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Recently completed video games

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Alright, good to know. Since I've already installed them, I'll play a little bit of the expansions. I'll definitely stop once I get bored though.

Winter Assault's story is relatively interesting, if you're a 40K buff, but it still suffers from in-engine cutscene. (And for some ungodly reason, they did the Soulstorm beginning cutscene entirely in-engine.)

But it's nothing that's going to amaze you, gameplay wise, with the exception of the occasional Titan bit. (Like a still functioning LASER CANNON ARM, to slightly but not fully spoil it.)

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Amazingly enough, I played through the entirety of Batman: Arkham Asylum - Game of the Year Edition. The game itself was an amazing achievement as well. I have no interest in comics or superheroes in general but the gameplay was so damn good that it kept me playing till the end. Mark Hamill's and Arleen Sorking's performances where excellent and at some point I started liking the setting a bit as well.

I can't remember when I have last played an action game that has been anywhere near as well balanced as this. Perfect mixture of combat, stealth and exploration. I really wish that Naughty Dog and likes would take a leaf out of Rocksteady's book, which they obviously won't do because they are driving for "the ultimate cinematic experience". I enjoy being able to explore the area that I have just de-enemified in peace, to go back to an area that was safe minutes ago only to find it safe still, to walk more than 50 meters without an action sequence to drive me forward, and to not worry about constant waves of reinforcements. It seems to me that these kind of joys have become more and more rare of late, which is why I hope the sequel won't differ from its predecessor too much.

In short, this was a surprisingly excellent game. I can't believe no-one mentioned in their favorite games of 2010 list. This game has GOTY written all over it.

What a terrible post,

but I'm tired,

so here it goes.

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I completed Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light today. Fun game! I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected, and it was a steal for [cheap price on Steam].

I'm surprised that no one on my friends list seems to have gone further than the first couple of levels. And, judging by the leaderboards, a startling 75% dropped off before getting to the final level. Deserves a little more attention, because I think the puzzle-adventure design is top-notch.

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Kirby's Super Star Ultra completely done. That was incredibly jam packed for a Kirby game. I had played the original long ago on an emulator but didn't get too far since emulators sucked on 486s. Maybe originally made it to the start of The Great Cave Offensive?

I really like the idea of a bunch of mini adventures in one game, I don't think too many other games have played with this idea. The new content seems to be a massive amount of boss rush stuff and a few minor level additions. I'm not complaining either way though, but I imagine those who played the original Super Star might not be that pleased.

I also don't think I've played a DS game so far with this many prerendered cutscenes. Insecticide seemed to have a lot but still not this much.

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Flogged my way through DeathSpank. The dialog was pretty well written and actually made me laugh out loud once or twice. The gameplay was decent but certainly nothing special. I think I finished all the sidequests as well, although I'm not sure why exactly because most of them weren't very entertaining.

Is Thongs of Virtue just more of the same or are there some significant changes or improvements? Although, I enjoyed the game quite a bit, I'm not sure if I'm up for another ten hours of that stuff.

Probably because most people put it on their 2009 list instead?

Well.. yes. It was just a tired Game of the Year Edition joke.

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Is Thongs of Virtue just more of the same or are there some significant changes or improvements? Although, I enjoyed the game quite a bit, I'm not sure if I'm up for another ten hours of that stuff.

It is actually, surprisingly, much better.

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I started playing Thongs of Virtue immediately after I finished its predecessor and the gameplay was getting stale halfway through. I think I took the wrong dosage there. Better wait a few days before going on.

But yeah, TOV is the better part of the two. I liked the pacing better, and it was also more balanced. The cutscene animations were nice little rewards.

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Christ, Metal Gear for Game Boy Color done after picking at the damn thing for over half a year now. I don't think I've spent that long on a Game Boy Color game ever, except for possibly doing a bunch of replay junk years ago with the Zelda Oracle series.

There's all of these extra and alternate missions that you can complete, but aren't necessarily set up in a user friendly way (can't skip cutscenes) or have little in the way of fairness. But there is a Donkey Kong level where Snake is dodging barrels going up a mountainside while the arcade music plays that sort of makes up for the more frustrating portions. There's also this ridiculous Ideaspy Script you receive after unlocking the game that is worth a read just for the pure zaniness. It's a pain in the ass to see all the episodes yourself as you have to play through the game without quitting or turning off the Game Boy after beating it. Luckily someone transcribed it online and relieved any frustration.

The actual game itself was pretty enjoyable, but I forgot almost the full story and what happens since I had finished that part a few months ago. It's a very strange non canon game that tells the events after the original Metal Gear in very different ways. The plot seemed to be a mixture of elements from Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear 2.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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Christ, Metal Gear for Game Boy Color done after picking at the damn thing for over half a year now. I don't think I've spent that long on a Game Boy Color game ever, except for possibly doing a bunch of replay junk years ago with the Zelda Oracle series.

There's all these extra missions and alternate missions that you can complete, but they aren't necessarily set up in a user friendly way (can't skip cutscenes). There's a Donkey Kong level where Snake is dodging barrels going up a mountainside while the arcade music that sort of makes up for a lot of it. There's also this ridiculous Ideaspy Script you receive after unlocking the game that is worth a read just for the pure zaniness. Luckily someone transcribed it online.

The actual game itself was pretty enjoyable, but I forgot almost the full story and what happens since I had finished that part a few months ago.

No Pokemon Gold/Silver for you? :fart:

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Just completed Shank. Jesus, what a disappointment. The game looks beautiful and sounds great (as an idea; the voice acting is atrocious) but I found it above all dull and frustrating. Play the demo and you have seen everything the game has to offer. The designers actually thought the wrestler battle from the demo was so good that they made it appear at least three times throughout the game with little or no variation. Regular combat might look nice but is about as basic as it gets. Very poor hit detection (especially when the enemy is wielding a minigun) and unresponsive and stupid controls spice things up a bit, though.

For instance, the absolute hardest part of the game was one where a couple of gunmen had taken the higher ground and were shooting down at you while you were slicing their pals. The catch was that you could only shoot 45 degrees up and if you tried to jump and shoot, our hero would actually shoot downwards. The bad guys didn't have any problems shooting at different angles, though.

The game was pretty short but still not short enough for me, as I got bored about halfway through the game. The story is so bad that one has to wonder why they even bothered with it. After the first cutscene, you should have a pretty good idea how the entire story might play out and it will play out just like that.

I can't really recommend this game to anyone unless you can get it very cheap. Some people may still enjoy it, I just don't know who or why.

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I think it may have been A1200 only... and it probably came out years later. Not sure.

Edit: Yep, here's the details (with screenshots) http://hol.abime.net/785

Well that solves that then. We only had Amiga 500 with the added memory module.

We finally completed New Super Mario Bros Wii last week and by that I mean the first 8 worlds. We are still in progress of collecting all coins and getting all the Star Road levels opened. World 8 still missing a few coins.

Awesome game, you can really piss your co-op player with moving or jumping just in the right time to steal some power up or make the other person die. ;)

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No Pokemon Gold/Silver for you? :fart:

Haha, sorry, I haven't played a Pokemon since Red and Blue came out, which I sold to get a Dreamcast a year later.

Catching all of a large amount of something doesn't fit well with my game OCD tendencies.

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I just finished vanilla Dawn of War II on hard.

I really like the changes they made to the game, making it about a few units to avoid the clustered movement problems, and have every unit be meaningful. It really clicked for me in one of the Tyranid missions where I held a full building for about 10 minutes against a steady flow from a hive.

I still have some issues though. Most of it revolves around the boss fights that this game is enamoured with. I thought that pretty much every boss fight in this game was horrible. Your unit abilities end up mattering a lot less, and the ones that do matter don't for very long because of the high damage output of the bosses, their tendency to summon minions to ruin your shit and their general unaffected nature.

One example was a Ork machine boss that was weak against power weapons, meaning that my Commander had to stun him with power fists while everyone else piled on the damage. This only worked for a few seconds, because after 2 hits my commander was at blinking red health, and even using a medkit as soon as that occurred didn't stop him from dying. Once he went down it became a shit show as my scouts cloaked to stay alive and my tactical and devastator marines desperately tried to stay out of melee, only to get picked off whenever the game decided they were close enough.

Pretty much every boss fight became double orbital strike, timed explosives and artillery strikes and retreating whenever they got close. It was tedious, not fun and not at all what I think they want you to do in those fights. I have no idea what the correct way is though.

I thought the equipment stuff was cool, but the data they give you seemed a bit off. Giving Avitus a heavy bolter always gave him a ridiculously high damage score in comparison to Plasma Cannons or Rocket Launchers, but the latter weapons definitely seemed more damaging and effective. It also seemed like all the data was for the commander himself sans his backup, which doesn't give you the whole story. Overall I wish more final stats (by which I mean total stats after taking into account skills and accessories) like accuracy, damage against each unit type, total damage/supression resistance were surfaced. The game also never described how the mechanic of Armor works. Normally I'd assume it's a negative effect to the opponent's accuracy, but it seemed more like a damage reduction mechanic.

I still experienced strange control stuff. There were some weird retreats where units would retreat into enemies along seemingly longer paths than an actual retreat. Melee units would stand still taking fire or attack weaker units while higher priority ones destroy them. Abilites I thought were targeted to enemies were targeted to spaces making them kinda useless against fast moving bosses. And as I said before the whole thing had this control latency where telling your commander to attack the rocket guy after he decided on his own to attack a regular infantry man meant waiting for him to start and finish his melee animation before running over, and meant that he would almost always die in transit.

I don't mean to shit on the game. The story was great, and I loved the flow of the regular combat. I'm looking forward to the expansion. I'll probably just play it on normal to avoid more boss problems.

tl;dr Dawn of War is fun, bosses are dumb.

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I just finished the Sly Trilogy.... Sly 3 was my least favorite, it tries to do too much... It has too many characters, most of them unnecessary, but I love the series overall...

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I just finished the Sly Trilogy.... Sly 3 was my least favorite, it tries to do too much... It has too many characters, most of them unnecessary, but I love the series overall...

Urgh, you're part of the problem.

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Urgh, you're part of the problem.

I'm pretty sure the last time this forum talked about the Sly series, you were the only one who hated it....:getmecoat

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I'm pretty sure the last time this forum talked about the Sly series, you were the only one who hated it....:getmecoat

True.

YOU'RE ALL PART OF THE PROBLEM.:tup:

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tl;dr Dawn of War is fun, bosses are dumb.

I loved Company of Heroes and kind of liked Dawn of War II as well when I tried it on my friends computer, but those dumb boss battles completely ruined the game for me. I never bought the game because of them.

I assume the sequels or standalone expansions or whatever haven't changed this aspect of the game?

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YOU'RE ALL PART OF THE PROBLEM.:tup:

What problem is that, exactly? :erm:

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What problem is that, exactly? :erm:

Liking bad games and demanding they be remade for current generations. It leaves people like me (who haven't played them before) hearing all these great things about these games, and being like "Oh sweet! I'll be able to play that soon!" Then I play it, it sucks, and I hate you all.

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Liking bad games and demanding they be remade for current generations. It leaves people like me (who haven't played them before) hearing all these great things about these games, and being like "Oh sweet! I'll be able to play that soon!" Then I play it, it sucks, and I hate you all.

How is it a bad game if you're the only one who hates it? :erm:

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How is it a bad game if you're the only one who hates it? :erm:

Thiiiiiiiis?

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Oh man, I took a vacation the week before christmas because I was really tired from last year's work load and no vacation for more than a year. Then I got sick with pneumonia around new years. I'm ok now, going to work on Monday, but at least this period allowed me to play lots of games:

DeathSpank

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue

Back to the Future's first chapter

Flower

Assassin's Creed II

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Heavy Rain

Dream Machine's first chapters

NightSky

Saira

Those I finished, King's Bounty, echochrome, Torchlight, Arx Fatalis will be completed later I hope.

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