Today on Finnedorb…



Dead Space 2 (PS3): 9:16

Story: After the end of the first game, Isaac was captured by the Earth Government. He’s been in and out of cryosleep for 3 years. Eventually, he wakes up on the Sprawl, a space station in Saturn’s moon Titan. It’s been completely overrun by Necromorphs thanks to a new marker. It’s up to him to destroy it while also dealing with the Earth Government, and his guilt over what happened to Nicole.

Characters: Early on, Isaac is contacted by a lady named Daina, but she turns out to be a Unitoloigist who was trying to capture him to make her own marker. She’s killed by the Earth Government as soon as we get to her. He eventually meets another captive of the Earth Government, Nolan Stross who allegedly killed his wife and son. It’s never confirmed if he actually did, but he tries to kill us and another side character late in the game so it wouldn’t surprise me. The final major side character is Ellie. She’s a CEC pilot who’s just trying to get out of here. She’s probably my favorite side character in the series since she has great chemistry with Isaac. Speaking of Isaac, he’s voiced now. It took a while to get used to, but I think it works for this game since it’s slightly more cinematic than the last. The main villain of the game is Hans Tidemann, the leader of this station who’s trying everything in his power to kill Isaac.

Gameplay: The standard gameplay of the last game is still here, now with some new weapons I didn’t end up using since all the weapons from the previous game are here too. The biggest change to the game are the zero-gravity sections. No longer are you forced to jump around to very specific spots, now we can fly! This is a great change, and I’m happy they fixed my biggest gripe with the first game. Suit upgrades are a little different this time too, instead of upgrading the engineer suit throughout the game, we switch through different suits with their own bonuses. I like this change, I think it adds a little more strategy to how you play. Although, I think they could’ve gone farther with this idea than what they did.

While I like the gameplay in this better than the first game, the first game still has the better atmosphere. It’s hard for me to say which is better, but one thing's for certain; this is a good game. 8/10

I know I didn't have much to say about this game, but I have a lot more to say about the next.

Pretty good month for me

8/10 Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii): 53:58 7/10
8/11 The Forgotten City (PC-Steam): 5:42 7/10
8/12 Severed Steel (PC-Epic): 2:46 8/10
8/13 Barbie: Dreamhouse Party (Wii): 0:58 5/10 - WORST
8/13 Black Widow: Recharged (PC-Epic): 2:42 6/10
8/14 Centipede: Recharged (PC-Epic): 2:19 6/10
8/20 Dead Space 2 (PS3): 9:16 8/10 - BEST
8/26 Dead Space 3 (PS3): 11:18 7/10

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn was a massive disappointment for me. I think it did a bad job following up Path of Radiance's story and I wasn't a fan of the game being split-up into parts. This game was also significantly harder than the previous, purely due to how dogshit the Dawn Brigade is. I don't think there's been a weaker mc than Micaiah, and the Jagen Sothe sucks too. I'm still a fan of the gameplay because I like Fire Emblem, but this is almost my least favorite (it's lucky FE Fates: Conquest has such a terrible story).

Dead Space 2 was a great sequel to Dead Space. I loved the improvements to the gameplay and the side characters. It's hard for me to say whether this or the first game are my favorite in the series.

I can't say the same for Dead Space 3. This is not a Dead Space game, it's a generic Sci-Fi shooter. The tone is nothing like the previous games to the point where it isn't even a horror game. The side characters are awful, especially Nolan and Carver. I wasn't a fan of how crafting replaced the store system since it just leads to having too much ammo and health. Every shot mattered in the first two games, I can waste 70% of my ammo in this game and be fine. The redesigns for the necromorphs suck too. The first two games really made you feel like you were fighting twisted and corrupted corpses, but they just feel like generic aliens in this one. The game feels fine to play, just nothing special like the first two.

August update

14-2. A game whose title contains the name of a color: Severed Steel

I'm realizing as I write this that FE: Radiant Dawn would've also worked, but this is funnier.

24. An arcade-style high score game: Centipede: Recharged

26. A game where you play as a bug or an aquatic creature: Black Widow: Recharged

I didn't remember this challenge when I decided to beat this game, things just lined up really well

42. A game that had a red retirement rating on HLTB when you started playing it (10% or higher): Barbie's Dreamhouse Party (13.3%)

50/59

Collection

01. A new game (released within the past year)
02. An old game (released 10+ years ago): Resident Evil Revelations
03. A really old game (released 20+ years ago): Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004)
04. An ancient game (released 30+ years ago)
05. A time sink (50+ hours): Fallout 4 (138 hours)
06. A quick completion (less than an hour): Deer Drive (36 min)
07. A game you got for free: LISA: Definitive Edition
08. A game you've been wishing and waiting for
09-1. A remake or remaster of a game: Resident Evil (2002)
09-2. A game that received new translations to other languages some time after its initial release
10. A game with 6+ endings: Star Fox Command
11. A collection of games: Zone of the Enders HD Collection
12. A game recommended to you by someone else
13. A game whose title could describe your life
14-1. A game with an alliterative title: Custom Robo (Known as Custom Robo: Battle Revolution in Japan)
14-2. A game whose title contains the name of a color: Severed Steel
14-3. A game whose title starts with a number: 911 Operator
15. A game that heavily focuses on flight: Zone of the Enders
16. A game from a genre you don't usually play: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
17. A game that is themed around dogs or cats: While True: Learn()
18-1. A game that features multiple genres, or is a mashup of different genres
18-2. A visual novel or text-based game: Hotel Dusk: Room 315
19. A game where you play as an antihero or a villain: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
20-1. A game set in a historical time period: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (The Wild West)
20-2. A game set in the far future: Deus Ex (Takes place in the 2050's)
21. A game with a female protagonist: Medal of Honor: Underground
22. A game without any humans: Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
23. A game where you play as a robot or an alien: SteamWorld Heist
24. An arcade-style high score game: Centipede: Recharged
25-1. A game set in a world you would like living in
25-2. A game whose protagonist you would want to be friends with: Batman: Arkham Asylum
26. A game where you play as a bug or an aquatic creature: Black Widow: Recharged
27. A game that was adapted from another medium (book, movie, etc.) or a game that has been adapted into another medium: XIII
28. A game you watched someone else play first (partially or in full): JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eye's of Heaven
29. Another person’s favorite game
30. A game with a diverse cast: Sunset Overdrive
31. A cornerstone to gaming culture: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
32. A game that starts with the same first letter as in your username (if your username doesn’t contain letters, pick a random letter): Final Fantasy VII
33-1. A “threequel” (third part of a series): Resident Evil 3 (2020)
33-2. A spin-off game: Metal Gear Solid VR Missions
34. A bright and cheerful game: New Super Luigi U
35. A game containing a real or fictional religion: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
36. A game that heavily features either fire or ice: Insurmountable
37. A game that heavily features money, gold, or economics: Who Wants to be a Millionaire (2020)
38. A game with a subtitle: Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure
39. A game that surprised you: Quake II
40. A post-apocalyptic game: Anarchy Reigns
41. A game with a short title (4 letters or less): DUSK
42. A game that had a red retirement rating on HLTB when you started playing it (10% or higher): Barbie's Dreamhouse Party
43. A game that one of your favorite artists worked on (artist, developer, musician, voice actor/actress, etc.): Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (Hideo Kojima)
44-1. A game you previously retired or put on hold: Undertale
44-2. A game that you have beaten before and are replaying: MadWorld
45. A game that is on someone else’s HLTB 2024 Gaming Challenge List: Dead Space (Palipilino #35)
46-1. A studio's very first game: Paradigm
46-2. A studio's most recent game (at the time when you started playing the game): Teardown
47. A game that had its HLTB times on a purple/red/gray background at the time you started playing it (color indicates the amount of submitted playtimes, red = low amount, gray = zero): Bejewled 2
48. A game that has been a HLTB Game of the Month: Pony Island
49. A game listed on the HLTB stats page, or the stats page filtered for a single platform: Batman: Arkham City (Best Reviewed for Xbox 360)
50. A game chosen by the HLTB randomizer: Valkyria Chronicles

Today on Finnedorb…



Dead Space (PS3): 10h 18m

I actually beat this like a month ago so It’s not part of my PS3 journey. I’m just reviewing it since I beat Dead Space 2 recently and I’m halfway through Dead Space 3 now.

Story: You play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer for the CEC mining company. He’s joined by Hammond, Kendra, and others who won’t be around for much longer as they arrive to rescue the crew of the Ishimura. Isaac’s wife Nicole left him a video message and he’s desperately hoping to rescue her. They’re attacked by some aliens later named Necromorphs, and Issac is split off from the others. As Isaac makes his way through the ship he discovers that the whole thing was caused by this thing called the marker; the idol for a religion called Unitology. When people die in its presence, they come back as necromorphs. We eventually meet two scientists. Both have gone insane, but one wants to help us destroy the marker while the other wants to kill us. We reunite with the others eventually, and Kendra sends out a distress signal. Unfortunately, the ship that received it picked up an escape pod with a necromorph in it Hammond sent out earlier in an attempt to kill it. The crew is murdered and the ship crashes into the Ishimura. Turns out the Earth Government knew about the marker, and sent this ship to get rid of the evidence. Hammond dies while we’re getting parts to repair a ship, and Kendra betrays us, stealing our ship. Luckily, we randomly find Nicole and escape with her and the marker in-tow. We return the maker to its planet which kills all necromorphs in the area. While we’re leaving, Kendra steals it and reveals Nicole to be a hallucination. She died before the game started and Isaac subconsciously knew it. We make our way to the ship while chasing Kendra, but she’s killed by a monster known as the Hive Mind. Isaac isn’t though and kills it easily. He leaves the planet, and after watching his wife’s video again, he gets jumpscared by the fake Nicole, ending the game.

The story’s very immersive, there’s barely any cutscenes and you’re in control the whole time (something the sequels stop doing). The atmosphere is also so tense, you really get the feeling that everyone is dead and it feels like you’re completely alone.

Gameplay: Necromorphs are resistant to shots to the chest so you need to cut off their limbs. This puts a nice spin on the shooting, making you put more thought into what you target. There are times when you’ll enter zero-gravity and you need to jump around. Thing is though, the game is really finicky with where you can jump or not and it can feel frustrating. It’s probably the biggest stain on this game because of how annoying it is.

I really liked Dead Space, but those zero-grav areas were annoying and the final boss was piss easy. 8/10

I'm planning on playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution next so I'll nominate that

Got my hands on a copy of Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2005) for Xbox 360 today. I got it for 20 bucks which is a steal.

The coin has spoken, PS3 it is.

I don't think I'll be marathoning this, but I'll beat all 11 games by the end of the year (plus any others I might buy in the meantime).

That's an interesting topic

Probably...

11. BioShock
12. Dishonored
13. Quake II
14. Tomodachi Life
15. Punch-Out!! (Wii)

I've just reached part 4 of Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn and I'll likely beat the game in the next 2-3 days so I'm just posting to see if we can get some more votes for which library I'll beat next. Right now it's a tie between PS3 and GameCube so if no one else votes I'll just flip a coin.

46/59

I managed to add a couple more games to my list this month. I have games in mind for the challenges left, but I don't feel like playing them this month. There's still five months left though so I've got plenty of time

Games added:

07. A game you got for free: LISA: Definitive Edition

30. A game with a diverse cast: Sunset Overdrive

35. A game containing a real or fictional religion: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

45. A game that is on someone else’s HLTB 2024 Gaming Challenge List: Dead Space (Palipilino #35)

46-2. A studio's most recent game (at the time when you started playing the game): Teardown

Collection

01. A new game (released within the past year)
02. An old game (released 10+ years ago): Resident Evil Revelations
03. A really old game (released 20+ years ago): Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004)
04. An ancient game (released 30+ years ago)
05. A time sink (50+ hours): Fallout 4 (138 hours)
06. A quick completion (less than an hour): Deer Drive (36 min)
07. A game you got for free: LISA: Definitive Edition
08. A game you've been wishing and waiting for
09-1. A remake or remaster of a game: Resident Evil (2002)
09-2. A game that received new translations to other languages some time after its initial release
10. A game with 6+ endings: Star Fox Command
11. A collection of games: Zone of the Enders HD Collection
12. A game recommended to you by someone else
13. A game whose title could describe your life
14-1. A game with an alliterative title: Custom Robo (Known as Custom Robo: Battle Revolution in Japan)
14-2. A game whose title contains the name of a color
14-3. A game whose title starts with a number: 911 Operator
15. A game that heavily focuses on flight: Zone of the Enders
16. A game from a genre you don't usually play: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
17. A game that is themed around dogs or cats: While True: Learn()
18-1. A game that features multiple genres, or is a mashup of different genres
18-2. A visual novel or text-based game: Hotel Dusk: Room 315
19. A game where you play as an antihero or a villain: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
20-1. A game set in a historical time period: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (The Wild West)
20-2. A game set in the far future: Deus Ex (Takes place in the 2050's)
21. A game with a female protagonist: Medal of Honor: Underground
22. A game without any humans: Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
23. A game where you play as a robot or an alien: SteamWorld Heist
24. An arcade-style high score game
25-1. A game set in a world you would like living in
25-2. A game whose protagonist you would want to be friends with: Batman: Arkham Asylum
26. A game where you play as a bug or an aquatic creature
27. A game that was adapted from another medium (book, movie, etc.) or a game that has been adapted into another medium:XIII
28. A game you watched someone else play first (partially or in full): JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eye's of Heaven
29. Another person’s favorite game
30. A game with a diverse cast: Sunset Overdrive
31. A cornerstone to gaming culture: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
32. A game that starts with the same first letter as in your username (if your username doesn’t contain letters, pick a random letter): Final Fantasy VII
33-1. A “threequel” (third part of a series): Resident Evil 3 (2020)
33-2. A spin-off game: Metal Gear Solid VR Missions
34. A bright and cheerful game: New Super Luigi U
35. A game containing a real or fictional religion: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
36. A game that heavily features either fire or ice: Insurmountable
37. A game that heavily features money, gold, or economics: Who Wants to be a Millionaire (2020)
38. A game with a subtitle: Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure
39. A game that surprised you: Quake II
40. A post-apocalyptic game: Anarchy Reigns
41. A game with a short title (4 letters or less): DUSK
42. A game that had a red retirement rating on HLTB when you started playing it (10% or higher)
43. A game that one of your favorite artists worked on (artist, developer, musician, voice actor/actress, etc.): Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (Hideo Kojima)
44-1. A game you previously retired or put on hold: Undertale
44-2. A game that you have beaten before and are replaying: MadWorld
45. A game that is on someone else’s HLTB 2024 Gaming Challenge List: Dead Space (Palipilino #35)
46-1. A studio's very first game: Paradigm
46-2. A studio's most recent game (at the time when you started playing the game): Teardown
47. A game that had its HLTB times on a purple/red/gray background at the time you started playing it (color indicates the amount of submitted playtimes, red = low amount, gray = zero): Bejewled 2
48. A game that has been a HLTB Game of the Month: Pony Island
49. A game listed on the HLTB stats page, or the stats page filtered for a single platform: Batman: Arkham City (Best Reviewed for Xbox 360)
50. A game chosen by the HLTB randomizer: Valkyria Chronicles

A surprisingly good month for me. It had a slow start, and then what felt like a very fast end.

7/8 Teardown (PC-Steam) 8/10
7/18 Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (Gamecube) 9/10
7/21 LISA: The Painful (PC-Epic) 8/10
7/22 LISA: the Joyful (PC-Epic) 8/10
7/22 LISA: Definitive Edition (PC-Epic) 8/10
7/25 Sunset Overdrive (Xbox One) 6/10
7/30 Dead Space (PS3) 8/10

I thought Teardown was going to take me a lot longer... and then I played half the game over the course of one day. I guess I had nothing else to do that day, I would just play for an hour or two, leave to do something else, and then return over and over. The game's decent, I enjoyed the puzzle solving combined with destruction, but the campaign was pretty weak and I thought the final mission was boring.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance was the best game I played this month. It has the usual Fire Emblem gameplay with one of the best stories in the series. Many of the characters felt three dimensional. Stefan is now my favorite FE character, I just think it's funny how he just appears and forcefully joins your group if Lethe or Mordecai steps on one specific out of the way tile. His stats are great too, he killed most of the bosses until he died to an unfortunate crit. My only real issue with the game is that the support system could have been fleshed out. I wish it was like Awakening where any character can have supports with most other characters, just remove the romance aspects and it'd be great.

LISA: Definitive Edition was initially a game I didn't like, but I decided to stick with it and I really enjoyed it. Brad is an interesting character we learn more and more about through the game, and the hallucinations caused by Joy are great. The gameplay was very engaging, I liked how each party member felt unique and had their own place in a potential team. My team ended up being Brad (obviously), Nern (infinite SP and TP), Birdie (an underrated powerhouse who also has a great team-heal move), and Tiger Man (a consistent powerhouse that can wipe out fodder enemies easily... he did fall off by the end though and his joy addiction was annoying). I wasn't a fan of the final parts after Area 3, I've never been a fan of being forced to do things I don't want to do (Spec-Ops the Line being the exception) and that felt like most of the end. When I beat it I wasn't sure how to classify it due to LISA: Definitive Edition's main story being both The Painful and it's Epilogue DLC The Joyful. I don't usually add the regular version of a game if I beat a G.O.T.Y or Complete edition of it, but this is one of the few exceptions.

LISA: The Joyful is a neat epilogue to LISA: The Painful that adds a new layer to the original story. The goal is to kill the seven warlords of the wasteland, and for the most part you do it alone. I enjoyed this quest, but it didn't really have much of an ending. The actual ending of the game has very little to do with ruling the wastes and I think that's a shame. It feels like the part after you've killed the bosses should've been it's own game because it's so different. Although maybe not, it's filled with enemies with massive health pools that don't attack. You just press the action button over and over again until it dies. If these last enemies actually fought back it could've been fun, but Dingaling went with this instead.

Sunset Overdrive was this month's game of the month. It was also the first game I've suggested that won! It was also the worst game I played this month. I'd heard that this was an underrated gem from the Xbox One's starting lineup. After playing I strongly disagree, this game is mediocre at best. The one thing everyone talks about is the movement, and yeah it is absolutely the best part of the game. It's so much fun to zip around the map and grind everywhere. One of the other things I liked were the animations for when you respawn. It makes dying feel a lot less tedious. The soundtrack was also good to I guess, I'm just listing off the positives since there's way more negatives. This is game is ugly as shit, which, to be fair, makes sense. It's was one of the first games released in the 8th generation, and it makes sense for there to be growing pains. The gunplay is a little boring, I found shooting while grinding like the game wants doesn't spice things up much and the enemies either get shredded like paper, or can take just enough damage to feel annoying to fight. The story feels like it was written by a team of 70 year old men who have vaguely heard of millennials. I refuse to elaborate.

Finally, I beat Dead Space yesterday. It's a really solid horror game that deserves every bit of praise it gets. The necromorphs could be genuinely unsettling at times, and the atmosphere feels very tense. The unique gunplay where you need to shoot off limbs helps each combat encounter feel unique. If shooting them in the chests was the only was to deal with enemies, this game would be very boring. My only problems with the game are the Zero-G sections and the terrible final boss. There are certain sections where gravity gets removed and you have to jump around, but the game is really picky about where you can jump and it gets very annoying. The final boss is just piss easy and massively underwhelming, I expected the Hive Mind to be a massive threat, I mean it brought down a whole colony and yet this space nerd takes it down in a minute.

Next month I'm planning on playing Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn and Cruelty Squad along with whatever gets voted on my blog (*cough* shameless plug *cough*).

Well I'm back sooner than I thought

I mentioned in my last post as well as in my 2023 wrap-up that I wanted to complete one of my console backlogs in a sort of marathon. I was going to do it in a few months, but I changed my mind.

I've decided to keep it up to a vote, but I'm excluding my PC, Wii, Xbox 360, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One backlogs. They're all just too long, my PC backlog takes more hours to complete than there are waking hours in a year .

So here's your candidates:

Gamecube: 17 Games, 8 Days to beat all

Chibi-Robo!
F-Zero GX
Frogger: Ancient Shadow
Killer7
Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Mario Party 5
Metroid Prime
Odama
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Pikmin
Star Fox Adventures
Super monkey Ball
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Tetris Worlds
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest
The Simpsons Hit & Run

Xbox: 16 Games, 7 Days 4 Hours to beat all*

Atari Anthology
Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge
Destroy All Humans!
Destroy All Humans! 2
Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo 2
Max Payne
Max Payne 2
Mega Man Anniversary Collection
Namco Museum 50th Anniversary
Phantom Dust
Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Taito Legends
The Simpsons Road Rage
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

Wii U: 13 Games, 7 Days 4 Hours to beat all

Bayonetta
Bayonetta 2
Just Dance 2016
Just Dance 2017
NES Remix Pack
New Super Mario Bros. U
Nintendo Land
Paper Mario: Color Splash
Pushmo World
Super Mario 3D World
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD
The Wonderful 101
Yoshi's Woolly World

3DS: 11 Games, 7 Days to beat all

Dillon's Rolling Western
Dillon's Rolling Western: The Last Ranger
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valencia
Fire Emblem: Fates - Revelation
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions
Metroid: Samus Returns
My Nintendo Picross - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Pushmo
Yoshi's New Island

PS2: 11 Games, 4 Days 20 Hours to beat all

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
Devil May Cry
God of War
Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec
Katamari Damacy
Kill Switch
Kingdom Hearts
Mortal Kombat: Deception
Red Faction
Resident Evil Code: Veronica X
Silent Scope

PS3: 11 Games, 6 Days 17 Hours to beat all

Alpha Protocol
Darksiders
Demon's Souls
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Hitman HD Trilogy
Hitman: Absolution
inFAMOUS
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Resistance: Fall of Man
Resistance 2
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

N64: 10 Games, 3 Days 20 Hours to beat all

Banjo-Tooie
BattleTanx
BattleTanx: Global Assault
Bio Freaks
Pokemon Snap
Resident Evil 2
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter
WinBack: Covert Operations

NES: 9 Games, 1 Day 9 Hours to beat all**

3-D World Runner
Dragon Warrior
Mach Rider
Marble Madness
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 3
The Adventures of Dino Ricky
The Legend of Zelda

PS1: 9 Games, 2 Days 15 Hours to beat all*

Die Hard Trilogy
Gex: Enter the Gecko
Grand Theft Auto
Hot Shots Golf
Sesame Street: Elmo's Letter Adventure
Spyro the Dragon
Tenchu: Stealth Assassins
Tomb Raider
Who Wants to be a Millionaire: 3rd Edition

SNES: 9 Games, 1 Day 17 Hours to beat all*

F-Zero
Killer Instinct
Mario is Missing!
Pilotwings
Pitfall: the Mayan Adventure
Shaq Fu
SimCity
Super Mario All-Stars
William's Arcade's Greatest Hits

The Under 1% Club (DS, GBA, PS5, GB): 9 Games, 6 Days 14 Hours to beat all*

Build-A-Bear Workshop
Elite Beat Agents
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
God of War: Ragnarock
Golden Sun
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Marvel's Avengers
Nintendogs
Pokemon Red

Dreamcast: 8 Games, 3 Days 1 Hour to beat all

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
Crazy Taxi
Crazy Taxi 2
Seaman
Shenmue
Shenmue II
Sonic Adventure
Soulcalibur

PSP: 7 Games, 3 Days 7 Hours to beat all*

Exit
Killzone: Liberation
Metal Gear Acid
Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play
Patapon
Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade
Untold Legends: The Warrior's Code

*One or more games have no recorded completion times
**Most of these games don't save and I'm not great at a lot of them

Vote for whatever one you think I should play, I'll be doing posts about all of the games I beat or retire

I'm not going to start this right now, I want to beat Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn first, so votes are open till then

And I'm done. I ended up beating it faster than the average time. My thoughts on it did not change on it over the last two hours, and I still think this is like a 6/10. I don't understand why so many people say this is an underrated gem, what am I missing?

I've just gotten done with my second sitting, I'm around 2/3 of the way through the game. My thoughts on this game have only gotten a little worse after a really shitty section where you need to roast chickens, and the boat escape mission. I've realized a lot of these missions feel like side quests in LEGO games, none of them are very interesting. I'm glad this game is almost over at least. Also I'm not sure if this is just happening to me or if the Xbox version is just like this, but it is constantly automatically capturing my gameplay. It's weird, I've never played another game that does this.

It's been more than a year since last time, might as well give it another go. I'm doing three strikes

1. Portal 2, Portal, Hades, Tomb Raider (2013), BioShock, Doom (2016), BioShock Infinite
2. Terraria, Fallout New Vegas, Half-Life, Undertale, Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead 2
3. RE2 Remake, Dishonored, Limbo, Little Nightmares, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
4. Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Skyrim, Hotline Miami, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
5. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Civilization VI
6. RE3 Remake
7. Wolfenstein: The New Order, Papers Please, Resident Evil 4, Dishonored 2, GRIS
8. Final Fantasy VII, A Short Hike
9. Left 4 Dead
10. Detroit: Become Human, Super Mario Odyssey, Metal Gear Rising: Revengence, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
11. Half-Life: Opposing Force, Half-Life: Blue Shift, Minecraft, Deathloop, Spec Ops: The Line, L.A. Noire
12. Metal gear Solid V: Ground Zeros, Neon White, SUPERHOT
13. Hitman 2 (2018), Doki Doki Literature Club!, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, Hitman (2016)
14. Doom, Guacamelee! Super Ultimate Championship Edition, Plants vs. Zombies, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Aperture Desk Job
15. The Stanley Parable, Mass Effect, Deus Ex
16. The Wolf Among Us
17. STRIKE ONE
18. Dishonored: Death of The Outsider, HUE
19. Half-Life: Source, Helltaker, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
20. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
21. Resident Evil: Revelations
22. Orwell, Dear Esther
23. Call of Duty: Black Ops II
24. Heavy Rain, Fallout Shelter, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Call of Duty: Black Ops
25. Metal Gear Solid, Shovel Knight
26. STRIKE TWO
27. Postal 2, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog
28. STRIKE THREE

14 more pages than last time, although I wasn't playing with strikes back then. I'll be back in a year

Is it that time again already? I feel Like July just started

I plan on playing it anyway so I'm nominating Cruelty Squad

I started the game today. I don't know what I expected going in, but so far it is the most 7/10 game I've ever played. The movement is fun, but the combat is a little boring and the comedy is more miss than hit. I'm at the point just after Walter dies and we need to go looking for Bryllcream.

Today on Finnedorb…

With the completion of the Zone of the Enders HD Collection, I’ve finally finished the A-Z Challenge. There have been a lot of highs and lows in this challenge, and here’s my ranking of the games from worst to best.

26: Gods Will Fall



To no one's surprise, Gods Will Fall was the worst game I played for this challenge. It was so bad I couldn’t complete it. The randomized difficulty is bullshit, nothing carries over when you die unlike every other rogue-like, and the combat is awful. This has been the worst game I’ve played this year and I hope it stays that way because if I can find something worse than this, I will explode.

25. Kane & Lynch: Dead Men



I knew this game wasn’t going to be great just by the general reputation of this series, but I didn’t expect it to be this bad. The gunplay isn’t fun and I hate every character except Lynch who ends up getting sidelined by the end. This game looks awful graphically, and I feel like we barely get to know our main character. At the very least, it’s short.

24. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles



This is probably a hot take, but this game sucks. It does a horrible job retelling the plots of RE 0, 1, and 3, the enemies are way too tanky, the checkpoints are awful, and the boss fights suck with the exception of Nemesis. The only good part about playing this for the challenge is that I also played through REmake so I wouldn’t get spoiled and I ended up really enjoying it.

23. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell



I really don’t see why people like this game, I personally had a bad time with it. Mainly I didn’t enjoy the gameplay and the missions where you can’t kill are really annoying. The plot was pretty boring too, it just felt extremely generic. I guess using countries like Georgia and Azerbaijan in the plot is more unique than something like a COD campaign where they just use Russia over and over again. Even though this felt like a slog, I’m willing to try out the sequels since there must be one good one for the series to be this well liked.

22. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven



This was a tough spot to choose, but ultimately I went with this. It’s not horrible, the plot’s just boring, the gameplay is boring, and the roster could be a lot better. I’m also slightly biased because I decided to retell the plots of every Jojo part and that took several days of typing. If you’re a Jojo fan like me then you’ll get something out of the fanservice, but as a game it’s not very good.

21. Anarchy Reigns



I replayed MadWorld for this since I thought it was a direct sequel. That was the most fun I had relating to this game. This was a really disappointing followup to MadWorld that has basically nothing to do with it outside of like four shared characters (Blacker Baron doesn’t count). Gone is the fun scoring system from the first game that unlocked weapons and traps for more opportunities. Now we just have to kill a bunch of the same enemies with few traps and weapons in order to unlock the next stage. It’s a boring grind that kills the pacing. The graphics took a hit too, these characters do not look great in color. The setting is just a boring post-apocalypse, and it feels like all personality from the first game was surgically removed. I don’t know how fun the multiplayer is, but the campaign sucks.

20. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair



Alright, admittedly I retired this a little early. I just knew I wasn’t going to have fun with this so I quit before I wasted too much of my time. It’s a fine enough platformer, but it’s not all that interesting. Top that with the fact I don’t really like 2-D platformers and you get something that’s just not my thing.

19. Europa Universalis III



This was very boring and nothing happened. It was just waiting for 1821 for hours while nothing happened. I never understood the combat system so I didn’t declare war, and no one declared war on me. I just played as Portugal and waited. This also made me remove Europa Universalis IV from my backlog since these games don’t really have a definitive end to them. If I knew how to play a little better I might have fun, but my playthrough was just miserable.

18. Loop Hero



This game isn’t bad, it’s just way too grindy for my taste. There are four different stages, but they take forever and require good RNG with minimal rewards for ending the loop early. There’s very little direct gameplay besides switching out your gear and placing tile cards. Maybe if I wasn’t playing this for the challenge I would’ve gone through with it, but I had things to do and just felt very bored so I retired it.

17. Custom-Robo



I genuinely don’t remember anything about this game. I think I liked the gameplay, and I remember thinking the writing was funny, but I couldn’t tell you a single character’s name or any plot details. This left zero impact on me and it disappeared from my brain.

16 and 15: New Super Luigi U and While True: Learn()


Both of these are short, nothing games. They are gone just a few hours after they start. I have no real opinions on either of them, they’re just way too short. I’m ranking them higher than Custom-Robo because I actually remember things about these games.

14. Zone of the Enders HD Collection



The first game is bad, but it’s not offensively bad. The second game is better in every way, but still not great. I just reviewed these so I’m not going into much detail, but the package overall is okay.

13. Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions



MGS VR Missions is an alright collection of microgames in the style of the original MGS, but it suffers from all the jank of MGS1 combat. The grenade challenge stages were awful because of how hard they are to aim. I liked the mystery stages and this is enjoyable if you like MGS1. Just don’t play it in a few days like I did, this is meant to be played for like an hour or less at a time.

12. XIII



XIII is good, but the gunplay isn’t great, and there’s a really shitty bossfight at the end that drags everything down. The visual style is what makes this game, I love the comic book aesthetic. The voice cast is great and helps elevate an overall mediocre script and story.

11. Insurmountable



This was a neat hidden gem in my library. I didn’t expect much, I just thought this was a mountain climbing sim, but I was wrong. The tile based movement is a lot of fun, although it does get a bit repetitive later on. The time loop story is pretty interesting too as we slowly uncovered more and more information. I wish the characters had a bit more personality, but it was a short and sweet adventure.

10. Sid Meier’s Pirates!



Despite ending my run pretty early, I had fun with this game. I loved taking over ships and finding clues to where our missing family is. My biggest complaint with this game is how hard it punishes you for losing sword fights. The fight with the Marquis is brutal, and I lost everything. I might play this again and find the full family, but I settled for just ending the journey and becoming a Parson.

9. Deus Ex



I have mixed feelings on Deus Ex, but after thinking about it, I’ve decided I like this game. I like the plot, and JC is a great main character. My main issues were the shitty lighting, the performance, and the barely functioning stealth system. I enjoyed figuring out where to go by talking to people, and multiple routes are neat. I didn’t really like the final mission in Area 51 and the three endings are all pretty lame, but the journey is fun.

8. Paradigm



Another hidden gem in my library. Paradigm is a point-and-click adventure game with funny writing and an interesting world. I’m still pissed about accidentally deleting my review before I could publish it since more people should play this game. There's one part near the end where you can click a button 10,000 times to skip like 2 hours of the game and I actually did it just to see what would happen. Sure enough, it skip[s several puzzles and lets you start fighting the boss. I don’t want to give anything else away, but if you picked this up when it was free on Epic, play it.

7. Batman: Arkham City



This game has a great story, and it’s a great followup to Arkham Asylum. Its gameplay is better, the open-world is larger, and there’s more villains. The only thing I think it does worse is how the game generally looks. It’s graphically superior, but I’m not a fan of how Arkham city looks style-wise and the first game just had a lot more personality. I’ve also never really been a fan of Hugo Strange, and I would’ve preferred someone else as the villain. I plan on playing Arkham Knight either this month or in August, and I’m hoping it fixes some of my issues.

6. Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath



This game has a good first and second act, and then the third act just feels like a different game. It’s not bad, just a lot different out of nowhere. The gameplay is a lot of fun, and I like the mechanic of having to hunt your own ammo. The boss fights are all solid (except one) and I like this game’s comedy. This is the first Oddworld game I’ve played and I’m aware it’s a lot different than the others but I still want to see more of this world.

5. Hotel Dusk: Room 215



Hotel Dusk is a great story with very little actual gameplay. I like the story and I got attached to most of the characters, this would be a great book or movie. Unfortunately though there’s just not much substance due to this being a visual novel. Doesn't mean I don’t want a new one, there are still some loose ends left at the end of the story and I want to see them tied up. I know there’s a sequel that never came to the US, but the 3DS can play all regions of DS games and it released in Europe so I’ll get my hands on it someday.

4. Undertale



I think I may have rated this game a little too highly, it’s not really a 10/10. It’s still a great game, I don’t have any problems with it, but it’s more like a 9/10 or an 8/10 to me. The characters are still great, the writing is amazing, the gameplay is fun, and the sheer variety of endings and ways you can interact with the world are insane. But I knew all this before this challenge, I wasn’t surprised so it ranks a little lower for me.

3. Valkyria Chronicles



I might have some recency bias here, but I really enjoyed this game (minus the final boss). I got really attached to my units and the world they live in. The gameplay was fun and I like how the game looks. I’ve said most of what I have to say already in the review so I’m not going into as much detail here, but it ended up being my third favorite game of the challenge.

2. Quake II



On the opposite end of Undertale, I did not expect to love Quake II this much. I played the remaster from a few years ago, and this shit is amazing. I loved the gameplay, and the level design was great too. I had a smile on my face the whole time. The only reason it’s not higher is because I have a hard time remembering specifics about the game. There’s a lot of levels and plot points I’ve forgotten about, but I’ll never forget the blood-pumping feel of the gameplay.

1. Final Fantasy VII



I’d heard about how good this game was, but I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. I’m not usually a fan of JRPGs, but this was an exception. The story was amazing, and I ended up really liking Cloud compared to what I thought about him based on Smash Bros. The Materia system added some customization to how I played, even if juggling them between characters was a little annoying. I haven’t played any other FF games, but I can already say this is the best one. I wish the remake wasn’t basically a different game split into a trilogy, a straight remake would be something I’d love to play. If I could go back, I’d change this to a 10/10, but I don’t like going back and changing my scores.


The Future:

This challenge was a lot of fun despite the occasional lows. I discovered some games I would’ve never played. I plan on doing this again next year, I’m just hoping it takes a little less time.

I said last year I was going to complete one of my console backlogs as a challenge, but I’m not sure if I’m still going to do it. If I do then it’ll be in a few months, I need a break.

I’m also going on break from this blog too. These posts take a while to type because of my bad habit of going into way too much detail. I’ll probably come back when I beat a game I have something to say about, but I don’t know when that’ll happen.

The challenge started on a boring note, and ended on a boring note, but the middle was a fun rollercoaster I hope to ride on again.

41/59

Collection

01. A new game (released within the past year)
02. An old game (released 10+ years ago): Resident Evil Revelations
03. A really old game (released 20+ years ago): Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004)
04. An ancient game (released 30+ years ago)
05. A time sink (50+ hours): Fallout 4 (138 hours)
06. A quick completion (less than an hour): Deer Drive (36 min)
07. A game you got for free
08. A game you've been wishing and waiting for
09-1. A remake or remaster of a game: Resident Evil (2002)
09-2. A game that received new translations to other languages some time after its initial release
10. A game with 6+ endings: Star Fox Command
11. A collection of games: Zone of the Enders HD Collection
12. A game recommended to you by someone else
13. A game whose title could describe your life
14-1. A game with an alliterative title: Custom Robo (Known as Custom Robo: Battle Revolution in Japan)
14-2. A game whose title contains the name of a color
14-3. A game whose title starts with a number: 911 Operator
15. A game that heavily focuses on flight: Zone of the Enders
16. A game from a genre you don't usually play: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
17. A game that is themed around dogs or cats: While True: Learn()
18-1. A game that features multiple genres, or is a mashup of different genres
18-2. A visual novel or text-based game: Hotel Dusk: Room 315
19. A game where you play as an antihero or a villain: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
20-1. A game set in a historical time period: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (The Wild West)
20-2. A game set in the far future: Deus Ex (Takes place in the 2050's)
21. A game with a female protagonist: Medal of Honor: Underground
22. A game without any humans: Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
23. A game where you play as a robot or an alien: SteamWorld Heist
24. An arcade-style high score game
25-1. A game set in a world you would like living in
25-2. A game whose protagonist you would want to be friends with: Batman: Arkham Asylum
26. A game where you play as a bug or an aquatic creature
27. A game that was adapted from another medium (book, movie, etc.) or a game that has been adapted into another medium:XIII
28. A game you watched someone else play first (partially or in full): JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eye's of Heaven
29. Another person’s favorite game
30. A game with a diverse cast
31. A cornerstone to gaming culture: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
32. A game that starts with the same first letter as in your username (if your username doesn’t contain letters, pick a random letter): Final Fantasy VII
33-1. A “threequel” (third part of a series): Resident Evil 3 (2020)
33-2. A spin-off game: Metal Gear Solid VR Missions
34. A bright and cheerful game: New Super Luigi U
35. A game containing a real or fictional religion
36. A game that heavily features either fire or ice: Insurmountable
37. A game that heavily features money, gold, or economics: Who Wants to be a Millionaire (2020)
38. A game with a subtitle: Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure
39. A game that surprised you: Quake II
40. A post-apocalyptic game: Anarchy Reigns
41. A game with a short title (4 letters or less): DUSK
42. A game that had a red retirement rating on HLTB when you started playing it (10% or higher)
43. A game that one of your favorite artists worked on (artist, developer, musician, voice actor/actress, etc.): Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (Hideo Kojima)
44-1. A game you previously retired or put on hold: Undertale
44-2. A game that you have beaten before and are replaying: MadWorld
45. A game that is on someone else’s HLTB 2024 Gaming Challenge List
46-1. A studio's very first game: Paradigm
46-2. A studio's most recent game (at the time when you started playing the game)
47. A game that had its HLTB times on a purple/red/gray background at the time you started playing it (color indicates the amount of submitted playtimes, red = low amount, gray = zero): Bejewled 2
48. A game that has been a HLTB Game of the Month: Pony Island
49. A game listed on the HLTB stats page, or the stats page filtered for a single platform: Batman: Arkham City (Best Reviewed for Xbox 360)
50. A game chosen by the HLTB randomizer: Valkyria Chronicles

I wanted to beat more games in June, but I got Covid near the end and it killed my motivation to play

6/7 SteamWorld Heist (PC-Steam): 8:36 8/10
6/12 Valkyria Chronicles (PS3): 35:24 8/10
6/13 Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? - Back to School (Wii): 0:32 5/10
6/14 While True: Learn() (PC-Epic): 4:17 7/10
6/17 XIII (Xbox): 10:32 7/10
6/21 Resident Evil: Revelations (Wii U): 8:36 7/10
6/23 Zone of the Enders HD (PS3): 4:09 6/10
6/30 Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner HD (PS3): 7:41 7/10
6/30 Zone of the Enders HD Collection (PS3): 11:50 7/10

9 games is nothing to sneeze at, but it could've been 11 or 12 if I didn't catch Covid

Valkyria Chronicles was the standout this month, I've become an instant fan of the series and I want to play more.

With the completion of Zone of the Ender HD Collection, I've also finished my A-Z challenge this year. It was a lot of fun and got me to play games I normally wouldn't, who knows how long Deus Ex or MGS VR Missions would rot in my backlog if it weren't for this. Can't wait to do it again next year!

(Z post 2 of 2)
Today on Finnedorb…



Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner HD (PS3): 7:41

I first started this game and got past the Leo fight before I quit the game without saving, deleting my progress. I was going to pick it up again the next day, but then I woke up with covid. I feel like shit and I’ve generally been lacking motivation to do anything. I ended up beating this game on the 30th since I knew I wanted to at least get it done in June.

Story: 2 years after the first game on Jupiter’s moon Callisto, we play as Dingo. He’s working there as a miner using a pretty crappy mech. One day on the job, he picks up a strong reading of Metatron ore in the area and he investigates. It turns out to be an abandoned Jehuty. Bahram (the bad guys from the first game) suddenly attack with an overwhelming amount of Orbital Frames, so we hop inside Jehuty to rescue our friends. We’re reintroduced to ADA, and she gives us tutorials. The combat in this game is mostly the same besides two major changes. The arenas are generally smaller and are closer to the grounds, and now if you smash a frame into a wall they will take extra damage. On top of that, the whole feel is just a lot smoother. My only real complaints about the new combat are that you can’t have a sub-weapon equipped and grab at the same time like you could in the first game, and the camera is somehow worse than the first game. Back to Callisto, Dingo takes out a few waves of enemies before coming across a piloted frame that’s targeting his friend (I’m not going to look up her name, she never appears again). The lady in the frame demands that we hand over Jehuty, but we refuse and start fighting. This is Ken, she mainly attacks from a range, and she can only be hit after an attack. We take her out pretty easily, and Dingo decides to infiltrate Bahram’s mothership. We get on-board through the hangar, and take out a bunch of frames until we come across the Nephtis, Viola’s frame from the last game. It’s being piloted by an AI replication of her, and we throw a pillar to temporarily take her out. Dingo seems to know Viola pretty well, although he doesn’t really react when ADA tells him she died. It’s not plot relevant, I just found it weird considering some things we find out later. ADA fills Dingo in on the plot of the first game, omitting Leo and Atlantis. Anubis appears in the next room piloted by Nohman, the commander of Bahram from the first game who I completely forgot the name of when I made my review. This is a fight you're meant to lose, and when you do, Nohman recognizes that you’re Dingo. Nohman invites Dingo to his room, and we cut to Dingo in the hallway. Ken punches him for the fight earlier, but Nohman tells her to back off. He reveals Dingo used to be a leading pilot in Bahram six years ago until he was presumed dead on his last mission. Nohman tells him to come back to Bahram, but Dingo refuses, claiming Nohman killed several of his comrades. Dingo starts to leave, and Nohman shoots him five times. Nohman leaves, and Ken tells Dingo he needs to help her if he wants to live. Dingo is barely conscious and doesn’t hear her, but she assumes he agrees. We jump ahead two months, and Ken boots up Jehuty with Dingo inside of it. He’s been in a coma, and his life-support is tied directly to Jehuty’s systems. Dingo says he didn’t want this, and Ken argues he should be more grateful. She tells him she’s a member of the Space Force (a “peace-keeping” force from earth), and that he needs to get off the ship and onto Mars. The ship is pretty boring, it’s just swarms of enemies until we get an SOS from another Space Force member who snuck on-board. His name is Taper, and he has a really crappy frame so we need to protect him while we escort him to an escape pod. His mission is to rescue some people after they obtained the powerful Vector Cannon. On a side-note, you need to shoot a specific box to find him before you escort him, and I got it right on my first-try. Then I lost my save data, and I thought I got soft-locked when I destroyed every box until I realized there were multiple warehouses. The escorting part is annoying, but Taper has enough health for it to not be that bad. If only an upcoming mission was like that. We get Taper to the escape pod, and then take out some enemies. AI Viola shows up, and we use our jets to boost off the ship and onto Mars. Dingo is shocked by the ruined state of Mars, and Ken tells us that Bahram has taken over Mars in the past year. The citizens and resistance are helpless to stop them, and the Space Force can’t do shit thanks to Aumaan, a giant fortress with destructive capabilities. It can’t be fully activated unless both Anubis and Jehuty… do something I’m not sure what though. It’s like how during the Cold War, two keys were needed simultaneously to launch a nuke. There’s more that doesn’t really matter, this scene is just a shit ton of exposition that could be summed up in two sentences, except unlike Metal Gear, the voice acting and dialogue are stilted and terrible. Anyway some enemies attack us, and then we go into a boss fight with Leo who is no longer whiney, little, or a bitch. This fight took me nearly an hour on my initial run, and then I beat him first try the second time through. I’m a little embarrassed about that, but he’s here demanding we give him Jehuty back. Apparently Elena from the first game just ditched Jehuty on Callisto and I honestly don’t remember why, Leo tells us to shut up when we ask him who Elena is and I don’t remember if she tells us later. Leo tells Dingo that ADA plans on self-destructing once we get to Aumaan, and Dingo is obviously troubled by this since he’s stuck inside of Jehuty. Leo wants to take care of Aumaan, but Dingo tells him to go do his homework. Leo agrees to this, and goes off to rescue the soldiers in Vascillia. In order to progress we need to enter Vascillia by destroying some locks on the south gate. This was as far as I got originally, and I ended up halving my time to get here. This part just involves destroying a shit ton of enemies, and destroying some pillars. We finally get into Vascillia, and we have another fight with the Viola AI. I didn’t understand what you were supposed to do here at first because the game was pretty vague, but you just need to grab some solar panels on the wall, and block her when she charges at you. Halfway through, she tackles you into a new area with lasers surrounding the arena. Just matador her into the lasers, and you win. We get a call from Taper who confirms he’s heading towards the soldiers. He asks us what our mission is, but he’s interrupted by a nearby battle the Space Force is having with Bahram. Civilians are getting caught in the crossfire, so we run over there to help. This is this game’s version of the SOS missions from the first and these are worse. It is so much harder to prevent civilian deaths just due to the way the area is structured, and because the Space Force doesn’t care. We have to hold them in place with a sub weapon while we take out the enemies if we want any of them to live. I don’t remember what my score was for this, but more than 50% lived. Taper gives us his location so we can back him up, but suddenly a train full of Bahram’s troops begins heading there. We destroy the train pretty easily, and get a call. It’s Ken, she’s come to Mars to help out. Dingo shares a story about a Space Force spy from when he was on Bahram, and how Nohman caught them immediately. He tells her the story because he doesn’t believe she actually works for the Space Force. Ken deflects the accusation by accusing Dingo of ditching his comrades during his final mission. We hang up when we get a call from Taper. He assumes the Orbital Frame approaching them is us, it’s not. We hear the sounds of a battle. When we get there, nearly everyone is dead, and we begin fighting the Viola AI again. This fight sucks, in order to damage her we need to use a grabbed enemy. The problem is, enemies will break out of your grab after a few seconds, and these enemies in particular love to grab you. This fight is tedious and takes forever. We finally take the AI down, and we retrieve the vector cannon. Dingo’s upset since Viola used to be a comrade, but unfortunately he forgot to hang up the call with Taper and he heard us. Despite the fact we just destroyed the AI, he immediately assumes we’re working for Bahram. Leo calmly explains the situation, but Taper isn’t listening. Ken finally arrives, and Taper gets even more worried. While he’s causing a commotion, the Viola AI infects Ken’s frame and takes it over. We need to delta the AI by grabbing Ken’s frame without harming her. The only way to do this is to parry her enough times to repel her. This mechanic is barely explained in-game, and I didn’t really understand it until I looked up a guide. Basically, you just need to attack right as she’s attacking, do this enough times and she’s repealed, allowing you to grab her. The amount of parries increases every time up to a max of around 5. Timing is everything with this one, so pay attention. Unfortunately, even if you do, Viola has this bullshit attack where she just drains Ken’s health bar to kill her which gives you a game over. This attack is stupid and unavoidable. If you're not fast enough it’ll be over in seconds. We finally delete AI Viola, but Ken doesn't know how to fly without an on-board AI so we need to carry her out of here. This is another escort mission and it sucks. There’s a bottomless pit, the enemies seem to exclusively target her, and they infinitely respawn until we kill a specific enemy. Eventually we manage to get out of the area, and Ken hops into Jehuty with us. Ken gets a call, and Bahram has somehow activated Aumaan. We can’t go over there just yet though because we have no way to deal with Anubis. Luckily, Dingo knows the perfect guy to help them. There’s a guy named Lloyd who’s a software engineer for Orbital Frames. On the way to his lab, Dingo goes into detail about his final mission. He and his team were to escort some Mettatron to Antilla (where the first game takes place). It went off without a hitch, but when they left Antilla, they were attacked by the Space Force. There was an overwhelming amount of soldiers, and when Dingo asked Nohman for help, he told DIngo to give up and die. It turns out Nohman leaked the whole thing to the Space Force in order to make them think the mission was a failure. All of Dingo’s comrades were killed, and he escaped to Callisto. On what’s basically Lloyd’s front lawn, there’s a shit ton of defenses. We can avoid them by going on a specific route that Ken knows. Basically we just move forward until Ken tells us to switch directions, and that goes on for like 5-6 minutes. Lloyd invites us in, but we need to prove our skills before he’ll help us so we fight through a gauntlet of enemies as we make our way to the basement. Finally we fight the man himself. The first phase is nothing special, there’s a decent amount of cover he hides behind, and he can teleport. The second phase is where the real fight begins. He shuts off all the lights so we can’t see. ADA is able to sense his position, and she guides us as we move forwards in a seemingly endless space. When we catch up we can do some damage before the cycle repeats. This can get somewhat tedious, and I recommend using your jest to boost left and right rather than just holding down the button since there’s some obstacles that come very quickly. I also discovered you can’t guard if your using your jets which is very annoying during this fight since the attack you need to block comes out very fast. This is probably my favorite fight in the game, even if it’s a little repetitive. We eventually take him down, and he gives us a program that will boost Jehuty’s power to be on the same level as Anubis. It takes some time to kick in though, so when Anubis comes bursting through the ceiling, we need to run. Unfortunately, we left Ken down there, and she’s been captured by Nohman. We can’t face Nohkman until the program kicks in, so we’re forced to leave her. Leo tells us the assault on Aumaan is about to begin, so we head over there… but first we need to take out a fleet of enemy ships. This is the worst part of the game. We need to destroy five ships of increasing difficulty. We do this by using the Vector Cannon on the engine. On every ship past the first though, we also need to destroy a massive cannon that is covered by anti-aircraft guns and turrets as well as infinite reinforcements from orbital frames. This was hell, I’d usually get to the third or fourth ship and then die. It went on like this until I tried out the homing missile sub weapon. This allows you to shoot off rockets that deal massive damage to nearby enemies. More missiles are fired off the longer you hold the circle button. Every missile seems to target a different enemy, and once I figured that out, it became my favorite weapon in the game. No longer did I have to struggle to take out the anti-aircraft guns, I can just hold circle to delete them. Enemies? Gone. Turrets? Gone. My will to live? Restored! Eventually we take care of all the ships, and a giant enemy frame shows up. It has shields, but it’s vulnerable at the core. It’s pretty easy and I took it out in 2 attempts. We meet up with the Space Force, but Taper’s convinced everyone we’re an enemy so they take aim at us. We get a call from Elena who tells us to surrender Jehuty. We ask about Ken, but our hunch was right and she has nothing to do with the Space Force. Leo shows up and tries to convince Elena that we’re an ally. She’s not buying it, but Dingo tells everyone they all have the same reason for fighting. The ground troops stand down, and Elena lets Dingo take command of the troops. The goal of this part is to take out all the 100+ enemies. Luckily they are all level 1 and very weak. We can save some of the ground troops when they get knocked down, but I wasn’t sure how to do this. I ended up saving 26/40 and got an A-rank so I was doing something right. We take out all the enemies, and the troops arrive at a crevice near Aumaan’s entrance. Before we can go further, the program finally kicks in, and we get a massive upgrade. Jehuty now has four guns, our attacks do significantly more damage, and we can teleport to enemies by manipulating space. We absolutely steamroll the enemies guarding the entrance, but we get a call from Ken. She tells us not to come because Nohman is too powerful. She reveals the truth, that she’s just a Bahram soldier who’s decided to revolt. Her father was on DIngo’s unit during the final mission, and he died there as well. Nohman enters the call by restraining Ken, he’s excited about finishing the job and killing us. The call ends, and we destroy some more enemies. We make it to a control facility where ADA realizes we’re not in Aumaan. Anubis arrives, and we begin fighting. Around the halfway point, Leo shows up and delivers a devastating blow. A second Anubis shows up behind him, and beats the shit out of him. It’s revealed the first Anubis was a fake being piloted by Ken. Ken reveals the real Aumaan is actually inside of Mars’ largest moon, Phobos. Nohman is aiming Aumaan’s weapons at Mars to completely destroy it. I’ve watched the rest of the cutscene three times now, and I genuinely can’t tell what’s happening. It seems like maybe a tractor beam or something begins pulling everyone to Phobos, but that's my best guess. The real fight with Anubis begins, and it’s disappointingly easy. Just dodge a projectile, use the teleport, and slash him a couple times. You can’t use any sub weapons or your guns in this fight so progress is slow. His attacks are very easy to dodge and the whole thing is a slog. Eventually we defeat Anubis, and we all land on Phobos. Elena says she’ll send a ship to pick us up, and she tells us about ADA’s self-destruct program. It’s impossible to remove, and it will activate once inside Aumaan. Anubis suddenly crashes onto Phobos, interrupting our conversation, and we go to investigate. Anubis falls into Phobos to begin using Aumaan. Its power will destroy the Solar System, and we have to stop it. We only agree to do it if Earth promises to stay out of Mars’ affairs (apparently Earth has a habit of doing that I guess). Elena says she’ll talk to some people to make it happen, and we dive into the core to fight Anubis. I’m going to be honest, I don’t understand this fight. He has a shield up, and sometimes my attacks work. I found that sprint attacks always hit, but they do little damage. Burst attacks are good too, but they’re harder to pull off. He has a phase where he heals, but you can stop it with the homing lasers. The frame rate on this part is horrible and there’s a lot of visual mess on screen at all times. This final boss is boring, and beat it on my second try. While Nohman may have died, Aumaan was still activated, and we need to stop it before ADA blows us up. Dingo tells ADA to “radiate Jehuty’s energy and strike it against the core of Aumaan”'. I don’t know what that means, but Dingo tries it. He’s swallowed up by Aumaan’s beam, but he finds Anubis’ head and uses its energy to take out Aumaan. The blasts sends us drifting into space, but ken and Leo rescue us. We get medical attention, and the game ends with Dingo telling Ken to give him a normal body, Jehuty was way too big.

This game definitely has a better story than the first game, although it’s still not great. Maybe it’s good in Japanese, but the English dialogue and voice acting are still terrible. I’m glad Leo wasn’t the main character again, and I like Dingo. I will say, I know it’s been put in HD, but even without that I’m shocked that this was a PS2 game. The visuals are actually amazing and better than some games that come out today. This game improves on nearly everything the first game tried to do… but at the end of the day it’s still not great. The combat feels smoother, sure, but it still gets boring after a while. The bosses all mostly sucked too, Lloyd was really the only good one. This game is better than the first in every way, but it’s still just decent. 7/10

Oh and the collection overall is fine, but the frame rate issues were annoying and they should have included the GBA game. 7/10

And with that, the A-Z challenge comes to an end. I’m going to do another post ranking all the games and giving my general thoughts about the challenge, but I’m glad I get to move onto other things.

Oh shit, I didn't expect it to win! Glad I've finally got an excuse to play it!

(Z post 1 of 2)
Today on Finnedorb…



Zone of the Enders HD (PS3): 4:09

Story: In the far future of 2172, a colony near Jupiter is being attacked. A child named Leo is running from the chaos. He finds cover and begins crying. We fl;ashback to just before the attack, he and his friends are tied up for sneaking around. Everyone immediately blames Leo, so the lady unties him and asks him what he wants to do. He can either knock her out and save his friends, or run like a little bitch. Then the attack begins, and a battle between two Orbital Frames ensues. Orbital Frames are just mechs, some require pilots, others don’t. The attacker, Viola, wins and the defeated frame falls onto Leo’s friends as he runs away like a little bitch. We come back to the present, and a Frame is shooting at him has caught up with him. Another Frame comes to his rescue and he runs away. As he runs past several corpses, he stumbles into some kind of garage for a special frame. A sudden explosion blasts Leo into the pilot’s seat, and he accidentally destroys his attacker with the frame. The frame’s on-board AI, ADA, has detected Leo is not supposed to be controlling it, but in the chaos there is nothing she can do but work with him. She teaches Leo how to control this special frame called a Jehuty, and they destroy several enemy frames. I should point out now that none of the regular enemies have pilots, I didn’t realize this at the time so I was very confused for a conversation that happens later. Viola shows up again, and she begins fighting us before the leader of the attackers (I’d love to give them a name but I don’t think the game does) intervenes. The goal of the attack is to secure both of the Jehuties on the colony, and he doesn’t want Viola to fight one yet. The two leave, and ADA tells Leo that everyone in the area is dead. He begins crying, but we receive a communication from a cargo ship called the Atlantis. They were supposed to receive the Jehuty, but clearly their guy didn’t make it. We need to deliver the frame to the Atlantis so they can deliver it to Mars for military operations. Leo doesn’t want to do this because he thinks he’ll have to kill people and he doesn’t want to. This sounds reasonable, but the voice acting is horrible and the dialogue is stilted which makes him sound very annoying and like a whiny little bitch. He ends up agreeing, being assured he won’t have to kill anyone, and he flies into the air. From the skies, Leo sees that his home town is being attacked, so he flies down to make sure his father is okay. His house-apartment block thing has been completely destroyed, but ADA assures him it’s likely everyone was evacuated. There is one civilian left, Leo’s friend Celvice who is running to the church. Leo flies over, and talks to Celvice. She tells him she’s going to the church to check if the children are in danger. Leo tells her she’s being stupid and to not risk it. They argue for a bit before Leo is grazed by an enemy. Celvice goes to the church anyway, and Leo fights the enemy. This is the first boss in the game, and it’s pretty easy if you remember to use your guard. We fly around and shoot him a bunch, and he goes down easily. ADA wants to finish him off, but LEO refuses since he can’t fight anymore. The guy takes off in an escape pod, and ADA says Leo’s decision is illogical. There weren’t any children at the church, and we pick up Celvice. She’ll be with us for most of the game, but she doesn’t talk much. We jump back into the sky and see a giant energy field in our way. ADA doesn’t know what it is, so we’re going to a nearby factory to download some data. While in the sky, we hear a news headline that several civilians are trapped in a burning hospital. Celvice wants us to rescue them, but ADA wants us to go straight to the factory. We ignore ADA and rescue the civilians. Then we head to the factory and kill a frame that has a passcode for the server which is how we’ll unlock the servers from now on. It turns out that the field is basically a large microwave created by two antennas. They kill all organic life in the field, and we need to take out the power supply. We head to the generator, but we can’t attack it since the field blocks all energy weapons. Now we need to backtrack to find a ballistic weapon. This is one of the most annoying parts of the game, there are times when you need to backtrack, but the game won’t tell you where. Eventually we try all options and find that these things called porters have been added to the town with the burning hospital. When Porters are destroyed, they reveal a hidden object. In this case it’s a sniper rifle, and we head back to the generator, finally destroying it. Unfortunately, the two antennas have an emergency supply so we need to take care of them. The first one is easy, just fly into the maintenance tunnel and destroy the generator. There’s a server in here as well, but we don’t have the passcodes. The second antenna is harder, the field blocks off access to the tunnel so we need to backtrack yet again. When we leave what little of the tunnel we entered, a new squad arrives and they have the first passcode, but the second passcode is still missing. I visited every area until finally a new squad showed up with the passcode. The fight’s annoying since they’re the tanky laser enemies, but we take them out and grab the passcode. The passcodes unlock a module that will let us remotely control a raptor frame, but we need to find a deactivated, undamaged one. I just looked up where it was at this point because the backtracking was really annoying, and once we grab it, we can just fly it right through the energy field. We download an anti-stealth module while we’re there, and then destroy the generator. With the field now down we can fly towards the Atlantis. Suddenly, we’re shot out of the sky by the next boss. ADA is acting very strange, and we fly off before the boss can destroy us. It turns out ADA has a virus, but luckily she told us where her AI was created just before we were shot, isn’t that convenient? We access a server and download a vaccine. ADA is back to normal, but we can’t defeat the boss right now. There’s another server nearby with two passcodes, so you’ll never guess what we have to do next. That’s right, more backtracking! We get the passcode from another squad, but the next passcode is being held by an invisible enemy. We need to retrieve the anti-stealth module from the raptor bot we controlled earlier. We do. Then we get the passcode. The server gives us a decoy that will throw off any homing attacks. Equipped with the new module, we fight the boss. The first phase is easy (as long as you remember to actually equip the decoy), and the second-phase is a little harder. We take him down, he escapes, and ADA knows we won’t try to kill him so she doesn’t ask. All the raptor bots shut down (except no they don’t, I don’t know why they brought this up if they don’t actually get deactivated), and we fly to the skies once again. The members of the Atlantis call us once again, but Leo is being a whiny little bitch again and doesn’t want to complete the mission. Leo says they don’t care about those who die including the guy who was supposed to pilot the Jehuty. The guy, Thunderhart, tells him to shut up since the pilot was his best friend and the other member, Elena’s, boyfriend. Thunderhart tells him to meet him at a warehouse under a dam, and Leo agrees. We get to the warehouse after a few small fights, and we’re ambushed by Viola. She traps us in an attack, and we can’t move. ADA tells us to use the escape pod while she self-destructs, but Leo refuses to leave her behind. Then Leo inexplicably gets out of the attack, and the fight begins again. This is the hardest boss in the game and it’s not close. Viola has a dangerous melee attack, but unlike the other bosses you can also use your melee in a high-risk high-reward attack. This isn’t worth it in my opinion, so I just used ranged attacks and beat her in 5 or 6 tries. We refuse to kill Viola, even after she killed our friends, and we leave to meet with Thunderhart. He wants our help once again, the leader guy has planted bombs that will throw the colony into Jupiter. Thunderhart wants us to disarm the bombs but Leo is, once again, a whiny little bitch and refuses to help. Celvice convinces him to do it, but then she’s shot by Viola. She tells Leo to fight her again while he’s defusing the bombs, and she leaves using a raptor. Celvice is wounded, but she’ll live. Thunderhart takes her to get medical help, and we leave to disarm the bombs. On the way up, we get Leo's backstory. He was neglected as a child, and when his parents had to separated due to his dad's military career, they argued over who should get him. Except, they were arguing for each other. Neither of his parents wanted custody, and everyone else in his life hates him too. Then he says tis mission has given him a purpose and that's why he hasn't abandoned it. Not even two minutes earlier he was refusing to defuse bombs, but sure. We defuse the bombs without much issue, and then we fight Viola. This fight is infinitely easier than the first, and we finally defeat her. She’s been launched towards Jupiter, and she tells us not to save her or she’ll kill everyone we love. Her husband and parents were killed earlier and she says, I shit you not, “I don’t have the functions of a woman now”. I mentioned it earlier, but this game has some really crappy dialogue. Not in a funny way like Metal Wolf Chaos or Shenmue, it’s just bad. We tell her we’re lucky to be alive after the fight, and she thanks us before disintegrating. Then the leader arrives in the Anubis, the other Jehuty. We are nowhere near ready to fight him, and Elena helps us escape. We’re finally on the Atlantis, and now we can relax as our job here is done. We ask ADA what she’ll do after Mars, and she tells us she’s supposed to self-destruct during the battle. The credits begin as ADA shutdown for now, and Leo is reunited with Celvice as the game ends.

Bad

This game is bad

It’s not offensively bad, there’s just nothing to it. There are only three enemies in the game, the combat is boring, the backtracking is annoying, and the story feels incomplete, like we're missing both the beginning and end. The voice acting and dialogue sucks, I can only guess this game was butchered when it came over here. I expected this game wouldn’t be great due to the reviews on this site, but the second game has better reviews so it should be a lot better.

I was debating whether or not this game is a 5 or a 6, but ultimately I decided this game didn’t frustrate me, it just bored me. 6/10

Also what the fuck is an Ender and why is this their zone?

I'm nominating Sunset Overdrive

Well it's been a long time. This challenge has taken half the year, and we're at the end. I only own one game that starts with Z, but I already used the "Game in every tier" joke with Quake II and that's only funny once a challenge so I'm skipping the tierlist.



This is a collection of both Zone of the Enders games, neither of which I know anything about. I just know they're made by Hideo Kojima. This was actually going to be a game called Z that I picked up during the Winter Sale, but then I found this at my local game store. I decided I'd rather play this than Z so I refunded it. Maybe next year, there aren't many games that start with Z after all.