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I really love Doom 3, and i still actually do, but when it was new i always felt like i had to be the apologist for it. People turned on that game so hard.

 

I think a lot of the reason people turned on it was, at the time, we were starting to see games have a proper go at storytelling, and here's fucking Doom 3 being a throwback to pure gameplay with no context. It felt regressive. It's like the 2D backlash - at the time, what people wanted was to see the new frontiers explored, and like the 2D backlash, now it's been explored we're more willing to enjoy games that once felt regressive.

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I recall that one of the common arguments against it was that it wasn't enough like the old games, however.

It was a weird game, it felt like it was trying to pull in two very different directions. Mechanically, it felt very much like an old-school shooter, particularly Quake 2, i think. However, it also had all these weird little incidental pieces of story-telling and environmental interactions to puzzle through, kinds of things that felt like they came from a completely different first-person gaming tradition. (SysShock, Deus Ex, etc.)

You had people who liked the former hating that they had to listen to audio logs to get passwords, and you had people who liked the latter hating the part where it's... you know... an Id game. (Monster closets and all.)

Those strange contrasts might have been part of why it clicked with me though, and it probably helps that i already loved all the things it was pulling from.

Generally though, it really did seem like people just hated how dark it was. (Though i offer up that theory concerning this, that many people originally experienced the game as being actually darker than it should have been, because i remember the original release disabling some lighting effects on less powerful PC's.)

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I finally completed LEGO The Hobbit, the weirdest thing is that it's been released before the final part is out and it ends on a cliffhanger.

 

It's taken the building minigames from LEGO The Movie, this is just a shot in the dark, but I think they have have did some test and realized that these minigames can potentially sell LEGO sets. Since the game is all about dwaves, you can mine and there is "loot", which is used to build the kits in the building minigame I just mentioned, which means there is a mining mini-game, but it's pretty painless. Not to mention that only you complete the game you can just buy the resources.

 

Another thing they added to the game is the well... "Costume quests", you have to go to character creator and create a specific, but easy to create character to complete a certain quest.

 

The most interesting thing is that quests have a time line and you have to complete a series of quests to reach the next ones. A farmer wants to see a scarecrow, then needs help defeating some wolves, then he decides that maybe he should quit farming and become a miner for which he'll need your help and so on and so one. At the end of these quest lines you usually get a red brick or a special character unlock.

 

Frankly, I think this is the LEGO that made me laugh the most, but I'm really curious about the final part, the rumor is that it will be DLC.

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Just played through Quake for the first time!

 

Even though I've been a Doom fan for most of my life, I've never found myself able to get into Quake. The weapons felt too weak, you moved too slowly, you weren't fighting enough enemies at a time. This time, though, it clicked for me. I realized that those were all conscious design decisions, and that I had no reason to expect 3D Doom.

 

But, at the same time, the game manages to push a lot of the same buttons that the Doom games do. It has that feeling of dread where you're always hesitating to go around the next corner, and where you always have just barely enough ammo. The sound track may not be as rockin' as Doom's, but it definitely helps to reinforce the atmosphere and I thought it was pretty cool how it changes dynamically while you move through the levels.

 

Enemies are sort of a mixed bag. I like the ones that leap through the air at you, and the dudes with the chainsaw in one hand and the grenade launcher in the other are fantastic and they force you to think about the space around you in a way that Doom never required. The slimey jumping around guys that they start throwing at you towards the end of the game are the worst, though.

 

I still have a problem with the weapons in the game; they're boring. Essentially you have a basic melee weapon, a shot gun, a more powerful shotgun, a machine gun, a more powerful machine gun, a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher, and the lightning gun (those last 3 are pretty great though.) The grenade launcher is my favorite, because it's the only weapon which really seems to make use of the new 3D engine.

 

Also the final boss is incredibly lame. But overall I really enjoyed the game! Now I should probably play Quake 2 one of these days.

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The Quake games have always been my favorite Id games. The first game, especially, had this way of keeping you constantly on guard, the player being a little more fragile and much slower than in Doom, and the enemies seeming so much more threatening. Doom felt to me like it was just on constantly and always stacked in the player's favor, but Quake had this ebb and flow of these guarded, paranoid moments waiting for the game to explode into violent, frenetic panic. (That moody and ambient Nine Inch Nails soundtrack certainly also contributes quite a bit, i think.) You know, and unrestricted mouselook was kind of a revelation, and i much preferred the more precise player movement. The game also really took advantage of its new 3D engine and put you into a lot of vertically oriented situations that would have never appeared in one of the earlier Doom games. (Or really any other shooter at the time.)
 

You're correct to say that Quake's arsenal is kind of bland though, especially the nailguns, where the super nailgun literally is just a better nailgun with no trade-off at all. (There's at least an accuracy trade-off with the shotguns.) The final boss is also a real bummer.

As for Quake 2, i think there's an argument to make for it being Id's best game, or at least their best campaign game, because i'd certainly rather play Quake or Quake 3 for competitive purposes. Quake 2's phenomenal though, i love it. It's also a wildly different game, Quake wasn't exactly a very internally consistent series.

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Finally finished The Walking Dead season 1 and 400 Days. I needed a break from it after the third episode. What an awesome game. I'll have to get Season Two when I can afford it, even though it doesn't have the Sean and Jake magic.

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Finally finished The Walking Dead season 1 and 400 Days. I needed a break from it after the third episode. What an awesome game. I'll have to get Season Two when I can afford it, even though it doesn't have the Sean and Jake magic.

But it does have Nick Breckon!

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The game also really took advantage of its new 3D engine and put you into a lot of vertically oriented situations that would have never appeared in one of the earlier Doom games. (Or really any other shooter at the time.)

There is one interesting/weird feeling I have every time I play this game: I feel like I can almost sense the intense joy of level designers finally being able to create unconstrained 3D spaces in this type of game, especially in the first episode. There is a lot of verticality, crazy underwater paths etc but what stands out to me is the way areas are reused in the flow of the levels. When progressing through a level you very often revisit the same spaces and see them in different contexts as various paths intersect there. There's something extremely satisfying about this type of gameworld traversal, it works as an unintrusive progress indicator and I feel it's something many action games lack today, you either don't ever revisit anything or you do but the space is used in pretty much the same way as before except maybe throwing a new wave of enemies at you.

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There is one interesting/weird feeling I have every time I play this game: I feel like I can almost sense the intense joy of level designers finally being able to create unconstrained 3D spaces in this type of game, especially in the first episode.

always stood out to me as being very playful in its design, pushing this newfound verticality to its logical conclusion with this large, layered, low-gravity environment.

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Tropico 4 :tmeh:

Finally finished the standard campaign. The last mission was a real meat circus. So here you are trying to get your island running again after minimum wage is so permanently to $20, finished a bunch of more missions, and then finally... build 3 things of 2x60k+40k before the end of 2012.... It was already 2018 at that point.... great.

It's an ok strategy game, but so much is left to random chance. There are like 3 formulas which work very good, but only if you get enough workers or tourists that spend money. Nothing you can control.

 

That sounds about the same as I felt by the time I made it that far. I had some major bugs in the second to last mission where you have to target different citizens trying to find the spy. There's so little depth in the building in that game.

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Today I finished Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury.

 

I loved its predecessor, Legacy of Goku II. This one was similar, but I didn't enjoy it as much. Partially because I enjoyed the Android/Cell sagas much more than the Buu saga. Also, this game had a weird difficulty spike at the end: Before the final fight with Buu, I was destroying absolutely everything around me in a few hits. I got every character to level 150, which isn't the max level (that would be 200). But when I fought the final battle, I died several times and had a lot of trouble with it. I had been grinding levels in that game for hours and it still ended with me barely winning.

 

I suppose that's kind of intentional (I mean, Buu is supposed to be almost unkillable) but when I had to grind that much and still spent the final battle constantly on the verge of death, I feel like it wouldn't go so well if I hadn't tried to overlevel myself for an easy final battle...

Long story short, I wanted it to be a baby game.

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The thing I hate the most about anime fighting games based off a series is when you know that in the story, your character is going to lose this fight, yet you can't lose the fight. You have to win the fight in order to see a cut scene of you losing the fight you just won. It's the most infuriating and backwards thing ever. Why can't you just be able to continue the story regardless of the fights outcome? it's a continuous bugbear I have against fighting game stories. Blazblue does some cool stuff where you have to lose fights to get the best endings and stuff, but Blazblue is a rare example of a half decent story in fighting games. That and Skullgirls. Some endings are quite sweet, like Pinwheel's.

 

Anyways, I finished Metroid Fusion last night! I have never finished a Metroid game before, even though I've gotten darn close before in both Prime and Metroid 2. It was good! Wasn't too long, and the computer made sure I knew what I was doing, unlike Super Metroid, where I was pretty stuck. Until I realised I could super bomb that glass walkway. I also would have never finished this game if it wasn't for the WiiU reminding me that I already owned Metroid Fusion on the 3DS thanks to the Ambassador Program, and that no matter how cheap it is, free is still cheaper. XD

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I played through Mirror's Edge for the sixth or seventh time this weekend. It's still the most beautiful game I've ever played, despite being almost six years old now. It's also still one of my favourite games to play through in general, and is probably my favourite game period of the last several years (with the possible exception of Dark Souls).

My current rig can run it at max settings with all the cool PhysX stuff on, so I took some fancy screenshots.

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But it does have Nick Breckon!

That definitely helps. But Sean and Jake wrote the big plot points for the entire previous season, isn't that right? My impression is that Nick's influence is not that strong. I will definitely get it, though, just not this minute.

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That sounds about the same as I felt by the time I made it that far. I had some major bugs in the second to last mission where you have to target different citizens trying to find the spy. There's so little depth in the building in that game.

I had the exact same problem. Had to redo the whole mission.

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I played through The Swapper yesterday. The atmosphere was just incredible throughout. I rarely got caught up enough in the gameplay to lose the general sense of unease that runs through the whole game. I liked the puzzles, and found them to mostly be pretty great, but I made a big mistake early on that made the end game way less fun. I didn't realize that you needed to get every orb to advance, and so once I got to the last section of the game, I had to back track a ton to finish it up. Still, I enjoyed my time with it.

 

On a related note, I think playing the game helped me understand the "obtuse indie game story" thing from the last podcast and the episode thread. I think The Swapper was just about perfect at reducing the story mostly to tone like Chris was saying. If it said more, it wouldn't have been effective, and if it said less, it would have been just obnoxious. Hope I'm getting that right. Anyway, video games.

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Broken Sword 5 :tup:

I just finished part 2 of broken sword 5, and now it's complete. It's a proper continuation of the Broken Sword games. They went back to the 2D adventure game style. I'm happy with my kickstarter backing. They delivered what I wanted. (I would also have backed a 3D Broken Sword game).

If you don't know Broken Sword, but did play Double Fine's Broken Age: it's quite different (except for the first word). Broken Sword is much more unfriendly in its puzzles. Part 2 had a few heavy puzzles which required thinking, and unless you have prior knowledge, even googling. The story of BS is classic BS style, so also quite predictable and doesn't have the depth Broken Age had.

Anyway, I'm happy I used a sausage and a goat to get rid of some guys with guns.

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Trials evolution

Um, the credits rolled so I guess that means it's done? I went back and made sure I was top on the leaderboards between me and two random PSN friends. Other than a couple of tracks where they must have got lucky bounces :( we all get lucky bounces, I got a 40th in the world time on a first run (it's like 200 now, which is still pretty damn good when it's out of a 100,000)

Edit: it's actually trails fusion, ah they're all the same

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I beat Tales of Xillia and it's even better than Tales of Graces! In theme an tone it's pretty much the same as Graces, it has very dark moments, but also very sweet moments and characters I actually enjoy playing as.

 

Although some might find this a bad thing, I like the fact that I can simply set the battles to automatic and just read a book or comic, the AI does a better job then I would most of the time.

 

And one of the most interesting things about the game is the shop upgrade system, instead of gathering crafting items for synthesizing potions and such, you just give them to the shop and will become a shop that sells better items and this carries over to ALL shops of that category, which means you never have to look for a specific shop again.

 

I remember complaining in Tales of Graces about how they seem to force two characters into a couple out of nowhere, well in Xillia every single female character seems to fall in love with Jude, the worst part?

 

Nobody confesses their love! Leia practically spent her life trying to become a nurse only because Jude wants to become the doctor, in the end she decides to work in her parent's inn and hope to form a family, she never says if she's thinking of forming a family with Jude or not.

 

Elize is the typical "I want to marry the male protagonist when I'm older!", she wants "big bazongas" because Milla has them.

 

And Milla... Well, they hold hands and that's about it... just about when Jude is going to confess his feeling he chickens out, probably because he thinks Milla has to become God and can't choose him?

 

But it's kinda frustrating to have so many romance only slightly insunuated, even secondary character don't even get to get married since Isla tries to commit suicide out of pure grief and end up in some weird coma.

 

 

Despite that, the ending was ridiculously satisfying.

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Just finished up Tomb Raider II. Unlike the first game I actually played this one as a kid, not sure if that's why I enjoyed it more. I don't feel super nostalgic about it. Anyway, there are some unfortunate things about the game, in hindsight it's easy to see it as the series starting to head down the wrong path. It's pretty evident that they thought of Lara as an action hero, that's why they stuffed more guns in there, why they put in awkward vehicle sections, urban environments and human enemies (my final tally was 12847 rounds fired, heh). It starts of fantastic with the Great Wall of China level, but then it cuts to three levels of Venice and two on a not-oil rig. After that it gets better, a flipped over sunken ship might be the best idea for a chapter setting in all of the games (even though it doesn't make sense for all of those air pockets to be there) and the Tibet levels after that get back to the feel of TR I. There's some genuinely great level design going on in parts of this game, The Deck is probably the one I liked the most. Temple of Xian didn't quite live up to my memories of it (I remembered there being a giant spider, turns out it was just dog sized), but it's still pretty great.

 

I'm honestly a little surprised how well these games hold up once you get used to the controls again. Why were designers doing more interesting things with 3D spaces two years into 3D being a thing than now? It's a bloody shame.

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I finished Ratchet and Clank Quest for Booty after spending about 5 months chipping away at an 100% save file for Secret Agent Clank. Secret Agent Clank is absolute bullshit. It has all the extra skill points and leveling up as any other Ratchet and Clank game, but then adds a bunch of dance minigames you have to be perfect on and fucking mind numbing weapon grinding the series has yet to ever see (and I'm guessing after). Besides that the big draw to the game, the stealth, was fucking stupid clunky shit, Secret Agent Clank is just a bundle of mini interludes of detached levels with multiple characters. The one thing I was hoping the game would be, Clank controlling the Gadgebots, was nonexistent. There's Gadgebots controlling eachother, but usually it's press square to bite x100. And nearly every fucking skill point was some kind of herculean task requiring me to retry a level over and over a hundred times to perfect some badly designed level (usually filled with unskippable cutscenes) and not get hit or almost worse, don't get caught in one of the 30 minute long stealth based levels. What precedence had been set before that a Ratchet and Clank game should be that hard? This is a handheld game! I had played all of the fucking things chronologically up until Agent Clank, and not even the BADASSXTREEEEME black sheep Deadlocked had skill points like that. In fact, Deadlocked was relatively easy. Fuck Secret Agent Clank, I almost wanted to give up on the whole series because of it. In fact, I don't even want to see Clank in a god damn bowtie ever again.

 

I'm sure if you don't have an OCD need for 100%, Secret Agent Clank is probably more of a forgettable and shoddy portable cash in for the Ratchet and Clank series.

 

Anyway, Quest for Booty was awesome and I had a lot of fun for a few hours with no grinding or OCD hang ups. In fact, it's the first Ratchet and Clank I have encountered that doesn't require a second playthrough. Now I have a pirate hat for Crack in Time, which I have just started and have properly filled my pupils with its eye candy. There is a burping mating call monster gun. Happiness is restored.

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Trials evolution

Um, the credits rolled so I guess that means it's done? I went back and made sure I was top on the leaderboards between me and two random PSN friends. Other than a couple of tracks where they must have got lucky bounces :( we all get lucky bounces, I got a 40th in the world time on a first run (it's like 200 now, which is still pretty damn good when it's out of a 100,000)

Edit: it's actually trails fusion, ah they're all the same

 

Usually I race through Trials to the credits to get everything unlocked, then comes the pain of a million retries. Zero faulting everything that isn't an extreme, getting platinums on everything that isn't extreme and then - the extremes.

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Just completed Metro: Last Light, having not played the predecessor.

 

I had a good time, the stealth was thrilling enough. I most often play games like these to see the different environments, and Last Light had a good amount of ambiance.

 

Not having played the previous game(s?) I didn't get too much out of the story.

 

I would have preferred it if I could have scavenged custom parts from weapons to put on my own weapons. At least sights on standard weapons should be interchangeable.

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Well, I beat Knight of the Pen and Paper +1, I remember ElMuerte saying that he felt like it was a fremium game since you pay for characters and temporary bonuses, but it's all in in-game currency and if there is a store to buy money, I never saw it, it's relatively fair since the more difficult missions give you more money, although it sucks that you have to pay more and more for each member of your group.

 

What really sucked is that you kinda max out around level 30, you don't get skill points for spells and you don't you don't get better equipment, the problem? The final areas have you fighting SWARMS of level 42 characters.

 

To make things even worse I found out how unfair dungeons are too late, it's relatively fair to have to roll to see if you're attacked for camping in a non-safe area, but what really sucks is that fleeing from a battle in a dungeon means you have to restart the whole thing. I ran away from a fight only because it's so annoying to fighting the swarms of final enemies. Even if you buy some temporary boosts that counts as fleeing the dungeon and means you have to restarts.

 

Not to mention, the dice felt "loaded" in the final dungeon, in the first dungeon I entered I didn't encounter a single enemy (the higher the roll, the better the encounter, too low means a trap, too high means treasure), while I encountered a fore around each corner and this was my character that had a +1 to all dice rolls which stacked with another temporary boost I used and yet I still had to fight every few minutes.

 

 

I also beat the Room II, it keeps amazing how much I love this series seeing that I tend to hate games that are nothing but puzzle over puzzle, but the implementation and air of mystery makes it all work perfectly! 

 

It did feel like it trying to be more scary than mysterious this time though.

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I beat Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory yesterday. It's certainly the best Splinter Cell game I've played, probably my third favourite stealth game.

Sneaking, using gadgets, distracting guards, remote hacking and disabling lights and security with the pistol EMP thing is all fun. I did an almost-ghost playthrough, meaning no alarms and I avoided knocking anyone out as much as possible. Didn't shy away from a few face slaps when necessary, though. The levels are pretty well designed allowing for extremely stealthy playthroughs for those who look around.

Besides being an overall really good game, one thing I noted now (after over 8 years since my last playthrough) was the fun and snarky dialog, although I'm afraid I missed some of the witty interrogations due to my play style. I just love Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher.

If you haven't played the series, but you're going to, stop after finishing Chaos Theory. I started playing through Double Agent hoping it's not as bad as I remembered. But it's even worse. Maybe I couldn't begin judging it with a clean slate or maybe I've started overthinking games, but playing through two and a half missions from the beginning left me with this simmering rage and the desire to shove the game disk up someone's ass.

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