Last game you finished, tell us about it

Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

Played the whole game co-op with my dad on dual tablets. Great game. First time playing this particular game and it truly did not disappoint. I was immersed from beginning to end and really, really enjoyed it. I have come to learn that I simply adore the Infinity Engine style games so much. Definitely some of my favorite games period.

We didn't finish the Heart of Winter or Trials of the Luremaster expansions yet due to an issue with my dad's tablet. Basically, the game crashes when we try to load a save after dying, so yeah. However, what we've seen of the HoW expansion thus far has been quite good and I look forward to seeing more of it.

If I had to rate the game, well, it's a 10/10 for me. Can't think of any single aspect of it I didn't like.

rhophiehalul78 said:

XCOM Enemy Unknown. And I'm replaying it on harder difficulties! This game is amazing. I can't play the sequel yet though as I'm a little out of funds.

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That might work out well for you - there are apparently many acknowledged technical issues with the sequel, and they've announced that they're working very hard to sort them out. Getting it on sale later, all patched up, is probably the way to go.

I really liked the new Xcom Two but I think Enemy Unknown is my favourite as of right now. That game is just incredibly good and enjoyable.

Carnifex said:

I really liked the new Xcom Two but I think Enemy Unknown is my favourite as of right now. That game is just incredibly good and enjoyable.

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What about Enemy Within? It's an improved version of Enemy Unknown right? I just have the enemy unknown game and might get the expansion in the near or far future

Ahhh yes my mistake, I meant to say Enemy Within. I replayed that right after I finished Xcom Two and had a wonderful time, some things are quite different but I find both systems/games quite entertaining. For an expansion, Enemy Within really changed the base game, made it quite better for me. If you don't have that expansion and enjoy the Xcom games, I highly recommend it.

Fluent said:

If I had to rate the game, well, it's a 10/10 for me. Can't think of any single aspect of it I didn't like.

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Yes, it's one of the closet to perfect games I've played in my life, particularly after the first replay. It's a game where knowing what's coming up makes it even better IMO.

That's what save and reload is good for. But some reason I didn't mind some of the trial and error gaming with IWD. It required some real tactical (perhaps strategic) thinking.

It's so much more than that. It's the whole concept of pre-planning a party of you're own, while thinking about all the encounters etc. It's knowing when to step-up your concentration and knowing when to hack and slash. It's speeding up the game because you're not nervously inching forward anymore. Plus many more.

Well what I said covered that but whatever. Chose to be combative but I'm not playing.

Just finished The Beginner's Guide. It's a short experimental story game by the guy that did The Stanley Parable (which was amazing). This one was kind of strange at first, but had a very nice and introspective payoff. Really makes you think about things. I absolutely loved it. Really big recommendation from me. It's very short, just 1.6 hours according to STEAM, but worth every penny imo. It felt really honest and genuine.

I just finished The Talos Principle. One heck of a ride. I really liked it and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in A.I. philosophy. Very cool stuff. I particularly liked the philosophical discussions you engage in with Milton, along the whole game. Of course, they sometimes felt a bit gimped because of the dialogue system. I guess you'll never satisfy everyone when it comes to the response options you get when talking to the entity. But it was nice nonetheless.

danutz_plusplus said:

I just finished The Talos Principle. One heck of a ride. I really liked it and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in A.I. philosophy. Very cool stuff. I particularly liked the philosophical discussions you engage in with Milton, along the whole game. Of course, they sometimes felt a bit gimped because of the dialogue system. I guess you'll never satisfy everyone when it comes to the response options you get when talking to the entity. But it was nice nonetheless.

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Just in time
Talos Principle on sale this weekend on Steam $9.99

http://store.steampowered.com/app/257510/?snr=1_620_4__45

Just finished Life is Strange. Seriously amazing game but sheesh, my heart is torn apart now

Actually, I'd revise my score to a 9/10 for Icewind Dale: EE. Why? 1 point deduction for only being a 40 hour game. It was seriously way too short, especially considering Baldur's Gate is 100 hours long.

Great game, yes, but should have been about double the length, IMO.

A whole point just for game-length? Hmmm, my criticism of your criticism is that your criticism skills need leveling-up more. To be honest, there's quite a few nitpicks you could make about IWD, just as with most games, and it's normally not best to give any game 10/10 scores, unless you're rounding up a 100 point system.

What I like to do when performing a more serious critique of a game is to take the ten most prominent elements of the game, the parts which the game made me think about most, and attempt to mark each of those out of 10 which, when all added up, gives an out of 100 score.

For example, one of IWD's most prominent criticisms is that it is very low on character dialogue and character interaction generally. However, this is not something the game made me think about, it's only something that other games made people think about and then incorrectly expected them in this game, because of whatever route they took to get to IWD being different to someone else's. So character interaction wouldn't even be in my list of 10 things to analyse for quality assessment.

For IWD I would probably look at:

1. Stability and bugs
2. Itemisation
3. Character creation
4. Atmosphere and visuals/sound effects etc
5. Monster variety
6. Combat variety
7. Overarching story
8. Exploration/area variety
9. General mechanics
10. Replayability

To which my biggest criticism would be the game's assumption that you know what you're doing when you start and doesn't provide any form of general learning of the ropes, making it much harder for the uninitiated to get into it. So this would ding the General Mechanics score quite heavily, though only by 0.2 or 0.3 for the big picture. Docking a whole point for it would be an overreaction IMO. Game length would come under Replayability or something and, again, I would only be attributing a 0.1 to that kind of thing rather than a whole point. Maybe it would make 0.2 or 0.3 if you had Game Length as one of your actual full categories, but even still, hardly a full point issue IMO.

Well, I was just going by a whole point scale. It's probably closer to a 9.5 if you want to get picky about it.

The game length is/was a serious issue for me. I went in expecting a 100 hour game because Baldur's Gate is that long, and I end up beating the game in less than 50 hours. It was a bit of a disappointment. Just when it started getting good in Dorn's Deep, the game is all but over.

Also, there is no clear sign that the game is going to end soon. All of a sudden you're at the boss's lair with no way to tie up loose quests or backtrack.

Still, it's an excellent game, one I will certainly re-play in the future because it was a blast. I really hope the second game in the series gets an Enhanced Edition, as that will definitely be another game that my dad and I co-op through.

The second is much, much longer and also has lots more time consuming traditional puzzle elements strewn around the place, which will please you greatly I suspect

Fluent said:

Well, I was just going by a whole point scale. It's probably closer to a 9.5 if you want to get picky about it.

The game length is/was a serious issue for me. I went in expecting a 100 hour game because Baldur's Gate is that long, and I end up beating the game in less than 50 hours. It was a bit of a disappointment. Just when it started getting good in Dorn's Deep, the game is all but over.

Also, there is no clear sign that the game is going to end soon. All of a sudden you're at the boss's lair with no way to tie up loose quests or backtrack.

Still, it's an excellent game, one I will certainly re-play in the future because it was a blast. I really hope the second game in the series gets an Enhanced Edition, as that will definitely be another game that my dad and I co-op through.

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I wouldn't 'downscore' a game because it's "only" 40+ hours. If it was 10 hours then yes, but at 40 hours that's already more than most newer RPGs out there.

wolfing said:

I wouldn't 'downscore' a game because it's "only" 40+ hours. If it was 10 hours then yes, but at 40 hours that's already more than most newer RPGs out there.

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Well, that's you.

When I play an Infinity Engine game that is the step-brother/sister to Baldur's Gate, I want an epic, long adventure. At 40 hours we are just warming up. Divinity: OS gave us 120+ hours and it was fabulous. Baldur's Gate gave me 100 hours on the dot to beat. Icewind Dale was a letdown in that department. I wanted it to be a huge game and got a medium, small-ish sized game.

Fluent, you didn't finish Heart of Winter or Trials of the Luremaster, so complaining about the length is kind of silly if you ask me. Given you probably finished Tales of the Swordcoast in your BG adventure, the comparison is hardly fair. For instance, it took me 85 hours to complete Icewind Dale EE last year (that's everything but on PC.)

I've been a little too busy to game a great deal recently, although I am starting to finally dig my paws into Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin on the new system. Hopefully get some free time soon to have some co-op action with my intrepid Dark Souls mate.