Recently completed video games

[Berzee]

Beat Nancy Drew: Secret of the Scarlet Hand last night. Hilarious Nancy Drew game as always, with slightly higher amounts of backtracking+extensive-notetaking puzzles than is reasonable. In-game hint system was pretty good in this one, though! Can't tell if I keep playing these ironically or not. I think it's partially that, partially the fact that the puzzles and writing are actually truly clever sometimes, and partially that the voice actors so clearly Try Their Best and you get attached to them even when they're not recurring characters.

 

Random thought: why does it weird me out when characters in a 3d adventure game only stand in one spot for the entire game, but I don't even notice it in 2d adventure games? Maybe part of it is that lots of the Nancy Drew games actually involve the passage of time/days, with you going back to your hotel and setting the alarm clock...so it reinforces the fact that Adventure Game Characters never move from their post unless the plot demands it.

 

Weird ending, even for one of these games. (mild spoilers follow, not really spoiling the mystery, just detailing what made the ending funny).

 

You end up locked in a thing, suffocating. If you don't escape within 30-60 seconds, you die. If you do escape, you tumble out and are immediately greeted by the game's cast of characters who line up side-by-side and launch into a barrage of rather fourth-wall-breaking little praise-speeches about how awesome you are. You jerks, you were standing right there, couldn't you have busted me out of the suffocation chamber? Or like, apprehended the villain who locked me in there 20 seconds ago?

 

The villain is then shown in another room, discovering that I foiled their plans. They shake a fist at the sky, shouting "Curse youuuu Nancy Drewwwwwww!"

 

:-|

 

P.S. Every time we beat one of these, we gather up our little stack of Post-It clues and put them in a zip lock and write the name on the outside. I hope that when we die, an unwitting someone will be poking through the estate sale and find the zip lock back labeled "SCARLET HAND", full of scribbled Mayan glyphs and computer logon credentials and instructions for contacting Mexican smugglers via HAM radio morse code transmissions.

[voxn]

~ gaining levels ~

 

first in Neverwinter! A game that surprised me in how decent it was for the first ~25 levels. The game fell apart quickly though, and was poorly designed in significant ways. It had probably one of the most hilarious exploits though: bidding a negative amount on the auction house, which, when you got the refund, simply generated the amount of currency you bid.

 

tried to gain some levels in Marvel Heroes & found it irredeemably awful.

 

played Path of Exile on the new hardcore onslaught ladder, and made it to 74 before dying, edging out my previous record of 70! I play one character per ladder, and it makes for a fun ending to empty my accrued stash on random people (who usually wig out).

 

went back and checked out Diablo 3 after not touching it since launch, and promptly killed my lv60 wizard. Oh well. True to form Blizzard has pushed out a slew of patches, but it still has the fundamental problem of the auction house invalidating  my desire to actually play the game

 

[Zeusthecat]

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge

 

Fucking awesome! I wrote a lot more about it on the Monkey Island 2: SE thread so I won't bother here.

[Apelsin]

Bought Thomas was alone yesterday and finished it today. Great little game with wonderful music, atmosphere and some really nice gameplay. Also contains the handsomest and most charming quadrilaterals I've seen in a while.

 

Suffers a bit though from Unity physics weirdness where characters will stick to the sides of walls/obstacles or move slightly when on top of moving objects.

 

But the game is an overall 

[elmuerte]

Just finished both Puzzle Agent games

Overall the puzzles were quite simple. There were a few rather difficult puzzles (e.g. space numbers). I screwed up a few puzzles mostly because the description wasn't clear. Unlike Professor Layton you're not bombarded with a shit load of similar puzzles, so I didn't get tired of the puzzles. Anyway, funny story. Had 6 hours of fun (in total).

[axemtitanium]

If you are interested in learning a bit more about Spec Ops: The line you can check out the talk one of the developers has about the narrative.

 

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1017980/We-Are-Not-Heroes-Contextualizing

 

Thanks for the link. Will watch!

[Tanukitsune]

I beat Evoland and.... it's ridiculous pandering... Sure it has the "game evolution" gimmick, but it's been done before and you're never gonna guess the names of the characters in the game! The heroes are Clink and Kareith and the bad guy is Zepyrhos! You'll NEVER guess what Zephyros does to Kaerith! 

 

But seriously, this game tries to pay homage but it just copies, half of the enemies are Nintendo enemies with one letter changed and the bosses are just variations of FF or Zelda bosses. I facepalmed so hard when Zephyros killed my party with a Kamehameha.... At least try to be little subtle, OK?

 

The worst of it being a Zelda and FF "inspired game" is that it's not both at the same time, it's only one at a time... except for that Diablo level. You can have a hundred potion or spells, but you can't use them in Link mode and you can't use Links weapons in Cloud mode

[Sno]

I had never played through Alien Swarm, so i recently played through it with a group of friends on hard.

That's a well made one of those, it's a great take on that genre.

Valve should do more weird one-off projects like that. (Or Half-Life 3, one or the other.)

 

  to Alien Swarm.

[Professor Video Games]

Just finished Bioshock: Infinite. The game has been discussed to death, so I won't go into too much detail, but I'd say overall I enjoyed playing it. I had fun riding around on skylines and turning all the dumb fodder enemies to goo in various ways, even if all the gore and violence didn't mesh well with the tone of the game. The world is just so gorgeous and detailed from top to bottom, it's a shame the story doesn't keep up. An absurd over-reliance on audio logs, questionable character motivations, and if you're going to tell a story with time travel and multiple realities, you better make that shit air tight because you're just asking for paradoxes and plot holes. This story was not air tight. But man those first few hours when you are first discovering Columbia are incredible.

[juv3nal]

Borrowed copy of assassin's creed 3. Not really as bad as I had heard/feared, but I did come to it late so maybe I avoided some bugginess that got patched out?

Ship combat was cool, sending out trading convoys and any of the crafting that didn't involve weapons/tools was completely 100% superfluous. If you ever needed money, it was easy enough to just hunt and dump off furs the next time you get to a shop.

 

But otherwise, it was more assassin's creed which, while never zomg amazing great, is not a horrible way to spend some time assuming its been long enough since the last one.

 

Also, every time I see the credits roll on an AC game, it amazes me that something involving that many freaking people ever coheres into a game. It's an impressive testament to the occassional usefulness of pointy headed manager types as much as they're usually the subject of mocking/denigration.

[Berzee]

I just defeated Back To The Future: The Game. It was good! It was also the first Telltale game I've played since Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. As I was playing it I was continually thinking about how I could understand any criticisms leveled at the game's control scheme, linearity, predictable patterns and general cutscene-y-ness -- and yet I devoured all five episodes like a tasty cake. I was impressed by how enjoyable it was even for someone who never saw the movie. 1930's was a mighty fine choice of starting era.

[mikemariano]

I just five-starred Super Mario 3D Land!  Every level completed with Mario, every level completed with Luigi, and getting to the top of every flagpole.

 

I thought this meant I had exhausted everything there is to do in this game, but apparently this unlocks Special Levels, so I have a little bit more Mario to go!

 

And Berzee, I've played the first two episodes of Back to the Future, then I took a break, but I'm glad to hear you say the enjoyment level holds up.  I figured the game would dial back on the movies' wacky suburban action setpieces, but they capture all of the spirit of the films.

[Zeusthecat]

Finished Maniac Mansion today. It was a cool fucking game.

[Ucantalas]

It isn't the first time I've done so, but I just finished The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition today. And by today, I mean like... 15 minutes ago.

I love that game. I love it so much. Not as much as Curse of Monkey Island, but I still love it.

[elmuerte]

Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4

Pretty much the same gameplay as #3, a jRPG like game, but without the random encounters. It was ok, but the fighting become rather tedious at some point. Of the whole Rain-Slick series I like the HotHead games (first two) more than the Zeboyd games (last two).

[Tanukitsune]

Did it feel as pandering as the first Zeboyd game? The Sci-fi level was almost painful with it's pandering. :|

[elmuerte]

Not sure what you mean with that.

[Zeusthecat]

Finished Resident Evil 5. I really enjoyed it but the story was unbearably stupid. This is the first Resident Evil I've played since the first one and this series has gotten fucking weird. Apparently Wesker is agent Smith from The Matrix. The game was definitely more funny than it was scary.

 

Gameplay-wise this game was awesome though. The weapon and inventory system really clicked for me and most of the people I played with online were cool. I actually really liked some of the boss fights too. I normally hate boss fights but this game had a few good ones and they weren't overly frustrating. 

 

I've started a second playthrough to continue leveling up weapons and fucking up zombies. This is definitely one of the better co-op games I've played.

[feelthedarkness]

Rayman Origins, man this was so much fun, every level is a feast of animation, and incorporates some unique level themed mechanics. That final, bonus level Land of the Livid Dead wore my poor thumb out, and the boss Big Mama is might be my favorite RMO boss. 

[melmer]

I've got to play more Rayman Origins, i finished the first world the other night, that game is nuts! definitely not a Mario clone

 

[Apelsin]

So, I just powered through the last hour or so of BioShock Infinite on the advice from a certain Irish fellow here on the forums.

Well, that was an ending.

 

Must also say that in the time I spent away made me appreciate the mechanics again. Maybe I should go back to some other titles I've abandoned.

Also, why weren't there more sections with optional combat as in the 

Asylum level

? Those 20 minutes were among the most interesting in the game for me.

[Roswell47]

Just finished Thief Gold. Had no idea how scary and creepy a lot of the game is. Great level design. Zombies are awful. Had quite a lot of moments that made it feel like a proto-Amnesia. Gonna play Thief 2 now.

[Frenetic Pony]

Gunpoint I appreciated some of the humorous dialogue, and how easy and slick the controls were. But for the most part it felt like an inanely easy puzzle game with only one real trick per level and no atmosphere or anything else going for it. I got through it, playing about one mission at a time. Then I'd go to the next, ask myself "ok, what's the one single trick on this level?" Realize I'd stopped caring, and save the rest for another day. Overall

 

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon's Keep I've got the Borderlands 2 Season 1 pass, so... there we are. And... I think I'm just sick of Borderlands 2 at this point. I'm sick of the brown, dark, environments. I'm sick of the art direction. I'm sick of the combat mechanics. The writing continues to be amusingly funny, and in this DLC you're stuck playing as characters in a D&D like campaign. Which made the occasions when you get to here Tiny Tina be a DM with the original vault hunters playing quite funny. And Torgue is back! That guy is just hilarious. He gives you a quest to blow up the ocean, yep, just blow up the damned ocean, because. But unless you're really, really, REALLY into Borderlands 2 there isn't much here to recommend it beyond the humor. Beyond the writing it just feels like yet more Borderlands 2 with a few new models and textures slapped here and there.

[Zeusthecat]

Zak Mckracken And The Alien Mindbenders

 

I used a guide. It was a cool story but the puzzles were crazy.

[Tanukitsune]

I finally Atelier Totori Plus and while I loved the game, I didn't enjoy hard ridiculous the conditions for the "true ending" every game from Japan seems to have now.

 

Totori is ridiculously adorable and charming, her friends are pretty interesting too. Yes, I said "her" Japan isn't afraid of having female protagonists, in fact, it's rather common there.

 

Totori is an alchemist, so the game is VERY craft heavy, as you progress you fight bigger monsters, get better ingredients which get you better items to fight bigger monsters.

 

The can be ridiculously complex if you want it to, since ingredients have several stats like quality, but most importantly, a same ingredient can have a ton of different stats modifiers or similar, if you use a certain herb, the potion will heal you more, but if you that same herb but with a different quality you'll get the chance to use it more. Apparently you can make game breaking items, but doing that seemed too tedious. I beat the final boss relatively easy once I had decent items.