Recently completed video games

[Bjorn]

I beat SteamWorld Dig and yeah, it's pretty good, it's more like a metroidvania with digging than anything else. Although you really shouldn't bother to explore the older areas that much since the ore become more expensive the deeper you get, so why go look for that copper ore that's 2$ when you get a ruby that's 300$? 

 

The game does have some special core for bigger upgrades or teleporters to make the trip back easier. Although I did have spare cores in the end, it did feel a bit tense to decide whether I could afford one or not at most times.

 

I played through that as well after picking it up from the Flash sale it was in.  Great game, very charming, nails the "feel" it was going for.  I don't think it's really a Metroidvania game though, as there are only a couple of times you need to backtrack, and it's not really backtracking even, given how quickly each area can be reached.  The sense of progression is great, each new power feels like a solid upgrade and there's no wasted filler abilities.  And it's a great length, probably 3-7 hours depending on how compulsive you get about searching out ore. 

 

I hoarded my orbs and only bought 3 teleporters the entire game.  In the end, I easily could have bought 6 or 7 and still got all the other upgrades, which would have sped it up a lot and eliminated a bunch of needless time returning to town by a longer path. 

[N1njaSquirrel]

This is strange. I also completed SteamWorld Dig, and yes, it's fantastic. I was hesitant to play it at first because I thought it'd be another Terraria/Minecraft clone, but it wasn't. It's fantastic. Probably won't play it again though.

[Tanukitsune]

Yeah, I guess the ease of backtracking and having so little of it doesn't make it a real Metroidvania, but it did scratch the "itch" if you catch my drift.

 

I also beat the first season of The Last Door, a horror adventure game that... was kinda dumb? It's tries to hard to be scary and mysterious, but it's Lovecraftian-esque lore wasn't interesting enough for me to care about getting season two, it feels like one of those generic RPGs that replaces "elves" with "we're definitely not elves despite looking and acting the same", except in this case it's a bad Lovecraft fan-fic with the names changed.

 

The Powerpuff Girls: Defenders of Townsville.... Who thought of making a Metroidvania with FLYING characters? It makes the exploring too easy, the characters only have different in one power, which is what you use for "Metroidvania-ing", and once you clear the first area... You never need to use Blossom again, there aren't really any secret areas either and every enemy is just some orb robot, even the bosses. I'm glad I got it cheap, because it's pretty meh.

 

Haunt the House: Terrortown: You play as a little ghost that possesses items to scare people, as the atmosphere grows more tense, you gain more powers and can do more things with the items.

There are only four houses to haunt, but the numbers of items and things the items can do is pretty amazing. Also, the ghost is adorable!

 

The Yawhg: There isn't much to tell about this short game, except I managed to get bitten by a werewolf AND a vampire in my game... Nice?!

 

Year Walk: This game was shorter... and creepier than I expected. It was nice to learn about new mythical creatures and the style was nice, it could have used more puzzles though, it feels like there was only a handful of them.

[Dewar]

I'm finally working my way through the last few episodes of season three. I would say the comedy and quality of the games holds up all through-out, though the gameplay doesn't change a ton and it feels a bit samey by the end. I would definitely recommend buying the whole of season one. I'm sure it can be had for dirty cheap.

 

Finally completed this after buying it in one of the first steam sales way back when. The last couple of episodes had lots of call backs, some of which I remembered and others I didn't. Still very fun even if I didn't get the references. I enjoyed the last episode especially because I would always forget to use the psychic powers and they took them away and got back to simple use item on scenery puzzles. As a consequence, it was also the first episode in a while that I completed without needing a hint or two from a walkthrough.

[Stuart]

The Yawhg: There isn't much to tell about this short game, except I managed to get bitten by a werewolf AND a vampire in my game... Nice?!

 

Play it with friends and/or family! It becomes even more interesting.

[Bjorn]

Finished Capsule tonight, which was fantastic.  I gushed about it over in the Episode 146 thread a couple of times, but I'm double posting here just to pimp it out some more, as it's worthy of some love and not everyone reads the episode threads.

 

If you didn't listen to 146, it's a short survival game where the interface is a radar screen.  You are in a capsule, in an unknown location, and must survive.  Nothing else is explained, and you have to figure out all the rest of the mechanics and secrets yourself.  It maybe takes a couple of hours with some failures mixed in (which will happen late in the game). 

[JonCole]

I beat Watch Dogs! I hit a rut in the middle when I had captured all the towers, completed acts 1, 2 & 3 to hit a story lull, and completed all of my favorite side-activity (gang hideouts) where I stopped playing for nearly a week. But I did get back in the saddle and finished the storyline, which I actually ended up enjoying. It's certainly not one of the better written stories in games and it's told somewhat inconsistently in terms of tone, but I ended up liking where it left Aiden in terms of sequel potential. I thought I heard rumblings of people dissatisfied with the ending, but I felt it had just enough loose ends to get me back in for more in another game.

 

I think Watch Dogs might have been better served by not being on such a wildly out of control hype train. While that E3 trailer got us all excited, Ubisoft shouldn't have set expectations so high. Though I guess ultimately it may not make a difference, as Assassin's Creed had a relatively poor first showing that got a lot of people's attention and went on to capitalize on that early, somewhat undeserved momentum. Given where both of these franchises are, what I really want is them to just intersect at some point with some weird AC flashback/assassinate dudes + Watch Dogs modern day hacking/traversing game.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I beat Watch Dogs! I hit a rut in the middle when I had captured all the towers, completed acts 1, 2 & 3 to hit a story lull, and completed all of my favorite side-activity (gang hideouts) where I stopped playing for nearly a week. But I did get back in the saddle and finished the storyline, which I actually ended up enjoying. It's certainly not one of the better written stories in games and it's told somewhat inconsistently in terms of tone, but I ended up liking where it left Aiden in terms of sequel potential. I thought I heard rumblings of people dissatisfied with the ending, but I felt it had just enough loose ends to get me back in for more in another game.

 

I think Watch Dogs might have been better served by not being on such a wildly out of control hype train. While that E3 trailer got us all excited, Ubisoft shouldn't have set expectations so high. Though I guess ultimately it may not make a difference, as Assassin's Creed had a relatively poor first showing that got a lot of people's attention and went on to capitalize on that early, somewhat undeserved momentum. Given where both of these franchises are, what I really want is them to just intersect at some point with some weird AC flashback/assassinate dudes + Watch Dogs modern day hacking/traversing game.

 

 

Hacking the animus.

[Ucantalas]

I just finished Portal 2. (Well, the single player campaign, didnt do the co-op because I am all alone.)

Very fun game. Don't really have much to say about it, except for the fact that I'm surprised I managed to avoid most spoilers from the game.

[mikemariano]

I need to do the co-op, too!  I played with some random person online but they hated me.

[Cordeos]

I just finished Far Cry 3:Blood Dragon it was a fun mindless shooter that didn't take itself too seriously. The initial challenge of your guns not doing much damage was fun as was the endgame when you have unlocked all the attachments. I also appreciated that the blood dragons were still difficult even at the end of the game. My only major complaint is how much they limited sniping by surrounding the outposts with high walls. My favorite part of any open world shooter is being able to actually snipe.

 

I wish there was a mod to port the weapons and animals into the regular game. I would enjoy demolishing the pirates with my laser rifle or watching a blood dragon rampage through an unprotected base.

[eot]

I need to do the co-op, too!  I played with some random person online but they hated me.

Do it, they co-op is much better than the single player.

[twmac]

I beat Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

 

Plot is dumb so it is good that it is all skippable. The combat is sublime, although the final boss is all the jokes. I got so stuck  on it that I had to replay half the game to have enough health power-ups to take him on.

 

The parrying system is different and a little more convoluted than Bayonetta.

 

Still, it was a hell of a lot of fun and pretty short but sweet.

[Griddlelol]

Cannot wait to play MGR:R. Looks like my exact type of game. Dumb fun action. How long did it take you?

[Reyturner]

Shovel Knight

Perfectly captures how you remember the best NES games feeling.

[twmac]

Cannot wait to play MGR:R. Looks like my exact type of game. Dumb fun action. How long did it take you?

 

It is about 6 hours long if you skip the cutscenes. There is some replayability in it (normal I found to be quite challenging) and the VR missions are pretty fun to try and beat as you have to think about the combat differently to the way you do during the campaign.

 

My only advice is look up a Youtube tutorial about the parrying as it is not explained well in the game

[elmuerte]

Deus Ex: The Fall

This is a port of a mobile game. I don't know how the mobile game plays, but this one almost plays like DX:HR. The world is in the same style as DX:HR, just way lower fidelity.

So... this game sucks quite a bit. Sure there are multiple ways to play it, usually just 2 (stealth or non-stealth). Cleaning a room in stealth is a piece of cake (unless the game acts up). The game is no where near the sophistication of DX:HR. The story is rather , the world is rather . The game is just quite .

Why the , because of the bugs. Pretty much 75+% of the time sound disappears. So there is no indication that you're even being shot at, or that a guard is alarmed. You just have the music. Also the voices are quite often gone. Luckily there are subs so you don't miss what is being said. Well... as long as the subs stay visible long enough for you to read, which often is not the case either. During a key cinematic I lost both audio and text. So I have no idea how the story progressed. Then there's the shitty controls. Quite often you are struggling for the game to respond to your action. This is really annoying during hacking, or even some world interactions.

Oh... and the game doesn't have an ending either. It's just part 1, and as far as I can tell there isn't going to be a part 2.

[mikemariano]

I completed the new Tex Murphy game Tesla Effect this afternoon.  I liked it!

 

Frighteningly, the post-credits contains the Idle Thumbs Podblast music sting—and it's the second time today I've heard it!  This morning I was walking through Coney Island and a carnival booth was playing it on a loop.

 

I'm sure it's some Action News-esque piece of music up for grabs, but I have only ever heard it on the podblasts.  Hearing it in real life and then hearing it a few hours later in a game is just bizarre.

[Tanukitsune]

I just beat Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons, it's a weird SNES about that's a strategy RPG in the 16th century where you choose a character which a specific mission, which is intertwined with the other character's in some ways and which is likely to take you all over the world.

 

It's kinda like playing Sid Meier's Pirates! where piracy is optional, you can establish trade routes, become a pirate or make discoveries to make your fame and fortune. It was fun to make relatively accurate discoveries... The game got the pangolin mixed with the armadillo and put it in Africa. And making the big voyage from Europe to America is just as intense as you expected in that era. I tried to do the obvious route from West Africa to Brazil, but somehow ended up in Santo Domingo... nearly starved to death.

 

The catastrophes were annoying, I bought lime juice for scurvy and rat poison in case they infested the boat... I never used them, but I was forced to go back to Europe because I had to buy some "perfume" that wards it away.

 

It was a relatively educational game in the sense that I had to do some research to plan my navigation route and satisfying to make so many discoveries. The story got a little silly in the end, but it was good... for it's time?

[Bjorn]

That game looked so cool when I was a kid, but I never got a chance to play it very much.  I rented it once and a single day with it wasn't enough time to figure crap out and I never saw it for sale.

[N1njaSquirrel]

that game sounds nuts. Even more so because it was on the SNES. Was it a well recieved/popular game? I can't even imagine how it looks. flippin' nuts.

[Tanukitsune]

I rented Uncharted Waters too back in the day and got this when I saw it on the WiiU VC as for it's popularity? I'm not sure, I don't think strategy games were popular on the SNES, but they did release the sequel out of Japan and it made to Virtual Console? Then again, it doesn't mean it was popular. 

[Reyturner]

Thomas was Alone is a testament to how much a small amount of good writing can impact a game. 

[prettyunsmart]

I played as much Broforce as currently exists. I was surprised at how mechanically sound it is. I mostly picked it up out of a general love of 80s action movies, but it is actually a really solid 2D shooter with some pretty interesting environmental destruction mechanics. It isn't really well balanced at the moment. Some heroes are way too powerful, and some are basically worthless in most situations (looking at you Indiana Brones). Either way, there's a decent amount of stuff to play with in the game already and it seems like they'll only keep adding to it, so I think it is worth a look.

 

I also finished The Wolf Among Us yesterday. I wrote up longer thoughts on the game in the game's thread, but in short, I was a little disappointed. It was still a pretty well-told story in the Fables universe, but mechanically, I found myself becoming really bored with the QTEs by the end, and some of the dialog branching broke down in some pretty noticeable ways. It wasn't bad, I just wished it turned out a little better.

 

And finally, I played through The Blackwell Legacy, the first chapter in Wadjet Eye's Blackwell series a couple of days ago. It was really interesting to see how the game turned out after playing The Shivah not too long ago. It really seems like a refined version of the same ideas in terms of adventure game design focused around investigating a mystery. I'm really looking forward to playing the rest of the series. Having just started the second game, I'm already noticing even more polish (plus jumping back in time seems pretty cool too). 

[Bjorn]

Thomas was Alone is a testament to how much a small amount of good writing can impact a game. 

 

Such a good game.  The writing and narration take a good platformer/puzzle game and make it sublime.