Recently completed video games

[Sno]

About the dialogue system in Binary Domain: Your responses modify relationship values with the other characters, and based on that the story can play out in some subtly different ways including multiple different endings.

 

I like Binary Domain quite a bit, it's a generally under appreciated game, i feel.

 

One of the issues i think people generally have with it is that it has this kind of superfluous skill system that leaves you with a first impression of the game where all you can really focus on is that it seems to have awful, swimmy shooting mechanics. It gets better, but it's kind of a bad way to start a game that is more third-person shooter than any overt RPG.

[Atlantic]

About the dialogue system in Binary Domain: Your responses modify relationship values with the other characters, and based on that the story can play out in some subtly different ways including multiple different endings.

 

I like Binary Domain quite a bit, it's a generally under appreciated game, i feel.

 

One of the issues i think people generally have with it is that it has this kind of superfluous skill system that leaves you with a first impression of the game where all you can really focus on is that it seems to have awful, swimmy shooting mechanics. It gets better, but it's kind of a bad way to start a game that is more third-person shooter than any overt RPG.

 

That's what I suspected, but the ending seemed to wrap up the character arcs decently. There are a couple of things that I could see going differently though.

 

None of the skills ever felt like they had any sort of effect. I'm sure some of the health boost and health regen nanomachines helped out a few times, but I can't point to a moment specifically. I never had a problem with any of the shooting mechanics, but I have the luxury of knowing how this game was received before I started playing it. I know it wasn't going to blow me away.

 

PS. I like the French robot and that you have to fight a chandelier (the fight is not great, but it's a silly idea that I enjoy)

 

PPS. Ditto for the motorbike boss

[eot]

I recently completed Binary Domain.

:tup:

I think Binary Domain is one of the most underrated games of the last few years. Its metacritic is 66, that's reserved for truly bad games. The combat is a ton of fun, mostly because of how the robots come apart. I honestly prefer it over most single player shooters. Most of its charm comes from the writing though. It's so strange, switching from campy, to serious and unsettling, then to endearing. It shouldn't work but it does and to me it feels sincere somehow in a way that games of this kind rarely do. Also, regarding Dan, I had one moment in the game where he said something and I thought to myself "that was a really well delivered line!". The game constantly exceeded my expectations in a good way, it has the trappings of forgettable, utterly generic, poorly playing shooter that I would hate. Then it does a pirouette and smiles at you with cartoon glint in its teeth and you can't help but smile back at it.

 

I used it once already, but if there's one word that sums up Binary Domain for me it's 'endearing'.

[Twig]

Ooh Binary Domain is one of those games I always meant to get but then completely forgot about. Now that I'm reminded, I hope I don't forget again.

[Atlantic]

I used it once already, but if there's one word that sums up Binary Domain for me it's 'endearing'.

 

In a world of grimdark open-world collectathons, Binary Domain is a great antidote. I get the feeling that the people who made it had a lot of fun doing so. And I like that every cutscene swerves between comedic farce a seriousness at every opportunity.

 

 

Ooh Binary Domain is one of those games I always meant to get but then completely forgot about. Now that I'm reminded, I hope I don't forget again.

 

If you have a PS3 still hooked up, it's on sale on PSN for very cheap (at least on the EU store).

[chummer]

Dragon Age: Inquisition- Found myself at the 60 hour mark and kind of just sped through the last three missions of the game. I didn't even touch Hissing Wastes or Empries. A lot of the great character interaction stuff from previous games was still there, but it was blockaded by all this #Content that wasn't great. Played a tempest rouge and while I liked being a super fast character in a series that's always been kind of slow, combat became that MMO waiting for cooldowns while holding an attack button style that I'm bored to tears by. I think I was most disappointed by

the fact that you only see Alistair for a hot second if you made him king, but get him in a whole quest if you kept him a Grey Warden.

Like Mass Effect 3, I didn't feel like it delivered well on the promise of carrying over world-states. But again, that party interaction stuff is still great. Also, Josephine and Vivienne need a spin-off game where in Orlais where they engage in games of intrigue and such.

 

Her Story- Posted my thoughts in the game's thread, but can be summed up by saying it has great acting and a novel way of discovering narrative while the writing quality varies wildly. For $6 though, it's an easy recommend.

[Max Ernst]

I finished Guacamelee. I had a blast with it. The art style and music were really solid and gave the game a really great sense of atmosphere. The platforming also felt really good and I enjoyed those difficult segments where you have to have pinpoint timing on all of your button presses and world switching. Some of that shit got really intense and it felt pretty damn good when you finally pull off the correct sequence of moves with the right timing after 20 minutes of failed attempts. The combat also felt really solid and had a lot of complexity woven in, allowing for a lot of different combos and improvisation. All in all, this was just a really solid game. After completing it I saw that Hard mode had opened up. And nope. Fuck that. The base game was difficult enough.

The video game equivalent of a Reddit thread. I regret every second I spent playing this.

[elmuerte]

Back to Bed

Party of the current Eye Candy Humble Bundle. It's a puzzle game with gorgeous art. It Dali with a bit of Escher for the puzzles. I didn't finish the "nightmare" mode, but that's the just same 30 levels except that you have to pick up a key somewhere in the level. I didn't find the puzzles very complicated, but that's probably because I have a knack for these kinds of puzzles. Basically you have to redirect the path "Bob" is walking by putting objects in front of him, until he finds his bed. Really simple, but fun.

[Zeusthecat]

The video game equivalent of a Reddit thread. I regret every second I spent playing this.

I don't really understand what you mean by that. Care to elaborate?

[Merus]

Well each level section is upvoted by the player base

No I think he means there's a lot of reference humour in the background art.

[Jutranjo]

Well each level section is upvoted by the player base

No I think he means there's a lot of reference humour in the background art.

 

There's stuff like this around the biggest town hub 

[Griddlelol]

I finished Metal Gear Solid: Grond Zeroes. As in, I've finished every mission, but I'm not quite done with it. I really enjoyed it, it's an absolute blast to move around that base, marking enemies, taking them out, avoiding them or causing complete havock. As a sand box game it's right up my alley.

The challenges are pretty engaging too. I'm going to try and 100% it because it's just that much fun to play.

I think I've spent around 10 hours with it, and I'm still going. People complaining it was too short are clearly full of shit.

[SecretAsianMan]

I pushed all the buttons in Please, Don't Touch Anything.  I grabbed it during the last Steam sale and unlocked all the endings.  It's got an 'escape the room' type puzzle aspect.  The interface made me think of Papers, Please with the way that there's lot of things to interact with that get unlocked as you progress.  It's pretty short, I managed to get through it in under 2 hours.  If I were a real jackass I could request a refund.  It's games like this that fall under the 2 hour mark that make me worried about Steam's policy, although if you just wanted to see everything I'm sure a video of it exists somewhere.

[Twig]

Wouldn't it be easier just to pirate the game, though?

 

Already found a torrent with it (which I won't link for obvious reasons) that has plenty of seeds, so I'm gonna go with yeah it would be easier. U:

[SecretAsianMan]

It probably would be easier to pirate it, but I'm not the kind of person who pirates games or would want to request a refund for a short indie game I could finish in under 2 hours, so I have no insights into either mentality.

 

Also when I say I could request a refund, that doesn't mean I didn't like it.  I enjoyed it, it just happens to fall into that space of "a game you can beat and get a refund for on Steam".

[Twig]

I mean yeah I wasn't talking about you. My point was anyone who's likely to pull that stunt would probably rather just pirate it because it's way easier.

[Cordeos]

I just finished Dues Ex: Human Revolution: Directors Cut. I feel like this game didn't know what it wanted to be. Most of the levels are semi-linear there is a shoot everybody path and a stealth path. However you get the feeling that despite the "choice" of play styles there is the stealth way and the wrong way. I found the over world maps to be very annoying, they are just open enough to make navigation around Detroit and Hengsha irritating, its easy to get lost due to a lack of differentiated buildings and odd pathing.

 

This brings me to my number one issue with this game, Missing Link. First they take all your stuff and abilities, a trick games need to stop using. Right away you have to knock out two guards at exactly the right time and hope a third doesn't magically spot you (I had to reload several times and I don't know what I did different the last time). Then you have to do tons of backtracking for all the quests (maybe I should have killed everyone so I didn't have to sneak past the same guard five times).

 

If the levels had been more truly multi-path and if shooting vs. stealth were actually equally valid play style choices this game would have been far better.

 

What is the point of giving players a choice of endings when the sequel will tell them what the correct one is?

 

I will definitely not be buying the new Deus Ex until it is under $10.

[Jutranjo]

Steam refunding has something about people who abuse it will have their refund option removed. The risk of any repercussion when pirating is much lower in comparison. It's at least slightly consumer friendly.

 

Also Missing link was originally a DLC that ran a totally separate DLC with no savegame importing/exporting because it got finished after the main game,  which is why it's so weird.

[Trip Hazard]

I got Deus Ex: Director's Cut for a dollar from the Charity thingy. When I first played the non-DC version, I wasn't too impressed initially but it slowly grew on me, but not enough to finish it. You're totally right, Cordeos, that the over-world locations were confusing to navigate and lacked differentiation in the areas. They felt like an appeal to players of the original game, but Hong Kong and Hell's Kitchen were really memorable, and more appealing visually.

 

Didn't help that I was playing Dishonored at roughly the same time, which I preferred vastly. One thing I'll say which I loved from DE:HR are the long, tense conversations with multiple responses. They were tricky to nail, and caused me much consternation, in a really good way.

[tberton]

Those conversations are the main thing I hope Dishonored 2 pulls from Deus Ex. Also, I think Deus Ex was more generous with non-lethal takedown options.

[Ninety-Three]

I just finished Waking Mars. I don't have many interesting things to say about most of the game (it was full of interesting ideas with not-super-interesting implementations), but ART's dialogue was incredibly adorable. I'm actually considering replaying it just so I can record it all. A quick Google told me no, but does anyone know of someone on the internet who has already done so, and perhaps posted it?

[Dewar]

I beat King's Bounty: Crossworlds this weekend. It's basically Heroes of Might and Magic without the actual taking over of cities (and without uPlay.) Much like its predecessor, it's an awesome 30 hour game stretched out to 50-60 hours. I'm glad I finally got it off my plate, but I'm definitely not buying the next in the series for quite some time, if ever.

[Bjorn]

I beat King's Bounty: Crossworlds this weekend. It's basically Heroes of Might and Magic without the actual taking over of cities (and without uPlay.) Much like its predecessor, it's an awesome 30 hour game stretched out to 50-60 hours. I'm glad I finally got it off my plate, but I'm definitely not buying the next in the series for quite some time, if ever.

 

I would generally advise against the next entry (Warriors of the North).  It's mostly more of the same, with a few changes, but it's even more bloated than the previous 2 entries.  I finally quit when I hit a point that re-populated a couple of maps I had already cleared, forcing me to go back through them.  It was just the worst kind of extra bullshit content to extend how long a game takes.  Steam says I was over 100 hours when I quit, and I don't know how far from the end I was.  I think that includes restarting once fairly early on, and probably some wasted time paused, but still, it's a massive game.  I love the KB series, but I wish they were tighter, more focused games.

[Valorian Endymion]

Some Visual Novels I did finish this days:

 

Shan Gui: it is a short Chinese VN (kinectic type, so choices), the story itself it, well, very sweet, a bit short, ok. In the end I did even made the badge.

 

Higurashi When They Cry - Chapter 1 Onikakushi: The best way I could tell about this one is "I didn´t see that coming", it´s a really good VN, I confess that was unware of what Higurashi was about or everything around (there is a ton of game and anime) I had bought sometime ago and only now I finally decided to start playing, by the end I was really surprised and can´t wait until the next chapters. Just for the love of all, play with the new sprites,the original ones are horrible.

 

the VN itself start very slow, something you see in many VN, the trick is that here you might have a idea of what maybe is coming on, but this slow pace and the character put that almost tension to rest and when things heat, and believe me, things get heat, this sudden shock and contrast is quite powerful. The first scene where Rena start screaming "LIES!" freaked me out (and the new artist made the scene even better).

[Max Ernst]

There's stuff like this around the biggest town hub 

It's this gross referential stuff plus the TOTALLY RANDOM humour and the gameplay is twitch retro mashup of genres basically designed to played with your neckbeard.