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Finished Evoland 2 :tmeh:

The original one was quite bad, started of really interesting to show you how jRPGs evolved, but after a while it felt unfinished and wrapped up in a hurry. In Evoland 2 it looks like it wants to do the same, show the evolution of JRPGs, it starts out like that, but it stops doing that quite fast. It's like after developing the first 30 minutes of the game they decided they didn't want to go that way. Instead they created a jRPG which is set in 3 time frames, each time frame it shown as a console generation (i.e. 8bit, 16bit, 32bit) style graphics. But there's more, they tried to fit in pretty much every other style of game from the 8bit and 16bit era. There's some 2D platforming stuff, connect-three, turn based strategy, shoot-em-up (2 styles), beat-em-up, double dragon like brawler, card game, even some DDR. (all except for tower defense)

It's all well constructed and looks nice. There are just a couple of really annoying elements. There is no quest log, so if you skipped too fast through the long and slow dialogues you often have no idea what to do. And yes, the dialogues are really slow, way too many "...", and of course the slow text presentation, and unskippable animations. The 3 time frames/worlds cannot be easily switched, instead you have to travel to a point to switch to a different time (followed by an unskippable animation) and return to the place where you previously were (in the wrong time). These things make the game really tedious as you are constantly traveling around to figure out where to go next. It made the game quite long for me, 21 hours to complete.

Anyway, if you're into old style jRPGs and want to play a whole bunch of other game types, you might want to try this one out. (It's currently in the humble bundle at the $10 level.)

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I finished KOTOR2 for like the 5th time. I just blasted through this game, having not played it since the OG XBOX I had pretty much forgotten everything. It's fantastic though, and while 1 will always be a great game to me thanks to nostalgia, I think 2 surpasses it in almost every way.

 

My major gripe with the game is that Dark Side essentially means psychopath. I ended up playing through as a Light Side guy because most of the choices made more sense. Then there's the issue that being full light/dark gives you an extremely useful +3 stat bonus. It makes it almost impossible to follow a "grey" path like Kreia instructs you to (and feels the most realistic). 

 

I played as a Jedi Master - i.e. one who uses force powers, I usually follow a more weapon focussed path, but I decided to do something different. It felt way less fun. I had to buff myself 2 or 3 times before a lot of my spells would go off at early game, then at end game once I got the super force mastery thing, I was able to just stun every opponent and that was that. 

As a light side player, force powers aren't really that fun. You get a stun, a bunch of buffs and that's it. So instead of stunning people then tearing them down with AoE force spells, I had to stun, attack with my weak ass lightsaber then stun again until everything was dead. An evil play through would have made that much more satisfying.

 

I still think it's a great game, the story is a lot more subtle than the good/evil of KOTOR1, and I really appreciate that. 

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Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

I loved the game, the mystery and characters where great, specially because, unlike the first game, where I had watched the anime before, this time I don´t know what to expect. They could just added a better explanation of how some minigames work, I take me a while to figure what I was supposed to do in the Monomi´s minigame or in Rebuttal Showdown during the trials. However, the Logic Dive was fun.

Warning Lots of Spoilers!


 

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Serious, last warning!

 

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The ending is amazing, because, you know that advice that you should not have last second reveals or plot twists in the end? Danganronpa 2 thrown this out of the window and pull of performing a amazing trick, that got me surprised at every turn as things came to conclusion, some unexpected deaths caught me so off guard, that until the end I was still was worried about the few students left.

 

Also the reveal that the students in the game, where in fact not just student from Hope´s Peak, but Remnants of Despair  shocked me - specially, given what Junko suggest that they might have done in name of their devotion to her and that scene where Nagito appear with Junko´s hand attached to his own arm...



 

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I finally finished Stephen's Sausage Roll yesterday. It took me about 30 hours and it was perfect. It would've been my favorite puzzle game ever if it wasn't for The Witness.

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I just beat Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls, a "Mega-Brawl-Vania", where a khimera girl fight Mega Man-like bosses in a brawler style and uses their powers to unlock secret areas.... Did I mention one of the bosses is a PIZZA slime girl?

 

The game is so good I feel BAD that it's free on Steam. 

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Gravity Rush Remastered on PS4. Loved it! Very original setting and unique gameplay. If I'm being honest the gameplay isn't perhaps quite up on the same level as, for instance the later Infamous and Batman games, in terms of how satisfying they feel, but they're unique and unlike anything else enough that I'd have no hesitation about recommending this title to anyone in the market for a cool superhero game.

 

Here's some gameplay footage I captured:

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Did you play it on Vita? I liked it a lot there and wonder how it compares. I'm definitely curious about GR2, but the touch stuff actually felt really right for the game on Vita, so I'm a bit worried about the sequel ditching to the PS4 for a more standard controller.

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Human Resource Machine :tmeh:

It's one of those games where you have to write small programs using a reduced assembly language. The problems aren't really that difficult (if you're a programmer) and most challenges I also managed to complete on the first try. Every puzzle has a size and speed challenge. Sometimes there isn't a single solution for both, in this case it's usually unrolling your logic. So it can be quite complicated if you're not a programmer.

It's all ok to play, except that entering the program is really annoying when you have large programs. For one challenge my solution was over 100 statements, given that you only see like 15 statements on the screen this is really cumbersome. The 100+ statement solution I worked out in notepad because it was easier to handle, only made a few mistakes copying it over to the game :/

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Did you play it on Vita? I liked it a lot there and wonder how it compares. I'm definitely curious about GR2, but the touch stuff actually felt really right for the game on Vita, so I'm a bit worried about the sequel ditching to the PS4 for a more standard controller.

I played the first few missions on a friend's Vita last summer. I think the motion controls aiming was a bit more natural on the Vita, than with a DS4 gamepad, so I ended up mostly just aiming with the right stick. Other than that it's pretty much the same tho.

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I beat XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Then immediately deleted it from my hard drive. Iron man, normal difficulty. 

 

I have 12 different games that I've started and abandoned, and number 13 was the one that did it. Fuck that game, it's glorious and by far one of my favourite and most hated games of all time. 

 

Steam lost track of my hour count, but a good estimate must be around 200 hours to beat it. It's a stellar strategy game that fucks you over constantly. 95% to hit on an important target? You gonna miss. 20% to hit on a random pot shot, it crits and you kill stuff. 6 team members on overwatch? They all fire at the same guy, and they all miss.

 

In terms of balance, I didn't particularly like it. Snipers are strong, a little too strong, support start out practically useless, but become pretty decent. Assault are good all rounders and Heavies start out great, but by end game they're utter crap. Their only saving grace is the missile, and sometimes I'd just bring them for holo-targeting as a squad wide accuracy buff.

 

Psionic powers, particularly mind control are OP as fuck. Once you have 1 or 2 squad members with mind control, the game turns crazy easy. A full squad of mind controllers and you just can't lose. It was actually refreshing to find the last mission so easy because I could just mind control everything with my fully psychic dream-team.

 

Yeah, so XCOM was the best of games, and the worst of games. Fuck XCOM, it's brilliant. 

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I just finished playing Remember Me. A fairly mediocre experience throughout, though the highlights include the setting, music, and remix sequences, when they decide to finally show up. I was disappointed to find you only ever do the whole remixing thing four times in the whole game, and two of them involve the same memory being altered. The combat and map traversal were pretty awful, though the interesting-looking environments helped a bit to overcome how narrow and uninteresting the layout of the maps always were. Combat falls into that pitfall that most games have by rationing out special moves and abilities slowly over the course of the game (special moves are given to you at specific combat sequences throughout the game, making it a completely inorganic experience that doesn't at all match what the character is experiencing). I prefer games that present all or at least most of your abilities to you at the beginning, and you as a player develops the skills to use them effectively, rather than locking things off.

 

Anyway, I must have liked it somewhat, since I played it through to the end, although it is a rather short game. Fewer uninteresting combat sequences and more memory remixes would definitely push this game into more favourable territory for me.

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Finished Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance. That game is bananas in a lot of great ways. A core mechanic is slicing dudes into many pieces (which you have precision analog control of), pulling out their cyborg-spines, and crushing them in your fist to absorb their spine-juice (refilling your health). Take that mindset and expand it to the rest of the gameplay and story and you get a very fun game aside from when the shitty camera gets in the way. It also doesn't do a good job getting the nuances of the mechanics across...I ended up watching a few videos on youtube to get a better handle on things. I played on Normal and the game is pretty forgiving of button mashing...I think it would be a good game to Get Good at and play through on harder difficulties, but alas I don't really have time for such things when there are Witcher expansions out there.

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I beat XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Then immediately deleted it from my hard drive. Iron man, normal difficulty. 

 

I have 12 different games that I've started and abandoned, and number 13 was the one that did it. Fuck that game, it's glorious and by far one of my favourite and most hated games of all time. 

 

Steam lost track of my hour count, but a good estimate must be around 200 hours to beat it. It's a stellar strategy game that fucks you over constantly. 95% to hit on an important target? You gonna miss. 20% to hit on a random pot shot, it crits and you kill stuff. 6 team members on overwatch? They all fire at the same guy, and they all miss.

 

In terms of balance, I didn't particularly like it. Snipers are strong, a little too strong, support start out practically useless, but become pretty decent. Assault are good all rounders and Heavies start out great, but by end game they're utter crap. Their only saving grace is the missile, and sometimes I'd just bring them for holo-targeting as a squad wide accuracy buff.

 

Psionic powers, particularly mind control are OP as fuck. Once you have 1 or 2 squad members with mind control, the game turns crazy easy. A full squad of mind controllers and you just can't lose. It was actually refreshing to find the last mission so easy because I could just mind control everything with my fully psychic dream-team.

 

Yeah, so XCOM was the best of games, and the worst of games. Fuck XCOM, it's brilliant. 

 

Now you can start XCOM 2 :) 

 

The supports got a crazy overhaul in 2 that makes them bunches better (they get a drone that can remote hack, heal and/or attack depending on how you spec it).  Psyconauts are still OP as fuck though.  There's an ability that once per mission you can perma-mind control someone, plus the normal mind control that runs out.

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I completed Wild Arms and.... I loved it? It adds "tools" for puzzles making it a bit Zelda-ish and it's probably one of my favorite JRPGs on the PSOne.

 

The most surprising thing is that despite doing ALL the JRPG tropes, it seems to do them their own way, giving it a more unique feel. It also made me realize how many other JRPGs do ALL THE TROPES and still feel "fresh". A bit part is the cast, which as also tropes... but done in their own way too. Every game seems to have some escaped princess in the party, but they never feel like the SAME princess, if you catch my drift?

 

Frankly, I guess my gushing about the game is how the the same things as every other JRPG and feel unique and fun?

 

I hoping to have as much fun with Wild Arms II!  :tup:  :tup:  :tup:

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Now you can start XCOM 2 :)

 

The supports got a crazy overhaul in 2 that makes them bunches better (they get a drone that can remote hack, heal and/or attack depending on how you spec it).  Psyconauts are still OP as fuck though.  There's an ability that once per mission you can perma-mind control someone, plus the normal mind control that runs out.

 

I'll get XCOM 2 once it's on sale, but I don't think I have it in me to play for a few months!

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I completed Wild Arms and.... I loved it? It adds "tools" for puzzles making it a bit Zelda-ish and it's probably one of my favorite JRPGs on the PSOne.

 

The most surprising thing is that despite doing ALL the JRPG tropes, it seems to do them their own way, giving it a more unique feel. It also made me realize how many other JRPGs do ALL THE TROPES and still feel "fresh". A bit part is the cast, which as also tropes... but done in their own way too. Every game seems to have some escaped princess in the party, but they never feel like the SAME princess, if you catch my drift?

 

Frankly, I guess my gushing about the game is how the the same things as every other JRPG and feel unique and fun?

 

I hoping to have as much fun with Wild Arms II!  :tup:  :tup:  :tup:

 

I don't think I ever beat that, but I was really enjoying it at the time.

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I just finished playing Remember Me.

 

I played (and finished) this a few months ago - and have since forgotten all about it. You're quite right that the setting is about the most interesting thing about it, though I liked the flow of combat once you get the hang of it. It's almost like a rhythm game in that you're tapping into a silent rhythm to keep the combo flow, and the music does a good job of reinforcing that by means of a trick that Zelda: The Wind Waker first brought to the table. (Which is, as soon as you hit a person/maintain a combo for long enough, the music reacts by getting more bombastic with every following move.) I dig that.

 

But man, does this game straitjacket you into doing whatever it wants to do, instead of giving you any freedom. At first I loved the idea of exploring Neo-Paris and all their weird new Capitol-like fashion (loved the brand stores and whenever you sneak into people's appartments to see how they live), but then it turns out to be so dreadfully linear. Mind you, I don't dislike linear games, not necessarily! But this just felt so confined.

 

I wanted to love this game way more than I ended up doing, though I played through to the end. I think Don't Nod made a smart more making Life is Strange afterwards, shying away from epic games where they don't have the budget to go all the way (i.e. making it fully explorable, open world) and instead refocusing on what was really good about Remember Me - shifting around with time, personal stories and interesting characters.

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Remember Me is a great game with an utterly fantastic soundtrack and some cheesy less-than-stellar plotlines and decent gameplay and a fun setting!!!

 

Pretty excited to play Vampyr, whatever it ends up being.

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I fucking hated Remember Me, I still haven't finished it because everything about it made me want to kill myself. A friend insisted that it was awesome so tried to play it three times and it just reminded me of a worse version of the Aeon Flux game. The memory rejigging was the only thing even remotely entertaining. 

 

Glad that other people got a kick out of it and you also nailed why I hated the combat (I do not enjoy Rhythms games). Absolutely agree that Life is Strange was a great address to all of the problems of Remember Me. 

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Cibele is a really cool game, though I kind of wish it's story wasn't so small in it's scope. I related hard to the characters, but think the format could have been applied to a richer and more interesting story, especially if it were just half an hour longer or something. Still pretty cool, though.

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Summertime means I have a ton of work to do, but no hard deadlines (well, mostly). Which really means I've been playing video games. Finally got around to Invisible Inc. and XCOM 2. Holy fuck, guys. I know everyone else already knows about these, but Fuck. XCOM 2 was just a straight up improvement on the first, and so much more nerve wracking (it has hard enough I didn't play ironman my first go, like I did Enemy Unknown), and I had an absolute blast with it. I'm very much looking forward to the heartrending ironman runthrough.

 

Invisible Inc. though. If you thought XCOM was hard...Just as easy to lose a guy, but no real backup squad to speak for. The roguelike nature of the game works amazingly, and it is just a beautiful, beautiful game (I mean, it's Klei, so no surprise there). The use of the xcom type mechanics in a spy game worked really well, and even though it kicked my ass again and again on normal mode (I eventually went down to easy!) it was an absolute blast. So. So. Good. What a great way to kick off the summer.

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Finished Salt & Sanctuary in co-op over the weekend.  It's a really terrific game, borrowing liberally from both the Metroidvania and Souls games.  It doesn't necessarily do anything new, but it executes those ideas just really well. 

 

If you are ever looking for local co-op games, this is a no-brainer.  As a single player game I'm not sure I would have rated it as highly, but it's still damn good. 

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I can't wait to get my hands on Salt and Sanctuary. It sounds fantastic. Having coop is just a beautiful idea. Sounds like it was amazing.

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I just finished Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc on PC.

 

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It was an experience to say the least. Very odd, quite twisted and kept me interested all the way through. Always been a bit wary of visual novels, but this one worked for me.

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Just finished up Oxenfree.

 

Overall, I disliked the game. The big problem for me was the conflict between the wide camera compositions and the dialogue. Important to the visual style of the game seems to be maintaining views of large scenes, with characters appearing small in the frame. The game uses this to its advantage at points, creating some really beautiful images, but in exchange the game cant use tighter shots or camera moves to communicate emotion or drama.

 

So as a result the dialogue felt over acted, with characters shouting out their every emotion. Further, their just isn't enough breathing room between lines, with characters speaking without having any time to think or reflect beforehand. The game would also often prompt me to make a dialogue decision whilst someone else was speaking, and though sometimes the game would wait to trigger the line, it often just interrupted the other character. The result being a mess of people speaking at the same time or being cut off. I appreciate the attempt to capture teenage energy in the dialogue but I found myself annoyed at the relentless pace, in what could have been a more sedate, tense experience. Kentucky Route Zero feels like a similar game, but has more confidence in its quiet, meditative moments.

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