- Spoiler: show
- Max empathy is kind of vague, even the achievement hunters haven’t yet nailed the exact things that guarantee it. But it seems you need to save everyone you can, and not hide things from people (you find out how much of a horrible person Morgan was, you have to own up to that when the opportunity presents itself)
The final scene with the grand reveal of what really happened should have given you some hints from what was said about what you might’ve missed.
There are a couple of non-standard game overs that are fun as well, such as just using the escape pod and screwing everyone over
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Games Completed 2019
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Flabyo
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Re: Games Completed 2019
@simon
- Spoiler: show
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Simonsloth
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- Location: London
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Flabyo
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- Location: Guildford
Re: Games Completed 2019
- Spoiler: show
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ReprobateGamer
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Re: Games Completed 2019
- Spoiler: show
Completed the campaign last night. It remains a by the numbers retelling of a Gears story down to the enemy antagonist that is killed without any of their back story being revealed. The final chapter was a welcome diversion to the rest (though I'm not surprised that somehow Gears of War turned a mech fight into a cover shooter).
I'm looking forward to seeing what the Coalition do with the next one as they certainly proved capable but it wasn't a stretch.
Haven't yet tried any of the multiplayer but I've never been much of a Gears player outside of campaign runs so without buddies to go in with, I'm not tempted to go in (fun though Horde mode is)
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Alex79
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- Location: Walsall, UK.
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Re: Games Completed 2019
JUL - Windjammers (Arcade Mode) (PS Vita)Alex79uk wrote: January 20th, 2019, 5:10 pmJAN - Super Mario Land (Nintendo Gameboy)
JAN - Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (Megadrive on PS4)
FEB - Professor Layton & The Curious Village (Android)
FEB - Donkey Kong '94 (Nintendo Gameboy)
FEB - Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
FEB - Chuchel (Android)
FEB - Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)
MAR - Spider-Man (PS4)
MAR - Florence (Android)
MAR - Where On Google Earth Is Carmen Sandiego (Browser)
MAR - Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (PS4)
MAR - Final Fantasy X (PS Vita)
MAY - Söldner-X 2 (PS Vita)
MAY - Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4)
MAY - The Punisher (Arcade on PS Vita)
JUN - Super Mario Bros. (NES on Switch)
JUN - Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PS4)
Heard people go on about this game for years, equating it more to a fighting game than a sports title, but I'm not sure I'd go that far considering the very limited move set on each character. It's fun though, but not sure I'll go back to it much. Bet it would be a lot more fun against humans in couch multiplayer though.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Games Completed 2019
It’s all about the multiplayer.
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duskvstweak
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- Location: North Carolina
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Re: Games Completed 2019
- Spoiler: show
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ColinAlonso
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- Location: Dublin
Re: Games Completed 2019
- Spoiler: show
I'll get this out of the way first, while not essential, playing A Bird Story before this is highly recommended. Also it may be the only game I've played where the main character is called Colin
(even if we don't find that out until FP).It didn't have as much of an emotional impact for me as To The Moon. That was quite a singular story about one man's life. This one deals a bit more with the nature of the doctors' work as well as their patient's life. Still, I found it very interesting and am fully on board for a future Episode 3 in the series.
I also added a Tetris Effect Expert clear to the list.
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James
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Re: Games Completed 2019
- Spoiler: show
Had this game for ages and just hadn't found the time to play it. The gamepad controls were bugging out badly, and I'm so out of practice with mouse & keys that it took me a good 15 minutes to settle in to playing it. Thankfully, settle in I did, and before I knew it I was caught up in cleaning Gabriel's apartment and the revolution going on outside it.
I have a lot of time for Tale Of Tales' games, and Sunset further justified that faith. A slow, deliberate game, and one I'm sure I'll be mulling over for a long time to come.
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seansthomas
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- Joined: March 31st, 2015, 8:10 am
Re: Games Completed 2019
1st February - Dark Souls
8th February - The Gardens Between
9th February - Quarantine Circular
20th February - Night in the woods
26th March - Ape Out
16th June - Brothers
25th June - My Friend Pedro
7th July - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Looking forward to listening to the show of this one. Fascinating game which I had even more appreciation of after I watched the Featurette extra.
Left me feeling uneasy, challenged (mentally and gameplay wise), sympathetic, confused and exhausted - often all at once.
Senua is acted incredibly well and the plot did a great job of never being explicit but heavily helping me figure out what I was supposed to feel.
Puzzles and platforming were decent if a bit unmemorable, though I loved having to reforge bits of the environment through focusing in the right areas. That was a very smart analogy.
Combat was pretty tough at times but I grew to love it. Liked the sense of a constant uphill battle which even begins by not telling you the controls. I wonder if that decaying arm mechanic that warned me of limited deaths would have ever played out...?
Very smart port too. Switches between high res rendered cut scenes into action seamlessly. Generally looked stunning on the Switch. Only thing that gave it away at times was the character model herself feeling a bit blurrier and discoloured compared to the environment.
Ninja Theory did a great job here. I enjoyed Enslaved a lot but kudos for taking this on and pulling it off so well. Not sure I see myself replaying it any time soon but I'm so glad I bought and experienced it.
8th February - The Gardens Between
9th February - Quarantine Circular
20th February - Night in the woods
26th March - Ape Out
16th June - Brothers
25th June - My Friend Pedro
7th July - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Looking forward to listening to the show of this one. Fascinating game which I had even more appreciation of after I watched the Featurette extra.
Left me feeling uneasy, challenged (mentally and gameplay wise), sympathetic, confused and exhausted - often all at once.
Senua is acted incredibly well and the plot did a great job of never being explicit but heavily helping me figure out what I was supposed to feel.
Puzzles and platforming were decent if a bit unmemorable, though I loved having to reforge bits of the environment through focusing in the right areas. That was a very smart analogy.
Combat was pretty tough at times but I grew to love it. Liked the sense of a constant uphill battle which even begins by not telling you the controls. I wonder if that decaying arm mechanic that warned me of limited deaths would have ever played out...?
Very smart port too. Switches between high res rendered cut scenes into action seamlessly. Generally looked stunning on the Switch. Only thing that gave it away at times was the character model herself feeling a bit blurrier and discoloured compared to the environment.
Ninja Theory did a great job here. I enjoyed Enslaved a lot but kudos for taking this on and pulling it off so well. Not sure I see myself replaying it any time soon but I'm so glad I bought and experienced it.
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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2019
- Spoiler: show
This was a moderately fun time, but it's not going to impress anyone as an example of the genre. It's one of those B-tier platformers from the PS2 era that was very derivative of what Sony were putting out at the time, with a lack of polish and stiff simplistic controls. My thoughts in general haven't changed much from this post here but I do have a few things to add. While most of levels are pretty short, some of them do start getting a bit longer towards the end of the game. Still pretty linear, but are a much bigger time investment than the usual bit-sized stage. There's also a bunch of levels where you pilot mechs or vehicles. They're pretty one-note, but inoffensive. It feels fun to be powerful in a mech and tear your way through enemies, but you're basically just mashing the punch button over and over thoughtlessly. Although, you could say the same thing about the usual combat with boomerangs. At least there you have a lot of variety in your tools.
While I like this game, I think I prefer the original. Pretty much the biggest draw to these games is the Australian theming of everything, and that was done better in the first. You got to see a lot of cartoon-ified versions of lots of diverse areas you might see in the Australian countryside. It felt like they put real care in trying to represent the continent, at least as a caricature. Here though it feels like more of an afterthought. It still has that Australian feel to it, but it doesn't feel like they were trying as hard to really make it a focal point of the game. The way the world and levels are constructed feels like it's taken a step down in production value too. Level design feels really straightforward and like there wasn't much inspiration behind it, and everything feels a bit flat, both metaphorically and literally. But I do at least like the idea of being able to drive around the overworld, making it feel like a more cohesive whole than a bunch of isolated levels. It's just in practice the old method worked better.
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MajorGamer
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- Joined: October 14th, 2016, 6:33 am
- Location: Toronto, Canada
Re: Games Completed 2019
- Spoiler: show
A platformer with a season changing gimmick. Each level (only 8 total with 4 bosses) is set in one of the four seasons and you can switch the season (it is a set one per level) which will change some of the obstacles on screen. It really doesn't amount to too much, mostly just changing the season to get whatever it is out of the way and then switching back. It does look great, though.
You mostly attack with a crossbow and my problem with it is how over animated it is. You can very easily be locked into the animation of putting the crossbow away after your attack and proceed to take a hit because of it. There are also collectibles to be found that could have been done much better. For one, some require attacks you only get after a boss which forces needless back tracking to get everything. For another, some are incredibly obnoxious to get. This is because some only appear after you land on the platform it would be on so you need to walk over every platform just to be sure nothing randomly pops up.
Jul 4 - Battle Princess Madelyn (Switch)
This is a game of two halves. It has an Arcade mode and a Story mode. Both have entirely different levels to them and systems. Arcade mode plays like Ghouls n Ghosts except all armor/weapons are random drops from enemies. There are also lots of blind jumps because the camera isn't great. It needed to be zoomed out a bit more or let you see more things below you. Story mode has quests to get your weapons where you can switch between them at will once obtained and a blacksmith where you upgrade your armor. Blind jumps are still here but this mode has a map that you can open to see them off-screen so it isn't as bad. Story mode also has poor loading times which is very weird since Arcade mode has none. Both modes have the same life system. It costs magic to revive and simply killing enemies recharges your magic. It is as abusable as it sounds like. Bosses only have two attacks each and way too much life so they honestly become boring.
I think they really needed to focus on one mode to iron out the kinks in it instead of having two sub-par modes.
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Sinclair Gregstrum
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Re: Games Completed 2019
Jan - Streets Of Rage 2 - (Switch)
Jan - Detroit: Become Human (PS4 Pro)
Feb - Quarantine Circular (Switch)
Feb - Yoku’s Island Express (Switch)
Feb - Shenmue (PS4 Pro)
Mar - Rise of the Tomb Raider (XOX)
Apr - Gunstar Heroes (Switch)
May - Street Fighter 5 (PS4 Pro)
Jun - The Division 2 – (XOX)
A ‘game as a service’ that’s content-packed, with strong gameplay, deep systems, beautiful visuals, and rock solid performance. And it’s been that way since launch (bar the odd minor technical niggle early doors).
It can be done!
Also if you’re not really in to the whole ‘game as a service’ thing, there’s so much in The Division 2 before you hit the grind that it’s easily worth the price of entry regardless of if never pick it up again after the main campaign is done. I’ve played through to the level cap of 30 with a friend of mine, basically treating it like a co-op open world third person shooter. It took around 35 hours and we could easily have stretched it to 40 – 45 if we’d exhaustively done everything before we popped the final mission.
A very good game indeed!
Jan - Detroit: Become Human (PS4 Pro)
Feb - Quarantine Circular (Switch)
Feb - Yoku’s Island Express (Switch)
Feb - Shenmue (PS4 Pro)
Mar - Rise of the Tomb Raider (XOX)
Apr - Gunstar Heroes (Switch)
May - Street Fighter 5 (PS4 Pro)
Jun - The Division 2 – (XOX)
A ‘game as a service’ that’s content-packed, with strong gameplay, deep systems, beautiful visuals, and rock solid performance. And it’s been that way since launch (bar the odd minor technical niggle early doors).
It can be done!
Also if you’re not really in to the whole ‘game as a service’ thing, there’s so much in The Division 2 before you hit the grind that it’s easily worth the price of entry regardless of if never pick it up again after the main campaign is done. I’ve played through to the level cap of 30 with a friend of mine, basically treating it like a co-op open world third person shooter. It took around 35 hours and we could easily have stretched it to 40 – 45 if we’d exhaustively done everything before we popped the final mission.
A very good game indeed!
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Sinclair Gregstrum
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Re: Games Completed 2019
Also shout-out to Scrustle for going back to Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2. You win the award for most random game completion of 2019! I would bet decent money that you were literally the only person on the planet playing that game at the time you were!
The fact that you only 'moderately enjoyed' it, just makes it all the more perfect. Please tell me you're playing Bug Too! next...
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James
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Re: Games Completed 2019
- Spoiler: show
Um, this isn't a game.
I know, a shocking statement coming from a defender of even the most mildly-interactive experience. I grabbed this freebie when we got a PSVR last year, and assumed it was along the lines of Spider-Man: Homecoming VR and other, similar VR tech demo/proof of concept things.
In actuality, Crow: The Legend is an animated short (about 15 minutes or so) from the director of Madagascar and starring John Legend, amongst some other notable names. Being in VR, it's a 360-degree video, but with no player involvement beyond pressing 'play' on the main menu and then looking around whilst the story plays out. Thought I'd mention it here because I do think it's worth checking out for anyone who has a VR headset (it's also on Oculus and Samsung Gear VR).
It's a retelling of a Native American legend, and could easily have been fleshed out into a feature-length film. The odd thing about making it a VR short, is that the artstyle and story would clearly also work very well for young kids, but they can't (or shouldn't) be using VR, as far as I'm aware.
Anyway, will drop this from my completed list going forward, but wanted to mention it.
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Scrustle
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Re: Games Completed 2019
- Spoiler: show
Carrying on from what I said here and here, in the end I think I ended up a bit more positive overall, but still those issues I had before linger. It actually does build on the mechanics more than the first game in a way that I do like. But unfortunately it seems to take quite a while until the game really comes in to its own. They do a lot right though, with the improvements to weapon and plasmid variety, and fleshing out the Little Sister system to make really good use of them. It's really fun to turn your tools towards a more defensive use from time to time. It gives you time to think to set up fun traps, and lots of tools to be creative with them. The problem is that through pretty much the whole game, you're actually quite fragile, so when you have a lot of enemies bearing down on you, it can feel pretty overwhelming, and having the inconsistent audio makes things even more confusing, and the weapon select wheel disappearing when you're trying to think of your next move doesn't help either. But by the last few levels, you're beefed up enough that you don't feel so weak, and you've fully fleshed out your arsenal too. The mechanics finally come together in a synthesis that feels right.
My feelings on the story are still along the same lines, perhaps closer to my opinions before this recent playthrough, instead of when I did those posts. Lamb is still a boring villain that pales in comparison to Ryan, who lacks any concrete ideology despite the story treating her as if she's an intellectual leader on his level. I was a little surprised to see that the major characters who you encounter through the game, whose fate you're supposed to decide, didn't play as big a role as I remembered. There's only three of them, and they don't feel like they are a representation of the level they preside over either, unlike the similar characters in the first game. With the exception of the last one I suppose. That moment still has some power. But I still appreciate that they give you a bit more of a nuanced presentation of them than in the first game. Although there were a few things about this game that raise a few questions in terms of canon. Not just the idea that Lamb is somehow a big player in this world that we somehow never heard of in the first game. I can overlook that to a degree by Ryan wanting to erase all memory of her. But there's other stuff that just doesn't add up, like inconsistencies in events in the timeline, or stuff that just seems somewhat far-fetched in general. It does make the game a bit hard to get invested in when it feels like there's stuff that shouldn't be possible in this world.
Audio and general technical problems were still a problem all the way through the game, but I think by the final level I finally managed to fix the audio stuff fairly well. As I was doing some digging to try to work out what this game's deal is, I found out that it's really terrible at memory management. The game doesn't give itself anywhere near enough memory budget to do what it's trying for some reason. So it probably wasn't that audio mod that was introducing glitches. In fact I uninstalled it at one point to try and get rid of that problem of stuff cutting out, which didn't work. So I had to do what I did to fix the game crashing after the intro cutscene, and went in to the .ini files to tweak memory limits for that. So in those final moments, the game finally had a decent balance to it and didn't cut out. I think the audio problems in general seem to vary from level to level too. Some had good ambient sound design without needing the mod at all. But even at its best, there were still a few problems, but these were just down to sound effects they decided to not put in the game, like the vending machines no longer having voice jingles, etc. While I think that with these tweaks, the sound design overall is pretty good, it still misses a few things the first game had. But it becomes more little niggles that are hardly worth mentioning, rather than the big problems that made the whole experience feel flat like before. Oh, and the shotgun sounds amazing. Maybe the best in any game I've played. Definitely the loudest, mod or no. It's ridiculous.
But even with all the audio stuff fixed, I still got a couple of visual bugs too. Mostly minor things, also hardly worth mentioning. But there was also a big problem with one of the later levels, where it just crashed over and over like the game did initially, even with the memory cap fix. I had to turn the texture detail down for that one, making the game look rather ugly in the process. Not sure what that was all about. A memory leak issue? Can that cause that? And could it affect only one level?
So, still a flawed sequel that tried some admirable things, but was a bit hit-and-miss with them. Generally I still really like it, but it can't beat the first game. It still stands up well as a good follow-up though. The PC version was a technical struggle. I sort of wish that I knew all this stuff about what the issues were and how to fix them before starting, instead of right at the end. I did look in to it early on, but these things are usually not straightforward. I've yet to play the Minerva's Den DLC, which I do plan to soon. It'll be interesting to play it so close to finishing the main game. Before I played it sort of out of the blue, but now I can see how it stacks up next to it.
EDIT: Thoughts on Minerva's Den here.
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Hunter30
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- Joined: January 25th, 2015, 4:43 pm
Re: Games Completed 2019
January - Tomb Raider: Underworld (PS3)
February - Lego The Lord of the Rings (PS3)
July - Dead Space (PS3)
February - Lego The Lord of the Rings (PS3)
July - Dead Space (PS3)
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Michiel K
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Re: Games Completed 2019
12-7 - Kickle Cubicle (NES)
What a fun little game. THEE (sort of) discovery of 2019 for me, so far. I've unlocked the extra expert levels and wrote the password down, so I'm still not done with this inventive arcade action puzzler.
What a fun little game. THEE (sort of) discovery of 2019 for me, so far. I've unlocked the extra expert levels and wrote the password down, so I'm still not done with this inventive arcade action puzzler.
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Flabyo
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- Joined: August 8th, 2013, 8:46 am
- Location: Guildford
Re: Games Completed 2019
12th July - Metro 2033 Redux (XBO)Flabyo wrote: May 28th, 2019, 10:55 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)
17th May - Middle Earth: Shadow of War (XBO)
25th May - Wolfenstein 2 (XBO)
28th May - Tacoma (XBO)
With all three metro games on gamepass now, and having never played any of them, figured it was about time...
This one was...ok. The remastering process can’t hide the fact the original was bound by the restrictions of the 360 somewhat, but what’s there is interesting enough. I think I managed to lose the plot thread a bit towards the end, it took a couple of leaps and I wasn’t sure why we were doing what we were doing.
Apparently I got the ‘good’ ending, which reading the requirements for on TrueAchievements is something of a miracle for a first playthrough.
I’ll take a break with something else, then it’s onto Last Light Redux.
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DomsBeard
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- Location: Doms Chin
Re: Games Completed 2019
Flabyo, I played 2033 at launch and had a choice of two options at the end. I chose the option that turned out to be non canon. I take it that is now the bad ending?