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I beat Strider. I actually liked it a lot. It's got a Metroidvania structure but it's mostly pretty linear; basically the only thing they use it for is when you go back into an area you've been before and what was a normal room suddenly has a lot more importance. Like 90% of the upgrades are on the critical path; the vast majority of collectables just unlock concept art and that sort of thing. It has a lot of bossfights and they are all the kind where you have to watch the boss' pattern, identify a weak spot, avoid their attack and strike as much as you can. No hitting obvious vulnerabilities three times. The games responds to skill quite nicely; you have a handful of moves but they're all useful, and although I didn't use the Ultracold attacks very often I can see other people playing it differently.

 

The plot is so, so dumb. It clear they felt they needed one but they also liked the idea of a game where you don't need to worry about the plot and there's this awkward compromise where you start the game with a 10 second cutscene and no context other than 'Eliminate Grandmaster Meio' but you still get (bad) cutscenes where the villains monologue at you. They've kept all the mechanic-focused names from the original game so your three major powerups are called Option-A, Option-B and Option-C. It relies on gauntlets a little too much and the UI is a little janky.

 

I played on hard; you don't really have to engage with the game's systems very much on normal, which I think was a mistake, but it is a substantial action game with a character that's fun to move around and attack with, and level design that is a little more elaborate than most action games without being directionless.

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I finished off Enslaved:Odyssey to the West yesterday.  Overall I found it marginally enjoyable!  After thoroughly enjoying Ninja Theory's work on the DmC reboot, I was excited to come into this, but it's a very different game, and doesn't sport anything close to the highly technical, challenging combat system of DmC.  In fact, to be quite critical for a moment, most of it's gameplay systems felt pretty shallow.  The combat is fairly simple, and the platforming is context-sensitive.  It also does this annoying thing where it litters collectable items in nooks and crannies, items that you want because they'll provide currency to upgrade your character.  This is usually fine, but devolves into the stupid when they're still present during moments of high drama or time pressure in the storyline.  Your NPC companion yelling for help, and you're rooting around in a trash bin in an alley for upgrade currency.

 

I'm also torn two ways on the context-sensitive jumping.  On the one hand, I'm not sure the gameplay would have been enhanced at all with the ability to fall to your death and then having to restart sections of the game.  On the other hand, as you go through yet another sequence of holding directions and tapping 'A', you sort of find yourself wondering what the payoff is.  Certainly it allows you to have more confidence in trying things, because you flat out aren't allowed to if it would mean your death, but it kind of neutralizes any sense of satisfaction about the successfully traversing the level.

 

However its atypical plot, colourful, post-apocalyptic U.S. setting, and service-ably written/acted characters bring it up a bit.  Also it clocks in at a perfect six hours.  Surprisingly, the game was co-directed by Andy Serkis who provides both the voice and mo-cap for the main character, with excellent results.

 

If you want a character action game that's a bit different from the rest, I recommend checking it out.

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Warlock - Master of the Arcane :tmeh:

I think I got this turn based strategy game in the huge Paradox bundle. I just finished a single compaign. It took me 17 hours. This is one of those games of "one more turn, and then I'll stop", which then results in hours pasing by. There's quite a lot of stuff going on, nearing the end of the game it started to become quite cumbersome to manage it all. There are still a bunch of things in the game I have no idea about despite having spend 17 hours on it. Eitherway, it was fun to play, but now I'm done. I fon't feel like playing another campaign (it's all random generated content anyway).

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Oh hey! I came on here to read and remembered that I totally completed Gravity Rush (aka Gravity Daze). 

Pretty good game! I had fun, the narrative I started to ignore a bit towards the end because it was very cliche JRPG style stuff so I won't comment on that (some people like that stuff). 

However, the psuedo-open world design was great, and having their version of XP points as collectibles made me want to explore rather than jumping from mission to mission. Falling around everywhere took a while to figure out how to control fluidly, but once I got the hang of it I was everywhere I wanted to be very fast. 

 

The special abilities were a little bit broken (especially the

shooting tons of homing rocks

one, which I would just wait for it to refresh and use it again), but the combat was very fulfilling. 

 

If you've got a vita, it's free with ps+ and is a solid game. Don't expect something amazing, but it's certainly an experience I'm glad I spent my time on. Yeah, so Gravity Rush!

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I beat Strider. I actually liked it a lot.....

me too. I just completed on hard as well, 6 hours 20 mins. I had no interest of 100% it like I do with most of these metrovania type games, because like you said, it's very linear and so by the end I really didn't feel the need to travel back to all the location to uncover the 5% of the map that remained uncovered because I hadn't hit it via the critical path.

I will say the beginning of the game felt a little sparse on the upgrade side, it felt like a long time before you acquired the second energy type, but then got the rest of the upgrades really close together.... Which made the second half of the game super fun

And yeah, story :) so I assume strider died re-entering the earths atmosphere, if the end credits movie went on a little longer we would've seen striders face starting to melt

I liked it more than Dust: A furry tail which a quit probably after about six hours

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Warlock - Master of the Arcane :tmeh:

I think I got this turn based strategy game in the huge Paradox bundle. I just finished a single compaign. It took me 17 hours. This is one of those games of "one more turn, and then I'll stop", which then results in hours pasing by. There's quite a lot of stuff going on, nearing the end of the game it started to become quite cumbersome to manage it all. There are still a bunch of things in the game I have no idea about despite having spend 17 hours on it. Eitherway, it was fun to play, but now I'm done. I fon't feel like playing another campaign (it's all random generated content anyway).

 

The unit management killed me in that game as well. I really enjoyed it otherwise. Civ 5 can be a bit obnoxious in forcing the camera places as well, so maybe it is par for course for 5X.

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Finished up Broken Age: Act 1 last night.  It was great great great.

 

As soon as adventure games open up a space more than 5 screens at once I tend to become overwhelmed.  Too much back-tracking and making sure that I didn't miss anything.  My problem being that I have trouble re-contextualizing.  Once I've used a space for one puzzle I can only understand that space in that singular way.  Thankfully there was only one example of this:

 

The Dead-Eyed riddle.  There was the cave entrance, beach, talking tree, snake tree, outside the lumberjack's house, inside the lumberjack's house, AND the entire cloud area.  We had already used the fruit tree in an earlier puzzle, so when I saw nothing new in that area I immediately moved on.  I'm also TERRIBLE at riddles.  I wrote it down and still didn't get it.  After wandering around for a good 15 minutes, we had to look it up, which always makes me feel like an idiot.

 

That's why I'm glad the game wasn't harder.  The world ends up feeling lifeless and empty due to the binary nature of whether something pertains to your current puzzle or not.  And since there's always only one solution, if you're stuck for too long and have retread over the world a few times, it becomes hard to maintain a suspension of disbelief that the world is alive.  Broken Age for the most part felt alive.

 

The music in the game was fantastic!  Excited to get to Act 2 so I can hear more of it!

 

--------------

 

Then we watched the Oscars (worth it for the "Adele Dazeem" moment), and I managed to "finish" Rymdkapsel.  The art, UI, and gameplay design of this game is amazing.  I was worried it would prove too challenging, with the constant count-down to attack keeping you on edge at all times.  But the pacing of the game is actually quite calming, as your indirect control means that you're actually just sitting back and enjoying your little dudes going at their tasks.

 

The music was the best rendition of Neu/Cluster/Harmonia krautrock-space-music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I was thrilled to hear how good the music was.

 

I only completed the "Research All Monoliths" challenge, and I will most certainly play more of this game to try and get the other two challenges.  At this point it's just perfecting a build, though, so I figured worth considering "completed".

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I just finished a playthrough of Earth Defense Force 2025's solo campaign, with a co-op game still in progress and a fair amount of time in on all the classes.
 

That game is a janky mess with a perpetually terrible framerate, and i love it. I love the threadbare mission scripting that allows these insane battles against hundreds of weird and enormous enemies to spiral out of control through these massive, fully-destructable city environments. I find a gleeful kind of catharsis in this game just setting me out in a largely unrestricted arena with my toolbox of weapons and a series of problems for me to solve in any way that toolbox allows. I loved 2017, and i think 2025 is a great successor.
 

The co-op's been very enjoyable, if only mostly functional. The classes are all entertaining enough individually, and together they create some really fun team dynamics. (In co-op, make sure somebody plays as an Air Raider. Probably don't pair up a Fencer with an Air Raider though, if you only have two players.) However, some odd sync issues can crop up with the netcode, though the game doesn't require so much precision that it falls apart.

The online campaign has some extra-ridiculous missions that don't appear in the offline game, but both campaigns are quite long. The game is nearly twice as long as 2017, with the first half of the game mostly retreading old ground, and the second half introducing lots of new enemies. Unfortunately, there's a couple mission setups that repeat a few times with virtually no variation. That kind of filler feels out of place in a game that is built around the idea that people will already be playing missions multiple times through higher difficulties to earn better weapons. (You really only see a tiny portion of the available weapons by playing through on the normal difficulty, they get stranger from there on out.)

Still, i love it. :tup:

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Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast (PAL)

 

Beat this game on Saturday. Played with fiancee who insisted the hardware was faulty. She still beat the game though - think it's aimed at the casual crowd. It froze a couple of times, something to do with wheelchair access? I took advantage by repeatedly zapping Zurg on the underside of his gun. Finished up as a Lv4 Space Scout, 182,000 points. Standard on-rails shooter. 3D is great. Tight controls, 360 degree movement feels fluid but reticule is too small. Needs iron sights. 5/10.

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So tempted by EDF. Maybe I can dig up my old dying 360 and coax it into working long enough for my wife and I to play together.

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I just finished Dark Souls! It only took me about two years.

 

I first played it a couple of months after it came out. I had heard mixed things about it, not so much that it wasn't good, but that it might not be for everybody, so I acted like it was the 90s and rented a copy from Redbox. I played a ton of it over the weekend since my wife was out of town, and I got as far as the gargoyles before I got stuck. I started just wandering and ended up in Darkroot Garden. I really enjoyed my time with the game, but I didn't end up picking up a copy. When the PC version came out, I added it to my steam wish list and ended up waiting for it to go on sale.

 

Once it finally did, I played up until the same point, getting stuck at the gargoyles. Now, I know that my problem was a combination of not upgrading my equipment, not understanding the equipment load system, and leaning too much on the Drake Sword in the early game. I played for a few hours, then I put it down for about six months. I came back, this time determined to understand the systems, upgrade my gear, and grind out some levels to get over the initial hump. Once I did that, I got through the gargoyles without too much trouble. Over the next few months, I played the game for short bursts, up until I got to Anor Londo. I was feeling pretty good, up until I got sucked into the Painted World before I was ready for it, without any items to prevent/cure toxicity. 

 

I gave up. I posted about it in the "Quitters Club" thread here on the forums, but a bunch of people gave me suggestions on how to get through it. I ended up running past the toxic enemies, finishing up the Painted World, fighting the boss, and continuing on my way. Last night I took down the last few bosses in quick succession, only to get stuck on Gwyn. This morning, I decided to give a different strategy a shot (tanky Havel's armor/Iron Flesh instead of fast rolling robe wearing) and got through it with only a couple of tries. I have never felt so accomplished on finishing a video game.

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I just finished Silent Storm, which I bought on a Steam sale some time back. It's a World War 2 turn based squad tactics game. I'm a little bit torn on some aspects of it, but overall I was left with a very positive feeling, and I would recommend it :tup:

 

The most noteworthy aspect of the game is the physics simulation and environmental destruction. Virtually every structure in the game (so not only doors, but walls, floors, ceilings, fences and various objects) are destructible. Enemies got the entrances to a building well protected? Just get out some explosives and make your own entrance anywhere you please. In one mission I was to eliminate some bad guys holed up in some houses. Only one side of the building had a door and windows, and the street in front of it was populated with bad guys. So, I had my soldier blow a hole on the back wall of the building with his panzerfaust. As it happened, the ad hoc entrance led to the very room where the leader of the bunch was waiting, so I took him out the very same turn.

 

Also the projectiles (bullets, grenades, RPGs...) are simulated flying from your gun to your target. Which means that a shot heading for it's target can hit things between you and the target, as well as things behind it if the bullet penetrates. On one occastion, my sniper shot at an enemy standing in a doorway. The shot hit, but the bullet kept on travelling into the factory space behind him. It hit some Red Barrels™, which proceeded to blow a gaping hole in the factory floor. Also bullets hitting hard surfaces at low angles have a chance of ricocheting, which have led to similar events as the previously described one.

 

All in all, it's fun to plan out and execute your turn, counting Action Points (there's action points, not some lazy shitty "one move and one action" bullshit) and maximizing your to-hit-chance before taking the shots. There's also 4 different stances (prone, crouch, walk, run) and some sound, vision and cover based stealth mechanics.

 

Now the bad sides. First one is a slight spoiler if you know nothing about the game, and also my major complaint. It's the armored suits called "Panzerkleins" (PK). They effectively break the balance of the game, as (with a few notable exceptions) the only thing that can hurt a PK is another PK. They are literally impervious to bullets from any regular gun, and even some PK machine guns. Even anti-tank RPG weapons often fail to damage the suit, and even when they do, the damage is negliglible. The only reliable hand-held weapon that can damage a PK is some scifi beam gun. The game definitely went downhill from the moment PKs were introduced.

 

The other, certainly lesser complaint is that the enemy turns seem to take absolutely forever. Especially when there are a lot of enemies around. It can be excused, since the game is quite strong otherwise, but it can easily get on your nerves if you're not prepared for a slow paced experience.

 

I bought the game in a pack that included the sequel Silent Storm: Sentinels. Gonna play that next.

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Replayed Grim Fandango to see how it held up. I'm... I'm not sure it does. The tank controls are a real problem, sure, but Year 3 until the end feels weirdly abbreviated. You don't really feel like you're in danger -

assassins dressed as customs officers try to kill you, but when you get to the Edge of the World, Domino makes you a manager and gives you run of the joint? And the solution is to sail off without him? You really don't get any hands-on with the damage that Hector's caused in Year 4; the casino should feel slimy and corrupt, but you've done the same just on a small scale.

Manny is a sleazeball until he's not - it doesn't really work as a redemptive arc.

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Fiiiiiiine

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I finished Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition for the billionth time. Now to 100% again!

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Now the bad sides. First one is a slight spoiler if you know nothing about the game, and also my major complaint. It's the armored suits called "Panzerkleins" (PK). They effectively break the balance of the game, as (with a few notable exceptions) the only thing that can hurt a PK is another PK. They are literally impervious to bullets from any regular gun, and even some PK machine guns. Even anti-tank RPG weapons often fail to damage the suit, and even when they do, the damage is negliglible. The only reliable hand-held weapon that can damage a PK is some scifi beam gun. The game definitely went downhill from the moment PKs were introduced.

Really glad to see this game still giving people entertainment. I've been a huge fan since before the second one came out.

You're not the only one who is vexed by the panzerkleins, to the point that there's a mod that removes them:

http://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/no-panzerklein-modification-s2/

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I am become The Witchest (2). I was surprised to see I pumped 30 hours in there and enjoyed myself all the way through. When I look back at any of the parts and elements of this game in isolation, they're pretty bad. Gameplay-wise. The stealth is bad, the combat is meh and the crafting I rarely used and wasn't fun. So many systems are quite useless: for instance the day/night cycle, which is hardly noticeable and rarely used. The story was moderately fun but convoluted. I'd say the things that make it shine are the moral choices, which have a pretty huge effect on how things transpire, and the characters, some of which are fun and voiced excellently. (Others are awful.)

And yet! I was totally captivated by the thing. Weird. Is this the 'Witcher Effect'?

One last thing: the opening cinematic is fan-tas-tic. It's exciting, funny, gorgeous. This is how you do it.

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Jacob Jones and The Bigfoot Mystery is pretty much a Layton clone, although not that well planned out puzzle wise, the puzzles feel forced and it's very annoying to see people constantly asking for a solution they can't find, but they somehow know you did it perfectly later

 

After playing Tearaway the paper aesthetics of the backgrounds seem pretty much lazy and jarring since the characters are in a different style. At least it's was less than a dollar?

 

 

I'm not sure .detuned counts as a game it more like a demo like Lingering in the Shadows, only more disturbing and trippy? If you added a "horror filter" to this game it would be more disturbing that many horror games. You can give a guy an elephant head and make him shake Jacob's Ladder/Silent Hill Style.

 

Oh, I also beat the latest Walking Dead episode, but I already talked about that in the appropriate thread.

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Last night I finished South Park: Stick of Truth.

 

I pretty much blitzed this game for the whole weekend. In the end it took 15 hours or so. I say blitzed, it was a fairly relaxed playthrough, I did about 80% of the side quests, and a fair bit of exploring.

 

The best thing about the game is that it's funny. Very funny. And not in a lame 'look a modern gaming trope' way either. Actually funny writing by Matt and Trey. Some of the best bits were stuff that wasn't just South Park cameos. That first couple of hours wandering around South Park finding all the 'cameos' and side quests was the worst and dullest part of the game for me. It even got to a point in which I just couldn't bring myself to look inside another building to find another cameo to add to my friend list. The best praise for the game was that the main quest line felt like playing an episode of the show, which is all down to Trey and Matt's excellent writing. The 'edgy' gross-out stuff that happens in the game is very south park. It's a credit I guess to the writers (again) that the gross out stuff is simultaneously disgusting and hilarious. I find that so often it can be disgusting to a point that it's just not funny. Family Guy does this a lot. The shock value of what happens in SP:SoT is quickly followed up by not more shocking stuff, but funny lines or slapstick humour. And it works, because it left me laughing all the way to the superb climax. I played it on PC, and so got to see the censored scenes uncensored, and it's surprising that they got censored at all really. It didn't feel offensive at all. Just par for the course of a South Park show, and the censors were there just to generate hype.

 

But yes. Very good. My final verdict is a High number close to a higher number.

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Would you recommend it to someone who has missed the last few seasons?

 

Yes totally. If you like the TV show you'll like the game. There are 3 episodes in the lastest season which is kinda a 'prequel' to the game, (I think the first one of the trilogy is called 'Black Friday' or 'Friday is coming' or something like that) but I'd even advise to stay away from that as it's a bit of a spoiler for one of the best end-game gags (even though I did laugh again when it happened)

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Just finished Metro: Last Light. It was alright. Like the previous one it's great at setting up mood and atmosphere and it looks great. I loved going through the metro "cities" and surface wasteland...it's all so incredibly detailed and fun to explore (in the completely linear way it's presented at least). I also love the mechanics like having to manually recharge your flashlight battery or the pneumatic guns and the game has a button dedicated to wiping grime off your gas mask for goodness sake. But fighting mutants could get a little annoying/tedious and the few boss fights they had in there felt out of place and unnecessary. Also the human AI is pretty dumb and the stealth was so forgiving it bordered on ridiculous, which isn't something I'd expect myself to say (it's basically a binary system of completely invisible or not and enemies are quick to give up searching for you). The story was serviceable enough, aside from some bad voice acting and a few groan-worthy moments, and in general the guns felt good to shoot so I'd say the good outweighed the bad.

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Last night I finished South Park: Stick of Truth

That first couple of hours wandering around South Park finding all the 'cameos' and side quests was the worst and dullest part of the game for me.

 

Argh that's where I'm stuck at now! I can play it for about 40 minutes then just "eh". "Oh look it's Al Gore and he wants you to find Manbearpig. Ha ha ha."

 

I'm glad it gets better. Not that it's even bad now, it's just not totally gripping.

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