The last game you completed

[PointnClicker01]

I've just finished Lost Horizon... Thanks @Brian Boru for pointing the game out to me, it was a very nostalgic experience and I loved every second of it. I will definitely try out the second part of it as well. Probably right after I had a look into:

These Nights in Cairo

Since the story is about Egypt, Egyptology and especially Egyptology from a hundred years ago... I just had to move this title to the very top of the list.

But first things first: What's my conclusion after finishing Lost Horizon?
I have to admit: Because the Secret File Series have a very special place in my gamer heart and Lost Horizon is from the same developer and it spreads the same "charme"... I am unable to judge neutrally about this game. For me, the developer achieves to combine everything I love about Point'n'Click: A thrilling story, funny and humorous characters as well as exactly the right amount of: "How on earth should this combination of things work?!" puzzles. The only thing I have to critisize a little about is, that there were too many or too long cutscenes in comparison to the parts where the player had to interact with things/people and to solve puzzles.
The bonus area which you can enter after finishing the game for the first time was also a pleasant surprise. The possibility to play the start of the prototype version is great and I secretly hope that they would work parts of the alternate version into the second game of the series... I will find it out soon!

 

[Slasken]

Just finished Red Dead Redemtion 2. Great game, and I truly loved my experience. I wish RDR1 would be remastered on PC so I could continue the story. I finished that one when it came out, but it would be interesting to play it again with new eyes.

 

[Volverine]

Half life 2 it was so long ago

 

[Brian Boru]

so long ago

You haven't completed a game since 2004?

 

[Johnway]

Ok so a few more games completed on the raspberry Pi:

Rocket knight adventures by konami on the mega drive/genesis Honestly not a bad game. pretty original stuff for the time and the action was varied and relatively decent. There were a few bits that made my seethe near the end and felt a bit irksome control wise (slightly slippery movement and trying to bounce off walls to get higher is horrible) but a solid effort for the time and something i would have enjoyed.

Sparkster: Rocket knight adventure 2 this time on the snes. Similar story except rather then evil (germanic?) pigs, its evil Lions/tigers with a russian/middle eastern motif. Not as memorable as the first game and has its fair share of irratating/naff bits like the submarine flooding section and the battle bot section near the end. Buts a retread of the original right down to the fact you're back in space again fighting a robotic emperor. Still, I've played worse back in the day and still a solid effort, it just didn't up its game for the sequel. All well and good delivering a similar solid experience but expected familiar retread.

next time i write about 2 other games: Soulblazer and SkyBlazer (unrelated games that share Blazer in its name).

 

[Johnway]

A bit unexpected, but i've finished GTA liberty City Stories on the psp/ps vita.

Considering this is a PSP game its an impressive technical achievement with GTA 3 liberty city pretty much there. Admittedly the draw distance can be a bit on the lowside, the low pedestrian count and occasional muddy textures are black marks, but i'll let it slide. Lets face it graphics were like that back in the 00s and yes whilst its laughable to see the polygonal landscapes etc, GTA3 on the main consoles weren't any better. Little has been lost, we still get essentially the GTA 3 experience with radio stations and fully voiced sequences etc. if anything Liberty stories does one better by giving us bikes which the original didn't until they released the game onto the ps2.

Gameplay wise its a mixed bag by today's standards. Controls are its very much limited by the PSP itself and the solution implemented does work but its still very clunky. Whilst fun, there are some serious design limitations that stick out like an eyesore with hindsight. My biggest gripes probably the amount of prep time to restarting a mission. There's no instant restart/ checkpoints to speed things up so its just a hassle to load, drive and attempt the mission again. Mess up and usually means losing all your gear so loading is a better alternative.

Side missions are even worse , want to go into a race you need the right vehicle so you need to drive around looking for the right one and also a good one if you want to win the race. So more searching etc. if the side missions just provided everything i needed it would be fine but sadly it doesn't.


Speaking of Side missions and activities. DON'T MAKE ME SEARCH FOR THEM. i would be more receptive to playing them if i:

a: know they were there in the first place.
b. Where to play them.

i finished only 48% of the game as i didn't do any of the side missions except the collecting cars for love media. Speaking of collecting cars, the side job isn't even marked on the bloody map so unless you knew from the start you'll easily miss it. If you want me to play your content, don't make me comb through the world looking for it. i have better things to do.

The game isn't difficult but the controls and woeful companion ai did make things harder then they should have been. Too often i would try to do something only to fail because the ai companion gets themselves killed. That said there were points that were BS like chasing down a target who seems to run faster then cars. Doing drive by attacks is a thankless chore and a mess of finger gymnastics to get it to work.

So would i recommend it? For a PSP game i say it wasn't bad, but age has not done it any favours. probably not worth it by todays standards unless you play on an emulator with free mouse look or save states.

 

[Garasparn]

It was Yakuza 0, and i've earned platinum trophy

 

[Johnway]

Another game finished, this time its axiom verge. For a single person developing the game i have to say it was pretty decent metroid-style shooter. Not the longest game to complete. I was able to explore 90% of the game map (collecting only 70%) of the goodies in under 10 hours. I got it through epic so no achievements to keep me going sadly.

The game is competently made with an interesting gimmick whereby you can corrupt the world around you to your advantage. A plant spewing toxic waste or killer worms? Convert it so that it shoots out health instead. Killer bug thing with a wide laser? corrupt it so that it becomes an ally and is rendered harmless.

Gameplay wise the shooting is pretty tight you get a wide range of weapons that does have its uses even, if its slightly situational. For the most part you're either killing animals, bugs and robots but the highlight are probably the mutant bosses which dwarf you in scale.

Criticisms that quickly come to mind is a lack of direction sometimes. Several hours were spent just me wandering around trying to figure out where to go and what to do. The solution frequently felt like i was trying to break the game sometimes as some of the areas to reach to progress are hard to reach. Its not helped by the lack of narrative to tell you where to go next (sure it gives you an objective but would be nice to tell me where i should head towards and whether i've done the job).

Speaking of narrative, i didn't really pay too much attention to it and felt a bit inconclusive. Then again i think that was intentional as your character is pretty much at the end with more questions then answers with feelings that his entire existence is now in question. But hey theres a sequel out so....

Do i recommend it? yeah its alright. I can't complain for the free price tag i got the game on epic. I'll give it a 7/10.

 

[DXCHASE]

I was finally able to complete Call of Duty: MW2 and will have my overall thoughts later. But, for the campaign itself is was ok. Nothing particularly standout-ish, but the cinematics looked really good.

 

[McStabStab]

Rolled the credits on Horizon: Zero Dawn. I liked the game well enough, the ending was pretty decent. The best part about it was the environment and machine designs, but holy cow I thought the tribal / human designs were kind of comical. And some of the voice acting from the periphery characters was a little goofy.

Happy I played it, doubt I'll try Forbidden West but you never know.

 

[Brian Boru]

Horizon: Zero Dawn

On my wishlist. Is there much platforming or melee involved? They give me indigestion.

 

[McStabStab]

On my wishlist. Is there much platforming or melee involved? They give me indigestion.

There’s platforming but it’s more like Assassin’s Creed / Dying Light style “hey there’s yellow paint on these things in the wilderness so I know they’re climbable” type platforming.

Melee combat is like 30% to ranged combat depending on how you do the skill tree.

 

[Zloth]

I remember the "platforming" being more for dramatic effect than an actual challenge. (One that I won't be impressed by until I see some handstands!)

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Monday night, I finished up A Plague Tale: Requiem. It was a very awesome game. The overall flow of the entire game was a lot different than the first one, even though most of the game mechanics are similar. I did like that they added things like the crossbow, though.

At first, I thought I wasn't going to like it anywhere near as much as the first game. But boy was I wrong. And certain parts are really challenging. But the game was balanced really well, and very rewarding to play. Without giving anything away, I'm really interested to see if they make a third one. The developer said they're going to wait and see what the response is to this one to decide if they're making another one. It was an excellent game, though.

On my wishlist. Is there much platforming or melee involved? They give me indigestion.

The combat is all according to your playstyle. You can use ranged combat more if that's what you like. Personally, I upgraded and used melee the majority of the time. But you don't have to. There will be some that you can't get around, though.

 

[dabaig]

Divinity Original Sin 2. Never thought I would find a group of people to play that campaign with, but they pretty much nolife'd it with me and it was a lot of fun.

 

[McStabStab]

Divinity Original Sin 2. Never thought I would find a group of people to play that campaign with, but they pretty much nolife'd it with me and it was a lot of fun.

That’s awesome. I’ve taken a break on my playthrough but I'm at Arx currently. Will need to finish eventually!

 

[Johnway]

Well i finished both the "Blazer" named games so i'll add them to the list.

The first was soul blazer on the Snes a 2d platformer with indian mythology for inspiration. Not going to lie, the game is extremely tough platformer. Whilst the game gives you plenty of advantages and features (being able to deflect projectiles with your fists, a password system and a generous life system), the game comes with some seriously dickish platforming. The second problem is that climbing/pulling yourself up a platform is poorly executed. Reach the top of the platform and your character simply lets go of the platform and you're left hoping you can rejiggle and move up the platform. Bosses themselves were the easier aspect of the game. Overall nothing exciting/uniquew even for its time.


The second game was Sky blazer a sort of arcadely hack and slash game. Not going to lie, when i first saw it i thought it was some spin off of actraiser - the font, the music, graphics and the premise are similar (heavenly person is sent down from heaven to kill demons and rescue creatures and humanity). Despite the simple premise and basic gameplay loop (essentially, kill all the monsters that spawn from the portal and then seal it. Rinse and repeat till victory) i found the game weirdly compelling. I think its the breezy combat and the impact you're making on the land (watch it grow) made it rather good. The combat itself is a bit hit and miss with collision detection/hitboxes ropey in places. The Second problem is perhaps the backtracking near the end, it seems to be tacked on at the end as monsters can't be defeated until near the end of the game. But overall, had fun with it.

 

[Brian Boru]

Picross Touch

Picross Touch is a great intro to the nanogram sub-genre of puzzle games, and very well done for a free game. I just finished all 366 levels and can confirm that they are all solvable logically, ie without needing to guess. Ideal for a quick play in between other tasks or bigger games.

The interface is simple, functional, and just works. The levels are:
♣ Tutorial.
♦ 57 very easy 5x5, each doable in 10-20 seconds going quickly.
♥ 122 medium 10x10 levels.
♠ 187 hard 15x15, which can take 10 minutes towards the end.

Definitely recommend if you're new to the genre like me. I'll be playing more nanograms in the future after this nice intro.

 

[danthegamer]

I too enjoyed A Plague Tale.

Last finished was Maneater - Truth Quest.

Combat is kind of a 'button masher', but fun. Chomping people down with a giant shark is really rewarding, and tail slapping someone 200 ft is hysterical.

Gameplay is sandbox style with objectives, and collectables. The game wraparound story is that of a Discovery/The Learning Channel documentary about the sharks with a narrator. Full with storyline and ingame cutscenes.

Clearly it was designed for consoles, and the game tells you its best with a controller, that said my biggest beef was if you remap the mouse controls, they perform the hard coded default actions in addition to your remap. not a game breaker.

You can customize your shark with upgrades that have different feature that help you in defense and attack, as well as passave buffs that help the player.

The individual parts can be upgraded several times, and you can mix and match tail, fins, teeth etc to give you different advantages. Visiting your home base allows to change your 'loadout' for different in game challenges.The different parts you choose are graphical as we, and look gnarly!

All things considered this is a fairly simple straightforward game that you can play and just have fun. When you get tired of chomping on unsuspecting swimmers, go grind for awhile and earn some upgrades to beat the next challenge.

 

[Brian Boru]

Faircrofts Antiques - Home for Christmas

Hidden Object game I picked at over the last 2 weeks. HO is not a genre I usually bother with, not excited by it, but this worked well, no bugs. Beware that others reported bugs, so be sure to play the free demo first.

"Story" is rubbish, standard XMas saccharin, everybody is a total goody-two-shoes and in the best of humor—not a Grinch in sight, but happily the dialog has Skip buttons

There's variety in the puzzle types:
♣ Pick from list
♦ Find shapes
♥ Find one item at a time
♠ Find specials to reveal new objects
I didn't like what you often find in HO games—the use of clutter to hide, which I regard as lazy design.

There are various mini games, which you can play or skip. Game has 15 chapters, with each having 4-5 HO scenes.

5/10 not a replay, but not a waste of my time either. Not my genre, so don't let me put you off it—try the demo and decide for yourself. There are some useful reviews at the link above.

 

[McStabStab]

I finished Signalis on Gamepass for PC. What a great survival horror game by Rose Engine and Humble Games. The combat was decent, but definitely not the highlight. The puzzles were a bit advanced, usually involving multiple clues or mechanics, and the story was mostly just hints to what is happening.

After being completely duped by the false ending, I continued on to witness a poetic and tragic finale (there are multiple endings). I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys survival horror or sci-fi.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Just finished up the story in Dying Light 2 Steam says 51 hours. I assigned each zone to a faction, did all bandit camps, most broadcast towers, fixed all the windmills, powered up all but 2 of the metro stations and found nearly all of the Nightrunner hideouts and parachute drops. Phew.

Spoiler: Waffle

Minute to minute just moving around the city just feels great. The ? marks on the map I usually find annoying in open world games here work for me, because they give excuses to find ways to the top of buildings and around the city using parkour jumps, wall running, grappling hook and glider. It gives you plenty of excuses to do the thing that most makes the game fun, its all about the traversal. The GRE facilities are tense to go into at night, and are fun little mazes to navigate in the dark while killing some zombies and grabbing loot.

Combat is functional, mostly melee based, towards the end the stronger bows made a lot of encounters trivial as you can snipe before enemies see you and the AI is dumb as a rock, even for the human enemies. The fire and electric critical hit mods sometimes obscure the fight so you end up swinging and dodging wildly just to score hits. Parry is always a fun one for me, but by the end I wasnt using it much because its more effective just to hit opponents as they swing as it interrupts them anyway. Dodging gives you the same bullet time slowdown as parrying which lets you get the same amount of hits. Boss battles and fights with stronger zombies arent the best, as the combat system doesnt translate well to this kind of fighting. The fact that boss arenas are often also full of normal infected means you often end up getting dragged into the 'fighting off biter' tap x animation which at those times is just annoying.

The story starts ok and there are some good twists early to mid way through. I didnt pay much attention by the end though. Go here do that, oh you cant, you have to do this first over and over. Aiden never questions it seriously and just does what hes told. There are plenty of choices along the way, and I'd be interested to know what difference some of them would have made, but even within the world the people you betray with your choices often just hand wave it away later on when you speak to them. I really didnt care much by the end.

The game handles death by respawning you at the nearest safe zone in the city. It would have been better with a checkpoint system IMO because it basically magics you away and saves the state of the world before you died. Íf you were in the middle of a fight all the items you used are gone and all the monsters you killed are still dead. takes you out of the game and makes encounters less tense after the first time you die.

The final boss battle is terrible. Several phases, just swinging and dodging. There's at least one ground pound attack that seemed to be impossible to dodge. The fight begins on a platform in a large room. After getting knocked off a couple of times by the unblockable attack I decided to try some arrows from a distance. The games solution to prevent this was to make arrows do zero damage, which is frankly dumb.

Its good, the movement and design of the city is a 10/10 game, the zombies and wandering monsters add a really good tension to everything. The story and combat 5/6 drag it down overall to a solid 7.5

Dying Light 2 Its pretty good

 

[Rolfil]

Tropico 4. Standard Campaign, Modern Times and all the DLC missions. It took a while!
Fanatical had the whole thing for £1 a few months ago but I already owned it all.

It holds up pretty well for a game released in 2011 and well worth it if you can pick it up for a bargain.

As I now have a shiny new 6700XT I can move onto Star Wars Jedi - Fallen Order

 

[Johnway]

GTA Vice City Stories on the PSP - Got to say i liked this one a hell of a lot more then Liberty city stories. I very much prefer the sunny shores of vice city compared to the gloomy gray wet skyscrapers of liberty city. it also plays a lot better namely its mostly a set of flat islands and made getting around much much easier. liberty city itself is a hilly, geometric mess at the best of times.

Unsurprisingly Vice city stories is a massive step up from its predecessor, adding a lot of stuff (like boats/helicopters) and quality of life features. You don't drown instantly if you drive into the water (although stay in the water long enough you will) and you can swim. Secondly if you get busted/wasted you don't lose all your weapons. You get the chance to buy them all back and be on your way, plus weapons is relatively cheap. Additionally (something i haven't thoroughly tested) there are checkpoints in the missions. mess up part of the way in a mission and go back to the starting line it will ask if you want to start at a certain point in that mission rather then the beginning (if applicable). money isn't an issue thanks to the empire building mechanic automatically putting money into your wallet every day (no need to go collect it like in vice city!)

Speaking of the empire, feature this is probably the main new addition. Players attack a rivals site, clean it out, buy and set up shop and generate money. Play side missions to improve the quality of the business and unlock costumes. It can be a bit grindy at times as its more rinse repeat for all the sites. That said i think the aggression from the rival gangs is a bit on the high side, no sooner have you claimed a new site your rivals instantly attack back and usually i would like to save my game etc. Plus they can come in multiple waves and it gets annoying. My strategy? Head back to a save game point, save it, reload new save file and reset aggression so everything is back to normal. Repair damaged property and go back and trash another rival's site.

The story of VCS is also a lot better, you meet more interesting characters, vince vance is a much better protagonist and it fleshes out the vice city story much more significantly as more key pivotal characters in the original vice city games are introduced. Namely Lance himself. Whilst in the original game i had him as a sort of swave cool cat, in VCS he is a much much more incompetent, greedy and troublesome character. Additionally the story is much much more interesting, starts off vince as a law abiding citizen/soldier soon out of circumstance gets dragged deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld. That said, whilst the game does end with a bang, it couyld have been handled a lot better. The whole thing is wrapped up somewhat quickly which is a shame. As always the voice acting is top notch; surprising since its a PSP game.

that said some of the niggles from the previous game are here as well. Camera struggles with tight indoor interiors, special missions or side races etc aren't marked on the map (you better remember where to go to do them!). Unlike before i decided to go to gamefaqs and just grab the maps to all the stuff and just avoid the pain/tedium of finding it myself. Controls can be a bit awful especially doing drive bys and the auto aiming still locks onto dead bodies etc. There are some horrible missions to play, like the 3rd mission near the end trying to protect lance whilst on a bike and he just gets in the way of my gun fire whilst absorbing the enemies.

Audio wise can't fault it. Voice acting is good the radio stations are excellent with great work done by all. Killer soundtracks and trademark humor you expect in GTA are all there. Unsurprisingly i found myself flipping between flash fm, the wave 103, vrock and VCPR you can listen to them on youtube.

But would i recommend you play it now? If you have a psp/vita and still play that, then yes absolutely. If you're a die hard fan of the GTA series i would recommend it. Everyone else? unless you have an emulator and desperate to try you won't regret it, otherwise not essential to play.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I finally beat Doom Eternal.

Liked it quite a bit. The addition of the flame gun to replenish armor and Crucible sword to delete large enemies in one hit added another couple of layers to the combat compared to the first game. Maybe a bit too much to start with, as a scrub like me struggles to switch between weapons on the fly let alone manage everything else.

In the end it felt good when I actually managed to pull of using the correct tools against the right enemy while all the time managing levels of ammo, health and armor via, chainsaw, glory kills and flamer. On top of that when to use the Glory punch, BFG and Crucible sword for most effect. Then add in the Doom hunters and Marauders to the encounters it gets tough, but thats what made it most fun when things actually go roughly as intended. Took a while to get there though.

I struggled with some of the platforming and basic puzzles, mainly with figuring out where the hell I was supposed to go. Which was at times frustrating and I could have done without. I guess it was intended as a change of pace, but for me it slowed things down a bit too much for this kind of game.

Have to mention on a fairly middling rig (Ryzen 5800X3D and Radeon 5700XT) I played it on Ultra at 1440p 144 hz and it never dipped below that I noticed. Game looks pretty good still too.

8/10 I might even play it again.

I also finished Uncharted 4 :A Thiefs End.

It was alright, the shooting feels exactly as I remember the first 2 games, moving from cover to cover and popping head shots off, its fine.

Set pieces are the highlight and keep you on the edge of the seat at times. QTE heavy as always, if you miss a button prompt or jump more than a couple of times it becomes frustrating, but if you muddle through first time they do really get the adrenaline going.

Never played the third game, but watched a primer and far as I can tell didnt miss much for the story. Basic action movie stuff. Looking forward to the future grimdark sequels where Nate comes to terms with the thousands of mercenaries and henchmen he's murdered and mutilated on his way to find treasures. I'm not too bothered about jumping into the other game that came as part of the package straight away. Graphics were alright, some nice scenery but nothing special in 2023, especially character models are a bit old looking. 80FPSish all on ultra with FSR2.0 Quality on.

6/10 I'd rather have played TLOU2