Finished Any Games Lately?

merphle wrote:

Dishonored, low-chaos stealthy run.

Same here, yesterday. Thought the ending was a little anti-climactic but a great experience overall. I'm tempted to go back and try high-chaos.

Also, I finished a game!!!!

Docjoe wrote:

Finished my playthrough on Torchlight 2. Have not finished a game in quite a while and was committed to see that one through. Good game although gets repetitive. I think it would probably be better in multiplayer. It was on par with Diablo 3, just a very different style. I probably liked the dark mood of D3 better.

I like the dark mood of the Diablo series in general better, but I also like the lightheartedness of T2. Didn't get the charm or fun of T1.

Growat wrote:
merphle wrote:

Dishonored, low-chaos stealthy run.

Same here, yesterday. Thought the ending was a little anti-climactic but a great experience overall. I'm tempted to go back and try high-chaos.

Also, I finished a game!!!!

I was very ready to start a new game and play it high-chaos, guns a-blazing about halfway through the game... but by the end, it had kinda worn out its welcome. Maybe I'll try again after I've cooled down a bit. And yes, the ending felt rushed, though it did wrap things up tidily.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die which respected the player in a way few games do these days. The game is amazingly satisfying as you go from getting immediately killed to whittling enemies and bosses down more and more to the final triumph. Sure your character and gear improve, but most importantly you, the player, get better at the game. You get better to the point where one or two tries is sufficient on the mechanically less complex bosses.

There's also an incredibly well put together world which makes the most out of player curiosity.

Mark of the Ninja, in stealth/ghost mode. The killing was pretty off-putting, but once I tried to be more "shadow" and less "warrior", it really clicked. More thoughts in the catch-all, but to summarize: Sublime stealth implementation, very satisfying gameplay, excellent game.

Finished The Room on iOS last night at too-late-o'clock AM. Absolutely fantastic "locked room/puzzle box" game. Had a blast just poking and prodding away at the various mechanisms and secrets. Looking forward to seeing more.

I finished Final Fantasy XIII finally.

You know what's BS?

Spoiler:

You're taking too long beating the final boss -- so he'll cast an inescapable doom spell so you have a few minutes to finish or die. Without that, I almost certainly would've finished the first time I faced him, since I was reducing his health, just... slowly.

It did get me to go seek out a guide and find a better way to beat him that only took a few minutes but still. Come on game.

Anyway I did like this game. The combat was consistently fun except for the few BS moments like what I just described. Oddly enough for a game with beautiful environments and varied random encounters, the last dungeon really suffered from being boring and samey (ugly landscape, only a few enemy types), which kind of made me glad to have it over. Why do developers do this? "The player is no doubt eager to see the final boss and the end of the story after 70 hours, so let's give her the worst, most boring dungeon in the game with zero story relevance! Clearly this game which naturally takes dozens of hours to beat needs more padding!"

stevenmack wrote:

Finished The Room on iOS last night at too-late-o'clock AM. Absolutely fantastic "locked room/puzzle box" game. Had a blast just poking and prodding away at the various mechanisms and secrets. Looking forward to seeing more.

Just started this on my new Ipad. Loving it so far but man can it be challenging!

Polished off both Botanicula and Little Inferno (aka my can't-face-Dark-Souls-games) last night. Both charming and had great art design, fairly light on the challenge front and very relaxing overall. Strongly recommend Botanicula to all concerned, Little Inferno would probably be enjoyed by people like me that were fans of the art and world of World of Goo, but not by people that weren't.

I'm so proud of myself; I finished Thirty Flight of Loving last night. I would have knocked out Gravity Bone as well but the game crashed in windowed mode.

Maclintok wrote:

I'm so proud of myself; I finished Thirty Flight of Loving last night. I would have knocked out Gravity Bone as well but the game crashed in windowed mode.

Nice! Gravity Bone is pretty good too, so give it a try eventually.

Demyx wrote:

I finished Final Fantasy XIII finally.

You know what's BS?

Spoiler:

You're taking too long beating the final boss -- so he'll cast an inescapable doom spell so you have a few minutes to finish or die. Without that, I almost certainly would've finished the first time I faced him, since I was reducing his health, just... slowly.

It did get me to go seek out a guide and find a better way to beat him that only took a few minutes but still. Come on game.

Anyway I did like this game. The combat was consistently fun except for the few BS moments like what I just described. Oddly enough for a game with beautiful environments and varied random encounters, the last dungeon really suffered from being boring and samey (ugly landscape, only a few enemy types), which kind of made me glad to have it over. Why do developers do this? "The player is no doubt eager to see the final boss and the end of the story after 70 hours, so let's give her the worst, most boring dungeon in the game with zero story relevance! Clearly this game which naturally takes dozens of hours to beat needs more padding!"

Your spoiler actually occurs with ALL bosses in the game, if you didn't realize that. I think the developers did that as a way to force you to lose a fight since in FFXIII you have an infinite amount of Mana and can keep healing your characters for hours and hours if you want to. But yeah, it's a common complaint, and they definitely could have implemented it in a way that wouldn't just frustrate players by interrupting their long, hard fought boss fight right at the end.

jamos5 wrote:

Your spoiler actually occurs with ALL bosses in the game, if you didn't realize that. I think the developers did that as a way to force you to lose a fight since in FFXIII you have an infinite amount of Mana and can keep healing your characters for hours and hours if you want to. But yeah, it's a common complaint, and they definitely could have implemented it in a way that wouldn't just frustrate players by interrupting their long, hard fought boss fight right at the end.

I actually just learned that reading about the game today. I never recall running into it with the other bosses since I had pretty good strats for everything else -- the problem with the last boss (and it seems I'm not the only person who ran into this issue) is

Spoiler:

His ultimate attack resets his chain gauge so you can't stagger him easily, and, more importantly, I didn't realize WHY he wasn't being staggered until much too late.

It turned out the secret is to use SABs to cast Poison. Who knew? Me, now. Went from thirty minutes of whittling a tiny amount of health at a time to "cast poison, turtle."

But yeah, I get that the ability to turtle infinitely in this game necessitates the doom counter, but I think it would've actually been more elegant if all bosses were just plain ol' timed so there wouldn't be a surprise. That way you could see that you weren't dealing enough damage to finish in the time limit before you sink twenty minutes into a fight.

Completed Costume Quest. A nice RPG, but the combat was a bit lite for me. All the better for the younger folk, I suppose.

cyrax wrote:

Completed Costume Quest. A nice RPG, but the combat was a bit lite for me. All the better for the younger folk, I suppose.

Have you played Stacking yet? It's not an RPG, but it definitely a Double Fine game that avoids the above problem. I didn't make it far into Costume Quest, although, I've always been meaning to go back to it.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
cyrax wrote:

Completed Costume Quest. A nice RPG, but the combat was a bit lite for me. All the better for the younger folk, I suppose.

Have you played Stacking yet? It's not an RPG, but it definitely a Double Fine game that avoids the above problem. I didn't make it far into Costume Quest, although, I've always been meaning to go back to it.

Unfortunately, I haven't. It's something I know I'd be into, but the ever-state of my backlog always makes me hesitant to pick-up games I'm not excited about. Stacking was the first game PS+ gave for free, but I wasn't sold on the service early into its life. I think it's the only Double Fine game I don't own that's not platform exclusive.

Bulletstorm which is over the top, gorgeous, fun, puerile, and what something like DNF could have been if it had a sense of humor and style. I'm honestly sad to know the sequel was cancelled because it was visually very impressive and a load of fun to boot. A lot of talent at that studio from the Painkiller days, I think some of it went to the studio that did Hard Reset which I loved as well.

Had I played it before the end of last year it would have gone on my less than ten GOTY list because while there were weird things about it (no jumping!) the flaws never got in my way or frustrated me.

cyrax wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:
cyrax wrote:

Completed Costume Quest. A nice RPG, but the combat was a bit lite for me. All the better for the younger folk, I suppose.

Have you played Stacking yet? It's not an RPG, but it definitely a Double Fine game that avoids the above problem. I didn't make it far into Costume Quest, although, I've always been meaning to go back to it.

Unfortunately, I haven't. It's something I know I'd be into, but the ever-state of my backlog always makes me hesitant to pick-up games I'm not excited about. Stacking was the first game PS+ gave for free, but I wasn't sold on the service early into its life. I think it's the only Double Fine game I don't own that's not platform exclusive.

Make sure that's on your wishlist. Pick it up next time it goes on sale. Honestly, it's totally worth $15, but you know, the pile.

I finished Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Would you believe me if I said it was my favorite one? I just thought it was really well written and moving, but I'm usually touched by works that attempt to encapsulate or put a bow on the breadth of an entire life (or in this case two lives). Loved the Sofia character, and because I spent my early game splitting time between relic hunting (with their accompanying Altair memories) and cultivating seven master assassins to guard the dens I'd won, I never had to play the tower defense outside of the brief tutorial.

silentsod wrote:

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die which respected the player in a way few games do these days. The game is amazingly satisfying as you go from getting immediately killed to whittling enemies and bosses down more and more to the final triumph. Sure your character and gear improve, but most importantly you, the player, get better at the game. You get better to the point where one or two tries is sufficient on the mechanically less complex bosses.

There's also an incredibly well put together world which makes the most out of player curiosity.

I'm not done, but I must echo the world bit. It's what I would love to see from any metroid/metroidvania game in that you have get through one area to the next and without realizing at first, you've crossed back over where you have been multiple times and those crosses can become shortcuts once you find the right thing to activate them. That can be a key to a door, an elevator, or kicking a ladder.

And I almost talked myself out of getting this game.

Finished Darkness 2. Short game but I enjoyed my time with it especially the story back and forth!

Just finished FTL. Finally beat the mother. Is anyone ever really done with FTL though? I'll keep it on my harddrive, but definitely feel I can walk away from the game now for a bit while I complete AC: Brotherhood and XCOM. And ME3 again.

Beat Halo 4 yesterday. I'm really not sure how I feel about it... I played a few MP games and it's definitely still Halo, and I actually kind of enjoy the progression system. Being able to start every match with a BR is pretty neat. The Promethian weapons were alright, but they're basically just versions of stuff we already have.

As for the story, I'm not sure if I like it all that much. It was nice to see them try to address the rampancy issue with Cortana, but the relationship stuff they hinted at was a little weird. You could argue that Halo's story was never good, but it was decent sci fi genre fiction, and it was told well enough. This one just didn't really do it for me. It was still pretty fun though.

The game was pretty, though.

Just finished Bulletstorm. Lots of over the top action and dialogue! The graphics and scenery were awesome as well. Fun times!

Recently got done with XCOM on the PC. I was disappointed at how repetitive it became towards the end. It feels like they've taken too much randomness out of it. I did start a new playthrough on Normal Ironman with some of the Second Wave mods, which does make things more interesting to me.

What I can't get is how they've managed to mess up the line of sight. I'm shooting through walls and not being able to shoot through open space all the time. It really brings the whole down a notch.

Yesterday I finally gave up on and uninstalled Dead Island on the PC. I was over 60 hours into it and really liking it, but it never seemed to end. Looked like I was maybe 2/3 in.

Very close to being my game of the year was Hotline Miami (PC), which I played through on the Christmas break in two feverish sessions. So good. I'm really excited to see what these guys do next.

jlaakso wrote:

Yesterday I finally gave up on and uninstalled Dead Island on the PC. I was over 60 hours into it and really liking it, but it never seemed to end. Looked like I was maybe 2/3 in.

Don't feel bad about that. The ending was lame and the last fight was frustrating, particularly if soloing it. You might watch a YouTube video of the ending to affirm this. If you got 60 hours out of it, you got your money's worth. The game was a lot easier to get through when tons of GWJers were playing it when it was released. I have fond heel --> zombie head memories.

Finally finished Super Hexagon, perhaps the hardest yet most intense game I've played. The final stage, Hyper Hexagonest, was a particular beast. Stream reports 30 hours played in the game and I think about 10 of those were spent learning the last stage alone. I usually don't respond to pure arcade challenge but this game was just so intelligently crafted that it pulled me through. It also helps that it was a great game for me to play while listening to podcasts, it's that rare game where you can play it well and still pay attention to and parse the conversation. I actually beat the hardest stages while listening to other stuff, which is kind of a bummer since I didn't get the sound for the endings.

Just played through Journey. I'm really happy I stayed signed in to PSN despite comments to play through signed out. I was joined by a player who had obviously finished a few times given the markings on her robe. Now, I say "her" as it felt like my companion was a woman, but I'm sure I was projecting how I felt onto the player. That is the genius of the limited communication. Bravo!

Louis

elgee74 wrote:

I'm really happy I stayed signed in to PSN despite comments to play through signed out.

Whoever they were, they are not your friends, they are liars. Playing Journey offline; what a ridiculous notion!

Latrine wrote:

Finally finished Super Hexagon, perhaps the hardest yet most intense game I've played. The final stage, Hyper Hexagonest, was a particular beast. Stream reports 30 hours played in the game and I think about 10 of those were spent learning the last stage alone. I usually don't respond to pure arcade challenge but this game was just so intelligently crafted that it pulled me through. It also helps that it was a great game for me to play while listening to podcasts, it's that rare game where you can play it well and still pay attention to and parse the conversation. I actually beat the hardest stages while listening to other stuff, which is kind of a bummer since I didn't get the sound for the endings.

Holy crap!

Let's say you are amazing at that game and spend on average 1 minute per play. That's 1800 plays! My hat's off to you!