Your Games Completed of 2026

Oh there's a thought, does Trails in the Sky SC read your save from the first game? If so I might want to continue playing on PC…

Alastor

It does, I think it has an upper cap on level but I remember SC carrying from FC and 3rd carrying from SC

Brian Bloodaxe

Good to know.

Alastor

Yeah, don't get too excited but it was pretty cool. Sadly I was a handheld game for FC and SC and then PC for 3rd which is the only way to play it (If I had a steam machine I could play it on my VB )

aniki

Rolled credits on Sea of Stars. It's fine, I really wish it was better.

It seemed to drag on quite a bit but then the ending came out of nowhere; it did a pretty poor job of establishing its plot and stakes, despite the often excessive amount of dialogue. It could really have done with more in the way of signposting, too; it was a nightmare trying to backtrack to different villages or other locations without any of them being marked on the map (which isn't accessible at all, unless you're on the overworld).

Ultimately felt like a couple of different games that had been jammed together, not entirely successfully.

Alastor

That's the general gist I've heard from everyone I've seen to complete it, sounds like Chained Echoes without any of the cool idea from that game, is that unfair?

aniki

Chained Echoes! That's the other vaguely-disappointing retro-styled RPG I was trying desperately to remember!

I don't remember any of the cool ideas Chained Echoes may or may not have had, but given that I'd forgotten its name…

Alastor

I thought the combat for Chained Echoes was really fun and super engaging, I've heard people rag on SoS's combat as apparently relying on the special attack minigames too much and apparently not giving you anything new to play with, whereas CE at least had new mechanics like introducing mechs with a whole new combat mechanic.

…erm, I'm not trying to shill CE and shit on SoS or anything, I haven't played the latter (and probably never will) it's all just coming back to me. Although yes, story does kind of shit the bed and it can be a bit mean sometimes.

It got DLC too but I feel like I'm a bit too far removed from that setting at this point to go back. :thinking:

aniki

Jul 26

There might have been more to SoS' combat if I'd been playing on a higher difficulty. It does have some interesting stuff with damage types—there are "locks" that appear (with a countdown) when an enemy is building up to a big attack; if you break them all, the event is stunned and loses that action, but often there's no way to fully break it in the time limit.

I would need to replay Chained Echoes for a fair comparison, though—it's not on Gamepass any more, but I'm not sure I want to spend £20+ on it when I'm pretty sure I finished it already.

Alastor

Halo: Campaign Evolved
As usual with every version of this game I'm having a blast until the Flood show up and then I honestly feel like it genuinely turns into a not very good game. The issue is that they had a cool concept, but they overused it, the first level where you meet them is fantastic, going through that forest into the facility where Things Have Gone Wrong and then suddenly your completely swarmed by these things coming at you. Then you have a tense defense section where you're holding them off until help arrives…then it does it again with Guilty Spark hacking a door slowly while they come at you, and then again, and again and again…

It doesn't really let up either, after you escape the Library you do see the Covenant again and boy did I miss those guys, but the Flood never really go away. I dunno' man, maybe it could have worked but I think that their presence could have been better if their arrival was a real 'oh shit' moment and used more sparingly but destructive when it happens. And the Flood count gets extremely dense towards the end to the point I'm not sure if you're even supposed to fight as many as I did, until I just ran past them anyway. Campaign DEvolved more like.

As for this particular version's unique qualities…I still don't really know what to say tbh, sometimes I think it looks cool but sometimes I feel it's not even as good looking as MCC and unlike that version you can't toggle the graphics. You get to use some weapons from Halo 2 (as if you're ever switching off the Magnum in Halo 1) you can Sprint for some fucking reason, there's no Multiplayer…insane value!

I'm just glad this was on Game Pass, this is absolutely not worth full price

Garwoofoo

I think all of the Halo games are a bit variable though, aren't they? The back half of Halo 1 has too much Flood and is basically the first half in reverse. Halo 2 has the Arbiter levels. Halo 3 is mostly fine but has one level right at the end which might be the worst in the whole series. And so on.

It looks like they've basically given up making new Halo games now and are just going to churn out remakes, Halo 2 is already all but confirmed.

Alastor

Halo 3 being my favourite and the least offensive game Flood wise is probably not a coincidence, though there is still that one mission with Cortana named after her that sucks iirc.

Alastor

Well looking at the internet the opinion seems divided to fairly negative, but I really enjoyed those 3 bonus missions this game comes with. Yes, the Covenant use of purple is absolutely hideous (issue in the main game too tbf), yes the Chief and Johnson dialogue is a 'bit' Marvel-ish, but I object to the issues people have with Chief talking 'too much' just because he does in the main game, he's not a mute.

…And yet, unlike the last half of the main game, you actually have fun combat against the Covenant, and the combat sandbox is fairly inorganic at times with the way they rain guns on you, but there's some good shootouts to be had here. Lots of two tiered, huge elaborate arenas that give you the tools to do what Halo does best and to repeat, not a single Flood in sight.

Guess I'm done, no way am I playing this version on Legendary any time soon

Alastor

Aug 07

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Maybe my feelings are clouded because I was getting restless/bored but If you play this like I just did, beelining through the story, I think this is actually at least a worse experience than Vice City. The PS2 GTAs don't exactly have the focused stories of the later titles but I at least was always looking forward to what would happen next, in this game I didn't care about anything in the parts outside Los Santos, bar maybe a few exceptions. There are better missions than Vice City here but also some that are real chores.

And the map is the most impressive yet…and also the most annoying to navigate, it's bigger than LC/VC and more complex, I had to check the main big map a ton to make sure I didn't take a curvy off road from my destination, and some later missions make you go on an absolute trek.

I just don't think these games were meant to be played like this, which doesn't excuse the way both VC and San Andreas punish you for not having engaged with the side stuff imo but it's something I just never encountered back in the day when I played these games for months. So yeah, what a shocker, this game was kind of a mess this time. Also it's way too long, I'm sure GTA4 will be even longer.

Actually looking forward to scaling things back a bit with Liberty City Stories now, which is a GTA game made for a handheld as opposed to me emulating San Andreas on one (It was also later made for the PS2 but lets not get bogged down in the details, I don't think I'm going to play that version anyway)

Brian Bloodaxe

Aug 07

I remember enjoying Liberty City Stories. I seem to remember I spent basically the whole game on motorbikes.

You should play Jak 2 as well.

Alastor

Aug 07

Oh man I'd love to revisit those games actually, R&C too

Alastor

Aug 20

Pokemon Leaf Green

It's a remake of the first generation of Pokemon, it's excellent, obviously.

Catching your own Pokemon, then raising them and testing them out in Gym Battles is still a great RPG concept to this day I think, and something that will be different to everyone because there's a roster of 150 Pokemon here, and with it being the first game they hadn't scraped the bottom of the barrel for design ideas yet! Even if you think the series is tired now and refuses to change a stale formula I think it's hard to deny the original concept and thus games were easy 10/10s. (which are not these games but…close enough? A time before remakes were seen as creatively bankrupt)

The downsides are that is still quite an old game in terms of signposting, maybe I'm just not vigilant enough but some points in this game I got lost because I didn't talk to an NPC who explained the hint, it's quite Dragon Quest levels of obtuse in that way, it really doesn't care. Also it's not got the 'conveniences' of recent games, EXP share is in the game but it's not like the recent game where your entire team gets EXP regardless if they fought or not. I hated that in the new games so I don't mind, but stuff like that and something else I might have forgot not being in the older games might make this game a no go at this point.

So pumped to play Crystal at some point now, but I think it might be a good idea to wedge the Golden Sun games in between there

Alastor

Aug 30

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

I enjoyed that quite a bit, definitely more fun to play than San Andreas was. Knowing this is/was a PSP exclusive at some point it's hard to not be a bit impressed at how this brought a pretty faithful 3D GTA experience to a handheld, it's not really cut down from say, GTA3 all that much, it's arguably a better game/GTA than 3 even. As a handheld GTA the scope of the missions reflect this and after a million hours of San 'drive cross country lol' Andreas I couldn't be happier, any given play session of this had me burning through more missions in a row before burnout than pretty much any GTA game so far.

Not essential unless you are a massive fan, but deserves to stand in the line up of GTA games as much as the PS2 trilogy if you ask me. (ignoring that it came to PS2 eventually…)

Now I hadn't beat this before, but I had played it a fair amount, by comparison I've not seen more than 5 minutes of Vice City Stories gameplay let alone played it, so it'll be all new to me. I'm hoping they don't jump the shark and try to push the envelope too much and stray too far from what I liked about LCS but we'll see.

Alastor

Sep 02

Metal Gear Solid 4
The internet is full of people calling this a masterpiece, but I think it's the worst game in the series, it feels to me like what MGS would be if someone made a movie of it, the 'Foxdie doomsday' plot and scenes like Meryl and Johnny fighting that army of soldiers while proposing to each other are straight out of something I'd expect to see if that actually happened. At best Kojima wrote himself into a corner trying to tie everything up into a neat bow, at worst he actively regretted some of the stuff he did in previous games and just retconned almost everything.

Gameplay wise it has moments of brilliance, then after Act 2 you kind of don't even get that, so I don't know why people even defend it from that angle either. I'm just looking forward to playing Peace Walker too, which has a lot of problems, but at least was fun to play

Alastor

Sep 05

Onimusha 3: Demon's Siege
Solid game, and if it wasn't having to play as Jean Reno, would probably be my favourite. I don't think he's horrible to play, he's clearly got a strong moveset with cool utility, but I just wanted to cut things down with Samanosuke's swords every time I had to play as him. That isn't to say the time swapping mechanic is bad either, it's used to cool effect in some good environments, I just never felt his combat was all that satisfying, which probably won't be a very common opinion, I bet people love him.

Ninchilla

Sep 09

Not 100% complete yet, but we rolled credits on Big Walk tonight! Absolute masterpiece of a finale, and surprisingly affecting right at the end. Undisputed GOTY for me.

Garwoofoo

Sep 13

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

I went back to this after a long break and found I was closer to the end than I thought I was.

This is a musou game so you know what you're getting: thousands of enemies, loads of characters and a whole lot of enjoyable button-mashing. They've all got a slightly different style and this one is low on battlefield management (your allies generally go to sensible places under their own steam) and high on flashy attacks and multi-character combos. It's very enjoyable to play, has quite a lot of stuff to do between battles, has tremendous cutscenes and fits in very well as a canon prequel to Tears of the Kingdom.

However it is that link (haha) that also lets it down slightly. The problem is that TOTK doesn't really have many significant characters who also exist in this prequel period, so most of the roster is simply made up. And they get a bit desperate: it's fair enough that you have a Goron ally, a Rito ally, a Zora ally and so on, but then later on you unlock another Goron, another Rito, another Zora (and then just a couple of random blokes for good measure) and it's clearly padding for the sake of it. There are, in all honesty, just five really distinctive characters in this (three from TOTK and two significant originals) and everybody else is just a bit generic.

But it's fun, it looks spectacular, and if you want a combat-heavy button masher then it's a good choice. Personally I think the series peaked with the original Hyrule Warriors (especially its Definitive Edition on Switch) which just had so many unique characters and settings and huge dollops of fan service - but this is decent too.

Alastor

Sep 13

The thought that I'm behind not one, but two Zelda Musou games is frightening, especially considering I feel like I could just play Hyrule Warriors forever. Pretty much the only game I forced myself to stop playing because there was too much content rather than a lack of it., easily the best licensed musou I've played.

Garwoofoo

Metroid: Zero Mission

The absolute peak of its genre, IMHO, still unbeaten 22 years after release. It's not too difficult, it can be beaten in a couple of sessions, it's small enough that you can hold the overall shape of it in your head without constantly referring to a map, it's got great bosses and it's cleverly, intricately designed. It's one of those rare remakes that has completely supplanted the original (the only other one I can think of is Resident Evil, from around the same time). It's basically perfect and well worth the few hours it'll take for a run through.

Alastor

I'm seeing a lot of people prefer Fusion these days, I'm a way bigger fan of Fusion now than I used to be but I still think Zero Mission is better, Fusion has way better boss fights though

Garwoofoo

Fusion was criticised at the time for being too linear and plot-heavy, but then every Metroid game since then has been the same, so I think it's much more widely liked these days. I remember the bosses in that one being an absolute bastard though.

I'm quite tempted to do a series playthrough in order, I've played all the games to a greater or lesser extent but only ever actually finished a couple of them. I really enjoyed this runthrough of Zero Mission.

EDIT: not Other M though, I do like the way everyone seems to have collectively agreed that game doesn't exist.

Alastor

I would have played it again post MP4 but I don't have a Wii and I'm not sure I want to see how much of a hassle it is to emulate the control scheme of that particular game.

Garwoofoo

It's got, from memory, a really bizarre control scheme where half the time you are holding the Wiimote on its side and controlling Samus with the D-pad, and the other half you are pointing it at the screen to aim at stuff. So you're perpetually swinging it backwards and forwards as you try to move and aim at the same time. The whole game was a disaster from the start. It looks like Dread is canonically Metroid 5 and Ravenous is going to be Metroid 6, and Other M has been quietly forgotten about.

Alastor