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Recently completed video games

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An Octave Higher is a pretty good visual novel about a Victorian-like magical world, they take a very scientific approach to magical, spells are in scientific notation and formulas and I kinda love that angle.

 

The story deals with the industrialization of magic, and the story of three characters from different backgrounds and a "True Ending" that I didn't mind working for.

 

It kinda sucks that the VN with the best stories are the ones you usually can talk the least about.

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From what I remember, you can't immediately start the game and then break into a bank, but if you start the game planning on a bank heist I seem to recall it doesn't take more than a few jobs. From what I remember your rating automatically jumps several levels when you do that, so you can start doing harder jobs quicker.

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I recently completed GTAV. It's incredible that a game that big can have nothing to say that isn't crass or vulgar or chauvinistic or plain old fashioned misogyny, and nothing else. I thought it was funny that in this open world crime simulator, a good portion of the game is doing regular everyday tasks, like mopping floors or doing some work at the docks or driving around in a car. Incidentally, you spend 90% of the game driving, but it isn't very fun to do so. It's just busy work to inflate the play time of the game. I couldn't help but think "This Is Why We Video Gaming" by Leigh Alexander after almost every mission, and every few minutes during the in between bits too. What a heap of rubbish.

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I just beat Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today, a post apocalyptic adventure where an event killed all electronics and polluted all thew water (yet somehow people are still alive) and with a disease called "The Dissolve" where you literally melt away.

 

Frankly, I didn't like how the game was presented to me, it just kept rubbing my face in it's dismal display of doom and destruction and yelling "Look at how horrible everything is!", only to top it off with an abrupt ending.

 

Not to mention that the character was a "Dissolved" from the beginning, despite never showing any symptoms, except the visions he gets...

The final puzzle lets you alter a vision of the past to get an item before it's destroyed, and not only does the character no comment about it, he later refuses to believe time travel is possible.

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The Beginner's Guide :tmeh:

A walking simulator which is purely narrative driven. There isn't much besides the story being presented. Just like in Dear Esther. It's not like with Gone Home where there's more to do. In TBG you just walk through the world hitting queues for the story to be told.

The story didn't really speak to me, so for me it's just a :tmeh: .

 

Coffin Dodgers :tdown:

A bad kart racer. It even feels unfinished in some parts, like upgrades which do not exist, but there is a slot visible. The levels aren't that great, quite often I got stuck behind a piece of geometry.

 

Armikrog :tmeh:

Spiritual successor to The Neverhood. In the end, rather disappointing. If you never played The Neverhood, or any other rather obscure adventure games, you might hate the game. Some of the puzzles are quite brutal to solve, requiring you to do obscure things or back track a lot. There is zero explanation on how the game works. The game in fact is just simply, just point and click. No inventory management needed, everything guides itself (which is not something you would expect). In a few cases there was some serious pixel hunting going on. When you start the game it is really promising with a nice into movie, but it falls apart quite quickly. The voice audio is really bad, everything sounds like it has been recorded in a large empty room. It happened to me a couple of times where the audio/music broke down. I did not experience any serious gameplay issues.

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I'm rather sad to hear how Armikrog turned out, but I'm also glad I didn't KS the game. :|

 

 

 

I beat Arc the Lad I, it was short and sweat for a JRPG, it felt so short that I actually bothered to do the obligatory giant optional dungeon and it was still under 20 hours. Despite the story being generic, I do like the art and characters, I specially love that Poco, the soldier that was crying and afraid in the game was the 2nd most powerful character by the end with his trumpet of doom.

 

I have a weakness for silly weapons...

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I finally beat "Rise of Nations" at "normal" level.

 

For such an old game, it has some great AI. You don't feel like the computer is cheating (this has been a pest in RTS's and turn-based strategies since "Civilization" - computer simply got "freebies" at higher difficulty levels), it's actually working harder than you are.

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I dusted off my old Dawn of War 2 save this weekend and played through the Chaos Rising campaign. Man, I really love how they structured that game. It almost feels like Dota2 at times, a game of positioning and using the right abilities at the right time. Unfortunately, the second expansion, Retribution, has lost some of the charm by dropping the reoccurring characters and allowing you to play as a bunch of different races, which just feels like it's watering down the experience.

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I beat two games recently,

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

So now I'm officially a Metal Gear fan. Out of the 6 I've played, these 2 are by far the best. Mechanically V is beautiful. It's like like someone designed the perfect game. For 3, it's certainly competent mechanically, enough that I didn't initially hate it like I did 1 and 2. It's fun to play with a few weak points (that healing system ugh).

I don't have much more to say on V, I love it. Can't get enough of it. I have a lot to say about 3, but I might type that up in the MGS thread. The only regret I have, is that playing MGS3 on vita, all I could think was how much better it is suited to being on a big tv. It's not a portable game, and it really shows.

I'd really like to play through. 3 again because I think hiding under some Kojima weirdness, there's a great game there. I also think it's probably he greatest James Bond film/game ever made. Seriously, getting some crazy 007 vibes from it.

Oh and David Hayter is awful. Terrible, terrible voice actor. I prefer a silent Kiefer any day, even if his silent moments are awkward as fuck.

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Oh and David Hayter is awful. Terrible, terrible voice actor.

 

I wish you didn't have to be so wrong!

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I've been playing

lately and that game is absolutely fucking awesome and people should play it.

 

There's a lot of good subtle mechanical nuance that says to me the designer has a real love the bullet hell genre. For example, you can burst a shield for an area-of-effect offensive attack or manipulate your max-level damage-over-time projectile to move slower across large enemies. (You can also, on the fly, trade score for extra lives if you're struggling.)

 

There's also a roguelite "macro" mode that has a really labyrinthine upgrade system and free-roaming spaces. It... Feels a little janky and unpolished in ways the main modes don't, but it's also been pretty entertaining.

 

The visual style and the soundtrack are pretty terrific too.

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I found myself playing Super Mario Bros 3 today in an effort to calm down and entertain my roomies' two year old as neither of them could get him to smile (it worked!). Thing is, I've beaten the game before when I was a child, but today was the first time I actually had an honest run at the game since. I've certainly poked at SMB3 a few times via the SNES port in All-Stars, but never saw past world 3 in those times.

 

Today was like a refresher course, but a lot also felt new as there were a few things I just outright didn't remember. It felt new and familiar all at the same time. Most of the levels in the game were fairly easy to remember after all these years, especially since the game was built to have a lot of one-off themes for levels. They didn't rely on making levels longer as the means of making them difficult; in the last 3rd of the game there were plenty of levels that took a minute to beat, but required a lot of intimate know-how with the mechanics by that point in the game (most of these stages featured very cruelly used Lakitus hurrying you along).

 

SMB3 is just so damn fascinating as a game. While not TRULY unique, every stage is more or less as close to unique as you can get while using the same framework of mechanics. I'm sleep deprived at the moment and having a hard time putting it succinctly, but hopefully other people that played it know what I mean and can describe it better.

 

It was also interesting getting reminded that some of the over-used tricks from those impossible Mario Maker / Kaizo levels were used once or twice in a more fair manner in SMB3. Like jumping out of a situation only to hit a row of invisible coin blocks, that sort of thing. Nintendo definitely knew how to pull punches with that stuff, not crossing the line of RNG / unfair territory and giving people a chance to adjust to those surprises.

 

Maybe it's nostalgia for the most part talking but hot damn, what a great game. I missed it.

 

Edit - Oh and I ran through every stage, 100% and resorted to the P-wing two times only and only after having honest runs at those particular levels.

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And now for a new game I've beaten; Mass Effect 2. Hooray!

 

So I can say for sure that Mass Effect 2 is superior to Mass Effect in every respect, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not that hung up on the combat aspects of each game. While ME2 certainly cleaned things up and made it better, a non-compelling combat system being made better is still non-compelling. Most of my praise for the series so far has to do with its writing. While "save the universe!" plots are really tired, the things happening along the way make the journey worth it. ME2 did a better job at humanizing (hurr) the characters on your team. Subject Zero ended up surprising me the most. From the way Chris talked about her on Idle Thumbs years ago I had some biases formed up. And those biases were met until I went on her loyalty mission and generally got to know her better. I was playing a female Shepard so I couldn't see the romance stuff, but I read about how there's a split path with Jack; a quickie, or an actual involved relationship. And her way of talking to get into the latter seemed more real, I guess, than what I would've expected.

 

There's definitely a lot to talk about when it comes to this game and the series as a whole but I'm not gonna get into it all right now. Last thing I will note though is that the big reveal at the end of part 2 was no more or less cheesy than anything else that was happening in the games at that point.

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Just completed the "true ending" of Metal Gear Solid 5. :tmeh:

Although I still have actual story 1 mission to unclock, I did complete the main story thingy. It's a :tmeh: for me simply because it's just way too long. The should have just removed all the mission replays from part 2 (even though I didn't play any of them) and removed the high requirement of completion of side ops just to complete the main story. Additionally, I did not like the fact that you are mostly punished by the game for being stealthy (as time is the most import factor to get a high rank) and that you are quite often forced into combat for the story missions even though you were a ghost up to that part.

That being said, the game mechanics are really really polished (except for walking up tiny slopes). A little while ago I went back to the weird "demo" of MGSV "Ground Zeroes", and playing that felt like going back in time 5+ years.

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And those biases were met until I went on her loyalty mission and generally got to know her better. I was playing a female Shepard so I couldn't see the romance stuff, but I read about how there's a split path with Jack; a quickie, or an actual involved relationship. And her way of talking to get into the latter seemed more real, I guess, than what I would've expected.

 

I remember trying to get into Jack's pants, trying to wheedle my way in by saying just the right things, the things I thought she wanted to hear. Completely reprehensible behaviour really, considering she has trust issues and was finally starting to see me as someone she could trust.

 

Anyway, she saw completely through my act and rebuffed me totally, and it was *awesome*. So often with dialogue choices in Mass Effect (and in ME2, just not that convo) I knew exactly what to say to achieve the outcome I wanted - gaming the system, basically - but with this one the excellent writing was geared to counter that kind of behaviour, without feeling at all fake or out of character. Just top-notch characterisation in that game, not with everyone, but with a fair few

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All of my romances in every Bioware game are purely accidental because I'm nice to people.

 

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, I stopped being nice and just ALWAYS picked the flirt option with everybody, since they provided it so clearly and blatantly and I thought that was kinda dumb.

 

Of course that meant I ended up with Dorian, the hunk. <3

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Oh man that reminds me.

 

So Mass Effect 2 also scored points because it didn't brute-force me into a relationship with any of my team members, unlike ME1 (where, if you're nice to Liara at all, she wins out; so you have to be a dick to her about at least two things). On top of that, at what I suppose would be THE sex scene, my Shepard instead just looked at the photo of Kaiden on her desk for a bit, then went on to do what Shepard does best; blow shit up.

 

So yeah, I'm very pleased with Bioware about that.

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ME2 definitely gave me relationships I didn't ask for. Jack and Tali, if I recall correctly.

 

This is reminding me that I want to replay 1 and 2 (as Femshep!) because I still haven't played 3. And it's been a long time.

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Heh.

 

I liked Thane a lot, though, I would've been okay with that.

 

The internet fetishization of Tali weirds me out, though, and although I think Jack isn't a bad character, I don't really like her.

 

(My real one-true-love is, OF COURSE, Garrus!)

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Heh.

 

I liked Thane a lot, though, I would've been okay with that.

 

The internet fetishization of Tali weirds me out, though, and although I think Jack isn't a bad character, I don't really like her.

 

(My real one-true-love is, OF COURSE, Garrus!)

garrus___i__d_calibrate_that_by_karlgreg

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You don't even have to TRY to nail Garrus, I think. He's pretty open right away talking in innuendos and aaaaaa it was weird.

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It was also interesting getting reminded that some of the over-used tricks from those impossible Mario Maker / Kaizo levels were used once or twice in a more fair manner in SMB3. Like jumping out of a situation only to hit a row of invisible coin blocks, that sort of thing. Nintendo definitely knew how to pull punches with that stuff, not crossing the line of RNG / unfair territory and giving people a chance to adjust to those surprises.

 

Playing Mario Maker has kind of been a weird lesson in how much of what constitutes "good" level design is simply knowing when to have some empty space. There are just so, so, so many levels that seem to think "This spot doesn't have anything in it, what should i put here that will challenge the player?" and those levels often just come across as relentless and unfun.

 

I also generally feel that levels should be designed to be theoretically completable on a first run, that every obstacle should be slightly telegraphed even if they are still significantly challenging. Surprise deaths from bad leaps of faith or enemies in item blocks or invisible blocks positioned above death pits just make me instantly quit out of a level. That's some real disrespect to the player.

Lakitus are also terrible. Swarms of RNG enemies are the worst.

There are so many terrible Mario Maker levels, even if Mario Maker is itself an awesome thing.

 

...

 

Oh hey, this is the recently completed thread.

Thumbs up to Mario Maker, everybody go play Mario Maker.

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I replayed Monument Valley but this time I also the Forgotten Shores addon.  I liked Monument Valley the first time but Forgotten Shores really steps up the game.  There's some clever play on the perspective mechanics and one level is super Escher in it's puzzles.  Still a really beautiful game that's simplicity is maybe it's greatest strength.

 

The full game, including the addons, are free on Android via Amazon's Underground app

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You don't even have to TRY to nail Garrus, I think. He's pretty open right away talking in innuendos and aaaaaa it was weird.

 

I always got the feeling that he was just being war buddies and was a bit shocked when I expressed interest. 

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