Recently completed video games

[miffy495]

Finished Mass Effect 2 about 2 hours ago. I'll put thoughts in that thread though.

[Sodon]

I finished Mass Effect the weekend before the second came out. I poopsocked the last 5 hours of that game. Man, did that shit ramp up at the end.

[Twilo]

Just finished Final Fantasy 9 (with plenty of time to spare before 13).

My god the end guy is an asshole

[Nappi]

I completed a game, video game! It was Assassin's Creed II and I enjoyed the whole experience immensely*. Definitely my game of the year 2009.

Is the Forli DLC worth buying, by the way?

*Except maybe for the final part which I didn't care too much for. Still, it was far from ruining the game for me.

[JonCole]

  Nappi said:

I completed a game, video game! It was Assassin's Creed II and I enjoyed the whole experience immensely*. Definitely my game of the year 2009.

Is the Forli DLC worth buying, by the way?

*Except maybe for the final part which I didn't care too much for. Still, it was far from ruining the game for me.

Might I ask what you didn't like about the "final part"? Because I thought that story-wise, Assassin's Creed II did a great job with the ending. The combat wasn't perfect, but it also wasn't blown completely out of proportion like some games do with final boss battles.

[Nappi]

I didn't have any problems with it gameplaywise and I actually liked it a lot up until the point I

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assassinated the pope

. I just hadn't played the original game, didn't give a crap about the "other" story and disliked how little the ending had to do with more than 90 percent of the game. I didn't feel like I was controlling Desmond controlling Ezio at any point of the game; I was very much playing as that Florentian guy all the time. Yet, in the final act

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Minerva (or whatever she was) was directly addressing Desmond, the guy I barely knew, making me feel as much an outsider as Ezio was at that point

. Not having played the first game, it seemed to me that Ubisoft was trying very little to make me interested in the background story all the way to the end and then fully expect me to be excited as fuck about everything that was going on.

I also really dislike

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"supernatural"

stuff in games that don't benefit from it in any way, something that I have probably ranted about enough in other threads already. I can't imagine Assassin's Creed II, for instance, being any less enjoyable if they had removed the entire other plot and made

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the secret something a bit less far fetched

.

[Korax]

Just got done with Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. I like the idea of a game changing elements of itself in response you your actions, but because I've only played once so far, I can't really comment on specific elements/changes. One part of the player profiling fell a bit flat, though. Aside from the in-game changes, the profiling is also used during the credits to write up an actual profile of the player. I answered questions during the therapy sessions as close to my actual personality and I played as I would have played any other game of this type, but most of the conclusions the game came to were either wrong or too general for me to really consider valid.

In any case, I'm going to play at least once more, this time deliberately trying to affect the outcome.

[Sleepdance]

Just finished Bioshock and man, it has one of the most unsetisfying endings, mostly because of the lenght of the final

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cutscene

. Man, I would be pleased if they would extend it just with

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credits

, but no, they simply throw you on

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the title screen

.

[Patters]

This week I have finished: Mass Effect 2(), Batman Arkham Asylum () and DoW II ()

[miffy495]

A for Arkham? Care to qualify that? I'm interested in what brought it down for you, as my own experience and the general reaction to the game both seemed to have been very positive.

[Patters]

  miffy495 said:

A for Arkham? Care to qualify that? I'm interested in what brought it down for you, as my own experience and the general reaction to the game both seemed to have been very positive.

It's definitely a very good game, I was expecting a lot more for the overall experience to be stronger. The reviews I had seen and the opinions made me believe it would be utterly brilliant. I just felt a little underwhelmed. The combat feels to simple for my liking, as was the stealth. it got a lot better towards the end, but not enough.

The claims of best superhero game, to me, were the step too far, Spider-man 2: The Movie: The game, was better.

[Moelman]

  Patters said:

The claims of best superhero game, to me, were the step too far, Spider-man 2: The Movie: The game, was better.

That game was definitely awesome, probably one of the games I spent the most time on for Xbox. Haven't beaten Batman yet though.

[Armchair General]

  miffy495 said:

A for Arkham? Care to qualify that? I'm interested in what brought it down for you, as my own experience and the general reaction to the game both seemed to have been very positive.

I'm with Miffy. Innovative combat (to me at least) was great. Plus all the other stuff make this a classic imho.

Andy

[Gabbo]

Finished Dead Space (PC) recently, and I'm going to draw some ire with this, but it just wasn't as amazing as it was made out to be. A few interesting set pieces with decent atmosphere in places that ended up being repetitive fetch quests with very few actual scares in it. And no, having a creature bust through a wall/door/window/vent as the music has once again gone dropped out to emphasize that a monster is about to jump out of the closet is not scary. It was far scarier when all I heard were rumblings or voices, but the corridors were completely empty and nothing jumped out at me.

The controls worked well enough, and it looked good (despite constant tearing), but I don't think those two things alone make up for the weakly strung together plot and blah gameplay.

[Patters]

  Armchair General said:

I'm with Miffy. Innovative combat (to me at least) was great. Plus all the other stuff make this a classic imho.

Andy

I feel indifferent to AA. It didn't do anything new, the boss fights were particularly uninspired. Other than that nothing had bad execution, it just felt like something I have played a dozen times before. It felt like a blockbuster film, which the majority of which I also don't explicitly like.

I know my personal favourite release of 2009 Forza Motorsport 3 wouldn't get any GotYs, in the same way a documentary wouldn't win an equivalent Oscar.

[miffy495]

Understood. I thought Arkham was very good, and certainly stood out just by virtue of being a very well executed Batman game, but your points are fair. I wouldn't call it my goty either. It had a few things going in its favour. First, it's BATMAN. Second, it's GOOD Batman. Third, it was a summer release, so got more attention. I think if it had been released in say, October or November, it may have been lost in the shuffle. I enjoyed it a lot, and would give it a myself (thus my initial surprise), but share your criticisms with one exception. I thought that the combat was wonderfully executed. It was possible to get through simply and never getting long combos or anything, but once you worked out batarang and grapple integration and started getting strings of 20+ hits, it began to take on a life of its own. Great stuff, it just took some exploring to dig it up.

[dpp]

I finished the "story mode" of The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom in one sitting this Sunday, excellent game. If you liked Braid, you will definitely like it.

[syntheticgerbil]

Finished Uncharted 2 last weekend after getting all the shit in the first game and if I were to estimate in numbers how much more I liked it, I would say it was three to four times better.

What a great game! It felt like all the annoyances and tedium from the first one were taken out nearly completely. It feels like a lot of options were given on how to handle gun battles now that weren't there before even though the core mechanics seem essentially the same. Maybe it's the new guns and battlefield layouts as well as how the enemies react now? In the first one, it was pretty much just hide, shoot, and hope a bunch of enemies don't rush all at once to your hiding spot on the hardest modes. I'll see if that carries over when I beat Uncharted 2 on crushing.

I also can't believe how many environments and objects were created for just one game.

In more boring news, I finished Earthworm Jim for cell phones last week as well. It was shit and it was missing nearly half of all of the levels from the original version. Maybe Gameloft deserves something for the porting effort? I have no idea. I didn't enjoy it though.

I am waiting for the HD version though that will hopefully come to the PSN store. It's 6 months past its supposed release date now.

[Chuckpebble]

  syntheticgerbil said:

What a great game! It felt like all the annoyances and tedium from the first one were taken out nearly completely.

My father-in-law has the first game and I've been coaxing him into getting the sequel. Its a shame really, he seems to have been put off of the first one due to the platforming, which he'd have me do if I was over. I'll use your experiences to regroup my attack plan. He's playing Wolfenstein for Pete's sake.

Oh, hi there topic.

I beat No More Heroes 2, twice. That game makes me all happy inside.

I know you can't beat Team Fortress 2, but I think I'm finished with it. For now anyway.

I played through one world of New (I like to call it Old School) Super Mario Bros. Wii and shelved it in anticipation of actually being able to play it with my wife.

That led me to beating Super Mario Bros.

Still got it.

[syntheticgerbil]

  Chuckpebble said:

My father-in-law has the first game and I've been coaxing him into getting the sequel. Its a shame really, he seems to have been put off of the first one due to the platforming, which he'd have me do if I was over. I'll use your experiences to regroup my attack plan. He's playing Wolfenstein for Pete's sake.

Hah, well, actually I found the gunfights the most tedious part about the first one, not the platforming. Not hard or anything, just way too long.The second one's gunfights all have much more variety of location and don't last too long where you are just waiting for enemies to come out of a spawn spot until the music stops being dramatic.

I suppose if I really think about it, the second game's platforming elements seem to suffer from less fall off or bad jumps, whereas in the first one I knew what to do most of the time and then I would not press a button long enough or what just slightly off on my direction and would fall to my death. Uncharted 2's checkpoints during platformer seem much more liberal as well. It also helps that they make a lot of the bricks you have to climb up or grab onto red a lot. Couldn't find where I was supposed to go a lot before.

[Kolzig]

I completed yesterday Hotel Dusk finally.

Holy crap there's a lot of text in the game.

And not much else actually.

Some of the puzzles were fun, but most were not that much. That's how it always seems to be with Cing's games.

I've played through both of the Another Code games and now this. All of them have so much similarities that you can immediately say it's a Cing game.

Edited February 24, 2010 by Kolzig

[SiN]

Finished off Batman day-before, and Phoenix Wright 3 yesterday. Now playing Bayonetta. :tup:

Mo

[Korax]

Metroid.

I didn't have a NES when I was young, although I had a GameBoy and Metroid II. I've played every other iteration, and the original has been sitting on my Wii since it was released on the Virtual Console.

At first I was surprised at how short/small the game is, but then I remembered that it was an early NES game, so it makes sense. Even then, most of the paths are completely unnecessary, and just serve to distract you from finding essential power-ups and beating the three bosses. I now understand how people can complete the game in half an hour, even without sequence breaking.

[Tanukitsune]

I just finished Skies of Arcadia Legends.... It's strange, the game is SOOOO bloody cliché and predictable, yet I loved it!

I guess I was just happy to play a JRPG where I don't want to punch the main characters in the face?

Also, they were "sky pirates" which was pretty awesome, although the airboat battles take WAAAY too long!

Imma gonna play Arkham Asylum now! <3

[Patters]

  Tanukitsune said:

I just finished Skies of Arcadia Legends.... It's strange, the game is SOOOO bloody cliché and predictable, yet I loved it!

I guess I was just happy to play a JRPG where I don't want to punch the main characters in the face?

Also, they were "sky pirates" which was pretty awesome, although the airboat battles take WAAAY too long!

Imma gonna play Arkham Asylum now! <3

Skies is my favourite game of all time, glad you enjoyed it.