Last game you finished, tell us about it

Just finished Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. Played it exclusively on my Surface Pro, about 90% while on the subway. Obviously not much to say about BG that hasn't been said 1000x already, so will focus on the EE part.

It ran beautifully until the 1.3 patch, but I had a backup and restored myself to 1.2. They don't officially support Intel GPUs and particularly the Surface Pro (which is grade A bullshit IMO). At launch, there were issues due to this, but people found work arounds, then they fixed the problems in patches. They tried to fix some graphics thing in 1.3, but it in turn broke whatever they previously fixed for Intel GPU/SP and have been utterly useless in resolving it.

Now that that is over with, I enjoyed playing it at a higher resolution, but with the GUI a static size. Made it much easier to use on a small touchscreen like the SP. I enjoyed the new characters for the most part. Was nice to have some party banter. I added Neera, Dorn and Rasaah. The evil drow mage was added after I started I think and since he's not in BG2:EE and I was already pretty far along with Neera, I just killed him when I met him. If I were to play again, I'd grab him early (though evil characters annoy me) and ditch Neera.

I found the new NPC's interesting and the banter was nice, but nothing blew me away. The new areas associated with Neera and Rasaah were less than breathtaking, but it was nice to have new areas that weren't just recycled areas from one of the IE games. If they had added something like a Watcher's Keep to EE, I think there would have been a lot less complaining.

I think the most interesting thing to me was that because of the way I played, it was both fresh and stale. I've played BG so many times, I pretty much remember all the quests, so as expected it was a bit stale, however it had been long enough that I forgot a lot of the details. I've gotten real bad about looking up cheats online for games, but since I was on the subway most of the time, that simply wasn't possible. So I really had to figure a few things out as I went.

For the first time probably in any of my plays, I actually got good at using buffs. I've been more of a throw my tanks in and then let hell loose with magic type of player. Strategy is not my forte.

All in all it was a lot of fun, but I was kind of ready for it to be done by the time I got to the end. I'm in no great hurry to play BG2:EE right now as I have enough other games on my plate.

Right now I'm debating between playing Ps:T or finishing Fallout during my commute. I've never gotten far in Ps:T and I'm about 1/3 through Fallout for the first time. Ps:T seems to work ok on the SP once I did all the GUI mods. The buttons are a bit small still, so that could be problematic. Haven't tried Fallout yet.

I just finished Bioshock 2 for the first time.

I'm not sure why I never finished it before, but I regret not having done a full playthough sooner. I have to admit that it's a lot better than I originally thought. The combat is superior to the other Bioshock games, and the story was better than I was expecting.

I need to replay Bioshock Infinite now and then the DLCs, but I'll play a few other games first. There's also a single-player DLC for Bioshock 2 that I haven't played yet.

JDR13 said:

I just finished Bioshock 2 for the first time.

I'm not sure why I never finished it before, but I regret not having done a full playthough sooner. I have to admit that it's a lot better than I originally thought. The combat is superior to the other Bioshock games, and the story was better than I was expecting.

I need to replay Bioshock Infinite now and then the DLCs, but I'll play a few other games first. There's also a single-player DLC for Bioshock 2 that I haven't played yet.

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That reminds me that I really should play Minerva's Den for Bioshock 2. I started it - and I really liked it from the start. But after Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite, I was kinda full, so I decided to hold off.

DArtagnan said:

That reminds me that I really should play Minerva's Den for Bioshock 2. I started it - and I really liked it from the start. But after Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite, I was kinda full, so I decided to hold off.

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Yep, that's the one. I'm not going to play it right now for that same reason. I'll go back to it right before I replay BI.

Legend of Grimrock

First time I played this, I stopped around level 4 or 5, because the puzzles were annoying and too numerous. But I liked what I heard about the sequel being expanded and the puzzles being different, so I decided to give it another shot.

I'm glad I did, because the puzzles aren't quite as bad as all that. Oh, I could definitely do without half of them, especially the timing puzzles - which makes me feel like I'm playing Portal.

I grew up with with games like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Captive and Black Crypt - and they were among those dearest to my heart. So, the formula is extremely familiar to me, and though the genre has clearly expanded beyond games of this limited scope, it still works well considering that Grimrock is almost identical to Dungeon Master in terms of features.

The game is extremely impressive in a technical sense, when you consider the budget and the size of the team, and it has a great balance of adding new creatures and combat challenges.

The exploration is decent enough for this genre, though I would have liked more story and less trivial notes and books. I'm a big exploration guy, so naturally this is worse for me.

There should have been fewer puzzles - but more "cerebral" stuff like riddles. I loved the few I found of the latter. Much more engaging than trying to avoid falling through a hole for the zillionth time.

Having played games like Captive, the "combat square dance" is second nature for me. It suits the simplistic nature of the overall gameplay, and I don't think the game would improve with turn-based combat like in MMX. It simply doesn't have enough meat on it, to support that kind of experience. If the character system had been better - and the exploration more meaty, then TB combat would have been wonderful.

I liked how you didn't have enough skill points to maximise more than a single skill - because it means you can experiment with new characters on a potential replay, though I don't see myself playing it again. Something was definitely off about the item balance, and I didn't seem to find a lot of cool weapons apart from a few swords. Maybe I missed some secrets leading to those, who knows.

I'm glad it wasn't a bigger game, because I was getting fed up with the endless combat, which seemed to get a bit silly towards the end. But nothing as bad as I've tried in the past.

I really liked the final encounter - as well as the little twist, even though most of us probably saw it coming.

Overall, it was a nice little romp that was worth the small investment and it manages to not outstay its welcome.

6.5/10

Alien Isolation

In space, no one can hear you scream at the repetition.

Well, talk about a MASSIVE disappointment.

The first third of the game is superb, the middle section is mediocre, and the last third is terrible.

This is a 6-8 hour game with, literally, 10 hours of completely superfluous padding that does absolutely nothing except serve as a major source of deja vu and frustration with the lack of imagination demonstrated by the developers.

You won't believe how many times you have to go back and restart a generator or something similarly uinteresting - because the game has no more tricks up its sleeve after the first handful of hours. It's the way they try to create tension and it works in the beginning.

But as the game progresses, you adjust to the Alien and it's no longer as scary as it is at first. This means that every implausible accident causing a delay becomes ever more about despising the process and ever less about appreciating the tension.

The exploration is mostly linear or deceptively non-linear at places, and you find very little of interest. The audio logs are there just because that's what these games have in them, and not because the developers had something interesting to say.

Same goes for the crafting system, which is perhaps the least interesting crafting system I can recall. I didn't use half the things I could craft - because the game gives you very few opportunities or reasons not to use the much faster and more efficient approach of your normal weapons.

Clearly, the game was NOT developed by people who understood the games they were inspired by. System Shock 2, for instance, has more interesting choices in the first hour of the first level than the entirety of Isolation. That's no exaggeration.

It's very unfortunate, because the game CAN be a masterpiece. The atmosphere and level of immersion is perhaps the best I've ever experienced in a game. It's just that good. The sound design is also on a level that's hard to recall in any other AAA game. The sound is so good that it ends up being your primary tool, because you NEED to know where your enemy is at all times - and your motion tracker, as useful as it is, is not as efficient as your ears. Just make absolutely sure you're playing with surround sound!

The level design is fantastic when it comes to recreating the Alien film - but it's also lacking in originality for the same reason.

To me, the game feels like the developers wanted to have sex with the Alien movie, but since they couldn't quite have that - they chose to make this game instead.

What I mean by that is that they bring almost NOTHING of their own to the table in terms of story or imagination. It's like they're idolizing the film to such an extent that they consider any deviation sacrilegious.

Such a slave-like disposition is not how you create strong art. You have to use your own vision, and they should have let the movie serve as inspiration - not a rigid blueprint.

To make my point clear, I have to say that Aliens: Colonial Marines had more original material than this game does, and as terrible as that game was, at least it tried to expand a little upon the familiar stories.

Isolation does NOTHING without it having been part of the source material, and everything you see can be traced back DIRECTLY to Scott's film.

Maybe a lot of the fans just want to exist in that environment, and nothing more. That's cool - but I was never really into seeing the same things over and over.

After I got used to the strong sense of place and ambience, I started hungering for something interesting to happen in the story - and nothing ever really did. It doesn't help matters when the game gives you more "endings" than you can count, and each of them more ridiculously drawn out than the next.

Near the end of the game, it becomes a big "experience-fest" - like you'd recognise from the worst AAA titles - with explosions going off everywhere you go and constant little QTE triggers that you have to do.

It's like they had too much money and they felt like throwing in a pointless and trivial action movie at the last minute.

Oh well. It started on such an unbelievably high note - and I've never been that scared of a computer game in my entire life. I guess there was no way it could sustain that throughout - but I must say I couldn't have imagined the negative direction the game starts taking around halfway into it.

The ONLY reason this game doesn't get a lower score from me, is because it did something no other game has done in terms of atmosphere and immersion. During the first hours of the game, I was THERE. In that place. No barrier.

That's too rare for me to ignore, and so it gets a higher score than it might deserve.

5/10

Ah, too bad. Reminds me of what happened in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. What started as a scary survival horror, turned into a QTE and shooter fest. Much less scary later since you lose the feeling of being vulnerable. Does Alien Isolation do this to?

A shame.. I was really looking forward to Alien Isolation. I'll still play it of course, but I'll temper my expectations.

I kind of suspected such a thing might be the case when I heard estimates of how long it was. I find the sweet spot for survival-horror games to be in the 8-10 hour range. Imo, it gets tough to maintain the atmosphere beyond that.

Of course it doesn't help when the game is a one-trick pony like Alien Isolation is.

Thrasher said:

Ah, too bad. Reminds me of what happened in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. What started as a scary survival horror, turned into a QTE and shooter fest. Much less scary later since you lose the feeling of being vulnerable. Does Alien Isolation do this to?

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To an extent, yes. You get a weapon that makes you more or less invulnerable to the Alien - though you have to be very careful, conserving ammunition. That removes a lot of the tension, but it supports the pacing of the game well enough. At that point, you're badly in need of relief, so that's ok. Also, the Alien is superbly crafted and somewhat unpredictable - so you never feel quite safe.

The problem is more about how repetitive your tasks are during the last ~6 hours. It's incredibly unimaginative and they're dangling the end in front of you for so long during the last third of the game. Then, for the last hour or so - it gets ridiculous in terms of "accidents" and explosions. That said, it's all very pretty and clearly about burning money from the budget to justify the investment - but I'm just not impressed when the gameplay is absolutely devoid of interesting tasks. This game would most likely win the ultimate prize in a competition about how much time is spent doing nothing but pushing buttons or pulling levers.

But it's key to note that I'm very intolerant of both repetition and "action-driven" explosion fests in my stealth games. I hate having the developer take my control and shove me into yet another pointless near-death first person experience - when I, as an experienced gamer, know that nothing will ever happen to my character when I'm not in control of her. I rolled my eyes more during the last hour of this game than I would do in a conversation with a politician who's on camera

Just finished Dark Souls, finally. It's the first game I've finished in a looong time... I tend to start a game, only to get distracted by another. It's the disadvantage of having a big backlog of awesome games.

Anyway, I liked the atmosphere and some of the areas - Anor Londo, New Londo and Oolacile come to mind -- but I am glad I can move on after putting about 100 hours in. No clue why anyone would want to run through the same content again and again...

I think I'll move on to Witcher 2 now.

DArtagnan said:

To an extent, yes. You get a weapon that makes you more or less invulnerable to the Alien - though you have to be very careful, conserving ammunition. That removes a lot of the tension, but it supports the pacing of the game well enough.

...

I'm just not impressed when the gameplay is absolutely devoid of interesting tasks. This game would most likely win the ultimate prize in a competition about how much time is spent doing nothing but pushing buttons or pulling levers

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Yep, these 2 things together are a bit of deal spoiler for me. Will wait for a sale. I've got more than enough in my backlog. Thanks for the heads up!

Legend of Grimrock 2

Excellent addition to the genre and a sequel that builds upon its predecessor in pretty much all the right ways.

The biggest change is the addition of outdoor areas and I´d say Almost Human managed to realize its potential thoroughly and really well.
Instead of making the overworld to be a mere eye candy serving as a connective tissue between dungeons, they´ve made the exteriors fully fledged areas packed with content and used the opportunity to make the game a highly non-linear, more-or-less open world experience. Coupled with the increase in environmental variety and nice touches in the form of day/night cycle and underwater areas, the boost the overworld addition provides to exploration aspect is substantial.

The other major, at first a more subtle change is diversification of puzzle elements.
While good timing may be required here and there and secret buttons are still a-plenty, there´s now much bigger emphasis on solutions which require correct interpretations of written clues and/or figuring out puzzles´ mechanics where the action-y side of executing solutions is usually easy or not present at all, like in the case of digging treasures and plenty of other cases. The bigger prominence of written (or "spoken") clues along with open world design also leads to quite a few cases where solution to a problem is found in an entirely different area, which is most notable when it comes to the main quest progression, making the game more demanding when it comes to making notes.

When it comes to combat, it has received a fair share of improvements as well, though I don´t think these affect the overall experience as notably as the aspects in the above two paragraphs.
The changes can be mostly boiled down to enemies having more ways to counteract players´ square dancing, either via help of their movesets and/or level design, leading to a less formulaic experience. Some of the bigger set fights come with neat surprises, but detailing these would be unnecessary spoiler-y.
Besides that, even though the game features mild respawns or new enemies appearing at old places, I´d say the combat encounters are generally sparser when compared to the previous game, though my memory may be hazy in this regard. At any rate, I think the game maintains a pleasant exploration/puzzles/combat ratio and combat-heavy areas are rare.
There´s one enemy type with a rather questionable design, considering when and where it can be encountered, but that´s it when it comes to complaints.

Equipment selection is more diverse than in the predecessor, there are more special item properties/attacks, as well as a new weapon category (firearms), though I wouldn´t say this leads to a substantial increase in player´s tactical portfolio.
As a flaw I´d mention weapon special attacks taking too long to perform and I also don´t think making items with charges consume energy was a good design decision, though impact of this on gameplay is minor.

As for the character system, I think it´s serviceable for this kind of game, but I wouldn´t list it among the main draws of the game. It does a solid job at making one mull over party composition in the beginning, there are enough options to make one look forward to a new level up at least during early-to-mid game, works alright in unison with itemization and the addition of a farmer class (levels up by eating) is a nice touch, but for engaging with it remained a side dish to the game´s main course (puzzles + exploration). One specific weakness in my opinion is a fairly small selection of spells.

Overall I would say that, given its subgenre, the game sports a very good combat experience, solid itemization and a serviceable character system, but where it really shines are the puzzles and exploration. Moreover, its scope feels just about right - the sizeable adventure comes with very little of what I´d consider filler and it was basically bug-free for me.
The resulting game is bigger, more varied and, well, better, than its in my opinion already very good predecessor.
I´ve played it on normal and finding 71/77 of its secrets, digging up all treasures and finishing it took me around 30 hours and I´ve found it to be a looot of fun pretty much from start to finish. Can´t think of a game of this particular type I´ve enjoyed more, really .

If there´s going to be a sequel, I think it might be the right time to add NPCs with dialogue and more utility abilities and spells usable in exploration and puzzles (hand in hand with it could go multiple solutions for overcoming non-combat obstacles).

P.S.: An additional really cool feature worth noting is reward for more attentive and thorough players in the form of a possible

Just finished Dragon Age 2.
It was in my library for ages, but with all the bad word-of-mouth I never felt like playing it. About two weeks ago I finally decided to play it.

What can I say, I do agree with all the complaints I read about it. Hated the paratrooper mobs. Hated the limited areas (specially the need to explore them again and again after every chapter, even worse, some twice (day/night)). Didn't like the reduced companion inventory.

Having said that, I did enjoy the game. On hard difficulty it was challenging enough but very doable. I would score it a 0.75 Dragon Age Origins, which is not bad.

wolfing said:

Just finished Dragon Age 2.
It was in my library for ages, but with all the bad word-of-mouth I never felt like playing it. About two weeks ago I finally decided to play it.

What can I say, I do agree with all the complaints I read about it. Hated the paratrooper mobs. Hated the limited areas (specially the need to explore them again and again after every chapter, even worse, some twice (day/night)). Didn't like the reduced companion inventory.

Having said that, I did enjoy the game. On hard difficulty it was challenging enough but very doable. I would score it a 0.75 Dragon Age Origins, which is not bad.

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So now that you just finished, what do you think are the good parts of DA2 they want to incorporate into Dragon Age 3???

Dajjer said:

So now that you just finished, what do you think are the good parts of DA2 they want to incorporate into Dragon Age 3???

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hmm… the 'sell all junk' button? Honestly, if they fix the three main issues I mentioned that would be great. I would add a better crafting system: basically, at the end I should be able to have runes for every stat I saw (like more mana, magic resistance, stun, etc).

wolfing said:

hmm… the 'sell all junk' button? Honestly, if they fix the three main issues I mentioned that would be great. I would add a better crafting system: basically, at the end I should be able to have runes for every stat I saw (like more mana, magic resistance, stun, etc).

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Hmmm, let me rephrase the question. For the past few years the developers have been saying they are going to add the best features of both DA1 and DA2 for DA3. Just what features do you think they can "pull from DA2" that would create this new RPG amalgam? What do "you" think DA2 did good that will be in DA3?

I personally, had no problem with DA1 and was very disappointed in the so called new direction of DA2.

Note: Your original post has made me willing to give DA2 another chance,

Dajjer said:

Hmmm, let me rephrase the question. For the past few years the developers have been saying they are going to add the best features of both DA1 and DA2 for DA3. Just what features do you think they can "pull from DA2" that would create this new RPG amalgam? What do "you" think DA2 did good that will be in DA3?

I personally, had no problem with DA1 and was very disappointed in the so called new direction of DA2.

Note: Your original post has made me willing to give DA2 another chance,

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The only thing I can remember that I liked much better in DA2 than in DA1 was not having to worry so much about inventory. In DA1 I always had to stop in the middle of an adventure because my inventory was full and I had to decide what to toss away. In DA2 that was rare (I think it only stopped me from grabbing something once). Other than that I think DA1 was superior in all aspects, but again, that doesn't mean DA2 was bad, I enjoyed it fine.

After having a very enjoyable run thru the "new" X-Com:Enemy Unknown, I was working my way thru a run of Enemy Within. That was fairly fun as well until the aliens went after my base. I was hampered by the game giving me 6000 snipers and nearly none of the other classes. Then, when the base defense rolled in I found myself trying to hold the fort with a bunch of rookies with assault rifles because the game gets to pick which troops you'll have and if you wipe the deck equipment-wise prior to missions like I do, you're screwed with no prior warning that it's a bad decision. I made a go of it for a while due to the one top-shelf sniper the game deigned to put on the mission, but between rookies missing most of their shots and doing 2hp a shot when they were lucky enough to hit it was pretty well pointless. Pissed me off. I admittedly get a little lazy with my tactics, but I'm not a complete moron with strategy games. Even if I somehow did make it thru that mission, my roster was going to be decimated. I'm sure that's the idea--throw the gamer a big curveball and make them adapt--but I question whether that's really much fun.

Oh well, I should be working on my Wiz8 run anyway...

Just finished Wasteland 2. Overall I really enjoyed it, but by the end some of its shortcomings started to get old. The end fight was not particularly difficult, and the timed event is a nice touch, though I think a little more time is needed if you don't know where the exit is.

The pros:
+Nice atmosphere
+Turn based combat
+Multiple solutions to quests
+I liked the look of the environments
+ Lots of recruitable NPCs that have unique dialog in certain places. I enjoyed Ertan's most of all
+ Ending similar to Fallout in terms of epilogue based on choices

The cons:
-Quests are broken in the second part of the game in particular

-In Hollywood there are quests where you find quest items before you find the quest giver, and how it handles this I found disorienting.

-Bad feedback from the game when gaining stats and/or items from NPCs. These events need to be output to the printer

-In places where there is a lot of bubble dialog (namely the torture chamber in the Bastion), it disrupts dialog with the other NPCs

-Attempts to tie so much to the original Wasteland. I didn't like this and to me it seemed like a cop out. Honestly, Base Cochise AGAIN?

-Lack of boss fights. I understand this isn't Super Mario, but I like a boss fight. The IE games were full of them, for example. The closest thing was the Scorpitron, which was promptly rehashed in the next area.

There were lots of cons, but I still really enjoyed this game & intend to replay it, this time saving Highpool & taking a different mix of characters.

Dajjer said:

So now that you just finished, what do you think are the good parts of DA2 they want to incorporate into Dragon Age 3???

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I thought the idea of having separate "friendship" and "rivalry" advancement paths for companions was pretty cool. I'm pretty sure they're not keeping that, though.