The last game you completed

[Johnway]

I remember reading about this game. It looked like it might be fun to mess around with the variety of weapons/loot you can find, though I'm terrible at real time platforming even without being shot at and needing to shoot back.

The good news is that your mage has a floating/hover ability so you can boot and land quite easily. A common problem is getting caught on pixel pieces of land and being fairly dark its quite difficult to notice. Its hard to break them as previously mentioned not all spells can penetrate or break bits of stone or dirt. Getting stuck is a real threat that can lead to untimely demises. ice in particular may break under your weight and makes getting out difficult.

its even hardware when one of the traits solidifies all liquids. Great to stop getting drowned or getting caught inside slime/acid/lava bad news when you're trying to run or boost past a waterfall of liquid as it solidifies in front of your face and possibly infront and behind you effectively encasing you.

 

[Johnway]

Ok... time for another Snes game i finished. This time its Shadowrun (1993) a sort of openworld RPG in the shadowrun universe. You play as courier/hacker jake who one day wakes up in the morgue left for dead after taking a job. As you stumble out of the morgue you're given a mysterious message to find 3 magical items to get an audience with a magic dog spirit and understand what the hell is happening. Ie: why the hell everyone wants you dead.

being a 1993 game it was always going to suffer in the story department. narrative is weak with a lack of a map and general information as to who i'm talking to and i was lost scratching my head as to where the hell i should be going next. hell, some of the objectives are needlessy cryptic like trying to get into the darkblade compound. On top of this the antagonist isn't particularly fleshed out (ie there isn't one) .

Combat is pretty scrappy affairs. All you can do is just shoot and hope for the best. For the RPG mechanics of getting better weapons/items isn't well fleshed out. The problem is that there isn't any real effective methods getting cash besides killing the bosses, hacking computers or going into the fight ring at the junkyard. The latter there is only so many fights you can do. hacking isn't available until much later in the game. Sure, you could kill baddies for money but you're only going to get 10, 20, 30 or maybe 60 credits and guns, armor, cyberware are in the thousands... There is enough money to buy all the best stuff, but its not properly dispersed. hell, by the end game the last 3 or 4 computers will give you 10k+ in cash to buy everything you need. yeah, thanks a lot game give me 80k+ cash AFTER i bought all the best armor and gun AND in the penultimate room in the game... With no final boss to fight.... Throw in more side quests or opportunities for cash.

There is only one or 2 weapons worth buying. Later in the game it almost becomes compulsory to buy better weapons as enemies become practically indestructible. My advice? Save and buy the shotgun ASAP. once that's done you can get the mesh armor for 5000 progress the story far enough and you'll get that relatively easy.

levelling up is thankfully easy peasy. getting karma points is just a case of eliminating a handful of baddies. Like 8 of them. Easily done in 5 minutes. I did find an awesome place to level up and amass huge amounts of karma with no problems. Some skills you can safely ignore levelling up like negotiation and charm skill if you're not going to hire help. But i was able to breeze through fights once i levelled up. A bit of advise, don't level up your gun skill above 7. you can go upto lvl 16 but its pointless as by level 7 you are at 100% accuracy.

The other criticism, is the pixel hunting for items. You can easily miss items and lead to much frustrating backtracking. I missed the scalpel in the first room and turned out i couldn't open the doors in the graveyard. You'd think a crow bar or explosives would suffice but nnnooooo has to be a scalpel knife..

so should you play it? not really. There are far better open world adventure games like the legend of zelda but its not a horrible game to play.

 

[ingman22]

The last game I finished was battlefield 5, I have passed the call of duty more than once, but I think that soon I will go over a few more games when new ones come out

 

[Pifanjr]

Just played through Pikuniku with my daughter. It's a short little puzzle/platformer, took us only about 3 hours to reach the end. The graphics work really well and there's enough charm to it to keep playing, but the gameplay is nothing special. I think it's a bit too hard to be a good introduction to platformers, but too easy to be a challenge for anyone who already has some experience.

 

[Johnway]

As i mentioned previously i recently finished party hard. Control a serial killer and quite literally end the party by killing everyone. There isn't much to it really. Sure you can try and get max points chaining kills but its extremely difficult and once the police are called and on your tail, its pretty much over. i like the premise but several things stand out:

1. The maps are sort of randomized. There are some key elements etc, but opportunities vary from each attempt. Sometimes there is a wild bear to help you murder everyone, sometimes you get different powerups or maybe there's a punchbowl you can poison.

2. The stealthy approach is the best, but also the most boring. Walk around pick off isolated guests, trigger traps that maximize combo. Wait a lot until someone isolates themselves and rinse and repeat.

3. lack of objectives. Kill everyone and that's it. I believe the sequel gave you challenges and rather then just making everyone suffer you can pick off the low life scum at the parties and be done with it.

4. Story is a bit rubbish. ok it had promise as you have a detective telling his story tracking the party killer and there is a twist at the end but... meh. a bit light.

5. i think there are bugs in the game. I soft locked the game once or twice. In one map the guests kept finding bodies but no one seemed to be able to call the cops. So essentially i took out the bouncers and just went to town murdering everyone. i was swiftly rewarded by not seeing the next part of the story and me having to crash out of the game. Wonderful.

After the story there is the opportunity to unlock other killers (extremely difficult) or have a stab at the more wackier maps lthat have aliens, robots, etc. But its more a reskin of older levels. There is DLC but i didn't play it and i don't hear good things about it either. Would i recommend it? its not terrible, but i would buy it in a bundle with party hard 2.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I just downloaded and beat A Memoir Blue. It's a very short interactive story game. Really weird, but also a good experience.

 

[stan51]

The last game I finished was the forest a nice game for me it played very well maybe someday I'll play this game again because it's really good

 

[Johnway]

Alright, more games completed!

Lets start with the recent one Mushroom 11. You use your mouse to erase away the green goo thing to make it move forward and through a series of obstacles over 7 chapters. I'll give the game credit, the visuals and audio are nice and the idea has promise. Execution wise it was harrowing to play.

The biggest obstacle unsurprisingly is getting the physics to work and move the bloody blob in the right direction. There is a method to the madness but its extremely difficult. The problem is that as you delete parts of the blob it regrows but the problem is that is the limited control as to how it regrows. moving in one direction is not a problem, but what if i want to create a long bridge? it grows all over the place and i just have to wing it.

Things get even more stressful near the end when you have to start strapping the bloody goo to rockets and getting past spike traps. Every new challenge just made me wince and die a little verging on just quitting the game for the BS i had to go through. Kudos to anyone who could complete some of these maps without dying. At times it would have helped if there was a slowmo feature or there was more goo to work with to reduce precision in places.

Would i recommend it? probably not. its left me with a healthy distaste for physics/mechanic puzzle games.

 

[Johnway]

The other game i finished was the evil within 2. I played it on normal and clocked in just under 18 hrs. having played the original game i decided to play on normal so i could enjoy it as a shooter and have some leeway to solutions (ie: shoot my way out if i have to).

Although its has some hub/open world chunks, the experience is pretty linear. There are a couple side quests and you could technically back track but its not required.

Starting off things are pretty tough with limited resources (even when the game generously gave me DLC resources), skills and stamina. by the end i was able to level up weapons and had plenty of resources to fight bosses (they sometimes kindly drop bullets...). That said, its neigh impossible to max out all weapons without serious grinding or playing on new game +. So being selective what you upgrade is key (reducing diminishing returns) But the pistol, shotgun and the warden cross bow are good bets.

I did have a few niggles though.

The combat for one thing felt off. I would fire 2 shots and the second one just misses so wide i swear the bullet just disappears. Especially apparently when i was at the shooting gallery and when i fired twice i didn't see where the second bullet went. it could be something to do with serious recoil or i was missing something. Even with the laser guided pistol shots went wide. Its probably why in the end i opted for torso shots and the damage multiplier every time you hit your target. Weapons are laughably weak at the start and it can be quite disheartening as pistols do pitiful damage even with headshots (taking 3 or 4 shots) and i had to rely on the shotgun to do some reliable damage. by the end of the game when you pick up numerous upgrade pouches and upgraded your weapons a bit, the problems just melt away.

That said i think i was missing something when it came to the finer points to combat mechanics. i didn't use the cross bow as much as i wanted and i always went for headshots when perhaps i should have gone for the legs, bring them down and stomp them...

The second is the balance of the game. its seriously wishy washy whether it wants to be a true survival horror or RE4. yes, its a survival horror of sorts where sneaking is key to survival as going toe to toe with enemies meant eating up lots of resources. you also move kinda slowly and any small amount of running drains stamina very quickly. Other times the only way out is to shoot your way out. boss rooms are filled with resources and even drop ammo, some sections you are forced to fight. Whether this is to make the game less dull or to inject some much needed excitement i'm not sure. So i compromised and played the game like splinter cell sneak killing as much as i can before whipping out the guns etc.

Thirdly maybe the blandness of everything. Environments are generic, bare or just bland. Although that said, it is a simulation of a small town USA that's about to collapse. So....

But despite the concerns, i think the game wasn't bad. The game was fairly solid, i had fun in places and it does have some pretty interesting cool ideas. Would i recommend it? considering how dirt cheap the game you can get these days, i would say that its worth a shot.

 

[Johnway]

Add another game on the list. This time its dishonored 2: death of the outsider. i completed dishonored 2 earlier in the summer and decided to finish off the expansion pack whilst the lore was still fresh in my mind.

The good news is that the game is every bit as good as the main game, plenty of routes to take and maps are filled with various little secrets. That said, being expansion pack is unsurprisingly short and it does reuse areas from the original game and between missions. That's said, whilst the layout is the same, the time settings, deployment of guards are different and different areas are opened up to explore. There's sufficient change to consider it different imo.

Where there are limitations, there are additions as well.

Billy has different skills compared to emily and corvo. They're pretty good, although one thing that irks me. Why can't i place a displacement marker in certain situations. why do i have to run around the back to place the marker so that i could teleport from the front? Especially flawed when i'm trying to move around a gate/windows with bars on it... its limitations for the system but come on, its BS.

The chaos system is largely irrelevant and relegated to what you decide for the outsider. So want to play as a ninja assassin and murder everyone? Feel free to do it with absolutely no consequence to the final outcome. you'll still come out a good guy if you spare the outsider. Even if you murder everyone in the process.

Blackmarket contracts. Side missions to get extra coin or charms. not going to lie, the game even on hard is fairly easy once you get in the grove (although getting some of these achievements can be a pain). But these contracts are certainly challenging as they have set requirements that complicate matters. Like kidnapping the bartender serving drinks that's full of the eyeless. And he is serving drinks at that time... Steal a note without being spotted and the guard is surrounded by wolfhounds and soldiers. Alert any of them and the guard with the note will be alerted and mission failed.

So... would i recommend it? absolutely. Get dishonored 2 in a bundle (which is dirt cheap in steam sales these days) and you won't regret it.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Add another game on the list. This time its dishonored 2: death of the outsider. i completed dishonored 2 earlier in the summer and decided to finish off the expansion pack whilst the lore was still fresh in my mind.

Dishonored 2 is an awesome game. I didn't get very far before I started something else, though. I need to go back and play it in earnest sometime. My main disappointment with the game mechanics, though, is that dark areas don't make you any less visible, like they do in Thief games. It's all line-of-sight. Other than that, it's an amazing game.

 

[Johnway]

Dishonored 2 is an awesome game. I didn't get very far before I started something else, though. I need to go back and play it in earnest sometime. My main disappointment with the game mechanics, though, is that dark areas don't make you any less visible, like they do in Thief games. It's all line-of-sight. Other than that, it's an amazing game.

yeah the stealth system is much more like real life, you can't just disappear in the darkness/shadows and expect no one to spot you. on harder difficulties its even more extreme sometimes they will look up and see you from a much further distance so getting the Ghost achievements are much tougher on higher difficulties. The good news is that you can upgrade your skills so you're harder to spot /silent(upgrade gear or from charms) and/or move faster which helps minimize reaction times.

Plenty of tools to silently incapacitate foes. Chloroforms bottles being the most popular. in death of the outsider the game goes one step further and lets you have hyperbaraic grenades. Effectively concussion grenades that can knock groups of people out with tremendous force and damaging/triggering mines booby traps etc. its practically buying chloroform bottles. An absolute god send and something i was screaming for in the main game.

The last advantage is that you can tag foes so you could sit in the corner somewhere cast an image about. Float around market targets and scout ahead. Does have its limitations like moving too high and you start floating downwards but its dead handy.

The last thing i didn't mention was the lore for the death of the outsider is pretty good, gives a back story as to who the outsider was and his powers and the whole back history of the void. it does wrap up the story nicely (discussing the aftermath of dishonored 2) and also leaves it open for dishonored 3 (the void may have been sealed, but the cultists who opened it previously will work to reopen it to gain its powers again.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

yeah the stealth system is much more like real life, you can't just disappear in the darkness/shadows and expect no one to spot you.

Well, to be fair, darkness does help to hide you in real life. Just not nearly as much as it does in the Thief games.

 

[Zloth]

Finished Death Stranding. (Well, it rolled back time a little so I could do a few more missions I left hanging, but it's pretty much done.) I.... don't even know where to begin discussing it. The game doesn't really fit in any genre, so I want to explain a lot about just what it is - but that would take most of the night.

What I can say is that I enjoyed it a whole lot. Even the epic exposition dump at the end. Yes, it got to the point where a character just walked around you in circles, explaining what had been going on for a stunningly long time (with credits rolling in between breaks!), but the story was so interesting that I still enjoyed it.

 

[Brian Boru]

epic exposition dump

Kojima should just go make movies and be done with it.

I.... don't even know where to begin discussing it

You could compare and contrast it with Diner Dash maybe?

 

[Zloth]

I haven't played Diner Dash, but Death Stranding is way way better! Because: of course it is.

Kojima should just go make movies and be done with it.

People watching movies like that sort of thing even less!

Maybe I'll just fall back on ye'olde pro/con points.

Cons

• The exposition. If you start getting fidgety when somebody talks for more than five minutes, there's no way you're going to follow the story in this game.
• Tiny cutscenes play very, very often. Go to your private room - cutscene, get a vehicle out of the garage - cutscene, put your deliveries down - cutscene, hoist your backpack onto your back - cutscene. Take a shower - cutscene.
• "Oh Sam, you delivered all that? You're such an awesome porter! I can't believe how wonderful you are! How did you even haul such a heavy load?" Hint: there's a truck right behind me. It's no wonder Sam slips so much, given the load of butter slathered onto him every time he makes a delivery.
• Normal difficulty was too easy.
• MAMA. Started out as a very interesting character then... well, spoilers, but she went from strange-and-cool to strange-and-dumb, IMHO. A couple more missions to set up the change would have helped a lot.
• Higgs. It seems every JRPG has to have a bad guy/gal that's ultra-smug and condescending. This game is no JRPG, but it still got one of these cliche villains.
• Why are people leaving ramps all over the fraggin' landscape??
• Why did this game take place in the USA? The scale of the game came out as ridiculous - you're hiking faster than most jets can fly! New Zealand would have been a better fit.

Pros

• Skipping cutscenes (like descending down to your private quarters) is just a left click. You'll be using it a LOT. Things you haven't seen before can be skipped, too, but you'll need to pause then click a skip button.
• Landscape is beautiful! See screenies once I get done with FF7R.
• Voice acting is superb. I hated the Higgs character, but his voice acting was still top notch. The only weak voice acting was BB. Animation of the actors was also great.
• Building up highways and zip lines was very fun. Not only are you helping your own game, but you're also helping other people play.
• Delivering is really just a way to get you to explore, and that was very fun. You can do more delivery missions after the first for some nice rewards, but they are quite optional. I found the extra missions were best to do after adding some infrastructure that would help you do them.
• The music is great! After sneaking and dodging your way over steep slopes and around invisible ghosties, having Silent Poets sing to you as you run down the mountain was one of those great moments in gaming.
• As of the director's cut, the paid product placement has been removed.

 

[Brian Boru]

Maybe I'll just fall back on ye'olde pro/con points

Great post! Maybe deserves its own thread? Recently popular AAA with a few players here for sure, your post will be lost forever in a few days—as far as I know very few members use the search. Even then only 'stranding' would work, and still return a lot of results… ~130 at the moment—would need to know it was you to narrow it down to 20.

Diner Dash was a joke, sorry 2003 mad game, super-clicky, an ex used to play it—she had very nimble fingers…

Why did this game take place in the USA?

Sales?
I have no idea how location being outside USA affects sales in USA, anyone know?

 

[Zloth]

Great post! Maybe deserves its own thread? Recently popular AAA with a few players here for sure, your post will be lost forever in a few days—as far as I know very few members use the search. Even then only 'stranding' would work, and still return a lot of results… ~130 at the moment—would need to know it was you to narrow it down to 20.

Thanks! And, really, that's fine. I'll put the same points into my Steam review. It will fade away there, too.... like tears in the rain.

Diner Dash was a joke, sorry 2003 mad game, super-clicky, an ex used to play it—she had very nimble fingers…

I know, that's why a gave a silly, over-confident response. I should have stuck a winky on the end.

Sales?
I have no idea how location being outside USA affects sales in USA, anyone know?

Guessing at the mind of Hideo Kojima sounds like dubious business!

 

[JarlBSoD]

Depends on how you count but i did a Short campaign completion with Valkia in Warhammer 3 total war yesterday Before that it was Diablo 2 i think, i just realiced i play allot of games with no definitive ending hehe.

 

[DXCHASE]

Finished beating Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem a month or so ago and forgot this thread was here!

 

[Brian Boru]

clash of the clans!

How was it?
Would you recommend it?

I completed a Far Cry 5 run as much as I'm going to. No interest in the 9 or more spray n pray sequences required to kill each of the cult leaders, which is totally against the spirit of the game. I maxed Resistance points for each of 'em, that'll do! Playing the Resistance mod, if you're wondering how that's possible.

That said, if the blurb on the main map is to be believed, there were still a bunch of missions to be completed in each region. I can only assume those are released by spraying n praying, as I've been pretty much over the whole county so there's [almost] nothing hidden from me. There are roughly 50 missions in each region, of which I completed 30+, so if anyone can fill in the blank, I'd appreciate it.

That also said, I'm not a Completionist, so it's not a biggie—just curious. Most of the fun for me is in the random stuff out n about, and exploring the big world.

I played mostly with Boomer and Jess Black as sidekicks—for scouting and double skins respectively. My loadout was…
M-79 Grenade Launcher as sidearm
SPAS-12 shotgun
45/70 "Fall's Ghost" assault rifle
SA-50 sniper
…apart from acquiring the perks via kills with other weapons.

Great fun, it's passed FC4 as my fav FC.

 

[PointnClicker01]

I just finished Keepsake.

As I mentioned in other threads, I would rate Keepsake as an old but precious gem, who shines for its unique and touching story. All of the characters are quite layered and the more breadcrumbs you get from the story, the more interested and fascinated you get. It is one of the few games that really made me cry in the end.
The visions of the game are - considered the age of the game - still very beautiful and detailed. It allows you to fully dive in into this medieval magical world and enjoying every inch of the majestic castle called the Dragonvale Academy.
I also liked the progressing of the story as I experienced it correctly balanced for the amount of details and secrets the story held.

Unfortunately, there are also some downsides to the game. In many ways, the game is not up to the standards of nowadays Point‘n‘Click adventures. The paths (even though very beautiful and astonishing on first sight) are super long and theres many (again beautiful!) screens that have no use except one path from one side to the other. So as soon as you have to go back and forth through the map, it can get a bit tiring.
Also, I experienced a lot of crashs during the gameplay. I‘d recommend to save the game every 15 minutes or after every riddle or cutscene, as there is no autosave.

Still, I would recommend this game, even if only to those who like it to play a game for its story and who are not immediately frustrated when a game crashes sometimes.

 

[Zloth]

Did I post this Death Stranding review before?

View: https://youtu.be/lKdv-IeAv2g


The review is for the original game. Skipping cutscenes isn't as much of a bother now. Also, I didn't have that many problems with falling - but maybe he played on a higher difficulty level. All product placement is gone in the Director's Cut version, too.

 

[Johnway]

Well another game completed. This time its regions of ruin! play as a dwarf on his quest to reclaim a region (of ruin) uniting the last of the scattered dwarfs and liberating the region (of ruin) from the goblins/undead/orcs!

I'll cut to the chase, its not a bad game but its far too simple and you'll probably see everything the game has to offer in the first 3 hours (so barely a quarter of the way in). Whilst the game has charm, humor, top notch audio etc, the game suffers from being far too simplistic. This is the cycle:

1. Go to area of interest, kill everything and loot the place for better gear, immediate resources and info/quests for more areas of interest to explore. Repeat until you have rescued some dwarfs.
2. Send rescued dwarfs back to cleared areas to grab more resources.
3. build and level up buildings with resources. use food to clear FOW to go to more places of interest.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 until you discover the Goblin kings base (achieved by activating specific monoliths in the world).

The combat is far too simplistic and whilst i'm not expecting combos/dmc style stuff, its very much rinse and repeat as well:

1. one handed users you can hack down with whatever you want.
2. Shield users, use power attacks to stun. Follow up with another attack to deliver crit. retreat, beat, repeat.
3. longer range users, either engage in stealth or get in close (holding shield up) and mess them up.
4. hardier foes like trolls and stronger opponents repeat step 2.
5. Fast attackers like wolves etc. Do jumping attacks. if you jump on the spot doing downward slashes you can reduce damage and might get lucky doing back attacks to cause instant crits.
6. magic users, similar to step 3 with projectile users, but try to deflect projectiles back in their face. Don't get close as it increases accuracy. Unless you have super high defence in which case let them eat blade.
7. Aggressive attackers like berzerkers. Block and stun them before critting them.

I was barely halfway through the game before i unlocked all but one or 2 needless upgrades and flush with cash and the best gear. hell i didn't even bother sending any dwarfs out as it would have been pointless to gather any resources. i think playing on normal didn't help, but by that point i was starting to question why i was playing the game still. I was certainly growing impatient trying trying to explore the areas and just repeating the cycle with variations of a generally flat level. Plus the same handful of biomes, enemies etc and it gets repetitive. fast.

So... Would i recommend it? its not like the game is terrible, i kept going for just over 18hrs for some reason. Like i say, too simplistic i think your time could be better spent elsewhere tbh. There is a regions of ruin 2 coming out but will i get that? probably not.

 

[Zloth]

Dungeon of Naheulbeuk done.

Like the South Park games, this is a really good turn-based RPG hiding inside a lot of humor. You'll get quite a challenge if you try playing it on hard difficulty, too!

Voice acting falls down hard outside of the main characters and even the mains rush their lines sometimes, which really kills the humor when it happens.

The game borders on being a tactical RPG in that there are a LOT of battles, some of which take quite some time. Thankfully, you can save whenever you want, even mid-battle.

Skill options are good ones. Even at the level 10 cap, you won't be able to get all the skills, so you'll need to make some real choices. (Re-specs are cheap & easy, though, so bad choices can be fixed.)

I didn't get the DLC for this one. There's PLENTY of content in the main game!