Finished Any Games Lately?

Finished Assassin's Creed 2 FINALLY. I don't think I even got the breadth of what I could do as far as combat and stalking targets until way, way late in the game. Now I'm a little obsessed and have to ask, is there any carryover to Brotherhood that would prevent me from switching to PS3 for that one? Like, Altair's armor unlocked from the get-go or anything after earning it in 2? PS3 is having that sale on complete editions for PS+ members and it's tempting.

Also finished Walking Dead. Part 5 was short, contained one real head-scratching moment (from where I was sitting at least), but ended well.

I decided to go retro for the Thanksgiving weekend and played an epic 450 turn game of Star Trek: Birth of the Federation. This would have been impossible when the game came out. Hardware at the time would be begging for mercy, on the order of 10 minutes processing between turns, once you got up into the 200 turn range. On modern hardware it was still taking just a few seconds per turn at the end of the game. Shoddy programming, or a game far ahead of its time?

(If you've played this and remember the opponent AI and horrific cheating it gets away with, you know the answer - shoddy programming. Still fun!)

I'm posting here because I can't remember if I ever actually finished a game back in the day. If memory serves, my patience with the epic wait times between turns always wore out before I could finish putting the galaxy in order.

The Walking Dead...I have actually finished a game this year.

Finished Arcania: Gothic 4 yesterday, after putting in 30 hours over two full years. It was pretty grindy, which is why I tended to play it for a couple of hours every month or so, then drop it for something else. There was enough fun to be had that I never uninstalled it, but in general it was something of a mess.

If you’re not familiar with it, Arcania was one of two competing Gothic sequels, the result of a legal conflict between developer and publisher following Gothic 3. The makers of Arcania got the Gothic license, while all the talent behind the previous games went on to make Risen, a far superior game.

Not that Arcania was all bad…the bones of a good game were there, but it was poorly implemented and obviously unfinished. The crafting system was half baked, and the very limited number of character models had me inventing my own fictional back story about what was really going on, which involved human clones and behavior experiments. I think my story was better than the game’s.

What story there was in the game took far too long to develop, and the ending was abrupt and nonsensical. It was intended as a cliffhanger to set up events for its sequel, Fall of Setarrif, but it was really terribly executed. I won’t be playing that game. Instead, I’ll continue enjoying the swashbuckling sequel to Risen. It’s not going to take me two years to finish that one.

I've finished off a fair few games over the past six months or so. Let's take a look!

Puzzle Quest 2 While not as good as the first Puzzle Quest, it's still a fun game and perfect for the treadmill. I enjoyed it on my Nexus 7. I was disappointed by the lack of multiple towns, yet pleased by some creatively written quests and some nice artwork (excepting the nasty player character portraits).

Rage I thoroughly enjoyed about two thirds of this game; for every two things that were awesome, there was one annoying thing. Lovely environments with lots of crappy close-in textures, great firefights mixed with some repetitive bandit racing sequences made for an overall fun-filled time. I loved the hologram mini-game, as it reminded me of a cowboy holo-game in the arcades I played when I was a kid (can't remember the name of it).

Dishonored Oh! Dishonored is definitely my game of the year. A single-player only, stealth/slow-moving FPS with a AAA budget and lots of things to read and non-lethal options? Without multiplayer? More, please!

The Walking Dead Game I had a great time with this game; though its puzzles weren't overly taxing, it had some great dialogue and some genuinely touching moments. I'm eagerly awaiting the next season.

Slumberland wrote:

Finished Assassin's Creed 2 FINALLY. I don't think I even got the breadth of what I could do as far as combat and stalking targets until way, way late in the game. Now I'm a little obsessed and have to ask, is there any carryover to Brotherhood that would prevent me from switching to PS3 for that one? Like, Altair's armor unlocked from the get-go or anything after earning it in 2? PS3 is having that sale on complete editions for PS+ members and it's tempting.

Also finished Walking Dead. Part 5 was short, contained one real head-scratching moment (from where I was sitting at least), but ended well.

As far as I know, there is no caryyover from one game to the next.

I too finished The Walking Dead. Best adventure game of the last many, many years.

Finished The Walking Dead season 1. I have to take a break.

I just... I can't...

JillSammich wrote:

Finished The Walking Dead season 1. I have to take a break.

I just... I can't...

That's as far as I got as well. I started to play episode 2 but found that none of my decisions had carried over. I'll get back to it as soon as I can get the motivation to re-play the end of episode 1 & hope that it works this time.

conejote wrote:

I've been doing a little retro gaming lately, and I just finished Star Trek Elite Force 2, released back in 2003.

Unknown Soldier wrote:

I decided to go retro for the Thanksgiving weekend and played an epic 450 turn game of Star Trek: Birth of the Federation.

So confusing at first. I thought I was reading a re-post at first.

Mark of the Ninja which was a superb stealth game! Simple plot with a great twist where I genuinely was unsure of what was the best choice to make! I also found the kill moves borderline sickening, which is curious given the legions I've slaughtered casually in the past. I honestly think it's the zoom in, slo-mo, you see their faces as they die and blood leaves them. Made me uncomfortable.

Frog Fractions. Set aside 45 minutes and just play it. Wow.

To The Moon very nice indeed, the story is quite captivating. The "gamey" elements at the end were a bit annoying though.

Torchlight 2 things explode into a red mist. 'Nuff said.

Limbo. It was aight.

In reading reviews I found out that there was a text description of the game for the XBOX that would've given my play-through some greater purpose:

Spoiler:

I had no idea that the girl he saw early in the game was in any way important to the narrative. I started the game with a blank slate about the "story" and just started walking. So having him walk towards the shadowy girl at the end of the game felt weird, like, the whole reason my character was moving to the right was so he could hook up with a shadowy lady? Who even is this shadowy lady? Felt like a HUGE cop out.

But she's his sister!? It wouldn't've made the entire experience any more meaningful for me to have known that, but at least it would've made sense.

Loved the atmosphere, but without a meaty meaning/subtext/message/emotion to dig into it felt more like artifice. Especially since the puzzles weren't integrated into the storytelling. Some of the criticism talked about the main character's grizzly deaths as an important part of the storytelling, but I couldn't figure out exactly how it was important. It just seemed like a well-animated fail-state.

Glad I played it, but I certainly won't be going back.

mrtomaytohead wrote:
conejote wrote:

I've been doing a little retro gaming lately, and I just finished Star Trek Elite Force 2, released back in 2003.

Unknown Soldier wrote:

I decided to go retro for the Thanksgiving weekend and played an epic 450 turn game of Star Trek: Birth of the Federation.

So confusing at first. I thought I was reading a re-post at first.

Yeah that was an interesting coincidence. My game is more retro than his though!

I never actually played EF2. I own EF1 but it was too bland for my tastes so I never even tried the sequel. I was curious so I did go watch the youtube video conejote linked, pretty good easter egg there. And it looked better than I would have expected for such an old shooter.

2003 is retro? Egad, I'm getting old.

I recently finished Zork Nemesis for the zillionth time (does that still count?). Crappy pixelized FMVs be damned, that remains one of my favorite games of all time.

Eleima wrote:

2003 is retro? Egad, I'm getting old.

I'm still playing Age of Mythology online, and I AM old!

Eleima wrote:

I recently finished Zork Nemesis for the zillionth time (does that still count?). Crappy pixelized FMVs be damned, that remains one of my favorite games of all time.

Wasn't there a low-complexity Zork MMO released a few years ago?

Natus wrote:

I'm still playing Age of Mythology online, and I AM old!

Wait...The servers are still active for that game? Damn, I might need to reinstall my copy

As for me, my list of completed games continues to grow! Wrapped up Assassins Creed 3 and will be done with The Walking Dead today!

Assassin's Creed: Liberation, apparenty while doing combat wrong the whole time. That's par for the course with me and AC games though.

Natus wrote:
Eleima wrote:

I recently finished Zork Nemesis for the zillionth time (does that still count?). Crappy pixelized FMVs be damned, that remains one of my favorite games of all time.

Wasn't there a low-complexity Zork MMO released a few years ago?

Yup, it was Legends of Zork which I didn't even know of until you spoke of it (some Zork fan I am!). It launched in 2009 and shut down in 2011 with very little warning, apparently. Never got a chance to try it myself.

I finished 999 and want to run into the sequel.

CptDomano wrote:
Natus wrote:

I'm still playing Age of Mythology online, and I AM old!

Wait...The servers are still active for that game? Damn, I might need to reinstall my copy :D

You do! Best RTS evar! Here you go: http://www.voobly.com/

Edit: DPost

Just finished Space Marine. My testosterone actually doubled while playing that game. It has some flaws, but the game is very underrated. It was big, beefy, no-nonsense and bloody. When I described it to my pal, he said it sounded like I was describing a jumbo burger. That has given me the inspiration to restart a great thread from the past.

Up next, either Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood or Walking Dead. Or both!

Been on a bit of a tear lately. Finished Mark of the Ninja and loved every minute of it. I love a game where the controls are so responsive that you can do exactly what you mean to do and failure is entirely your fault, not the games.

Finished Dishonored. Definitely on the GotY list for me. Disappointing ending only slightly diluted the greatness of the rest of the game.

And finished Uncharted 3. Big disappointment. If you're going to make a game that plays like a movie, you'd better make an interesting movie. U2 had a fantastic story along with great gameplay. I got bored about 2/3 of the way through U3 and had to make myself see it through. Really glad they didn't repeat the horrible boss fight at the U2, at least.

Now... back to Dragon's Dogma.

Legend of Grimrock and the game was really stellar with the exception of the final boss and one puzzle. Those parts were actually terrible and annoying, but the rest of the experience was so good I just pulled an all nighter to play it!

Just finished my first (high chaos) playthrough of Dishonored. I enjoyed the game but I'm not at all convinced it was deserving of all the hype surrounding it on release. Mostly it played like a fairly conventional, dare I say old-fashioned, FPS with some imperfect stealth elements tacked on, all of which Thief did much better many years ago. The plot was weak and obvious especially the conclusion and while Steam tells me I played around 15 hours, a lot of that was repeating early sections to achieve low chaos, something I gave up on when I realised the game wasn't going to reward me with new non-lethal abilities.

Judging from review and comments, there is a lot of interesting subquests and extra content scattered around, which I may come back to. It seems rather odd that they put so much effort into the extra stuff when the main questline was short and felt undeveloped.

That all sounds very negative, so I should emphasise that I didn't have a bad time overall and as a steam sale purchase I got my money's worth, but I'm scratching my head at how much this was praised.

Portal 2. Beyond lovely. 9 hours. Perfect length. Puzzles weren't terrible. I looked two of them up, but didn't feel bad: the flow of the experience was more important than the feeling of satisfaction of figuring out a tough puzzle. Writing was fun! Wished I had had the ability to play it with sound, so I'll probably be going back in a year to do it the right way.

I'm a late joiner to the PS3, so I've only just gotten to the end of the first Assassin's Creed game. While I haven't actually played through to the ending cutscene myself (currently stopped at the 9 templar zombies, so I watched the end on YouTube) I am completely burned out on the combat system and consider myself finished.

However, I have heard really good things about the ACII trio of games, so I'm looking forward to continuing the series.

raevenote wrote:

I'm a late joiner to the PS3, so I've only just gotten to the end of the first Assassin's Creed game. While I haven't actually played through to the ending cutscene myself (currently stopped at the 9 templar zombies, so I watched the end on YouTube) I am completely burned out on the combat system and consider myself finished.

However, I have heard really good things about the ACII trio of games, so I'm looking forward to continuing the series.

As someone who just recently started playing AC2, I will warn you that it has a very slow start, but is progressing to be quite a bit better than the first game. Also, be prepared for some bad character models, especially during cut-scenes where they use close shots.

However, AC2 improves on a lot of things from AC, including the combat model. I felt like I was more of a badass in AC2 than I ever did in AC.