Last game you finished, tell us about it

FO3

Just 'finished' FO3 after not playing for months. What an idiotic ending - I hadn't explored about 75% (at least) of the map before I was shanghaied into the 'Project Purity Finale' (it's *soooo* important and URGENT!!*)... only to discover that regardless of my final choice I couldn't continue to explore the world. So, all that effort wasted. Pending quests screwed. No inkling of this up front, mind you. Just wham! Game over. As for consequence of activating project purity - I doubt they would be immediate - they could simply assume that it will take some time for things to start changing and let you carry on exploring the world anyway. Just change the water colour around the monument for pete's sake or add a few dialogue choices when you meet people. If they wanted to terminate the game in such dramatic fashion, the main story should have had you visit a lot more of the world.

GothicGothicness said:

Why remake a 2d adventure game? nothing is as beautiful as a hand-drawn 2d adventure games.....

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It really does look beautiful ... and I'm not so aghast about the whole hair thing ...

booboo said:

Just 'finished' FO3 after not playing for months. What an idiotic ending - I hadn't explored about 75% (at least) of the map before I was shanghaied into the 'Project Purity Finale' (it's *soooo* important and URGENT!!*)... only to discover that regardless of my final choice I couldn't continue to explore the world. So, all that effort wasted. Pending quests screwed. No inkling of this up front, mind you. Just wham! Game over. As for consequence of activating project purity - I doubt they would be immediate - they could simply assume that it will take some time for things to start changing and let you carry on exploring the world anyway. Just change the water colour around the monument for pete's sake or add a few dialogue choices when you meet people. If they wanted to terminate the game in such dramatic fashion, the main story should have had you visit a lot more of the world.

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Uh... the 3rd DLC "Broken Steel" does all that. Install it and you can continue right where the main game ended. In fact, you might even have more fun than the rest of us because you can play 75% of the game with the new content.

I recommend you grab at least the 3rd and the 4th DLC at once and get back into the game. You haven't actually "finished" it yet.

JemyM said:

Uh... the 3rd DLC "Broken Steel" does all that. Install it and you can continue right where the main game ended. In fact, you might even have more fun than the rest of us because you can play 75% of the game with the new content.

I recommend you grab at least the 3rd and the 4th DLC at once and get back into the game. You haven't actually "finished" it yet.

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Definitely agree ... I had traversed everything before finishing, but for those who haven't Broken Steel did the trick.

It really does look beautiful ... and I'm not so aghast about the whole hair thing ...

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I guess it could also be a matter of what style you like, personaly I really love the old hand-drawn 2d background and characters in the style of MI, simon the sorcerer, kings quest etc.... so I see no reason to remake it... at least not for the purpose to add new graphics ( I even prefer the older graphics more charming/beauty ). However I do realise that it is a very good way to attract new players unfamiliar with the series to discover it and also a good way to promote the new games.... on top of that they could probably re-use a lot of the artwork in the new games.....

GothicGothicness said:

I guess it could also be a matter of what style you like, personaly I really love the old hand-drawn 2d background and characters in the style of MI, simon the sorcerer, kings quest etc.... so I see no reason to remake it... at least not for the purpose to add new graphics ( I even prefer the older graphics more charming/beauty ). However I do realise that it is a very good way to attract new players unfamiliar with the series to discover it and also a good way to promote the new games.... on top of that they could probably re-use a lot of the artwork in the new games.....

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Some of the new artwork, the backgrounds in particular, looks absolutely great compared to the original. Since you have the option to switch to "classic" with the F10 button you can really compare the old to the new, and rather quickly I completely skipped the "classic" mode since it couldn't compete with the new one.

MI: SE is still 2d, but in hires.

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It is not entirely 2d, they modeled the characters in 3d and rendered them in high-res 2d. That's not the same as hand-drawn 2d at all. ( the hair is a dead give-away )

Some of the backgrounds might be hand-drawn, at least if they do not contain much animations.

Of course it is also a matter of taste, for me characters are the most important and I don't like the new look of them. Backgrounds... that's another matter....

Force Unleashed
Force Unleashed promises to allow you to weild the power like never before, while telling the story between Episode III and IV. Does it deliver?

Story
You are Starkiller, the secret apprentice of Darth Vader. You work as his assassin, defeating escaped Jedi all over the galaxy. He is really training you so that you and he can take on the emperor.
The story is told through cutscenes between levels. Force Unleashed is supposed to bridge the gap between Episode III and IV, primarily dealing with the birth of the rebellion to fight back to an already totalitarian empire. It does, but I would have preferred a bit more filling. There are very few surprises here and very little emotion. It never really feels epic, you are like this unknown outsider all the way through. There's almost no characterbuildning for any of the main characters, not even the apprentice.
The primary villains seems to have more effort to them. Most of them are Jedi who one way or another have became mentally unstable when being forced to deal with the fact that the Jedi Council is annihilated. We have one who built his own imaginary council, one drunkard and one who seem to be the only one who doesn't realize her padawan have been corrupted by the dark side.

Engine
There were a lot of buzz regarding the Force Unleashed engine. Very early videos started to appear on the web showcasing it's amazing AI and breakable environment. While this is in the game, it haven't actually been used as much as you would like. There are always something that can be ripped to shreds, but most of the level is still rock solid, meaning it's useless to play around breaking stuff. While it happens that the enemy reacts to the environment, this is pretty rare. They never really become anything more than cannon fodder.

Graphically the game uses most ghee-whizz effects out there. Personally I thought that character faces didn't look as good as other games, lips and eyes in particular, but levels often look amazing. Soundwise the game have what you would expect from a star wars game, lightsaber sounds, blaster sounds and John Williams music.

A major issue I had was the loading sequences. Opening any menu will lead to a loading screen, dying or restarting the level will lead to a loading screen... This is one game you will see the loading screen a lot and it gets frustrating.

Another nuisance is that many of the cutscenes cannot be skipped.

Gameplay
Force Unleashed is essentially a hack & slash game, very similar to games like God of War. Those who played the Jedi Knight series will see the return of upgradeable forcepowers and lightsaber customization and you can even find custom robes. Force Unleashed offers pretty much every feature you can ask for in a game such as this one, but it fails to bring any surprises and it's also in the gameplay area that Force Unleashed suffers.

The gameplay is tweaked a bit, but not enough. One of the key issues is targeting. Force powers usually targets opponents in front of Starkiller rather than in the middle of the camera, and it will not be uncommon that you unleash your powers on an item closer to Starkiller than your real target standing next to it. Prepare to forcelightning or accidently throwing a piece of item instead of a foe.

Another problem is that all those combos you can unlock doesn't really matter. This is a hack & slash game and during the later levels you might take the quick approach and use the combos you are familiar with instead of bothering with the new ones. The stuff you get for free is more than enough to get you through the game. In fact, I didn't use a single force upgrade until the 8th level on Sith Warrior. Another problem is that the areas are usually so hampered that there are few possibilities for experimentation anyway.

There are also sequences in which savepoints are far between, forcing you to watch through a pair of cutscenes and do several hard and annoying battles over and over again.

All of these make the game frustrating and make actually sometimes end up somewhat boring and repetitive.

I also hate buttonmashing cutscenes. Since I am forced to watch the "press this button fast" descriptions anyway I won't get to see the cutscene. Add to that, many of the minibosses cannot be killed unless you button-sequence them to death. I noticed one time in which wookiees had dropped a miniboss to zero health, but it just wouldn't die until I walked up there and did the buttonsequence.

Final Conclusion
Force Unleashed is not a bad game, but not a particulary good either. The unique engine never get's to shine enough, the story offers no surprises and little emotion and there are plenty of technical problems to make the game frustrating. Having said that, Star Wars fans can most likely forgive the flaws and should go on playing it anyway. Like I said, it's neither a bad game, nor is it a perfect game. I could compare it to Republic Commando that also delivered what it promised without being a particulary good game.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
When you combine Tomb Raider with Gears of War, and do everything absolutely right, you might end up with Uncharted, a game which have almost no scratches, in which both gameplay, story and graphics just shines.

Story
A treasure hunting hero, Nathan Drake, who are appearently ancestor to famous explorer Sir Francis Drake, teams up with a journalist, Elena Fisher, to seek for the lost treasure of El Dorado. If you have seen movies like Romancing the Indiana Jones movies you can tell what kind of story you are offered in Uncharted and this is one who do the story so well that you are dragged right into it, and will probably fall in love with the characters.

I wish I could say more about it because the story really is better than average for games.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
Uncharted is probably one of the best looking games on console. The maps are extremely well done and they look absolutely beautiful. Characters looks great and they are well animated. The sound is great. Drake and whatever companion you have with you often pass comments on the situation, like if he finds a good item, or if new enemies pop up. The musical score is awesome and one that I have to get the OST for, it really sounds like a classic adventure movie. There's nothing to complain about here.

Gameplay
Gameplay is rock solid and highly optimized, leaving no glitches whatsoever that I could see.

Uncharted takes some of the games most celebrated for gameplay out there and mash them into one; Gears of War and Tomb Raider. A lot of the game is puzzlesolving mixed with climbing and jumping around in a way that is almost identical to Tomb Raider (or Prince of Persia), so fans of that series will feel right at home. But combat have been directly borrowed from Gears of War. That means that you need to duck & cover if you want to stay alive. Both of these works very well, and the platform controls are actually easier to control than Tomb Raider: Legends/Anniversary/Underworld as far as I can tell. The Duck & Cover system works very well too. Unlike games in which there are very defined places in which you can take cover, Uncharted pretty much lets you take cover anywhere in which there's a wall or something else. There's also a twist near the end that changes the way you play quite a bit, which allows you to play the game more like a shooter in an (in my opinion) fun way.

Beyond that there's the ability to control turrets and drive vehicles, which is in almost all games like this.

There are some "push theese buttons in the right time" cutscenes that I generally hate, but unlike other games this never got frustrating. Most of the time you only need to push one button at the right time so you do not need to memorize button orders.

There's tons of rewards/trophies to be made in the game that unlocks all sorts of bonus modes and extra features. Many of theese encourage you to experiment with weapons in different ways.

If I should get nitpicky, there are very few things I can imagine complaning about... Maybe there are bits where you have to beat waves of enemies that get's kinda repetitive, unless you take your chance to unlock some trophies while you got the chance. I also had some problems to find where to go, but there's a help function that pops up if you stay too long at one place.

Final Conclusion
I had never heard of Naughty Dog prior to this game, but appearently they were behind the Crash Bandicot and Jak & Daxter, of which I have played neither. I was taken by complete surprise that a game company I never heard of, release the first game in a new series, and do everything absolutely right. Uncharted is probably the best game I played this year.

Siren: Blood Curse
Let me say this up front; Siren: Blood Curse is very different game, and feel very much like an interactive experiment. It's set up to be like an interactive TV show. There are 12 chapters, each chapter begins with a short recap of previous episodes, followed by two interactive sequences, followed by "scenes from the next episode". Originally they were released as downloadable chapters but I bought the blue-ray.

The story begins simple; an American Television crew investigates a city called Hanuda, where blood sacrifices were made 30 years earlier. From that point on things just get weirder and weirder. Appearently Hanuda is cursed and there's "intelligent" zombies called "chibitos" all over, who seem to be stuck in their daily routine, living out their daily lives, even if they are actually dead.

At first glance the game looks like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, meaning it looks like a survival horror game. Unlike other horror games though, where you are usually meant to kill whatever comes in your path, Siren puts more focus into sneaking. You will often feel you play a regular person who have no combat experience, and sneaking is often the best way to go by. The goal is often about getting through the area, meaning you have to get past the chibitos. This can sometimes be easy if you find a weapon, but they will never stay down forever, they will get up again in a minute or so, so there's no way to "clear the area".

As a help you have something known as "sightjacking". You can enter the eyes of a chibito, making it possible to track their routine, something that will help you sneaking past them, or decide the right moment to whack them over the head with one of the 50 improvised weapons in the game, everything from ashtrays to frying pans to real weapons like guns and blades.

One cool feature was the archive. On each map you can find secrets that unlocks archive items. These archive items can be accessed from the main menu and usually expand the storyline. Most of these are actual photographs or live video with the actors used for the game. There's even a fake website, the main characters blog.

Siren Blood Curse is interesting experiment, but I don't know if it's a good game. The story suffers like most horror plots that simply tries to be scary without telling anything more. The maps can be very frustrating to get through, often since you have to do a great feat to get past every obstacle without failing. Essentially you have to learn how to do each map through trial and error. Once you know how to do it you blaze through the map in notime. But I still have to give them thumbs up for trying to do things different. With a better plot and some less frustration, this could have been awesome. If they make another game like this, count me in.

Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
Secret Files 1: Tunguska was a mystery adventuregame that tried very hard to be the professionally made 2d adventuregame we all craved for, but in the end couldn't impress me. There was something missing. For one thing the characters never got to me and the humor often failed. When I heard that a sequel was coming I hoped they would make a better job, but now after I finished the game I don't know what to think.

The 2d artwork looks good, except for the miniportrait of Nina who looked weird compared to the large image used in the game menu. The 3d models didn't look that well either. The game is rather silent, I could barely hear any ambient noise and there were no music outside the main menu. Perhaps there was something wrong with my audio. I experienced some bugs, such as a paper cup that couldn't be picked up when the game was played in widescreen mode, which automatically happens if your desktop is set to widescreen mode. After some strolling around forums I temporary changed the desktop to 4:3 and then the paper cup popped up where it should be. I also noted that the return button often ended up outside the monitor, and there were some places where you had to click on stuff in the bottom of the screen, that were often covered with the autoappearing inventory menu.

And the story is rather unconnected as well. I spent a large part of the game solving puzzles that felt outside the story, some felt like extremely long solutions for simple problems. There's this place you need to find several special stones all over Paris to get past a short gap, it seems the stones have to be the right ones and cannot be substituted, but guess what? They are conveniently placed just so you will be able to find them by strolling around...

This is probably not the first game I would mention to introduce someone to the adventure genré. The mechanisms for puzzlesolving is quite well done, there's even a "search for hints" button that points out key items on each screen. It just doesn't feel very interesting to bother.

Fallout 3, DLC5: Mothership Zeta
Mothership Zeta for those who didn't knew, is the fifth and final downloadable mini-expansion for Fallout 3, and as far as I concern, the worst, or equal to Operation Anchorage.

The only thing I can say about it is that it looks good. Beyond that, it's a linear shooter. You do very little beyond wasting aliens. Sure, there are some notes to find, but very little in terms of interesting quests and making choices. In fact, unlike Point Lookout and Broken Steel there are no subquests whatsoever in the game. All it adds is 4 hours worth of blasting aliens over and over and over again.

It's easy to tell by the loot that this is meant to be the final addition to the game.
The mothership is filled over the edge with awesome weapons, at least if you are an energy weapons user. You will also find "alien epoxy". This new item can repair items up to 100% without the need for spares, so now you can use those fragile rare items without worrying.

If you intend to try the Fallout 3 DLC's, begin with Broken Steel and Point Lookout, but save this and Anchorage to when you really want some more hours of fallout 3.

Starcraft: Brood War
The is the expansion to one of the most familiar of PC RTS games.
First time played. This mini-review is without nostalgia.
10 years old, have it stood the test of time, or is it simply too old to be enjoyed?

Story
Starcraft had a superb story, well acted characters, plenty of twists that you don't see coming, told through FMV cutscenes between maps or in-game through voiced dialogue. In the story department Brood War doesn't dissappoint. This is even a game that can be enjoyed by people not that familiar to RTS games thanks to the story.
This cannot be stressed enough, Starcraft is a really fleshed out world. Each of the three forces, Terran, Protoss and Zerg is unique to their character.
Terran are the militarized humans, that behave a bit like Starship Troopers. The most known human in Starcraft, Jim Raynor, barely appears in Brood War, instead the campaign have more focus on the "Earth Defence Force", who are something like a semi-villian.
Protoss is an advanced alien race that is very religious. They act with honor, but sometimes act like zealots, and their main unit is even called "zealot".
Zerg is an alien lifeform with a collective mind, somewhat inspired by Alien. Theese aliens have the focus in Brood War, and is lead by the primary villain. I won't spoil who the main villain is here, in case you haven't played Starcraft, but this is one villain to remember.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
Brood War looks exactly like Starcraft did.
The game is 10 years old, with obvious impact on graphics, but it actually doesn't look that bad. The 2d art is well done, the forces are superbly designed and characters have animated portraits. The FMV sequences uses very old 3d software and you can see that they aren't as beautiful as modern blizzard games, but they are still nice.
Sound is excellent. Almost every unit type have unique voice to it, and it's funny to click them many times since they often say funny things if you do.

Gameplay
Starcraft is by my opinion unmatched when it comes to RTS gameplay. Brood War expands this with a couple of new and really useful units. Terran gets medics, which means that troops can finally be healed up to full again if they get hurt. Zerg gets "lurkers" who can dig into the ground and act as a defense, shooting up lethal spikes from the ground. Each race gets flying units specifically used to waste other flying units.

This is a very balanced game and especially the later maps can be quite challenging, still it works great. The final map is insane, it took me 8 hours to complete the damn thing. However, my only real nuisance is that when things get crowded, forces tend to get stuck in eachother and behind buildings. This was so annoying that I eventually begun researching transports early on to get stuck forces out from there.

Final Verdict
Starcraft have aged well. Even for a new player, Starcraft is a really great game, in fact, this game is even better than most new titles. Sure, the graphics have aged a bit, but the gameplay and the story is among the best out there.

Assassin's Creed
This game promises a free-roaming, stealthbased gameplay as you play an assassin during the crusades. Does it deliver?

Story
Desmond, a bartender in a near future, find himself trapped in a machine that can visually let him relive his ancestors experiences through his DNA code. It turns out that one of his ancestors were Altair, an assassin during the dark ages. Having broken the rules of the assassins once too many, his master have given him the mission to redeem himself by killing targets in three cities; Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus.
The story is superb, it delivers loads of philosophical questions, on morality in particular.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
Assassin's Creed looks amazing. Most of the graphics is inspired by real history, with each of the major religions represented during the crusade. The large cities looks absolutely amazing, and the become even more realistic with people walking everywhere, along with birds on the rooftops. It might not be an exaggeration to claim Assassin's Creed have the best animations in a game ever. You will almost never see a repeated animation. Altair can move in any direction, grabbing onto stuff, dropping down, fighting etc and it's all fluid. The audio is pretty good as well. Almost every presented nation is voiceacted. You will hear french, british, german in the crusader camp, as well as arabic and hebrew. It's not uncommon that some audioclips will play a few times too many though which is annoying.

Gameplay
And this is where Assassin's Creed break down. For a game that look as amazing as it does, and have a really great story, why does the majority of everything you do in-game remind me about MMORPG quests? Let me tell you how the major part (maybe 90%) of Assassin's Creed breaks down. Each time you get a target you have to go to the area where the target resides and search for clues. The best way to do this is to begin by reaching outlook points where you climb up a high point to get a glimpse of the map, once you do, that part of the city and everything important is revealed to you. Well, to do this properly you will climb X (6-12) number of outlook points. Then you can unlock more health by rescuing citizens that is harassed by the cityguard. This is as simple as going there, killing all guards and talk to the citizens. You will do this X times (6-12). Then you gather clues which means you are going to solve 6 quests that always plays out the same. When you found a quest it means you found a NPC who have information. He will give you this info if you do things like "kill targets on time", "kill targets by using stealth", "guard me from A to B", but it can also be extremely silly "collect 10-20 flags I hidden in this area" or "destroy X shops by throwing guards into them". Then there's eavesdropping which means you have to find a bench to sit on, then press a button to listen in on a conversation. Finding the bench is the difficult part here, but often it's just there next to them. And no, you wont be able to listen from your convenient rooftop or hiding place, you have to sit on the bench. Then there's interrogation, which means listen to a guy making a speech, then follow him and fistfight him until he talks. Finally there's pickpocketing, which means sneak up behind someone and press a button.

Now get this; there are 9 such areas in the game, that means you have to repeat this 9 times. 9x6-12 outlookpoints, 9x6-12 civilians harassed by guards, 9x6 miniquests to get clues, and if that's not enough for you you have the option to also find hidden flags throughout the entire area, which on PC will grant you nothing.

The simplicity and repetition of theese quests is what sucks the fun out of Asssassin's Creed like a bat on a bloodbag. If one would release a savegame pack in which they already did all this so you can only play out the assassination itself, then they would boost the fun you can have in this game tremendously.

Final Verdict
Assassin's Creed offers superb visuals, controls, and story, but fails blatantly when it comes to make the quests fun and interesting. It's as if they hired the best talent in the industry, only to give the quest-design to a former MMORPG designer with no clue on how to make anything beyond grinding quests for an MMO. The game is a test of patience, for hours of boring tedious gameplay you are offered perhaps 10-15 minutes coolness in reward, only to get back to the grind, because grind is what Assassin's Creed is mostly about.

JemyM said:

Final Verdict
Assassin's Creed offers superb visuals, controls, and story, but fails blatantly when it comes to make the quests fun and interesting. It's as if they hired the best talent in the industry, only to give the quest-design to a former MMORPG designer with no clue on how to make anything beyond grinding quests for an MMO. The game is a test of patience, for hours of boring tedious gameplay you are offered perhaps 10-15 minutes coolness in reward, only to get back to the grind, because grind is what Assassin's Creed is mostly about.

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I give you credit for actually finishing AC, I became too bored to continue a little more than half-way through. It's a real shame, the game is quite interesting at the start...

AC is the perfect example of why you shouldn't give priority to production values and basically ignore gameplay evolution.

Not that it held it back - and it STILL sold like hot cakes, despite being incredibly hollow in terms of gameplay.

How people can still doubt my point about hype and marketing is beyond me.

DArtagnan said:

How people can still doubt my point about hype and marketing is beyond me.

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Who doubts that? Couple it with paid-off high score reviews and you have the perfect storm that will allow poop in a bag to sell millions and get 9.5/10 reviews.

txa1265 said:

Who doubts that? Couple it with paid-off high score reviews and you have the perfect storm that will allow poop in a bag to sell millions and get 9.5/10 reviews.

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We had a debate not too long ago about what made games sell

DArtagnan said:

We had a debate not too long ago about what made games sell

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Ah yes ...

I think a large part of it is that most of us here are like aliens compared to the bulk majority of mainstream gamers. While they get a game and play a little and then drift away to the next one by trading in the game they just paid $60 for $25 in credit to the next $60 game they'll play for 4 hours before moving on ... we look in every nook and cranny, taking 80 hours to play games the devs say should take 40 - 60, just so we can explore. Heck, JKII *still* takes me ~25 hours after all these years because I still love to take my time, find every item and every secret, listen to every conversation, and so on.

Games like AC are not made for us - they are made for the 'quick hitters'.

txa1265 said:

Ah yes ...

I think a large part of it is that most of us here are like aliens compared to the bulk majority of mainstream gamers.

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I agree. And sometimes I have the feeling as if I'm even more alien ...