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Recently completed video games

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I finished Ratchet and Clank on the PS4, yesterday. What a great game! I'd recommend it to just about anybody.

 

Having never played a Ratchet and Clank game before, and knowing very little about the series, I didn't have many expectations going in. I thought it'd be far more of a conventional platformer game, actually, but I'd say it's gunplay which has a more prominent role. 

 

Okay, I want to say some really positive things about this game, but I'd like to get the negatives out of the way first. One, I thought some of the Clank sections were a bit tedious. They didn't quite hit the sweet spot of great puzzle design. On a couple of occasions, I'd walk into a new puzzle room, know what to within ten seconds, then spend the next five minutes laboriously shuffling bots about the place. Two, the game starts off a little slow. The middle part of the game is the best part, where you're discovering new weapons every level and can jump from planet to planet as you like. But the start, you've got your 'nades, which are fine, your peashooter, which is weaksauce, and the flamethrower, which is strong but useless against anything that flies. These weapons are all pretty conventional weapons, like the sorts of things you might see in the real world. Later weapons are batshit insane, and all the better for it. It would have been nice to get a more characterful weapon earlier on.

 

 

Thirdly, I hated the Quark bit at the end. I didn't even understand the mechanics of it, 'cos the first time you transform to Quark, it's on a glowing pad with a transform symbol, which led me to believe I could only transform there.

 

But the positives are so, so many. The weapons are all fun, but also useful! They don't fall into the trap that many "zany" weapons fall into (I'm looking at you, Armed and Dangerous). The graphics are sublime; like playing a Pixar film. I never even skipped a single cutscene, 'cos I thought it was well written and animated. The story is...not amazing, but not bad. I didn't like the last minute inclusion of wossname,

he made the final battle a bit anticlimactic IMO.

 

Anyway, great game. I'm gonna go play it all over again.

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As someone who has played all the proper Ratchet & Clank game, I also enjoyed it. You can tell when the game has to rely on the movie script, and boy based on the cutscenes taken directly from the movie, that movie was a turkey. There's a massive difference in charm between the playable segments with Insomniac's writers and the wit-free cutscenes.

 

Clank sections have always been tedious. I think the best they got was in A Crack in Time, but Insomniac don't really know how to design a good puzzle and the Clank sections are always about Insomniac's lousy puzzle design.

 

The thing that's extraordinary about Ratchet & Clank is that they are clearly scraping in the corners of the design space but the games don't really suffer for it. The arsenal is varied and the game strongly encourages different weapon use, the level design is usually pretty solid, the writing is lively and entertaining and not particularly deep... it's a good time.

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I actually thought the movie was on the high end of video game movies.  It's not high cinema or anything, but it generally captures the essence of the characters, has some good banter and tells a very Ratchet and Clank story. 

 

R&C is one of the only reasons I wish I had a PS4.

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Rituals :tdown:

An artsy walking sim. It has a story somewhere, no idea where. The controls are really annoying. On the plus side, it was short.

 

TIMEframe :tmeh:

A short exploration game where you have limited time to visit some places before the world is destroyed and you are reset. The time limit is quite a downer, would be better if you were able to explore all in a single visit.

 

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Over the last several weeks I went on a pretty big Resident Evil bender.

 

Resident Evil Revelations 1 - :tmeh:

 

Rev1 is kind of delightfully dumb, the script and voice acting are pretty bad, but in a good, cheesy way.  Pretty classic mechanically.  The thing that stops me from giving it an enthusiastic thumb's up is a single mechanic.  A fair amount of the pickups in the game are "hidden" and you have to pull out a scanner, see if anything is detected close to you, if it is, then look around for a highlight spot to scan, then put the scanner away.  It's really dumb and a big ol waste of time.  But I think you pretty much have to do it to have enough bullets/herbs to get through. 

 

Resident Evil Revelations 2 - :tup:

 

Rev2 is just delightful.  It's got 2 different campaigns ala RE2, with different characters exploring the same spaces over the course of 4 episodes.  The "hidden" loot thing from Rev1 returns, but at least it's better this time.  Now there are just sparkles you can notice in the environment, and you have to point at them briefly to make them appear.  A lot of them are just gems for BP (which you use for an RPG-lite upgrade system that isn't super necessary to finish the game), so it's also far less necessary to find them all.  Overall I really liked this a whole bunch. 

 

Resident Evil 7 - :tup::wub::wub::wub:

 

RE7 is easily my favorite AAA game from a big publisher in a very long time.  It's so good.  Great atmosphere throughout.  Fantastic boss enemies.  I've already played through it 3 times, and plan on a fourth.  One of the few complaints I have is that the regular enemy ("Molded", a kind of bioengineered monster instead of zombies) don't have much variety to them, but other than that it that game shines in every respect.  I had really tired of the horror trend towards games being like Amnesia (hide/run from the monster) because I think there's only so much you can do with that.  RE7 takes its inspirations from all over the place and makes the best of all of them. 

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Ghostbusters: The Video Game

 

Picked this up for like £1 during the Steam winter sale. Never played it on PS3/ Xbox 360 originally. I thought it was okay, the best thing about it was all the original games starring and working on the game. I found the random character you played as had nothing interesting about him what-so-ever. I guess they had to do that? You couldn't play as one of the four GBs so instead just some voiceless, emotionless dude.

 

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I finally finished Oracle of Ages! Which means I've finished the Seasons/Ages duo. Which means I've finally played every mainline Zelda! Four Swords Adventure doesn't count, right? Please say no!

 

These two were a slog. Constantly pausing to switch out inventory items was an absolute ballache. There were some good moments and interesting ideas that came from linking the two games but going back to these after Link Between Worlds is tough. I bludgeoned through the last few dungeons with a walkthrough. I'm happy to have ticked them off, especially in time for that Breadth of the Wind thingy, but I won't be revisiting them.

 

Done.

 

*checks eBay for Four Swords Adventure*

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Unravel

 

Been after this for a while and was sale for £4 on PSN. It was very enjoyable - gorgeous visuals, simple game mechanics (although a few weird difficulty spikes here and there). I didn't get all the trophies or collectibles but am pretty happy with my time with the game. I am going to try and follow the instructions and make my own yarny at some point for sure!

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I finished my 100% playthrough of Hollow Knight the other day. I started saying it was my favorite game of the decade as a joke, but it might actually be true now that I think about it. It ranks highly in pretty much all the rankings I care about (art, music, combat/playforming gameplay, lore) and aside from a couple glitches it was really well put together for a very small team. I've been successfully pushing it on other since then and have yet to hear a bad word about it.

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I beat a few games:

3D Super Hang On: I played this on my Amstrad as a kid and on arcade too, and boy is it better than I remember!:tup:

 

The Amstrad version doesn't even have the great music, which isn't easy to hear over the noisy bike and the graphics are gorgeous! It's no Outrun, but it's great!

3D Power Drift: Ugh, I kinda hate this game? I don't know if this is the first SEGA game with other racers, but boy are they broken! They seem immune to obstacles and can drive where my car can't? I don't know why I beat every course... Oh, right. I expected it to unlock something like in Super Hang On.:tdown:

 

Tick's Tales: This adventure has it's obvious Monkey Island influences and it's merely Medieval Monkey Island, only not as good. You have the three tasks, and from the starts the puzzles show the lack of polish and logic. How am I supposed to know wool plus stick makes a cat toy? How was I supposed to know he could make a string out of the wool?

Most the puzzles are just making potions where you have to figure out what they mean, and logic is something not very sound... :tmeh:

 

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Finished Hue :tup:

It's a 2D puzzle platform game where you can high parts of the world by selecting the same color. Usually games like this end in very time sensitive actions. But in Hue this is not the case. There are a few segments where timing is important, but that mostly running through a straight hallway selecting the right color. Usually plenty of time. In overall I did not have much trouble solving the puzzles. So I could easily continue without running into any walls. There was only 1 level which took me a while to figure out, once figured out I declare myself an idiot for taking so long.

 

 

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I was lucky enough to find a NES Mini and I obviously filled it with NES games, like Sweet Home!

 

The first survival it reminded me of wasn't Resident Evil, but Corpse Party, with the use of boards to go over gaps, the use of candles and the gruesome gore?

 

It also reminded me of Dizzy with it's TINY inventory and some obtuse puzzles, for example, somehow a pick will allow you to walk over ice? The real challenge is dealing with the inventory, when can you drop an item? Which items do I need? You only have room for TWO and a weapon. 

 

The game forces you to split into teams of two and three or smaller if needed since each character has a special item, Taro has a camera to get hints from frescos, Kazuo has a lighter, Akiko has a medical kit to remove status ailments, Emi has a key that opens many doors and... Asuka has a vacuum cleaner? She cleans up dirty frescos and floors with glass pieces.

 

You could probably play the whole game without a walkthrough thanks to the fresco's hints (except for one specific puzzle, which is very strict?) and the mansion has enough healing items to keep you alive.

 

If you can, give this game a go, I really recommend it! :tup:

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So I beat Mother 1/Earthbound Zero on the NES Mini, specifically the "Easy" patch and... wow, it's practically unplayable unpatched.

 

The game is so unbalanced, many areas have super strong enemies for no reason, since in the next area they'll less strong suddenly. The grinding is torture without the patch and dungeon design is pretty bad?

 

Also the story is ham-fisted and weak and the charm from the sequels are not here.

 

If you want to say you've played the whole trilogy, do it with the patch I mentioned, or else you'll be in for a bad time.

 

 

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Horizon Zero Dawn - 29.5 hours on normal (about 15) then easy (15) finished at level 37.

 

Very interesting game... I wasn't consumed by the hype for this game, but I did think it looked great. I have quite mixed feeling on it. I was excited, saw all the E3 and game conference stuff and it looked great. It's just a solid third person action game. Definitely could be the start of something new. But i'm not like madly in love or like it's the best thing ever.

 

- The game is gorgeous, the landscapes, lighting, design of the robots, settlements are all awesome. The occasional bug out or lip sync thing stands out alot more than normal because of how great it looks most of the time, however this was very rare. Super kudos to GG for the achievement here.

 

- Interesting story once it gets going, I quite enjoyed it. I really didn't enjoy the dialogue most the time, it was super video gamey at times and MY GOD Aloy speaking to herself during the entire game really got on my nerves - its so unnecessary and over the top. There were times when Aloy would be pointless talking to herself, an audio diary playing and Slyens talking to me.

 

- Gameplay is okay, I got frustrated with the climbing most of the time and I often missed arrow shots which I feel were spot on but whatever. I love however that you can pretty much Skyrim up any mountain which is great for taking short cuts. I disliked the fact if you are spotted every single enemy in the area automatically knows your location and you just get overwhelmed. 

 

- Focus. Why does every game need a "detective" cheat mode?? Okay, well I *kinda* get it here, as it links with the story like ancient tech but man, almost every game. Feels cheap.

 

Over the last four months I played Arkham Knight, Watch Dogs 2, Mad Max and playing open world games is weird. I always lose interest the more I play, every game is full of icons and collectibles and its too much for me. I play the story, a few side missions that interest me. I missed alot of stuff in Horizon but I think I am okay with that. The problem with side missions in this game is they are basically the same thing over and over...

 

Get side mission. "Investigate area". Open your focus and scan objects, Aloy pointless talks to herself "hmm a barrel, looks used...", continue scanning.. follow trail.... encounter NPC, enemy etc. Mission complete. Literally 90% of the side missions is just this over and over again. Became a real bore.

 

So yeah, the game is fine. I am happy its over and done with. I do not regret buying or playing it, but yeah probably won't be in my top 10 of the year. I would probably rate it 7/10.

 

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Finished Torment: Tides of Numenera :tmeh:

Took me about 21 hours to get through a single play-through. There was too much to read, too much narrative for me to enjoy. Also so many branching points, also unclear points where you had to make decisions. The parts where you were simply following a conversation tree and where you explicitly had to make a choice look alike. So sometimes I made a choice while I though I was just asking all the available info.

I get the feeling there are really a lot of different playthroughs possible, although mostly narrative in sense and not content based. But I'm not going to find that out.

The UI and controls are quite bad though. For example, you have a move and action in each turn (when you have an encounter), the action can also be another move. But how far you can move before consuming an action is a really tedious exercise. Traversing through the maps is also annoying, you have a map, but you cannot click on it to go to that place quickly. And the constant UI animations when you get into a dialogue thing... ugh.

Anyway, it was an interesting experience. Being able to solve conflicts by not fighting was also nice. But I think they could have created a more interesting game for me by focusing less on the huge about of text.

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The Interactive Adventures of Dog Mendonça & Pizzaboy :tmeh:

A graphical adventure game. It's ok. There are some annoying standard adventure game mistakes in it, like lack of quickly exiting a scene and a lot of going back and forth between scenes. Also had to do a lot of pixel hunting to find things which I needed to complete the various puzzles (only later found out there's a `show hotspot` thing with the right mouse button). So a lot of wandering around trying to figure out what do to. You could say it's like those classic adventure games from the mid 90s. (Not as overly complex as them though).

The game contains a lot of references to movies/games/... from the 80s and 90s. Sadly, in only a few cases you can look at them. Generally only plot elements are interactive. This might be to save cost on voice over work, but I wouldn't have minded just a text only description for minor stuff.

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Dishonored 2 - Replay - Easy - 6 Hours

 

So i've not played D2 since finishing it when it first came out. Felt like running through doing a no kill, powers or being spotted run. I played the first game like three times through (high chaos, low chaos, full stealth). Man game is so great, such good level design. Can't wait for story DLC.

 

Bound - 1.5 Hours?

 

Picked this up on sale last month, looked cool last year but didn't have time for it. What a neat game. The audio x visuals are nutso. I don't care for achievements / trophies but they aren't great here. Pretty much all tied to speed-running or collectibles. Well worth checking this game out.

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Axiom Verge - :tup:

 

Why did it take me so long to get into this game? It's great. When a storm knocked our internet out I turned to something sittin' on the ol' hard drive, and got further the first sitting than I had in two or three attempts previously. I decided to keep going, and while there were some backtracking and signposting issues, it ended up being very good at metroiding my vania fix. The bosses were a bit of a simplicity, but outside of a couple of specific encounters that's never been The Thing for me in these types of games.

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Stories Untold :tup:

Holy crap this game is good. If you look at the media it looks similar to that Stranger Things TV series. It sort of is. I can't tell much more, it would spoil too much.

Maybe The Stanley Parable but as 80s horror would be the best description?

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Just finished Rusty Lake Hotel and Rusty Lake Roots, and had a good time with both! They'e available on the App Store/Google Play if I'm not mistaken, but I played on PC.

 

They are point and click adventures with a very dark and macabre sense of humour and quite disturbing content, despite the pleasant hand drawn art style (RL Hotel has anthropomorphic animals in old suits and dresses!). It's best to play them unspoiled, so I'll just say that my favorite thing was the sense of progression in Rusty Lake Roots and the way that the narrative unfolded in small, unrelated chunks with pretty much no dialogue and very little text.

 

The puzzles sometimes requires a bit of obtuse video game logic and others are somewhat repetitive and not very interesting (there's some standard measuring puzzles, decoding passwords etc.), but it's not really that difficult and you can get them for cheap, so... :tup:

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Completed Void & Meddler - Episode 1 yesterday.  As an adventure game it is unacceptably bad—nothing but pixel hunting and blindly using your inventory on objects.  The story is also non-existent and there is no incentive to play the other episodes based on this one alone.

 

But it looks really good!  Pixel art plus insanely blown out lighting effects—all style and no substance.  The music is great, moody cyberpunk, too.

 

So print out a walkthrough and enjoy this pretty, mostly unplayable game!

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I beat Call of Juarez: Gunslinger a while ago but forgot to post about it. Really enjoyable, colorful, sometimes funny FPS. If you want to be a cowboy, it's a great shooter.

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Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition :tup:

This is basically a re-release of the original with GWFL replaced with Steam. Just like the first release it is still a fun game. Over the top action where at every kill you feel like a real bad ass, combined with over the top (dumb) dialogues. It's simply great. And the game still looks cool, except for the lip sync... that looks really dated. The large detailed and colorful scenery is still a really refreshing sight in FPS games.

Because this version is now released by Gearbox they added a option to play as Duke Nukem instead. This is a basically a model and VO swap for the main character. Nothing really changes, except that the work on Duke Nukem is quite bad. It's best to play it with the original character.

 

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On 3/31/2017 at 3:12 PM, TychoCelchuuu said:

I beat Call of Juarez: Gunslinger a while ago but forgot to post about it. Really enjoyable, colorful, sometimes funny FPS. If you want to be a cowboy, it's a great shooter.

 

Please remember your opinions on it for when I finally get there in my FPS thread!

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Don't worry, they aren't going anywhere. They'll be in my head for a good while. I tend to be pretty good at remembering what I think about games, books, movies, etc.

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