gdf

Recently completed video games

Recommended Posts

Finished SteamWorld Heist on iPad. :tup:

 

A great game to dip into for short sessions, with its quick but satisfying missions, but it also has a pleasant mechanical depth to it over the course of the game. Which characters you build up, and which weapons you stumble upon, have a big effect on what a sensible loadout looks like and how the missions therefore pan out. Mainly it's reminded me how much I enjoy well-balanced turn-based strategy game like this. Ricocheting bullets into enemies in ridiculously complex ways is immense fun, and there's that nice sense of a plan coming together as you plunder another big ship and all make it to the evacuation point in one piece. The story's just alright, but mainly it is paced smartly to allow you to finish a 'world' and play with some new types of ships and enemies before things get boring.

 

Lends itself well to iPad Pro, the detailed cartoony steampunk art looks great. Looking forward to seeing what Image & Form are working on Switch.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Picked that one up for my iphone and it works surprisingly well there. Was worried it would be too cramped but it hasn't been a problem for the most part.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Beat Rogue Legacy again. :tup:

 

Took about half the time I did the first time. No real reason I replayed, it's just a good "zone out, listen to a podcast, don't think about anything" game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Owlboy :tmeh:

It's quite a nice game, but there are a bunch of really annoying challenges, especially near the end where a previously nice control feature is actually making things more complicated and it should be. The very frequent cinematics are quite a bit annoying.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just finished Portal Stories: Mel for a second time. Picked it up after hearing about it on the podcast - the words "portal" and "free" caught my attention. It's a superb mod/map-pack woven together with a story (that borrows heavily from Portal 2) and neat voice acting. The puzzles get really challenging in their logistics, rather than twitch reflexes like some custom Portal maps, which suited my style. It's always satisfying to pull off a complicated series of moves that get everything where it needs to be, even if it does take 15 minutes or more.

 

It's not quite as polished as the real deal, but it's not far off either. Recommended!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Completed Life is Strange :tmeh:

The story developed in quite a different way then I expected it to go based on what I played in episode 1. It went more down the path I did not really care for. So it became a bit tedious for me wrap up the game. Which is a shame for me, but I guess others would enjoy what's what went on.

The game is a bit like those modern Telltale games where you make choices that affect the story. But you have the ability to rewind time and redo (most of your choices). Although in most cases you must rewind time to take the, more or less, only correct dialogue path. This is sometimes a bit annoying because it feels like trial and error to just get on with the story. You do not really have an actual choice in this matter. There are still plenty of choices left in the game.

The ending feels flawed. The premise that you caused the destruction of the town by your rewinding. And the idea to stop it, is to rewind again. Sure, it might have been caused by a single action (saving Cloe the first time) and none of the subsequent actions. But this is rather stretching it. If Cloe was supposed to die, she would have also been killed in the storm. So yeah, fuck that town!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I just 100%ed Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and it was pretty amazing, sure in the ending all the unlockables make the game too easy, but... you can turn them off.

 

The animations were so smooth and pretty and sure, some boss fights weren't that interesting, but other fights made up for them.

 

The "Vania-ing" was great, the moment I

realized the lines in the marble were I maze I had to traverse with the mouse power was pretty glorious, specially seeing how big the maze was!

 

:tup::tup::tup:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 12/9/2016 at 11:01 PM, Simon said:

Finished SteamWorld Heist on iPad. :tup:

 

Oh my god it's out on iPad? I need to get that. Played through it twice on PS4 already but I could go for thirds.

 

Recently finished:

Inside - I loved Limbo. Played through it something like 7-8 times, on 4 different systems. Inside is a worthy followup. Love how it tells it's story entirely through the environment, and it has some great gameplay moments that are unexpected and unexpectedly intuitive. And the ending where you turn into a Katamari Cronenberg is one of this year's most WTF moments.

 

Watch Dogs 2 - Welp, this was great. Great gameplay. Most likable characters in a Ubisoft game since Beyond Good & Evil. The car-hacking is my favourite superpower in a game in a long while.

 

Video evidence of what a cool hacker guy I am:

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm obviously way behind on this, but I just finished beating Portal for the first time.

 

My goodness, what a game!  I feel like everything was super polished: the portal mechanic was so engaging, the way the level design taught you through level progression, and even the length seemed perfect.  I hear Portal 2 is much longer, but personally it seemed like 3 hours was an appropriate amount of time.

 

A weird aside, but the only negative for me with this game is that I frequently found myself feeling dizzy after a little while - I had to break it into one hour chunks in order to finish.  Maybe this has something to do with the direction changing and momentum carry across portals, but I thought it was strange.  A cursory search on Google showed that I'm not the only one that felt this...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, MisterP said:

I'm obviously way behind on this, but I just finished beating Portal for the first time.

 

My goodness, what a game!  I feel like everything was super polished: the portal mechanic was so engaging, the way the level design taught you through level progression, and even the length seemed perfect.  I hear Portal 2 is much longer, but personally it seemed like 3 hours was an appropriate amount of time.

 

A weird aside, but the only negative for me with this game is that I frequently found myself feeling dizzy after a little while - I had to break it into one hour chunks in order to finish.  Maybe this has something to do with the direction changing and momentum carry across portals, but I thought it was strange.  A cursory search on Google showed that I'm not the only one that felt this...

Portal 2 is longer because they put more story in. I found 2 to be disappointing because it failed to really build up the puzzle challenge well. They never had you use a bunch of the tools in the same puzzle the way they do in 1. The Coop in Portal 2 is super fun thought!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes, Portal is the tighter experience. If you like the story-world of Portal though, part 2 is pretty fucking amazing. I have no comments on the gameplay side (I liked it, but Cordeos was disappointed, so make up your own mind), but the story was very well told. Some of the best and funniest dialogue/monologue/characterizations I've ever seen in a video game, and the Portal world is developed in all sorts of interesting ways.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Portal 2 is well worth a look if you liked the humour in the first game. It's genuinely funny. The puzzles are a little too streamlined though; the game is too good at limiting your options so that you can brute-force a solution.

 

Shout out again to Portal Stories:Mel for having deep, challenging puzzles - and it's free if you have Portal 2.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
9 hours ago, Beasteh said:

The puzzles are a little too streamlined though

 

If you like your puzzles a little shaggy, seek out Quantum Conundrum by one of the original Portal Developers.  The mechanics are a little different but they are more freewheeling than Portal 2.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
14 hours ago, mikemariano said:

 

If you like your puzzles a little shaggy, seek out Quantum Conundrum by one of the original Portal Developers.  The mechanics are a little different but they are more freewheeling than Portal 2.

 

Even though it's got one of the original developers, the tone of QC is definitely different. It felt like Portal for 10 year olds. Not in terms of mechanics, but it terms of story/setting/characters. Bounced off it pretty hard due to the that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As a fan of puzzle games, I was tempted by Quantum Conundrum's charm. Unfortunately the damning reviews put me off - they all seemed to agree that it was too reliant on twitch reactions, which is absolutely not what I'm looking for in a puzzle.

 

That's not to rubbish the suggestion though, if you derive fun from a tricky execution of a solution, more power to you!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I enjoyed Quantum Conundrum, but its puzzles are definitely on the twitch/timing side of things more than anything else. The story and stuff is also much less interesting than the Portal universe. I had an okay time with it and ended up finishing it, but I have no desire to revisit the puzzles to complete them as well as I could like I have been tempted to on occasions for Portal.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just finished the campaign for Overcooked!

 

So much fun, so much shouting at my partner and her shouting at me. My favourite local multiplayer of the year.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I finished the 18-world challenge in Super Mario Maker 3DS.

 

I recently played through Super Mario 3D Land again and got really stressed out.  Mario Maker stressed me out, too, especially a level with a moving vine on a block and spikes.  I don't remember Mario being this stressful!

 

So now I'm making a slow-paced water level.  I am now a Mario baby.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Doodle God :tdown:

A mobile game converted to a PC game. You match 2 things to (maybe) create a new thing. You do this until you've found all combinations. Some combinations are logical, but most of them are not. So in the end you are just trying to combine everything with everything.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 14/11/2016 at 9:59 AM, miffy495 said:

I finished up Recore today. It really seems like a game that should be more popular with the Idle Thumbs community, to be honest. As a group, we seem to be drawn to the interesting but flawed games, and boy is this ever one of those. So much about it is so close to incredible, but always falls just a bit short. It's also completely unfinished. There is art on the cover and the disc of an entire type of robot buddy that didn't make it into the game, for example. This buddy has question-marked-out spots on 3 different menu screens, you can still collect parts for it, and there are entire "cut" dungeons that you can make your way to by Skyrim-ing around the environment that rely on using it. Seriously. It's such an obvious vacancy in the game that googling "Recore T8-NK" turns up conspiracy theories about its absence. Factor in that the critical path was less than 1/4th of my playtime (and I still felt like I didn't take that much time with the game) and that the final mission is about as long as everything else in the game up to that point (despite being mostly filler), and you have a decidedly "What the fuck why wasn't this given another year to become amazing?" game.

 

It's extra tragic because what is here and complete is really good. The combat is dynamic and fun, the buddies and their different styles and upgrade paths are varied and cool, the traversal is really fun (yay jetboots!). All of the fundamentals that make the game a game are great. Technical hiccoughs aside, it's fantastic to play. I just wish they'd actually got to make a full game.

 

I love it and hate it at the same time. It's super fun, but VERY flawed. If your tolerance for these things is high in the pursuit of interesting experiences, please try it. The more people do, the better chance they'll have a chance to make the game that this could have been in Recore 2. And yeah, there is of course a post-credits stinger that leaves room for one, so I'm going to hold out hope for at least a while.

 

 

I wanted to come back to this now that I finished ReCore too. Agree 100% with everything. Despite all of this ReCore is still in my top 5 games of 2016.

 

My real complaint is that the 'filler' that they force you to do near the end of the game is enjpoyable enough that if they had shifted to a linear progression game and just lined up those dungeons at the end of the game without forcing you to do all the bullshit to unlock Prismatic Cores, I would have very little to complain about.

 

The moment to moment gameplay is so fun that I really didn't care about the repetition as much as I thought I would. Also, forearmed with the knowledge of the Core hunt at the end I actually managed to pick up about 90% of the amount needed to finish the big bad boss. I really hope they make a sequel because a lot of the work that is here is so much fun.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I just beat Adventure Bar Story, a cute bar sim/JRPG that kinda fails at the bar sim part.

 

The only way the game thought of approaching the combat and bar parts was by making leveling only possible by eating (and limiting how much you can eat a day), enemies only drop ingredients (which you could just find on the floor too) and give you points for moves, so eventually I just used a moved to evade combat once I had all the moves.

 

You only progress by dealing with the bar, which unlocks new areas with new ingredients. Your bar gets "better" by earning a certain amount of money and winning the weekly cooking contest, which is way too easy, just cook the most expensive items in your menu and you'll win easy.

 

The main flaw is that near the end you don't need to clients to purchase food or money, I had so much money I just bought ingredients and made more than enough for the next day. Also the game becomes a pure JRPG by forcing you to go on a "quest" for a "potion", they call it a "soup" just to have an excuse to use the cooking angle, but it's a potion and all you do is fight bosses for them.

 

I'm not sure if I recommend it, if you're aware of it's flaws and still want to play, go for it?

 

I also somehow have the sequel on PSN Mobile, just how old is this game?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I finished Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE last night. More like TMS #GOTY. I loved this game. I loved the characters. I loved the combat. I loved the music videos. Start to finish a delight.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
17 hours ago, twmac said:

Despite all of this ReCore is still in my top 5 games of 2016.

 

Also agree 100%. The tragedy is that it could have been undisputed #1.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Tomb Raider (2013) :tmeh:

 

I liked this enough to finish it in a matter of a few days, but have some reservations.

 

It's much more of a shooter than I remember the early games being. The combat works well and is usually good fun, but it seems quite a shift in overall tone - I kept expecting a change of pace, for some parts of the game to have less enemies and more expansive, fiendishly puzzley tombs, but it never happened. You're usually only ten minutes from the next swathe of bad guys to blast your way past, and every stage is very contained and linear. Most of the actual tomb-raiding seems to be in the optional tombs, which are nicely designed but usually very quick one-room puzzles. Maybe I've missed a couple of tombs, but I think my % completion is more down to not finding all the collectable GPS caches etc.

 

I'm aware that this is the origin story, and that after surviving the island Lara will follow in her father's footsteps as an archaeologist - so I'd be interested to see if Rise of the Tomb Raider has more exploration and tomb-raiding accordingly.
 

There are some annoying interface choices too - lots of button-mashing quick-time events (it seems like the game has stopped throwing these at you halfway through, but they come back towards the end, sadly), and the XP/salvage system allowing you to upgrade weapons and abilities at campfires was unnecessary filler.

 

I also didn't care for the sort of 'torture horror' aesthetic - the cut-scene in which Lara's head cautiously surfaces, Apocalypse Now style, in a pool of the blood and guts of hundreds of cult victims, was the point at which it became a bit ridiculous.

 

After all those criticisms, it might seem strange to say that I did enjoy this game and was hooked on it. On the positive side, the environments look great, with a great variety across the island, and platforming around feels natural - everything blends in nicely, but you're never unsure about what around you can be grabbed onto, zip-lined along, etc. I suppose this just felt like the first half of a game that was going to love - I was never bored, but it never let me loose. Maybe the sequel will hit the spot.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I finished a little game called The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the 3DS. It's pretty obscure, you probably haven't heard of it? It's super good though :tup:


Until the Wii U/3DS generation I hadn't played any Zelda games at all, so it's been a great pleasure to discover them for the first time. Over the last couple of years I've since played Link to the Past, Wind Waker HD, (about half of) Skyward Sword, (most of) Link's Awakening, and Link Between Worlds. Those are all basically very good too!


For me, Ocarina has probably been the most consistently enjoyable one so far. (Though I think I like Wind Waker more, for all its problems.) We all know that Ocarina represented a huge step forwards in terms of showing the possibilities of 3D graphics in gaming. Yet it also picks up the baton where Super Metroid left off in terms of Nintendo trying to make something with mature themes. And I don't just mean in the sense of depicting death and tragedy and decay: I think it's trying to say some fairly profound things about video games as a way for adults to connect with earlier/later versions of themselves. I might write something about that. 

 

Some of the darker levels later in the game also reminded me of just how much the Dark Souls games owe to Zelda. I mean, once you get into fighting those big knights with axes near the end - and even the final battle with Ganon, where you can roll between his legs to wail on his tail - that's the Souls combat in a nutshell. But more fundamentally, Zelda is the source of that same unwillingness to explain its essential mechanics. Ocarina makes some of that stuff a little less obscure with hints - but often it's not that much clearer what you need to do next, especially compared with modern games. And of course there's tons of stuff to discover which is wildly, delightfully unintuitive.


I think now I also understand why some Zelda fans get tetchy about the future direction of the series, and changes made to 'the formula' thus far. While playing Ocarina, I kept thinking about the promise of Breath of the Wild and wondering: how much more game does anybody really need? Aren't I having enough fun doing this amazing dungeon already? As it stands, the game strikes a fantastic balance between 'helpful optional stuff to do' and 'stuff that must be done to beat the game' - would it really be that much more meaningful to add five or six more things like the Biggeron's Sword quest just to unlock more non-essential upgrades?

 

But I hope those fears are unfounded. So far it seems like Breath of the Wild will be a totally new thing, both for Zelda and Nintendo. I remain cautiously optimistic.

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