Completion Thread 2012: Hai! Dekimashita!

[Yoshi]

Revelaitons

[MechDeus]

You had to bring an import (so far), a non-exclusive (as you pointed out), and arcade ports to the table to even make a case. That's exactly what I'm talking about.

So since you redirected the comments to specify consoles while saying it's the year of the portable I guess that means you no longer count the PC as a viable platform?

I can think of tons of great games not on handhelds in 2012, but a lot of them are going to be multiplatform. That also includes a bunch of PC games not "being held back" by consoles, like Dustforce and a new Sins of a Solar Empire. If anything you should be happy for the ports to PC and not damning them, since all of those ports at least have better resolutions and more solid if not better framerates that you otherwise wouldn't have gotten. Not to mention the enormous benefit of having all those games on one platform that isn't going away.

I also like how you tried to single out arcade ports, as though there was any chance of those being played by more than two people if they weren't on consoles. Persona 4 Arena didn't even come out in American arcades, and what was the last big fighting game tournament where they used arcade machines for most of the games? Even if you did want to count them as arcade games, it's still a good lineup that at least gives the portables a run for the money for this years releases.

[Andrew]

Wario Land: Shake It! (WII)

Started this one a while ago, went back and finished it recently. A good game with a challenging final boss, I didn't think the tilt controls were overdone at all. Beautiful in spite of the fact that it isn't truly presented in widescreen. It made me wish that NSMB titles would shake up heh the artistic direction a bit, instead of the generic sameness we get every time.


Shining Force II (GEN)

I had my first Shining Force experience a couple years ago, and this one was even better. Some of the later battles were truly challenging, requiring me to egress and reengage a few times before getting it right. It doesn't hold up graphically to its contemporaries--that's not to say that it's ugly, but it was released around the same time as Secret of Mana and looks like it easily could have dropped several years beforehand. But the character art is priceless, the soundtrack memorable, the supporting cast varied and well scripted. Superb.



360
Mass Effect 2

PS3
Journey
Final Fantasy XIII-2

WII
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Deadly Creatures
Xenoblade Chronicles
Wario Land: Shake It!

3DS
Pushmo
Mutant Mudds
Resident Evil: Revelations
Sakura Samurai: Art of the Sword
Mighty Switch Force
Mario Kart 7

DS
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
Again
The Legendary Starfy
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Chrono Trigger

iOS
Alphadia
Hector: Badge of Carnage
9mm
Eternal Legacy
Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror
Bar Oasis
Grinsia

PSV
Touch My Katamari
Uncharted: Golden Abyss

PSP
Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection
Me & My Katamari

GBA
WarioWare, Inc: Mega Microgames!

GB/GBC
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
Kirby's Dream Land

GG
Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble

GEN
Phantasy Star II
Shining Force II

PC
Dear Esther

[Yoshi]

So since you redirected the comments to specify consoles while saying it's the year of the portable I guess that means you no longer count the PC as a viable platform?

Every pre-Windows 8 year is the year of the PC, but there are so few developers pushing the platform because of multiplatform releases at best and late, shitty ports at worst, it's hard to be excited. Console exclusives shouldn't even exist anymore, other than first/second party games, but they continue to limp out on ancient hardware. We have 8XX cards out there but nothing to really use them. At least there are finally some portable games pushing powerful (by portable standards) hardware. We haven't seen that since the Lynx really.

To come at this from a whole different direction, Dishonored is probably the only game this year that has a shot at being better than two portable games, and that is crazy. Epic Mickey 2 and Hitman have an outside shot, but it's a damn short list. And I don't think I would have put a portable game in my top three or five any other year. When you have the two best examples of games from an entire set of platforms come out in one year, that's pretty amazing. Clearly I'm grading on the curve, but this is a weak year for console/PC games and a really strong one for portables.

[MechDeus]

Every pre-Windows 8 year is the year of the PC, but there are so few developers pushing the platform because of multiplatform releases at best and late, shitty ports at worst, it's hard to be excited.

Rose-colored glasses. PC games rarely pushed the platform hard, there would be maybe one game a year that could really use a system from the last year. Most games skewed towards a lower end because they had to accommodate for the majority of their audience, things like Mechwarrior 2, Unreal, and Crysis that had options way above and beyond were/are rare (aside from shadow effects, which are still usually a terrible resource hog).

I guess if you just want to be grumpy about it then go for it, but we're getting better versions of games then we ever have before. Just seems silly to me to want a unified platform - preferably PC - and more graphical options for your games, and then when you start to get more of that all you can do is complain about it.

When you have the two best examples of games from an entire set of platforms come out in one year, that's pretty amazing.

The sad part is that you're counting schlock like Uncharted instead of something like Gravity Rush.

[GohanX]

*edit*

Derp

[Joust Williams]

When games like Max Payne 3, an uber-budget non-open world shooter with incredible detail, are being overlooked in favor of a game where you have to buy an attachment to make the game playable on a system with a four inch screen, the curve is broken. At least pick a game where you wouldn't be thinking "If only this was on a console/PC" all the time.

This hasn't been a 2000 or 2004 type year for games, but come on, there have been a bunch of good ones and November hasn't hit.

[Rocca]

62. New Super Mario Bros. 2



Pretty uninspiring stuff. That line does great thrown around a lot for this game, but not without reason. In many ways, I didn't expect much, but I was surprised that it's what I actually got in the end. Even the last boss was pretty boring. You can't even hit him, you just have to wait and press a big button. This back-to-basics routine is a clear ploy to get the nostalgic on-board, see: the Wii game (which I didn't really like either) and honestly, save maybe one or two worlds in the middle, I can't say I really enjoyed this at all. 50% through the playthrough I stopped paying attention to finding each and every Star Coin lurking in the shadows (or above and off-screen).

As for game mechanics itself, I feel like there could have been a few more power-ups...granted, the Gold Flower and Mushroom are new, but they don't feel very original or game-changing compared to options like flight, density (metal), etc. It isn't an ugly game, but it just felt very bland. This was a definite spur of the moment purchase when I got my XL and my other friends were, but wow, what a waste of dinero. I'd trade it in, but a few friends wanted to play it first, so at least it won't cost them anything to try and see for themselves.

As for unlocking the last Secret [Star] World, the need to find coins throughout the world is pretty boring. I didn't really understand the prerequisites of 90 Stars and whether it was the total overall found or the total remaining post spending, because if it's the amount remaining, that is ridiculously unfair. A player who spends Star Coins to unlock the Mushroom huts is at a penalty than someone who didn't, being forced to find the rest of the coins, which is a weird unbalance.

63. Darksiders 2



Beaten on Apocalyptic. I don't know. A lot of things in this, I really, really loved. It's a gorgeous game full of vibrant color, flora and fauna, art and etc, but in terms of progressing where Darksiders left off, we got nothing. Literally nothing. It barely even felt like Darksiders 1.5, but truly Death being an errand boy. The breakdown of the entire game is to reach the Well of Souls to free humanity tasked to you at the beginning of the game. But to get there, you need to free the land of three miscreants, which open the path to speak to someone who can help you, if you fight some beast for him, which is locked by three scattered keys, in three seperate dungeon. Then when you do, the king asks for his three servants.

There is enough errand quests to make you question the point of it. The fact you can make the most of unremarkable gear by infusing them into Posessed items was pretty cool. The Crucible is another take at gauntlet style levels, but for some reason your skills are locked (L1/LB) even though you can just access them manually on the radial menu. It just feels very off.

Also, their inspirations are clean and cut. GoW style combat of swarms mixed with one-foe focusing with DMC. Terrain parkour traversals like PoP, portals like, well, Portal, literal giant stone bosses like in SotC, etc etc. The weirdest bit to me would be the music, which in combat feels like they just took the guitar riff from Sands of Time when you're in combat and music from Firefly when you're travelling. As for bugs, I ran into several crashes, but thankfully no game breakers.

This is a really gorgeous game with some great ideas, but it is pommeled to death by misdirecting the player into sub-quest over sub-quest over sub-quest. Even at the end Death reaches the Well of Souls and laughs to himself saying he persevered to get all this way and in the end doesn't even know what he's supposed to do. The Crowfather says he needs to make a sacrifice, so instead of finding anyone else, he just kills himself. Uhhh...

I guess I'll try the DLC for Argul's Tomb whenever it comes out (this came with like five Pre-order codes to use on PSN/XBLA and MyTHQ, but other than that, no thanks.

64. Sound Shapes (PS3/Vita)



Found the Vita version way more fun. Double platinum due to this new Cross Buy incentive. Really fun and it warmed up to me by the mid-end. The deadmau5 and Beck albums are great.

[007bond]

The thing that got me about DNF was the rubber band AI. Going from a level where the enemies basically beg to be shot, to a level where they lie in wait around the corner to kill you was very counter productive to having me want to keep playing.

Its worth it for the cheevos, anyone who can sit through playing air hockey long enough to get the achievement deserves a fucking medal

Besides a few bosses I didn't have too much trouble with the enemies but there were definitely some cheap deaths that had me cursing at the TV (the horrible load times made it much worse). Also, all the jumping sections and underwater are awful and just prove why they've been eliminated from nearly all FPS's.

[Mzo]

#47 - Gargoyle's Quest 2 (NES)

A re-telling of the Game Boy game with all new levels and bosses but kind of a worse translation? Weird. I always imagined the series had more of an RPG slant to it but the games are very short and you end up getting fat upgrades a little too quickly. Not even sure why there's an overworld when you really don't do much exploration or grinding. These two games could've been a lot cooler but they feel very tiny. On to Demon's Crest!