Recently completed video games

[Donk]

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

 

Sweet game, it's very video gamey, at least compared to The Last of Us. Lots of jumping puzzles and so many dudes to shoot.  Near the end they switch to monsters which feels better but damn, so much shooting. Great production and must have looked amazing when it came out, should have played it years ago.

[SecretAsianMan]

I started and finished playing all the episodes of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People despite being neither cool nor attractive.  Overall it was ok, full of the weird kind of humor you'd expect out of a game based on a flash cartoon.  The puzzles were fairly simple most of the time, although a few were rather unintuitive.  I'm sure I missed a lot of the humor since I'm not very familiar with Strong Bad. 

 

The main reason I played it was because I did it co-op with Tegan via Steam's streaming beta.  The streaming delay would occasionally lead her to suggest an action to me that I had already started but otherwise it was a great way to play the game.  It reminded me of playing the first Monkey Island game with a friend and is definitely a thing I will be doing again when I can.

[Zeusthecat]

Last week I beat Donkey Kong Country again. Fuck all the haters, this game is awesome and just has such a great sense of atmosphere. Also, are these games honestly considered difficult? I feel like I hear that a lot and I just really don't get it. Yeah, some levels require several tries to get a feel for how it all flows and where the enemies are but it feels like a pretty standard game to me as far as difficulty goes. Also, the music in this game is great, especially the underwater levels. This might be one of the only games where I actually look forward to water levels because they are some of the easiest levels and have some of the best music in the game.

[Dewar]

I beat Sailor's Dream,the new game by Simogo of Year Walk and Device 6 fame. I read some reviews ahead of time and was warned that it wasn't much of a game, more a story told in little bits. There aren't any puzzles and there really even any choices to make. I knew all that ahead of time and I was still somewhat disappointed. First, there just isn't much story there, for a game that's mostly story. It's told in a very interesting way divided between written passages, songs, and radio transmissions, but there's just not enough character development to really get involved. On top of that, about half the content is based around opening the app at specific times to hear specific messages, which quickly shifted from suspense-building to a chore. It's a shame too, because the production value of what content is there is really really good.

 

meh/5

[shammack]

Last week I beat Donkey Kong Country again. Fuck all the haters, this game is awesome and just has such a great sense of atmosphere. Also, are these games honestly considered difficult? I feel like I hear that a lot and I just really don't get it. Yeah, some levels require several tries to get a feel for how it all flows and where the enemies are but it feels like a pretty standard game to me as far as difficulty goes. Also, the music in this game is great, especially the underwater levels. This might be one of the only games where I actually look forward to water levels because they are some of the easiest levels and have some of the best music in the game.

 

I don't remember Donkey Kong Country being very difficult to beat, but I think it was kind of a pain if you wanted to get exclamation points on all the levels, because some of the secrets were hidden in pretty obscure places. I feel like the Donkey Kong Country Returns games are much harder than the original, but it's possible I've just gotten old.

[Zeusthecat]

I don't remember Donkey Kong Country being very difficult to beat, but I think it was kind of a pain if you wanted to get exclamation points on all the levels, because some of the secrets were hidden in pretty obscure places. I feel like the Donkey Kong Country Returns games are much harder than the original, but it's possible I've just gotten old.

 

Yeah, I can definitely see that being a pain. I typically beat the first one with around 50% completion on my game save and have zero motivation to go back through trying to 100% everything. I definitely want to check out the new DKC games when I finish clearing my backlog.

[syntheticgerbil]

I finished Metal Gear Solid. This game was ambitious for its time. Incredibly so, however that's probably one of the parts that stops me from loving the game.

The entire game is fantastic until you get to Metal Gear Rex, that boss fight, in idea is brilliant, however it's poorly executed due to the inherent limitations of the controls and camera. It turns what was meant to be an epic fight into something frustrating and unfair. Similarly the fight with Liquid Snake suffers from trying to be a fighting game without the controls. There's that terrible hold over, where you get knocked down to invisible when you are hit, which allows you to be stun locked to death by certain bosses, and equally, bosses turn invisible when you hit them which feels out of place in a game like this.

You should have just went with Twin Snakes, the final boss fight is instead fun.

 

 

Lilly Looking Through

A samorost kind of adventure game. It's not really long (<2hr), and there are not a lot of interaction points. Everything that can be touched is significant. There are a couple of puzzles you have to solve in order to go forward. As with smorost, there's no hints so it can take a little while to figure out what to do. The game is really heavy on the animation, some animations take quite a while to complete. It's a bit like a short interactive animation.

Ahh I keep meaning to play this. Glad you liked it, maybe I'll get on it sooner!

[Sno]

I just finished Fract OSC and it might be up there with my favorite exploration/puzzle games, just a tremendous little thing that was. I said a little more about it over here.

 

I think i might have missed a few things, there were those stone circles and the musical elevators, i never really figured out if there was any specific purpose behind those, and also probably a bunch of exploration achievements that i missed. The way everything culminates in that final sequence before the credits though, where it elucidates that everything you've been doing has in some way manipulating sound or building sequences, and then lets you create your final mix from all what you've done. Fuuuuuuuuuuck...

[Tanukitsune]

My last game of 2014 was.... Monster High: 13 Wishes.... 

 

But my first game of 2015 was Rayman Legends, it was amazing! And to think I almost did buy and only got to one final Wii Premium credit code. I'm pretty sure other have talked to death of this game, but what I love about this one is that at the end of the level, your reward is the most amazing kind of musical level ever, it's almost like a rhythm game since the tune is kinda ruined if you miss a lum or two.

 

And instead or rewards you with some super challenging levels, you get a special world with nothing buy 8-bit versions of the previous musical levels!  

....except with no checkpoints...  

 

This might overtake Super Mario 3D World as my favorite platform game of 2014, either way, it's pretty close.

[elmuerte]

Finished Fract OSC yesterday in more or less one sitting.

It's a very stylized game with puzzles. The first part of a puzzles requires you to complete a path by turing/moving elements. The second part requires you to configure a tone generator correctly. The last part can be quite difficult sometimes. You have to walk around to find the next puzzle, which can be quite confusing due to the world design.

The world design feels rather random. Then again, it all has the look of a music player visualization. The CRT shader effect is quite awesome though. (zoom in on the grey line and you see what I mean)

 

Fract OSC is in the weekly humble bundle if you pay more than $10 (list price is ~$15): https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

[elmuerte]

I just completed Mind: Path to Thalamus

It's another one of those puzzle walking simulator games telling some kind of emotional story. This appears to be a thing now. This game belongs to the gorgeous looking category, just look at this and this (those are actual screenshots I made). Exploring isn't really needed (a shame with this beautiful world) as it's quite linear in most cases. The puzzles are mostly toggling "switches" with balls. There's a switch for fog, night, rain and time. At some point you need to let the ball roll to reach a switch at a certain time. It sounds easy enough, but some of the puzzles do offer a challenge. It's not a very long game, but a very enjoyable 3~ hours for me.

 

As with the game above, it's also part of the weekly humble bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

[Tanukitsune]

Oh! I remember this game, the puzzles seemed to get repetitive and unnecessary to me, it was basically the same puzzle with an extra step... Do the puzzles get more interesting after the foggy plains? I really want to give this game another chance. :\

[elmuerte]

The foggy plains are rather annoying, not difficult, just tedious. The puzzles to become mre difficult after that. But there's also some other tedious stuff, and an annoying part. Given the length of the game I do recommend giving it another try.

[TheLastBaron]

So I actually finished a game, which hasn't happened in a year or so. I actually finished two. I played through The Shiva and the first Blackwell game which granted is a grand total of a few hours. I was expecting to like The Shiva more than I did since noir and Judaism are two things that I enjoy a ton, but it was still alright. The Blackwell game I had actually played most of the way through and then never gotten around to finishing, which is what always happens and why I never finish games. It was good, I'm interested in seeing where the series goes and I have the others except for the final one which I should have picked up in the sale. I think being able to finish games in one sitting is what's allowing me to actually complete anything.

Also this was my first time using the steam in home streaming, it worked great but these were both games that were super low resolution and would have run easily on my old laptop anyway so I don't know how it would have worked playing something more hi-fi.

[elmuerte]

Just defeated the final boss in Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris

It's the sequel to Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and just like the previous game it's a isometric, top-down game when you have to run around, shoot, jump and solve some simple puzzles. So, it's more of the same. I do get the feeling that this game was much more geared to co-op, but it's still ok to play on your own. It's a very gamey-game, it's a lot of about completing challenges in the various "tombs". It's not very difficult. The real difficulty is switching between 3 key items using the keyboard. Sure, you can cycle through them with the mouse wheel, but that's not very precise. You often have to switch between the item under key 2 and then to 5. The jumping part has been improved for keyboard controls. As you basically only have 8 directions the times you have to aim between those eight has been greatly reduced compared to the original.

[agorman]

I just finished my first playthrough of The Cave and ended up enjoying it quite a bit. I played as The Twins, The Monk, and The Hillbilly. I want to play it again at some point to see some of the other character-specific levels, but I'll probably wait a bit, as I'd probably get pretty tired of it if I had to replay all the non-player specific levels. Overall

[eRonin]

I just finished Tomb Raider (2013) with an 85% completion rate yesterday. Decided chasing down the challenges wasn't worth it so 85% will have to do. Overall an enjoyable game, but I did have a few gripes, namely the overabundance of quick-time events and sheer number of bad guys to kill. There was absolutely no option for a stealthy playthrough, which is strange because games like Crysis had more leeway in that regard. What little stealth there is in the game is simply to allow you bonus exp for when you get the stealth kill (either way, you gotta kill the dude, there's no avoiding that). I'm not a fan of shooting galleries, especially the kind that locks you into an arena where the only way to progress is to murder everyone in sight. Regardless, lining up headshots in the game did feel rewarding. My favourite part of the game was definitely the puzzles, whether they were in the optional tombs or otherwise.

 

Next game I'm moving on to is Dragon Age: Origins, so I don't think I'll be posting here with an update on completion any time soon.

[prettyunsmart]

I bested Dragon Age: Inquisition. Yeah, it was alright. I liked it enough to play for over 100 hours, but I don't really know why. It's biggest problem is that the combat can't decide what it wants to be. They should have gone either the transistor root, with a weird, semi-turn based thing, or a dark souls route, with an almost "character action" style combat. Dragon age really suffers for it. To the point that the combat becomes a chore. This isn't helped by the awful AI, and terribly customisation for the AI. Melee DPS warriors spend most of their time dead since they never get behind enemies. Mages will not pay attention to elemental resistances (one Mage had a ton of ice spells, but instead spammed his single fire spell on dragons meaning I had to baby sit him as well as my character) leading to difficult fights being frustrating, or requiring a lot of micromanagement with a system that makes micromanagement incredibly slow and difficult.

The narrative is kinda boring too, it's old fashioned high fantasy style thing, which to be honest, isn't really my thing. Even if it was I probably would find it a little cheesey. Bad guy is bad because he's bad. You've got to stop him because...he's bad? It's never really explained what he'd do to people. I assume he wanted to hurt or kill people, but I don't really know why.

The quests are pretty weak too, so many go here, collect this. I started off reading the descriptions as to why, but after a while it became like an MMO where I just wanted to get shit done.

I doubt I'll ever play it again, but hey, it was better than skyrim.

 

I finished Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I ended up feeling pretty much like Griddlelol did. The main story was pretty dull, a lot of the quests felt uninspired, and yet I still liked it enough to finish it, so there's that. Mostly I stuck with it because of the character moments that happened around Skyhold, a few of which I'll talk about in a spoiler tag. More than anything, this game reminded me how much filler Bioware stuffs into their games inbetween the stuff I care about. 

 

Some stuff was really fantastic. I loved any time I talked to the Iron Bull. I liked still having Varric around as my BFF. I thought the sidequest where you need to get Varric to write another entry in his cheesy romance serial for Cassandra was great. Also, the Wicked Grace game where Cullen lost his clothes was one of the best "hangout" moments of the game. Oh, and the Winter Palace section was a great idea, even if it ended up feeling a bit underdeveloped. The idea of sneaking around the palace alternating between combat and fishing for information was a really good one.

Then the game ended, and it turns out that Solas was secretly the most important character (which is too bad because I found him super boring and had pretty much ignored him the whole way through). It didn't make me feel like i needed to re-examine everything I knew about the game as wonder why game developers seem to think that their players will know so much about their lore to care about this kind of stuff without fully explaining it within the main text. Oh well.

[Reyturner]

Saw the credits roll in two video games this weekend.

The first was Jazzpunk, which I'd picked up in a Humble Bundle at... some point... I guess? It's funny but in a way that is actually unique to games. Portal is funny, but only because of the writing. Jazzpunk's writing is good, but there's more too it than that. It's funny the way good Gary's Mod videos are funny. Sometimes just throwing a prop at a physics object has a charm to it. The ascetic is hard to pin down but, if you've seen Be Kind Rewind, sweding probably describes it best: a lot of very simple animations, stock footage, chunky models and text too speech. It all feels very DIY and fun. The best part is that it's only a couple hours long so it doesn't overstay its welcome at all. Play it if you haven't. You probably already own it.

The second was probably as far on the other end of the spectrum as you can get: Metal Gear Rising: Revengence (Best Title 2013). This was my second run through and DANG but that is a great game. It's like the perfect contrast to something like Jazzpunk. The combat is sooooo smooth and responsive. Every encounter promises opportunity for mastery and challenge. If you don't know, MGR:R is in the Platinum character action school of design like Bayonetta (not having a WiiU and seeing everyone swoon over Bayo 2 was what inspired me to replay this actually). Every Platinum game is like 2 games. The first is when you're learning to play and you're just trying to finish it. You can fumble and mash your way through as long as you engage with the basic ideas of Tue game. The 2nd is when you're chasing S-Ranks in all the battles. The difference is like going for all stars in a Mario game: it's how you're supposed to play it and MGR really stands up to that kind of rigour. The story is pure Kojima, so that that as you will. It is still audacious and dumb in that fun MGS way without the... issues that GZ has. Honestly that isn't why you're here, though that Senator Armstrong speech at the end...

Video games are the best.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Finished Transistor a few days ago, in one long sitting. Tremendous game. I combat sometimes felt a little mushy - it was either too hard because things were too frantic and I didn't have enough time to execute complicated plans, or it was a bit too easy. Maybe I should have played around with the things that make it harder more until I found the right balance, but whatever. The game is absolutely gorgeous in every way, and I love the story and the characters. I also appreciate that it wasn't super long.

[Sno]

I don't normally play side-scrolling character-based adventure games, so perhaps what follows should be taken in the context of me being a relative outsider to the genre, but Primordia was recommended and gifted to me, so i gave it a chance and ended up playing through it in only a few sittings.

I guess i liked it? I mostly liked it, i guess. I could probably feel okay giving it a recommendation. I'm not super sure how i feel about it overall though. It's beautiful, and the puzzles all seemed fairly logical to me. I found the story elaborate and interesting, but the game felt like it was trying to say something, it's weighing a lot of heavy themes and seems to only find some pretty muddled conclusions about them. Perhaps i shouldn't expect more, but the story left me feeling a little cold at the end.

[SecretAsianMan]

I kind of felt the same way.  I love the individual parts of it, the setting, the story, the characters.  But taken as a whole they don't quite add up the way I'd like.  I'd still suggest people play it though, if they're into those kinds of games.

 

A personal side story about Primordia: I was at the Supergiant Booth during a PAX when they first showed off Transistor and while standing in line to play the demo I spoke to Logan Cunningham, who besides being the voice everyone recognizes from Bastion also voiced Horatio in Primordia.  As I was talking to him, he didn't seem very interested in talking to me at first (I can't blame him, this was in the afternoon on the last day of the show) but when I mentioned how I enjoyed his work in Primordia as well he perked up a bit.  He told me he hadn't gotten a chance to play it himself yet but said I was the first person outside of his friends/coworkers to recognize him in it and seemed to appreciate getting recognized for something other than Bastion.

[eot]

Is anyone here a fan of the classic Tomb Raider games? I know some people find that the controls make the games unplayable. Personally I don't have that many problems with them. They're slow, but they're also precise. Last year I played through the first two games, and after a bit of a break from them I decided to continue with Tomb Raider III. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed it, and it's not nostalgia either because I only played bits of TRIII at a friend's house. It a beast of a game, it took me almost 30 hours to finish it. Here I was starting to feel that games don't hold my attention any more and then a 16 year old game does it just fine.

 

Compared to the previous two games the level design is much more complex. There's 19 levels (and a bonus one I didn't get because you need all the secrets and good luck with that! I got 39 / 59), but five of them are short boss levels, which leaves 14 proper ones. So each one took 2 hours on average. I feel like that's twice as long as the first two TR games. Core just went crazy with this game. Playing it on PS1 with limited saves must've been a nightmare. I'm not going to pretend these games don't have issues, there are tons of cheap death traps, the vehicles control like absolute garbage and there's the perviness of the people who made the game (the game literally ends with a screen filling close up of a CG butt with "The End" pasted over it).

 

However the TR games scratch an itch I don't think any other games do. Being left to explore a huge environment filled with platforming challenges, there's nothing else like it. The levels in this game are insane, you're given exactly zero direction and there are no interruptions whatsoever. It's so strange to me that no one's attempted anything quite like it. I mean, these games were a huge success. There's something to the blocky environments too. It makes it so you can tell which jumps are possible and which aren't, where you can stand, crawl, grab onto etc. in an elegant way. They don't need to colour code grab points or anything like that, so (almost paradoxically) the environments feel more natural.

 

I'll finish by saying that my favourite level was Madubu Gorge, if anyone remembers that one. It's a gorge, obviously, filled with waterfalls and rapids that end up in a cave system and that you make your way up, down, over, under, across, in and whatever other ways there are. It's amazing. These games make such great use of space, with paths that constantly loop back on each other. It puts most modern games to shame. A few of screens (btw, I think it's noteworthy that these games had such a minimalistic HUD that only popped up when it was needed. A design trend that wouldn't catch on until well over a decade later):

[chummer]

On what platform did you play it on, eot? I picked up the collection from GOG or somewhere but I haven't booted it up because I'm anxious about playing it with a 360 gamepad :\

[eot]

I played using a keyboard actually, but I imagine you can use something like xpadder and make a controller work without much hassle. Not sure how well the digital controls would work with an analog stick though.