Games You've Beat in 2015

[TheMightyEthan]

 

Just finished Sunset Overdrive.  Really enjoyed it, great game.

[toxicitizen]

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood.

 

It's more of the same gameplay but without the character-driven hub stuff between missions. Which was arguably the most interesting aspect of The New Order, but it's not like its absence ruins the game or anything. Also, I was a little disappointed that The New Order did away with all the supernatural stuff so I was glad to see it come back, even if there's just the one enemy type.

 

I'm kinda curious why they released it as a standalone game, though. The way it's split into two distinct parts, I wouldn't be surprised if it was originally intended to be two separate DLC packs, like Dishonored got.

 

Anyway, if you liked The New Order you'll probably enjoy The Old Blood. It's kinda short but not excessively so. Took me about 6-7 hours, which seems reasonable for the price.

[Mister Jack]

I loved New Order so more of the same is fine by me. The only reason I haven't already bought it is because I've just been too busy dealing with my dad's estate. Hopefully I can get around to it soon.

Edited May 10, 2015 by Mister Jack

[TheMightyEthan]

Sunset Overdrive: Mystery of the Mooil Rig.  It was more Sunset Overdrive, which is what I wanted, and I really liked the level design of the rig; it had a lot of levels and cool ways to traverse between them.  It ended a little abruptly though, I would have preferred there to have been more content.

[TheMightyEthan]

Sunset Overdrive: Dawn of the Rise of the Fallen Machines.  Overall not as neat as the Mooil Righ, though it did have a little bit more content so that was nice.

 

I have now completely exhausted this game.  I'm sad it's over.  

[deanb]

GTAV is beat, at least main story stuff. 

[Saturnine Tenshi]

I recently did the

 

mission where you torture the guy.

 

How far along am I?

[TCP]

If this was Ocarina of Time, you just beat the Deku Tree.

[deanb]

I recently did the

 

mission where you torture the guy.

 

How far along am I?

 

Maybe halfway or so. With the way it works with inter winding missions hard to keep track. But I guess with that particular group of people you're fairly early days.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Ah, okay. Thanks. I've mainly being doing online with The Exile Arcade guys. Don't see many of you PXODers online.

[toxicitizen]

Middle-Earth: Arkham's Creed Shadow of Mordor.

 

So, uh, why was this anyone's GOTY?

 

Seriously. Why?

 

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not bad. Far from it. It was great to play this kind of game in a setting that's not Assassin's Creed and I'm glad to see Ubisoft getting some competition in the genre. Plus, having an actual combat system was nice for a change. The Nemesis sytem was a cool idea and innovation like this is always welcome. I also hadn't played a LOTR game in fucking forever (I think the last one was that turn-based RPG from like two gens ago, The Third Age?), so that was nice as well.

 

But there was nothing about the game that really blew me away. The main story kinda sucked, which I understand was somewhat intentional since they wanted to focus on the "emergent storytelling" resulting from the Nemesis system, but I dunno. Even the Nemesis system wasn't quite the revelation I'd been led to believe it was. It's cool but imho it wasn't deep enough to carry the entire game. Halfway through the game, I was already sick of the intro "cutscenes" constantly interrupting me in the middle of combat. And I'd regularly end up having 2 or 3 of these assholes coming at me while I was already trying to take down one of them. That got old pretty fast. The good outweighed the bad and I'd love to see the system iterated upon and improved, but I never really felt like any of it added up to anything remotely close to a "story". And it had some annoyances that were hard to look past.

 

Overall, it's pretty much the same game as Assassin's Creed, so I don't want to sound overly negative here. The game's fun as hell to play, it just doesn't really beat AC at its own game. It's kinda like Darksiders where it's highly derivative of other, better games but fails to really surpass them in any way. It borrows gameplay elements liberally but never makes any attempt to improve upon them, the execution is sometimes even slightly worse. Its biggest strengths are the Middle-Earth setting and the (flawed) Nemesis system and, I dunno, I just feel like there were much better games that came out last year. It definitely deserves to be on a top 10 list for 2014 but being the actual GOTY? Hell no.

 

That being said, I'm glad the game was successful and I'll be looking forward to the inevitable sequel. There's a lot of potential with the Nemesis system, they just need to work on it a bit more. 

Edited May 14, 2015 by FLD

[TheMightyEthan]

I had to make sure I hadn't picked SoM for my GOTY before "liking" that.  

[IDDQD]

So, uh, why was this anyone's GOTY?

I'm with you on that. Probably gonna repeat a lot of things you've said.

 

I think it's a solid mashup of Assassin's Creed/Batman Arkham Whatever games with bonus points for being set in LOTR universe, but in the end I got about halfway through before putting it away forever.

 

That was the point when Nemesis system, got old and became more of an annoyance. Pausing mid-combo only to focus on yet another dude taunting me with same repeated insult over and over is just flow breaking and stupid. One particularly dumb occurence was when I got in a really large fight with something like 30 or 40 dudes and there were 4 different captains among them and they simply took turns, like they were standing in a lunch line or something.

 

The story was also so good that I can't even remember what it was about. Something about Sauron, no doubt. And that one ring.

 

In short - solid game but nowhere near as good as the hype would suggest.

[toxicitizen]

The story was also so good that I can't even remember what it was about. Something about Sauron, no doubt. And that one ring.

Yeah, the main story is kinda disjointed and unfocused. I doubt I'll remember any of it 6 months from now.

 

And, on a more specific/nitpicky note, there was one detail that made me go "wait, wat??" so hard that I actually had to look up Tolkien lore.

 

 

 

So, early on the game reveals that ghost dude is called Celebrimbor and that he was the one who forged the Rings of Power for Sauron, specifically making a big deal about him being the maker of the One Ring. When that happened, I just kinda went "Wait, didn't Sauron do that?"

 

It's been a while so I don't remember how it was presented in the movies, but turns out there actually was an elf called Celebrimbor in Tolkien lore and he did forge the Rings of Power. He just didn't forge the One Ring. Sauron did that himself, in secret.

 

Interestingly enough, the three rings for the Elves were also made in secret but by Celebrimbor himself. That's why the Elves weren't affected by them.

 

 

 

I'm not a big enough LOTR nerd for this to actually bother me but you'd think that's the kind of details they're make sure to get right while making a game like this.

 

And now I kinda feel like rewatching the LOTR movies...

Edited May 14, 2015 by FLD

[deanb]

It's been a while but iirc in the game it's actually presented as

 

Sauron makes the One Ring, he blackmails Celebrimbor to fix/improve it under pain of having his family hacked up to bits.

 

[toxicitizen]

If that's the case, then I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention during those flashback scenes because I somehow missed that detail. Lol. That would make more sense, though.

[Mal]

The Old Blood.

 

Same good gameplay of TNO but with a look down memory lane. Mix occult and Wolfenstein and you'll get something that should not surprise you. If it surprises you then you're a young grasshopper!

[toxicitizen]

Invisible, Inc.

 

Beat the game on Beginner, which is essentially the tutorial difficulty. It gives you a bunch of safety nets like mission retries and a rewind turn function (you still have rewind on harder difficulties but you're much more limited in how many times you can use it), so I think it's essentially impossible to fail completely. Or at least, you'd have to suck pretty damn hard for that to happen.

 

Anyway, the game's pretty damn great, it definitely lives up to Klei's previous efforts. And that's no small feat considering how much I fucking loved Mark of the Ninja. It's basically a roguelike stealth XCOM, which is right up my alley. It's also the first game I bought as soon as it was available in Early Access (before it was even on Steam's EA), so it was nice to see it slowly coming together over time. That being said, it kinda reinforced my main fear with Early Access: getting tired of the game before the final version is even out. That's not quite what happened here, but it still had a small impact.

 

Last time I tried the game was last fall and I played for something like ten hours before I decided to stop and wait for the final version. It was a blast because it was the first build I played that was starting to have a skeleton of a campaign. It was great to see how far the game had come since the initial build, which was little more than a prototype. The release version wasn't all that different from that build, it was just way more balanced and polished.

 

So, when it finally came out this week, there wasn't really that "magic" period, it didn't feel new or special. I'd already gone through that phase a little less than a year ago, it almost felt like just replaying a familiar game after a big content patch. It's not a big deal but it's certainly something I'll keep in mind the next time I'm tempted to buy an Early Access game. Especially when it comes to story-driven games, which this one isn't.

 

Oh and I still think Incognita was a much better title.

Edited May 17, 2015 by FLD

[MetalCaveman]

Bloodborne \m/ \m/

 

 

So... I killed the Moon Presence and as a reward I got... turned into a worm/slug/alien tentacle of doom?

 

 

 

[toxicitizen]

Axiom Verge.

 

Is it still Metroidvania if it's pretty much just straight up Metroid? Like, which part of the formula does the "vania" half refer to exactly? Anyway, yeah, Axiom Verge is basically someone that went "Remember that game Metroid? That was a good game. I should make that." It's actually a little bit creepier and weirder than Metroid, though, which I really dug.

 

The price was a little off-putting initially but I thought it was worth every single penny. It's definitely one of the best games I've played this year so far. Go buy it now. I know Cowboy called it an early GOTY or whatever but don't let that put you off the game. I mean, even a broken clock is right twice a day!

 

 

Also, kind of unrelated but the game got me thinking about this recent trend where game creators go to Kickstarter to pitch "Totally not [insert IP that defined my career]". That's not what Axiom Verge is but it might as well be, especially given how Nintendo seem to be uninterested in making more Metroid games these days. And, in that sense, I kinda feel like Axiom Verge set the bar pretty high for those games. I don't really give a fuck about Yooka-Laylee (or however the fuck it's spelled) because I never played or cared about Banjo-Kazooie, but I really want Mighty No. 9 and Bloodstained to turn out great.

 

But if Axiom Verge is the level of quality they have to to meet, then I'm worried we might be in for some disappointment here. I mean, it's way too early to tell about Bloodstained but the most recent screenshots I've seen of Mighty No. 9 looked like fucking shit. The game might still be fun but visually it's just so bland and lifeless, especially compared to the concept art from the initial Kickstarter pitch.

 

It feels kinda weird to be so negative in reaction to a game being great but nothing I've seen of MN9 has made me feel really optimistic. I dunno, maybe I'm just being a cynical asshole.

[TheMightyEthan]

I think Metroidvania is just like if shooters were called Doomensteins: no specific part of the title refers to any specific part of the formula, it's just that those are the foundational games upon which the genre is built.

[toxicitizen]

Doomenstein sounds like a kickass name for a German metal band.

 

Anyway, I wasn't being entirely serious with my question. Just seemed weird to call Axiom Verge Metroivania when it clearly just wants to be Metroid. But, since you answered, didn't Metroid pretty much lay all the foundation to begin with?

 

I know the "vania" half comes from Symphony of the Night but that came like a decade after the original Metroid. It's something I always wondered about. Like, what did Castlevania do to earn its half of the genre? It's not like it brought anything new to the table, at least, nothing that's commonly associated with Metroidvania games. The only thing I can think of that SotN had that Metroid/Super Metroid didn't is the loot system.

 

I guess it makes more sense if you ignore the original and just assume it's from SotN and Super Metroid. Those came out a lot closer to each other and could be seen as having properly defined the genre.

[Mister Jack]

Castlevania added RPG elements to what was formerly a straight up action game.

[toxicitizen]

Right, not sure why I said loot system but that's what I was talking about. Those RPG elements aren't really a staple of the genre in general, are they? At least, not in my experience. I mean, almost every genre seems to have RPG elements these days, but for me a Metroidvania is defined more by the level design structure and the upgrades-based exploration.

[Mister Jack]

I haven't played Axiom Verge so I wouldn't know, but that's why they call it Metroidvania.  Metroid was already doing the upgrade-based exploration long before Castlevania dipped its toes into the water, so I think the RPG elements are they key differential.  Whether the term is misleading when applied to certain games is another matter entirely, but it's been around so long that I guess people just don't want to bother coming up with another label.

Edited May 18, 2015 by Mister Jack