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Beaten: Axiom Verge This game is awesome. Just a fantastic Metroidvania all around. I started it and put all my other games on hold till I finished it. Also I can't believe this game was developed by a single person. Incredible. Beaten: Morai Free Steam game with a very interesting premise. You just have to play it (takes less than 10 minutes). The gimmick is interesting and also hilarious.
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Nov 29, 2016 23:15
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More stuff for the countdown: BEATEN: Kathy Rain BEATEN: Kick rear end Commandos BEATEN/ENDLESS: Handsome Mr. Frog BEATEN: Transmissions Element 120 BEATEN: Orwell Episode 1 BEATEN: Gunmetal Arcadia Zero And... ADDED: Games from the itch.io bundle (specifically, Killing Time at Lightspeed, North, Blitz Breaker, Four Sided Fantasy), Suits: A Business RPG, Zasa - An AI Story, The Beggar's Ride, Earthlock (review copy received) My Steamcompletionist is currently at 71.3%. My goal is to get as many of my 2016-published games finished before next Monday, so that means a lot of the games I just added, and possibly a couple others. So I should get up to 72% by then. 75%.. so close!!
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Nov 30, 2016 04:43
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Tsioc posted:BEATEN: Alan Wake I'm currently playing through Alan Wake (I am in the second special episode, and this are kind of poo poo in comparison to the main game, but whatever, I want to get them out of the way). Visuals and sounds are excellent. And their engine is so much more improved since Max Payne 2. The environments look amazing, and give the sense of a real location, and the flashlight beam and all the shadows are impressively implemented. They also use cliffs, slopes and water as their invisible walls substitute, which works very well. The story is/was quite well done, and they mixed, borrowed or referenced many sources and on every medium (tv, books, radio). And out of so much content, they chose to make the coffee thermos a collectible (of zero consequence, but eh). Which was a fun tribute to Cooper's love for coffee, but why am I still searching in the dark for the same scattered thermos at the late game again to get a +1? At least make them increase Wake's stamina or something. Or replaces them with other trivia stuff (to be fair, reading signs is also a collectible, as are watching tv shows and listeting radio broadcasts, albeit less apparent ones ). I wanted so much to like the gameplay but... no. It wasn't as much fun for me. I appreciate that they did a few variations on the encounters, but ultimately the action part of the gameplay became quickly repetitive in a "not that poo poo again" kind of way. It was also less fun because Alan Wake can't run for poo poo without losing his breath, or jump/climb whenever or whatever you deem it appropriate/necessary (the contextual triggers are sometimes wonky). and also the game pretty much reveals to you from the early moments that no matter how much you struggle to find pages in the woods and secret locations, you'll miss out a bunch of them unless you play in the nightmare difficulty. Which is a dick move. As was removing all my weapons, (very restricted) arsenal and maybe the flashlight at the start of every chapter. What the hell? I know that Remedy went through some rough time during development (I think funding was the greatest issue/ concern). And it originally seemed like they were making an open world game, and their tech demos looked amazing for the time. You can still see that some of that ended in the game, albeit in a very limited fashion and more like "hey look we made all this, but you get to play... that instead". It still feels like a "Remedy" game enough, in a way the old Max Payne titles did. And it could use mod tools but that's not happening. Maybe in a possible sequel (if Remedy stays afloat by then, and hopefully cut the timed-exclusive bullshit that are/were toxic to their PC gaming fans ), they will expand and improve on the gameplay, because there has to be a lot they can do with the darkness/taken/etc concepts and a lot better done than what ended up in Alan Wake.
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Nov 30, 2016 11:50
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BEATEN: FEAR: Perseus Mandate Boy howdy am I sick of warehouses. I dig bitesize chunks of FEAR - when it goes right bursting into a room in slo-mo and balletically dispatching a room full of freaked out soldiers feels utterly badass (it's even better if you do it using just the kung-fu moves). On top of that, the weapons are punchy, loud and effective - especially the all time greatest shotgun ever. Why can't all videogame shotguns boom like a bomb going off, cut people in two and send them spiralling through the air?  ahhhhhh Still, having now played FEAR, Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate the formula has gotten a bit samey - mostly down to the dowdy and repetitive environments. There are only so many grey warehouses, grey offices and grey sewers I can take, all populated by the same handful of props. But Perseus Mandate was the best of the original FEAR package - mainly due to the cool backflipping, time warping Nightcrawler baddies who actually present a challenge. Godammit I am glad its over now though. I need something more colourful in my life! Necrothatcher fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 14:49
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Reminder that the two expansion packs for FEAR were done by different teams than the base game after massive fights between Monolith and the publisher which is why they retcon the story so that more sequels with Fettel and Alma can be made. At one point Monolith was working on a spiritual successor to FEAR while an actual FEAR 2 was in dev elsewhere before things calmed down and lots of legal poo poo happened to actually have Monolith do the real sequel. gently caress I love the first FEAR.
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Nov 30, 2016 16:33
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Beat: Train Valley: A fun little puzzle game that is basically a history-themed toy train set. It's got a cool art style and gets fairly challenging though there are optional advanced objectives I'm not even bothering with. There's also a Germany DLC that I did which had some unique mechanics which was fun. Recommend it for anybody looking for a relaxing type puzzle game.
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Dec 1, 2016 20:10
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AbstractNapper posted:Competed: Valiant Hearts This might be an unpopular opinion, but I pretty much hated this game, and more so after I had finished it, as it gets shittier towards the end....wants to cover many of the terrible aspects of the war in general and the WWI in particular,, but it undercuts all that with silly story cliffhangers, twists and sudden changes of pace and tone (especially towards the end, where they go, gently caress it, let's get emotional revenge on the player who invested hours into this). I was OK with the ending, but then, I was pretty sure I knew how this was going to go as soon as I noticed that this was a game set in WWI with a dog in it. I enjoyed the game a lot more than you did, but I do not deny that a game that is by weight mostly about the futility of war and how life generally sucks should probably not have scenes where you are spending several minutes outrunning tanks and zepplins piloted by dudes enraged that you stole their pants. And while "Orpheus in the Underworld" might be an appropriate title for something about that, it's a little jarring when it is the actual soundtrack. Meanwhile... COMPLETED: Princess Remedy In A Heap Of Trouble. The only reason to buy this is if you played Princess Remedy In A World Of Hurt and were filled with a need to throw Ludosity a few bucks, because it's more of the same, with only a new variable-bomb mechanic and more frequent bossfights. It's otherwise about the same size of game and the same basic gameplay. Still, I'm A-OK with having 100%ed this one. NULLED: Bio Menace. GOG dumped this on me for free at some point. It turns out to be a Contra clone in the Commander Keen 4 engine, and (a) that's not actually very good and (b) saving the game preserves the fact that you've lost some lives but it doesn't preserve your progress within the level. gently caress that noise. BEATEN: THOTH. Sneaky Twin-Stick Shooter. I cleared this in under 2 hours, so I consider the asking price of  a bit high, but it's definitely clever and I'm definitely glad I played it. The store's description mentions that it's a mix of twin-stick shooter and puzzle game, and despite the fact that the only thing you are ever doing is moving around and shooting things, I'm definitely willing to grant it that status. This does also mean I can't say much about the gameplay, because that's where the clever bits are. The checkpoints were maybe a little bit far apart, but after throwing aside Bio Menace this was not a significant concern (see also: beat it in under two hours).
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Dec 3, 2016 17:38
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Finished: Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire It was actually an OK solitaire mahjong game, but goddamn are the voices annoying. Also the whole idea of all but undressing the girls was really unnecessary, but it's an anime game, so I guess it's what you would expect. Finished: Mafia III I really didn't like Mafia or Mafia 2. The first for extremely lovely driving and the second for being open world without anything to do in it. But Mafia III was really enjoyable. Great shooting, decent story, very good driving, exceptional soundtrack, non-forced collectathon. All in all a really good and enjoyable open world game. Finished: Mishap: An Intentional Haunting Hidden Object Game! Finished: Shadow Warrior 2 Awesome FPS game, that I played through in co-op with Kragger. When we finished, I realized I didn't get any story achievements, so I played through it in single player too, just because it was really fun. Nulled: Tallowmere Procedural generated rogue-like pixel platformer. Not my cup of tea.
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Dec 3, 2016 18:22
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BEATEN: Witcher III: Hearts of Stone It was weird going back to Witcher III 18 months or so after beating it - for at least the first hour or so I fumbled around having forgotten all the buttons and how the game works. Then I ran into the brick wall difficulty of the Toad boss, which kills you in a couple of hits, constantly poisons you and takes an age to kill. But once that was out of the way I was back on the horse and laying into one of the best expansions I've played to any game.  Every character and performance has something notable about it - particularly Mirror Master, Olgierd von Everich and Iris von Everich. Then there's the little flourishes in dialogue: trapped in a hostage situation and getting out of by accusing the negotiator of racism, the hilarious ghost possession wedding scene and dealings with miserable lovelorn ghosts. CDPR just nail the drama over and over again - making everyone else (though particularly Bethesda) look like chumps when it comes to storytelling.  On top of that it's just a beautiful game - with some of the warmest looking sun I've seen in a game, great weather effects and brill animation. It's even more impressive given that I'm playing on a 2013 laptop with a now kinda obsolete Geforce 750M (have to travel for work a lot). I set it to 720p and turn down most of the fancier effects but it still looks amazing, and runs at somewhere between 40-60FPS.  I had heard that this was the lesser of the two W3 expansions, so I can't wait to play Blood & Wine. Also you can buy some stupid sunglasses and give Geralt a totally dorky hairdo: 
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Dec 3, 2016 20:17
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Might as well post here, since this was the thread that got me to get this together. Made a spreadsheet of my Steam library the other day to keep track of this. Currently playing Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight and enjoying it quite a bit! Recommended for any Metroidvania fans. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1H8LGinJpFwbzFT4j9GtJaMlzgqvyuOZ37_4vF-9RU6c/edit#gid=0 I did also just make an account on Backloggery, though that's the only game up there right now. http://backloggery.com/Tomapella
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Dec 4, 2016 01:57
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Tomapella posted:Might as well post here, since this was the thread that got me to get this together. Made a spreadsheet of my Steam library the other day to keep track of this. Currently playing Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight and enjoying it quite a bit! Recommended for any Metroidvania fans. Reading your comments, and - Company of Heroes isn't a shooter, it's an RTS. Throwing in intense love for Mark of the Ninja, especially if you like metroidvanias - I mean, it's not one, but it's similar gameplay and it's just incredibly good at what it does. It's a neat idea to make a gdoc of your backlog, and I should probably try that, but I've pretty much given up on clearing my backlog and I'm instead focusing on just playing what's fun... Nulled: Western Press: got it in the humble monthly bundle and while typing dueling is fun, I don't feel compelled to beat all of the AIs or even play more of it. I've got stuff to work on already. Nulled: Minion Masters - same deal. It's some kind of multiplayer game? Nah. Beaten: Spaera - it's multiplayer match-3 tetris and weird - very early access. I beat the story mode (what there is of) and several other folks in PVP, so now I've shelved it to wait out the Devs bringing it to 1.0. I liked it a lot! Nulled: Anodyne - it's good atmospheric gameboy Zelda, and I love how weird it is, but... jumping puzzles. No. I'll find an LP and finish it that way. On Hold: KeeperRL. I love it, but I want to wait until the dev works on it more before I dig back in. Not a fan of dying without realizing why, and hopefully that'll be addressed in future patches. (It's still in EA) Nulled: Westerado - I'm not going to come back to it for now. It's a neat Western mystery with arcade-y shooting, and while it's really pretty, I don't care for westerns, and there are cooler things to play at the mo. I might be back in the future, but I don't know. Playing:  Okay, here's what's on my current list: Broforce, Burnout Paradise, Cook, Serve, Delicious!, Dragon's Dogma, Escapists (aiming to break out of at least one prison, then probably shelf it for a while), Flame in the Flood, Hacknet (need to boot this up and check it out), Luxor HD, Mordheim (probably won't win it, but I want to win at least one warband match before I decide if I'll go the distance), Rebel Galaxy (might be shelved for a while as I don't feel like playing what's Firefly: the game at the mo), Resident Evil 4, Titan Quest AE.Mostly aiming to beat story modes and see the credits scroll, but I might lose interest before then and let the game go back on the shelf. We'll see! I'm having fun with it!  e: Nearly forgot, I shoved all of my puzzlers into a category. Uh, there's a lot. I'm working on Paint it Back and picking away at Infinifactory, but those could take years. Same deal with the HOGs I'm slowly pushing through. StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Dec 4, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 02:24
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StrixNebulosa posted:Beaten: Spaera - it's multiplayer match-3 tetris and weird - very early access. I beat the story mode (what there is of) and several other folks in PVP, so now I've shelved it to wait out the Devs bringing it to 1.0. I liked it a lot! I played it, but since there is no tutorial to speak of, it is hard to tell what the hell I am doing regarding special powers, etc. StrixNebulosa posted:Playing: That is the way I tend to play stuff these days with such a huge backlog, but there are game si would honestly love to play again (or am like Skyrim SE). I understand your pain. Mine: Beaten: Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) Man this game was good. It has a 17 hour campaign and a TON of stuf fon top of that (with all dlc). It ran pretty well on my 6 year old pc/video card until i got to some more intense areas. I played through the whole thing via steam link streaming. Beaten: Human Fall Flat Ultimate drunken baby simulator. strategery fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 16:25
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strategery posted:I played it, but since there is no tutorial to speak of, it is hard to tell what the hell I am doing regarding special powers, etc. Spaera: it's a little tricky - look at the controls, then hold whatever button lets you look at special abilities, then experiment. It's a fairly simple game so it's easy to pick up after that? I mean, match-3 with falling tetris blocks, line up the colors and you're golden. But moving on - there's just so much to play, man. I keep getting stuck in indecision loops and settling on Cook Serve Delicious, which....ehh, alright. I like it a lot, but I can't do more than a few days at a time. Nulled: Flame in the Flood. Underwhelming, horrible inventory management, and the core gameplay didn't grab me. If my backlog weren't so huge I'd stick with it, but as is, nah. Glad I didn't pay for it, so to speak. Nulled: Escapists. Tedious grinding for stats got to me, along with the...rule-breaking with the logic systems? Like, I can open a vent and sneak out of my cell, but the instant a guard spots that open vent I'm magically teleported into solitary, no guard chase, nothing. Same deal with stealing a key from a guard. That's...really breaking with the inherent logic of the premise and I don't care for trying to break out of a magical puzzle box. Not at the moment, at least. Added: FEZ. This is actually a magical game. The story is pretty bad, as are the character designs, but everything else is great - a glitchy world, beautiful if generic locations, and my goodness the platforming/puzzling is satisfying. Find orange cubes by climbing and exploring and it's just... I really love this game. Shame about the window dressing, as that's all it would have taken to make a good game great. Added: The Swapper. Another good one! I hate that the blurry graphics are the default, as they look terrible, but at least they're optional. The story is weird and compelling, the main gimmick is thought-provoking, and the puzzling so far is satisfying. This is a good time, guys. Exploring an abandoned space station while teleporting around by leaving clones of yourself everywhere is a good time. On Hold: Mordheim. Something about this game keeps me wanting to come back to it despite the tedious combat and emphasis on losing, but...man. I don't know. Shelving it for now, but not writing it off. It scratches a specific itch but not well enough to make me want to play it at the mo. It is quite pretty for what's essentially a glorified tabletop wargame.
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Dec 6, 2016 05:43
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Avernum 4-6: Spiderweb's games are like comfort food for me now. Pretty much know exactly what I'm getting. The same gameplay, same writing style, same skills, spells, items, art assets, sound effects, UI, etc. etc. Same flaws that carry on from game to game, too. They're good and fun and challenging and I like them a lot. 6 > 5 > 4. Carmageddon: Max Damage: It's ok. I think I've had enough Carmageddon, though. Either way the game's much more fun on Easy where you easily earn enough credits per mission to not have to grind to unlock chapters. Crypt of the Necrodancer: So good. I'm not done with it - beaten All Zones Mode with Cadence, Melody and Bard, which is enough to remove it from the backlog and place it into Favorites. I will keep playing this for sure. After passing on many tempting bundles and deals this year my backlog has now been reduced to a final 10 games:  I started the year on 94. I might actually buy something in the winter sale. I played a bit of Age of Wonders but am not sure I have the patience for it at the moment. Might take a break from big games and stick to Necrodancer for now before tackling those last two Spiderweb games. And there's a good chance I'll downgrade Skyrim to the original version for mod support, but I guess it depends on the mod situation for the SE once I get around to it. Other than those three and Teleglitch these final ten games are not the most inspiring stuff so it might be good to refresh it a bit at Christmas, though not by much cause I do want to bring this down to zero soon enough.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:06
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Mystic Stylez fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Dec 15, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 02:51
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Glare Seethe posted:After passing on many tempting bundles and deals this year my backlog has now been reduced to a final 10 games: Give Teleglitch a shot, maybe a 20-30 minute playthrough, if it doesn't catch you by then, you may not have patience to play it all the way through.
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Dec 7, 2016 10:10
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Mystic Stylez posted:What are the best sites to track backlogs down, still Backloggery and Steamcompletionist? I would throw in GaugePowered, too if you like the idea of "getting your monies worth". If you do IdleMaster, however, it screws your numbers up (you do have the ability to manually put hours in though).
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Dec 7, 2016 11:23
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PowerBeard posted:Give Teleglitch a shot, maybe a 20-30 minute playthrough, if it doesn't catch you by then, you may not have patience to play it all the way through. Just did this and made it to level 3 before getting ambushed by a swarm of enemies and dying. So far I like it. It seems pretty fast-paced, the levels are large but you move through them pretty quickly. I'll stick to this and Necrodancer for a while, I think.
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Dec 7, 2016 20:00
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Beat: Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R - Nulled this before--got frustrated with the arcade mode boss the first time I played it--but I occasionally come back to this to dick around with a guilty gear game on my laptop, which can't handle Xrd. Beat Arcade mode playing Slayer for the first several fights, but had trouble with the penultimate match against Potemkin. I switched to Kliff and managed to keep him out with his stupidly long pokes. As Kliff, I-No wasn't nearly as hard as she was when I tried beating her with Sol weeks ago, even though I had much less experience with the character. I did know how to evade her boss-only supers this time, though, which made a difference. Probably will continue to gently caress around with story modes and such if I want to play a fighting game on my laptop in the future..
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Dec 7, 2016 21:09
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BEATEN: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Well my games randomiser said I had to play this, and I vaguely remember being impressed by the Omaha beach level on PS2 back in the early 2000s. But, after 15 or so years of military first person shooters, it has not aged particularly well. Worst of all is the way you absolutely have to quicksaving every couple of meters - enemies fire hitscan weapons at you without warning and a burst of fire can cut you down in a second or two. It's tolerable enough in the interior environments - at least you can pop in and out of cover and take them down, but my god the outdoor sniper-based levels are a loving drag.  There's apparently a bug in the game where the enemies don't have to be pointing their guns at you to shoot you, so you spend a lot of time being sniped through walls from long distances. This is hard enough in a destroyed French town level, but at least you get used to scanning all the doors and windows for Nazis. But the snowy forest levels, where the enemy's view is further than yours can go gently caress itself. I lost count of the amount of times I was sneaking along and then *BLAM* dead without warning.  Thing is, I guess random death out of nowhere actually makes for a decent simulation of how horrible war is. In the Omaha beach level you die over and over again - it's pure luck whether you make it to the beach before getting carved up by machinegun fire. It's frustrating and unfair, but I guess running up an exposed beach while being shot at is frustrating and unfair. Fave bits were the stealth levels - if only because you can be primitive Hitman and stalk commanders, steal their uniforms, flash their papers around and feel a tiny little bit like a proper WW2 superspy. But I finished it, with a slight use of a 'full health' cheat when things got particularly unfair. I'm not particularly raring to go on mission packs Breakthrough and Spearhead though. Maybe one rainy day. BEATEN: Deus Ex GO Crackin' puzzle game that transplants the Hitman GO style onto Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Puzzles are as clever as you'd expect from the series, graphics and animations are brill and the whole thing has a shiny, responsive, classy vibe to it.. Only slight flaws are that the game doesn't tell you when a new skill is unlocked, that the plot is rubbish and (at least compared to Hitman) there's no retro bonus levels. Oh what I would do for a JC Denton/DX1 themed skin and level pack...  If you haven't played a GO game you totally should. I've got Lara Croft GO all lined up and can't wait.
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Dec 8, 2016 01:20
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Allied Assault was such a sting to me because it was one of those visually groundbreaking games you played the HUGE demo of but that was really the best part. It is impossible and I refuse to believe anyone can beat that loving sniper village legitimately. It really isn't hard to believe how Call of Duty usurped the crown from MoH. The original CoD has its bullshit coming from an era of health pack FPS games that expected you to mash quick saves but it doesn't pull anywhere near the levels of fuckery that MoH does.
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Dec 8, 2016 06:20
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I remember playing MoH Frontline for GameCube. You had a boatload of health and could kill just about anything in melee. It was great.
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Dec 8, 2016 07:15
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al-azad posted:Allied Assault was such a sting to me because it was one of those visually groundbreaking games you played the HUGE demo of but that was really the best part. It is impossible and I refuse to believe anyone can beat that loving sniper village legitimately. The sniper levels are so hard and so unfair that you wonder what the devs were thinking. It's kinda rough because there's the bones of a decent game here and, for better or worse, Allied Assault's set-piece led FPS design presaged the CoD game style (I think Infinity Ward is actually composed of ex-MoH devs). Still, actually playing it is a dog. Also, I got a bit weirdly put off by the complete lack of blood - the enemies just fall over. Even Goldeneye had the enemies get red stains when shot, so Allied Assault feels weirdly clinical and theatrical. Still, Michael Giacchino's score is great, and the sound design is alright. Love the *PING* of the Garand when you reload.
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Dec 8, 2016 12:51
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Beating some older games.. I spent 113 hours of the last 2 weeks playing games on Steam, according to Steam. Maybe some of that was card grinding, I dunno. But holy cow. I really did cram a lot of 2016 game playtime into last week before my list started going up. BEATEN: Never Alone - Charming sidescrolling puzzle platformer (that can be played co-op?) where you're an Inuit girl with a fox companion trying to find the source of a supernatural blizzard. Game plays a lot like Limbo and there's lots of fun documentary film footage you unlock throughout the campaign about Inuit heritage and culture. BEATEN: Broforce - Not quite as great as people claim but still enjoyable enough. Too many kind of lovely characters to be honest. At no point was I bored though. Maybe a little dulled because almost every area is jungle with only slight visual variety. BEATEN: Pixel Puzzles Ultimate - Well, it showed up in my steam library, so I solved some puzzles. That's good enough right? I ain't buying any puzzle packs. BEATEN: The Lake House: Children of SIlence - HIDDEN OBJECT GAMES!!! BEATEN: House of Caravan - The kind of game shesellssheshells would play on their stream. Dumb and silly as gently caress "spooky" first person puzzler. PLAYING: Iron Brigade, Armed & Dangerous, The East New World, 12 is Better Than 6
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Dec 9, 2016 07:23
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Beaten: Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal This game is a lot of fun, and plays to my love of asymmetric RTSes. You have a variety of (mostly) static defences; the enemy is an endlessly expanding pool of all-consuming goo. It sometimes gets classified as a tower defence game, and I can see why, but it really doesn't handle like one at all. It's biggest problem is that it assumes you've played the first two games. It could really use a "previously, on Creeper World" screen or something, because a lot of the plot assumed I was familiar with CW1 and 2 and was totally incomprehensible as a result. I get the impression that the epilogue was meant to be a twist akin to the one at the end of Spellforce: the Order of Dawn, but without having played whatever it's referring to, it has no impact.
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Dec 10, 2016 21:40
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Beaten: The Swapper! A short, good puzzle game with a weird story! And I actually went through all of it instead of getting distracted and letting it sit for weeks!  ... I still don't know how to feel about the story. I also admit I used a walkthrough for two puzzles, because my goodness, those were hard. But I did everything I could, and had a blast doing it - clever puzzle mechanics, clever controls, clever puzzles. A good time. Playing: Toki Tori - I didn't realize I had this, then I found it while organizing my steam library and installed it and it's a cute puzzler game with single-screen puzzles, so into my puzzles it goes and I'll pick it apart over the next year.
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Dec 11, 2016 07:13
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Completed - NES Remix 2: In my opinion, this is much better than the first. The game selection is perfect (outside of Wario's Woods), and the remixes are really fun. Reached 3 stars on every level, but not going for rainbow.
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Dec 12, 2016 03:38
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The closer I get to the end of my backlog the more eager I am to drag myself over that finish line, and the less patience I have for a game. I've nulled the following: Teleglitch: Die More Edition: It's very good (sound design in particular is great), but there are two things about it that annoy me enough to not want to continue. The first is that using the knife, which you have to do as much as possible at least early on in order to conserve ammo, is just not fun for me at all. I hate it. The second is that I find the AI's movement patterns extremely irritating. The way they circle around you back and forth makes it feel like you're trying to swat away flies. While I don't expect them to rush my line of fire head-on or anything, it's enough to put me off. I made it to level 5 but I just don't really want to keep playing. Also - and this is petty - the text is riddled with typos, which drives me nuts. However, I'm keeping it around for now and will do 1-2 runs a day maybe to see if I can unlock the next checkpoint and make some progress, but I doubt that'll last long. So I guess this is only half-nulled. Arma: Cold War Assault: I admit I came in expecting to hate this, and I did. The mouse sensitivity is broken and requires out-of-game fiddling (not happening), there are routine frame drops and stuttering, and frankly I don't really understand how to play this game and am extremely uninterested in figuring it out. I did the training and half of the first mission (which was just me running behind the AI) and I just do not care at all. Legends of Dawn Reborn: Ah, man. The Steam reviews for this game are Mostly Negative and it's easy to see why. There is some good stuff in here - custom spellcrafting, for instance - but the execution is just bad. I played about three hours and feel a little guilty dumping it because clearly effort has been put into it. I want to root for this underdog. But it's poorly optimized, the setting is generic, the writing is amateurish, combat is boring, and the game is full of bugs, bad design calls and implementation issues. One example is cursed items. There are many of them and you don't know they're cursed before you equip them, at which point you can't remove them until 1) you identify the curse at an Oracle Stone, and 2) you then pray at a shrine. Each of these two steps requires a trek into the wilderness and likely involves fighting things. One of my current curses, in addition to making the actual item not work (i.e. provide defense/attack benefits), prevents me from earning XP. So I have to fight lots of enemies to remove it but gain absolutely nothing on the way. Fitting for a curse, but disheartening from a gameplay perspective. And I'll have to do it again every time I accidentally put on a cursed item because there's just no way of knowing in advance. Bummer. Am I really going to spend 30 hours on this...? If I'm honest with myself, I should probably just drop it. Sorry, game.  Age of Wonders: Played a little bit of the first mission but this game's a victim of my current impatience - just not in the mood for a slow-paced turn-based strategy game from 2001. The best scenario for Age of Wonders is if I play and enjoy Shadow Magic (also in my backlog) and decide to go back to this one, but it's sadly more likely that I'll null Shadow Magic too, to be honest.
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Dec 12, 2016 10:59
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COMPLETED: Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope. This game combines a very weak plot with some terrible live-action FMV. The least-enjoyable Artifex Mundi HOG I've played so far. COMPLETED: Bioshock Infinite. The combat feels much like Bioshock I with a few new mobility options, and the plot isn't actually as clever as the writers obviously think it is. It's quite a good game, but I don't get the obsessive love it gets from some people. PLAYED: Bioshock Infinite: Clash in the Clouds. A pure combat DLC, the later waves in the arenas get very frustrating. I played it long enough to unlock all the vigor and weapon upgrades, plus the museum items. That's enough for me, even if it's not really finished. COMPLETED: Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten. One of the best Tower Defence games I have ever played. It's not Immortal Defense, but DQ is easily number 2 on the list, and you should play it. There's New Game+ and some extra challenges to extend the playtime, which is admittedly a bit short. COMPLETED: The Deadly Tower of Monsters. An open world action game, I really like how the game world is arranged vertically, and backtracking involves jumping off the side and free-falling for a while. The developers have clearly put a lot of thought into how to make travelling through the game-world easy and smooth. The 1960's B-movie aesthetic is quite good too. Recommended. COMPLETED (again): Total War: Medieval II. Have you ever finished a game, only to find yourself feeling like you didn't really complete it and you should go back and do it properly? It's like an itch in the brain. I had to do another campaign so I could stop thinking about this game. COMPLETED: Enigmatis I: The Ghosts of Maple Creek. One of the better Artifex HOGs, I really liked the detective theme; gathering evidence and piecing it together. On top of that, the game does an atmosphere of subtle menace very well; you can feel the murder mystery constantly hanging overhead. PLAYED: Age of Barbarian. A Conan the Barbarian game with the serial numbers filed off. I wanted to like it, but the controls are absolute garbage. This makes normal fights more irritating than they should be, and boss fights nightmarishly frustrating. That's why I put it in the "Rejected" category in my Steam library. COMPLETED: Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode I. This really felt like someone's Bioshock fanfic that got turned into a game. Someone took Booker and Elizabeth, and dropped them into Rapture with a flimsy excuse plot; yep, feels like fanfiction. You can probably skip this one. COMPLETED: Enigmatis II: The Mists of Ravenwood. This is a spectacular game, more a light adventure game than a standard HOG. With a genuinely engaging plot, excellent artwork and zero moon logic, this is the best Artifex Mundi game yet. COMPLETED (again): Total War: Medieval II: Kingdoms. The previously-mentioned brain itch is why I replayed this. In addition to a second playthrough of the Americas campaign, I also tried the Teutonic campaign. It was much less fun than the Americas campaign; I wonder if the Britannia or Crusades campaigns would be any good. COMPLETED: Enigmatis III: The Shadow of Karkhala. What a disappointing end to the previously excellent series. My main problem with Karkhala is this: in the first two games, the antagonist's actions were the main engine that drives the plot. Here, most of the problems come from the snowy weather and mountainous terrain. The overarching villain of the series is barely there, only showing up for the last 10 minutes or so. In addition, rescuing the little girl in this game comes across as a mindless copying of a plot element that worked very well in Ravenwood, done by someone who didn't understand what made the girl in Ravenwood memorable. It's ultimately OK, just a major let-down. COMPLETED: Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode II. If Episode I was fanfic, this is the writers frantically retconning every plot-hole and unpopular element in the entire series. Also, attempting to retrofit the Bioshock gameplay into a stealth game doesn't quite work. COMPLETED: Company of Heroes I. A top-quality RTS with only the occasional unreasonably difficult mission objective to detract from the overall experience. Despite being on a whole new engine, Relic have gone to great lengths to make it play like their previous game, Dawn of War. So much so, I'm wondering if the Essence Engine is just an upgraded version of the old Impossible Creatures engine that powered DoW. One more minor nitpick: It's set in that D-Day and Operation Overlord time period that gets massively over-represented in computer gaming. Not that that's bad, it's just something I've seen many times before. Very much worth playing. COMPLETED: Company of Heroes I: Opposing Fronts. Two more campaigns, complete with new armies. One stars the Wehrmacht, and although it starts slow, the final missions where you can drown the Allies in panzers are great fun. The other stars the British, and I found this campaign less fun. The British army feels a bit too gimmicky to play. Recommended, even though this expansion is also stuck in Western Europe, late 1944. COMPLETED: Company of Heroes I: Tales of Valor. Oh what a shock, it's late 1944 again. The three mini-campaigns are a mixed bag. Two of them play more like Strategy RPGs than standard Company of Heroes RTSing, and are great fun. The Tiger Ace campaign is the best experience I've had with the entire series so far. The third mini-campaign, about the Falaise Pocket, is the most unfun slog imaginable. It's a single defence mission broken up into three parts, and is just a never-ending wave of enemies for 2-3 hours (or however long it takes you to finish). You can take or leave this expansion.  Next up: I've had the Half-Life II episodes in my library for years, waiting for Episode III and/or the third game. I think it's safe to call Half-Life a dead series at this point, so I'll get these done.
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Dec 12, 2016 14:28
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I really think I gave AoW a chance as well but dropped it for similar reasons. Looking forward to trying SM tho.
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Dec 12, 2016 14:33
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EightDeer posted:Next up: I've had the Half-Life II episodes in my library for years, waiting for Episode III and/or the third game. I think it's safe to call Half-Life a dead series at this point, so I'll get these done. Looking forward to hearing what you think about Episode 2.
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Dec 12, 2016 15:24
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EightDeer posted:Next up: I've had the Half-Life II episodes in my library for years, waiting for Episode III and/or the third game. I think it's safe to call Half-Life a dead series at this point, so I'll get these done. Same here... well at least with ep 2.
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Dec 12, 2016 17:30
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100%: Punch Club - Played through this once before--beat it on Normal difficulty as a Tiger (agility build, prize fighter route), decided to replay on Hardcore to get the 100 days achievement and try the other story path. A step or two above an idling game in terms of interactivity--a lot of the time you are sitting there waiting for your character to complete a task, or watching them fight (there's no way to interact with the fighting besides choosing their active skills). Attributes can be trained up but decay every day and you can't spend all your time training: you constantly need rest, food, and money to complete most tasks, and training depletes all these things. Managing all this is probably one of the more interesting parts of the game, but by mid-late game you get enough money coming in to ignore having to go to work, sleep, etc, allowing you to mostly fart around in the gym until your next scheduled fight comes up. The game doesn't have manual saving, adding a bit of tension/drama to routine fights--if you get into a fight you can't win, you'll have to deal with the consequences. I thought the branching storyline would aid replayability, but it was kind of a letdown: the gameplay is almost the exact the same in both branches, but skinned/themed differently. I found the story amusing in a campy way, but the writing was pretty poor across the board... apparently it was translated from Russian? For awhile I thought the characters were just supposed to be dumb. The ending particularly was sort of a letdown. Over those two playthroughs I managed to get all but two of the achievements: those last two were much harder than they should have been: they're tied to getting mugged repeatedly, and getting mugged is actually really difficult unless you're actively trying to attract muggers. Eventually I got them, though, making this one of the few games I've managed to 100%. Miscellaneous hot takes: The "endurance fights" in endgame are kind of a drag. Some of the decisions about game balance were questionable: training strength gimps both your energy efficiency and your accuracy. The capstone Turtle talents completely break the game against all but the strongest opponents.
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Dec 13, 2016 03:16
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BEATEN: Iron Brigade - DoubleFine makes good games, and this is one of them. Tower Defense meets Third-person shooter, except this was fun unlike Sanctum. I'll consider this the king until I try Fortified (another TD/TPS hybrid). BEATEN: 12 is Better Than 6 - Hotline Wild West, passable, enjoyable, not terrible, I don't really have a grade in mind for this one, but it was more enjoyable than the end of.... BEATEN: The East New World - Okay, I put this in my top 50 (the very beginning of course) but I regret it a little because the back half of the game is absurdly difficult and decidedly UN-chill. not cool devs, not cool. BEATEN: Bot Vice - Modernized Wild Guns, brutal, difficult, great arcade fun. BEATEN: Splasher Preview - A game coming out in January. The game designer of Rayman Legends/Origins has mixed his awesome sidescrolling rhythmic platforming with the paint from Portal 2 (bounce paint, sticky paint, etc). The preview had 4 levels, and they were very tightly designed and can absolutely be speedrun. It may not look like a high-budget indie title but the design has all the care of the Rayman titles (it also has a couple of similarities: you free a number of captured people in every level, and there is a reason to collect as much yellow ink as you can in each stage). I'm at 72% on Steamcompletionist now. It took a really long time to get from 71% to 72% on account of all the 2016 indie games I kept adding (and beating) to compile the list but that's obviously slowed down now so I can catch up on games I got back in November. ADDED: Sir You Are Being Hunted The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Dec 14, 2016 |
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Dec 14, 2016 08:48
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BEATEN: Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut Played this (and loved it) on PS3 on release, but have had the Director's Cut knocking around in my unplayed list for a couple of years. I'm pretty sure someone's gifting me Mankind Divided at Christmas, so I figured I should run through it to remind myself of the plot. I've also played DX1 and DX2 this year, so it's nice to round off the full set. Am pleased that it's held up really well. Okay, so the facial animation, some of the NPCS and a couple of incidental animations are a bit rough, not to mention that Hengsha and Detroit suddenly feel a bit unpopulated compared to modern games, but the bones of the game are about as solid as you can get. Also it's nice to see a game with a consistent design philosophy - though the black and gold thing was made fun of at the time the aesthetic really holds up.  This guy feels like a refugee from Oblivion Sure, level design is maybe a little too riddled with man-sized vents, but the game gives you a decent amount of creativity to go about tasks as you see fit. For my money the best moments in the series are when you feel like you're getting one up on the designers - using your strength aug to create a pile of boxes to jump over a fence you're supposed to go around, or bouncing off electric floors and chugging hypostims to get somewhere early. The game is rigorously designed, so they've probably foreseen all this, but it feels like they haven't and it makes me feel smart for figuring it out. Even little things like refusing to pay the 1000 credit cover charge for the nightclub and sneaking in through the bathrooms creates a kinda smugness in the player.  A Very Special Adam Jenson selfie The first time I played it back in 2011 I was assiduously kind and caring to the baddies - using concussion grenades, tranq darts and knocking people out. This time I figured that these bastards turned me into a hideous robot monster man. I've got loving swords in my arms and I'm goddamn going to use them. Carving a bloody path through everyone didn't quite change the game as much as I'd have liked - though I dug Pritchard calling me Attilla the Hun and various NPCs referring to me as the Grim Reaper and pleading for their lives.  BASH! It made the ending - where Jenson is all "but didn't I try to use my resources carefully and avoid unnecessary harm?" a bit ridiculous. Adam, you chucked a frag grenade into a bathroom where a guy was taking a poo poo. You wiped out hundreds of innocent brainwashed zombies with a minigun. You jammed a sword through David Sarif's neck just to see if it was possible.  Take THAT you smug Brit bastard. Also on first play I hadn't realised quite how much of a boner HR has for Metal Gear Solid. Missing Link DLC was excellent too. But good times all round. On to Mankind Divided.
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Dec 20, 2016 11:55
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BEATEN: Starbound (15hrs) - Just played the campaign and got a couple of good breaks (I found an Apex village without having to go to a dangerously cold planet, for example). The game now in release is what I expected it to be when I first paid for it (which wasn't the case in beta). For the most part the campaign is relatively balanced as long as your equipment is up to date with the resources they expect you to be finding. The only thing is, I think it expects you to do a little of everything and I wasn't really up for farming/harvesting, which plays a role in crafting things like EPP upgrades to explore certain planets for scanning quests. BEATEN: Beyond Eyes (2hrs) - FINISHED FOR NOW: Slime Rancher (8hr) - So chill, so addictive, BUT. I've unlocked the lab and it won't be a while until the next content update I think. BEATEN: Mexicana Deadly Holiday - HIDDEN OBJECT GAME!!
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Dec 20, 2016 17:42
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Mr. Flunchy posted:BEATEN: Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut You forgot The Fall 
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Dec 20, 2016 23:58
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EightDeer posted:You forgot The Fall I played that too. I can't remember anything about it. I think the main character was bald? That's it. edit: BEATEN: Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 I got both episodes of Sonic 4 in the Humble Bundle earlier this year, and thought the first episode was a decent way to kill a few hours. People complain about the physics, but it didn't bother me too much. The only sticking point was a frustratingly tough final boss and the limited life system.  Episode 2 is pretty much more of the same, but apparently with fixed physics to make it more like the originals. It was powerfully 'alright'. It plays okay, looks alright and generally runs fine, but there's no spark of genius or creativity in it. The level designer is clearly a big classic Sonic fan, but doesn't have the imagination and skills that made Sonic 1 to S&K so much fun. Also, the designers decided to put helpful TV screens showing what move you need to use to solve the 'puzzles', which feels a bit insulting to the intelligence. Not to mention that being able to summon Tails to lift you into the air and fly around mildly breaks a lot of the jumping puzzles. Also the music really sucks, which is pretty unforgivable for a Sonic game. Overall, not a complete waste of time, but forgettable stuff. Still, at least the plot is kept to a bare minimum and there's no dialogue. Special mention has to go the 'Controls' screen.  This is less than helpful when playing on a keyboard. Necrothatcher fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Dec 21, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2016 01:58
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BEATEN: 140 (1hr) - Rhythmic platformer from the developer of THOTH. This was their earlier game so it's not quite as intelligently designed, but it's alright. BEATEN: Sir You Are Being Hunted (4 hrs) - First-person stealth game where you gather device fragments and bring them back to the center island, while robots try to find and kill you. Again, just alright. It wasnt perfect, the AI I couldn't quite understand whether it was just bad or I was misinterpreting something. If you can find the axe, you're golden. BEATEN: Hue (3 hrs) - Single-player puzzle platformer that takes the color elements from Runbow and gives you the control over it, then throws puzzles at you. You gain colors over time and can go back to earlier areas with new colors to find secrets. It's not a Metroidvania though, it's more along the lines of maybe Teslagrad. BEATEN: Shadow Blade Reload (2hr) - Speedrun-oriented ninja platformer, fun movement, not so fun combat, I say it's a quality B grade game. ADDED: I was gifted INSIDE, Firewatch and Victor Vran from Kragger99. I've also bought Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate, Hidden: On the Trail of the Ancients, and Rusty Lake: Roots. But that's just the first day of the sale and there's more purchases to come...
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Dec 23, 2016 09:22
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Quest For Glory II posted:BEATEN: 140 (1hr) - Rhythmic platformer from the developer of THOTH. This was their earlier game so it's not quite as intelligently designed, but it's alright. This is even weirder when you realize that it's also one of the developers of LIMBO. Not sure if he helped with INSIDE.
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Dec 23, 2016 10:28
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