Recently completed video games

[Trip Hazard]

I beat Deadlight after just shy of 5 hours after getting it in a bundle. It wasn't bad, felt good capping zombies but mostly you weren't doing that, you were running away from them. Sometimes it wasn't obvious enough how to get out of a given situation, so I ended up beating the zombies back with my axe trying to buy myself time to figure it out. Not always the games fault, that. What was the game's fault is that it wasn't always apparent what was in the background and what was in the foreground, and the main character (Randall? He didn't have much personality) didn't always do what I wanted him to do when I was jumping about. 

 

I really hated the section with

the Rat at about the halfway point. Too much insta-death, too many awkward jumps, too much reloading, and it bothered me that Randall didn't slap the shit out of the Rat for putting him through the gauntlet.

 

Also finished Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. After getting my head around the controls, I bombed ahead with it and finished it in two sittings, I think. Great game, lots of lovely sights and actually quite moving in places. I'd recommend it.

 

Edit: I have now started playing Riddick, after a recent thread raving about it, and also STALKER, a game I've bounced off a couple of times in the past. Any tips from Zone veterans?

[Apelsin]

For STALKER I would recommend downloading the Complete mod (I believe that is what it is called). Fixes a lot of issues, including balance which might help you out in the beginning of the game.

As for gameplay... I was just really careful in my engagements with other Stalkers and creatures in the zone. Trying to give them as wide a berth I possibly could. At least until I was able to get my hands on a automatic weapon.

[neonrev]

The STALKER Complete mod series (SoC, Clear Sky or Pripyat) is probably the best way to play the game, especially if you've bounced off of it in the past. The weapon handling is also greatly improved in a way I can't really describe. Less jerky, more weighty? Complete also bundles in a number of atmospheric mods, both audio and visual, which should also be mentioned. It has utterly gorgeous skies. 
 

Complete also includes some debug/cheat tools in the menu, and I'd advise you to never even look at them. I know they intend the teleport system to be a feature and not a debug tool, but it utterly ruins the zone as a place. The walking is important. 

If you find the zone not punishing enough, the Misery Mod for Call of Pripyat is my personal favorite game/mod combo for the series. It is incredibly deep and fleshes out much of the game, but is definitely not a good way to start, unless a Dark Souls-esque Stalker experience sounds good to you.

General starting tips I guess: (I'd suggest playing at least on normal or hard (whatever they're called again) unless you're really having problems with the combat. The AI for the enemies doesn't really mesh with their lower health and your higher damage, and it makes them seem really stupid. That plus the fact that the environmental dangers are unchanged can make the game all the more frustrating and off-putting. A-life is the heart of Stalker, and it functions best at higher difficulties.)

Muppjockey is right, only make contact on your own terms. It's a little like DayZ when it comes to fellow Stalkers. It's always worth determining whether a fight is in your favor or even necessary. Some Stalkers are friendly, and can be a source of quests, free or paid distance movement (the actual in-game teleport) and trade. Of course, many others will just as gladly shoot you in the head and take your bread and vodka. 
The creatures are different. In my mind, unless you have a good reason to engage, they're just a waste of ammo and health, and more dangerous than they look. Until you have a surfeit of medical supplies and ammo, just walk around. You can waste them with little effort later.

Don't be seduced by automatic fire. Stalker has a ballistics system, and a fairly complex one. The AI doesn't get suppressed, and body shots are far less effective than pretty little headshots. Once the other Stalkers get body armor, having a little fire discipline and more practiced knowledge of the ballistics will come in handy. 

Don't worry about artifact hunting until you have a much better detector and armor. Most can kill you with their heat or radiation alone, regardless of how hard you try to navigate them.

Once you find a weapon you like, stick with it. Some of the games have repair and upgrade systems, and a weapon customized to your needs is going to work out better in the long run than stock weapon upgrades. Along those lines, keep everything repaired, and keep enough food and medicine around. Being well supplied is better than having new gear.

Run away from bloodsuckers very fast. Do not stop until you can find a corner to safely back into and cry while spraying shotgun shells into the rest of the room. This is the only way to deal with them for a long time.

There's more specific things about the different games, but I hope that's helpful generally.

(Edit: Boy I love talking about Stalker. Sorry world)

[JonCole]

I beat South Park: The Stick of Truth! It's probably my Game of the Year so far, but that's not saying much because I haven't played more than a few games from this year. You basically have to really like South Park to enjoy it, but since I meet that prerequisite it was a blast for me. It was developed by Obsidian and has their signature 80% done feeling where some systems don't feel fully fleshed out, but it didn't really bother me all that much.

 

The combat system is very similar to something like the DS/3DS Mario RPG games or Bioware's Sonic game, where a lot of stuff is timing based. It's definitely a game where once you find your niche, you can spend enough money to buy the exact equipment you want and totally devastate practically anything. By the end, I was killing normal mobs in one round without letting them touch me. The combat isn't ridiculously tactically compelling, but the game was made with the story as the main driver so they put in environmental puzzles that let you dodge probably half of the battles in the game. In one "dungeon" I was able to take out every single enemy minus the boss without actually entering battle.

 

The story hits all of the South Park staples - a fumbling insane government, Canada, aliens, Crab People, all of the major characters, etc. It makes a fair amount of game-related jabs too, which was something I didn't quite expect but definitely enjoyed.

 

Anyways, for fans of the South Park genre, it's super good.

[Trip Hazard]

Thanks guys, they were two very helpful, enlightening and passionate posts which have made me very keen to get stuck in to STALKER. I'm going to post some thoughts in the dedicated stalker thread, 'cos I don't wish to derail this topic.

[Griddlelol]

I finished Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. Another fantastic action game by Platinum - who I think are quickly becoming my favourite developer. 

 

In essence, this game is all about the combat, and the combat is fucking good. Like, really fucking good. Slashing away at people, blocking, parrying, then finally entering blade mode to slice them up into tiny pieces. There's usually a really easy QTE in there, but nothing frustrating, they're pretty easy, and the animations look really good. 

 

The bosses in this game are really the point. They have excellent sound tracks which reach their peak at the final stage of each boss. The bosses all require a lot of good timing, and a lot of patience, but they're really rewarding. 

 

The story isn't awful either. I assumed it was going to be completely throw away, but it was kinda good. 

 

Play it! It's good!

[SuperBiasedMan]

Also, the sneaking in it is still pretty fun and viable if you wanna try stealth more than slashy slashy (stealth still involves killing though).

[Griddlelol]

Yeah, it is. Although I didn't do a hell of a lot of it. Preferred going head on, way more fun, but yeah, sneaking about and stealth kills are viable.

 

I forgot to mention that just like most Platinum games, they don't explain anything. I had to look up how to parry - and I still don't think I understood it fully. I was easily able to forgive it because it was so strong in pretty much every other way.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Yeah, it's a fighting based system but the stealth is still a fun maneuvering puzzle.

And in addition to needing to investigate the parry system, you have to buy the dodge move!

[Yasawas]

Hotel Dusk: Room 215. I'm disappointed with this, it sounded right up my street but it was really dull. The story is pretty strong for a game but there's nothing else there as the box-promised puzzles are thin on the ground and barely puzzling when they do show up, and all you do is wander about this hotel fighting a clumsy-as-fuck interface talking to dudes. The characters are actually pretty interesting and the animated stuff is really cool but the endless repetition of the key story points and reveals is excruciating. It's like they wrote this legitimately interesting story then decided anyone playing a video game would be so dumb they would need every element of it explained to them in minute detail very slowly at least two or three times. This is not the 999 written by James Ellroy experience I was looking for.

 

Edit - Oh God I forgot the music! For real, the worst game soundtrack I have heard for as long as I can remember, like I would actually need to go back to the Spectrum to find a rival for this. It's simply astonishing.

[N1njaSquirrel]

I really enjoyed hotel dusk. The puzzle with the puzzle (if that makes sense) always sticks with me as an ingenious use of the DS. Although this was a while ago, and just after the first Phoenix Wright, if I remember correctly.

 

I just finished DmC, as in the gritty prequel remake thing that Ninja Theory made. I hated the people, the writing, the dialogue and especially the music. The intro was so distasteful I turned it off and didn't touch it for a month or two (I got it on PS+) until coaxmetal on the idle thumbs IRC said it was quite good. After getting past the first 10 minuets, the game gets better. The action is quite good and fluid (although not quite reaching the heights of Bayonetta's), also the level design is really good. particular highlights is the dance floor and the mansion that gets torn apart. It was also the first time I've ever been disgusted in a video game. I generally have a high tolerance for messed up shit, but the baby boss was gross. seeing the lady getting sucked into his belly-button was really off-putting and disturbing. So congratulations there I guess?

 

The problem I had with everything else was how juvenile it all was. It was like a teenager's power dream. Fuck the man, yeah? ooohhh corporations are bad. Who can trust the news? ooohh not me! grrrr. A perfect example is when he gets to the night club, punches the bouncer in the face, then writes 'fuck you' on the waiting list and walks in. He also does it in a red pen, because he's presumably angry, although the rest of the waiting list was written in black ink. He gets the pen by catching the pen which is knocked into the air which the bouncer was holding, when he was punched. Presumably he'd be writing it in black ink then? Unless the bouncer had one of those 4-way biros. They didn't delve into this much, I have to say. also the writing was thicker, like he was using a marker pen. Yet he clearly clicked the pen before he wrote, insinuating a use of a biro. UNACCURATE. I HATE THIS GAME.

[chummer]

Finished Burial At Sea: Episode 1. I didn't like that the ending indulged in the dullest parts of Infinite, but I really liked the rest. Walking around pre-fall Rapture was easily my favorite bit, and the Fontaine Futuristics section tapped well into the creepy parts of BioShock 1. The combat is as dull as it has always been, but the way the game limits your resources was a neat bit of challenge; forced me to consider an encounter instead of just charging in and shooting off guns and plasmids pell mell.

 

So, BioShock DLC continues to be the most interesting parts of BioShock games. 

[Griddlelol]

Yeah, it's a fighting based system but the stealth is still a fun maneuvering puzzle.

And in addition to needing to investigate the parry system, you have to buy the dodge move!

 

I bought the dodge move and never understood how to use it. Parrying was plenty for me. 

 

I also didn't realise until the boss with the

explosive shield

that you can charge up your attacks by holding down the button. 

[chummer]

Burial At Sea: Episode 2 is done with. What a great piece of DLC.  I'll criticize the ending again for indulging in the multi-verse stuff that I didn't find particularly interesting, but exploring Rapture again as a dank, creepy place was really good. This one was much more stealth-focused than Ep 1, but I feel that works well with the plasmids as I often used them to create chaos among enemies instead of running and gunning. The lead up to the ending also spares you from any combat at all, letting you dip into the story some more, which I really enjoyed.

 

They tried to remove the racist treatment of Daisy, and while I don't think they pulled it off, at least they acknowledged that it was a problem.

 

Playing this has got me thinking about BioShock 1 and how whenever I hear it spoken about, it's always in the context of the game's twist and commentary on choice. I never felt that was very substantial though and found the best part of BioShock was always the stylistic choices, incredible world, and stories that took place within that world. I feel like that's what all the DLC story pieces (including Minerva's Den) dive into and why'd I'd say they're the best BioShock things worth playing.

[elmuerte]

Ether One

I think I picked this one up in a humble bundle. I don't think I heard about it before. But... I loved it! Remember that weird game by that fullbright company? Well, this is sort of like that. It's one of those fancy walking simulators. But unlike most walking simulators, this game also has optional puzzles that you can solve.

I like this game more than Gone Home. It also has a great story, but of a different subject. There's a beautiful world to explore, there is not as much object to inspect as in gone home. It's not obvious which objects you can, and cannot inspect, which is a bit annoying.

So, the puzzles. You can walk through the whole game without doing those puzzles, just taking in the main story without much challenge. Solving the puzzles, which are quite challenging, adds some weight to the story.

ps, I'm pretty sure the developers, or at least one of them, is an Idle Thumbs fans, because Nick B, Sean V. Chris R, and Jake R. play a role in the back story of the game.

[Tanukitsune]

I beat Whispering Willows, you play as a girl who can astral project herself as a ghost that can talk to other ghosts and possess items to move them.

 

And that's basically all there is to the game, you slowly make your way through an abandoned mansion using your ghost power looking for your father and you slowly uncover the morbid story of the mansion and it's inhabitants and despite the puzzles being almost too simple, I enjoyed exploring the mansion, talking to ghosts and learning about their past. And almost every ghost is grotesque deformed depending on how they died, or probably just to give you the jibblies and so they can this a horror game.

 

I don't know if this game is an OUYA port or if it was just developed for both systems at the same time, but that would explain the Amazing Frog Easter egg and the OUYA logo in the middle of a corridor. Hmm, what ever happened to the OUYA?

[baekgom84]

I'm a bit late to the party but I just finished Bioshock 2. It's a very solid and competent sequel to the original game, but it definitely doesn't tinker with the original game's formula very much. Great writing and level design though. Am I the only one that absolutely hates fighting the Big Daddies/Big Sisters? The game just doesn't seem to be very well designed to accommodate the kind of prolonged gun battles required to take down these guys. I started off playing on a controller, mostly so I could play on my TV, but I got so frustrated at some of the difficulty spikes that I ended up switching back to mouse and keyboard. Going to try to finish a couple of other games in my back catalogue now and then return to play through the Minerva's Den DLC, which I've heard is actually better than the main game.

[syntheticgerbil]

I feel like I don't finish games anymore, but I guess I finished Tomb Raider Legend last month or the month before. It was pretty good but it felt a little bit uneven, the level design was a little bit sparse and uninventive in many cases, and the game felt way too linear. Combat was pretty shit, or at least functional but not fun. I did like the story a lot though even though it was kind of cheesy. I always wanted to know what happened next. The game was very pretty as well. I played the PS3 version if that's any reference.

 

But more recently I finished Tomb Raider Underworld and holy fuck I enjoyed it so much. Not so into kicking pots to get treasures out of them, that was really weird and stupid for the collectibles in this game for someone who likes to collect artifacts, but oh well. But the game itself was so good. It scratched just the right kind of Prince of Persia/parkour itch I love. The puzzles and levels were inventive, the flow felt really even, and it was so god damn gorgeous. Combat was very much improved but was also muted as well as any boss fights stripped from the game. Apparently this was intentional by the designers so that they could have more focus on climbing and exploring. Good choice I think. There was a boss showdown at the end but instead it was done through level traversing, which I find a unique choice since every game of this type I have played ends with a sort of throwaway boss fight that is often times frustrating or sort of bad (Looking at you Enslaved).

 

Maybe the story could have been better in Underworld though. I got the conclusion to everything but it was all so depressing and nothing really ended well except the villian was stopped. DLC continued the stuff but didn't really add anything extra.

[SecretAsianMan]

I've been on a speedrun watching kick lately and the other day I watched one for Arkham City.  It got me in the mood to play it again so I started and finished a new game plus over the weekend.  I even used some tricks I learned from watching the speedrun (nothing like sequence breaks or out of bounds stuff, just little things like how to speed up combat or make some sequences faster).  Still a fun game.

[undermind9]

i finished Legend of Zelda (NES) main quest...maybe for the first time ever on Wii Virtual Console.  i got all the way to dungeon 9 based on childhood memories...but i suspect i quit it as a child because of a lost save or the nearly impossible to navigate maze of hidden passages & bombable walls.  i dont remember actually drawing out that dungeon on paper so its possible that it was never complete.  this time i just pulled up a google image to keep all the paths straight

 

 

interestingly, my wife really hates this game as an observer.  She finds the incredibly repetitive overworld & dungeon music grating, and finds it ugly as a whole.  i have yet to experiment if the opinion holds on all pixel games or just the actual classic ones (NES vs NES-esque indies).  

 

anyways, if i do second quest i'll probably follow an overworld map for the secret hearts but do dungeons 1-8 w/o aide

[Yasawas]

Mega Man (NES). Only other one I've played is Mega Man X earlier this year which I thought was alright but I've had a building notion to give them a proper go, play the entire series in order as far as I'm able and I had some eShop credit just sitting and so this purchase happened. 

 

It's excellent, frankly. There aren't many games the best part of 30 years old that hold up as well as this (provided you can forgive the stupidly unfair bits like checkpoints which spawn you right beside an enemy...) and the lack of frills probably helps in that regard in that they were forced to make a tight, concise experience. I'm starting to understand why people get so passionate about these games now.

[Griddlelol]

Super Time Force Ultra. Really enjoyable game, I loved how it's styled like a cartoon network show. The game play is really fun too, but I didn't like how collectables were so important. There were certain points that you use one guy to do something, ditch him or her, then continue from a previous point so that the original guy is grabbing a collectible, and the new one is progressing through the level - if that makes any sense. Well, when you get that cooperative action going, it's very satisfying. 

The characters are all quite individual, and all of them have their uses. I found progressing through most levels, the sniper was by far the best, but once you get to bosses, all of them have their uses. 

 

The story might be entertaining to some people, but I didn't really pay attention to it. It was a bit weird, and I was too eager to get back into the game proper.

 

I personally would like to have it on the Vita, I much prefer playing indie games on a small screen in bed. So I doubt I'm going to get deep into the hardmode levels, but I still really enjoyed it. 

[Sutku]

Donkey Kong Country - Tropical Freeze (all levels beat, puzzle pieces collected, regular mode KONG letters gathered): Fantastic level design where you can keep a run going from start to finish. Controls felt clunky at first especially after playing Super Mario 3D World, but when you get the weighty feel of the controls down it's all good. There probably isn't that much new here compared to DK Country Returns but I never owned a Wii so this is my first go at a modern DK game. Co-op with this game is problematic. Playing with my wife-to-be, the precision needed for the more difficult levels and the fact that there's a lot of moving platforms makes it quite frustrating to sync movement through levels. So we just ended up taking turns. There's still stuff to do like time attack medals and Hard Mode but that's going to be a project done in the next year i think. Oh one more thing: Hated the boss battles. They're basically very easy for the first 2-3 minutes after which the hard part comes in and it was extremely frustrating just doing the beginning part over and over again. Still, a great game.

 

Super Mario 3D World (every god damn thing done): This was the 1st game I played with my Wii U and boy was it a good one. The sheer simplicity of the game gives the devs so much time to just concentrate on the sublime visual and mechanical polish that I had a stupid grin on my face for the first two hours of the game. The open areas are very good for co-op as well. Not forcing the players on a small space at the same time makes it possible for players to actually work together without descending into chaos.  Achieving the "done it all 5 glowing star" status started to feel a bit like work though. Completing every level 5 times was a bit of a cheap decision to prolong the game (I'm a neurotic mess if a collectathons completion meter is anything less that 100%) but luckily my lovely GF had a months vacation from work at the time and she was a brave soldier and pushed through some of the levels over and over again.

 

So far the Wii U is pretty much the best console experience in a long time for me. Currently also playing Pikmin 3 and Wind Waker HD.

[Griddlelol]

THE LAST LEVEL IS TOO HARD! I think I could do it if I had a coop partner.

[Sutku]

THE LAST LEVEL IS TOO HARD! I think I could do it if I had a coop partner.

 

3D World? It was an incredible challenge yeah. I did manage to beat it with Peach but I couldn't have done it with the other ones without the Tanooki suit. The adrenaline levels on the last boost platforms while collecting the keys were pretty incredible. To top it all off I always get a terrible nose itch when I concentrate on a difficult game challenge.