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BEATEN: Batman: The Telltale Series Let's get the technical poo poo out of the way first. Despite being graphically limited the thing runs like a dog, dropping frames and descending into jerkiness at the drop of a hat. On top of that it refuses to run if the game resolution is different from your desktop resolution, the game doesn't detect completed saves from the free Episode 1 trial, there's a tonne of small annoying glitches (character's mouths not moving, the background remaining static when you're supposed to be speeding through it in the Batmobile) and the anti-aliasing is either broken or just bad. But, leaving all that aside for the moment, it's a pretty good Telltale game and a decent semi-original spin on Batman. It's one of the only times in Batman media where I've felt like Bruce Wayne is the real person and Batman is just a scary tool he uses to get things done. It's just downright fun smarming and charming your way through scenes as Bruce, especially if (like me) you play him as a borderline autistic creepy weirdo who reacts to direct questions with blank silence. While I enjoyed the fighty QTE bits, I just dug the little things: wandering around Selina Kyle's lovely apartment in my pants looking for bagels, outright agreeing with the surprised bad guys during their little monologues or using the "punch him/her" option whenever it came up.  This is Bruce running around in his pants frantically hiding his Batman stuff as someone turns up at Selina's apartment door. The only downsides are the usual Telltale problem - the moment when the illusion fails as you realise that, no matter what decisions you make, the game has decided what's going to happen. Most egregious here is you can prevent Harvey Dent getting scarred and turning into Two Face, but he goes crazy and starts shooting up the place regardless. He's even referred to by the game as 'Two Face', despite having precisely one face.. There's a tonne of annoying things like that, like the repeatedly underlined 'important' choice to make Batman vicious or merciful having no impact whatsoever or... just loads of little disappointing thing Oh well, I've had worse times with Batman. Worth a go when it's deeply discounted. BEATEN: Volume  Steam roulette tossed this one up. As someone who deeply dug the MGS VR missions (completed all of them in MGS1 Integral and MGS2 Subsistence) I was pretty psyched for this. But frankly it falls a couple of marks short of good. Problem number 1: the lovely voice acting. The main character is voiced by YouTube personality Charlie McDonnell - who is clearly NOT an actor. It's a downright terrible, flat performance - and he rarely shuts up throughout the game.  Problem number 2: though a stealth game there's no room for improvisation. There's a load of stealth toys to play with, but (aside from very rare situations) you don't choose which one you'd like to use to get past guards. It makes things feel a bit prescriptive. Problem number 3: there are 100 levels, a lot of which feel like filler. Too much game is a weird criticism, but I'd have dug this a lot more if there were maybe 50 levels. Plus, they all look basically the same - sure the game tells you you're in an art gallery, military base or prison - but they're all the same drat boxy rooms. Problem number 4: the plot is absolute dogshit. BEATEN: ABZÛ  Pretty, short game that desperately wants to be a ThatGameCompany game (even having some ex-staff from there on this), but falls slightly short. Swim around beautiful ocean dioramas, marvel at the colours, interact with a couple of things, dig the orchestral soundtrack and you're done. It's good stuff, but never quite comes together in the same way as Journey on PlayStation.  BEATEN: 80 Days  Kickin' rad Phileas Fogg-em-up where you must plan and make your way around a slightly alt-history Victorian planet. It's basically an interactive novella with the barest smattering of strategy, but it's beautifully written (even makes steampunk non-cringey!), looks nice and gets tense when you're approaching your deadline. Think I'll fiddle with the mobile version and try out some different routes when I'm bored and on the go.
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Jan 15, 2017 20:21
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NULLED: Thief - Just wasn't a great game. Didn't engage me like the previous ones in the series, just really wasn't enjoying it. NULLED: Front Mission Evolved - Not my style of mech game, and is very dated. Not going to play it! Playing: DOOM - Almost beaten, but a great reboot. A real return to what made Doom fun. In the vein of the new Wolfenstein, an appropriately redone franchise, in stark contrast to Thief. Playing: Witcher 3 - Far from beaten, but very quality! I haven't played 1/2 so some story elements go over my head, but it's been a ton of fun. I'm almost level 20 and halfway through completing Novigrad quests. Taking a ton of time, but certainly enjoyable. Playing: Poly Bridge - A very large bridge-building game with great charm and challenges not seen in others. I'm playing a bridge here or there, but the mechanics of it are certainly interesting. Lots of levels, and most seem rather complex so not something easily cranked out. "Beaten": Astroneer - I've seen all it has to offer at the moment, but it was certainly an enjoyable ~12 hours doing so. I'm excited that it gets more content and leaves early access, but if it never progresses past the current stage, I still wouldn't feel burned. I'll revisit it maybe at a major milestone(alpha/beta) or just at release. Beaten: Hacknet - An enjoyable Uplink-ish fake hacking game with a fairly simple story. Has some neat info allowing "NG+"(ish) replays of it to see how things change if you do certain things differently. If you liked Uplink, you'll like Hacknet. Beaten(ish): Human Resource Machine - Did the vast majority of puzzles legit, I did not do the optional last branch, and I looked up a solution for the final puzzle because I was getting bored of the mechanic by that point. Beaten: Dex - Fantastic 2D cyberpunk action game. Really gripped me, other than a break for sleeping it was the only thing I did over 2 days to the tune of 11 hours from start to finish. Would highly recommend.
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Jan 16, 2017 12:00
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Nulled: WASTED I definitely had a lot of fun with this and got my money's worth, but in the late game it gets really spiky -- I've lost a bunch of promising characters in Cooler 5 after breezing through most of the cooler and then opening a door/turning a corner and getting one-shotted, even with stealth. And while grinding earlier coolers/earlier floors to get your hangovers back on a new character isn't hard, it is tedious. So I'm calling it a day with WASTED. Beaten: Demon Truck I'm never going to be #1, but I made it to the top 100 on the global leaderboard, and I'm satisfied with that. A fun game with an excellent soundtrack. Next [desktop]: probably Nehrim, which I finally got around to downloading and installing. Next [laptop]: ToME4! I'm not necessarily going for another win, but I want to play around with the new classes and races that have been introduced in the past year and/or that I never got around to unlocking last time -- primarily the Ogre and Demonologist.
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Jan 16, 2017 16:14
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I'm gonna be doing another list once I hit the next 50 games beaten so I'll keep these writeups relatively short. BEATEN: Shatter - Breakout with dope music and gravity mechanics. BEATEN: Bit.Trip BEAT - Pong with dope music and rhythm mechanics. BEATEN: Traverser - Adventure/puzzler with gravity mechanics and-- okay not DOPE music but it's alright. I just wanted to list these three all in a row. BEATEN: Projector Face - Point n click adventure game that's really loving short, like an hour long. You make friends by showing them horrible films! BEATEN: STASIS - Point n click adventure horror game with lots of body horror and gore. You wake up on a hosed up ship doing horrible experiments. BEATEN: Stories of Bethem: Full Moon - Zelda-style game but instead of a sword you use magic. Full-length game, 12-ish hours, longer than Oceanhorn or Anodyne. Has 9 main dungeons, a couple mini-dungeons, and plenty of exploration. Too many monster zoo rooms!!
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Jan 18, 2017 05:44
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BEATEN: TIE Fighter. The original missions, and such, at least. Wasn't part of the backlog because I thought I'd beaten it back in the day. Having now reached the end, I'm pretty sure I hadn't. The expansion packs are unBACKLOG, since the consensus was that they made up for giving you wildly overpowered ships by in turn being wildly unfair. I've been afraid to revisit Freespace 2 for years, because I thought that perhaps my memories of it were too rose-tinted by the mists of nostalgia. I have a much stronger reason to believe that it still holds up now. This was a blast.
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Jan 18, 2017 06:50
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Beat: Hexcells Plus - Significantly harder than the first game. I found myself running puzzles multiple times to improve my score enough to unlock the final level. Fun, but some of the new mechanics tended to bog things down sometimes. Beat: Hexcells Infinite - Doesn't change up the formula any more than the previous game, though it does add an endless mode. Enjoyed this one was well, and had an easier time than Plus, partially because I was able to use the puzzle-solving tricks I picked up in the previous game. 100%: Regency Solitaire - Bundle game, didn't expect to like it, but it was actually a pretty decent solitaire game. Uses some interesting gimmicks to set itself apart from other similar titles, and everything fits into a sort of high-class, royalty aesthetic. There's a story and it's charming, but a little on the bland side. Didn't take much extra effort to get all the achievements. Nulled: The Last Blade - Enjoyed this one, and thought it was a bit similar to Guilty Gear... and then I realized it was made by the same guy who did the Guilty Gear games. Keyboard controls weren't great in this dotEmu release (I had some trouble rebinding them to what I was comfortable with), and I didn't want to pull out my fightstick. I tried a handful of the characters and played Arcade a few times. I got to the boss once while on my last continue, but did not win. The game seems to limits the number of continues you can take in arcade mode, and I didn't want to grind through the earlier matches repeatedly just to get more tries against the boss. So I think I'm done with this one. Great gameplay, though, and really great character designs. I'm glad I checked it out. 
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Jan 18, 2017 18:09
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BEATEN: XCOM: Enemy Unknown Ever since roundly bouncing off X-COM: UFO Defence and having absolutely no idea what was going on, I'd put Enemy Unknown on the backburner. But, with XCOM 2 getting shitloads of great reviews and currently being $10 in the Humble Monthly Bundle, I figured I'd give it a go and see how I liked it. Oh my god what a game - somebody should have told me it's like a scifi combo of MGS Peace Walker/Phantom Pain. Loved naming my soldiers after my friends, then guiding them through a hard as nails war where they got murdered in all sorts of horrible ways by monsters. Just gradually getting more and more powerful, until your guys are psychic, robot-armoring wearing, jetpack-equipped dead-eye snipers was super fun - as was getting the tactics nailed down and clearing out rooms. I got the mind control power just before the final mission and there's nothing finer than turning the baddies against one another. Tried my best not to savescum too, it feels like missing the point. I did reload a couple of times when the positioning reticule moved me to the wrong place, but it feels like that's on the game not me. I hear good things about Enemy Within, but given that I now own XCOM 2 I think I'll go straight to that. Opinions? BEATEN: Sleeping Dogs: Zodiac Tournament DLC  More Sleeping Dogs is never a bad thing, and I got this for a couple of pence in a sale. It's about an hour long and takes you through a barely concealed 'Enter the Dragon' ripoff. I haven't played Sleeping Dogs in 6 months or so, so it took me a moment to remember what the combos were, but before too long I was snappin' bones with the best of them. The only annoying thing was a huge difficulty spike where you have to fight in a room with a slowly lowering spiked ceiling. I got it in the end (by gumming the gears up with mooks) but it must have been my 15th or so attempt. BEATEN: Sleeping Dogs: Wheels of Fury DLC  Also a short one - basically a series of driving missions in which you trick out a sports car until it's essentially the Batmobile. Not much to say here, just that the fully upgraded car is pretty ridiculously fast and comes with a battering ram, an EMP and twin machine guns. It also sounds like a goddamn monster.  NULLED: Baseball Stars 2  I don't understand baseball and I don't understand this video game. Got it in the SNK Humble Bundle and figured I'd get it out of the way. Played one game - couldn't work out how to hit the ball without it being a foul, or how to pitch properly and the weird baseball lingo is pretty incomprehensible. Still, I managed to claw my way to a thrilling 3-2 victory (all points scored in the first.. round?). But to finish this would require playing 6 matches of 20 mins each and I cannot be arsed. I did get my pitcher punched in the face though. 
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Jan 18, 2017 19:23
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Enemy Within is worth a playthrough. I'd give it a go before moving on to XCOM 2.
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Jan 18, 2017 19:51
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BEATEN: The Ultimate DOOM and DOOM II: Hell on Earth. - Played with GZDOOM source port. Some nice old school action with the granddaddy of FPS. Killing demon and the Moon and Earth and Hell. BEATEN: Spec Ops: The Line - Oh boy is there a line and oh boy do you cross. The deconstruction of the modern military shooter. We watch (and arguably cause) it's main character spiral downward into PTSD-driven delusions and insanity. Unable to tell what's real and fake due an unreliable narrator. One of the few games that isn't horror based that I found engaging, but not fun. There's no heroes here. Only men should have just... stopped.
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Jan 19, 2017 03:48
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Beat: Exanima - I started out playing the story mode and didn't like it much. Very dark and drab, and I wasn't used to the controls yet so my character controlled like a drunk person. Then I tried Arena and liked it much more. After a little while the controls started to make more sense, and it turned out to be one the better melee combat systems I've seen. Breaking through the opponent's defense is challenging, but rewarding, and there is a really detailed armor system in which you can stack on layers and layers of gear, which protect your character versus different types of damage in a location-based way. For instance, blade slashes don't do much against plate armor, so you have to go for weak spots, attempt to stab or equip a bashing weapon. They wreck face against cloth or leather wearing opponents, though. The arena mode had some annoyances of its own, though. Most pieces of mid-late game equipment take several arena wins to earn and must be in stock with the merchant (can be quite random, even with the hireling). The match tiers available at a given time are shuffled randomly as well, but are weighted toward lower-tier fights. So if you grind ten matches to earn that Expert Pole Hammer, you might not be able to swing it for awhile until an Expert rank match actually comes up. Some fights require you to have a team, which doubles or triples the amount of equipment and rank grinding needed to play those matches. If you get hurt, it might take you several matches to heal completely. In other words, it just took too long to progress. The core gameplay was fun enough that it didn't matter too much. I marked it beaten because I reached Master rank with my main fighter, and earned enough money for his endgame weapon. Would take me a lot of grinding to get his endgame armor, though, and I just don't think it's worth it. I might pick it up again to play the story once it gets out of early access.
dhamster fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 05:46
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I'm playing through Steam alphabets! My last post in this thread was October 2015. Since then I've finished two alphabet runs. The first took most of 2016 thanks to several major life events (changed jobs, moved across country) and a friend taking literally forever to finish my B game with me in coop. The second was much faster - I started at Christmas and finished tonight. With that, I'm down to under 100 games left in my backlog! Here's the dump of titles I played. BEAT! Alien Isolation / Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Bit Trip Runner 2 / Borderlands 2 / Battlefield Bad Company 2 Call of Duty 4 / Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 Deadpool / Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition Enslaved: Odyssey to the West / No More E! FEAR 2: Project Origin / Far Cry 3 God of War 2 / God of War Ghost of Sparta Halo 4 / Half Minute Hero No I! No J! No K! Lego Harry Potter 5-7 / Little Inferno Marvel Heroes / Mortal Kombat 9 Storymode No N! No O! Pillars of Eternity / Prototype 2 No Q! Rayman Origins / Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare Shadow Warrior / The Swapper Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction & Blacklist No U! No V! Walking Dead Season 1 / Witcher 2 No X! Ys Oath in Felghana / No More Y! No Z! Nulled Along the Way Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 Fly'n / Forced / FEAR 3 The Last Remnant / Lego Batman Outlast Painkiller Black Resonance / Recettear / Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City / RE6 / Risen 1 and 2 Sonic Generations / Sang-Froid / Shank 2 A whole mess of Tom Clancy: Splinter Cell Chaos Theory & Double Agent / GRAW 1, 2, & 3/ Rb6 Vegas 1 & 2 / HAWX 1 & 2 Wargame: European Escalation My goal is to have my backlog cleared out by the Christmas sale. Onward! 
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Jan 20, 2017 01:32
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COMPLETED: Glittermitten Grove. Had a lot of the silliness I expected it to, but also took its core gameplay elements exactly seriously enough to make it worth playing. I expected a prank and mostly got a game about exploration and experimentation. BEATEN: Shenzhen I/O. In a certain sense this is just a refinement of TIS-100, but it's a very, very good refinement of it. The ability to select chips and do circuit layout improves the puzzle space enormously, and Zach has gotten way better at writing since the bloated and overwrought Spacechem days. My Steam "time played" counter here says "14 hours", which doesn't count the time I spent sketching designs in my RL notebook but does count the 15 or so games of Shenzhen Solitaire I won. Shenzhen Solitaire is really good, incidentally, mixing electronic Mahjongg solitaire with FreeCell in ways that reinforce complexity. It was a cute bonus packin originally but it got popular enough that there is now a standalone version on Steam. Shenzhen I/O includes a bonus campaign, which I haven't started. But that's what makes this Beaten instead of Completed. BEATEN: Pony Island. This wants to be in a similar vein as Glittermitten Grove, but it doesn't really manage to reach the same level. Its detours do not go as far, and its core gameplay elements don't get pushed far enough. It has two main gameplay modes, one of which is intentionally insipid and the other of which is a cheap plastic imitation of Shenzhen I/O. It's possible that it's getting an unfair evaluation from me given what I'm comparing it against here, but, well. COMPLETED: Thumper. Holy Hell. This is a rhythm racer, which in some sense is a thing I'm well-familiar with by now - race down a track, make required inputs as indicated by things on the track - but holy Hell. Everything about the sound and visual design makes it incredibly visceral to play. It's so physically draining that I pretty much had to limit myself to 15-minute sessions. It's amazing and wonderful; it's a Hell of a rush; it's beautiful and the design is as tight as can be imagined; but it is neither pleasant nor relaxing. Holy Hell. This is the raytraced high-speed nightmare world we were promised VR would be back when we were also being promised jetpacks. ON DECK: Something that's as far away from Thumper as I can manage. Ace Attorney Dual Destinies seems like a reasonable possibility.
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Jan 29, 2017 07:04
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ManxomeBromide posted:BEATEN: Shenzhen I/O. In a certain sense this is just a refinement of TIS-100, but it's a very, very good refinement of it. The ability to select chips and do circuit layout improves the puzzle space enormously, and Zach has gotten way better at writing since the bloated and overwrought Spacechem days. I think it's his wife who does the writing, at least that was the case in SpaceChem and Ironclad Tactics iirc. I actually quite liked the writing in SpaceChem personally, it conveyed insane events in a subdued, almost corporate, matter-of-fact style that I found really entertaining. I've only been playing one game the past few weeks: Eador. Masters of the Broken World: This is an excellent 4X/King's Bounty/HoMM hybrid. It took me 85 hours to beat and I got what is considered the "quickest" ending. It does get a little repetitive sometimes, but part of that was down to my sticking with only two of the four hero classes - Warrior and Scout. I didn't even try the Wizard or Commander. Still, there is a ton of content in here, from units to buildings to items to enemies, etc., and a lot of ways to go about your business of conquering maps/shards. There is also a large element of randomness which is good, but sometimes frustrating. One time I had my opponent essentially conquered but couldn't attack his capital (and thus eliminate him from the map) because he had stumbled on a Labyrinth and through a random event was able to get six minotaurs to guard it, who just crushed me every time. So I had to grind a bit. But that's okay, I'll take those weird curveballs every now and then. This game is hugely addictive and very rich/generous. I like it a lot. Thinking of installing Dropsy next, but I also know there's free DLC coming in a couple of months which will integrate into the main game. Not sure if I want to wait or just play it now and do the extra content later like everyone else.
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Jan 29, 2017 17:43
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Glare Seethe posted:I think it's his wife who does the writing, at least that was the case in SpaceChem and Ironclad Tactics iirc. I actually quite liked the writing in SpaceChem personally, it conveyed insane events in a subdued, almost corporate, matter-of-fact style that I found really entertaining. They just released the sequel/expansion to Eador
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Jan 29, 2017 18:13
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MOVIE MAJICK posted:They just released the sequel/expansion to Eador Yup, I saw. There's a 15% discount coupon sitting in my inventory too. But from what I've seen it looks like a standalone expansion to MotBW and a lot of reviews are calling it out for bugs still. I'll probably wait on it, not sure it's worth it for me right now, especially since I just dumped 85 hours into MotBW.
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Jan 29, 2017 18:23
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BEATEN: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4) Wow. Now, The Uncharted games are a tiny bit shallow gameplay-wise, especially the gunplay sections, but this about a visually dazzling, exciting and slick game design as it gets. Every couple of minutes there's something jaw-droppingly beautiful - from huge sun dappled vistas to building interiors detailed to millimeter precision. It feels like a luxury experience, probably the best environment design I've seen yet in a game. I'm not going to go on about it too long because everyone's probably sick of hearing about this game and it's so obviously amazing, but it's definitely one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've had in a while and the perfect capper to the Uncharted series. Also, it's such a spectacle that it makes for a great social experience. My friends were urging me to play simply because it's so much fun to watch. BEATEN: Dead Space  Tossed up by Steam Roulette. I enjoyed it, though it became a bit of a slog by the end. The first couple of levels were great - I was low on ammo, constantly low on health and the monsters and environments were genuinely scaring the crap out of me. Then, as I upgraded my equipment and learned the game systems, it gradually stopped being scary and became bit action game by numbers. Your first necromorph is heartstopping scary - your hundredth? Not so much. Thought the silent protagonist thing didn't work in this, why is this bozo staying stone cold silent as he's betrayed, runs into his long lost girlfriend or is mocked by mad scientists? It just doesn't read properly. But it's straightforward enough to get through, even if the game is maybe 1/4 too long. BEATEN: Sonic the Hedgehog  I was hungover and fragile this week and decided to spend the morning playing through the version I got from the Sonic Humble Bundle. This is an old friend for me - I vividly remember playing it on a Megadrive demo station in a kid's store in 1991, and getting it a couple of months later for my 7th birthday. It's a classic and it mostly holds up well: though Marble Zone and Spring Yard Zone are pains in the arse. I particularly appreciated Starlight Zone here - partially for the superchilled music (that bassline... mmmMMM) - and partially because it just looks rad. Also, I nabbed all the Chaos Emeralds and got the good ending, so pleased with that. BEATEN: Sleeping Dogs - Nightmare at North Point DLC  3/4 Sleeping Dogs DLCs done and this was the worst yet. Delving into Chinese magic and the afterlife is a neat prospect - as is bringing back all the characters you mulched and blew up in the main story. But, in practice, it's driving between locations and fighting badly animated Chinese 'zombies', which stiffly hover at you and use one move. Disappointing. Hope Year of the Snake is better. Necrothatcher fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jan 30, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 16:14
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To be fair it was a pretty accurate depiction of Jiangshi 
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Jan 30, 2017 16:22
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BEAT: Halo 5 As usual, I'm a sucker for sci-fi, and had a lot of fun playing though Halo 5. Played through on Heroic(hard), then almost immediately started a second playthrough on Legendary(very hard). That ended up feeling easier, probably because I was forced to play smarter and more carefully.
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Feb 1, 2017 22:00
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Here's a big big chunk of games beaten since my last post. I'm too tired to put in lengthy recaps right now, but I plan on doing a list either this month or next month on the games I've played since the winter sale, since people liked the 50 Indies of 2016 list. BEATEN: Shardlight - Wadjet Eye adventure game. Post-apocalypse, lots of bleakness. People scraping by, and a bizarre retro-revolutionary government. BEATEN: Rise & Shine - Side-scrolling action shooter, it's not as good as it wants to be, but it's alright. LOTS of video game references. BEATEN: Cruel Games: Red Riding Hood - HIDDEN OBJECT GAMES!!! BEATEN: Airscape the Fall of Gravity - Half of this game is pretty nice, the other half can get hosed. 2D platformer with Mario Galaxy-esque gravity mechanics. BEATEN: Bohemian Killing - Interesting walking sim where you are a killer trying to prove your "innocence" to the court by retracing your steps in flashback. Depending on how well you fudge the facts in the flashback, while keeping accurate to witness accounts, you can get one of 8 different endings. I happened to get the 2nd best ending so that was good enough for me. BEATEN: Judge Dredd: Countdown Sector 106 - A Judge Dredd gamebook that's no longer available on Steam. I'd never played a gamebook before but I guess they're like single player D&D. I'll probably play Sorcery soon because I have it on Amazon Underground. BEATEN: Zen Bound 2 - Relaxing puzzle game where you wrap a string around an object until a certain percentage of it is covered. BEATEN: Woof Blaster - This one was gifted to me but then became a free game later, woops! You're a dog jumpin around blasting things. It's actually not terrible but it was probably the right call to make this free. BEATEN: Magnetta - Megaman-clone, the movement is a little clunkier than Giga Girl (the mine cart level can get hosed). I'd say overall Giga Girl is better but obviously playing the actual Megaman games should be your first choice. BEATEN: QUBE Director's Cut - One of the first of the first-person puzzlers to have to follow in Portal's shadow, it later got a story attached to the puzzling that is a little goofy honestly. But it's a decent puzzler that you can get for $2 in sales. BEATEN: The Sea Will Claim Everything - Charming, weirdly-drawn ICOM-style adventure game where you help people in another world/time with their problems and deal with their awful governments. BEATEN: RYB - Logic puzzle game that will probably scratch the same itch as Hexcells. I liked it quite a bit. White dot puzzles were annoying though. BEATEN: Victor Vran - Arcadey ARPG that's largely about just blastin fools with a shotgun. I mean there are other weapon types but why would you not just use the shotgun. BEATEN: Gunmetal Arcadia - Followup to Gunmetal Arcadia Zero that is more of a reimagining of the original game, going in a more roguelite direction with randomly generated levels, legacy perks, a lot of new upgrades to get. Honestly I preferred Zero because of its hand crafted levels. BEATEN: Suits: A Business RPG - RPG Maker game that is in the "weird" territory, like EFF or Space Funeral. I kinda wanna listen to the soundtrack again. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Feb 2, 2017 |
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Feb 2, 2017 10:05
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Beat: Hitman (2016) - Considering this beaten because I've completed all missions at least once and reached Mastery Level 20 at all destinations. There's a lot more I could do to complete it, including the new Professional difficulty and I will at some point, but for now its time to move on. Beat: Brigador - Completed all campaign missions at least once. I haven't even gotten into Freelance and haven't completed any missions with more than one vehicle. It's a good game but I don't think some of the harder vehicles on harder missions will be any fun for me.
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Feb 2, 2017 18:53
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Completed: Hustle Cat - It's cutesy, but I wanted more explanation on what happened to start the conflict... even the last route doesn't give much detail. Last cat best cat though. Completed: Tick Tock Isle - Meh. It looked like it would be Myst-like, but had weird metroidvania elements, and it was more running back and forth within levels that looked very samey and seeing what happened than really solving anything. Took longer to get the card drops than to complete the game. Completed: Steins;Gate - finally... this took 3 months because I kept quitting due to apathy. it would have been great if it didn't keep repeating the same points over. and over. and over. and over. and over. again. probably better as a show than as a game, because cutting content here would improve it. Nulled: Reveal the Deep - wouldn't launch. Next up: .. I need to pick. Blood Code, Science Girls, or Trillion maybe?
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Feb 3, 2017 17:30
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BEATEN: The Talos Principle! After over a year of playing it on and off - I blitzed most of it when I got it, but somewhere around the last world I just lost all interest, especially as the puzzles were an intense slog by then. I don't mind stopping to figure out puzzles, but getting my timing down perfectly? And with the time-double mechanic? Ughhh no, that was not fun. The story, thankfully, is what carried the day. The ending was worth it, and there's a lot to chew over. I rescued the AI because of course I did. Even if it is a voice of doubt in my mind, it deserves to be in the world! That all said, I'm not interested in the star puzzles, or doing it all over to get the rest of the achievements. Too much work for too little reward, especially when I get motion sickness if I play the game for too long. Ultimately a brilliant game, even if it drags on at the end. I'll check out the DLC when it goes for sale, but eh: I'm done with the Talos Principle, and happy I finished it. NULLED: Everything from the latest monthly Humble bundle, basically: Abzu doesn't run smoothly on my laptop, Okhlos is so shallow it's boring, I'm not interested in Ryse, Husk has bad reviews - and I already own and beat Steamworld Heist! XCOM 2's still on the to-play roster though. I enjoyed what I've played of it, and I'm waiting for my mood to roll around into full alien-hunting so I can give it the same love I did XCOM EU/EW. PLAYING: Lots, but let me highlight Stellaris, Endless Legend, and the Silver Case. I'm aiming to complete a game of Stellaris (or at least get so far in it's obvious I've won), and play Endless Legend until I have all of the difficulty levels beaten / until I get bored - working on a Normal Difficulty game with the Allayi now, and I really, really love it as a podcast game. The Silver Case, meanwhile, is like a book that is determined to be as boring and nonsensical as it possibly can, but it also sports a thick atmosphere and a mystery I'm curious about, so I keep pushing through an hour here and there because darnit, what the heck is going on -
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Feb 4, 2017 09:19
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StrixNebulosa posted:BEATEN: The Talos Principle! After over a year of playing it on and off - I blitzed most of it when I got it, but somewhere around the last world I just lost all interest, especially as the puzzles were an intense slog by then. I don't mind stopping to figure out puzzles, but getting my timing down perfectly? And with the time-double mechanic? Ughhh no, that was not fun. The story, thankfully, is what carried the day. The ending was worth it, and there's a lot to chew over. I rescued the AI because of course I did. Even if it is a voice of doubt in my mind, it deserves to be in the world! What a weird coincidence. I too wandered off from the game, albeit right at the end of the bonus stuff rather than the main game (though I hadn't completed the tower yet either), and then came back to it this week to put it to bed. Though I also sped through an entire second replay so I could get all the achievements I missed. Ultimately I'm a bit sad I waited so long. The conclusion(s) would've rocked my socks off if I had kept up the momentum of my first playthrough, but basically speed running it again made everything feel small and tidy, the exact opposite thing I wanted out of such a philosophical game. Oh well.
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Feb 4, 2017 09:33
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John Murdoch posted:What a weird coincidence. I too wandered off from the game, albeit right at the end of the bonus stuff rather than the main game (though I hadn't completed the tower yet either), and then came back to it this week to put it to bed. Though I also sped through an entire second replay so I could get all the achievements I missed. Ultimately I'm a bit sad I waited so long. The conclusion(s) would've rocked my socks off if I had kept up the momentum of my first playthrough, but basically speed running it again made everything feel small and tidy, the exact opposite thing I wanted out of such a philosophical game. Oh well. If they'd trimmed the amount of puzzles you have to complete to climb the tower, the pacing would have been just about perfect, I think. I would have blitzed it, adored it, and would have been singing its praises for all of last year instead of looking at it guiltily and playing something else.
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Feb 4, 2017 09:35
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I think for me it's less about the total number of puzzles and more the uneven difficulty curve. There's just a few too many puzzles that require information you're not given/isn't intuitive (like the nuances of the recorder mechanic) or rely purely on reflexes instead of any kind of logic, not to mention the red herrings. It also sucks when you screw up completely and need to totally reset instead of having some kind of rewind/undo function. Though speaking of the recording stuff, it was so much nicer going through a second time knowing about the fast forward button. Edit: Unless you meant the tower climb itself, which, yeah, I also agree it could've been just a smidge shorter. John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Feb 4, 2017 |
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Feb 4, 2017 09:49
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John Murdoch posted:I think for me it's less about the total number of puzzles and more the uneven difficulty curve. There's just a few too many puzzles that require information you're not given/isn't intuitive (like the nuances of the recorder mechanic) or rely purely on reflexes instead of any kind of logic, not to mention the red herrings. It also sucks when you screw up completely and need to totally reset instead of having some kind of rewind/undo function. That's fair! I think a good compromise would involve the locks needing fewer puzzle pieces to solve, while keeping the same amount of puzzles in the game. You can skip the ones that are frustrating for you, and get what you need - and if you want to be a completionist, come back for 'em. Basically Super Mario 64 had it figured out years ago and all Talos P had to do was copy them, but nope. edit responding to your edit: The tower sequence was fine except that it needed to ditch the timer and include checkpoints between puzzle areas, because come on!
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Feb 4, 2017 09:54
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I didn't know there was a time limit until I saw somebody mention it on the game's forum, but yeah, I was pretty salty when I realized far too late that I needed to carry a connector with me via a one-way fan trip and had to restart from scratch. 
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Feb 4, 2017 09:57
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I beat Dropsy. It's very good. I thought it had a little bit of a communication problem at times - I had some trouble deciphering what an item actually was or what someone wanted of me, but that only happened on occasion. Really nice adventure game otherwise. I also nulled Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. Much like the original, I played about an hour of this and shelved it because for whatever reason it just didn't grab me. I don't know why. I found it tedious from the word go. Whether it's the graphics or the UI or whatever else, something about this series just doesn't do it for me even though on paper it should be right up my alley. I've no doubt this is an excellent game but I really don't want to play it. More importantly, however: my backlog is now down to ONE!  The final game. It's Skyrim. I may wait on it, because Torment (which I backed) is coming out on the 28th and since I only play one game at a time generally (certainly with RPGs) I wouldn't want to pause one to start the other. And I expect Skyrim will take me longer than three weeks to get through. I guess I'm free to play whatever for now. Might do a 100% replay of Psychonauts because it's been a few years and I haven't actually played my Steam copy yet.
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Feb 4, 2017 15:05
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Beaten: Spirits of Xanadu Fifteen years ago this would have been published as an SS2 fan mission; it has a vibe very reminiscent of Shock 2. It's a bit heavier on the puzzles, a bit shorter on the explosions. It's also quite short -- I beat it without spoilers in about two hours, and could probably go back and get the other two endings in an hour each now that I know what I'm doing -- but this is, I think, all to the good; it doesn't overstay it's welcome, and if you find yourself craving more there are those endings to try for.
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Feb 5, 2017 23:07
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Beaten: Thief (2014) A decent stealth game worth buying on sale and at least playing through once, especially if you like stealth games. The story was stupid and incoherent, but the gameplay is mostly good. Beaten/Completed: Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den I always heard good things about this but finally got around to playing it, it's great. n4 fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Feb 6, 2017 |
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Feb 6, 2017 19:02
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Completed - Teslagrad: I had little idea what this game was about going into it. I was surprised it was a Metroidvania (albeit with very little backtracking). It had nice graphics, though a little dark at times, and good music. The gameplay was just the right amount of challenging, and getting all the scrolls wasn't ridiculously time consuming or frustrating. A good game that I'm glad I played.
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Feb 7, 2017 04:01
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I seriously need to play some good games again. Almost done with Watch Dogs 2 and EDF, but I also played these turds the last couple of months: Finished: Age of Enigma: The Secret of the Sixth Ghost Finished: Alex Hunter - Lord of Mind Finished: Dark Parables: The Final Cinderella Collector's Edition Finished: Eventide 2: The sorceres Mirror Finished: Faces of Illusion: The Twin Phantoms Finished: Revenge of the Spirit: Rite of Resurrection HIDDEN OBJECT GAMES! Nulled: The Decimation of Olarath Nulled: Mini Attack Submarine Nulled: Operation: Global Shield Nulled: Starship: Nova Strike DIGITAL HOMICIDE GAMES! They showed up as getting cards, I idled them, couldn't sell the spare cards because it's Digital Homicide, then decided to try them out because how bad could they really be? I now regret spending time looking at them, and will never get those 10 minutes back. Nulled: Bubble Blowout A bad Match 3/Bubble game with lovely aiming and clearing mechanics. Nulled: Panty Party I got this as a gift, so I feel a bit bad for nulling it, but it's just a lovely shooter with some awful high-pitched Japanese voice acting and that whole dialog thing that NES era JRPGs made popular. The gimmick is panties and if you are a sad sap that will only experience girl panties when you go through your mom's underwear drawer, then sure, you'll probably like this game. You could also leaf through a Victoria's Secrets catalog and get some more detailed knowledge of women undergarment with the added bonus of not being forced to wade through yet another awful Japanese anime-inspired story of girls showing of their nether regions to cave dwelling, trilby wearing neckbeard mouth breathers. Aaaanyway.... Finished: Pony Island Slightly amusing platformer/logic puzzler that tries a bit too hard to do a "wacky" story and and hope some of that Frog Factions poo poo rubs off. At least it only takes a couple of hours to finish. Finished: Pretty Girls Panic! Qix clone with Japanese anime girls as backgrounds, soundtrack is filled with lots of Japanese female one-liners, moaning, screaming and whatever you have. You can thankfully mute that crap. The game itself is quite easy and really boring. Play the Fortix games instead if you want an entertaining Qix clone. Finished: Quell Lovely ball-sliding puzzler... Yeah, ball-sliding! Finished: Super Markup Man A fun, semi-edutaining game, where you need to put HTML and CSS tags in the right order. You will NOT be a master of AngularJS, use React as the V in MVC or setup a NodeJS farm after finishing this, but you can get a very simple idea of how web pages are structured.
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Feb 11, 2017 13:10
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Since I posted last, I've beaten Assassin's Creed III, Costume Quest, Puzzle Agent 1, and Shadow Warrior. They were fine games. Shadow Warrior I enjoyed the most out of all of those. Now playing: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.........again. Morrowind is just such an awesome game.
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Feb 11, 2017 16:20
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Beat - Orcs Must Die! 2: Co-oped the main story mode. Pretty fun playing with someone else. There's a bit of strategy, but most levels can be easily beaten with a brimstone / freezing arrow wall combo.
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Feb 12, 2017 21:08
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Nulled a good number of bundle titles recently. Nearly to less than a hundred unfinished games on backloggery, which is nice. Null: Cortex Command - Didn't really like the UI, the gameplay or the visuals. Null: Expand - Supposed to be some kind of minimalist/ambient kind of game. I didn't really find it that interesting, or engaging. Null: Sid Meier's Pirates! - Pretty dated at this point. After playing Sunless Sea this was a huge step backward. Null: Shock Troopers 2nd Squad - I liked the first game, but this one wasn't so good. I played the first level and decided I'd had enough. Beat: Roundabout - It's a quirky and really unique goon-made game. Ran into a handful of crash bugs here and there. The game is built around the fact that your limousine is constantly revolving, which is generally kind of annoying and takes some getting used to. The game flow is... kind of odd. Missions are really short--they seem to end as soon as they begin. You'll pick someone up and try not to bump into anything as you take a priest to bury the dead in a graveyard, take a soccer player to his game (and score a goal for him), farm crops for a country bumpkin, and other silly scenarios. Each one is bookended by a live-action cutscene with intentionally bad acting, not unlike the sort of stuff you'd see in an old Sega CD title. This really seemed like it should have been up my alley, but I ultimately just found it to be "alright." Still, though I didn't like it as much as I wanted to, but it was definitely memorable. Null: Jade Empire - Ran like crap on my PC for some reason, and the controls felt really janky. Not a great PC port, and it doesn't seem to have aged super well.
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Feb 13, 2017 16:23
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BEATEN: Wolfenstein: The Old Blood Current events put me in the mood to blow up, stab and otherwise brutally maim Nazis, and Wolfenstein is about the best way to do it. I absolutely loved The New Order when I played it last year - finding it surprisingly touching and smart about history for a game where you murder giant Nazi robot dogs. Plus you get to drop acid with alt-history Jimi Hendrix, what's not to like? This isn't as good as TNO, but I still thought it was brill. The moment to moment action and impact of the guns in these games is brill, as is the careful environment design and pulpy sense of adventure. I love the way it swings between kinda sobering reflections on the consequences of Nazism and silly Indiana Jones-y gags. Still, fighting Nazi zombies isn't quite as fun as regular Nazis and it kind of dragged on a bit towards the end. Still, I got it for £3 in a sale and can't reasonably complain too much. Scratched the fash bashing itch. BEATEN: FLY'N  Randomly churned up by Steam Roulette. On first inspection it's a cute, chilled out platformer. But there's a difficulty cliff early on when the game gets CRAZY BOLLOCK HARD. It's never unfair, but it asks a lot of your platforming skills and patience. At times it felt like bashing my head against a wall (thus getting the 'Resilient' die 50 times in one level and go on to beat it trophy), but I inched my way through. Glad I did, because the last levels were rock solid but a hell of a lot of fun. Felt like a hidden gem. BEATEN: Sleeping Dogs: Year of the Snake DLC  I'd heard that this was the 'good' Sleeping Dogs DLC, so saved it til last. My mistake, it's another really lightly written and short bundle of missions that doesn't go anywhere. It even ends in a half-assed way - you catch the main villain and he gives you the old "ah Wei, do you really think this ends with my capture" routine and... then it really IS over. I guess the tear gas launcher was fun... My favourite of the SD DLCS was Zodiac Tournament - at least that was nicely silly. NULLED: Deponia  Another from the Steam Roulette. Now, I have nothing against adventure games, but I got halfway through this and just couldn't take it anymore. Not only is it crammed with kind of lol random humour that drives me up the loving wall, it's got headache inducing puzzles that, as far as I could tell, rely wholly on randomly trying objects in your inventory on whatever's around. It's infuriating. But - worse than all that - it has the absolute worst gaming protagonist I've ever played as. Rufus is a snide, dickish and bizarrely sexist jerk who is constantly making lovely asides to the player and acting like a 13 year olds idea of a cool. I can normally get past this poo poo, but it's so in your face that I couldn't go on. I guess the game looks nice, but my god the writing kills whatever they were going for stone dead.
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Feb 13, 2017 16:52
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Mr. Flunchy posted:BEATEN: FLY'N FLY'N is absolutely a hidden gem and anyone who likes platformers should probably check it out. But I agree it's a lot more difficult than it looks at first sight. Out of curiosity I just checked if I have that achievement for dying 50 times in one level, though, and surprisingly I don't. I apparently never beat the bonus levels, however. quote:NULLED: Deponia It's a real shame that such a great setting and beautiful art were wasted on Rufus. There's so much potential there. The puzzles I didn't mind but admittedly I have a high tolerance for weirdo adventure game logic. Technically not backlog because I've played it several times before, but I went ahead and did another 100% playthrough of Psychonauts. It's an honest-to-god masterpiece. Lungfishopolis -> The Milkman Conspiracy -> Gloria's Theater -> Waterloo World -> Black Velvetopia is seriously an astounding sequence of levels. There's so much detail in the game, such richness and creativity poured into every level, so much heart, you can sense how much care was put into it. It's often criticised for its platforming but I honestly found it perfectly fun, particularly bouncing around on my levitation ball and floating and such. And it's half an adventure game anyway, using your powers on every character to get unique responses, showing everyone all your items, etc. - some of the best jokes are hidden in these missable interactions. It's just so ridiculously good.
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Feb 13, 2017 17:37
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The true hell is trying to platform in the horrendously lovely PS2 port of Psychonauts.
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Feb 13, 2017 18:28
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Glare Seethe posted:FLY'N is absolutely a hidden gem and anyone who likes platformers should probably check it out. But I agree it's a lot more difficult than it looks at first sight. Out of curiosity I just checked if I have that achievement for dying 50 times in one level, though, and surprisingly I don't. I apparently never beat the bonus levels, however. Thirding that FLY'N is great, cute, and hard. John Murdoch posted:The true hell is trying to platform in the horrendously lovely PS2 port of Psychonauts. That's the one I played first. It once bugged out its timing and had my respawn point underwater. 
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Feb 13, 2017 18:50
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Glare Seethe posted:Technically not backlog because I've played it several times before, but I went ahead and did another 100% playthrough of Psychonauts. It's an honest-to-god masterpiece. Lungfishopolis -> The Milkman Conspiracy -> Gloria's Theater -> Waterloo World -> Black Velvetopia is seriously an astounding sequence of levels. There's so much detail in the game, such richness and creativity poured into every level, so much heart, you can sense how much care was put into it. It's often criticised for its platforming but I honestly found it perfectly fun, particularly bouncing around on my levitation ball and floating and such. And it's half an adventure game anyway, using your powers on every character to get unique responses, showing everyone all your items, etc. - some of the best jokes are hidden in these missable interactions. It's just so ridiculously good. I feel bad, I really want to like Psychonauts, but I just can't get past the platforming. It's the game that made me realize that's probably my least favorite genre of games. I just don't have the patience to figure out the exact perfect timing and positioning to get a character to just jump across a bunch of ledges and bars. I dunno, maybe it's because I didn't play a crap-load of Super Mario Bros growing up like every other person in my generation.
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Feb 13, 2017 21:57
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