Gaming What was the last videogame you beat?

Just beat Life is Strange. Now please excuse me while I have a therapy session to attend. I've never played such a depressing game in my life.

 

The Walking Dead is like that for me, plus I don't do well with the constant tension between the characters. But the games are so captivating that I put myself through it regardless.

 

Gears of War 4

The final boss was easy and the ending was a bit sudden but other than that the campaign was great. The game is basically for Gears what The Force Awakens was for Star Wars. It brought back the series and kept true to the originals but is it's own thing at the same time.

Now the real fun begins with the Horde mode and the multiplayer!

 

God of War

 

Gears of War trilogy. After hearing all the praise Gears 4 was getting, I came to regret not getting into the series early on. I'd played the original Gears back when it first released on the 360 but bounced off before getting very far. Decided to try out the ultimate edition on the Xbox One to see if it'd stick now, and boy did it. What a fantastic series. Over the top bro shooters with perfect third-person cover based gameplay. These games have aged incredibly well, and 2 and 3 still look great even compared to the original's remaster. I'm skipping Judgment as I've heard it's an unnecessary entry in the franchise (and after reading over the game's plot online, I can see why). Looking forward to starting Gears 4 very soon.

 

Yeah Judgment is alright but it's definitely the worst of the series IMO. They changed the controls for some reason and it's not as fun as the others. I played it before the other games and I didn't understand why people didn't like it, but after playing the others I realized they are so much better that there is no real reason to play it if you have any of the other games. Gears 4 is my favourite of the series though. Enjoy it when you get it.

100% The Darkness 2 earlier. It's a really great game and it's a shame that not many people know about it. I admit I didn't know about it until someone I know lent me his copy but I'm really glad I played it. The story is pretty good and the Darkness powers are so fun to use. The only complaint I have with the game is that it's a bit short but I'd say it has enough replay value to make up for it with a New Game plus option and an extra Vendettas campaign. The game should be pretty cheap now so I highly recommend it if you see it anywhere.

 

The Force Unleashed... beat it like a 100 times over

 

Borderlands 1. So damn fun, even 7 years later.

 

I had a lot of fun with that game too. It had a pleasant gameplay loop that was comfortable to fall into. It was especially well suited to put on mute, and listen to podcasts over.

The last game I beat was episode three of Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space, called Night of the Raving Dead. Unfortunately, I finished it two trophies short.

 

God of War II

 

Red Faction: Guerrilla

Really fun game.

 

After having finished the standalone Prince of Persia from 2008, five years ago, I was easily tempted to revisit that world when I found the Epilogue to that game on the PS Store for £2.50, as I have a great fondness for that game and its universe. I finished it in one sitting today. It was fun (the challenge level is significantly higher than the main game), and I enjoyed returning to that world and those characters, but from a story perspective it was ultimately pointless, as it ends unresolved. I thought the point of an epilogue to a story is to tie up loose ends. This, instead, undoes the ending of the main game, only to narrate an extended series of events (or one event, rather) that ultimately has no relevance and ends up nowhere. I suppose the Epilogue was meant to act as a prologue to a possible sequel. But since the sequel never materialised, I find the circular and tragic ending to the main game to be a much more artful closure to the tale. Still, if you liked the main game, it is a fun two hours, purely from a gameplay perspective.

 

I loved Prince of Persia '08. I was working my way to getting all the light seeds and had a save game glitch about halfway through that caused one to disappear, and I started over and got them all again. Got every achievement for it. Granted this was back when I was in high school with much less disposable income/much more free time, so I squeezed every last drop out of the games I was able to buy back then, but I had a blast with it. Didn't get very far in the DLC though. Kinda wanna go back to it since I have an ugly 1060/1250G for it, but I doubt I ever will.

 

The story doesn't add aything useful, but it is a fun play, and it's short so you can likely finish it in one sitting. Unfortunately, you have to fight the most buttonmashing-prone enemy of them all from the main game several times here. The brutish Warrior, who needs to be pushed toward a ledge and then tilted over by mashing X (on the 360 controller). That proved a frustrating challenge to my thumbs. But the overall package is thankfully still fun.

I also forgot to mention that the DLC has some great exclusive musical tracks in it.

 

Batman: Arkham Origins

 

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

 

Man, you just tear through games. 8 days for Black Flag?

 

No lol, been playing it on and off, took a break to focus on Batman lol

 

Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry

 

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.

A strange, and enrapturing (see what I did there) game.

The recreation of a rural English village is brilliantly done, as I live in a similar region. The scenes in the game capture reality excellently.

The way the story told was engrossing, and portrayed in a novel way, linking the memory of events with the materials we leave behind. Similar in a way to the amulet mechanic in Myst IV: Revelation, only more dynamic.

The graphics were gorgeous. Makes me wish for a modern Myst game.

The lack of any real interactivity is the only major negative

 

The Getaway (PS2)
This is a game that I have a weird abusive relationship with. I am annoyed by its faults that frequently make it irritating and often a drag to play. So much so that I have repeatedly put it aside for extended periods in favour of other games. But I still found myself coming back to it to conclude the story. It's not because of the story, mind you, because it's rubbish; lazy and formulaic. So there must be some other part of it that entertains me. I suppose the fact that I could see the high ambitions that were clearly behind the game (for the era it released) made me appreciate the effort even though it falls short. Also, the rare times where I'm completely in the zone, and I'm driving flawlessly through the thick London traffic without hitting other cars, and then making my way through the shoot-outs without being hurt, it feels properly immersive, and it's elevated to a genuinely cinematic experience. Yet, that is a feeling that many games can elicit, so in the end, I reckon I just enjoy the gameplay loop of trying to squeeze through congested traffic.

Or maybe it's just the completionist in me that has to complete a game I've bought. I bought Ni No Kuni last year in what has to be the most manipulated and stupid decision I've ever made in a game purchase, and although it's probably a massive 60-hour undertaking, I insistently intend to play and complete that game to the end, because I have bought it, and now I have to justify the purchase.

 

STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC!

 

Just beat the mainline campaign of Rise of the Tomb Raider. I'm not sure if Rise of the Tomb Raider or Tomb Raider was better, but both were absolutely outstanding. I really hope that the end of the game indicates that there's a 3rd game in this reboot era on the way. I love everything about this version of Lara Croft. The stories are so intriguing. I've loved how both games, too, have elements of bygone military eras, specifically an island occupied by the Japanese in World War II and a Siberian Soviet base and mining operation.

And... I started writing this post as the credits were rolling. It's a good thing I don't skip credit reels in games, because the post-credits ending is even more interesting, though I'm a bit irked at how stupidly Lara acted right at the very end!

Anyway, I finished with a 98% sync. I am so pissed at myself for not understanding how the Challenge system worked in the Syria level right at the beginning, else I would've had 100% completion on every map in the game. I wonder if I can rectify that, as I've read there are ways to re-do certain parts of the game, or I'm screwed unless I replay the game end-to-end.

I'm stunned at how hard it was to gain XP. I barely achieved 100% on the Skills menu in Tomb Raider, just a little bit before the end. By the end of Rise of the Tomb Raider, I still had 5 skills locked and only 2 or 3 skill points, 1 or 2 of which I couldn't use because I earned them after the final Camp Fire (I had one SP saved in case I couldn't deal with the final battle and had to roll back to the final Camp Site... The saved SP would go toward the max defense skill). And it wasn't until the Lost City map that I really missed any bonus XP in combat. There were really only a handful of enemies I didn't get bonus XP on, but the enemies starting with the Lost City were a massive pain in the rear end. Of course, it wasn't until the very end of the game that I realized there was actually a pretty easy way to get bonus XP on those enemies, provided I could get the high ground on them...

I'm going to call it a night on the game for now. I may not play it again before I go on Christmas vacation, but regardless, I'll definitely be back at this game to do the DLC missions that came with the 20 Year Anniversary edition and maybe mess around with the apparent ability to re-do parts of the game in a Challenge Mode (or something like that... not sure I understood the concept).

 

Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space episode 3 - Night of the Raving Dead
This is the funniest episode yet in this series. Sam and Max's hometown is overrun by zombies who are amazingly well-behaved. Your investigation of their source leads you to a flamboyant and self-obsessed vampire who has managed to amass an army of loyal zombie followers by performing gothic raps about life's pains and staying up to date with the latest trends. I'm sure you can tell that this plot is inspired by the pop culture of recent times. Along the way, you also attempt to set Frankenstein's monster up with a date and star in a soap opera, among other things. Although the story itself isn't that important in these games, this episode has the most coherent plot yet in this series.

I'm taking a break before moving on to the final two episodes. In the meantime, I plan to finish Bionic Commando (2009).

 

Dragon Age: Inquisition. At last, it's finally over. Until I start Trespasser. After DA2 trimmed the game down and concentrated on a strong story to great results, Inquisition goes whole hog on bloat and generic save-the-world questlines. It's not that it's not a fun game, it's just that there's too much game for you not to hit the, "God, are we done yet?" point well before the game is over. Did we really need some dozen different vast localities to explore, about half of which weren't even relevant to the main plot? Though the writing of the main questline was generic, the characters were well-written and interesting, and the game did a lot to expand the setting. It also, finally, didn't look like crap, with a major graphical facelift. In general the new engine is an upgrade, though I'm not entirely in love with the combat. And the game's love of climbing and jumping puzzles when the engine is so spectacularly terrible at climbing and jumping did annoy the crap out of me. It's funny, because I liked the game, I liked most things about the game . . . but its so overstuffed, so undisciplined, that I really disliked the experience of playing the game forever. And it's so huge and such a time commitment that it discourages me from ever replaying it again, despite the vast amount of different choices to replay. Designers really need to rediscover the virtues of a tightly, efficiently-designed game with a focused narrative.