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Recently completed video games

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Finished Card City Nights: An amusing single-player card collecting game. I found the light-hearted, goofy tone charming. The gameplay reminded me of Heroes of Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes because it centers around linking three cards/units together to activate abilities. I find deck building in these type of games rather daunting, but I was able stick with an Aggro/Rush deck throughout the game without too much trouble. There are some pacing issues by the end and occasional grind for new cards, but I take that as a unfortunately natural part of card games.

 

Finished Bastion: I know I'm late to the party on this one, but nothing but high praise. Great art, fantastic music, and solid gameplay. I was surprised by the game having such deep mechanics after hearing so much about its narrative style. The modular difficulty and risk-reward using the idols/gods was probably my favorite part. I loved that I could fine tune the game to my skill level. The narrative wrapping was just icing on the cake. A good balance was struck by the narrator giving enough background of the world to give it a sense of place, yet leaving me wanting more. I felt incentivized to try different weapon combinations and new items to get the narrator to reveal more history of the world.

 

Finished Rayman Origins: Great 2D platforming and stunningly gorgeous visuals. The feeling of movement in this game is classic Ubisoft. There's a really nice game flow when you can get in the groove, which for the most part the level design doesn't impede as the precision platforming isn't that prevalent. Despite that, I rather enjoyed the precision and difficulty in the bonus level. Props also for some homages to Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. The blend between the enemy sounds and environment being mixed/timed into the music were also great and really added to the whimsical nature of the game. However, the damsel tropes ridden throughout the game were way too much, and definitely took away some of my enjoyment of the game. Co-op shenanigans, like in Super Mario Bros Wii, were a blast.
 

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

 

This sounds... really good.

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This sounds... really good.

 

i had not heard of this prior to Reyturner's post and tried demo as well tonight

 

the fist boss pounded me to a pulp for a while, i sorta figured it out - and arrow to the heart/face.  super satisfying! 

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I had completely forgot about Titan Souls.  Definitely back on my radar now. 

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I thought that was a browser game? http://clawmark.itch.io/titan-souls

 

They're fleshing it out or porting the above game to other systems? I think I beat a couple of the bosses in that while I was doing nothing at work, it was pretty fun.

 

 

It was a game jam game that they developed into a full title.

 

Which means they had the chance to change the name...

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I've completed a few short games this week:

 

-Disillusions Manga Horror: Yes, that's it's actual name. All you do is walk around in a scene, touching items to trigger something and have the character comment on it with the most anime portrait ever and using some speech program to say some words in Japanese... It's a glorious trainwreck?

 

-Astray: An Amnesia styled horror game, only not scary and not as good, but OK-ish? 

 

-Danmaku Unlimited 2 & Crimzon Clover: Shmups, not much to say about them except I was actually bummed out a bit when Crimzon had freeplay already unlocked. 

 

-Monsterbag: a Vita game that is free if you have PS+ where the game starts as the whimsy adventures of girls and her monster backpack who tries to catch up with her when she leaves for the bus... and then the game turns dark FAST!

 

I'd call it a weird stealth puzzle game? The Monsterbad can only jump from person to person's back and if they are angry and looking your way, they will attack and kill you, sometimes you have to time it right, sometimes you have to use the environment and solve a puzzle to advance. It had some frustrating moments, but I really enjoyed the game!  :tup:

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-Danmaku Unlimited 2 & Crimzon Clover: Shmups, not much to say about them except I was actually bummed out a bit when Crimzon had freeplay already unlocked. 

 

Really? Why? I personally loved Crimzon Clover. Unlike Danmaku, it actually explained it's systems without giving away everything, and it was really good fun. In Danmaku I just got a tad lost.

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Oh, of the two games I did enjoy CC more, but the fact it had freeplay meant it wouldn't challenge me as much to get better, with Danmaku 2 I knew I was getting better since by the time I finally beat the first two stages that gave me trouble were a breeze. 

 

But then again, CC looks crazy hard, so maybe I should shut up.

 

I just beat Claire, which is like Lone Survivor only more blatant with it's influences, some of the sound effects are directly from well, either RE or Silent Hill, that's for sure. While I did enjoy it a lot, the levels were too big and empty for my taste and it felt a bit like they made it longer just because they could. I didn't even understand how the endings worked and I got the second best ending and I got lost a lot. 

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Borderlands 2. I skipped the first game and just went right into this one. There's a lot of people still saying it's better than even the latest game so I wanted to see what the hubub was all about. And I found out! It was pretty fun and quirky. The only thing I didn't like about it was how bland or confusing-in-purpose some of the character skill trees were. The Psycho's trees are freaking amazing in how clear it is on how you're "supposed" to play using any of them. Mechromancer and Assassin sorta have that going on too. Well now that I think about it, the Siren is pretty clear too.

 

So that leaves the Gunzerker and the Commando. They each have a tree that really boosts their action skill, and then... that's it. The other two trees are generic "survive" and... I can't figure out one tree for each of them.

 

Looking at the skill trees for BL:TPS it looks like they did a much better job of defining playstyle with any given tree. Which I'm looking forward to. A lot of people seem to be down on TPS for some reason or another, but most of it seems to be based on the writing. Which means I may still enjoy it.

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Gunzerker trees: Gunlust is your morr dakka tree, the idea is that you're constantly swapping guns. Rampage makes your gunzerking longer and more effective. Brawn is a tanking tree.

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I played through BL1 and 2 as Sirens. I really like the way they play. It's super fun.

 

I just beat Kid Icarus, the 3D Classics version on 3DS. After getting linked to Anatomy of a Game in the Metroid thread, I started reading a tonne of them and the ones about Kid Icarus made me want to go back and check it out. I'd had the 3D Classics version on my 3DS for a long time, so I jumped in. I'd never made it through the first level before, so this was a big thing for me. It was actually pretty good, considering how much I'd heard in the past about this being a disappointing game. It's got a really rough start, but after the first two levels it's pretty fun. I had no idea that there were three maze levels, I'd always assumed that the whole game was the vertical scrolling style of the opener. Turns out that this is only 6 of the 13 levels. There are also 3 complex maze levels, some side-scrolling, and a forced scrolling shooter. This is a really varied and interesting design. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Good times.

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Finished Cave Story. I don't remember the final three bosses being so tricky to beat when I was a kid; must be slowing down in my old age. Took me about seven or eight tries in total.

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So that leaves the Gunzerker and the Commando. They each have a tree that really boosts their action skill, and then... that's it. The other two trees are generic "survive" and... I can't figure out one tree for each of them.

 

I can't speak for the Gunzerker, but i played a hell of a lot of BL2 as a Commando, and i can basically tell you that you can't really do anything interesting with the commando by focusing in on one tree, it pretty much has to be a combination of two or more. That's kind of a problem with the Commando, it doesn't come into its own until NG+ playthroughs. Until you have enough points to mix elements from deep in multiple trees, it's pretty dull. (While most pronounced with the Commando, I feel that's kind of a problem with BL2 in general, NG playthroughs are pretty bland compared to the ridiculous builds you can sort out in NG+ playthroughs.)

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Oh, of the two games I did enjoy CC more, but the fact it had freeplay meant it wouldn't challenge me as much to get better, with Danmaku 2 I knew I was getting better since by the time I finally beat the first two stages that gave me trouble were a breeze. 

 

But then again, CC looks crazy hard, so maybe I should shut up.

 

I just beat Claire, which is like Lone Survivor only more blatant with it's influences, some of the sound effects are directly from well, either RE or Silent Hill, that's for sure. While I did enjoy it a lot, the levels were too big and empty for my taste and it felt a bit like they made it longer just because they could. I didn't even understand how the endings worked and I got the second best ending and I got lost a lot. 

Crimzon Clover doesn't need limited credits because it has an incentive to play well integrated into the game itself - you need to 1CC the game in order to fight the true final boss.  A pretty smart way to set a goal for players to work toward without artificially limiting them or alienating players who just want to mindlessly mash their way to the end, I think.

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I can't speak for the Gunzerker, but i played a hell of a lot of BL2 as a Commando, and i can basically tell you that you can't really do anything interesting with the commando by focusing in on one tree, it pretty much has to be a combination of two or more. That's kind of a problem with the Commando, it doesn't come into its own until NG+ playthroughs. Until you have enough points to mix elements from deep in multiple trees, it's pretty dull. (While most pronounced with the Commando, I feel that's kind of a problem with BL2 in general, NG playthroughs are pretty bland compared to the ridiculous builds you can sort out in NG+ playthroughs.)

Yeah, I've been looking at the trees more closely and the Commando does look really sturdy with a lot of levels. It's just a problem of getting those levels. I was playing him through the mission on the dam to save Roland, and couldn't damage the Constructor bot for shit (my Mechromancer made it a joke). And then I learned the game has branching paths for story missions, to some degree!

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Crimzon Clover doesn't need limited credits because it has an incentive to play well integrated into the game itself - you need to 1CC the game in order to fight the true final boss.  A pretty smart way to set a goal for players to work toward without artificially limiting them or alienating players who just want to mindlessly mash their way to the end, I think.

 

This is actually a pretty common trope in shmups. I'm pretty sure all the Cave games do it (Death Smiles, DoDonPachi, etc). The only game I think that doesn't do it is Ikaruga, but that's because it's fucking hard as nails anyways.

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Yeah, I've been looking at the trees more closely and the Commando does look really sturdy with a lot of levels. It's just a problem of getting those levels. I was playing him through the mission on the dam to save Roland, and couldn't damage the Constructor bot for shit (my Mechromancer made it a joke). And then I learned the game has branching paths for story missions, to some degree!

 

Oh? Can you get more specific?

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Oh? Can you get more specific?

Technically it's not that big of a deal.

Basically, on the dam you can either save Roland or not. If you fail to destroy the Constructor Bot, it takes him away, changing the reason why you go to the prison (Friendship Gulag?). I can't remember why you end up going there if you DO save Roland.

So mostly dialog change I guess. But still neat.

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I actually beat a game over the weekend!  Finally finished the last couple of areas of Middle Manager of Justice, one of the only DoubleFine games I hadn't got around to playing.  It's a fun little portable time waster, though the framework for something a lot more interesting is there.  I'd love to see them re-visit that kind of game with the lessons they learned from it. 

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I played/finished Super Win the Game over the weekend. It's an expanded You Have to Win the Game (A retro 2d platformer with metroid style ability collection. Also it's free) now with a Zelda II style overworld added in. It's charming and has a great CRT emulation look going on. If you like the original I think it's worth checking out.

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Just beat the Battlefield 4 campaign for the second time, kinda just wanted a quick, dumb shooter campaign and was recently considering revisiting the MP of BF4 so it seemed a natural step. Not to mention I have a second pass at trophies, considering PS3 and PS4 trophies are separate. Still a pretty good campaign all things considered, though I'm reminded how much the needless choice at the end bothered me. Why offer absolutely no choice in a campaign until the last minute, particularly when it really doesn't matter (there are like 3 lines of dialogue that pertain to each ending) to the plot in any way?

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I just beat Kya: The Dark Lineage, a PS2 which might be a hidden gem? It's a bit like Ratchet & Clank, Jax and similar games.

 

You're a girl transported to a magical world where an evil overlord is taking over, so the plot is not that original, but I like the gameplay. You must fight creatures called Wolven and then exorcise them back to "Nativs" who build shops to get better upgrades or skills needed to continue the game.

 

The combat is not perfect, but interesting, I don't think the upgrades are that optional as Wolven get tougher and more efficient at fighting, just when you think you're found a good combo to make the combat easier the game dishes out a new enemy and forces you to change tactics a bit right until the end.

 

I rather liked some of the puzzles, sometimes you are forced to sneak around enemies and use their weapons against them like a bomb dispenser, it's mostly about using your powers efficient or creatively.

 

The games has races and minigames as completely optional things only for money, I didn't even need to touch them at all, you do get a magical airboard with with you must traverse special areas, dodging and jumping, which was actually quite fun... until the last two sections, which are so close they might as well be the same.

 

You must keep hitting the speed boosters of the lava will catch you, but as the speed increases it's harder to steer and if you slow down too much.. when most of the sections are on walls so you can pretty much guess what will happen.

 

I owned this game a long time before and remembered these areas I just mentioned, but never beat it, if only I knew how close I was to the ending, the final boss wasn't that hard after fighting so many "Ninja" Wolven. I even 100% the game and all, it was a blast! :3

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