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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.

Yep, those videos are FANTASTIC. I was so happy to have found someone who was actually trying to be helpful, rather than show off his madskillz, or that one crazy time he got the top score out of sheer fluke. It's impossible to recreate those videos. With the ones I found he tries several different ways of solving a level, figures out the easiest, and posts that. God knows how long it took him. Top guy.

I got all the achievements for MGS3HD (although it's only half as many as the PS3 version has -- damn MS!) and now I'm just working through the dogtags in MGS2. As you say, it's pretty fun, because I now know the levels so well from all the Virtual Missions. I should be able to blast through it all, in theory :) I already hit a problem on EXTREME, though -- Olga could kill me with one hit. I had to find a pretty cheap way to beat her.

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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.

Oooh I've just started this and am enjoying it so far. Unlike the Resistance series I have actually played the first 2, in fact I had restarted the first on hard until the third came from Lovefilm.

I'm a sucker for scripted sequences sometimes...

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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.

I tried to beat that game, but I hated it... What's the name you give when a bunch of bullies take something from you and just pass it from one to another? "Hot potato"? Well, that's what this game does, and it does too much of it.

Arkham City did a lot of it, but it was through the whole game, you tried to get the cure, but things get getting in your way, but in this game? You need to do a million boring tasks in the same level. By the time I finished the second level I just couldn't take it anymore. :|

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I tried to beat that game, but I hated it... What's the name you give when a bunch of bullies take something from you and just pass it from one to another? "Hot potato"? Well, that's what this game does, and it does too much of it.

Arkham City did a lot of it, but it was through the whole game, you tried to get the cure, but things get getting in your way, but in this game? You need to do a million boring tasks in the same level. By the time I finished the second level I just couldn't take it anymore. :|

Yeah, I don't claim it's any work of art but I did have fun with it. Might also be due in part to the fact that I played it on easy and could burn through those annoyances fairly quickly. In my quest to defeat my backlog, I've had a lot less humility about game difficulty. If playing on easy will allow me to finish a game and even have fun with it, I'll gladly take that opportunity.

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Yeah, I don't claim it's any work of art but I did have fun with it. Might also be due in part to the fact that I played it on easy and could burn through those annoyances fairly quickly. In my quest to defeat my backlog, I've had a lot less humility about game difficulty. If playing on easy will allow me to finish a game and even have fun with it, I'll gladly take that opportunity.

I'm not talking about annoying endurance arenas, this is the kind of stuff that's annoying on any difficulty level. As in:

-All you have to do to beat the level is take the elevator, but the keycard is the hands of soldier "X"!

-Oh, you found him? WRONG! He's been taken by a monster to the sewers! And you need a special key to enter the sewers!

-Annoying obligatory arena fight with an enemy that's only hard to fight because it's hard to hit!

-You have the keycard finally? Good! But the entrance you took just caved in, you better take another route!

-You finally made it to the elevator with the keycard? Well... It's broken now! Do the basement and fix it! We promise there won't be another annoying arena fight! No, seriously, there will definitely not be a mini boss/QTE timed event down there, because you've played this level for hours and you just want it to end, why would prolong your suffering... O.K., there is a mini-boss fight, but it's almost a micro boss fight if you come to think of it.

This is the kind of "hot potato" I'm talking about, where the programmers will think of just about any excuse to make the level longer, if I have to all this stupidity in my first mission or level and the second is more of the same, I just quit.

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I'm not talking about annoying endurance arenas, this is the kind of stuff that's annoying on any difficulty level. As in:

-All you have to do to beat the level is take the elevator, but the keycard is the hands of soldier "X"!

-Oh, you found him? WRONG! He's been taken by a monster to the sewers! And you need a special key to enter the sewers!

-Annoying obligatory arena fight with an enemy that's only hard to fight because it's hard to hit!

-You have the keycard finally? Good! But the entrance you took just caved in, you better take another route!

-You finally made it to the elevator with the keycard? Well... It's broken now! Do the basement and fix it! We promise there won't be another annoying arena fight! No, seriously, there will definitely not be a mini boss/QTE timed event down there, because you've played this level for hours and you just want it to end, why would prolong your suffering... O.K., there is a mini-boss fight, but it's almost a micro boss fight if you come to think of it.

This is the kind of "hot potato" I'm talking about, where the programmers will think of just about any excuse to make the level longer, if I have to all this stupidity in my first mission or level and the second is more of the same, I just quit.

I dunno, that game design tendency seems like a matter of degree rather than being "x"-type of game. Most games have dumb contrivances that promote forward progress. I feel more bothered by games where you drop 2 meters in elevation and can't backtrack because there's no jump function than by games where an entrance collapses or keycard is destroyed. At least there's some facade constructed over that funneling of your progression.

That said, I think "-Annoying obligatory arena fight with an enemy that's only hard to fight because it's hard to hit!" rings very true. Transformers falls victim very obviously to the "wait a guy to show his red spot, attack that red spot, avoid incredibly powerful attacks, now he's slightly more powerful, repeat two more times" thing.

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I guess you're right about the degree, anything is bearable and even fun if don't right, I've actually enjoyed a turret section a few times.

Are you talking about the cloakers or are there even more annoying versions of that enemy? Either way, I'm glad I quit.

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The cloakers are really the only enemy of that particular type. The different enemy types recur and persist through both campaigns, so there's really not a huge amount of variety in the ground-based combat.

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Man, i can't really get into the discussion because i don't have that game fresh in memory, but i really liked War for Cybertron. I mean, I also hold a great deal of affection for that brand, so take that as you will, but i thought that was a genuinely awesome game.

I'd recommend having a few rounds with its survival thing, which was one of the big surprises and standouts of that game for me. One of the very best examples of a wave-based co-op survival gametype, i think.

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I technically 100%'ed inFamous 2 and by technically I mean I got every collectible and the game, but I refuse to replay the game in evil mode to get 100%. I really loved this game, this is only the second sandbox game in which I've done every mission and collected everything, but I don't love it so much that I'm willing to do everything all over again.

(Maybe I could just kill innocents until I'm evil, I still don't want to, anyway.)

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I'm super late to the game but I played through Botanicula and got all but two of the creature cards. I've been really enjoying listening to the soundtrack since.

I love games like that where you're encouraged to explore and figure things out on your own, with no handholding, no dialogue, no hints, just a lot of organic exploration and immersion in an artwork. It also made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. :3

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I technically 100%'ed inFamous 2 and by technically I mean I got every collectible and the game, but I refuse to replay the game in evil mode to get 100%. I really loved this game, this is only the second sandbox game in which I've done every mission and collected everything, but I don't love it so much that I'm willing to do everything all over again.

(Maybe I could just kill innocents until I'm evil, I still don't want to, anyway.)

You just burning through all those PS+ free games?

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Warhammer 40k Space Marine: Just finished the campaign.

Like Tanukitsune, I really loved the way they implemented melee in this game. It's not just an afterthought like in most shooters, it's fundamental to the way the game is played. You need to melee to regain health which forces you to constantly engage the enemy head-on. Unfortunately, in harder areas this kind of broke the game for me. Places where there were a ton of snipers positioned behind waves of close range enemies meant you either had to charge fwd, melee and grab health constantly and probably die to a stray grenade or cumulative sniper shots or hang back and take potshots until most of the enemies were dead. Which, you can imagine, in a melee focused game, is no fun at all. Still, the moments when you're rocking the hammer and joyfully swinging and ground pounding your way through a group of enemies is visceral bliss on the level of the best Diablo crowd clearing moments. Add the jetpack scenes (of which there were not nearly enough) and you're in berserker heaven.

I found the universe to be very interesting, and wish the designers had been a bit more ambitious in scope. It just sounds so amazing: a universe populated by humans, orcs, and chaos forces, all in constant struggle for domination. None is more moral than the other, judging from the harsh way humans are treated in the world of the game - which is woefully tiny in comparison. I felt such jealousy hearing captains in orbit above talk about hammering starships with pulse blasts over the radio as I trudged from broken bridge v01 to dimly lit hall v03 to arena v06. I can understand that they probably didn't have a huge leash to begin with considering THQ's financial troubles. And this was painfully apparent throughout the game. While the building blocks of gameplay and combat were fresh and enjoyable, the story was predictable and the villains trite. The final boss battle was a joke that felt like an actual retrogression of quicktime event implementation. It all felt very small time in a world that is purportedly epic in scale.

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I found the universe to be very interesting, and wish the designers had been a bit more ambitious in scope. It just sounds so amazing: a universe populated by humans, orcs, and chaos forces, all in constant struggle for domination.

If you're into what Space Marine showed of WH40k as a universe, i encourage wiki-binging.

It's a fun setting, everything is horrible.

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It is a fun setting. But I'm not sure the narrative is strong enough to stand apart from the gameplay. Let alone buried in wiki articles. I want to be stomping orcs in outer space as I hear about this stuff!

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I feel like I never have time to complete a game, if I do it's probably on a handheld because it's easier to eschew normal sleep hours when you're in bed and thoroughly entertained.

I did make a note to FINALLY finish Stacking. I'd left it at 91% for about 2 months before hopping back in for the final chapter. I should have planned that better, 10 minutes later I was done with the game. So fleeting! Awesome experience, but for all the flatulence.

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I've been chipping at this one for a while, but I finally finished City of Secret and it's dreadful, you can't really tell what you can pick up and what not, so the game has a button that tells you what you can pick up, except...

It's also the hint button, well, more like "I'm telling you EXACTLY what to do button", which you probably need since this game has so much moon logic.

It's a Polish game, which might explain why the humor doesn't make any sense either, it was probably lost in translation? In the game's ending, all the characters are interviewed and they all take a dump on the game, this might have been funny if the game wasn't terrible for real. :tdown:

(Thank God I got for free at the iOS app store)

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I did make a note to FINALLY finish Stacking. I'd left it at 91% for about 2 months before hopping back in for the final chapter. I should have planned that better, 10 minutes later I was done with the game. So fleeting! Awesome experience, but for all the flatulence.

I'm on the last level of Stacking, I think, and have been for at least a year now. I was playing it with a friend and then stopped seeing her very much, but I should either make a point of getting her to come over or just do it myself. At this point I'm concerned my PS3 will break before I finish it, like my 360 did before I finished Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes.

In terms of games I did finish recently, I played through all of Prototype 2 at a pretty brisk pace. It's not the greatest game ever made, and certainly doesn't have a huge amount of artistic merit, but it is very easy and enjoyable to simply consume (no pun intended). The side missions were just varied and systemic enough yet with the right little sprinkling of script and voicework to keep me going, and the primary powers and traversal mechanics remain fun for the length of the game. I thought it was timed pretty well, just when I was starting to not want to pick it up again it was coming to a close.

By contrast I've made it 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through Max Payne 3 and feel like I just want it to be over. It's not a bad game by any means (and is probably objectively better than Prototype 2), but I'm tiring of it quite quickly. I want to see the narrative, and perhaps more importantly the settings/situations, play out, but I hope it starts to roll into an endgame pretty soon. I'm having a lot of trouble motivating myself to start it up rather than just do another game of a neverending multiplayer game like Sins of a Solar Empire/League of Legends/Dota 2 with some friends. This issue will only become more pronounced next week when the Civilization V expansion comes out.

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I somehow finished story mode in Radiant Silvergun... I know Treasure loves their boss battles, but that was just ludicrous! I lost count on how many forms the final boss had, I'd probably curl up into a fetal postion if I tried to remember. :blink:

I really hated the tight corridor levels, specially the ones where you had to shoot the pincer bots who are holding the blocks together and fly under them before getting crushed. :tdown:

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In probably the longest time coming for any game I've owned, I finally beat Advance Wars DS. I bought it when I first arrived in Texas six years ago, despite being awful at strategy games. But hey, it looked light-hearted and I figured it would be great. Then I ended up getting my ass kicked in the mid-game a lot, and got stuck on a mission toward the end. When I broke my wrist three weeks ago I was out of options for games but this was definitely playable. And over these past three weeks I've gotten far better at the game. So I decided to muscle my way through that mission I was stuck on and it turned out to be one of those awful difficulty mishaps because the rest of the game was simple beyond it.

Of course, looking at the post game content, I'm disappointed to see there's a LOT of grinding involved to unlock features and COs to play as. Now I'm less excited about my accomplishment.

Edit - Oh, apparently I racked up enough points to buy up most of the unlockables in one shot. Excited again.

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Duel Strike is an amazing game. I loved it. You have some overpowered abilities when you team up that can completely sweep the enemy off their feet, but the sense of wild joy is superb and the CO designs are super fun. That's maybe why I was so disappointed when the next Advance Wars (Dark Conflict) was gritty and post-apocalyptic. Didn't care for that at all.

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Duel Strike is an amazing game. I loved it. You have some overpowered abilities when you team up that can completely sweep the enemy off their feet, but the sense of wild joy is superb and the CO designs are super fun. That's maybe why I was so disappointed when the next Advance Wars (Dark Conflict) was gritty and post-apocalyptic. Didn't care for that at all.

I got Days of Ruin (the NA title of gritty Advance Wars) for Christmas from a secret Santa a couple years ago. The tone doesn't bother me. The change in how COs work is a little odd; they aren't universally applying benefits to all units. Plus, there's fewer of them and they all seem to fit the straight-forward categories of "strong air units, strong ground," etc. Dual Strike is great because of all the different angles COs had, though like three of them are literally the same in what they do. Also the balance in Days of Ruin is really, REALLY different, I was having a hard time grasping it.

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Dual Strike had a lot of neat stuff, and it was a lot of fun, but it was also a completely, completely broken game. Absolutely awfully balanced.

Days of Ruin, over-powered anti-tank units aside, was generally a much more balanced game. (Which is nice, because it was also the first game in the series with any form of online play.) It really also had a lot of neat new mechanics, actually. Kind of a soft reboot for the Wars series.

Man, but there was a lot of cool stuff in there. Loved the aircraft carriers and some of the other new units.

Really want to see a Wars game on the 3DS. (Dreaming here: With some kind of asynchronous play-by-mail option.)

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I just beat Oblivion after six months of playing it non-stop!

Now I can play the Shivering Isles or play a different game entirely.

  • Sam and Max Season Two?
  • A Boy and his Blob?
  • Metroid Prime? (I keep putting this away and not finishing it.)
  • Or the many bundle-bought games that won't run on my MacBook?

Eh. I'll figure it out.

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