gdf

Recently completed video games

Recommended Posts

I've played a bunch of Telltale Episodes and visual novels lately:

 

-Quantum Conscience: A sci-fi visual novel where you have the power to read minds and the path you take is decided by whether you do so or not. For example, if you read the minds of the hotel staff for information, your friend will disappointed and think being an agent is too easy.

 

But... I felt like I had no real control of the story, specially when the game decided for me to romance the girl that according to the game, didn't like me, but... we became an item? The story was good though.

 

-Bermuda: Have you played Unhack? It's like that except you have to play a silly stealth game between visual novel parts. The story felt too short and I felt I barely got to know anybody.

 

-Date Warp: On your first date, the car breaks down and you end up in a strange house that ends up trapped in a barrier, to find out the truth behind everything in the house you must complete all the other routes as you learn the secrets of other characters. I'm must be decent since the people I hated at first I got a pretty decent character arc as I got to know them.

 

-NEO AQUARIUM - The King of Crustaceans: A fighting game where you play as a mollusk with lasers... you can even play as a barnacle and it's pure madness and fun!

 

-Adventures of Bertram Fiddle: A short episodic adventure that did have pretty straightforward puzzles, but the charm of the Victorian world and the funny dialogue make up for it.

 

-Telltale's Borderlands: I think it might be one of my current favorites since it has the urgency and danger of the other modern Telltale games, but the humor of the early TT games.

 

-Tellatale's Game of Thrones: You'd think "tough decision simulator" would be perfect for this franchise, but... in the end, you just know everything will end horribly, so the decisions no longer matter. At least with Walking Dead or Wold Among Us I felt like my actions might save someone, even if at a great cost, but here? I feel like every choice is just delaying the inevitable or choosing between which horrible death will happen... 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

what companion app!? I played the PC version.

 

Oh, I don't know how that works then. Looking at the website, it seems it was integrated. Did you read the book that had the weird fairy tales in it? Did you open the puzzle box?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ah, on iOS, that stuff was in a different app, so it's a lot more likely that people just missed it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

On a Vita kick.

 

Danganronpa 2 (Vita) - Loved the first one, rebought a Vita in part to play this. It is a bad game. For the first 25 hours it's an almost identical retread of the first but with awful, hateful characters and some really cringey fanservice bits that make it hard to play on the train. There is nothing in this part of it that builds upon the ending of the original so having had that nice twist you have to keep plodding on to get more backstory which is almost the whole reason I wanted to play it to begin with. Once you get there, the plot such as it is is shat on you in one big lump for the final few hours and I couldn't maintain interest in following it by that end to be honest. This is not Virtue's Last Reward, there is no clever twist, it's just a very average VN with some truly appalling trial minigames. You're probably better off just watching the anime to be honest. So disappointed.

 

Sayonara Umihara Kawase Chirahi (Vita) - I mark a game as completed when the credits roll so this is counted even though I've seen maybe 10% of it and will be coming back to it for years yet. I've spent a fortune on Umihara Kawase games in the past and this is definitely the best package you can buy (I think it's called Yumi's Odd Odyssey in North America) being an improved version of the recentish 3DS game and including the classic Super Famicom original. It's pretty amazing. It's a 2D physics-based platformer (stay with me) where the gimmick is you have a kind of elastic grapple rope thing and have to use it to propel yourself around levels with multiple exits, so getting to the next level is generally pretty straightforward but getting to the special exit that branches off the map and unlocks further new bits is where the longevity is. It's impossible to convey how good it is to play but when you get a feel for it and can fling yourself around these levels in ways you couldn't have imagined at first it is the best.

 

Persona 4: Dancing All Night (Vita) - It's the best rhythm game since Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and I don't throw that around lightly. I loved the P4 soundtrack anyway so I'm biased but the remixes here are very strong for the most part and there's a ton of them. Story mode is really meaty too, way more content than I'd expected, but I got exhausted with the amount of reading required so the finer points were kind of lost on me. Great stuff though, and I am already debating whether to buy the European version too so I can buy DLC which is something I never thought I'd say about anything.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I beat episode four of Telltale's Game of Thrones and while started playing the series hating the show and groaning at the game, I actually enjoyed this episode although probably just for one scene where you can get a rival merchant very angry at you.

 

E.X. Troopers: I'm pretty sure the only reason anybody heard of this game was because some thought it was some Mega Man Legends spin-off, and frankly, it's gameplay does remind me a LOT of that game. It's really a Lost Planet spin-off that's so anime it hurts SOOO good! The game is so visual that it didn't matter that I barely understand Japanese. It does have a few missions where you must protect someone while they hack a terminal of sorts, so obviously the game throws enemies with rocket launchers at these moments. I still love it!  :tup:

 

Neverending Nightmares: Wow, this game felt like a slog and it was only an hour long. How can such a short game feel so long? Everything is a jump scare and anything that could have been creepy or scary is abused so much that it stops being scary and becomes either funny or annoying. You spends most of the game confused seeing a dead girl everywhere, up to a point where it literally rains corpses of her.... wow, how subtle. I think the truth behind everything might change depending on which path you take, but I can't be bothered to find out.  :tdown:  :tdown:  :tdown:

 

Harmful Park: OH GOD, YEEEESSS! It's been ages since I've played a cute and quirky shmup, Parodius style, an amusement park has been taken over by a weird clown scientist and you must fly around with your mother's invention a ship that shoots jelly beans and pies and has an ice cream laser. The game is just so pretty and weird and every screen has some character dancing in the background or something funny or cute. How can I not love a game where one of the mid-bosses is an actual wedding where you dodge hearts and tears?  :tup:  :tup:  :tup:

 

L.S.D. Dream Simulator: This kinda of a non-game where you just run around in a dream-like world looking at how weird it is... except it's not that weird, specially after playing Harmful Park. How am I supposed to be shocked by a flying elephant after killing an inflatable dino with jelly beans in Harmful Park? *shrugs*

 

Hatsume Miku: Project Diva f: My first Miku game and probably my last. I must say, that the game does give you more bang for your buck with so many songs and while some of the videos where fun, I didn't like the game play.

 

Sure I suck at rhythm games, but in this one it didn't feel like I was doing anything following a rhythm except for some of the bridges of the song. The game seems to have a health bar that depletes as you mess up, but it doesn't seem necessary, if you mess up THAT many notes in a row you have to worse at rhythm games than me.

 

The Way We All Go: This might be a horror game or a "yandere" simulator, when I died the first time there was barely any time for shock or terror, a girl just knocks on my door and stabs me, I did try for more ending, but frankly they were all pretty dumb. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Neverending Nightmares: Wow, this game felt like a slog and it was only an hour long. How can such a short game feel so long? Everything is a jump scare and anything that could have been creepy or scary is abused so much that it stops being scary and becomes either funny or annoying. You spends most of the game confused seeing a dead girl everywhere, up to a point where it literally rains corpses of her.... wow, how subtle. I think the truth behind everything might change depending on which path you take, but I can't be bothered to find out.  :tdown:  :tdown:  :tdown:

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. That and the fact that you move really really slow makes the game feel so long.

I think you choose a different path because I didn't have a lot of corpses of her. I'm not sure if I feel like going back to play the alternate paths and the game is so tedious.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Harmful Park: OH GOD, YEEEESSS! It's been ages since I've played a cute and quirky shmup, Parodius style

This is the main feature that I look for in a Shoot 'em Up, so thanks for the write up!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. That and the fact that you move really really slow makes the game feel so long.

I think you choose a different path because I didn't have a lot of corpses of her. I'm not sure if I feel like going back to play the alternate paths and the game is so tedious.

 

I ran almost all the time I could, I think it's the passages that look the same what really wore me down, but since you beat it too, did you get an ending where

it turns out the your daughter and wife look alike, your daughter died and your wife leaves you because you can't get over the loss?

 

This is the main feature that I look for in a Shoot 'em Up, so thanks for the write up!

 

It's on the Japanese PSN and if you're going to get it, try to get 100% Cotton, another cute and quirky shmup!  :tup:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I recently completed:

 

Lilly Looking Through: A sort of cute, very easy, and very tedious click-'em-up. The puzzles are never hard, but sometimes they take a lot of annoying fiddling. Wouldn't really recommend it to someone with experience in the genre. It might be fun to play with a small child?

 

Tiny Bang Story: A hidden picture game! I don't play these often. the only reason I grabbed this one is because I played it before with a friend a few years ago, and I remember it being enjoyable enough. It has some puzzles, so it's not all just clicking until you find junk. Main problem is the usual problem with these kinds of games: you've found all but one thing and the last thing is right there in your face but you'll never see it.

 

The Novelist: Interesting, I suppose, but really didn't do much for me. I think I got the best ending possible, or at least close to it! I like the idea of playing as a ghost-thing and manipulating a family to your whim, but it sometimes felt rather arbitrary what decisions these people were making, and really if you just balance who you help out with each phase, it's impossible to get it wrong, even if some of the decisions seem like they should matter a lot more.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I ran almost all the time I could, I think it's the passages that look the same what really wore me down, but since you beat it too, did you get an ending where

it turns out the your daughter and wife look alike, your daughter died and your wife leaves you because you can't get over the loss?

Nope, had the

guy being in the hospital after a suicide attempt (cutting wrists) with crying sister next to him

The middle ending.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ok, I really have to talk about Discouraged Workers and I don't know how.

 

It's a very short visual novel, but like 999 and Danganronpa you can't really talk about it without spoiling anything. From the title you can tell it's about an unemployed woman who has given up on getting a job... and that's it's DARK.

 

I'm baffled such a game exists on Steam, because this is the first game on Steam with 

a REAL sex scene, sure you can see naked people on Steam and you can see them having sex.. but in a TV/movie kind of way that's mostly censored, but you can tell what's going on. This one has.... fluids (but censored)... *blushes*

 

The story just got more intense and gripping and I sighed in relief was it was truly over.... I can't really say more about it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, just finished Dragon Age Inquisition, there is still a lot of things I need to think about it, but the overall is really positive, below are some quick thought on the game (might expand this later in the DAI thread later):

 

The Good

All your party members, their history and dialogues

Item crafting

Music

 

The Bugs

Later in the game I run in two major issues - sometimes a really strange thing happen and my characters keep in combat mode, even after the combat finished, I could not move very well, like there was a rubber band keeping my character in place and I could not save. This issue however, while ruined a fighting against a dragon (I had to restart the game) was solved in later patches. The second one was a very strange delay in dialogues with characters, where several second would pass and they won´t say anything or advance the dialogue, this was quite combined with a loading bug where some npcs would not show up in Skyhold, unless I reload it. That caused me to miss important stuff, such when Blackwall leaves, because I was so used to see not him appear, that I didn´t noticed he truly gone until too late and had to load a older save.

 

The Not so good

While the overall writting is really good, there was some parts where is rather weak, stuff just happen with no context in some quests (like the Let´s Kill a Beast, where you go kill something and the quest just ends, or the Missing Patrol, where you waste hour looking around but the quest only end when you pick a worthless stuff from a chest and by third there was this quest in desert where you go looking around some stones to find a hidden place, but once you find it, nothing really happen, once you cross the door the quest just ends), sometimes you do quest out of order - like the one to clean the ramparts that you mostly like to finish even before you knew what his going or finding the npc.

In Skyhold the npcs are just way too far away from each other, which make the runs to talk to everybody tiring also this combined with the bug that causes them to not load is really annoying and often can cause you to miss important stuff or events.

Sometimes I felt that npcs didn´t react to things around them, it´s hard to explain, maybe I was just expecting to much given the overall level of Bioware writting. But there was moments where large event happen and my party simple didn´t say a word, like the quest there you find some uncover some really important truths about Elven history, no one in my party says anything, not even my on character how is a Dalish elf and should have at least be surprised by what he just find out.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I finished Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. It's possibly the best thing I played on the PS4 so far, certainly the most beautiful one, musically and visually. It has a lot of sensibility that's often missing in games. Really enjoyed this one. 

 

 

 

The Novelist: Interesting, I suppose, but really didn't do much for me. I think I got the best ending possible, or at least close to it! I like the idea of playing as a ghost-thing and manipulating a family to your whim, but it sometimes felt rather arbitrary what decisions these people were making, and really if you just balance who you help out with each phase, it's impossible to get it wrong, even if some of the decisions seem like they should matter a lot more.

 

This game has been sitting on my backlog for a while, as lot of other games are, but I guess I should just skip this one then. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

[The Novelist] has been sitting on my backlog for a while, as lot of other games are, but I guess I should just skip this one then. 

 

I think your reaction to the game can vary wildly based on your life experiences. Some of the early choices do seem a bit arbitrary, to the point of absurdity (can't you find a way to work your schedules so your wife can take art classes and spend time with your kid?). For most of the game, I was on the fence. I appreciated some parts of it while thinking others were poorly done. Once I got to the game's final choice, things just hit too close to home for me.

 

So, the game's final choice focuses on the father getting a job offer to teach English at a University somewhere far away. Leaving aside the fact that this is a comically simple version of how getting an academic job works, I found it to be a really difficult choice to make. Jobs like this one are hard to come by, but taking the offer would mean uprooting the rest of the family just for the father's happiness and career.

I'm a grad student right now married to someone who has a career and life of her own where we live. I know that in a few years, I'll be looking for a position as a professor, and if I (somehow) manage to find one, it will mean asking my wife to give up all she has here and move to some new place that we probably know nothing about.

As much as the game had lots of weak moments in its writing, that final choice actually made me reflect about the direction of my life in the next few years, which isn't something that happens with games, or really any other medium, that often. I'm willing to forgive it any other faults as a result of that.

 

Non-spoiler version: the game's ending had some stuff in it that made me reflect on my life and relationships. Even if there are some weak moments to the writing or some questionable design choices, I think it's worth a look.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Finished Final Fantasy XIII,I did enjoyed almost everything from this game much more that I would imagine, despite what people often say about it.

 

I had no problem with the so said, "corridors" or with Lightining herself, which I found ok character and the Paradigm system is quite good as its the overall story. The only issues I noticed was, that many times combat can be decided by knowing before hand what enemy you would face, so you would have the right paradigms, however it is very easy at some points to be catch off guard (in a Gestalt battle) or simple unaware of what you Paradigms you need. There was two points in the game which I found quit tiring, the Ark which is very long and some battles are very annoying and the Gran Pulse part where you do all those side missions to hunts bosses, because you almost have no context why you are doing that and the battle against some of this enemies can be too hard.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Finished Majora's Mask 3D! I thought about why I like it and it's because it's the most interesting and thought-provoking Zelda. Sometimes it's tough to get through, but the story that it tells and the questions it asks are far in advance of the standard good/evil light/dark dualities. Really wonderful.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A Story About My Uncle :tup:

It's a shot non-violent 3D platforming game. You've got jump boots and a grappling hook which has a couple of charges before you need to land. It has quite a gorgeous world through which you traverse. There's also a bit of a story. It's short, but quite nice. Took me a little over 2 hours to go through. As with most 3D platforming games you often fail to stick your landing, or grapple on a suitable surface. Near the end there are a couple of infuriating parts. Unlike most games, non of the achivements are easy to get, in fact, some of them are seriously challenging (complete a level without falling, complete a level with only X grapplings).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Alum: It's a very old-school style adventure in a sci-fi world, but also very VERY religious? I don't know what to think about the religion of the game, since it's the driving force in the plot.

An epidemic is consuming the land and only the "Altruist" can stop it.

 

The Altruist's "religion" is never really called one, but you can't be forced into it, you must drink of a phial willingly and suddenly you're filled with his love and forgiveness and the illness is gone. The world and lore is pretty interesting and the religion part never really bothered me. :tup:

 

The Silent Age: The story of a 70's janitor who gets caught in time travelling adventure where only he can stop the end of the world. The story is pretty interesting and the 70's vibe is pretty great too.

 

The puzzles mostly consist between travelling from the present to the future and altering a few things to open new paths. :tup:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've been busy, I completed two games.

The Witcher 3 and Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

The Witcher was a pretty good game. The narrative is a bit of a mix. It shifts from incredible moments like the famous bloody baron quest line to boring fantasy shit as the game moves into the final act. I completely lost interest in the final act. It felt excessive and it felt like the open world design became more of a hindrance, rather than an augmentation.

The Witcher 3 is best when you're looking for Ciri. You're traversing a world encountering different and exciting things along the way. Characters, objects and small stories all make sense in the context of searching and looking for Ciri. Compare that to other open world RPGs of note like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Skyrim. Their open worlds make very little sense. They're distractions from the grave mission you're on to save the world.

The controls suck, but what can you do? I was able to look past that for much of the game, but it became a chore in the final act.

if the game had ended when you found Ciri and defended the castle, I'd be arguing for it as a great game. Because it keeps going, it's only good.

Dark Souls 2 surprised me. I lost steam the first time I tried to play it. I as was surprisingly close to the end (unbeknownst to me at the time) and just lost interest. SotFS held me in to the end.

It's a souls game, so if you like that, you'll like DS2. It has one major problem in that the game limits your rolling invincibility frames from the start, requiring you to invest in a stat to increase it. It was an awful design choice which makes the start of the game painfully frustrating.

Once you get past that, it has some good bosses, some great areas to explore and a lot of tough challenges.

Flexile Setnry, Ruin Sentinels, sir Alonne, Fume Knight where the ones that stood out to me as the best.

The sheer number of ways to do things in DS2 is to its credit. You can cast in 4 different ways. You can use huge swords and maces or fast katanas and rapiers. Each has their advantage and disadvantage, but I don't think any one is the optimal way.

I'm now playing NG+, I've completely ditched my shield (which in the latter half of the game was merely for stamina regen) and it's fantastic. I'd liked to have done this from the start, but the agility stat makes it very difficult. Despite what many people have said, DS2 is a great game and a great souls game. I'm planning on getting the platinum trophy, but that's really just an excuse to play more DS2.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I finished Metroid Fusion on the 3ds Ambassador download. It's a shame I didn't beat this four hour game when I first bought it back in 2002. It's my first completed non-Prime Metroid game.

Now to conquer something less directed! Probably Super or Zero Mission

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think it really counts as "finishing" it, as this was only on Beginner difficulty, but I completed a playthrough of Invisible, Inc. for the first time. Playing it in short bursts (a mission or two a day) helped to keep it enjoyable, I think, but I'm looking forward to trying it on Experienced difficulty (I didn't replay a single level this playthrough, and only rewound twice, so Beginner was definitely too easy).

I'm really impressed by how well Invisible, Inc. works, both technically (the interplay of quite a lot of complex systems is near-perfect, without any apparent balance issues) and in terms in narrative and setting (obviously, the common noir and cyberpunk elements help with broad-strokes setting, but there's a lot of little touches which work well together).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I finished Metroid Fusion on the 3ds Ambassador download. It's a shame I didn't beat this four hour game when I first bought it back in 2002. It's my first completed non-Prime Metroid game.

Now to conquer something less directed! Probably Super or Zero Mission

I've got Fusion waiting on my 3DS but I want to play Super first. Still waiting for a controller adapter off ebay - it's been 2 months!

 

I just finished Resident Evil on the DS. I went through in Classic mode, so pretty much got the vanilla PS1 experience. I used youtube a bit in the second half. I wanted to try an original tank-RE but I've got an aversion to tank controls. I tried years ago with REmake on Gamecube and couldn't stand it. The game was a lot more generous with ammo and supplies than I was expecting, which gave me the confidence to plough ahead. There's enough ammo to kill practically everything so long as you don't Wiggum it away. Ultimately I enjoyed it, and was surprised to see just how much has been carried through to the sequels. I now need to read up on how the hell that script and voice acting came to be. They sounded like American actors but I don't understand how any actor could give a reading like that! All. Of. A. Sudden. Every. Single. Word. Is. Fully. And. Unnaturally. Enunciated.

 

It's entertaining now, and the novelty of voice acting at all must have been incredible at the time. But jeez.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Finished Lara Croft GO.  It's mostly the same as Hitman GO with Tomb Raider aesthetics, although there are some gameplay changes such as traps, wall climbling, and even a boss fight.  It's pretty short, 41 levels across 5 chapters.  There are some collectables along the way but they don't require any puzzle solving beyond simply spotting a jar in the background and tapping on it.  It lacks the objectives that Hitman GO had such as clearing a level with a certain number of moves or not killing any enemies.  The puzzles seemed easier as well.  It's not bad overall but I'd say Hitman GO was better.  Hopefully they'll add more levels to Lara Croft like they did with Hitman.  I'd also like to see more games get a GO version.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think it really counts as "finishing" it, as this was only on Beginner difficulty, but I completed a playthrough of Invisible, Inc. for the first time. Playing it in short bursts (a mission or two a day) helped to keep it enjoyable, I think, but I'm looking forward to trying it on Experienced difficulty (I didn't replay a single level this playthrough, and only rewound twice, so Beginner was definitely too easy).

I'm really impressed by how well Invisible, Inc. works, both technically (the interplay of quite a lot of complex systems is near-perfect, without any apparent balance issues) and in terms in narrative and setting (obviously, the common noir and cyberpunk elements help with broad-strokes setting, but there's a lot of little touches which work well together).

 

I found Experienced to be about the right difficulty to me. It was hard enough to make me restart once or twice, but things were loose enough to let me pull off some pretty silly crap on the last mission.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now