Aperson

Continuing to post this here as it's technically a "gaming diary" as it were, but if mods feel I should be posting these somewhere else or not at all I will stop doing so. So, here's Part 3 of Metroid Prime 2 Echoes (Wii U)

Haven't had much time to play more of Metroid Prime 2 recently with some things coming up that are quite important, but I did continue my work on editing the Let's Play. I've got about 10 Parts recorded so far so I'm trying to optimise what I have and poke fun at myself during editing. Even redid a dialogue section where I was standing still to a more elaborate and informed discussion with better commentary than was originally there.

Would be cool to get Metroid Prime Trilogy on Switch. I feel the games will look a lot better in HD, they were always considered graphically impressive for their time but obviously graphical standards have moved on a bit since then. Speaking of Prime Trilogy, that Prime 2 LP I was talking about? Finally in a position for it to go live, first episode is below:

I'll be honest, your number 2 selection killed any desire I had for a sequel to number 4. I won't say which games they are and I really did like number 4 sans the story. But I feel that because 2 exists 4 loses some of it's novelty.

OK, Gaming Objectives this year: I really don't know how things are going to pan out but there are a few things left over that I still need to do: - Finish Dark Souls (maybe this will finally be the year) - Finish Hollow Knight - Buy and play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Smash Ultimate got me more interested in the series but I have still yet to follow up on that. - Finally get around to playing Dragon Quest IX again. - Finish my Let's Play of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, the first episode of which will be up later this evening. - Subsequently do Prime 3 to finish the Trilogy replay. - Any other outstanding unfinished games from my backlog. 2020 will for me mark 20 years as a gamer, it was in 2000 when I first got into gaming through Pokemon Red on Game Boy Color. I feel like this might be a quiet year for new games aside from some big hitters because most companies will be switching focus to developing for PS5 and Xbox Series X for the end of the year. How this affects the Switch will be interesting. Games I am looking forward to this year: - Final Fantasy VII Remake (I may play the demo before deciding whether I want to get this though) - Marvel's Avengers (might pick this up if the single player is any good but I am very cautious over this one) I'm really not sure what else I have to look forward to this year, especially as it seems unlikely that Metroid Prime 4 will be out for another 2 years or so. That is the one Switch game I have been perhaps anticipating more than any other but I am really nervous about it considering all the difficulty it's had so far.

Likewise, I am going to check what I wrote at the start of the year compared to what I actually played. Finishing Dark Souls - Nope. Maybe next year. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Torna - Yep, played that and finished it. The World Ends with You: Final Remix - Ended up passing. Apparently the controls on Switch are terrible. Golden Sun: Lost Age - Yeah, played this one. Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc - My opportunity to play this seemed to have gone a long time ago, it no longer works on modern PCs. Replaying the Metroid Prime Trilogy - N-Europe Game Club helped with this one for the first game, MP2 is now going to be a Let's Play so this is ongoing and will probably be my gaming until the end of the year. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - Got this one Switch when it came out, played and finished. Hollow Knight - Played through the majority of this game but got stuck when trying to get the true ending and beating the Dream Bosses. Celeste - As great as I've heard things about this game I surprisingly never found the time to pick it up. The Messenger - I feel like I haven't heard very much about this game other than it's really good, not sure if I am going to pick this one up now. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Maybe next year, I really thought I was going to pick this game up this year. I also knew I'd be getting Pokemon Gen 8 this year, indeed I got Pokemon Sword during the year. Now for the games I wasn't expecting to get during the year. Pokemon Trading Card Game Online - Playing the Pokemon TCG again is something I didn't expect to happen but hey, that happened and I ended up getting the online client. Magic The Gathering Arena - Getting back into card games this year persuaded me to dip my toes in the murky waters of loot box powered video games, but I refuse to put a single penny in the game. Arena really made MTG appealing again after I abandoned it years ago and I like some of the dialogue in the game. Batman: Arkham Asylum - I ended up picking up this game second hand for free and having played City this seemed like the only other Arkham game worth playing. Super Mario Maker 2 - In fairness, this game was only announced this year. It was a very welcome announcement though, got me back into Mario Maker. Going into 2020 I am really not sure what games I'll be getting or continuing. I'm in half a mind to add Dragon Quest IX to the pile of games I want to try and finish. I have no idea yet whether I want to get the Final Fantasy VII Remake or not but that seems like the biggest game coming out next year.

If anyone remembers the N-Europe club from earlier this year when we all did Metroid Prime, I have decided to continue off that in pursuit of finishing the Prime Trilogy on Wii U by replaying Metroid Prime 2. Since I've already played this game though I have decided to do something different with it this time and record my playthrough as a Let's Play. The first episode will be up sometime next year.

OK, final epsiode of His Dark Materials was done perfectly. They managed to capture what made the book's ending so good so well and the cinematography in the final moments of the episode was really well done. Considering the film never actually showed the true ending they were always going to do better than the flim by actually showing it but full credit for putting the impact of the moment in the show itself, you can tell that the writers really understood how big this is supposed to be and I don't really have anything negative to say about the finale.

Beaten Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3). I had advance warning over many years that the final boss of this game is terrible... and I see exactly why. What's the point in having a final boss that just stands around there and lets goons fight against you? He doesn't really fight against you aside from doing a few things at the beginning... in fact the only really good boss fights in this game were Killer Croc (which is more of an event than a boss battle) and Poison Ivy (which still suffers from some of the same problems the other bosses do). I booted up F-Zero GX (Gamecube) again in an attempt to make some progress in the Grand Prix mode but even on Novice difficulty it's so hard to complete these tracks let alone win the race! Sand Ocean Lateral Shift is a torture chamber.

Yeah, I'm in a similar situation whereby the "new" games I played this year aren't even enough for a top 5. One of them was technically released this year but it was a port of an already existing game that just happened to come out on Switch this year so excluding that I think it was just three 2019 games being Kingdom Hearts III, Super Mario Maker 2 and Pokemon Sword which is a very low amount. Part of the reason is that I got into card games and unless Magic the Gathering Arena counts as a 2019 release then I don't think I can include anymore than that. I played a lot of games this year, some of which were catching up from previous years. In the buildup to Kingdom Hearts III I was playing many of the spin-offs and this started a long string of RPG and action games I played which included NieR; Automata, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna and Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age before moving onto other games like Hollow Knight, Pokemon Trading Card Game Online and Batman Arkham Asylum. For games released in 2019 I would probably say Super Mario Maker 2 for game of the year, though only on a minor edge over Kingdom Hearts III and Pokemon Sword which while they are both great games and I enjoyed both, they haven't quite had the same staying power as Mario Maker 2 in terms of content and what you can do since I beat both in about a week and I didn't really feel compelled to return to Kingdom Hearts III after beating it and only did minor stuff in post-game for Pokemon Sword after finishing that game. In terms of all games I played this year therefore my top 10 would be. 1. NieR: Automata - Best game I've played this year, this game is a masterpiece. I won't say anymore because I put it in my list for Game of the Decade. 2. Super Mario Maker 2 - The first game with a lot more options in level design. Except that in order to play it properly and share your levels online you need to pay for Nintendo's online subscription service. 3. Kingdom Hearts III - Probably the game I wanted to play on PS4 for the longest time and... I beat it in a week and the hardest difficulty wasn't even that challenging. Still, the game was very enjoyable and the Toy Story level was awesome. 4. Pokemon Sword/Shield - While it has taken several steps back from previous Pokemon games due to a very strong streamlining mindset that underlines everything that the game does, often going too far in the process of where it shouldn't be and the removal of a lot of content from previous games, Pokemon Sword and Shield are still surprisingly fun games and still capture the essense of Pokemon 5. Hollow Knight - I never quite finished this game due to wanting to get the true ending and struggling on the bosses that I need to defeat in order to finish it, this game surprised me after a slow start to become an incredibly endearing adventure game. The biggest credit I can give the developers is that it feels like I'm playing Metroid with a nail instead of a gun. The level design is really well done and the game is just huge with such a large map to explore. It also manages to be open ended like some of the earlier Metroid games. The better comparison though is probably Dark Souls, this game is basically a 2D Dark Souls. 6. Golden Sun: The Lost Age - I have my issues with the ending of this game but overall I enjoyed it more than the original game. The world map felt bigger to explore and there was a lot more to do in spite of effectively being the second half of what was supposed to be a larger RPG. 7. Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna - A prequel that had a decent amount of content and didn't overstay it's welcome. Admittedly padded out by forcing you to do sidequests in certain sections of the game but as an addition to a much larger game it's certainly welcome. 8. Batman: Arkham Asylum - Finally got to play the game that redefined the superhero game. It's quite a short game as I found out, unexpectedly completing the game as of today. The combat is solid and the more Metroid like structure of the game's world leads to tighter level design although admittedly unlike Hollow Knight you are always made aware at all times where you need to go. The final boss fight might be the worst final boss I've ever faced in a video game, though Metroid Prime Federation Force gives competition on that fornt. 9. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - The exploration in this game is terrific, the world map feels very interconnected and explorable and the game feels like a contemporary modern RPG in design similar to that of Xenoblade. With that in mind I have to ask... what happened to this game's plot? They set up a lot in the opening hours but I feel at some point the game kind of forgets about the plot and goes meandering about all over the place as an excuse for more exploration. A fairly major event happens halfway through the game but there are no real relevant major twists for the rest of the game with only one major revelation for the characters at the end of what essentially becomes the game's final dungeon, since the final boss' area is a bit different. Still, I think this game was the one that I spent the longest time when it comes to single player games playing through this year. 10. Magic The Gathering Arena - If you asked me at the beginning of the year that I would get back into card games and play a free to play game that has microtransactions in it a lot then I would be surprised seeing as the whole sentiment among long time gamers is stacked against these types of games. Turns out, in spite of a few technical issues Arena is really fun. The main gameplay really does a lot to bring the card game's original vision to a platform that can make it look like both players are castling spells at each other. Cards flash into play with special effects and in some cases fancy animations to go along with them. Major characters in the Magic universe are fully voiced and talk after you summon them. Outside of the gameplay, the wildcard system is really good for allowing you to acquire the kind of cards you want to build the decks you want and is overall much more useable that Pokemon TCG Online's systems. The inclusion of a draft mode gives you an additional challenge to save up for and allow you to pick out exactly the cards you want. The biggest problem with the game is, as ever when it comes to Free to Play games, the egregious monetization in the game. Thankfully none of it is required in order to build a card collection and create a top deck but the amount of time you have to put into the game to build a deck that could be considered top tier in the metagame is considerable especially considering you need 4 of every card to make a playable deck. Even then, if you're only interested in making your own deck ideas, you might find yourself limited by your card collection and only having one of a really good card which counteracts the playability of it. MTG Arena was probably the game I spent most time on in 2019 but only because of getting back into card games again and I think all the others I played are in general higher quality.

Tried to play more of Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) but the game crashed... then all of a sudden I was playing as the Joker in a redone version of the opening. Then the Joker killed Batman... apparently I was supposed to use the middle stick to avoid it. Whoops....

Well, barring any sudden all time classics getting released in the last 10 days of the year we are at the end of a gaming decade. The 2010s have seen gaming become more popular and more widespread than ever before but at the same time the enhancement in technology has lead to scummier and scummier business practises as more companies have tried to exploit us for profit. In spite of that though there have been many great games released this decade so the big question is which was the best game this decade? Here are my personal picks for the games that came out this decade that I enjoyed the most: Xenobalde Chronicles This is a game that I passed on when it was first released but later on gave another try after realising I might have just missed out on an all time classic. Played it and it's right up there with the Final Fantasy series in terms of story, in some ways it's even better. It's a very long game but the narrative is so compelling that you always want to progress to find out what happens next... and then it just keeps getting better from there. Some of these cutscenes really stick out in your memory. The gameplay is also very solid, modernising the RPG to a more involved combat system and having zero random encounters amid a truly explorable world, albeit one that it feels like you are exploring just to have every location on the map. The game sadly falls a bit short on sidequests as while there are a lot of them they are all bland and generic with the exception of one major sidequest. NieR: Automata I must admit I had never really played anything by Platinum before playing this unless you count Okami and gave this a try on a whim. Yeah, this is a stone cold classic, kind of similar to Xenoblade in many aspects except for how this pushes it's storytelling into the gameplay a bit more. The visual design is very solid and clearly intentional, the rather different way of storytelling done in this game leads to an interesting experience, the combat is solid with some pretty involved boss battles and the soundtrack is fantastic. If you missed out on this game I highly encourage you to give it a go. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze I always thought I picked a good time to play the Donkey Kong Country series for the first time, prior to this decade starting, since the series got a welcome follow up series this year from Retro Studios. DKCR came out and started to make the New Super Mario Bros series feel obsolete, the level design was a lot more imaginative and the game as a whole felt more challenging. While I loved DKCR, Tropical Freeze made it feel obsolete. The more streamlined world structure, the return of David Wise doing the music and the incorporation of his music into the level design, as well as a lot more branching paths to take with secret exits in the levels makes this feel like the pinnicle of 2D platforming. The game's re-release on the Switch allows more people to have access to it and the only real complaint about the game is that the extra characters are inbalanced and subsequently feel obsolete. This isn't too much of an issue when playing. Super Mario Odyssey All the 3D Mario games have been great this decade, but for me Super Mario Odyssey is the strongest one. While Galaxy 2 and 3D World are still great with their linear level design, Super Mario Odyssey's return to the more open level style of 64 and Sunshine makes it the best one for me. Not only that but they expanded upon Mario's classic moveset and gave him a lot more versatility. The game recognises that it's on far more powerful hardware than before and gives us the largest levels in the series' 3D history. There's more to collect than ever before and the game takes a leaf out of Banjo-Kazooie's book by letting you stay in the level after you collect Moons. But most importantly of all this game just feels so fun to play. It's one of those games you can pick up and play and have a good time doing so. Undertale This game might be more well known for it's overbearing and overzealous fanbase these days but Undertale is one of the most defining indie games released this decade. It is genuinely a good game with some design decisions that really get you involved in playing it. The characters are so compelling and the idea of turning the RPG system on it's head and giving you the choice of how you want to play makes it feel so fresh. I also appreciate how the game is full of callbacks to classic RPGs like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger but done in a more humorous way. Yes, internet culture and Megalovania may have been a key part in how Sans eventually got into Smash Bros but would so many people have become fans of the game if it wasn't a great game in the first place? Dark Souls When it comes to gaming innovation and taking things to the next level I feel like one game has succeeded where others have failed and that is Dark Souls. Probably one of the most defining and impactful games of the decade, it brought back a challenge at a time where games were getting easier and easier to complete. But while I have not finished this game myself, you kind of do the game a bit of injustice by only describing the difficulty. It is far from an old school game in 3D although it does lean towards the likes of Metroid for it's interconnected world map, Dark Souls has an element to the game that took advantage of the modern age by always being online. You can help other players by leaving messages behind for them or jump into someone else's save file and help them take down a difficult boss. Or you could just hang about online invading other people's games and abusing cheap fire magic to kill unsuspecting players who just want to try and progress in the game and steal all their souls >.>. It's a game that's worth persevering through in spite of it's high difficulty as the world is interesting and it's something you really want to learn more about. Dark Souls raised the bar for gaming and is going to be remembered as a stone cold classic for years to come. Pokemon Sun/Moon This decade saw Pokemon go full on annualisation mode with only 2015 not having a mainline Pokemon game released. Of the numerous releases this game was my favourite. Black/White raised the bar for storytelling in a Pokemon game and while it's debateable whether this game has a better storyline than Black/White, the change in structure to allow for such a story makes this game stand out from the rest of the series. The Pokemon designs introduced in this generation are some of my favourites that have been introduced with Pokemon like Rowlet, Decidueye, Rockruff and Bewear. Soundtrack is top quality work with the Champion theme being one of the best in the series and tunes like Mount Lanakila, Vast Poni Canyon, Konikoni City, Mali City, Gladion's Theme, Guzma's battle theme and many more... Unfortunately the game is not without it's issues, the opening hours are a bit handholdy, the character's face is expressionless, Festival Plaza is too cumbersome compared to other game's online features and the call for help mechanic is unfortunately a bit too annoying but aside from the last one none of those really bothered me. It was probably the most invested I got into a Pokemon game for a long time. Marvel's Spider-Man One series I started playing this decade was the Batman: Arkham series. I had never been too big a fan of Batman but after hearing good things about the games on other systems I picked up Arkham City and played through that. Yeah, this is a very solid series, with a kind of Zelda/Metroid element to it with collectable upgrades as you progress that allow you to do more things while the combat feels satisfying. That being said... I was always a bigger fan of Spider-Man than Batman. I had never finished Spider-Man 2 the previous decade and that was a game widely considered to be one of the best Spider-Man games ever made which is some going for a movie tie-in. It's Pizza theme is internet infamous to this day. When they revealed this game I did become interested in it but I wasn't sure if it was a game I was going to ever paly. Well I did and... it's great. Takes a few cues from the Arkham games but I honestly feel the fighting styles are a lot more different between the two games. Spider-Man is just naturally able to do so much more with wall launches to take down enemies. Swinging around just feels so fun too and unlike Spider-Man 2 this game isn't hamstrung by a film's plot and can do what it wants. And while you can predict some of the twists, the way the characters are portrayed kind of makes you not want them to happen even though they are probably going to happen. Given the game is by Insomniac (hey, that's a company's work that I really got into this decade!) it is naturally rather amusing with Spider-Man being the perfect launchpad for such a style to work. There's DLC that I've yet to play for this game... perhaps in the next decade I can get to it! Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver At last, the long awaited Pokemon Gold and Silver remakes arrived and they were worth the wait. The games somehow improved upon a game that was considered the best entry in it's series at the time of release, adding so many new features. They really went above and beyond with these games and it shows that perhaps Game Freak were at their peak in quality when designing these games. Incorporating Pokemon Crystal aspects into SoulSilver while vastly improving upon the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum engine to deliver it, restored dungeons that weren't in the original game, brand new routes including the return of the Safari Zone, a fantastic remixed soundtrack that really took Pokemon music to the next level and they even incorporated evolutions which were introduced in later games into the Johto Pokedex so for instance, if you caught a Swinub in Ice Path you could evolve it all the way into a Mamoswine before the Pokemon League. Nothing much else to say really, they made a classic even better. Pokemon Black/White These were the games that changed so much and risked it all, but the pay off made for one of the most compelling Pokemon games we've ever had. Team Plasma were just a lot more interesting than previous teams with a goal that played into the ideology behind Pokemon by asking if it's right for people to keep them. The rivals have better ongoing storylines than previously and the whole truth and ideals theme worked really well to greatly improve the series' writing. In any other game, having a rival who wants to become the Champion is a given... this game decides to ask this rival "what will you do after becoming champion?". Sure, the game meanders a bit and in trying to make Team Plasma so involved in the game's story you have to do a lot more odd jobs for trying to stop them as they are always involved in something major between each gym. The game's climax though... kudos to them for shaking it up a bit and delivering something unexpected. I kind of feel like Sword and Shield tried to do everything in it's finale and kind of lacked the focus that these games have. So yeah, these are my favourite games from the last 10 years but... I'm sure other people will have vastly different picks so go ahead. One particular Zelda game I didn't include on this list after all..

Played a bit more of Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3). I like how Batman conveniently has a Batcave on Arkham Island... I've just come back out of that cave after getting the Batclaw. The Scarecrow section was so well designed, how it plays with the level geometry and only very subtley indicates that what you're seeing isn't actually real even though it looks like it might be. Even if it ends in this lighthouse of death stealth section...

Thought that His Dark Materials got delayed an hour tonight because the content of the fight between the two armoured bears might be a bit graphic. But no, it was just because of Sports Personality of the Year. I guess they are going to have to off-screen some particularly violent moments to keep the age rating down which kind of made the fight feel a bit anticlimactic.The animators must have had a lot of fun with that fight scene though. They've also made a start on the actual storyline of Book 2, so I guess that's going to be ongoing in the finale and the awkward scene jumping can end when the two main characters' end up meeting each other. Next week is the finale to Sereis 1. I can't remember if there was a big battle between the Magisterium and Asriel at the end of book 1 or if that's been added for the TV show but I wouldn't be surprised with the latter. The cliffhanger was also very ominous...

My big takeaway from The Game Awards this year is that it's most promiment backer was Wizards of the Coast, what with the MTG MMO, new Dungeons and Dragons thing and the Theros Arena Event being included in the show.

This either just goes to show that people are either still hung up on Brexit or only willing to put in the basic amount of research before deciding to vote. I do wonder what the age demographic of voters for each party was in this election. Still shocked that people actually voted for a party effectively run by the British Trump... but then again Americans voted for Trump...

Coincidentally the Game Awards are on the same day as the Election... or at least they would be if they weren't on at 1:30 in the morning. I will probably catch up with it on the Friday morning in that instance.

Starting Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3). Played Arkham City before this so I don't know how that will affect my experience with this but it's one of those 7th gen games I missed out on so I thought I might as well pick it up. Joker has definitely stolen the show so far. Also went back to Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch) to check out the Zelda update and make a new level using these parts. I've tried to limit gaming time as of late however so not much progress has been made so far.

Going to say though, the latest episode of His Dark Materials was absolutely fantastic. If you still have misgivings about this show, it is merely building up it's characters and world throughout the episodes and this was the most action packed engaging episode so far.

Um, OK.

Started getting into Commander in Magic The Gathering recently so bought a few cards online with view to enhancing the deck for Commander play, namely this lot:

Something I've noticed when it comes to book adaptations is that there's going to be a hardcore book purist audience for every one of them that will compain if something isn't exactly like it is in the books even if in some instances the changes were made with it being on screen in mind. Seen many people really annoyed about not having a dried fish in the latest episode of HDM for example. It was still a very sad moment but the common complaint was that the whole twist is undersold on what is supposed to be a major plot twist. Personally I'd forgotten a lot of details about that part anyway so I still thought it was a good scene.

Went back on today after finding out that you can put Egg Moves on already existing Pokemon so taught my Corviknight Roost through this method. I then played a few random matches online with 6v6 battles, after beating someone with a JoJo team twice I then proceeded to get battered by two people who had "proper" teams (usually with Ferrothorn, Aegislash and Hydreigon). Also, been uploading the later fights in Pokemon Sword and Shield to Youtube, clips below in spoiler:

I don't feel game length personally is necessarily important but when you're playing a game that you get really absorbed in and you're really enjoying for whatever reason it can be a bit of a comedown if you end up finishing in the game in just a week. For example, A Hat in Time was a very fun game while I was playing it and while the developers seem to have intended for the game not to be that long, by the time I'd finished the game I was disappointed because it was already over and I was enjoying myself playing that game. I can certainly appreciate that while working people don't have much time for games which makes my own situation a bit stranger and hard to relate when I have a lot of free time to play these games. Sometimes that can be a problem as I finished Kingdom Hearts III in just a week and usually take about a week to beat brand new Pokemon games. Final Fantasy XII meanwhile lasted me over a month before I finished it. Fortunately I enjoyed the exploration in that game so I didn't mind the amount of time it took even if the story was hardly a classic. I think RPGs can be systematic of this issue. The fact that the Dragon Quest series has used it's playtime hours as a selling point is all well and good but it's not really about the amount of time it takes to finish the game the game needs to keep you engaged for a certain period of time. I've admittedly only played one Dragon Quest game and that was DQIX which I never finished as the game struggled to keep my attention during that period. I have forgotten exactly what point I was in the game and may pick it up again but it's perhaps telling that I was never able to stick with it all the way through.

Let's not forget this year that it's not just a games of the year list people will be making, there's also the matter of Game of the Decade! Finished Pokemon Sword (Switch) a few weeks ago. Not the best Pokemon game by any means but I can't say it was flat out terrible in spite of all the cut content. Next port of call looks like being to go back to Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch) to check out all the new content and maybe make a Zelda themed level or something. I've also got Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) on the sidelines and Hollow Knight (Switch) still to finish while Magic The Gathering Arena (PC) is always there for some progression towards the deck I'm intending to build in it. So I think it's unlikely I'll be getting any new games before the end of the decade.