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Just finished Half Life Opposing Force for the first time since cheating my way through in ninth grade. Thoughts go in the Valve Re-play thread, same as with Half Life Source.

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I just finished Bulletstorm.

It was good, better than i was expecting. An entertaining solo shooter.

Were you expecting to get repeatedly punched in the gut? Did not like this game one bit.

I just finished Mindjack. Bizarre, bizarre game, utterly reprehensible in some ways and absolutely brilliant in others.

The story and voice acting is deliciously terrible (but not pulled off with the flair of Deadly Premonition), the action itself is solid if unremarkable until you start using all the mindjacking powers and allowing people to randomly enter your game and ruin it for you. I played with randoms for about 6 hours on Monday and it was equal parts exhilarating and infuriating.

Can't say I would recommend it, but people need to play it just to experience it, preferably with a headset and a few beers inside them.

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Were you expecting to get repeatedly punched in the gut? Did not like this game one bit.

I was expecting a game where the core systems didn't hold up outside of the scoring gimmick, but i found that for the most part they do. I thought the game had an interesting and varied campaign with a lot of cool scenarios. I like the goofy setting and the fiction they concocted for it. I even liked the characters and felt there was a surprising amount of effort devoted to their story arcs. I'm also of the mind that over the top gore and infantile swearing can be pretty hilarious when handled right, so i'm kind of the audience for that game.

I also think the visuals are wildly uneven and that the nuts and bolts of that scoring system wouldn't really hold up under scrutiny. I mean, so I don't think it's a great game, and i have no real intention of ever playing it again, but i thought it was a fun ride.

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Blue Shift is now done, less than 24 hours after starting it. That was a short game, thoughts to go in the Valve thread as usual.

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Okay Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence Version done, finished the regular game a couple of weeks ago and went over my thoughts in the thread, but just now I've completed all the extra modes and have gotten all of the special items. I've also watched the movie version on the limited ediiton third disc, which worked much better than I thought it would. The only jarring parts were added voiceover, but lots of gameplay was recorded in a cinematic fashion that worked without ever showing the codec screens or GUI. This has been the most satisfying Metal Gear for me so far. I didn't even have to spend over hundred hours on it (like Substance) to see and do everything.

Having looked at the trailer included for Metal Gear Solid 4, I'm kind of sad that the color scheme is going to be washed out beige over black areas next time around. I'm going to miss the extreme greens and earth colors all over Metal Gear Solid 3. Sometimes I could see texture repeats taking me out of the game, but overall I found the whole thing incredibly beautiful to look at. Much nicer on the eyes than the start orange all over MGS2. But next up are the Acid games and the Portable Ops before I play 4, as I'm kind of a bastard for chronological order.

Also I had finished The Whispered World a week or two ago, but I haven't made a post about it. Somewhat disappointed but somewhat thrilled at what the game did achieve. I'll have to think about it some more.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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Actually MGS4 does a good job of shooting you all over the world, so the beige goes away after the first chapter. If I recall correctly, it goes Middle East, South America, London, Alaska, and then offshore-y thing. Lots of variety, and the colour palette does a nice beige-green-grey-white-orange thing over the course of the game. That said, it's also WAY more actiony and up it's own ass than 3 was, so I'd worry more about that than the setting dragging you down.

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Hah well, that's some good news with a lot of bad news. I was afraid Metal Gear Solid 4 might end up as a clusterfuck of idiocy and convoluted story ideas based on everything I've heard, but I guess after finishing 3 I had serious high hopes. Guess I'll find out in a year or so when I catch up.

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I finished Back to the Future: Double Visions, episode 4.

This one was good, but not as good as episode 3, that was the highest point Telltale has reached so far. I'm hoping the final episode will be the greatest.

More thoughts are in BttF's thread.

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I was expecting a game where the core systems didn't hold up outside of the scoring gimmick, but i found that for the most part they do. I thought the game had an interesting and varied campaign with a lot of cool scenarios. I like the goofy setting and the fiction they concocted for it. I even liked the characters and felt there was a surprising amount of effort devoted to their story arcs. I'm also of the mind that over the top gore and infantile swearing can be pretty hilarious when handled right, so i'm kind of the audience for that game.

I also think the visuals are wildly uneven and that the nuts and bolts of that scoring system wouldn't really hold up under scrutiny. I mean, so I don't think it's a great game, and i have no real intention of ever playing it again, but i thought it was a fun ride.

I was just teasing, I didn't like the game but I know quite a few people who think that the game is ace.

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Completed Puzzle Agent yesterday!

Great game, now I can confirm that I feel this is the best game Telltale has put out so far (mind you, I still haven't played Sam&Max 1x04--> and also ToMI, so big fail mark to me at this point :getmecoat). So most likely one the unplayed games will rank up higher in the end, but that remains to be seen, cha cha!

Jake and the other guy responsible for the UI have created a really clean and easily working UI. I enjoyed that very much! So thank you guys!

More thoughts at Scoggings.

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I just beat Persona 3 Portable and it was just amazing, I'm not sure if it's better than Persona 4 though, although since this game has

a robot girl and a doggie as playable characters

it's pretty awesome in my book! :tup:

Damn, now I really have nothing to play.;(

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I completed Might of Magic: Clash the Heroes the other day. I'm working on a review simply because I want to recommend this to more people.

Game math: I've spent 30+ hours in a 15$ XBLA game, and I still keep going back to the multiplayer, and I'm contemplating going through the long campaign AGAIN, simply because of an achievement bug. This is how wonderfully addictive it is.

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I completed Might of Magic: Clash the Heroes the other day. I'm working on a review simply because I want to recommend this to more people.

Game math: I've spent 30+ hours in a 15$ XBLA game, and I still keep going back to the multiplayer, and I'm contemplating going through the long campaign AGAIN, simply because of an achievement bug. This is how wonderfully addictive it is.

Totally agreed. I think my gametime on the DS version was like.. 50 hours, because I completed literally every single thing.

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Dragon Age 2

Very :tmeh:. The story is rather un-epic and uninteresting. The environment is boring and tiny. There is no real exploring. There's like 1 kind of dungeon per major area (and like 9 or 10 major areas), and the dungeon itself is tiny. So it's very repetitive. Inventory system also has been simplified, armor items only apply to you, your companions have a fixed armor. There's a lot of tedious running around. If you didn't DA1 much you really shouldn't play this game. It's the worst kind of RPG.

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An un-epic story sounds alright, if "you have to save the world" isn't the plot. Uninteresting is another story...

The repeating dungeons thing sounds like a bummer. I know they did that in Mass Effect 1 (although it's a different genre), but there they also had all those unique planets. I recently played through Dragon Age, and I really enjoyed all the variety in the dungeon design. You had the huge Circle of Magi tower, the Veil section there (partially reused), all the different Orzammar dungeons, the Denerim alienage quest dungeons and the Redcliffe castle. That's only naming my favorites. Are the dungeons in DA2 as large as the ones in Origins, or are they more like the ME side encounters?

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The dungeons are no where near as large as in DA. They are a bit larger than the ME1 "planet missions". But in most cases parts of the dungeons are blocked.

As for the un-epicness of the story. Everything is being handled as truely epic of proportions. But you were there, and the things really weren't that epic, teh were quite "meh". For example, the deep roads expedition in DA2 is constantly being referred to as being an epic adventure. But it's really shit compared to the deep roads expedition in DA1, that one was epic.

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That's a bummer.

The Deep Roads section was one of my favorites, because they position it as this huge super deep dungeon, and my first thought was that it would be like every other place. Then you go in and each dungeon is bigger than the others and there are more of them. It was great when you fight that almost infinite horde of darkspawn at the bridge. It was one of the few game moments I can remember that had a mechanical design that matched the fiction. I know some people thought it was too long, but that could've been solved with some changes to loot mechanics.

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Finished Back to the Future episode 4

It was ok. I'm getting a bit bored with the adventure game formula used by TTG.

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Is it because it's lacking challenge?

Speaking of challenge, I just beat Outland, which is basically a Metroidvania game with the polarity system of Ikaruga or Silhouette Mirage.

The game is pretty good, I highly recommend it, it's challenging, but doable.

It's sad to hear DA2 doesn't sound worth it.

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I beat Vanquish on Wednesday, but forgot to say anything until today. It was fucking great. I may post more in the game's thread later. The takeaway will be that it was fucking great though.

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Is it because it's lacking challenge?

It's more the lack of puzzles, and mainly focus on talking as using specific items on people. The only real puzzle in ep 4 was the punch card thing, which was basically the same puzzle from ep 1.

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Also, in addition to Vanquish, Half Life 2 is now done. It took me about 15 hours, which I assume will be the longest amount of time of any of the games in my Valve replay. Now I have both episodes left to go, as well as Portal and Portal 2. I also threw Research and Development on the pile, as I've never tried that and would like to. Onward and upward!

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Runaway: A twist of fate

Not as good as the first two games, but it does give a nice conclusion to the whole story. If you liked the first two games, you'd also like this one. The game was a bit heavy of the "movie experience" though, but still an ok adventure game, albeit quite short. :tup: (for an adventure game)

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