Recently completed video games

[Sombre]

I love how that is something that one would say. Seriously.

Out of 121 deaths, I have made it there 3 times. Yetis on the iceworld just destroy me.

[Kolzig]

I played through GTA:Chinatown Wars on DS maybe two weeks ago.

Amazing game, I only completed something like 60% which was mainly just the story. Took me in real life about one year to complete the game, but there were long periods of time that I did not play the game at all.

I'm still puzzled how the tiny DS cart can contain such a big and living city inside it. The game was very well made and only sometimes it was a little bit annoying that the draw distance was not always up to speed when you were driving some very fast sports car and trying to run away from cops.

After I finished the game, I was just driving around and got my first six star cop rating, hahah.

There was insane amount of cops, SWAT teams, FBI agents and tanks after me.

[miffy495]

I would recommend going online and finding those lion statues that are in the game. If you find both, you get two bonus missions. One of these missions involves stealing a tank and going on a rampage. Awesome.

[elmuerte]

Finally finished Brutal Legend. The final battle wasn't as difficult as I thought, actually, it was quite easy. Didn't really care for the real time strategy part. But overall the game was quite nice, I really enjoyed how various metal concepts where explained in the story.

[twmac]

I beat Half Life 2 two weeks ago.

[Kolzig]

One month after GTA:CW I have completed finally Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Took me about two months in real life time I think.

Completion percentage was 74%

My plan was not to that many Riddler statues, but in the end I actually collected something like 155/250 statues. I got 18/20 upgrades and I think from the character profiles I got 31/40?

This was an awesome game for a comics nut like me. I've always loved DC comics, especially Batman and Superman. Holy crap if the same developer would someday make a game about Superman and succeed with it as much as with Batman.

There has never been a good Superman game, only one mediocre arcade game and one mediocre SNES game about the death and return of Superman. Then bunch of horrible crap like Superman 64 and Superman Returns games.

Batman Arkham Asylum was my game of the year 2009. I knew already after just playing 30 minutes in autumn at a friend's place and now after playing the whole game by myself, the goty prize is even more sure.

Next stop FarCry 2 and Ghostbusters.

[Joflar]

I need to go back to Batman AA. I beat the story but never did any challenge missions.

My latest gaming conquest was Trine. They must have tuned the last level extensively because it wasn't terrible, and actually pretty fun. I ended up losing the thief and wizard at one point and had to hop around as a knight, freaking out until I reached a checkpoint.

My favorite physics moment was finding a ferris wheel and using the Wizard to move it around in a circle while skeletons tried to hop on. Every time they touched one of the carriages the momentum killed them and their bodies would slide off with this really hilarious rag doll effect.

[JonCole]

In reading a little bit of the backlog of this thread, I quickly realized that I never finish any games. The last one that I feel I completely finished was Mass Effect 2 (or the Johto half of Pokemon SoulSilver, for whatever that's worth).

Now, inspired by this, I'm on a quest to beat Darksiders. It's a pretty sweet game, so I don't think it'll be too big of a problem.

[brkl]

I played through Dragon Age and Awakening.

Dragon Age made me miss Mass Effect 2 a lot. The characters weren't as interesting, as well acted or animated as in ME2. It took 20 hours longer, but I spent a lot of time hoping dungeons would just end. Suffered a lot from not having a proper antagonist.

Loghain

was just Scar from The Lion King and the archdemon just a beast. Inventory management was a huge pain. I wonder how long I spent all in all looking around battlefields to make sure I didn't miss some item I need.

Still, there was a lot of cleverness and richness that made it worth my time and money in the end. I appreciated the sense of making big choices with repercussions. The world was a touch bland, but they did mix up the standard fantasy fare in clever ways.

In many ways I liked Awakening a lot more. It's shorter, more focused, has proper antagonists with interesting motivations and such. I liked the characters more too, except unfortunately the game didn't give as much time to their stories as DA. The ending came really suddenly for me. There was a bunch of quests I had wanted to finish, but wasn't able to. It felt really rushed.

[tm_drummer]

I re-played Monkey Island 1 and 2.

and I re-played Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and Sands of Time...and am currently playing through Warrior Within. yeah, I know it's not in the correct order...but I played it like that because....I was looking through some games on my old Xbox, so I found The Two Thrones and decided to play it. When I was finished, I grabbed the Sands of Time for the PC, because I had it with me here where I currently live...and now I'm back in my hometown, visiting the family for a few days so, naturally, I grabbed the Warrior Within (PC) and am currently re-playing that.

I don't know, I guess I'm kinda preparing for the story of the upcoming "sequel", The Forgottens Sands, so.....

Edited May 1, 2010 by tm_drummer

[elmuerte]

I played a bit of Dragon Age yesterday and today. And I'm wondering, has there ever been an inventory system that wasn't a PITA? Diablo/Titan Quest/Torchlight were probably the best, but still a pain. Luckily Dragon Age's system isn't as annoying as Borderlands system, that one is really like Mass Effect 1 annoying.

Back to Dragon Age. I get the sense that the world is quite focused on the same subject. There is nothing besides the main story line.

So the game is about 20 hour longer than ME2? Maybe I should work on Borderlands first, although DA so far is less tedious than Borderlands.

[brkl]

About that and probably more, since I didn't do every little thing in DA, only almost every little thing.

Playing the game now got me thinking, they need to make a system like this, but without health and mana potions. One of the improvements in Awakening are stamina potions for fighters, but the real problem is that the difficulty of a fight depends mostly on how stocked you are with potions. If they didn't have potions, they could tune the difficulty better.

BTW, ending a fight with a High Dragon with only one of your team left, and her a 5% health, feels really good. At that point I was only going on with the fight to be stubborn, I didn't expect to actually win it.

[Xeneth]

Out of 121 deaths, I have made it there 3 times. Yetis on the iceworld just destroy me.

They ARE pretty brutal. I started picking up spiked boots en route to combat them at one point... those and a cape will carry you through the ice levels surprisingly unscathed.

[Xeneth]

FINALLY dragged out and finished Silent Hill: Shattered Memories...

It looked and played quite decently on the Wii, I was pleasantly surprised! The flashlight and cell phone controls were used in neat ways that helped to draw me in, it's just too bad the damn game was so caught up in it's own rules structures!

Horror guideline: The only good reason to create a "rule" like, "Monsters only chase and attack you when the world morphs into a frozen mirror version of itself" is to BREAK it at some point for added effect!

Waiting for the game to "cash in" on any number of creepy ideas, setups, and feelings Shattered Memories evokes is like waiting for Silicon Knights to make a fucking Eternal Darkness sequel! There was a room

with a strung up bear corpse

in it that literally had me scootching around on walls to keep me as far away from the thing as possible. The atmosphere was great! How they resisted

making a paw twitch

at some point, I have no idea.

Just got done with Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. I like the idea of a game changing elements of itself in response you your actions...

Me too! In fact, I'd like to see more behind the scenes profiling when it comes to a TON of games, from on the fly difficulty balancing to tuning NPC dialogue in response to which characters a player seems to be connecting with more frequently. Shattered Memories does a decent job setting up some of its brand of profiling, but it initially sort of sabotaged itself with this cute "warning label" it displays on boot...

Stating that up front invites the player to do the OPPOSITE of what you'd want in the same way that informing students that today's surprise test is going to count toward X% of their grade affects performance. It creates unnecessary tension and anticipation that I feel runs counter to the effort they put into making the profiling sections feel like part of the gameplay. If you're going to do THAT, just make all the psyche crap a damn UI menu and skimp on the presentation layer, Jesus! My single playthrough understanding of the system is limited, but we can be relatively sure that an uninformed player wondering why the game asks so many odd questions would lead to far more interesting reactions.

As for the lame "fortune cookie" ending analysis...

...most of the conclusions the game came to were either wrong or too general for me to really consider valid.

Yeah! Especially the part about me being rubbish in the sack! ...I hope. Oh god... *starts sending pitiful and humiliating questing emails to exes*

They could have completely skipped over that final content awareness jab and it probably would have come off better for it.

...In any case, I'm going to play at least once more, this time deliberately trying to affect the outcome.

Strangely, I'm not interested in doing this... I went the same way you did and played it very "straight", so I have a feeling that the second run and subsequent comparisons would strip a little something away from the parts about the first playthrough I actually enjoyed. Curious as I am from a design standpoint, wondering just how much of the game would have been different is likely MUCH more interesting than knowing from a player standpoint. I WOULD be interested in watching someone I know play through though- Far too juicy to pass up, experiential lenses be damned!

Edited May 5, 2010 by Xeneth

[gdf]

A few weeks ago I went a bit nuts and have since played through Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, The Darkness, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Halo 3: ODST, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, VVVVVV, Splinter Cell: Conviction and Kane & Lynch.

[elmuerte]

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard

I still have quite a few levels to play for that, I think. I'm a bit disappointed by the low amount of game parodies. It started off good.

[Thyroid]

The last game I finished was the new Sam and Max episode. And before that, Monkey Island chapter 5. I played Braid for a bit, but never finished it (it doesn't help that I only get to play on the PC once a month or so). Fahrenheit was okay, but just got lamer and lamer as the game went on and I finally quit around the time

Lucas jumps through the wall with the Indigo child in his arms

.

I'm getting a new PC now, though, so I'll finally be able to shoot/get shot by TF2 characters. I have at least 15 games I can't even play. Hell, I'm finally gonna play Far Cry.

[Sombre]

[syntheticgerbil]

But what if you fail to beat those all within the designated month?

[Sombre]

But what if you fail to beat those all within the designated month?

It's my "Beat" list, then the month next to it, so I can track month by month progress.

..

[ThunderPeel2001]

Wow, this year... I'm not sure I've beaten ANY game. Hmmm.

[syntheticgerbil]

It's my "Beat" list, then the month next to it, so I can track month by month progress.

..

Why don't you cross them out, then?

EVERYTHING MUST BE CROSSED OUT

Or a check. I like those.

[Sombre]

Why don't you cross them out, then?

EVERYTHING MUST BE CROSSED OUT

Or a check. I like those.

Oh God stop picking faults in my list. I will add you to my kill list.

AND CROSS IT OUT

[Squid Division]

You seem to have been really excited to beat Bioshock 2.

[Thompson]

You seem to have been really excited to beat Bioshock 2.

Of course, it has to do with Scoops.