Recently completed video games

[miffy495]

Over the past three days, I've finished two games. The first was Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, on a gamecube as emulated by my Wii. The second was Half Life 2 Episode 2, which brings my replay of the Half Life series to a close and means that I'm now onto the Portal replay. I'l put my HL2E2 thoughts in the Valve replay thread (Hint: nothing that groundbreaking will be said by me), but as there's no Paper Mario thread I'll talk about that here.

So, The Thousand Year Door. For years this had sat on my desk as one of those "I have a save file right before the final boss. I swear I'll beat it one of these days" games. Over the past few months, I've been playing it on and off when I have some time to kill at home. The basic idea was that I wanted to replay all of the Paper Mario games (after replaying the N64 one in February) before the 3DS one comes out later this year. It's still incredibly good. I love that series so much. Turns out that my save file was actually further from the end than I thought it was. It was right before the final chapter, not the final boss. Took me about 4 more hours from that point to finish the game. The main complaint that I've come away with is something that seems endemic to the JRPG genre. That is, if you're going to have a huge, multi-part final boss fight, you really shouldn't put a 20 minute unskipable cutscene before it. I had to do that boss fight twice to finish it (losing by 3 HP the first time! 3!!!) and going through that scene a second time was fucking awful. Still, a great game, and if you have the means to play it I would highly recommend doing so.

[Erkki]

  Orvidos said:

If enough people are interested I'll scrap this to a link and move it over. I wasn't aware of any other Thumbs playing it currently, though. This was sort of a ploy for that.

Please do make a new thread.

I just bought it after RPS sold me on it. Haven't had time to play much yet. It seems like this is a platformer with a goal + sandbox, whereas Minecraft is mostly just the sandbox?

[elmuerte]

Crysis: Warhead

I'm giving this game a because it's even worse than the original. The game is quite short; took me 4 hours to go through it. The first game had some actually story going on, I'm not really sure what was going on here, or where in the time of the original game this was playing. The goal was pretty much: chase this big box. And when you retrieved it... that was it. Again, not really a satisfying ending. This game was almost an on-rails-shooter, and the environment was actually quite boring. At least the first had a small space ship element, and some more interesting locations to visit. This was basically nothing but following the path till the end of the map.

[Tanukitsune]

I just completed Y''S Chronicles Book I & II, it's the same games as the original, only with modern graphics and a new soundtrack, and a few alterations to the gameplay too.

The game is a bit of a nightmare without maps, the world is small but easy to get lost into. It's also very "retro" and plays like a 8 bit JRPG (Which is what it was originally).

I don't know why this version took out the voice acting, it's only a few cheesy lines during cutscenes, but I do miss them.

[miffy495]

That'll do it for Portal. 2 sittings, and not anything new to say about it, so I won't put anything in the Valve replay thread. Only Portal 2 left, and I've replayed every single player Valve game in just over a month!

[Sno]

  Tanukitsune said:

I just completed Y''S Chronicles Book I & II, it's the same games as the original, only with modern graphics and a new soundtrack, and a few alterations to the gameplay too.

The game is a bit of a nightmare without maps, the world is small but easy to get lost into. It's also very "retro" and plays like a 8 bit JRPG (Which is what it was originally).

I don't know why this version took out the voice acting, it's only a few cheesy lines during cutscenes, but I do miss them.

As it would happen, i actually also just played through this. It was the first time i've played any version of those games. Ys II left the impression of it being a pretty amazing game, while the design of Ys I definitely shows its age. (Though I had read that the Chronicles versions are based off of previous remakes that had already significantly added to the games.)

Continuing with the Ys thing, now i'm playing through Ys Seven, which for me will be the last of the Ys games Xseed had localized. I'm normally fairly adverse to Japanese RPG's, but this is a pretty fantastic series, and i want to see more of these games be released outside of Japan.

[syntheticgerbil]

The second professor Layton is now finished! (Also Sam and Max season 1, a miserable fact on how behind I am on Telltale games.) I really need to get on adding to threads about my last 4 games. Crap.

[ThunderPeel2001]

  syntheticgerbil said:

The second professor Layton is now finished! (Also Sam and Max season 1, a miserable fact on how behind I am on Telltale games.) I really need to get on adding to threads about my last 4 games. Crap.

Thoughts, feelings?

[syntheticgerbil]

I am planning on adding all things to respective threads, but I get so daunted with the blank message form sometimes.

[ThunderPeel2001]

  syntheticgerbil said:

I am planning on adding all things to respective threads, but I get so daunted with the blank message form sometimes.

I'd just be interested in a general response: Good/bad? Met expectations/letdown?

[elmuerte]

Duke Nukem Forever

If you want to play a real sequel to DN3D, this game is it. It's longer than the average FPS game; and it's a blast to play through it. The graphics are quite dated, feels like playing an 3 to 4 year old game. But if graphics is your thing, than this game isn't it. The worst part of the game is the "modern" gameplay mechanics of regenerating health, and limited number of weapons you can carry. But for the rest it is plain old Duke3D like gameplay. The game isn't just shooting, but there are also some puzzle and platform elements (and some on-rails shooting and driving).

After you completed the game you can see a bunch of concept art, screenshots from the past 15 years of development and various movies from the past 15 years. From the look of that it looks like the scrapped quite some stuff from the final year (which is probably partially included with DLC #3). Even though they cut a lot of content from the game it isn't small, took me about 10 hours to go through the SP campaign. I think 3D Realms plans for DNF were probably way too big.

[miffy495]

  elmuerte said:

After you completed the game you can see a bunch of concept art, screenshots from the past 15 years of development and various movies from the past 15 years. From the look of that it looks like the scrapped quite some stuff from the final year (which is probably partially included with DLC #3). Even though they cut a lot of content from the game it isn't small, took me about 10 hours to go through the SP campaign. I think 3D Realms plans for DNF were probably way too big.

That sounds like the entire part of the game I would be interested in. Bummer you have to beat it first. Maybe I'll pick it up if it gets cheap and plough through it in a weekend so I can see the cool stuff at the end.

[elmuerte]

but it's not a game. just some static content which will probably be online within a few weeks.

[Salacious Snake]

I recently got around to playing through the campaigns of Warcraft III. I suddenly understand why people give a shit about the backstory of the setting.

World of Warcraft never communicated it in a way that made me care, but now I get it!

Moving on to Frozen Throne now.

[miffy495]

They are really good. I actually wanted to play Wow really bad for a long time just because of that fucking story, but from what I've seen the quality didn't carry so I kept on ignoring the game.

[twmac]

Just finished D&D: Daggerdale. Not worthy of its on thread. Avoid at all costs, even Arkadian Warriors is better than this crap.

Stuttering framerates, poor multiplayer, terribly stale missions with no decent loot. And... QTEs!

Seriously, don't even bother witht the trial, don't buy it if it is cheap. Avoid at all costs.

[mikemariano]

  twmac said:

Just finished D&D: Daggerdale. Not worthy of its on thread. Avoid at all costs, even Arkadian Warriors is better than this crap.

AaFamedaS1g

Stuck-up Daggerdale punks! Think they're too good for me...

[Kolzig]

While waiting for the super long delivery. I finally managed to finish something in the Duke saga.

Completed the whole Duke Nukum 1 game during last week for the first time. I have played it several times in the past, but never completely through all the episodes. It was a bit uneven game, there were really difficult levels and some were just way too easy to pass through.

It didn't really feel like the later versions of Duke yet, but it was a solid sidescroller game. Sound effects were really simple and Replogle, Blum and co. seemed to be really proud of the Duke jump animation mechanics. Also funny about the name Duke Nukum and the story behind it. Then they just left it like that even after continuing with the later games being Nukem again.

I am at the moment going through DN2, Duke Manhattan Project, Duke GBA and the GBC versions. So a playthrough of all should happen before DNF arrives someday by post.

[Sombre]

I didn't "beat it", but I played Dance Central last night at my buddys house, embarassing myself totally. I think that game is one of those "You either get it, or you don't" type of things.

I didn't

I've also lately been playing Devil Survivor for the DS. It's a very polarizing game. I'll write up properly when I beat it, but it jumps between being serviceable, then an enemy will do 900 damage to your thing with 600 HP, and having incredibly "convenient" foresight into your attacks

I guess my girlfriend and I finished our Persona 4 "co-op" game earlier too. She does the story stuff, I do the dungeons/fights/fusions etc. Great fun :

Now I'm back home after finishing Uni, I expect to make it through games much faster. That's the plan, anyway

[Sno]

I just finished Red Faction Armageddon.

It's a pretty average game from a critical standpoint, terrible story and all that, but on a more gut response level, i really loved it.

Just a big dumb corridor shooter where things explode spectacularly, really phenomenally ridiculous levels of environmental destruction to see. (With a fairly cool gimmick that lets you reconstruct destroyed bits of the environment, either for cover or just to allow you to keep moving forward.)

Seems like there's a lot of pretty divided opinion on the game though, but there's a demo on X-box Live, if anybody cares. It was what sold me on it, and having played the full game, i think it's a reasonably good representation of what that thing is.

[Tanukitsune]

I just beat Might Milky Way a very quirky game from WayForward (of Shantae fame). It's a a basic but challenging puzzle game where you must guise Luna to the exit of the level by hopping planet to planet, you create planets with candy and bigger planets can curve your trajectory (I'm pretty sure there is a scientific name for this, but I can't remember it). I heartily recommend it!

I've been discovering quite a few nice DSiWare games since the eShop, wouldn't anybody object to me ressurecting the DSiWare thread? It's been dead for years!

Kolzig, I had no idea there were Duke Nukem games for the GBA and GBC, do you have the PSOne and N64 ones too?

[Kolzig]

No, I have just these two. I know there are like 2-3 games for PS1 that were pretty bad and then the N64 version which ok I guess.

I've checked some videos of those from youtube, but nothing much else.

3D Realms webpage has a page about the GBA game. The engine is really well done for GBA.

http://www.3drealms.com/dukegba/index.html

Also of the GBC:

http://www.3drealms.com/gameboy/index.html

[miffy495]

  Tanukitsune said:

I've been discovering quite a few nice DSiWare games since the eShop, wouldn't anybody object to me ressurecting the DSiWare thread? It's been dead for years!

Bring that sucker back! For a while there, I really liked what they were doing with it (the ArtStyle games, Mario vs Donkey Kong, Mighty Flip Champs, etc) but then it just kind of fell into mediocrity and having to wade through the crap to find the good games became too much effort. If you've got some gems to share, that's what the thread is for. I'm hoping that with the 3DS eShop opening, there will be another run of good stuff for a while before they've got the major stuff out of the way and it slows again (see also: Virtual Console and Wiiware. A lot of great releases out the gate followed by years of "meh").

[Tanukitsune]

  Kolzig said:

No, I have just these two. I know there are like 2-3 games for PS1 that were pretty bad and then the N64 version which ok I guess.

I've checked some videos of those from youtube, but nothing much else.

3D Realms webpage has a page about the GBA game. The engine is really well done for GBA.

http://www.3drealms.com/dukegba/index.html

Also of the GBC:

http://www.3drealms.com/gameboy/index.html

Hmm, I might have owned the GBA one? I'm pretty sure I owned one or two of the PSOne games too and yeah, they kinda sucked.

[elmuerte]

Back to the Future

Just finished the last episode, loved the ending. The overall season gets a

The last episode was better than the 4th, but not as good as Citizen Brown. Ep5 was also pretty much about isolated rooms where you have to solve a few sequential, or even one, puzzle. I wish TTG stepped away from that format a bit.