Recently completed video games

[TychoCelchuuu]

I think his name is Ico HD.

[Merus]

Also, this game made me realise just how much I detest random encounters. This might be a bit of an unfair example because here encounters are never any challenge at all, and there's no skill or party systems and thus no interesting decisions to make during battles. But still, they just strike me as an inexcusably inefficient way to design a game, in terms of interestingness per unit of player time. I could even see potential for them to be used to some effect, the way Monopoly isn't necessarily very fun to play but makes an effective statement with its systems, but nobody seems to do that; encounters never seem either fun or meaningful. I'm not all that familiar with the genre, so I'd love to hear of counterexamples!

 

Good games with random encounters usually try to ensure each encounter in an area serves as its own interesting battle, either introducing a new monster, or putting a combination of monsters in that require tactics different to fighting them alone. The fashion, these days, is to represent monsters on the map in some way, but there are games (chiefly the Etrian Odyssey series) that instead put a radar on screen that slowly transitions from green to red. When it's flashing red, an encounter is about to happen.

[Sno]

I thought Etrian Odyssey IV, admittedly the only EO i've played, did a pretty commendable job making every random battle feel significant and challenging, having enemies designed to make you carefully consider the abilities at your disposal and the systems they function within. (Also, once you've leveled beyond that area, there's the option to let the AI recklessly autofight through those random battles in a flash.)

[Yasawas]

Touch! Kirby (DS). AKA Canvas Curse/Power Paintbrush. I've had this since Japanese release which I was horrified to discover was nine years ago. I decided to go back and try to finish it as a palette-cleanser after Bravely Default and before I start the next Ace Attorney. It's a kind of weird platformer entirely controlled by the touchscreen as you poke enemies to disable them then poke Kirby to roll into them to finish them off, you also use the stylus to draw platforms for him, block lasers/rockets and interact with the environment. It's short, it's adorable, it's fun and I have no desire to ever play it again.

[tegan]

I finally finished Sam & Max Season Two the other night, and immediately moved on to season three. Season two was a pretty massive improvement over season one, though not as huge a leap as the one between two and three. I just appreciate that someone realized that nobody liked the Soda Poppers and just ran with it.

 

Also, I'll bet Jake was the one responsible for making Bosco's handwriting in episode four be the Calvin & Hobbes font.

[Dewar]

I'm stalled about half way through Season 3. I was thinking about trying to beat it this weekend, but I ended up playing Broken Age. I appreciate that the puzzles are a lot different and some of the more annoying faces from seasons 1 and 2 don't show up, but man it got a lot harder too.

[Tanukitsune]

I just finally completed Hate Plus and... I'm glad I had a file from the previous game with the "Impossible Harem ending", because not only do the character work better together than separate, but... 

I'm pretty sure Mute commits suicide without Hyun-ae to help her out... I'm pretty sure the fact that I don't want to play her story solo has mean something, right?

 

It's pretty interesting to read the story of the ship before Mute or the "Old Mute" days like they like to call it, they all seem to interconnect at some moment in time, also, like I said, it's more fun to see Hyun-ae and Mute's reaction to the files together than separate, they seem to balance each other out and well, they create funnier situation together, Mute solo is just "How dare people not act like we are in the Dark Ages? Women should stay in the kitchen and make babies!" while Hyun-ae solo is too romantic and waifu-y...

[cyrix]

First up, Evoland. Mostly it reminded me of DLC Quest, another game I finished recently. It's another parody/satire that criticises but doesn't end up doing anything interesting or different in terms of player interaction from the games it's criticising. The story is played a lot straighter than DLC Quest, mostly just ripping off Zelda and Final Fantasy wholesale, so it's disappointing that they bothered working so hard to make a mechanically and visually competent game only to abandon any hope of it being meaningful or even funny. Is it just lack of ideas? The one part I found kinda fun was switching between the 2D and 3D modes ("time travelling") to get around certain puzzley forest areas, which is also the only time the whole supposed evolution-of-video-games theme felt used in an interesting way.

Expanding on those thoughts, I'm not all that comfortable thinking about the amount of time I've wasted spent on these two games, yet I've finished them while any number of brilliant games sit in my library unplayed. I'm sure this says something about my commitment avoidance or attention span or something, like it's easier to engage if you know a game is basically throwaway and only likely to take a few hours. I even spent an extra hour or so unlocking all the achievements I hadn't quite reached, so now it's 100% complete and I never have to think about it again.

Also, this game made me realise just how much I detest random encounters. This might be a bit of an unfair example because here encounters are never any challenge at all, and there's no skill or party systems and thus no interesting decisions to make during battles. But still, they just strike me as an inexcusably inefficient way to design a game, in terms of interestingness per unit of player time. I could even see potential for them to be used to some effect, the way Monopoly isn't necessarily very fun to play but makes an effective statement with its systems, but nobody seems to do that; encounters never seem either fun or meaningful. I'm not all that familiar with the genre, so I'd love to hear of counterexamples!

We feel very similarly about Evoland. Although I will say that I really don't think it was meant as satire/parody but as homage, which i think is why:

 

Evoland became stale quite fast and didn't really explore much of the RPG "evolution".

this is exactly right, it seemed to me like a game with a ton of love and ambition that ended up going nowhere in terms of gameplay. Like they had this idea of the shifting nature of RPGs over the years and made all this art to prove the concept but then either ran out of money, ability, or enthusiasm to make the gameplay systems to match it.

It's really a shame because i was picking up what that game was putting down for the first hour or so, and not many games have gone back to that PlayStation era low poly characters with pre-rendered backgrounds style yet.

Also I hear you about the commitment avoidance thing man, let me tell you about my like 200+ game steam library of which I have really played maybe 50, and my console games, and all the movies I haven't watched, and the books I hav... I think I'm just gonna go take a nap. 

[prettyunsmart]

Last night, I finished Octodad: Dadliest Catch, which was pretty neat. It was nice to see a comedy game come out where the humor comes both from the writing and the mechanics. Too often "funny games" just have wacky item descriptions or something like that on top of an otherwise rote experience. It falls apart at the end due to a difficult curve that ramps up a bit too steeply, but overall I thought it was a good experience. Video games aren't constrained by actors, sets, props, or anything like that, so they can be about literally anything (even if they often tend to just be about a small handful of things). Octodad is refreshingly different, even if it might prove a bit too strange for some.

[Sno]

I also just played Octodad: Dadliest Catch.

I really liked it, it's a cute adventure game. I saw some people elsewhere complaining about the last few challenges of the game being frustrating, but i don't believe they were unduly difficult. I do see how it could go wrong though, since most of the rest of the game doesn't really require any precision from you.

Simply following the story, the game was super brief, but i felt it was well worth the sale price it's currently on for. The levels are also actually quite big and have a lot to see and do, lots of weird side objectives to pursue if you feel like you need to get more out of it. (Some amusing achievements and an item collection quest that reveals a lot of additional puzzles, including some hidden levels.)

 

Also, Octodad's kind of a dick.

The end of the story has the supposed villain apologizing to Octodad and his family because plot, but he has pretty legitimate beef. In the flashback mission, Octodad climbs out of the ocean onto Chef's ship and starts impersonating the Chef's captain. When the Chef tries to reveal the deception, Octodad smashes him off deck with the ship's crane, essentially leaving him for dead in the middle of the ocean. He did nothing wrong and was nearly killed for it, he wasn't even acting in a particularly aggressive or threatening manner during the flashback sequence.

 

Yes, i'm completely over-analyzing the plot.

For the most part though, it's funny and silly and even a little bit sweet. Probably just don't think about it too much.

[elmuerte]

Killing is Harmless aka Spec Ops: The Line: The Book

What?! Yes... it's a book by Brendan Keogh about Spec Ops: The Line. It goes through the whole game analyzing all parts of it.

So why post it in "recently completed vigis"? Because reading the book feels like experiencing the game again.

Initially I picked up Spec Ops: The Line at a steam sale, because.. why not. It looked like a generic shooter game I didn't like, but I heard some things about it. But when I played it, I was astonished by the experience. Recently I recalled the game and came to realize that it's belongs to my list of best games ever made. On the drive back from my recent ski trip I was sort of bored and started to check out the ebooks I bought via http://storybundle.com , and I noticed the book "Killing is Harmless", I started to read it... and read it... and read it. The 8 hour drive evaporated while I was, once again, mesmerized by Spec Ops: The Line. The drive wasn't long enough, or I was too tired, so I wasn't able to finish the book in one sitting. I needed a few hours to finish it, which I had today.

Soo... the book does analyze the game's story a lot, and to some agree even over analyses it at some points. But reading Keogh's walkthrough and analysis initiated a total recall of my own experience. So I feel like I've played the game again. ... I feel I have to actually play the game a 3rd 2nd time.

[Laco]

It's really a shame because i was picking up what that game was putting down for the first hour or so, and not many games have gone back to that PlayStation era low poly characters with pre-rendered backgrounds style yet.

Yeah, they really nailed the style in that section. It's not a fair comparison given there are only a handful of pre-rendered backgrounds in Evoland, but it was interesting playing that part and realising that a tiny group of people can now casually pull off visuals that took many multi-millions of dollars back in '97. Sure, it's 18+ year old technology, but I find the improvement in content production capability, not just computing power, interesting in comparison with, say, filmmaking. Now I just want retro games that emulate that awful PSX polygon jitter (maybe not)...

Back on topic, yesterday I finished The Floor Is Jelly. What a joyful, surreal, beautiful game. It only took a couple of hours (and I only discovered a handful of the many secrets), but I loved every moment. I hope it comes to Steam someday so more people get a chance to play it. I think this Anna Anthropy tweet sums up my thoughts best: https://twitter.com/auntiepixelante/status/429000287362097152

[Tanukitsune]

I have to ask, does Octodad still have the suspicion meter or can you wreck every thing and still complete the game? I saw some gameplay and it wasn't there, but I think it still the tutorial level.

[Sno]

Nah, it's still there.

[Tanukitsune]

Damn, is it at least slightly less hard to control and forgiving than Surgeon Simulator? I couldn't even do the first stage of that game. :|

[Zeusthecat]

I finally achieved 100% completion in Grand Theft Auto 5. I loved just about everything about this game. The story is definitely the weakest part and the first 10 hours are pretty slow but beyond that everything is golden. The high level of polish on every little diversion in the game combined with all of the systemic elements at play made for a very entertaining experience. I also just started GTA Online and so far it is pretty damn fun too.

 

When this comes out on PC I might just purchase it again and go through everything a second time.

[youmeyou]

I wasn't able to do anything in Surgeon Sim but beat Octodad with a second player in coop mode, so there's that. It also has an easy mode which it defaults to.

 

I enjoyed it! I can't wait to play some of the community levels. The game kind of falls apart toward the end as they introduce a lot of gamey elements like stealth and boss fights. Some of the sections seems straight up broken

the aquarium swim scene felt super restricted and kind of pointless and the last boss fight was a chore thanks to the dearth of fish available to plug up the spouts with

I'm kind of suspicious that the PC crowd is being used to beta test the game's bugs, of which there are many. I had to turn off all the graphical settings in the flashback scene because something was causing consistent hard crashes.

 

Anyway, it's a very cool game despite some of my qualms. I also thoroughly enjoyed this perspective on it (and makes me want to see more mundane rather than trditionally game-like levels, perhaps from the workshop)

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/10610001/How-Octodad-works-as-an-analogy-for-invisible-illnesses.html

[Dewar]

I just finally completed Hate Plus and... I'm glad I had a file from the previous game with the "Impossible Harem ending", because not only do the character work better together than separate, but... 

I'm pretty sure Mute commits suicide without Hyun-ae to help her out... I'm pretty sure the fact that I don't want to play her story solo has mean something, right?

 

It's pretty interesting to read the story of the ship before Mute or the "Old Mute" days like they like to call it, they all seem to interconnect at some moment in time, also, like I said, it's more fun to see Hyun-ae and Mute's reaction to the files together than separate, they seem to balance each other out and well, they create funnier situation together, Mute solo is just "How dare people not act like we are in the Dark Ages? Women should stay in the kitchen and make babies!" while Hyun-ae solo is too romantic and waifu-y...

 

I played with only Hyun-ae, and I definitely felt like something was missing. I've wanted to go back for a while and play with Mute (or maybe with not bringing over a save file at all) but I dunno. It didn't grab me as much as the first one.

[Blambo]

Preeeetty late to the party but I just got around to finishing Episode 5 of the Walking Dead. Pretty gut wrenching.

 

If anyone played as maximum-asshole Lee, what kind of character did you perceive him as when he died? I went full Mother Theresa on my playthrough.

 

Also did anyone feel like Molly didn't feel totally fleshed out? She was mostly a token badass during the episode (which was pretty awesome) but I guess there definitely wasn't enough time to develop on my sense of her loss like Kenny's

[Twig]

I've been binging on shitty RPGs lately. I don't really know why, I just feel like it.

 

So I've beaten both Risen and Risen 2, a German RPG series. There's something... about that whole thing with customizing my character, and making choices that affect the path I'm taking. Like, choosing to side with the freedom fighters (who later turn out to be NOT QUITE GOOD PEOPLE oh what a twist) instead of the cult-like overlords (who later turn out to be NOT QUITE BAD PEOPLE oh what a twist) in the first game results in you not being able to learn magic. Likewise, in the second game, siding with the natives grants you access to voodoo (because magic is banned now, only voodoo is available! (??)), and locks you out of access to rifles. Anyway, the games aren't really good, but I found myself enjoying them, anyway. Also Risen 2 is just like... there are the natives, who are basically African tribes, and the Inquisition, who are all a bunch of British dudes, and they're all "hey these savages are good for nothing but slavery" and ugh how pathetic to fall back on that just to emphasize that the good guys aren't good. Other than that, both games are basically standard fantasy fare, although not so much the dragon kind as the weird little goblin creatures and giant bugs kind.

[SilentBtAmazing]

Have you tried Two Worlds II, Twig?

I too enjoy the occasional shitty RPG binge and it was my fave out of the last five years' trash. I played it on 360 and had to enter a console command every time so as not to barf but still managed to finish it unlike D2:DKS and other similar titles. I think because it was unselfconsciously weird in lots of places like totally unironically having velociraptors and endangered species as enemies to fight.

[Ewan]

Okay, first post in this thread so here goes, Gone Home:

 

This was a bit of an odd one for me. I had heard lots about it post-release and as people spoke more about the game I picked up more details about it that I feel impacted on my enjoyment.

 

I became aware that the game actually wasn't about ghostly stuff so I wasn't anticipating the scares that I think the game ideally wants its players to think are coming, and the tension that would create. My playthrough was very chilled and inquisitive as opposed to being on edge.

 

My main problem with the game though was the design of the house, it never felt quite real to me. Part of this is due to the bluntness with which we control games, mouse/key and controllers don’t come anywhere near the fidelity of movement a human can manage. This resulted in the environments, but particularly the objects, feeling overly-large and cumbersome. The floorplan of the house also felt like none I have ever stepped in: odd diagonal corridors, over use of adjacent rooms (i.e. rooms that are only accessible through another room and are not directly connected to a corridor), and little overlap between different floors’ floorplan. These all really took me out of the experience. 

 

In spite of all this I was incredibly engrossed in the story which was delivered with a great acuteness. The combination of listening to a person speak whilst walking around their room, viewing their stuff increased my connection to the character. It felt like those great moments in real life when you are rifling through a chest or suitcase full of photographs and letters from a past relative. It makes that person feel all the more real whilst creating an eeriness, a sense of trespassing, which Gone Home replicates to a T.

[JonCole]

Defender's Quest 

 

Surprisingly good tower defense game. Endearing low-fi graphics, good character progression (RPG elements [!!!!!!!], equipment, etc) and a nice difficulty curve. Pause, 1/2x, 1x, 2x, and 4x speed controls are awesome and should be in every TD game. Made a great second screen thing for when I was watching TV on Netflix.

[Bjorn]

Defender's Quest 

 

Surprisingly good tower defense game. Endearing low-fi graphics, good character progression (RPG elements [!!!!!!!], equipment, etc) and a nice difficulty curve. Pause, 1/2x, 1x, 2x, and 4x speed controls are awesome and should be in every TD game. Made a great second screen thing for when I was watching TV on Netflix.

 

I really liked that game.  It sold me with this line in the description: "It also features an engaging, character-driven story written by an actual English major!" 

 

It's also worth a NG+ playthrough if you enjoyed the mechanics of it.  You unlock new equipment and upgrades, and there's a ton more story.  The protagonist starts keeping a diary with thoughts on everything that's going on, which some genuinely funny commentary on the people she's meeting. 

[JonCole]

I think it'll be a game I keep installed and I'll revisit it at some point for a second playthrough on NG+. I almost decided to 3-star every level, but I decided to stop after I finished the last level on normal. Don't really want to burn out on this it, like I did with other similar second-screen friendly stuff like M&M Clash of Heroes (played through completely with max leveled everything and everything unlocked TWICE, but now I never want to play it again) and Puzzle Quest.