Author Topic: Deadline December 2021!  (Read 7392 times)

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Offline pokepal148

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #25 on: December 19, 2021, 05:26:58 PM »
Xenoblade 2 was just really easy to drop and there are enough systems in place with the blades to make it kind of difficult to get back to.

Offline TOPHATANT123

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #26 on: December 19, 2021, 08:48:53 PM »
Xenoblade 2 has design problems. Overall I still like it quite a lot, but I can't disagree with the criticisms raised.

December is nearing its end and I've not finished any of the games yet.

Horizon Zero Dawn
I'm almost done with the DLC, then onto blasting through the remaining main story quests. The DLC I think is the best part about the game. It's challenging but not annoying, and gives you some new things to play with and unlock. Mixes linear sections with the open world nicely. After the DLC I have started to appreciate the combat even more, it's really fun as far as open world combat goes.

I usually love story and dialogue. But whenever a side quest giving NPC in Horizon starts talking my eyes glaze over and I miss all the details. I'm not sure what it is, I feel like they overuse those sci-fi proper nouns to refer to things that the game hasn't properly established. The way they talk is half modern, half faux wise tribal elder. Plus all of the side quests are some variation on: go here kill this. I find it hard to find any attachment to these side stories. The lore is more interesting than what's going on in the game.

Even though I don't think I love it as much as the general consensus, the game has something that makes me able to play it for 6 hours straight. Nearing 90 hours, should be able to finish this.

Robotics;Notes Elite
Now about 20 hours in. I'm just enjoying being with these characters and the world is well realised. Not as immediately gripping as Stein's Gate, but I'm not going to cast judgement yet. Probably won't finish before January, but I'd like to.

Shin Megami Tensei 5
70 hours in and still loving it. Some boss fights have gone down to the wire and been incredibly close. It's balanced in such a way that you feel powerful and have a range of tools, but so do your enemies. Any regular encounter can be a life or death situation, so you need to learn when to go all in and when to fold. At the rate I'm going plus everything else, very doubtful I'll finish this for Deadline December.

Offline Luigi Dude

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #27 on: December 20, 2021, 02:02:11 PM »
I just recently attempted once again to get through this game, and I stopped playing at Chapter 4 because I Just reached a point where I kind of don't care anymore. I think the game's biggest problem is the Gacha nature of the Blade system. You pull so many Blades, and if you don't draw a rare Blade or at least one with rare passive abilities, you might as well trash it and try again. Then you have to level them all up through incredibly arbitrary ways. And you might not even pull a Blade that's suitable for the character that pulled it, so you have to use a limited resource to reassign them. And you're constantly needing to equip and unequip them whenever you run into skill checks in the world. It's just too much, and at this point I just don't care. It's not like the story is going anywhere fast, either.

Oh I agree the Blade system is a mess and the developers really didn't think it through that well.  But focusing on the Blades the game gives you naturally was enough for me to get through the main game.  Plus I don't want to spoil much but toward the last few chapters, the story gives Rex 2 Blades that end up being so overpowered that there's no point in him using anything else after that.  I also found Tora to be the much better tank character since he can have such a large amount of HP, and if you keep putting an item that gives him a 25% damage barrier to max HP in his pouch all the time, it's almost impossible for him to die.  Of course the Tiger Tiger minigame to power up Poppi is dumb.  The later levels in that mini game are so damn cheap that it end up being quicker to just replay the first level over and over again since it's the easiest one to gain crystals to buy better parts for her.

It's kind of weird how the game makes a big deal out of Blades and wants you to have a ton of them, but by the end of it, the best ones end up being a few the game gives you anyway.  Unless someone is trying to go for 100% on all side quest, it just doesn't seem worth it to me.

On the story though, yeah your going to be out of luck on that one.  I personally didn't think the story became interesting until the last few chapters, but then the game suddenly shoves a ton of cutscenes and flashbacks down your throat as well.  It's a very badly paced story where you have things moving at a snails pace for much of the game then suddenly things go from 0 to 100 at the end.
I’m gonna have you play every inch of this game! - Masahiro Sakurai

Offline pokepal148

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #28 on: December 20, 2021, 02:49:50 PM »
I hit Perfect Chaos yesterday in Sonic Adventure. That boss is significantly more difficult than the handful of gameplay videos I've seen years ago make it out to be.

Offline NWR_insanolord

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #29 on: December 23, 2021, 01:15:03 AM »
I just rolled credits on Metroid Dread, so that's one down. That final boss was a real bastard, to the point I started to worry about the battery on my Switch with how many tries it took me, but I finally took him down.

EDIT: Having finished the credits and gone back to the home screen it turns out my battery was still at 75%, so I wasn't anywhere close to running out, but it felt like a lot at the time.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2021, 01:19:54 AM by NWR_insanolord »
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Offline M.K.Ultra

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #30 on: December 26, 2021, 06:22:08 PM »
I finally completed my second play through of Astral Chain. In addition to increasing the difficulty to Pt standard (I don't know why I played casual the first time, standard is not that hard) I went for 100% completion. There are a lot of different collectibles and a lot of game here. It ended up taking be about 66 hours but it was very satisfying. This game is easily in my top 5 Switch games and should not be missed.

According to the in-game achievement system I am only 94% complete because I still have the following: Pt Ultimate difficulty, database (taking pictures of every enemy), and File 12 (post game missions). Still I feel like I am at a good enough stopping point to say I finished the main game and Lappy looks impressed  ;)



Offline pokepal148

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #31 on: December 27, 2021, 03:11:09 PM »
I cleared Sonic Adventure now. Perfect Chaos was a real bully but we did it. I have 48 emblems and 20 hours on record.

Offline broodwars

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #32 on: December 27, 2021, 10:05:39 PM »
I did end up clearing the Terminator Resistance DLC, as well as Lost in Random and Carrion.
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Offline pokepal148

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #33 on: December 27, 2021, 11:35:09 PM »
I went and cleared the final boss of Kirby Star Allies. That's two games this month! Let's go.

Offline M.K.Ultra

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #34 on: December 28, 2021, 11:48:30 AM »
I beat the main story in Fallout 4 thus completing both objectives for Deadline December! Total playtime was about 56 hours and I ended up with 32/50 trophies. This was the first Bethesda game I finished and as most people say, it's both a great game and a buggy mess. I am not sure what I said in Shocktober so I will just post my notes again here.
Pros: Story, characters, voice acting. The ability to choose the outcome of the game is the best I have ever seen in a game. The relationship system is awesome (I love you Cait!). The VATS system for "turn based" combat. Cons: The game is too difficult at first, requiring too much manual saving. Too much of an emphasis on killing. The crafting system is not great. When you side with one faction, you have to turn on the other three.

Offline Khushrenada

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #35 on: December 28, 2021, 08:21:24 PM »
Alright. Finally some progress I can report on. Things have been jammed up for awhile but maybe stuff will finally start falling into place here.

Completed Part Time UFO late last night. Finally made a high enough tower in the Tower of Infinity section to get the last medal needed which also gave me the last Feat of Glory I needed. Done and dusted.

Then I was finally able to move on and wrap up Shantae for GBC. Collected the last firefly and was able to acquire all dances and items and beat the boss so that is complete and wrapped up.

On a roll, I then looked up what bonus areas I was missing in DKC and then got that game finished on 101% via the Switch SNES app. A couple of those bonus areas are crazy. You basically need a guide to find them.

That moves my progress to 4/10. I really thought I'd be at 6 or 7 at this point but some of this stuff took me longer to finish than expected and time to play has still been a bit of a juggling act. Meanwhile, Mario Super Picross just wants to keep giving me more puzzles but I should be nearing the end in that. Finished all the Wario puzzles and now just have 10 or so left in Mario's Special section. I got batteries charging up for my WiiMote for finishing MP3 but that'll be tomorrow. I guess it is GameCube time now.
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Offline ThePerm

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #36 on: December 28, 2021, 11:25:17 PM »
I did not mention it above but I am playing Fallout 4 on PS4.
and Fallout 4 to beat on Ps4.
How far into the game are you Perm?

Not very far.
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Offline NWR_insanolord

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #37 on: December 29, 2021, 04:30:59 AM »
It's looking like I probably won't hit my second goal for this, as I just checked and the second set of Pikmin 3 Deluxe side stories is longer than I was expecting.
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Offline TOPHATANT123

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #38 on: December 30, 2021, 05:54:57 PM »
At the very least I managed to finish Horizon Zero Dawn. As they came out a week apart and have similar mechanics, it's hard not to compare this game with Breath of the Wild. I actually think the two games compliment each other well, rather than one being clearly better.

For an open world game Horizon has really great nuanced combat with a wide variety of weapons. In Zelda, combat isn't really a focus (though I will say a huge improvement over previous entries).

Zelda has a greater emphasis on freedom and exploration, with shrines, koroks, photos and resources. In Horizon there's not much of a reason to just head out and walk in a random direction, when I went somewhere it was with purpose.

Horizon has excellent lore to dig into, whereas in BOTW I thought the lore was pretty shallow.

BOTW's crafting system is really fun and silly, as you mash random things together and see what comes out. Horizon is a lot more utilitarian, there are only a very small handful of resources that you will actually need to pick up

Horizon has some amazing DLC that fits perfectly into the main game. As for BOTW's DLC, well I was so underwhelmed I never bought it.

BOTW has a crazy physics system that you can get really creative with. Plus the fact you can go literally anyway. With Horizon it's more of what you see is what you get.

Both the games are a phenomenal first attempt at an open world game, it goes to show what can happen when you get developers working on new genres.

Offline Luigi Dude

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #39 on: December 31, 2021, 09:20:22 PM »
Managed to get one more big game in by the end of the year and even had enough time left to do an indie as well.

Astral Chain

Finally bought the game during the eShop Thanksgiving sale last month, since I had always been interested in it from the trailers.  Finished the game earlier this week and really enjoyed it overall.  Played it on the PT Standard mode but didn't go for S+ like AJBungle did.  I originally was going to go back and replay levels to get higher ranks and get all photo's, but by the time I finished the main story I was burned out.

My biggest problem is the game is just too long for what it has to offer.  The combat is fun, but not as deep as Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101.  It's also lacking in enemy variety, despite the database saying it has over 160 enemies, most are just reskins of existing ones.  By the end of the game I was enjoying the detective and exploration aspects more then the actual combat sections.

Still a nice first entry in a new IP, and would like to see what a more polished sequel would be able to do.  Especially when the game introduces a new element to the combat literally at the very end that I think has the potential to really expand the combat in a future installment.


Broforce

Well I still had a few days left so I decided to play something short in my backlog.  Not much to really say about this.  It was a fun action game and I laughed at all the different things the game was parodying.  The level design does start to feel samey after a while but the last few levels get pretty crazy so the game kept me engaged for the 5 hours it took to beat it.
I’m gonna have you play every inch of this game! - Masahiro Sakurai

Offline Khushrenada

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #40 on: January 01, 2022, 10:44:06 PM »
Well, when I made my last post a couple days ago, it hit me that December ended on Friday. For some reason, I had been thinking it was this Sunday. I guess holiday time had got me all confuzzled. After making the post, I knew I wasn't going to finish everything I had hoped to.

I finally wrote off Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue. There was one outfit I couldn't unlock. I have no idea what the requirement is or how close I might be to getting it. There's just no info on this game out there. It just wasn't covered by any game site and no real FAQ exists. I just see the same sort of stuff for it posted all over and it's clearly not correct since I've done what was said to get S ranks on all levels and still nothing. I've bought all the profiles, videos and music. I've gotten all my helpers to their top level 3 and have finished all levels with S rank. There's only so much I can keep playing this kind of basic game until whatever charm it has is gone so that's it. I'm considering it finished and walking away.

Mario's Super Picross - I finished the Special Mario levels late on Friday and that caused the credits to play on the game. However, it also unlocked some Ultra levels on the Wario side so I beat the game but it's not quite finished yet. A half point.

Pikmin - Popped in Pikmin after washing my hands of the Hello Kitty Sailer B Costume madness and started chipping away through that. Have gotten all parts from the Impact Site, Forest of Hope, Forest Navel and now have to go through the Distant Spring and Final Boss for the remaining 11 ship parts.

I also never got any gaming time on Thursday further cutting into the potential of finishing Pikmin in time or the MP3 final bosses I keep talking about. Maybe tonight. Also never got back to Luigi's Mansion or XCX yet but I'll get to them soon enough I'm sure. Final December Tally: 5.5/10

(Mario's Super Picross is too super! So many large Picross puzzles. With less puzzles, I might have been able to make it to 7/10.)
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Offline M.K.Ultra

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #41 on: January 19, 2022, 06:26:47 PM »

And we've got one down. Finished the 150cc time trials and unlocked the last kart part. I really thought I could blast through this game quickly and at times it felt like I was getting through it faster than MK7 even with the extra cups and modes. (Nothing like beating a staff ghost on your first try.  8) ) Yet, my playtime is over 40 according to the Switch. Not sure what it was when I started playing the game more seriously as I had some previous time in it but it likely took 30 hours to complete it like this. (And there's still 200cc Time Trials if I wanted to go the extra mile.)


What kart/racer combination did you use for 200cc to 3-star the cups. I had great set up for the 50-150 but it doesn't work at 200?

Offline Khushrenada

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #42 on: January 19, 2022, 08:36:50 PM »
Oh yeah, I had to change up my racing rig for 200cc also. I used my time at first with 100cc and 150cc to try different characters and kart pieces before eventually settling on Waluigi + W25 Silver Arrow (what I call the Monopoly Car) + Slick Tires + the standard Super Glider. Although I did later switch to the Gold Standard kart piece after unlocking it and used that for the last few Cups and all the 150cc Time Trials with Waluigi and didn’t notice much difference in control.

For 200cc, I returned to Daisy as my champion driver. It seemed to me that acceleration more than top speed was needed for 200cc. It also took some fiddling to find a build that I liked the traction and cornering with but I pretty much settled on the combo of Daisy + Landship + Blue Standard + Standard Glider. If you don’t have the Landship unlocked then you can also use the Streetle frame. The stats are the same as the Landship and that driver/tire/glider combo. Now I say pretty much settled on because there was one other build I had to use to get through the Egg Cup. That was my hardest 200cc challenge. The worst thing was that I could pretty much get first on the first two tracks 99% of the time. It was Dragon Driftway and Mute City together that kept eluding me. Cornering is very challenging in Dragon Driftway and I also had a problem with a large curve in Mute City though sometimes it also was ruined by bad item luck on the last lap. In any case, I used the same Driver/tire/glider combo but switched the kart frame from Landship to Biddybuggy. It seemed to give me the slight improvement in cornering that I needed for Dragon Driftway and I finally did some better cornering in Mute City as well.

Fortunately for you, I started snapping a bunch of clips at the end of some races and wins that I thought might make for decent tweets of Mario Kart Madness so I could easily see what my builds were and what I used to win some cups. Now a couple caveats. People can drive in different ways and have different preferences for what they may think feels right to them. I’ve never liked the feel of the motorcycle/bike frames. The cornering feels off on those. I’ve stuck with carts because there’s a type of cornering and drift I’m looking for based on what I feel it was like in past games that I succeeded with. So, this combo still may not be right for you.

The other thing you may already know but I’ll mention anyways is that you have to race differently in 200cc. I had to change the angle or spot on the road I might normally take a corner. As I’d do some laps, I’d be figuring out and identifying which corners or parts of the track were tripping me up and focus on how and when I was turning or driving when I got to them until I found a successful approach and started copying that maneuver each time I’d hit that portion. Unlike the early cups, sometimes it was more beneficial to not go over any ramps or do any tricks for extra speed boosts because that could cause you to miss the next corner or lose control of the cart. Sometime it was best not to even bother doing a drift for some corners or just driving/hopping over some land to reach a “shortcut” because 200 keeps you from being slowed down too much when you off-road. The game also says using your brakes is an important part of 200cc and there are times you may have to quickly slam to the B button but generally I found just letting go of the A button for a quick moment or two was enough to bring my speed down and correct myself in some tricky spots without slowing down too much. Sometimes that was the best approach for a tight corner. Start turning, letting go of A for a moment to kill a bad drift and press back down to keep going forward after that quick correction. Better to do that then crash and lose all speed and momentum.

Hope that helps. A good track to try is the Mario Circuit track in Flower Cup. I loaded the game up and tested the Daisy build on it just now. I could still do some long cornering on it getting up to purple sparks and easily won that race on my first try. Still got it! Although most 200cc tracks won’t give you time to do nice cornering.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2022, 11:49:12 PM by Khushrenada »
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Offline M.K.Ultra

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #43 on: January 20, 2022, 05:50:29 PM »
Thanks for that Khush, you always go above and beyond. I was last trying out some of the baby drivers and still getting stuck on courses like Mute City. I will give you setup a try. I definitely agree with you on the bikes, I only use them for battle mode.

Offline Khushrenada

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Re: Deadline December 2021!
« Reply #44 on: January 21, 2022, 06:48:32 PM »
Thanks for that Khush, you always go above and beyond.

I was just honored that when you thought you could use some advice for a game the name that came to your mind was Khushrenada. If someone is going to think of me as their go-to source for information then I don't want to let them down!
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