Last game you finished, tell us about it

Bioshock 2- Was a pretty decent shooter with a bit of a Big Daddy gimmick, was alot shorter then the first one though(finished the first one in around 20 hours, this one clocked in at around 7-8). The story wasn't as intereasting and felt a bit thrown together.
Thanks for the warning. That means waiting for the bargain bin for me (if at all).
 
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Elder scrolls: arena if u love old skool rpg, you should get this game but you must run in dosbox for it to work but its still a really fun game and with the 2 weeks to fully complent its awsomeness ive came to say anyone hardcore rpg fan needs atleast a one time play threw
 
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I read gamespy's excellent analysis of the Bioshock 2 plotline, and I think it's genious but it could have been better executed. Despite it's shortcomings it's one of the best PC games on the market at the moment.
 
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Elder scrolls: arena if u love old skool rpg, you should get this game but you must run in dosbox for it to work but its still a really fun game and with the 2 weeks to fully complent its awsomeness ive came to say anyone hardcore rpg fan needs atleast a one time play threw

I'm impressed that you finished it in 2 weeks, that game is beyond huge.
 
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Far Cry 2
I was ready to write my thoughts on it but JemyM's said most of what I planed to say here.

I think the game had run it's course after the first 2 hours but surprisingly I enjoyed the last 1/10 of my playthrough.Driving from point A to point B was less of an issue because my targets were close to the bus stops and the game got a story out of nowhere.
I disagree with JemyM about the ending,I thought it was quite good,Jackal was the only memorable character in the game and his cause was interesting.

For the most part of the game it felt like the Two Worlds of shooters but it got better near the end,it was like the opposite of Risen.I completed it in 16 hours although it felt like 40+,it was a drag.

I don't think I'll ever replay this again and I wouldn't recommend to anyone.
 
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Dear Green Place
People who like more realistic shooters might still want to get farcry 2 but, like you said, you need an iron stomach that can digest loads of repetitiveness.

Still, not too bad of a take on "Heart of darkness"... if you're a big fps fan.
 
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People who like more realistic shooters might still want to get farcry 2 but, like you said, you need an iron stomach that can digest loads of repetitiveness.

I thought FarCry 2 was *terrible*, especially compared to how cool the first game was back then. It was almost as disappointing as FEAR 2.
 
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I thought FarCry 2 was *terrible*, especially compared to how cool the first game was back then. It was almost as disappointing as FEAR 2.

If someone said "I have played everything but FEAR 2 and Far Cry 2, which one should I pick", I would much sooner say FEAR 2 than Far Cry 2.

FEAR 2 can be finished in a reasonable timeframe and does offer a continuous story and new content as you move on. All Far Cry 2 offers after the first hours of the game is the same over and over and over again, with barely no story and barely nothing new, and when you reach half of the game you get to start over and play the entire game again on a new map. Not only is it a timesink that takes ten times longer to play to do it "properly", when you finally reach the end all your hard work you have put down will be rewarded with a punishment for doing so (not referring to the Jackal there). The only game-ending equally disappointing was NWN2 but at least that one had a sequel that "fixed it".
 
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Both aren't the best games, but saying that FEAR 2 is better than Farcry 2 is pretty harsh :p
 
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Seriously, I have no idea why anyone would even consider placing FC2 even on the same level as FEAR2. FEAR2 average rating of 78% falls into the same "a few hours of entertainment but skipable" kind of experince you can also find in games like Force Unleashed, TUROK, Blacksite Area 51, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Mothership Zeta for Fallout 3, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic etc. Emphasis here is "few hours". The FPS mechanics work as they should, the story progress throughout the game, there's some scripted events to see while traveling through the railroad maps.

Far Cry 2 would have improved quite a bit by being 1/4th as long. It was a clear attempt to let oversimplified mission architecture and generated content slowly drain your time away with the promise of more up ahead, a promise it in the end never delivers on but instead insults your hard work. Kinda like Assassin's Creed in that regard (that also had a lot of stuff that was simply there to rob your time), but at least AC had a more rewarding story and an exciting ending to go along with it.

If one wants a free-roaming FPS, S.T.A.L.K.E.R is definitely a much better game. Comparing STALKER and FC2 proves gameplay and content is more important for entertainment than being bugfree.
 
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Ishar: Legend of the Fortress (1992)
Ishar is a "Dungeon Master" or "Eye of the Beholder" clone. You see the world through the eyes of your characters as you take on hordes of enemies, delve into dungeons, gather gold and experience and save the princess. Unlike DM or EotB, most of Ishar takes place above ground on a couple of Islands. Having tried to produce artwork for a game like this myself I have to say that it's well done. It's much easier to draw dungeon walls.

You start the game with one character but can recruit others at taverns you come across. You can have a party of up to five but thanks to a couple of quests you probably need to keep one slot free until the end of the game. All theese characters can die, including the one you begun the game with. Some you hire might leave when sleeping at a tavern as well, so Ishar is a game in which you aren't meant to stick around with the same characters for long.

Amiga 1200 promised a 256 color palette, just like the PC, which was a great upgrade from the 32 on Amiga 500. Unfortunately, there were very few games that used this advantage. The Ishar series was ofcourse made for PC, but I decided to play the 1200 version instead. This allowed me to use savestates and also allowed me to remap the keyboard. This saved me some of the hassle playing the game, because it's really hardcore.

This is a hardcore game. There are tons of ways you can make the game impossible to finish and tons of dead ends that require preparation to get past. Preparation you probably don't know of before you failed once. I used a lot of help from internet sites but I was still forced to replay some bits due to minor mistakes.

My primary reason for playing the game was so I could go on with Ishar II.
 
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Last game i finished? Hmpf… Can it be the one before last instead? No? Crap.

Okay, okay. Last game i finished was Princess Debut. Yes, i was bored. Yes, i had nothing better to play on my DS at the time that i had not already finished twenty times already. Yes, i had very little time to be at home so i was mostly playing when waiting the bus or at the subway station or stuffies. And it was actually pretty cute if you like minigames and Otome dating sims. I can't believe i am writing this shit in a public forum, YHVH bless anonimity.

Tell you about it? Let me see. One day your twin from another dimension, a princess of a magical kingdom, comes out the closet, and i meant it literally and not in the luke, i'm a furry way. She tells you she totally fails at dancing and a great ball is being prepared in the magical kingdom so she needs you to take her place. You agree and her magical fairy thingie takes you to the magical world while she remains in the mundane one, and now you have thirty days to become a master of dancing, queen of the ballroom. And along the way you have to get you a prince from a batch including each and every archetype from romance games, like, totally ever. Including a giant bunny. And don't ask me about him, i'm not that kind of girl.

Where was i? Ah, yes, i see. The gameplay. You dance by following some drawings in the touch screen thingie. You go up in level gaining access to more pretty dresses, more complex songs, and stuffies. If you dance well your companion becomes all lovey dovey with you, and every now and then you gain a level, some points in two stats i don't really know what affect, and more stamina points that allow you to dance more times a day. Then you have dating sim scenes where you, like, are doing thingies with one or more of the princes and must choose between several options.

Given how totally hardcore i usually am with games and how most games coming out lately are totally grimdark seriouze stuffies it was pretty neat to play something so totally naive and childish you actually have a magic girl anime transformation every time you choose to switch dresses. :facepaw:

And don't even ask how it came to be i had that game, it's a long story i don't want to dwell in. You may now proceed to make fun of me, nya. I deserve it, totally.

@ JemyM
That's pretty hardcore, i say. I never could get beyond the you will pay each time you want to save your game thingie because time is, like, a non replenishable commodity. I will give you one respect point in case you ever need to roll for loyalty with me before a boss fight.
 
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The land of fairies and pretty witches, nya!
Tell you about it? Let me see. One day your twin from another dimension, a princess of a magical kingdom, comes out the closet, and i meant it literally and not in the luke, i'm a furry way. She tells you she totally fails at dancing and a great ball is being prepared in the magical kingdom so she needs you to take her place. You agree and her magical fairy thingie takes you to the magical world while she remains in the mundane one, and now you have thirty days to become a master of dancing, queen of the ballroom. And along the way you have to get you a prince from a batch including each and every archetype from romance games, like, totally ever. Including a giant bunny. And don't ask me about him, i'm not that kind of girl.

Game sounds awesome to me. I take it it's DS only? I say end the rampant discrimination against putting all the bizarrish new stuff on PC. It's always with the Sturm und Drang biowarean romances or Transformers meets Ayn Rand shooters these days. It's totally possible that PC gamers(at least some) want to dance with magical big bunnies, too.
 
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Now I ABSOLUTELY want a DS.
 
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This is a hardcore game.

I think "unfair" would be somewhat more fitting.
Good luck with Ishar 2, that one is quite unfair as well :).
Some pretty neat features though, and saving is for free IIRC.

As for me, Mass Effect 2.
Great characters, VA, cinematization, largely unnecessary minigames, often way too linear level design, some great combat scenarios and not really that much of the filler ones, solid sidequesting, simple main story elevated by the squad related stuff, well developed "lore".
Played as vanguard on hardcore, changed to insanity about halfway through, got satisfying amount of adrenaline out of it (while not really remarkable on its own, the combat music served this really well I think), everyone lived in the end.

The next game should have more pronounced character development and itemization, less linear "battle zones", more non-combat quests (like the Samara loyalty one) and ditch the probing minigame (probing Uranus was funny though), or else.

Even though the game is really shallow RPG-mechanics-wise, thanks to well developed universe, emphasis on character interaction and some choices here and there, I think the term action RPG suits the game best.

Overall, thumbs up from me.
 
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Last game I finished was "Silent Storm Sentinels", an extension to "Silent Storm". I already had lots of fun with "Silent Storm", but this one is even better. It's a turn-based, squad-based, tactical game which is sort of a Jagged Alliance 3. Except that it's not as good as Jagged Alliance, but it's good enough for drawing a parallel without insulting JA.

It takes place just after WW2, and you get to lead a squad of mercenaries during the cold war, trying to prevent it from escalating to "damn hot" war. Like in mercenaries tactical games (JA, Wages of war, and the like) you get to pick men from a rooster of different mercenaries. There are six classes of characters in the game : Soldier, Engineer, Grenadier, Sniper, Medic and Scout. All have very different abilities, which are raised via skill trees, like in Diablo 2. The challenge is ok on default settings, but can be fine tuned very efficiently to obtain maximum personal enjoyment (once you know the game and its different parameters, of course).
Then, towards 2/3 of the game, Sci-Fi breaks in, and super powered exo-skeletons a.ka "Panzerkleins" make an appearance. Most of those who diss the game, base their dislike on this. It's justified in a way, Panzerkleins are ugly and grotesque and most importantly, are a pain to play with. Since you can easily not use them and still destroy the enemy's ones, I don't mind this too much.

So, if the "Jagged Alliance" series left you hungry for more, this is a good derivative. Not as good as the real shit, but still tasty.

You may now proceed to make fun of me, nya. I deserve it, totally.
I really wanted to, but you pretty much cut the ground under my feet :

The gameplay. You dance by following some drawings in the touch screen thingie. You go up in level gaining access to more pretty dresses, more complex songs, and stuffies. And along the way you have to get you a prince from a batch including each and every archetype from romance games, like, totally ever. Including a giant bunny.

that's unfair and like, totally not kawaii. :(
 
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Just finished, rather swiftly, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 while waiting for a decent game, more suited to my taste, to be released (say, Drakensang 2…). My verdict: shameful.
The gameplay is precisely what those familiar with modern FPS-titles should expect, moreso if they have any experience with COD:Modern Warfare. Indeed, quite often BC2 felt like an extension of Modern Warfare 2, from the hokey storyline to the scripted-events-which-rob-you-completely-of-control-while-watching-some-quasi-cinematic-event-unfold, even the graphics. I would be somewhat remiss, of course, if I neglected to mention the "destructible" environment, which is the sole genuinely distinguishing characteristic of the two (well, that and a few of the weapons you can use). The fact that this "destruction" is somewhat erratic (certain doors, in my experience, shattering into micro-fragments with a single bullet whereas others required a full-burst to break and, inexplicably, disappear) and, given sufficient time, predictable dulls the "that is so awesome" affect the developers likely intended.
In short, pick it up if MW2 left you wanting more or the one-shot gimmick of a destructible environment captured your attention. Multiplayer might hold a certain appeal, for those inclined to such pursuits, however, as I am not among them I similarly cannot comment.

…oh, and it was buggy. CTD'ed thrice, among other errors, albeit one of which may have been my fault (as I initially ran the game at rather high-settings). Still, I understand this was hardly unexpected, coming from DICE.
 
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@ Magerette

Yes, it's only DS, but the DS it's kind of super dee duper convenient considering all the weird stuffies and the experimental thingies are coming out for it right now, and since it's also all safey safe from the waves of Grimdark engulfing the rest of the industry i say, like, best console ever, totally.

There's always emulators for the PC purist, though i don't know how far we can take that discussion on this particular forum given how easy they make piracy but also how legal they are as long you have the original thingie somewhere. :S

@ MiniVazdru-Kun

Are you, like, following me around? I'm starting to think frenchy can't live without kitty cat, nya. x3
 
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The land of fairies and pretty witches, nya!
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