Recently completed video games

[Tanukitsune]

I just finished State of Decay and I enjoyed it a lot, I liked the resource management and scavenging, but the combat is weird. I still have no idea if all the weapons were mostly the same and to get a minimum of target locking you have to be very high leveled.

 

I think I was doing too well actually, I only had one survivor and some leave because I didn't enough materials to keep the house in a good condition only to have a surplus of everything near the end.

 

I even stopped scavenging and only did missions, I had the cop Maya Torres with almost all stats maxed out, tired and wounded, but with enough of everything to not care. I thought I was doomed when I saw the juggernaut zombies and the feral ones, but I not only miraculously survived and completely the game, but the final battle was rather easy. It seemed like the game knew we'd abuse the car and didn't allow you to have one.

 

I had a good time, it was pure chaos! 

[Patrick R]

Finally beat Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but I had to resort to using save states, so I don't think it counts. Gonna try to beat it for realsies before the new year.

[chummer]

Dragon Age: Origins I've never enjoyed the MMO-like nature of the combat (thinking about tanking, dps, healers, managing cooldowns, etc.), but I was impressed by how big the game felt, even if it wasn't actually that big. I think this was due to the way you move around in the world, made to choose places on a larger map and watch a trail go from point to point. While a lot of the world feels like a lazy cross between Tolkien short-hand mixed with stereotypes of real-world nations, I really like the way magic is conceived of in the game so I'm glad that seems to be the focus all the way through instead of "wow these giant brown people and their religion sure are scary." Character interaction is great!

 

Dragon Age 2 Yup, one right after the other. I'm a monster. Liked that they pulled away from the Grey Wardens and decided that each game should focus on a different part of the world. The characters I liked (Varric, Merril, Isabelle) I really liked, though I don't feel they developed as well as the first game's characters. I didn't feel invested in the player character's story as much as I did in the first game, and I think it's because the conversation wheel didn't allow for the same minutiae of characterization. The animations/fx on magic attacks look great, as does the game's icon art and between-chapter art style. Considering how tepid I remember the response to this game being, I'm surprised I liked it as much as I did. That said, that weird anime-esque final battle felt weirdly out of tone with the rest of the game. I'll note that this was released during Bioware's "

" era.

 

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor Meh.

 

Iron Sky Invasion A middling, arcade space combat game. It has a lot of great ideas that aren't unique, but made me think of how they would make a better game really exciting. (Does that even make sense?) If you pick it up in a bundle and are into the genre, give it a gander.

 

A Story About My Uncle You run around a pretty world while doing crazy big jumps and grappling. It's got a great kinesthetic (I don't think that's a word) feeling.

[Tanukitsune]

Well, I beat "Castlevania": Lords of Shadows 2, but I'm not sure why, for every moment that I almost started to enjoy the game, the game seemed to actively go out of it's way to make me hate it.

 

The cutscenes are super cheesy and the plot is dumb, it has the worst stealth sections, only to be topped by even WORSE stealth section. Get this, you have evade an enemy while walking on very crunchy leaves, once you get passed that section... you fight and kill him.   

 

You play as Dracula, but you never feel an ounce as powerful as the so called "Dragon", he can't even double jump. The game over the top gory probably to please the God of War fans? Dracula activate almost everything by bleeding on it.

 

The plot almost has a moment that's neat, but if you stop to think about it, it doesn't really make sense. The ending is as terrible as I expected and I'm happy that this trilogy of Castlevania games is over, I just hope that this isn't the last Castlevania, it might be a terribad God of War clone, but it's the least Castlevania-esque of the series. I'd even take a Castlevania 64 remake over this, even though it's terribleness amused me so much. 

[Dewar]

Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions is... Wait... Is that a 3D pun? Fuck this game!

Anyways, no, it's actually pretty good. It's essentially Geometry Wars 2 and Geometry Wars Galaxies mashed up into one package. The main mode has the Gradius-like options and mission progression that Galaxies had, but there's another mode that is also pretty much just Geometry Wars 2. (There's also a co-op campaign or something? It even has online play.)

 

The boss fights and some of the other mission types that have been added to the Galaxies-esque mode are pretty fantastic, and i like the new mechanic they introduced for how you collect primary weapon power-ups. Some of the progression restrictions in that mode feel super tight though, i wouldn't be surprised if most people don't get very far.

Some people have been bitching about the three dimensional stages limiting your view of the arenas, but the much bigger issue is how muddled the distinct spawn tones are in the audio mix of the game, which is kind of a really important part of being able to keep up with the chaos of Geometry Wars. I feel like i'm getting taken out by small, fast-moving enemies way more frequently without those clear, distinct sounds serving as an alert. It feels like something they could probably patch and they should, it's the only thing that really feels like it's keeping the game down. Also, it's less of an issue and more down to personal taste perhaps, but I don't like the tron aesthetic as much as the vibrantly beautiful vector graphics-aesthetic featured in the previous games.

 

Kind of going to give a "Hey, the first Geometry Wars may be on steam, but Geo 2 and Galaxies aren't, and this is kind of like those" recommendation here. It's not the best Geometry Wars has been, but it's still better than almost any other twin stick shooter out there.

 

It's worth noting that there's a classic mode that plays almost like Geometry Wars 2, no drone, flat playing field, etc.

[Tanukitsune]

I may have beaten the "best worst" game I've played in ages.... Sinister City.

 

It's so goofy and terrible, it's like watching pugs bake a cake, you know they can't do, but you can't stop watching!

 

You spend most of the game talking with people who after saying a few words will force you to search and do hidden object "puzzles" because gameplay. 

"Bla bla... I want coffee... yadda yadda... fix the AC... bla bla... install this software..." ad nauseum.

 

We're talking Birdemic awesome here, guys!   

[Dewar]

This weekend I finally made it through Star Wolves 3:Civil War. That game is a collection of interesting ideas with extremely poor execution stretched way too long. The balance of the end game was so very bad that I ended up turning on Godmode (I'm willing to put up with an unhealthy amount of punishment in a game before giving up or cheating) to make it through the last 2 hours as to not waste the 50 not so great hours I'd already put into it. 

 

Why do I do this to myself?

[Sno]

So i played BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea.

A little bittersweet, knowing that it's the final piece of Irrational content. It's a beautiful and fairly substantial pair of expansions. It felt a little wobbly to me though, in the way the first episode tries to scale back on the action with mechanics that aren't really meant for that kind of restrained combat, and even in Episode 2, where many systems are newly introduced or outright redesigned, it still has some clunky things like those arbitrarily restrictive carry limits. Narratively, it's a nice bookend on Irrational's work with the BioShock series, though episode 2 has a few clunky exposition dumps and i'm pretty sure it intorduced a few new plotholes to the series.

 

I don't know though, i don't feel super strongly about the add-ons one way or the other, but i'm happy to have played them and the end of Episode 2 may have hit me harder than i'm entirely comfortable admitting.

Clash in the Clouds, the other thing, i thought was a fun throwaway. It doesn't really need to be there, but as somebody who enjoys Infinite's mechanics more than most people seemed to, it's fun to have that arena to really push the game to its limits.

 

It's worth noting that there's a classic mode that plays almost like Geometry Wars 2, no drone, flat playing field, etc.

Yeah, I mentioned it in the second paragraph. There's a few differences setting it apart, but but it's pretty close to Geometry Wars 2.

[Dewar]

Whoops, sorry. I somehow skipped that sentence.

[twmac]

Finished Legend of Korra. It is definitely Platinum's worst game but it isn't that bad.

 

Anyway - not a fan of the show but it was a diverting game for an afternoon.

[Tanukitsune]

I just beat Styx: Master of Shadows, I talk about it more in it's own thread, but it's a very enjoyable game despite some of it's flaws in story and gameplay.

 

I enjoyed enough to want to get Of Orcs and Men.

[chummer]

I enjoyed enough to want to get Of Orcs and Men.

 

Interested to hear thoughts on this! I played it and really disliked it as it felt like a D-quality KOTOR but with goblins instead of Jedi.

[twmac]

I am in teh same boat as Tanu. I have had a copy of 'Of Orcs and Men' lying around for a while but couldn't get past the first 30 minutes. Styx is a way different beast, but because of the way that Styx resolves itself, I kind of want to get into 'Of Orcs' to see what Cyanide were trying to do.

[iax]

Ok, so I've finished The Talos Principle. This game is getting a lot of extremely positive reviews and word of mouth right know and I think it absolutely deserves it.
 
It's impossible to talk about this game without comparing it to Portal and Portal 2. Not only because Portal is to first person puzzlers what Doom was to FPS games ("Doom clones") in the mid-nineties, the basic structure of TTP is the same: puzzle "chambers", disembodied authority figure with questionable motives, traces of predecessor characters, robots, cubes which are not called cubes etc. I admit it's something that I found a little bit off-putting at first, "Portal wannabe" was definitely my first impression. I'm writing the post as someone who played both Portal games and was very sceptical about this weird Serious Sam puzzle game with janky robots.

 

Some thoughts:
 
The TTP puzzle-solving mechanics mechanics are not as "exotic" as portals but I think the way they force the player to think about the spatial relations and timing is the same as in Portal. There is a lot more of positioning of various devices. The puzzles are on par or maybe even better than in Portals in my opinion and there are A LOT of them.

 

The world is not linear but hub-based. While the hubs themselves are gated, most of the time multiple puzzles are accessible and the game actively encourages the player to try something else when they are stuck. I think that might have freed the designers to include more difficult puzzles in the game. I think the game is more difficult than Portals, but not dramatically.

 

While many good puzzle games try to make you realize something new in each puzzle, TTP is not afraid to play with already presented ideas in some of the arenas. There is still a lot of variety though, "the non-revelatory" puzzles are good and they don't feel like filler content.

 

There is an extra layer to the game: there are many secret stars to collect. Most of them require the player to do something against the established rules (e.g. finding a way to bring something from another puzzle area even when all areas have entry gates preventing the player from doing that. It's funny that when I switched to this "all bets are off" mode I immediately jumped to trying some crazy overcomplicated approaches which didn't work at all, the solutions were much simpler) and I still have no idea where many of the stars are even when the game hints their location. The stars add an extra mystery layer to the game.

 

The game is very long, probably 15 to 20 hours (17 for me and I've only got 7 stars, I can't imagine how long it takes to find all of them). I've never felt like the game is dragging.

 

The tone and the writing itself are not "portalish" at all even if there are some surface similarities. TTP is generally much more serious and philosophical. To be honest, after watching some trailers and even playing the public beta I was expecting the writing to be a disaster. I expected seeing robots running through Serious Sam scenery with some grandiose quotes about religion and consciousness randomly printed on walls or something similar because that's what video games with similar aspirations are prone to do. I was pleasantly surprised this is not the case at all. Sure, it's not an academical deep dive into philosophy but it's smart, interesting, sometimes funny and it meshes with the structure of the game quite well. It's clear it has been written by people that know what they're doing (Tom Jubert (FTL, The Swapper) and Jonas Kyratzes (The Sea Will Claim Everything) to be specific).
Mild spoiler about some of the writing in the game (no details, but I was surprised by it's existence in the game):

I loved the fact there was a game-spanning dialogue that tried to make me feel bad / stupid about myself as a person (and not for puzzle-solving skills) and it actually sort of worked even when it was clear it's unfair and rigged that way. It felt fresh, so many video games are obsessed with making the player feel good about themselves (of course even TTP does that on a mechanical level). Oh and also I loved the fact the game is self-aware about the Serious Sam assets and subtly points out how ridiculous it is at one point :-)

 

Great puzzles, great writing, great game. My new favourite first person puzzler (well, on par with Portal 2 coop at least), GOTY 2014, would buy and play again.

[agorman]

I finally beat hell in Spelunky. I imagine I'm done with that game now, but it's probably the most difficult thing I've done in a game.

[Bjorn]

I played through Costume Quest 2 over the weekend.  It's a game, and a pretty decent one at that.  It felt a bit more soulless than the original though, perhaps because it's just more of the same with some minor mechanical changes. 

[SecretAsianMan]

I finally beat hell in Spelunky. I imagine I'm done with that game now, but it's probably the most difficult thing I've done in a game.

 

I said something similar when I first beat hell, yet here I am several months later and I'm still doing the daily challenge everyday.

[JonCole]

I beat Metro 2033 Redux this past weekend. I got Metro Redux hoping to play both 2033 and Last Light, but frankly I don't think I was prepared for a marathon so I decided to return the game and come to LL later. I had already played 2033 before on my PC, but I figured that it would be a good idea to play it again to re-familiarize myself with the world, see the Redux upgrade firsthand, and experience any DLC stuff they added in (I'm not sure if they did, my memory of the game isn't good enough to know if something is new or something I missed).

 

Man, I loved my time with this game. I figure that the first time I zipped through it as fast as possible - there were tons of side easter eggs and weapons caches to find along the way. Sometimes they were generous enough to give you a dim light in the corner of a huge room that might give you some indication to explore that direction, but other times you just have to scour the environment to find a little room off to the side where a corpse slaughtered by a nearby (also dead) mutated creature is holding a key to a nearby safe. Finding the safe, you see this poor dude's safehouse - mostly small things, a bed, a couple post cards, a teddy bear perhaps owned by a lost child. A short distance outside a major metro stop, there's a ladder descending slightly deeper into the sewers that eventually leads to what used to be a shop. Shop-owner blew his brains out, leaving his stock for the taking but also revealing how little hope there is in those tunnels. For some reason, the bleak, spartan aspect of Metro's storytelling made these little things that earned you a handful of military-grade rounds and shotgun ammo feel a lot more important.

 

The only unfortunate thing is that I apparently didn't do enough good things during the path of the story to earn me access to the "good" ending. I'm not a big fan of the "bad" ending, mostly because it doesn't follow the attitude that Artyom develops through the game in his journal entries.

[Bjorn]

I didn't even know there was a good/bad ending to 2033. 

[JonCole]

I didn't even know there was a good/bad ending to 2033. 

 

If you do enough good things like helping out people or giving bullets to beggars, you have an option at the end. Basically in the final scene where you're given a gun by a ranger to shoot the Dark One, you can choose to turn around into another Dark One's embrace. Essentially, they psychically detect that you're a good person and that you don't actually want to kill them after observing their largely passive role in the story. As a result, you don't launch the missiles and ostensibly wipe out the Dark Ones, instead you kinda set the path to communicate and possibly ally with them in this new world. The 'bad' ending theme is basically about human perseverance and dominance, while the good ending is about human empathy and cooperation.

[Bjorn]

I got the bad ending then!  I remember thinking that it felt kind of dissonant with some of the other characteristics of Artyom, but just chalked it up to being the dev's choice to end it that way. 

[Professor Video Games]

What's even worse is that they use the "bad" ending for the sequel. I had gotten the good ending (also not realizing there was more than one) and was very confused/annoyed when I started up Last Light.

[chummer]

Assassin's Creed: Rogue. Writing this up as the infamously long Ubisoft credit sequence rolls. I wasn't planning on playing this game, but a combination of a $1 Gamefly deal and Stephen Totilo's review of the game over on Kotaku convinced me to give it a try. The game recycles a lot from Black Flag, which is fine my me because it's one of my favorite AC games. I still get a wonderfully peaceful feeling from just sailing through the world while my crew sings shanties. The game also manages to do some interesting things with the land stuff. Casting the player in the role of a Templar means that many of the ways the game wanted you to play as an assassin in other entries is how the enemy attacks you in this one. Enemy AI will use haystacks, leap on top of you from buildings, and use smoke bombs- it's a neat role-reversal.

 

The game still has a lot of the design aesthetic that Ubisoft has been implementing so widely across their various open-world games, but I think AC:Rogue made enough interesting changes to justify its existence. I enjoyed it a lot and think it's a most definitely a better version of Black Flag.

[Valorian Endymion]

While not exactly recent, I did finish Dungeon Siege III, here is some quick thoughts:

 

- It´s not a bad game, but this is no Dungeon Siege II (which in my opinion was on of the best of the franchise and a very good and even quite unique diablo-like game), I wonder if DS III is another victim of "if had another name, maybe thing would be different".

- Also is not very good port, but not in performance, but how controls work.

- For much work they put on design armors and clothes for some bizarre reason you can´t really zoom in to see all of this detail.

- They replaced old mechanics with new ones that are somewhat very byzantine, I mean, I finished the game without exactly know how some of my abilities work, but not because they where complex, but because words and terms they use for each character that make things confusing or controls aren´t clear.

- History is ok, begin you average Obsidian narrative, some choice there and there, but many don´t lead to nothing while other have consequence that you could not expect, but in a bad way - just because I forget to do one quest I was told in the end that this caused some people to die...but the curious thing is notice in the end they hitting a sequel that never happened.

[Griddlelol]

I finished Bayonetta tonight, the rerelease on the WiiU.

Honestly, Bayonetta is a bad video game. I adored the combat, when it was good, it was the best, when it was bad, it was still better than practically every other game. The problem is, that just about everything else in Bayonetta is bad.

The narrative - I ended up skipping cut scenes because they were uninteresting, and filtered through brown.

The voice acting

The visuals - where's the colour?

The not-combat game play - walking around/jumping or being in panther form control like crap. They're not fun to use, making the platforming sections a chore.

The instant fail QTEs - made worse by the placement of buttons on a WiiU.

The shooting sections Urgh!

The perviness

The lack of explanations

The incredibly punishing rating system - seriously, one death gets me stone? That's not an incentive.

The thing is, I still really liked the game. The combat mechanics are just so good, and defeating difficult bosses or pulling off a parry feels amazing! So I'm kind of torn. I still think Bayonetta is an awful, frustrating game with a pointless narrative, but I'd still recommend it because at the core the combat is just...satisfying.