Last game you finished, tell us about it

[narpet]

I just finished the Oblivion expansion, The Shivering Isles. It was pretty good. I liked the landscapes the best, and with my new geforce 8800gtx I was able to turn everything up and really enjoy it. It was a very nice change from the eversame lands of the OC.

The plot was okay and I had a good time, but the main quest was really just one fedex quest after another. I think the thing that I enjoyed the most was getting the new set of armor that I was able to get one of the smiths to make (I won't put any spoilers here).

A lot of reviews have raved about how Bethesda has created a realm of madness... well... ummm... okay. Some of the NPCs were interesting, and Sheogorath himself was pretty well developed and acted, but I never really felt like I was in a realm of complete madness. More like I was in a realm of slightly quirky people, with the occasional mad man/woman.

But overall it was fun...

 

[JemyM]

Resident Evil Zero (9/10)
After playing the more hyped Resident Evil 4 I wasnt expecting much, but RE0 was to me a better game. Great horror atmosphere and well presented main characters. Unlike RE4 the environments and loot felt like it all fit in and the story was ok. Looking forward to take up the RE1 Remake next!

 

[txa1265]

Soldier of Fortune 2 (PC, 8.5/10)

Yeah, 8.5 ... I *know* It is a major cop-out for someone like me who prefers a 5 star system with no halfsies But there it is.

This was my '5th anniversary run' as the game released ~May 22nd 2002, and I've probably played it ~20 or so times on the PC, 1 or 2 times on the Mac. It is one of my all-time favorite shooters - but the funny thing is that it is a flawed game and I have known that from the very start. The game has forced stealth areas, levels that could have been designed on an etch-a-sketch they are so linear, and compensates for dodgy AI by giving enemies loads of HP and damage. This time I saw more 'ghost spawning' than I remember.

Yet I love the game - and mostly it is because it combines some great combat areas with enemies who give you a fierce fight and the best damage system I have ever seen (to this day!).

 

[JemyM]

Resident Evil (10/10)
I played the GameCube version (the remake) as Jill. What can I say? There are no problems with this game. Maybe a few puzzlerooms did not feel like they belonged in the mansion, but the story was nice, the character development was good and the game looks fantastic for it's age (even the remake have a few years of age now). I did not bother with replaying the game as Chris, instead I watched his unique scenes (with Rebecca for example) on youtube. Im off to Resident Evil 2 now.

 

[Moriendor]

S.W.A.T 4 - Gold Edition (including the Stetchkov Syndicate expansion)

This game was like a rollercoaster ride. Great atmosphere, sound, graphics, environments, mission settings etc but a lot of that was ruined by the completely pathetic AI of your squad members and the enemies.
You are the leader of a team of five SWAT members (so four AI dudes) and you can indirectly take control of teams of two (blue team and red team) to position them at different strategic places for example or to have them enter a room from two sides.

The problem is that your AI mates are really good at getting stuck in doorways or on ladders/ramps. They don't really know what a line of sight or a line of fire is. They have zero situational awareness and sometimes run by enemies that are standing right next to them or that hide behind a door (surely real SWAT officers are trained to check behind doors). They sometimes shoot each other but when a bad guy is waving his weapon around like a freak after being flashbanged then they do nothing about it but yell at the guy to drop it instead of shooting. Then when Mr. Bad Guy recovers from the flashbang, Mr. Bad Guy takes out 2, 3 or if you're in bad luck all 4 of your team members. Yup. That's right. Four fully trained SWAT dudes are allowing one bad guy to wipe them all out after they have flashbanged the shit out of the guy and had already taken control of the situation.
They also do not respond to your commands at all sometimes until you press the corresponding key a second time. This is obviously less than helpful when a situation (like entering a room from two sides) requires timing.

It also doesn't help at all that the animations are completely pathetic as well. This is a game where good graphics actually matter because the quality of the graphics or animations is actually a gameplay element. Why? Well, you need to achieve a certain mission score to be able to advance to the next mission. You get negative points for "unauthorized use of force". These negative points can be avoided if you yell at a suspect to drop his weapon. So sometimes you will find yourself in a situation where you will be standing really close to a subject with your weapon pointing at the guy and you'll be yelling at him to drop it repeatedly. Then all of a sudden the bad guy points the weapon at you (this happens in under 1/10th of a second so you have no chance to react) and kills you. That's bullshit. The animation from holding/waving gun around to aiming/pointing gun should take much longer and be much more fluid like in real-life so that you have a realistic chance to react.

All of the above led some missions to be an extreme exercise in frustration. I finished the game and the expansion on normal difficulty but I really can't even begin to imagine the frustration on any higher levels. That must take a lot of patience and dedication with some missions. Most missions are rather easy but there were two missions that I had to do over and over and over again before I got the required 50% score that is required on normal difficulty to advance to the next mission. The calculation of the score seems to be bugged anyway. I repeatedly received negative scores (-10%) for "unauthorized use of force" even when I paid extremely close attention to not shooting before yelling to drop it. The mission results were plain inexplicable at times and did not correspond to what actually happened during the course of a mission.

Still, it was tons of fun and very immersive if and when the game worked as intended. I wish it would somehow be possible to merge the good parts of SWAT 4 and Rainbow Six (R6 pre-Lockdown that is) for the perfect squad shooter *sigh*...

 

[txa1265]

S.W.A.T 4 - Gold Edition (including the Stetchkov Syndicate expansion)

This game was like a rollercoaster ride. Great atmosphere, sound, graphics, environments, mission settings etc but a lot of that was ruined by the completely pathetic AI of your squad members and the enemies.

Very well put - I didn't know that they had a Gold Edition, I played them individually. It sometimes feels like you want to 'lone wolf' it, but that is suicide.

 

[JemyM]

Resident Evil 2 (8/10)
RE2 have aged a bit since it came and unfortunally the story isnt satisfying enough to make the game perfect as it's prequels, but it was still an ok experience. I am looking forward to Code Veronica, but first RE3.

 

[Jaz]

Sudeki (Xbox):
I played and finished it before, but its been a while ago.
Sudeki is a very colorful game in the JRPG style (though it is by a British developer) without some of the length present in some of the Japanese games I played - but this also means it's rather short, especially when you played it before and know when to go where.

The story is... decent, though not really breathtaking: the world Sudeki was given to god Tetsu who, after a while, started to feel lonely, and made another god in his image. Heigou, however, was eveil. The two started to squabble over who owned Sudeki, and in the end the Heigou was banned, but the world split in two. 1000 years later, Heigou will return, and just the chosen ones can fight him...
Visuals are sweet, especially when you wander between the two halves of Sudeki later in the game: the bright, fruity-colored state Haskilia and its dark, gloomy counterpart Cyantia make for a nice contrast.

Character development is handled in the same old manner: you fight and solve questst, get XP, and can invest them on level-up. There are a handful attributes and several magical skills to spend your points on. Mismanagement IS an option: by spending points on magical attributes, for example, on a character you usually don't use for magical attacks or defenses, you can render your group unusable... but then you'll notice that quickly...

You always start with the same character and expand your group in the same manner because it's a plot-driven affair. Once you have all four basic characters together, it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to use them all in your party: sometimes one or two of them are needed elsewhere, the group is split, and you'll always be left alone to fight bosses (though with different bosses, you'll have different characters to fight them - none of your choice).

Each character (or better: type of character, because you'll have to adventure with some of your shadows from the 'other' world later on) has a special ability: the tank can move crates, the mage can make invisible things visible, the artillery can fly short distances, and the acrobat can climb certain walls. Some puzzles need the abilities of several characters to be solved - this reminded me a lot of Lost Vikings .

Real-time combat can be rather chaotic: sometimes you'll have to switch characters in mid-combat (to heal the group, for example), so re-adjustment to your new position can be a bit confusing. Apart from that, it's extremely bloody: enemies tend to gib, and that violently.

Okay, now the rest in shorthand:
I liked:
-the Lost Vikings like gameplay
-the colors! and the rest of the visuals
-the boss fights (sometimes strategic even for a single character)
-the plot twist

I didn't like:
-the length (too short)
-story on rails after reaching Cyantia (decent exploration wasn't possible anymore after this point)
-unresolved story element (Tal and his father, Tal and Ailish... etc.)
-some of the voice actors were terribly uninspired (at least in the localized version)

Summary:
More an action adventure w/RPG elements; grand visuals for its time. Highly entertaining while it lasts, despite a few shortcomings - a solid game:
8/10.

 

[JemyM]

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (8/10)
Slightly more rewarding than RE2 and less aged but the story was still not as interesting as the first games (zero and the remake). Looking forward to Code Veronica X now.

 

[GothicGothicness]

More an action adventure w/RPG elements; grand visuals for its time. Highly entertaining while it lasts, despite a few shortcomings - a solid game:
8/10.

I found one MAJOR problem with the gameplay. Get princess allish one of the powerfull shooting rods. and in each combat just back and shoot with her. This way I passed all the combats and never died or had any problems. They should have fixed that somehow... it could have made the combat hard and more enjoyable if they did.

 

[Jaz]

Well, personally I don't like difficult battles, so that was fine with me. Ailish wasn't the only powerful party member, by the way: you could do pretty much the same with Elco. If you cranked up his strength, equipped him with the ion weapon and the nano spell (which makes all friendlies deal double damage), he dealt more than 1000 HP damage per shot... to every hostile in his line of sight. Needless to say I used Elco whenever possible, and the Elco (double damage) / Tal (powerful shield) combo served to shorten fights significantly.
Whenever you had none of the distance fighters in your party, fights were more difficult. Fortunately, there were not many instances like that... and unfortunately, the end boss fight was one of those.

 

[JemyM]

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (9/10)
After the remake the best game in the series, also one of the longer. Best told story, most memorable villians. Harder than the rest.

 

[JDR13]

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (9/10)
After the remake the best game in the series, also one of the longer. Best told story, most memorable villians. Harder than the rest.

RE4 is the best game in the series followed by RE:Code Veronica and then RE0. Everyone is going to have a different opinion based on personal preference though.

 

[txa1265]

RE4 is the best game in the series followed by RE:Code Veronica and then RE0. Everyone is going to have a different opinion based on personal preference though.

The only RE I've played is the original, redone for the DS. It was pretty average, but didn't necessarily update well - especially many of the melodramatic moments and horrific voice acting. My GamerDad review.

As for me, I just finished replaying Dark Messiah Might & Magic 2x - once for fun and the second time to play an archer for the first time yet. My score - wait for the RPGWatch review coming soon

 

[JemyM]

RE4 is the best game in the series followed by RE:Code Veronica and then RE0. Everyone is going to have a different opinion based on personal preference though.

I gave RE4 an eight.

I hope the Survival Treasure Hunt isnt a sign of things to come. I found the whole goldrush for merchants concept to be absolutely alien to the entire genré, not to mention that many items seemed to pop up in the wierdest places. Thoose farmers seem to have been living on gold for a long time... how come they live like that when they are so extraordinary rich?
Furthermore, how many wierd places can you mention in RE4 in which you found a box of ammo?

In a Survival Horror game (and zombie movies), limited resources and using items you come over is part of the genré. Chasing gold to buy stuff isnt.

There were many things in Resident Evil 4 that did not quite fit in. I know it's just a game, but I think that things out of place shatters the immersion and reduce the scariness. When you pass from a rural rundown landscape into a well-kept glorious medieval castle shock-full of richness and glory, with it's own rollercoaster and lava basement, it just ruins my ability to take it seriously.
If anything, Resident Evil 4 had been better, more immersive and scarier, if it had better direction of it's content, maybe sparing some of the alien ideas for other games.

The interface was nice, the story was decent, but the dramaturgy was a complete mess. Had not RE2 and 3 been as aged as they are, they would end up higher on my list.

 

[JemyM]

The only RE I've played is the original, redone for the DS. It was pretty average, but didn't necessarily update well - especially many of the melodramatic moments and horrific voice acting.

I played the remake for GameCube last week and I have to say that it's one of the finest games ever made. It's really an icon for how a remake should be made.

 

[JDR13]

There are many things in games that might seem "out of place", after all we're talking about video games, not real life. There were plenty of things(items\weapons\ammo) in all of the RE games that were in strange locations. I agree that RE4 in particular had a lot of gold and ammo lying around, but the mechanics of that game were a little different than the previous games in the series as well. RE4 was more action oriented and had a great deal more enemies to contend with, which in turn made it necessary for more ammo.


Even in Gothic 1&2, which are my all-time favorite games, there were a great many things that were definitely "out of place".

 

[JDR13]

I played the remake for GameCube last week and I have to say that it's one of the finest games ever made. It's really an icon for how a remake should be made.

The RE1 remake on GC is indeed an excellent game. My only complaint is about the difficulty levels they give you to choose from. The easier one is a little too easy, while the hard one is downright brutal. They should have included something in between the two.

 

[xSamhainx]

I actually just found my old Playstation with the original RE over in a box in Mama Sam's garage last weekend..

Thinking of giving it a spin, wondering if it still works, and how much of the secrets and stuff I still know. I only played thru it once

 

[JemyM]

I actually just found my old Playstation with the original RE over in a box in Mama Sam's garage last weekend..

Thinking of giving it a spin, wondering if it still works, and how much of the secrets and stuff I still know. I only played thru it once

GameCube's are very cheap now. If you have some money over, consider grabbing one with the Remake. It's difficult to see that the remake is from 2002 when the game looks better than many PC games from 2006!