Games You've Beat in 2014

[danielpholt]

Resident Evil Revelations HD.

I played it when it came out on 3DS, but its so much better on PS3 though. Controls so much better.

The 3DS version is still the best looking 3DS game, so this was a good title to bring over to consoles. It looks really nice, Im kind of shocked that Capcom would put this much money into a portable title. On 3DS at that. Seems kind of like a waste considering the resolution of it's screen.

Anyways, onto Raid mode.

 

I've been putting off picking this up for ages. I had the demo on the 3DS and liked what I saw, I'm just a little stunned it never made its way to Vita. I mean, that's *the* system I want to play this game on. 

[Strangelove]

Yeah I was pretty upset when it didn't release on Vita. Would have been perfect.

[TheMightyEthan]

The Walking Dead Season 2.

 

[Strangelove]

InFamous: First Light. Finished the story and got all the collectible a in the city, still have to do the challenges and such.

[Eleven]

I guess I've just been playing a lot... but I just beat Diablo, and I'm now in the Reaper of Souls content... It felt really short.

[SomTervo]

InFamous: First Light. Finished the story and got all the collectible a in the city, still have to do the challenges and such.

 

How is First Light? I liked the sound of SP trying to mix it up with missions and game design, but is any of this actually the case?

[Strangelove]

I dont know what you really mean.

 

If you liked Second Son, youll like this one. If you didnt, you wont.

It took me about 4 hours for the story mode(I assume, I have no idea since theres no timer). The storyline shifts from the present(arena) to the past(Seattle).

There are almost twice as many neon upgrades for Fetch as there were for Delsin and you can clear up the map of collectibles in about an hour or 2. 

After that, you can play in the arena to do points based challenges.

Outside of the gigantic arena, the other new arena is the outside of the DUP headquarters(the snowy area). The city is mostly half of what it was in SS, the area that has the space needle. Its still pretty big.

 

And if you have SS, you can use Delsin in the arena.

[SomTervo]

What I mean is the various lines from Sucker Punch that they were trying to mix up their level and mission design with First Light, using it almost as an experiment. I can't be bothered to find a source for that. But obviously it was PR bullshit, if it's almost entirely the same as Second Son bar the arena. Suggestion I got was that there would be fewer side missions/ objectives and a focus on broader, longer story missions with more capacity for freedom.

Edited August 27, 2014 by kenshi_ryden

[Strangelove]

I dont know what you mean. As far as I can tell, the single story missions are longer, since there are only about 5 or 6. I suppose the difference is that you can start them and for the most part, go off and do other shit while the mission is still on. A lot of these open world games dont allow you to get distracted in the middle of a story mission, but I went off and did side stuff while in a story mission a lot.

Honestly, there really arent any side missons aside from collecting stuff or beating up DUP/gangsters. The arena kind of makes up for it.

[TheMightyEthan]

That was something I liked about Murdered: Soul Suspect:  you could get distracted and go off and do side stuff right during the middle of an investigation.

[SomTervo]

What I'm referring to is stuff Sucker Punch PR were saying in interviews and Twitter before the game came out.

 

It sounds like they did implement the changes I mentioned. Sucker Punch said stuff about wanting to make the missions exist within the game's bigger sandbox, and cut down side quests.

 

Basically, they wanted to make it more like what The Phantom Pain will be like. One main objective, huge gameplay opportunities within that, and occasional small distractions. I think it's a really good model- we know that traditional (eg GTA, usual inFamous) mission design is pretty terrible. Going from A to B with no dynamic fun or making your own objectives mid-mission.

Edited August 27, 2014 by kenshi_ryden

[toxicitizen]

Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited.

 

Beat the main story last night and man, this game is fucking great! I mean, it's the same insanely deep Disgaea gameplay but the story is a huge step up from Disgaea 3. I never really understood why D3's story got as much hate as it did but now I kinda do. D4's actually makes it look bad by comparison. Disgaea has always been super corny but D3 layed it on way too thick. Maybe it didn't bother me as much because I never played D2, so I only had the original to compare it to. Here. you start out as a bunch of demons (led by a vampire) fighting their way out of Hades but by the end you're fighting robots and aliens on the fucking moon. There's also a giant robot that fits into this somehow. This series has never really taken itself too seriously but this is a whole new level of ridiculous, even the original wasn't quite as silly when it introduced similar elements. Probably the funniest game I've played all year.

 

But Disgaea is all about that deep gameplay and here it's largely the same but with a lot of key improvements. There is still a metric fuckton of shit to do and systems you can use (and abuse). Or you can ignore it and just enjoy the story. At first I was really disappointed to see the skills team attacks from D3 were gone but after a few hours I forgot all about them. Overall, I really can't complain. It really feels like the "next-gen" leap that D3 wasn't. And I don't just mean how they finally fucking got HD sprites (I still don't know wtf they were thinking with D3 there...). There's tons of small details and refinements that makes it a better experience. The character sprites look great, especially on the Vita's screen, and they actually turn their heads to look at each other during cutscenes. Also, finally being able to retry or quit out of a mission without having to reset the game is so fucking useful. I lost the habit of saving after every single mission less than 10 hours in. Losing this feature is gonna be hard if I ever go back to one of the previous games.

 

I don't think I'll touch any of the post-game stuff for now. That's a hell of a time sink and I'm technically not done with D3 in that area. But yeah, if you own a Vita and love Disgaea, you really can't go wrong with this one.

[Little Pirate]

Walking Dead Season 2

Dammit... this series... every time...

[Strangelove]

Metro 2033 Redux. It's good. I liked it quite a bit. It had a few gameplay problems and I really dont understand all the weird vague stuff that happens to the main character when he passes out or whatever, but it was good.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Strangelove

[toxicitizen]

Metro 2033 Redux. It's good. I liked it quite a bit. It had a few gameplay problems and I really dont understand all the weird vague stuff that happens to the main character when he passes out or whatever, but it was good.

The weird stuff ties into the "true" ending, which I'm assuming you didn't get. It's incredibly annoying to even unlock it. Basically, you need to make the correct hidden choices at various points through the story (i.e. give money to the kid, save such and such NPCs, etc..). It's been a while but it's something along the lines of

the hallucinations being the Dark Ones simply trying to make peaceful contact. You realize they're not evil and you end up not nuking them. But then the sequel uses the "bad" ending as the canonical one, so whatever.

 

Edited August 30, 2014 by FLD

[Eleven]

@FLD

 

 

That's interesting. Is there a reference in the 2nd game that the true ending is still "true", it's just that things happened differently (bad ending)? Like, some kid had his hand on his pocket, and someone thought it was a gun, so he called out "Gun!" and shit happened (bad ending). If he only knew it wasn't a gun, then things would be different (good ending). But still, even if you get the bad ending, it doesn't change the fact that the kid never had a gun anyway. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

Obviously, I don't know the story, but I don't mind spoilers here.

 

Edit:

Just re-read: So you nuked them (bad ending), but was it mentioned or referenced that they might have not been evil in the second game (referencing the good ending)?.

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2014 by Eleven

[toxicitizen]

Well, like I said, it's been a few years since I played the original so memories are a bit foggy. And I haven't played the second game yet so I don't know much beyond which ending is canonical and I'm not going to go digging for spoilers. But if I'm getting what you're saying right, then

 

 

 

the "bad" ending doesn't change the fact that they're not evil, you just don't kill them. Here's what the game's wikipedia page says:

 

After the hallucination, two endings are possible, depending on choices the player makes throughout the game. In the canonical ending, Artyom allows the missiles to fire, destroying the Dark Ones; only to realize later that they sought peace and the deaths by them were accidental. The alternate ending gives Artyom the choice to destroy the laser guidance device, citing a last-minute realization that the Dark Ones were actually attempting to make peaceful contact through the hallucinations.

 

Edited August 30, 2014 by FLD

[toxicitizen]

CounterSpy.

 

Fun little game. It gets a bit repetitive but the gameplay is fun enough and it's too short to overstay its welcome. I'll probably replay it on the higher difficulties and go for 100% trophies. Not sure if it's worth 15 bucks, though. Maybe wait until it's 50% off, it's definitely worth that much.

 

I guess I should mention that I played it on Vita and there were some slight issues. The loading times for missions were kinda long, usually a solid minute if not more, and occasionally there would be noticeable framerate drops when entering a larger room. It never got in the way of enjoying the game but I thought it was worth mentioning. If that's the kind of stuff that bothers you then maybe play it on PS3 or PS4.

[Strangelove]

Metro: Last Light. So good. Easily one of the best single player FPS games Ive ever played. Fixed pretty much everything that I didnt like about the first.

The story also makes sense retroactively.

[SomTervo]

Called it, yo! It's really good isn't it.

 

Also the Redux is like £15?!?! Fucking bargain

[Strangelove]

It's really annoying that these great single player fps campaigns get made and no one ever talks about them. They always get overshadowed by their online multiplayer brethren.

Pretty much why I don't play a lot of fps games.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, Bioshock is the only one in recent memory I can think of that really got a lot of attention.

[danielpholt]

Yeah, Bioshock is the only one in recent memory I can think of that really got a lot of attention.

 

Wolfenstein got a decent amount of attention and I don't believe that's got a multiplayer mode. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Ah yes, you are correct.

[CorgiShinobi]

Infamous: Second Son

 

Not sure where I would rank this among the first two games. Loved the first game's story and I've always loved the idea of having electric powers, but the first game was rough around the edges too. The second improved on a lot of the movement and traveling throughout an open world as Cole, and the story was alright too. I don't know if it's because I felt like I rushed through the game a bit, or may it didn't have that much variety throughout the open world. Ironic considering at the end of it all you gain four Conduit powers...

 

However, they almost play the same function. It was a bit disappointing in how you couldn't switch between powers on the fly, instead having to find a source for the power to switch. I didn't care too much for the acquaintance characters, though Fetch was definitely most notable versus "escaped convict" Hank and "geek-gamer" Eugene. Really, all-in-all I didn't connect to anyone in this game, especially Betty and the Akomish which was the whole reason behind bursting into Seattle and stirring a fire under Augustine's butt.

 

I guess what I would say is that while this is a fun and good game, is seemed more focus on being flashy and incorporating features of the PS4 rather than making it a bigger and better successor because of the capability of next-gen. The powers themselves almost seem like they were chosen for the chance to show off particle effects and lighting. Let me tell you, sometimes the lighting goes insane with all the powers flying every which way. Otherwise, besides a few frustrating enemy types, it played just fine. If I had the time, I think I could 100% the Trophy List like I did the previous game.