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Finally in the mood for SP games again. Beaten: XCOM : Enemy Unknown Great game, Only reason I won't replay it is cause I know X-Com 2 is in my future. I did take a lot of time at the start making me utterly overpowered by the end, but that also meant I got to explore more of the different abilities and squadmates. I fear I broke the final boss though, I sneaked up to it with adaptive skin (the invisibility on full cover) and triggered it, so after a shredder rocket > Black Hole > My Sniper into a CQC Assault it was dead before it got to do anything.  Here's my final squad, feel free to laugh at any inefficiency's   Beaten: 12 Labours of Hercules III: Girl Power Just a fun little game, temped to pick up the other 4 by the end of the sale. Not much to say about them, you click on things and stuff happens. Nice little timewaster. Beaten: The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit Explained a lot better by the poster above, but a fun ("fun") little taste of Life is Strange 2. The kid is in a pretty terrible situation but you can halfway sympathise with how it got so bad on the father's end; not to excuse any abuse of course. Being a good kid and not telling on your dad being rewarded with him lashing out none the less was gutpunch. Completed: Life is Strange Inspired by the above I picked this up again. I love this game, it is not perfect and the final episode in particular requires you to go out of your way to explore (which is a normal thing in these games) to get the most out of it much more than the others. I had beaten it a while ago but I decided to try and get all the extra pictures, shame I can't retroactively save my plant.  I found most of them pretty easily, but I needed a guide for the last few.I wasn't so disappointed in the resolution of the game as most people, I thought it was pretty reasonable and the other option would be an even more insane power fantasy/wish fulfilment type of ending. I played both endings and the one where you choose Chloe seemed better executed and hit it's punches harder even if it wasn't my original/official choice.  Dropped/Nulled: The Witcher Enhanced Edition I played this one ages ago, even before the Enhanced Edition, having planned to finally play 2 I figured I would finally see if this one could re-grab me. Seeing it's a little too old for me, a bit too clunky and I don't have my old saves any more I decided to just forget about it. New games: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt GOTY Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015: Do You Still Shower With Your Dad Mini Metro Life is Strange: Before the Storm
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Jul 1, 2018 22:39
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I've been neither buying nor playing backlog games much lately. The buying has mostly been opportunistically pulling things off of sales that I know I'll want to get to eventually, and even there that was Ys Seven and Rez Infinite. I haven't been completely away from games, though. COMPLETED: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. All achievements on the "Redux" version. This game is preposterously pretty, even in realtime, even on an aging 750Ti. Unfortunately, the plot is nonsense, the characters are universally unlikeable, the interaction mode is both arbitrary and tedious and even with a significant amount of unguided exploration and flower-smelling it was all over in under five hours. Don't buy it, but if you got it in some ill-advised bundle at some point it's worth playing through sufficiently to knock it off the backlog. IN PROGRESS: Super Mario RPG. This, Paper Mario, and Starfox 64 are the only remaining VC Titles on my Wii that I haven't beaten in some other context. I'm pretty far in—I just climed the cliff at Land's End—but if I stop playing regularly it's kind of hard to get back into it. I'm absolutely delighted by the way that Mario hasn't previously had any characterization so Square decided to make him a total dick sometimes. POKED AT: Downwell. It's cute, but it's a Super House of Dead Ninjas style technically-finite score attack game that hasn't been what I've wanted lately. REPLAYING: Hadean Lands. This is what's been eating my spare time of late, and it's rewarding replay better than I expected it would. REPLAYING: The Legend of Zelda. I don't have the first quest route completely memorized but I remember a great deal of it and it's quite astonishing just how much fun it still is to play. I've got a stupidly huge number of keys hoarded after clearing the first four levels—I'm thinking about taking a sideways skip to Level 8 to bumrush the Magic Key with them and then skipping half the rest of the stages. ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 01:09
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MASTERED (again): Solar II. I played this years ago and loved it enough to 100% it. I bought another copy on Steam in the sale and 100% completed it again. I'm not sure how to describe it; a galaxy-em-up would be the closest I can get. Anyway, it's a really great game, and it's on sale for $2 at time of writing. PLAYED: Unreal I. I played this back in the 90s when it was the newest and shiniest thing around. At the time, I didn't finish it because I felt that Unreal was not as good as its competitors Doom and Quake. Twenty years on and my opinion remains mostly the same, with the added thought of "This has not aged well". It's the starting guns that kill it for me; the first few weapons you get feel like they're firing foam ammo. The sound design of the guns is unimpressive, and enemies don't really seem to be injured by them. A point in the game's favour is the enemy AI being pretty good, even by today's standards, but it's not enough to save it. PLAYED: Tower of Guns. Same basic problem as Unreal, but worse. Nerf guns instead of anything solid. Given that the combat is no fun, and combat is all this game has to offer, you can see why I chucked it into the digital garbage bin. PLAYED: Sword Coast Legends. You know that really irritating level scaling TES IV: Oblivion had where all the enemies are set to your level? It made the game feel like your character never actually increased in power in any meaningful fashion. Sword Coast Legends has that, but worse. Oblivion allowed you a decent damage output, at least. In SCL, by comparison, the enemy's health will rapidly grow past your ability to damage them, making every fight take multiple minutes as you slowly chip away at their mountains of HP. It's a bad RPG, and I didn't finish it. PLAYED: Unity of Command. UoC is rather different from most wargames. You get a full army at the start of every mission, and that's pretty much your lot. Reinforcements are extremely limited, and you get penalized for using them. This means that most of the time, a head-on fight will just leave your forces far too depleted to actually take the mission objectives. The central experience of the game is figuring out the most efficient way to cut off the enemy's supply lines, then slaughtering them once they're starving and out of ammo. Unfortunately, I didn't like it that much. In Panzer General-style wargames if one strategy doesn't work, it's possible to recover and try a different approach. In UoC, if your plan doesn't work, your army is usually too badly damaged to accomplish anything, and your only real choice is to restart the mission from the beginning. So yeah, this game wasn't my thing. Sorry Strix  COMPLETED: Loot Box Quest. A short (3-hour) parody clicker-style game. It was fun, but the lootbox jokes feel kinda dated these days; the threat of government regulation has caused nearly everyone in the gaming industry to back away from the implementation of lootboxes. It's only a dollar (less, if on sale) and I thought it was worth playing. COMPLETED: Left in the Dark: No-one on Board. A generic Artifex Mundi HOG. The most interesting thing about it is the occasional spot of bad voice-acting.  Next up: Sword Coast Legends did put me in the mood for a proper RPG, which that game wasn't. I have thus installed Pillars of Eternity I.
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Jul 3, 2018 08:10
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Nah, it's okay. Thanks for trying Unity of Command, and thanks for the write ups!
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Jul 3, 2018 10:35
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ManxomeBromide posted:I haven't been completely away from games, though. Is this a walking simulator type of game? Aka just walk and interact with environment. Always been interested in this game.
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Jul 3, 2018 21:25
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Ulio posted:Is this a walking simulator type of game? Aka just walk and interact with environment. Always been interested in this game. It's a mix of walking simulator with occasional fiddling-with-obtuse-UI-elements game, some of which "kill" or teleport you. As a result, for me, it ended up in an uncomfortable space between both where it got the disadvantages of both walking-sim and first-person adventure but only the advantages of the walking-sim.
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Jul 4, 2018 02:58
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COMPLETED Lara Croft GO - Absolutely clever puzzle design. It was really, really good at making me feel smart and it was just - so pleasant to unwind with. I did all the levels, found all the hidden items, and got all the cheevos.
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Jul 4, 2018 03:32
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ManxomeBromide posted:It's a mix of walking simulator with occasional fiddling-with-obtuse-UI-elements game, some of which "kill" or teleport you. As a result, for me, it ended up in an uncomfortable space between both where it got the disadvantages of both walking-sim and first-person adventure but only the advantages of the walking-sim. Alright thanks. I might try it just for the visuals as you said when it is on sale again. Really like the aesthetic.
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Jul 4, 2018 17:48
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Beat: Gauntlet (2014 edition) - I co-oped this with my brother. We did one play-through, but the game is clearly intended for more than that. The game was fun enough, but that final boss fight is a crazy ramp up in difficulty. The game lmost becomes a bullet hell shooter instead of a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler.
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Jul 5, 2018 05:03
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Ulio posted:Alright thanks. I might try it just for the visuals as you said when it is on sale again. Really like the aesthetic. I really liked the game. I don't remember hating the characters. The acting/ voice overs were of good quality and I found the journey and the ending to be better than ok. The most appealing thing about it are the visuals, I agree. But it had a few interesting puzzles too, if a bit easy, and I liked the themes and design logic in most of the areas except one that turns the game abruptly to some poo poo from Amnesia / Penumbra. I sort of hated that particular section. It's also kind of short but not terribly short.
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Jul 5, 2018 05:14
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BEATEN: Doom! Now, to clarify: I'm playing the Ultimate Doom with GZDoom, and I've only beaten the first three episodes....but hell! That's the full original game! And I beat it! I did it on standard difficulty, didn't fully explore the levels...but I didn't cheat, either, and I played it as vanilla as possible. And it was fun! Next up: the bonus episode, Doom II, the bonus map packs included with the Doom bundle on steam, and then the infinite amount of mods and custom levels. Oh, and replaying things on Ultraviolence and searching out all of the secrets. Which is both intimidating and happy - there's so much more Doom to play, god help my backlog. But still. Today I defeated the Spiderdemon for the first time ever. 
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Jul 9, 2018 23:13
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StrixNebulosa posted:BEATEN: Doom! Congrats, the speed and responsiveness of original Doom means it will always be timeless. A fantastic game for all generations of gamers!
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Jul 9, 2018 23:52
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FanaticalMilk posted:Congrats, the speed and responsiveness of original Doom means it will always be timeless. A fantastic game for all generations of gamers! It's absolutely crazy how great Doom is. I replayed it out of historical curiosity a couple of years back and was blown away by how well its aged. There's this brilliant rhythm in spotting a roomful of enemies and knowing instinctively the best order and method of taking them out most efficiently.
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Jul 10, 2018 00:10
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FanaticalMilk posted:Congrats, the speed and responsiveness of original Doom means it will always be timeless. A fantastic game for all generations of gamers! Thanks! And no kidding: once I fixed the controls I was off and running. The guns feel good, the levels are fun to explore, and the directional audio cues make up for the lack of enemy ai. If it were released today I'd praise the game for taking the FPS and streamlining it while simultaneously offering more complex levels than I'm used to seeing in games. e: And that shotgun! It feels so good and can be used at range which is the best!
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Jul 10, 2018 00:10
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PLAYING Gran Turismo - Got a bit further with this, I really forgot how few events there are compared to subsequent games, you can condemn yourself to a bit of a grind if you prioritise cool over fast too much. I managed to get all gold in the A licence and am very, very pleased with myself as those are often mentioned when talking about the hardest licences in GT history. Subnautica - I was so excited for this but something about it has just left me cold. I'm just gathering poo poo and going back to my escape pod to build slightly better stuff over and over, I really expected to have a base to call my own by now, maybe I'm doing it wrong. Also any survival game where food and water are trivial to get hold of but make you eat and drink constantly annoy me. Football Manager 2018 - I made the game run 20 years into the future to jumble things up. Krasnodar of Russia looked interesting, with £400M in the bank, I thought I could raise Russian football as a whole from the doldrums but I'm scrapping it out around 5th position in the league instead. At least I qualified for the Champions League, where I have a horrific group. Crusader Kings 2 - Still likely to get murdered by Aztecs, and the Mongol Invasion event has fired from the other side, too! Managed to move away from inheritance that splits the kingdom every time to one where the oldest member of the dynasty inherits, leading to some instability. Need to up my tech level to get to good old primogeniture. Rimworld - I couldn't wait any longer and as such I jumped into the latest experimental build instead of holding on for 1.0 proper. The game's random scenarios are just deranged so I rolled a d20 a bunch of times D&D style to determine my starting resources, weapons, planet, etc and am using a mod to create me and a group of friends to crashland with! Just Cause 3 - It's always fun for a blast, I switch it on when I don't have time to get into anything deep. BEAT RiME - Almost nulled this one as the often fiddly but simple puzzles and occasional lack of clear direction put me off. I was told to stick around for the ending and I'm really glad I did. It really puts the game in a whole new light. Life is Strange: Before the Storm - Like most, I was a little underwhelmed by the announcement of a prequel for Life is Strange but this is much better than it has any right to be. The facial animations are way ahead of the first Life is Strange and the story, while not as crazy as the first, kept me engaged and gave me a lot to think about. Your choices matter less in this game, which is unavoidable since we know what state most of the main characters will be in when the original LiS comes round and it'd be difficult to have an event that's incredibly shocking in BTS that Chloe never mentions in Life is Strange. It's even a bit of a stretch that Damon's existence is only alluded to in Life is Strange when he stabs Rachel and Frank has to kill him to stop him murdering Chloe. Anyway, good tale, well told. Sonic 2 - I actually beat Sonic 2 without cheating or save states! gently caress the Death Egg Zone, man. I was down to my last continue! NULLED FIFA 2004 - Played for nostalgia, it's a real bad football game. Could be fun with friends on a gaming night.
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Jul 13, 2018 13:39
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Finished: LEGO Batman 2 The first LEGO game with a huge hub city. I was already familiar with the concept as I had previously finished LEGO City Undercover, and while that game had a better city/world layout, I enjoyed the map a lot more in Batman 2. It actually made finding gold blocks easier even though some were locked away until you had unlocked new capabilities or characters. It's also the first game where they used dialogue. I have always loved the small silent movie sequences in the previous games, but it worked really well with the voice acting. It's a good game. Going through my backlog, I once again though I would take one for the team and play some bundle fodder - all of which were nulled after a few minutes because they were all crap games. Fast and Curious Something about moving downwards and crushing building blocks, eat burgers and avoiding a bullet. It's a Groupees game, and the quality is as good as their bundles. Fitz the Fox One of those lovely Mario platformer games that tries to emulate the original Gameboy look. Get Over Here Top down multiplayer (SP + CPU available) arena match game where you pull your enemy towards you and then do melee kills. There are way to many menus to go through just to start a match, and to end it, the only way I could figure out was to ALT+F4. Goodnight Butcher Find a piece of meat at the butcher shop, make sausages and steaks, put it on display and get hunted down by an evil spirit. All in glorious 10 year old hand drawn graphics. a grande bagunca espacial - The big space mess Vertical shmup on acid, shrooms and a bit of weed. Gravity Den A platform puzzler where you change gravity (walk on walls and upside down). It's actually not bad, just not my kind of thing. Green Ranch Casual time/resource management game, but not the 12 Labours of Hercules kind. HardCube Stylish platform puzzle game where you roll around a ball. InFlux Another ball rolling game KHOLAT Walking sim/horror game. Kiai Resonance 2D samurai katana 'em up sim-ish
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Jul 14, 2018 12:58
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Finished: Resident Evil Remake I never got to play the original so I tried the Director's Cut in an emulator but it was just too antiquated for me. The remake does a good enough job of smoothing off the rough edges while keeping a lot of things true to the original (from what little I saw of it). The graphics haven't been really updated since the GameCube version was released and on my 4K screen it's even more obvious. Still, I thought the atmosphere was pretty great. I enjoyed discovering what happened at the mansion even though being a game that I assume started that particular wave of survival horror games, it's quite predictable. I'll readily admit I was using a guide throughout but that didn't really diminish my enjoyment of it. Given the save system and how some enemies can one shot you later, I was glad I decided to go that route. If I ever get around to playing Jill I'll try it without the guide but that might be a long time away since I prefer to move to another game rather than replay the same game twice. Now onto finishing the new Doom!
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Jul 17, 2018 10:17
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JULY: #88: The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (1 hour) - I am really, really tired of seeing lovely single/widowed dads in video games. #89: Hidden Agenda (2 hours) - Oh boy, another story where we show how crazy a villain is by having him dress in drag gently caress off Supermassive #90: Until Dawn (8 hours) - I've now completed the Supermassive trilogy and I'm convinced these people only know how to direct. They can't write for poo poo. #91: RUINER (4 hours) - A dang good time, doesn't overstay its welcome, nice and splashy. #92: Resident Evil HD (10 hours) - Jill defeated all the zombies and they died forever the end. Chris was saved but he's dumb. #93: Infamous Second Son (8 hours) - Very fun to play superhero game, with a Native American protag!! I think I liked First Light's tight focus more though. #94: Rhiannon (7 hours) - Goofy low-budget Myst style game. #95: Bear With Me (6 hours) - Three-part point n click adventure. #96: Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon (5 hours) - Silly fun that I should definitely have not played solo. It's meant for co-op. #97: Hustle Cat (3 hours) - VN about a cat cafe where people turn into cats. It's pretty goofy. I went down the Finley route. #98: SiN (8 hours) - That was a weird game. A 1998 shooter that FELT 1998. For better or worse. #99: SiN Episodes (2.5 hours) - Unlike the first game, this was a clear Half Life 2 knockoff. Which, to be fair, I'm totally into. But it shows its age bigtime. And like HL2 Episodes, it was never finished. #100: Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within (10 hours) - One of the all-time point'n'click classics, the story has aged horribly and... well.... it's just really bad. And the acting! The ACTING! #101: Mass Effect Andromeda (16-17 hours) - Honestly? This was alright. Not $60 alright, but good for the price I paid. #102: Spycraft: The Great Game (5-6 hours) - It's not a GREAT game as it says on the box. But it's a fun game with trashy FMV where you do CIA stuff in a vaguely 90s web-browser looking interface... it's the kind of game Activision would never do now. #103: Hidden: On the Trail of the Ancients (3-4 hours) - Mediocre Myst-style game that ends unfinished. Oops! #104: Jackbox Party Pack 4 (endless) - Played just about every game on there. We actually did pretty well with Survive the Internet, but Fibbage is the star of the show. #105: Cold Fear (6 hours) - RE4 on a boat. Yeah, RE Revelations did that too. And better. #106: The Count Lucanor (3-4 hours) - Spooky top-down stealth fairy tale. #107: Ahnayro: The Dream World (10-11 hours) - ARG-ish Steam game that involves a lot of googling and research to solve puzzles. #108: Emily is Away 2 (2 hours) - Teens using AIM Simulator. #109: Quiet City (5 minutes) - Yes, a 5 minute Humble Original. You walk around interacting with hotspots and that's it. #110: A2Be (1/2 hour) - A VN Humble Original. It was very buggy and kind of a knockoff of that old CFB animated short about teleportion. #111: Pocket Kingdom (4-5 hours) - Block pushing puzzle game with very very vague metroidy ability gating. VERY SLIGHT.
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Aug 5, 2018 22:45
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Is the time how much you spent before quitting, how long it took to finish, or a mix of both? Do you generally beeline through story-only missions or, if available, do you also do side missions/quests and/or explore?
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Aug 6, 2018 20:04
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I would be interested to hear about your take on Bear With Me. I can dig a cutesy Noir adventure, but only if it is worth it and isn't obtuse.
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Aug 6, 2018 21:30
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Fart of Presto posted:Is the time how much you spent before quitting, how long it took to finish, or a mix of both? I actually did do a little sidequesting in Andromeda because they structured the world design so that you can knock out a few side quests on your way to the waypoint for the next story checkpoint. I think I'd like the colonization aspect of the game more if there was a town-builder aspect to it, although maybe there was one and I missed it. Shadow225 posted:I would be interested to hear about your take on Bear With Me. I can dig a cutesy Noir adventure, but only if it is worth it and isn't obtuse. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Aug 7, 2018 |
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Aug 7, 2018 01:32
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NEW GAME: La-Mulana 2. A 4.5-year kickstarter ends, and I'd been running out of steam on the games I was playing, so I dove right in here. I am now about 8 hours in. This seems to be a rare case of a surprise indie darling actually knowing what made their game good in the first place, which isn't just random cruelty. There's plenty of random cruelty, mind you, but it goes both ways and I have several things I've done already where I have no idea if they were in fact sequence breaks. ALSO IN PROGRESS: Rez Infinite. Because hey, if you're going to play Not La-Mulana, might as well go all-out. (EDITED to be in proper Steam Anonymous Bromide-post format) ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Aug 7, 2018 |
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Aug 7, 2018 05:10
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I seem to have picked up a few things without finishing anything I started before last month. PLAYING Rimworld - I'm finding my game a bit boring, I think that because I made myself and 9 friends, once I'm over the initial hump of securing food production, 10 young, fit, non-broken people with partners are pretty well equipped for surviving life on the rim. So far I've had more environmental obstacles than raids but it's only a matter of time before things start to get a bit more challenging. BOUGHT Stardew Valley - Well, I didn't buy it but I was kindly given it for my birthday! I spent one night on this and I'm impressed, it's really lovely and looks like it goes super deep. I've already got a bit too into fishing. This could be a major timesink when I tie off a couple of other games. Hearts of Iron 4 - I saw it on sale after listening to a podcast about World War 2. It's tricky to get into at first when you're probably doing everything wrong but it's surprisingly accessible for a game of such depth, especially once you realise that attrition and the numbers attached to your armies aren't the same things as in CK2. I turned off historical focuses and I'm currently in early 1946 as Japan, trying to tip the Soviet Union into capitulating after they declared war on Poland not long after Germany collapsed to end WW2. The US has nuked Kiev but the USSR's western border isn't budging. It's me, China and India that are making the most ground up from the Southeast. Yakuza 0 - Yakuza is one of the console-only series I've been vaguely interested in so I bought it when it came to PC to good reviews. I've only spent a little over an hour with it so far but I'm really enjoying it. Looks like there are plenty of side activities to get on with, it's a little janky in a somewhat endearing way and really scratches my Sleeping Dogs itch. More personally, it really reminds me of my honeymoon in Japan earlier in the year, we spent some of it staying in Shinjuku and we also stayed in Osaka so seeing stuff like Karaoke, Pachinko, Suntory whisky and those taxis where the doors open themselves is great. BEAT Sonic 3 and Knuckles - I've now beaten all of the Genesis 2D Sonics fair and square. They do get longer and easier as you go through but in terms of quality, S3&K is by far and away the best, I had a blast revisiting it. I'll try Sonic CD next, which I've never played before.
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Aug 7, 2018 12:00
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BEATEN: Ultra Street Fighter IV After spending 30 hours playing USFIV last month I can officially confirm that it is a loving incredible fighting game. I've beaten the Arcade mode with every single character and played a decent amount of online (hot tip - anyone still playing USFIV online is really loving good at it these days). What's particularly cool is that while the game 'feels' like a Street Fighter game from tip to toe it's not trying to copy any one of the classic games and is very much its own thing. At the core of why it feels good is a rhythm and pace that always feels natural, particularly when you and your opponent are poking at each other and playing footsies. The speed of the game is pitched just right so you have just enough time to react to a high or low attack. On top of the rock-solid basics, the focus attack system is very satisfying, especially with the red focus attacks in this version that can only be stopped with an armor-breaking attack. I'm not so into fighting games that I'm frame counting or anything, but it's pretty easy to work out various counters for attacks (playing Decapre online against a Shoto is pretty fun as once you nail the timing you can warp right through their projectiles and nail them in the recovery animation). Though it's nearly 10 years since the original SF4 released the game still looks incredibly solid. The character models have a chunky action figure build to them and the animation is some of the best in the business. My only real complaints are minor stuff. They've got these great and personality-filled character models, and then the introduction and ending cutscenes are done in lovely low-quality animation. It smarts even more when you've got the 'Fight Your Rival' in-engine cutscenes that kick rear end. Plus, the new characters added for the Ultra edition are a little bit underdone - they don't have rival cutscenes and some of them, particularly Poison, are a bit shallowly designed compared to the rest of the cast. Plus the Task Manager process is still called Super Street Fighter IV, which feels a bit amateurish. But yeah, it's loving rad. SFV probably eclipses it (haven’t played it yet), but you can get this super cheap and it's a top-tier fighting game with tonnes of content. BEATEN: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask  My Nintendo white whale. Finally decided to put my foot down and finish the drat game after multiple failed attempts. Turns out that hype is more than justified. Once you get over the time pressures and stop stressing that you're missing out on stuff, you begin to understand the temporal rules of Termina and the Groundhog Day vibe they're going for. My big hangup with the game in previous aborted playthroughs was that I felt under pressure to rush everywhere, but shift your perspective slightly and you understand you’ve got as much time as you need to do and learn anything. I don't want to go on too much about MM because it's been written about endlessly, but I loved the African design elements all the way through, the generally morose and depressed tone and the way it's not afraid to be weird in a uniquely sincere way. Above all that there's a seriously rare unified sense of game design, where the core mechanics, narrative, writing and music composition all create a sense of melancholy and reflections on mortality and fate. I don't think there's been another game that's captured this particular brand of mournful ennui since. In retrospect, I probably should have played the 3DS version rather than digging out the N64 though... BEATEN: Heavy Rain  A couple of months back I played Beyond: Two Souls and decided David Cage was an embarrassment whose games I never wanted to touch again. Well, Sony added this as their PS Plus game for July and my friend bought Detroit: Beyond Human... So I decided to give this a whirl as I'd vaguely heard it's better than B:TS... It is much, much worse. Not only is the overall story a load of nonsensical garbage (apparently due to Sony instructing Cage to remove the supernatural elements a few months before release) but the acting and dialogue are Tommy Wiseau level unnatural. This is probably because it's translated from French and primarily performed by French actors doing awful American accents, but it just comes across as intensely crap. I won't even get into the sub-Telltale gameplay. It feels like someone fed David Fincher’s Seven fed through a Markov chain. I am astonished anyone ever thought this was good. What were those reviewers back in 2010 thinking?! BEATEN: ABSOLVER  A weird little game that feels a bit like a proof of concept more than a finished product. You roam around a little world that appears to have suffered some kind of apocalypse getting into martial arts battles and engaging in co-op and/or PvP. Also, the whole thing is a VR world being used to train people to uh, absolve... something? Though it doesn't make sense it is pretty cool to play. The fighting has a nice to and fro to it, and it's fun to work out the holes in your opponent's defence and mercilessly exploit them. Also, the online component is really fun - when you meet someone there's a Sergio Leone style tension between you as you both try to work out whether they'll fight you or help you out. The whole thing is over in under five hours and I didn't see any reason to go back into NG+ to refine my skills. I'd have been a bit cheesed if I'd have paid full price, but as a PS Plus game it was a neat little curiosity. BEATEN: God of War III: Remastered  I'd heard this was a bit of a let down after GoW2, but for me it was the best in the series so far. I loved how far they took Kratos being an unrepentantly murderous prick - almost daring you to hate him. Whether he's gouging out people's eyes, tearing heads off, dismembering them while still alive, solving a puzzle in which you punt whimpering hellhounds around a room or simply pounding the Greek pantheon’s faces into a bloody pulp, Kratos does it in furious style. Plus it looks great at 1080p 60FPS and has a scale you just don't see that often in games. I liked it so much I picked up a cheapo copy of Ascension on PS3, so I'll get through that before I play the new one. Hell, maybe I'll play the PSP games if I'm still getting a kick out of the combat. BEATEN: Dishonored: Death of the Outsider  A pretty good side story that could (and probably will) wrap up the mildly diverting Dishonored universe. The smartest thing the game does is only give you three unupgradeable powers (teleport, copy appearance and out of body scouting) and gets rid of the mana system that bogged down the previous two - it always felt really backwards to give you all kinds of cool powers then penalise you for experimenting with them with limited MP. Here you find yourself really thinking about how these powers can combo together - scouting ahead and placing a teleport spot, or daisy-chaining your way through a series of guards by stealing their faces. I basically enjoyed it, but by the end, I was ready to call it quits. I'd like to see more Dishonored, but maybe in ten years or so when tech has really moved forward in AI and level design. BEATEN: Zenbound 2  Ultra chill game about wrapping various 3D models in string. As the string touches the surface it leaves paint behind and the aim is to completely colour in each object. Bar some minor twists this is all the game is. But while it doesn't do very much it does it very well. Soothing music, nice sound effects, satisfyingly tactile controls (this is a mobile port but I didn't have any problems playing with the mouse). Didn't rush through it, but nailed a handful each day and thoroughly enjoyed myself. BEATEN: Homefront  Objectively this is a pretty crap game - a bog standard military shooter about North Korea invading the USA that feels a tiny bit racist throughout. But it's a very short game (the campaign is about 3-4 hours long) and is just dumb enough to skate by on ridiculous prompts like "press A to hide in mass grave" and stupid setpieces revolving around your AI tank buddy. Plus they call North Koreans 'Norks', which never stopped making me laugh. BEATEN: The House of the Dead  After enjoying The Lost World last month I wanted to check out the other Sega light-gun game I used to pour 50ps into and never beat, so I trotted along to an arcade. Turns out House of the Dead lives up to my fond memories of it - I like the branching paths, cheesy voice-acting and inexplicably awesome techno-zombie soundtrack.. Was actually doing pretty well until I hit the brick wall of Magician, the final boss. That fireball throwing teleporting monster can go gently caress itself. I beat it - but it was more a question of money than skill. PLAYED: Tomb Raider Arcade  I had absolutely no idea this existed until I was standing in front of the gargantuan 4 player cabinet at the arcade. Released earlier this year, it’s a light gun adaptation of TR2013 in which you play Lara’s anonymous allies. So you blast baddies and animals while she runs around the screen helping you. Not sure who developed this, but the light gun mechanics are awesome and it’s satisfyingly fun to pop off headshots and get combo points. Plus the reloading mechanic is racking the pistol which has a really neat heavy clunkiness to it. Sadly I didn’t get to finish this as I ran out of money (gently caress you HoTD Magician…), but I got 2/3 of the way through and had a blast. NULLED: Uurnog Unlimited  Iffy indie platform game that seems to take inspiration from Super Mario Bros 2 in its design - and I have never, ever enjoyed SMB2. Kind of ugly-looking and refuses to explain much to you - I spent a couple of hours aimlessly wandering around. I get what it's going for, but I just wasn't having any fun at any point.
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Aug 12, 2018 11:36
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Beat: God Eater: Resurrection - I spent 149 hours with this game, which makes it (besides Nethack, I guess) the game I've played the most of. Which is weird as poo poo. Nothing about this game should appeal to me. It's a game where you spend a half hour meticulously setting up your equipment and the skills of your AI allies, then you enter a big room, and whack at a big monster with wet noodles for thirty minutes. You repeat this HUNDREDS OF TIMES. Yet I could not take myself away from this game. The crafting is really solid, and the animations of the monsters are really great, and everything just feels god drat solid. Not only that, but this game (Resurrection, which I believe is something of an HD remake of the original game with all of its old DLC?) has three sort of episodes to them, and not only are they pretty good, but these silly looking anime people with their giant loving eyes and their ridiculous underboobs became very endearing to me, and no poo poo, the closing of the second episode actually brought me to tears. I love this game, but I don't know why. Nothing about it should appeal to me. One thing though: I don't know what algorithm is used to determine what monster you want to lock on to if there are more than one on screen, but whatever it is, it manages to be entirely wrong 100% of the time.
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Aug 15, 2018 14:18
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Another batch: #112: Red Faction (8 hours) - The original game, PS2 version... boy aiming was a hell of a lot different in the PS2 era! A lot WORSE kind of different. #113: The 11th Hour (9 hours) - Maybe one of the worst first person adventure games I've ever played. #114: Dead Secret (2 hours) - A breezy first person adventure spoop where you solve a murder case as a killer chases you around. #115: Azure Striker Gunvolt (6 hours) - Another Inti-Creates Megaman-style jam.. this one was pretty darn fun, with a really bad story and a bad nonbinary stereotype character. I imagine the second game is better, and people say Burst is pretty good so I'll stay on this series for sure. #116: Barrow Hill: The Dark Path (4 hours) - Surprisingly short followup to the original Barrow Hill game. The updated engine made the game feel a lot more like a Hidden Object Game without the hidden objects. The original, despite the jank, was a better trashy first person adventure. #117: Subnautica (38 hours) - Ohh boy was I addicted to this one. But I'm glad I've finished it because the frustrations were really starting to mount up. The amount of pop-in is unforgivable, but even moreso is the amount of times I fell through the world. What the heck!!! Unknown Worlds more like Unknown Geometry. #118: A Hat in Time (8 hours) - What a wonderful game! Glad it came in a bundle and I didn't pay for it directly. #119: Drill Dozer (7 hours) - A delightful Metroid-lite game from Game Freak (I call it Metroid-lite because it has-- LITERAL!!-- gear-gating in each level). #120: Bleed 2 (1 hour) - Fantastic sequel to a massively underrated XBLIG gem. #121: Sublevel Zero (2 hours) - Quenched my Descent thirst... for now. Beat on the second run, the levels were too samey to want to do another run to see the additional content. #122: Knee Deep (3 hours) - Flawed but interesting interactive story game with a "stage play" aethetic. Really goes to sillytown in the third act.
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Aug 24, 2018 01:48
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The 7th Guest posted:#113: The 11th Hour (9 hours) - Maybe one of the worst first person adventure games I've ever played. While I don't disagree, it's funnier to me than it should be to see this sentiment paired with that username. The 7th Guest posted:#118: A Hat in Time (8 hours) - What a wonderful game! Glad it came in a bundle and I didn't pay for it directly. This is also a kind of strange combination of sentiments. Is there something about its context that would make one not want to purchase it directly, or is this a case of "wonderful surprise that came while I was intentionally buying something else"? (As for me: I'm still working my way through La-Mulana 2. It's really good, though I've taken a number of hints now, almost all of which were of the form "that wall over there is breakable, and you should have known this because you have a map and can see a corridor that leads out from what looks like a blank wall on the other side".) vvvv OK, fair enough. My playrate has slowed enough lately that I've been staying away from Humble Monthly. ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Aug 24, 2018 |
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Aug 24, 2018 05:46
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Ehh I don't want to get into it, but I will say, that Humble Monthly month was a pretty great value all in all. I'm looking forward to digging into Kona and The Surge. Of the 3d platformers from the last couple of years, Odyssey is still tops. But I'm glad that indie 3d platformers are getting better. Eventually indies will be putting out stuff on par with Nintendo and that's exciting to think about.
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Aug 24, 2018 05:56
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One more small batch to close out the month: #123: Contra 3 (2 hours) - A classic in the series, maybe the 2nd best? I was surprised at how short it was, though. I thought it'd be 8 stages rather than 6. Boy that final boss though! What a jerk they are. #124: Dragon's Dogma (20+ hours) - A lot of ups and downs on this one.. I was hooked on it, but a sequel would do well to adjust combat balance, and be a bit more vibrant with its aesthetic. #125: Portal Knights (15-17 hours) - Cube-based chill game in the vein of Terraria/DQ Builders, very light ARPG elements, primarily focused on mining, crafting, and light combat. #126: Omikron the Nomad Soul (15-16 hours) - Garbage Quantic Dream game that I did not touch personally but played vicariously through Supergreatfriend. Which is good because the game kidnaps your soul. So I managed to stay safe. Normally I don't count watching a LP as 'beating' a game, but this was a free giveaway game to begin with. #127: Project Snowblind (5 hours) - The Deus Ex: Invisible War team did a spinoff linear shooter, and it plays far more to their strengths than the much more awkward IW did. It was a fun little arcadey shooter with occasional vent crawling and game-breaking augment powers.
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Sep 1, 2018 08:35
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BEAT: Monster Hunter World Uh, using the word 'beat' lightly here since I technically saw the credits and unlocked what I've heard is a shitload of postgame content. This sucked me in REALLY loving hard since pc release and ate a ton of my free time. I've clocked about 90 hours so far, since joining SOSes and clobbering giant monsters in such a blast. I've never really enjoyed any hunting games in the past but absolutely loved this. This was my first MonHun game and holy poo poo, the turf wars where monsters beat each other up are super cool. Probably gonna lose countless more hours to this though, since I don't feel nearly done  Not the best port, but it runs fine on my desktop and they've (at least for me) sorted out the multiplayer connection issues.
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Sep 4, 2018 05:10
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A new batch served fresh from the first half of September: #128: Batman: Arkham VR (1 hour) - A glorified movie ride in VR.. there is not even combat in this game, and the plot is largely meant to hook into Arkham Knight so... yyyeahhh.. #129: 20001 a Space Felony (1 hour) - Comedic walking simulator where you observe a space crime scene and interrogate the ship's AI. #130: Monstro Battle Tactics (2 hours) - There are more campaigns in the game but one was enough for me. A puzzly game with Fire Emblem mechanics. #131: Torchlight (18 hours) - Maybe hasn't aged the greatest but is still very up-tempo and fun. #132: Hero of the Kingdom II (5 hours) - Excellent podcast-friendly casual game that combines resource management and hidden object games in a faux-RPG shell. #133: Donut County (3 hours) - I bought and played and beat this in one setting on iPhone. Great little game. #134: Grim Legends 1 (3 hours) - Hidden object game... #135: Grim Legends 3 (2 hours) - This one was pretty rad because it was trying to piggyback off of both Assassin's Creed and The Order 1886. #136: Tiny Tales (2.5 hours) - Hidden object game... #137: Horizon Zero Dawn (20 hours) - As good as advertised BUT... the climbing is awful and the stealth could've been better. #138: Hero of the Kingdom (4 hours) - The prequel to the sequel... I didn't actually notice many gameplay differences between the two so either is a fine starting point.
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Sep 14, 2018 05:09
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Eesh. I haven't beaten any games since June. Not for lack of engagement, though! BEATEN: La-Mulana 2. It's More La-Mulana, and if that's what you want it is properly delivered. Familiarity with solutions to puzzles in La-Mulana helped me interpret clues in 2, and several of those puzzles had much more obtuse or difficult-to-source clues in 1. I got mega-stuck four times (I had all the clues the game was going to give about some obstacle, but I could not determine how to proceed), and of those four, I felt only one was unfair. (I could work out why the actions solved the obstacle once they had been done, but I didn't find any clues indicating that the obstacle was an obstacle as opposed to an error on my part until after the obstacle had been cleared out.) My text file full of notes weighed in at 25KB. BEATEN: Rez Infinite, in Play Mode, on Normal, aka "the base game". This game spends most of its time being chill, but when it isn't chill, holy poo poo is it not. IN PROGRESS: Super Mario RPG. This got put on hold for quite awhile. Flipping through leavemywife's LP, it seems that I've reached Nimbus, which is the point he hit at the end of Update 30 of 43. I was enjoying it, so no reason to not see it through.
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Sep 16, 2018 05:25
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BEATEN: Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin I’ve played (and adored) Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne, so even going into this knowing it’s considered the low point in the Souls franchise I was still jazzed. After all, how bad can a Souls game really be? Well, having finished it I can kinda see why it’s got this reputation. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an absolutely fantastic game and head and shoulders above pretty much everything else, but there’s a whole bunch of tiny things that add up over time. The most annoying of these is being able to teleport to any bonfire at any time and having to go back to the sun-dappled hometown to level up. One of my favourite things about the series is feeling an abject sense of isolation and misery when you’re fathoms deep into some hellish nightmare dungeon and you know the further you go in the further you’ll have to get back to safety. The game mandating constant trips to the hometown kills this dead - how bad can things really get when I can chill out in a totally safe place whenever? Then there’s the fact that the game isn’t particularly hard. The ideal Souls boss experience should be getting stomped into the dirt 3 or 4 times before you get a handle on what to do, but I killed most of the DS2 bosses on my first attempt - which just left them feeling anticlimactic. With that in mind the best times I had were in the DLCs, which features some truly cunty bosses. The Fume Knight might have taken me 200 tries to beat and involved me completely changing my tactics and preferred equipment - the final time I figured him out and perfectly dodged all his attacks made me feel like loving Neo. Thing is, tackling the DLCs as and when they were available to me was a double-edged sword as it meant that the final few bosses were an absolute cakewalk in comparison. When the credits finally rolled I didn’t feel much satisfaction except a faint relief that this long-rear end game was finally over. I checked a walkthrough after I finished to find out what I missed and it turned out I missed out on the ‘true’ final boss because I’d used a consumable I shouldn’t have but hey-o I think that’s enough DS2 for one lifetime. BEATEN: Detroit: Become Human  After not enjoying Beyond: Two Souls and despising Heavy Rain I wasn’t exactly rushing out to grab this - but then my housemate randomly picked it up so what the hell I might as well give it a spin. Turns out - loving shock horror - Quantic Dream made an actually good game. One of the reasons I enjoyed it so much is that I purposefully tried to do the opposite of what I thought the game was nudging me towards - and always tried to pick either the most aggressive or most exciting sounding option. So rather than a peaceful yet dignified android civil rights movement my guys were casually doming cops and engaging in all our war with rocket launchers and machine guns. Rather than the odd couple goody two shoes android/alcoholic detective gradually becoming fast friends I ensured they constantly hated each other guts - with absolutely hilarious consequences. It led to my game having some truly bonkers scenes that, according to the in-game stats, had only been seen by 2 or 3% of players. One of my ending scenes was seen by 0% of players, which I know is a rounding error but I’m still pleased with it. I’d have been a bit cheesed if I’d have paid £50, but essentially playing it for free on my housemate’s dime really sweetened the deal and I’m glad I got a chance to play it. BEATEN: Time Crisis 2  The first of a couple of games I blasted through at London’s awesome ‘The Heart of Gaming’ retro arcade where all the machines are set to free play. I dig the pedal to cover and focus on accuracy and reflexes, but the game itself isn’t so hot. The Time Crisis dudes are lacking any personality and humor and the setting is weirdly generic. Maybe I’d have had more fun if I were playing it with a second player and taking advantage of the cover mechanics to get him or her out of trouble, but it just didn’t grab me. Also, the mechanical slide on the guns was broken. Boo. BEATEN: The House of the Dead 2  Another arcade lightgun game and it’s fun to contrast the Sega and Namco styles. It’s a big improvement over the first House of the Dead - I really dig the faux-Venice European setting (weirdly Time Crisis 2 is also set partly in Venice but this does it a lot better) and the graphics still hold up well enough. Plus it’s relatively fair for an arcade lightgun game - if you pay attention you can anticipate enemy attacks, the bosses aren’t overly cheap and if you’ve got quick reflexes it’s easy to stock up on bonus lives by saving civilians. I really want to check out House of the Deads 3 and 4, but my arm was getting a bit tired from waving the lightguns around so will tackle them some other day. BEATEN: ESP Ra.De  Bullet hell shooters are pretty alien to me. I’ve never been that good at the genre and the more insane ones just seem impossible (though I did get good at the ones in Nier: Automata). This is a typical example, but with the ships replaced by angry anime teenagers with psychic powers. It seems a little easier than other ones I’ve tried as you get a quickly refilling super blast that occupies most of the screen. It does get fuckin' weird later on as the final level is full of anime school girls who squeal in pain and bloodily explode as you carve through hundreds of them. Hi Japan. BEATEN: Crayon Physics Deluxe  Charming and creative puzzler that tasks you with collecting stars using physics objects you draw with crayon. Though the game is a little long in the tooth (locked to 4:3 resolutions) the core physics systems is astonishingly robust and if you can imagine a solution to a problem you can nearly always realise it. Also while there are maybe three songs in the whole game they’re all awesome. The Room: Old Sins  I absolutely adore The Room series and the latest might be the best yet. It gets away from the slightly convoluted third game in the series where you have to traverse a whole house by setting the game in a doll’s house that allows you to enter the rooms and solve puzzles. The plot is still absolute nonsense, but I love the weird ominous Lovecraft poo poo and the feel of clunky clicky physical materials is unrivalled in all of gaming. It’s the kind of game that looks hard to make and I wish there were more in this genre. BEATEN: Tomb Raider III  Even by classic Tomb Raider standards this is considered ‘the hard one’. And boy it lives up to that reputation- it’s a game that takes a sadistic delight in repeatedly kicking you in the crotch over and over, as if it wants you to fail, give up and not buy any more Tomb Raider games (which the over-worked devs probably would have preferred). Despite having to resort to a walkthrough more than I’d have like I got through it, though it was touch and go at some points (those London levels….). Given that it was this hard on the Steam version where you can save whenever I have no idea how anyone ever finished the PSOne release which used the save crystal system (saves are consumable items). I do love the environmental design, animation and control system though. Classic Tomb Raider controls are really unfairly criticised and you can do some impressively complex acrobatics once you get the hang of them. Having camera control would be nice though. BEATEN: Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You  A game where you’re a nefarious agent of the state snooping through people’s emails and online presence is a really good idea for a game, but the execution doesn’t quite stick the landing. The interface is neat, but the writing leaves a bit to be desired, the alt-present setting makes the game annoyingly apolitical and the gameplay conceits (you can’t edit information once you’ve entered it in the database) don’t make a lot of sense. I hear the sequel is worse than this, so I’ll probably duck out on the series here. I did quite enjoy playing it on a touch screen though - made me feel v Minority Report.
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Sep 24, 2018 00:22
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Is steamcompletionist.net dead?
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Sep 29, 2018 12:37
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Sininu posted:Is steamcompletionist.net dead? I have the guy who runs it as a Steam friend. He's been offline for 5 days, so maybe there's some RL issues happening.
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Sep 29, 2018 14:25
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It's not the first time it has been down for several days though.
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Sep 29, 2018 21:00
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Closing out the rest of September: #139: Eventide 2 (3 hours) - Hidden Object Game... #140: Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds (4 hours) - Decent expansion to Horizon, although a lot shorter than I was expecting. #141: Haven Moon (3 hours) - MYST-inspired first person adventure... and it's just as obtuse at times. #142: The Signal From Tolva (6 hours) - Poorly-optimized FPS where you are a robot capturing outposts and chasing down signals.. some people compared it to STALKER, I'd say it's more like a really low ambition Far Cry 2. #143: Tibetan Quest (3 hours) - Hidden Object Game... #144: Fairy Tale Mysteries (2 hours) - Hidden Object Game.. #145: Pan-Pan (1.5 hours) - Point n click isometric game, stylized like Monument Valley but plays more like a minimalist adventure game. #146: Hiveswap Act 1 (2 hours) - The infamous MS Paint Adventures game. Half charming, half impenetrable. There is a unique response for using anything on everything in this game, if you're that type of adventure game player. #147: The Low Road (3 hours) - Sidescrolling point n click adventure game about menial spy work. It was okay. #148: West of Loathing (6 hours) - Really enjoyable mix of jrpg and text adventure, with lots of silly flavor text and plenty of locations to explore. #149: Drawful 2 (endless) - It's drawful. Everyone plays it. #150: Destiny 2 (12-13 hours) - Much better than I was expecting, given the criticism. Solo content is far better than Destiny 1's, with the 'adventures' (sidequests) being on par with D1's main quests, and the main quests actually having set pieces and bespoke locations. I mmmmmight go for the expansions, which I didn't do for D1. I'm at 76% beaten on Steamcompletionist, and 58.4% in my all-in-one personal tracker.
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Sep 30, 2018 19:56
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I beat Bayonetta 2. Pretty good!
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Sep 30, 2018 20:02
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SteamCompletionist is up and running again. To celebrate that, I nulled a few games (and finished some as well). Finished: Arizona Rose and the Pirates' Riddles A pretty decent picross clone with a few hidden object scenes thrown in as well. Finished: Around the World in 80 days Straight up Hidden Object game. Nulled: Deadly Animal Duel Local MP only game. Finished: Far Cry 5 + DLCs Loved the basic stuff of the game, but yankin' me out for stupid cutscenes all the time, and then that ending... The 3 DLC missions sounded fun on paper, but were really, really bad. Nulled: Monster Hunter: World I'm sorry, but this was totally not me. It's a beautiful game, and I get why people enjoy it, but I kept getting more and more angry at it, even though Kragger and I had a decent amount of fun playing it. I usually don't mind grinding, and enjoy collecting bear asses in games or go on collectathons, but even when working on upgrading weapons and armour, trying out different weapon styles, and getting into the whole food boosters, just wasn't enough. Having spent 18 hours trying to get into it, I think it's fair that I quit when I did. Finished: Shadow of the Tomb Raider This was basically more of the same, compared the the two previous games, which was fine by me. Great fun, and you can change difficulty levels on Fighting, Puzzles and Exploration, which I found really cool. Finished: Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition Well, I'm actually going through the last couple of missions after the main game ended, but they are just fun standalone missions really. I did enjoy the story and characters from Dragonfall better, but this one just felt more polished. An excellent turn-based RPG. Finished: Strange Brigade Kragger and I really enjoyed the co-op missions from Sniper Elite 4, so when the devs announced SB, I was all over it. The main campaign is really a fun Indiana Jones romp through the South American horror tropes, in a totally arcade way. Lots of fun enemies, cool abilities, great levels and a good time all around, even though the DLC weapons were extremely overpowered and the end boss was kinda "was that it?" compared to some of the other levels we had been playing. Looking forward to the DLC 3-part campaign mission, and there is always Horde Mode for some good wholesome shooting fun. Nulled: Sudoku Quest I love a good sudoku puzzle game, but this one lacked some very basic ways of handling the UI, and forcing you to mix different modes. I have a shitload of other sudoku games, so I'll just try one of them instead.
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Oct 4, 2018 22:28
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| # ? May 31, 2024 10:55 |
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Oh man I played a lot of games this month so I'll try and keep this briefish: BEATEN: Marvel's Spider-Man (PS4)  Exactly as good as everyone says it is. Moving around the city is a dream, the map is full of personality, the combat and stealth are brilliant (though the stealth is perhaps a bit too easy once you're fully upgraded) and it looks astonishingly great. Plus it's got one of the best photo modes I've seen in a game. But what really surprised me is how great the story and general level of writing are. Rocksteady's Arkham games are the obvious point of comparison, but while those have small bits of good writing, the wider story arc is generally garbage. Spider-Man has a large cast of relatively complex characters, interlocking motivations that make sense and honest-to-god themes. They're also all really well acted, with Laura Bailey's MJ being particularly great. I'd go so far as to say that it's one of the best Spider-Man stories ever - and for cracking the nut of telling it in an open-world adventure Insomniac deserve all the kudos they're getting. BEATEN: Destiny 2  I probably wouldn't have played Destiny 2, but somehow I accidentally downloaded all 70ish gigs of it by mistake so figured I may as well give it a shot. First impressions were terrible. I didn't play Destiny, so the plot throwing me straight into the deep end with all the sci-fi/fantasy terminology meant that I didn't understand anything that was going on. Also the shooting seemed kind of mindless and easy, the campaign missions just "run to a marker, fight waves of guys, repeat" and the dialogue felt like someone doing a bad Joss Whedon impression (and I fuckin' hate actual Whedon). But, as the campaign went on and I unlocked some cooler 70s sci-fi lookin' planets I had a bit more fun. Then I figured out how you're supposed to form teams with other players (the fact that I had to look this up online isn't a good sign) and by the final missions it finally clicked - this is basically a jumped up Phantasy Star Online. Anyway, finished the campaign without too much trouble and immediately uninstalled as I don't give a gently caress about 'endgame' content. Final verdict: it's alright but don't go out of your way. BEATEN: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed  Was once billed as a true continuation of the Star Wars story but is now a weird vestigial organ. For a third-person actioner it's a bit janky, with the platforming controls loose and the lightsaber combat pretty unconvincing. Tossing stuff around with the Force is still fun, but the kinds of things that dazzled on its release almost exactly ten years ago aren't particularly impressive now. However, I did enjoy the DLC missions that present a dark original trilogy timeline. Incinerating Obi-Wan by tossing him into the Millennium Falcon's engine is cool, especially with the punchline of then killing his ghost too - and turning Luke to the dark side is kinda fun. I probably will play TFU2 - but only because I know it's notoriously short. BEATEN: God of War: Ascension (PS3)  I was on the fence about getting this. It's got a bad reputation of 'more of the same' - which is probably deserved considering that in 2013 this was the sixth God of War game with the same design in eight years. Plus it's objectively a step back from God of War III - they've ditched the unique weapons, there's a finicky elemental system and they hosed up the rage meter. HOWEVER - I still had a blast. The bosses are mindboggling enormous, the levels are spectacularly epic and it flows really nicely. Most of the second half of the game involves fighting your way up a giant statue of Apollo and rebuilding it as you go, and the scale of the way the place reconfigures around you is really fun. Also, the final boss is probably the most impressive thing I've ever seen a PS3 do. I tried to get a match in the multiplayer, but couldn't find anyone online so no opinions about that. BEATEN: Batman: The Enemy Within  In honour of Telltale's demise I decided to fire this up and give it go. The best thing about it is the surprisingly original take on the Joker, who spends most of the game as Batman and Bruce Wayne's best buddy (you can even pretty much choose dialogue options that suggest Bruce has the hots for him) before inevitably turning evil. I was really enjoying it throughout episodes 1-4 as this take on the Batman mythos is pretty drat screwy and you can make the character do some really unBatmanly things. But like a big piece of elastic things *twang* back to normal in the final episode and you realise that all those choices you made never really mattered. Plus ça change, Telltale. I probably would have liked to see another series of this, but having read up on the working conditions inside the studio and the moronic executive team I'm not too broken up about them going under. BEATEN: >observer  My Steam randomiser chucked up three cyberpunk games this month, but this was probably the best. You play a cyborg detective and brainjacker in dystopian Poland trying to find his son in a run-down apartment block. This might the dirtiest game I've played, with the sense of rot and decay so powerful throughout that you kinda want to take a shower afterwards. The basic gameplay is analysing crime scenes with various biological and digital evidence vision modes, interspersed with nightmare sequences when you jack into the memories of corpses. The detective stuff is really fun, but the dream sequences get a bit repetitive and have terrible stealth sections in them. It doesn't drag down the game too much though - the environment and sound design (especially the disorientating vision modes) are excellent and I dug Rutger Hauer's voice-acting. BEATEN: The Red Strings Club  Stylish gay cyberpunk bartending/pottery game. You're unravelling a corporate mind control conspiracy with the help of emotion manipulating cocktails and spun pots that you can install in people's chests to make them conscience-free, sluttier or into a hippie. Its gay stuff is so casual and natural that there's a tonne of confused players on the Steam discussion page wondering why the two male characters are so close. BEATEN: DeX  The clue's in the title really - DeX wants to be a 2D Deus Ex. Obvious budgetary and time constraints means that doesn't happen, but what's left is a mildly diverting 2D platform RPG with some neat art. The story is boilerplate cyberpunk, but it plays well enough. Sadly the story wraps up just as it gets going, leaving you with the distinct impression that the devs backs were up against a deadline they couldn't miss. Also, it's incredibly easy to break the combat if you level up the 'stun enemy' skill. BEATEN: The House of the Dead III  Pretty typical House of the Dead stuff, elevated by the addition of chunky plastic pump-action shotguns. Also, sassy teen zombie-killer Lisa Rogan is a really fun character. It's a bit easier than the previous games in the series though, perhaps because you don't have to shoot outside the screen to reload. Probably going to clock House of the Dead 4 this month, and then keep an eye out for the new House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn if it hits an arcade near me (https://www.segaarcade.com/news/house-of-the-dead-scarlet-dawn.html). BEATEN: Rez Infinite  I first bought this on its Dreamcast release day back in 2002, played through it on a crappy 15in CRT and loved it. I've since owned the PS2 and X360 versions but only now, having played it in VR, do I really feel like I've played Rez. I'm not about to become one of those annoying VR evangelists, but it immeasurably improves an already excellent game. Using your head to target makes you feel like you're one with the game and fitting yourself out with some chunky bass-heavy headphones is just... it's kind of like a gaming religious experience or something. I guess the next step will be jacking my brain straight into Rez when the inevitable neuro-link version comes out in 20 years. BEATEN: Batman: Arkham VR  Short but sweet VR experience as Batman. If I'd have paid £20 for it I'd be annoyed, but I got it as part of a bundle and really enjoyed the hour or so it took to beat. It's really weird leaning over a corpse and doing a digital autopsy of it when that corpse 'feels' like its right in front of you. Also, chucking batarangs at Alfred's head was good fun. Can't see myself going back to it (unless to show off VR to someone, but feeling as if you're physically in the environments is such a weird sensation. It's like I've got genuine memories of hanging out in the Batcave now. BEATEN: Tomb Raider III: The Lost Artefact  The biggest adventure was tracking the drat thing down. Unlike the TR1 and TR2 expansion packs, this was released commercially so you can't download it as freeware. After a lot of sniffing around online I managed to track down a French Tomb Raider III Gold disc on eBay and had it shipped to me. A couple of hours of tinkering with fan patches and voila, the 'missing' six levels of a game I honestly didn't enjoy that much. After all that it was nice to see that Core had apparently listened to the complaints about the difficulty of TR3 as this is substantially easier (and has hardly any human enemies). The level design is a slight step up too, and one instance where a little more linearity actually benefits the game. Onward to Revelations whenever I can be bothered... NULLED: Really Big Sky  Jeff Minter-esque twinstick shooter with a classic rave soundtrack. I unlocked almost all of the game modes and basically enjoyed it, but the game gets a bit too visually chaotic at times, meaning you tend to die quickly just as the game goes really trippy. Pity. NULLED: Ridge Racer Unbounded  Oh god, Ridge Racer - what have they done to you?! Hugely ill-conceived reboot of Ridge Racer into a FlatOut/Burnout style destruction-based racing game. It isn't half as fun as either of those games, mainly because it's incredibly difficult. Despite being based around driving aggressively and smashing into your opponents, if you crash your race is over as its unlikely you'll be able to catch up. If you smash your opponents they'll quite happily boost past you ten seconds later. So, if you screw up you have to restart the whole race, which is a time sink I really don't have any patience for. Genuinely sad to see a franchise like Ridge Racer bowing out this crappily (Type 4 for life).NULLED: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars  Okayish Vs series spinoff, but featuring anime characters I'd never heard of. Simplifies controls to just weak, medium and heavy attacks - which makes things a bit too basic for me. Plus I just didn't get on with any of the Tatsunoko characters and the final boss is a pain in the rear end if your character doesn't have a beam super. Finished it with a few Capcom characters and called it a day. NULLED: Hammerwatch  Indie Gauntlet clone that's apparently fun in multiplayer. However nobody I know wants to play it and for some reason whenever I joined one of the few remaining pubbie games the host instantly booted me. Playing it singleplayer was boring as hell, so I bailed on it.
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Oct 22, 2018 13:26
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