Games You've Beat in 2013

[toxicitizen]

Rayman Origins.

 

So, in the currently playing thread I said I kept going back and forth between loving and hating it. I think it actually won me over around halfway through. When the "tutorial" part ends and the game opens up a bit and you gain access to four new worlds all at once. I actually ended up completing 3 of those 4 in the same evening. I don't know if the gameplay just grew on me or if those levels were just that much better, but I started having tons more fun. Fuck those water levels, though. Seriously. Whoever thought those were a good idea should be flayed alive.

 

I still feel like the controls are kinda shit sometimes and I really don't get how it managed to score 9.5s almost across the board. But it was still pretty good. I'll most likely grab Legends but definitely not at launch and probably not until I can get it for cheaper than I got Origins (which I think was something like 13 bucks).

[Thursday Next]

T-Next spends most of his time outrunning zombies.

 

Still only one hour sessions. Need to maintain my "filthy casual" status.

[Hot Heart]

I meant during your day job.

[toxicitizen]

Joe Danger 2: The Movie.

 

The original was a lot of fun and this one just goes a little bit crazy with minecart, ski and jetpack levels. Also TF2 characters. So you can fly around with a jetpack as the Heavy. It's amazing. It's also quite a bit easier than the original, I managed to 100% the Movie Mode (what you'd call the main campaign) without too much effort. Really glad I got those two in the summer sale.

 

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.

 

Oh man, this one was long overdue. I've been a huge fan of Capybara games since Critter Crunch and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes came out on PSN. I've wanted to play this one since it came out on PC but for some reason never bought it. Ended up getting it through a Humble Bundle, I think, and it just disappeared in the backlog. 

 

It's kinda short but I really liked it. I guess it's technically a point-and-click adventure, but it's clear they were going for something a bit more out there. Some kind of musical "experience" or whatever. It's kinda weird. The game actually has events that are dependent on the phases of the fucking moon, of all things.The music of Jim Guthrie is pretty good, though, so it kinda works and ties the whole thing together rather well. Actually, I think the game was developed based on the music and not the other way around. The controls are kinda weird, though. It was originally an iOS game and they really didn't change anything when porting it so you just kinda use your mouse as if it were your finger on a touchscreen. It works well enough, I guess.

Edited August 23, 2013 by FLD

[CorgiShinobi]

DuckTales: Remastered

 

Post final boss platforming is a pain in the ass, but there's a shortcut. If you don't get it right the first time, you regenerate with the lava higher up, so unless you're hardest of the hardcore and want to barely survive, you could skip the shotcut...

 

But it saves you so much pain. At the point of my "beaten" status, I had already defeated Count Dracula Duck 11 times. Really nerfs your satsifaction of victory when it becomes a pattern.

[deanb]

Crysis 2

 

Pretty fun game overall, though I'd say it has issues with bullet sponge enemies (the last guys you fight are a nightmare, they seem to be only affected by one weapon so when that runs out it's jsut plonking a ton of bullets into them. Oh and when they die you get 5000 nanopoints, which is significantly higher than most others but also pointless as they're the last enemies you fight.)

 

Controls could be awkward and clunky, especially as scrolling between weapons you'd end up going through your two guns, the JAW, grenade and then C4. When really should have just gone through two weapons (having three would be nice) and put grenades, C4 n the JAW on other buttons. And you'd scroll cos the other option was hitting 1. And in an intense fire fight wanting to swap into close up shotgun you'd have the habit of hitting Q instead of 1 and losing your armour. Not fun at close range. Their choice of how nanopoint boosts are allocated seemed weird too.

 

Oh there was one bit where I was running away from an explosion, and went "but I went left!" tested a theory and took my hands off kb/m and found my guy was still running.

 

Storywise...maybe it's an issue with me not fully finishing Crysis n Warhead, but what happened to the first guy? Also storywise is that early game you get shot at assuming you're the infected Prophet in the suit, but then folks find out you're actually Alcatraz. And for most of the game you're Alcatraz. Then randomly everyone switches over to calling you Prophet again. I assume something got overlooked and bits of old game plot ended up still kept in (maybe to combat the leaked game?), or maybe no one paid attention to the VA left in the game and used old soldier outbursts instead of writing new ones?

[toxicitizen]

Storywise...maybe it's an issue with me not fully finishing Crysis n Warhead, but what happened to the first guy?

Assuming you mean Nomad? Mystery, then. That was the one thing that bugged me the most with the story. I was under the impression that Crysis 3 addresses this but I haven't played it yet so I have no idea.

 

Also storywise is that early game you get shot at assuming you're the infected Prophet in the suit, but then folks find out you're actually Alcatraz. And for most of the game you're Alcatraz. Then randomly everyone switches over to calling you Prophet again. I assume something got overlooked and bits of old game plot ended up still kept in (maybe to combat the leaked game?), or maybe no one paid attention to the VA left in the game and used old soldier outbursts instead of writing new ones?

Not sure where the game lost you but that's how I understood it.

 

 

Prophet kills himself at the beginning. You might have missed it but his corpse is in the area you wake up in when you first get the suit. Eventually people find out you're actually Alcatraz. This is where my memory gets a bit foggy but if I remember correctly, at some point it's revealed that Alcatraz was way too injured and you're basically a corpse inside the suit. At the end, Prophet's DNA (which had been preversed in the suit, because reasons!) does something and his consciousness takes over.

 

 

So yeah, I never really got the sense that there was some plot mix-ups (wasn't the leak only a few weeks before release anyway?). Just a really convoluted shitty plot.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Controls could be awkward and clunky, especially as scrolling between weapons you'd end up going through your two guns, the JAW, grenade and then C4. When really should have just gone through two weapons (having three would be nice) and put grenades, C4 n the JAW on other buttons. And you'd scroll cos the other option was hitting 1. And in an intense fire fight wanting to swap into close up shotgun you'd have the habit of hitting Q instead of 1 and losing your armour. Not fun at close range. Their choice of how nanopoint boosts are allocated seemed weird too.

 

 

Why do you say "You'd" instead of "I"? I didn't have your issues with the controls. I'm used to adapting to different controls for every game.

[deanb]

 

Storywise...maybe it's an issue with me not fully finishing Crysis n Warhead, but what happened to the first guy?

Assuming you mean Nomad? Mystery, then. That was the one thing that bugged me the most with the story. I was under the impression that Crysis 3 addresses this but I haven't played it yet so I have no idea.

 

Also storywise is that early game you get shot at assuming you're the infected Prophet in the suit, but then folks find out you're actually Alcatraz. And for most of the game you're Alcatraz. Then randomly everyone switches over to calling you Prophet again. I assume something got overlooked and bits of old game plot ended up still kept in (maybe to combat the leaked game?), or maybe no one paid attention to the VA left in the game and used old soldier outbursts instead of writing new ones?

Not sure where the game lost you but that's how I understood it.

 

 

Prophet kills himself at the beginning. You might have missed it but his corpse is in the area you wake up in when you first get the suit. Eventually people find out you're actually Alcatraz. This is where my memory gets a bit foggy but if I remember correctly, at some point it's revealed that Alcatraz was way too injured and you're basically a corpse inside the suit. At the end, Prophet's DNA (which had been preversed in the suit, because reasons!) does something and his consciousness takes over.

 

 

So yeah, I never really got the sense that there was some plot mix-ups (wasn't the leak only a few weeks before release anyway?). Just a really convoluted shitty plot.

 

 

Yeah Nomad.

 

 

I get that Prophet kills himself at the start, kinda hard to miss when they play that scene quite a few times. What I'm getting at is the NPCs swap from calling him Prophet at the start (makes sense, they think he is Prophet since they ain't seen the corpse) to you meeting Gould, him figuring out you're not Prophet, the last will n testament video plays n everyone's all like "hey, you're Alcatraz". Even more reinforced when Chine pops up. Then randomly about the last 2/3rds of the game folks call you Prophet again. You don't actually become Prophet MkII until the absolute end of the game.

 

 

@FDS Well of course you of all folks had no issue with controls.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah Nomad.

 

 

I get that Prophet kills himself at the start, kinda hard to miss when they play that scene quite a few times. What I'm getting at is the NPCs swap from calling him Prophet at the start (makes sense, they think he is Prophet since they ain't seen the corpse) to you meeting Gould, him figuring out you're not Prophet, the last will n testament video plays n everyone's all like "hey, you're Alcatraz". Even more reinforced when Chine pops up. Then randomly about the last 2/3rds of the game folks call you Prophet again. You don't actually become Prophet MkII until the absolute end of the game.

 

Oh, I don't remember that then. Been a while since I played it.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Yeah I don't remember any oddities of being called Prophet before becoming Prophet2.0

[toxicitizen]

Sonic Generations.

 

I'm of two minds on this one. I don't want to be too harsh on it because it's the first Sonic game I've played since I was a kid (before all that 3D nonsense), so it was really nice to revisit the series after such a long time. 

 

For the most part, I enjoyed the gameplay. It's really fun when you go fast, that part works. But holy shit the platforming is horrendous when it forces you to slow down or stop. Even as a kid, I always thought the way Sonic controls made any slow platforming kinda shitty and that hasn't changed here. Other than that, the story was kind of cringe-worthy. I guess the cutscenes were written with kids in mind? I didn't realize Sonic was aimed at young kids specifically nowadays. Or maybe Sega just has shit writers. Oh and that final boss fight was terrible. I mean, I get what they were going for but it played the worst of the entire game. It was the only one that just wasn't fun. Seemed kinda weird.

 

Also, looking at the thread I guess I forgot to post about it but I also played through Analogue: A Hate Story a few days ago. It was alright. I mean, it's a visual novel. I don't expect they get much better than this considering the story was interesting enough for me to finish it. I kinda liked the prequel Digital: A Love Story better, though. I really liked how it was set in the late 80s and had you using an old OS in the early days of the internet and message boards. A new sequel called Hate Plus just came out on Steam, I'll probably grab it at some point.

[toxicitizen]

Finally beat Catherine late last night. Man, it's good to have this one scratched off the backlog. I hated having it there. Loved the game but ended up losing interest because of a damn difficulty spike when I first bought it over a year ago.

 

The story is about as good as you would expect from the Persona team. Only issue there is your choices don't always mesh with how Vincent acts in cutscenes. As far as I'm aware, only the ending is affected by those. As for the gameplay, as someone who loves both difficult games and puzzle games, this game fits in a weird niche that's kinda perfect for me. The only problem is that the difficulty curve is kind of all over the place. It starts out easy enough and slowly ramps up as the game introduces new concepts. But suddenly around halfway through it just spikes out of nowhere and one boss level in particular feels like they programmed a variable called "bullshit" and just cranked it WAY up. There is so much shit coming at you from every single direction that you almost need luck to not walk into something that kills you by complete accident. This is around the part where I'd initially stopped.

 

Here's where it gets weird, though. After that boss, it kinda gets easier. I mean, I guess it's possible I just got significantly better at the game without realizing it. But I really doubt it. I feel like the game is at its best when it throws difficult puzzles at you but doesn't rush you through them (i.e. doesn't actively try to fucking murder you so you actually have time to think). And the last few levels are a lot like that, even the bosses aren't trying as hard to climb right up your ass. Not the final boss, though. Holy shit, fuck that asshole. It's like they didn't know what to do so they just went back to that bullshit variable from earlier and fucking broke it on purpose. Here, there were times I literally died because I stepped on the wrong block at the wrong time, without any real way to know what was coming. It was infuriating. I don't think there even exists words of profanity hateful enough to do justice to my hatred for that motherfucker.

 

But yeah, other than those two difficulty walls, I absolutely loved the game. I kinda want to keep playing it. I mean, there's trophies I could hunt or go for some of the other endings. But really, it's just more of the gameplay that I want. That hasn't happened in a while. I think XCOM was the last time.

Edited August 29, 2013 by FLD

[TheMightyEthan]

The story is about as good as you would expect from the Persona team. Only issue there is your choices don't always mesh with how Vincent acts in cutscenes. As far as I'm aware, only the ending is affected by those.

Yeah, that bugged the shit out of me.  I'm okay with games that want to tell you a story that isn't affected by player agency, but if that's what you're doing then don't fucking give the player choices to be making.  If I'm blowing off Katherine in gameplay I want Vincent to do the same in the cutscenes.  Otherwise just don't give me the option.

[toxicitizen]

 

The story is about as good as you would expect from the Persona team. Only issue there is your choices don't always mesh with how Vincent acts in cutscenes. As far as I'm aware, only the ending is affected by those.

Yeah, that bugged the shit out of me.  I'm okay with games that want to tell you a story that isn't affected by player agency, but if that's what you're doing then don't fucking give the player choices to be making.  If I'm blowing off Katherine in gameplay I want Vincent to do the same in the cutscenes.  Otherwise just don't give me the option.

 

 

Pretty much, yeah. Before playing the game, I was under the impression that

 

you could actually choose between Katherine and Catherine. But now that I've actually seen the ending (the normal lover one), I kind of feel like going with Catherine isn't even an option considering the reveal about what she actually is. I'd love to be wrong here. It would be cool if the reveal changes based on the choices you've made. This is the main reason I'm curious to see the other endings. But even then, there would still be huge inconsistencies with Vincent's character throughout the game.

 

[Hot Heart]

TMNT: Out of the Shadows

 

A pretty fun (and challenging) game once it gets going (i.e. you unlock some upgrades), but I can see why so many people have written it off early/after the demo. Basically, a neat game made by people who love the franchise but lacking a lot of polish, clearly due to a rushed development cycle (take a bow, Activision and Xbox 'Summer of Arcade'!). I may share more thoughts in the thread...or perhaps I shall do a review for PXOD, seeing as it's a 'smaller' game.

[toxicitizen]

For someone like me who's not a huge TMNT fan, would you recommend waiting for a sale?

[Hot Heart]

Most definitely. Essentially, fun can be had if you're willing to overlook a lot of the flaws but I don't think that's so easy if you're not too fond of the actual licence itself. At 50% off or something like that, I could see it as a lot more palatable.

[toxicitizen]

Alright, thanks. That's too bad, it looked like it had a lot of potential.

 

Anyway.

 

Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches.

 

It's really hard to complain about more Dishonored. The story is great and the gameplay is as awesome as ever. But I felt like it was seriously on the short side, more so than Knife of Dunwall.

 

I didn't really mind them re-using a map from the base game for one of the missions, but holy fuck, did it really need to be this short? If I wasn't so anal about doing things perfectly (I play games like this or Deus Ex at a snail pace, carefully exploring every inch and reloading whenever I do something I deem to be a mistake), I probably could've finished that first mission in 15 mins on a first run. The second mission was a lot bigger and more open like the missions from the main campaign but the third one was again kinda short and small. 

 

I'm really gonna have to replay the whole thing back-to-back at some point, though. Having something like two months between the two episodes made it kinda hard to really get into the story. Also, I wonder how the ending actually works.  

I finished it in low chaos and Corvo let Daud live, which is what I did in my playthrough of the main game. But I wonder if it actually reads your campaign save or if simply doing it in high chaos would've been enough to have Corvo kill Daud.

 

[TheMightyEthan]

 

I finished it in low chaos and Corvo let Daud live, which is what I did in my playthrough of the main game. But I wonder if it actually reads your campaign save or if simply doing it in high chaos would've been enough to have Corvo kill Daud.

 

Answering your question, so may be a spoiler you don't want, but

Corvo kills Daud or lets Daud live based on your chaos level at the end of Brigmore Witches. It doesn't have anything to do with your main campaign actions.

 

 

I didn't feel the first level was too short, but like you I'm crazy methodical.

[Hot Heart]

Alright, thanks. That's too bad, it looked like it had a lot of potential.

 

Yeah, it's a shame. I think that, given more time and/or a proper full release schedule (and perhaps without having to adhere to the Nickelodeon version), they could have created something quite remarkable. I've always wanted a more Ninja Gaiden-like TMNT game, but I know they will always have to compromise between younger and older audiences.

[CrowKnow]

Beat Middle Manager of Justice and 10,000,000 while I was on vacation.  10,000,000 was fun, not sure if there's really any reason for me to ever go back to it now though.  Middle Manager was great at first, but became a boring grind by the end( no thanks to how the difficulty ramped up)  

Edited September 1, 2013 by CrowKnow

[deanb]

You meaning 10,000,000? If so, yeah it's not much of a "oh I beat it, let's do some more" kind of game. As for MMoJ, god it does get pretty grindy. It'd be a tad easier to do if you could have more than 4 heroes in your base at a time, and if the UI was a bit better. You play it on iOS or Android?

[CrowKnow]

Android, there were a few crashes once in a while but, that was patched out relatively quickly.  1 big flaw I did notice was how much of a battery drain the game was, the game caused my S2 to run hot enough to feel  the heat through the case.

[deanb]

Oh yeah, it's a huge issue with the heat and battery drain. It's a pretty sloppily done port tbh, back button doesn't work properly for one. Doesn't bode well for Dropchord.