Games Completed 2018

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KSubzero1000
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Pitwar wrote: January 8th, 2018, 2:03 pm Like you say, Titanfall 2 and Doom are considered by many to be the cream of the crop in regards to shooters from the past few years, so maybe it's unfair to compare an older game to them.
I agree with the overall gist of your post, but I do take issue with the above statement. The implication that newer games automatically surpass older ones on account of being more technologically advanced is not something I can get behind. The best of 20012 shouldn't have to hide from the best of 2017 by default.

I'm not the biggest fan of Halo 4 myself, but there is something about the core Halo gameplay loop that I find to be very solid and satisfying. Something that no other shooter I've played has been able to recreate. Fighting an Elite, two Jackals and four Grunts has a unique flow to it, even in an otherwise empty room.
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Pitwar
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by Pitwar »

KSubzero1000 wrote: January 8th, 2018, 3:27 pm
Pitwar wrote: January 8th, 2018, 2:03 pm Like you say, Titanfall 2 and Doom are considered by many to be the cream of the crop in regards to shooters from the past few years, so maybe it's unfair to compare an older game to them.
I agree with the overall gist of your post, but I do take issue with the above statement. The implication that newer games automatically surpass older ones on account of being more technologically advanced is not something I can get behind. The best of 20012 shouldn't have to hide from the best of 2017 by default.

I'm not the biggest fan of Halo 4 myself, but there is something about the core Halo gameplay loop that I find to be very solid and satisfying. Something that no other shooter I've played has been able to recreate. Fighting an Elite, two Jackals and four Grunts has a unique flow to it, even in an otherwise empty room.
I'm not saying that newer games will always surpass older ones, just that its not always fair to compare something newer to something older. Obviously a newer game has the chance to learn from what worked and what didn't compared to an older game. A new game can still get that very wrong however.

Halo 4 was just ok, it didn't do anything wrong but it didn't do anything new, and I was hoping that 343 would to able to expand on the excellent work previously done by Bungie, and they didn't. So going back and playing a game that didn't do anything new compared to shooters I've played in recent years made Halo 4 feel a bit shitty in comparison.

Saying that however, going back and playing the Halo 3 maps online has made me realise how much I've missed that game. That's a perfect example of an older game outshining it's newer rivals, and showing that despite its age it can still hang with the new kids.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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Pitwar wrote: January 8th, 2018, 4:20 pm I'm not saying that newer games will always surpass older ones, just that its not always fair to compare something newer to something older. Obviously a newer game has the chance to learn from what worked and what didn't compared to an older game. A new game can still get that very wrong however.
Ah, I see. I think we're on the same page after all. :)
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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The main flaw I found with 4 is that the design of the mech enemies doesn’t do a good job of showing their weak spots etc... makes them quite frustrating to fight as you can’t make decisions about where to shoot quite fast enough.

5 corrects most of that, it’s a far better game. (Though neither are as fun as Reach or ODST for me)
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by Pitwar »

Flabyo wrote: January 8th, 2018, 4:29 pm The main flaw I found with 4 is that the design of the mech enemies doesn’t do a good job of showing their weak spots etc... makes them quite frustrating to fight as you can’t make decisions about where to shoot quite fast enough.

5 corrects most of that, it’s a far better game. (Though neither are as fun as Reach or ODST for me)
I'm really looking forward to playing Reach, as from what I've been told that's the best of the entries that I've not previously played. It's installed on my console, but I'll be saving that one to play last.
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Indiana747
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by Indiana747 »

(Jan) Life is Strange: Before the Storm - PS4.
(Jan) Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition - PS4.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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I finished the first Fable game. That last boss is kind of crap, huh? I'd say, for the most part, the game holds up as being a quick, fun game with some charming elements, but the art style has definitely aged better than the actual mechanics.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by Scrustle »

Spoiler: show
04/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Normal)
05/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Jetstream Sam DLC (Normal)
06/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Blade Wolf DLC (Normal)
10/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Hard)

Still on the MGR kick. Not sure if I'll keep going on from here. This run through was a lot of fun, but a bit odd in terms of difficulty. At first I thought it was going to be pretty tough, from just playing the prologue mission where you don't have access to your unlocked skills and such. But then once I got in to the game proper, and I got all my upgrades and stuff from the first run, it became much easier. Enemies definitely hit harder than on Normal, but you hit a whole lot harder too. There are a couple of upgrades that are perhaps a bit overpowered too. For this run I used the cyborg body upgrade that allows you to carry double the amount of healing items, and a wig that gives you infinite blade energy, and consequently unlimited Ripper Mode. The former was unnecessary (although looks cool), and with the latter, I usually don't use Ripper Mode anyway. So even though I did use it to get past a few tough fights that might have been a pain otherwise, having unlimited ability to do that was perhaps overkill.

I did have a bit of trouble with the camera this time around too as well. I've always thought that the criticisms this game gets for its camera are exaggerated, but this time I think I perhaps understood where people were coming from. It was a rare occurrence though, and I managed to work around them easily enough.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by Shabbasnake »

January: Okami
January: Life is Strange.

As I'm too broke to justify a new console I'm finally trying to tick off PS3 games I've had in my collection for a while. I didn't quite complete Okami before Christmas / new year so I managed to beat that earlier in the month, and binged Life is Strange in about a week. Thoroughly enjoyed both, flawed though they are.

The Okami HD release is as gorgeous as I'd expected, and once you start to open up the range of abilities I really enjoyed getting into combat and trying things out. Most of the dungeons (if that's the right word) are cleverly designed, and I don't recall getting too frustrated with any of them. It does drag on a bit towards the end though, and the way women are included or commented on isn't great - it was one of those games where my wife would walk in at just the wrong moment and judge me for playing. But I'm really glad that I played it.

My experience with Life is Strange was almost the inverse: the majority wasn't that good, but the parts that worked are among my recent gaming highlights. Mechanically it's fairly basic, and the overarching plot descends into nonsense in places. However I bought into some of the characters in a major way. It's hard to explain, but the kids at Blackwell Academy felt real enough to me - albeit as someone who's experience of American high school life is based entirely on film and TV. I was invested in what happened to Max and Chloe, so some of the choices were genuinely tough for me even knowing there was a time travel gubbins to play around with. It's stuck with me in the days since I finished it - and I admit to overlooking a lot of problems with the game because of that.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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SUPERHOT (PS4)

Quite enjoyable. Fun to play, though a pale imitation of it's VR counterpart (the two versions are different games with different levels). I guess some of the novelty has worn off due to familiarity with the mechanic, but I'm surprised that this made GOTY lists in 2016.

It may sound strange, but I view this as a puzzle game, yet the VR version as a shooter.

It's also strange to me that there seems to have been no DLC released for this. At minimum you'd think that they'd be able to repurpose existing levels for DLC pretty easily.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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AndrewBrown wrote: January 4th, 2018, 7:54 pm 02/01: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past [SNES Classic]
04/01: Oxenfree [Switch]
13/01: Axiom Verge: Multiverse Edition [Switch]

Really liked the character designs in this. The Sudras were really cool, sinister in appearance but actually very sympathetic and human in their action. I kept expecting them to betray me or turn out to be Secretly Evil, but... things were much more complicated than that contrived plot twist.

I enjoyed the first half of the game as I was opening more and more new areas of the world, but the backhalf focused on sending me back into those areas with new tools but no new direction. And those tools felt limited—a device that lets me walk through walls, cool, but then I get a device that lets me walk through walls two-thick, then three-thick. Rather than developing new ideas to keep me engaged, it keeps building on old ones. And I kept unlocking guns most of which I never ended up using. Maybe it's nice to have a wide selection of weapons available to suit different playstyles, but I would've preferred to see more focus on specific guns with specific roles. This is what Metroid does, and this game so clearly wants to be Metroid that I think it's fair to call it out on this.

I'm glad I played Axiom Verge, but I'm also glad it's over. Cleared it with 67%, shy of getting the best ending. But as Trace becomes a recluse and grows old trying to get back to Sudran, I shall do the opposite. I'm finished on Sudran.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by Todinho »

I am Setsuna(PC)- If I had to describe this game in few words it would be "One note" now that's not necessarilly a bad thing there's alot of games that focus on a particular thing, be it gameplay or story, and they execute it very well and I am Setsuna definetly knows what it wants to be but I have to say it didnt do all that much for me.

I dont wanna be too harsh because the game was clearly made on shoestring budget(The more I went on the more I realized that the snow aesthetic was just as much a choice to cut costs as it was an artistic one) and I think this was the team's first game as well. That being said the biggest issue is that the writing here is really weak, it's like it's following a list of clichés and plot points that have to happen, I felt no connection to the world or the characters because they were all so generic, I think 2 characters end up standing out(the Knight lady and the Auron looking dude) but even then because everybody around then is so unremarkable, and when it comes to Setsuna herself that's where the game really falls flat because I didnt care at all, she like Yuna but if Yuna had even less of a personality.

Gameplaywise the game is first not very long(took me less then 20 hours to beat)and it's really easy, I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I died in the entire game, I do enjoy the overall combat though especially how skills work which is a bit like the materia of FF7 only if your party has characters with skills that synergize with each other you get these cool combos that do more damage and have different effects, which is something from Chrono Trigger I think, so I really liked playing around with skill combinations to make a team that stomped through every mob, which to me is the crux of making a good JRPG battle system like in FFV where you can mix and match skills from different jobs or on Persona where you can create different personas with their own skills.(as a tangent this is why I never understood the complaints that FFXII plays itself, well who cares all you do is press buttons on a menu, what's important is the strategies you build with the skills of your characters before battle and how you can adapt if need be)

In the end all I can say is that the game is ok, there's nothing overtly wrong with it it just doesnt do enough. With their new game coming out this month I hope they learned a great deal out of this game and expand on the good parts like the combat and improve when it comes to story.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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Just a couple of further words on Superhot. It's a fine game, it's just that I found it a little anaemic after playing the VR version not long ago.

Although the two are completely separate games, there are some interesting differences in approach. In the normal game, you move through the levels with the left stick, whereas in the VR version, you are static, and you are moved by the game to different points in the level, whereupon you are fixed in place again (though you can move two or three feet in any direction). You'd think this would impact the game negatively, but it really doesn't. That two or three feet of movement, and the constant dodging and crouching in VR, makes the game seem much more dynamic than the flat version.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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A lot of research says that having the player control their own walk through an eniviromemt in first person VR is one of the main things that causes nausea. It’s why so many games have this kind of teleport from point to point motion going on.

Something to do with the lack of inner ear feedback that you’d normally get when you’re actually walking. It’s one of the major drawbacks of the tech.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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Yes, it's the big issue for sure. I was interested to see that Superhot was a completely different game than Superhot VR - some settings are reused but not many - and was puzzled as to why this was. It seems to me that the devs decided, we're going to take player movement completely out of the VR version, which was a smart move, and then maybe they saw that designing new levels around that made more sense than reusing the existing ones. And maybe that in turn explains the lack of DLC for the original game, that the Devs were busy doing this.

I'd love to see a dev blog for this but haven't been able to turn up anything.

You definitely become more tolerant of the movement issues as time goes on. I switched to normal movement in Skyrim the other night and it was fine, but I could feel it at the end of a 90 min session. The problem then is that if you do get sick, it tends to wipe you out completely, for me I generally have to go to bed.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by James »

Spoiler: show
3rd Jan - Hidden Folks (Android)
13th Jan - Bleed 2 (PC)

More on the podcast, obviously, but if you fancy a short, but sweet burst of action gaming you could do far worse than grab Bleed 2 on Steam now, or on console in about a month. ;)

13th Jan - Bleed (Xbox One)

Oh, I also polished off Bleed on Hard difficulty. Even took a crack at Arcade Mode (on Easy, obviously); I made it to the third Mission, somehow, before realising that I don't stand a snowball's chance in Hell, and succumbing to that crisis of confidence instantly.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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ThirdMan wrote: January 13th, 2018, 5:51 pm 12/01 - Mini Metro (Android)

I enjoyed it most when I wasn't concentrating on scores. As soon as I went about methodically unlocking new maps or trying for personal bests it lost its magic. I suspect I'm in the minority in that regard because that's where the real 'meat' of the game seems to lie. But for me this was simply about the tranquil enjoyment of transporting happy little shapes from A to B, while Disasterpeace's procedural soundtrack bubbled away in the background.
I also enjoyed this from a 'tranquil enjoyment' perspective - I did briefly look at the other maps but pretty much stuck to London for the entire time I played it. Great little game.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

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AndrewBrown wrote: January 13th, 2018, 11:06 am 02/01: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past [SNES Classic]
04/01: Oxenfree [Switch]
13/01: Axiom Verge: Multiverse Edition [Switch]
14/01: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim [Switch]

For years I've wanted to do a playthrough of Skyrim where I don't use fast travel and do an incredibly thorough scouring of each region. It had to come to Switch before that happened, and it solidified Skyrim as one of my all-time favorite videogames. It's janky and broken and has idiotic AI but I do love it so. One-shotting entire armies with a buffed-up dagger and a broken character build never stops being fun. Does it make sense that my character is functionally invisible with 100 Sneak skill and a few Enchants? No, not really. But Skyrim is a game where you really shouldn't be thinking too hard.

After 180 hours, I've finished all the base game content—I've never actually done that before, the damn College was always an obstacle—and I'll very probably do the Dawnguard quests before the month is out as well. Dawnguard is a great questline, I've finished it before on Steam. Then it'll be off to Solstheim for the Dragonborn DLC, which I haven't done before. Looking forward to that! I hope Dragonborn will be like Shivering Isles, which actually increase my opinion of the base game.
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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by Scrustle »

Spoiler: show
04/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Normal)
05/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Jetstream Sam DLC (Normal)
06/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Blade Wolf DLC (Normal)
10/01 - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Hard)
14/01 - Killer Is Dead (Hard)

Had this one going on in the background for a little while, and just cleaned up the last few levels today. The timing of it has been pretty interesting though, in that it happened to land right next to a bunch of other games that make for some stark comparisons.

Even though I've played through it before a number of times, this playthrough was prompted by Humble giving away free copies a while ago. I owned it already, but that made me feel the urge to go back to it again. This was also shortly after I gave up on my most recent playthrough of No More Heroes 2, and of course very close to playing Metal Gear Rising again as well.

It really is quite surprising how much better it is than NMH2 in a number of ways. I've always put this game on the same kind of level as those games, but after having such a rough time with NMH2 most recently, and seeing how lopsided and poorly designed some aspects of the combat is, it makes this game look so much better in comparison. Everything is so much tighter and more responsive. Combat has a much better flow in general, and the dodge move is a million times more precise and satisfying. I still really like the NMH games, and they definitely have something this game lacks in terms of personality (although more so NMH1 than 2), but this one definitely has them beat on mechanics.

It's the opposite story with Metal Gear Rising however. Everything that KID does better than NMH, MGR does even better, by a wider margin. There are a number of enemies and situations in KID that feel kind of cheap and annoying. Usually most attacks are telegraphed well, but some aren't at all, which can get you stuck in a frustrating stun-lock on occasion. It's rare (and nowhere near as awful as the nightmare of a final boss on NMH2), but enough to damage the experience to be worth mentioning. And while I like all the bosses in general, a couple of them do suffer from having annoying attacks like that. Not so in MGR. In that game you always feel like you have all the information you need to react to something, and the tools to deal with it. It's just up to you to execute it properly.

Overall though, I still like this game quite a bit. Might actually like it a bit more now since comparing it to NMH so closely. I really hope Travis Strikes Again can build on this when it comes to how well it controls.
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Re: Games Completed 2018

Post by Pitwar »

7th Jan - Halo 4 (Xbox One)
13th Jan - Halo 5 (Xbox One)

Halo 5 was a better entry into the series than 4, however I still felt is was missing that old Bungie magic, but 343 still did a decent enough job. It also seemed to be over before it really started which was a shame.

I'll be jumping on to ODST and Reach at some point in the near future, but for now the Halo playthroughs will take a break while I take on Gears of War 4.
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