Finished Any Games Lately?

trueheart78 wrote:

Just watched the ending to Rain on Your Parade. What a delightful romp that didn’t overstay it’s welcome, and continually changed up the formula. Actually laughed out loud at a late game achievement, too! IMAGE(https://emojipedia-us.s3.dualstack.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/thumbs/240/samsung/265/rolling-on-the-floor-laughing_1f923.png)

IMAGE(https://media2.giphy.com/media/5zw4cbPHTRspvFC7za/giphy.gif?cid=5e214886jk8q7smm5nyqxb0e2ofs8jderqa2i0hynifmeirh&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)

At this point, I want to suggest games to you just to see the gifs you post.

Is that a T Swizzle gif, too? If not, I wonder why not.

The closest you can get to finishing a multi-player game.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/s4qGpI7.jpg)

Ps: I have all the achievements but one is bugged.

Vrikk wrote:

Is that a T Swizzle gif, too? If not, I wonder why not.

From the Delicate music video.

I’ll generally post a gif, but don’t expect 100% T Swizzle. Expect around 89%.

IMAGE(https://media3.giphy.com/media/EarVbr8G2cocPnQLdm/giphy.gif?cid=5e214886bhk4zeadezvjw0jb7h3s1ltsmx0yvxizhnnv6ysw&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)

I finished Phantom Doctrine recently. It's a neat take on the X-com style game, the stealth aspect was shinning light here, but I ran into several game breaking bugs that made me lose progress and have to go back previous saves. I'd recommend on a sale if you looking for turn-based stealth squad game. Hoping for sequel with refined gameplay and fewer bugs.

I've basically finished Returnal, though I'm still attempting sessions to find the last remaining collectibles for trophies. Great game, though one with some moderate difficulty walls that can be difficult to break through.

I finished The Alliance Alive this morning! Wrote about it in the JRPG Club thread.

ME1 just now.

Just finished Dying Light. I had no intention of playing this anytime soon, but after randomly catching World War Z on TV, well, I had no choice but to install this game that had been in my pile for a while.

Now THAT was one hell of a zombie game. If I had to sum the game up in one sentence, it would be Mirror's Edge had sex with Left 4 Dead on a bed of fantastic graphics, gameplay, RPG leveling, sound design and story. This was just such an enjoyable romp from sunrise to sunset, and the night running was every bit as tense as I expected. The characters in this were well developed with a couple of expected and unexpected twists, and the voice acting - a particular focus of mine since I did that for a few years - was spot on.

If I had to nitpick, the main villain was kind of generic, the zombie killing became really repetitive over time even though the game did a great job introducing new zombies in a meaningful way, and the crafting system felt kind of like an add on, but these were truly minor grievances in a game filled with quality and zombie bashing fun.

Up next, well, these Reapers aren't going to stop themselves. Also need to get back into Pillars of Eternity 2, And some Warhammer Total War 2, and Evil Genius 2, and maybe start Phoenix Point and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

Hi I'm Budo and I like games.

Dying light is definitely my favourite zombie game ever, looking forward to the new one

Just beat Mass Effect. Even with the upgrades in the Legendary Edition, I am reminded why I do not really love the first game that much... it's a janky game. There's a lot of downtime and emptiness to it, which even if I chalk it up to being a Xbox 360 game, the latter parts of the series are so much better.

The last third of ME1 is really, really good though. Filled with deep, rich lore. If only the last ~8 hours could make up for the shakiness that comes before it.

I recently finished two games!

First up was Pokemon White 2. It was my second or third casual playthrough of it. I think it cemented it’s status in my mind as being the best mainline Pokemon game. It had a good mix of challenge, diversity of Pokemon to build interesting teams, and having key quality of life features without being too streamlined (which happened with later games). And it has probably the best postgame in the series. It’s good!

Second up was Monster Hunter Rise, which I “beat” (aka beating the story boss at the end of HR7) around the 45 hour mark. It was the first time I’ve actually beat one of these games (I put like 2 hours into 4U, and got halfway through world before wandering off to play other things). There’s certainly more game to be had, but I feel like I’ve had my fun. Other than the initial hurdle of getting a hold of all the button inputs to do to the things you you want to do (I'm looking at you, items), I liked the faster pace of Rise, and the simple but not boring level design. I feel like it sort of splits the difference between Dauntless (fast to get into fights, but the levels are boring and the combat is arcadey to the point of being simplistic) and MH World (longer to get to fights, but more varied levels and more complex combat). And this is one of those times when splitting the difference worked well. Throw in the wirebugs for quick recoveries and movement options, and you have a rock solid game.

But.....grinding monsters over and over to see the hightest level stuff just doesn’t interest me right now. Or I look at some of the missions I would do next, where I need to fight 2 or 3 monsters in the 50 minute time limit (it usually takes me maybe 25-30 minutes to beat a monster of my level right now playing things solo), which I'm not looking forward to. For the last few rounds of the Hub Ranks, I was already starting to get tired of how long all of the monsters were taking to fight. I was doing well enough to get through most fights on the first try, but haven't learned whatever combos are necessary to blow through these fights. And I don't know if I'm going to get there or not. It was cool and has a pretty good shot at being somewhere on the lower end of my GOTY list, but I don’t know that I’m going to fall in love with this series like I know some people do.

Budo wrote:

Just finished Dying Light. I had no intention of playing this anytime soon, but after randomly catching World War Z on TV, well, I had no choice but to install this game that had been in my pile for a while.

I always enjoy your capsule reviews.

Dying Light had the parkour system that I was hoping Mirror's Edge would have. So many exciting free running moments in that game, and so many clumsy, momentum-stopping faceplants in Mirror's Edge (and its sequel).

Evan E wrote:

Dying Light had the parkour system that I was hoping Mirror's Edge would have. So many exciting free running moments in that game, and so many clumsy, momentum-stopping faceplants in Mirror's Edge (and its sequel).

Totally. I think the open world helps Dying Light immensely. I was looking at the gameplay trailer for the sequel. And it reminded me of all the alternative routes you could link together to get to the same destination. That was never my experience with Mirror's Edge. It was just one of many of those games' problems.

It feels like it's been 84 years but I finally beat a game! That game is Black Mesa. I've never played the original Half Life but Half Life 2 remains one of my all time favorites. I plan on replaying the latter sometime this year but I'm a bit scared to since I feel like it won't hold up. We'll see...

Anyways, my favorite things about Black Mesa were the things I liked about HL2, the atmosphere and world.

Spoiler:

The part at the beginning were everything goes to crap and you have to deal with zombified scientists as you make your way to the surface was probably the best part. Worst day of work ever

Less of a fan of when they introduced the military soldiers that you have to deal with at several points. I'm not the best at FPS so I died a lot in those spots and it didn't help that health/armor was few and far between. Around the halfway point, I installed a mod that gives you more pickups which helped.

I thought Xen was really cool too even though it seems like a lot of people dislike that portion of the game. It was a nice change of pace after spending a lot of time in the more drab, sterile research facility. It does go on for a bit too long but I feel like the whole game had pacing issues. Certain parts definitely dragged.

It did feel a bit dated with how it wasn't always clear were to go or what to do and the shooting feels clunky but I can see how the original Half Life was revolutionary for it's time. I'm glad that I played it (albeit a more shinier and updated version)

Next up is Half Life: Alyx!

Does Xen in Black Mesa have the same negative impression that the original HL Xen had? I know the former was significantly reworked but hadn't heard anything about it specifically.

From what I can gather, a lot of people didn't like the Interloper chapter which was longer and more tedious than the original. I didn't mind though.

Spoiler:

Thought it was interesting to see the Vortigaunt's village and how they are just victims. Made sure not to kill a single one there. And I loved finding my way up and fighting through the controllers and brutes on the way to the final boss.

I just finished Backbone on GamePass. This feels to me like the typical case of an indie game with an amazing pitch that at some point ran out of money and/or ideas. The game is dead gorgeous, the little music it has is excellent, and the beginning of the story is a bit trope-y but still really good (or at least good enough to hook me in), and I enjoyed most of the dialogue choices. But... the game is just unfinished, they clearly got to a point where they had to finish it so they ended the story.

Steam reviews are really down on this game and I do see why people felt a bit deceived by the prologue, because the prologue has at least a couple of decent puzzles but the rest of the game has no puzzles at all. I also think the detective / murder mystery theme of the game makes you expect more of that and it's just not there at all. It also seems to me that they had to save money on the audio department and the sound effect are pretty lackluster, to the point that some scenes feel weirdly quiet when they shouldn't be.

At the end, I'm pretty conflicted because I see the potential in the game and but I can't help feeling a bit disappointed by the final product. I'd still recommend checking it out as long as you temper your expectations and are willing to enjoy the ride more than the destination.

Ok. So. Mass Effect. Done. Again.

Look, this has historically been my all time favorite series not named Baldur's Gate. I finished ME years ago back in the day when seeing a 3 second butt shot of Ashley or Liara was the scandal of the century consuming our childrens' souls. So even with the remastered graphics and tweaks to the game, I was concerned the vanguard of the series, the Sovereign if you will, would have aged as poorly as the Protheans.

Boy was I wrong about that. Well, mostly.

It didn't matter that I pretty much knew every story beat backwards and forwards. It didn't matter that I was going to play it exactly the same way again

Spoiler:

(Male Shepard Paragon Ashley saving Wrex and the Council, then Femshep Paragon Kaidan saved Liara romance Yes Wrex Council, and finally Male Shepard Renegade Ashley Wrex and the Council die).

The question was would I simply enjoy like I did back in the day?

Yes. Oh yes. Planethopping with the Mako is still so much fun. The Citadel is still a delight. The kick of the sniper rifle and shotgun are still great. Every time Wrex says "Shepard". The voiceover is top notch. The music reminds me why it's still on my iPod. That creepy walk Shep does whenever s/he walks up to Kaidan or Liara for a conversation. The Map music. But with all that said, ME1 still suffers from the same old demons. The inventory system remains atrocious. Apparently the Council has decreed every colony has to use the same prefab bunker map, and if you play all the side missions by the end of the game you character has advanced so far that you are pretty much one-shotting geth and even the boss battle becomes ho-hum.

But who cares? MASS EFFECT! Whoooo!

The best part about this whole experience is that I consider the first game to be the most important in the series since it establishes all of the key content, setting, story lore and most of the main characters. I never forgot how much hype surrounded this game in previews, and how much it surpassed expectations. However, the gameplay for ME1 is the worst (not bad, just the weakest of the 3). And having just completed the game and having an even better time than expected, it has me excited to dive into the crown jewel of the trilogy ME2 and my favorite story-wise, ME3.

In conclusion, I had a combination of no surprise and surprise with ME1. I was not surprised by any of the content or my expected experience, but I was surprised by how much I still enjoyed it. Yet again.

Up next, not Mass Effect 2. I'm going to let the series breathe a bit. I have to get back to Pillars of Eternity 2. And get started on Elder Scrolls Online, and now all of a sudden the WoW 9.1 patch is out because it heard I was getting the wandering eye. And for some reason I have no less than 5 Mortal Empires Campaigns started in TW: Warhammer II. And a bunch of others.

I need three of me to play my active pile, never mind the regular pile.

Finished Death Stranding, all a bit poor really and the bonkers nature of it was more of a distraction than useful or interesting in the end. The gameplay is just to get a delivery from one terminal and deliver it to the next terminal. Do that about 20 times and that is it. Add in 3 or 4 fights and about 20 hours of cut scenes.

I found the story a complete mess and you are told it through the cut scenes, you really do not feel involved in it at all so it could have been anything. There is no point to road building as you can normally get from terminal to destination in under 30 minutes without it, so there is only one journey late in the game it could be handy, but even that was uneventful except for some BT’s that are thrown at you.

Persevered for 40 hours, last chapter is set before this kicks off so I could do more deliveries and build roads but think I am happy to leave it now.

Finished off The Evil Within! I first played it not long after its release, got about 2-3 hours in, then never touched it again. Which is a shame because I ended up really loving the game. It's quite mixed - there's parts of the game that are brilliant, parts that are frustrating, parts that are just boring. But the good parts are really good.

Maybe think of it as a supernatural take on Resident Evil 4, but more of a focus on horror than action. I mean, it's still very focussed on action, but the horror aspects are almost always present. It also takes itself way more seriously - it probably doesn't work well with the setting, but I did miss the silliness that Res Evil 4 had.

With the sequel now on Game Pass, that's next on my list.

I'm so glad you loved it! I did too when I originally played it, and loved the sequel when I played it last year. I hope you enjoy it as well!

Deadly Premonition. I can see why people hate the game and love the game. It has good twin peaks type story that is told badly. The game is a buggy mess that gets worse each time they release it. The most stable version is the original xbox version and that is buggy. The combat is terrible. I kind of think combat should have been removed. I also think it might not have been in the game at the start.

The game has upbeat music during murder scenes. The music is way to loud which is done on purpose at one point but seems to be a big mistake every other time it happens. You can turn the music down though.

The murder mystery turns into the xfiles. Xfiles turn into the walking deaead, The walking dead turns into attack on titan. And then things get weird. I think the real main bad guy not the last bad guy or anyone you fight is confusing.

Spoiler:

The dog, the dog is the main bad guy right?

I don't freaking know. He helps the main dude at times which confused me.

This is billed as a horror game but it isn't. Its a wacky wacky disturbing at times game. There are car races in this game and cereal sandwiches. Oh and coffee that sends messages from the great beyond.

And with a grand 'kabooooom', the Collector base is no more, and Mass Effect 2 is finished. All squadmates survived, Illusive Man pissed off royally (yeesss, of course I'll leave the base for you....), and Shepherd can go off and have a nice long rest.

Which lasts about 20 minutes until I start Mass Effect 3...

So if we've watched dozens of hours of a streamer finishing a game, does that count as finishing a game?

There are so many games I wanted to like but could not get into that I really enjoy watching someone else play. In particular, my new addiction is watching Baradul play the Rogue Tech mod for Battletech. I have easily watched him play for more than 20 hours. There is some sense of accomplishment watching him deal with all the micro management to showcase the insane amount of new weapons and systems: multiple ammo types for ballistics and missiles, mech equipped artillery, vehicle lancemates, energy weapons with diablo style prefix/affix systems, etc.
I commented on one of his videos that the amount of mechanics in this game puts any fantasy RPG to shame. And that I would love to see a fantasy RPG with many of these core features but adjusted for shorter/melee range, more melee options and less indirect combat.
It makes me want to play Battletech but I was so frustrated right off the bat due to several non starters:
-pilot injuries,
-over emphasis on lengthy repair mechanics,
-what I call the "level one syndrome" - one shot deaths, inability to hit anything, one turn/round party wipes, so underpowered that the whole party takes an eternity to kill one insect/vermin/minion

It's pretty rare that I finish two games in two days, but here I am again. I finished off New Pokemon Snap. I played it almost as a companion to The Evil Within, like a happy little comfort wind-down after a bunch of horror and gore. I didn't intend it that way, it's just how it turned out.
The game itself was great though. I was surprised by how much content there is. Like, it's not BotW level content, but it's a far cry from the one-afternoon of the N64 original. Even though I've technically finished it, there's still a lot I haven't seen.

Mario_Alba wrote:

I'm so glad you loved it! I did too when I originally played it, and loved the sequel when I played it last year. I hope you enjoy it as well!

Thanks! I'm hoping to dedicate a decent chunk of time to it this weekend. Very keen for it!

I beat Brigador. It’s a realtime isometrics cyberpunk mech shooter, if the “what is this game” part even matters. But what it really is is a game where you drive a big tank/mech/whatever and can destroy anything/everything with guns/explosives/mortars/lasers/running over them. Fully destructible environments. Military bases; cities; fancy suburbs; gas stations; golf courses. All there to be destroyed.

There’s some sort of story here, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. I unlocked a lot of lore and intel, but I didn’t care to read any of it. There are tank controls and twin stick shooter controls; I used tank because I couldn’t be bothered to turn them off. It’s fine. It also gets hard near the end.

But it doesn’t really feel like that second paragraph matters. If mechs and/or wanton destruction interest you, check it out. And the best part is you may already have it! I think it’s been in a Humble Bundle, plus been given away on GOG and Epic, so if you follow along with the Video Game Deals thread there’s a good chance it’s already in your library somewhere, waiting to be taken for a spin.

Blue Blink (TurboGrafx-16)

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/J2GHHXC/Blue-Blink-05.gif)

I've played all the classics, so I'm digging into the obscure sh*t now. This is a decent platformer based on an anime of the same name that no one remembers. Nothing special, but a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Just finished Firewatch.
Pretty good. It was a long time hanger-on of my wishlist.

Also, credits are worth watching just for the song. Not sure the connection to the game, but /shrug