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 Hello Games forum! Some of you may remember that in 2017 I attempted to do a themed year of gaming. Each month was supposed to be a specific genre and I would only play games of that genre in that month. It was meant to be a way to knock my steam backlog down as it currently is huge. Issues with my PC caused me to have to cut it short in April and this was a real bummer as I had been enjoying the constraints of the challenge. 2018 came along and near November I got a hankering to do another gaming themed year for 2019. I thought about doing monthly genres again but a completely different idea crossed my head. Each week I would pick a game to start on Monday and see how far I can get. Each Sunday I would write up how much I enjoy based on what I have played, give a rating and explain whether or not I would continue on. 52 weeks, 52 games, Action 52! I am going to do my best to finish these games because somehow last week I started and completed Yakuza Kiwami (fresh off the high of Yakuza 0) and that is something younger me used to do, so perhaps I can try it again this year?  I will also be moving into a newer place in the next couple of months which will drastically increase my gaming time, so it is very possible that I will have an even fuller year of gaming! At least, this is the hope  Anyway. I have started the first game of the new year with a PS3 title I have heard lots about, made the forums gangtag of it but never gotten round to playing myself:  Look out for an update from me about this in a few days time I will also be posting a picture crop alongside each write up as a teaser for the game I will be playing the week after - and they will be tough! To make up for it, I will also be giving out $5 gift certificates for whoever guesses which game it is correctly first! Week 2 will be the following:  Good luck!
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Jan 2, 2019 11:24
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Real hurthling! posted:Yo vanquish is sick as hell my dude. Startin off with a bang. Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. LawfulWaffle posted:I'm pretty sure it isn't 2064: Read Only Memories but that keeps popping into my head when I look at it. And you win! Well done! It is 2064: Read Only Memories! I got it on PS plus and the name alone intrigued me enough to put it on the list! I will be sending you a PM for a $5 gift certificate! Perhaps a spanking new title if you wish
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Jan 2, 2019 23:18
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GAME: Vanquish TIME PLAYED: 4 hours of a possible 7 gaming hours. RATING: Oorah! QUICK THOUGHT: Pumped up, jumped up, bumped up, blitzkireg b movie! COMPLETED?: Sadly no. LONGER THOUGHTS: OK! What a way to start off the new year. I have high hopes for Action 52 and a strong will to see it through no matter what happens to my tech (I have backup games in case things go wrong with any of my systems) and originally I was not going to play anything other than PS4/PC games. It was due to my falling in love with Yakuza in the last seven weeks of 2018 that caused me to replace my PS3 for an inevitable playthrough of 3,4 and 5 (two of which I discovered I owned.) While doing so I saw Vanquish on sale for £2.99 and remembered how much I had heard it spoken about on these forums and with such reverence. I did not have a clue what it was about before the 1st of January and my only exposure was during the creation of the gangtag. Finding a few static pictures to work with, I had only a sort of idea of what it might be: Gears of War meets Halo. Well, this sort of idea was completely incorrect on my part. I have played Halo and Gears of War and neither of them combined reach half as much fun as I had with this game. I truly wish I had had more gaming time this week because it was so easy to play and so easy to have a good time. I am bad at video gaming, so any game that makes me feel badass without holding my hand gets high marks from me. Vanquish did just that. Speeding through tunnels, across metallic platforms, on my butt and coming to a halt to flip up and wail upon enemy after enemy all alongside a bunch of starship trooper like squad mates help flank me was frenetic and frantic. Sometimes I lost visual control because so many bullets and explosions were happening and the music got a bit repetitive during the fighting, but that feeling of being a super powered super solider never left. I have not played many platinum games (this, Nier:Automata and 60% of Bayonetta before I accidentally wiped my save) but their reputation for fast paced action is a deserved one! This week should have had more time for me to game within, but a few bits of life got in the way. I am going to list the potential amount of time I have to game each week as that will also show how grabbed I was. I am disappointed I did not get more time to play and this game is one I have to return to next year. The opening cut scene was horrifying and I can barely think of worse ways to go. I also, as mentioned a little earlier, got flashes of Starship Troopers as I played. This is very much a good thing as I love that film and am wondering if the cheesy, tongue in cheek dialogue between Sam and Burns is an amalgamation of those wonderful cliches. I am through and through a story kind of gamer. I love tales of terrific things, of funny fables and of sad sojourns and even if it feels as though it might be a mad old standard bit of sci-fi fare I want to know where Sam takes his wonderful suit. WEEK 1 SUCCESSES: Game enjoyed and wish to finish. WEEK 2:  WEEK 3 TEASER:  (Hopefully this is a little tougher to get!)
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Jan 6, 2019 22:41
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Seedge posted:I reckon week three is Iconoclasts. It is not, I am afraid. Rarity posted:I'm getting vague Mega Man Zero vibes but I'm sure that I wrong. Thank you! I love to write about things I like And it is not any of the mega men Samuringa posted:I was going to guess Megaman X but it can't be it. Definitely a later one, maybe a Zero or ZX. Again, none of the mega men. I think this will be very tough as I do not believe it is a well known game and I am not sure how I came to own it.
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Jan 9, 2019 11:37
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FirstAidKite posted:Is that Curse of the Crescent Isle? Afraid not LordOfTheNoobs posted:Could it be Kingsway or whatever it was called? Nope. Samuringa posted:It looks a bit like Terraria or another game that is aping SNES style mfcrocker posted:It's not Terraria, but this does make me think it might be Starbound Not Terraria or Starbound either. I may have made it too tough so if no one guesses right by Saturday, I will give a clue.
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Jan 11, 2019 13:02
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LawfulWaffle posted:I think the thing on top the totem/Easter Isle statue is a spring, so I bet it's a platformer. Wario Land 4, maybe? It is not Wario Land 4 either.
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Jan 11, 2019 14:39
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Ok I am going to give out a clue because it does seem a little too tough. It is a platformer and it is on PC.
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Jan 12, 2019 23:18
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GAME: 2064 Read Only Memories TIME PLAYED: 4 hours of a possible 5 gaming hours. RATING: Soulful. QUICK THOUGHT: San Franciscan silicon sleuths search for soul in satisfying sojourn. COMPLETED: 56% LONGER THOUGHTS: Week two began strong also! I can see Action 52 is going to make 2019 very interesting to me. I have such a bad habit of trying a hundred games at once and never sticking with things unless it really grabs me. These last few years only a few games have done that with enough grip to make me complete them. Having a strict one game a week rule is reigning in my indecision and my attention span! First of all I have a soundbar on my TV so beginning 2064 I was immediately hit with just how funky an opening it had: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjhXZ9_3vqY This is VERY much my jam. I love video game music and especially chiptune music. (It reminds me of all my time spent gaming with the NES and Megadrive). Such a strong bit of music to a really well narrated opening title put me in the mood to be the investigative journalist that the game revolves around. I was sold from the very first few notes. Not only is the music pretty great, but I thought all the voice actors lending their talents to the characters did a fantastic job. Turing (the bot that is your sidekick throughout the game) Detective Rivers and the various Neo-SF police droids were my favourite voices to listen to and each had the appropriate cadence for whom they were portraying. The vibes that the game was giving me equalled a mixture of Blade Runner, Will Smith's I Robot and classic Lucasarts Point and click games. The game is contained within a nice little box showing one scene at a time with a pretty simple to use interface. I like that a lot as I can focus on the text and the choices I am making in how to speak to people. The writing was intriguing and while I have ideas where the story is going to go, I am not sure it is going to be as easy as I think. It feels mature enough not to rely upon regular hard boiled noir/cyberpunk cliches and I do not think that the writers would cop out in such a fashion. I love solving crimes/detective type stories and this was no different. I wanted to help Turing find their creator and if I had more time, I believe I could. The art style was pretty vivid too and looked very good. I have never had issue with pixel art for games. I know it is usually used by indie developers because it is considerably easier to produce, but it never felt cheap in this game or a cost cutting measure. It fit the atmosphere that the game was going for and was consistently lush. I think this could be classed more as a visual novel than a point and click, but the distinction does not really matter. Both kinds of games are fun to me and both kinds of games will appear in Action 52 again. This was a pleasant change of pace after Vanquish and I think I am going to keep up the method of switching up game types/genres at the end of each week. WEEK 2 SUCCESSES: Had good fun, got my brain ticking over and over and mulling some sci-fi crime, and have a neat little story to return to at some point. WEEK 3:  Recursion Deluxe (Seems it was a little too tough! Let us hope that Week 4 is easier) WEEK 4 TEASER: 
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Jan 13, 2019 21:25
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Rarity posted:I'm getting late 90s early 00s pre-rendered backgrounds from this. No idea what it might be - is that a big cone-shaped head hiding behind the fence? I will give a clue out early for this one, but when I confirm the game name people are probably going to either say: "Ugh!" or "Why?" 
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Jan 13, 2019 22:14
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All good guesses but not quite correct!
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Jan 13, 2019 23:10
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Doom Goon posted:Knack!? Ugh! Why? HAH! You win!
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Jan 16, 2019 14:50
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Well the reason I picked Knack is because I think *fingers crossed* I am going to be moving to a new place that week, so something I can say I have tried/played without missing out too much incase it all goes hideously wrong. $5 title change certificate will be heading your way later tonight Doom Goon!
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Jan 16, 2019 15:48
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:As a member of the Knack Pack, I am ashamed for not recognizing those goblin fortifications I honestly thought you would guess it. I truly did and then saw your guess and thought nooooo!
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Jan 16, 2019 17:50
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Doom Goon posted:In all fairness as soon as I read VideoGames's "hint" my mind went straight to goonitude. The Knack Pack's proliferation on these forums is the only reason I got it. You will shortly be getting a PM from me with the certificate number in
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Jan 18, 2019 11:52
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GAME: Recursion Deluxe TIME PLAYED: 2 hours of a possible 2 hours. RATING: the game is the game is the game is QUICK THOUGHT: Adequately charming mind twister. COMPLETED: World 2 out of 5. LONGER THOUGHTS: Recursion Deluxe is a game I have no idea how I came to own and a perfect example of why I set up a whole year of gaming in 2017 in the first place. My steam backlog is tremendous and unfortunately I could not tell you why or where I got all these games from. A game I adore is VVVVVV. It is part of the single screen genre with a kicking soundtrack and a super simple control scheme. When I was going through my 1600+ list of steam games (yeah, I know! What on earth?!) I got echoes of VVVVVV from seeing the trailer to Recursion Deluxe. It is a game where the screen you are on is unmoving and the only thing you will see for each level. As such going to either edge transports you to the flipside edge, like in the classic Nokia 3210 game snake. The music is chiptune and is serviceable. Nothing stood out to me and I do listen to a lot of chiptune soundtracks. Visually it looks fine too. I can tell what is what, and it has a rich sort of 16bit look to it. Luckily the controls are on point as well. One of the things I like least about many platformers are floaty and non responsive controls. I would say I rank responsive platformer controls higher than any other genre. The actual levels do a good job with the difficulty. They start off quite simple and as you become more familiar with what to expect they start to mix up the movement and platforming. There is no story so the game is purely about the mechanics with different looking worlds/enemies. If you like the first few levels then I am sure you will like the next few. I did have fun. It did not blow my socks off or set my world on fire but I feel I got enough out of the game to add it to my 'Finished' list. I do not finished every game I play and once I feel I have derived enough from it I will gladly stop playing it rather than force myself to 100%. It has taken many years to get to this point of view but I urge more people to put down those games they dislike and not spend their time forcing them to do things. WEEK 3 SUCCESSES: Using the PC for gaming again, dusting off those single screen neurons that usually go unused. Got my fill satisfactorily. WEEK 4:  Knack! Actually, picking Knack (a game with a very apathetic reputation) is a plus for me as I am supposed to be moving this week. I am not losing too much time by picking it. Consequently, moving is going to bump up that possible hours number into the tens! So start seeing some more lengthy games appear! WEEK 5 TEASER: 
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Jan 21, 2019 10:58
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Ha, nice answers but I will give a clue. It is free to play for the base but can buy a couple of large expansion packs to play the whole thing.
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Jan 21, 2019 18:19
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Pablo Nergigante posted:In that case I'm going to guess that it's a game elf help book should have guessed, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone. You are 100% correct! I had seen In Training mention it a few times in the general chat thread and thought it might be nice to try!
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Jan 22, 2019 09:26
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Hi Everyone! Sorry for the delay. I moved on the 26th and have been without internet since! It came back to me today, and is rather speedy, coupled with my lovely new place this means gaming can occur drastically more again. I stupidly forgot to sign into the PS4 before I left so my PS Plus license for Knack was unable to be updated and as such I never got round to playing it. Instead, these past two weeks I have been playing a completely different game which will get a write up on Sunday in Knack's place
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Feb 6, 2019 23:12
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 GAME: Resident Evil II Remake TIME PLAYED: 20 hours out of 20 hours. RATING: That guy's a maniac! Why'd he bite me? QUICK THOUGHT: GOTY 2019. COMPLETED?: Claire A Scenario, 75% Leon B Scenario. LONGER THOUGHTS INCLUDING SPOILERS: Good grief! OK. Firstly, many apologies for the delay. This was unintentional and entirely my own fault at forgetting to reup my PS Plus licenses on my PS4. As such Knack and Hatsune have been bumped back to Week 7. I will play them and I will experience them! I will make sure 52 games are played this year!! Anyway Resident Evil 2 Remake is hands down the best Resident Evil game ever made and is going to be my GOTY 2019 barring some miracle. It is wild just how great and good this game is and I have nothing but awe, admiration and respect for all those developers who worked on it. This is going to be a huge gush but I think it totally deserves it. Before playing this, my favourite Resident Evil was the second. The clever use of two different branching paths telling the full story was something I had never seen before. Same with the level of motion capture in the CGI (I used to be absolutely blown away by how real the car and fluid movements of Leon and Claire in the opening and dare I say, it still looks decent in this modern age.) Resident Evil 2 Remake is the Tomb Raider Anniversary of remakes. (As with that, my favourite Tomb Raider was the first, then Anniversary snatched that mantle by being.) and this is everything I could have wanted for a re-imagining. Both of them take the great story line of the original and the feel and atmosphere and upgrade it. The love shown to the source material is so apparent as this is not a quick port of an original made to run on newer hardware but the creation of a tribute that holds the original close to its heart. The game feels so familiar to me, yet is completely different. The setting is undoubtedly the same, but making your way through it means you need to discard all those vivid memories of the original. I chose to use the original soundtrack (I love the theme that plays in the save rooms and the main hall of RPD) and this heightened my discomfort in a good way. I am uneasy due to the sheer level of familiarity with the subject but that it is unfolding in a different fashion makes me confused and more likely to make mistakes. I really do appreciate that and think the game is stronger for it. I wish it could have been granted to all people who own the game, not just DLC. The engine is stunning. Hands down nothing is lost from moving away from the tank controls of the original. Controlling Claire and Leon feels good and very tight. If I mess up with aiming and shooting then it is always my fault and not the game. The way it deals with light sources and weather ups the creep factor. In fact, the first time walking down a corridor with the windows blown open, the wind and rain coming in through and my tiny flashlight illuminating patches of the walls and floors was immersive in so many ways. It did not help that shortly after, Mr X. stuck his head through a door and started to chase me which caused a rather loud shriek followed by me turning and running into a bench. Sounds design is also top notch. The ambient patter, the footsteps of all characters, the moans of the zombies, the echoing of Mr. X stomping all around the RPD. Everything has detail and care put into it and the whole of it enhances the feeling of the game. There were many times I had to put the controller down for just a moment as I was getting scared to continue. I love that about it. Any game that makes me feel the extreme emotions (love, fear, sadness, joy, etc...) gets bonus marks. I love to be scared in video games and Resident Evil 2 Remake did this. I played for 20 hours (in the week that I could when not moving all my stuff around) and I was so into it that I managed to get nearly 3/4 through a full A and B scenario run. It never felt unfair and all the puzzles were as mind bending as I like. Getting through some of them gave my little eureka moments and I always prefer to figure things out without help. That I was able to do the first scenario completely alone gave me a real confidence boost. This is a slick and stylish game with amazing visuals, wonderful sound, killer story and fantastic controls and I urge anyone who likes action based horror games that has not experienced the original to come and see what all the fuss is about. Some Random Thoughts Because I Have So Many: - The lab with Plant 43 was excellent, and walking into that observatory to see the scientist pinned against the glass was so cinematic. - Even though the previous bad acting is gone, the replaced stuff is wonderful. Irons is so creepy and the section with him and Sherry was tense and well done. - Claire feels as badass as Leon did in the original. They absolutely beefed up her agency and character and she is now as cool as Jill Valentine! - That scene in the jail with Leon and Ben had me wincing. This engine allows for some brutal animations. - All cut-scenes are ace. That moment you first find a licker victim gives me the willies! - There had better be a remake of Nemesis. That is my second favourite and could easily use the same engine/locale in much the way the original did. - Those g embryos are one of the grossest things I have seen in video games (along with the newer juicy Birkin) and walking through the sewers was a constant battle with my own fear. - Mr. X was more annoying in scenario B because I just wanted to get on with things and he kept crashing my party! Still kept me on my toes and would scare me way more than scenario A. - Please remake Nemesis! WEEK 4,5,6 SUCCESSES: Finished an A scenario, most of a B scenario and hunger for more! Will have to come back to this because goodness it is incredible! WEEK 7:  &  I owe it to both of them! WEEK 8 TEASER: 
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Feb 11, 2019 11:25
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I understand what you are saying but one of my problems is liking a game and sitting on it thinking about playing more than doing so. Giving myself a deadline is great because I know I have this amount of time to play and not get distracted. Think of it as a different kind of games review system - I have my Sunday evening/Monday morning deadline to write up each game regardless of how far I have come. I know it seems weird, but it is working for me to make me get off my butt and play things. I am hoping that by doing this more and more I get a good routine and can start finishing games again. Besides, if I DO finish a game in a week (now possible due to more time) then I will go back to one of the ones I really liked from this year
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Feb 11, 2019 13:39
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Hello friends. I have been very unwell this last week. It has thrown everything out of whack, annoyingly. As such I am slightly changing the way I do this. No longer is it 52 games, 52 weeks, but 52 games as long as it takes, with posts about how it is going! I was not expecting the move to be followed so soon by getting ill and it wrecking my plans. It is nearly four weeks of mess in the gaming plans and has pretty much removed a whole month from the plan. As such I am changing it up. I had 52 games to play and I will. Instead I am going to play them and stick to one until I complete it or am satisfied that I have gotten enough from it that I can. Also I am going to share the games here in advance so you know what to expect! So firstly let us get back to Knack, Hatsune Miku and the other game I played while I was poorly.  GAME: Knack QUICK RATING: The Blox to Crash Bandicoot's Lego QUICK THOUGHT: Unremarkable. GAME %: Stopped at level 4-3. LONGER THOUGHTS: The PS4 thread likes to joke about Knack and goodness knows I have changed the thread title to include some of them over ten times since I have been reading it but I had never actually experienced it other than the occasional screenshot or paragraph from CharlieFoxTrot or from when I went looking for images to make the Knack Pack gang tag. My life was Knackless and Knacky free. So I sat down with Lady VG and I gave it a go and I have to same I am warmly indifferent. There is nothing bad about Knack at all. However there is nothing outstanding. When I think of average games, I think Knack is there. It is fine to control, has a decent art style, serviceable dialogue performed perfunctorily and a regular video game story. It managed to hold my attention for a few hours and I stopped at the beginning of chapter 4-4. I looked it up after the fact and found out the game has 13 chapters in total, but I felt as though I got my fill from what I played. It is strange for a game to be so average to me with nothing standing out on either end. The worst I could say was that it got quite bizarrely difficult in certain situations but dying never felt like being penalised as the section you are on just restarts. I might not fully understand Knack, but I can say I now know Knack. --  GAME: Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Tone QUICK RATING: Weekender Tapper QUICK THOUGHT: Beat slapping my memories of Parappa the Rapper. GAME %: Easy to a good degree on both songs. LONGER THOUGHTS: I forgot just how bad I am at these kinds of games. When I say bad, I mean I press the wrong button once and my whole composure comes crashing down like a house of marbles. I have tried similar games such as Parapper the Rapper, OSU and the Yakuza karaoke/disco mini games but I just flail in a blind panic when more than two notes appear at the same time. I am not sure what it is about timing of button pushes but it persists through to quick time events as well. My mind freezes up when I have to push a certain button at a certain time and more often than not I will slip up. Having said that I did not need to force myself to play this. I enjoyed the two demo songs and thought they were quite catchy tunes (Weekender Girl more so). The game is a good looking one in terms of how clear it is to follow but I feel like it would be more fun at an arcade than using a DS4. I always thought people playing DDR on their PCs were losing out a little of the magic of the foot pads. I did not spend oodles on time on this, but I did spend enough to get a semi decent score on the two demo tracks. It took a ton of replaying them but I never got to the point where I thought I would have the skill to go further than easy. This style of game, while fun, is just a little too beyond me. -- COMPLETED: Yes! Claire A/Leon B with B Rankings for both. MORE THOUGHTS: I had originally been down to play Heat Signature this week but due to my illness I could not bring myself to sit at my PC. I spent the majority of the time on the couch and I had a longing to finish the Leon B scenario. The only reason I had been putting it off was having to run around Mr X constantly while trying to get to the bookshelf. At that point in RPD I was not scared of him, he was just a nuisance. I am glad I continued because he most definitely became scary again! It was a real treat to see the true ending of the game and finishing it is what lead me to change the nature of this year. (It also means I am going to go back and finish Vanquish and 2064 ReadOnlyMemories, but not quite yet.) Resident Evil 2 is a masterpiece and a game I am glad to own. The free DLC that just came out is a great little bit of side content and really does surprise me that it is free. Could Capcom be making a comeback of sorts? Time will tell! I am going to split this post in two with the next one being the list of Games I am playing and the current one I have started with initial thoughts. Thank you for those who followed and I hope you continue to do so!
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Feb 26, 2019 12:45
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The Amazing Game List: This is not in play order, this is the list I went through and collated prior to the start of the event. I just put the first games I played as the opening entries. 01. Vanquish (PS3 - returning to). 02. 2064 ReadOnlyMemories (PS4 - returning to). 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PS4) 08. Spacechem (PC) 09. Monkey Island 2 (PC) 10. Nioh (PS4) 11. Darkest Dungeon (PC) 12. Alpha Protocol (PC) 13. Heat Signature (PC) 14. Outlast (PS4) 15. Infamous Second Sun (PS4) 16. Tearaway Unfolded (PS4) 17. Weckfest (PC) 18. Cyber City 2157 (PC) 19. Cloudbuilt (PC) 20. Transistor (PS4) 21. Mirror's Edge Catalyst (PS4) 22. Legend of Korra (PS4) 23. Hitman (PS4) 24. LISA (PC) 25. Kerbal Space Program (PC) 26. Art of Murder - FBI Confidential (PC) 27. SOMA (PS4) 28. Oxenfree (PS4) 29. Road Redemption (PC) 30. Fat Princess Adventures (PS4) 31. Prey (PC) 32. Until Dawn (PS4) 33. Unreal Tournament 3 (PC) 34. Rebel Galaxy (PS4) 35. Streets of Rogue (PC) 36. MGSV (PS4) 37. Black the Fall (PC) 38. The Sexy Brutale (PC) 39. Ys (PS4) 40. Wipeot Omega (PS4) 41. Onrush (PS4) 42. Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PS4) 43. Soma (PS4) 44. Necropolis (PS4) 45. Starcraft II (PC) 46. Riven (PC) 47. Skyrim VR (PS4) 48. Mount and Blade Warband (PS4) 49. Driver San Francisco (PC) 50. Sleeping Dogs (PS4) 51. Escape Goat 2 (PC) 52. Kentucky Route Zero (PC) As you can see I have a mix of all kinds of things! These are all games I have had an inkling to play at some point but never gotten round to and I would like to scratch them off my lists. Some look short and sweet and some (like the current one) are going to take me ages, but with the change up in how this goes I will make it my mission to play these games and give them a fair shake! --  CURRENT GAME: Witcher 3. Now this I have played four or so hours before back in august of 2017. I think something else got in the way because I just stopped. I did like what I was doing and have been thinking about returning ever since and now that I am in a place where I can focus on the gaming aspect I have the time and the environment to dedicate to it. So I am going to complete the Witcher 3 and both expansions. It took me 75 hours to do 56% of Horizon Zero Dawn and I see most people saying the Witcher 3 takes roughly 150 hours. I have a feeling I might be doubling this and then some if it goes the way of other games! So far I am in White Orchard and I am playing my Geralt as a gruff but fair sort of dude. I have no idea how I am supposed to be with him, but my first choice of not asking for payment at the guy being attacked by a Griffin allowed me to be given free food at an inn! I shall see where this goes from here on in!
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Feb 26, 2019 13:11
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I am utterly ashamed I missed this.
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Feb 26, 2019 15:49
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Rarity posted:Congrats on the rest of this thread being The Witcher 3 I promise to make sure I go through all the games and not get bogged down just with Geralt! I have high desires to play all those games on my list
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Feb 26, 2019 16:06
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Good heavens! It has been a while! However, some bad news. I did not finish Witcher, in fact, I did not get round to Witcher as something else took over. I have completed 3 other games and am midway through two completely different games so far! So let us get into it and a quadruple post from me!  GAME: Prey QUICK RATING: System Shock III out of III QUICK THOUGHT: Holy moly I love being scared in space GAME %: Completed! LONGER THOUGHTS: Prey is System Shock III. It is quite literally the kind of space RPG that my mind always invents when I think of the wonderful times I had playing System Shock II and wondered about how a sequel to that would play out. I am amazed at the level of detail, the level of story and the level of engagement that Prey contains. It has been a long, long time since a game has scared me so thoroughly while not letting me pull myself away from it. Often when I am scared in games I will quickly quit and need to relax for a moment. I can think of a few moments in games where this happens and it is usually the same thing causing it: small creatures that run around like spiders and jump for your face. Playing the Half Life games is an exercise in hearing me shriek and there will never be a day when I can calmly deal with head crabs. I panic and flail trying to counter them and it ends up causing me more distress. The same exact events happen in Prey and the lovely little mimics. It does not help me that they resemble the poisonous head crabs of half life 2, it does not help that they zip around and are something else in the room ready to jump it and it does not help that they manage to scare me every time. I love it. I absolutely adore having emotional reactions to things! Fear, sadness, love, joy, all of these things came about through my play through of Prey. I was so engaged with the story and what was happening, but not just the main quest, but all the little things involving the other members of the crew. I searched for people just so I could say they were at rest. I looked for secrets around the place and discovered so much about the lives of those living on the station. I got sad at the romances cut down by the alien life forms, and I made sure to be as good as possible. I got quite a few achievements that I do not think I would have if I had been playing like I normally do in videogames. Prey sucked me in and I played for 29 hours over 3 days. This does not happen to me often and the last time I was so engaged was during Horizon Zero Dawn and Yakuza 0. It took me by surprise in multiple places and one thing that cannot be overstated is that if you think you can do it in game, then there is a 95% chance you can. I wanted to see if I could use one of my weapons to get to a place and avoid an area and it easily let me. This opened my mind to trying out so many other things that would otherwise not have crossed my imagination and gave me so much more interactivity. If you enjoy FPS games with RPG tangents in a sci-fi setting full of creepy enemies and a gorgeously detailed space station, then please play Prey. It is amazing. It is one of the best games I have ever played and will be jamming itself into my top 10 of all time. RANDOM THOUGHTS: - Really impressed how the levels felt like a place people would actually live in. It was not gamefied like a lot of places such as Bioshock. You would walk round these gorgeous looking places in Rapture but you could not really imagine there being a society living there. Prey was the opposite. Locales and details had meaning in the world it was set. - One of the quests had me bummed out because I had gotten invested into the characters so much. I cannot stress how well I thought the fleshing out of the crew was. - I barely had any typhon powers except for the one that allowed me to rescue humans under mind control and object mimicry. I did not realise there was an achievement for saving all humans and not killing a single one until it popped up. I cannot imagine doing a run the other way! - Whatever they make next I am so onboard! - The music was phenomenal and I have not stopped listening to ‘Everything Will Be Alright’ since I made it my wake up alarm - The first time I was attacked by a nightmare it absolutely chilled me to the bone, and somehow I was able to turn into a coffee cup and roll away before it found me again! Very panicky!
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Jun 21, 2019 15:31
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 GAME: Spider-Man QUICK RATING: Spectacular! QUICK THOUGHT: The Superior Spider-Man Game! GAME %: Completed LONGER THOUGHTS: Now this is a game I was loving and just stopped playing (this happened with the other completed game I will be bringing up afterwards) and much like the other one I could not tell you why. This game is a joy to play. It is really rare that games based on super-heroes turn out well, there just seems to be something lost in between the comic pages and the page files. Rocksteady’s Arkham series proved that it was possible to make a slick, inventive super-hero game that stays true to the roots of the character it is portraying. Spider-Man does the exact same for me and I think I would even say that it is the best super-hero game I have played. It is a lot like an Ubisoft open world game with mini missions, collectables, tasks and icons littering a wonderfully exaggerated recreation of New York but none of it is a chore and this is due to one specific thing that they 100% nailed down: the web slinging. The web slinging in the game is unlike any kind of in game movement I have experienced before. (I know there is a spider-man game that was praised for the web slinging it had, but I have not played it before so have nothing to compare it to.). The web slinging in this is honed to perfection and while the city of New York is large and sprawling, zipping across it is never anything than fast and beautiful sky ballet! There were times I would often just swing around aimlessly because it was so much fun to get up to a max speed and dart between towers. The absolute confidence in movement in this game lead the collectathons to be simple and I did the whole backpack tracking within my first couple of hours playing the game. I wish there had been more! The music swells as you move and is so pleasantly dynamic with the speed you are going that it almost makes you feel like spider-man. The story packed a ton of things inside it, but not once did I feel overloaded. It also did some pretty special things with the regular menagerie of villains and I will be very intrigued to see where it goes. What an Amazing Success! RANDOM THOUGHTS: - We have all seen the movies and read the comics or have cultural osmosis, but even still I did not want Doc Ock to turn. I rooted for him the whole way through and that reveal near the end where he told Peter he had always known he was Spider-man was genuinely moving. - The voice of Doctor Octavius was William Saylers who also does Rigby from Regular Show. Often during his moments with Peter I would smile because I would be thinking of how Hamboning might save my life one day! - Really loved the backpack grabbing, the photo ops and the little lab research mini games with the spectrum analysis and pipe dream like power rerouting. - The literal comic book suit that you can unlock is absolutely incredible and I could not get over how well animated it was. I wish I had had it from the very start, also that I could apply a similar comic style to the villains. I would love a whole game in that art style! - I still cannot believe insomniac studios went from Sunset Overdrive to this. - I also really enjoyed Mary Jane having autonomy and doing her own thing. I thought the little diversions as her were a nice break from the pace. - They really fleshed out all of the characters and those who did not get much screen time I hope get a lot more next time round! It is tough to juggle a ton of characters but they succeeded. - I had never heard of Mr. Negative before and found him a bit lacking, but thank goodness we have Doc Ock to take over. The fight with the sinister six was fantastic and jumping after electro round the raft in the cartoon suit was perfect comic book action.
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Jun 21, 2019 15:31
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 GAME: God of War QUICK RATING: Boy! That was astounding! QUICK THOUGHT: How to make me detest a fun marvel character in 30 easy hours. GAME %: Completed LONGER THOUGHTS: I had never played the other God of War games, had no idea what they were about (other than third person brawlers) and I grabbed this game because I had been having real fun with the other playstation exclusives. What I got is possibly one of the best looking games I have experienced with a healthy dose of fun combat brawling and edge of seat story telling. I had a similar experience with this that I had with Horizon Zero Dawn and Prey. However it did not kick in till I picked it up again. Like Spider-Man I played a lot then stopped (I think it was around the time I moved house) and forgot to pick it up again! The perils of having a full 2TB PS4 and bad memory about what I have to play! I am so glad I took it back up after Spider-Man and finished it off. The story had always been intriguing but it really started to ramp up and I got the point where I just had to know and understand all these questions I had! From what I can gather it pulls a pretty accurate, but at the same time unique, twist on a lot of Norse mythology incorporating it into a telling of the stories of yore. I knew Kratos was Greek and that he had a beef with the Greek gods, so I am not sure how he is in the nine realms but it did not matter. I was sucked in and wanted to absorb everything I could about the meticulous world I was playing in. It has an extremely simple goal and so much fun on the way there that I really appreciated it was not some world ending plot to stop armageddon, but a grounded tale of the exploration of father and son. I was emotionally there despite not having any children myself. I wanted Kratos and Atreus to bond and to come to an understanding and I think the team behind the game truly succeeded in making an approachable myth of their own. I was not expecting to complete 3 fantastic games in quick succession but it happened! RANDOM THOUGHTS: - I could sit in that boat and listen to the stories of old times forever and ever. The dialogue was fascinating and I just wanted to learn all that I could about the gods. - Wow. Kudos for a game being able to make me dislike Thor and Odin as much as Ted Faro. I did not see that coming! - The sound is so weighty and rich. The noise of the axe returning to your hand is a truly satisfying clunk, especially on a great sound system! - Again, the visuals are amazing. Everything looks beautiful and had I owned an HDR compatible TV I am sure I would have been even more blown away. - The ‘one take’ style is interesting and pretty nifty, it does mean 0 loading screens (or very cleverly hidden loading screens) so I can appreciate the technical aspects of it. - The noise of the world serpent is up there in my favourite sounds list, along with the T-Rex roar from Jurassic Park, the War of the Worlds Tripod noise and this instrument sound that I have no idea what is called and can never explain properly. - Baldur and Freya mirroring a more distorted version of Atreus and Kratos was something I liked a lot. It also made perfect sense that Freya would be angry with Kratos as you just know that Kratos would have allowed Atreus to do the same thing to him. He might have trouble showing it, but there is real love behind his actions/words that he does not quite know how to express. - I love those dwarves! - The story Kratos told about Atreus’ name was perfect and such a touching moment to capstone everything they had gone through. I cannot laud the emotional beats in the story enough.
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Jun 21, 2019 15:32
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And finally: Is what I am currently playing. I am on the 6th Colossus and this is my first time with it. So far I have nothing but praise. It has been interesting and staggeringly haunting! I am typing up thoughts in the PS4 thread while I am playing but currently, the whole thing is sitting uneasily with me! I do not get that these creatures are bad, and this happened after being hit by those strange black tendrils after killing the first colossus. I shall see where this game takes me!  This is the other game that I am in the middle of. I have done a ton of the map and am currently stuck on the Dung Warrior guy. It is a really tough game, with oh so ethereal music! The controls are ace, the design is luscious, I am just not that good at it I am going to try to finish it though!
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Jun 21, 2019 15:37
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 13:56 |
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Samuringa posted:Welcome back, Commander. Oh my heavens I am SO SO down for this! What on earth? Please! Let me buy it now!
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Jun 22, 2019 23:59
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