Finished Any Games Lately?

I wrapped up Inscryption. That is a helluva experience. There were points where I absolutely adored it and it would easily top my GOTY list. Then there were points that dragged and I had trouble seeing the relevance to the narrative as a whole. In the end, it came together amazingly well to what I’d consider a gaming masterpiece as a whole. I see why it gathered so many awards over the last year. But as I said above, there are parts that weren’t perfect, and honestly kinda boring.

I’m going to try to be very light on spoilers, which are a very large part of the experience. If you’re sensitive at all to spoilers, my lightest spoiler final thought is: this is definitely worth your time if you’re interested in card games, rogue likes, narrative experiences, horror experiences (although quite light on true gore). It’s one of my highest recommendations. Still, it’s not for everybody, and that’s totally okay too.

Light spoiler thoughts:

Spoiler:

The first act is the most polished experience and 100% sucked me in. I was ALL IN until the beginning of the second act… then I really bounced off and needed a break for a while. I did eventually come back to finish act 2, then absolutely loved act 3 and the epilogue finale, which tied everything together so well it kinda blows my mind how much stuff was introduced so subtly in act 1 and you don’t see how it all relates until the end. I cannot believe how much effort went into certain sections in the epilogue. I love the care and attention that was put into every detail.

Hob, which was great. Some original ideas, nice and short, intriguing world to play around in (and with).

Go, Hob!

Redherring wrote:

Hob, which was great. Some original ideas, nice and short, intriguing world to play around in (and with).

That was my game of the year in 2020! Such a great game, it's a shame it's not talked about more.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. It's a bit of a Zelda clone with the sort of humour that the title implies. Combat and puzzles were mostly pretty ordinary, with a few exceptions, but the game mostly relies on its humour anyway. Worth checking out considering it only takes around 2 hours to finish.

Saw credits in Life is Strange: True Colors. Huge step up from Life is Strange 2 IMO. Thought the characters were better. But like Deck Nine's other Life is Strange effort, Before the Storm, it feels really rushed despite having 5 episodes this time. Only spent 8 hours total compared to the 18 in LiS2.

Finished Grapple Dog on the Switch.

Really fun collect-a-thon platformer based on grapple hook mechanics. The gameplay loop reminded me a bit of the classic Rayman games where the goal is to get through a level collecting things without dying and, while there are enemies, the focus is not on combat. The level design was fun, including the bosses, checkpoints appear often but not too often, controls are tight (although I always struggle in platformers with "sticky" walls) and the level of challenge was right for me. It also felt like the right length (short but not too short) and if you're a completionist, there's more to do after you beat the game.

My only caveat is that the Switch has some really unacceptable performance issues that cause a bunch of rage-inducing unfair deaths and it crashed to the main screen twice so I'd recommend getting it on PC unless you see something about a patch.

Sekiro, finally!

The last few bosses got a bit frustrating but I mostly really enjoyed it. The developers explored a lot of really interesting, clever twists on their signature style, which made it a very fresh take on the Soulsbourne genre.

Favourite boss was definitely

Spoiler:

the Guardian Ape. I loved how it went from comedy in the first phase, with fart attacks and poop flinging, to eerie, writhing, neck-centipede body horror in the second.

Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster

I started and never finished the fan-translated ROM back in the 90s when I first discovered emulators, so this has been a 25-year journey. Between the job system, small cast, and pretty basic story (okay, there are big twists here and there), V feels more like a sequel to III than like a bridge from IV to VI. Generally when I hit a tough boss I just retooled my job setup (add more time mages!) and beat them without grinding, so I finished with only a few jobs mastered. The final dungeon throws a lot of what could be described as fun twists or cheap shots, depending on how charitable you're feeling. I'm not sure I could imagine tackling it without the Pixel Remaster's generous autosave system, so maybe it's a good thing that I forgot that emulator run back in the day.

IIRC FF 1-6 is not chronological.
I thought 3(japanese) was 5(for western gamers) and 4(japanese) was 6(for western gamers)

2, 3 and 5 didn't come to the west right away, so FF4 was released as FF2 in the US, and FF6 was released as FF3.

However, subsequent re-releases, remasters, and remakes have kept the original Japanese numbering. And at this point I think most people assume when you say 3 that you mean the actual FF3, not FF6.

beanman101283 wrote:

2, 3 and 5 didn't come to the west right away, so FF4 was released as FF2 in the US, and FF6 was released as FF3.

However, subsequent re-releases, remasters, and remakes have kept the original Japanese numbering. And at this point I think most people assume when you say 3 that you mean the actual FF3, not FF6.

Depends on the context. I will often use FF2US/FF3US if I am specifically talking about the SNES games.

I really wish they would bring the remasters to consoles. Xbox or Switch specifically since those are the ones I own. Seems really odd that they are only on PC, iOS, and Android. I tried to get in network streaming between my PC and Xbox working, but it wasn't really playable.

I'm hopeful the pixel remasters will be announced for console this year with the series' 35th anniversary and all the other big FF news expected for this year. They've had time to iron out the bugs on PC/mobile, so hopefully it's not too much effort to get them on consoles at this point.

Finished Control Ultimate Edition finally. I had started playing it last year and then got sidetracked by other things. This game was so good in some places the Ashtray Maze of course was brilliant and Swift Platform was a fun little synthwave infused challenge. My main complaint with it is the lack of a proper ending. It feels like there should have been another DLC or something to finally wrap it all up. The Alan Wake DLC was fun. I like the puzzle aspects of the boss fights in it. Makes me want to play the Alan Wake remaster now.

I somehow managed to Get ONE ending of NieR Automata. I just found out that there are 26 or so endings. Which I obviously wont do. I never imagined having 3 kids will limit my time so so so much.

I might play a second time (I heard it was shorter) to play with 92 and that the B ending.
Overall a very very good game. But the ending left me with a bunch of doubts. It felt incomplete

Darkhaund wrote:

I somehow managed to Get ONE ending of NieR Automata. I just found out that there are 26 or so endings. Which I obviously wont do. I never imagined having 3 kids will limit my time so so so much.

I might play a second time (I heard it was shorter) to play with 92 and that the B ending.
Overall a very very good game. But the ending left me with a bunch of doubts. It felt incomplete

It IS incomplete. Think of them as "Chapters" instead of "Endings." Getting to ending E is the true end of the game. The other endings are mostly jokes or gags, not "real" endings.

The B path has you replaying the game from 9S's perspective, though you still learn new things that weren't apparent with 2B. C through E then continue the story onward.

Darkhaund wrote:

I somehow managed to Get ONE ending of NieR Automata. I just found out that there are 26 or so endings. Which I obviously wont do. I never imagined having 3 kids will limit my time so so so much.

I might play a second time (I heard it was shorter) to play with 92 and that the B ending.
Overall a very very good game. But the ending left me with a bunch of doubts. It felt incomplete

Ending C-E are the main endings if I remember correctly. B is your play-through with 9S and then C-E takes place after A and B and you are given branching choices with each ending being the ending for that branch. If I remember right endings B-E combined take less time than A did. Other than that most of the endings are just various "You Failed" endings like if you uninstall your OS chip or eat the fish or if you fail during certain parts of the game or kill characters you aren't supposed to.

Thanks for the info guys! Ill see and ponder on this. My backlog is huuuge

beanman101283 wrote:
Darkhaund wrote:

I somehow managed to Get ONE ending of NieR Automata. I just found out that there are 26 or so endings. Which I obviously wont do. I never imagined having 3 kids will limit my time so so so much.

I might play a second time (I heard it was shorter) to play with 92 and that the B ending.
Overall a very very good game. But the ending left me with a bunch of doubts. It felt incomplete

It IS incomplete. Think of them as "Chapters" instead of "Endings." Getting to ending E is the true end of the game. The other endings are mostly jokes or gags, not "real" endings.

The B path has you replaying the game from 9S's perspective, though you still learn new things that weren't apparent with 2B. C through E then continue the story onward.

Seconding this, and it was my GOTY a couple of years ago. Route B is sort of the controversial one since there is overlap with Route A (but there is a lot of new information). Route C and the endings C-E are what makes the game special, IMO. For me, the total playtime was under 35 hours.

So once I start Playing after ending A things will go faster?

Darkhaund wrote:

So once I start Playing after ending A things will go faster?

Yes. Ending B is maybe like half as long? And then the other endings are really short, and also have much less overlap. Also just a warning that some people dislike the hacking gameplay for 9S but I personally enjoyed it.

So yeah you should keep going! Especially if you've gotten this far and been enjoying it, it'll only keep getting better.

Okkkkay!!! ill do to get to ending E at least!!!!
Thanks

Supraland

So refreshing to play this after a couple of big bloated open world games. It shows that you don't need a sprawling map to provoke a sense of exploration and discovery, when you can make smaller spaces that are so dense with secrets to find and puzzles to solve. Somehow it keeps on coming up with rewarding upgrades and inventive new abilities, right to the end (which unfortunately soured me a bit with a dud of a final boss). I guess you could mainline the quest pretty quickly but I spent 35 hours wandering about, and regret none of it!

Rolled the credits on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order last night. It was... fine? A little glitchy on my aging PS4, but I enjoyed it. Maybe it's because I played it after putting 100ish hours into Horizon: Forbidden West, but the game felt a little short to me.

But, after finishing it, who exactly IS the "Fallen Order" they're referring to in the game title? The Jedi that have been all be eradicated? The mysterious force sensitive aliens that are a big part of the plot (but you really never learn much about)? The Night Sisters?

I always assumed it was the Jedi Order. But now that I think about it, they could have clarified by calling it "Star Wars Fallen Jedi Order" instead of "Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order."

The Inquisitors are all fallen Jedi was my thought.

XCOM 2 War of the Chosen Legendary Ironman. But I cheated. I discovered that if you load your save after hitting alt+F4, the save file loads up at the start of your turn, so any alien or Lost activity that kills your people is negated.

So, I've started it again and I'm sticking to it this time. I've already passed my first test. I lost Elena (my first Reaper voiced by Marina Sirtis!) to a f*cking random Faceless. If I can withstand that death, then I can withstand anything.

Grenn wrote:

But I cheated.

Did you lie? Did you bribe men to cover the crimes of other men? Are you an accessory to murder? Can you live with it?

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Dishonored

This was a replay for me. When it first came out (ten years ago?), I played it on the 360, and didn't care for it. That was mostly my own fault: I was trying for some of the harder stealth achievements on a first playthrough, and the constant trial and error sucked all the fun out of the game for me. I hate-finished it by the end.

This time around, I didn't worry about the achievements, and just tried to have fun. It was a massively improved experience. I had fun with the powers, didn't stress too much about low vs high chaos, and really dug into exploring and finding all the lore tidbits scattered around. Turns out it's a pretty amazing game! There are few games where it's so fun and satisfying to just poke your nose into every nook and cranny. Combining Blink with upgraded jumps is a joy. I still played stealthily, but wasn't afraid to murder a guy who surprised me coming around a corner.

I also this time played the two story DLCs, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches. These are fantastic. They're decently distilled experiences, full of dense levels to explore and tell a pretty compelling story by the end. I highly highly recommend playing these if you missed out on them before.

I'm planning to dive right into Dishonored 2 next week. I skipped it due to my aforementioned issues with my first playthrough, but now I can't wait to finally give it a try.

Dishonored 2 has some of the most incredible levels of any game I've ever played. Enjoy!