Gaming What was the last videogame you beat?

Finally finished my Fallout 76 playthrough, from the very beginning.

There's a lot of content with the expansions, and it turns out that at least two vaults were added to be fully explored (from retired game concepts).

Still, there's disappointing parts of it - there's a cabin that has been there from the beginning with a computer list of all kinds of mysteries... that still read ACCESS DENIED. Sigh.

In any case, I'm actually going to go in the opposite direction and give the ultimate ancestor - Wasteland - a try (I remember vaguely playing it about 30 years ago).

 

Jedi Fallen Order

So it's taken me about three weeks to a month to get through this game. I'll go into spoilers and primary story details in the main JFO thread, but I'll leave my review here. Overall the story was pretty good and I liked the characters; in particular Cere's story which IMO overshadowed Cal's own. The gameplay, at least for myself, was somewhat of a drawback to me. Why did it have to be so difficult - even in the easiest "Story Mode", to not only defend yourself with the lightsaber but to use it in combat? I know these games prefer to make things more challenging by keeping away from simple button-mashing, but if you're a novice in SW games like these where you're controlling a Jedi, couldn't they make an exception? I'm sorry, but no Stormtrooper wielding any type of weapon should be able to get the better of a Jedi. But overall it's a pretty good game. Just not sure how much replay value it has. Obviously if you're Trophy hunter you'll spent extra time collecting everything. I was just more interested in the story itself.

 

Wow, it didn't even dawn on me that I was the last one to post in this thread. I completed JFO a couple of weeks ago, and just last night completed Life is Strange: True Colors

I won't get into details about the game, save it as a spoiler in the LIS thread, but overall I was pretty satisfied. I mentioned the other day in the LIS thread that I got to a cutscene late in the game where it immediately kept crashing on me at the same point; but after reading some comments online about the same issue a few people suggested deleting the game completely off of the HDD and install it onto an external drive. Fortunately I had one lying around my house, formatted it, and reinstalled the game. It worked and I was able to complete the game and get through the credits. For the most part I did like the characters in this installment more than I had in the previous game (but not as much as the original). The environment doesn't change all that much as you're pretty much in the same town throughout the game; once in awhile you venture off just on the outskirts. It's a small mountain town, and the scenery really is beautiful. It really makes you feel like you're in a small Colorado town. The story is more personable for most people than LIS2; it doesn't really delve into the political issues of the day and focus more on just your average young person coming of age on her own.

 

Working through Metroid Zero Mission on the GBA. It's really good, a remake of the original Metroid with SNES type graphics. Also playing the Crash games on GBA. It's basically 2D Crash Bandicoot, and pretty well done.

 

Miles Morales: Spider-Man

A year later, I finally played and finished this. It gets some flak for being 10-15 hours but, to me, that still felt substantial. The Spider-Man DLC was the perfect set-up for this game, as it continues the story seanlessly - hopefully Spider-Men 2 does the same.

The city has never looked better, this one just having the edge even on the PS5 version of its predecessor. The snow effects in a couple of sections was uncannily real. It's also improved the web-swinging, hard as it may to believe.

It has some gameplay weaknesses - targeting is still a bit floaty and the enemies always seemed to have a bit too much health for my liking. The biggest weaknesses arose in some of its audio puzzles, as they lacked a visual cue that would have helped greatly. There's the odd pacing issue, especially on the final level. The pacing was all over the place and the final boss fight went on far too long. The epilogue section did more than make up for that, especially with the Spider-Cat costume, which is brilliant.

Story? It's mostly very good, what drags it down from being great is the (fe)male toxic masculinity of Phin. That character starts off OK and rapidly collapses into a snarling, psychopath macho bastard. I was pretty much cheering at the end when she was disposed of. It's not as if the game needed her to go that route with Prowler, Rhino and the wonderfully smoothly evil, what would a fit, attractive Boris Joyhnson look like, total psychopath in Simon Krieger. He was a superb villain, especially with that corporate tagline: "Roxxon. We're here for you."

For a game that gets so much right on accessibility, it also highlights its stumbles more sharply - like the lack of turn-on visual cues on audio-based puzzlesand a lack of subtitles during some fights. Most of the time it is very, very good in this respect.

When I got to grip to grips with Miles' venom abilities and really started using those, in both stealth and combat, the game got great. True, there is the alert hive-mind that definitely needs working on for the sequel as does some of the stealth arenas. But overall? It's a very good game, with some very neat diversity aspects woven in like signing and black lives matter.

 

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I didn’t quite beat this one, got to the final boss (phase 3 of 4, specifically) but now that I’ve moved on to FF7 remake it does feel that Sekiro finally beat me. It was still an engrossing experience, and I hope one day FromSoftware makes a sequel.

Its notorious reputation for difficulty is well earned, every single enemy in the game (well, almost) from lowly bandits to legendary samurai lords can kill you in seconds if you let your guard down, and I do think the game could have preserved its creative vision with some kind of “easy” mode, but the punishing need for precision does evoke brutal purity of the Japanese sword, the katana.

Compared to the Dark Souls games, Sekiro is a far more streamlined dungeon crawler rpg. You only get one real weapon the whole game, although there is a panoply of techniques and ninja gadgets to enhance your deadliness. The spirit of the game is clashing steel, a finely tuned system of attack and parry encourages if not demands you learn opponents’ techniques in order to break their “posture” and find a killing blow. In a sense, Sekiro is a rhythm game like Guitar Hero but with spears, magic and swords instead of electric chords. In measuring its difficulty, I’d say the bosses are considerably harder than Dark Souls because they require far more precision to defeat, but the exploration-combat is much easier because all your stealth/ninja powers allow for many creative solutions to eliminate whole squads of enemies.

Holding the brutal, inevitably frustrating gameplay together is a beautifully gory, mythical reimagining of the Sengoku Era, when samurai clans battled to forge the foundations modern Japan. From giant apes to ninjitsu sorcerers and dragon gods, there is an old world of magic and heroes finally dying off to give way to something new. The production design is gorgeous throughout, and entirely dark-fantasy. I wish I was more familiar with Buddhist theology because it seems to be the foundation for much of the story. The writing is sparse but elegant, and voice acting well done both in Japanese and English. Many of the characters are unforgettable, with Genichiro Ashina as the magnetic antagonist.

It is very hard to recommend this one, because it’s so damn hard to play. But I will say, if you are able to handle Jedi: Fallen Order on hardest or second-hardest difficulty then you’ll probably be able to get deep into Sekiro. As with all the FromSoftware games, there are loads of detailed strategy guides to help and you will get satisfaction from succeeding in a “hardcore” gaming experience. Really though it’s all about the rich, dark fantasy of ninja vs. samurai. If that aesthetic is appealing to you then check it out, you may be surprised at how much punishment you can tolerate, and how glorious it can feel to overcome it.

 

It's short but I'd still count Life is Strange: True Colors WAVELENGTHS DLC as a game that I've just beat. You can buy the DLC separately from the game or included with the Deluxe edition. It runs roughly about two hours; and even though it's actually a prequel to the main game, it doesn't let you play it until after you've beaten True Colors. I really enjoyed it. I got more into details in the LIS thread. As you play through the main game, you kind of wonder why there aren't more references to the events that occurred in the original LIS. That's really what the Wavelengths DLC provides.

 

I seem to have a fondness for sims / builders in which you can't quite "win", but in which you can achieve the objectives you set for yourself. The latest such game to date, which fits with the current climate, is Project Hospital, a rather clever sim which, aside from its short campaigns focused on this or that aspect of hospital management/diagnostics, offers a sandbox mode in which you can build your own hospital entirely from scratch - and in which you had better learn to pace yourself if you wish to avoid bankruptcy early on. Doesn't hurt that the game is highly moddable and has seen competent modders add expansion-worthy material.

This is of course not at serious game levels of realism, but the layman I am did enjoy diving into the "medical mystery" part of it, and the increasing complexity as you open new departments in your hospital - the game is "fair" in the sense it only sends you patients whose pathologies fall under the lists corresponding to your open departments. Alternating between diagnostics, management, construction and, in the late game, of catastrophic events has offered a nice variety of challenges as my hospital grew from its humble beginnings as a local clinic into a massive complex that employs hundreds and treats hundreds everyday, with hundreds of possible different pathologies.

I'll probably run another game with a couple of RP-oriented construction directives and see where that leads me. In the mean time, it's taught me a thing or two about the breadth of the knowledge required of a Doctor - without, of course, going in-depth...

 

Hidden Agenda
This has become a bit of a tradition to play over the Christmas break every year. It is a fun concept where you use your mobile devices to interact with the game. Given my family are not really gamers (other than my sister and me), it is something my parents can also participate in. Unfortunately, this year yielded the worst ending we have got so far, was rather a dull one! Still, it was good fun, and is something to do as a family.

 

The Dark Pictures: Little Hope and House of Ashes. After nearly two years since I played the first DP game, Man of Medan, with my sisters and cousins, we finally reunited for Christmas to play the later releases in the series. They all make for really engaging group horror gaming evenings, even for my notably horror-shy sisters (and I don't exactly play much horror myself). The format, heavy on narrative with a small cast of individually played characters who can all die at any point, is one I've very fond of. I don't like horror movies at all, but the player agency involved in holding the character's lives in your hands gives it an edge that pulls me in.

Of the two, Little Hope went for more traditional creepy/psychological horror, while House of Ashes was more a big actiony adventure, which I slightly preferred. The scale and scope of Ashes was very impressive, showing some definite improvements in terms of scope, dynamic angles, and number of NPCs on screen, even if it was less scary as a whole (though still very tense, if not more so, given the risk of losing the characters). Very excited for their next game, The Devil in Me, coming out later this year, which looks to basically be 'Saw, but in game form'.

There were some great moments, such as one of my sisters leaving my character in Little Hope to die a gruesome death to save her own skin, an amazing back and forth action scene in the climax of Ashes involving every single surviving character getting a last standoff, multiple players instantly jabbing the button as soon as they saw an icon even when it was actually a tapping rhythm game minigame and insta-failing, then my sister (the other one, they're twins) redeeming her complete failure at the same heartbeat minigame back in Man of Medan by acing 5 of them in a row in a very tense scene.

 

Quake 64. I am the master.

 

Guardians of the Galaxy

A fun game that can be really frustrating at times. Combat is very repetitive and is just fending off swarm after swarm of enemies as you make your way through each Chapter. It gets easier as you acquire more abilities but it can be really hard early on. Other than that though it’s a pretty great game. Story is really good and the characters are all fun to follow along with. The environments are varied and interesting to explore. Much better than The Avengers and with a little improvement it could reach Spider-Man heights.

 

Concrete Genie

This was a PS Plus freebie a while back. It's a short game; only about 6 hours long or so. You play as a young boy who's a runaway orphan in a small seaside town that's been covered in darkness and despair. While trying to hide from a group of bullies, you gain the power to paint on the walls of the town to light it up once again. It's a sweet game with a moral message.

 

This made me so mad when I was playing Man of Medan. I feel like it's genuinely a flaw in the game design. For a split second, I feel like you really don't know whether it's a quick time event, a rhythm game or a "tap as fast as you can" event. I hit a button once and realized like a second later that it was a "tap as fast as you can" prompt, but it was too late and a character died.

 

Yeah, I lost, I'm not completing this **** pile:

Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham

Due to playing and spending too much time on this absolute piece of crap I no longer care or have any confidence in the new Lego Star Wars game because it'll be the same idiocy that kills this game.

Too often I couldn't tell what I had to do, clearly see what to do or trigger inputs, because those require me to be in precise positioning. I only stuck with it as long as I did because it was a no refund, digital buy. Even at £7.99, it's a con.

The final straw? A puzzle which requires me to check the colours on some pillars before jumping onto a changing platform, which is an instant kill if you get it wrong, but you cannot have both pieces of visual info on the screen at once! All I can conclude is that this game was made with the sole purpose of torturing children and adults.

The same kind of stupid, idiotic, difficult bull**** game design crops up on Lego Harry Potter too. There's puzzles with next to no reset feature, lying signposting and .... It's a very cynical, lazy, bastard piece of game design and Travellers Tales ought to be ashamed of that and this.

I've still got Lego Supervillains, as a PS+ freebie, wonder how long that'll last before the same plague strikes it.

 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I'm tempted to do a Jedi Ben style essay on this but I don't know if I have it in me. At least not at this moment in time. What I will say is that I enjoyed the doing the divine beasts and the shrines (except for any that required motion controls because **** them) but most of the stuff in between didn't click for me as often as I had hoped and the core gameplay loop eventually got kind of stale. Weapons and shields breaking did suck but by far the biggest problem for me were the controls. I just found them to be often clunky and awkward even when going through your inventory or map (and yes I did use the Pro Controller). I did like the game overall but it definitely left a lot to be desired.

 

You're not alone in that feeling on BotW

I personally, really disliked it. The divine beasts should have been temples, there should have been more of them. The shrines were annoying and the weapon breaking/Master sword nerfing was ridiculous

Just an overall horrible game

 

So that's two nods against BOTW. I've never played the game (don't own the Nintendo console), but to this day I was still annoyed that it beat out Horizon: Zero Dawn for GOTY. I only saw BOTW as a demo at a local Best Buy and wasn't all that impressed.

 

I personally loved the game, had so much fun playing it and cannot wait for the next game. Horizon is good too, but I much preferred BotW. The controls of Horizon always felt a tad clunky, which made for annoying gameplay now and then, especially w.r.t the parkour.

Strange Brigade (Base game, platinum trophy)
This is a great coop game, I played it all with my uncle abs today we finally got the platinum trophy. It took us 3 years and 5 months from getting the first trophy to the platinum. Some aspects were a grind, but overall, very enjoyable. There isn’t much of a story, it is more of a survival wave type game, but with the odd (simple) puzzle thrown in. Not a bad game for a £10 pick up in ASDA three years ago!

 

Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham / Lego Super Villains

In the end, I couldn't leave either of these unfinished. Though both games did, for different reasons, give indications of what I need to see in the upcoming new Lego Star Wars.

Having got past that infernally designed puzzle, the rest of Lego Batman 3 was surprisingly more straight forward, which only emphasies the main problem with the game: It is terribly uneven. It has some really good sections, the Resogun homage shooting levels are a lot of fun but then it follows up with a puzzle that makes no damn sense.

Lego Super Villains suffers from that same uneven nature coupled with poor signposting and graphical clutter. The last is more significant than might be thought, as while it's a better looking game - and should be as it was made in 2018 compared to its 2014 predecessor - the graphics get in the way of the gameplay. Whether that be having difficulty seeing your character because there's four others on the screen, enemies and a boss, with lots of flashy attacks, obscuring your view - or the attack windows for the boss - or telling what something is and knowing how to interact with it. I'd press the hint button and up would come 'use laser on gold items', only problem is, due to lighting effects, the gold item did not look gold to me. Similarly, another time was to use a batarang, but I hadn't used that technique in 10 levels. Which leads neatly to the other problem is it's very hard to keep track of which character has which ability and the game thinks you can do this easily.

And then there is the True Hero / Villain status from getting enough studs which is all over the place, some levels you'll do it easily on, on others it'll look impossible to do and others times you'll feel, quite justifiably, it's been stolen from you.

When both games are on a roll they are good, the story is well executed, there's good voice work, it can work really well. Until it doesn't....

As to what Lego Star Wars needs? Accessibility options, lots of them.

Bayonetta (PS4)

Playing this remastered edition in boosted form on a PS5 was superb fun.

It's a short game, you can be done in 7-8 hours but it is such a lunatic ride. It's not perfect, the Witch Time statue sequences bring a well-paced game to a screeching halt every time they turn up, the camera can be imperfect, but the main action of killing demonic angels in very creative ways? It remains ace. Someone should have surpassed this game by now but nope, it remains in a league of its own. How many other games finish a boss fight by you feeding the boss to your giant demon hair-dog?

Assassins' Creed Crossover

Comprised of a story section in both Odyssey and Valhalla, if you have both games, this is a rather excellent freebie. It's also a far bigger piece of content than I expected, adding a new area to each game.

It's nothing that innovative, but it does throw some interesting story curveballs and even a hint, depending on how you read it, as to how the upcoming Infinity could work.

 

I installed Odyssey again so I can play the crossover event but haven't had a chance since I have been at my parents' house during an ice storm.

 

For anyone who has one of the games, it'll irritate but if you have both, it's great.

If you want to play in the righr order, I didn't, it's Odyssey then Valhalla.

 

Yeah I'd heard play Odyssey first so that's why I reinstalled it. I also then need to play a lot of Valhalla because I never played the DLC.

 

Don't worry about levelling much in Valhalla, recommended level is 55 for its new area.

 

Y’all won’t like these links then.

IGN’s #1 game of all time is Breath of the Wild

A Japanese television program held a three hour special where over 50,000 people voted Breath of the Wild as the best game ever made

Totally worthy of those titles. Breath of the Wild eats the entirety of Horizon for breakfast in its first hour.