Beaten

Yakuza Kiwami 2 – read about it here.

Mega Man 3 – It has been too long since I’ve played this. It is still a great game. I’ve begun to accept that Mega Man 2 is the superior experience. But this is the game I spent all my time with as a kid and this is the Mega Man game that I love. I hadn’t really played it in several years until a few weekends ago. It took a couple of attempts, but I pretty quickly got into a groove and cleared the whole thing. I don’t like the Yellow Devil, but otherwise I love this game.

Super Mario Galaxy – read about it here.

Mercenaries Saga 3 – I bought this as a cheap Final Fantasy Tactics rip off. I got what I paid for. I don’t really mean that as an insult. It plays like FFT on a budget. Everything works just fine, but it feels kind of bare bones and under tested. There is still that baseline enjoyment or moving guys around a little map and using terrain and skills to defeat opponents. However, it lacks FFT’s delightfully breakable job system. The story is roughly on the same level as FFT’s original translation, minus the attempts at grandeur. Mercenaries Saga 3 isn’t a terrible way to spend $8.

Gargoyle’s Quest 2 – This has a well deserved reputation as a minor NES classic. It displays Capcom’s mastery of the system in its later days. (This was a 1992 release, contemporaneous with Sonic 2 and Super Mario Kart) It takes an RPG world map and combines it with fairly unique platforming levels. That uniqueness is largely due to the interesting abilities of Firebrand. It is a game all about managing his hover meter, moving laterally but not on the platforms. The problem with the game is that it requires some jumping with no way of knowing where you are going to land beforehand. That is a complaint, but not a game breaking one. It just leads to some frustrating hits. Otherwise, this game is really, really good.

Costume Quest 2 – I tried to beat five horror or Halloween themed games before the end of October. The first game that jumped to mind when I decided to do that, Costume Quest 2 was the first game to come to mind. I bought it a few years ago around Halloween, but I didn’t end up beating it, mostly because I got it on the WiiU but it doesn’t allow the player to play on the tablet. It is just big screen. Accepting that, I decided to finish up this little adventure. It takes about 6 hours to beat and that is about all the game there is in the premise. It is a pretty basic RPG with characters changing abilities based on which costumes they wear. The costumes allow for quite a bit of customization in the party. The battles, though, play out mostly identically once your party is set. The story if fluff, but largely pretty amusing. This is just a fun little game, enjoyable but easily forgettable.

Spirit Camera – This is a neat little experiment that isn’t much of a game. It uses the 3DS cameras for an AR experience. It comes with a booklet that the game reacts to to create ghosts that can only be seen through the 3DS. It is really neat, putting the player in the role of a survival horror protagonist stuck in a cursed book. It is actually a neat little short story. It is rather short though. It can be beaten in less than three hours. The biggest time sink is getting the camera to actually recognize what it is looking for. You have to play it in excellent light, or the AR scans in the booklet won’t work. It can be truly frustrating. It is an amazing experience; the game does a lot of interesting things with the book and general AR stuff. There just isn’t a lot of there and the illusion is completely broken when it doesn’t work right. Still, it is definitely worth playing.

Ongoing

Suikoden V – I am coming to the end of my revisit of this game. I’ll have one last post about it when I do (I might not expect that for more than a month) but it is turning into a more somber undertaking than I expected. Not because I don’t think the game has held up; it is just as much fun to play as it was when it first came out, but because I am beginning to suspect that this is the last time I will have the time or desire to play this game. Or any similar game.

Earthbound – I got an SNES Classic for Christmas and I haven’t really played it. I mean, I’ve turned it on and sampled nearly all of the games, but I haven’t really sat down and played any of them. I intend Earthbound to be the first, but I only managed to get through the opening.

Lollipop Chainsaw – This was another game I played for a Halloween celebration. It really feels like it wants to be Bayonetta, but the gameplay just isn’t there. It is sloppy and repetitive. The story stuff I might have enjoyed back when this came out half a decade ago, now I can barely tolerate it. Having a boss continuingly yell “slut” at the protagonist is just off putting. I don’t really know if I am going to finish this now that I missed Halloween.

Onimusha 2 – I already beat this once few years back, but I recall it being one of my favorite games if its ilk. I remember being especially intrigued by its branching story paths, built off of a friendship system with a handful of allies. So far I have barely gotten through the first few scenes of the game, which I have enjoyed very much despite the tank controls. The first game is getting–has gotten?– a remaster and I hope they follow up with this one.

Upcoming

Super Mario 3D World – I’ve actually already started, but this will be finished up soon.

Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers – I want to get back to this. I like it a bunch, for all that it still plays like it is twenty years old.

Yakuza 3 – I got distracted by Halloween games, but I’ll come back to this.

Xenoblade Chronicles X – I had a sudden desire to play through the parts of this I didn’t get to before I finished the story, only to have those hopes disappear because my nephew had deleted my save. I have some desire to start from scratch. We’ll see.