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Recently completed video games

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The Darkness :tup::tmeh: - This game has been sitting on my backlog for almost five years (got it a few months after release). Don't know why I let it get that far behind me, so I decided to barrel through it over a couple days. I'm not really surprised at how well it holds up considering Starbreeze's reputation, but that rep also follows in that the combat really isn't that great. I did decide to play it on easy for the sake of brevity, however, meaning I felt a minimal amount of slog. Otherwise, The Darkness is a really great game with quite a unique story. I'm eager to check out The Darkness 2, though I'm quite sure that due to relatively little commercial success it'll get even cheaper in the future (currently going for $12.50 on Amazon DD).

So you know what you're getting into, the sequel wasn't developed by Starbreeze, it was a Digital Extremes joint. It delves much more into the fantasy elements, it's less of the unique character-focused story that the first one was, and on the whole is a much more linear combat-focused experience. (The open-world and predatory stealth stuff is completely gone.)

It's a fine game, though. The core combat is much more interesting and balanced, they have a a really brilliant visual style going for it, and there's a co-op mode that is surprising for the amount of attention it seems to have received. It's also still reasonably well written, though the direction it goes in at the end would make me wary of a Darkness III, should they make another one.

If you want more Starbreeze, i'd strongly recommend Assault on Dark Athena. (Which i am sure can be found for pennies.)

It's two games! It contains a completely remade version of Butcher Bay that includes the additional content from the earlier PC re-release, on top of its new Dark Athena campaign.

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Xenoblade Chronicles :tup:

So yeah, 82 hours. That's a lot of game. And I really, really liked it. I can't say I love it because it's not really amazing, but it's really incredibly impressive especially on the Wii (Which is a qualifier I hate to use, but it's 2012 and I've seen the game running on the Dolphin emulator. It could look much better.)

The gameplay is basically a single-player MMO, but the characters mostly don't fit squarely into the typical MMO roles. There's a dude who has mostly tanking skills and a woman who has mostly healing skills, but the other 5 out of 7 characters have a pretty wide variety of things they can do, which I really appreciate. It's also not a very difficult game, and if you manage to get your main character killed the death penalty isn't harsh. Again very MMOish, but I like it. You can even use the map to warp to any landmark you've previously been to, and if it's in the same area there won't be a load time. That's a BIG DEAL for a game like this.

There are METRIC TONS of quests to do. You don't need to do all of them, but a lot are required for things like buying some advanced weapon and armor pieces, and unlocking the 4th and 5th skill trees on many characters. They're mostly generic run and fetch quests, so if that bums you out and you don't like grinding then you should probably steer clear. If you want to, though, you can skip most of the quests and just kill a bunch of monsters. They all drop some sort of loot that you can equip on your guys.

The graphics are quite good. I haven't played a great amount of games on the Wii so I don't really have a definitive sample to compare to, but I'd guess they're some of the best on the system. The areas are huge and the draw distance on terrain is very far - even on mobs it is usually quite good, unless you just used a warp and it's loading other things. The sound is also excellent overall, although after 80 hours I can hear that daytime field theme in my sleep. The UK voice actors are nothing special but do the job just fine.

And finally, the story is a bit ham-fisted but I like it. They throw a couple of curveballs at you along the way and I think that's pretty cool.

Overall, it's definitely my favorite Wii game. The only Nintendo games I own are SMBWii (which came with the system) and Rhythm Heaven Fever, so I'm not a typical Nintendo fan. Xenoblade does not really fit in on the Wii and never uses the motion controls (I used a classic controller for the whole thing), but this game is not about waggle. If you own a Wii and you have a hankering for a good long RPG with heavy exploration and fighting components, I think you should give this one a go.

Big thumbs up. :tup:

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A friend brought over a Sega Genesis and a bunch of games; we ended up playing through Streets of Rage from start to finish. So yeah, I recently completed a game from decades ago.

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They're mostly generic run and fetch quests, so if that bums you out and you don't like grinding then you should probably steer clear.

*twitch*

I think I'll hug my blob extra hard the next time I turn on my Wii.

Incidentally, I'm using the classic controller for the first time to play A Boy And His Blob. I like it!

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Xenoblade Chronicles :tup:

I played through this too and really, really enjoyed it, and had posted my thoughts on the existing topic for the game.

*twitch*

There's no particular grind to the main path in the game, i'd advise not dismissing an excellent RPG because of optional side content.

I also actually kind of got pretty wrapped up in the side quests because of the elaborate affinity system wrapped around them.

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I just beat Binary Domain and I enjoyed a lot more than I expected, the voice command thing was dumb and I didn't like that every time I tried to shoot a robot one of my squad would get in my way, get shot, and lose confidence in me, which doesn't really matter since they become more loyal if you perform well, but I loved every other thing.

The robot designs were great and it was pretty cool to see a big robot fall to bits as the battle progress and you can practically see it's insides. It also felt like it did matter who I picked for each mission and how I treated them, even though it's probably that if you chose a different party the end result is probably going to be the same. And the pacing was great, it never got too slow or too annoying.

I could tell the game was made by the same team as the Yakuza games, but I can't really say why without spoiling the game.

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It seems like a lot of people are kind of discovering Binary Domain now that it's been marked down at retail a bunch, i've been seeing a lot of people start picking it up and having very positive things to say about it.

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The extent to which Binary Domain is not-shit may shock and surprise you.

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I'm not sure why people would expect it to be that bad, because it was made in Japan?

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Well, probably more specifically that it was developed by Sega, who really doesn't really have a stellar track record let alone with shooter games.

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For me, it was the japanese-development part of the equation.

Sometimes you get a game like Vanquish, something that seems like an inspired and fresh outsider's take on a predominantly western genre.

Sometimes you get a game that feels like pure imitation, like the developer didn't understand what makes the genre work in the first place. (Quantum Theory? Mindjack?)

Binary Domain, to me, looked like it was the latter.

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Man, I had completely forgotten about Quantum Theory and Mindjack, but isn't Sega in charge of the Aliens FPS games? I though the last one was at least decent from what I've heard.

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The last AvP was developed by Rebellion, the guys that had already developed two prior AvP games. (A lot of people absolutely hated this last one, but i thought it was pretty underrated.)

The other big one still on the way is Aliens: Colonial Marines, and that's a Gearbox game. (I think this game looks bad, everything i've seen looks so bad.)

Sega's super weird these days, like its Japanese business has just imploded, and it's scrambling to capitalize on anything it has going on in the west.

Binary Domain, however, was a pretty genuine internal effort from Sega, it seems like.

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Binary Domain got pretty poor reviews and none of the gameplay previews inspired much confidence. Most of the reason I'm passing is because while there may be interesting gameplay elements the story and voice acting seem so awful and cheesy I doubt I'd be able to get over that in the interest of just playing the game.

Vanquish was a good example of this. The story was just so goddamn awful that I never finished the game. There were many fantastic mechanics in that game that I had never seen before in a shooter and some incredible enemies (the boss that reassembles itself out of junk is one of the coolest things I've ever seen) but they would force you to slog through awful cutscene after awful cutscene with not a lick of interesting dialogue and after a point I just couldn't carry on.

It would be one thing if you could easily skip all story (like in Diablo, whos story is possibly worse) but they forced those Gears of War style segments where you're forced to walk and chat on a radio in between battles and engage in nonsensical cutsceneversations that sometimes went on for minutes.

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What i'm hearing from several people going through the game is that the cheesier aspects of Binary Domain actually coalesce into a really entertaining genre narrative that ends up being the best thing about the game, that the paper thin characters end up being pretty likable.

Nobody seems super amazed with Binary Domain from a gameplay standpoint. Speaking personally from my time with the demo that Sega had put out, i thought it had some mildly interesting mechanics and some fairly impressive enemy types, but i also felt that it was a very loose and imprecise feeling game.

(This seems to be a thing lately, third-person shooters with kind of crummy mechanics that just barely get by on the strength of a narrative.)

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I haven't been keeping track but it's probably a good idea to. The latest two games I finished were Max Payne 3 and Spec Ops: The Line.

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The good thing about Binary Domain is that the story is the pulpiest, most Tom Clancy rip-off stuff I have seen in a long time, and the overacting makes it absolutely wonderful. The gameplay itself is decent but nothing revolutionary in the realm of cover-based third-person shooters.

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The good thing about Binary Domain is that the story is the pulpiest, most Tom Clancy rip-off stuff I have seen in a long time, and the overacting makes it absolutely wonderful. The gameplay itself is decent but nothing revolutionary in the realm of cover-based third-person shooters.

Yeah just finished it myself, and I loved how much they just went for action/sci-fi cliche. It's very well done, played straight and without apology, and I found my self actually smiling and enjoying it when an extremely obvious thing happened.

And look, Amazon's selling Steam codes for $10 right now, so it's not a big investment.

Boateng, b*tches! Nuff said! :tup:

That was sweeeeeeeeeet!

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It took me 15 years but I finally wrapped up Breath of Fire 3. We got that game the year it launched and my brother beating it really deflated any sense of urgency on my part to do the same. As far as JRPGs go, despite the cliches (tropes I guess is the new word kids use now) that pop up, it's pretty damn good all around. The difficulty is questionable maybe, in that the times where it actually is difficult it's sporadic spikes, but it still felt satisfying getting through everything.

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(tropes I guess is the new word kids use now)

Not around here, no.

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Not around here, no.

This community is now leaps and bounds ahead of the entirety of the internet.

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I was curious to check out Age of Empires Online, so I installed it, but then GFWL asks for a CD-key.

You need to buy it free on Windows Live for Games Marketplace. Make sure you have an Xbox Live account attached to your GFWL account, or else you will get an error, disallowing you to login. After buying the game via GFWL, DO NOT install the AOEO from Games for Windows Live, instead... wait at minimum, 30 minutes, restart GFWL standalone client, and check to see if the Downloads tab has Age of Empires Online. Once it does, login via your steam version of Age of Empires Online. You will no longer be asked to give a CD-Key. Instead, it will ask you to login to your GFWL account via the login screen that pops up... login, and you're golden.

So, no thanks. LATER, GAME.

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You need to buy it free on Windows Live for Games Marketplace. Make sure you have an Xbox Live account attached to your GFWL account, or else you will get an error, disallowing you to login. After buying the game via GFWL, DO NOT install the AOEO from Games for Windows Live, instead... wait at minimum, 30 minutes, restart GFWL standalone client, and check to see if the Downloads tab has Age of Empires Online. Once it does, login via your steam version of Age of Empires Online. You will no longer be asked to give a CD-Key. Instead, it will ask you to login to your GFWL account via the login screen that pops up... login, and you're golden.

:clap:

What the fuck is this?

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