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Recently completed video games

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I have been a huge champion of The Journey Down ever since the first part came out five years ago. I completely fell in love with the style, the atmosphere, the music, the characters, just everything about it was really fresh and interesting. The puzzles weren't especially complex but maybe another good thing was that I never lost momentum and stopped playing.

 

Part Three finally came out and to be honest I'm a bit disappointed. I feel as though I spent more time watching cutscenes than figuring out puzzles. It is extremely straightforward and the climax didn't much make up for it. It blew out into this large scale action epic that took it from charming to trite pretty fast.

 

That wouldn't stop me from recommending the first two! They will still hold a special place in my heart. Just write your own ending.

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I've also finished Celeste! I really liked it; challenging without being unfair, with great, thoughtful level design. I also really liked the story, because I have that Part of Me and it was really affecting seeing Madeline reconcile with it and work with it. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll get a double air dash if I manage the same.

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I finished INSIDE.

 

My partner and I played it all the way through together. She likes platform games but I was a little was worried the morbid tone would put her off. But she was totally engrossed throughout, from the moment you have to pause in front of that car to keep from getting caught right at the beginning. (The game doesn't tell you what to do - it doesn't even tell you you're being hunted - but when I saw her pause, and the little boy just tuck himself against the vehicle, with that beautiful animation - god it's so good.)

 

It is one of the few games I can think of where it stands alone, so confidently, as a complete work of art unto itself. The ways in which it is 'about games' are certainly there but they're also not especially interesting. You might as well say that Mulholland Drive is 'about movies' - it's not wrong but there's so much else going on there.

 

I almost can't believe that this is from the same team who made Limbo. Comparing this to that is like that bit in Amadeus where Mozart takes one of Salieri's compositions and does the 'wouldn't it be better like this…' thing to it. A magical reinvention that takes everything that made that earlier game quite interesting and, effortlessly, turns it into something really, really great.

 

One of the best games I've ever played.

 

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Beat some co-op games recently while the kiddo and her husband were in town visiting!

 

Assault Android Cactus - A really solid up to 4 player twin stick shooter with some bullet hell elements.  You're androids defending a ship from other robots having gone rogue and killing all the humans.  There is a final spike in difficulty at the last boss that is particularly brutal though, to the point that we weren't able to beat it with 4 of us and only got through with 2 of us trying it because of the uptick in number and health of enemies at a full squad.  Would probably be a bit lackluster alone, but great for a pick up and play co-op game :tup:

 

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime - The lady and I had started this game many moons ago, but ended up hitting a spot where two of us running the ship was feeling more frustrating than fun.  Broke it back out with 4 players and it's such a more fun experience!  Just having to worry about 1 or 2 stations on the ship makes it a lot less stressful of a game.  Big :tup: after going back to it. 

 

Crawl - Since this is a rougelite MP game, had to say we "finished" it, but we did have multiple completed runs, and it is such a good experience with 4 people.  In it, one person is the "hero" and the other three are spirits who animate the monsters and traps of a dungeon.  Successfully kill the hero, and your spirit resurrects and the previous hero becomes a spirit.  The player who can reach the dungeon boss and slay it is the winner of the match.  The interplay of swapping between co-op and vs play, and even having some competitiveness with other spirits if there is someone you want to block from being human, is balanced and makes for great emergent moments throughout a game. 

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I had a very similar experience with Lovers. Funny how the 2 player mode is definitely the strongest design wise, but, actually I just want a fucking around in a spaceship experience.

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Just completed the trial version of David Lynch Teaches Typing. Very helpful - I recommend it. I'd also recommend Chris Remo making a mod by subbing out the audio files. The process for getting the full version seems unnecessarily convoluted, but I'm getting there. :tup:

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Superhot is free on Xbox Live Games for Gold at the moment. Do it, it is great.

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3 hours ago, twmac said:

Superhot is free on Xbox Live Games for Gold at the moment. Do it, it is great.

 

Yeah, I got it via Twitch prime. Still on going I think.

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4 minutes ago, thenexus6 said:

 

Yeah, I got it via Twitch prime. Still on going I think.

 

It came out on Xbox One at the tail end of 2016 and I played it compulsively for about a month. The infinite modes that unlock are so damn good!

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I just picked up AC Origins as well coz I found it for 23€ and I can't resist a great deal. However I'm also about to buy FC5 and I'm not about to subject myself to 2 Ubigames at once so Origins will have to wait a little while.

 

9 hours ago, twmac said:

Superhot is free on Xbox Live Games for Gold at the moment. Do it, it is great.

 

Aaaaaaand it's also in the latest Humble Indie Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/humble-indie-bundle-19?hmb_source=navbar&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=tile_index_1 

 

along with SOMA, Mini Metro and Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. All great.

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Very late to the party on this, but I finished the main questline for The Witcher 3 last night. Been thinking about it a lot recently.  It's stunning in its scale and ambition - huge maps, tens of thousands of voiced lines, dozens of interesting characters, hundreds of (admittedly dull) quests...

 

Some of it dragged on (you spend way too long running from one end of Novigrad to the other and back), and the ending kept getting further away (the game ended about 10 hours after I thought it would), but overall it was an engaging experience - I wanted to keep playing to uncover the next bit of plot, or to get new dialog from the more colourful characters.

 

Still have the DLC to look at, but for now I'm done with open-world RPGs. I don't normally do long games, so TW3 was a pleasant departure. Really need a break after about 70 hours though!

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Yeah TW3 took me like 3 or 4 months worth of weekends to beat. Currently playing through the Blood & Wine expansion. It's a good weekend game. It's too complicated to get into on a weekday evening, but spending a lazy Saturday riding through Toussaint, getting pulled into crazy sidequests and looking for paintings to hang in my new house, is a good time.

 

Anyway, 25 hours in I've beaten Spintires: Mudrunner. I've done all the singleplayer maps and challenges, that is.

 

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Sorry about the pile of screenshots, but I just can't help myself. This game is so god damn beautiful. And with suspensions creaking, mud deforming, plumes of exhaust smoke billowing, it looks even more beautiful in motion. I'm a huge Spintires fan. Played the original demo in 2012 and instantly backed the Kickstarter when it came up a year later. I was dismayed by all the troubles the development went through under the original publisher, Oovee, but with the development now under a new publisher, Focus, and with original developer Pavel still in control, development has been flourishing. It now has the long-awaited cockpit-view, the wonky camera controls have been remade, AND Steam Workshop Map support just entered public beta. The game is more perfect than ever.

 

If for some reason you've been holding off on getting this Russian lumber-hauling sim, the finest off-roading game since Screamer 4x4 came out 18 years ago, then now is the time to get onboard. COME ON IN, PEOPLE, THE WATER IS FINE! Or should I say, the MUD is fine!? ;)

 

:tup:

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Is it nice to play with a controller? I'm always tempted to get a wheel setup but the adult inside stops me

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1. Ys IV (PCE CD) 
2. Exile (w/ Unworked Designs patch)(PCE CD) 
3. Macross 2036 (PCE CD) 
4. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (PC) 
5. AM2R (PC) 
6. TaleSpin (NES) 
7. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (PC) 
8. Super Mario 64 (N64) 

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13 hours ago, graddy said:

Is it nice to play with a controller? I'm always tempted to get a wheel setup but the adult inside stops me

 

Controller or M+KB is definitely the way to go. While you can hook up a wheel you'll likely have to use it in combination with a mouse for several functions, so it's quite unwieldy.

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I finished Shadow of Mordor. (No, not the new one - yes, the one that came out in 2014. Gosh that seems like a long time ago now.)

 

It was fine? It's enjoyable to play, aside from the murky visuals and the characterless world and a storyline which is totally devoid of interest. The climbing and stabbing and shooting is fun, and it's all carried off with a certain amount of flair. I skipped all the cutscenes without remorse - and I never skip cutscenes in games.

 

But I think I broke the Nemesis system. I never had all the good orc dating sim experiences you're supposed to have with this game. Apparently this is not an uncommon problem!

 

It seems that if you don't die often, you never use the 'Advance time' function, and you simply kill or brand every captain you encounter, the game doesn't really know how to cope with you. I ended up just rending these gaping holes in the orc army which were never properly filled. Once or twice I was ambushed unexpectedly by some captain…but then I just killed them, and that was that? Nobody ever seemed to want to hunt me down, and I never found a captain I couldn't handle. Often I'd get low on health but then I'd just run away, or scamper up the side of the nearest building, find some plants to chew on, then return to the fray and thin out the herd before exacting my revenge on the captain.

 

In particular it's strange to me that 'time' - in the sense of the thing that enables orcs to move around their hierarchy - only seems to advance in this game when you want it to. And I couldn’t see any reason why I would want to hit the 'advance time' button. Perhaps there were system-related reasons that meant it couldn't happen any other way. But the problem with that is that the events in the game end up feeling like discrete instances that can be indefinitely postponed. I never felt like I was making any meaningful decisions between, for example, helping one captain ambush another, or helping one of my own captains build up their forces. Because you can do all of that, if you want. It's all just stuff. You never feel like the world is actually ticking away in the background without you.

 

It's all very odd. I'm curious to see if Shadow of War handled all this in the same way - but I will probably never be curious enough to buy it now.

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Here are the games I have completed:

  • Red Faction
  • Shadow Complex
  • De Blob
  • Final Fantasy VII (On PSP)
  • Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (I cant believe I have not played that until now)
  • Mirrors Edge
  • Pikmin Wii

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The idea is to actually say something about the games, not to simply compose a list. Why would anyone care about the latter?

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I finished Mirror's Edge: Catalyst today. I put it off for about a year because I reached a section of the game that I found quite infuriating. Usually it's all about death-defying leaps, and the game presented me with a platforming section that required precision jumping in a very narrow space. Your character is so accustomed to making those long jumps that trying to jump half a metre next to you becomes an exercise in frustration, as your character will either clear the target platform completely or grab onto it, then vault herself over the edge, to her doom. Anyway, so I came back to that, finished that section in a few attempts, and then realised that I was actually less than an hour to the end of the game by that point. I'm not going to talk too much about the ending, I guess, but I'm still bemused about the whole "this isn't a sequel" business; in both Mirror's Edge games, you have a sister and she plays a relatively large role in each game, but they are completely different characters. I suppose the developers didn't really know what they wanted to do with the story after the first game, so they decided to just tell a completely different story with a similar premise. I look forward to the third game, which I hope will tell a completely unrelated story to the previous two games yet again.

 

Oh and I sort of just returned to it because I'm close to finishing another game (Batman: Arkham Knight) but I don't want that one to end just yet so I ended something else.

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Bud Spencer & Terence Hill - Slaps And Beans

A river city ransom like beat 'em up as a tribute to the Bud Spencer & Terence Hill action comedy movies. If you're not into those movies you properly won't enjoy this much. It is relatively short, and it doesn't never cover all movies. But I had a lot of fun anyway. The game lacks proper fighting controls, there aren't any combo's you can actually perform. The racing minigame is almost unplayable with a controller. etc. A whole bunch of minor flaws. But it has a lot of references to the movies, and some of the original songs.

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On 3/28/2018 at 2:09 PM, Beasteh said:

Still have the DLC to look at, but for now I'm done with open-world RPGs. I don't normally do long games, so TW3 was a pleasant departure. Really need a break after about 70 hours though!

 

I took a break just like that when I played and I think it was a good idea. The expansions are as good as if not better than the main game, but the burnout can be very real.

 

I just finished the WiiU classic Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, a Shin Megami Tensei/Fire Emblem crossover JRPG where you lead a squad of Japanese idols to save everyone from evil forces that feed off of people's artistic essences. This game was very silly but its heart is in the right place and the writing is very good and fun. Like this is a game where one of the characters at one point has a tv role as Sneeze Detective, a detective who has multiple personalities that change when she sneezes and there's random chances for characters to break into songs or whatever and do adorable super attacks mid combat. My main complaints would probably be that the dungeons are kinda lame and that Tsubasa's boobs are absurd.

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You know, if Tokyo Mirage Sessions came to Switch, I'd probably pick it up, although the proper Fire Emblem must be coming soonish too...

 

I just completed Doom 2016. Haven't played an FPS in a while, but goddamn that was a belter! Just chunky and meaty and metal. I really liked the movie with the credits too - how they tied in the visuals depending on whose credit was onscreen. I'm definitely going to go back and mop up the secrets and change the gun view to centre.

 

I'm looking forward to Wolfenstein II, although it seems the actual shooting part of it isn't half as satisfying.

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