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Maybe, but in Dead Rising 3, on my first run, I pretty much rescued everyone and if I hadn't been dicking around so much I would have finished it. The second run, I rescued everyone and finished the story.

 

For my money it is almost impossible to rescue everyone and get a true ending in Dead Rising.

 

As for the DLC in 3, most of them are self contained stories for different characters in the game (do you remember how weird it was to get a short cutscene introducing  army commander, only for you to then murder him straight away? The DLC explains this) but the weird Super Hyper, Mega Remix spin off has nothing to do with the main game and well worth a few run throughs. It was one of those 'available now' announcements at E3 and I had a lot of shallow fun with it.

 

Oh, I am definitely going to buy Dead Rising 4. I bought an Xbox One to play 3 so it is unlikely I will skip 4 (and I might even get the re-releases)

Wow, even on my second play with the experience I earned from playing all the way to the deadline the first time, I only managed to get maybe half the side missions done. I guess I'm slow or something.

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I finally beat Herc's Adventures, which is basically Zombies Ate My Neighbors in ancient Greece.

 

I had to check Moby Games and one of the game designers worked on both games, which explains a lot, the graphic style, the humor, the strange weapons... it just remind me of ZAMN.

 

But instead of traversing several levels, it's an overworld, which brings me to the game's biggest flaw, the world isn't open that much if at all and many times you will have to go the same route a few times because it's your only option. You want to get to Athens from Crete? You have to go to Egypt and the Amazon lands each time.

 

When you start the game you'll see some places you can't reach because of a giant boulder, but once you train in the city and can lift the boulders, the only obstacles will be locked doors or people demanding a password.

 

The game is on the US PSN store and I recommend giving it a go.  :tup:

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Finished ABZÛ :tup:

It's not as good as Journey, but it's a really nice exploration game anyway.

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^ agreed - the art was pretty stellar and the fish were fun to look at. My wife watched me play it and I finished it in 2 hrs. I felt like I explored fairly thoroughly.

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Wow, even on my second play with the experience I earned from playing all the way to the deadline the first time, I only managed to get maybe half the side missions done. I guess I'm slow or something.

 

It involves abusing the modified vehicles at every opportunity. That motorcycle/combine harvester is a devastating beast.

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Finished DKC2 with a friend of mine, passing the controller when we lost a life. Man, that game has some harsh difficulty spikes, which is probably a consequence of it being so creative. Each new level seems to bring a new type of challenge, whether it's swimming rapidly through cooled lava, or leaping over vast bottomless canyons with the wind shoving you along. Some of those ideas work well and the challenge seems fair, but sometimes they're throwing obstacles at you that you won't see coming, and don't have time to react to. 

 

I'm also very glad of the save state function for the final boss fight, which goes on way longer than it has any right to. I still love the game, but I'm starting to appreciate the relative simplicity of DKC more, now.

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Finished Quadrilateral Cowboy. Like every other Blendo Games game, it's sublime and incomparable. Generally I'm happy with the length of the games, although I think it would be nice if Flotilla continued longer, and this is another example of that - I would definitely have been happy with more levels. The story was also surprisingly basic, not in the sense of being spare - they're always spare - but in the sense of not much happening, really, explicitly or implicitly, at least as far as I could tell. I'll be interested to see if it generates a modding community. There's a lot of room in the mechanics for people to do some neat stuff.

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Just finished Final Fantasy XIII 2. It is a very good game, despite the concept of you going back and forth in time to a couple of place, making  the pace kind strange to get on (since you aren´t often sure where to go next), the over length and extension feel just right on. Also Noel and Serah are very good characters and do got some chemistry together and the ending was amazing. The few things I didn´t like was a couple of the minigames in the Serependy (a casino like place) where really annoying (the slot machine) or too complicated for what is worth (the chocobo race), thankfully I could farm some gil to buy the stuff I needed there without the minigames.

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I finally did Firewatch, in one single, four hour sitting. Absolutely gorgeous looking and the interactions between Henry and Delilah were so sweet and believeable. I loved how you could tell so much about Delilah just by the way she responds. I saw her as willful, cheeky, kind of nerdy in her own way and sometimes a little childish (in the way of not wanting to own up to responsibilities or her actions). A great foil for Henry. What a neat, compact experience.

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The Solus Project :tmeh:

An exploration game with quite a bit survivaling going on. The game page says that there are no enemies, but there is a Lost-like smoke monster at various places which is a real annoyance. Having to deal with this monster a couple of times really bugged the hell out of me.

I wanted to play this game for it's exploration stuff. But most of the time I was crawling through rather boring caves and trying to stay alive.

You spend quite a bit of time drinking and eating and getting dry. On top of that regular sleeping, getting cool or warm. A lot of time spend on surviving, and less about surviving. So that was a bit of a disappointment.

 

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I just 100% Pharaoh Rebirth+ and boy was it amazing up into the end! It's safe to say this is the best "Metroidvania" nobody heard of, and it really stands out on it's own, it has a few "normal" puzzles, but it's mostly about exploration and finding relics. 

 

There are about 80 different collectibles and some are only obtained by beating a boss without getting hit, which I somehow did. Most of the relics give you a small stat bonus and they really add up when you start filling up your inventory, some items are traded for others and some only work when you have a set.

 

The beauty and fluidity of the pixel art was just stunning and I just couldn't get enough of the game until I 100%ed it. It a shame the game has such a small following that I was practically alone when I had to find all the items, but it was also nice to do it mostly on my own? 

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The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna 

 

Story keeps the sombre-but-hopeful tone of the original, while poking fun at internet forum culture. The terminals make a return, but instead of philosophical discussions (it's light on the philosophy this time), there's forum posts, text adventures and even Jeff Goldblum fan-fiction (have Croteam been listening to Idle Thumbs?).

 

As an expansion pack (sure, it says "DLC" but the game's plenty long enough to merit the description), it goes beyond the difficulty level of the base game, which was often too easy. You'll be using new techniques, pushing the core toolset to new heights - this time it's really a challenge. The final optional puzzles were a cycle of frustration and elation, punctauted with long periods of headscratching. When that "aha" moment comes, it's all worth it. Gehenna delivers such moments in spades.

 

Talos was already one of my favourite games from recent years, Road to Gehenna makes it one of my favourites of all time.

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Almost done with Samorost 3. It's a wonderful game, a real 'total work of art' - there's just such a handcraftedness and purpose put into every tiny detail, especially details you're likely to miss. It makes scrutinizing every scene fulfilling. The main bummer is that some puzzles quickly become laborious - you'll see the solution but realize how long it will take you to solve (mechanically... all the pieces you'll have to move around very slowly). The rewards for progress are fulfilling on so many sensory levels (especially audio) that you can usually slog through those slow moments. The sound design in Samorost 3 is an order of magnitude better than even Machinarium. So tactile, full of texture and space, wonderful use of reverb and ambient sounds. Super recommended.

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I finally did Firewatch, in one single, four hour sitting. Absolutely gorgeous looking and the interactions between Henry and Delilah were so sweet and believeable. I loved how you could tell so much about Delilah just by the way she responds. I saw her as willful, cheeky, kind of nerdy in her own way and sometimes a little childish (in the way of not wanting to own up to responsibilities or her actions). A great foil for Henry. What a neat, compact experience.

 

Will FW get ported to xbone? Dying to play it but lack the means... 

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Finished DKC2 with a friend of mine, passing the controller when we lost a life. Man, that game has some harsh difficulty spikes, which is probably a consequence of it being so creative. Each new level seems to bring a new type of challenge, whether it's swimming rapidly through cooled lava, or leaping over vast bottomless canyons with the wind shoving you along. Some of those ideas work well and the challenge seems fair, but sometimes they're throwing obstacles at you that you won't see coming, and don't have time to react to. 

 

I'm also very glad of the save state function for the final boss fight, which goes on way longer than it has any right to. I still love the game, but I'm starting to appreciate the relative simplicity of DKC more, now.

 

It's amazing how mechanically challenging DKC and DKC2 are... I wonder if my 10 year old brain would have been able to finish those games to the same level of completeness without strategy guides. Probably not.  Did you get to the Lost World?

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We deliberately skipped the Lost World. I remember how teeth-gnashingly frustrating some of those levels were, and it didn't seem worth it. Also, if memory serves, you have to pay 15 coins to Klubber at each kiosk, which I think would necessitate grind? So, I've never seen the true final ending to DKC2, and, as I lack a controller with a good d-pad, I won't be seeing it any time soon.

 

I played DKC a lot as a kid, too, but I don't remember any secret levels or anything like that? I completed the whole game several times, but probably missed out on hidden stuff.

 

Anyway, I just now, this moment, finished AM2R, and I'm really happy to have played it. My total time was 6h22m, with an 84% collection rate. I may play it again and try to cut that time down. If it weren't for a few times where I was completely unsure of how to proceed (my own dumb fault, mostly), I feel my time would've hovered around the 5h mark. 

 

The game handles well, has an expansive, interconnected map, and is lovely to look at. The pacing is pretty good, with serious upgrades doled out at regular intervals and tons of extra power-ups to find. Some of the music is very good, some not so good, but as another poster pointed out in the thread for the game, it would've benefited from using silence more often to develop an atmosphere. You'll be hearing music almost constantly as you play. Some of the boss fights were great, some were utterly tedious (the final boss looks great but is boring to fight)

 

My experience was glitch free, but I understand others have not been so lucky, although the game was recently patched. I'd recommend it to fans of metroid games or "metroidvania" games.

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Oooh, that's been on my wish list for a long time. Sounds like it might be worth it.

 

Do it. If you liked Talos Principle, Gehenna manages to provide more and does it better.

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I finally felt like I'd gotten away from the hype around Gone Home enough to enjoy it, so I played through it a few days ago. I can't remember having higher expectations for the actual content of a game, not just its gameplay. It was incredible. I am certain I have nothing new to add to that conversation, so I won't try except to say that I have never, in any media, felt as emotionally involved with a character as I did here.

I'm not an adventure game player by any means, and I did find the attic and the basement unlocking to be either confusing or poorly signposted, as I needed spoilers, and I could not stand being restricted to walking, and I very much did not find that adding to the realism or immersion. If I'm trying to discover what I believe to be a secret passage hidden within my families house but need to go double-check something across the house, I'm sure as hell not going to walk there, I'm going to run, or at least move faster than "Aiding the elderly across streets" speed.

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Finished ABZÛ :tup:

It's not as good as Journey, but it's a really nice exploration game anyway.

 

I will ditto this. I also finished Bound, which is in a similar vein, but slightly less good. Still would recommend even though it doesn't stand up in a side by side comparison. Maybe give it some space if you've played Abzu or the ThatGameCompany titles super recently.

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I have finished Links Awakening DX, including color dungeon! Like I mentioned earlier, as a kid I shamelessly used Nintendo Power and tag teamed with a friend on dungeons. Doing it all myself was really lovely. I enjoy The density of the world and the arcadey combat. I did go online for a few hints, but only after screwing around quite a bit. Almost every time I was satisfied that the solution was fairly obscure. Thankfully this only happened 3-4 times.

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Syberia appeared in the backwards compatibility list on my Xbox One, I must have drunkenly bought the X360 re-release some years back and never played it. Seeing as I don't buy more than 2 games a month now, I figured I would give it a go.

 

After some of the more grandiose stuff I've been paying recently, it has been a delight from a narative stand point. Not much is really going on in the game and it is about the places and the world that has been imagined more than anything else. The sad emptiness of Aralbad, the inane stupidity of the University with the hilarious deans talking all over each other... The boat man that speaks a dialect that involved 4 different languages. All of it great.

 

Some of it has aged very poorly (the design for controller use is bad) and there are two puzzles that I refused to figure out on my own as the information presented to me just seemed wrong. Also some of the collision led to me wasting about an hour trying to figure something out that didn't need to be (I had just not walked around an item correctly and therefore hadn't found a transition into a new area).

 

Well worth revisiting, I just wish I had Syberia II to play and see what happened next.

 

I also like the fact that Kate Walker is kind of an arsehole, in that too-polite-American way.

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I think I beat Binding of Isaac: Rebirth? Satan is the final boss, right?

 

I had a crazy run where I got three Gumpy items and turned into Gumpy the cat, I finally made it to the Womb and the game froze.... I thought I'd never get such a good run again and was fuming, but I managed to beat Mom's Heart and soon got the most ridiculous run ever.

 

I upgraded the store so it always had a 15c useful item and managed to get the PHD (?) and the rechargeable pill bottle, which means I kept getting health ups, luck ups and range ups, but the best part was when I got the "remote control tear", which I though would ruin my run, but it made me unstoppable, specially since I got the charge shot and some laser upgrade, which turned the tear into a ring of death! 

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I think I beat Binding of Isaac: Rebirth? Satan is the final boss, right?

 

 

Do you also have the Afterbirth expansion?  There is a secret new boss in it as well. 

 

Did you ever reach the Boss Rush, a special Boss mode/encounter?  It's something that's worth getting to a time or two if you really dig Rebirth. 

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