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I beat Bastion, which is literally the only game I can remember beating off the top of my head since Brutal Legend. Good game, good art, good music, and I saw after the fact that Supergiant is based in San Jose, also a plus!

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Part of the reason I love Bastion so much is that it does things exclusive to video games; like, you couldn't tell that story in the same way if you wrote it in prose or filmed it. The narrator was a smart move. The fact he actually comments on very specific things is the icing on the cake. I imagine that must have been quite difficult to code.

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Yeah, I have no idea how they managed to code that. I was afraid it would end up being like the banter NPCs say in most open world games where it's generic and repetitive, but it wasn't at all. It felt so tailored to me specifically and to what I was actually doing.

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Just finished Limbo, lovely design, visuals and soundscapes. Puzzles kept me entertained too. Very enjoyable, you should play it if you haven't.

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Just finished Limbo. Found the thing to be massively overrated. Yes, it's got a nice visual design, but there's plenty to dislike: Typical game "we can't tell a coherent story, so we'll rely on vague darkness and pretend we're profound" (see Braid), but by far the worse thing was the trial and error puzzles. I felt like I was playing a game from 1990.

I know I'm in a minority on this!

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by far the worse thing was the trial and error puzzles.

Not at all! The Limbo designers did a great checkpointing job. I was never bothered by the cheap shots they took at me (and there were many cheap deaths) because it smoothly took me back just a few steps each time.

Then again, I'm the guy who quit playing Super Meat Boy after dying once, so what do I know about "good" dying in games?

...Or should I say I had a decent run of Super Meat Boy on Hardcore Mode?

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I suppose I 'beat' Skyrim, well I'm done with it for the foreseeable future anyway, unless I decide to pick it up on PC and mess around with some mods.

All in all, thoroughly enjoyed it, was going for all the trophies (PS3) but Silus didn't spawn and stopped me from getting all the daedric artefacts, other than that, music was great, graphics were beautiful, gameplay was typically RPG with a bit of added spice in the animations and execution of some mechanics.

Storyline was probably Skyrim's weakest point, that or bugs, but it managed to keep me interested, even if I did think that the civil war was a waaaay more interesting concept.

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Just finished Limbo. Found the thing to be massively overrated. Yes, it's got a nice visual design, but there's plenty to dislike: Typical game "we can't tell a coherent story, so we'll rely on vague darkness and pretend we're profound" (see Braid), but by far the worse thing was the trial and error puzzles. I felt like I was playing a game from 1990.

I know I'm in a minority on this!

I know exactly what you are talking about, it was good, but I don't think it beats Another World, Prince of Persia, or Oddworld for example. Thing is, I don't think a lot of Limbo lovers played the older versions of the same game.

I still found it enjoyable, but I actually felt it was easy, with the trial and error puzzles being very forgiving in terms of checkpoints.

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Ghost Trick. Written and directed by Shu Takumi of Ace Attorney fame and it definitely shows in the story department. It's that typical, extremely convoluted type of crime story, but as expertly rolled out as all his games. Plus it has some really cool puzzles. The gameplay was surprisingly adventure-like and pretty unique at that.

Don't overlook this!

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DS or iPhone version?

I beat two games this week, Dynasty Warrior 7, which is pretty awesome now, while you can't chose whatever character you want you get a better story mode and every makes more sense and can you believe there has been SEVEN of these game and now they tell how the Romance of the Three Kingdom ends?

It's also much less grindy!:tup:

The other game I played was Sonic Colours, which seems to support my theory that the moment Sonic Team "gave up" is when people liked them again.

It was great fun, but it's was lazily made, the bosses were recycled, the levels are insultingly short, one is just you running around the rings of a planet, but they are pretty fun! :tup:

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Just finished Alpha Protocol, almost started another playthrough, but this fresh Mass Effect 3 install won't play itself...

Alpha Protocol gives you some important choices to make, a lot of them actually. Even though the missions are flawed (AI, level design, animations, graphics and some glitches) I really liked their structure. They were frequent and short. Sometimes they would even just involve a few conversation choices rather than a shootout based on of how you aligned yourself with the factions and characters.

You can pick it up for cheap, I'd recommend giving it a go, it's an interesting game.

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Ghost Trick was the DS version which I picked up for cheap. I can see this game working on iOS since it's pretty much touch-based.

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just finished Bastion last night.

I enjoyed it, but was kind of disappointed in the ending. There were two moments nearing the end where you suddenly have to make a choice between 2 options. I felt like I did not have enough information to make a well-considered selection, and the game's end was clearly dictated by those 2 black or white choices I made.

I felt like the narrator was not telling me the whole story, he admits as much along the way, and so I always felt like I was missing out on something. It created a nice sense of ambiguity and distrust in me, which is a fun thing to experience from a game. But then to have me have to make these 2 choices...

Then again, what is life but a series of more-or-less misinformed choices we make. So that was something.

Also, I have never really appreciated 'multiple-ending' games. The prospect of replaying 4-5 hours to see a couple of extra minutes of story is not enticing enough to me.

In the end I saved Zulf and then did what Zia wanted me to do and did not reset the Bastion. They were more or less natural choices. Save a guy as opposed to letting him die, easy enough. Even though he did get my pet squirt killed. Then I did what the girl wanted to do, again not a hard choice.

I just wish I wasn't second guessing my instinctual choices because I feel like I missed out on prospective story content and/or a "better" ending. This is as much my problem as the game's.

Other than that this game is great. Tight controls. Fun array of weapons. Beautiful level art. The way the world builds itself around you is so lovely. Fun narrative hook. etc..

2 thumbs up.

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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.

Going back to this....

I finished Zero Mission last week and I found the last level to be an incredible example of how to put stress on the player via the feeling of being hunted .

Losing your suit and abilities is a time tested design piece but here it really felt as though the safety net had been taken away and panic had set in.

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I've just finished Wipeout HD (and Fury). The last few golds had been eluding me for a while on 'phantom'. Top game.

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I felt like the narrator was not telling me the whole story, he admits as much along the way, and so I always felt like I was missing out on something

I thought the ending was great. The Narrator not telling you why things (like

that Zulf's people were the victims, not the creators, of the Calamity

) added a certain ambiguity that made me hesitate about

leaving Zulf to die

.

When it becomes apparent that the Narrator is telling the story of the Bastion to Zia, and that, finally, the game has caught-up to what's happening in real-time, the game gives you the choice. Saving Zulf isn't black-and-white because although he did betray you and cause so much trouble, he did it in revenge. I find his position completely understandable.

As for the ending: I decided to restart the universe and, because of the aforementioned added ambiguity, save Zulf and see what he had to say about betraying us. It all become very emotional at the end and I found myself surprisingly touched by it.

Great great game.

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Arkham City

The good:

Everything! :tup: :tup:

The bad:

The Riddler

That is all.

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I'd never heard of Bastion, and have just bought it on the strength of your few words. It sounds fun!

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I'm with Kroms, I got so invested in the characters, so by the end, the last choice was extremely hard. It became a "Should vs. want" choice for me, rather than black or white.

I played through Ghost Trick on the iPad, and that version is great, touch controls work well, and it's nice to see the smooth art style on a big screen. I got completely hooked by the writing, and I love that even the smallest character has a funny quirk.

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That choice wasn't that hard with me... I went with want. :blink:

I just beat Rayman Origins, which is probably one of the best classic platforms I've played in ages! Some bosses where a bit boring or annoying, but still... :tup:

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I bought Ghost Trick on the DS and played a little of it, I only got maybe 1 or two puzzles into it, but I wasn't hooked and stopped playing. I'll definitely give it another shot.

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It's that time again when I complain about this thread and suggest that topics get their own threads instead of this desolate opinion graveyard.

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I just beat Rayman Origins, which is probably one of the best classic platforms I've played in ages! Some bosses where a bit boring or annoying, but still... :tup:

I can't get over how good the demo is. I'm sooo buying the game - twice.

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