Recently completed video games

[Roderick]

Interesting. Despite having very little interest in racing gams, Forze Horizon took my interest en I played it for dozens of hours. I thought it was a neat arcadey/roaming racer. It exuded that 'Midtown Madness' vibe of just cruising along and driving for driving's sake, in a beautiful autumn Colorado environment. 

[quantum_leopold]

Although I bought it quite a while ago, I finally got around to playing and finishing Home.  I'm fairly sure this game first came to my attention when Jeff Cannata talked about it on Weekend Confirmed many months ago as a game that tells a story that is heavily influenced by player choice, which is always something that interests me.  I was delayed in playing it first because "Home" is a terrible name SEO-wise (it'd be hard to find a worse name for Googling if they tried, but eventually I found it), and then because, upon starting it, the game advises you to play the whole thing in one approximately 90-minute sitting.  For whatever reason, the idea of setting aside 90 minutes to play it to completion struck me as daunting, but I finally got around to it this weekend.  Sad to say, I found that it was not worth the wait.  

 

I love the idea of shaping a narrative in response to a player's choices, and was very curious to see what I could do to influence this world.  From the start, the concept isn't super fresh: you wake up in a strange house, with no memory of how you got there, and wondering where your girlfriend (wife?) is.  You explore the house and attempt to make your way back home.  On the way, you discover that some bad things have happened during the period where your memory is missing.  Initially, the choices were just boring.  For the first two thirds or so of the game, every choice is something like a)do you search through this desk?, b)do you pick up this weapon?, and c)do you continue exploring or just leave?  I think the worst kind of "choice" a game can present you is "do something" versus "do nothing," and all of Home's choices seemed to break down into that dichotomy.  I ultimately decided to explore wherever possible (I want to learn what's going on) but to never pick up a weapon (I wanted to avoid the seemingly inevitable and somewhat boring conclusion that I was responsible for some of the bad stuff I was seeing, and also wanted to steer clear of anything resembling combat, if possible).  Perhaps I made bad choices, but regardless, my experience just wasn't very interesting.  You go to an area.  You search around, seeing and hearing some creepy stuff.  I found some items that hinted at what might be going on.  I ignored a lot of weapons.  That was pretty much it.

 

Much as I didn't enjoy the choices the game presented me early on, however, later they got much worse: bizarrely, the choices presented to me turned from "do you do X, or do you not do X" to more like "you did X and then what happened?"  Without getting into spoiler territory, the game poses questions to you that are not too far off from this: "You looked out the window and you saw (S)omething? Or (N)othing?"  I suppose that, in a sense, the developer was speaking accurately in describing this as a "choose your own adventure" story, but that kind of choice is not exactly what I had in mind.  "Do you attempt to kill the troll, or do you try to bargain with him" is a reasonable question in a choice-based narrative.  "You attempt to kill the troll, do you succeed Y or N?" does not strike me as the sort of choice that should be put in my hands.  The couple of choices that take this form towards the end of the game were choices I can't recall having been presented in a game before, but I think that's probably for good reason.

 

I like Home's ambitions, and some of the broad strokes of the game are fine--the art style is nice, the sound design is excellent, and I was creeped out at least a few times.  But I found the choice structure to be very ill-conceived, and the narrative that I played through really didn't do much for me at all.  I can't recommend it.

[osmosisch]

This is me being the latest to the party, but I just finished Metro 2033. 

Nope, I'm still working on it

 

I really like it so far. A linear counterpart to STALKER with at least as good atmosphere. Too bad the gunplay isn't better, but you can't have everything.

[Roderick]

I just finished 3DS eShop title Gunman Clive on hard mode. What a delightful little platformer! It cost a mere 2 euros, I finished it in a single hour, and it was a good experience. Recommended as a fun platforming diversion.

[Sno]

I've also played that, it's a super likable little game.

I was smiling practically the whole way through because it was clearly designed by a person/people who have upmost fondness for platformers, there were just tons of little nods to classic games, i noticed particularly a lot of little Megaman moments.

Apparently that developer is now working on a classic zelda-inspired thing for 3DS.

[Roderick]

Gunman Clive:

 

The best moment was the second boss. Up until then it's pretty reasonable and normal, when suddenly you get a transforming locomotive engine turning into a preposterous robot. What a great moment!

 

I also laughed when I replayed as the damsel and the game opens with Gunman Clive trapped on the stagecoach, screaming for help. Knowing wink.

[Tanukitsune]

I don't remember a hard mode in the PC version I got from a indie bundle, I guess it's a 3DS exclusive? The PC version is a direct port of the iOS, which was already on "impossible" mode with it's virtual controls, yet easy on PC.

 

I just beat Ni No Kuni and I have very mixed feeling, while I did enjoy it a lot, it's ridiculously "cookie cutter", it does so many of the JRPG tropes, but it does have it's original moment. The story has it's ups and downs, it was great right before the ending, but the ending was pretty disappointing.

 

For a game with the obligatory "only you can stop the end of the world" plot, the tragedy and drama is so minimal, the only deaths happen right at the beginning and in the past, the town are destroyed, because towns always get destroyed, except they don't... They just say they have been damaged. The worst is how every "bad guy" is so easily forgiven and after defeating the big bad she just says she'll plant some flowers.... I'm not kidding.

 

Gameplay wise, it also has it's problems, it's so very close to a Pokémon clone, but the thing it changes are for the worse, since you don't use Pokéballs enemies just have a capture rate, which is ridiculously low, even after spending your points on something that should make it easier that is only accessible when the game is almost over. And you're AI partner don't have an option for "conserve MP", so if you give them a companion with powerful spells their MPs will drain like crazy. It also sucks how little the creatures change from one "metamorphosis" to another.

 

And yet, I enjoyed it quite a bit despite it's flaws...

[Tanukitsune]

I'd hate to make a "double post", but I just beat BOTH Kane & Lynch games and... they were fun!

 

In the first game I actually felt sympathy of Kane and thought Lynch was a crazy man and didn't understand why they stuck together until the end, it had some frustrating moments, but it was fun game, and it's ending is as "bad" as the sequel.

 

Frankly, I don't know why people hate the sequel, I mean, it's like Hitman and takes a dump on the first game, but that's about it? Too short? It kinda felt long... I don't like that in this game you play as Lynch and he's the one saying Kane is the one messing everything up and I REALLY don't like that the game tries to make Lynch sympathetic, sure the story is a mess and the game play is less fun than the first game, but it's still pretty fun.

[Roderick]

Wow, didn't you have a hard time with the last levels of the first one? I remember that being a huge pain in the butt, but that might also have been due to playing on the console rather than PC.

[Tanukitsune]

Well, there was some frustrating parts, like the truck and the mission where you can let them shoot flares, specially since I somehow managed to sneak past a section and reach a checkpoint which made us be attacked by the enemies behind us every moment we restarted so I just had to kill the enemies in front quick and run away from the others. XP

[twmac]

As it was really sunny this weekend I spent the entire time sitting down and beginning-to-ending Metro 2033 and Alan Wake.

 

Enjoyed both, even if Alan Wake was a little too long, and I am excited to try out both games' sequels/spinoffs.

[youmeyou]

Ha totallly, I couch potatoed it very intensively this sunny weekend. Was all:

 

 

Finished up Far Cry 3 and played a chunk of Metro Last Light. Far Cry 3... you know how it goes. Many of the open world elements were quite excellent. Stealthing around an enemy camp then beating a wingsuit-aided escape as reinforcements arrive that leads to a hidden ravine infested by alligators and bandits. Rambo the game, essentially. Except Yohalem wasn't satisfied making Rambo. A director intent on remaking Heart of Darkness while the crew thought he said mini-game laden jungle sandbox shooter. A game incredibly at odds with itself and its purpose. But the entertainment factor was enough to keep me invested to the end so that's saying something, if only about a studio's finely tuned formula for fostering addictive habits in the players of their games.

[Sno]

I just did a complete run through Half-Life.

I dunno why.

Hey, but Half-Life is still a pretty good game.

Xen is still kind of terrible.

Awful, clunky jumping puzzles aside, i'm struck by how much modern FPS's are still designed like Half-Life.

Both a sign of how influential, far-reaching, and forward-thinking Half-Life was, and how little everybody else has progressed.

[syntheticgerbil]

Oh yeah, beat Ratchet and Clank 3. Now that was a good game, faith in series renewed!

[Noyb]

So I played through the XBLA remake of NiGHTS into Dreams after vivid, decades-old memories of being completely befuddled as a child by an in-store demo kiosk of the original Saturn version.

 

Such a weird game design to wrap your head around. Every level begins with the player character walking a few steps then getting attacked and robbed, making me think I was doing something terribly wrong. The 3d platforming parts that feel so familiar end up being mostly unimportant, while the 2.5d flying sections overwhelm with invisible rails and important game elements out of reach on another plane. Took me until now to figure out that it's a time trial racing game at heart: you need to collect 20 balls over one or more laps, bring them to the spherical robot thingie, then return to the start of the track. And when you finally complete a level, it throws you into a boss fight that emphasizes combat mechanics you might not even know about from the main levels, which you need to replay from the start if you fail at the boss.

 

Such a steep learning curve, requiring a ton of memorization to excel at any one level, but once I was able to get into the groove I eventually grew to like its charm. 

[Zeusthecat]

I recently finished Assassin's Creed Revelations. I know I am in the minority on this but I actually think it was the best game in the series so far. I liked it enough to keep playing after the ending (which was fucking retarded by the way) and got all of the single player achievements.

 

The fact that they finally mapped throwing knives/gun/poison darts to a separate button than hidden blade/sword/crossbow made everything so much more fluid in this game. That improvement alone convinced me that this one is superior to the previous 3 as far as gameplay is concerned. I also liked the bomb crafting system to a degree. There are a handful of bombs that I actually used regularly and they provided a little more depth to the gameplay despite the fact that a lot of the bombs more or less did the same thing. I only wish they would have provided more incentive to use the different types of bombs because I found absolutely zero reason to use the majority of them. I will say though that it was quite fun trying to get some of the bomb related achievements and that at least provided some incentive for me to experiment.

 

The missions in this game were pretty varied and were some of the best in the series so far. At a certain point in the game a stronger enemy type is also introduced which changes things up since they shoot at you during combat and cannot be taken down in one hit unless you assassinate them before they see you. It definitely made combat a little more interesting as it forced me to use my poison darts to take those guys out during conflict and then watch them flail around as I fucked up the weaker guys. I'll never get tired of poisoning guards in these games.

 

The story was crap as usual. Luckily Desmond is in a coma most of the game so the present day story isn't shoved up my ass as much as in previous games. Also, the den defense minigame is shit, thank god you only have to do it once (although I did it a few more times while trying to complete all the assassin challenges). Oh, and ziplines are great. Overall I had a lot of fun with this game. One last thing:

The stupid god guy at the end that tells you about the solar flare that wiped out the first civilization sounded EXACTLY like a certain South Park character. I can't remember which character but it was familiar enough for me to just laugh the whole time that stupid dude was talking. God the present-day story is fucking dumb in these games.

 

Oh yeah, I figure it's also worth mentioning that I've been playing the multiplayer in Brotherhood. It is FANTASTIC. It really feels like multiplayer is the best way to play the game and feel like an assassin. I am so paranoid though after playing this. Every time I see an NPC I freak out because it could actually be a dude that is about to murder me.

[Roderick]

Fair point, Zeus. I had a lot of fun with Revelations, check out an earlier post I wrote about it, probably in the topic about AC.

[Ucantalas]

As much as a lot of people didn't like the present timeline of AC, I kind of liked it. In fact, it was the entire reason I bothered to pick up AC2. But as the series went on, it slowed down, and then stopped, and they just kept pulling stuff out of their asses... Felt a lot like LOST, actually.

[Tanukitsune]

I just beat Dust: An Elysian Tale and... wow... the fact the this was done by one guy makes it even more amazing. This guy clearly loved games and knew how to throw in nods for the fans in a clever, non pandering way, like the "Mysterious Wall Chicken", it's a the best Metroidvania fan love letter out there that could directly compete with Super Metroid and Castlevania SOTN and still look good, that's how amazing of a game I think this is.

[Zeusthecat]

Fair point, Zeus. I had a lot of fun with Revelations, check out an earlier post I wrote about it, probably in the topic about AC.

 

Found your posts and I have to say I really like your take on the game and how your opinions changed as you played it. I feel like we probably had a similar experience with the game and the new systems. Also, glad to hear someone else liked the bombs because they were super cool even if they lacked a bit in variety. My one point of disagreement was in the setting. I really liked Istanbul, probably more than Rome. I think this is because it was all city with no open areas (I don't like open areas in these games, I feel like assassins would stick to rooftops, alleys, and crowded areas) and the npcs seemed to have more variety. I feel like they did a semi-respectable job representing a city where multiple cultures intersect and where not everyone is just an Italian person.

 

 

 

As much as a lot of people didn't like the present timeline of AC, I kind of liked it. In fact, it was the entire reason I bothered to pick up AC2. But as the series went on, it slowed down, and then stopped, and they just kept pulling stuff out of their asses... Felt a lot like LOST, actually.

 

I have to admit, as much as I don't like the cheesy story it has started to grow on me. I am actually secretly kind of interested in what happens at this point because I've stuck it out for so long. The character stereotypes are what bothers me the most but once I get past that it can be kind of a clever little story. I definitely hate Desmond less after this game and kind of enjoyed hearing his little backstory as I did those Desmond memory sequences. The historical story is pretty great though. Playing as Ezio through multiple decades has been really cool and I really liked the character development. I am actually kind of sad that his story has ended as I've grown quite fond of him as a character. One missed opportunity though that could have completely changed my opinion about the story:

When Ezio "talks" to Desmond at the end I started to get really excited. For some reason I think it would have been the coolest thing ever to have that stupid god tell Ezio what's up and somehow let him and Desmond talk to each other. It might have been super cheesy but it would have been nice to give Ezio some closure on who Desmond is.

[axemtitanium]

Hey guys, I haven't been around this past month because I fell down a BIOHOLE. Since I'm a weirdo, I didn't feel comfortable playing BioShock Infinite until I had played all the games that came before it, which I had neglected to play when they first came out. Since I'm a very specific weirdo, I didn't count System Shock 2 as something to play before BioShock. So sue me.

 

I know I'm late to the party but BioShock 1 is a really, really good game. It set a very high bar for the other games in the series. I was definitely spoiled on the ending going in, but it had been so long that I actually forgot what the spoiler was (mostly). I basically spent the whole game with this niggling feeling, "I feel like I shouldn't trust this Atlas guy, but I can't for the life of me figure out why". Also people kept saying would-you-kindly like some kind of code word and I couldn't figure out what it meant. Anyway, I liked the environmental storytelling in Rapture, especially combined with the audio diaries. In a lot of cases, there would be an artfully constructed room where Something Happened and a helpful audio diary nearby would essentially narrate the vignette. I also really enjoyed examining the living spaces of Rapture's inhabitants for clues about their personality (e.g. Sander Cohen's room). They say you can tell more about a person by visiting their dorm room than meeting them. Since most of Rapture is already dead, this works out nicely. I'm the kind of guy who spends 6 hours meticulously exploring each level, rummaging for ammo that I can't pick up because I'm full, stacking all the health kits and EVE hypos in a corner so I can pick them up after I actually use one, and basically stealing everyone's shit. So BioShock was right up my alley. Shame I didn't play it way sooner. One final note, the first 12-15% of BioShock is a horror game with a very heavy, thick atmosphere. I'm not a big fan of the genre, but I liked the amount that was there and its treatment, and was glad when it was over.

 

I think BioShock 2 was a great game and I don't know why people were so down on it. Though not to the same degree as The Walking Dead, I felt that it captured some simulacrum of the feelings of parenthood which really resonated with me (I say this as a person with no children, mind you). The story wasn't ground-breaking but it was elegant and enjoyable. On the other hand, I loved the combat in BioShock 2. It was much more tactical and I felt like I was in control of the battlefield with most encounters happening on my terms. The speargun is probably one of my favorite weapons ever. There's nothing like sniped a dude in the head and pinning him to the wall 15 meters behind him. Also rocket spear + brute splicer = hilarious flying meatsack. I was a little sad that you don't get the Natural Camouflage tonic until late in the game though, since I loved stealthing through BioShock 1. On account of how much I liked BioShock 2, I didn't find Minerva's Den as wonderfully fantastic as some people have been saying by comparison. It's not bad at all—story is fantastic and fun all the way through—but I think other people liked it more in comparison to how much they didn't care for BioShock 2 proper, whereas I found BioShock 2 to be quite good overall. Except for the multiplayer. The multiplayer is stupid and bullshit.

 

And so we come to BioShock Infinite. I thought it was a good game but not a great game. I have a lot of problems with BioShock Infinite, which I believe stem from a combination of playing so much finite BioShock beforehand and isolating myself from most media coverage of the game aside from the early gameplay videos. Let's start with the combat. I haven't really been following the "is Infinite too violent" discussion so I'll leave that aspect on the table. I think BioShock 1 and definitely BioShock 2 have way more interesting combat than Infinite. The skyhook mechanic is fantastic and hella cool, but the rest of the combat doesn't really hold up. The weapons feel light and weightless. Especially with the heavier enemies, even if you knew their weakpoints, they would just drink bullets and headshots for days before dying. My favorite weapons from the previous games where the crossbow and speargun, respectively, and I was disappointed that the sniper rifle didn't fill the same role. I admit that I wasn't too adventurous particularly with using vigor traps but mostly because they cost too damn much so it felt like a waste (backseat designer moment: I would lower the salt cost of vigor traps but increase the charge time in order to encourage more tactical encounters and prepping for fights). I also wish there were more opportunities to interact/play around with the environment in the way that was possible with the Telekinesis plasmid. And while I'm complaining, bodies (and lockboxes) disappear too fast. I know it's probably a perf issue, but it's jarring to finish a big firefight and discover that the bodies of all the people I murderized have magically vanished and I can't even loot their lockboxes.

 

On the story side, I felt that the game did a good job of escaping from under System Shock 2's shadow (from what I understand) in order to tell a compelling narrative. However, I had the same problem as Chris, which was that I feel the audio diary design was terrible. Unlike BioShock, they didn't seem as intelligently placed and there were very few that had a story to tell that integrated with the environment where it was found. There was one Preston E. Downs diary ("Trapped") which was really good but it was the only one that stood out to me. Some of the ones by/about Slate were alright too. On the other hand, there are WAY too many Comstock diaries and they're all dull as nails sermon snippets. His character is flat; he's the born-again Christian through and through and his diaries never show any development or reveal hidden personality traits like Andrew Ryan's did. Daisy's diaries suffer from the same problem. As for Elizabeth, I liked her character, her development, and her story arc but I think she failed as an AI. Her use in battle is fine, whatever, but I was expecting a lot more banter about environmental stuff as was shown in early previews (they took out the Lincoln mask scene  ). If you're going to give the main character a voice and a companion to talk to, I would have hoped they had more to talk about than where the next lockpick is. I know it would have been super expensive to write and voice a boatload of extra, optional, non-critpath dialogue but it feels like a missed opportunity.

 

I know it sounds like I'm really down on Infinite, but I honestly did like it a lot. If I had to rate it, I'd give it a GiantBomb 4-star. They were way ambitious; it shot for Alpha Centauri and probably made it to Eris or thereabouts. The Luteces are probably my favorite game characters in some time (Lutecest is the bestest). I apologize if a lot of this stuff is a rehash of stuff talked on the podcast; I skipped that episode because of spoilers. Anyway, yeah. BioShock. I heard it's a pretty good series.

[TychoCelchuuu]

System Shock > System Shock 2 > Minerva's Den > BioShock > BioShock 2 > * > Infinite.

[elmuerte]

so.. everything is greater than infinite?

 

I'm going to call my math teacher, I've been lied to.

[manny_c44]

System Shock > System Shock 2 > Minerva's Den > BioShock > BioShock 2 > * > Infinite.

 

Oh man, I always wanted to play the first system shock, but it always seemed like a DOS emulator and who knows what else was necessary to play the game (if you have to specifically emulate a CPU clock speed to get a game to run then, for me, it is too complicated to set up).

 

Is there a better way to play the game?

[TychoCelchuuu]

Google "System Shock Portable," but frankly I've always found that buggier and less easy to use than DOSBox, which is a very easy program to get your head around. System Shock runs just fine in DOSBox without any tweaking on my part.