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moobaa

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Com-PETE-ions, 2020 Edition

Here's a list of games I've Com-PETE-d in the abovementioned calendar year.

So - what constitutes "Com-PETE-ion"? All Achievements/Trophies, where available, is a bare minimum; the aim is to fully experience what the game has to offer (from at least an asset perspective). DLC is required in almost all cases - the commitment is to the game.

FYI - During these quarantine-laden times, I aim to Com-PETE three games a month. The backlog is well over two hundred games, and over half of them I haven't even played.

(Whoops - it would appear that I "liked" my own list. How narcissistic!)

--Pete.

List items

  • A simple game of choices that plays different characters against each other in a manner that almost always leaves you conflicted. Would be a quick game, were it not for the Com-PETE-ion requirement to see all the endings.

  • Wattam is some silly, colorful, obtuse fun. Despite some obscure requirements for minor Trophies, the Platinum is a simple Com-PETE-ion.

  • Another quirky Simogo joint, though perhaps more intuitive than Year Walk (at least to us non-Nordic peeps). A couple of playthroughs seemed to provide the full vibe of the game.

  • Main game and Platinum Trophy? Easy. Survival Mode? Heaps of fun with my usual Uncharted-buddy. Survival Mode on Crushing? Hard as nails. I wound up enlisting the help of a couple of Survival pros, who were exceptionally patient and considerate.

  • Discovered I "owned" this, and I was desperate for games to Com-PETE that month. On- and off-The List within a day.

  • Another desperately short game, but a super-fulfilling one. A thoroughly enjoyable bit of video spelunking, with the Steam Achievements being a pretty comprehensive Com-PETE-ion.

  • I love me a clicker, and there were INCREMENTING NUMBERS all over the place here. Free-to-play on Steam, I still bought the Savvy Investor Bundle to give the developers some coin... 149 hours later, that investment seems sound. There's one little hump where progress slows somewhat, but otherwise it's all NUMBERS. THEY GO UP!

  • More engaging than Mountain... and, when all the automatic options are enabled, it's a great screen-saver. Some of the Steam Achievements were a bit of a pain, though.

  • A thoroughly enjoyable single-player campaign. The DLC, though? Crap. Enjoyed the co-op multiplayer, but the zombie stuff? Rubbish.

  • Oh man, what a great game. Only acquired this game in 2020, which now seems like a mistake - I could've bought this years ago. Totally good fun filling out the Fish-o-pedia. Returning to the game after a couple of months has revealed the internal Byrdr app to be a work of genius.

  • Big, dumb, stupid, fun. Bad DLC. I don't need to play another Just Cause for a couple of years, now.

  • Needed a quick finish. Found an engaging bit of interaction. Played it through a handful of times. Don't regret a moment.

  • I wish Double Fine had updated this for 64-bit iOS... I had a fair bit of fun with this, but would rather not have to keep an old iPad around to play it. Achievements were a bit of a grind, though.

  • Quirky. Quick. Bad DLC. There's been a lot of bad DLC with this year's games. Sigh.

  • Playing through this twice was a trial. Reading those cards was tough.

  • My first Picross! My last Picross! In getting perfect scores on all the Picrosses, and maxing the score, I may have over-Picrossed!

  • I hate this game. My first 360 game, buried within the VIP Pack which served as a pre-order for the 360 in Australia. Wanted the console, not this game. Much anger.

  • I have many, many, Serious Sam games from a Humble Bundle back-in-the-day. This was the first of many. Only played through this "Classic" version of TFE in Tourist difficulty; Serious will be saved for the HD renditions.

  • It took nearly 10 years to 100% this on Hero Mode. Yes, Hylian Shield included.

  • All levels unlocked in Practice Mode. Easy, right? Nah - Expert Extra (then Master, and Master Extra) are a right bitch. Don't mind admitting that I used Dolphin to save-state my way through the later levels, saving enough lives to allow access to the Extra levels.

  • Great game, perfectly suited to the Switch. 100%, plus The Impossible Challenge. Some of those SuperHot levels are fantastic.

  • I really enjoyed the early part of this game - mechanically solid. But The Turn leads to the game mechanics twisting badly, and the tone of the game felt at odds with the story matter. I found it all rather disconcerting, really. Add to that a resource bug in the VR DLC that resulted in load times in the double-digit minutes(!), and I quit that game for the last time with a bad taste in my mouth.

  • Wonderfully morbid cheesy horror story, with a fun (and mostly accurate) light-gun game tacked on... with great faux-shotgun actions. Heaps of endings & achievements to work through, but a single run takes less than half an hour (and is really fun, too). Played it on a Quest (via Virtual Desktop) without issue.

  • A fantastic evolution of the walking simulator. Really loved the world-building & story. Also - fuck corporations, amirite?

  • This one counts twice: I managed to complete the game with 100% collectibles (105% costumes on the JP release, due to a bug!) on all three difficulty levels, and set times for each Death Match opponent, for both the US and JP release. Great game that sadly underwhelmed on release due to my mental state at the time. Stunning soundtrack, too!

  • I loved the short story, despite its misogyny. The game script eases up on that, replacing it with racist caricatures and dated point-and-click gunk. Pixel hunting is all very well and good, but when travel points are out of the bounds of the display (and labels are inconsistent) it's asking a bit much. Still, I com-PETE-d all 35 endings (yes, 35 - although only 15 are unique content) to tell you that you don't have to.

  • An interesting blend of incremental gaming and twin-stick shooting. The former is solid, if unspectacular - AdVenture Capitalist presses those buttons much more effectively - and the latter is pretty average. And the manager mini-games were awful - I ended up rigging up a system with some gnarly code, a webcam, and a bunch of electronics in order to beat the WoodGuy challenge. So that was fun.

  • A proper rollercoaster... First 5 hours were a bit of a yawn. For the next 30 hours, I couldn't put it down. The following 10 hours had a bit of "are we nearly done?"... and the last 5 hours? Sooooooo much "wtf??!?" head-scratching, including a Kojima-esque ninety-minute denouement (for one of the nine... no, ten... wait, eleven... or is it twelve?) endings. Despite any misgivings, I'll still be buying the third Zero Escape game...

  • A pleasant Ico-like that fails to create the same sense of wonder that Ueda's work did. It even fails to match Tequila's own Sexy Brutale. But still, it looks gorgeous, and plays pretty well, so it's a nice game to just wander through. Use a guide for the Achievements, though - some of them (and the collectibles) are pretty obtuse.

  • Gorgeous presentation, fluid controls, and - once you get to the point where your sharky avatar can take on alligators - a wonderful sense of progression. I had a ton of fun with this, and it thankfully didn't outstay its welcome. Some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments certainly helped, too. #RIPFirstUnit

  • Great game! As has been oft remarked by others, The Oldest House is an incredibly well realised location, and much of the writing (especially Darling and the puppets) is simply wonderful. A pity, then, that the DLC is - once again - comparatively lacklustre, with competent horde modes and OK-ish story additions only reducing the average quality of the rest of the offering. Once the final trophy had popped, I'd had my fill of the game. Excellent accessibility options.

  • Bought as a result of Giant Bomb's discussions surrounding this game's narrative, this absolutely delivered in the story department. Gameplay, though, often devolved into point-and-click adventuring, but the bespoke mechanics sprinkled throughout kept things interesting. Audiovisually gorgeous, too.

  • SoundSelf is a pretty sweet "technodelic" that I probably completely undersell by using it more as a guided meditation tool. I fire this up on my Oculus Quest (using Virtual Desktop and Steam VR), sit back, and let the visuals lead me through nice period of quiet contemplation. Sure, there are Achievements attached to the game, but the sense of "completion" of SoundSelf is far outweighed by the calm I associate with it.

  • I kinda regret picking this up on PSPlus - I'm a big scaredy-cat, and am not into horror media at all - but the inclusion of a Safe Mode convinced me that it was well worth investigating the lauded story. The narrative *is* worthy of its plaudits, and there's no doubting that the atmosphere generated (especially by the stunning sound design) is second-to-none. But I am *still* a scaredy-cat, and frequently had patches where I *had* to walk away from the game, and there's no way I'd even attempt to play this on "Normal" mode. Recommended!

  • A pretty simple premise for a puzzler, but the presentation surrounding the game is simply incredible. Polished to the n'th degree, The Pedestrian consistently caused me to gasp and grin in equal measures. And, weighing in at a svelte 4-5 hours, it doesn't outstay its welcome.

  • Another two-for here - the Steam VR version had the non-VR "Folded Edition" thrown in. However, it's most definitely a better experience in VR - there's a bunch of really personal (even intimate) set-pieces that just don't have the same punch on a flat screen. It's well worth wandering around in world of Paper Beast, and experiencing those encounters, but I'm not sure there's much worth revisiting. But maybe there doesn't need to be...

  • I smashed my way through this in a panicky manner, time-limited by the need to travel for Christmas ahead of the end-of-year server closure. I'd never played one of these reactive-action games before, and didn't really enjoy my first taste of it... mid-to-late game, though, was much more fun due to my instinctive over-levelling. The two trickiest achievements - the leaderboard-based Tests - were easily save-scummed, but once again some poor DLC "story content" left a bad taste in my mouth.

  • A beautiful (and short) look at death (and capitalism) through a mortician's eyes. Suffers a little from the characters seemingly having the same voice, but still manages to deliver a heartfelt experience.

  • Moss is aesthetically gorgeous - sound, animation, and graphical fidelity (on a screen-door PSVR) are all absolutely wonderful, and demonstrate what can be achieved in non-abstract games on the platform. In terms of gameplay, it's frugal... but oh-so-satisfying. Sure, it's a short game, but movement is appropriately weighted when exploring, and the simple combat combos have a pleasing punch to them. And, in a first for this year, the DLC isn't phoned-in bullshit, with additional mechanics added for decent rewards. In short, I loved Moss.

  • I loved the character writing, I loved the gameplay, I loved the plot progression. But, at every stage of the game, it felt like there was just *too much*. Dialogue exchanges went too long, new gameplay elements were introduced and then noticeably hung around, and the pre-credits denouement felt painful. Having two full rounds of mechanical re-visitations was like pulling teeth, and - in a marked departure from other players' teary end-game experiences - I finished the game seething in rage. That was tempered somewhat by the dev commentary and "secret" room, but Wandersong still (unfortunately) seemed to be an example of the whole being much less than the sum of its parts.

  • Loved the appearance of Snakebird on a random GB video, so I thought I'd try the "easier" Snakebird Primer to see if I was up to the challenge. And you know what? It turns out that Primer is pitched perfectly for me. With sufficient puzzling and not too much frustration, it walks that fine line really well. Snakebird Primer is plenty enough Snakebird for me.
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