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Uncharted 3 - The setpieces were incredible and Naughty Dog does some really impressive stuff with the PS3, but man can Drake go somewhere and not have it burn down, sink, crash, or implode just once? Those things all looked really amazing and were fun to escape from, it got to be a bit ridiculous. The voice acting and cutscenes are really well done and the story works well in a popcorn movie sort of way. The shootouts have always been my least favorite part of these games and I got frustrated with some of them towards the end that had too many well armed/bullet spongey guys. More fun just navigating the environments. I hope they try some new things with Uncharted 4 whenever that comes out.

 

Gunpoint - The mechanics in this are really fun and it just makes me wish the game were a bit longer. For the story's purposes it was the right length (which was really well written btw), but at the same time I wanted more scenarios to play with the mechanics ie I wanted to kick doors into more dudes. Also the music is perfect.

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Congratulations, Ucantalas! Both are amazing games and have some of the best moments of Zelda in the series. (Don't tell anyone I bailed on Wind Waker during the Triforce shard hunt.)

 

Ugh, those Triforce shards... definitely the low point of the game. I have to admit, when I mentioned what part I was at, one of my friends immediately said "Go find a guide online to do the Triforce stuff." It still took two days, one getting the charts and another getting the actual shards. ...and then I had to farm for Rupees because Tingle costs so much to translate the charts, and I hadn't bothered to get the larger wallet until then... All around an annoying part of an otherwise great game.

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Sam and Max Hit the Road

 

Very fun game. I liked it a lot.

 

Saints Row 2

 

Also a very fun game. I completed the campaign and all of the side activities and ended up with 92% completion. The city is honestly kind of foggy and ugly, the graphics are pretty weak, and the AI is pretty bad at times (and oh man their traffic simulation is horrible; cars crashing into each other left and right) but the game is super fun despite all that. I also really appreciate that the story basically reinforces the fact that you are a cold blooded dickface of a human being which lines up nicely with how you actually play the game. I really liked the story and thought it was a perfect mix of goofiness and badassery that didn't take itself too seriously but felt very earnest. 

 

The side activites were pretty exceptional in this game. I expected it to be a slog but there was such a variety of stuff to do and the difficulty of the activities ramps up just enough to be hard but not overly frustrating. I especially found my zen with Heli Assault, Insurance Fraud, and Trailblazing. 

 

The main downside to this game was the overall buggy-ness. It crashed on me over a dozen times and I had some pretty crazy framerate drops for long periods of time. Normally this kind of stuff doesn't bother me too much but it happened enough in this game to drag the whole experience down slightly.

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Congratulations, Ucantalas! Both are amazing games and have some of the best moments of Zelda in the series. (Don't tell anyone I bailed on Wind Waker during the Triforce shard hunt.)

 

Unfortunate, because the final few areas and encounters of Wind Waker are actually really amazing.

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Finally finished Sleeping Dogs.  Quite an enjoyable game, really enjoyed the story as well as the combat.  

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Well, I beat Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon: Another Story a JRPG in which a villain is trying to rewrite history and change the past and this somehow gives them an excuse to bring back every villain they had met up until this point.

 

Frankly, there were moments I though it felt it was made with RPG Maker and well... uninspired? They have an excuse to send the "Inner Senshi" around the world to retrieve some crystals and well...

 

Here's an example, Mercury visits Switzerland which is just a bunch of ice caverns where she happens to find a hidden village that looks as generic and uninspired and as a good excuse to not even to have to look up anything about Switzerland. It's nearly the same for all the other Senshi, a hidden village that looks generic as hell. At least the maps are small?

 

At least the story is interesting enough, except I'm not even sure this story is canon because character-wise, they don't do anything new... the Outer Senshi don't really do anything plotwise and the Inner Senshi just follow their own tropes.

 

Still it was nice to see them again, I'd only recommend this game to big Sailor Moon fans who don't mind a mediocre RPG with a decent story. Hopefully we'll get new games when they release the new anime next year.

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finished device 6 after not enjoying the first bit at all a month or so ago. I still stand by the first chapter being kind of lame and the story stuff is kind of boring until you discover the implications later on, since I just thought it was gibberish. the rest of the puzzles are great though, really satisfying stuff that I wish they put into other games. think I might reinstall FEZ and finish that so I can get to the crazy puzzle stuff people were talking about before.

 

also finished the 8th world in SM3DW

 

cat bowser!!!! just need 10 more green stars to unlock the last level of world 9

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Link to the Past, the final big Zelda gap in my knowledge (still haven't played the Oracle games... or the CDi ones). Hmm. I felt I should play this before Link Between Worlds and my feelings are mixed. The problem is I've played this game a dozen times, most specifically with Ocarina which was my first ever Zelda. I was playing the GBA version on a DSLite so perhaps the world felt a little truncated onscreen, but little irritations kept springing up. I've always found the arc of Link's sword swings annoying (eg. I've got an enemy approaching from the top right but facing north my sword swings 45 degrees anticlockwise so it won't hit him) and the Light World Theme really started to wind me up through repetition.

Plus side, the dungeons were excellent and the music was otherwise great. I can stand back and appreciate it in context, but I think there's just been too many iterations and subtle enhancements in the past twenty years for this to have the same impact. Glad to have plugged the gap, but might give it a few months before Link Between Worlds.

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Glad to have plugged the gap, but might give it a few months before Link Between Worlds.

 

If you're waiting to play A Link Between Worlds because of any similarities between it and Link to the Past, then you don't really need to wait.  The overworld layout is mostly the same and there are references to the older game, but other than that they are extremely different games.  However if you're just waiting as a break from Zelda, that I understand.

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Gone Home

 

Gotta say, not nearly as Blown Away (IGN.com) as others seem to have been by this game. I don't know if the slight edge of disappointment is because of the hype or what.

 

That said, I did have a good experience with this game. I do feel that the game's time-specific references really don't reach me as a 23-year old, but I found the general plot quite affecting nonetheless. The journal aspect of the storytelling was nice, I loved the voice actor. I'm curious if it's possible to completely miss journal entries if you don't dig deep enough or find certain trigger items; I had a weird moment where the narrative felt like it jumped around, possibly because I found items out of sequence.

 

The contextual storytelling was rock solid. I kinda wish that there was a sub-plot of substance, while at the same time I felt good about the fact that there were things going on in the life of the supporting characters completely separate from the protagonist and primary subject of the narrative. I feel like the world is rich for a second or third visit by other characters due to the complexity of these unspoken characters, though I can't personally think up another narrative to warrant this return.

 

The game was super spooky, even though nothing overtly scary happened. I finished it in 1.1 hours, according to Steam.

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I also played Gone Home very recently and quite liked it, but i definitely don't think i feel as strongly about it as some others do. (It certainly seems to have ended up as a thing where people are incredibly polarized about it.)

It is quite a marvelously constructed little thing though, i have a lot of appreciation for how it lays the pieces of its narrative out before you. I was impressed with how well it succeeded in feeling like a carefully plotted narrative, when it comes out of me randomly clicking on things in a largely open environment.

Thought the story was quite sweet, enjoyed the pieces of the 90's nostalgia that lined up with my personal experiences of the decade, and i loved having such a fully realized place to just poke around in.


Really enjoyed going through the commentary mode after finishing, i love that kind of stuff and i wish more games would do it.

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Yeah, I liked Gone Home but recognized I was being railroaded pretty quickly. The story was nice, but not really being able to interact with it in any way kind of left a bit of a lesser experience than, say, The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us. Still, finally got to play it with the new Intel drivers.

 

Speaking  of The Walking Dead, I quit that halfway through the season. Sorry Jake and Sean, but the story just turned into obvious emotional manipulation rather than an actual story. It's the same reason I stopped reading Game of Thrones. There was less of an interesting story and more of a "Oh, you like this character do you? BAM DEAD! Looool. Wouldn't it be horrible if... oh it just happened!"

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Earlier today I finished Ben There, Dan That!, a short adventure game. I got it and it's sequel on Steam the other day while the package was on sale.

 

It was funny, and the story was just weird enough to keep me interested. And for the most part, the puzzles were okay. Except one of the earliest puzzles in the game...

You get stuck on an alien ship and there are several doors that have special keypad things that need a certain shaped item to be placed in them. One of them is shaped like a rabbit's head, another is shaped like an X. 

 

I had a pair of scissors in my inventory, shown open, like an X. I assumed that this was the object meant to go in the keypad needing an X-shaped object. And it didn't work. And I couldn't get it to work. I kept trying and trying and nothing worked.

 

It was then that I found out all of the hints about "using the scissors" were meant to point to using the scissors on a Sam and Max poster in my inventory, to cut out (Sam? Max? Which one's the rabbit?)'s head and use that on the rabbit-head-shaped keypad.

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I finished Alan Wake!

 

I almost quit after finishing the first episode because the combat was really bringing it down for me. Then I screamed FUCK IT at the mirror in my bathroom, sat back down at my computer, and continued to play the game. Man it's so close to a perfect game except for the combat. I wish the game had been more about solving puzzles using light. There's some of that, and it's pretty cool when it does do that, but most of the game is just fighting dudes (or running away from dudes, which I'm also okay with except that it can be frustrating if somebody jumps you from a spot you didn't see and oops you're basically stunlocked as they all swarm you oh noooo where'd my health go?!?! (the checkpoint system is pretty forgiving so it didn't bother me too much)). Huh, what. Anyway, good game. The tone and atmosphere is great, and there's nothing better in a game with levels than playing in a level for half an hour, coming out of a building, looking over the edge of a cliff, and seeing where you were half an hour ago. Pretty game. The DLC was also good except for some random annoying platformy bits in a game with shitty jumping mechanics. (I paused on a moving platform once and when I unpaused I just fell straight through the platform to my death. COOL.)

 

I started American Nightmare and it's weirdly totally different in tone. Which I think is sort of the point, but it'll take some time before I'm sure if it's good. At first glance, I think I like it.

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After starting it years ag on the PC and never really getting anywhere, I finally sat down and played Ikachan for the 3DS. I love the deep sea, Metroidvanias, and one-sitting games, so it was all good. That ending is pretty fucking nuts though.

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i picked up Hexcells this morning and just had to play every puzzle. just as good as sudoku or picross with a few more systems that it rolls out pretty slowly over not that many levels, but probably just the right amount for the price ($3). yeah my only complaint is that only the last section is much of a challenge and it just made me want like 50 more puzzles of those. the first 4 sections especially are just teaching you how to play. buy it though, maybe he'll make more levels if he makes more money

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I recently completed:

 

Ducktales Remastered: I'm going to commit heresy.... I kinda think this is a better game than the original. If you want to be traumatized forever, play it it's hardest difficulty, if you want to play it just to collect the riches, you can play on easier settings.

 

Jake Kauffman did an awesome job and the remixed version is just as good as the original and I like how the added more stuff to make each level feels more like a mini-sode of DuckTales. The boss battles are more intense and I'm pretty sure they changed the game and were you find the heart upgrades were the treasures you should get after defeating the boss... or at least some special treasure. I do remember each level having some rare and valuable treasure... Anyway, yes I would choose this version over the original, it's that good and I played a year or two ago, so it's kinda fresh in my memory.

 

Chainsaw Warrior: It's a board game turned into a mobile game, ported to PC and I loved it... It's tough but fair? You have a very limited time limit to stop an evil entity from destroying the city and it can only be destroyed with one weapon. With so much radiation, mutant zombies, traps and other chaotic elements it's a blast! On my first run some guy just stole my special gun and I could no longer win... the second time I rolled my hand to hand combat so high that even without my chainsaw I could smite anything with relative ease!

 

Stanley Parable: I just loved the game, I ranted about it the appropriate thread.

 

Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior: Should I be worried that I 100% this game? I actually do enjoy cleaning and I might have OCD... I guess this game is kinda an OCD test. If you're willing to clean up every stain, pick up every bullet and even use the "sniffer" compulsively until it stops beeping in every inch of every room... You might have control issues. :deranged:  

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I beat The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the train ride home tonight.  It was a cute game!  Though I wonder if I'll ever find that fourth bottle...

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Beat Papers, Please recently. Now time to play again to see more endings. What an amazing game. One of the great things about it is how it's something only a game can be: that it was me stamping the "REJECT" on the passport and me making the call to question someone's sex and me having to balance my income and my family against not wanting to take bribes and so forth was really impactful.

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I started American Nightmare and it's weirdly totally different in tone. Which I think is sort of the point, but it'll take some time before I'm sure if it's good. At first glance, I think I like it.

I finished Alan Wake: American Nightmare.

Aside from one aspect that made me cringe because all you fuckers have made me hate video games (out of place sexualization REALLY AWKWARD especially given the first game and how Not Like That it was - as in the first character you meet literally has polygons explicitly for her hard nipples - which I only noticed because I'm staring at her tits of course (and the camera aligned itself in a way to, for a brief moment, expose said nipplage)), I weirdly loved it. It continues to be wildly different in tone and atmosphere, but in what is probably the best way. There's this mechanic in Alan Wake where you pick up manuscripts, and they sort of fill in missing information - basically they're the story you're playing. But you get them in pieces, sometimes out of order. (I really like this aspect of Alan Wake!) In both games, there's a manuscript page that waxes on about how the "genre" of the story is shifting. In the first one, it's from mystery/thriller to horror. In the second one, it's from horror to pulp. I may be reading too much into it, but I wonder if that's what they were going for with American Nightmare. A shift in genre. The combat is much smoother, easier. Not just in terms of FEEL (though that's there, too), but simply because there's less back-and-forth when choosing to shine light or shoot gun... I'm not sure how to explain it other than to just EXPLAIN IT (with an example!): In the first game, reloading would disallow shining the light - adding a sort of tension to reloading. Do I really have time to do this? In the second game, you can do both at the same time. Is this because Alan is supposed to be BETTER at it all now? (Probably not, but I like to pretend as much!) But there's more to it. The story takes on a sort of... wackier feel. The big bad in American Nightmare is basically a cartoon psycho, instead of the enigmatic dark force found in the first game.

 

This is all sort of rambly because I'm kind of on a high after finishing the game. It's put me in a bizarre state of hyper-happiness. I love it. I'm not sure if it's actually GOOD, to be honest, but also fuck that noise who cares I love it.

 

I may mess around with the arcade mode, just because the combat feels so much better, to the point where I actually think I enjoy it? Unlike the first game? Or Stockholm has found a new home in my head.

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I beat The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the train ride home tonight.  It was a cute game!  Though I wonder if I'll ever find that fourth bottle...

 

There are actually 5 bottles in the game

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I may mess around with the arcade mode, just because the combat feels so much better, to the point where I actually think I enjoy it? Unlike the first game? Or Stockholm has found a new home in my head.

One of the smallest, most important things they did is having Alan turn his head to look towards the nearest offscreen enemy. You probably responded to this new diegetic radar without even realizing it.

(Actually, did the PC version of the first game have that too? The original 360 game definitely didn't.)

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There are actually 5 bottles in the game

 

I'm pretty sure one is from the fairy fountain, but I never pinned it on my map and I just can't find it anymore...

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One of the smallest, most important things they did is having Alan turn his head to look towards the nearest offscreen enemy. You probably responded to this new diegetic radar without even realizing it.

(Actually, did the PC version of the first game have that too? The original 360 game definitely didn't.)

I don't know if the game has that or not. Most of the time, I kept all enemies in front of me, and when I didn't, well, I was pretty well trained to listen to sound cues. I didn't even remotely register that or a lack of it in the first game. That's the sort of thing I tend to notice, too, if it's actually helping. Although I do remember him turning his head to look at OTHER things in the first game, so maybe he did it for enemies, as well? Anyway, in American Nightmare, I didn't need it. Game was BASICALLY cake.

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