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Recently completed video games

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Finished Metal Gear Solid 4. Absolutely hated it at the start, though it was a nice finish to the saga by the end. Great movie, terrible game though, game play portions are too short cinematics/cutscenes are too frequent and there's far too much dialogue considering how little is actually said. I cannot stress how much pointless chit chat there was that was completely superfluous. I really enjoyed how they dealt with Old Snake and the notion of your favorite hero becoming outdated, now only in terms of story telling but gameplay as well.

Makes me wish something similar was done in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Rather than spending half the movie telling you that Indy wasn't too old, "No really, Harrison Ford's still got it !" I think it would have been better if it kept trying to convince you he WAS too old, sort of breaking him down as a hero and having him validate himself by the end. "Maybe I am too old" says Indy at start, then by the end he overcomes and qualifies himself as a hero once more.

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I just beat Alien Breed Episode 1 and I'm definitely not getting episode 2...

This game is mediocre and annoying, when you start the game and you see the halls exploding it give you a sense of urgency, but when everything explodes CONSTANTLY it's just annoying! How can parts of a ship being constantly exploding without the ship exploding anyway?:erm:

And the missions on each level are a boring chore:

"Hey! Go here!"

"OOOOOPS! IT BROKE! Go here to fix it!"

"OMG! That broke too, what are the chances? You know what to do..."

THAT'S THE WHOLE GAME!:frusty:

If you want to have fun killing aliens just get Alien Shooter, Team 17 is only good at making Worms games..:shifty:

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Finished Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney: Investigations. Not a bad entry. The writers are getting rather good at explicitly making clear what you're intended to present at each item prompt. Though for a game with a dedicated logic button, it's disappointing whenever the logical links are Goldblumesque. The way the baddies executed their plot in the last case was so absurd and sloppy it's a miracle that it actually worked. Also, the writers don't know the proper use of "begging the question."

Also beat Shadow Complex. Fun popcorn Metroidvania, but nothing I'd want to replay again. Plot was terrible in writing and execution. Level design really needed more connections between sections, and it seemed like the game really didn't want you exploring or backtracking until you got

Samus' missile launcher

.

Scott Pilgrim. This is really, ridiculously fun once you get over how poorly it telegraphed that leveling up doesn't level up your stats.

Sam and Max Season 3. Quality bar was set really high this season. Loved every minute of it.

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Not finished them, but just started:

God of War 2

F.E.A.R 2

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Expecting to beat them next, before I go pick up Starcraft 2 from the city!

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After hundreds and hundreds of hours over 4 years, I won a CivIV 'campaign' game. I've only won about 3 games ever, if that many, and this is my first space victory. I really dislike the unit stacking and what that means for combat. The huge stacks are annoying to use and even more annoying to try and fight off. Artillery units are understandably slow and vulnerable, but their inability to fire over other units makes me never build any over the course of the game until I get bombers. I think Civ V's improvements have made me hate everything about Civ IV's combat, not that I was in love with it before.

So I can say I beat Civ IV right? Right?! :getmecoat

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So I can say I beat Civ IV right? Right?!

I spent years playing the original King's Bounty and Heroes of Might & Magic II. I never once managed to complete a campaign and dig up...whatever treasure I was supposed to dig up.

But every once in a while I beat all the other dudes. I count that as a win.

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Ahaha, I finished Game Boy Gallery playing on Game Boy Color. It's some bastard child Nintendo game from the revamped Game and Watch series that later starred Mario and the gang. Instead this stars some strange kid who takes odd jobs and gets fired. That's the running story throughout the manual at least.

I only say I finished it because I got to the points in all the scores where "special animations" happen as listed out by the manual. I was totally cheating on Flagman and pausing and writing down all the Simon Says type directions. I could have gone on forever, but got tired.

Still it's amazing how enthralling a simple Game and Watch minigame thing can be.

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Finished Red Dead Redemption a few days ago. I stalled out in Mexico over the summer, and just picked it up again and immediately got swept away by the story.

Now I'm trading it away on Goozex.

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I just finished Dead Space again on normal using my completed save. I still think its a great game.

Awesome sound design and great lighting abound. The Ishimura feels like an actual working ship with all the ambient machinery sounds, and the monsters sound okay too. Although the game is very brown grey, the lighting ranges wildly to add a lot of color in a Diablo-esque way. I particularly like watching the colour saturation fade and warm up when you exit and enter vacuums.

I also really enjoy the style of gameplay. Even though it's very similar to any other 1st person silent protagonist shooter, seeing your dude get beat the hell up and struggle is really engrossing. They do a good job of changing the way your character controls in certain sections. This mostly means the zero g stuff, but there are also the points where you get tossed off your feet and have to struggle to aim. The gameplay in those points is essentially just shoot the weakpoint, but the jittery movement and awkward gun grip is nice.

The futuristic power tools as weaponry idea is something I hope they continue with going forward. Less assault rifles, more plasma cutters and remote buzz saws.

It wasn't all great though. The mission structure is kinda dumb, with you running around fixing everything on the ship. The beginning was really brought down by the tutorial. They have this great set up of having two people on your com to tell you what to do along with audio logs. At one point you see this blood stained wall:

deadspacelimbs.th.png.

This is followed by an audio log and radio message from your friend telling you to cut off their limbs. Of course the game still needs to shove a big tutorial hologram in your face in case you're thick. Most every game idea is presented doubled up like this and it was especially annoying on a second playthrough.

Also the way you gather equipment is way too restrictive. You buy all weapons outside of your starting cutter as well as armor upgrades, and you'll need to spend money on nodes to upgrade your weapons, abilities and health. This meant I spent my 1st round using only the cutter till near the very end after I'd bought the last armor set. Armor upgrades also increase your tiny inventory, so it's by far the most useful thing. At the very least they could give you the weapons to try out before you spend those credits, since they're pretty weak compared to your upgraded cutter, at least starting out.

Finally, Isaac could emote a bit more in dialogue scenes. He has all these great animations for movement, fighting and damage, but he will just stand still through 99% of the communications, even those that take place behind a window. I like that you're never really locked into any animations, and it's kinda fun to melee attack an indestructable window with the bad guy behind it, to portray anger, but I think the game should meet me half way. The dude is just way too stoic.

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Dead Space is one of those games I got halfway through in about 2 days, but never went back to. I always say that I want to, but I never do. Part of the problem is that I feel like I've seen everything already. I never got any indication there were any mechanics any further, and since I'm playing on easy, because I'm a pansy, I'd be playing through for the environments and boss fights.

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I recently burned through Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, and was pleasantly surprised.

With all the previous Layton games, I tend to get halfway in, and I just fall out of it. Not with an active "I'm done with this shit" kinda thing, more of a product of it being "Pick up, do 2 puzzles and get back to paying attention in lectures". But I finally pushed through this one, made it to the end, and thouroughly enjoyed it. The puzzle to story ratio was perfect, as usual-with a fantastic story which really explains a bit more of Laytons past.

I don't know how I feel about the 4th and 5th games, however. They're already OUT in Japan, and we already know that they are prequels. In a way, UF ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, so I'd love to know how it carries on, but with us being 2 games behind, and neither of them being the sequel, I'm not holding out too long.

And the ending where

Luke and Layton finally have to part ways, really hit a soft spot. It was such a pure friendship, and seeing them being broken apart was pretty emotional, for me personally. But a gentleman never makes a scene in public

Would recommend!

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Interesting. I wasn't really excited about the 3rd Layton game. But glad to hear it's at least better than the 2nd one. I got sort of bored with the second one, the story wasn't very compelling.

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Been going through my DS stuff lately as I've been packing all my consoles in boxes in preparation for a move. Finished the first Professor Layton (!!) and Picross 3D up. Perfect scores on every level of Picross 3D, so I'm pretty happy with that. The Gold challenge on level 10 of Hard was crazy, and I finished it with 30 seconds to spare, but I did it, damn it. Layton was really good, but as everyone is talking about 2 sequels past what I've played at this point, I won't bother talking about it much.

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Interesting. I wasn't really excited about the 3rd Layton game. But glad to hear it's at least better than the 2nd one. I got sort of bored with the second one, the story wasn't very compelling.

It's more Layton goodness really. A lot of great backstory, and some riveting revelations as the story goes on.

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I beat Farcry 2 last night... The game did a lot of things right, but a lot of things wrong as well... a few times I said "That's it, screw this game", but evidently I was compelled enough to keep playing.

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I guess I finished with the second Deathspank and the Wii Boy and his Blob lately. Both top notch experiences that I talked about more in depth other places on the forums. Generally a good time for good games it seems like.

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Finished Mothership Zeta (fallout 3 dlc).

It was ok. Not much special except a different environment. Point Lookout and Operation Anchorage were better. I triggered the bug where you instantly jumped to "kill the captain" after the space walk. Which sucked because I missed out on some dialog. I did traverse through the rest of the ship and did the death ray stuff.

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Finally beat Final Fantasy XIII.

I guess I wasn't disappointed in the ending, but it could have been better. There were no twists, it was pretty much what you'd expect.

Also, the reason it took so long was because originally I was set on playing the game with Lightning, Snow and Vanille because they are my favorite characters. But it's basically impossible to play the last chapter without a Synergist, which none of them are (or at least the game was so much harder to the point that it was too frustrating to play). So after quite a while not playing the game I caved and changed my party to include Hope, probably my least favorite video game character ever, and Fang and Lightning. If each character was more equally balanced in that game it would have greatly increased my enjoyment, as the story was actually decent.

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Beat Dead Rising 2. It was fun. I was kinda surprised at how easy it was to juggle the different side tasks, I had to load a couple times, but I did make it through without really missing any. Gonna play a lot more though, single player and hopefuly some co-op. Haven't tried the competitive multi yet.

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I beat Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent this weekend, due to the iOS version being on sale. (It still is, for 1$)

Like people said back then, some of the puzzles don't always give you enough information, and the art looks kinda awful downscaled at points, but other than that I pretty much had a blast playing it. I was really surprised and pleased when they suddenly decided to interrupt the puzzle solving part with a sudden piece of narrative. Those parts of these types of games are usually kept totally separate, so my brain hadn't even considered that a puzzle could get interrupted. Well played, Telltale.

(PS, Monkey Island Special Editions are also 1$, as well as a bunch more.)

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I went out and beat Majesty again, after listening to 45 again. Chris, you're an amazing person, and I can't agree more about 2, but J.H.C., play Majesty 1. Ten bucks on Steam. Worth your time. Love the game. The concept was executed properly the first time, and not the second.

/nerdrage

Think I'm going to go beat Morrowind in its entirety in the coming months. Every quest, all the armor, all the areas, everything I can possibly do. . . .Wish me luck.

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I completed during the weekend a game that I really can't begin to understand why I even owned it. Well, it was not actually bought by me. My wife bought it about a year ago from a supermarket sale for 10€. She thought this game was an on rails shooter for Wii.

It turns out this was just a regular fps, a really shitty one at that. She played it for 5 minutes and didn't want to play it after that. The game I'm talking about it Cabela's Dangerous Adventures, in US known as Cabela's Dangerous Hunts. The engine for the enviroment doesn't actually look that bad, but the controls are the most horrible ever in a Wii fps game and the whole idea of the game is totally stupid and pointless. I made it an obsession for myself to complete this shitty game and a year later I'm done. I think I didn't play it for about 10 months at all because it was just so horrible. During the past few weeks I was grinding through it. It is actually less than 10 hours game that has only like seven missions or so, just that the whole game is so bad that you can't play it for long times without going into a rage mode and you want to through the gamedisc out of the window.

My worst GotY so far.

I hope I can sell it for 5€ somewhere, I will never get 10€ back for this in some fleamarket / internet auction site.

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