Just Finished: Donkey Kong Country (NSO)

I never played the original SNES game to completion although I think I beat either the GB or GBA port at some point a long time ago. The visuals were groundbreaking for their time and still hold up pretty well. Rare did a great job reviving DK as a character and IP and crafting a 2D platformer that can stand on its own merits even in the shadow of Super Mario. As many have pointed out before, the game's music is extremely well done. The game is pretty challenging, mitigated by the fact that I could use the auto-save and instant replay features to help expedite things. Using this method the game only took me a bit over 2 hours to complete. I'm sure younger gamers struggled with it for much longer back in the day. Diddy Kong is a great addition to Nintendo's cast of characters. The boss battles get a bit repetitive. The level design is solid. Riding the different animal companions is a nice feature. I didn't feel inspired enough to try to collect all the hidden secrets and thus my completion % is well below 100. The fakeout during the final boss battle is cute. I enjoyed it but I think I will skip its immediate SNES sequels and jump ahead to the more modern Donkey Kong Country games made by Retro when I feel like returning to this part of the jungle.

Score: 8/10

Full Completed 2023 List:

• Super Mario World (NSO)
• Star Fox (NSO)
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (PS5)
• Donkey Kong Country (NSO)

Finished:

1. Hades (PC)
2. Gris (PC)
3. Salt and Sacrifice (PC)
4. Death's Gambit: Afterlife (PC)
5. Dragon Quest VI (DS)

Currently Playing:

1. Stephen's Sausage Roll (PC)
2. Nioh 2 (PS5)

Finished:

Pokemon Platinum (finished in 2023)
God of War: Ragnarok (finished in 2023)
Astro's Playroom
BattleCity (GB)
BattleCity (NES)
Super Bomberman
Super Bomberman 3
Saturn Bomberman
Neo Bomberman
Bomberman (PCE)
Bomberman (NES)
Mega Bomberman
Bomberman '94
Bomberman '93
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Persona 5 Royal
Atomic Heart
Dishonored 2
Man of Medan
Hellblade
Little Nightmares II
The House of the Dead 2
Metal Slug 6

And Borderlands 3.

I played BL2 a lot back in the day, never got around to playing BL3 until now, it was... much the same. Although the drop rate of legendary guns was far too high. In a run of BL2 I got like 2 or 3 legendary items. In BL3 it's like 1 every big fight. Irony is that some other weapons from other means are far more powerful and in reality but those legendaries and other guns made the combat trivial. I remember in BL2 doing the Arena things and legit struggling on the latter stages of them. In this I did it after the main story so my level was the same as the enemies and I made them all first time.

The end game content is decent but prefer to just play through the story with another character. Characters talk for too long, tell me the mission and shut up, comedy is fine but it doenst work if it's only spoken comedy. And why is it the main character is not in cutscenes?

Overall a great game but still.

+ Persona 4 Golden (Xbox Series X/S) - 1000G, Hard

Just Finished: The Legend of Zelda (NSO)

I have finally completed the original Zelda game after several previous attempts, including on Wii and 3DS. Like other Zelda games I used a guide to complete it. This one more so than the others I am not sure how you could beat the game without know what to do. I can respect the game for its ambitions but that doesn't mean its good game design. How would you know which random rock to bomb or which tree to burn in order to progress? It is kind of cute how the game slows down when there are too many characters onscreen at once. The level design and dungeon patterns start to become repetitive later on. It was not the most fun game to play through but it felt necessary since I'm such a fan of the series. I am currently on a multi-year journey to play through most of the major Zelda games. I am fairly certain that I will never play Zelda II: The (Worst) Adventure of Link though.

Score: 7/10

Full Completed 2023 List:

• Super Mario World (NSO)
• Star Fox (NSO)
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (PS5)
• Donkey Kong Country (NSO)
• The Legend of Zelda (NSO)

1) Cyberpunk 2077 - PS5
2) Medium - PS5
3) Ghostwire Tokyo - PS5
4) Jedi Fallen Order - PS5
5) Forspoken - PS5
6) Shadow Warrior 2 - PS4
7) Hogwarts Legacy - PS5
8) Scarlet Nexus - PS5

2nd update of the year.

(46 completed games):

Games I've finished in 2023:

DC League of Super-Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace (Game Pass)
Soccer Story (Game Pass)
Super Sunny Island
Nobody Saves the World (Game Pass)
Rift Racoon
Genesis Noir (Game Pass)
Alveole
Explosive Candy World
Fluffy Cubed
Little Mouse's Encyclopedia
Chess Brain: Dark Troops
Can Androids Pray: Blue
Pukan, Bye-Bye!
SIGNALIS (Game Pass)
Dyna Bomb
Devoured by Darkness
Persona 4 Golden (Game Pass)
No Thing
The Pillar: Puzzle Escape
Infernax (Game Pass)
Before I Forget
The Legend of the Dragonflame Highschool Collection
Hot Wheels Unleashed (Game Pass)
Besiege (Game Pass)
Umurangi Generation Special Edition (Game Pass)
XIII
A Plague Tale: Requiem (Game Pass)
Bright Memory
No Time to Relax
Iris Fall
Rain City
Seduction: A Monk's Fate
890B
When the Past Was Around
Full Throttle Remastered (Game Pass)
Shadow Warrior 3 Definitive Edition (Game Pass)
AntVentor
Soul Hackers 2 (Game Pass)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Aery - Path of Corruption
Twin Mirror
Cyber Pool
The Lost Cube
Stela
The Journey Down: Chapter One
Anno 1800 Console Edition

Currently working on:

F1 2021

Updated with short reviews on completed games:

1) Cyberpunk 2077 - PS5
2) Medium - PS5
3) Ghostwire Tokyo - PS5
4) Jedi Fallen Order - PS5
5) Forspoken - PS5
6) Shadow Warrior 2 - PS4
7) Hogwarts Legacy - PS5
8) Scarlet Nexus - PS5
9) Oninaki - PS5
10) The Pedestrian - PS4