Finished Any Games Lately?

I finished Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which was sort of this weird Uncharted/Souls-like/Metroidvania mashup, with enough action set pieces to feel like a movie. I think that part of it actually really worked for me (the Uncharted piece), and the combat was simple but challenging enough to keep me engaged in basically every battle up to the end (although around the time I could fully restore my Force bar when healing made a lot of boss fight trivial at the end of the game, since you could keep them sort of stun locked with Force Pulls and just whale on them). Those two parts really worked for me. And the new powers = new areas part of the metroidvania was pretty fun as well; the only real problem I had, and it was significant, was how slow the movement and exploration was. It actively made me not want to go back to older areas to explore more with the new powers, since it was tedious to run around and there was also no fast travel, which sort of a big part of metroidvanias. There was enough backtracking in the story to let you get to most of the map once you had more powers, but I didn’t even try to 100% it.

I finished it in 17 hours, which How Long to Beat says is basically how long it takes to mainline the game. I think that’s what I more or less did, and had fun with it so long as I was on the critical path. And it was a good test of my new video card, so mission accomplished there as well.

I finished The Forgotten City. I was pleasantly surprised by the game. Short but super interesting and captivating. It manages to include some historical and philosophical discussions without becoming a slog, in part thanks to the voice acting and not requiring a lot of reading. It also has some good exploration and social engineering puzzles. I was not a fan of the action/horror elements but that's just my preference. I also found the inconsistency of the invisible wall to be a bit annoying in an otherwise well-made setting to explore. But neither of these things was a big deal. I really enjoyed the game overall.

Last Call BBS. The swan song of the late, lamented Zachtronics. I wasn't expecting much since it looked like a collection of half finished game ideas, but every single mini game in the collection turned out to be good to great.

One detail that I particularly liked was how the programming puzzles now show you the first and tenth percentile best scores of other players, rather than only the absolute best score like they did in previous games. This meant that I could be satisfied with knowing I'd found a 'pretty good' solution if I got within the tenth percentile, instead of spending hours scratching my head trying to understand whatever galaxy-brain, five dimensional chess technique the absolute best solutions used.

So long Zachtronics, and thanks for all the games!

Finished Signalis. Old school survival horror, it's what you get if you mix a top down Resident Evil with liberal sprinklings of Silent Hill, Lovecraft and a Tsutomu Nihei manga, especially BLAME.

The areas aren't as tightly designes as the Resident Evil mansion (Then again what is?), and the storytelling's a bit too oblique, but it's still a very impressive effort. It also does some cool things with perspective shifts. Just goes to show that you don't need high tech to look good if you've got style.

Also finished The Convenience Store, which took a bit over an hour. It's an alright J-horror riff about working the night shift in a haunted 24/7 convenience store. The signposting about what you need to do to progress isn't always the best, a one of the endings concludes with text dump, which is a bit clumsy. I got it as part of an indie bundle where I owned most everything, which meant I paid like 20 cents extra compared to just buying Faith, and I'm not going to complain at that price.

And I got all the achievements in Vampire Survivors, and promptly uninstalled it for my own good. That's a very more-ish game.

For those of you who have played (or just finished Plague Tale: Innocence), I feel that Plague Tale: Requim is 100% better. I'm not going to lie and say it's easy though. The stealth parts are still pretty tricky. However, I finished the game yesterday at 28 hours in. It was an amazing journey and a very powerful ending.

It's also on XBox game pass so there's no need to purchase it

Just finished Dishonored 2: Death of the Outsider. That was a fun expansion pack and a nice way to wrap up the Dishonored series. Overall, a fairly short set of missions, and I found it interesting that they limited Billie Lurk (who is appropriately named considering how long this game has been on my hard drive) to just a few powers while expanding out the number of bonecharms. Storywise it was pretty straightforward with no major surprises and I'm fine with that.

Overall I've enjoyed the Dishonored series. I would never call myself a major fan but I did have fun with it and really appreciated their level design in particular. I respect what the Arkane has done to develop the franchise, but it just never really grabbed me the way other series have. Still, I'm glad I played it and wrapped up the storyline of the outsider in this relatively brief epilogue.

Up next more Immortal Empires in Total War: Warhammer III, possibly Expeditions: Rome or Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children or even Warhammer: Verminitide 2 (man these developers really love using a colon in their titles), and...dear lord another WoW expansion is coming? Whelp, there goes the next 6 months of my life...

Ghost of Tshushima.

Went from putting this down two years ago, to picking it up again and just being overwhelmed at how good the emotional punches are. Especially the end.

There was a little too much fluff in side stuff to do, but all the character tales were excellent. Loved the combat.

Overall, a game that I am very happy I was wrong about.

It's weird how much of Ghost of Tsushima, just presented as a checklist, seems like it's yet another open world action game. Almost none of it is particularly original - really I think the Guiding Wind is the only new thing it brings - but I found myself sucked into it deeply, and was delighted to go back for another round with the DLC.

That's in pointed contrast to the most recent AC entry I played, Valhalla; I put over 180 hours into Valhalla but haven't posted about it here because I still couldn't find a way to finish the campaign. I was positively praying that each campaign mission would finally be the last one, but it went on and on and on and on... Eventually I vowed I'd finish it just because I'm stubborn as hell and it was really annoying me w/r/t how much of my life it had already sucked away; in for a penny, in for a kiloton. Thank god I finally got distracted by something shiny for long enough that I could just give up when the option of returning opened up.

Yeah, Ghost is the very definition of greater than the sum of it's parts for me. It doesn't do anything particularly innovative and sometimes doesn't even do it as well as it's peers, but for some reason the mix works well enough that you don't care. One of the handful of open world games I finished and even did most of the side content for. As someone who doesn't get the loot grind appeal of most games, I also loved that you basically keep almost the same equipment but just upgrade it occasionally, and therefore the upgrades really feel like they matter.

kuddles wrote:

Yeah, Ghost is the very definition of greater than the sum of it's parts for me. It doesn't do anything particularly innovative and sometimes doesn't even do it as well as it's peers, but for some reason the mix works well enough that you don't care. One of the handful of open world games I finished and even did most of the side content for. As someone who doesn't get the loot grind appeal of most games, I also loved that you basically keep almost the same equipment but just upgrade it occasionally, and therefore the upgrades really feel like they matter.

That's a good way to state it. As I was playing it, I wasn't really ever amazed at any one part of it. There were little bits here and there that I was amazed by (like when the enemies start to fear you in battle since you are being recognized as "The Ghost"), but beyond that it was standard open-world gaming. Go to place, talk to a person, kill someone, go back to quest giver. A new thing is now checked off as complete on the world map.

Thinking back at it though, it was wonderful and visceral in many ways.

kuddles wrote:

...As someone who doesn't get the loot grind appeal of most games, I also loved that you basically keep almost the same equipment but just upgrade it occasionally, and therefore the upgrades really feel like they matter.

Oh, man, so much this. A constant stream of upgrades that each give you a 1% increase in some stat just feel like a continual trickle of meaninglessness. I want fewer upgrades, and I want each one to really feel like, hey, now I can do things I couldn't do before.

Whenever I see this thread title pop up, I think "ha ha, nope!"

So good work actually finishing games, y'all deserve a pat on the back

Evan E wrote:
kuddles wrote:

...As someone who doesn't get the loot grind appeal of most games, I also loved that you basically keep almost the same equipment but just upgrade it occasionally, and therefore the upgrades really feel like they matter.

Oh, man, so much this. A constant stream of upgrades that each give you a 1% increase in some stat just feel like a continual trickle of meaninglessness. I want fewer upgrades, and I want each one to really feel like, hey, now I can do things I couldn't do before.

Yeah, the restraint of GoT is a big part of why it worked for me despite being an open world. Every upgrade, side quest, activity, even each new location felt curated and meaningful in its own way.

Pillars of Eternity -- Odd that they chose to save the most interesting world building for the twist with an hour to go in the game. Especially since the middle of the game dragged a bit. Still, I really enjoyed the game and I'm glad I was able to rescue my save from an old, dead iMac in order to go back and finish it.

I just reinstalled PoE a month or so ago myself and looks like steam kept all my saved. I was about to buy PoE2 on sale and realized I never finished the first, so going to make myself do that sometime soon

I finished Resident Evil 7! This is the first Resident Evil game I've managed to complete, after bouncing off the Resident Evil HD and Resident Evil 4 years ago.

The start is damn terrifying. They really make you feel helpless in this nightmarish scenario. If you manage to push through those opening couple hours though, the weapons you acquire go a long way toward making the horror a lot less overbearing.

Since this is the first game I actually put significant time into, I wasn't aware these are basically puzzle exploration games with gooey monsters thrown in. I really enjoyed exploring each location, opening up pathways, and learning my way around while sniffing for items. Also, after all these years, I somehow managed to avoid being spoiled on the various twists and new locations after the halfway point, and they were a highlight of the game for me.

I'll play the free DLC sometime this week, and I'm looking forward to trying some of the other games now, like the recent remakes, and RE8.

My wife and I completed Haven. Completed the main story and most achievements. This took almost a year to complete, yet the time played was only around 19 hours, played on XSX. Shows a bit how hard it is for my wife and I to find time to play together! Overall, we really enjoyed the game a lot, but by the end we were mostly ready to complete it and move on to something else.

There's a lot we loved about the game: a mature relationship that doesn't shy away from sex or relationship conflict but keeps it mostly light and fun, enjoyable sci-fi story, fluid movement, pretty visuals and good music, and they added multiple gender options over the last year so you can choose M/M or M/F or F/F for the couple with excellent voice acting. The combat was mostly good but got tedious towards the end when we couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong, and it seemed like every encounter started requiring consumable items which were a little annoying to craft and bring along.

Minor complaints: Combat is the top one and I wish we'd realized you could make it substantially easier in the options settings much sooner, some achievements require perfect playthroughs or tedious requirements, movement was mostly good but really could've used better dual-stick control (I couldn't move the camera while gliding).

Spoiler thoughts:

Spoiler:

We loved that there were two endings that felt very appropriate for the dystopian sci-fi setting. I was worried we'd be railroaded into a single option and were very pleased that you could actually make a choice with the realistic consequences that followed.

My wife and I have struggled to find games that engage both of us, and this one really hit last year (even making my top games from 2021!), but then we stagnated and it took way more months than expected to complete. I'd definitely recommend it to many couples, because the main characters are very likable and their banter was fun, just be aware that sex and adult topics come up frequently, so maybe not with young kiddos around. Also note that it works well with a primary player as well, so the second doesn't need to be able to navigate 3D environments a lot, yet they can still assist in collecting items, in combat, and choosing dialogue options (which were surprisingly well done). I'd probably rate it 8/10 because of how well it hit with my wife and I.

Finished Heavenly Bodies, a short game that was one of the monthly free games on ps+ recently. It belongs in the same genre as Octodad or Surgeon Simulator; the control scheme is so obtuse as to be comical. The comedy isn't as overt as those other games, but it's actually much funnier because of how straight they play it. The final scene had me in hysterics. A really well done five hour distraction.

billt721 wrote:

Pillars of Eternity -- Odd that they chose to save the most interesting world building for the twist with an hour to go in the game. Especially since the middle of the game dragged a bit. Still, I really enjoyed the game and I'm glad I was able to rescue my save from an old, dead iMac in order to go back and finish it.

The 2nd one is even better!

With the idea of finally getting around to some of the old FMV titles kicking around the pile, I played Under a Killing Moon, and it was pretty rough going. I had low expectations for the graphics/gameplay experience, but even with that in mind I felt like entirely too much of the game was spent fighting with the controls. The acting was pretty awful even for the standard awkwardness of the genre, and the depiction of several of the characters was pretty off-putting. I did get a chuckle here and there, but most of the jokes fell flat. In the middle chapters all that kept me going was the promise of more James Earl Jones narration and those nifty little chapter title sequences.

Not the best experience overall, though I have fond enough memories of Pandora Directive that I'll still probably give Overseer a shot.

I wrapped up Save Room on Switch. It was nice and relaxing, with a good kick of nostalgia.

The premise is: what if Resident Evil 4's inventory management was a game unto itself?

Chicory
At first, I was not impressed. Your cutesy mammal charm is lost on me! Your art is stark and scratchy, it hurts my eyes! Your brush was better in Okami!

But I'd heard people mention this in GOTY talk last year so I came back to it after a while and started prodding at the world. I got better with the brush and got a power up for it. I started thinking of CrossCode, a game I liked a couple of years ago. With my new power up things started to get more interesting, puzzles started to emerge, and I was impressed. Then it escalated again, and again, and now here we are in the finished games thread, with a game I'm sure will be somewhere in my own GOTY list this year.

For me, it was mostly about the chill vibes and the increasingly clever puzzles. And the music! The game also has a message, that was not so personally impactful to me, but that's OK. It's not intrusive - nothing about the game is. I actually feel quite nourished after playing it, which is something I can't say about many games.

ComfortZone wrote:

Chicory
But I'd heard people mention this in GOTY talk last year so I came back to it after a while and started prodding at the world. I got better with the brush and got a power up for it. I started thinking of CrossCode, a game I liked a couple of years ago. With my new power up things started to get more interesting, puzzles started to emerge, and I was impressed. Then it escalated again, and again, and now here we are in the finished games thread, with a game I'm sure will be somewhere in my own GOTY list this year.

As someone who had it in their GOTY list last year, I'm really glad to read this!

Technically unrelated to the release of a certain game's latest remaster, but I guess timely nevertheless, I've (finally!) completed Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen, getting the World ending (basically the best one if you're not planning to go full evil). An interesting game for various reasons, and I believe I understand now why people often bring up Ogre Battle as a candidate for a remake: it does a lot of interesting things that few modern games appear to have picked up, or at least not in the same combination. And there were certainly aspects of the game which made me think "this is interesting, but could be done better" which make for good fodder for theorycrafting a similar RTS/RPG hybrid.

Ted wrote:

I wrapped up Save Room on Switch. It was nice and relaxing, with a good kick of nostalgia.

The premise is: what if Resident Evil 4's inventory management was a game unto itself?

I grabbed this one too and it was a lot of fun. Only a couple of hours long, but also only a few dollars, so totally worth it!

Finished Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana. Turned out to be a really good RPG. The island location is pretty fantastic and its fun to explore and open new areas. The game also does a fantastic job at keeping things fresh through the 50 hours played. They keep adding new little tools or things to do. Can be 20 or 30 hours in and a new thing is offered up to check out.

Even though the characters are ones you've seen a hundred times in RPGs they were still fun to be around. You form this little family trying to survive, explore and escape the island. The storyline at the start was pretty blah. The Dana stuff didn't make any sense at first. But about halfway through things started connecting and the game got a lot more interesting. And when I was about 35 or so hours in and ready to be done with the game the story elements got even more interesting. I got involved in the game just as much as the previous hours.

I also have to say the English voice actors were pretty good so stuck with them. They weren't called out in the credits roll, which was surprising - just the Japanese voice actors.

My wife was also playing the game. We ended up finishing the same night. And surprisingly I somehow had this whole new area to explore in the epilogue that she did not. It was pretty significant for filling in a story element. So looks like there may be multiple endings to the game - she did play on Easy difficulty so wondering if that's why it was different.

In any case this is the first Ys game I've finished. Always found the games boss battles too difficult and this one was just right. Near the end I did feel powerful but not overwhelmingly so. Boss battles still took time and some skill.

So if looking for a light action RPG this one is a good one.

Halo (number)

You know the one. You play as Master John Chief Halo 117, a super space soldier in the future. The future of humanity is at stake, and the only way to prevent genocide (according to ancient and time-honoured traditions) is to visit foreign lands and kill everyone who looks different to you.

So grab your space gun, board your space jeep (or space tank, or space plane) and go kick some alien butt.

With incredibly unique action sequences (the tank ride, the jeep ride, the plane fight, the bit on the beach, and the one where you take the fight to the enemy in their own base), and an epic story I’m sure to remember until about half way through this post, Halo (number) is hands down the best game I have finished this week.

Beat Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow the other night. Was playing back to back JRPGs and decided to give this oldie a go. Played on PC via GOG and, well, once I got used to the particularities of its movement, and spent way too long on the first boss, I was able to get into a zen-like state. It's nice to revisit a classic I'd only played as a rental as a kid. This was pretty old-school hard, but not the hardest out of the oldies I've revisited in my adulthood.

Wolfenstein II: The New Order

I think I started this a couple years ago and finally put it to bed. Had to go all the way down on the difficulty level and still had multiple save re-loads on what turned out to be the final (long) level.

Pros:
- Fun blasting Nazis
- Fun dual-wielding in an FPS
- 60's world where Germany won WW2 was nuts from a set design perspective

Cons:
- Plenty of gore for its own sake (how novel)
- Cringe-y dialog and tropes (think: Inglorious Basterds brand of 'humour')

Bottom Line:
- Strange mix of historical revisionism, juvenile jokes, progressive symbolism and violence. Shooting Nazis tho!

Finished a couple of shorter PS Plus games this week:

Superhot why didn't I play this sooner? Great premise, great execution.

Minit clever little game, enjoyed the Zork like adventuring elements. The hard time limit is strangely liberating and well integrated into puzzles; But it was hard to make out some critical items, and I had to look up a guide for a couple of more obscure steps.