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Legend of Grimrock :tup:

Finally finished it, took me 23 hours. I missed 1 treasure and a few secrets, but other than that I've completed it.

It's really a great dungeon crawler. It barely has a story, it's just crawling the dungeon. The story is presented in pure text in form of notes and dreams. That lack of a story is well compensated by the great gameplay. It's quite well paced, the game kept being challenging. In some cases I feel I was cheating a bit (although still within the rules of the game). I didn't care much for the final battle, it was just taking a swing or two and then escape to a lower level to recover. The puzzles were ok, nothing really complicated.

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But it all felt cut short, like they just ran out of time and shipped the game with a lot more "a hundred dudes are going to try and shoot you now" scenarios than they might have wanted.

I found myself frequently thinking "Ugh, more of this shit. God damn it Uncharted I just want to continue the story, why are you forcing me to do the thing you're worst at so much?". It was depressing and frustrating.

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Botanicula :tmeh:

Way too much pixel hunting. There were only a few crafty puzzles. It's more like Samorost than like Machinarium.

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I replayed Pyschonauts, it seems they fixed the Meat Circus by giving you unlimited lives. I never thought it was that bad.

Either they changed the game to make it easier, or this game is easier than I remember, even the figment collecting wasn't as bad as I remembered! It's great to replay classics, you keep noticing things you didn't before, like that Tara Strong played Sheegor! :tup:

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Oh man I just finished Limbo, going for that No Point in Dying cheesemint, which requires beating the game in one sitting with at most deaths. It's one of those cheesemints that presents an actual challenge, instead of just "collect all the doohickies", although Limbo has enough of those, too. And even they aren't that bad. I got most of them pretty easy. The names are hints, and you basically have to go off the beaten path to get 'em. Then once you get 'em all there's a hidden secret level (that I had to look up on the internet, 'cause what).

Anyway, what I'm trying to say, is what the fuck is Limbo about. Am I dead, or is the name just a trick. Am I trying to save myself or the girl. Why do these kids hate me for no reason. My problem with the game is that it is literally open to whatever interpretation I feel like applying to it. I mean, I guess that's fine. There's plenty of stuff like that in the world, but it's never been my bag. Get outta here!

So, the Limbo Experience was shit. But the game was great! Otherwise, I never would've gone for the aforementioned no-dying-more-than-five-times cheesemint. Which, by the way, was a great challenge. The game is short enough that I didn't feel TOO frustrated when I failed the first few times, and in fact only felt more motivated, as I knew I could do it with enough practice. Kept making it further and further. Finally made it to the very last jump with no lives left... and failed. Next time, made it all the way, though I had died one too many times... but didn't! YES. Feels good.

Oh, also, given all that praise for the mechanics, I should say that I was kind of surprised. I really didn't expect it to be so mechanically sound. I thought it was all artsy fartsy from the way people talked about it. But no! Pretty slick, that Limbo.

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What about Yakuza 1, have you played that? I keep hearing about the Yakuza games and am wondering if I need to play them. Would you recommend playing them all through?

I finished Yakuza 1 about 2 years ago and yes it is worth playing. Yakuza 3 has a recap of all the major events from 1 and 2 but I have been told that it is also the weakest of the series so it might not be a good starting point. Have Yakuza 3 and 4 sitting at home waiting for a rainy day.

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Anyway, what I'm trying to say, is what the fuck is Limbo about. Am I dead, or is the name just a trick. Am I trying to save myself or the girl. Why do these kids hate me for no reason. My problem with the game is that it is literally open to whatever interpretation I feel like applying to it. I mean, I guess that's fine. There's plenty of stuff like that in the world, but it's never been my bag. Get outta here!

I quite liked the openly interpretable nature of the game. Unlike say, Outland, which tries to force Diablo-style lore down your throat in the form of full screen paragraphs, Limbo lets the story come out through the gameplay. The narrative is intentionally obfuscated to inspire a sense of helplessness in the player. I think it was mostly successful. And I absolutely loved the ending for reasons I find hard to explain. I've also had some great conversations about Limbo mostly due to the murky nature of its plot.

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With all these indie bundle I had a lot to play, Cardinal Quest is one of the few I liked enough to bother finishing.

It's was great fun to find spells and use them to survive. It's pretty strategic with the wizard since the fireball takes a few turns to recharge you have to either slow them down, make them sleep, charm them... you know, the usual D&D spells.

I never understood what money is for though, maybe you get an extra life at 100 coins?

The most frustrating part is fighting the elementals, since they can summon a minor copy, throw fireballs and teleport. I once had one teleport behind me leaving me with nowhere to escape. I barely made it out of there! :tup:

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Anyway, what I'm trying to say, is what the fuck is Limbo about. Am I dead, or is the name just a trick. Am I trying to save myself or the girl. Why do these kids hate me for no reason. My problem with the game is that it is literally open to whatever interpretation I feel like applying to it. I mean, I guess that's fine. There's plenty of stuff like that in the world, but it's never been my bag. Get outta here!

I thought the Limbo part was pretty straightforward actually. I took it as you were some kid who recently died, woke up, and is stuck in the inbetween hell and heaven purgatory type thing. Stuff is a weird mishmash of things from the real world, much like Wristcutters, and some people have been there so long that they get feral and violent.

Really it seemed like the game was trying to be more vague about something that didn't have much below the surface.

At the end I imagine he meets a girl who is more fresh into the world and is his possible friend or will bring some kind of happiness in the dull and tragic life in limbo. Then you are back at the start because you are stuck there. Again, much like Wristcutters. I guess Limbo is just Wristcutters with more violence, giant spiders, and no comedy or Tom Waits.

I guess I was pretty disappointed in the ending, as it just said nothing. I was imaging there would have been someway to exit limbo, but I guess that would have been too "cliche" for the artsy designers. Either that or too much new art required that hypothetically wouldn't have been a bunch of black and white.

At least it's not as obnoxious as Braid I suppose. I could have done with more plot like Another World though.

Reposting this in the Limbo thread also, since it's active.

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Finished Syndicate (2012) which I was rather disappointed with. While the shooting was fine and had me engaged in the combat, I just didn't really care for the story which made pushing through the game a bit of an ordeal. If only they'd opened up the world a little more.

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I'm sure any thread on ICO that has ever existed on this board has been locked, but I finally beat it last week after a few false starts throughout the years.

I didn't know ICO existed until maybe 2005 (from the Thumbs board, actually), didn't buy it until like 2007 since I made sure to import the PAL version and have a PS2 that swapped discs ahead of time, where then my life was too hectic to make my way through to game from start to end. I guess I didn't realize it was so short either, otherwise I could have easily spent an afternoon on it years ago. But I resold that version ASAP on Ebay when I heard the European version was going to be in the HD collection, and made way more money than I figured (it had those art cards). Finally I bought the HD collection on Amazon during Black Friday last year and started only just now after rebuying a PS3 since mine bit the dust last February. A lot of weird delays I can't exactly explain to get to ICO and Shadow of the Colossus.

So in that vein, ICO has suffered majorly through time in my eyes. I've now played enough games where they have taken ICO's tropes and made them better (I didn't even realize Sands of Time was using so much from ICO), and I feel I am left with a broken subpar game experience. I appreciate everything ICO did and I do enjoy the story, characters, graphics, music, and atmopshere, but in the gameplay department there's only like two puzzles I felt like I haven't done before in a platformer. The bad controls all around, Yorda's horrible AI, and the impossibly boring fighting were just making the game tedious to slog through. So when others say they beat ICO in the same day, I would do an hour or two spurt and turn the game off for the next night, even though I didn't need to.

So this is where I'm completely unfair to a game I know is/was great: I waited way too long. Maybe it would have been nice had they made the controls and game smoother in the HD collection instead of just prettier? I've played it twice so far, for the alternate ending, so it's pleasant enough, I just don't know if I would recommend it today like some other similar platformers that are older and I still enjoy. I'm trying to do that ridiculous under 2 hour speed run for the trophy right now, which isn't incredibly frustrating with saves, but I'm not there enough. Although, I'm a bit confused why the developers would have felt the last 25-50 minutes of the game (depending on how well you play) would be great if you could not save at all?

I read ahead on the time attack stuff and multiple playthroughs required to get everything in Shadow of the Colossus, so I don't even think I'm going to start that game until next year. Too many difficult and frustrating twitch games have come my way the last year and I think I'm going to just play some adventure games for the next few months so I can wind down a little bit. Maybe some easier games like Journey as well.

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Well this isn't a game as such, but I just finished all the VR Missions from Metal Gear Solid 2 HD. All 511 of them! Total time taken: 50 hours. Yikes! (Although I think I may have left it on and did other things from time to time.)

I'm pretty kick ass at MGS2 now! Most amount of work I've ever done for an achievement, I think. Just as well I enjoyed myself!

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The VR missions are the best things about MGS. Seriously, I love them. Pure gameplay, no story fluff to bog it down. And MGS actually has good gameplay when not bogged down by the story! (I enjoy the ridiculousness of the story, too, though.)

My favorite MGS game is Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions on PS1.

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So in that vein, ICO has suffered majorly through time in my eyes. I've now played enough games where they have taken ICO's tropes and made them better (I didn't even realize Sands of Time was using so much from ICO), and I feel I am left with a broken subpar game experience. I appreciate everything ICO did and I do enjoy the story, characters, graphics, music, and atmopshere, but in the gameplay department there's only like two puzzles I felt like I haven't done before in a platformer. The bad controls all around, Yorda's horrible AI, and the impossibly boring fighting were just making the game tedious to slog through. So when others say they beat ICO in the same day, I would do an hour or two spurt and turn the game off for the next night, even though I didn't need to.

So this is where I'm completely unfair to a game I know is/was great: I waited way too long.

For what it's worth: I played the game in 2005 or so, only a few years after it came out, and I felt similarly about the controls and puzzles even then. I appreciate the game for its aesthetics and generally cool conceptualness, but as a gameplay experience, my impression is that it was a little wonky even then.

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Well this isn't a game as such, but I just finished all the VR Missions from Metal Gear Solid 2 HD. All 511 of them! Total time taken: 50 hours. Yikes! (Although I think I may have left it on and did other things from time to time.)

I'm pretty kick ass at MGS2 now! Most amount of work I've ever done for an achievement, I think. Just as well I enjoyed myself!

Holy shit,! I did this too on the PS2, but I clocked in at 70 hours and I had to use a walkthrough for many of the later missions. That's damn good timing on your part. I've done about 40% so far for the HD one but I've just been chipping away. I spent forever on the sniper missions and the stupid MGS1 Snake Tengu fight thing. 20 minutes of fighting and just one easy part to screw up at the end... sheesh.

But definitely those missions are a great chunk of game play. It's a shame the last 100 get brutal but otherwise I had fun with them.

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I totally used a walkthrough the final batch of MGS1 missions. They were just too fiddly and required you to trial and error for hundreds of times before you managed to inch your way to the end.

These were the video walkthroughs: http://www.trueachievements.com/viewcomment.aspx?commentid=438877#vch

Astonishingly they're not just videos of some uber player showing off, they're deliberately designed to be solutions that most players can do.

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Those videos look much better than the way I finished them, which was reading various guides on Gamefaqs and trying to understand what exactly they were telling me to do.

Mostly I just really don't want to do that 20 minute Tengu fight again. I lucked out having to quickly shoot a stinger at the bucket over the giant guard's head. If I didn't do that, I would die almost instantly. Looks like the link you posted has a walkthrough for it that is kind of current instead of some dude showing off like I had to use before. Thanks a ton for that!

I'm also not looking forward to doing extreme mode bosses again. Finding all of the dog tags is no problem really and once you know the layout of the game, it goes super quick. I wish Metal Gear Solid 2 didn't have those few super difficult parts to 100%. Metal Gear Solid 3 is so much more relieving in that there is no reason for me to ever play extreme or do some crazy boss rush to unlock something. They even took out duel mode in the HD version which was the only semblance of true difficulty in Metal Gear Solid 3.

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Rock of Ages :tdown:

Basically tower defense with quite a twist, it's more original than most tower defense games. But sadly, the gameplay isn't worked out quite well. I won most battles with the same tactic: simply build a shit load of towers in a row and thereby delaying the opponent. Then it was simply a matter of passing by the opponents defenses and hit the door. After a while it becomes tedious to do the same thing again, and again. Steam clocked me at 3 hours for the game, and that was probably spread over months playing two or three levels at the time.

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I found Rock of Ages to be infinitely more fun once I started treating it as a platformer.

The key hunting and speedruns were actually my favorite parts of the game. X:

But, yeah, the main draw, the tower defense-itude, is kinda lame, since every single level is, as you say, basically the same damn thing. A real shame, too. I think the game has a lot more potential than they delivered. I'd've liked things like pinball bumpers, bouncy platforms, etc. You know, stereotypical platformer stuff, but this time you're a ball! Would've added a lot to the game, I think. Hell, maybe even some gravity reversal, but that might be going too crazy.

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I finished Space Marine, which I got free from the PSN +, I loved how balanced the melee and shooting is, or at least, I liked how the game let me play as a melee fighter nearly all of the game, except for a few enemies that I couldn't reach.

I'm kinda sad I liked the game, since I'm not any good at non-Civ (squad based?) strategy games, because now I kinda want to see more from this world.

Warhammer created the original Space Marine which spawned all the others, right? They why did I like this one, but not the others? Was it just the melee?

I also beast Vessel another indie physics based platform puzzle game, which I thought I'd hate because the genre was started to get generic, but the fact that you can bring the liquids to life and give them different behaviors makes the game feel unique, at least for now?

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I just played The Darkness II.

It was ok.

Competent, but forgettable.

Warhammer created the original Space Marine which spawned all the others, right? They why did I like this one, but not the others? Was it just the melee?

Warhammer 40k's claims about its Space Marines are just marketing silliness, as even Aliens predates WH40k, and there's other instances of the concept dating back to the 30's.

Anyways, if you want more WH40k at the lowest bar of entry, Relic's Dawn of War games are your best bet, even if you're not hugely into RTS games.

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After months, I'm still picking up Pullblox / Pushmo now and then.

I'm on the last of the 250 puzzles now. Basically, the first 210 puzzles were so easy as to be off-putting (if the mechanic hadn't been so much fun, that is), but it's getting delightfully tough now. It feels really good to solve a puzzle now. I'm miffed that it'll be over soon, just now it's getting interesting. The game should've ramped the difficulty up a little sooner, I feel.

Ah well, great download in any case.

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FINALLY finished Resistance 1, I gave up for a while as it became ridiculously tedious and drawn out but I made it! I guess playing the third one first spoiled me a bit.

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Just wrapped up Uncharted 3. I liked it a lot. It's probably a better game than Uncharted 2, but does not have the same out-of-the-blue "wait, I just did WHAT?" factor that the latter had. I still eagerly await the Uncharted game that forgets that guns exist, however, as some of the shooty bits had me nearly gnawing my own leg off to escape back to traversal.

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Beat Metro 2033 a week ago, very good game. Don't really think the combat mechanics hold up in the later stages of the game, as 4A's idea of ramping up the difficulty as time goes on is just having guys with significantly more hit points or things that can kill you in one or two hits. Did love the story and atmosphere, though.

Finished up Transfomers: War for Cybertron this past weekend, what a weird game. Never was a huge fan of Transformers, but there's still a level of cultural osmosis nostalgia that I appreciated in this one. The gameplay is nothing special, standard third-person shooting stuff, but I did like the transforming in the air combat levels. Well worth the $5 or $10 I paid for it in some Steam sale from way back.

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