The games which you played out

Discuss, argue, whine, talk but not about Elma.

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anpdad
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by anpdad »

Got back in Dark Souls when the remaster came out and done a couple of basic challenge runs:
-SL1 pyromancer, mainly using pyromancies (duh);
-SL1 pyro, melee only, no estus, no casting;
-Deathless any%;
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Boomer »

anpdad, I want to try these type of games for teh first time, where start? Demon's Souls? or no need?
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

Frostpunk

Strategy is probably far from being my favourite genre, but enjoyed this tremendously anyway. Game design is 10/10, everything is beautiful and well-modelled; game mechanics are just complex enough to keep me intrigued throughout, but not overwhelming, and the atmosphere is fantastic! Amazing in-game tutorials as well - subtle and non-intrusive, but gradually introduce you to every mechanic in the game in a clear and easy-to-understand way, kudos devs! Probably the best strategy game I've played :)

Only complaint: countless crashes, mainly (if not only) when saving or loading games. Very frustrating at times, but it doesn't seem to be a hugely popular complaint, so maybe I'm just unlucky in some way.

Gave 8/10 on metacritic because of the crashes and other minor imperfections (borderline boring endgame, at times imperfectly balanced difficulty, etc.). Would've been ez 9/10 without the crashes :(
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

The Turing Test - 6/10 (9h for 100% completion)

In short, an aesthetically-pleasing puzzle game in a space environment with a fairly OK narrative.

However, it is a copy-cat of Portal to an embarrassing degree, with some elements from Watch_Dogs and other games. Very low on the innovativeness scale. The mechanics were introduced well though, so that it's fairly unlikely to not feel comfortable with them. The puzzles themselves were OK, but also pretty uneven. Most were very simple and short (some, even towards the end, made me go "what? already?), but now and then there was a really long and fairly difficult one. It felt like the progression wasn't smooth at all.

The story behind the gameplay, philosophical to a large extent, clearly had a lot of thought put into it, but ultimately felt rather shallow and disappointing, especially towards the end. The AI's main accusation of Ava Turing was that she's naive, and I couldn't agree more. The game is very pleasing visually too, with colourful lighting effects much to my liking, and a neat dynamic implementation of pupillary light reflex.

All in all, fairly entertaining for a few hours, if you're not in an overly demanding mood. I wouldn't say it's worth the full price though, considering you can get something like The Witcher 3 on sale for less.
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

Played through the HL series in late May & June:

Half-Life (1998) - 6/10
Half-Life: Opposing Force (1999) - 6/10
Half-Life: Blue Shift (2001) - 4/10
Half-Life 2 (2004) - 8/10
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (2005) - 7/10
Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006) - 8/10
Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007) - 8/10

Half-Life is aged as fuck, which is amazing given just 6 years until HL2. Played it mostly for the historical value and don't regret it, but at times was pretty draggy and obviously clunky as hell. Still, pretty well designed and still kinda enjoyable. Opposing Force was a great expansion pack, expanding a bit on the game mechanics and presenting another perspective on the story, totally worth it. Blue Shift was very meh though, despite being 2 years younger. Step back to HL in terms of game mechanics, and an excuse plot.

HL2 was WOW. Like, seriously, that game is 15 years old, compared to 21 for HL, but it feels more like 5 years vs 50. The progress they (or I guess the industry in general) made in those 6 years is just crazy. Vastly improved and expanded game mechanics, one of the most fun shooting experiences I've had in many years, really well-designed world and enemies etc, overall huge pleasure to play. What I didn't like, are the few things that prevented me from getting emotionally engaged in the story, such as mute Gordon, a few unnecessarily long vehicle-based chapters, and a rather poorly written story. I mean, half of the game revolves about rescuing the dad of some lass, who for whatever reason is madly in love with Gordon to the point of being annoying :P But still, a great shooter, and can totally see why it became a classic. The Episodes are equivalent in their standards imo, so all the above applies to them as well. I think there's a high chance that I'll replay HL+Eps in the future :)

HL2: Lost Coast is a mini-chapter displaying some technologies they developed. Only takes 20-30min or so, so I'd recommend playing it through.



Submerged (2015) - 4/10

A boating/climbing exploration game with no combat. The world looks pretty nice, but the game is repetitive as fuck and in general just boring. Only 4h, but wanted to kill myself after 2 :P Still, 4/10 though, cuz was nat terrible, just boring :P



Now onto BioShock :)
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Lousku »

What I didn't like, are the few things that prevented me from getting emotionally engaged in the story, such as mute Gordon
Hah, fun cause this feels the opposite to me. If "my" character says things I don't wanna say, that's negative to the feeling of engagement. If it's magically giving an option to say what I'm thinking then sure I might feel like I said it, but usually it just feels like a writer masturbating while I'm trying to play the game. HL2 lets me run around and try to jump on the chandelier or bang a book on the NPC's head while it talks. I'm not locked into a cutscene and I'm not forced to let a writer speak for me.
then again i don't know anything
maybe easier not to think abouut alöl things thought than not things thought ... or something..=?
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

Yeah, I agree with that, and I guess that's why a lot of games choose mute lead characters. But in terms of immersion, nothing comes close to Witcher 3 for me, partly because it had very extensive dialogues where you could almost always say what you really feel through Geralt's mouth. Obviously that's not possible in many games, so it's not really a major complaint. I'd say the thing that bothered me much more was that I just didn't care at all about what happened in the world :<
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Lousku »

I can see that. Yeah, HL is not very much of an RPG. :)
then again i don't know anything
maybe easier not to think abouut alöl things thought than not things thought ... or something..=?
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Labs »

"A story about my uncle", "Deathtrap" and "QUBE 2" on my done list now :) Plans for future: Dishonored, Dishonored 2, Prey
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

Labs wrote: 28 Jul 2019, 22:39Plans for future: Dishonored, Dishonored 2
Same here. I played Dishonored before, but I bought the whole collection a few days ago. Make sure to not miss Death of the Outsider too, apparently it's quite good =)
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

pawq wrote: 27 Jul 2019, 18:23Now onto BioShock :)
Well, that took a while! So, over the past month and a half, I played through:

BioShock (2007) - 8/10
BioShock 2 (2010) - 8/10
BioShock 2: The Protector Trials (2010) - 7/10
BioShock 2: Minerva's Den (2011) - 8/10
BioShock Infinite (2013) - 9/10
BioShock Infinite: Clash in the Clouds (2013) - 6/10
BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode One (2013) - 8/10
BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode Two (2014) - 8/10

A bit of a wall of text below, more or less coherent thoughts about the games. Might be interesting for people who played them, and though might contain some very minor spoilers, should be oke for those who haven't too. tl;dr: good games ;)

The thing that shocked me the most in BioShock was the sheer brilliance of the concept of a utopian underwater city, all the ideologies in it, and the idea of Adam, topped off with Little Sisters & Big Daddies. Mind = blown. Hats off to the people who came up with these, polished the ideas and formed them into a coherent game. Game design was mind blowing as well. The world was designed beautifully, with incredible attention to detail and taste. A lot of areas which don't serve any purpose for the story, and are there just for the immersion (and still beautifully designed!). Various bits of interface also had a stunning level of attention to detail, such as stylised videos for unlockable perks, interactive vending machines for purchasing items, a mini-game for hacking objects, etc. Pretty well-designed combat, with a very fun extra layer: research of enemies, which you carry out by taking pictures of them (in combat for most points), and get extra info or boosted damage against those types. Unfortunately this leads me to my biggest problem with this game: a total of 5 ranged weapons, each with 3 types of ammunition, plus melee, the research camera, and 3 types of hacking tools. So, that's keys 1-8 covered. On top of that, 6 slots for plasmids (kinda-magic things) - F1-F6. It is very simply impossible to maintain full control over your whole arsenal during combat with so many options (for example can't even reach most of the keys while still moving with WASD), so you have to end up choosing just a couple of weapons and plasmids to focus on. This really annoyed me during combat, since I normally like to be able to use all the mechanics available to exploit all the fun from a game. It's also unnecessary - the game could easily do without basic nab things like a shotgun, which you can use in just about any game. To make things worse, there's a bug half-way through which swaps the order of weapons, so you have to re-learn them again... Because you're not able to rearrange them ;/ Then, while the concept for the world is amazing, the story is not very immersive, above all because you mostly learn about past events from found audio recordings; most of the story of the game happened before the game. All in all, it's a fantastic game, and definitely deserves to be a classic, but still a bit far from perfection.

Most of the above applies to BioShock 2 as well - game design, story concept, etc. Combat was slightly improved, since can now wield weapons and plasmids at the same time (so at least don't have to switch between them...), but even more plasmid slots, and equally many weapons, so that wasn't really solved. Modified research as well - I didn't like the mechanic here as much as in BioShock, but maybe just because I was used to one already. Same complaint about the story - most of it already happened, and we're just uncovering it. But the whole storyline was really well-written, so it's super-interesting to discover the background. The events at the end were interesting, but maybe a bit too confusing. Also, the game was crashing like fucking crazy, and only towards the end I found a solution online (permitting more vram in some settings file). At some point was hardly playable, so that ruined the experience a bit. Also, a really annoying issue when switching ammo types, where if you press shoot before it finishes reloading, it goes to the previous ammo type. Ended up with wrong ammo countless times because of this. Still, my impressions were mostly similar to those from BioShock. A very worthy sequel.

The Protector Trials are a series of short challenges, which are actually really fucking awesome, because they limit the weapons and plasmids that you can use to the bare minimum (usually 2-3 total), so it forces you to learn/use some that you may've not used in the main game. Very very fun!

The Minerva's Den DLC looks at another piece of the storyline, with a different protagonist. The vast majority of what I said about BioShock 2 applies here too, but the ending was satisfying as fuck!



BioShock Infinite takes us to the skies, which is obviously a massive contrast to BioShocks 1 & 2. The concept of the floating city is amazing and executed beautifully, but it didn't feel quite as special as Rapture. The world is so freaking beautiful though that I audibly gasped several times. In Edith's words, IT'S SO CUTE I'M GONNA DIE!!! And with regards to the story, FINALLY AN UN-MUTE PROTAGONIST, and FINALLY A RELATABLE NPC!!! Of course it helps that Elisabeth was cute as fuck, but just having someone to talk to and care about made the experience so much more fun and so much more immersive =) And she's executed so well as a companion - never gets stuck/disappears/blocks the way, small talk with the protagonist when walking around, casually leaning against a wall when waiting for me to finish looting... Just perfect :heart_eyes: Very fun combat as well, with most game mechanics nicely evolved, and FINALLY ONLY 2 WEAPONS AVAILABLE AT A TIME. So need to choose what you want to use, and then can have full control over it. Another plus: very satisfying headshots 8) However, the game still had some technical issues imo. The inability to save (only auto checkpoints) means that sometimes you can go 30 minutes (once went up to an hour!) without hitting a checkpoint. Need to sleep? Your problem. Just imagine the game crashing then... Another very annoying issue was that when jumping onto a rail or hook or sth (so that you're hanging), there is always a particular direction that the cursor will tend to upon "landing", and you can try to counteract it, but you won't win, because it won't stop. So plenty of times I was jumping onto things planning to strike some enemies immediately after, but had to wait until the game turns me with my back to them, before I could start aiming, and obviously die in the meantime. Sach idiot thing, a shame. Also mouse sensitivity changing when zooming/running -.- But still, overall probably my favourite BioShock game. And THAT ENDING. Mind = ^)(@!^&)#%()*@#!&%.

Clash in the Clouds is a series of challenges in a similar vein to The Protector Trials from BioShock 2. Pretty cool challenges (more inventive than from the predecessor), but the experienced ruined by the fact that they come in series of 15, and you have to do all at once. Get to some fun challenge that you'd like to hoyl? Sorry, gotta do all 14 prior ones before every attempt. There are two types of hard, hard but enjoyable, and hard but annoying. This was the latter.

Burial at Sea is a direct sequel to BioShock Infinite, while also kinda being prequels to BioShock. Again, most of what I said for B:I applies here. Actually super-interesting storyline here, the links to BioShock both in dialogues/recordings and in game design were extremely satisfying. Same issues as in the main game too though, and actually in Ep. 2 they messed up the save thing even more. Playing as Elisabeth, so naturally super easy to kill (because women have thinner skin I guess?), combat totally messed up, but to make things worse, once you die, you get respawned at the beginning of the level, which can again easily be 30-60 minutes earlier, and to piss you off even more, there's a ~15-second UNSKIPPABLE VIDEO EVERY TIME. Again, such idiot thing. Still, playing B:I and not these would be a huge shame, these build a perfect bridge between B:I and BioShock.



Phew :) Now time for a short break. I think coming next are Life Is Strange and Life Is Strange: Before the Storm :]
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Bludek »

Just yesterday we finished the all new Borderlands 3 in cooperation mode (my + 2 mans) and if you've played any other Borderlands game, you'll gonna love this one too. It took us a tiny bit over 31 hours to finish the main storyline, but we've kinda rushed everything, coz our time was limited. I personaly like much calmer playing style, enjoying dialogues, doing side quests and such, but this was fine also :)

It might seem strange, but one of the major "flaws" for me was the super-high drop rate of legendary weapons. Don't get me wrong, I love them stylish orange weapons with unique abilities, but in most boss fights at least one of us got a legendary weapon and few times we got triple or even quadruple legendary drop. In previous games you had to fight super hard for legendaries, rare quality weapons were the ones you mostly used and you were happy with an occasional epic quality weapon. Now legendaries do not feel as unique anymore. Also the dialogues were not as funny as in previous games and the highest difficulty level available atm ("normal") felt quite easy. I'm looking forward to "Mayhem mode".

But otherwise it felt amazingly fun to run around and shoot everything that moves. New playable characters are unique and have cool abilities. I've played Moze the Gunner, which appeared to be the strongest of the 3 we tried - having unlimited rocket launcher (Vanquisher Rocket Pod skill) is quite broken. FL4K was very good too, Zane was a bit underwhelming, but we didn't follow any guides or anything, so I might have just been the luckiest in recognizing powerful skills.

Main story was also great. Overall I would highly recommend this game, especially in cooperation mode with friends. There's plenty of other good singleplayer games, but this one is real fun to play in multiplayer. 9/10
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

Wait, wasn't this released like yesterday? :D

Nice review, thanks for the good read! I'll definitely check it out when I finally get to the Borderlands series :)



Life Is Strange (2015) - 9/10

The most emotional game I've ever played. Could hardly sleep all night, head was weaving events in the game world even when I did sleep. Nuff said.

Gorgeous art style (at times felt more realistic than the photo-realistic AAA games), perfectly matched music, great simple and intuitive controls, some of the best story and character development I've experienced (not just in games), great voice acting, beautiful and super-well-thought-through world design, time rewinding really well-implemented (both in terms of game mechanics and in terms of storyline). -0.3 for minor technical issues (resetting mouse sens after each game restart, poor lip sync, some visual artifacts), -0.7 for some personal issues with the story.

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Re: The games which you played out

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pawq wrote: 18 Sep 2019, 14:10 Wait, wasn't this released like yesterday? :D
Well, it was released 13.9., so we all took 5 (3 + weekend) days off from work (friday-tuesday), we drove to friend's cabin and played every day for several hours. Was totally great. We played BL2 for few years before every now and then, so we knew we'll want to play BL3 together.

btw, Pawq, is Bioshock 3 standalone enough, that I can download it and enjoy it fully? Or is playing previous games mandatory?
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Re: The games which you played out

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Bludek wrote: 18 Sep 2019, 15:02Well, it was released 13.9., so we all took 5 (3 + weekend) days off from work (friday-tuesday), we drove to friend's cabin and played every day for several hours.
Holy shit, that sounds amazing! I hope I'll be able to do that with some friends at some point (but not at FEM)!

Bludek wrote: 18 Sep 2019, 15:02btw, Pawq, is Bioshock 3 standalone enough, that I can download it and enjoy it fully? Or is playing previous games mandatory?
You'd definitely be able to enjoy it without having played BioShocks 1 & 2, it makes more sense than for example playing BioShock 2 without having played 1, cuz that's a direct continuation.

BUT: the game is very heavily linked to the world of Rapture and events from BioShocks 1 & 2, especially in the Burial at Sea expansion packs, and those links were perhaps the most fascinating bits of the series for me. So, if you want to enjoy it fully, imo you should play through the whole series.

Another reason for that: BioShocks 1 & 2 are some of the best games out there. Extremely memorable and unique. Even though I gave a slightly higher score to B:I, I would say it's more worth playing BioShock than BioShock Infinite if you were to choose just one game. Personal opinion ofc. Still: why not both? ;)
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Re: The games which you played out

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut (2011/2013) - 8/10

Initially I was a bit reluctant, thinking that no aspect of this game is really exceptional, but over 44h of gameplay I convinced myself that the quality of the game is just so high throughout, that it's one of the best shooters I've played. Definitely recommended if you like any kind of shooters, especially with stealth elements.

positive:
- great world (especially texture) design
- great soundtrack
- amazing main character design and voice acting
- astonishing level of medical and technical terminology and knowledge, but not your typical techno babble from hollywood, but stuff that actually makes sense (or is true) scientifically! Amazing for a video game, felt like reading a popular science article at times.
- very good npc model design and voice acting overall
- pretty satisfying and balanced combat
- well-executed stealth mechanics
- great story (for a game, though the last few hours were actually darn exciting)
- enjoyable and well-balanced augmentation system
- great atmosphere overall :)

negative:
- very repetitive world design (especially secondary locations like hotel rooms, apartments etc, plenty of copy-paste everywhere)
- very poor interaction with npcs aside from dialogues (e.g. you can steal money or hack the computer of an npc right in front of them, and they won't even say anything)
- pretty poor lip sync (apart from a few select characters, unfortunately the main character is also affected)
- very repetitive takedown mechanics (same animation for a highly-trained heavily-armoured soldier and a civilian...) and in general quite repetitive/tedious stealth (unfortunately the game heavily encourages it with xp)
- very poor npc interaction when sneaking (e.g. taking down a guard and pulling his body away some 10m in front of another guard looking my way, lots like that)
- extremely disappointing boss fights (on the hardest difficulty level...)
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Re: The games which you played out

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Deus Ex: The Fall (2013 - iOS / 2014 - PC) - 3/10

Knew this was supposed to be a poor mobile port from reviews (45/3.0 on metacritic, 32% on steam), but woah :D Played for completionist reasons, thankfully wasn't too long (less than 7h, having covered every square cm).

tl;dr: 100% skippable, unless you're a true completionist with spare 5-7h

positive:
- the things that were directly copied from DX:HR (part of soundtrack, some design elements, augmentation system)
- infinite backpack capacity (or rather no such thing, just inventory/store are one thing and you can hold any amount of crap and buy things at any time, not that it's particularly immersive)
- bearable story & quests
- some care with world design
- can remap keys :-D (lots of complaints in reviews about the lack of that option, I guess they patched it...)

negative:
- 2002 graphics, literally :D
- even at lowest mouse sensitivity setting had to bring sensitivity down to 800dpi (3000dpi normally), which meant that I needed an area of roughly 50x50cm for menus... Thankfully I have a dpi button on the mouse, so every time I esced, went into inventory, hacking, or any other game menu, I had to switch dpi and then switch it back in-game. Not sure if anyone actually started the port on PC before releasing it.
- extremely clunky movement mechanics (no sprinting or jumping, the least realistic falling I've experienced since... maybe ever)
- extremely clunky world and character design
- horrid dialogues and voice acting
- no creative content that would go beyond DX:HR in terms of lore
- horrid stealth and combat mechanics
- virtually no interaction with npcs outside of dialogues
- ridiculously easy regardless of gameplay style, and no difficulty setting
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2016) - 9-10/10

Woah!! This game was exactly what I expected Human Revolution to be, even though I expected it to be somewhat poorer because of some bad reviews. I expected HR to be an amazing game that would sweep me off my feet, but it was just an all-round really solidly good game. MD did sweep me off my feet though, and not once or twice.

To start with, it's a fucking PERFECT sequel, with most mechanics, world design elements osv retained, but improved, and an appropriate amount of new stuff added. Feels like a perfectly natural continuation of the story and of the gameplay from HR, but significantly more advanced.

And not just more advanced or complex, but virtually every single aspect of the game was improved so significantly (from already high bars), that I'm considering giving this game a 10/10, which would be a first for me (haven't been rating games that long, but could only think of 2-3 games that could get a 10/10 that I played before, i.e. defo Witcher 3, maybe Skyrim and CoD 4).

For now I only finished the main story (albeit in completionist "mode"), but it already took me 61 hours, which is by far the longest shooter I've ever played, maybe apart from Just Cause 2, which is a massive open-world game though. This game still has 3 full-size expansions and an alternative mode, so I expect maybe half as much more playtime before I fully exploit it. And at no point in the game did I feel like I wanted it to end already, which is mega impressive given that I often feel that even in 10-15h games!!!

positive:
- mindblowing (!!!!!!) world and object design. I fucking swear they must've hired genuine architects and interior designers for this game. Fantastic attention to detail and beautiful design throughout. Also almost no repetitiveness, which was the biggest annoyance in DX:HR for me.
- amazing soundtrack!! there were several occasions when I didn't really want to progress because the music was so fucking awesome.
- amazing main character design and voice acting
- the game still very robustly justifies the "science" in "science fiction"
- very good npc model design and voice acting overall
- very satisfying, fun and balanced combat. really well-implemented on-the-fly weapon modification mechanics, great weapon design, osv
- well-executed stealth mechanics
- great story and side quests
- enjoyable and well-balanced augmentation system
- really sick atmosphere
- greatly improved npc interaction (e.g. they'll say something if you steal from them, or confront you if you do it several times), really couldn't complain this time, all forms of interaction were pretty solid, also when stealthing etc
- better XP balance (e.g. the game gives you XP for using uncovered codes instead of hacking gak, so actually encourages exploration and reading everything)
- greatly improved takedown mechanics (e.g. enemies are pulled behind cover as part of takedown from hiding, instead of being thrown forward or just down, which was a major annoyance in DX:HR)
- virtually no boss fights, which is great, cuz who needs that! and they were underwhelming in DX:HR.
- top notch user interface design and implementation
- the world is significantly bigger than in DX:HR and a lot more fun for exploration, with a great amount of well-planned hidden areas, hidden lore, etc.
- virtually no bógs
- cutscenes rendered in high resolution, not 1995 quality like in DX:HR :)

negative:
- still horrible lip sync, or virtually no sync (sometimes seemed random), which is very strange for a game of this magnitude
- still no reflections in mirrors, which is again a bit puzzling for a game of this magnitude
- some frame drops when entering open areas for the first time in a while, but nothing tragic

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And yes, I'm not expecting anyone to read all, writing this partly for my future self :)
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Chris »

Pawq I hate you. I buy a lot of games and never play them. You not only buy games, but you also play and even finish them. 8O You should get a life and play Worms, Elma and TF2 more ;>
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by kuchitsu »

Do you guys know any games with a lot of dialogues where the consequences of your decisions are usually pretty hard to predict? So without the obvious stuff like "this is clearly an evil response" (omg some games actually show you how the choice is going to affect your stats, what kind of spoiler bullshit is that?).
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Orcc »

There are plenty of old Finnish text adventure games from the '90s, where the outcomes are usually totally random. Time to learn Finnish
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pawq
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

Deus Ex: Human Revolution & Deus Ex: Mankind Divided both do a pretty decent job at that imo. Witcher 3 also had some great choices 👍 Can't remember predictability tho

Chris love you too <3
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by ArZeNiK »

here are some random non-casual games i've played out without any ordering criteria

super mario 64 (very good still playing romhacks to this day)
super mario world (played a lot of romhacks when i was younger but now meh)
mario party 2 (duno why didnt start with 1, but still was amasink)
sonic adventure (ok i skipped big the cat by cheats but fuck big the cat)
sonic adventure 2 (skipped one lev by xiit again here i think)
sonic battle (random official sonic game for gba)
sonic advance 3 (duno why didnt start with 1 either mb cuz more characters and shit. but good game)
disney's tarzan (speedrunning favourite)
thats all. the rest i play is filthy casual stuff not worth of mentioning (popcap games and the like)
that or games that cant be finished (elma, idle games, fighting games, rythym games osv)
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pawq
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: Desperate Measures, System Rift, A Criminal Past (2016-2017) - 8/10
Very decent DLCs, keeping up the high standards of the main game :)
(Ended up giving the main game 9/10, just didn't feel emotional enough about it to give a 10.)

Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods (2008) - 3/10

Somehow never played this before despite being a Gothic fan. So fantastically bad :D A third of the big world from Gothic 3 (so still a sizeable world) copied in, but with like 80% unnamed NPCs, only a bunch of really really bad quests (Skyrim ones look like high art next to this), the worst dialogue writing I've ever heard in any game, horribly imbalanced combat, and not much goodness at all :D But I kinda enjoyed teh overall atmosphere (which is just Gothic 3 copycat), cuz I spent quite a lot of time playing that game as a kid. Still, 100% forgettable and a total waste of time until you're a moron completionist like me.

Arcania: Fall of Setarrif (2011) - 2/10

Wow, I can hardly believe I managed to find something even worse than Forsaken Gods. This game is a 5-hour long (if you kill every possible creature and pick up every possible plant), fully-linear (think CoD-level of linearity), laughably easy (even at the hardest difficulty level just keep pressing M1), extremely poorly-written, bug-ridden abomination. It even has a trap section near the end, which is about 5x less advanced than the trap sections in Gothic 1. Oh, and I got 70 fps on a GTX 1070.
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Re: The games which you played out

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F.E.A.R. 3 (2011) - 4/10

Eh, so bad compared to the first two games... Pretty generic, unimmersive, extremely linear and repetitive shooter with barely any development and a story I couldn't give less fucks about. It wasn't excruciatingly bad, but I would avoid it if you're not a completionist of the series. Probably the strongest points are the challenges and the co-op mode, but after completing the story by myself I feel saturated with the game already.
Last edited by pawq on 1 Mar 2020, 04:15, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The games which you played out

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GRID 2 (2013) - 5/10

This game is trying to be both a sim game and an arcade game, and ends up being good at neither, with really poor driving mechanics, but not an exciting enough campaign. The visuals are stunning though, both of the cars and of the environment. Can surely have some fun for a bit, despite the really poorly balanced difficulty (in some races I finished 30s ahead of second with no effort, and others were borderline impossible because you had to overtake 10 cars in 2 minutes on a 95%-throttle track).
Last edited by pawq on 1 Mar 2020, 04:16, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The games which you played out

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Ori and the Blind Forest (2015/2016) - 9/10

A tremendously fun and heartwarmingly gorgeous action platformer. A beautifully crafted open world, an affectionate story, and a bunch of creative, diverse and nearly perfectly executed mechanics made this a really fun play, and I'm already looking forward to playing it again! Luckily a sequel is coming soon :)
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Re: The games which you played out

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Left 4 Dead (2008) - 8/10

Really fun shooter, especially in the co-op mode! Pretty basic mechanics, like in HL2, but that makes it more pure in a way for me, and certainly not less enjoyable! A very short campaign though, and pretty outdated visuals for 2008.

Was max fun playing with lousk & chris, looking forward to L4D2! :D
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Re: The games which you played out

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Last Day of June (2017) - 6/10

A beautifully drawn, short story/mini-puzzle game, with a charming plot and gorgeous visuals, but not much else. Unskippable repetitive cutscenes were also quite annoying at times. Amazing music from Steven Wilson is a plus of course, but it can be enjoyed equally outside of the game.
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Re: The games which you played out

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Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (2018) - 8/10
(47h to complete)

It's almost definitely the best-written game I've ever played. It's a story- and choice-driven RPG with Gwent (the card game known from The Witcher 3) as the main game mechanic (and sole means of combat). Narration and dialogues are plentiful, and the quality of their writing in my opinion surpasses many actual novels, and the voice acting is at the same level. I deeply connected with most of the main characters, which doesn't happen that often in games! The impact of the choices made in the game is so deep that at times it felt like the game was not written, but it was genuinely responding to what I was doing. The implementation of Gwent was fantastic, especially after I really got into it, but at times suffers from balance issues (nothing major though). Top it off with truly gorgeous visual game design and great music, and you've got a hell of a game! Unfortunately it started dragging for me after like 30 hours (out of the 47h it took me to finish it), because Gwent can be repetitive, especially after you figure out some good tactics, and there's not much else to it other than talking and collecting wood.

Dishonored (2012) - 9/10
Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall (2013) - 7/10
Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches (2013) - 8/10
(23h, 6h and 9h respectively to complete)

The stealth mechanics in this game are still some of the most fun and unique in the genre. Everything in this game is tremendously well-designed (even the UI!), and the artistic style of humans is maybe the most interesting I've ever seen. They managed to make people and their emotions look really realistic and relatable, without photo-realistic rendering. Reminds me of Life Is Strange a little in this regard. The story is really captivating, and the game offers countless ways to progress through it, making every playthrough feel like your own. I can't really think of any downsides of this game, it definitely deserves to be a classic! Also, it's fun to see how BioShock Infinite must've been inspired from this!

The story expansions, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches, don't live up to the main game in terms of story writing, but game design, etc. are on the same level as in the main game.
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Re: The games which you played out

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Dishonored 2 (2016) - 8/10
(40h to complete)

A bittersweet experience. The game is a huge improvement compared to Dishonored on almost every single level:
- visually gorgeous
- level design, both in terms of layout and architecture, is often stunning (don't want to spoil the experience, but a couple of levels really BLOW MIND)
- maybe the most customisable HUD I've ever seen in a game
- overall beautiful GUI with vastly improved functionality compared to Dishonored
- by far the most customisable difficulty settings I've ever seen
- and a number of other smaller improvements, such as level maps that can be found in the streets/buildings and can be later viewed in the journal, the ability to slowly move and rotate when choking enemies, secondary small-font subtitles for when interaction and background speech occurs simultaneously, much more comprehensive stats at the end of each level, etc etc etc.

However, it pains me to say, the writing in this game really sucks balls, especially compared to the original. The story is rather poorly contrived, but above all most of the dialogues feel like a B-grade TV show. It's nowhere near as engaging emotionally as Dishonored, or even as The Knife of Dunwall or The Brigmore Witches. In Dishonored, the stealth and other mechanics served the story, but here I feel like it's the other way around - they had plenty of brilliant ideas on how to improve the gameplay, and needed SOME story to go with it. It's a real shame, and it also made the playthrough feel less exciting and more tedious and repeatable.

The game also suffers from stutter issues, but limiting fps to 60 resolved this. Not ideal and was frustrating initially, but since then it ran just fine. Had only occasional dips to some 55fps with a GTX1070, and no noticeable stutter anymore.

Despite that, if you're a fan of the gameplay from Dishonored, this should be a thoroughly enjoyable experience!
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Re: The games which you played out

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Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (2017) - 6/10
(13h to complete)

Recommended, but just barely. This "game" is pretty much DLC for Dishonored 2, exactly how The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches were DLCs for Dishonored. In terms of game mechanics, interface and design, the game is virtually identical to Dishonored 2. In fact, in some cases even limited. This means really good, because those things were nailed in D2, but there's just no progress that I'd expect from what is essentially marketed as a separate game. Level-wise it was extremely disappointing, with effectively only 3 new levels. They were fairly well-designed, but nothing outstanding like in D2, and they were mostly rather hollow, with random, very repetitive loot, and random, very repeatable enemies, most of both not actually contributing to the story in any way, but just acting as fillers. And finally, the writing in my impression was probably the dullest of the whole franchise, so much that I was glad when it was finally over.

Recommended ONLY if you've played through D2 and are not yet sated.
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Re: The games which you played out

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LIMBO (2010) - 7/10
(9h to complete with all achievements)

LIMBO is a 2D, black-and-white, physics-based mini-puzzle platformer that relies heavily on an eerie atmosphere and simple yet evolving puzzle mechanics, rather than stunning visuals or story-telling. The atmosphere worked really well for me, with the minimalist ambient music and sound effects complimenting it beautifully (though I wish the soundtrack was more pronounced). However, the puzzles only got engaging more or less halfway through the game, the first half being closer to a walking simulator (which, in the case of a platformer essentially means keeping "right" pressed for prolonged amounts of time. Still, ultimately pretty enjoyable, with rewarding secret areas, and a nice final challenge in the form of an achievement to finish the game in one sitting with 5 or less deaths (which takes about an hour).



INSIDE (2016) - 6/10
(5h to complete with all achievements)

A spiritual sequel to LIMBO, with many elements retained (such as the mini-chapter based gameplay, eerie atmosphere, faceless boy as the main character), but also some significant changes, most importantly the 2.5D graphics, and hence a completely new artistic style. The design of the world was beautiful, and some locations were so breathtaking and mesmerising, through a combination of visuals and sound, that I sat back speechless for a while! Unfortunately, this happened very occasionally, just like properly engaging puzzles. What seemed like a significant majority of the game involved only walking to the right through pleasant, but not special, sceneries, which was at times really boring. The secret areas were way too easy too, especially with the hints in the achievement icons and descriptions (15.9% of players on Steam got all secret areas, compared to 3.5% in LIMBO). I'm both impressed with how well the Danish makers of this game were able to create a unique, eerie gameplay, and disappointed with how unexploited the potential was. It could easily be a 10-hour, heart-gripping adventure, but turned out to be a 4-hour, rather monotonous semi-platformer. I wonder if maybe EPIC lost patience after several years and cut off funding or something like that :/
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Re: The games which you played out

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Earth 2160 - 7/10
(39h to complete)

I finally got down and finished the game all the way through, after nearly completing it some 12 years ago, and then not-even-close to finishing it some 5 years ago, so I'm naturally biased with nostalgia, but I think it's an overall great rts, but sadly with a few shortcomings that can ruin the experience if you can't or can't be arsed to learn to avoid them.

The graphics in the game are often complimented, and at times they're really amazing for 2005, but it kinda depends where you look. What I'm most impressed with though, is that each of the four factions has a COMPLETELY different gameplay. Literally every mechanic is altered: completely different vehicles with completely different types weapons, different ways to harvest resources (which require very different planning and sometimes microcontrol), different ways to set up bases and interconnect buildings, different defence systems (which require completely different base layout), etc. It's literally a different game depending on what faction you play with, which is incredibly enjoyable. Crucially, the factions are all really well balanced, so that every faction has a fair chance against every other. Together with expansive unit customisation and cool base expansion options, it makes for tremendously fun gameplay once you get a hold of the basic faction mechanics. On top of that, the soundtrack is wicked!

HOWEVER. The story is pretty mediocre, and voice acting is poop. Literally. And cutscenes, which are rendered mostly in regular 3rd person, seem to use exactly the same models and textures as the zoomed-out RTS gameplay, so they look like poop too. Some campaign missions are rather poorly designed and boring to play, and difficulty can vary from no-effort to super unfairly hard at random. But maybe worst of all, movement AI of ground units is the worst in the history of ground unit movement AI. Units get stuck constantly, passing groups of units past each other is a nightmare, and it happens a lot that you suddenly realise you're missing some units, only because they decided to go around half the map (and through enemy bases) to get 1cm closer to their target position that was blocked by other units from the same group. This can be partly avoided by using small groups of units and a lot of microcontrol (sending groups to checkpoints instead of the whole way at once), but it can get very annoying indeed...

Overall, despite the issues I had lots of fun playing the game, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to everyone :)
Last edited by pawq on 18 Sep 2020, 19:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Hosp »

Life Is Strange, good game, bought Before The Storm, so far not as good game
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Re: The games which you played out

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Hosp wrote: 4 Aug 2020, 22:50Before The Storm (...) not as good game
Yeps =( But still love
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by kuchitsu »

Deadly Rooms of Death: King Dugan's Dungeon - 42,5 hours
Deadly Rooms of Death: Journey to Rooted Hold - 47 hours
Deadly Rooms of Death: The City Beneath - 48,5 hours
(didn't specifically try to find every secret room but I solved almost all that I stumbled upon)

Very pleased with this series so far. You can see that the authors really tried to develop a unique system and they succeeded spectacularly. Even parts that resemble traditional puzzles like Tetris or Sokoban have some interesting spin on them, but most content feels completely fresh. I'm loving the roach queens, goo mothers, sneaky goblins, different kinds of snakes, player clones, etc, and together all these elements allow for so much complexity it's mind-boggling.

I played through KDD very quickly and stayed super motivated throughout the whole thing. JTRH wore me out slightly with its increased difficulty and same visuals/music but it still offered enough new content to keep me engaged. Then TCB just blew my mind with tons of new gameplay elements, improved and varied graphics, a lovely soundtrack and a full-fledged story (I particularly liked the intermissions where you're introduced to new mechanics and really have to focus on learning them since you're not given a sword). Fantastic games, no wonder I've heard about them so much from hardcore puzzle addicts, and I'm enjoying the semi-satirical plot as well.

I'm now trying DROD RPG, which is a step in a completely different direction. To be honest, it seems rather underwhelming so far, with simpler mechanics (almost as if they were trying to create some kind of a dumbed-down mobile version) and an annoying trial & error style where sometimes you can get stuck just because you didn't know what was ahead. But I was so impressed with the first three games that I'm willing to believe that the authors created something cool again and I just need to play some more to "get it". Still, I'm considering skipping this one and going back to the main series if it doesn't improve much in the next few levels.

(also this song kicks some serious ass :) https://artoftravelogue.bandcamp.com/tr ... tions-inst)
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Sunshine »

Slay the spire 233 hours. completed 100% achievements and highest ascension on 3/4 characters. Quite addicting card game and well balanced, extremely fun!
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by FinMan »

Slay the Spire is a great game indeed. Did you beat the heart on 3/4 or just the floor 3 bosses? Been playing quite a lot with bene and Spef too. Beat the heart on all classes multiple times now myself, ascension 20 of course. So I also played it out i guess?
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Re: The games which you played out

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I beat A20 heart only twice I think (ironclad and defect), I mainly hoyled to a20 and then started another climb with another class. Didn't orka silent to A20 coz don't really like the playstyle and focused on acchievements after got others to A20
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Zweq »

kuchitsu wrote: 12 Aug 2020, 23:20 Deadly Rooms of Death: King Dugan's Dungeon - 42,5 hours
Deadly Rooms of Death: Journey to Rooted Hold - 47 hours
Deadly Rooms of Death: The City Beneath - 48,5 hours
(didn't specifically try to find every secret room but I solved almost all that I stumbled upon)

Very pleased with this series so far. You can see that the authors really tried to develop a unique system and they succeeded spectacularly. Even parts that resemble traditional puzzles like Tetris or Sokoban have some interesting spin on them, but most content feels completely fresh. I'm loving the roach queens, goo mothers, sneaky goblins, different kinds of snakes, player clones, etc, and together all these elements allow for so much complexity it's mind-boggling.

I played through KDD very quickly and stayed super motivated throughout the whole thing. JTRH wore me out slightly with its increased difficulty and same visuals/music but it still offered enough new content to keep me engaged. Then TCB just blew my mind with tons of new gameplay elements, improved and varied graphics, a lovely soundtrack and a full-fledged story (I particularly liked the intermissions where you're introduced to new mechanics and really have to focus on learning them since you're not given a sword). Fantastic games, no wonder I've heard about them so much from hardcore puzzle addicts, and I'm enjoying the semi-satirical plot as well.

I'm now trying DROD RPG, which is a step in a completely different direction. To be honest, it seems rather underwhelming so far, with simpler mechanics (almost as if they were trying to create some kind of a dumbed-down mobile version) and an annoying trial & error style where sometimes you can get stuck just because you didn't know what was ahead. But I was so impressed with the first three games that I'm willing to believe that the authors created something cool again and I just need to play some more to "get it". Still, I'm considering skipping this one and going back to the main series if it doesn't improve much in the next few levels.

(also this song kicks some serious ass :) https://artoftravelogue.bandcamp.com/tr ... tions-inst)
excelent, this is a post to my liking. I recommend trying DROD: The second sky, it's pretty much as good as TCB, just harder. I replayed TCB last winter, finally finished the game except for the last 3 rooms that were too horror (builders, tar and trapdoors))).
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by kuchitsu »

Zweq wrote: 20 Aug 2020, 09:51 (builders, tar and trapdoors)))
Haha, that is a hilariously annoying combination! I feel like I solved some of these "incorrectly". In one room I just kept stepping on as many trapdoors as I could with no plan until it worked. In another I waited for tar to fill everything, which immobilized all builders so the rest went smoothly. Also in the previous level there is a room where they are trying to destroy the platform you're on while you're waiting for another builder to prepare the bomb, and at first I was attempting some sophisticated strategies but then I found some weird spot where I could repeat the same movements and have them moving left, right, left, right for eternity lol.

I think my favorite rooms usually involve guiding roach queens in some clever way. Or luring golems so they all die on on-off platforms. And I love controlling multiple clones and trying to make sure that nothing bad happens to any of them. Feeding snakes is fun too, although I kinda suck at predicting their movements. Also one secret room was just a bunch of tetris blocks that you need to put together seamlessly, and I actually cut them out of paper and spent a while arranging them. Lots of good stuff in these games.)) Definitely gonna try The Second Sky, thanks!
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by anpdad »

in one room I just kept stepping on as many trapdoors as I could with no plan until it worked. In another I waited for tar to fill everything, which immobilized all builders so the rest went smoothly.
Pretty sure i used the same approach if i guessed the rooms correctly :)
I think my favorite rooms usually involve guiding roach queens in some clever way. Or luring golems so they all die on on-off platforms.
There's several hours worth of each of these activities in The Second Sky just in 2 specific levels (they broke my brain and beat it into submission. For days.). In fact, if i recall correctly, there's more content than jtrh and tcb combined, so you'll definitely find what to like and what to hate in this one. And it gets very difficult sometimes. Of course, i would also recommend trying it out :)


EDIT: if you care about plot much, few holds have been released between the TCB and TSS, and i think the "Devilishly Dangerous Dungeons of Doom" + "Finding the First Truth" have some plot development that would glue the events of two games neatly. It's not necessary to play them, it'll just be slightly confusing for a short while, but nothing unmanageable.
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Hosp »

I finished all levels in Steam then I improved some levels to get 39TT. (100% Achievements) Ty for your time.
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

Just Cause 3 - 7/10
(67h to complete 100%)

In short: a largely unsatisfying follow-up to the epic classic Just Cause 2, but with its own charms. Despite the annoyances it was fun enough for me to go for 100% completion :)

Positive:
- multiple tethers, which is just what JC2 was missing
- a great wingsuit implementation, which would've also been amazing in JC2; this is one of the biggest advantages of this game imo
- pretty flora and geography of the world, and some decent vehicle designs
- plentiful challenges for all types of vehicles (and, crucially, wingsuiting)
- as in JC2, extremely fun physics. Vehicles + objects + tethers = hours of entertainment.
- really fun DLC vehicles
- very decent cutscenes, with some of the best lipsync and motion capture I've seen in a game

Negative:
- loading screens ALL. THE. TIME. Literally, I've never seen this much loading screens in a game. Absolute horror to wait through and a major turn-off
- somehow (how ???) the world wasn't nearly as pretty as JC2. I was barely ever tempted to take screenshots, which happened all the time in JC2, despite 5 years older graphics.
- extremely repetitive world design and building design from 2005 (buildings are just bricks with 8 vertices from more than 200m away or so), and almost complete lack of unique "fun" locations, which were plentiful in JC2
- the physics can be quite buggy in some instances
- utterly hopeless motorcycle handling mechanics (EVEN WORSE than in JC2!)
- meh story and mostly meh missions
- overall not as memorable and immersive atmosphere as in JC2 :(
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

What Remains of Edith Finch - 9/10
(3h to complete)

A truly beautiful visual tale, driven by fascinating stories and shown through equally fascinating visual means. The stellar reviews are fully deserved!
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by pawq »

FAR: Lone Sails - 6/10
(3.5h to complete first time, 1.5h for speedrun, 8h for 100%)

A short and pretty visual tale, with ultra-minimalistic storytelling and puzzles. As cute as this game is, and as beautiful as the soundtrack is, the experience isn't engaging physically, mentally, or emotionally, or in other words, it's boring... I can enjoy games built upon an atmosphere, but this simply didn't have enough variety or activity to keep me interested or occupied, even just for the 3h-or-so first playthrough. However, thanks to the pretty visuals and music the game was pleasant enough even on the 2nd ("speedrun") playthrough, and there's nothing "bad" about it, just not enough content for my taste.
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Lee »

I forgot about this topic... Okay here goes. Since I got my new computer some months ago the games I played out are:

Finished with achievements
Faerie Solitaire Harvest
Q.U.B.E. 2 (Recommend if you like puzzle games)
Spyro Reignited Trilogy (Highly recommend)
Mini Ninjas (Recommend)
Happy Room
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (Highly recommend)

Finished with achievements sans DLC content
SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell (Recommend)
A Hat in Time (Super Highly recommend)
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by Lee »

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
J2 gifted me this game a long time ago and I finally got around to getting the final achievement. It's not like any of the other tomb raider games, but still a decent playing experience imo.
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Re: The games which you played out

Post by ArZeNiK »

Henry Stickmin Collection
played some of the episodes when i was younger
had a lot of fun with this one, got almost all achievements too (im missing some bios)
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