Games Completed 2019

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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Scrustle »

Spoiler: show
25/01 - Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
31/01 - Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas
01/02 - SOMA (Safe Mode)
09/02 - Shadow Warrior
18/02 - Mulaka
26/02 - NieR: Automata - 3C3C1D119440927 DLC
02/03 - Race Driver: GRID
04/03 - Bladed Fury
10/03 - Devil May Cry 5 (Devil Hunter)
13/03 - AER: Memories of Old
17/03 - Devil May Cry 5 (Son of Sparda)
20/03 - Devil May Cry 5 (Human)
05/04 - God of War III Remastered
12/04 - Devil May Cry 5 (Dante Must Die)
14/04 - Journey
15/04 - ABZU
22/04 - Journey
28/04 - Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - Colonies Edition

This was an interesting blast from the past, which stood up better than I expected in some regards. The way it plays is actually still fun, especially when it comes to the mechs, which feel weighty and powerful, but thankfully not overly cumbersome. They have an appropriate heft that makes it feel like you're moving around a big heavy machine, but not so much that it's frustrating to move around. Later in the game when you get hold of the most advanced example is especially fun, as it can slide around and has a lot of mobility, compared to the other mechs at least. The alien enemy types are still pretty interesting and provide some decent variety, and going up against other mechs is pretty fun as well. Bosses at the ends of levels are a nice set piece too. They have a slight Monster Hunter feel to them when you're up against a big alien, but mech bosses are also enjoyable. On-foot combat is pretty slow and feels rudimentary, but it's not as bad as I feared it would be, and being able to use the weapons from the mechs is a nice way to spice things up a bit and make you feel powerful. The final boss was a bit of a disappointment though. They put you in a really cool mech that only shows up for that one moment, and set up this visually striking climactic set piece. But then it turns out the mech you pilot controls poorly, and the fight itself is kind of a let-down. At first it's confusing as it's not clear what you need to do, but then when you work out the extremely simple method you're meant to go for, the fight is over really quickly without much happening at all. It's a shame, since the mechs are really the highlight of the experience in terms of the tools you get to mess with, and the ideas they set up for that fight had a lot of potential. But then a mostly solid game ends on a bit of a whimper.

The story though is pretty abysmal throughout. It was never something that really stood out as memorable playing it originally back in the day, but with how far storytelling in games has come since, it's impossible to ignore how amateurish it feels. When the game first came out, I suppose you could say that it was pretty run-of-the-mill and average for the time, but if this was released today it would get slaughtered for it I imagine. Writing and voice acting is really stilted, and the whole thing feels like a string of random events with hardly any rhyme or reason behind them. Character motivations are confusing or non-existent, and the central threat of the plot doesn't even make sense. It's almost as if you're actually playing as the bad guys in this world, who are bent on wanton destruction for no reason.

While I didn't get to play in the Unlimited Mode during this playthrough, I did give it a quick look after finishing it. From the few minutes I saw, it seems like it is a pretty fun way to play the game. Speeding up how fast the game plays like that definitely makes running around on foot much swifter and less tedious, and it speeds up the pace of the game in general in a way that felt pretty good. Having unlimited ammo was fun too. Being able to just go wild with the mechs was cool. While I doubt I'll go back to this game again any time soon, playing it through on that mode does seem like a good time.
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ColinAlonso
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by ColinAlonso »

Spoiler: show
Jan 16 - Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PS4)
Jan 20 - FTL: Faster Than Light (PC) (Easy)
Jan 25 - Final Fantasy VIII (PSVita - PS1 Classic)
Jan 27 - Puzzle Bobble (Switch) (Difficulty Level 4 - One credit)
Feb 3 - Metal Slug 3 (PS4 - PS2 anthology version on Easy)
Feb 8 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (Switch)(Vs Computer mode - Normal)
Feb 12 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (Switch)(Puzzle mode - One credit)
Feb 20 - Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (3DS - DS cart)
Feb 21 - Super Smash Bros Ultimate (Switch) (World of Light)
Mar 3 - Ristar (JP version) (PC)
Mar 22 - Wargroove (Switch)
Mar 31 - River City Ransom (Switch - NES rom)
Apr 2 - Donkey Kong '94 (3DS - VC)
Apr 20 - Super Dodge Ball (Switch - NES rom)
Apr 28 - Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)

Those credits were about 35-40 minutes long! :lol:

OK, let's start with what could have drove me away, the pacing. I kinda get that for the world to impart the sense of place and time that it is in, that it had to be slow but even allowing for that, it dragged so much that I understand why people stopped.

The shooting was poor. I don't play many third person shooters so maybe I'm being harsh, particularly on an open-world game that can't script its encounters as much as others do but the cover system in particular felt very loose ( I can't think of a better word to describe how I feel on it).

Having said those things I played to the end for a number of reasons.

The world is gorgeous, even on my standard PS4. From the snowy mountains down all the way to the cloying air of the bayou. Even less dramatic areas can look grand, there's a gorgeous lake to the west of Strawberry for one and even some of the grassy plains in New Hanover look great. The bustle of Saint Denis is also wonderfully done and a nice change in pace

Side missions (Stranger missions, I guess) are usually interesting or entertaining often with a nice 3-4 mission path to them. I did most that I found.

The plot, hmmm, I think if I just took it as a series of plot points it mightn't seem that interesting. Its one that probably hangs on its characters. Thankfully some of those characters are great and that makes it memorable.
Spoiler: show
While not being in direct conflict until relatively late in the game, a lot of it seems to hinge on Arthur and Dutch's changing ideals, with Dutch drifting into madness not helping matters (he first mentions Tahiti in Chapter 3, I think, and that's when I was sure we were watcing him lose it, even if there were signs before). Arthur just can't leave though, the gang are his family and Dutch (and Hosea) are his father figures.

Sadie, John (and family, of course), Lenny, Charles, Rains Fall and Eagle Flies (another great story arc about a father and son on different paths) are all also characters that I ended up caring about too. Even hanging around the camp can be fun, chatting, drinking, listening to Uncle's tall tales or Javier playing the guitar.

Micah was a bit one-dimensional and it was obvious I was always going to kill him.

While relatively minor, I really liked Sean and, as I read somewhere, he feels like an apology for Irish in RDR. Compared to that lazy stereotype, Sean is a proper Dub.

Finally, Arthur's TB was a surprise and was a really interesting move by the developers. Especially since I assumed he was just going to die in a straightforward gunfight like John in RDR1
In short very enjoyable but also very long.
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ReprobateGamer
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by ReprobateGamer »

Jan - Lego Marvel Avengers
Jan - Titanfall 2
Feb - Oxenfree
March - Gorogoa
April - Resident Evil 2 Remake (XONE) - Leon A

After a slow start to the year, I've had a pretty good weekend for completions:

April 26th - RE2 REmake (Xone) - Claire 2nd Run

It had to follow of course.

Ultimately, I've decided that I do like this game, that it is good, that my nostalgia for the previous game IS influencing my choice but I don't think I care.

There are things I don't like - the score just doesn't work for me (though again still not played with headphones) and it's rare I hear it. I'm going to mess with the balance of sound effects to music when I run completions on my profile rather than my wife's and see if I can actually hear more than a few random notes
Mr X is vastly overused; the reuse of entire gameplay elements from one version to another is a little lazy (this was a major plus point in the original) but each scenario is a little more cohesive in it's presentation rather than the slight air of 'throw stuff in and see what sticks'.
The game references lore from all over the RE universe (RE:Zero, Gun Survivor, Veronica for sure) which is a plus for me and the true ending reminded me that this series traditionally does a happy ending more often than not - bittersweet of course when you know what the next 19 years are going to bring to our protagonists ...

April 28th - Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 (Xone) - story

This completion goes on my youngest' account.
I have no real interest in getting the 100% for this or even just the story on my account - I found the setting was dull and there just wasn't any spark. It's solid enough and there are 4 player modes which we may try but ultimately I didn't care what happened. Don't know if this is the move away from New York as the main hub area but also the voice acting was definitely below par for the most part (its made during the SAG strikes I believe) and it definitely suffers from not having top pick cast - there are some good voices in there but only a few. There are a few of the more obscure characters as well (at least to my skin deep Marvel knowledge), some of which have bleed into level designs that are pretty formulaic.
I can't recommend this one to fans of either Lego or Marvel, unless you have already plumbed the depths of earlier games


April 29th - holedown - Android

Picked this up about a week ago on a whim (though it was mentioned in a thread on Android Games), just hit the black hole level and I'm pretty certain that this will be the point it gets deleted from the phone. It's a block-busting ball game at heart, with the skin of a deep space miner.
Enjoyable for sure but I think I'd like to see more goal based targets at this point rather than just an endless score attack

So a good weekend for completions but not necessary a weekend of games I found good ...
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Flabyo
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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Flabyo wrote: March 30th, 2019, 11:54 pm 5th Jan - Rise of the Tomb Raider (XBO)
1st Feb - Doom (2016) (XBO)
20th Feb - Crackdown 3: Campaign (XBO)
25th Mar - Bound (PS4)
30th Mar - Shadow of the Tomb Raider (XBO)
29th April - Mortal Kombat 11 Story Mode (PS4)

That was pretty good. A more interesting story than MKX had, but not quite as fun as the one in MK9. The presentation levels are through the roof here though, they’ve pretty much nailed the cinematography aspects now.
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MajorGamer
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by MajorGamer »

Chopper wrote: April 28th, 2019, 7:02 am MajorGamer, absolutely no offence intended but I’d love to hear your approach to selecting the games you play, as they often seem terrible :lol:

Are you purely operating on a backlog-based system, or do you just prefer exploring off the beaten path, with the ups and downs that come along with that approach? Genuinely curious.
In terms of selecting what ones to buy, I see what looks interesting to me and wishlist it on Steam to buy during one of their sales. When the sales come, I look at the game reviews for a closer look (unfortunately many lack any meaningful review) and go from there. I've been much more discerning over the last year. Nearly 100 games were removed from my wishlist in December. Many of the really bad ones now I got 2 years or so ago. As for what games I select to play, I almost always use backloggery's fortune cookie feature (picks a game via RNG).

Exploring off the beaten path can have some nice surprises. Has-Been Heroes is a good recent-ish example as it reviewed not so great but I really enjoyed it or the ReThink series which has made for some nice little puzzle games. It's how I ran into the likes of Spelunky and Cave Story before being remade for Steam or finding Matt Thorson's freeware stuff. Then there is the other side where I ran into a game last year that I'm pretty sure is impossible to beat. Essentially Super Monkey Ball (that's how it caught my attention) but a certain level didn't seem possible. I looked at the achievements and half the worlds were at 0% across all players.
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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Scrustle »

Spoiler: show
25/01 - Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
31/01 - Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas
01/02 - SOMA (Safe Mode)
09/02 - Shadow Warrior
18/02 - Mulaka
26/02 - NieR: Automata - 3C3C1D119440927 DLC
02/03 - Race Driver: GRID
04/03 - Bladed Fury
10/03 - Devil May Cry 5 (Devil Hunter)
13/03 - AER: Memories of Old
17/03 - Devil May Cry 5 (Son of Sparda)
20/03 - Devil May Cry 5 (Human)
05/04 - God of War III Remastered
12/04 - Devil May Cry 5 (Dante Must Die)
14/04 - Journey
15/04 - ABZU
22/04 - Journey
28/04 - Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - Colonies Edition
30/04 - Dangerous Driving

Sadly, a complete and total mess of a game. It started off pretty well, making a good first impression. But as time went on it just got worse and worse until it passed a point of forgiveness, and still kept plummeting. When I started I thought I would be in the same area as the more positive reviews, but my feelings on the game gradually dragged down as time went on until now where I think I'm probably more negative on it than pretty much all the reviews out there. Like at first I thought maybe people were being too harsh, expecting this to literally be Burnout 4 in all but name, and being too critical on the soundtrack issue, since the game does clearly want you to play with your own music. But the problems go so much deeper than that. It would be fine if the game was just a bit rough and light on content, but instead it's a failure in so many ways that it is next to unplayable.

While the cars feel nice and grippy when steering normally, drifting feels awful. It's something required to do to make a lot of the hairpins, so it's not like you can avoid using it. But it feels really stodgy and unreliable. It's very inconsistent in initiation, sometimes taking a while to register, or sometimes not at all, meaning that you have very little control over where your car is pointing and when you turn in to a corner. It isn't so noticeable in the slower cars as they give you more time to turn, but once you reach near the end of the game, getting around a corner feels more like wishful thinking than actual skill. It also just doesn't look very cool. The car doesn't pull a satisfying angle and instead sits in this vague spot where it can be hard to tell if you're even drifting or not.

The game has a serious visibility problem too, with many of the glaring lighting effects getting in your face all the time that you can't see anything in front of you. On top of that the way the camera zooms out to an extreme level when boosting also makes things hard to make out, and the course design itself is pretty visually bland and indistinct, making it very unclear when corners are coming up sometimes, or even which direction they're going. Not to mention how none of the tracks have any real character.

Traffic is often placed in a way that feels completely random and very unfair. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to it, and is frequently placed in such a way that it is impossible to have seen before you hit it. It's also not rare for traffic cars to skip about, teleporting around when you get close to them. Which is also a lot of fun to avoid. Sometimes they drive on the wrong side of the road as well.

The physics are totally broken. Your car frequently gets snagged on little things, or sometimes nothing at all, sending it flying off the road through no fault of your own. Colliding with other racers is another lottery of whether the game is going to screw you or not. On some level it does feel satisfyingly like the old Burnout games, when it works. But far too often you get thrown around in a way that has no logic to it, and that you can't do anything to mitigate. When you get in to the faster cars, hitting opponents from behind becomes suicide as well, as the physics engine more often than not totally freaks out as it wedges you under them.

I also really don't like the persistent wrecks feature in this game. It makes races much more annoying the longer they go on, having the track littered with the remains of previous crashes. Not only are they also annoyingly hard to spot, they tend to build up in the trickier parts of a track. So when a corner is already hard to get through, it quickly becomes a massive roadblock of smoking wreckage that you can't avoid crashing in to every time, just making the problem worse in the process. One time I also hit one as it spawned in mid-air while I was going over a jump. Like it spawned on the same frame, at the very same spot in the sky where I happened to be at the time.

There was also this one event where there's a corner that is literally too tight for you turn around. And when you respawn after inevitably crashing, it places you too close to the wall for you to turn away again before crashing, so you get stuck in an endless respawn loop unable to do anything. It also moves your car forward a little bit on every respawn, so eventually you're spawning behind the wall repeatedly.

The game has a few performance problems too. I was playing on PS4 Pro, where the game is supposed to run at 60fps. It does mostly, but there are parts on certain tracks where the frame rate just tanks and makes it really hard to control the game and see what the hell is going on. There's also frequent stuttering when you're driving through the tunnels on some of the larger tracks that move between different biomes. I have no idea how anyone can play this on the base consoles at 30fps. It is just way too fast for that.

So yeah, a real disappointment in the end, that I gradually disliked more and more as time went on. I'm not entirely sure why I even finished it. I almost rage-quit a few times. I guess I felt like it was only a short game, so it wouldn't go on for so long. And that I had kind of an obligation to see this through as a big fan of the old Burnout games. Also perhaps a bit of morbid curiosity to see how bad it could get. The game did get a chuckle out of me a few times when the sheer level of jank became comically absurd. But I would never recommend this game to anyone, Burnout fan or not. It's probably the most broken game I've ever paid money for. The only thing that compares is perhaps the original Two Worlds, but this game breaks far more frequently than that did.
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Simonsloth
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Simonsloth »

Simonsloth wrote: April 1st, 2019, 8:44 pm
Spoiler: show
January:
Tale of Tales Collection
Virginia
Gravity Rush 2
Nier Automata

Feb:
Wolfenstein 2
Prey (2006)
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Aladdin SNES
Aladdin Mega Drive
Donkey Kong

March:
Donkey King Country
Pilotwings
Dino crisis
Pony Island
Ape Escape
Donkey Kong country 2
Donkey Kong Country 3
Monkey Island 2

April:
DK 94
Inside (PS4)
Pony island
Shovel Knight plague of shadows
Dk64
30/04
Banjo Kazooie

Now that’s how you do it! I cannot believe this is the same studio as DK64 as it’s light years ahead in every department. I was tearing my hair out a little with the quiz at the end but some nail biting guesses and risk taking saw me through. Was quite exhilarating.
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Chopper
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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MajorGamer wrote: April 30th, 2019, 8:09 am In terms of selecting what ones to buy, I see what looks interesting to me and wishlist it on Steam to buy during one of their sales. When the sales come, I look at the game reviews for a closer look (unfortunately many lack any meaningful review) and go from there. I've been much more discerning over the last year. Nearly 100 games were removed from my wishlist in December. Many of the really bad ones now I got 2 years or so ago. As for what games I select to play, I almost always use backloggery's fortune cookie feature (picks a game via RNG).
Great explanation, thanks for taking the time! I couldn't discern any pattern at all, and a lot of them weren't great games (in your own words) so that makes sense.

I barely read reviews any more (mostly after I've finished the game) - the way I choose games now is based off feel, but is also largely as a result of reading comment sections/forums. I'm fairly selective but still end up with backlog 'lifers' due to overenthusiasm. I can see how the RNG thing would affect that :)
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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Scrustle wrote: April 30th, 2019, 2:31 pm 30/04 - Dangerous Driving

Sadly, a complete and total mess of a game. [...]
Disheartening, isn't it? I guess the arcade racing sub-genre is more or less dead now... :(
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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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KSubzero1000 wrote: May 1st, 2019, 7:34 am
Scrustle wrote: April 30th, 2019, 2:31 pm 30/04 - Dangerous Driving

Sadly, a complete and total mess of a game. [...]
Disheartening, isn't it? I guess the arcade racing sub-genre is more or less dead now... :(
It's been dead for a long time already. This game was the closest thing to a gasp of life it has had in years. For that, I can't really hate it. At least they tried. No one else wanted to. They just couldn't stick the landing at all. Maybe it just wasn't possible in the first place, with such a small team of developers with so few resources to work with. 3D racing games in general are extremely rare in the indie scene to begin with. It seems getting the handling and physics right is a pretty hard task. Maybe one day they will get enough cash to bulk up their team and actually get the time they need to make a decent game.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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Scrustle wrote: May 1st, 2019, 8:29 am It's been dead for a long time already. This game was the closest thing to a gasp of life it has had in years.
You know what I'm kinda worried about? That it might retroactively hurt Burnout's legacy. That a lot of people who haven't played any real Burnout game in 10+ years dipped into this one then quickly concluded that the old games probably weren't as good as they remembered them, which might make it even more difficult to get future projects off the ground.
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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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KSubzero1000 wrote: May 1st, 2019, 9:28 am You know what I'm kinda worried about? That it might retroactively hurt Burnout's legacy. That a lot of people who haven't played any real Burnout game in 10+ years dipped into this one then quickly concluded that the old games probably weren't as good as they remembered them, which might make it even more difficult to get future projects off the ground.
That's not something that particularly worries me. The likelihood of future Burnout projects was already next to zero anyway. EA has obviously been very uninterested in it for ages. Ever since they put the series on ice and moved Criterion over to NFS they've probably been very reluctant to revive Burnout. It's probably very hard for them to be any less likely to do that now than they already have been. There's also the existence of Paradise Remastered coming out fairly recently too. Even though I don't really have confidence that means they're giving the series another chance, if they were to do so, they would be using that to test the waters more than looking at another studio's output. People seemed more positive on that, but it also didn't really make much of an impact either, so I guess that's another false start. But I'm also not really keen on the idea of EA bringing back the series anyway these day. Don't trust them in the slightest to not ruin it. And besides, Criterion isn't what it used to be. I heard the studio that made that remaster is made of ex-Criterion people, so maybe they could do it, but they'd still be missing the people from Three Fields. I doubt either they or EA are keen on working with each other these days.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by ratsoalbion »

Another chance to share this interview I did with Iain Angus in 2014: https://caneandrinse.com/iain-angus-bur ... interview/

He didn’t predict Paradise Remastered though...
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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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ratsoalbion wrote: May 1st, 2019, 11:20 am Another chance to share this interview I did with Iain Angus in 2014: https://caneandrinse.com/iain-angus-bur ... interview/

He didn’t predict Paradise Remastered though...
Ah yes I remember that interview. Good stuff. Reading through it again it's interesting he mentions a big barrier to doing remasters is having to deal with obsolete tools. I have heard that Criterion's old Renderware engine was a pain to work with. Or at least it was for other developers who licensed it out. Perhaps the team who did the Paradise remaster were in a uniquely lucky situation in that they worked on the original and were probably the only people able to go back to it and understand it.
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Flabyo
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Re: Games Completed 2019

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Most of EAs Surrey studios (not just Criterion, but the one in Chertsey that did the Harry Potter games etc...) have long since scattered their staff to the winds.

You couldn’t easily get them all in the same place to do anything now, they all work on other things in other places. You’d have more chance of trying to reassemble the Fable team, and that would be pretty hard as it is given most of the senior people from that team are all doing pretty cool things in their own right now.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Simonsloth »

Flabyo wrote: May 1st, 2019, 1:50 pm Most of EAs Surrey studios (not just Criterion, but the one in Chertsey that did the Harry Potter games etc...) have long since scattered their staff to the winds.

You couldn’t easily get them all in the same place to do anything now, they all work on other things in other places. You’d have more chance of trying to reassemble the Fable team, and that would be pretty hard as it is given most of the senior people from that team are all doing pretty cool things in their own right now.
Those were the days. My dad’s best friend (who used to do marketing for Silica shop) used to work at EA Chertsey. I used to play games before release: dungeon keeper, the sims.....tomorrow never dies etc or get them for a tenner at worst. It was a shame it shut down as my stream of EA games dried up. Although these days FIFA is about all I would get from him if he were still there.
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Indiana747 »

(Jan) Starlink :Battle for Atlas - PS4.
(Jan) Far Cry 5 - PS4.
(Jan) Resident Evil 2(2019) - PS4.
(Jan) Shadow of the Tomb Raider - XB1X.
(Feb) Metro Exodus - XB1X.
(Mar) Marvel's Spiderman - PS4.
(Apr) The Division 2 - XB1X.
(Apr) Dead Rising 3 - XB1X.
(Apr) World War Z - XB1X.
(Apr) Earthfall: Invasion - XB1X.
(May) RYSE: Son of Rome - XB1X.
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ColinAlonso
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by ColinAlonso »

Spoiler: show
Jan 16 - Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PS4)
Jan 20 - FTL: Faster Than Light (PC) (Easy)
Jan 25 - Final Fantasy VIII (PSVita - PS1 Classic)
Jan 27 - Puzzle Bobble (Switch) (Difficulty Level 4 - One credit)
Feb 3 - Metal Slug 3 (PS4 - PS2 anthology version on Easy)
Feb 8 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (Switch)(Vs Computer mode - Normal)
Feb 12 - Puzzle Bobble 2 (Switch)(Puzzle mode - One credit)
Feb 20 - Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (3DS - DS cart)
Feb 21 - Super Smash Bros Ultimate (Switch) (World of Light)
Mar 3 - Ristar (JP version) (PC)
Mar 22 - Wargroove (Switch)
Mar 31 - River City Ransom (Switch - NES rom)
Apr 2 - Donkey Kong '94 (3DS - VC)
Apr 20 - Super Dodge Ball (Switch - NES rom)
Apr 28 - Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)
May 2 - Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (Switch)

*sigh*. I should like this more than I do. Its got some good level ideas and looks and sounds great yet I never felt fully comfortable playing it. I never got the hang of DK himself. I think the main thing is that I could never judge his roll, which is an important part of his moveset. While I can get out of it I'd still find myself stupidly rolling over ledges. Since the roll has a maximum distance, if two enemies were near each other I'd roll through the first and end my roll right in front of the next one and get hit.

I was never 100% with his jump either, I was nearly there though. I think this is due to how often I had Dixie with me, making jumps a lot easier and therefore harder when it was just DK.

The game is hard. That's actually ok. However the bosses are too long. Each boss has about three different phases. Trying to remember and execute the dodge and attack patterns and going back to the start when you die turns them into slogs.

Multiple moves shouldn't be tied to the same button like this. Sometimes I'd roll when I wanted to ground pound.

I know I'm being negative but I feel I was so close to playing a really good platformer. It just suffered from a few issues which stopped it reaching the high expectations I had.

I played it in handheld mode (on commute usually) and I have never felt a stronger need for a d-pad on the Switch. I could never fully decide if I was going to use the stick or buttons. This may have impacted my enjoyment of the game.

May 2 - Aladdin SNES (PC emulation)

I have some memories of the MD version but never played this. I got the hang of Al flipping and bouncing off enemies and bouncing and swinging off parts of the level quickly enough (it takes a bit of work at the start though). The game is fairly easy. Its graphics are pretty enough but unspectacular. The music takes two songs from the movie (Friend Like Me and Whole New World, that I remember anyway) and had one other stand out track to me, mostly because I think it sounds like an early Final Fantasy (3-5) dungeon theme.



It adapts the locales of the movie closely until it goes completely off piste with the genie and pyramid levels.

All in all it was a nice little hour or so of fun that I didn't quite expect to have when I started.
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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Scrustle »

Spoiler: show
25/01 - Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
31/01 - Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas
01/02 - SOMA (Safe Mode)
09/02 - Shadow Warrior
18/02 - Mulaka
26/02 - NieR: Automata - 3C3C1D119440927 DLC
02/03 - Race Driver: GRID
04/03 - Bladed Fury
10/03 - Devil May Cry 5 (Devil Hunter)
13/03 - AER: Memories of Old
17/03 - Devil May Cry 5 (Son of Sparda)
20/03 - Devil May Cry 5 (Human)
05/04 - God of War III Remastered
12/04 - Devil May Cry 5 (Dante Must Die)
14/04 - Journey
15/04 - ABZU
22/04 - Journey
28/04 - Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - Colonies Edition
30/04 - Dangerous Driving
02/05 - Final Fantasy XV - Episode Gladiolus/Episode Prompto/Episode Ignis

Finally got around to these DLC chapters. Still got Episode Ardyn to do at some point, but that feels more like an outlier compared to these, which were always meant to be closer companion pieces. Overall I think they start off pretty poorly, but get better as they go along, and end on a pretty high note. So in that sense they feel right played together as well. If I was buying/playing these piecemeal as they came out I might have been a bit disappointed in them. So, a few words on each.

Episode Gladiolus:
This one is pretty mediocre and lacking in substance. It's just a single short dungeon that is completely linear and gives you no room to explore. The lacking attempt at a story is nothing more than beating some ancient spirit to prove you have the power to defend Noctis, which was never something that felt like it had any relevance to anything else in the game. It was however quite a pretty looking dungeon, having you move through a series of caves that poke out on to a cliffside of a huge canyon, along with some impressively fantastical looking rock formations. Time passes as you progress too, giving you some really nice sunset lighting at the finale. I suppose you could say there's also some fun in it if you enjoy the combat of this game, since it focuses on pretty much exclusively on that. I do personally enjoy it, but I can see why for a lot of people it doesn't really cut it. On top of that, you only get access to Gladio's big sword, which is pretty sluggish and unwieldy. Not the most fun weapon type to use in the game. Overall, inoffensive, but not really especially appealing. And with how arbitrary and pointless it feels, it fits the really unsubtle way Gladio just leaves the party in the main game for this side-chapter.

Episode Prompto:
This one was quite a lot more ambitious when it came to gameplay. This time it's focused almost entirely on ranged weapons, which feel nothing like any of the normal weapons you get to use in the base game. Yet at the same time the way they do it feels very appropriate. If you imagine what the game does to a traditional hack-and-slash control scheme, this DLC applies that same logic to a third-person shooter control scheme. It's very odd. It more or less works, although it's definitely not giving the likes of Vanquish a run for its money. It has some novelty value though I suppose. In addition to that, this one is semi-open world for the second half of it. You get to explore a large snowy mountainous area on a snowmobile. The problem is, there's pretty much no reason to do so. There's nothing in it. You have some "side-quests" you can do, which seem to consist of just random battles that show up periodically. But they just look like fights with basic enemies, and reward you with upgrades for your snowmobile, which seems totally pointless. There's no need.

That said, it does have a couple of interesting narrative bits. Aranea shows up for this one, and seeing her interact with Prompto is pretty fun. They also dig in to Prompto's back story a bit more, which was interesting. Nothing new gets revealed, but they explore his feelings about wanting to be accepted and worthy to Noctis and co. The DLC also ends with an insane set piece of a boss fight that has a really weird twist to it. So spoilers ahead if you don't want to know, but honestly I don't think explaining this one thing ruins anything major. You sit on the back of the snowmobile in a turret section, where you are chased by a colossal robotic worm that is possessed by the demonic spirit of the head weapons researcher of the evil empire's army. Yeah. In general though I'd say this one had a few interesting bits, but still wasn't amazing. I enjoyed the narrative bits I mentioned, but that only makes up a very small part of the run-time. Combat was somewhat interesting for being so different, but I still prefer using swords, etc.

Episode Ignis:
This one was actually quite impressive. All these DLCs were only about 2 hours long, yet in that short time, this one managed to pack a lot of cool stuff in. It takes place towards the end of the Altissia section of the main game, so you are back in that setting here. Except now you have way more mobility options, giving you a grappling hook to zip up to rooftops, letting you run around basically anywhere. It's really impressive given how fiddly it was to navigate that place before. It also has this system where you can defend certain districts of the city from attack, helping turn the tide of the battle that was just in the background in the base game. It also goes some way to help fulfil the promise of what was shown in one of the earlier trailers of the game, where they showed this same battle, with Noctis jumping around rooftops and stuff, participating much more than you ever get to do in the final product. It's not exactly the same, but it's something. Ignis' daggers are also easily the most fun combat style of all the DLCs too. Much faster and responsive than Gladio, and just more involving and cool than Prompto. Having different elemental magic that changes how your attacks work beyond applying different damage types is cool as well. Although I'm not sure on his weird counter attack thing. It seems like you need to get hit to even get a chance to do it, but it's impossible to predict and the timing on it is strict.

Story-wise it has a few really cool moments. Seeing the reason for the big change Ignis goes through for the second half of the main game is pretty satisfying, and it delves in to his feelings of duty towards Noct in a way that was pretty well done. There's even a scene at the very end with the two talking that was actually quite moving. They also add something in that adds some extra dramatic weight to their relationship in the game proper. It definitely manages much better than the other two DLCs on the narrative front. That would have been enough in itself, but then it goes and tops itself by having an alternate ending. While this wasn't as good a story as the main ending, it does go down some interesting roads. It gives you a little bit more insight in to Ardyn, and explores Ignis' devotion to Noct in a different way as well. It's an entertaining "what if" scenario, that adds a little extra flavour to the DLC and was a nice surprise to see them go the extra mile on this when they didn't need to.

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As is probably clear Episode Ignis was my favourite overall, and I would say it's well worth trying out. Gladio can be skipped and you would miss nothing. Prompto is okay, but not necessary. Doesn't add anything meaningful outside of novelty. But Ignis is pretty cool and actually adds something that feels worthwhile.
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Chopper
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Re: Games Completed 2019

Post by Chopper »

Scrustle wrote: May 3rd, 2019, 12:18 am
Episode Gladiolus:
Don't knock it too much, sounds like it could become a perennial favourite.

I'll get my coat.
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