Gaming What was the last videogame you beat?

Horizon: Zero Dawn + Frozen Wastes

Played this in anticipation for Forbidden West (which is fabulous so far) and I really enjoyed this one. Aloy is a great character. The voice acting for some side characters can get Capcom levels of bad sometimes, but that's really my only major gripe. The Hunting Lodge missions can **** off, I never bothered with them. The DLC expansion is great too, it's basically its own game.

 

What was your issue with the Hunting Lodge missions? Just the level of difficulty?

 

I finished off Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin this morning, just in time to start playing Elden Ring on Thursday night.

 

The DLC I never played because it was too hard when I tried. Had to just watch a story summary video.

Forbidden West is good but I can tell it's gonna take me months.

 

Not sure if I beat it per se, but I did unlock numerous characters. Marvel vs. Street Fighter. Super fun game, the first in the Marvel Vs. Capcom series. Actually the second game in the series. X Men vs Street Fighter was the first.

 

Who's your main?

 

Is there a thread to talk about the videogames that beat you?
(Bloody KSP/RSS/RO/RP )

 

Just hated that they were timed, and also you had to shoot specific things off of the machines. I don't have steady hands or aim.

 

You da main

 

Captain America or the Hulk.

 

Ugh I don't mind shooting things off but timed things are the bane of my existence. I also didn't do more than the required hunting lodge missions.

 

Yakuza 6. As someone who’s fallen in love with this series over the past year and a half or so, even I couldn’t believe how brilliantly they pulled off the conclusion to the Kazuma Kiryu saga. Playing through these games has truly been one of my favorite experiences with this medium, and getting to witness such a wonderful conclusion was the cherry on top. Can’t say enough good things.

 

Luxor. My goodness this game is addicting. I played for 2 hours yesterday.

 

Gone through a few games recently. Making progress with the backlog. Got AC Origins, Arkham Knight & Miles Morales complete, but did avoid a lot of the side stuff. Gave up with Halo Infinite, just watching a playthrough instead.

 

Portal 2 Co-Op
Haven't played this in probably 5+ years, but a guy at work and myself decided to give it a shot. It is so much fun, we did whiz through it, but some of the puzzles really got us thinking. Usually, FPS make me a bit motion sick, but this game seemed to be perfectly fine, which is a bonus! Great fun, and definitely one to try if you have a partner in crime!

 

Crazy Climber on Atari. Great but difficult game. You have to climb a skyscraper.

 

That's the one part of Portal 2 I haven't played. My bro just got his steam deck and I should be able to get mine next week..that might be the first thing we do is play the co op.

 

Superliminal (2019). A puzzle game based around changing objects' sizes via perspective tricks. That's a pretty cool central mechanic, but the game didn't stick with it for long. It sort of ambled around various perspective related puzzles, without much escalation or building on previous lessons. Too short too. But a decent mindbender if you have a little time spare.

 

Horizon II: The Forbidden West

This is a surprisingly mixed bag. It is, overall, a great game, but the playing experience within that will be quite variable. As a sequel it is far weaker, as it tends to opt more for continuation than improvement, though there are some here. In terms of accessibility what look like exemplary options fall apart a bit due to implementation. In this respect Guerilla are behind UbiSoft and further behind Insomniac in their understanding of this area.

Things that work very, very well is the world design. Bigger than its predecessor but with the same level of density, it is a great world to explore but the Focus used to scan the world seems a lot more restricted here both in its range and what it shows. This sense of restriction crops up elsewhere too. Nonetheless, you always want to see what you can find. Minor flaws are how it displays map information inconsistently. Some icons disappear when done, others not so you can end up heading for stuff you've done. Similarly, sometimes the path guiding will be off. The climbing system is mostly good but often the indicator of button pressing would be lost in the texture detail, so at times it felt an inconsistent system.

Combat is more complicated but I'm not sure that makes it better. There are more elements, but the one the game really wants you to use is the acid arrows. Elemental effects are better late in the game when you have gear that applies them faster, until then they feel far more limited. Melee strikes feel more limited here too, nor can you power up your staff that much. The biggest weakness in the combat is the camera does not track enemies for you and the auto aim really isn't much of one by 2022 standards. This will mean you try and do stuff but fail because the game just screws around with your aim, your camera, your view - one accessibility option of auto-concentration probably made the game far harder, when I played the final mission with it off it seemed easier! Then there's arbitrary restrictions that make no sense like a max number of traps and tripwires you can deploy, which massively undermines their use. Finally, the game will arbitrarily strip you of stealth even if you've done everything right, or it'll deploy stealth stripping indestuctible pods - these are hugely irritating.

The worst combat by far is melee. It is terrible and stands out even more due to how many excellent melee combat games have come out since 2017. It is crude, limited, often fails to register combos, hides enemies amid graphical detail and it really isn't very good. For the sequel it needs a major overhaul, not just the combat but also visibility of human enemies.

I greatly enjoyed the story and the quests, the great majority were very good with excellent intro story sequences and conversations.

There is some open world clutter in this - the timed rubbish that is the hunting grounds are back, with an arena added - don't care about either. There's machine races - they're overcomplicated rubbish. The collectables? I can't say many of them were good to do, due to how the game often tofails to visually convey info. Not just in side content either. Many complain about Aloy's prodding the player in the right direction, but even then there were times when I couldn't tell what I needed to do. A blue-gray indicator blended in on a greay wall or a gap did not look jumpable to my eyes.

I managed to do most of the quests and, by taking advantage of a bug, even did an underwater stealth one. Talking of, that is utter rubbish and the game would be far better off without it. It ruins the enjoyment of the underwater environments, which look amazing. But you will get trapped in those and need to fast travel pack warp your way out because you won't be able to see the way out.

All of the new enemies are very well designed and often look amazing. Some, however, are a total pain to fight and turn up far, far too often.

Any game that I spend over 100 hours on must have done something or a whole lot of something right and this does. It does have its moment-to-moment frustrations where oddity of design really crops up. Part of the reason those aspects stand out so much is because everything else is so good.

What do I want for the sequel? More obvious tagging and better camera tracking of enemies. Far better auto aim targeting for easily hitting machine parts. Less restrictions on what you can do in combat and the gear - your gear has the usual four levels, but there's remarkably little Legendary gear to get. Though, when I powered up a Legendary bow, it was certainly worth it, I'd like to do a New Game+ run with that gear. DLC will also work.

And, while combat can frustrate, there will often be times where it is very, very good - blowing up elemental parts on a machine, with a huge blast resulting, never gets old. Watching a machine die by tripwire is always very fun. As is shooting off a weapon and using it on its prior owner - Thunderjaws remain the best example of this.

How would I rate this? Probably a great game for everyone else, it's very good for me and a good, but not great, sequel. I do want to play the next one too.

 

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS5)

For all that it has its flaws with some camera angles on slide sequences, not always great at indicating where you should go and the final boss is a mess, this is still a very good game.

The pity is they didn't take the accessibility improvements added here further still. Despite that the consistent centre dot changes how I play in a very positive sense.

Whatever the gameplay weaknesses, it's on the story that the game mostly shines, though I think it is too indulgent to Nadine and Sam. I did love that endgame conversation where Nadine admits that nearly her entire mercenary company has died trying to kill Drake. That was funny.

While this does conclude Drake's story there us an awful lot that could still be done with this. There is Cassie, there's Chloe, there's Sully and Sam. I think the definitive Uncharted game is still to be made.

 

Excitebike NES
I own this game and have played it a few times and didn't care for it. But i gave it a chance and boy is this fun. Lots of strategy, conserving your turbo so you don't overheat and angling your bike on jumps (hello Trials HD). And that catchy theme music. Great game. It's on the NES classic for a reason.

 

Excitebike is quite fun and a classic. I've got the cart and manual with a custom game case. I need to explore the create your own track feature sometime.

 

Halo: Infinite

One of the bad entries to the series, sadly. Better than Halo 5 in some ways, worse in others. One of those ostensibly AAA titles that feels like an early-access release. Whether they have plans to build on it or not, it doesn't reinvigorate the franchise on its own.

Campaign: Main positive development is an "open world" layout in Far Cry style. Big map, with outposts full of enemies, clearing them grants fast travel and rewards. It's a nice way to play Halo, you can choose your pace for an entire session. Leisurely vehicle rampages, sniping, assault on foot with or without marine support, many ways to approach it. Environments are more vertical than usual, which can be exploited with a very handy grappling hook. There's no jetpack, but otherwise Chief feels more maneuverable than ever, another plus. This comes in handy vs a decent roster of boss and miniboss fights, another big plus. Unfortunately there's pretty much zero story to get you interested in zooming around the new ring. There's Chief, and nu-Cortana, a fidgety pilot who's constantly panicking, and a new indistinguishable Brute/ape/ogre villain, and that's pretty much it. No cinematic cutscenes either, it's all first person with an occasional camera sweep, what little story does develop is equally cryptic and boring, which borders on annoying. Whole narrative component feels like it was hastily assembled months before release. And it's not just the sparse/bad writing, enemy-types are less varied and expressive than the series' standard, environmental aesthetics less diverse. The game *plays* up to the series' standard and sometimes looks great, but it's just not engaging enough to be worth it. I've seen it said that Infinite was supposed to be a sort of franchise reboot. If that's true, then the correct decision would have been a straight remake of Halo:CE, with the open world layout to make it fresh.

Multiplayer: Much better than Halo 5's weird microeconomy, keeps gameplay contemporary with universal-zoom while still emphasizing maneuvers. The only Halo multiplayer I like is BTB, preferably with objectives. There's a new mode where you capture "power seeds" as a nice variation to CTF, but the maps are not very good. If they bring back Blood Gulch I'll be back too, otherwise probably won't play ever again!

 

Wordbreaker by POWGI. It’s Wordle on the Xbox. 120 puzzles. Only difference is you can’t repeat letters in a word. And you get more than six guesses. Good when you need to kill a few minutes here and there.

 

Ridge Racer PS One
Not really that hard to beat. Only a few tracks, but just a perfect racer, with great 90's techno that perfectly complements the action, tight controls and a great sense of speed. And perhaps most importantly, you are almost always just winning or just coming in 2nd or 3rd. This is kind of my golden age of gaming, the mid/late 90's, when the SNES, PS One and the N64 were the systems. And the Genesis.