Finished Any Games Lately?

Twisted Tales of Spike McFang (SNES)

A cute, charming Zelda-style ARPG that would be remembered as a classic if it wasn't for obnoxious mandatory grinding. Your attack power doubles every time you level up, so you absolutely need to grind enemies if you want any chance against the bosses. Even if you have gosu skills and can beat the bosses without getting hit, they will take forever to go down if you're not at a decent level. It's quite telling that even speed runs for the game take time to grind up several levels. I probably spent around 40% of my time in the game grinding.

Djinn wrote:

Twisted Tales of Spike McFang (SNES)

A cute, charming Zelda-style ARPG that would be remembered as a classic if it wasn't for obnoxious mandatory grinding. Your attack power doubles every time you level up, so you absolutely need to grind enemies if you want any chance against the bosses. Even if you have gosu skills and can beat the bosses without getting hit, they will take forever to go down if you're not at a decent level. It's quite telling that even speed runs for the game take time to grind up several levels. I probably spent around 40% of my time in the game grinding.

I really liked that game back in the day. I never thought it got the attention it deserved. I should play it again someday. Wonder if the batteries in my cart have gone dead.

Veloxi wrote:

Finished Mass Effect 3 this morning. What a weird ending.

All of them?

I've been on a binge of small grid-based puzzle games lately:

Puzzle Pelago is a nice looking game where you have to connect different types of buildings on a grid and combine their output to create other things (e.g. coal + iron = steel) and then supply them to houses. The trick is that your supply lines cannot intersect or overlap. It reminded me of Cosmic Express. The difficulty feels a bit random and the UI has a few minor annoyances but otherwise I enjoyed it a lot. It has 101 puzzles, a pretty decent number, and the final screen suggests there may be more to come.

A Frog's Guide to Eating Flies is a very small free browser game where you help a frog eat flies. The main mechanic is that you can stretch your tongue by sticking it to a rock and pulling away. Only 24 levels and on the easy side, except for the last two puzzles. Cute music. Loved it.

reky is in the Itch.io bundle for racial justice. It's a very attractive game where you control a ball which you must take to the exit of the level. You do this by moving blocks that will create bridges or fill in gaps for you. You also use your ball to "paint" these blocks, and only painted blocks can move. Kinda hard to explain. My problem with this one is that the UI felt awful. Sometimes you cannot tell immediately where the exit of the level is, and you cannot tell where a block can move until you try to move it. This leads to a lot of trial an error. On top of that, there is a scoring system for solving a level with the fewest possible moves and a really sluggish undo feature. This means you will have to memorize each solution and do almost every puzzle twice if you want the three stars. I bounced off after 1h or so.

Puzzle Blox 2 is a Sokoban-style game where you have to push blocks of the same color together, which will make them disappear. You win by making every block go away. Unfortunately the game is kinda ugly. The movement is very slow, which is mitigated by a "run" feature. Problem is, I only learned about that feature from the dev on a Discord... otherwise you're stuck going at a snail's pace. The main mechanic is that there is gravity on the blocks, which will force you to catch falling bricks and push them as they fall. I usually don't like real time movement in this kind of game (as opposed to purely turn-based movement) so it is definitely not my favorite. I don't think I'll make it to 100% on this one.

Titanfall 2 was good. Every once in a while I like to play one of these linear FPS campaigns, but I never dive into multiplayer. I don't think this one topped the first Modern Warfare or Wolfenstein: The New Order for me though.

I also beat In Other Waters a week or two ago. I backed it on Kickstarter because I love the idea of exploring an alien world and cataloguing its life. In this game you're the AI helping the marine biologist protagonist so you just get a topographic map to guide her through and some little dots moving around that represent creatures. As you tag more creatures you unlock detailed text descriptions. Unfortunately, I felt like I really needed at least a few static paintings of the landscape and lifeforms to draw me fully in and capture my imagination. Tonally the game reminded me a lot of Waking Mars, which I ultimately preferred.

I picked up Murdered Soul Suspect in a recent PSN sale for about $2. At that price, it was a nice surprise! It is undeniably janky but not in ways that are game breaking - for example it doesn't save game options between sessions, and the objective log seems to give up about half way through the game. But it's a good time, a short schlocky murder mystery, based on exploring Salem and analysing crime scenes. There is no combat and only an occasional stealth section, which is so ridiculously forgiving it might as well not be there. If it's lurking in your backlog I'd recommend giving it a go!

So I once again took a diversion from my 2 simultaneous Baldur's Gate series quests to play Sigma Theory: Global Cold War. A globetrotting spy game where you recruit a team of international spies and gather spies to research the Sigma Project before an other country does.

I liked the game a bunch - it was fun. You can complete a full game in 2-4 hours. It takes about 1 game to understand the mechanics, a second game to figure out the strategy, and I won it by my 3rd game. The replayability is limited in terms of victory but there's lots of variety in the agents, scientists and story. The overall gameplay lore is, well, ridiculous, but who cares? Globetrotting spies!

I liked it a lot, but I can already see it becoming repetitive after a few runs. Definitely recommend it, especially to those folks who are looking for a James Bond strategy fix.

Ok, back to Baldur's Gate 2. I have two groups in the Underdark and those Drow aren't going to backstab themselves.

Prey was great. It feels like Arkane wanted to make a System Shock but they couldn’t, so they just did their own thing with the concept. It even has “Looking Glass” technology as a prominent feature of the game world.

I spent probably too much time exploring and finding different ways around problems. Loved that every apparent piece of junk or excess equipment could be recycled into something useful. Didn’t really delve into a lot of the character abilities - which may give me an excuse for another play through.

Prey: Mooncrash was quite good as well if you’re looking for more.

I just finished XCOM: Chimera Squad. Once they patched the bugs out, it was great! Really enjoyed myself.

I think my favorite thing about it was the world building. I loved the squad banter, radio ads/talk shows, etc.

gewy wrote:

Prey: Mooncrash was quite good as well if you’re looking for more.

I haven’t been really impressed with what I’ve read about Mooncrash - it’s not really my style of game. If it was just a standard expansion from a different point of view like the Dishonored DLC I would be all over it.

Redherring wrote:
gewy wrote:

Prey: Mooncrash was quite good as well if you’re looking for more.

I haven’t been really impressed with what I’ve read about Mooncrash - it’s not really my style of game. If it was just a standard expansion from a different point of view like the Dishonored DLC I would be all over it.

I had the same "really?" reaction when I read the pitch for Mooncrasch, but then it wound up being my game of the year. I honestly think it's better than the base game.

Doom Eternal

I absolutely adored it for the most part. I loved how much more colourful it was, I loved the additions to mobility and combat, I loved the music. Every fight felt like an old Unreal Tournament 99 or Quake 3 Arena deathmatch. The "take what you need" approach to each encounter was really interesting, and having to think quickly on the fly really engaged me! Do I use my flamer to get more armour? Can I afford to use a grenade here? Oh no I'm low on health, I need to pick apart a demon so I can RIP it up for HP. It worked really well!

Though I'd be lying if I said I didn't totally run out of gas about 1.5-2 hours from the finish line. I stopped playing for a month or two and only came back to finish it because I felt I had to. While I enjoyed playing on the harder difficulty for 90% of the game, I ended up putting it on easy to blast past the terrible final boss.

The backstory stuff was cool, but it was poorly paced and I never wanted to stop and read the text. Because of how it was presented, I was confused throughout most of the game. The gameplay was good, so I didn't mind, but you could tell they really tried to inject more story into the game and it felt forced (whereas it was a cool side thing in Doom 2016).

Minor complaint, but I found it hard to swap weapons on the fly. Usually I'd have weapons bound to Q, R, Z, X C etc. in these games, but with the additions of so many little mechanics which used those buttons, I was forced to use the number keys or totally stop the game and scroll through my inventory. Not a huge deal, but it got in the way of my flow often.

I think it's far better than Doom 2016 in a lot of ways, but I can't ignore how fed up I was with it by the end. It's hard for me to gauge how I really feel. Considering the improvements, I'd say it's at least on par. But while it's highs are higher, it has a handful of clumsy moments that brings it down a notch or two.

Pros
+ Great environments
+ COLOURS. It's like a goddamn comic book and I love that!
+ Another fantastic soundtrack
+ Unique FPS mechanics that both felt new and oldschool
+ It indulges in its own stupidity and gives you good dumb fun
+ Platforming felt pretty good! 1 or 2 levels had me feeling a bit confused but I overall loved the added freedom of movement.

cons
- A bit too long, it became a slog near the end
- Mauraders break the flow of the game
- Final boss is tedious and frustrating

TL;DR damn fine game, but not a perfect game. And that's ok!

I finished Remothered: Tormented Fathers last night, and while it wasn't great, I thought it was very enjoyable. It's a 5-6 hour survival horror game in which you don't have any weapons and stealth is a must if you want the main character to be able to escape the mansion she is trapped in. Despite the graphics looking a little last-gen and rather low-res, I thought the game was very intense and atmospheric, and it definitely managed to create tension in a very satisfying way. If you like the genre, it's usually on sale for under $10, and I think it's worth that price for sure.

I just finished Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, after getting stuck on the last boss fight and putting it down for a week. It was a fine game. Probably the best Star Wars action game I've played, which may not be saying a whole lot. I went into it expecting it to be more Dark Souls-ey, but it ended up being a lot more like a Tomb Raider, with a Star Wars skin; I like the modern Tomb Raider games, so this isn't a knock against it, but it's just not what I thought i was getting myself into, so I was a bit let down.

I understand why they had to make certain game design choices, but the combat really didn't feel very Star Wars-ey. Lightsabers are supposed to be the ultimate one-hit-kill (or maim) weapon, and yet some fights felt like I was using a Lightbutterknife, even against trash mobs. And there were a lot of treasure chests scattered everywhere, but they contained only cosmetic items; no new pieces of armor, weapons, or items to be found - only new skills gained through the course of the story.

I'm definitely glad I played it, despite the final boss fight feeling frustratingly cheap, and I would probably even look forward to a sequel if one gets announced.

merphle wrote:

I just finished Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, after getting stuck on the last boss fight and putting it down for a week.

Im half way through and have had to take a break from the bit up the big tree where you have to do multiple double jump wall runs (which im failing horribly at!).

Totally agree with your comparison to the Tomb Raider games, but I had been trying to choose a game in the SW universe throughout lockdown and dont regret the choice

LondonLoo wrote:
merphle wrote:

I just finished Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, after getting stuck on the last boss fight and putting it down for a week.

Im half way through and have had to take a break from the bit up the big tree where you have to do multiple double jump wall runs (which im failing horribly at!).

Totally agree with your comparison to the Tomb Raider games, but I had been trying to choose a game in the SW universe throughout lockdown and dont regret the choice

Absolutely. I realize upon re-reading my earlier post that I may have come down a bit harshly on the game overall. It's a great Star Wars game. Great controls, (mostly) awesome level design, and it certainly captures the feel of being a Jedi really well. I should have included all of that in my post before lambasting the parts that just kept irritating me throughout the game.

Also BD-1 is such a great companion.

Finished The Pedestrian, a really wonderful puzzle platformer where you help a stickman get through levels that look like street signs. The aesthetic and style of the game is super whimsical and it really invites you to keep playing. The puzzles are not too difficult and they are made in a way such that it is very inconvenient to brute force them so you are actually encouraged to think about the solution. The final puzzle is completely different to the rest of the game and I just wish there were more like it. At 3-4hs, the game is a bit short, but still totally worth it for me, this will likely make it to my top 10 this year.

Finished Jedi: Fallen Order. Hoo boy, did this game just not click with me.

I found the combat horrendous. Controls were mushy, camera wonky, and encounters overall generally poor such as fighting several enemies in cramped spaces, or monsters cheaply jumping out of nowhere to snag some health.

The Uncharted bits were fun and I liked exploring new areas, but having to re-visit places felt like a cheap way to expand the content - mostly due to respawning enemies for no reason whatsoever - which is another mechanic I can't stand. (Thanks Dark Souls!) I learned about halfway through that looking for crates wasn't very rewarding either so I gave up looking for those too.

Overall, this game was well below my expectations. It got so much praise at launch. I really didn't expect to dislike it so much. I knew it was a souls-like going in though, so that's on me.

PaladinTom wrote:

Finished Jedi: Fallen Order. Hoo boy, did this game just not click with me.

I found the combat horrendous. Controls were mushy, camera wonky, and encounters overall generally poor such as fighting several enemies in cramped spaces, or monsters cheaply jumping out of nowhere to snag some health.

The Uncharted bits were fun and I liked exploring new areas, but having to re-visit places felt like a cheap way to expand the content - mostly due to respawning enemies for no reason whatsoever - which is another mechanic I can't stand. (Thanks Dark Souls!) I learned about halfway through that looking for crates wasn't very rewarding either so I gave up looking for those too.

Overall, this game was well below my expectations. It got so much praise at launch. I really didn't expect to dislike it so much. I knew it was a souls-like going in though, so that's on me.

This. I think that if there had been more smaller planets, fewer worthless collectibles, and a tighter focus on the narrative part of the game, it would have been stronger overall.

People still might have had issues with the mechanics and combat, but I'll bet those issues were exacerbated by retreading old terrain a bunch of times.

PaladinTom wrote:

Finished Jedi: Fallen Order. Hoo boy, did this game just not click with me.

I found the combat horrendous. Controls were mushy, camera wonky, and encounters overall generally poor such as fighting several enemies in cramped spaces, or monsters cheaply jumping out of nowhere to snag some health.

The Uncharted bits were fun and I liked exploring new areas, but having to re-visit places felt like a cheap way to expand the content - mostly due to respawning enemies for no reason whatsoever - which is another mechanic I can't stand. (Thanks Dark Souls!) I learned about halfway through that looking for crates wasn't very rewarding either so I gave up looking for those too.

Overall, this game was well below my expectations. It got so much praise at launch. I really didn't expect to dislike it so much. I knew it was a souls-like going in though, so that's on me.

Man! Sounds like you feel about this game like I did about Control! It's such a shame when a game you have been looking forward to disappoints you so crushingly. Hopefully, you'll enjoy your next game a lot more!

Finished off Assassin's Creed 3: Remastered including DLC. I posted my thoughts to the dedicated thread, but basically I enjoyed it despite some tricky and pedantic optional objectives (because of course I fully sync'd all the story missions!). A few minor challenges left over (for the Thieves' club and a couple of delivery requests if I recall correctly), but... meh.

So now I've done all the 'Desmond' AC games. I've got AC: Liberation to play ('cos it comes with the AC3 remaster), but at the moment I'm kind of tapped out on Assassin's Creed. I've also got AC: Odyssey to get back to. Both can wait a bit, I think, while I play something else.

Spoiler:

I reserve the right to change my mind and immediately start playing them anyway. But I think this time I really need to take a break from the franchise.

PaladinTom wrote:

Finished Jedi: Fallen Order. Hoo boy, did this game just not click with me.

Thanks for the review. I fell off this hard after like 4-5 hours. Wasn’t enjoying combat, story was just serviceable, and exploration felt pointless since chests were useless and hidden bonuses really mild. After your review, I think I might just drop difficulty to easy and blast through the mainline story to get something from it and call that good enough.

Sasu wrote:

After your review, I think I might just drop difficulty to easy and blast through the mainline story to get something from it and call that good enough.

Yeah! Do that! There are some really cool environments and unique ancient-feeling world building. It'd be a shame to miss out on that stuff.

Finally finished Marvel's Spider-Man. I definitely can't wait until Miles Morales comes out.

I have started keeping a list in Evernote of games that I have actually finished. There has been a noticeable spike during the COVID-Nineteens, perhaps unsurprisingly! I have been particularly interested in not overly long story games, at least in terms of what I have been finishing: Doki Doki Literature Club, 12 Labors (as a Canadian, it pains me to write it that way, but you can find it in that giant Itch Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, if you bought that), Californium, Paratopic, Milkmaid of the Milky Way, and Dear Esther were my most recent accomplishments. But the big one has been Shadowrun Returns, which I have been pecking away at since 2014! Don’t stretch it out, if you haven’t started it yet. I forgot all sorts of plot points! Drink it in, if you can!

Mario_Alba wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

Finished Jedi: Fallen Order. Hoo boy, did this game just not click with me.

I found the combat horrendous. Controls were mushy, camera wonky, and encounters overall generally poor such as fighting several enemies in cramped spaces, or monsters cheaply jumping out of nowhere to snag some health.

The Uncharted bits were fun and I liked exploring new areas, but having to re-visit places felt like a cheap way to expand the content - mostly due to respawning enemies for no reason whatsoever - which is another mechanic I can't stand. (Thanks Dark Souls!) I learned about halfway through that looking for crates wasn't very rewarding either so I gave up looking for those too.

Overall, this game was well below my expectations. It got so much praise at launch. I really didn't expect to dislike it so much. I knew it was a souls-like going in though, so that's on me.

Man! Sounds like you feel about this game like I did about Control! It's such a shame when a game you have been looking forward to disappoints you so crushingly. Hopefully, you'll enjoy your next game a lot more!

I avoided Control because of the way past Remedy games have controlled. There's always something about them that's... loose. I can't really explain it, but I've heard a couple of people mention the controls in a way that makes me think this game is no different. If I only I could try a demo...

PaladinTom wrote:
Mario_Alba wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

Finished Jedi: Fallen Order. Hoo boy, did this game just not click with me.

I found the combat horrendous. Controls were mushy, camera wonky, and encounters overall generally poor such as fighting several enemies in cramped spaces, or monsters cheaply jumping out of nowhere to snag some health.

The Uncharted bits were fun and I liked exploring new areas, but having to re-visit places felt like a cheap way to expand the content - mostly due to respawning enemies for no reason whatsoever - which is another mechanic I can't stand. (Thanks Dark Souls!) I learned about halfway through that looking for crates wasn't very rewarding either so I gave up looking for those too.

Overall, this game was well below my expectations. It got so much praise at launch. I really didn't expect to dislike it so much. I knew it was a souls-like going in though, so that's on me.

Man! Sounds like you feel about this game like I did about Control! It's such a shame when a game you have been looking forward to disappoints you so crushingly. Hopefully, you'll enjoy your next game a lot more!

I avoided Control because of the way past Remedy games have controlled. There's always something about them that's... loose. I can't really explain it, but I've heard a couple of people mention the controls in a way that makes me think this game is no different. If I only I could try a demo...

I loved Alan Wake, so I was ready to love Control as well. Alas, it was not meant to be. It made me so... angry. Like a Souls game, come to think of it.

Adventure Island II (NES)

The Adventure Island series is well known among retro gamers, but the series never gets much attention. And rightfully so to be honest. The games are mediocre platformers on a system overflowing with top-notch 2D platformers. The Adventure Island series isn't bad, but neither is it noteworthy. All the levels look and feel the same and the bosses literally are the same with sprite swaps and different hp totals. Cool music though.

The second game in the series would have been a decent if forgettable game if not for the trollish game design. The developers of this game loved gotcha traps that you have no chance to survive unless you know about them in advance. Large jumps over bottomless pits where fast-moving enemies spawn when you're halfway over the pit. Enemies that spawn from the left side of the screen and move like a bat out of hell. Fireballs that jump out of pits to kill you, but one fireball in a nondescript pit moves faster than the others causing you to mistime it and die. Oh, and just to be clear, you die in one hit, the levels have extremely tight time limits that force you to constantly rush, and there are no checkpoints. And if you game over you start the entire world over again. The last world in particular was particularly brutal. I think I had about 8 game overs over 3-4 hours of playtime.

Overall though I did enjoy the game and I'm looking forward to trying out the rest of the series. The later games in the series are significantly easier, so that will be a welcome change of pace.

I finished AI: The Somnium Files, which was a steam sale purchase.

And is...a visual novel I guess? Like, it's mostly on rails, except for the bits where it blossoms into other paths, and those paths turn ino a sneakily linear thing, and f*ck me, this game is just super clever.

I just like it a whole lot. The one blemish is the QTE action scenes, which while funny the first time around turns into a one-note joke about MGS guards.