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I finished Mirror's Edge. This game was awesome. The whole concept was so well executed and the game looked and played really well. The only parts that kind of sucked were whenever dudes with guns showed up. Which was a lot unfortunately.

 

If I could play that game and have it just be all the parkour stuff and nothing else, I would be so happy.

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Just finished Wolfenstien: The New Order over the weekend, and I thought it was really well done. A great balance between being true to a classic series, and modernizing it at the same time. Some very minor spoilers below. (Back-of-the-box stuff, plus one boss name) Last paragraph is a spoiler-free TLDR.

 

The addition of compelling stealth, and a surprisingly relatable narrative were two particularly good changes, but of course there is still tons of good ol' nazi killin' to go around too.

 

I specifically liked the balance between stealth and action options, and the seamless transition between the two. (Try to kill a commander quietly, fuck up, kill 500 nazis with dual-weild shotguns instead) Despite not being much for stealth typically, I actually wished there were more stealth options later in the game. (This was probably at least partially due to the fact that I was playing on the 2nd highest difficulty, and ammo was pretty scarce late in the game so I often wanted to conserve it if I could)

 

The story was also quite well done considering that it's a Wolfenstein game, moving the series out of the WWII era it has trod over many times and in to an alternative history of the 1960s where Germany won the war. There is a *ton* of really great environmental storytelling such as little newspaper clippings about how history changed in this universe, and German-ized popular music from the 1960s, (think The Beatles in German) which all help to build a pretty convincing and interesting world. The love story was less compelling to me, but served to move the plot along while humanizing Blascowitz a bit so I suppose it did its job.

All that said, I felt like some of the later boss fights, (London Monitor and the final boss specifically) were just really boring grind-fests. The Monitor was pretty dull and I never felt like I was at any risk of dying due to how little you have to actually expose yourself to the boss, and the last boss was just a boring "stand there and fill him full of bullets for 10 minutes" other than one extremely minor twist at the start.

 

Overall. on top of the solid gunplay you'd expect in a Wolfenstien game, The New Order has some *really* great worldbuilding and environmental storytelling, plus a very nice balance between stealth and action for the most part, but boring, same-y boss fights.

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I also completed GTA V last weekend. I posted some thoughts over in the GTA thread, which I've quoted below for convenience, discussing a bit about what I thought the game did well to resolve issues chronically present in games of that style.

 

The PC release of the fifth entry in the Grand Theft Auto series has received significant critical acclaim, and rightly so. GTA V on PC offers extremely impressive and well-optimized graphical fidelity, along with many other small (but important) improvements unique to the PC platform such as support for on-the-fly switching between controller types. 


However, the changes I’ve enjoyed the most are not those unique to the PC. Specifically, the modifications to how police pursue and interact with the player, and the introduction of multiple protagonists in a single storyline, are both outstanding improvements. Between them, these two features have solved many of the problems present at the very core of previous iterations in the Grand Theft Auto series. 

Most notably, the introduction of three protagonists has opened up some exciting new gameplay and storytelling opportunities. Not being shackled to a single character for the entire duration of the storyline has allowed for more consistent pacing, including the elimination of many uninteresting tasks inherently present in GTA-style games, and also greater narrative and mechanical variety. 

Novels and other long-form media are often written from the viewpoint of more than one character for a very good reason; stories centered on a single protagonist are, by default, restricted to a narrower narrative tract in order to remain true to the personality of that one character. The inclusion of multiple protagonists in GTA V solves this problem by allowing writers to move from one thematic style to another as the narrative switches between characters, such as moving from the TV soap-opera of Michael’s life to the meth-fueled thrill ride that defines Trevor’s character. Compare this to the one-note immigrant story of Niko Bellic, (GTA IV’s player-character) and the benefits of a multi-character approach speak for themselves. 

Further, the different themes and concepts woven through each unique story allow for a wider variety of gameplay experience. The types of activities Trevor (who is certainly insane) would engage in don’t necessarily fit with Franklin’s calmer, more rational persona, or vice-versa. Having a stable of different playable characters available broadens the mission types designers can choose from, as they no longer have to match an entire game’s worth of content to a single character’s personality. 

Another benefit of allowing the player to switch between characters as they desire (or as the story demands) is the assurance that players are never stuck resolving the slow or uninteresting parts of a given story beat. As soon as one encounter is winding down, players can simply switch to another character. This removes many hum-drum tasks such as driving back to town after completing a mission on the far side of the gameworld, or feeling stuck because you totalled your car far away from major transportation routes, and now have to spend time walking back to a road to find another vehicle.

Other, similar, open-word games have also tried to solve this problem. Most notably, recent iterations in the Saints Row series have tried to do something similar by allowing players to summon transportation out of thin air by “calling a hommie” to have a vehicle delivered. However, this approach brings with it its own set of disadvantages. Namely, the very nature of such a system (having a friend able to deliver any car to you anywhere in the world in 5 seconds flat) has forced the Saints Row series down a particularly fanciful narrative path to accommodate the obvious impossibility of such a system. 

The real-world impossibility of Saints Row’s “call a hommie” feature forces players to accept that the game is, indeed, completely make-believe; suspension of disbelief becomes impossible. Because of this, that series is forced into a certain type of playful, light-hearted storytelling. While this is hardly a problem in and of itself, it does limit the options available to the design team from a narrative and thematic perspective. The way Saints Row has attempted to cut out unpleasant activities for players does solve some problems, but at the cost of limiting narrative options. 

By contrast, the multiple protagonist system in GTA does not invite the limitations incurred in recent Saints Row games; Rockstar North remains free to choose their own narrative style. Nearly any story can be told in a way that involves multiple characters, whereas storytelling options become more limited when clearly impossible and fantastical systems are introduced instead. Effectively, GTA and Saints Row have both tried to solve the same problem that is inherently present in open world games, (mitigating the amount of time the player is forced to spend on uninteresting tasks) but GTA V has done so in a way with few downsides, while the tact taken by the Saints Row team has pigeon-holed them in to a specific type of narrative arch. 

Another important and, I think, under-valued change introduced by GTA V is that of sight cones for police units that are pursuing the player. Previous titles simply had a radius placed around each pursuing cop, which would cause all police in the area to “agro” on the player if the player entered that area. Now, in GTA V, police have actual sight cones which respect line-of-sight.

While older titles had players effectively playing tag with police, GTA V lets you play hide-and-seek. This is a much more engaging mechanic that feels very appropriate when attempting to evade pursuit. More importantly, breaking line-of-site and then ditching your car to hide is *really fun* compared to just flooring the gas and trying to put distance between you and the cops. Suddenly, one of the features which is most commonly interacted with by players of a GTA games has had a whole extra layer of enjoyable and appropriate depth and complexity added; it’s made being pursued by police an enjoyable activity in and of itself, instead of a boring inevitability. 

This may seem like a small change, but given the prevalence of run-ins with the police in GTA, *any* change to this system is likely to have a significant impact on how players interact with the game. The addition of sightlines for cops has changed a system that resides at the heart of the GTA franchise and, in my eyes, greatly improved the entirety of the game.

Between the increased variety afforded by the inclusion of multiple characters, and the improvements to the critically important police pursuit system, Rockstar North has delivered some really intelligent improvements in GTA V. The bevy of PS4, Xbox One, and PC features offer further refinement to an already great entry in a long-standing series. Whether you’re new to the GTA series or a long-standing fan, there has never been a better time to jump back in.

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Just finished Pillars of Eternity :tup:

Truly a modern Baldur's Gate. It's long (took me 40+ hours), it's damn difficult (eventually finished it on easy :/ ). The ending was great, every choice you made in the game was revisited in how it changed the world. So instead of just having a choice and the end of the game and only get an ending based on that pretty much everything was presented. So it was a worthwhile ending. I did not do everything by the looks of it, but I doubt I will return to the world (via an earlier save) to wrap somethings up.

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Just finished Pillars of Eternity :tup:

Truly a modern Baldur's Gate. It's long (took me 40+ hours), it's damn difficult (eventually finished it on easy :/ ). The ending was great, every choice you made in the game was revisited in how it changed the world. So instead of just having a choice and the end of the game and only get an ending based on that pretty much everything was presented. So it was a worthwhile ending. I did not do everything by the looks of it, but I doubt I will return to the world (via an earlier save) to wrap somethings up.

 

Wow, good to know!  I am at the 50 hour mark and am maybe at the middle of Act II.  I have been doing some sidequests, but it doesn't feel like too many.  And I've barely scratched the Endless Paths!

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I've beaten a few games:

 

Another Perspective: This game tries so hard to be Braid and think it's so deep, but it's a so-so platform game that's not very special.

 

Girl Fight: I got this on a PSN sale, only knowing it looked stupid and terrible.... I was right!

This game is literally a Dead or Alive clone, practically every character is an analog of the DoA universe, the final boss is even a metallic like like DoA 4 and I'm pretty sure some of the moves are from DoA even.

The characters are shamelessly objects of desire since they have little to none backstory or reasons to do anything.

 

There is these evil Foundation who for some reason is doing VR training with these girls, the game never explains WHY the bad guys do this, except that the final boss is an AI that is trying to find the one worthy of her help.

 

Before each battle the AI, which happens to be the only voice in the game, give you hints and the backstory of the character, but you will never find out more. The game has unlockable extras and... they just don't tell you, they will tell you other things, but never what you want to know.

 

It gets better, every character has the same ending, when you beat "Chrome" the AI, you wake up in the real world and open your eyes... that's it. The only thing I found out after beating the AI takes you over when you wake up and... nothing else.

 

It's hilarious how much of the little story there is is missing! Also, the ragdolling at the end of the round is glorious!

 

 

I also beat Mystik Belle, a "Dizzyvania", which is like a Metroidvania with heavy adventure elements and a limited inventory.

 

The plot is simple, collect three ingredients for a witches brew, as you advance and defeat bosses, you'll get new powers to access new areas. The limited inventory isn't much of a hassle if you just drop items near a warp gate, and you can figure out what to do by speaking to the few people that are around the castle. Many will even give you a clue if you just show them random items.

 

I didn't get stuck a few times, once because I didn't know a certain item could be examined after it's use and another because I had forgotten Belle had heavily hinted to explore an shelf later.

 

It might be a bit hard if you didn't expect adventure puzzles in your "Vania", but I think the game flowed pretty well and puzzles seemed pretty straight-forward if you know your adventure games.

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I'd hate to post again, but apparently I'm the first to beat Pier Solar since nobody has mentioned the game in the forum.

 

Pier Solar and The Great Architect was Kickstarted game for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and if it's one thing it does well is feel like a game from that era, but it also has a it's flaws.

 

I don't really know what is different but I can assume many of the new options weren't possible in the original system, like autosaving, changing the encounter rate and HD options.

 

I don't really get the HD options, you get HD portraits, HD cutscenes and... HD backgrounds? The rest looks the same, it's so weird I just play in the original look. The encounter rate is a God-send, since you can dial it to zero when you're lost and don't want to fight and crank it up to the max when you want to grind. It also has AI battling, which is.... terrible, the options don't work and the party would use incredibly valuable items on common enemies.

 

Speaking of the enemies, the variety isn't that great and the game has flying enemies which can only be hit by ranged weapons... which are only owned by two of the five party members, the others can't even touch them unless they use spells.

 

Which brings me to spell system, you have a change system and can only use certain spells at certain charge levels, so you have to waste turns with charging.

 

It's got quite a few flaws, but... I still enjoyed it. I wouldn't get it full price?

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I completed Kid Icarus Uprising. It's got the bones and guts of an amazing game, but the controls just ruin the experience.

The narrative is great, it's actually amusing. The presentation of the narrative is great, it's during the combat, with constant chattering. It's amazing when you're concentrating to just start laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. The only problem is that it's a handheld game. I couldn't have the sound on every moment so I missed a lot of it.

I really like how much it reminds me of smash bros. I don't know if they have the same dev, or whether it was some sort of way to test out some of the new things introduced into Smash 4. Like how you bet the currency used to buy weapons at the start of each level, which affects the difficulty. Also, choosing the difficulty level at each chapter is so great.

I would love to see a sequel on the wiiu. One that actually controls well.

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I actually quit the game because I hated the controls so much.

 

I recently completed Planetarian, a kinetic novel about a malfunctioning robot in a post apocalyptic world, she's in care of a planetarium in an abandoned city until a "junker" in search of something to salvage finds her.

 

It was a amazing story, it's all I can say.  :tup:

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I finished Axiom Verge.

 

It had somewhat interesting upgrades although only a few were genuine surprises, but coming off Ori and the Blind Forest, which had moments that were definitely overtuned but an environment that was a joy to explore, this didn't do it for me. It didn't help that some of the puzzles were obnoxious, the music wasn't built for sound systems with a quality subwoofer and the plot was rubbish.

 

I think I've got some problems with the glitch aesthetic, as well - there are places, the secret worlds especially, where the glitches feel like glitches, but too often in games that want to incorporate the idea of a game 'glitching' they tend to feel fairly rote. Glitches are undefined behaviour; they should be a little more adventurous than different colours, or drawing from the wrong position on the sprite sheet.

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I finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Director's Cut: Colon for the Wii U this past week.

 

DEHR was my absolute favourite game of 2011, even despite the flaws.  The Director's Cut fixes the boss battles somewhat (though I only took advantage of the "fix" in the Jaron fight, and even then he destroyed the bots in no time) and integrates the DLC in the middle of the game.  I'm not actually a huge fan of the integrated DLC as it's pretty flow-breaking - it worked better as a standalone, in my opinion.  

 

The gamepad integration was phenomenal.  I didn't realize how much I valued the second screen until I used it for hacking, inventory management, and in-game texts.  It really felt like it added a new dimension to an already-fabulous game.  

 

I spent about 48 hours with the game - a little bit longer than my first playthrough+DLC, but that's because I'm a save-spammer, and I explored everything again, except this time I took my time with it.  By the end of it, I was a complete walking tank, but that's consistent with the original DE.

 

If you a) like DEHR, and b ) have a Wii U, then you should get it.  I have no qualms in saying that it's the definitive version of the game.  

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I just beat Sorcery Saga: The Curse of the Great Curry God, a surprisingly easy rogue-like RPG. An apprentice mage ends up having to collect the ingredients for the Ultimate Curry to save her favorite curry joint and she meets a bunch of quirky characters on the way.

 

You have a companion, Kuu, who who will eat just about anything and level up, earning different abilities every few levels, but losing them when you leave an area, some can be very dangerous, like the "SO HUNGRY!"  one which ruined me when an enemy knocked my best weapon out of my hand and Kuu just ate it...

 

You can find special items that unlock a "skit" back at your home, which reward with something very good, like a spell. I think the magic might break the game, even the final boss died only after a few spells, then again, the first boss had me running like coward struggling to survive, so I guess I upgraded the right things.

 

It's a quirky and color Japanese game with Tofu monsters and fish dressed as maids, how can I not love it?

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I just beat Sorcery Saga: The Curse of the Great Curry God, a surprisingly easy rogue-like RPG.

 

Whoever the Polygon reviewer was found it to be "brutal."  She also described the plot as:

 

You play as Pupuru, a courageous teenage girl and megafan of a local curry shop. When a new chain restaurant opens up downtown headed by an evil businessman, Pupuru vows to gather magic ingredients for a legendary curry recipe to save the smaller shop.

 

Just like Empire Records!

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With so many characters I forgot about the business rival. Now I wonder if I was just lucky or if, but the review barely sound like the game I played. 

 

The last time I played was almost a year ago and it was easy to get back into it and I just didn't die after the first dungeon.  :blink:

 

I do agree with the creep factor of having that demon drooling over the protagonist, but a Japanese game with no gratuitous panty shots or similar is practically a miracle by today's standards in Japan.

 

Huh, I just realized that the armor is mostly cute and never revealing, imagine a puffy dress with armor padding?

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Detective Grimoire :tmeh:

It's a rather small, and simple adventure game. It feels like one of those small flash games on the internet, except that it is completely voice acted and longer than average flash games. It's a nice distration.

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I finished The Order 1886. It's a disappointing game because you really wish that their engine should be used in a better game. The visuals are just fantastic, beyond any other game on consoles or PC, and their cinematic push was really well done, some usually terrible effects like chromatic aberration and film grain look just perfect in the game, it's truly an outstanding work in art-direction and visuals. The gameplay is fine, there's nothing wrong with the shooting itself, but sometimes you face some poor design decisions, like unecessary big hordes of enemies on the same location to make the game longer. 

 

But the most disappointing thing of all is the story, the character's actions don't make any sense a lot of times, and the ending is terrible, it really seems that devs didin't finish the story before the budget was over, so they needed to finish the game without any closure at all. 

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Me and my girlfriend finishes Sorcery 1 and 2 today and they really highlight how much better 80 Days is to me. Dieing and rewinding to redo stuff is part of the design but feels awful and means too much repeat playing too.

I think Sorcery's premise and core design being so gamey essentially procludes it from doing the smart writing choices that made 80Days such a joy. The second one has you collect a set of McGuffins, but in a game where you can't properly double back without actually undoing progress that means you're supposed to get it right in one run, or deal with the punishments that the incorrect path burdens on you. It doesn't help that the game is portrayed as being hard, but finding the right choice is often about luck or having the correct knowledge (from happening upon a source of information). Puzzles are relatively rare. I should just reinstall 80Days again and never let it leave my phone.

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I beat Apotheon, a Greek mythology based "fake-Vania", which I call it because I bought it thinking it was a "Vania" (it was in the tags), but ended up being nothing of that sort.

 

All the upgrades from boss fights are nothing but actual upgrades, like faster shooting with the bow, and to find the chests of goodies all you need is lockpicks and Greek Fire bombs, one of which you can craft and one of which is dropped from crates and you're likely to have in surplus.

 

Your weapons do degrade, but I never had to buy one from a weapon merchant and had weapons to spare, all I did need to buy was upgrades for my armor and recipes.

 

Frankly, it was an OK game, that's got a neat " Greek vase" aesthetic and a story too similar to God of War, but it's simply not a "Vania". *shrugs*

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Finished Wolfenstein: The Old Blood after grabbing it during the Steam Sale. I was momentarily tricked, because I forgot it was about zombies. Outside of DayZ and L4D, I really dislike zombies in video games. Thankfully, it also has new cool-style BJ Blazkowicz who is somehow a real and interesting character and interacts with other people in the world in very human way. I thought the actual gunplay was better than New Order, possibly because it was just a shorter experience so I got the schockhammer faster. I did not like the last boss fight, but other than that it was really good. The zombies are even tolerable. Worth the $10 I paid, and short enough that I finished it in two evenings (which I think is a plus).

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Just finished Halo 3: ODST. First Halo game I've ever played, outside of about 10 minutes of the first game at a friend's house. I get the hype! Super fun, especially since playing on Brutal meant I kept repeatedly getting my ass handed to me.

 

It was interesting to play ODST without playing any of the others because there's no attempts in ODST to teach you how Halo games work. I sorta had to figure out what weapons did what and how to beat different enemies through dying a lot, the way I had to learn Spelunky. And there's no explanation for who the aliens are and what war you're in or why or any of that. I don't even know if the characters in it are in other Halo games. Not that I could follow the story anyway, since there's weirdly no subtitles option.

 

I want to play more Halo but I have no idea where to start. What's the next 360 Halo game I should play?

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I finished Rage and it wasn't terrible. On the graphical side of things, this game was pretty amazing. Those MegaTextures resulted in some very impressive and unique environments and went a long way toward keeping me engaged with the game when I would have normally been bored out of my mind. Couple that with the incredible character designs and animations and I feel like they really created a unique world with interesting and lively characters that I would have loved to spend more time in if they had given me some more interesting stuff to do.

 

Unfortunately, the gameplay part of Rage is pretty damn uninspired. Every area you traverse through with the exception of the overworld is nothing more than a series of very narrow corridors with only one path to follow from start to end. You have all of your standard guns, each of which have a couple of different ammo types that will be more effective under certain conditions. There's really nothing special here; you just shoot the same guns you've shot in 678 other first person shooters and enemies die when they've been shot enough. Luckily, they threw in a few other cool gadgets to mix things up like a deployable turret, a sentry bot, these boomerang-like wingsticks, and an RC car strapped with explosives. Most of these gadgets suck though and are pointless, as are most of the guns because all you need to do to win this game is to throw wingsticks at every fucking thing that moves. I tried using a few of the other gadgets just to try to get some achievements and immediately abandoned them when I realized how useless they were. The wingsticks are definitely the saving grace of this game and it would have been a better game if you were just wingstick man traveling through the wasteland severing everyone's limbs with wingsticks.

 

Those graphics though... this game was alright.

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Just finished Halo 3: ODST. First Halo game I've ever played, outside of about 10 minutes of the first game at a friend's house. I get the hype! Super fun, especially since playing on Brutal meant I kept repeatedly getting my ass handed to me.

 

It was interesting to play ODST without playing any of the others because there's no attempts in ODST to teach you how Halo games work. I sorta had to figure out what weapons did what and how to beat different enemies through dying a lot, the way I had to learn Spelunky. And there's no explanation for who the aliens are and what war you're in or why or any of that. I don't even know if the characters in it are in other Halo games. Not that I could follow the story anyway, since there's weirdly no subtitles option.

 

I want to play more Halo but I have no idea where to start. What's the next 360 Halo game I should play?

 

I'd say 3, as it and ODST are the pinnacle of the series in different ways.  If you want to play more after 3, it's not that 4 or Reach are bad, but they aren't as good as 2, 3 or ODST. 

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I finished Rage and it wasn't terrible.

 

Did you play it on PC? I thought the mega textures were TERRIBLE. I played it on a decent computer at the time I bought it (not at launch, I think 2011?), and it seems like I'm the only one in the world for whom mega textures don't work. I would spin around in a canyon, and it was literally seconds at times to go from the low res textures to the high res textures.

 

That game looked awful on PC.

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Did you play it on PC? I thought the mega textures were TERRIBLE. I played it on a decent computer at the time I bought it (not at launch, I think 2011?), and it seems like I'm the only one in the world for whom mega textures don't work. I would spin around in a canyon, and it was literally seconds at times to go from the low res textures to the high res textures.

 

That game looked awful on PC.

 

I played on PC and didn't have any issues that were too noticeable. There were times that if I spun around too fast, there would be a split second where the high resolution texture hadn't fully loaded in. It was never more than half a second though.

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