Last game you finished, tell us about it

Originally Posted by Rills
Just finished Gothic 1 yesterday for the first time ever. How I missed this gem the first time I don't know. I thoroughly enjoyed it and really appreciated the length of game play and breadth of plot.

Welcome to the club, Gothic is one of the best CRPGs ever made. Gothic 2 +expansion is equally incredible.

Two Worlds
This game gave mixed feelings. I could go on ranting what I did not like, but then I had to explain why I spent 13 days playing it, exploring almost every piece of the map.

Two Worlds is a massive singleplayer RPG, similar to Gothic and the Elder Scrolls series. This means exploration of a huge map, filled with dungeons, camps, cities etc. I tend to enjoy this kind of game and I love to just run around and explore stuff. Two Worlds just happens to be a "left over" since I have nothing else to play. In Oblivion I had the problem that since all dungeons/maps was generated, I had to reason to explore. I loved Gothic 3 though, despite a sea of bugs that even trashed savefiles once in awhile.

Two Worlds was to me slightly more entertaining than Oblivion simply because it's designed, not randomized. However, the design itself is not good. The game is extremely unbalanced. I could have finished the game using 15 points (fire magic) and let that be that. Loot and money was mostly pointless as a mage. Many times I wondered why I even bothered.At the end of the game I had about 99.50% combat efficiency, meaning that I died like ten times or so during the entire game.

The dialogues are simply… bad. I cannot really put my finger on it, but quests just do not feel exciting. The main quest didn't feel exiting either. The main story is almost as bad if not even worse than Oblivion. There were a couple of broken quests, even if I run patch 1.7 that is over a gig in size.

The final bit after grabbing the last relic I simply rushed. I felt it was time to just go on with it, finish the game, leaving the rest of the quests undone.

I will play the sequel. Not because Two Worlds was a good game, but because it's the kind of games I like and they are rare. I do hope they will make a massive improvement on balance, character system, quests and story.

Originally Posted by Rills
Just finished Gothic 1 yesterday for the first time ever. How I missed this gem the first time I don't know. I thoroughly enjoyed it and really appreciated the length of game play and breadth of plot.

Glad you liked it! Now hop on to the next one Gothic 2

Last thing I finished was Crysis. Besides the graphics I don't think there was anything exceptional about it. It wasn't a bad game in any way but pretty linear and generic FPS. The part were you become weightless are too long and gets boring quickly.

I had hoped for finishing The Witcher but my wife gave birth a little earlier than expected so I'll wait for the Enhanced Edition.

I did try Two Worlds the other night but I can't play it due to language and regional setting not matching. Pretty stupid restriction which hasn't been fixed in version 1.7.

I last finished Unreal, and well, I started a thread about the retrospective article I did about it at GamingWIthChildren.

Originally Posted by Rills
Just finished Gothic 1 yesterday for the first time ever. How I missed this gem the first time I don't know. I thoroughly enjoyed it and really appreciated the length of game play and breadth of plot.

Wow, congratulations. I just chime in with the other's and suggest Gothic 2 next.

Gothic 2 was to me even better than Gothic 1. It expands the world while still keeping what was good about the old one. Gothic 3 is not as good (due to being unfinished) but still worthwhile if one enjoyed the first two. What Gothic 3 do wrong it makes up with what it does right and it really should have rised the bar of how we see on roleplaying games, but failed by being pushed out in an unfinished state.

Originally Posted by stealth
I had hoped for finishing The Witcher but my wife gave birth a little earlier than expected so I'll wait for the Enhanced Edition.

Same here. In the beginning of this summer I had promised myself to finish a couple of games and I have now finished them all except for The Witcher, for the very same reason you state here; I wait for the Enhanced Edition.

Still, it have been a wonderful RPG summer… Mass Effect, Arcanum, Mask of the Betrayer and Two Worlds. Not to mention a couple of shooters, including Crysis and Halo 2. Plus a few other games I had around, such as Tomb Raider: Anniversary.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Condemned: Criminal Origins is probably the scariest game I ever played, and that's coming from someone who tried almost every horror game out there (still with an opening for Fatal Frame which I will play later).

Except for being a game with loads of atmosphere it was also a sucessful "First Person Beat Em Up" in which you had to take out enemies in hand-to-hand combat rather than shooting at them. Even if there were firearms in the game, you often ran out of ammo rather quick.

The weakness of the game was the ending and when they announced Condemned 2 they promised to give a satisfying explanation to what really happened. Well, C2 does offer an explanation and it does expand the universe quite a bit. Im not so sure this was a good thing because the story does feel a bit exaggerated.

I have to say that Condemned 2 have more focus on improving the Hand-To-Hand combat and less to make the game scary. It's difficult to put my finger on why it's less scary though. In Condemned you were both stalking and were stalked by a serial killer, and you moved through run down areas ("Condemned" areas), like an urban explorer. C2 spend more time in areas that are not run down and you rarely feel alone due to continous radio chatter. Some maps tried to be scary but was more annoying due to distorting your view so much that it was difficult to see where you were going.

C2 is worth it if you like the Hand to Hand combat and if you want a sequel to Condemned, but unfortunally I must call it a second-rate horror game.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
I have actually played every Metal Gear game by order of release; MG, MG2, MGS, MGS2 and MGS3 and now MGSO. Even if MGSO is a sequel to MGS3, both MGS3 and MGSO are prequels to the first Metal Gear on MSX. MGS3 begun the story of how the first snake got to be Big Boss (the villain of MG) but it didn't go far enough. MGSO does a better job to tie the two together even if it leaves some questions unanswered. Still, MGS3 and MGSO have made Big Boss into more of a hero than a villain. MGSO do not only flesh out the story about Big Boss, it actually introduce a few more characters, explaining how they got to be who they are. Another prequel to answer the final questions might be neccessary. As far as I know, Big Boss doesn't appear in MGS4 which is going to be the game im playing next.

Im talking about the story here, but that's really the major reason I play these games. MGSO might be the worst story since MG and MG2 but at least it made me cry once but that's still below average when it comes to the MGS series. In MGSO the cutscenes are not rendered in 3d but have a comic style which is quite good but different. I kinda missed the radio chatter. Since it's text-only and not voice recorded I didn't bother pushing the call button over and over to see if the person im speaking to have something new to say (which is actually very entertaining in the other games).

Gamewise MGSO is a bit different from earlier MG games. Instead of playing Snake on a mission you play Snake the army recruiter. Throughout the game you recruit people and you put them into work into an army of guys. You need engineers, doctors, spies and sneakers. The first two produce stuff for you and doctors allow you to heal faster while resting. Spies go on missions for you and collect information about areas. They will give you reports which act as bonus missions. Having a spy in an area may also make that area easier to sneak around in. Sneakers are the people you take on real missions, so you do not have to play as Snake himself, instead you can pick a person who look just as the people in that area which make it possible to go around without alerting the guards. All people you recruit have special skills just like a roleplaying game and they can recruit new people by kidnapping them during a mission. This mechanic is actually quite fun and make MGS into a base-building strategy game on top of the stealth game it normaly is.

There were two bonus missions that gave me loads of frustration due to insufficient game mechanics but I managed to beat them. Then there was one mission I couldn't finish but after reading on the web it seems no one have. It's discussed in several forums with no solution for it (releasing a prisoner at the Security Base). I also unlocked all bonus characters except for Gene (which requires some grinding, something I didn't have time for).

Anyway, the first game I finished on PSP and a game addictive enough to screw up my schedule for this week which I need to take care of now.

Any time I read this title I shake my head.

Shouldn't it read "Solid metal gear" ?

To me, this sounds horrible. In original.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Any time I read this title I shake my head.

Shouldn't it read "Solid metal gear" ?

To me, this sounds horrible. In original.

It is basically because of the Japanese's use of pictograms rather than letters in their language.

The translated result is often a mix of a name and a concept. For instance in Final Fantasy VII one of the main bad guys was a huge robot called Weapon. It was both a weapon as well as being called weapon.

It can be a bit confusing at first but you'll get used to it eventually

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Any time I read this title I shake my head.
Shouldn't it read "Solid metal gear" ?
To me, this sounds horrible. In original.

"Metal Gear" is a nuclear equipped Robot, while Solid is the codename of the main character. "Metal Gear: Solid" or "Metal Gear: Solid Snake" might have been the kind of name an American developer would come up with. Ironically, the addon "Solid" came with the third game, which then went from Metal Gear 3 into Metal Gear Solid, while Metal Gear Solid 3 is actually Metal Gear 5.

However, I was thinking about this when I wrote the review… The original game of Big Boss (who you play in MGS3 and MGSO) is Naked Snake, but calling the game Metal Gear Naked might have been bad.

But there are few Japanese made games that manages to get a perfect translation. They also have a habit of tossing around the chronology quite a bit, usually releasing a prequel sooner or later. Hell, the first three games i bought for PSP were ALL prequels (Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and Silent Hill: Origins).

I had never played a MGS game before Portable Ops … and I didn't think much of it. Controls were pretty wonky, action was mediocre, and so on. Very average in my opinion.

Originally Posted by txa1265
I had never played a MGS game before Portable Ops … and I didn't think much of it. Controls were pretty wonky, action was mediocre, and so on. Very average in my opinion.

MGSO should not be held as an example of what the MGS series are. Play the original on playstation (or on emulator) or the remake for GameCube and you might discover why the name frequently appears in "top five" lists. The complexity of their storylines and how it deals with deep philosophical questions/conspiracy theories/human nature is up there with Deus Ex and Planescape Torment.

I have never regret my decision to try the series. Both MSX games (Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake) are not much today, but back in 1987/1990 the attempt to deliver a such story with the available technology was uncommon beyond the adventuregame genré. Anyway, they were ok to play as an introduction to MGS.

But it can also be that I was personally touched by the story which managed to tell me something important at a time when I was struggeling with very hard questions regarding myself.

Originally Posted by JemyM
But it can also be that I was personally touched by the story which managed to tell me something important at a time when I was struggeling with very hard questions regarding myself.

You know, that is a sentiment that is understated in gaming, and very important. I still look at the Jedi Training sequence in JKII as a cathartic and fundamentally changing experience despite coming more than 20 years after I was a 'fardcore' gamer.

So I don't condemn MGS as a franchise based on a PSP games … I've been around too many crappy PSP games to do that … it is just a shame that they didn't do a better job of delivering the goods.

Originally Posted by txa1265
You know, that is a sentiment that is understated in gaming, and very important. I still look at the Jedi Training sequence in JKII as a cathartic and fundamentally changing experience despite coming more than 20 years after I was a 'fardcore' gamer. So I don't condemn MGS as a franchise based on a PSP games … I've been around too many crappy PSP games to do that … it is just a shame that they didn't do a better job of delivering the goods.

It's unfortunally very uncommon that games try to tell the player something. I think it's based on what kind of philosophy you have when designing one. You can have the idea that a game is a challenge. If you do, gameplay is ofcourse very important but story isn't. If you rather have the idea that a game is entertainment then challenging gameplay is not so important, but neither is dealing with deep philosophical questions since they are just confusing to average joe. The philosophy that art is a mere product meant to make money drives people to try to make art that is guaranteed to sell, meaning they are not eager to try anything new, or risky, which is the kind of stuff that is required to take us beyond our normal lives. This is sad.

Real art is not just entertainment, or something that can be packaged and sold. Real art is a way to share to eachother our experiences and in doing that we enrich our lives, make us prepared for the complex situations that we might find ourselves in during our otherwise average lives. Telling great tales is not just something you do, it's a talent and telling tales is an artform. In the beginning there were music, tales and pictures. Then they were brought together by cinemas. Games takes them one step further in creating an interactive experience that keeps you awake and aware in a way very different from movies. Designers who use this as a tool to weave a tale that really sucks you in and manage to deliver a message in the right moment usually ends up high on my list. If a game can offer me a good perspective of what it means to be human, how to deal with an uncommon fate, or tell me something which makes me see the world just a little bit different, that offers me far more than a puzzle or twitch gameplay which I just see as "topping" while most probably see that content as the main ingredients.

But I am a rather emotional person who can cry like a baby when watching a movie, playing a game or reading a book… so maybe I am just a child, easily touched by simple tools.

Anyway, got a bit carried away with this message.

Originally Posted by ch3ss007
My last game that i finished was Gothic 3 .
It was realy good , if you didnt playt you should try it !!

I did, and I agree.

Metal Gear Solid 4
I do not know how to rate this game without sounding like a fanboy. What can I say? It's not open-ended, free-roaming uhm… it does not include a RTS? The game is ranked 93% on gamerankings with many 10 out of 10 so I am not alone if I rate it very high.

The game had a slow start and I was a bit annoyed when I had to play a game that is sometimes played in FPS mode on a console. When the third level begun however, I just couldnt stop playing… "I will just finish this level" became four hours last night, then I woke up early and I didnt even bothered about getting dressed. When the end credits were rolling and my wife came through the door I had not eaten my lunch and I entirely skipped most of my caffeine intake and the clock was half past five in the afternoon. When a game simply do not let me go I know I have something special on my hands.

Maybe I can blame the game for having the longest cutscenes I have ever seen in a game? But that would blame the game for one of it's greatest strength's, the amazing story. MGS4 is The End of the MGS saga in which each chapter (beyond MGS anyway) carry an over the top complex story. Even if it seemed to be impossible to tie it all together, MGS4 did. Best ending ever? Well, I have to taste that sentence for awhile, thinking if I know a single ending more satisfactory than this was… but right now I cannot remember one. Although one really should have played all the previous games to be able to enjoy it since much of the game is nostalgia back to the old games, almost like an anniversary edition or celebration of the past series.

Have I seen more beautiful graphics? Well, Mass Effect and Crysis might be consider equals, but when it comes to characterdesign, the character models, there are none like it. The music and the art direction is simply beautiful, you can see that this game is created by real artists. The game simply reeks with beautiful cinematic scenes that just keeps messing with your emotions.

GamePlay? Overdone? The game carry so many features without making the game bad… The game have more weapons than you will ever use. You have a shop system to buy upgrades and if you like collecting you can do that for quite some time (not to mention tons of badges and achievments. The game have so many secrets and extra features that playing it once doesn't allow you to see the entire game. It's the first game I seen that carry a built-in MP3 player, an iPod to be precise. The maps have great variety and some of them are even more fun due to their original features. Playing the game as an actiongame is just as fun as playing the game as a sneaking game. The boss fights are very original and extremely well made. Two of them even carry a whole genré in itself (not mentioning which to spare you spoilers).

There are other great games out there, but I do not know what to compare this game with since there's really none like it.

I am completely exhausted now. It will take a day or two until I can pick up another game.

Just finished Mass Effect, I guess most of you have an opinion on it really so all I'll say that it was a really absorbing game, so the lack of "true" role-playing options didn't bother me. I love games that play like an interactive movie when done right.

EDIT: Only thing that bothered me was the extreme likeness of and how boring the non-main quest line assignments were, as I like to get everything done in games.

I beat Crysis for second time, as well as CoD: Modern Warfare couple weeks back.

On the RPG front the only unfinished business is both the Oblivion expansions. Don't think would finish them in near future as i already set my sight forward to newer games.