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Metro 2033? Super atmospheric, super hardcore, very much worth playing.

Very much agree; it looks fairly typical of an FPS, but it's much more interesting than I expected. Great environments and varied gameplay, and the guns are meaty.

I even liked the other-worldly bits.

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I'll bring up the game that turned out to be my super surprise "hindsight game of 2009" (in that it was a game of 2009 that I played in 2010 and it retroactively became my game of 2009), Cryostasis. That game is fucking rad, and continues the amazingly weird atmosphere thing that Metro had, if you're down for more of it.

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This is just going to be a running thing now, hey?

Well here's another - Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is one real beast of creative and cool game design. A bit like the Riddick game, it kind of slides between adventure gaming, stealth, and shooting on a whim, in addition to have some incredibly tense chase sequences where you are fumbling with door bolts and various environmental tasks while being hunted. (There's also a remarkably elaborate health system, with you patching and treating different kinds of wounds while abusing painkillers to help you muscle through the negative effects.)

^ There are unfortunate issues and glitches with each version of the game though, and it can also be brutally difficult.

You know, and the turn survival horror has taken for tighter, better designed combat mechanics probably helps make it count too.

Resident Evil 4 and onward, or Dead Space 1 & 2, for example.

Edited by Sno

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I'd like to vouch for the incredibly tense and awesome chase sequences of Dark Corners of the Earth. I never finished the game, but damn if I didn't have a great time digging into it.

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Just finished my first playthrough of Torchlight. I recorded a quick video while I fought the last boss on my thoughts of it, since I'd played through nearly all of it in a single sitting over the last few hours, but I fouled it up. So I'll do that again when I finish my Destroyer run-through, because honestly my opinions were pretty tainted by a few poor choices on my part.

Fakeedit: Actually, I know what went wrong, so I'll just re-record the exact same diatribe when I wake up and start again. Stupid video encoding.

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I'm finally done with the Splinter Cell series! :tup:

OK, I skipped the PSP one because it controls terribly and it's just a remix of older missions, but I've beaten all the other ones!

I also beat the only Serious Sam indie games I didn't have yet, Kamikaze Attack is more or less Cananbalt, except you can attack with a kick, but if you attack too much you explode!

Serious Sam: The Greek Encounter is Kleer-ly a load of Werebull, I could tell from the moment the Game Maker loading screen started. I could go on talking about all it's fault for longer that it would take you to beat the game, but I'll just tell you stay away from it.

Oh yeah, I also beat a few of the AGS Bake Bundle games, there are a few interesting games in it, but they mostly suck or are boring. :tmeh:

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Just finished Assassins Creed 2, what a great game. So much to do, so many ways to do it, top notch animations and graphics and designs, I enjoyed climbing throughout the entire game, upgrading the villa seems to release some endorphins and when you get good at all the things Ezio does you just feel like a king in the cities being all bad ass.

I think I'll take a break from the Animus though before continuing on to Brotherhood. Just put in Enslaved, about an hour in and so far so good. Looks nice.

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I've finished two whole games over the past couple of weeks! Despite all the homework and work work, I've found time to play the last couple of hours of both Saint's Row the Third and Driver San Fransisco! In fairness, I was already most of the way done both of these games before school started, but I have managed to find the free time to finish them over the past five weeks, so that's pretty rad.

Saint's Row:

Yeah, it's fucking sweet. Everyone should play this game if you're interested in crazy things. It lulls a bit in the middle, but the start and end are both so unbelievably strong, the humour is consistent throughout, and the writing is never bad. Bought the DLC season pass because I want to stay in this world and keep doing awesome things. Played it on PC, and it looks and plays great with the exception of a framerate glitch which required updating my graphics card to get past. Can't recommend it enough.

Driver San Fransisco:

Also a pretty good game, but definitely has its flaws. I never really got the feeling that it lulled, actually. The story, despite (or maybe because of) being played straight, somehow works. The Thumbs crew's prediction that the end of the game

would result in Tanner jumping out of his bed and running out of the hospital, saying something along the lines of "I KNOW WHERE JERICHO IS!"

was

basically dead on. Which made me very happy.

What I wasn't expecting was that the game would keep throwing new mechanics at you until the penultimate mission, in which you gain the ability

to pick random cars off the road and hurl them at your opponent

. Always awesome. Problem is, the game itself is less fun than it deserves to be. The controls are the main issue, feeling way more loose than they should. Feels like you can't take a basic corner without drifting in a 360 first. Kinda rough. Still, that I kept at it all the way to the end credits (currently running on my laptop as I type this) says enough about it. It's a sweet game, maybe not full price sweet, but next time it goes on sale, go for it.

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This is just going to be a running thing now, hey?

Well here's another - Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is one real beast of creative and cool game design. A bit like the Riddick game, it kind of slides between adventure gaming, stealth, and shooting on a whim, in addition to have some incredibly tense chase sequences where you are fumbling with door bolts and various environmental tasks while being hunted. (There's also a remarkably elaborate health system, with you patching and treating different kinds of wounds while abusing painkillers to help you muscle through the negative effects.)

^ There are unfortunate issues and glitches with each version of the game though, and it can also be brutally difficult.

You know, and the turn survival horror has taken for tighter, better designed combat mechanics probably helps make it count too.

Resident Evil 4 and onward, or Dead Space 1 & 2, for example.

I got my Cthulthu disc back from my brother at the weekend so I intend on finishing it this time. Scared the crap out of me last time I played it, I seem to vividly remember a scene with a mother & father arguing and a door flying open with a heinous creature running past? Also doesn't help that I have a rather large phobia of fish.

I had an evening to myself (for the first time in ages) a couple of weeks ago so I managed to finish Singularity in one sitting. Most fun I've had in yonks.

Just finished Assassins Creed 2, what a great game. So much to do, so many ways to do it, top notch animations and graphics and designs, I enjoyed climbing throughout the entire game, upgrading the villa seems to release some endorphins and when you get good at all the things Ezio does you just feel like a king in the cities being all bad ass.

I think I'll take a break from the Animus though before continuing on to Brotherhood. Just put in Enslaved, about an hour in and so far so good. Looks nice.

I too finished the 2nd one late last year and really enjoyed it (other than the unnecessary 'sexual' elements, totally unneeded), my wife got me Brotherhood for Christmas but again I don't think I can quite face another trip to the Animus again quite so soon.

I also beat Metroid Fusion yesterday, thoroughly enjoyed it (made the perfect lunch time game) but I was disappointed by the lack of urgency by the SA X, I was expecting to encounter it much more often.

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I also beat Metroid Fusion yesterday, thoroughly enjoyed it (made the perfect lunch time game) but I was disappointed by the lack of urgency by the SA X, I was expecting to encounter it much more often.

I had the opposite experience: the appearances of SA-X jolted me each time and kept me nervous each time I entered a new screen.

You're right that the encounters don't happen often, but they happened often enough to frighten me.

Look at me, falling directly into a game developer's expectations!

PS: I wonder how it would be to replay Metroid Fusion after seeing how its plot ties into Metroid Other M...

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I had the opposite experience: the appearances of SA-X jolted me each time and kept me nervous each time I entered a new screen.

You're right that the encounters don't happen often, but they happened often enough to frighten me.

Look at me, falling directly into a game developer's expectations!

PS: I wonder how it would be to replay Metroid Fusion after seeing how its plot ties into Metroid Other M...

Given how much of a fan of Fusion I was, the second the reveal trailer for Other M contained the words "Any objections, Lady?" I knew what was up. The knowledge of the history between Samus and Adam definitely did soften my opinion on elements of Other M, I think. Where lots of people unfamiliar with Adam just saw Samus encountering a man and immediately giving up her independence, setting back the character etc etc, I saw no problem with it as in my mind Adam was already established as the one person that Samus would ever actually listen to in a situation like that. As it was Adam, it didn't bother me. So where a lot of people were offended by Other M, I really loved it as a game, and the plot was enough to interest me (though I will admit to horrible voice acting and some pretty dumb twists). So yeah, I think that replaying Fusion may change your opinion a bit on Other M, but maybe not on Fusion?

As for SA-X, I'm kind of in the middle. It scared the crap out of me every time it showed up on my first play through, but in the end I found myself wondering why I only saw it a few times. That said, the tension in the sections where it is stalking you is phenomenal. I gotta replay that game.

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Finished Castlevania: Lords of Shadow over the weekend. Aside from a few missteps (

fucking chupacabras

), I thought it was pretty good. I'm not that great at that sort of combo-based character action, so I was pleased to be able to get through it without too much trouble on the normal difficulty.

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I beat Tornado Outbreak, I saw it the other day in a game store for 5€ and took a chance, because.... TORNADOES!

It's a Katamari Cy-clone! :grin:

You absorb smaller things until you become bigger and you're supposed to pick up 50 fire sprites to be able to end the level, with a final level with a very mini game-y boss (which is the same for every level).

Oh, and sunlight hurts you... You are made of wind and SUNLIGHT hurts you!:frusty:

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Arkham City :tup:

I just finished the game. The ending actually caught me by surprise, I didn't expect the last battle to be the final battle for the main story. The game felt short, and I really have no idea how many hours I put into it. I think there were less epic battles, and overall the tasks were shorter than in Arkham Asylum. But that could also be my memory. I think AA had more stealth room clearing elements than AC. In AC they added more challenge to stealth clearing, quite often you had to change tactics.

I didn't really care for the catwoman elements, it's a nice variation. The game mechanics for the catwoman segments were pretty much the same as those of batman except with different gadgets. I don't think that worked very well, I'm pretty sure catwoman isn't a brawler as batman is.

One thing that annoys me a bit in this game is the riddler clues. You see them briefly when you enter a area, and then they're gone. There's barely enough time to read the text, so it's difficult to get the clues to begin with.

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The Riddler stuff in general kind of annoyed me in Arkham City. There's way too much of it, and far too much of it is not interesting. I would have preferred just to have the riddles themselves and the more complex and unique trophy solutions. Make all the "this is just a random collectible" trophies and destruction of cameras and balloons non-essential. They can still be in the game, but I don't want to have to do them to get the Riddler side missions, which are actually somewhat entertaining. Also, yes, figuring out which riddle clue goes with which location is really clumsy.

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I finished Alpha Protocol.

I don't think that game got the credit it deserves. It's great!

It may have helped that I played on easy, because I already knew that I wasn't interested in the mechanical side of the game. I didn't want to be challenged by the combat; I wanted to concentrate on making choices and being a beardy, schizophrenic jerk.

It's cool. It seems that things can really play out differently depending on what you do, moreso than in a lot of games that give you the illusion of choice.

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I finished Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS.

That is a better game than Resident Evil 5. There are no qualifications for that statement. This portable gaiden game is a better executed and more fully featured game than the last main entry in the series.

The title lies though, there are no revelations, it's a completely stand alone story. (It has about as much to do with the T-Virus/Umbrella mythology as RE4 did, which is not much.)

I finished Alpha Protocol.

I don't think that game got the credit it deserves. It's great!

I think Alpha Protocol has some serious problems as an action RPG, and several of the possible story arcs noticeably go nowhere, but i respect the hell out of the dialogue system that game uses. It really made you feel like a spy sparring with words.

Scared the crap out of me last time I played it, I seem to vividly remember a scene with a mother & father arguing and a door flying open with a heinous creature running past?

Oh man! I had totally forgotten about that part, that was an incredible sequence!

... And i see Metroid being discussed, and i kind of want to get into it, but i kind of shouldn't get into it.

I don't like Fusion and Other M.

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Arkham City

I just finished the game. The ending actually caught me by surprise, I didn't expect the last battle to be the final battle for the main story. The game felt short, and I really have no idea how many hours I put into it. I think there were less epic battles, and overall the tasks were shorter than in Arkham Asylum. But that could also be my memory. I think AA had more stealth room clearing elements than AC. In AC they added more challenge to stealth clearing, quite often you had to change tactics.

I didn't really care for the catwoman elements, it's a nice variation. The game mechanics for the catwoman segments were pretty much the same as those of batman except with different gadgets. I don't think that worked very well, I'm pretty sure catwoman isn't a brawler as batman is.

One thing that annoys me a bit in this game is the riddler clues. You see them briefly when you enter a area, and then they're gone. There's barely enough time to read the text, so it's difficult to get the clues to begin with.

I really enjoyed Arkham City but there was just *something* preventing me from enjoying it as much as Arkham Asylum. I think the 'open world' aspect of the game derailed things a bit for me as I enjoyed the more linear aspects of Arkham Asylum, it just made the game flow a little better. I also felt as though the main story took a bit of a compromise so that more side quests could be added as filler.

I was also peeved that I made all the effort of being it at full whack in order to get the Catwoman missions only to find that they had very little place in the game and might as well have been side missions.

Given how much of a fan of Fusion I was, the second the reveal trailer for Other M contained the words "Any objections, Lady?" I knew what was up. The knowledge of the history between Samus and Adam definitely did soften my opinion on elements of Other M, I think. Where lots of people unfamiliar with Adam just saw Samus encountering a man and immediately giving up her independence, setting back the character etc etc, I saw no problem with it as in my mind Adam was already established as the one person that Samus would ever actually listen to in a situation like that. As it was Adam, it didn't bother me. So where a lot of people were offended by Other M, I really loved it as a game, and the plot was enough to interest me (though I will admit to horrible voice acting and some pretty dumb twists). So yeah, I think that replaying Fusion may change your opinion a bit on Other M, but maybe not on Fusion?

As for SA-X, I'm kind of in the middle. It scared the crap out of me every time it showed up on my first play through, but in the end I found myself wondering why I only saw it a few times. That said, the tension in the sections where it is stalking you is phenomenal. I gotta replay that game.

I have to admit that I'm a bit of a late comer to the Metroid series. I had Super Metroid back in the day but I lost interest in the series when I didn't get on with the Prime series (shocking I know!), that is until my brother got me Other M for my birthday and I really enjoyed it. It did feel like playing Super Metroid but with 3D elements. I might track down Zero Mission next, it's a re imagining of the first NES title isn't it?

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Finished Metal Gear Acid 2 and I loved it so much more than the first one. It's kind of overwhelming though, I had that learning curve thing (yet again) where I barely played it for three months and once the ball got rolling I was hooked and could not stop. It's definitely a very awesome series even though they are not considered must plays or canon to the Metal Gear universe at all.

The only thing that really annoyed me with the game is that it has all these unlockable videos in 3D that turn out just to be real life Japanese models posing in bikinis or having wet T-shirts. Apparently they were filmed especially for this game and it makes no god damn sense whatsoever. It actually cheapens the game to throw in a bunch of jack off material. It's not even good stuff anyway, it shouldn't be there. Along this line, there's also a female scientist that has a ridiculous amount of cleavage coming out of lab attire that has an extreme amount of jiggle factor in a character with not much action going on.

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I somehow beat Final Fantasy I & II last week, apparently Square didn't always make their games to be 200+ hours long?

FFII has the strangest levelling system ever, but despite it, I managed to enjoy the game a lot!:tup:

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Woah, how long did each take you? That's quite an achievement. Did you use a guide at all?

FFII's leveling system is legendary. Read up, peoples.

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I'd say 13-16 hours each and skipped the extra dungeons in both games.

I didn't use guides, but I did use maps, which you really need for FFII with all it's hidden passages, I also took advantage of having Minwu, the white mage in my party to fight enemies to strong for me to get some good gears and levels early on.

But you're right about the levelling sytems, why on earth do you level spells like Warp and Teleport? It's interesting that instead of getting better spells you just level them up, but once you get a new character or spell, everything is at level 1 and mostly useless.

You can cast "Life" on the whole party, which is kinda cheap, so I guess it evens out? I'm guess the original NES version was much more severe.

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I have to admit that I'm a bit of a late comer to the Metroid series. I had Super Metroid back in the day but I lost interest in the series when I didn't get on with the Prime series (shocking I know!), that is until my brother got me Other M for my birthday and I really enjoyed it. It did feel like playing Super Metroid but with 3D elements. I might track down Zero Mission next, it's a re imagining of the first NES title isn't it?

Yes, Zero Mission is a significantly expanded remake of the original game.

Making a recommendation though - If you can find a copy of the Metroid Prime Trilogy for Wii, do that. (The North American release can be hard to find, but the European versions are apparently pretty common.)

Speaking honestly, the Metroid fan in me could nitpick a lot of things about the Trilogy release, namely that it introduces a couple relatively harmless and really dumb bugs into the third game, and that they've also created a noticeably less than perfect version of the first Prime that is bereft of a ton of small visual flourishes. (It also rebalances the difficulty in the second game though, which that game actually really needed. Echoes is a hard game.)

The misgivings are pretty minor, it probably takes a fan to notice anything awry. It's still three incredible games for the price of one. (With the two GC titles pretty successfully overhauled with the the third game's responsive Wii-centric control scheme.)

Also just going to throw this out there - I think Super Metroid and Metroid Prime are the best games in that series. I think those are the games that should be played first.

Finished Metal Gear Acid 2 and I loved it so much more than the first one. It's kind of overwhelming though, I had that learning curve thing (yet again) where I barely played it for three months and once the ball got rolling I was hooked and could not stop. It's definitely a very awesome series even though they are not considered must plays or canon to the Metal Gear universe at all.

I loved the Metal Gear Acid games, i hope Konami revisits that formula again at some point.

You know, and with X-com being such a topic these days, i've had conversations about how uncommon that style game has become, only to realize that the Acid games would probably be an incredibly easy recommendation for people who miss really deep turn-based tactics games.

The Acid games didn't really get the attention they deserved.

The only thing that really annoyed me with the game is that it has all these unlockable videos in 3D that turn out just to be real life Japanese models posing in bikinis or having wet T-shirts. Apparently they were filmed especially for this game and it makes no god damn sense whatsoever. It actually cheapens the game to throw in a bunch of jack off material. It's not even good stuff anyway, it shouldn't be there. Along this line, there's also a female scientist that has a ridiculous amount of cleavage coming out of lab attire that has an extreme amount of jiggle factor in a character with not much action going on.

This seems to be pretty common place with a lot of the latter Metal Gear games, and it seems to have more to do with Kojima's weird sense of humor than titillation.

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I somehow beat Final Fantasy I & II last week, apparently Square didn't always make their games to be 200+ hours long?

What platform, I recently finished them myself on iOS... closing in on 40 hours I'd guess for each.

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