Last game you finished, tell us about it

NyxVampiria said:

What now? Elaborate for us slow people!

Click to expand...

Not Paradox itself, more like the company that made Cities: Skylines (published by Paradox).

Just a short note: some face from Paradox at their forum promised to have news about their take on lifesim genre in this year. When exactly wasn't specified.
But isn't it odd that so after Sims games made millions of sold copies the only game on PC even close to Sims is indie Stardew Valley? One would think except EA other publishers just don't want to make money. We're seeing numerous clones of clones and almostclones, but noone even tried to clone Sims.

Give me a space life sim. Then again I'm afraid if it was any good I'd never play anything else again.

Finished Jedi Academy…short story: better combat and level design, lesser story and characters( though few were actually present in JO) than it's predecessor.
Love what they did playstyles and abilities…you can really pull some sweet choreography here, even just with force acrobatics.
Only shame is game AI is not really up to it, bit too many rooms with Imperial fodder that makes the game feel more padded than it should.
Story felt like it was moving too fast and too slow…with becoming a Jedi( five minute course, really ), portraying relationship with Katarn/Rosh( love that guy…not the strongest, but definitely the coolest Jedi out there) and dragged itself on the other end with too many side missions.
Definitely jumping into some matches to kick some Je..err, Sith ass.

I just finished Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear. I liked it.

I rushed through BG to have a proper character. I played that game way too much and I fail at having fun with it anymore, but SoD was all new and I had fun again.

I'm not sure about going through BG2 though…

Managed to finish sword coast legends

Overall i'd say its a mediocre game; it starts really bad, probably why the multitude of negative opinions about it. Still it lacks many features you would expect to find in a rpg or d&d title : no tactics, no info on mobs while playing, the party control is very simple and clunky. It has only one save slot which makes replaying certain parts impossible, also its badly optimised; for no reason it just goes from 60 fps to 30-40, i even had 20 fps when ghosts were on my screen (luckly they apear only for like 3 minutes the whole game ), plus the loadings time are just insane.

What i did like, was everything related to the companions; they were written very good - also voiced very good, their quests were interesting; actually all the quests were good and the overall story, events you are going trough and the areas of the game were enjoyable to me.

So i'd say, for who wants simple (almost derpish) combat and good writing/voiceacting, should get this at a big discount.

Well … I finished Dishonored and the add-ons for the fourth time now: 2x Low chaos and 2x high chaos, 126 hours in all.
Even during the last run I still discovered new ways of getting from point A to point B and heard some gossip I hadn't heard yet …

…my best friend is playing it for the first time. He bought the game yesterday, and I sooo envy him.
*sigh*

Shadowrun Return: Dead's man switch.

Disclaimer: I played the "sequels" first.

Seems like I'm going to be in a minority when saying that I liked it a lot, all I remember reading went Dragonfall released was "Dead man switch is bad skip it". Sure the sequels had more polish, but Dead's Man Switch had its own charm too.

It doesn't have as much text, but by Hong Kong I felt their was too much text to read everywhere so this was a welcome change to me. It also has less combat, I suspect some people complained about it because both Dragonfall and Hong Kong loves to swarm you (screw you mini-expac might I add).

I'm a bit sad by the lack of matrix stuff. In fact, I played a decker/rigger and I felt a bit useless with my character. Each time there was a story important matrix element, you had a NPC to do the job for you. Also, shotgun rulez.

Now I need more cyberpunk, can someone advance time by a month?

Well...I preordered NBA 2K17, so will letcha know what it's like soon...much excite

shadowrun hong kong

Very good on the sidequests part, varied and interesting; main story was ok but i did liked the setting, triad mood and atmosphere - it lacked a bit in the middle part though, it started very good and finished good. Didnt finished that bonus campaign, was alittle dissapointed, i thought and hoped it would be something about the other yamakings, after getting pumped about them from the main game, was not really in the mood for the cop thing.


Homefront the revolution

Liked it, though there arent many good things to say about it; the game had quite a potential but probably the inexperinced devs had too much they could handle; im a sucker for this kind of -not too big - open world games, with some nice touches here and there it could have been much better, same for stealth part; was still fun doing crossbow headshots, sneaking around throwing firecrackers to bait a group of norks and then blow them with a rc car ; but still some small additions could have made it much better.

I finished Batman Arkham Knight the other night. I have played through all of the Batman games from Asylum to Knight over the summer and this series definitely earns a special place in my personal hall of fame.

Arkham Knight took me 44 hours including 100% on all the side and season pass content except for 100% on the Riddler trophies and the AR challenges… I only got about 30% of the 243 total Riddler trophies and watched the 100% ending on YouTube (the difference is rather minor).

A fun coincidence and I'm not making this up: When the credits of Arkham Knight started rolling I had a real bat flying into my room. No kidding. This was not the first time this summer (the bats often times come flying into houses in late summer around here) but certainly a funny coincidence. Apparently the bat wanted to watch the ending, too!

Anyway, here's my (spoilerfree) Steam review for the game:

And yet another masterpiece in an awesome franchise. Minor annoyances aside, I would put this at the no. 1 spot and the games in reverse order, i.e. Knight > Origins > City > Asylum. Do not be mistaken here. That does not mean that Asylum is bad. On a rating scale of x.x/10 points I'd rate Knight = 9.7, Origins = 9.6, City = 9.5 and Asylum = 9.2 or something like that…

As a gamer who nowadays buys all games when GOTYs or complete packages are available, I was spared the release drama. I picked up Knight including the season pass for €19.99 this summer and the game offered a near flawless experience.

There was some very minor sporadic framerate hitching/stuttering every few hours of gameplay and I had two crashes to desktop in ~37 hours. Other than that (pardon the pun): A rocksteady experience .

I have 16GB of RAM and a GTX 1070 and played the game with all settings maxed (yes including all of the Gameworks features) in 1440p. I got between 60 and 90fps most of the time. There were occasional drops to below 60fps in heavy smoke/particle environments (probably PhysX causing the drops) but on a whole it was smooth sailing.

The star of the game is once again the world design. This is the best version of Gotham in the series and it is tons of fun to explore it with the all new Batmobile or on foot (well, or "on air" more like).
The attention to detail is stunning once again and it's interesting to see how the world changes during the course of the story.
For example, some of the side quests aren't just busy work as in other games but they really affect the world around you.

The characters are all good fun and you will naturally come across many fan favorites. I generally liked the story, although the ending is a little stretched (it doesn't end when you think it does… several times!) and also set up a little weird because the credits won't roll right after ending the game but I don't want to spoil anything so see for yourself.

My only criticism in addition to the weird ending would be the occasionally annoying handling of the Batmobile, especially in some of the side missions, namely the Riddler races and bomb defusions. You also have to work around some of the game's consolitis (PCGamingWiki FTW!) like enhancing the FoV for the best experience.
It does take a bit of practice to effectively maneuver the Batmobile around the city with digital controls on the PC but nothing you can't handle if you have played NfS games with a keyboard and mouse before. The BM will clearly work better with a controller's analogue sticks, of course.

To sum it up, this is one of the most visually impressive PC games money can buy at the moment with one of the most detailed game worlds, great characters and story and mostly awesome gameplay that is only tainted by a few annoyances with the controls on the PC. The side missions from the season pass (expansion missions) are also a lot of fun so I'm glad I got the full package. What can I say? Highly recommended. Get this game and simply enjoy the epic conclusion of the Batman Arkham series.

Moriendor said:

A fun coincidence and I'm not making this up: When the credits of Arkham Knight started rolling I had a real bat flying into my room. No kidding. This was not the first time this summer (the bats often times come flying into houses in late summer around here) but certainly a funny coincidence. Apparently the bat wanted to watch the ending, too!

Click to expand...

You don't have screens on your windows in Germany? How long did he stay for? I hope you at least offered him a beer or something.

JDR13 said:

You don't have screens on your windows in Germany? How long did he stay for? I hope you at least offered him a beer or something.

Click to expand...

Nope. No beer for the little fella and his friends (he brought his gang so there were about a dozen bats inside my apartment at once but only one in my study as I finished Arkham Knight) as they are starting to piss me off with their territorial neighborhood gang war .

They did not enter through a window and screens are not very common around here (we have no gators and no rattlers here ). I live on the 3rd floor of an apartment building and I have this huge sliding door which leads to my balcony and since it's been pretty hot here the last few weeks, I kept it open at night after I fended off one bat invasion back in mid August. After keeping the door shut for a few nights, I thought they were gone for good but it looks like I was wrong.

What I do when they fly around inside is I isolate them to my living room with the huge sliding door and close all other doors to make sure they stay in one place. Then I turn on the lights to make it inconvenient for them but they are tough and obnoxious little critters. This last time it took a good two hours or so before they decided to leave on their own.

Now it's still hot and I open the sliding door all the way with the roller blinds let down all the way so they can't come in. It sucks because it doesn't cool down at night nearly as fast as it would with a fully open door and windows.
So, aside from screens, I am now also considering installing some good old 88mm FLAK cannons .

Completed Expeditions: Conquistador. Killed the Aztec emperor. I had played the game almost to the end over a year ago, but for some reason stopped. Decided to restart it last week. It's a great game and my main criticism is that I don't like my character not being able to participate in battles. Glad this is being rectified for Expeditions: Vikings.

I just finished a (quick) run through Gateway to the Savage Frontier, one of the over 9,000 Gold Box AD&D games released in the late 80's/early 90's.

It's probably one of the shortest ones I can remember, and certainly the easiest. Combat was only somewhat challenging at the beginning, when you have only crap armor and no levels, and in a few fights at the end, notably the very final fight.

Of course, the DOS version had to be bugged, in favor of the PCs, as a rather annoying foe gave out the best items in the game; Cloaks of Displacement (-2 AC) and +3 Platemail (!). They also dropped an Ioun Stone which had no apparent effect, but was supposed to increase Wisdom by 1, and a +2 Composite Longbow. For the most part, gear never otherwise got above generic +1 <x>. Item mix was rather poor, actually. You could buy a +1 Battle Axe and Gauntlets of Dexterity, and the only notable items gained were 4 different Longswords (+2 generic, +2vs Undead, +1 Icewind Dale, and +3 Stonecutter), and a +2 Battle Axe.

Maps were rather sparse as well, though nicely designed and logical (unusual for many games of this era), with some text used to give a greater impression of detail that the systems of the time couldn't handle.

It's an AD&D game, so you know what to expect there. All in all, it was a fairly fun but quick game, lasting maybe 10 hours at best. I only had to reload a few times, mostly on the end fight, and against some medusas.

As an aside, you can apparently transfer characters from Curse of the Azure Bonds over. If they're high level, this game becomes trivial, as they can start above the level cap otherwise, and the higher level spells otherwise not accessible are implemented. And of course, you can transfer to Treasures of the Savage Frontier as well, for a complete experience.

Following my victory in Gateway to the Savage Frontier, I carried on, bringing four of my characters (and the gear from the others) to Treasures of the Savage Frontier. It's yet another Gold Box game, out of the over 9000 ones released.

Over Gateway, the quality took a significant jump. Encounters were much more well built, instead of small groups gathered together in front of you, they were strategically placed. While the AI wasn't much to speak of, it still resulted in some nail biters. For the final fight, I ended the game with only three characters standing, one a NPC.

For the most part, encounters were pretty fair, except for a couple two parters where the entire party tended to run away. Terrified characters was a newer mechanic, introduced in Pools of Darkness (I think), and it is a nightmare. The battles themselves weren't hard, but getting my party to the point that I could fight them was almost impossible!

Economy is completely broken. Whereas in Gateway you at least spent a good chunk of your money on training, in Treasures I left more money laying around than is sane. My vault held over 50k platinum pieces, I had hundreds of gems and pieces of jewellery, and almost nothing to spend it on as my party was at the level cap by the time I hit the endgame. This was after leaving probably 100k platinum laying around, as well as hundreds of enchanted weapons and armor.

Gear, due to a more monty haul approach, at least allows for more than 1 weapon type. You can get +3 or better of several different weapon types, with a number of named weapons and armor through the game.

The plot likewise ends up a bit stronger, at least until late in the game. Then you randomly go treasure hunting for a dragon's hoard, but for much of the game the plot is logical, and even manages some drama and intensity. This is also one of the earliest, if not the first, game with a romance in it, though it's more an afterthought than anything you have something to do with.

Also unlike it's predecessor, the game isn't particularly linear. You can do much of the missions after the first without finishing the second, only a few have to be done in order. There are also several optional dungeons and a few optional towns. Random encounters aren't terribly pervasive, though they can be annoying particularly running from town to town.

All in all, it was just as fun as it was 20+ years ago, and it definitely leans more towards a challenging run. Despite having AC values ranging from -10 to -15(!), I never felt untouchable in melee, and enemy casters had no issues tearing up my entire party at once. This contrasts heavily with Gateway, in which only the combats with Shambling Mounds posed any danger, due to them having a bugged -3 AC, relatively high HP, half damage from all attacks and immunity to fire, coupled with a low level cap.

I think I took about 15 hours or so to finish the entire thing. Not counting a save game corruption that forced me to restart after getting about half-way through.

Next, Pool of Radiance.

I just finished Wasteland 2 Director's Cut. I really liked the game, but one thing got me thinking: in the 1st part of the game (Arizona map) the game makes us (or tries to) worry about water: the several oases scattered thru the map, the canteens we have to fill, then we have the Highpool issue with the Raiders and the water.

Then we go to California map and all the "water issues" just vanish: no oases, no need for canteens, etc. Weirdly eough, there is a waterwell in Seal Beach where we can fill up our canteens. What for?

I am not complaining/whining here because of this feature. I am just making a comment about a design feature that got overlooked by the devs in the 2nd part of the game. Not that it would make a huge difference: stopping by the Arizona's oases only to refill our canteens sounded more like a nuisance. There wasn't a "sense of urgence" for doing that (refilling canteens).

Again, the game isn't perfect but I really liked it


Just my two cents!

For a change of pace, I fired up Mega Man 6 (NES). It's a short game, in retrospect, since it can be beaten in around a hour if you're moderately skilled at platformers. Other Megaman games were far more difficult, for the most part. A passcode system saves your progress to a point, but you'll have to grind out lives and e tanks each time you play.

It's also a bit of same old same old, for the NES games. All the weapons are reskinned versions of older games' weapons. The robot masters' patterns are simpler, and slower, than older ones as well.

The main improvements are in level design. There are split paths in some levels, a few of which are rather difficult to actually get to. Earlier games were pretty much straight forward. There's also the addition of the energy balancer, which removes a lot of annoyance in recharging weapons.

If you were new to the series, I'd recommend 4 or 7 first, as they were both better made, and still easier entries. 1 and 2 are by far the most challenging, followed by 3. 5 sits between 4/7 and 6, but at least it has some unique elements still to it, whereas 6 was a tired rehash. 8 is terrible, and Mega Man and Bass (GBA only here in the US, but SNES in Japan) is almost as hard as 2. I have not played 9 or 10, since those are new-console digital purchase only.

Switching Gears yet again, I moved forward a bit and played Mega Man X3. No, the X does not stand for 10.

The X series is a more serious, dystopian future set 100 years of the original Mega Man games, featuring primarily the title character X, and Zero. Later titles would add more characters, but these two are the mainstays of this series. For the record, there are 5 different series which tie together, Original Mega Man, X, Zero, ZX, then Legends (in that order).

In short, the story is that true AI is formerd; robots with the able to think and feel for themselves. X was the original, and he was sealed away for a century to test his morality. Because giving a highly powerful robot with a weapon capable of tearing apart heavy armored fighting machines the ability to choose to wipe out humanity isn't very bright. Thee scientists who copied X weren't very bright. Cue a series of wars, and the X series has it's basis.

Gameplay is the same run-jump-and-shoot of the original series, with the same ability to select stages in any order for the first part of the game. Each boss has a special weapon that you gain after you beat them, and each boss is weak to one of the other bosses weapons.

Differences are that you start much weaker than in the original. You have to obtain 8 heart tanks to extend your health bar to it's full amount, and there are upgrades for 4 armor parts. On the (slightly) easier side energy tanks are now permanent, though they have to be recharged after you use them.

X3 also added additional upgrades for each armor piece, chips which increase their capabilities. There are now ride armors obtainable for use, though I only used them to access upgrades TBH. You can't bring one to a boss fight. Ride armors have their own health bars. There's even a couple secret upgrades which you can get.

Level design, the game is pretty difficult. It is the hardest of the SNES trilogy of X games, in my opinion, despite some very powerful upgrades being available. There are many jumps with almost no margin for error, and even with the double air dash, you can easily fail. Enemy placement borders on frustrating, with most every trash enemy requiring a charge shot or better to bring down. Many are well placed to block platforms and knock you into pits or spikes.

Energy capsules, which drop from enemies or appear in set spots, are very rare. Extra lives more so. In my playthrough, I found 3 1-ups in the entire game, two of which are set together deep in a difficult stage. No enemies dropped them. Weapon energy is rarer than health; the only time I got weapon energy was in a box that specifically dropped energy capsules when shot.

Boss and special weapon design is where this game falls flat on it's face. The best weapon in the game is the X Buster, which you start with. Even the upgraded charge shot sucks, the only redeeming factor that you can fire the first upgraded shot (which is horrible) and then hold the second charge shot (the original, base shot), without holding down the fire button.

Other special weapons are pretty much used only when fighting bosses that require them. They do less damage to most trash than the base X Buster, and require far more shots. Only one had a decent design, the rest, as a weapon, were terrible from a logical standpoint.

Bosses, if you had the correct weapon, were a joke. They would be stunned, letting you set for the next shot, and would mostly end up in a pattern loop. One just stunned, and you never even had to actually fight him. This continued until a few of the end stages' bosses, though a couple of them had such easily exploited patterns that it really didn't matter.

On the other hand, the master robots were a nightmare if you lacked the proper weapon, being essentially impossible without hours of tedious practice learning their patterns and/or having the full run of energy tanks and armor/health upgrades to back you up. The final boss in particular was a pain, not due to his pattern, but due to the incredibly tiny hitbox, and the fact that only charged shots worked on it.

All in all, I think this is the worst of the SNES Mega Man games, by far. Poor special weapon and boss designs, and far too many blind leaps (a no-no in platforming design) with robots waiting offscreen that you can't avoid make it more frustrating than fun.

If you want to hit the series, start with the first or 4th ones, both of which are far more fun to play. Then hit 2. 5 is still better than 3, but it's not much better. 6 is one of the most difficult platformers I've ever played, and such should probably only be played if you're a completist or rather hardcore.

I (re-)finished BioShock Remastered last night. It's still (almost) every bit as great as I remembered it... except for some some minor annoyances like slightly excessive Splicer respawning, tons of backtraking, and unsolvable hacking grids requiring many retries.

The biggest annoyance, however, was the technical side. There has been one much needed patch so far to fix the controls and various other flaws but two things remain unresolved so far: The crashes and the surround sound issues. The crashes happened very randomly to me and only started on the third level or so. There was no excessive crashing but it was still uncomfortable enough every few hours since you had to remember to save often in several slots.

The sound issues are near gamebreaking at times. The problem is that the positioning of the audio does not work so you'll hear a Splicer like he should be right in front of you but in reality he is a level above you or in the next room. It is really messed up and what is also annoying is that some of the audio logs are barely audible when you have e.g. a super-loud sound of a security camera in your ear even though the camera is miles away.
Sometimes characters tell you codes for security doors/elevators through the audio logs and you just can not understand what they are saying. Grrrr...

It is, therefore, not too surprising that the game -in spite of the awesome content- only has a 'Mixed' rating on Steam at the moment. It could definitely use a couple more patches.

I also accidentally finished Assassin's Creed Rogue a few days ago. I don't know... it just ended in the middle of something . There was no real warning or foreshadowing... no boss fight or anything either... it just decided to roll the credits and I was like 'WTF? Do they have credits in the middle of games now?' but they were serious... that was really it.
I can now say with confidence that Black Flag is the better game of the two, although they are quite similar. The world in Rogue is the best part of the game. The North Atlantic and the River Valley as well as NYC and surroundings are extremely well done and fun to explore as far as UbiSoft formula exploration is concerned (which I'm getting really tired of).