Last game you finished, tell us about it

If you play GI or GII, be aware the controls need at least an hour or two to get used to…

The game is really fun I think once you get used to it.
I think that type of combat is much better too :)

I have a gaming mouse with a lot of buttons so I think it will be getting some use for the Gothic games :D.
 
I might be confusing you with some other user but, didn't you initially join us as a console gamer? Don't mean to go all pcmasterrace but even as a PB fan, I'd expect Risen 2, given all the flak it has taken from most PB fans, to be fairly unimpressive even for the uninitiated gamer.
 
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I have a gaming mouse with a lot of buttons so I think it will be getting some use for the Gothic games :D.

Probably not. The first Gothic's game controls were almost counter intuitive. I'm pretty certain you're going to have to use the keyboard. There is a learning curve. Gothic 2 had two controls set ups, the original from G1 and a bit of a more standard one. Eventually the game will suck you in like no other.
 
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I might be confusing you with some other user but, didn't you initially join us as a console gamer? Don't mean to go all pcmasterrace but even as a PB fan, I'd expect Risen 2, given all the flak it has taken from most PB fans, to be fairly unimpressive even for the uninitiated gamer.

Yes, I joined as a console gamer but have been playing strictly on PC for the past year and some change.

Risen 2 I found quite impressive. I felt it had a high aura of quality and polish to it, which was nice to see. I'm sure I'll like the earlier games, too, but there was really not much wrong with Risen 2 from my perspective. It was an engaging and interesting game to explore and had a lot of elements that I'm after in RPGs.

Probably not. The first Gothic's game controls were almost counter intuitive. I'm pretty certain you're going to have to use the keyboard. There is a learning curve. Gothic 2 had two controls set ups, the original from G1 and a bit of a more standard one. Eventually the game will suck you in like no other.

I tested my mouse and I'm able to route all the keyboard controls to mouse buttons. So instead of using CTRL+UP to interact with things, I can macro that to a button on my mouse. I use the other buttons for quick keys to various functions and it seems to work pretty well.

Honestly, I have no idea how someone could play Gothic 1 without a gaming mouse. Using CTRL+WASD to attack is very strange.
 
Yes, I joined as a console gamer but have been playing strictly on PC for the past year and some change.

Risen 2 I found quite impressive. I felt it had a high aura of quality and polish to it, which was nice to see. I'm sure I'll like the earlier games, too, but there was really not much wrong with Risen 2 from my perspective. It was an engaging and interesting game to explore and had a lot of elements that I'm after in RPGs.

I tested my mouse and I'm able to route all the keyboard controls to mouse buttons. So instead of using CTRL+UP to interact with things, I can macro that to a button on my mouse. I use the other buttons for quick keys to various functions and it seems to work pretty well.

Honestly, I have no idea how someone could play Gothic 1 without a gaming mouse. Using CTRL+WASD to attack is very strange.

Wow, that's great about your gaming mouse. Congrats. Now disappear from these forums for a bit and earn your gaming stripes by completing G1 and G2. :biggrin:

As far as games completed by me; I just completed my 4th in a row Hidden Object Game. (Midnight Mystery: Poe). I find Hidden Objet games the perfect go to game when I need a break from my RPGs. You can play them for 15 minutes or 4 hours (if the game last that long).

The 3rd Hidden Object game was a superior game called The Tiny Bang Story. A very unique HOG that had fantastic fantasy graphics. The games animation reminded me of the graphics used in indie animation projects of the 70s like the Fantastic Planet movie, kinda.
 
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Wow, that's great about your gaming mouse. Congrats. Now disappear from these forums for a bit and earn your gaming stripes by completing G1 and G2. :biggrin:

I was actually going to start with Gothic 3. For some reason I'm very intrigued by the large open-world/sandbox style of that game. Then I plan on playing the rest of the games as well as Risen 1.

Thoughts on playing Gothic 3 as my first proper Gothic game?
 
You would be better off playing the Gothics in order imo because of the overarching story. They're more closely tied to each other than the Risen games are.
 
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Started and finished Journey on the PS3. Pretty cool game. The visuals and music was great. It was a nice experience. I'm gonna try Flower and Flow when I get the time. I also started watching the developer commentary that came with the disc. I can't believe it took 3 years for them to make journey. It must really have been a passion-project.
 
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Farming Manager - Excalibur Publishing

You are given a plot of land and have to milk cows and grow crops then sell the resulting produce. In order to achieve this, you have to purchase the equipment and land. It's a basic facebook-like game which bares very little resemblance to the reality of farming with cows popping out a mere month or two after impregnation and crops just taking a month or two to grow. The only impediments to the monotony are the occasional need to get a vet or spray insecticide on fields.

Initially interesting and hypnotic, like most games of this type, earning to buy stuff and upgrades etc, the game quickly becomes the world's biggest borefest with no actual aim beyond making money, which is incredibly easy. In the Sandbox state of the game, I chose the hardest setting (starting with just 300k) and within 4 game years had all that investment back with just two fields and one cowshed, about 20% of the 'explorable' land. With nothing left to buy and no reason continue beyond making myself another 75k of fake money, the game instantly died.

Epic Escapes: Dark Seas - Select Games (Hidden object adventure)

A standard run-of-the-mill hidden object game with a boring plot and very little brain work involved. Even on its hardest setting, where it claims it will not provide hints, things still sparkle at you for attention, making you wonder why they bothered hiding things from you in the first place.

You're on a sinking ship from decades ago, are you a ghost, what are you doing there, it doesn't really matter, you just go from room to room hunting hidden objects and occasionally solving relatively easy puzzles. The largest 'zones' will be two or three rooms of interconnecting objects before being prevented from going back and prevented from going forward until all objects have been found.

About the same challenge as a Wordsearch with a thoroughly boring story.

The Keepers: Lost Progeny - Black Lime Games (Hidden Object Game)

A delightfully surprisingly interesting and engrossing hidden object game where you have to investigate your heritage, stop a demon and explore a large and well designed landscape full of polite brutality (game rating of 16+ !!). It's a wonderful mix of film noir and horror film without hardly any glaring and redundant cliches.

Hardcore mode really does mean hardcore mode and the game wont tell you a single hint or initiate any sparkles without your request (such as when you have no idea what the hidden object is supposed to be by its description). Clues are all written down for you as you find them so that when you get to the puzzle it will show you exactly what needs to be done with the clues provided - a bit a dumb-down, but far superior to having nonsense puzzles making no sense with the clues provided (a common sin for this genre).

I enjoyed every moment of the game and was particularly impressed with the 'zones' which sometimes allowed to to search 10 or twelve different areas to find what you needed without needing to block your progress back and forth. The chill factor is gorgeous without you ever having to feel under threat from anything.

Highly recommended. Beautiful game all-round.
 
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Any nonphone/nonfacebook game? :evilgrin:
 
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Like warehouse goat simulator ? I just finished candy crush ;)
 
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Just completed Monument Valley - an IOS /Android game.

Absolutely beautiful on the IPad. With a very unique game play. But the puzzle solving, although fairly easy, is quite satisfying. The only downside to this game is that it is simply too short. Many players are taking only 2 hours to finish, it took me 4. Replay is somewhat questionable because of the type of game play. But I don't think I've played a more beautiful game. If they make a sequel with the same gameplay and graphics, it would be a day one purchase.

I love this world. It reminds me of the dreams I had when I was a little tyke.
 
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Took me total of 10 hours to finish Murdered: Soul Suspect.

The idea of the game is simple. You're a detective who got killed and now as a ghost you're trying to solve the case of a mass murderer that got you into the afterlife mess.
You'll meet many ghosts and talk to them about stuff, learn some ghost skills (you need those to solve puzzles), you'll even help some to move on. Against you however sometimes demons spawn and you have to avoid or banish them.

Through the map you'll also find many "ghastly" collectibles that in the end reveal some side stories connected to ghosts. I was exploring everything carefully, but these stories are audio only and not very interesting nor "scary" - eventually I got annoyed with the whole thing and instead of having fun with those I just pursued the main quest.

The game won't crash on you, but it has a few bugs, one of those when you possess a priest can lock your progress so you have to revert to the previous checkpoint. There is no save system, this is a concole game ported on PC and Square Enix didn't want to bother with that. Mouse+keyboard is utterly crappy and you'll want to drop mouse sensitivity onto lowest value. Cutscenes are locked onto 30 FPS, game is not if you disable vsync. There are a few unskippable cutscenes very irritating (a ghosttrain that can kill you for example) and endcredits you can't stop but you have to CTRL+ALT+DEL to task manager in order to kill the process.

Oh and once again, subtitles are beyond horrible. What's wrong with all those devs? Is it so hard to take Subtitle Workshop and make proper subtitles for a game? And what are those bloody dots below letters in cutscenes? How come if I possessed someone and am reading his thoughts, why am I seeing subtitles of some area chitchat? Etc etc.

Let's be clear, the game is not completely bad. The main story is good and puzzles of different kind are "light" so this game is a nice addition to the genre for those who just can't find themselves playing point&click style. One more plus is that the game doesn't have any DLC, thank god.

But it's still a retarded port from consoles that disrespects both the machine (PC) and the audience (PC gamers). A mediocre title you should buy only on sale and only if you want to play an adventure:

5/10
 
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Just finished my first ever play-through of Gothic 1.

All in all it's a great game. I really enjoyed exploring the open-world and especially how dangerous it was if you went the "wrong" direction.

The character progression was a bit unbalanced near the end but was perfect in the beginning and middle sections. I would have liked even more expansion in those stages of the game.

The beginning was the best. Being a complete nobody in this dangerous new world with nothing but the clothes on your back to survive; it was great. Scavenging the world just to save up enough ore to buy an item that was absolutely essential to becoming more powerful was great fun. I love that early progression in RPGs and Gothic delivered it in an excellent way.

The last third of the game dragged on a bit for me. I didn't particularly care for the final grind through the end dungeon and the ending was a bit abrupt. I was expecting a bit more resolution but it kind of just left me hanging.

The many hours before that last third of the game were quite magical, though. I really enjoyed joining a faction and building up my reputation and all-important skills and equipment.

Final rating: 8/10

Now, it's on to the next classic cRPG that I missed over the years. Wish me luck :).
 
Finished The Witcher.

Well, the last couple of chapters were a lot better than the first chapters, but I don't think the game ended up being all that great anyway.

I do like the "grey area" approach to story telling, but the writing just wasn't sophisticated or smart enough to engage me. It was full of inconsistent dialogue and vague musings - but it didn't really say anything at all. Except, well, that humanity is doomed because we suck - but that's hardly groundbreaking. A lot of the characters seemed to change personalities out of the blue (like Siegfried) - and the game has a very bad habit of making NPCs spout random crap that's obviously part of some context that's simply not present in the game at the time of delivery. Really awkward and strange for a game that's supposed to engage the player in a dramatic story.

I'm not sure if the twist at the end is really supposed to be a twist - but it was sort of left unanswered. I have a theory about a certain child in the story - but I guess it remains to be seen if it's true.

The ending was typically overlong with about a thousand fights too many. I don't know what it is about these games that have to extend the ending sequence through what felt like an endless and pointless combat sequence - but I guess I can't really single this game out for doing it.

Once again, it seemed to be mostly inspired by Bioware here - with a ton of filler combat for no reason except as padding.

However, I can see how the ending must have been pretty impressive in 2007 - based on all the cutscenes going on.

The best part of the game ended up being the atmosphere and the whole concept of Witchers. I really like Geralt as an anti-hero, and though many of his lines were somewhat cringeworthy (especially when certain moments meant to be highly dramatic were ruined by poorly delivered cursing - which I guess is down to how the voice acting was recorded) - I still think he works well as a cool dude.

Oh, and the VERY best part - to me - would be the C&C implementation. I'm not sure quite how many of my choices made an impact - but the game certainly made it seem like dozens, which is very impressive.

I could have done without the in-your-face cutscenes explaining to me in true Hollywood exposition fashion how a previous choice made something happen, as if I was a complete moron with no memory - but the sheer amount of C&C in this game was truly impressive.

But, in the end, I have to say the game was a major disappointment - given the praise it seems to have received - both by gamers and by the critics. Sure, it does have some really cool stuff in it - but the overall experience was largely one of frustration and a ton of boring quests that felt like padding more than anything else.

An absolutely massive amount of annoyances present in this game - and some of the core elements like inventory managment, traveling and combat were all major pains from beginning to end - though the last two chapters had a lot less back-and-forth fetch crap. But there's really no excuse for a game with this much combat to have such a sucky system for it.

On the upside, however, I found the potion system very well done and gave a tactical feel to combat that did alleviate some of the frustration a bit. Also, the detailed entries for everything in the journal was also a nice touch.

I also enjoyed the spell system - and I think the majority of fights were unusually fair about how your spells worked. As in, they actually did work in most fights - where most games tend to have a lot of fights that break the rules in the name of artificial challenges. Not so with The Witcher - so that's gotta be a plus.

Overall, it's probably a 6/10 - to me.
 
Nice write up Dart.

I actually liked the cut scenes pointing out the C&C and I'm not a moron but it has been called in to question from time to time.:lol: I usually play games over months, not weeks so the reminders of my decisions were welcome.

Major disappointment? I suppose with the hype it could be. I think the hard part is judging it as a 2007 game.

The first few time I played it I really enjoyed the combat but after playing games like Dark souls and the witcher 2 it doesn't feel as fun.

Do you think you would have scored it higher if you'd played it back at release, before being influenced by the witcher 2 and other newer games?

Also thanks for no spoilers as I'm still making my way through it.:)
 
Ditto nice review DArtagnan! I enjoyed the NPC random musings, each go their own. I had read two of the books before playing the game and I would suggest that as it made my experience much richer with regard to backstory. I have since read more and again I would recommend that.
 
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Nice write up Dart.

I actually liked the cut scenes pointing out the C&C and I'm not a moron but it has been called in to question from time to time.:lol: I usually play games over months, not weeks so the reminders of my decisions were welcome.

Major disappointment? I suppose with the hype it could be. I think the hard part is judging it as a 2007 game.

The first few time I played it I really enjoyed the combat but after playing games like Dark souls and the witcher 2 it doesn't feel as fun.

Do you think you would have scored it higher if you'd played it back at release, before being influenced by the witcher 2 and other newer games?

Also thanks for no spoilers as I'm still making my way through it.:)

I'm not sure if I would have scored it higher back then. I might have, but that would be because the writing might have appealed to me more when I was younger.

I wrote it off upon release and though I've tried it multiple times, I've never managed to stay interested. I would never have finished this game if it wasn't because of how the save game carries over to the next one. I'm a huge fan of games that carry stuff over - and I felt forced to go through with it, which is probably not a good way to enjoy a game. I'm just tired of giving up on games - so I felt it was time to finish something proper :)

Thankfully, the last two chapters were actually pretty good - and it made the whole thing somewhat enjoyable towards the end.

But the writing was probably the thing that most surprised me, and that's not in a good way.

I used to think these bleak and super harsh settings were cool - simply because I found a lot of other settings or stories too light or unrealistically "fantastical" if you will. So, before it became a trend to overdo it, I really liked such things - much as I really liked Gothic, which I tend to find a more plausible take on a harsh setting.

But, these days, I find everything is harsh and rather extreme - or certainly - it's much more common in entertainment. I don't think that's interesting by itself anymore, and I'm always looking for "a point" to the whole thing.

That's what I was missing with The Witcher - and it really did seem to be about how everything is terrible. I don't need a magical or hopeful ending - but I do want something that's worth engaging in beyond simply dwelling on how sad everything is.

Though I concede it was really nice to be able to influence what happened in the game, the vast majority of it felt EXTREMELY rigid and guided.

I've always been a freeform non-linear kind of guy - and I really despise feeling that I'm jumping through hoops, and I don't enjoy doing something unless I agree it should be done or, at least, understand why I'm doing it.

A surprising amount of quests in Witcher were obscure and confusing to me, and though that's likely because of translations and this being a first effort - it served to take me out of what I was supposed to be doing.

I liked the Prologue - because everything was set up nicely, and it gave a proper motivation for moving on. But the game digressed immediately in the first chapter, and seemed to devolve into a giant FedEx simulator - and that's when the game started losing my attention.

Maybe they wanted to do too much - or maybe this is simply not the game for me.

I tend to lean towards the latter explanation, and I think people who don't mind being led around by the nose - and who're less annoyed with awkward writing and dialogue - are much more likely to enjoy it, because of the intriguing characters and truly interesting lore.
 
Ditto nice review DArtagnan! I enjoyed the NPC random musings, each go their own. I had read two of the books before playing the game and I would suggest that as it made my experience much richer with regard to backstory. I have since read more and again I would recommend that.

Yes, I've tried reading The Last Wish - and it seems ok, but it's also just a bunch of short stories? The whole thing is somewhat confusing.

What am I supposed to be reading first - and is there a proper first novel?
 
I just started playing gii notr again and it feels amazing still.

I only ever finished vanilla and playing it again is a lot of fun.

It shows how the witcher is so linear in terms of movement.

Climbing and running and swimming in gothic feels liberating...
 
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