Rate the last game you played

[Tyrfing]

Sakura Samurai- Art of the Sword- 6/10

First- I will admit I beat it thrice. However, I just cleared the "real" mode, where you get a minute amount of health.

Plot- It really isn't that great. Just to enlighten those who haven't played it, this is it: Princess Cherry Blossom was kidnapped by some evil entity (he, for some reason, never gets a name). A kappa waits by a pond by a chosen hero who can hear his voice. Elated by the boy that comes and hears him, he gifts him with the Blossom Sword (AKA a katana). He trains him in the art of war, and gives him his destiny. The player travels the land and storms three castles in hopes of finding her. Needless to say, he does. It's better than most download titles, that is for certain, but it is still quite generic.

Gameplay- This is where the game shines. It is somewhat hard to explain. This game is primarily about counter-attacking- enemy swings, you strike back, and so on until they die. However, it gets repetitive very quickly- I can hardly go through three chapters without getting bored. Even with different varieties of enemies, it gets repetitive. Also, on some enemies, you can strike even before they attack, making the point moot. However, bosses. Those are the best part. It works like it was intended to, but with some added spice. First off, at low HP, they can pull off combos that are nigh impossible to avoid. Furthermore, they take a TON of damage, even the first boss. I was surprised by the sudden lift in difficulty on my first run. Speaking of which...

Difficulty- It is way too freaking easy on regular mode. However, it is PERFECT on the replay run. Combat becomes so much more crucial, villages are much more welcome, and you have to think about how you spend your money. Remember that strike-before-they-do trick I mentioned in Gameplay? That is way too dangerous. Even on lower levels, you will die INSTANTLY. It isn't frustrating, though, like other games- It motivates you to defeat them once more. You have to plan how you will go about this, and even then, it isn't guaranteed you will win what with the random enemy selection. However, bosses are a living hell. And regular mode still tarnishes it.

I'll be honest, though; my rating, while somewhat low, is unrepresentative of my love for this game. I loved it so much, in fact, I had hoped Sakura Samurai had made it into SSB4. It is just that the few flaws are really major.

 

[Maicam]

Call of Duty 9/10

 

[aliveatnight]

Kid Icarus: Uprising. Honestly, I'd give it a 9/10. I love the music, the characters, the dialog and just the game itself. The controls aren't great, but they're just like Super Training, so it wasn't too weird.

 

[Osprey]

SSB4- 9.9 out of 10 because no game is perfect. The gameplay is fun, the music selection is excellent, it's just downright entertaining. My only complaint is the way that I sometimes lose track of my character whenever the camera zooms out during a fight.

 

[Username19]

Harvest Moon The Lost Valley. 2/10

This is the first "Harvest Moon" done by the new team and I was incredibly disappointed. I didnt completely beat the game but I did get a good 10 hours into it and completed almost everything.

Plot - The story is almost non existent. You literally start the game and meet a sprite. That sprite gives you a few tools a some seeds and makes you plant them and tells you to keep doing it until the Harvest Goddess wakes up. All within the first five minutes of the game. The next game day she wakes up and says keep planting things and leveling out the field to bring back seasons. It is no exaggeration when I say I had maybe four cut scenes that pertained to the story in-between getting all the seasons. Even all the NPCs you meet were not important to the story line and had the same text everday you talked to them.

Gameplay - This was probably the most disappointing aspect of the game. Depending on where you planted your crops and what you planted them by you were supposed to get "mutated" crops. I planted crops as high and low as you were able to, next to water, and next to other crops. I only ever received like two different crops. "Big" and "Great". Most of your time spent in the game is leveling out and rearranging your field that is completely screwed up. you had to dig and build using squares of material to make everything even and look the way you wanted. For me this was exactly like when I played Minecraft. It was tedious, long, and in no way fun.

Graphics - The characters looked fine with the new art. They all just looked like six years old which is a little off putting since you are supposed to marry one of them. All of the scenery in the game was laughable. The river looks like they took a blue marker, made a straight line across some paper, and then put a few white streaks on it took make it look like moving water. Everything else like the mountians and other sections of land looked really...square shaped. The grid base they used to add that XYZ depth factor just made everything have that Minecraft look to it.

Difficulty - The easiest Harvest Moon I have ever played. All of your tools, buildings, and necessities were handed to you almost immediately after starting the game. Two hours into the game i had a barn and kitchen built. There is no challenge to upgrading things and I got no sense of accomplishment from the game because of that.

I at least gave the game a two because the idea behind the story and crop system was cool, just not executed well.

 

[cityvillain]

Fantasy Life (3DS) 6.8/10

Fantasy Life is charming and rich with content. The graphics and art style are pleasant and has an adorable feel to it. The game has an insane amount of content from quests to increasing the ranks of your chosen job or life as they call it in the game. The story is not its main center piece but it's okay as you'll be more likely focusing on side quests rather than the story. The game starts slow but after 10 hours you'll be bombarded and feel overwhelmed by so many things you can do.

My main disappointment from the game though is the quests will be very monotonous which is sometimes typical of a massive RPG but there is a lot of monotonous quests in here. Also the different lives or jobs feel like they're just a rehash of one another. When you're a tailor or an angler, you'll have no proper offensive skills other than your dagger so the game encourages you to take another life that is battle-oriented. The RPG elements are okay and good and I wish they were more in-depth and executed in a very refine way. Outside the mechanics, another thing I find frustrating are some of its annoying in game characters and the main culprit is the butterfly. I'm not going in details in to this as this is a personal frustration.

Overall, the game looks charming and lovely. I love the small details within the game like the wonderful song that plays when you master a job. The environment is beautiful and full of personality. And unfortunately, the charming visuals are not enough to hold my attention longer as the game becomes repetitive as it progress.

 

[Dr. Buni]

A Link Between Worlds. 9.5/10. Best Zelda game since Majora's Mask and the second best in the series (right after MM), in my opinion. I loved the dungeons, the main characters, some of the music and the colorful and charming visuals.

 

[CrackFox]

The Walking Dead S2 Episode 3.

Great story telling. Didn't enjoy this one as much as the first two purely because the setting was a little dull and depressing but over all this game is shaping up to be brilliant.

8/10 for this episode.

 

[Wispy Willow]

Well, I've just finished Shovel Knight, so I thought I'd give it a rating.

Presentation:​

Art Style:

Well, the art style is similar to game from the 8-bit era... Only a bit nicer, and I must say, it's impressive what they did with the limited colour pallet. I give it a 9/10

Music:

The music, much like the art style, is similar to ye-olde games, and it's very good. If you want an example of how good the music is, just search up one of the following songs on Youtube (because I don't feel like linking any of them): King Knight's stage, Specter Knight's stage, Propeller Knight's stage, Tower of Fate: Enterence, Tower of Fate: Ascent, or just the main theme. I give the music a 10/10.

Other:

Given the premice of this game - a knight beating down foes with a shovel - you wouldn't expect it to be all serious, and it's not. For example, you know how I said that they did a lot with the limited colour pallet? Well, that was an actual line from the game. Granted, to hear that line you have beat a bonus dungeon, but still. Also, the line that plays when you enter a stage varies: you do get the standard 'Ready?', but there's also lines like 'Dig In!' and 'Justice In Spades!' Oh, and pretty much my favourite line in the game, 'For Shovelry!'

Story:​

The gist of the story is this: Shovel Knight and his longtime friend Sheild Knight went to the Tower of Fate, but an 'evil curse' was unleashed and only Shovel Knight made it out. After that he went into a life of solitude, until the game's main antagonist - the Enchantress - sets up her base in the Tower of Fate and forms the Order of No Quarter to do her dirty work, motivating Shovel Knight to pick up his shovel and platform through eight stages and back to the Tower of Fate to take down the Enchantress. I'd say it's simple, but it works: 9/10.

Gameplay:​

The gameplay is similar to various old Nintendo games. For example, as I mentioned in the story segment, there are eight stages before the Tower, and each of them has a boss at the end, similar to Mega Man. Speeking of Mega Man, some of the secret treasure chests contains an NPC who will give you a Relic if you have enough gold. As for what they do, they're basicly like the upgrades in Mega Man: they let you, say, shoot fireballs or create an area of effect blasr that damages all enemies around you. As for the gameplay itself, it basicly consists of you selecting a stage from a Mario-esqe overworlld (roaming enemies and all), then swinging your trademark shovel or using it like a pogo stick a-la Ducktales to make it to the boss. Simple and effective... Or it would be if the stages were not incredibly hard, and the fact that you lose gold every time you die. However, you can colect said gold again if you make it back to the point where you died with out dying before you reached said point. Anyway, if you need a testament to how hard it was, in the ten hours and twenty-one minutes I took to finish it, I died a hundred and twenty-one times. That's all I have to say... Appart from a rating on the gameplay front: a 9.5/10.

Overall opinion:​

I really liked Shovel Knight. Even though it was very hard, in most cases, it didn't feel like the game cheeted me into a death - it felt like I was the one that screwed up. That combined with various other things like the 8-bis art style and music, the great gameplay, various puns, and even the little things like the ability to increase the difficulty by destroying checkpoints make this a must-play for any fan. I give this game my BadAss rating of PLAY IT RIGHT NOW!!! (9.5/10).

 

[Osprey]

Fire Emblem: Awakening

Okay, so I have already beaten this game... at least five times now... but hey, I'm in the middle of yet another playthrough. Shows how much I enjoyed this game, yeah?

Gameplay- Do you like RPG's? Do you like strategy? Do you enjoy wiping the floor with armies, chess-style? I'd say the Fire Emblem series is for you, and Awakening is no exception. Like the battle system of Pokemon, FE:A's battles are simple to grasp but can go quite deep. It's turn-based strategy, where you have each turn to use your units to attack the enemy. A Weaponry Triangle dictates advantages (swords, axes, lances), and stats of characters themselves affect their strengths and weaknesses- standard RPG stuff.

Also, if you've been with the series for a long time, this game does a ton of acknowledgment of the past, through references in the story, to past heroes weapons, to even being able to battle and recruit past heroes (albeit in a spirit-card form). Awakening makes no attempt to detach itself from its legacy... really, it publicizes it.

Now, there's also Support Conversations... those certainly set this game apart and are easily one of my most favorite features of the game. If one character fights side by side with another frequently, they'll have conversations... which range from serious to small talk to hilarity. They're amusing, they add dimension to the characters (and made me even more attached to them), and they have in-battle effects; pairing characters who have good relations with eachother results in large accuracy, evasion, attack, etc. boosts. It's literally my sole exception to my dislike of shipping (yes, characters can marry eachother. And it's amusing to watch the progress, I will admit that.) All I should say is, if you're a strategy-RPG lover, the gameplay is pretty addictive.

Storyline- Here's the part where a lot of critics complain. I will admit, while it wasn't terrible, FE:A's story wasn't the best, nor the most original... I'd seen many of its elements in other stories before it, between Robin's (the avatar) amnesia, time travel, zombie apocalypses, evil doppelgangers... I'd continue and be a little less vague, but I'd spoil a lot.

Graphics- Kinda mixed here. The glorious cel-shaded cutscenes are few and far between, but they put other games to shame with their awesome anime-esque style. On the other hand, I'm still kinda bothered by the lack all the characters' lack of feet (they only got stubs) and the fact that Robin and Lucina honestly look better in SSB than in their original game (ie: character models aren't the highlight here). However, putting that aside, FE:A did an impressive job pushing the standards of handhelds. Full-3D battle sequences and excellently rendered backdrops are always present throughout the game. While the models weren't the best I've ever seen, the character designs themselves were pretty decent. MOST of them weren't scantily-clad fanservis (dammit, Plegians...), their eyes are proportional to their heads, and there isn't much of crazy anime hair besides the weird colors.

Music- Oh boy. While it isn't the stuff of Final Fantasy-tier legend, the music is excellent, and often used during battles to great effect (see the battles of Ch. 10 and the endgame). Many of these songs enjoy tossing leitmotifs around... you'll hear some of the original Fire Emblem theme all over the place.

Replay Value- I'm replaying this game for at least the sixth time now, and I'm not that bored with it. There is A TON to attempt after you slay the dragon; try taking on the Hidden Boss armies of SpotPass, maxing out characters, more support conversations... and if you happen to have money, try to take on the crazy-difficult DLC. Or, if you don't care for postgame, try a new file... in Lunatic mode. ... I don't recommend it, actually. It's like setting out from Pallet Town for the first time, and every Pokemon in the grass is level 20... and you got nothing but your measly starters. But hey, there's no way you can complain the game itself is "too easy."

So... I'd give it a 9/10. Story's a bit lacking, as are the models, but everything else about it makes up for it. Yes, maybe it is not the very best of the franchise (as many fans have loudly proclaimed), but it brought new life to a fairly minor franchise, and kept continuity at that.

 

[Boshi234]

Donkey Kong Country (GBA)- Well it's the second time I beat so I might try to rate it.

The plot is simple and most of us should know it by now so I won't tell it.
So anyway after all these years the GBA cartridge still works but if you have a Game Boy Advance you should use it for nostalgic value (otherwise use the original Nintendo DS or the DS Lite). The music of this game is enjoyable but I should note that I was playing my game with my nostalgia filters on. Overall I rate it 10/10 since it's one of the best platforming video games out there, even if it's from the 90's it is still quite a good video game.

 

[----]

Fire Emblem: Awakening

Plot: Not as good as some past Fire Emblems, but still is a pretty good plot. (7/10)

Gameplay: This game pretty much perfects the concepts of the series and due to the new "casual" mode newcomers can like the series as well. (10/10)

Difficulty: I played hard mode on the regular mode and had a ton of fun with it. The game is extremely addictive as well, I could sit down for four hours straight and not get bored with it. (9/10)

Graphics: This game looks amazing for a mobile console. The few 3D anime style cutscenes shown ingame are amazing. The inbattle character models look good too. (9/10)

Characters: I loved every character in this game. Every character has a unique personality and losing any of them is heart breaking. The fantastic support conversations unlocked while in battle can range from hilarious to depressing. (10/10)

Overall: I recommend this game to anyone who loves strategy games or even fans of JRPGs. (9/10)

 

[Maicam]

Recently, I have played God of War: Ghost of Sparta and completed it, I's give it 8/10.

 

[Wispy Willow]

Well, since I've unlocked all characters and stages in Smash U, I figgured I'd give it a rate.

Presentation:​

Art Style:

Well... I'd say that it looks f***ing beautiful and, while I do like the cell shading of the 3DS version, I infinately prefer this one's visuals. 10/10

Music:

As per usual, the music in this game is mostly taken from other games. As for the music that's from this one... It's alright, I guess, but the music from the other games... For the most part, incredible. For example, Id ~ Pourpose, Destroyed Skyworld, Battle! Champion Cynthia, Route 10, Rainbow Road (MK8), Vs. Meta Ridley, Theme of Samus Aran, pretty much everything from Zelda, 02 Battle, Magnus's Theme, Dark Pit's Theme, HIS WORLD (Instrumental), Grand Finale/In The Final, Reach For The Stars, every single track from Xenoblade Chronicles, though especially the Medley... I think you it by now, there's a s***-ton of great songs in there. However, there are a few bad apples in the bunch, which is a real shame, so I can't really give it a perfect ten... I think I'll go with 9.9.

Story:​

there's nothing to say here. I mean, there's no story mode, which is a real shame, since I actually liked the Subspace Emissary from Brawl... but with no story, there's nothing to rate, so let's move on from that.

Gameplay:​

WRANING: I go into pretty much everything gameplay-wise here, so I'll just put it in this spoiler...

Spoiler

Like all Smash games, the gameplay basicly involves beating the s*** out of various Nintendo characters until they fall/get launched off the stage and die, plain and simple. However, when you take into account that a lot of the characters play rather differently, then a simple match can actually be pretty complex. For example, say you have a Rosalina and Luma against a Duck Hunt Duo, pretty much the most complex characters in the game... That leads to a lot of mindgames. As far as other characters go, you've got ones like Ike, Ganonfdorf, Bowser, King Dedede, etc. as heavy-hitters, Marth/Lucina as precision characters, Jack-of-all-trades Robin, a mix of Ike, Marth and Robin - power, precision and Jack-of-all-trades - in Shulk, projectile shooters like Link/Toon Link, Samus and Mega Man, quick melée fighters like Pit/Datk Pit, Meta Knight, Zero suit Samus, Sonic and Greninja, and easy-to-lean characters like Mario and Kirby. And then you have the gimmick characters... the aforementioned Duck Hunt Duo's attacks revolve around setup, the also aforementioned Rosalina and Luma usually has efectively two fighters on the field, unless the Luma is KOed, Little Mac has incredibly good attacks on the ground, but a s***ty air game and recovery, Olimar who fights better with more Pikmin, Lucario's Aura ability, which makes him stronger as he takes damage... You get the picture, there's pretty muchevery playstyle right there for you. Oh, and the stages are pretty good too.

As for the different game modes... Well, we have regular Smash, which is just your basic Smash match. Then we have 8-player Smash, which is like regular Smash, but with eight people and less stage options. Oh, and Special Smash, which lets you create a custon match. As for other modes, we hace Classic, where you basicly go arounnd defeating various opponents as per usual. Also, there's Events, which are basicly matches where you have to do certian things like defeating a cdertin number of foes, eating food to get back to full health, burring two opponents, etc. oh, and there's Master Orders and Crazy Orders, which basicly give you a set of challenges that you can get stuff from if you clear them. As far as distractions go, there's Stage Builder, which lets you create a custom stage of your very own, Stadim, which has Target Blast - an Angry Birds rip-off, Multi Man Smash, where you fight wave after wave of opponents and Home Run Contest, where you beat up a Sandbag and then hit it as far as you can with a Home-Run Bat. Oh, and there's this crappy Mario Party rip-off that serves as a bad subsitute for the 3DS version's Smash Run... There's a lot of modes to choose from here...

Now, with that out of the way... I give the gameplay a 9.25/10 (I would give it a 10/10, if not for that evil, f***ing stupid Mario Party rip-off).

Final Results:​

As per usual, this instalment of the Smash franchise is a really f***ing good game - the gamplay is incredibly polished, the fighters have really different playstyles (mostly), the music is great (mostly), and it looks amazing. However, the lack of a story is a shame, and I do have a few other nitpicks, so I give this game my BadAss rating of PLAY IT RIGHT NOW!!! (9.5/10)

 

[CrackFox]

The Sims 4

Pleasant visuals and altogether much better than the Sims 3 base game. However, it's pretty bare and missing a lot of basic features. It definitely needs some expansion packs to open it up a bit. Right now I give it;

5/10

 

[Paleo]

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire

Not perfect, several minor annoyances, but lots and lots of good stuff to make up for it
9/10

 

[Dr. Buni]

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

9.5/10, would play again.

Perfect in most aspects, the only downside is the villain of the game barely appearing until the final moments of the game.

 

[Zeb]

Tales from the Borderlands: Episode 1 9/10 maybe even more than that.

Hilarious + fun with great writing and characters. Captures the Borderlands style perfectly and restored a lot of my faith in Telltale after The Walking Dead Season 2 flopped for me. Wasn't sure Borderlands would even work well in Telltale's style of games, but it did and it amazed me. Very hyped for Episode 2!

 

[dig]

ORAS - 9

With the possibilities of Battle Frontier DLC, that may well rise. Really want to play the battle factory with 3 gens worth of new pokemon.

 

[Dr. Buni]

Earthbound - 12/10. Deep Darkness aside, the game is absolutely incredible.