Last game you finished and your thoughts

The Legend of Zelda: a Link Between Worlds

I've raved about this already in its own thread, but I see no reason why I can't do it again.  

Pros

This is a beautiful game with a wonderful score, a set of well-designed dungeons, and a core mechanic that puts those of several other Zelda games to shame.  The wall-meld is used to great effect to turn rooms into huge multi-layered puzzles, explore nooks and crannies of the overworld and give a much greater sense of depth than LttP had.  The 3D also helps with this, and should always be up if you can help it.  It's wonderful.

It's the improvement of the overworld that really sets ALBW head and shoulders above its prequel for me.  As well as all the exploration, especially to find all the Maimai babies (which are absolutely adorable), Hyrule and Lorule feature a surprisingly full set of NPCs and minigames, and a proper "town" in the OoT-music-enhanced Kakariko Village.  I didn't like the emptiness of LttP's overworld(s), so this was a real plus point for me.

Also, there's a plot this time around!  While fairly standard Zelda stuff, it delivers a few good moments in the first half of the game, as well as two massive twists at the end.  

Cons

There are a couple of flaws, sadly, and they're by-products of the rental system and the new freedom it offers.  The difficulty in the latter half of the game is all over the place, with the boss of Turtle Rock (and indeed the dungeon in general) being a particular disappointment after the very tricky equivalent in LttP.  In addition, due to each dungeon only requiring at most one item, some of the later dungeon puzzles lack item-based complexity, although "hieroglyphing" makes up for this to a large extent.  (And at least the Skull Woods isn't completely horrible now.)

I understand that the rental system and resulting freedom were Nintendo trying something new, but in my mind it hasn't worked.  As well as the aforementioned two reasons, they've removed the joy of finding a new item halfway through the dungeon, and using it to open up seemingly impassable paths.  And I still ended up with my wallet half-full!

Summary

Item rentals aside, it's great.  I've enjoyed this more than any other game on the 3DS.  SM3DW has taken a back seat while I polish it off.  And I haven't even tried its Streetpass features.  

If you own a 3DS (and don't have a terrible history with Zelda games I guess), buy this game.  Otherwise, buy a 3DS and then buy this game.  Contemplating whether to buy a Wii U instead?  Divert your Wii U funds into a 3DS, and then buy this game.  I hope I've made myself clear.

9.5/10

The_Jaster wrote:

Have platinum ever made a bad game?

Infinite Space

Seeing all this ALBW loving is making me really want to get it! I think I want to finish Sticker Star first or it'll get lost.

andyman949 wrote:

The_Jaster wrote:

Have platinum ever made a bad game?

The Wonderful 101

Fixed that for you.  

I agree with pretty much everything you said about LBW, but I have to jump in to defend W101 and IS. They're both amazing games.

I'm pretty sure Andyman was just trolling, so I went along with it.  I like IS, even if it had a design flaw that meant I never finished the game, to the extent that it just missed out on making my DS top ten in Jay's thread. I don't like 101 (sniff), but I can see why others would.

I think you underestimate how much I despise Infinite Space!
Seriously though I never managed to get past the first boss because it didn't explain anything about how the game works so I lost too many games of Rock Paper Scissors.

And I've said before that I did fine until I reached a point where my ship was drastically out-equipped, in the second half of the game, so you were probably just rubbish!

  BTHHHHHHHHHHHHHHP

I personally never had an issue with renting items & as you said it allows you so much freedom & that in my book gives you a greater sense of adventure as you can tackle it anyway you want, in old Zelda's where you found them in dungeons it was usually a case of use once & then never again.

ALBW let's you use them in so many ways even outside of dungeons.

I think my book may well be differently written to yours, Jas!  It prefers challenge to freedom.  Do you disagree about Turtle Rock?

And I didn't find that with old Zeldas.  You'd use your dungeon items in a couple places in the overworld (like in ALBW) and a couple of places in other dungeons (unlike ALBW).

Do you mean that the boss is easy or the entire dungeon? As I thought the boss was easy but the dungeon had its tricky parts especially trying to navigate the latter parts.

I remember the dungeon being fairly simple too. Or short, at least.

Yeah, it was short & a few others were like that, tower of Hera for example....maybe it's intentional because its on a handheld?

Meh. Didn't stop them with the Ice Cavern.

Anyway, other people finishing games!  

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: A LINK BETWEEN WORLDS

2nd best 2D Zelda ever (and #19 on my all-time game list. Yeah I made one. F*** you.) The only reason it's not the top one is that it often makes me nostalgic for my youth and the discovery of A Link to the Past; also, the game may dwell too much on its predecessor.

Still: 10/10

LEGO Lord of the Rings: It had been aaaaages since I'd last played a LEGO game, and I really enjoyed it. They're a lot prettier looking than I remember, and I particularly enjoyed the open-world Middle Earth. It did result in some amusing moments though, like walking for 30 seconds to get from Rohan to Gondor. Pretty sure that took like 3 hours of film time for Aragorn and chums to do so. The humour was weaker than I recall, but that might be because I'm older. All told - pretty fun, for what it was!

Jimbob wrote:

2nd best 2D Zelda ever (and #19 on my all-time game list. Yeah I made one. F*** you.) The only reason it's not the top one is that it often makes me nostalgic for my youth and the discovery of A Link to the Past; also, the game may dwell too much on its predecessor.

I really think that if you've already played the original, then ALBW has made its predecessor obsolete, apart from maybe a slight issue with challenge.  But then, I don't really do nostalgia (apart from SM64, perhaps), nor did I like LttP that much.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Finally finished this last night. Very, very slow opening but once I got out of the starting village it evolved into the best Action RPG in decades. Brilliant combat system, loads of customisation options, a story line that kept me guessing, varied gameplay... the whole tactical thing with the gyroid squadrons was deep as well.

Buskalilly wrote:

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Finally finished this last night. Very, very slow opening but once I got out of the starting village it involved into the best Action RPG in decades. Brilliant combat system, loads of customisation options, a story line that kept me guessing, called gameplay... the whole tactical thing with the gyroid squadrons was deep as well.

Nook was such a brilliant character too. I never saw that twist where:

Spoiler:

Buskalilly wrote:

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Finally finished this last night. Very, very slow opening but once I got out of the starting village it involved into the best Action RPG in decades. Brilliant combat system, loads of customisation options, a story line that kept me guessing, called gameplay... the whole tactical thing with the gyroid squadrons was deep as well.

...I really really want this to happen. And it never will. Thanks, Buska. Thanks a lot.  

Thanks for both quoting me before I noticed and fixed that typo...

Amazingly, I've completed three games in a fortnight. First was Attack of the Friday Monsters: A Tokyo Tale, then SteamWorld Dig. Now falls Disney Epic Mickey: The Power of Illusion.

I remember this being one of my most anticipated games of 2012 - as a huge fan of Castle of Illusion, this sounded like a can't-miss, sure-fire success. The reviews put me off, but I decided I'd get it after a price drop, and finally picked it up for under a tenner last weekend.

Was it worth the extra year's wait? Err...

Firstly, the concept, soundtrack and visuals are all outstanding. The production outdoes that of pretty much every third-party 3DS game I've seen. It looks and sounds wonderful. The feeling of nostalgia is strong - you can tell the developers were huge fans of the Mega Drive prequel - and the arse-bounce is still one of the greatest jumps in platforming history. However, they overdo it with the daft painting gimmick, and the amount of back-tracking is a completely transparent way of masking the complete and utter lack of levels. I was fighting the final boss after only twelve short-ish levels and two boss fights. That's unacceptable for a game that originally sold for £40 in 2012. There's also an almighty difficulty spike near the end, which is totally at odds with how easy the game is in it's first half. Let's not begin on the amount of irrelevant character chit-chat either.

So, one for Disney fans and 2D platforming retroheads alike. That's about as far as I'd recommend it, though. It can be fun, and the building blocks are strong and robust for a sequel, but its sluggish, brief and a little bit disappointing.

6/10

Cloudberry Kingdom (story mode)

I really enjoyed this & even though it had its moments where it would frustrate the core mechanics are just superb, when you first lay eyes on a level that looks impossible or one where you die over 100+ times you just get a great feeling once you eventualy conquer it.

Bloody hated those laser beams though.

8/10

For me, Cloudberry Kingdom's Story Mode had become a right sod by the end. It soured my experience of the game. Anyway!

The Legend Of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

There's so much to love about ALBW. The use of ALTTP's overworld was great, allowing it to play with your expectations. The become a painting mechanic was just genius, too. Many of the sidequests were fun - my particular favourite being the Maiamai hunt. Curse those squeaky souls!

My complaint was the dungeons. I play Zelda for the dungeons and, once you broke into Lorule, the dungeons felt tiny (with the exception of the mid-sized Ice Palace, and the final Castle). If all the dungeons were twice as large, it would be my favourite 3DS game by miles. 

Rayman Legends

It's certainly a better game than NSMBU, and there's a whole lot of "different" going on.

There's still a problem that Rayman himself, as a character, is a bit of blank cardboard (this strikes me as odd given that Mr. Ancel created Beyond Good and Evil); eventually I migrated to the much-more-fun barbarian sisters. In fact, all the characters apart from Raymond (come on, you do that in your head every time) are absolutely fantastic - e.g. the "oh, what?" faces on the toad dudes when defeated is priceless.

I don't really know what the global plot was either - was it just rescue the teensies? (another complaint I think I've made before - this game assumes you are familiar with all things Rayman). Don't get me wrong, "story" is destroying modern gaming; but a good game, if without jarring talky cutscenes, should always be able to explain what's going on through the output of the screen.

and of course thegame has good music and good sounds and good graphics. Also impressed with the dynamic variation of the daily challenges. I still have to attempt them every day I switch the game on. And of course, you essentially get the predecessor free.

8/10 (like everything else)