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I just beat Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze... *curls up into fetal position and cries*

 

I really loved it, but at the same time I kinda never want to see it again? Each level and world felt very distinct from each other, sometimes even to it's own detriment... Why is there only ONE "musical" level where everything moves to the beat?

 

The giant fruit level was my favorite, as you get closer to the final area, the fruit juices freeze and the levels become giant ice lollies. The game was terrible at motivating me to collect anything that wasn't bananas, coins or 1ups, and the shop never really really motivated me to buy anything that wasn't a 1up... I never needed anything else.

 

While I must admit I probably dies 50 times in the final levels in total, I had so many coins I could afford it.

 

I'm really debating whether to keep it? Just by thinking of the final levels, I don't want to even touch it, but I still like it?  :getmecoat

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Holy crap, that's frightening. I still want to get the game and play it, and I'm not the one to shy away from a moderately difficult platformer. Good for you for finishing it though, despite its difficulty.

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Just finished Obduction :tup:

There sure is a lot of running around and getting stuck because you missed a small thing here or there. But in the end I made it without a walk through. The maze teleportation puzzle was a pain. It wasn't difficult, just really slow in solving it due to all the loading time. And there was this weird alien keypad thingy which I never figured out, just used trial and error until I got the desired effect.

The game world is really gorgeous, except for the cheesy explosion. I really liked the design of the world with the big chains and stuff.

 

Only walk through I need so far was literally to show a switch I'd walked past three times. Losing interest now though, once you're out of the western town it gets a lot less interesting to me :(

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I finished the Witcher 3 last night! This is the first RPG I've completed since Final Fantasy 9.

I also completed The Witcher 3 last night and I'm on the same boat of people who doesn't play RPGs (before Witcher 3, Chrono Trigger was the only RPG I ever finished).

I loved the game, it's definitely one of my all time favorites now. The world is so beautifully crafted, all the missions felt important, even if it's only importance was to make the important ones more relevant. It's amazing how surprising the outcomes of the quests are, you just can't expect how a lot of things will end, it's like the world just works in a very independent way and you can't really change the course of things so much. There's a sense of helplessness that, somehow, feels great, because it's not like you're engineering something to get a predetermined reward, but you just make your actions based on your values and guts, hoping for the best - but it's a not a game in which the best outcomes always happen, it's quite the opposite actually.

I'm going to take some time before jumping into the expansions (heard that Hearts of Stone has a fantastic story), but it has been a while since I felt so empty after finishing a game, never expected that I'd enjoy it so much.

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             Roes are red

             A slave obeys

             BioShock Remastered,

             Is pretty okay

             ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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I think I'm done with Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer? I got some ending credits and I've lost all motivation to continue.

 

This won't last as much as a normal AC game since when you're done for the day, the next day starts immediately.

 

Not only does the game let you go away with putting no effort, which mean you could just open their boxes and they'll say you're the best designer ever. Another thing that annoyed me was when a client asked for a underwater themed house and didn't unlock any special furniture that I know exists because he has some in boxes.

 

It's fun for a few hours when you build restaurants and hospitals, but once that's done, I couldn't think of a reason to continue, I guess that's why the credits roll when you build the last building.

 

Oh, another thing that annoyed me is that you can build as many houses in the same lot and they don't overwrite each other,  they somehow exist in the same place...

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The upside down? ;) I avoided HHA but I'm looking forward to the New Leaf update.

I finished Bayonetta and Sword of Vermilion (Mega Drive). The former was ridiculous and fun. The latter was a personal white whale from childhood that gave me a certain nostalgic pleasure in defeating. I wouldn't recommend it unless you've got a personal connection/vendetta. Corking music, though.

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Finished Her Story and The Beginner's Guide.
 
Both good. One of them took my breath away, left me reeling, mouth agape. 
 
Yup, TBG is totally great. I don't think I'll ever play it again, and not just because it's a "walking simulator" or whatever we're calling this kind of thing, but because it made me super uncomfortable at times.
 

Some of Coda's constructions were, I thought, incredible tense. I kept expecting something awful, not like a jump scare, but to find out something which made me really concerned for Coda. Like, at the end of Gone Home where I thought I'd find Samantha hanging from a rafter, a noose looped around her neck and poo in her pants. That didn't happen and TBG surprised me as well. It was brutal at the end, like I felt that I was the one who had poisoned Coda's creativity and that I made him feel physically sick.

 

I have questions about the game and some half-formed theories, so I'll probs hit the thread for it. It's still percolating with me as I only finished it late last night. 

 

Her Story is less great, but I did like it. Played it thought with my girlfriend over a couple of nights. I went into it knowing that it told a story in a non-linear way, and so I didn't expect it have a concrete "The End" moment, where everything is wrapped up neatly. And, I wasn't disappointed, but also, as a fan of closure, I kinda was? Can't be bothered going back to it to find every single clip, but I think I got the gist of it. For me, I really wanted the game to focus more on the murder mystery, whodunnit side of things, but after we explored this trail it quickly veered off into something quite different. I don't want to spoil it, but I'll just say I was less taken with that. Overall, I would still recommend it. 

 

Viva Seifert was great. She was just subtle enough that I felt I had to watch her body language and pay attention to her tone of voice, which made me feel clever when I then got a good hit with my next search term. But, it has enough of the hammy soap-opera about it so as not to exclude people who struggle reading people in that way, or make it necessary to really study clips multiple times. Just got it spot-on.

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I finally completed Amnesia: Memories, it's an "otome" VN about a girl who lost her memories when a spirit bumped into her and now the spirit is doing it's best to help you get your memories back.

 

As you play each timeline you get small hints on what is really happening until you unlock a final one where everything starts to make sense.

 

I can't really talk about it without spoiling the plot but...

 

OH MY GOD! Toma is the most messed up timeline, you spend a big chunk of it in cage captured by Toma, but it doesn't matter because he reads your diary and finds out you really loved him and... you just get together? WHAT?!?

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Just completed Alien Isolation. Good game, frustrating at times. 

Really loved the design, I often just wanted to hang out and look at things. Especially towards the later missions where you get to see the outside of the station and some space, I would often just stand for a minute, watching solar flares and the gas clouds moving over the planet below. Really enjoyed the stealth until maybe 3/4 of the way through the game where I started going crazy with the items and basically brute forcing some rooms after dying too often. By the end I was very ready for it to be over, and frustrated with the multiple false endings or near endings. Still, a gorgeous and impressive game. Really enjoyed the lead actress and the physicality of the player movements helps to ground you in her body, make you feel vulnerable. Great great sound design, really wonderful to be able to traverse an inky black room with without looking at threats but knowing exactly where they are because of the sounds. 

In summation, 80's grunge futurism is always cool and spooky, especially when it's recreated so faithfully. 

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The upside down? ;) I avoided HHA but I'm looking forward to the New Leaf update.

I finished Bayonetta and Sword of Vermilion (Mega Drive). The former was ridiculous and fun. The latter was a personal white whale from childhood that gave me a certain nostalgic pleasure in defeating. I wouldn't recommend it unless you've got a personal connection/vendetta. Corking music, though.

 

You too? My cousin came to visit us for a summer and he brought his copy of Sword of Vermilion so that we could play through it. He had memorised all of the dungeons so he just ran through them to the bosses. He also wouldn't let me play it without him being there. To an extent he would use this as a way to dominate what we did with our time as I was almost constantly wanting to play it and he straight up wouldn't let me.

 

One day I lost my patience and put the game in and played through to one of the bosses. My cousin lost his shit and was really annoyed. He later rationalised it out by saying that I was incompetent and he was worried about me breaking his game. He left before we could finish the game and the terms 'Sword of Vermilion' and 'incompetent' are emotional scars seared into my brain.

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I played through the new Bioshock update (hooray for free updates!). It was strange to play the game again. There are a lot of the ways in which it's still great (laying traps for big daddies and the like), but man, the story suffers quite a bit from time. I had forgotten what hollow caricatures all of the people in it were. Oh well, it was fun, and enough that I'll probably replay Bioshock 2 in the not too distant future (Infinite can go hang itself though...).

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I just beat Actual Sunlight, one of the most depressing and bleak games I've ever played... and it's PSN+ game. Did Sony want all their users to feel depressed?

 

It's a game about a suicidal man and going through his daily thought was incredibly difficult. It may be the shortest game on PSN, but it feels longer due to how bloody bleak it is... I almost wanted to take a break halfway through it since it's just so... harrowing?

 

The game ends with him on a rooftop and the only reason the game doesn't end with him jumping was probably because it would have been too much?
It's not like he changes his mind at the last moment...

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Just completed Alien Isolation. Good game, frustrating at times. 

Really loved the design, I often just wanted to hang out and look at things. Especially towards the later missions where you get to see the outside of the station and some space, I would often just stand for a minute, watching solar flares and the gas clouds moving over the planet below. Really enjoyed the stealth until maybe 3/4 of the way through the game where I started going crazy with the items and basically brute forcing some rooms after dying too often. By the end I was very ready for it to be over, and frustrated with the multiple false endings or near endings. Still, a gorgeous and impressive game. Really enjoyed the lead actress and the physicality of the player movements helps to ground you in her body, make you feel vulnerable. Great great sound design, really wonderful to be able to traverse an inky black room with without looking at threats but knowing exactly where they are because of the sounds. 

In summation, 80's grunge futurism is always cool and spooky, especially when it's recreated so faithfully. 

 

I got about 4 hours into the game and got stuck in a section that a lot of people get stuck in. At one point they released a baby mode difficulty so I set it to that and I still couldn't make any progress, but last night I was thinking about this game, and relented by installing the mod that turns the alien's behavior into a dummy so I can explore a fun late 70s/early 80s sci-fi spaceship some more.

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I got about 4 hours into the game and got stuck in a section that a lot of people get stuck in. At one point they released a baby mode difficulty so I set it to that and I still couldn't make any progress, but last night I was thinking about this game, and relented by installing the mod that turns the alien's behavior into a dummy so I can explore a fun late 70s/early 80s sci-fi spaceship some more.

This and a similar mod for SOMA are what I'm going to use if I ever get around to playing these games. I have absolutely no interest in being terrified by and having to hide from monsters, but I have lots of interest in walking around cool sci-fi environments.

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I ended up deleting Alien Isolation off my machine to free up some space, because after the first couple of real encounters with the alien, I just new it wasn't at all what I was interested in doing at the time.  I do wonder if I should have left it installed and modded it though, I was really digging just wandering around.

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The SOMA elements of horror were more bearable because I knew that the game length wasn't terrible (it still was a bit long), but knowing that Alien Isolation had 30+ hours of hiding in closets meant that I too deleted it after giving a good hour and half. Loved the vibe, but I knew I couldn't sustain beyond the initial experience.

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He left before we could finish the game and the terms 'Sword of Vermilion' and 'incompetent' are emotional scars seared into my brain.

 

Without save states and the "106 page hint book included!" with the game, I would never have made it :D

 

Due to Minerva's Den crashing continually on Saturday night, I finished Jazzpunk instead. Which made me wonder why I hadn't finished it ages ago. Great game, reeked of Blendo. :tup:

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I beat Obduction!

 

I only got hints for one puzzle, and it's the nature of these games that I must feel bad about any hints I receive outside of the game (intentionally or not).

 

But! All things considered, only one hint is pretty low for a Myst-alike game. Outside of maybe a little bit of tedious back-and-forth traversal (with loading waits) required for some puzzles, I'm very satisfied with how the whole thing was designed.

 

I am excited for some Myst mega-fans in my life to get their chance to play Obduction. Except, I seriously doubt they have computers that can run Obduction, possibly the most resource intensive game I've played on my own machine. Ah, well, eventually maybe.

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To the people considering re-installing Alien Isolation, I would recommend it. I was frustrated with many aspects of the game, but often found that with lowered difficulty it was often possible to play difficult scenes like an action movie, ie throw explosives everywhere and kill all enemies. The game does a pretty good job of communicating when the Alien is not around, in which case you can just murder everyone to enable walking around stress-free. When the Alien is around and you get tired of his shit, you get the flamethrower and molotovs, both of which make him flee and leave you alone for a bit. So you can sprint through an area, flame him when he shows up, and be safe. The game doesn't do a great job of communicating how all the tools work, and it wasn't until pretty late in that I realized I didn't have to be hiding all the time. Part of it was definitely immersion at first, and I really tried to not kill humans because it seemed so alien to Amanda. By the end of the game though I was a ruthless madwoman, laying waste to the innocent and the guilty alike; I just wanted to get the hell off that ship.


(as for length I just checked and Steam says I spent 24 hours on it, which is definately including some backtracking and meandering, so that's not tooo bad)

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Alan Wake

 

I have wanted to play this for quite a while now, but only just got round to it. I had seen maybe the first hour via walkthroughs years ago however. I played it on PC, normal difficulty, in around eight hours. 

 

I thought the game was good, but definitely with alot of faults. I thought the story was interesting and I really liked the atmosphere and setting. However the further I got through the game the more I just wanted it to be over. 

 

The characters were okay; Barry I found completely useless and annoying though. The only funny bit was when he shows up covered in Christmas lights later in the game. Apart from that his comic relief wasn't for me.

 

The game just felt very "video gamey" throughout which kinda sucked. "Hey turn that fuse box on, OHHH LOOK OUT ambush!". Here is a horde of taken to fight. It happened so much.  It got so repetitive after a while. Most of my deaths were from some of the ridiculous possessed objects, like a fridge just coming out of nowhere and hitting me.  

 

The driving in the game was terrible, the cars sounded and handled badly. I was getting slight Deadly Premonition flashbacks (although nothing comes close to that games driving)

 

There were also a few PC related things that really bugged me:

 

1 - You can't disable motion blur - no setting in options. I think you can do it by doing something with the game files, but it should really be an option.

 

2 - The controls were really floaty to me. I could never really get used to the feeling.

 

3 - The auto switching shoulder every two seconds really annoyed me. Why does this even happen? Really annoyed me.

 

 

I am glad I finally played it and I will continue and play the two DLCs and American Nightmare to see what they are all about but yeah I kind of expected more. 

 

The game also really wasn't scary, not that I expected it to be a horror or scary game but it kind of gives off that impression.

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Oh man, don't even get me started on Alan Wake. I had a pretty serious case of off-base - and unreasonable - expectations from reading previews about it and seeing some of the gorgeous screenshots, but man. It wasn't just not at all what I expected, but also boring, asinine, repetitive, overlong and, last but by no means least, *Barry*.

 

Yes, very "video gamey" as you say...

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Yeah its a real shame. Also, I think I will skip both the DLCs and just play American Nightmare some time.

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Your line about just wanting it to be over is exactly how I felt going through the last half to third of it.  I had such high hopes for that game.  And there's still a few parts in it I think are absolutely terrific.  I had American Nightmares installed for years before I finally deleted it a couple of months ago, realizing that I just had no interest in any more of that style of gameplay at all. 

 

I still think you can see where Alan Wake was at one point in time intended to be an experience much more like Silent Hill or Deadly Premonition, with open or semi-open access to a small town.  And at whatever point in development they shelved that to make it linear kind of ruined the game.  That might have been what they needed to do to get it out the door at all, but it gutted the sense of place and exploration, both of which Alan Wake needed badly. 

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