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Recently completed video games

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Hotline Miami

So much fun! The violence was actually joyful; probably because of the graphical fidelity (or lack thereof). Going into a sort of "zen mode" where you can smash open a door, kill a guy, throw your weapon, kill the guy who knocked out with the door, grab his weapon...

Plus I love hitting X to restart instantaneously. I think that's what made the game so lovable.

 

The sound track was superb. Fit the gameplay and the context. 

 

Ugh, I just want the second one now. 

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Finally started going through my backlog.  Finished of Infamous 2 to prep for Second Son, also knocked off Dishonored which I had a habit of coming back to every four months.  After the ending of Infamous 2 I'm interested to see where they go with Second Son.

 

Oh and finished Gravity Rush as well.  Really enjoyable game that had a nice pick up and play element to it while still having a solid story which was well suited for the Vita.

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I'm on the cutting edge of modern gaming right now, having just played Portal 2.

 

I went through the entire thing in one sitting, having just finished my commentary replay of Portal this morning, so I really got a chance to see how it compares to its predecessor. I'm sure it's been talked to death over the past three years, so I only have a few things to say about it.

 

  • it's neat that Ellen McLain finally got to perform an opera song in this one. She mentioned in the Portal 1 commentary that she was an opera singer, so that was fresh in my mind.
  • I'm still not used to having a good graphics card, so it was bonkers to play such a pretty gamed and constantly have to remind myself that stuff like this wasn't prerendered.
  • I didn't get motion sickness this time! Yaaaay!
  • there's only a few things I really disliked. Wheatley's tests drag on a lot longer than I'd like and get really obtuse really fast; and a lot of the time, progressing boils down to "find the barely visible white spot in this room"
  • using the gaming keypad SecretAsianMan sent me made a massive difference this time. I mapped WASD to the thumbstick and jump, use, and crouch to the three most easily accessible buttons. I'm never going back to the keyboard.
  • The humour pretty much always works. "The part where he kills you" was fantastic.

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I'm on the cutting edge of modern gaming right now, having just played Portal 2.

 

  • The humour pretty much always works. "The part where he kills you" was fantastic.

 

I finished a second playthrough of Portal 2 two weeks ago and found it just as funny.  You're right; Valve is so good at humor and storytelling through their single player games.  They make something insanely hard look easy, and as a company now it's something they don't seem interested in at all.

 

I have been playing user-created levels and have found some really good ones—including recreations of Plinko from The Price is Right!

 

I want to try out the co-op sometime, because apparently those missions are really good.  And I guess they tied into the main story at the end?  I didn't really pick up on that during my first playthrough.

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I recently completed Stick It To The Man, a very Pyschonauts inspired game, it's not as awesome as Pyschonauts, but it's still great.

 

I played the remake of Mickey's Castle of Illusions, since I originally played the Master System the game was very different for me, I just found right now that the Genesis version has completely different bosses... I always assumed it just looked better. :|

 

Anyway, it's the remake is still pretty faithful, the level are the same in each version, so that part was still familiar, the game actually demands that you collect gems to continue, something I don't remember from the Master System version, but I always had more than enough gems to continue. There were also collectibles for statues of the bosses of the game and other trinkets.

 

And for the final boss, it really put me to the test, she was very challenging, she was actually much harder than the original boss, but they didn't go crazy, unlike other some retro remakes I won't mention *cough* Giana Sisters*cough*

 

Oddly enough I own the Genesis version of the game, I never played because, like I said before, I thought it was the exact same version as the Master System but with better graphics... :|

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The Steam Winter Sale prompted me to buy a few new things, and also go through stuff I had already bought. As a result, I recently finished Gone Home, and sort-of-finished The Stanley Parable (who knows really?). I bought Saints Row 4 in the latest sale, forcing me to play through Saints Row The Third that I I bought ages ago; ridiculously over the top, janky fun. On the iPad, I bought and romped through The Room (and Epilogue), as well as Device 6. The four short games were perfect little snacks that tried out very different ideas; I can see myself being drawn more to these little indie games in the future :)

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I've just finished Gunman Clive, on Hard, playing as the Duck. (I completed it earlier on Easy and again on Normal, so now I consider this completed.)
 

That was... a challenge. But I loved every minute of it.

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I think I finished MirrorMoon, or something like it. At least, I', done with it. Don't really understand much of it. I'm rather disappointed. My idea of exploration is quite different. This was somewhat tedious.

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Can you say anything else about it? I've been quite curious about that one for a while.

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Well.. you basically walk around on a sphere searching for a few parts of a tool you can use to "complete" the sphere. And then you use the star map to find another sphere to walk around on doing more or less the same.

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I completed LEGO The Movie: the game and it's just like all the other LEGO games, but based on the LEGO Movie, I think this movie might have been catered a bit toward people who actually play with real LEGO, since the "jobs" you get in this game are closer to the jobs you get from normal LEGO sets, firemen, cops, builders...

 

Not to mention the main mini game is more or less building what you need with LEGO in more "real" way, you need to find the instructions and then you play a mini game where you must select the next few parts, the game takes over for a while and then you select the next few parts until it's done... This game is making want to buy real LEGO sets, which must mean they've done something right.

 

The game is also a bit about the conflict of LEGO builders who just follow instructions and whose who just build what they want, "instruction followers" are incapable of creating anything without instructions and "free form" builders can't follow instructions...

 

I kinda like how the game building system makes you more involved, it really makes you appreciate how much work goes into a LEGO set instead of just magically building at lighting speed where you don't even see what they did.

 

As for completionism, this game seems a bit on the light side after LEGO Marvel, but frankly, LEGO Marvel went so overboard that I'd rather have all games be more like this one than LEGO Marvel, sure the hub world isn't as alive and people don't talk, but... no racing games! No stupid overlong fetch quests for just a gold brick.

 

By the way, this game "only" has 75 gold bricks compared to the 250 LEGO Marvel had. Like I said, I'd rather have 75 than 250, specially since these are less annoying to get.

 

The only thing I think I should mention is this game has a "pants" system, where a character can gain abilities like in LEGO Lord of the Ring with the Mithril items, some are useful, some are just funny.

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wth!? in my Steam LEGO Movie: The Game doesn't get released until the 27th. And there isn't even a buy button

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I guess it's because the movie it's officially out in Europe? I got it at Greenmangaming and I hope Steam won't cut access to this game like it did with Scribblenauts Unlimited, it happened after I beat the game, but Steam cut access to it until it was officially released in Europe. :|

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Have been trying to plough through a few of the backlog. I tried Surgeon Simulator but there's no way I'm ever completing that. Not even a heart transplant. It took my 19 minutes to get the Team Fortress tape in the VCR.

However, I have finished Hotline Miami and Steamworld Dig on PC and 3DS respectively. Hotline took a while to get into but was a grower. My play style was all about the melee and the audio feedback made it 'feel' incredible. Enjoying the violence implicated you in the narrative.

I'd heard great things about Steamworld and thought it might scratch the Spelunky itch. Unfortunately I think it's more of a gateway drug. It was thoroughly enjoyable digging up precious stones for a few hours and the progression was fine, but it started to drag towards the end and didn't offer much else. I'm still resisting Spelunky - it would require too many hours tied to a PC. A 3DS version could hook me though.

 

 

I played the remake of Mickey's Castle of Illusions, since I originally played the Master System the game was very different for me, I just found right now that the Genesis version has completely different bosses... I always assumed it just looked better. :|

 

Anyway, it's the remake is still pretty faithful, the level are the same in each version, so that part was still familiar, the game actually demands that you collect gems to continue, something I don't remember from the Master System version, but I always had more than enough gems to continue. There were also collectibles for statues of the bosses of the game and other trinkets.

 

And for the final boss, it really put me to the test, she was very challenging, she was actually much harder than the original boss, but they didn't go crazy, unlike other some retro remakes I won't mention *cough* Giana Sisters*cough*

 

Oddly enough I own the Genesis version of the game, I never played because, like I said before, I thought it was the exact same version as the Master System but with better graphics... :|

 

The Mega Drive version was my first ever game, but I never played the MS version. I thought this and Power of Illusion might result in VC releases for Castle/World of Illusion but nadda so far. I'm waiting for a sale to pick this up - I'm eager to hear what Grant Kirkhope has done with the soundtrack.

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After finishing ACIII and all its DLC, I've been wanting to move on to IV, but worried that I'll instantly burn out on the game because of how recently I played III. The answer? Indie game sampler week! The last three days I've beaten Jazzpunk and Octodad, and was making a good run at Brothers when tonight's IT stream started and I decided to watch that. All good games, so far. Very much enjoying this week.

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The Mega Drive version was my first ever game, but I never played the MS version. I thought this and Power of Illusion might result in VC releases for Castle/World of Illusion but nadda so far. I'm waiting for a sale to pick this up - I'm eager to hear what Grant Kirkhope has done with the soundtrack.

Whoa, Grant Kirkhope was the composer? You'd think they'd promote that fact somewhere. This makes me even more interested to play it, after reading up on it after Tanukitsune's mention last week. By the way, the Steam version is currently 66% off on GamersGate.

I've finished a few video games recently. First was Duke Nukem. I played through the first shareware episode so many times as a kid, but never had the full game. It was... pretty good. I can't really divorce my enjoyment from nostalgia, but I enjoyed all the levels I'd never played just as much as the early ones. I like the way the engine is quite limited, but the levels are really expertly designed around its limitations. For example, most objects don't activate until they're onscreen, so the designer is always putting item boxes way up in the sky so you have to find a way to jump high enough to see them and make them fall.

I started on the sequel straight away, and it's a totally different game. The art style is much noisier, which makes it so hard to see enemies that I'm not really enjoying the experience so far. It's also where Duke as a macho parody character first appeared, which as a fan of the pretty characterless first game I was never really into.

Second, I picked up Redshirt for super cheap in the latest Groupees bundle. I wasn't that interested at first, but I'd read some stuff Cliffski wrote about publishing it, and figured I'd give it a go. Man, what an addictive game. I only reached one ending, but in contrast to real life Facebook, which I get bored of within minutes, I'd easily spend 3 or 4 hours on Spacebook without even noticing time had passed. I think this is because it so effectively kept me supplied with short, medium, and long term goals, unlike a more freeform "life management" game like The Sims. While the tasks are ultimately pretty repetitive, I found all the small decisions required enough active attention that my brain couldn't just zone out. My story was awesome:

Seducing the most senior hiring manager and keeping them happy while trying to advance my skills enough to let them hire me, only to have my partner killed on an away mission literally the same day that I reached the minimum qualifications. Thankfully the mission was so brutal that despite the emotional devastation or whatever, I got a big cash bonus which I immediately spent on a ticket off the ship. I left everyone else to die.

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I like the Finnish/Swedish/Norwegan way of looking at it. They all imply kinda wandering around and experiencing what the game has to offer, like a tourist seeing a new country.

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Nice article from Leigh Alexander about the idioms for completing games: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/209900/Beating_games_around_the_world.php

 

Yeah, an Ecuadorian guy is on there! Represent! :D I will say though, my brother doesn't say "gane" (win) when talking about finishing a game, he says "termine" (finished). 

 

Never really thought how simply stating one finishing a game can have so many different implications and definitions based on culture/language. Thanks for sharing!

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I think I say "beat" when it's a difficult game like Dark Souls, but I tend to say "finished" for more atmospheric story-telling games like Gone Home.

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Whoa, Grant Kirkhope was the composer? You'd think they'd promote that fact somewhere. This makes me even more interested to play it, after reading up on it after Tanukitsune's mention last week. By the way, the Steam version is currently 66% off on GamersGate.

 

Cha-CHING. Thanks for the heads-up.

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I think I say "beat" when it's a difficult game like Dark Souls, but I tend to say "finished" for more atmospheric story-telling games like Gone Home.

 

I do this as well.

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We Dutch indeed say «uitgespeeld», which correlates to «finished», but translates directly as «played out». The meaning here is rather that we go «out» of the experience of playing the game (or reading a book, where we also say «uit»).

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I just use "beat" when I "won" and "completed" if I did the extra stuff...

 

I also got the latest Groupees bundle and started to play the Grimm games which are old, but exclusive to Gametap until recently. The gameplay is similar to Katamari Damacy, but instead of growing, you "dark influence radius" grows.

 

Grimm's job is to take sugar coated fairy tales and darken them to show their true origins at first you can barely convert much to darkness, and people and animals will try to clean your mess, but as the world grows darker, you grow stronger and can convert bigger items and eventually building and people. I really love seeing the morphing effects and the game is very stylized too.

 

It's also fun too see how the dark and light parts of the world react to each other, the light will try to clean it up, but sometimes that lil' blue bird becomes a giant crow that will attack and distract a human.

 

They really reuse assets between episodes, but it's understand since I understand it was episodic.

 

 

 

I also recently remember I never played the LA Game Space games... Wow, the experimental games are really... meh? And this is from the guy who enjoysTale of Tales game where all you do is walk down the beach.

 

VideoHeroeS was the only one I actually enjoyed so far, you play as the only of a VHS rental store and have to deal with customers who give very vague descriptions of movies.

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I also recently remember I never played the LA Game Space games... Wow, the experimental games are really... meh? And this is from the guy who enjoysTale of Tales game where all you do is walk down the beach.

I guess i don't know all what was in there, but i thought

looked totally amazing.

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