Recently completed video games

[Bjorn]

I've been really afraid to go back and play 1 again. In many ways it is my favorite, but I'm afraid that purely because of rose tinted glasses and will be ruined by a replay.

[eot]

It's better on replays, because you know how to work around the bad part(s) (which is the mechanics). Be a biotic, play on easy and go nuts. All the things that are bad about it were bad in 2007 too.

[ratamero]

80 Days. Multiple times. (as much as you can say you've "completed" it, of course.)

[Bjorn]

Apparently 80 Days has a few super rare endings that only a handful of people have seen, SO YOU'RE PROBABLY NOT DONE YET!  Back into the balloon Passepartout.

[Trip Hazard]

All the things that are bad about it were bad in 2007 too.

 

That's true. The combat always seemed pretty clunky, even before we got our hands on the sequels. I replayed it recently, though, and I enjoyed it a lot. I definitely rate ME2 over it, but it laid a heck of a foundation.

[ratamero]

Apparently 80 Days has a few super rare endings that only a handful of people have seen, SO YOU'RE PROBABLY NOT DONE YET!  Back into the balloon Passepartout.

 

That damn thing has text equivalent to 6 mid-sized novels. I think no one will ever 100% that bastard. (I did get some easter egg-y stuff already, but no idea how much is still left. )

[Bjorn]

That damn thing has text equivalent to 6 mid-sized novels. I think no one will ever 100% that bastard. (I did get some easter egg-y stuff already, but no idea how much is still left. )

 

It's a video game, I'm sure someone will! I actually quit playing after my third trip. I still haven't done it in 80 days, but the three trips I made were all fabulous experiences and I decided if I played anymore I would ultimately dilute how good the early trips were. If someone ever extracts all the possible events, I would be curious to read through the rarest ones though.

[ratamero]

It's a video game, I'm sure someone will! I actually quit playing after my third trip. I still haven't done it in 80 days, but the three trips I made were all fabulous experiences and I decided if I played anymore I would ultimately dilute how good the early trips were. If someone ever extracts all the possible events, I would be curious to read through the rarest ones though.

 

New options have started opening up for me after some trips. I've completed 4 now, and just now I've got a second option for leaving London. As for making it on time, it's not really that relevant, but using the Trans-Siberian made me complete it in 60 days, and there's a slightly broken way of making it in roughly 40 days without really going around the world. All my journeys have been absolutely great, there was very, very little overlap between them.

[Dewar]

There's the new north pole stuff too right?

[Bjorn]

New options have started opening up for me after some trips. I've completed 4 now, and just now I've got a second option for leaving London. As for making it on time, it's not really that relevant, but using the Trans-Siberian made me complete it in 60 days, and there's a slightly broken way of making it in roughly 40 days without really going around the world. All my journeys have been absolutely great, there was very, very little overlap between them.

I may go back to it, I left it installed on my phone. I just knew I certainly wanted a break. And yeah, the diversity between the three runs was crazy, like I don't think I saw a single piece of duplicated content. I actually did the Trans-Siberian run on my first playthrough, but had a terrible bit of luck towards the end that cost me like a week, just enough to not make it in the 80 days.

I didn't realize that different options began appearing over time, like a different route out of London!

[ratamero]

I wasn't expecting it as well. Not sure exactly how it was unlocked, though, story-wise it didn't seem connected to anything I've done in the previous runs.

 

The north pole stuff has a nice plot, but it's not so great in terms of gameplay. Since I don't really care too much about the gameplay on 80 Days, I enjoyed it a lot.

[Griddlelol]

I've been really afraid to go back and play 1 again. In many ways it is my favorite, but I'm afraid that purely because of rose tinted glasses and will be ruined by a replay.

 

I think that game is only good the first time you play it. It's the discovery and immersion into a different universe that made me fall in love with it. All the tiny details and fantastic sound track. It was also a fairly new concept - the whole dialogue wheel. 

 

I tried to a couple of years ago, and it didn't feel the same. I don't think ME games are going to hold up as classics in 5 years time.

[Griddlelol]

I beat Bayonetta 2. It's a vast improvement over the first game, with a few weird changes that I didn't understand (mainly the lack of Witch Time when you parry), but overall it's more Bayonetta, which is what the world needs (or at least I did).

 

The combat is sublime, the story was better than the original (as in this time I didn't skip any cut scenes) and the colour palette used stripped away that horrendous brown/yellow stain on everything. It's bright, it's fast and it's bombastic. Just like it should be. They also took out the penalties for using healing items/power ups, meaning you don't have to be a god to get something other than Stone for a level completion. The death penalty is still in there, but that's understandable. Also all the horrendous instant-fail-counts-as-a-death-for-determining-score QTEs are gone. 

 

I delved a little deeper into the combat this time, foregoing B's trademark quadruple guns out and settling on swords in the hand slot, and the whip in the foot slot. Really worked well. I also used the bow for some bosses that I struggled to get close to with the swords, but the bow felt weird to use since it knocks you back when you shoot, meaning you can't really use combos with any foot-mounted weapon as you'll be out of range. This basically meant spamming the same button over and over, then switching to swords when I got close. 

 

I played on 3rd Climax (essentially hard) and I intend to go back and get at least gold rating on every level, and unlock the "secret" boss. It's a really good game. 

[N1njaSquirrel]

with a few weird changes that I didn't understand (mainly the lack of Witch Time when you parry)

 

This is because infinite climax now does activate witch time when you dodge, unlike in B1, so the need to add witch time into the parry was redundant. Instead you have a smaller time frame to activate witch time. Doing this also meant that you relied less on the parry on higher difficulties, which I think is slightly better, as it's not messing around with the original formula that you're used to in the earlier difficulties, as well as making it more difficult, because my memories of the higher difficulties in the first game involved spamming the analogue stick in the direction of the enemies and then wailing on them in witch time. Now there's a larger risk/reward involved.

 

I actually felt the story was worse than the original. It felt like it was trying to do the same thing, but without quite reaching the bombastic highs of the original. Plus there were ongoing memes that I felt did not reach the greatness of the original. Specifically the killing blow on the final boss, felt less epic (ugh I hate that word) than in the first game.

 

 

 I also used the bow for some bosses that I struggled to get close to with the swords, but the bow felt weird to use since it knocks you back when you shoot, meaning you can't really use combos with any foot-mounted weapon as you'll be out of range. This basically meant spamming the same button over and over, then switching to swords when I got close. 

 

could you not combo the bow with whips on the feet? Holding down the attack button on a hit either pulls the enemy towards you or you towards the enemy, bringing you in range, I think.

 

Good luck on 3rd Climax!

[Griddlelol]

This is because infinite climax now does activate witch time when you dodge, unlike in B1

 

I actually felt the story was worse than the original. It felt like it was trying to do the same thing, but without quite reaching the bombastic highs of the original. Plus there were ongoing memes that I felt did not reach the greatness of the original. Specifically the killing blow on the final boss, felt less epic (ugh I hate that word) than in the first game.

 

 

could you not combo the bow with whips on the feet? Holding down the attack button on a hit either pulls the enemy towards you or you towards the enemy, bringing you in range, I think.

 

Good luck on 3rd Climax!

 

Ah that makes sense. I actually bothered to purchase some moves this time, and the <- -> Punch (or kick) were fantastic for setting up parries whilst simultaneously attacking.

 

I just found the cutscenes really hard to watch in B1, they were ugly, and I had no fucking clue what was happening. The story was simpler in 2 so I could follow it without any trouble. 

 

I tried bow/whip but it felt off. I just couldn't get the hang of it, but guns/guns or sword/whip feels right to me. 

 

Do you think it's worth going for infinite climax? Some bosses on 3rd absolutely destroyed me (I'm looking at you Golem) but others I killed with very little trouble (including the final boss). 

[J.C.]

Finished Gat out of Hell (PS4) last night. I think I actually liked it better than SRIV, which was still great. The way the story progressed with the Wrath 'timer' was pretty nice, and getting around Hell is a blast.

[GavinTheAlmighty]

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker!  I finished the "main quest" lines and now I'm into the optional bonus stuff.  It's beautiful and fun, and I'm glad it ended when it did.  It's the type of game that can easily outstay its welcome, but doesn't.  Some of the challenges were real brain-pullers, and it felt like there was a sharp difficulty spike near the end of episode 3 (the final regular episode).  Still, it's nice and relaxing to play, and it's so joy-filled!

[elmuerte]

Borderlands: Pre-Sequel

This game is between Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2, not just story wise, but also quality. It is much shorter than blands2, but it still felt long. Just like blands1 it did not have a lot of variation in the world. It's basically icy moon and space station. For the rest the game is pretty much like the others, just different levels and different enemies.

[Patrick R]

I beat Super Metroid! And it only took a little cheating! First half I had no problem but the second half I leaned on a walk-through pretty heavily. And for Ridley, after 12 failures I cheated and used slow motion. 

[eot]

I beat Lovely Planet last night. It's a clever twist old school FPS and I had a lot of fun with it. However, as the difficulty ramps up in the last two worlds some of the levels get a little cheap. The problem isn't that it gets too difficult (I don't think it does), it just doesn't get difficult in an interesting way. I could definitely see myself playing the first three worlds a few more times while listening to a podcast or something though.

[elmuerte]

Finally finished Grim Fandango \o/

I've tried to play the game a couple of times before using Residual, but never got much farther than the car basement. So there are a few really obscure puzzles where I simply tried every combination. Maybe I missed a hint, or maybe I didn't. Playing with the commentary was interesting, there are a few really great stories in the commentary. I did encounter a few very annoying game breaking bugs, and thus lost some progress. Especially the part with "this little light of mine" was annoying. I sat through it 3 times!

Act 2 was quite difficult with the huge area and a lot of things to explore and do. Not a really great part to spread over multiple days without writing down what you were supposed to do.

[Sno]

I beat Lovely Planet last night. It's a clever twist old school FPS and I had a lot of fun with it. However, as the difficulty ramps up in the last two worlds some of the levels get a little cheap. The problem isn't that it gets too difficult (I don't think it does), it just doesn't get difficult in an interesting way. I could definitely see myself playing the first three worlds a few more times while listening to a podcast or something though.

Since you're the only person i know who has finished it, i'm going to say that I kind of hit a wall with the fog stages, should i go back and keep trying? Is there anything worth my while past that?

[eot]

I can't say there is, the game keeps ramping up the difficulty in the fifth world and the new mechanics it introduces aren't all that interesting. I liked the fourth world more and that's probably a good place to stop.

They introduce slender blue guys that act as teleporters when you shoot them. You can't spam bullets or you'll die from your own fire when you go through. So you need to be precise and most of the time they place them a fair distance away. There are also clouds that trap you for a second or two when you step on them to prevent you from dodging shots, or force you to shoot one of the teleporter guys right away. Basically, they force you to have even quicker reaction times than in the fog, because you go through a teleporter and you have three projectiles already about to hit your face.

 

On the second to last stage you need to fire a shot at a teleporter guy, jump through another teleporter, shoot one enemy, one apple and a second teleporter guy in less than one second before your first shot hits and you're teleported down, where you again have to do three precision shots before you're teleported by the second bullet you fired at which point you're launched into the air and have to shoot down two projectiles at long distance (you can't see them at the point where they hit you because you're falling through a cloud) plus a 3rd tele guy. So yeah, they keep piling it on.

[N1njaSquirrel]

Ah that makes sense. I actually bothered to purchase some moves this time, and the <- -> Punch (or kick) were fantastic for setting up parries whilst simultaneously attacking.

 

I just found the cutscenes really hard to watch in B1, they were ugly, and I had no fucking clue what was happening. The story was simpler in 2 so I could follow it without any trouble. 

 

I tried bow/whip but it felt off. I just couldn't get the hang of it, but guns/guns or sword/whip feels right to me. 

 

Do you think it's worth going for infinite climax? Some bosses on 3rd absolutely destroyed me (I'm looking at you Golem) but others I killed with very little trouble (including the final boss). 

 

Yeah, the story was simpler, but I felt that it meant that I was less inclined to re-watch the cutscenes. The first game was a fucking head-case and took a good few play throughs to understand, which I felt complemented the want to play the game through on every difficulty. By infinite climax I knew exactly why shit was going down, which made me like the story more. Also the little kid's voice acting was awful in B2, I felt that the VA's in general were better in B1.

 

Completing 3rd Climax unlocks a very cool weapon, and in B1 infinite climax unlocked the light sabre, so I feel inclinde to say that yes, it is worth going for, just becuase you're likely to unlock something sweet. But it is hard. That could also be because I have just picked it up again after a good 4 months of not playing it.

[Griddlelol]

Completing 3rd Climax unlocks a very cool weapon, and in B1 infinite climax unlocked the light sabre, so I feel inclinde to say that yes, it is worth going for, just becuase you're likely to unlock something sweet. But it is hard. That could also be because I have just picked it up again after a good 4 months of not playing it.

Cool, I'll definitely play it through again. I feel like I need a break from it though, I find the game play to be stressful and I can't play for more than an hour at a time.

I'm incredibly busy with metroid prime right now (which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite games I've played in a while) and I'd like to finish xenoblade and persona 4 before their respective sequels come out.