Last game you finished, tell us about it

Yeah, that's how I played it, mainly. Exploration and settlement building. Main quest stuff left to rot basically.

I didn't play it like that. I've installed no respawn mod. After that I did *everything*. That means not only exploration nor only settlements. But everything that can be done.
The game was fun enough for me to play through two possible endings. Yea, endings of the main quest. I saw both.
It says enough what I feel about FO4, considering I didn't like and could never replay FO3.

FO3 was Oblivion boredom with guns.
FO4 is not Skyrim bugland with guns, thank god.
 
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I got 60 hrs out of Fallout 4 and had fun with it. I ran through the main quest, but didn't bother with the settlements. I don't imagine I'll pick it up again - I did think about trying the DLC but felt like I'd had enough really.

I also thought the voiced protagonist was a mistake. There are plenty of things I hope they do better for the next game, in particular around tying the narrative together (i thought the factions in FO4 were particularly uninspired) and improving the combat, but I really hope they don't go down the route of cinematics / dialogue cut scenes etc.
 
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I liked the 'tower defense" aspects of building settlements to see how well they would hold up to attacks. Plus running wires and lighting to them up. Besides that I didn't do much, except provide enough food and water resources and sheltered beds. I created a couple walled communities, but stopped there.
 
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think I'm fully done with Bethesda.

One can only hope this also means done posting about them, but I think that gives you wet panties ;)

However, I somewhat agree with you. I really like Bethesda, but I thought Fallout 4 was a step backwards for the company. F4 felt old and tired.
 
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I just finished King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella. It was one of two King's Quest games that I had never played before, the other being Mask of Eternity, and I have been working my way through every Sierra adventure game. Overall I really enjoyed it. It is a big improvement over the previous three and a lot less tedious, although it still had a few random deaths and a couple of illogical puzzle solutions. Pretty darned good puzzle adventure game.
 
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I finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut a few days ago.

Not much to say. It's not very different from the original release. The boss fights are a little more interesting due to being modified, and it includes the extra mission "The Missing Link" which was originally a separate DLC for DX:HR.

Despite being basically the same game as the original release, I enjoyed it more this time around. It was also my first time playing The Missing Link, and I enjoyed that mission quite a bit.

Iirc, I rated the original release an 8.0. I'd give the DC an 8.5.
 
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Final fantasy ten was pretty good, but mind you this was after slogging through the eighth game, so opinions could vary. It seemed quite linear compared to some of the older games, and the leveling system via the huge wheel for each character was simply daunting at the first. The combat was stellar though, and I found myself in difficulty quite often early in the game, which was excellent.

One thing I did find out is that if you do some of the mythical weapons for the characters, they will become quite powerful. I did four of the weapons and I'll say when I had three characters on the battlefield each having their ultimate weapon, things just melted.

There seems to be another part to ten, and I might hold off on that segment till after I plough through Vikings.
 
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Mount & Blade Warband

Just finished this game after months of playing. I had owned it forever, but as is my custom, (a) I had not read up on it at all and (b) I set everything to the hardest difficulty from the beginning, including Ironman mode saving.

What a blast this game is. It was soooo incredibly hard at first. You can't die permanently (but you can lose army, equipment, etc), so I guess you are essentially grinding, but it felt like slow and steady progress to me. I spent tons of time in the arena honing my combat skills, although I never got very good at blocking without a shield. After many hours working for the various factions, I finally decided to help Lady Isolla of Suno retake the Kingdom of Swadia. By the end, once I finally took a castle for her and held it, it was the only castle in her whole "kingdom". It took me forever to realize that the way to take castles is to keep your own guys back and cheese them with arrows. I also tried a "poking" strategy with spears for a while, but I eventually realized arrows were better.

I quickly betrayed Lady Isolla and worked to build my own kingdom. I had been spending a lot of time liberating people from prison over the course of the game, as it was both fun and increased my reputation with Lords. This was crucial once I started asking people to join my team. I took one fortress, and then pretty quickly I got a Lord who owned a City to join me. I beat the Khans, then the Swadians, Nords, Rhodoks, Sultans, Vaegirs, in that order. The Sultans covered 2/3 of the map when I started taking my kingdom. Very fun but of course tedious towards the end.

Game said I was on 147% difficulty on the end game screen, although it had said 149% within the game itself. Level 43, day 1083, score of 52629, which seems pretty good for first time playing based on a little googling. No mods. I am sure I will play one of the expansion packs in like five years... It took me from February 5 to today to beat it, and I played it a lot. I can't imagine replaying this unless expansion pack, even though I really liked it.
 
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One thing I did find out is that if you do some of the mythical weapons for the characters, they will become quite powerful. I did four of the weapons and I'll say when I had three characters on the battlefield each having their ultimate weapon, things just melted.
Did you do that ultimate dungeon thing? I tried it for a while and got fairly far but I only had a couple of ultimate weapons. Save points became like beach-heads!
 
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An ultimate dungeon? Never found that, I did start the second part of ten but....the whole dress thing just seemed absurd to me. Like, even more absurd than normal.
 
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What was it's name... oh yes, here it is: the Omega Ruins. Those Dark Aeons were pretty nasty, too.

I never played X-2. I really loved the ending to X and didn't want to tarnish it. Honestly, I wish the whole franchise had just stopped there.
 
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I finished several short indie games over the last few days…

The Silent Age - A point and click adventure game where you play a janitor at a military R&D company who discovers a dying time traveler and is sent on a mission to save the world from an apocalyptic event. Adventure games aren't my thing, but this one caught my eye due to the themes.

It was "ok" I guess. The puzzles are very simplistic and require little thought. It's neat in that every location has a present and future version that you can access via a time travel device, and you have to go back and forth between times to solve most of the puzzles. I finished it in around 5.5 hours, and I'd rate it a 6.5/10. I suspect fans of the genre might rate it a little higher.

Spirits of Xanadu - A sci-fi action-adventure. You play as an agent tasked with retrieving a research vessel that has gone silent. It's a low-budget System Shock 2 clone with a dash of Event Horizon.

It plays like a standard FPS. The ship is quite small, and the game is very short. It's also quite vague, and much of what happens is left to the player's interpretation. A single playthrough takes around 4 hours. I'd give it a 6/10.

Adr1ft - You're an astronaut who wakes up to discover that the space station you had been working on has been destroyed. You're given no information about what happened, and you have to explore the remains of the station and repair various sections in an attempt to find a way back to earth.

It's a great-looking game. I believe it was one of the first titles to use the Unreal 4 engine. The setting is quite immersive, and the game does a good job of making you feel like you're actually floating around in space.. or at least what I imagine that would be like. I finished it in around 7 hours, and I'd give it a 7/10.
 
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Torment: Tides of Numenera

I've just finished T:ToN.

Pros:
  • Interesting stat mechanics, where not only stats like health have a drainable pool but also attributes (might, speed, intellect).
  • These stats and skills (lore, persuasion, quick fingers etc.) are heavily used in dialogues.
  • Alternative solutions in combat (crisis), by dialogue or by interacting with devices.
  • Nice visuals.
  • Excellent journal.

Cons:
  • Quite short. I've played 26 hours while finishing all side quests I could find.
  • Quite linear. There are 3 main areas which are visited one after the other. All of them have sub-areas and indoor areas, but all in all in doesn't feel like you have freedom to explore.
  • For me it was too text-heavy. Of course I wasn't surprised as it was well known before. I skipped a lot of text.
  • The setting is just too… strange, complex and mystical for my taste. (Difficult to describe.) You're traveling in your own mind, relive and alter past events through devices, meet strange otherworldly "humans" etc. For mee it's too much. If everything is special, nothing is special. I prefer more classical fantasy (or sci-fi) settings.
  • None of the NPC (except companions) have portraits.

All in all I it was fun to play. I've rated it 7,5/10 on my personal fun scale which is a little weaker than PoE, Shoadowrun: Hong Kong, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and Expeditions: Conquistador, on par with Technomancer and WL2, and better than TDE: Blackguards, Mars: War Logs and D:OS (7/10).
 
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I've just finished T:ToN.

Pros:
  • Interesting stat mechanics, where not only stats like health have a drainable pool but also attributes (might, speed, intellect).
  • These stats and skills (lore, persuasion, quick fingers etc.) are heavily used in dialogues.
  • Alternative solutions in combat (crisis), by dialogue or by interacting with devices.
  • Nice visuals.
  • Excellent journal.

Cons:
  • Quite short. I've played 26 hours while finishing all side quests I could find.
  • Quite linear. There are 3 main areas which are visited one after the other. All of them have sub-areas and indoor areas, but all in all in doesn't feel like you have freedom to explore.
  • For me it was too text-heavy. Of course I wasn't surprised as it was well known before. I skipped a lot of text.
  • The setting is just too… strange, complex and mystical for my taste. (Difficult to describe.) You're traveling in your own mind, relive and alter past events through devices, meet strange otherworldly "humans" etc. For mee it's too much. If everything is special, nothing is special. I prefer more classical fantasy (or sci-fi) settings.
  • None of the NPC (except companions) have portraits.

All in all I it was fun to play. I've rated it 7,5/10 on my personal fun scale which is a little weaker than PoE, Shoadowrun: Hong Kong, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and Expeditions: Conquistador, on par with Technomancer and WL2, and better than TDE: Blackguards, Mars: War Logs and D:OS (7/10).
About same score I would give, although your 'too linear' con is a pro to me, I prefer linear games. It took me some 32 hours I think, guess I'm a slow reader (but I read everything).
 
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Finished Prey after around 30 hours.

Could easily have spent 50 hours with it, but I wanted to leave a lot of stuff for an inevitable replay.

Fantastic game - but with some significant flaws. Unfortunately, the gameplay evolution - which was very strong overall - peaked around halfway through, which meant that the remaining half was much less interesting in terms of expanding your arsenal of options. Well, unless you went the Typhon (magic) route - which I didn't want to do.

I would have done many things differently, and it did lack a few Shock features that I came to miss towards the end - including a few weapon types that absolutely must be part of a game like this.

Biggest flaw was the difficulty level. WAY too easy - even on Nightmare. I never really felt threatened at all - except in the very beginning of the game. I guess it comes down to playstyle - and this being a very good fit for how I prefer playing, because I'm hearing other players complain that it's too hard on Normal.

But it was an incredibly accomplished experience with a ton of variety and content. Perfect for a few replays, I'd say.

Possibly the most polished game I've played in years. Incredibly smooth - and I didn't experience a single bug beyond tiny issues like being stuck a little while crouching on rare occasions.

Overall, I'd rate it 8.5/10. GOTY unless a miracle happens.
 
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Just finished Mass Effect Andromeda. Played it in a PS4 with patch 1.05, took me about 90-95 hours, did all the companion and planet quests, missed a few 'tasks' that didn't have markers.

First of all, all the things I saw before release (bad animations, horrible faces, etc) I didn't see. Walking and jogging animations were fine, running animation did look a little funky at times like they were horse-riders, but nothing jarring, and talking expressions were fine. Default female Ryder is ugly but I could customize one that looked great and loved it. Also can't comment on multiplayer as I didn't touch that.

Now as for the game itself, I loved almost everything about it, but the 'almost' is important, as what I didn't like is critical… the combat system. I hated the changes they made, basically turning it into a shooter. Companions just do their own thing, you can't control what they use. You can only use 3 power at any given time, you can switch to different profiles with 3 other powers, but there is like a 15 second delay after switching in which you can't use any powers, by which time non-boss battles were basically over (and then going back to the original setup, again another 15 second delay). I tried that and didn't care for that cumbersome system so I spent the whole game with 3 powers. Did not care for that AT ALL.

But like I said, combat is the only thing I didn't like about the game. Everything else, the story, the characters, the setting, the graphics, the music, I loved. Gone are the 'red/blue' responses, now decisions have 2-4 emotional choices that don't affect gameplay, so I could pick the one I wanted without weakening my character. You even get a psychological profile summarizing the type of responses you've made (I ended up passionate/funny).

I liked the crafting system in which you use research points to unlock different types of weapons and armor though it lacked information on some augmentations, like for example, my 1000 damage sniper rifle I decided to add an augmentation that turned it into an electrical sniper rifle (description just said that), to my surprise when I went all merry to try it in the first battle and… it did like 10 damage. Maybe it's good against shields and worthless against normal enemies, I don't know, but would be nice to see the effect on your weapon before spending rare materials on it (fortunately you can deconstruct weapons/armor and recover some materials, but still).

As for choices & consequences, game has plenty of them, from minor (like deciding to exile someone instead of letting them go so you later see them in some backward planet and them telling you 'Thanks for nothing!'), to major ones that have big consequences in this game and future Andromedas. There's even a separate section of the journal/codex detailing the important choices you made.

Game did have its share of bugs, none game-breaking. A few of the minor quests didn't mark as complete after finishing them, and a few times I 'died' in battle but the battle continued as if my character's soul hovered there on her way to heaven.

Another issue I didn't like was during in-party chatter, usually it happened when you are in the vehicle, but I missed a lot of that because when I fast-traveled to a waypoint, the loading screen could take 20-30 seconds during which time their conversation was happening, and I could only see and hear it after the UI loaded (so I could only hear the last couple of lines in the conversation), irked me a bit as I liked their conversations. I even picked companion pairs on some missions only to hear their chatter (each pair combination had different chatter topics).

So yeah, basically Mass Effect: Andromeda would have been perfect for me if it was like it is but replacing the combat system with one of the older Mass Effects', unfortunately the trend is to make everything a shooter nowadays so tough luck there. Still, a solid and enjoyable game, totally recommended.
 
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Nice mini review, Wolfing. If ME:A is offered on platforms other than Origin, I would pick it up but sadly no :(
 
Nice mini review, Wolfing. If ME:A is offered on platforms other than Origin, I would pick it up but sadly no :(

Its on Xbox and PS4 where you don't have to worry about Origin :p Plus PS4 has some awesome games like HZD.
 
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After 55 hours I finished Prey.

Of those at least 5 hours I was battling bugs (of which one was a gamebreaker). Also a huge chunk of hours spent was inventory tetris with backtracking towards recycler and fighting through silly trashmob respawns.

Great:
- nvidia screwed the driver (fixed), otherwise the game plays smooth as silk
- PC version feels like PC game, M+K doesn't emulate mushrooms
- Arkane kept their unique comics style for humans
- environment puzzles you can sort in different ways (not all sadly)
- the general story and it's endings (there is not just one)
- exploration is rewarding, some sidequests are brilliant
- semi openworld where hard trashmobs or locked doors prevent you from accessing something critical or too rewarding earlygame (example: weaver on derelict spaceship, even if you manage somehow to kill it inside are unopenable doors to cargo area)

Okay:
- you can save anywhere, but saving spots are limited
- unlocking powers can make some more inventory space (for example high jump and resistances can replace gloo gun)
- the ammo is scarce so you can't just grab Q-Beam and pwn everything

Bad:
- characters written as if dropped out of Transformers (live) movies, you can't care less about them
- certain moments you can't solve in different ways, for broken doors you must unlock mimic ability, for some keypads you need to have maxed hacking and for some maxed repair
- L plays Nightmare bait/repel sound after unlocking it instead of last found audio log so you're forced to use menus
- horrible hacking minigame designed also completely illogical where hacking level 1 is easy, level 2 is hard, level 3 again easy and hacking level 4 is easiest
- the game had obvious poor betatest, bugs, not many though passed through, some can lock your progress (the battle in Deep Storage), some will prevent a quest from triggering (finding Nicole Hague), some will make a quest unfinishable (finding Kirk Remmer)

Unforgivable:
- endless trashmob respawns (devs had to annoy the player even more, instead of trashmob scanning once, some trashmobs you'll need to scan many times)
- stuff that defies logic (examples are lobotomy is used to improve your suit, NPCs like Igwe and Mikhaila get past trashmobs although posess no skills which makes me to believe the initial design was not to have endless trashmobs so they can move through areas you've cleared)
- Nightmare phantom per it's story is supposed to focus you yet it kills other humans and completely ignores you

This game just doesn't excel in anything. Sometimes it's a shooter, sometimes a stealther, sometimes an environment puzzler, sometimes smells like RPG.
But neither "mode" feels like a part of Vivaldi's four seasons, most of time the game plays like an out of tune orchestra with rare great moments.
There is some fun in all of it, but it's tainted with grinding and different annoying timewasting mechanics like backtracking to a security terminal in order to find some crewmember.

It's tagged as horror, honestly there is no horror inside if you ask me. Some might point on experiments on humans, but we don't describe a movie about Auschwitz as horror.
Buy, but only when on sale or if modders make norespawn mod. Without such mod I don't see anyone having fun replaying it. Although overall above average today, in a few years we'll forget this game even existed:
7/10
 
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