Games You've Beat in 2014

[SomTervo]

 

Fucking great game.

 

Story's a bit of a wet fart, but farted very very well for the most part. Dodgy voice acting from a few people, terrible VA from one. It's long, probably 20 hours on average, and maybe 2-3 of those hours drag.

 

Phenomenal stealth and the later scenarios vs the alien/survivors are absolutely incredible. Really deep, and apparently Survivor mode is great and replayable too.

 

Fantastic. I was rushing through it so I could sell it - but I don't want to sell it anymore.

 

If anyone has an even passing interest in Alien, aliens, sci-fi, Deus Ex/Thief/System Shock/Bioshock, RPGs, horror or hide and seek, they should play it. Above all else it's the greatest hide and seek simulator ever made.

Edited December 16, 2014 by kenshi_ryden

[Strangelove]

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix. Rad port. The extra stuff is actually pretty cool too. At least the stuff they added inbetween playing through the story. I didnt try to beat any of the extra bosses or anything.

I will say that as cool as the Roxas fight is near the end of the game, its horribly unbalanced. Its not that its hard, but that its a rude awakening to people who mash x throughout the game and all of a sudden are asked to do more.

[Mister Jack]

I finished up Dust: An Elysian Tale so I could delete it and make some room on my hard drive.  The character art isn't great and the writing can be a little stilted here and there, but it was still pretty solid on the gameplay front.  I'd give it a B, I guess. 

[SomTervo]

I'm about a quarter of the way through Dust.

 

Maybe it's just because I know folk who worked on it, but it is exceeding my expectations massively. I'm loving it. Though I totally agree with your criticisms- the dialogue is flat-out bad, though the humour he manages to inject into a couple of the characters, and some of their voice actors, definitely raise the bar. Fidget could have been so, so irritating, but she's very much bearable due to the VA.

[Eleven]

Bioshock Inifite.

 

What... I got the important stuff (apparently only some of the important stuff), but still left me wondering what happened. I read up on the ending, and I can now understand it. I think I needed to be told a few more things to tie everything together, and I guess the rest of the voxophones, if I had gotten them, would have helped a ton. Now that I've read up on it, it kinda reminds of me of

 

 

Chrono Cross, with the parallel dimensions thing. And, like when I finished that game years ago, it blew my mind. Wow. Now that's why the DLC's title is like that! I may get that soon.

 

 

I played it on Easy though. I had a really hard time aiming in this game, I don't know why. I've always used a controller for FPS, but for some reason I sucked so bad. Maybe because I haven't really played an FPS game in a really long time. But it was for the best, the story, and the world really, got me hooked and I didn't have to die and redo combat parts which would have tarnished the experience for me anyway.

 

Now I'm going to go and YouTube the rest of the voxophones.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Play the DLC. Seriously. The 2nd episode is nearly required.

[Mal]

Lili: Child of Geos

 

A fun little game that looks great. It's a (well done) mobile port though so there really is no depth in the game but it is fun. Now how do I get the Zelda hat...?

[TheMightyEthan]

Play the DLC. Seriously. The 2nd episode is nearly required.

 

Yeah, Burial at Sea Ep 1 is so so, but Ep 2 is amazing, and you need to play Ep 1 first obviously.

[toxicitizen]

I really need to play Burial Ep 2. Meant to do it over the summer but never got around to it. I think I even uninstalled Infinite.

[SomTervo]

Yeah BInfinite wasn't worth keeping installed for me so I never took on the Burial eps. Heard great things. BI just left a really bad taste in my mouth. Took something with unbelievable potential and shat all over most of it, mainly poor pacing for me

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Just got the platinum trophy for Ar nosurge. I don't know that I enjoyed it as much as the Ar tonelico titles, but it was good nonetheless.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I beat Rage. Pretty good game, actually. The same sort of praise I see for Wolfenstein seems like it would apply to Rage as well but for whatever reason I don't remember it getting fans excited despite it doing well critically. It's a shame they didn't do more with it.

[Mister Jack]

I think I remember the main criticism being that it's too short.

[Mal]

Maybe because it's (Rage) a new IP while Wolfenstein gets a home run after some alright games and because of its lineage.

[toxicitizen]

Also that ending. I loved the game but that was a seriously WTF place to end it. Pretty much makes everyone go "Oh! Shit's about to really get interesting!" and then credits. 

 

But yeah, Rage is criminally under-appreciated. The way the mutants ran and jumped all over the place while coming at you made for some of the most fun and satisfying gunplay of the entire gen, imho.

[TheMightyEthan]

I think part of it is that prior to launch people were excited for Rage and expecting it to be the Next Big Thing, so compared to that it was a little bit of a letdown.  Wolfenstein, otoh, I don't think anyone was expecting to be good, so when it was people were surprised and pleased.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I think I remember the main criticism being that it's too short.

 

12 hours is too short? What in the actual fuck?

[TheMightyEthan]

For a shooter that's practically never ending.

[SomTervo]

IIRC if you rattle through the story missions in a oner it's like 5-6 hours? It's all the (excellent) side content which doubles the length. I was loving Rage a year or two ago but other stuff sidetracked me from finishing it. Seemed more than long enough though, like a really nice length.

 

God i need to start a profile on that Backlog websitr

[toxicitizen]

Trials Fusion.

 

This took me way longer than it should have. I had stopped playing last spring because I got frustrated with how it ran but after I installed my new parts yesterday I figured I'd give it a shot. Oh man, dat 60fps! Plays so much better that way.

 

Anyway, I guess I had already played through most of the base game's content because it only took me like an hour before I made it to and cleared the final track. There's still a bunch of optional stuff to do, though. And I'll probably grab the season pass now, since half the content is already out. I'm just waiting for a daily deal.

[TCP]

Far Cry 4 - Pretty good, I wish I didn't burn through it so quickly, hopefully it gets some substantial DLC like Blood Dragon.

[toxicitizen]

I guess I'm doing a double entry here. First off, Styx: Master of Shadows.

 

Finished it early yesterday but, since I ended up having to put it on hold for a few weeks, I wanted to let it sink in a little bit before doing my usual write up. This game is pretty rough around the edges but if you love true stealth games and can look past floaty jumping/controls, map re-use and generally low production values (most cutscenes are just drawn art with a voice over) then holy fuck are you in for a treat. Stealth games don't get any more legit than this. Forget all that "stealth-action" bullshit, Styx is the real fucking deal. If you get spotted, you are going to get fucking murdered. It's very possible to survive combat against one guard but any more than that and you might as well just hit that quick reload button. It just felt so good to encounter this kind of unapologetic stealth focus without having to replay the first two Thief games.

 

Like I said, it's a bit lacking in polish and was clearly developed on a tight budget. The way Styx jumps and (sometimes doesn't) grab onto ledges kinda makes you appreciate how Assassin's Creed has the auto-climbing thing. But man did the team behind Styx just get stealth. Environments are wonderfully open and have a ton of verticality to them. It makes most maps incredibly satisfying to explore and sneak around in. You can just sneak around on the ground but there's almost always "air vents" tucked away in corners and other high paths allowing you to sneak above guards, whether it's a series of ledges and catwalks or chandeliers and the likes. The first few missions kept blowing my mind with how much fun it was to discover hidden paths like that.

 

As for the map re-use, it's always disappointing when a game does it but Styx somehow manages to do it intelligently and circumvents most major problems that come with it. For one, it doesn't treat you like a fucking idiot and pretend it's a difference place. When a map shows up again, it's because you're going through the same place again. Usually in a different direction, too. Sometimes I'd only recognize the maps once I spotted a recognizable piece of scenery. Considering that the entire game takes place in one gigantic tower-like structure, it just kinda works. Especially when you end up using a different exit that leads to a completely new area. Obviously, more map variety would've been better but the devs clearly put some thought into how to do this properly so I wasn't too bothered by it.

 

So yeah, if you're a fan of pure stealth then definitely give Styx a shot. You won't be disappointed.

 

 

 

Next up, Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2.

 

Finally got around to playing it today, mainly so that I could free up the 40+ GBs that Infinite was taking on my hard drive. But goddamn, now I'm kinda kicking myself for waiting this long to play it. This was so fucking good!

 

I really loved the focus on stealth, it actually made me realize that I kinda dislike the combat in Bioshock in general. I guess that's why I was never able to play Infinite for extended periods of time. Sneaking around and picking enemies off stealthily was much more fun for me. There really isn't much more to say beyond that, at least not without getting into spoilers. It's nice to see the series being nicely tied up like this, though, especially considering what happened to Irrational. I'm kinda curious to see where the series will go next but if Levine isn't involved then I can't say I'm all that excited about it. :/

[toxicitizen]

Shadowrun Returns.

 

This was pretty damn good, even more so than I expected. There were times when I kinda wished it had higher production values but overall it was fine. The art is gorgeous, the lack of voice acting never bothered me and I hear Dragonfall is a little bit more open so I have that to look forward to in the next one.

 

It also seriously scratched that cyberpunk itch, and that's always nice. Cyberpunk is probably my favorite kind of setting/genre for RPGs. I've been vaguely familiar with the Shadowrun setting for years but this was my first actual experience with it. I've never played the tabletop version or past video games based on it. I loved it so much that now I'm really tempted to just jump right into Dragonfall. And Harebrained recently teased a kickstarter for their next campaign, so that's another thing to look forward to.

 

Other than that, it's been too long since it came out for me to remember the main issues people had with it, so I can't really comment on those. All I remember is the lack of manual saves thing and they've since rectified that with a patch. And holy shit, I can't even imagine playing this without the quick save button. It would've been so goddamn frustrating! I only actually died once or twice in the entire game but some areas/fights were pretty long and I can definitely see how having to start over from the autosave would suck. One thing I really appreciated was the ability to rewind a save to a previous state. I kinda hate having to keep a ton of backup saves in RPGs in case I screw something up so this was a very welcome feature. I can't believe I've never seen any other game implement it before.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Dragonfall is much better. That is all.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Note to self: Add "That is all." to internet pet peeves thread.