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I finally finished Dragon Age Origins and every last piece of DLC. It was pretty good and I liked most of the story and character dialog stuff but wasn't the biggest fan of the combat. My main character was a rogue archer and I had a really difficult time getting through a lot of the fights. I got to the point where I literally just saved my game every 50 steps or so because there were so many goddamn fights that I kept wiping on. The micromanagement and the amount of pausing that I had to do to get through a lot of them just wore me down and by the end of it, I found myself dreading every time an encounter started. And of course, I wrapped everything up with the hardest boss fight of all which was the final boss of the Golems of Amgarrak DLC. I spent well over an hour on that fight and had to look up a strategy for how to beat it before finally taking it down.

 

So yeah, it was a good game and I liked it but I would have liked it a hell of a lot more had the combat not been such a chore. I have a feeling I might be one of those people that will enjoy DA2 because I could really go for some of this stuff being a bit more streamlined.

You might feel differently, but DA2 isn't less of a chore. You probably won't wipe as much, but you'll have to wade through endless combat encounters all the same.

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I finished Counter Spy

Yeah it was ok. I liked the style a lot, and the shooting was pretty satisfying. However, the stealth just felt bad, like it had been added in at the end when they made the game about spies. It's just so half assed.

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Ori and the Blind Forest: I have a ton of complaints, small and big, but it's gorgeous and satifying and unique. Even the stuff that isn't executed well is conceptually great.

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I finished Apotheon the free game on PS+ a couple of months ago. It's a 2D metroidvania with a strong focus on a weird sort of physics based combat, based on Ancient Greek mythology.

I really liked it. I Was able to look past the problems it has (mainly the combat is awkward as hell, especially against multiple opponents) and went out and got all the trophies. I unashamedly used a guide because some of the in game clues are easily missable and I didn't feel like navigating the sailing section again.

I would not have bought this game because I have enough stuff on my list, so it was the perfect PS+ game, and if you're looking for an intersting aesthetic in a metroidvania, then get apotheon, it's pretty good!

On to more metroidvanias (well just metroid).

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Just finished Castlevania Mirror of Fate on 3DS. It was new and super cheap (in price) and I thought 'why not?' And I enjoyed it! I save stated though the NES original a while ago, but this is the only other Castlevania I've played. As a tourist I enjoyed the shlocky story and the generational stuff and the iconography it pilfers. Slick design, shallow but satisfying combat, decent music. An enjoyable blast.

 

I also got round to finishing Project Rub (or Feel the Magic: XY/XX outside EU) as I journey through outliers in the DS catalogue. It's a nice little showcase for the console that gets a little frustrating towards the end. Nice to see Sonic Team's name on something worth playing.

 

Next up I've got Canvas Curse (or Power Paintbrush as it's called here - Christ knows why.)

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Gritted my teeth through Yoshi's Island. I remember liking that game so much but I think I was just responding to it's graphics. The thing I like about Super Mario World is the fluid movement and the feeling that I can run headfirst through most levels if I can respond fast enough. Yoshi's Island feels more puzzle based, with way more maze-like levels. And the less said about that damn crying baby Mario the better.

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I recently got El Shaddai used for cheap and... was rather disappointed.

 

Sure, the visuals were amazing... for a few levels, but the combat, the platforming, the plot, it's all a mess. The game has platforming that's unnecessary, since it's more frustrating that rewarding, the combat is rather minimal in depth and in general, each chapter is only a few "lazy lockdown arenas" with unnecessary plataforming in between.

 

The bosses weren't that creative or rewarding either, you have to might bosses several times and you never know if it's the time that actually counts or not, sometimes you loses rapidly and they let you live, sometimes they run away, sometimes they change into another form, it's a mess.

 

I guess that sums up the game? It's mess, that's pretty sometimes.  :tmeh:

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Metroid Zero Mission yet another metroidvania I've completed. It was great, I am absolutely loving these games, it gave me a similar experience to playing super metroid, but I found it a lot easier, probably because I understood the mechanics from the start, rather than learn them as I was playing.

The

stealth section was great too

.

Anyway, good game, like all the metroids I've played.

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Recently finished up God of War 1, 2, and 3. Didn't own a PS2 when games were coming out, so I picked up the collection and 3 on the cheap (one of the many advantages of getting a console super late). 1 wasn't particularly impressive, but 2 and 3 have a really great sense of scale when they choose to highlight that. I can distinctly remember running across the giant chain that tethered those 3 gold horses in GoW2. 3 does that stuff even better, with the moving environments while being on various titans and big levels. It harkened back to similar feelings I got while playing Shadow of the Colossus. There's also some neat grappling stuff in 2 that I would love to see fully explored in its own game.

 

Story was terrible. Combat got dull, though I kind of appreciate how much of that stuff carries over through the series. In the end, I'm not sure I'd recommend any of the games. I don't regret playing them and I can see how 2 was really impressive for it's time (still kind of is), but there's too little of that impressive stuff.  I wasn't intending to, but I managed to pick up GoW: Ascension for free when the PS Store goofed. It'll probably be a while until I get to it, if at all.

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Almost forgot, about a month ago I finished this game Castle in the Darkness. Indie game on Steam, sorta has a Metroidvania vibe to it, but is generally just a fun, difficult adventure platformer. There's definitely instances of avoiding instant-death by the pixel in the game, but thankfully that's near the end of the game (I was really worried the game was going to devolve into that nonsense on the long-term). I haven't done the 100% completion task yet, which is... Look I said the game is difficult, but it feels like it is in a legit manner. I just need to take the time to do it.

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Dead Pixels - Got exactly what I wanted out of this. This is basically a slightly more robust flash game, and I enjoyed in the same mindless way I enjoy most mechanically simple flash games with RPG elements. A good game to play while listening to a podcast.

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Gone Home - amazing!

Monument Valley - enjoyable puzzles - only got stumped once though, on the last level.

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Close to finishing Dark Souls again, woo hoo. Initially I was just doing it for the Steam achievements, but it has once again become something of an obsession, causing me to entirely neglect all of the other perfectly good games I have installed (Planescape, XCOM, Alien: Isolation...)

 

What a game.

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Super Mario 3D World

 

Was Mario always weird? Because this game is weird. I went through heaven, through hell...and ended in Bowser's weird theme park?! Weird. But really good with a Pro Controller, not so much with the Wii U gamepad.

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I finished Far Cry 4 this week, its an incremental upgrade to Far Cry 3. The best feature they added in my opinion is the rhinos and elephants, because now that the wildlife can flip cars the world is a more amusing place.

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Super Mario 3D World

 

Was Mario always weird? Because this game is weird. I went through heaven, through hell...and ended in Bowser's weird theme park?! Weird. But really good with a Pro Controller, not so much with the Wii U gamepad.

 

I guess? I've never really thought about any of the context for any of the worlds in Mario games, just an 'oh there's the required lava/water/air stages'.

 

Maybe 3D World is just a huge allegory of Mario's life? 

 

I found the gamepad great though. I used it throughout my play of it. Especially with the way you can stop enemies and junk by touching the screen. (edit: Not to say that the pro controller isn't ace, because it totally is)

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I just beat Metal Arms: A Glitch in the System for the PS2 and wow, was it a blast!

 

The game was full of tiny details like Glitch's antenna wobbling as he walks and robots acting differently as they get damaged. It did have an exasperating turret section and unnecessary vehicle levels, but they were still enjoyable compared to modern games.

 

It was weird that almost every bad robot was voiced by Rob Paulsen howling like a monkey, but not as weird as them farting. The game also has section were you must hijack the enemy bots and when you managed to sneak up and hack a big one... boy does it feel rewarding.

 

I had a very stupid moment in the game where it got ridiculously hard since I had to fight several big shielded robots... Only to find out that I was supposed to simply enter the area without any weapons drawn. Oops. 

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Finished Final Fantasy Type-0 over the weekend.
 
Fun game, but goddamn that is some awful voice acting. Hard to tell if the story was good as a result too. It's got a pretty decent setup that it doesn't do much of interest with. The motivations for the war come down to

just because

.

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I just capped off South Park: The Stick of Truth over the weekend.  I haven't been a SP fan for a while, so I'm sure that a lot of the references went way over my head, but I could tell they were still making jokes.

 

I knew from friends having played it that it was a good game, but I guess I was still surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  I'm never much one for turn-based games as I find them to have a poor flow, but this was terrific.  No random encounters, throwaway and fourth-wall jokes effortlessly worked in, and tons of customization options, but I'll note that a good chunk of the customization goes by the wayside as you're going to want to upgrade your weapons/armour fairly smoothly in line with progress through the game.

 

I suppose my biggest complaint is that I can tell right away that it has very little replay value beyond testing out a new class.  All of the jokes would wear thin over repeated viewings and would lose their magic.  That said, I'm very happy that I played it, and if you're even remotely a South Park fan, you should play it.

 

It took me about 15 hours to do everything except one side quest (Jimbo's).  The learning curve is fairly smooth, but a few techniques do take some getting used to, such as the magic attacks.

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I beat Guacamelee last night.  I've beaten the game before but this time I was playing on hard.  It wasn't as fun as I remembered it being.  While I enjoy metroidvanias, I feel like this one didn't need to be one.  Part of the fun of Metroid is exploring areas using skills or abilities you didn't have before.  Guacamelee doesn't really have exploration, it's literally just matching abilities to colored blocks behind which lies a chest. 

 

The combat also felt less enjoyable this second time around.  All the moves are very slow and deliberate, which is fine, but when the game starts ramping up it gets really frustrating to get hit by something because the windup for your punch takes forever.  This leads me to not use most of the moves unless I need them to break a shield.  Instead I just rely on throws to juggle groups of enemies, which is much less satisfying. 

 

The only part I didn't really have a problem with is the platforming.  I admit it gets kind of ridiculous in a few places (not Meat Boy ridiculous but still way more than casual), but I actually think the dimension switching sections have some pretty clever design.  It never took me more than a couple tries to get past any particular section.  The exception for me is one area with Megaman style disappearing platforms, although I managed to get through it rather quickly this time.

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I made it to Caravan 10 in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and that prompted the credits to roll, so perhaps i can say i have "finished" the game, but i'm certainly nowhere remotely near being done with the game.

 

I've played a few Monster Hunter games before, most of that time was spent playing Monster Hunter Tri online with friends, but the series never clicked with me the way MH4U has. I'm not completely sure what's actually changed since those half-hearted experiences with the earlier games, but whether it's a case of Monster Hunter finally stepping its game up enough, or me just being more acclimated towards and ready for the kind of heavily demanding insanity it poses, i'm left with the feeling that it's an absolutely phenomenal action RPG. It's almost certainly going to be my game of the year and it's definitely my new favorite 3DS game.

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Finished DmC: Definitive Edition over the weekend. Lots of fun and honestly far more enjoyable to play than the other DMC games, gritty seriousness notwithstanding.

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Finished the Titan Souls demo and that's going to be an awesome game. The high stakes nature of the fights is great, with death being JUST annoying enough to give you a sense of tension without totally sapping your will to live when you get mushed. Each boss is a puzzle and the three in the demo are extremely varied in what you need to do. The loop of Get Flattened, Get Wise, Get Good, Get Win that's so enjoyable in games like Dark Souls is on full display here. I totally recommend it. 

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Finished the Titan Souls demo and that's going to be an awesome game. The high stakes nature of the fights is great, with death being JUST annoying enough to give you a sense of tension without totally sapping your will to live when you get mushed. Each boss is a puzzle and the three in the demo are extremely varied in what you need to do. The loop of Get Flattened, Get Wise, Get Good, Get Win that's so enjoyable in games like Dark Souls is on full display here. I totally recommend it. 

 

This is good to hear! The video they have on the Playstation store is weird. It's just the character wandering, and then encountering and dying to bosses. Probably not the best way to give an impression of the game. Guessing the demo is PC only?

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The game is Shadow of the Colossus x Dark Souls by way of Zelda. 

 

Looks like the demo is only on PC (right now anyways). Though I can't imagine its a very demanding game, system wise, and it's on Mac, Linux and Windows.

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