2020 Gaming Retrospective

[melkathi]

I don't know. Disco Elysium is a bit too mainstream.

[Katphood]

Hardcore or not, it'd be fun to play Cyberpunk 2077 on a PS5 hooked to a 4K laser TV no doubt, but for now, it has to wait. Such is life.

 

Funny how the PS4 Pro is the only 8th gen console that can hit an almost consistent 30 fps. Even the Xbox One X has an average fps of 25 which is disgusting. I won't touch the game until I have a capable PC.

[Keyrock]

On 12/27/2020 at 1:10 AM, Gorth said:

A shame. I would have loved some opinions on X4

 

 

On 12/27/2020 at 8:54 AM, Hurlshot said:

Oops, X4 is the one I played. I can't keep track of all these algebraic equations. 

I have no way to compare it to X2 or X3 unfortunately.

X4 is definitely more similar to X3 than X2, or Rebirth, for that matter. There are a few features carried over from Rebirth, such as superhighways and a simplified movement model by default (you can switch to hardcore Newtonian in options). There are more factions than ever to gain or lose reputation with, even with Boron not being in the game (yet?). Ships are more customizable than ever.

As with the previous games in the series, the learning curve is brutal and the tutorials leave a lot to be desired. Using wikis is virtually mandatory. It's a massive time sink, it takes forever to get anywhere in the game.

[Mamoulian War]

Being the 31st December of 2020, I might to chime in with my own 2020 retrospective. Even though I purchased few 2020 games this year, I've spent my gaming time only finishing my backlog and racing Assetto Corsa on PC with my new Direct Drive wheel, and load-cell pedals. And organizing one sort of Academy Tournament for CZ/SK newcomers to sim-racing, in the cooperation with the Trained Monkey Modding team, famous with few of their historical Skoda and Tatra cars for Assetto Corsa.

Anyway, here is the full list of my 2020 games, which I've finished

 

2020

14 games – 5 GoG games, 3 PS3 games and 6 PS4 games

 

1 - February 2, 21:00 – The first game of 2020 which I've finished is Pillars of Eternity: The White March – Part I expansion from GOG. Although me being kickstarter backer, I have never finished the base game, so I started to play vanilla game again from the beginning. I entered the expansion as level 8, so the content was pretty challenging, and I've enjoyed it a lot because of that. I was wiped clean few times, so I went for few hours back to vanilla to get little bit of relaxing content, and then back again, until I finished The White Forge as level 12. I still need to kill one dragon though

2 - April 6, 23:00 – My second finished game is Pillars of Eternity: The White March – Part II expansion from GOG. I had to quest until hitting level 16 in vanilla parts of the game to be able to finish it. I have turned on the scaling for the second expansion, so some of the fights were really crazy hard. Anyway, I was able to give back the memory to Abydon, but I was not able to temper him during the conversation with the Eyeless. We'll see what impact it will have on the final ending of the game. I think I liked this part little bit more than the first one. Well with the exception of monk fights in some of the encounters.

3 - April 11, 19:00 – The third one this year is the base game of Pillars of Eternity from GOG. I decided to go to the Burial Isle only after finishing every single quest I had in a journal. It took few hours and after that, I've descended into the Breith Eaman and Sun in Shadow areas and upscaled the encounters for final act. After few encounters with soul of Iovara, I've step in front of Thaos and after a lengthy dialogue, the fight have started. Well my party and thier builds were not optimal, so I spent a lot bitching about how some of them dropped down few times during the fight . In the end, the biggest help for me was the summon of Concelhaut, which was hitting Thaos from distance, while Aloth and Devil of Caroc kept knocked out repeatedly . Before his final breath, he managed dow to knock out also Edér, but in the end, it was not enough for him to defeat the rest of my party. After the fight, I’ve released his soul back to the cycle, while keeping his memories, as an adequate punishment for his deeds. In the last step, I’ve returned back the souls to all of the Hollowborn children, as promised to Hylea. The endings I’ve got were mostly positive, with the exception of Sagani, which got lost in the blizzard, and Devil of Caroc, which got torn to pieces by angry villagers. All in all one of the best RPGs, I’ve played in the last few years, and can’t wait to jump into Deadfire with my final save.

4 - May 5, 20:45 – Next game on my 2020 list is Vaporum from GOG. Steampunk dungeon-crawler RPG made in Slovakia. After I've found out, that this game was made in my home country, I purchased it immediately, and started to play few days later. I was not satisfied that much about game purchase in very long time. All what I have expected from the game was delivered and some things have been surmounted. AI on normal difficulty was satisfying, enemies challenging and puzzles were doable with little bit of thinking. The only one, which outmatched me, was the teleport puzzle in The Office level, where I was not able to find out any visual hooks to teleport in correct order to the final switch. Also the game was balanced pretty good for older people, with slower reflexes . Few timed puzzles were on the edge, but they added time stop feature to help you out. Although I haven't used it, I see that feature as a big plus for elderly gamers. The biggest negatives for me was little bit to dark levels for my linking, few of the hidden buttons were impossible to be found without map guides and me being to rusty for this type of games .

5 - May 16, 1:45 – After 2 and half year long break, I've went back to Final Fantasy Type-0 on my PS4. I quit the game somewhere in the middle, because I got tired of the gameplay system, and it got to me very fast again. Some of the quests were mildly of annoying, some of them very nice, but for me, the mildly annoying were more common. Despite that, I found enough fun in the later half of the game to finish it, and grind little bit for all the trophies the game had to offer. The game was made for multiple playthroughs, but for now, I do not think, that I will get back to it anytime soon.

6 - July 19, 19:30 – After 960 deaths, I was finally able to defeat Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin in Dark Souls II on my PS3, and finished the game for the first time ever. Most of the bosses, with the exception of Ancient Dragon were for my Sorcerer pretty easy to learn, but on some of them, my old bones were to slow to react, so I had to spent longer time wiping the floor there . Then there were areas like Shrine of Amana and Dragon shrine, where the enemy placement was so ridiculous, that it raised my death counter to sky high levels . Shrine of Amana has become for me officially the worst Souls level ever, beating by a long margin even the Blighttown and 5-1 area of Valley of Defilement. I still need to get into NG++ to be able to get all of the trophies for the game, but I need small pause to relax on a less demanding game .

7 - August 1, 15:00 – Today, I've finally started Journey on my PS4, after many recommendations from my friends. And I have to say, I am much more than impressed by this game. Took me just little bit over 2 hours to finish it solo, but this game easily blown away most of the games I've seen and played last few years. This game is artistic masterpiece and it is unbelievably relaxing to play after more than a month of Dark Souls 2 .

8 - August 9, 17:00 – Another session of Journey finished on my PS4. Took me around 2 hours again, but this time with a companion, who was helping me travelling around and has shown me how to get some trophies. It was a lot of fun, but this took away little bit of the feeling from the exploration of the world.

9 - August 10, 0:00 – One more trophy run of Journey finished on my PS4. This time, I've met 4 new companions. Just 5 more missing for the last trophy to pop-up .

10 - August 12, 23:15 – Last and final trophy run of Journey on my PS4 is behind me. Last trophy popped up after 3 hours of matchmaking . In the final session I've met 3 more companions.

11 - September 7, 22:45 – I've finished my second playthrough on New Game+ in Dark Souls II on my PS3. This time, because I knew most of the traps and also the bossfights, it took me only 292 deaths . The biggest issue to finishing the game was to my surprise Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin. The randomness of the fight, me being tired and triggerhappy meant, I needed for him 13 attempts. Not even Ancient Dragon made me so much trouble this time .

12 - October 17, 23:30 – After almost 10 hour long Saturday marathon of Dark Souls II New Game 2+ on my PS3, I've finaly achieved Platinum Trophy. This time, I have gone only for the mandatory bosses and left Lost Sinner as a last one. Up until her, it went very smooth and I had to my surprise inly 3 or 4 deaths. Then she decided to whip my ass with her big sword, and I went few time really angry. Especially when one of my controllers started to malfunction once in a while, which caused me at least 4 deaths. My DeathCounter stopped at 1474 :D, with only 36 deaths in this NG2+ run. In total, I spent little bit over 210 hours on this game, and enjoyed every single second of it, with the exception of Shrine of Amana, which sucked walrus balls!

13 - December 23, 00:15 – I have finally finished the main campaign of Shadowrun Hong Kong - Extended Edition Deluxe, the third installment in the series. The game is as good as two previous entries, with the exception of some of the extremely text heavy intermezzos in Heoi, which were in my opinion little bit bloated. This does not change the fact, that I had a lot of fun with the rest of the game. In the end, I was able to shut down The Fortune Machine, unfortunately with Raymond having to sacrifice himself .

14 - December 31, 03:30 – After two years break, I have decided to go back to my PS4 copy of Tales of Zestiria. After full clear of Hexen Isle, I went for second playthrough of Tales of Zestiria – The Strength of a Knight DLC, with the goal of getting 100% of Trophies. After getting to the Malevolent Crucible: Naraka, I've spent some time fusing the equipment and slowly started to learn to optimize the way how to approach the encounter, so I could defeat the boss in less than 2 minutes. After the first try, I was 15 seconds to slow. Not bad. In total, I have spent more than 2 hours to execute the fight properly with no mistakes, and missed the mark twice with less than 1 second behind the target time. In the end the Speedy Duo Trophy was mine, exactly at 3:30 in the morning, after the famous words One Last Try :D. The final time was 1:52.29.