Recently completed video games

[Griddlelol]

I finished the story mode in Hyrule Warriors. I had essentially played it twice, since my hd got formatted. It's a pretty enjoyable mindless game that I could play while I'm tired or while I'm watching a movie.

It was fun!

[elmuerte]

Dream

The game has potential, but it's rather poorly executed. Quite a few bugs, a couple really block your progress in a puzzle. The first part is quite good, but I get the idea that the developers got bored with the game and rushed the rest to completion.

 

Chaos on Deponia

Just way too many obscure puzzles. The story couldn't really interest me, it did not feel very coherent. A lot of humor and jokes were forced and thereby removing the fun of it. It's like a modern day Simon the Sorcerer, but not as good.

[Dewar]

I was looking at dream the other day. Maybe I'll give it a pass in favor of Cradle.

[aoanla]

I just replayed Quake for the first time since i was a kid, and it's a game that was kind of a formative experience for me, so i've always been wary about treading on those memories.

It was a weird experience, and i'm a little bummed out because i don't think the game holds up quite as well as i wanted it to. The weird thematic incoherence has often been a topic for people who want to look critically at the game, but i think it's actually one of Quake's strengths. It gives it a kind of weird sense of mechanical purity, that it sort of ends up being this abstract, contextless violence. I think the physics and the general feel of that game are as close to perfect as it could be, though the feel of the weapons specifically, and some of the weapon balance, came across as a little awkward this time around.

 

The big thing that wasn't working for me though is that fourth episode with the unique and completely awful enemies and its dark, difficult to see, and difficult to navigate environments. It also seemed like there was a lot of cheap damage, with powerful enemies quietly being dumped into corridors you had just passed through seconds earlier, no walls noisily receding to signal the change in the map.

That ambient ost is killer. (It's not in the steam version, so i just had it on a loop in the background.)

 

But yeah, Quake's still mostly awesome, but i think i have to say that it probably hasn't aged quite as well as some of Id's other games.

 

I replayed Quake a bit recently too (for the second time since originally playing it a lot back in the mid-late 90s). Actually, for me, it holds up better than Quake 2 does - the thematic incoherence you mention really helps me with it, just as it did at the time, because it makes it more timeless. (It also avoids the really strongly b-movie cheesiness of id's settings for Doom and Quake 2, which I think have aged considerably.) 

 

I do think there's some cheap moments, and I personally have problems reconciling my feelings for it (it was my first ever PC game, after moving on from our Amiga, and my feelings for it are complex - the visceral feeling of playing something in Real 3D, and the dark setting and brilliant ambient soundtrack (which has also aged much better than Doom and Quake 2's soundtracks, frankly - one reason I shared the much more Quake-like soundtracks from the Playstation release of Doom on the music thread) are part of my nostalgia, but so is my disappointment at the lack of any narrative or functional depth (I really did want to Talk To The Monsters). 

[dartmonkey]

Finished The Stanley Parable. 100%. All items. Good ending...

 

Well, who knows? I've played for over 2 hours and reckon I've seen 75%ish of it. Pretty wonderful. Also, I can't think of another game where playing the demo AFTER the main game is just as rewarding. I was chuckling for minutes playing the 8 game. I almost never play demos but I'm glad I went back for this one.

[elmuerte]

That's the because the demo is a whole new game. I don't recall many games where the demo is not part of the game. The original Rise of the Triads demo had it's own set of levels which did not return in the original game. But other than that I cannot recall a single game.

[Patrick R]

That's the because the demo is a whole new game. I don't recall many games where the demo is not part of the game. The original Rise of the Triads demo had it's own set of levels which did not return in the original game. But other than that I cannot recall a single game.

 

Half-Life: Uplink!

[Ozzie]

Tomb Raider IV, too, I think?

And Desperados.

The demos of Monkey Island, Freddy Pharkas and Space Quest VI have environments that are also part of the full game, but writing and puzzles are different I think.
I'm surely forgetting some. What were the other entries in the gallery of great standalone demos in the Stanley Parable demo? I forgot...

[elmuerte]

Submerged

This was actually a bit of a let down. Exploring the submerged city was less fun as I hoped for. It's pretty much nothing but climbing a building to collect 12 crates which will progress the main story. And some "secret" collecting to get the story about the city.

The stories are told via nothing but single frame pictures, or rather icons. Which is fine.

There's some sea animals which you encounter. The dolphins are quite nice and they swim with you.

But besides that, there really isn't anything else going on. The climbing become tedious at some point, especially when you have to backtrack a bit in order to collect a "secret" which you missed.

 

Remember Me

I did not expect this game to be mostly about fighting. I thought it was more about collecting and messing around with people's memories. The fighting wasn't that bad most of the time. The combo's are quite accessible because fighting it done pretty much with just 3 buttons (punch, kick, dodge). There are some really annoying fights, especially when you have multiple enemies which hurt when you hit them. And then there are the dumb QTEs in all but the last boss fight.

The world is really beautiful. It's a shame that you traverse a linear path through it, and that it's mostly scaling buildings and corridors to reach the next fight "arena".

 

[Tanukitsune]

Wow, I haven't posted here in a while.

 

The Emptiness is the cheesiest "hidden object games" I've played in a while, some jump scares will actually work, others will make you die laughing... I must admit there was a certain painting I couldn't walk past normally after a jump scare, but it's mostly cheesy. All you is find letter to open the seal in the next area with some minor puzzle solving.     

 

Tokyo Hosto.... I'm pretty sure the game is this way on purpose, it's a short visual novel about being a male host in a bat, but it's just the most cheesy and ridiculous thing ever, including the ending.       

 

Supercharged Robot VULKAISER is like those old 70's robot shows and you combine robots to fight bosses, the game acknowledges which robot you use and in-between level the pilot of the other bots will comment on the mission, give hints on how to use the robot or just talk. 

 

Will Fight for Food, a simple brawler where you can talk and take the pacifist route in some scenes, which made the game a bit boring. 

 

Abyss Odyssey, a rogue fighter where you try to descent several levels to reach an evil mage. I had a very lucky run where I bought a very powerful sword, but it was still a bloody miracle I made it. 

[Bjorn]

Abyss Odyssey, a rogue fighter where you try to descent several levels to reach an evil mage. I had a very lucky run where I bought a very powerful sword, but it was still a bloody miracle I made it. 

 

I really wanted to keep digging into Abyss Odyssey, I completed it twice and there was the whole community progression element and different characters, but ultimately I didn't find the actual gameplay to be quite good enough to just Spelunky levels of playing. 

[eot]

I just replayed Quake for the first time since i was a kid, and it's a game that was kind of a formative experience for me, so i've always been wary about treading on those memories.

It was a weird experience, and i'm a little bummed out because i don't think the game holds up quite as well as i wanted it to. The weird thematic incoherence has often been a topic for people who want to look critically at the game, but i think it's actually one of Quake's strengths. It gives it a kind of weird sense of mechanical purity, that it sort of ends up being this abstract, contextless violence. I think the physics and the general feel of that game are as close to perfect as it could be, though the feel of the weapons specifically, and some of the weapon balance, came across as a little awkward this time around.

 

The big thing that wasn't working for me though is that fourth episode with the unique and completely awful enemies and its dark, difficult to see, and difficult to navigate environments. It also seemed like there was a lot of cheap damage, with powerful enemies quietly being dumped into corridors you had just passed through seconds earlier, no walls noisily receding to signal the change in the map.

That ambient ost is killer. (It's not in the steam version, so i just had it on a loop in the background.)

 

But yeah, Quake's still mostly awesome, but i think i have to say that it probably hasn't aged quite as well as some of Id's other games.

 

I agree that the fourth episode brings the whole game down, but:

 

I replayed Quake a bit recently too (for the second time since originally playing it a lot back in the mid-late 90s). Actually, for me, it holds up better than Quake 2 does - the thematic incoherence you mention really helps me with it, just as it did at the time, because it makes it more timeless. (It also avoids the really strongly b-movie cheesiness of id's settings for Doom and Quake 2, which I think have aged considerably.)

 

I fully agree with this. I love the utterly incoherent theme in Quake. To me it doesn't matter that it's unintentionally great, if anything that makes it better. I don't like things that are weird just to be weird, but Quake's weirdness feels genuine to me. I don't think you could remake it, partially because the low fidelity graphics let them get away with things they wouldn't today, but also because the intentionality would ruin it. If you remade Deus Ex, what would you do with the weird stuff, like some of the horribly cheesy lines or racist voice acting? You can't intentionally remake it that way, but you can't remove it without making something that's not Deus Ex either.

 

Anyway, I probably like Quake's theme more than I reasonably should. I think the game is good for other reasons too. A lot of early 3D games are interesting because level design conventions hadn't solidified yet, and Quake is a perfect example. Much of the level design is strange by today's standards, or even the standards set a few years later, but I think most of it is great. It's another area where the game feels different from anything else in a good way. It doesn't have the giant maze like key hunts of Doom II, the levels are much tighter. Like aoanla said above, Quake II doesn't hold up nearly as well and while I agree that the theme is part of it, I also think the level design in Q2 goes against everything that's was good about Quake.

Also, Quake just still feels so damn good to play. The sound effects are spot on. There's a reason they still reused many of them (like the Quad Damage sound) for every subsequent game. It doesn't get much recognition anymore, but I think it's actually an accidental masterpiece. Love it.

[Dewar]

I got Race the Sun for "free" on PS+ and finally decided to try it out while watching Dota2 this weekend. The progression in the first mode is pretty awesome, and also obtainable, two things that often don't intersect for a lot of endless games out there. I capped out my level, but decided I was done and didn't want to do the two harder modes. Still well worth playing.

[Sno]

So i sort of mostly like Grey Goo.

I really liked what Petroglyph was trying to do with that game and i played a bunch of it when it came out, but the game had some pretty aggravating issues with balance and some pretty fucked performance issues where people experienced varying degrees of sluggish performance approaching almost completely unplayable, and on PC's well above the recommended specs, it's important to note. Everybody i talked to about the game felt it wasn't running as well as it should. It was also missing a sizable number of promised features and there were some other small issues, like the skirmish AI being pretty lame at release. It was a game i couldn't really recommend, it was a pretty deeply flawed product at the time, but i really didn't want to dismiss it out of hand. I waited to see if they would fix the issues and sort of just forgot about it after a while.

Seeing several big updates get pulled down recently prompted me to load the game back up and see how its come along, and i've found that it runs much better - though perhaps still not where it seems like it should be -  and has seen some pretty comprehensive balance tweaks, though the game still feels recognizable as what i had played initially. There's also a ton of new multiplayer maps, match replays, much improved skirmish AI and... A paid campaign DLC that was apparently given to me for free at some point, i'm assuming because i bought the game around release. I looked into it and there was apparently a window where people could grab it for free, but i didn't do that, so i don't know what's up. Hey though, more is good, the campaign in that game was actually really enjoyable, it has some really elaborate and very challenging missions. (Emphasis on challenging, you will likely replay these missions a few times each and have to think hard about what you need to do to beat them.)

 

I like the game a lot, i think it's probably Petroglyph's best game, and i think it draws some pretty favorable comparisons to Westwood's original C&C games, though with a resource rate economy model and some really interesting factions, one of which kind of completely upends the more traditional elements of the game. (A faction with no structures that forces its opponents to be more proactive about scouting and harassment.)

I've seen a lot of Starcraft-types respond pretty negatively to the game for downplaying micro for macro, along with some assertions that there's a low skill ceiling, and... I mean... That it emphasizes broader strategies is something i actually really like about it, and i'm not competitive enough to have anything to say about the skill ceiling. (I'm generally not super competitive with RTS's anymore, i just want to do some bot stomps or play against friends.)

 

The game's mostly just been a ton of fun for me as an old RTS fan that has seen the genre drift further and further in directions i don't really care about.

 

So Grey Goo's a as far as i'm concerned, but people are still pretty divided on it. Check it out during a sale, maybe. To me, it feels like a game that probably has an audience out there that would really appreciate it, but with a rough launch period and divided critical response, has failed to catch the attention of.

 

 
I agree that the fourth episode brings the whole game down, but:
  
I fully agree with this. I love the utterly incoherent theme in Quake. To me it doesn't matter that it's unintentionally great, if anything that makes it better. I don't like things that are weird just to be weird, but Quake's weirdness feels genuine to me. I don't think you could remake it, partially because the low fidelity graphics let them get away with things they wouldn't today, but also because the intentionality would ruin it. If you remade Deus Ex, what would you do with the weird stuff, like some of the horribly cheesy lines or racist voice acting? You can't intentionally remake it that way, but you can't remove it without making something that's not Deus Ex either.
 
Anyway, I probably like Quake's theme more than I reasonably should. I think the game is good for other reasons too. A lot of early 3D games are interesting because level design conventions hadn't solidified yet, and Quake is a perfect example. Much of the level design is strange by today's standards, or even the standards set a few years later, but I think most of it is great. It's another area where the game feels different from anything else in a good way. It doesn't have the giant maze like key hunts of Doom II, the levels are much tighter. Like aoanla said above, Quake II doesn't hold up nearly as well and while I agree that the theme is part of it, I also think the level design in Q2 goes against everything that's was good about Quake.

Also, Quake just still feels so damn good to play. The sound effects are spot on. There's a reason they still reused many of them (like the Quad Damage sound) for every subsequent game. It doesn't get much recognition anymore, but I think it's actually an accidental masterpiece. Love it.

The huge disparity between what Quake was supposed to be and what it ended up being makes it feel like Id got in over their head and just sort of haphazardly slipped back into doing what they knew best, and amazingly it doesn't even really feel like the stitched together remnants of another game, it kind of feels like nothing. It's so abstract and odd and kind of wonderful for it, and probably far too accidental for Id to have been self-aware enough about it to realize it worked and that they could have run with the ambiguous theming as a strength for other games. Certainly, Quake 2 is much more Doom-like in its theme, just trading cyber demons for... Pretty much just the same thing. On the other hand though, you could probably say Quake 3 was again in line with the original, being a game that stripped away needless context to the point of having floating platforms in a black void.

 

Anyways, I've been playing more of it again, going through it on the hard difficulty, and the layouts tend towards cleverly cruel and are way more enjoyable than the normal playthrough i used to ease myself back into the game. The enemy layouts in hard just seem like they mesh with the levels far better, because instead of a persistent low-level challenge, the game takes you through some big peaks and valleys. It sets up a lot of situations where it feels like Id's trying to lull the person playing into a false sense of security before dumping them into a really horrible situation.

Still going to say the fourth episode is a weirdly incongruous and wildly uneven set of levels though. I don't think that ever really registered with me as a kid, but i obviously didn't play it as much as the other episodes given how little of it i was able to remember.

[prettyunsmart]

I played NEON STRUCT (which apparently is supposed to be in all caps and has a German subtitle that I don't feel like typing out). It's a blocky take on immersive sims with Deus Ex seeming to serve as its most direct inspiration. Basically someone made a game just for me, and I unsurprisingly loved it. 

 

It's a pretty stripped down form of the Deus Ex formula, with stealth as your only option. I didn't really mind since I always play those games as the guy who sneaks through air ducts rather than running in with a rocket launcher. Since I've only played through once, I can't say for sure, but I think it does some neat stuff where it responds to how you play. Like, if you're spotted in one level, the people after you will send more agents in for the next, or if you help some people take out a security camera, you can read about what they did next on the news terminal  in the next level. 

[Dewar]

So i sort of mostly like Grey Goo.

I really liked what Petroglyph was trying to do with that game and i played a bunch of it when it came out, but the game had some pretty aggravating issues with balance and some pretty fucked performance issues where people experienced varying degrees of sluggish performance approaching almost completely unplayable, and on PC's well above the recommended specs, it's important to note. Everybody i talked to about the game felt it wasn't running as well as it should. It was also missing a sizable number of promised features and there were some other small issues, like the skirmish AI being pretty lame at release. It was a game i couldn't really recommend, it was a pretty deeply flawed product at the time, but i really didn't want to dismiss it out of hand. I waited to see if they would fix the issues and sort of just forgot about it after a while.

Seeing several big updates get pulled down recently prompted me to load the game back up and see how its come along, and i've found that it runs much better - though perhaps still not where it seems like it should be -  and has seen some pretty comprehensive balance tweaks, though the game still feels recognizable as what i had played initially. There's also a ton of new multiplayer maps, match replays, much improved skirmish AI and... A paid campaign DLC that was apparently given to me for free at some point, i'm assuming because i bought the game around release. I looked into it and there was apparently a window where people could grab it for free, but i didn't do that, so i don't know what's up. Hey though, more is good, the campaign in that game was actually really enjoyable, it has some really elaborate and very challenging missions. (Emphasis on challenging, you will likely replay these missions a few times each and have to think hard about what you need to do to beat them.)

 

I like the game a lot, i think it's probably Petroglyph's best game, and i think it draws some pretty favorable comparisons to Westwood's original C&C games, though with a resource rate economy model and some really interesting factions, one of which kind of completely upends the more traditional elements of the game. (A faction with no structures that forces its opponents to be more proactive about scouting and harassment.)

I've seen a lot of Starcraft-types respond pretty negatively to the game for downplaying micro for macro, along with some assertions that there's a low skill ceiling, and... I mean... That it emphasizes broader strategies is something i actually really like about it, and i'm not competitive enough to have anything to say about the skill ceiling. (I'm generally not super competitive with RTS's anymore, i just want to do some bot stomps or play against friends.)

 

The game's mostly just been a ton of fun for me as an old RTS fan that has seen the genre drift further and further in directions i don't really care about.

 

So Grey Goo's a as far as i'm concerned, but people are still pretty divided on it. Check it out during a sale, maybe. To me, it feels like a game that probably has an audience out there that would really appreciate it, but with a rough launch period and divided critical response, has failed to catch the attention of.

I was really looking forward to that when it was near release, and then I thought about the amount of time it can take to beat a campaign in an RTS and shied away.

[Sno]

I was really looking forward to that when it was near release, and then I thought about the amount of time it can take to beat a campaign in an RTS and shied away.

It's about average duration for this kind of RTS campaign, it's around 15 missions, and it's the sort that delves deep into heavily scripted and puzzle-like scenarios, though with a few randomized elements to keep you on your toes. It took me a few days to finish the campaign, speaking personally. I wasn't expecting to get much out of the campaign, actually, i have generally felt like this style of campaign is something i've had my fill of, but Grey Goo seems like it's just trying so damn hard. The missions seemed pretty well designed to me and the game presents actually a fairly fun sci-fi adventure with some unexpectedly sharp production values. (It's a gorgeous game all around, and has a pretty great soundtrack.) I ended up enjoying it quite a bit, but i definitely found it quite rough difficulty-wise while i was still in the process of figuring out the game. (I'm pretty out of practice with RTS's, to be fair.) The game ramps up quick and kind of throws you into missions that feel like they belong at the end of the game while you're still pretty early in the campaign, it's a game that expects you to know how to get your eco up and running immediately, and will face you with overwhelming odds if you aren't able to act decisively. I felt it was a fun challenge though, i thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm really honestly just happy to see that Petroglyph continued to put work into this game, it had a lot of problems but i felt like there were some good foundations there, and with their continued updates i think it's shaped up into something that's now actually worth checking out. It's probably not for everyone, but it's exactly what i had been looking to get out of an RTS for quite a while. Bit of an oldschool RTS vibe with a slick layer of polish on it. (For example, one of the things that's been pretty divisive is that there are no active abilities on units. You might want to ground fire to lead artillery shots, and you have to manage your air units pretty carefully, but broadly it's not as concerned about the minutia of an individual fight as it is the makeup of the battlefield at large. That will either sound great, or be a big indication that it's not for you.)

[mikemariano]

I said I was going to quit Pillars of Eternity but I recently completed Pillars of Eternity.  It was good!

[Tanukitsune]

I just beat The Talos Principle and I think I might like it more than Portal, even though Portal is better written.

 

I've never felt so satisfied after solving a puzzle and I barely needed help, although some light beam puzzles are annoying since they only work if everything is placed perfectly.

 

Unfortunately, the default ending seems to reset all puzzles and I don't have it in me to do everything again, just to climb that tower. 

[elmuerte]

you can load a savegame

[Dewar]

I beat South Park: The Stick of Truth this weekend after about a month of being stalled out about half way through. It was a pretty good game.In general it used the TV material in a mostly witty, but sometimes silly, crude, or unnecessary way. Still by far the best adaptation from TV series to game that I've played. Also, it does a pretty good job of lampooning the tropes of RPGs without falling into the trap of becoming what you're making fun of. There's some unique ideas in there about using environmental hazzards to kill enemies before you even have to fight them, some pretty clever traversal stuff, and an RPG system that's a pretty good retread of Paper Mario. My only complaint is that it still felt like it overstayed its welcome. As much as people have praised it for being short, it still felt like several of the sections were longer than they needed to be to get the point across.

 

Still, I'd recommend it for South Park fans. If you're not into South Park, go play Bowser's Inside Story instead.

[kaputt]

I finished Batman Arkham Knight. Sort of. Well, the main campaign ended, but it seems I still gotta do some stuff to have some real closure to the story, but I'm not really in the mood right now, so I'll just watch the "real endings" on youtube.

 

Anyway, the game was great most of the time, but the Batmobile battles were a bit of a drag by the end. The Batmobile by itself it's cool, when you use it to solve puzzles and to have more firepower against common enemies it's pretty cool, but the amount of tank fights is pretty dumb, even by a comic book supervillain it was kind of a nonsense to see that much of tanks fighting Batman. IMO is the second best Batman game, still worse than Arkham Asylum. The level design is great and it's actually the first time that I was impressed with the visuals of a Batman game. 

[elmuerte]

Year Walk... I have no idea what I played. The puzzles are quite obsucre, and weird.

[Dewar]

Year Walk... I have no idea what I played. The puzzles are quite obsucre, and weird.

 

Did you download the companion app?

[elmuerte]

what companion app!? I played the PC version.