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Zloth
Community Contributor
?? Why would you do that? Oh! There was some sort of "special ending" you could get if you did some insane gameplay times (that were even less sane at release to encourage you to pay more for microtransactions). I never even thought about doing all that. I just got Bruz a fortress of his own and moved on to the end game.
Its been a while but there has been a collection of stuff that i completed recently.
Lets start with the PC stuff, or Doom wads to be more exact. I finally finished Wolfendoom blade of agony. Prior to playing it again i played the first 2 episodes and was generally enjoyable this time playing it again i came out of it disappointed and fustrated with it. Not going to lie, there was a lot of effort and top notch production values, the problem was the technical issues that i encountered. Hit scan enemies that had the horrible habit of shooting almost instantly and the harder "standard" soldiers can absorb explosives like it was rain. Throw in inhuman accuracy for snipers who can see through snow storms and fog and you're in for a rough time. Technical issues that even with my gaming rig ( i7 32gb ram 1070gtx) encountering slow down on some of the maps. But what really pissed me off was some of the ropey collision detection that i encountered and even now i'm not entirely sure whether its me or the game. Would i recommend it? i don't know.
I had a quick opportunity to play the first part of ashes 2063. Although it was primitive in places, i enjoyed it. Although, i played it on arcade mode (the games ultraviolent difficulty) and honestly it was a cake wake as i was never short on ammo and even after fighting the final boss, i was walking around with most of my heavy weapons with over half ammo left over. I guess having the chainsaw around made saving ammo piss easy.
Next up, non pc stuff. I finished dino crisis on the playstation . Gameplay wise, think Resident evil except all the enemies are the hunters or Cerberus and you'll have an idea of what to expect. Honestly its a big let down. The tank controls were a serious hinderance at times. Ok against slow zones, not so much against dinosaurs.
I spent 99% of the time just running away and dodging the dinosaurs. Why? because the guns were rubbish and ammo was in short supply. I'll concede it had an interesting idea, ammo was short supply so you had to craft tranquillizer/poison darts and they can take down dinosaurs with one shot. Strange how shotgun/slag rounds are so rubbish though.
Speaking of combat, there were points that it was just frustrating. i remember the trex encounter after activating the communication radar being especially harrowing. I'm pretty sure it was more luck then skill that i survived.
lastly, yoshi's wooly world on the 3ds. Played it on casual and just just relaxed. A charming game that was pretty inventive and well designed. Good for younger players and comes chock full of extras.
Lets start with the PC stuff, or Doom wads to be more exact. I finally finished Wolfendoom blade of agony. Prior to playing it again i played the first 2 episodes and was generally enjoyable this time playing it again i came out of it disappointed and fustrated with it. Not going to lie, there was a lot of effort and top notch production values, the problem was the technical issues that i encountered. Hit scan enemies that had the horrible habit of shooting almost instantly and the harder "standard" soldiers can absorb explosives like it was rain. Throw in inhuman accuracy for snipers who can see through snow storms and fog and you're in for a rough time. Technical issues that even with my gaming rig ( i7 32gb ram 1070gtx) encountering slow down on some of the maps. But what really pissed me off was some of the ropey collision detection that i encountered and even now i'm not entirely sure whether its me or the game. Would i recommend it? i don't know.
I had a quick opportunity to play the first part of ashes 2063. Although it was primitive in places, i enjoyed it. Although, i played it on arcade mode (the games ultraviolent difficulty) and honestly it was a cake wake as i was never short on ammo and even after fighting the final boss, i was walking around with most of my heavy weapons with over half ammo left over. I guess having the chainsaw around made saving ammo piss easy.
Next up, non pc stuff. I finished dino crisis on the playstation . Gameplay wise, think Resident evil except all the enemies are the hunters or Cerberus and you'll have an idea of what to expect. Honestly its a big let down. The tank controls were a serious hinderance at times. Ok against slow zones, not so much against dinosaurs.
I spent 99% of the time just running away and dodging the dinosaurs. Why? because the guns were rubbish and ammo was in short supply. I'll concede it had an interesting idea, ammo was short supply so you had to craft tranquillizer/poison darts and they can take down dinosaurs with one shot. Strange how shotgun/slag rounds are so rubbish though.
Speaking of combat, there were points that it was just frustrating. i remember the trex encounter after activating the communication radar being especially harrowing. I'm pretty sure it was more luck then skill that i survived.
lastly, yoshi's wooly world on the 3ds. Played it on casual and just just relaxed. A charming game that was pretty inventive and well designed. Good for younger players and comes chock full of extras.
Zloth
Community Contributor
Horizon: Zero Dawn & DLC completed in just under 90 hours. I did just about everything in the game except collecting trinkets and the hunting lodges. Great game!
It isn't without its issues, of course. I had a scary moment toward the end of the game where the game crashed on me. When I tried to resume, it crashed again. When I tried to resume from a previous save, it crashed again. I ripped out the ReShade mod I was using and deleted the cached shader files, plus everything starting with "d", then verified files to get deleted files back. After that, the original save worked fine, so no harm done.
There have been a lot of people in the Steam forums complaining about issues. Many of them are using AMD graphics cards, so you might want to wait a little longer if you have one of those cards. (Yes, the developers are still patching the game.)
I've got a lot of quibbles with the game. There's a long, dry patch just after leaving the starting area where the quest quality gets weak, and you stop learning much about why the world is the way it is. Aloy's past doesn't really line up with how well she interacts with everyone. The map crunches down a huge area - I think I could run from Yellowstone Park to Lake Powell (about 500 miles) in roughly half an hour. Voice volume is a bit low. When trying to take careful aim, the camera will sometimes set itself right behind a plant, making it impossible to see. But all these things get trampled by the excellent world building and fun combat.
If you're looking for a beautiful, fun game to play in the open world stealth archer summersault stab loot & craft detective mode tower-climb-to-reveal-map and get side quest fatigue genre (thanks Girlfriend Gamer), this is a real good one to play! (Also, multiple types of bows and slings, for those of you balking at the third person mode.)
It isn't without its issues, of course. I had a scary moment toward the end of the game where the game crashed on me. When I tried to resume, it crashed again. When I tried to resume from a previous save, it crashed again. I ripped out the ReShade mod I was using and deleted the cached shader files, plus everything starting with "d", then verified files to get deleted files back. After that, the original save worked fine, so no harm done.
There have been a lot of people in the Steam forums complaining about issues. Many of them are using AMD graphics cards, so you might want to wait a little longer if you have one of those cards. (Yes, the developers are still patching the game.)
I've got a lot of quibbles with the game. There's a long, dry patch just after leaving the starting area where the quest quality gets weak, and you stop learning much about why the world is the way it is. Aloy's past doesn't really line up with how well she interacts with everyone. The map crunches down a huge area - I think I could run from Yellowstone Park to Lake Powell (about 500 miles) in roughly half an hour. Voice volume is a bit low. When trying to take careful aim, the camera will sometimes set itself right behind a plant, making it impossible to see. But all these things get trampled by the excellent world building and fun combat.
If you're looking for a beautiful, fun game to play in the open world stealth archer summersault stab loot & craft detective mode tower-climb-to-reveal-map and get side quest fatigue genre (thanks Girlfriend Gamer), this is a real good one to play! (Also, multiple types of bows and slings, for those of you balking at the third person mode.)
I really love this game, but man, it does crash more than any other game I've played. I have about 20 hours in, and I think it's crashed on me at least 3 or more times. I don't remember having that problem with a game for decades.
I haven't had any of the same complaints that you list so far, except one. It really is annoying when you're carefully aiming, and a plant or something gets in the way of your view. They could have done better with the camera angles. It reminds me of early 3rd person gaming, like Mario 64. It sucks, because sometimes you need to aim quickly to keep from getting your backside handed to you, and that happens. Or sometimes you need to use stealth and aim while you're hidden, and that won't let you, and you have to move out into view just to see what you're aiming at.
Other than that and the crashes, the game is just great.
i'll throw in one game i did complete but didn't mention: Glass masquerade. Got it for free and strangely i found this weirdly compelling in a relaxing way. That said, it can get a bit irksome with the DLC puzzles where nothing is quite as obvious (so isn't as simple as looking for corner pieces and working inwards). The other draw back is that you're only able to view one piece at a time. The rest is blacked out so you can't put relevant pieces in a pile, you'll just have to sift through the lot of them and memorize the pieces.
I finished TimeShift earlier this week. It doesn't get talked about much but I really enjoyed it, its like a weird fusion of F.E.A.R. and Half-Life 2. Awesome FPS combat with good weapons and enemies and the time changing abilities and neat little puzzles/obstacles to get through with them in between. Story is kinda weird and hard to follow, but the retro future aesthetic is really great. And the graphics still look really good, even though the game is from 2007. Honestly I would easily recommend, though you do have to a little fiddling with it to get it working, check the Steam guides.
Another game completed. This time it was manifold garden. Took me around 6 hours to complete and i have to say it was an amazing experience. The mind bending visuals were a real highlight as they were both impressive visually and technically. Puzzles weren't too difficult on the whole, but when you first see them it can be incredibly daunting as the scale of the puzzles are huge and sometimes you have to make vast leaps of faith to progress. Sometimes thinking outside the box to progress. But once you succeed its immensely satisfying.
The game did irk me in some places. mainly trying to figure out what the hell i was doing and where the hell i was going. The last one or 2 puzzles being timed puzzles especially rubbed me the wrong way. Not to mention all that black cancer life growths covering everything.
The ending was an impressive lightshow. That said it did feel life it was some sort of metaphorical statement on life and death or someone waking up from some sort of operation or something.
Would i recommend it? Absolutely. if you liked Antichamber, you'll love Manifold garden. Where as antechamber was quite oppressive and claustrophobic environment, manifold garden is more spacious experience.
The game did irk me in some places. mainly trying to figure out what the hell i was doing and where the hell i was going. The last one or 2 puzzles being timed puzzles especially rubbed me the wrong way. Not to mention all that black cancer life growths covering everything.
The ending was an impressive lightshow. That said it did feel life it was some sort of metaphorical statement on life and death or someone waking up from some sort of operation or something.
Would i recommend it? Absolutely. if you liked Antichamber, you'll love Manifold garden. Where as antechamber was quite oppressive and claustrophobic environment, manifold garden is more spacious experience.
I'm on a role it seems as i've finished the game i was playing on my PS vita, this time its parasite eve by square released back in 1998!
Gotta say despite being 24 years old, the game was strangely compelling and had a lot going for it. Combat was interesting hybrid of real time and turn based ( i believe the later final fantasy games used it) you wait for your action bar to fill up before you can attack/use/items cast spells and during that time you're free to move around the arena and dodge enemy attacks. its not 100% perfect, as there were points you wish you could cancel midway of an attack so that you could dodge. Equally more annoying is when you run out of ammo halfway through and your character stands stock still to reload and then shoot again, wasting precious seconds. The other annoying thing? limited inventory slots. limited by your level (so if you're level 10 you can carry +10 more items) equally annoying and meant backtracking to the station to drop stuff off. My advice? Save all the exp, weapon/armour upgrades till the very end to craft the best weapon and armour and carry it over to new game plus.
Being a PS1 one there were of course limitations, the prerendered backgounds/scenes meant the devs hid stuff all over the place and wasn't immediately obvious in some backgrounds what was where. of course valuable items were just hidden in plain view of the player but not the character as they are in plain site. oh and they threw in a sewer maze.... nothing too complex, its a 3x3 square but not exactly fun either...
Visually though on the PSV screen it wasn't pixelated to hell so i could live with it.
surprisingly , the game isn't long. It took me just 11 hours to beat most of the areas are pretty small except for day 5 where you had to go to multiple large areas. probably to compensate for day 6 which is just a boss fight. That said, new game+ includes the Chrysler building (77?) floors of hell to battle through before fighting the true boss. Yeah, i think i'm going to google the ending thanks.
So what next? I do have parasite eve 2 on my handheld, so i'll play that. Might go back to ex mode. One day.
Gotta say despite being 24 years old, the game was strangely compelling and had a lot going for it. Combat was interesting hybrid of real time and turn based ( i believe the later final fantasy games used it) you wait for your action bar to fill up before you can attack/use/items cast spells and during that time you're free to move around the arena and dodge enemy attacks. its not 100% perfect, as there were points you wish you could cancel midway of an attack so that you could dodge. Equally more annoying is when you run out of ammo halfway through and your character stands stock still to reload and then shoot again, wasting precious seconds. The other annoying thing? limited inventory slots. limited by your level (so if you're level 10 you can carry +10 more items) equally annoying and meant backtracking to the station to drop stuff off. My advice? Save all the exp, weapon/armour upgrades till the very end to craft the best weapon and armour and carry it over to new game plus.
Being a PS1 one there were of course limitations, the prerendered backgounds/scenes meant the devs hid stuff all over the place and wasn't immediately obvious in some backgrounds what was where. of course valuable items were just hidden in plain view of the player but not the character as they are in plain site. oh and they threw in a sewer maze.... nothing too complex, its a 3x3 square but not exactly fun either...
Visually though on the PSV screen it wasn't pixelated to hell so i could live with it.
surprisingly , the game isn't long. It took me just 11 hours to beat most of the areas are pretty small except for day 5 where you had to go to multiple large areas. probably to compensate for day 6 which is just a boss fight. That said, new game+ includes the Chrysler building (77?) floors of hell to battle through before fighting the true boss. Yeah, i think i'm going to google the ending thanks.
So what next? I do have parasite eve 2 on my handheld, so i'll play that. Might go back to ex mode. One day.
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Zloth
Community Contributor
Finished Mass Effect. Wow! The ending of that game is SO good! The middle, though, not so much. They've got a LOT of junk quests in there. Something bad is happening in cluster X, sector Y - go there, shoot everybody in one or two rooms, and you're done. The vast majority of time is spent driving over random landscape in your Mako/bouncy ball. The writing is well above average, but there's only so much you can do with such tiny quests.
The Bring Down the Sky DLC was pretty good. By putting shields around the turrets, they made the Mako combat at least vaguely challenging. The enemies were somewhat harder, too. (Even on "very hard," the main game wasn't hard at all. I guess it was made for people trying to aim with controllers?)
What's most shocking to me, though, isn't the game itself - it's the achievement rate. Almost 50% of players finished Mass Effect 1! It's a smaller game, especially if you skip a bunch of the junk quests, but that's still amazing to me. Most games like this would get from 20-25% completion.
The Bring Down the Sky DLC was pretty good. By putting shields around the turrets, they made the Mako combat at least vaguely challenging. The enemies were somewhat harder, too. (Even on "very hard," the main game wasn't hard at all. I guess it was made for people trying to aim with controllers?)
What's most shocking to me, though, isn't the game itself - it's the achievement rate. Almost 50% of players finished Mass Effect 1! It's a smaller game, especially if you skip a bunch of the junk quests, but that's still amazing to me. Most games like this would get from 20-25% completion.
Kaamos_Llama
Moderator
Finished God of War a couple of days ago, really good game. Got to 67% achievements and played for 42 hours. Way more than I usually do with action games. Solid main characters and decent story. Really good combat with a lot of layers to it, fun right up until the end and beyond.
Tried to do a bit of the Musphelheim trials so I could craft some of the legendary armors but combat there wasn't that interesting, and theres no practical need as I finished the story. Got 4 out of the optional end game 8 Valkyries, might go back and try and fight the others. Those fights are some of the best in the game.
8/10 might go back and do some more end game stuff but probably wont start a new game +.
Tried to do a bit of the Musphelheim trials so I could craft some of the legendary armors but combat there wasn't that interesting, and theres no practical need as I finished the story. Got 4 out of the optional end game 8 Valkyries, might go back and try and fight the others. Those fights are some of the best in the game.
8/10 might go back and do some more end game stuff but probably wont start a new game +.
I'm calling it a bit early, but I've finished shadow tactics. I'll play it for another day to pick up the last few quick achievements but he main game is beat.
overall i had a good time with it. dare i say i had fun? Its good to play something with a commando's vibe (never been too big on desperados but i can take it). Even on normal the game is pretty challenging as each map is a tough nut to crack. That said, most of the maps I managed to finish within 2/3 hours of play a day but sod speedrunning it though and some of the challenges are pretty obnoxious.
The other thing I would have liked is a pause button so that i can make orders without stress of misclicking but shadow mode will suffice. For now.
For the price you can get this game on sale (or even free) its damn good. I would recommend if you liked commandos/desperados get this one! I'll probably get the DLC later down the line but i've scratched my strategy obligations for my gaming collection. So i will be moving to RPG or some other indie game first.
overall i had a good time with it. dare i say i had fun? Its good to play something with a commando's vibe (never been too big on desperados but i can take it). Even on normal the game is pretty challenging as each map is a tough nut to crack. That said, most of the maps I managed to finish within 2/3 hours of play a day but sod speedrunning it though and some of the challenges are pretty obnoxious.
The other thing I would have liked is a pause button so that i can make orders without stress of misclicking but shadow mode will suffice. For now.
For the price you can get this game on sale (or even free) its damn good. I would recommend if you liked commandos/desperados get this one! I'll probably get the DLC later down the line but i've scratched my strategy obligations for my gaming collection. So i will be moving to RPG or some other indie game first.
Loved those games ~20 years ago, but…
…they sure were a lot of work!
I don't 'work' games anymore, so kudos to you for continuing to suffer
Yeah, same here. I have enough real stress in my life. Gaming is for fun. If a game stops being fun, I just quit. I ain't got no time for that!I don't 'work' games anymore, so kudos to you for continuing to suffer
I don't 'work' games anymore, so kudos to you for continuing to suffer
many thanks! truth be told there were times my heart just sank when you see some of the maps. The last map was especially harrowing as you couldn't approach it head on and had to infiltrate deep into the castle before you could begin eliminating a guard here and there and even then luck played apart of victory.
But as an old hand at commandos\desperados i had a rough idea what would work and what wouldn't. That said a lot of save scumming and pondering, which i found rather relaxing. It was like a complex puzzle once you found an exploit the whole thing would just unravel. That said, once you got in the grove and had some breathing room it did make life a lot easier. using Aiko's costume and the tanuki were probably my biggest assets as the former could distract key characters whilst i murdered my way around or and the guards would follow the tanuki out of side for me to eliminate them.
Speaking of killing ,one thing i did find a tad disappointing was that civilians were considered fair game and you had little choice but to do it. The problem was that you could tie them up. Incapacitate them and they'll get up and sound the alarm. Hell you couldn't even hide the body! So it was best to kill them. A bit sad that the only crime they committed was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This could be as simple as enjoying the hotbaths, sweeping the front of their homes, talking with friends or serving tea.
Haha. I'm such a slow gamer that I'll only be able to post in this thread 2-3 times a year.
Same here! I spend more time on browser games that I can play whenever I feel like it. I've been playing a lot of drift hunters for a while now and it's great!
Zloth
Community Contributor
(Copying my Steam review of Subnautica: Below Zero)
As usual, you REALLY want to avoid even watching the trailers or letting the screenshots run through on the store page before playing this game. If you do see them, give yourself a month to forget before you start to play. Also, I think you will be slightly better off playing the first game first, but you definitely won't ruin the first game by playing this one first.
Things that aren't so good here:
Overall, thumbs up. I don't think it's quite as good as the first game, but it's still great for people who love exploring.
As usual, you REALLY want to avoid even watching the trailers or letting the screenshots run through on the store page before playing this game. If you do see them, give yourself a month to forget before you start to play. Also, I think you will be slightly better off playing the first game first, but you definitely won't ruin the first game by playing this one first.
Things that aren't so good here:
- The engine has problems with geometry. For instance, you'll go up a small staircase only to find that your can't climb the last stair - you have to step back and jump! You'll play the majority of the game underwater, where this problem isn't much of an issue, but it's still pretty sad to see something like this in a modern game.
- A few of the hints just aren't good enough. The game's volume isn't huge, but it's big enough that you don't want to have to search the whole thing!
- The scary monsters aren't very scary. I still wouldn't let small children play the game, but Subnautica 1 veterans aren't going to panic just because something roars.
- Single save system is still here. I understand why they would want to limit you to one save, but the game needs to be rock solid to support that. This isn't. I would suggest backing up your save game directory, especially if your PC isn't all that stable.
- They put a bunch of land-based gameplay in, and it doesn't work so well. I wouldn't call it terrible, but the developers do a far better job under the waves.
- The sense of wonder and discovery is fully intact! For me, this point alone balances out all those bad things. Swimming through a crack in the ocean floor and discovering a whole new biome never gets even a little old! (see also: Blackreach in Skyrim)
- Being able to put your own screenshots into posters on your base walls is nice. Being able to put in custom images is great! (Eye of Sauron picture goes in the scanner room, naturally.)
- Being able to have the game play your own music through the jukebox is even better! The songs that normally play on the jukebox seem a bit weak, but they are playing right next to some of my favorite game tunes of all time - the poor things never had a chance.
- The sense of progression also works well. It's a little like levelling up in a role playing game. At first, you can barely stray from your little pod but, as you learn more, you get the ability to go farther and deeper, which allows you to learn even more yet. My to-do list stayed pretty full up until near the end of the game. In fact, I {ahem} sorta forgot to save the world before leaving. (Hey, I'm a busy adventurer! I can't be expected to remember every little task! )
- It's often difficult to tell whether an item is "worth" making. Here's a new storage module you can build that lets you store more items! Yeah, how many items? 3? 30? 300? No clue. The game has a 'creative' mode, though, where you can build anything you like right from the start. Just save your game, start another in creative mode, make the storage module, and try it out. Still, why don't they just give us more information on what we're making?
- Why can we only have 5 items ready to use at a time!? Luckily, there's a mod to fix this (that doesn't break achievements).
Overall, thumbs up. I don't think it's quite as good as the first game, but it's still great for people who love exploring.
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Kaamos_Llama
Moderator
@Zloth I'll take a wild stab at Subnautica ?
I'll bet you $100 it's Subnautica: Below Zero
Kaamos_Llama
Moderator
That's not how betting works. Especially not since I'm right.
Kaamos_Llama
Moderator
Haha. That's probably the first review I've read where they didn't mention the name of the game at all. I had to double check to see if this was a thread dedicated to Subnautica.@Zloth I'll take a wild stab at Subnautica ?
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