Recently completed video games

[Ninety-Three]

  On 1/4/2016 at 2:03 AM, Dewar said:

I would agree that mastering the mechanics makes much of the game trivial. For me, I got there in exactly 80 days the first time, but then playing the second time I made it in 60 and realized that I'd kind of drained the fun out of it. From your other recent posts, it's clear your a mechanics driven person, so I don't think that 80 days has much for you on that front. The fun of it is the little stories it tells hidden here and there and mainly the disasters that can strike and how you handle them. I imagine that you optimized so well that none of the small disasters ever felt like a real risk to your goal. The little story beats that you mention being disatisfying can have more depth, but it's easy to miss a part of the chain and just never hear about it again.

 

My first run I got there in 71 days, and could've done less if I was making more use of the banks. I think the mechanics had an unhealthy tendency to push against the narrative content. On my long-distance train rides, I never disembarked to check out the local city because I was terrified that I would run into a random event that would end up costing me time on my journey (and sure I might also find a random event that gained me time, but I was already making good time, so I was far more afraid of a penalty than a bonus). I got a quest to deliver an item, but it required going way off-track, or I could just sell the item and drop the quest for a ton of cash in a city directly to the east.

 

It's not that I'm purely a mechanical player, I love a Sunless Sea or a Longest Journey, but when there are mechanics and narrative in the same place in conflict, I automatically put mechanics first.

[Trip Hazard]

I finished Strider after getting it in a Capcom bundle a while back. Short, fast, well-animated, it's everything my penis isn't.

[prettyunsmart]

So I played Emily Is Away after seeing it on Nina Freeman's GOTY list at Giant Bomb. Formally, it really worked for me. I was a teenager at about the time the game is set, so the simulated desktop, IM client, and the profile pictures all worked well (I even used my old AIM screen name for old time's sake). I also really like the idea of having to pick your dialog choice and then hit keys on the keyboard to make it appear on screen. But as a story, I kind of hated it. 

 

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I guess I finished the game not being sure if the game was written from the perspective of a twenty-something looking back on their college days thinking "what if I had told her how I felt?" or if it was aiming at an examination of the weird, distant kind of unrequited love that so easily develops over IM and social media. I definitely had those kinds of relationships, and I hate myself for it, mostly because the idea of being a dorky guy pining after someone who sees him as just a friend can have such toxic undercurrents (see the Nice Guys of OKCupid, etc.). Maybe this is just my self-loathing talking, but I really go the sense that it was a game made by a person asking "what if?" which didn't ultimately seem that satisfying or interesting to me.

[jennegatron]

prettyunsmart: did you play the game multiple times for different endings? Which ending did you get?

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 the impression I got from the game was mostly of a young person trying to figure out how to deal with their feelings and how those feelings for one person can taint other relationships and sometimes those relationships weren't ever going to work out anyway.  So there are a couple important decisions you can make. 1. do you go to the party? 2. do you let Emily come visit you?  Because it becomes clear that she does like you as more than a friend, and you were too inept to see that back in high school. When she comes to visit, you learn that the moment in which that relationship could have possibly worked is past and the two of you have irreparably changed the relationship forever by sleeping together.  I thought it took the "what ifs?" and instead of playing them out in a wish fulfillment way, it instead showed you what could be the very real consequences, and that usually there's no happily ever after. The typing and deleting and inability to ever be emotionally honest felt so true to me, and I remember doing just that when I was 15 and negotiating my first romantic relationship with a boy I went to high school with.

[osmosisch]

  On 1/4/2016 at 4:28 AM, Ninety-Three said:

It's not that I'm purely a mechanical player, I love a Sunless Sea or a Longest Journey, but when there are mechanics and narrative in the same place in conflict, I automatically put mechanics first.

Yeah, then 80 days is not for you.

[Dragonfliet]

I finally got around to playing The Beginner's Guide. I would post in the kind-of thread for it, but the articles people posted there mostly covered it. I was pleasantly surprised by it. It does some really interesting things in the story, and is a powerful (ly depressing) contemplation on creation and the twist comes when it REALLY needed to (the story, if it kept going where it was going, would have become pretty trite). Granted, I think the ending falls apart, but it falls apart in the best possible way that I wish more games would be willing to do: going somewhere new, experimenting and playing and letting things end abstractly (without getting overly crazy about it).

[Tanukitsune]

I just got Nihilumbra from PSN+ and it was quite an enjoyable game. You are a shadow creature escaping through the void into another world, where you learn about the world and gain new powers.

 

Cibele: Since I didn't know how it would end I grew increasingly worried and uncomfortable... 

 

Exile's End: This is a funny story, this game is nothing more than an updated version of Inescapable who got RUINED because people though it was a "vania" was it was pretty linear. The new version simply yells at full volume NOT A METROIDVANIA in it's description when this game is a pretty decent vania compared to the other version.

 

The downside? Puzzle-wise it doesn't explain anything, I only knew the solution to some puzzles because they were the same in the other game. One door is only destroyed by a fully charged blast from a weapon you have no idea that is has this function.

Also some items are almost useless, I got a cloaking that I never needed and a detonator that I only need for one puzzle.

 

The bosses? Very disappointing, they have very obvious patterns and all you have to do is spam the grenade button.

 

Almost every game from "Mommy's Best Action Pack: What can I say? They are good arcade fun with some minor twists in some titles. In Shoot 1UP, the 1UP you earn join your ship and you have control over the formation, the more spread out they are the more damage you do, but obvious the easier they die off.

[prettyunsmart]

  On 1/4/2016 at 7:50 PM, jennegatron said:

prettyunsmart: did you play the game multiple times for different endings? Which ending did you get?

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 the impression I got from the game was mostly of a young person trying to figure out how to deal with their feelings and how those feelings for one person can taint other relationships and sometimes those relationships weren't ever going to work out anyway.  So there are a couple important decisions you can make. 1. do you go to the party? 2. do you let Emily come visit you?  Because it becomes clear that she does like you as more than a friend, and you were too inept to see that back in high school. When she comes to visit, you learn that the moment in which that relationship could have possibly worked is past and the two of you have irreparably changed the relationship forever by sleeping together.  I thought it took the "what ifs?" and instead of playing them out in a wish fulfillment way, it instead showed you what could be the very real consequences, and that usually there's no happily ever after. The typing and deleting and inability to ever be emotionally honest felt so true to me, and I remember doing just that when I was 15 and negotiating my first romantic relationship with a boy I went to high school with.

 

Huh. OK. Maybe I misjudged it. I don't tend to replay games with branching stories since I like to let my choices stand rather than trying to get the "best" ending.

 

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I guess I was put off by all the options to say "I hate your boyfriend" or "he doesn't treat you well enough" when you have no reason to know that or think that. Maybe the game just lets you be the worst if you want to, but that's not necessarily the way it needs to go.

[jennegatron]

Yeah I read all those douchey response options as things that you might think or you believe (as a character) but might not actually say. I agree that I thought there was no reason, as a player, to believe those things to be true. I liked it a lot, and am glad you posted about it! I can definitely understand your read of it.

[Griddlelol]

I just finished The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone. It was real good. I just dumped the difficulty down to easy, because the combat doesn't interest me in the slightest, but there was some great writing here. I really enjoyed the main quest line. 

 

TW3 is an odd game. It shines when it lets you feel OK with being in an open world. As soon as it starts forcing you down a critical path, the open world and even the writing just get...bad. My favourite parts of the game so far have been everything up to finding Ciri, then this expansion pack. 

 

I think the characters in Hearts of Stone are what made it stand out for me. They are detestable. 

[Tanukitsune]

Artifact Adventure, a game made to resemble old JRPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, while being complex and tough but fair.

 

The game is flooded with sidequests, and while many are pretty obvious, like someone asking you to poor something in the guard's drinking barrel, others will be much MUCH harder to know if you did the right thing, will you help the endangered animal or kill it? Will you help the wizard or slay it? Will you take the artifact that keeps the town's economy afloat or take it?

 

The game has SOOO many spells, and oddly enough the "Auto-fight" option's AI is almost too good, I could practically use auto-combat all the time. The healing items kinda suck since they become useless pretty soon as you never get any better healing items.

 

Supreme League of Patriots: Episode 1, it's an episodic adventure about a loser wannabe actor who is trying to get into a superhero talent show with the hopes of some talent agent seeing him and hiring him for something else. The humor is... better than Randall's Monday? I didn't get most of the referential humor and they do stupid things like play Latino music the moment you get close to the Latino character.

 

But the plot was mildly interesting near the end and I'm willing to at least play the next chapter.

 

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At the end of the episode he hits his head and thinks he's a real super hero, from the old times, with all the racism and sexism included.

[Trip Hazard]

I think I finished Undertale, but possibly didn't get the best ending, despite shooting for it and believing I would. Anyway, it was good, and I understand there is plenty more to see on repeat playthroughs

[Ninety-Three]

  On 1/11/2016 at 1:37 AM, Trip Hazard said:

I think I finished Undertale, but possibly didn't get the best ending, despite shooting for it and believing I would.

 

You can only get the best ending if you have first completed a non-pacifist route. If you still have a pacifist save near the end, I think you can qualify by turning that run lethal, completing the game, then reloading to pacifist again and pacifisting the game.

[Twig]

  On 1/11/2016 at 2:09 AM, Ninety-Three said:

You can only get the best ending if you have first completed a non-pacifist route. If you still have a pacifist save near the end, I think you can qualify by turning that run lethal, completing the game, then reloading to pacifist again and pacifisting the game.

That is not true. I got the pacifist ending without ever killing anyone.

Did you maybe kill the first boss because you couldn't figure out how not to? That's a common thing. I dunno.

Also if you do pacifist, for the true true ending, you have to make sure you did all the side quests. Like the dates and stuff. I think the game even tells you straight up if you have something else you can do to get a different ending.

[Ninety-Three]

  On 1/11/2016 at 3:45 AM, Twig said:

That is not true. I got the pacifist ending without ever killing anyone.

 

Oh, that's interesting, the wiki lied to me then. I stand corrected.

[Professor Video Games]

I finished Tales from the Borderlands. That game is real good. Top tier Telltale for sure. I had minimal Borderlands knowledge going in and it didn't matter...the characters and writing stand on their own. The gameplay is standard Telltale stuff but they do a good job making it interesting. Like episode 5 has a QTE sequence that is just fantastic, which is not something I would have thought possible. Plus, even though my PC is relatively ancient, their game engine is too so I could still run it like a champ.

[BusbyBerkeley]

I finished Wolfenstein: The New Order the other day. It was a good goddamn video game. I wish more games had stealth that doesn't make you feel like an idiot when you get spotted. It was super polished and everything felt great, and the writing wasn't actively terrible! It even passes the Bechdel test!

[Trip Hazard]

Y'see I thought, having finished the game without killing anyone and being told basically "no", that a pacifist run was not possible on the first playthrough. I remembered reading such on Eurogamer in Richard Cobbets retrospective

 

Quoted: One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming that the non-violence path, which isn't actually possible first time through...

 

but now Twig says it is, which gives me hope. I definitely haven't killed or even wounded anyone (with one exception, who shall not be named), except out of frustration but then reloaded the game. Does that make a difference? I know Undertale tracks what you've done, even if you reload. I hope I've not screwed myself, 'cos I could not see how I could possibly NOT have injured that person.

 

Anyway, Twig is on the money when he says the game lets you know about having missed things. I was told to go and make friends with a certain someone, which I did last night, so hopefully that's me all wrapped up, but then there's still the matter of the door.

 

I just hope I don't have to do

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the final two fights

again, 'cos whilst it was interesting enough the first time, it's a bit drawn out and frankly tediously tricky

[SuperBiasedMan]

I'm just gonna go all out spoiler for anyone who's not familiar with this, but this should spoil nothing for you Trip.

 

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For the true pacifist run, you can do it the first time, depending on what you consider the 'first time', but you definitely don't have to replay the whole game if you never killed anything and you became friends with both Papyrus and Undyne (by doing both their friend dates).

 

If you've done the run that way, you will still get a neutral ish ending, but sans will suggest you're not done and maybe you should go back. He's alluding to going to Alphys's lab, as you've never really gotten a friend date/quest thing for her. If you then load your save, you'll be back at the end of the game, but you can leave the final area and you'll get a phone call that directs you to something new you couldn't do before.

 

Unfortunately I think you do have to redo one of the final fights, but not the Asgore one (unless I remember wrong).

[Trip Hazard]

I hope I don't have to redo that one, it was a fourth-tryer!

 

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Thanks. Here's what I did:

I had dated Papyrus. I guess I got "friend zoned", which seems pretty ok.

I hadn't dated Undyne, not realising that was an option. Neither had I gone on the faux date with Alphys, but I have done both of those things now!

Man, I wish there was a sign outside Undyne's house letting you know.

So, should I head off now and finish the game again? Will that be enough? Cheers (y)

[SuperBiasedMan]

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if you have seen Alphys's underground lab and resolved her plot line, then yes go to the end again. Things should be different this time.

[Dewar]

  On 1/11/2016 at 4:12 AM, Ninety-Three said:

Oh, that's interesting, the wiki lied to me then. I stand corrected.

 

Edit: already covered in spoilers

[SuperBiasedMan]

One minor addition to Ninety-Three's confusion

 

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You are obligated to fight Asgore, using the actual Fight command. At the start of the fight he breaks your "MERCY" button to indicate that it's not going to be an option, and all your passive options won't deter him. You have to bring his health to zero, however this doesn't kill him. The game then gives you an explicit choice about whether or not to spare him.

 

People have criticised this deviation from the formula which I sorta agree with, I don't think it's entirely justified but I like the motivation behind it.

[SecretAsianMan]

I finished The Room Three which just recently came out on Android.  I think I like the first Room game the most.  They get progressively more complex but not necessarily in the puzzles.  The first Room game was restricted to intensely scrutinizing one object at a time until you unlocked all its secrets.  The second Room game had multiple objects in the same room that you were jumping back and forth between.  The third Room game has multiple rooms with multiple objects in each room.  As the physical space increased, I feel like the puzzles themselves have become less interesting.  What made the first one fun was all the fiddly bits.  Pressing buttons, flipping switches, turning knobs, all of which had immediate and noticeable effects.  This game still has that, but because you now have to traverse rooms to see the effect of what you just did it kind of kills the pacing.  It takes a few seconds to move from one room to the next and those seconds stack up into irritating waits while you search for the next step.  If there's a Room Four I expect it to basically be the next Myst game.

[twmac]

I finished Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, what a wonderful, messy game.

 

Gutted that the visuals are going to put off a lot of people. My friend summed it up with 'this game is so cool, imagine if they had made it a bullshit Star Wars game where you were controlling the Death Star - it would made so much money. Or, if they had made it ultra violent and gory'.

 

I am glad they didn't but I totally get what they mean, the game is tough as nails in places, there are so many different things going on as well that it doesn't explain until later that keeps you coming back.