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Sort of. They're actually

space aliens that were once the greek gods.

Well, they're also

all the other gods throughout history

too, right?

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Oh yeah, I also recently finished Donkey Kong for Game Boy. It was very interesting. It starts off with the first 4 regular levels from the arcade and then continues 96 levels off of that full of puzzle solving platformer goodness. The controls and physics stay the same as the original Donkey Kong arcade (well except Mario can now do a bunch of gymnastics shit).

It was pretty tough, but always interesting. Fresh obstacles and new puzzles kept coming every few levels. The only problem is you can only save your game every four levels, so the game tended to be exhausting when one or two of those levels is tough. It took a month or two of bite size chunks to get around to finishing it. It's definitely an interesting Nintendo experience if no one has messed with it yet. I hear it's sort of the precursor to Mario vs. Donkey Kong, but I've only played the GBA one years ago briefly, so I can't say for sure.

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Decided to finish the main story line of Just Cause 2, completed it at 40% with about 33 hours on the clock. And just as I expected, this game is just about messing around and having fun. I'm probably going to continue finishing the faction missions. Unlike in the previous games the optional faction missions are quite often unique and almost on the same level as the main story missions.

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Well, they're also

all the other gods throughout history

too, right?

Quite possibly. My brain couldn't comprehend the italian they were speaking, the words I had to read, AS WELL as the absurdity of it all. I just sat there, mouth agape, thinking "whatthehell" over and over.

To be fair, I did lose track of the plot quite a lot earlier in the game. After you assassinate

the guy who killed his family

I had no idea why I was killing the next bunch of dudes.

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Towards the end of Assassin's Creed II I was anticipating that things would become totally ridiculous soon, so when the total ridiculousness finally kicked in, instead of "What the hell is this?" I was thinking "Yey.. I beat a game" and paid very little attention what actually happened. Still, the ending was a bit worse than I had expected.. and my expectations were very low already.

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Well, they're also

all the other gods throughout history

too, right?

They may have been. I just remember that they had

the names of Greek gods when Ezio met them.

Beat Operation: Anchorage tonight, as predicted. Started on Point Lookout, which is the last of the expansion content that I haven't played. I'm really interested to see what the play time on my final save file will be. I've left a bunch of areas in the capital wasteland undiscovered, mostly in the Northwest, but I've tried to go everywhere on foot in all but the most extreme circumstances and play it almost more like a survivalist sim game than as a plot-based RPG. I've now finished, in order the main game, Broken Steel, the Pitt, Mothership Zeta, and Operation Anchorage.

There's been no rhyme or reason to the order I've been playing the expansions in, but I've actually really enjoyed all of them for different reasons. I've been a little bummed out by each of them as well (Broken Steel retcon-ing the ending, the Pitt being incredibly repetitive, Zeta being full of glitches, Anchorage being so damn linear, and Lookout having a map that looks huge until you realize that you can cross it in like a 10 minute walk) but that's only one complaint per expansion. For the most part, it's just been me getting my hopes up too high. Except the glitches in Zeta. That completely pissed me off and was not my own fault. When I have to reload the final mission 12 times so that my allies' AI doesn't bug out and have them flee back to the starting area in the middle of unlocking an otherwise-impassible door, I start to get pissed off. I'm fairly certain I'll be finished my Fallout 3 time by the end of the weekend, and that's making me more sad than I thought it would. I'm getting that feeling Chris talked about with Trine where you see the part of a book in your right hand getting smaller and smaller and start to feel depressed about it. That said, I don't know if I'll be doing New Vegas right away when it comes out. I may need to take some time to get Fallout 3 out of my system before hopping back into the engine for more questing.

EDIT: A day later, and I'm done. I don't want to play Starcraft 2 at work as I won't be online and can't get achievements (I know, I know. It's kind of a stupid reason) so I think the next PC game on my list will be to finally wrap up Dawn of War 2. My problems with Point Lookout as described in parentheses earlier held, but I still really liked my entire Fallout 3 experience. It felt really weird to never see end credits though. The thing with the expansion content is that it makes it look like the endgame isn't actually an endgame. I know there aren't anymore quests, but the game didn't really let me know it. I don't know if I'm ready to uninstall it, but I know I'm done the game. It's weird. Oh well.

Edited by miffy495

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Guys, help me out here.

I know the official title is Assassin's Creed, but surely it should be Assassins' Creed? It's a Creed of Assassins, not just one Assassin, isn't it?!

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Actually, I just beat Assassin's Creed II myself, and yeah... the ending is SOOO stupid!

I hate the fact that the Templars are responsible FOR EVERY SINGLE EVENT IN HISTORY EVER, the fact that humans are some creation from some alien race and that now we have to prevent some solar flare from killing us....

And what with that scene where Altair impregnates a Templar chick? What's was the significance of that? I also hate that Altair seemed to become more badass AFTER the first game takes place... He invented guns 500 years before they where supposed to?

I really hope Assassin's Creed III takes place in Victorian London, it's either that or it will be in the "present" with Desmond? :hah:

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I don't know if backlog games count, but I just beat Blood 2 a day ago.

The game feels like it's the dry run for Monolith before they reached FPS greatness during the NOLF era. It has some nice touches; the weapons and some of the dialogue, but everything else comes off as so god damn generic. The story could have opened the gameplay up to all kinds of interesting touches, but it can't quite leave its roots in keycard shooters behind (basically it's a fanboy dream: the first game but with better graphics). I suppose I'm saying this in a post Half-life/Half-life2 age of linear shooters (and more than a decade on) and I can't give it a fair shake as I've been influenced by newer, better games, but I can't help but feel that way. Not that I didn't enjoy it or I feel ripped of, it just won't stick with me past this week.

Mind you I haven't been holding on to the game for 12 years, I bought if off GOG whenever they picked it up for distribution and just started it a week ago.

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During my trip to Japan I played through three mobile phone games.

Doom RPG by Fountainhead Studios that is now part of id Mobile division.

Orcs & Elves II by the same Fountainhead Studios

Edge by Mobigame. Yes, this is the famous game that has been haunted by Tim Langdell and his idiotic copyright lawsuits.

All these were played on Nokia S60 platform on Nokia E51 phone, so screen is tiny, but the games were great!

Doom RPG I've wanted to play for years and it took me about six hours in total. Very nice game and it felt like mixture of Doom, Doom II and Doom³.

Orcs & Elves II I finished in 3h 15min. It was quite surprisingly short game, I played the original much longer on my DS couple of years ago, though the DS version was enhanced version of the original of course.

Edge was awesome, I got that for free from Nokia Ovi Store. They had it on display for awhile for free and now it costs 3€. This game works so nicely, the later levels are superchallenging and took a lot of time and deaths to finish. My wife played this on a touchscreen Nokia phone and the game play was very different with the gyro than when using the directional pad.

I don't know if backlog games count, but I just beat Blood 2 a day ago.

...

Mind you I haven't been holding on to the game for 12 years, I bought if off GOG whenever they picked it up for distribution and just started it a week ago.

I've always felt that I don't want to use multiple download services. I've chosen Steam, but GOG seems to have so much good stuff like Blood games there. Is it worth it to take the jump to the unknown someday and start using also GOG and not only Steam?

Steam has more new games and not so much golden oldies, but GOG seems to have all kinds of stuff and the prices are certainly not bad?

Edited by Kolzig

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I use 2, GOG and Steam. I don't mind that at all. The overlap is minimal, and the GOG collection is well worth it for what it carries. It's incredibly easy to use and really nice about just keeping everything you buy together for as long as you may want to download it. Also, optimization for Windows 7/Vista is nice.

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That'll do it for Dawn of War 2. I think I'm going to start on Mafia 1 before doing the Chaos Rising stuff. Between DOW and Starcraft 2, all I've been playing lately is strategy, and I'd like to try and play Mafia before the sequel comes out in a couple of weeks. I should at least be able to put a good dent in it.

Oh, and completion time for Fallout 3 and all expansions was just over 66 hours, for anyone considering doing the same thing. I promised earlier I'd mention how long it took, and had forgotten to.

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I beat BioShock 2 on Tuesday night. Overall I thought it was quite good :tup:. I got a chuckle out of Schrödinger the cat and the cans of Gaynor Peaches.

I played on Normal without Vita-Chambers, so early in the game I dreaded the Big Sister fights. Later on, after some research, and plasmid and tonic upgrades, they weren't as tough. Similar for the Alpha Series. The fight near the end

against multiple Big Sisters at once

was pretty intense.

Some people have complained the audio logs in this one are all about the main story, whereas the first BioShock had some logs that were incidental to the main story. I don't really have a preference either way (both ways have their merits). Regardless, what was their was very well done. Hearing peoples earlier motivations, then meeting them and seeing how they've changed was interesting.

I have zero interest in the multiplayer, so I didn't try that, and the protector trials doesn't sound terribly interesting either, but more story would be cool, so I will probably pick up Minerva's Den when it's out.

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Playing Diablo 1 for the first time, only just started though, the music is amazing and the atmosphere is still pretty creepy.

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Finished Uncharted 2

I think naughty dog pretty much created a perfect sequel. This game is almost exactly Uncharted 1, but with a different story/adventure. This also means it has the same flaws and the first games. Aiming is still a major annoyance. They however did a better job in level design. The chest high walls are not as obvious as the previous games (or most of the other games with a cover mechanism). The puzzles/platforming segments are still quite simple and sometimes tedious. And I really wish there was more adventuring, more opportunity to explore and enjoy the gorgeous environments.

The boss battle was a tedious and annoying part, and probably the worst part of the whole game.

Because I didn't play Uncharted 2 yet in 2009 I obviously didn't pick it as my GOTY. But now that I've played it, Batman: Arkham Asylum is still my 2009 GOTY.

I'm looking forward to a 3rd Nathan Drake adventure.

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I just beat Jak: The Last Frontier in "Hero mode", "inspired" by Ratchet's challenge mode.... The series is somehow a Ratchet knock-off, but I really enjoyed it non the less, I only wish it had a guide so I could get 100%...

I couldn't stomach the other Jak games being so vehicle heavy, but I didn't mind at all that this was plane based... which is kinda ripping off Ratchet's spaceship sections? :erm:

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Mafia. In anticipation of the sequel in a couple of weeks, I blasted through the 8 year old first game in about 4 sittings. I'm a bit torn about it. Holy shit is this game old and clunky. Part of it is probably that the graphics were actually very good for their time (looking slightly better than San Andreas, which was a couple of years later) so the mechanics being as dated as they are is even more off-putting. The difficulty peaked somewhere around mission 10, which is halfway through the game. This had me swearing like hell at my computer (I really can't remember being this pissed off at a game in a long, LONG time) for a while, then finding the last half of the game really easy. It's that messed up difficulty curve that is probably the worst thing about the game. The rest of it I enjoyed quite a bit. The voice acting was hit and miss, but the story was generally pretty good. It was also really refreshing to play a prohibition-era game. Smuggling whiskey was a really damn cool thing to have the player doing, and really helped remind me of exactly where and when I was. Also, the epilogue was really good. Except for

the gangster who comes to shoot Tommy calling him "Mr. Angelo" when he comes up to him, about 30 seconds after Tommy saying that after testifying against the Mafia he was given a new name by the government.

I really liked this game, but it came with more frustration than I'd ordinarily have put up with. Beware, those who are considering playing it. Still, a good experience overall.

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Finished Twilight Princess. Not much to say that hasn't been already said. It was a good game, with some realy annoying quirks that Zelda games commonly have. Like, not being able to jump, or making precise jumps.

Still, it was a really tight, well paced 30 hours.

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If I remember that my first playthrough took me about 70 hours to finish and after that I spent another 40 on the second one.

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I remain on an incredible tear. Bioshock 2 has been completed now. It was really a game of ups and downs for me. There were a few moments of mind-blowing awesome such as

the flooding of Dionysus Park or playing as a little sister

but also far too many moments that feel like they could have been pulled straight off the cutting floor from Bioshock. Overall, I quite liked it, and I think I actually preferred the endgame to that of Bioshock, which kind of lost its steam after the big reveal. I liked that the twist was

that there was no twist. Everyone was pretty much who they presented themselves to you at the start. After the way Bioshock handled itself, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. That it never did was perhaps an even bigger surprise

.

The one major complaint I have is that, with one exception contained in the above spoiler tags, the underwater segments were a tonne of potential with almost no payoff. They were linear corridors from one airlock to another with no combat, no exploration, and the only optional thing to do harvesting those creepy Adam slugs. I really wish they'd been used to greater effect. Make me find my way. Throw an angry octopus on my tail that I have to fight off with my drill or something. There's a whole damn ocean out there, so why was I put on a claustrophobia-inducing narrow path of coral that happened to lead straight to where the next section of indoor game was? Bummed me out to see so much promise in the concept wasted like that.

Also, that game was freaking hard. I've never dropped down the difficulty after starting a game before, but Bioshock 2 made me do it for the first time. Goddamn big sisters were still fucking terrifying even on the lower difficulty level.

Still, good game, and mechanically an improvement over Bioshock. Unfortunately, it's impossible to recreate the "wow" feeling that kept me going through most of the first game, but the sequel had a few points that really did keep me motivated, even though a disappointing amount of it felt pretty same-y.

EDIT: Holy hell, I just looked at a text file I've been keeping of games that I've finished this year. I have 31 games on there. 36 if you count all the expansions for Fallout 3. Considering this is a year in which I am working full time, spending a lot of time with my girlfriend, finished my honours degree, and made the Dean's list, that's fucking ridiculous. I'm feeling very accomplished, even though it's just vidja games. (although, in fairness, 11 of those are Sam and Max episodes [from my replay of the earlier two seasons and what has been released of the new one], so they're pretty short.)

Edited by miffy495

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I just beat Bioshock 2 as well. I really enjoyed it. I played it pretty much back to back with the original, and just finished the sequel last night.

At first I was kinda dismayed by what they were doing to Andrew Ryan.

Ryan Amusements works great as a simple refresher for those who haven't played the original in a while. It's very simple and heavy handed. However, it didn't strike me as being the quality of propaganda and speech I'd expected from the charismatic Ryan. The weird angry voice was the worst part. That section needed to have more finesse, or a strong aspect of corruption of the innocent, but it just came off as a cheesy ride. That would have been fine for me, without Ryan's direct involvement. I guess overall I don't like what they did to Ryan in this game, especially against such a crazy opponent in Lamb.

Once I got past that and the game started handing out systems faster than the original I was on board. As long as they stuck to their new stuff, I liked the story. I really enjoyed all the combat stuff once I got my keys bound well. Except for the camera, which I felt might as well just be an automatic effect of fighting a dude. I do like the Tony Hawk style system, I don't like having to focus on one enemy at a time to optimize research especially when dudes are jumping into vents and running for health. However, research did go really fast, especially with the tonics for it, so I didn't really mind. I also really loved the Drill Specialist tonic, which I probably used for about half the game.

If they do make another Raptureshock, I hope that they put in a button so that I can help tiny girls get into vents, so I don't freak out because they're gonna fall or cut themselves on the metal. Yes even though it was the same animation loop, I always felt bad when they slipped and faltered trying to escape. I felt like a psychopath for saving them and then watching them struggle to get in the vent when I could easily give them a boost.

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Wow. I also just finished Bioshock 2.I really don't know what to think of it. While to certain extent I did enjyoe the combat, it didn't click to me as it did in the original. Mostly this goes to the weapons themself. This sounds stupid, but when I upgraded weapons in 1 it was like 'YEAH, Fucking yeah', while here it was just boring. The thing I did love a lot was the fast that you could use plasmids and guns at the same time, mostly because before it just disoriented you while you were trying to remember what you were going to do because you had to focus on the keyboard etc. I had also some minor gripes, mostly mentioned above so I fell no need to repeat them.

@miffy495:I found a combat easy, or more likely less tense since you always have a big drill as one of your hands. I remember the joe when I found 1 ammo clip in Bioshock 1 since I was literaly dead every 5 minutes. Here, meh I have this big drill and rocket luncher so I can pretty much kill everything in 1 second(I killed big sister with constanlly freezing or shocking here and then drill dashing.

Also, the person that made shotgun so unsatisfying should get fir...I mean should refine it's idea of a satisfying weapon.

In general I think this got a lot of boos for being a Bioshock sequel. I tryed to play it without thinking about original and I could actually see why this game is so good, but well...it is called Bioshock (2). Or I was just naive to think it could be.:buyme: Still a good game.

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Also, the person that made shotgun so unsatisfying should get fir...I mean should refine it's idea of a satisfying weapon.

This. I remember when I found the shotgun, I thought it would be my only weapon, however it didn't do enough damage from what I thought was close, but I guess the game thought was mid range. Also, there were only two shots before a lengthy reload. Of course upgrading the clip size helped, but when melee attacks are so effective, you really need to make your shotguns and other short to mid range weapons more versatile. They probably should have given you the anti-personnel slugs earlier, because by then it was all spear gun, plasmids and drill.

The spear gun was great though. Electroshock plus fully upgraded spear gun equals hilarious room redecoration.

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Talking to a coworker, I think I figured out what bothered me most about this game. Weirdly, it was the moments of brilliance. They showed how much the team was capable of, so it bothered me so much more that there were only 4 or 5 of them and the rest of the game was pretty bland. If those moments weren't there, I probably would have accepted it as a reasonably good sequel to Bioshock that didn't really do anything special. After seeing those bits though, all I could think during the rest of it was "Ok, I know you can do better. Damn it."

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