Last game you finished, tell us about it

Little Big Planet
There are still some developers who dare to be different. LBP is a physics-based platform game with extreme cuteness, that really should be played by multiple players. You are even encouraged to play 4 people, but 2 is enough to have fun with it. But under the surface, is it anything more than a traditional platformer?

Story
There actually is a story in LBP… You travel across different nations such as Europe, Africa, USA, South America, Japan etc and in each of the places you visit a mysterious guy kidnap the people you help. Of course, I do not think you will bother about it that much, but let me say that it's very children friendly.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
Little Big Planet is a physics-based platform game, that looks a lot like childrens television in the 60-80'ies (before everything was cartoon only). Each map looks handmade, crafted if you so will, in wood, textiles etc, everything handpainted. This looks really good and it even brought me a bit of nostalgia from my own childhood. You play a "sackboy", a small humanoid doll. With the controller you can not only jump and move around, you can also look around, wave each hand separetely and change your mood, to pose for screenshots or for roleplaying reasons. The sound is pretty good and the music is excellent and very unique, often inspired by whatever nation you are in at the moment. All this looks really great.

Gameplay
LBP boils down to an advanced platformer for up to 4 people. As a platformer it's great. But what LBP really boosts is creativity. It speaks about creativity in the intro, if you end the game you get a "Only the beginning" trophy with a large amount of trophies to be earned if you create maps and upload them to the web (granted if people actually play them). The creation tool is ofcourse top notch and gives you free hands to create whatever map you like, and it's not surprising that there are a huge amount of custom maps, some of which can be seen on youtube.

Final Conclusion
For those who do not intend to create any maps or play custom content, LBP is still a fun platformer that should be played with friends or family. The main story is very children friendly and this is really a game to put in front of a younger child, if he/she is able to beat the maps that is. Ofcourse, any adult could join in and play too and it's perfectly fine to play the entire family. Even if I do not have any kids on my own, LBP was finally a game that me and my cohabit really could enjoy together. It took us almost a year to finish the game, one level here, one level there.

Me and my cohabit in-game

JemyM's System Shock review and comments moved here:

[ http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7932 ]

Grand Theft Auto IV
GTA IV is the tale of Niko Bellic, immigrant in a large American City, where he learns that the American Dream isn't what it's advertised to be. The game takes place in a humongous city with an enormous amount of content. That said, is it still fun to play?

Story
Niko Bellic is an east european man (most likely from Serbia) with a troubld past in war. He have came to Liberty City (modelled after New York) for three reasons, to visit his cousin Roman Bellic, chase the "American Dream", and to find someone. Right after arrival he finds out that the American Dream is little beyond a dream, and all the tales that his cousin told him turns out to be lies. To earn enough to make a living, while chasing down the person he needs to find, Niko Bellic begins a long journey through Liberty Citys underworld, with drugs, mafia, corrupted cops and crazy gangsters.

I had a huge bias against the premise of this game, but even I have to confess that the storyline of GTAIV is surpisingly well written. I hadn't expected that a game like this would have a such deep and complex story, and deep and complex characters as well. Niko Bellic is a loveable and very human character, with both positive sides and flaws. The NPC's you meet are memorable, interesting, and sometimes very funny.

It also have a pretty good narrative. The story is progressing in several ways, chats in the car while going to the missions, during cutscenes, with incoming messages on the mobile phone, e-mail etc. It's uncommon these days that a mainstream game makes so much effort of delivering a virtual tale like this.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
I ran the game with a wireless xbox 360 joypad that worked out of the box, and I ran it in 1920*1080 on my 40" HDTV. That was almost like playing on a console.

The greatest part of GTAIV is the city itself. Liberty City is inspired by New York, and is probably the largest handmade map I have seen in a game ever. One would think that would mean a lot of repetition, copy/pasted models and textures, but no, you will continue to see something new almost everytime you take a car somewhere. Not surprising considering the theme of the game, there's also a humongous amount of vehicles. I still kept seeing new vehicles even when I was almost done with the game. There's also a humongous amount of people walking around on the streets, and you keep seeing all sorts of archetypes, from teenagers, to elder jews, to a biker, to a business man, fat, thin, all colors and nationalities…

All this is set in motion and creates a very believeable universe. Cars stop at stoplights, organize themselves in traffic, people walk over the streets at green light, buys coffee or fastfood, type messages or talk on the phone. While simply walking through the city you will be able to listen in to numerous conversations by pedestrians, and you might even be harassed by doomsday prophets or beggars. But the game is alive even outside the streets. There's a huge amount of radio channels with custom speakers, news that update after ingame events. The radiochannels have a huge list of real music, including several songs you might have heard before. There's also a working TV that plays actual TV shows. There's a internet, complete with e-mail, spam, an online dating service, custom websites etc. There's so much going on in Liberty City that you might not have the endurance to get through it all. Yet it all helps to create the illusion of being in a real city.

Ofcourse, not everything is fine. The PC version is poorly optimized, and you need a graphiccard with 1600 ram to play it in the highest settings. I could override this with a hack so I could play with highest settings with my SLI, which gave me a good framerate but lead to a lot of flickering textures. It sucks that antialiasing didn't work either, even if I played the game in VISTA.

I noted very few bugs beyond that however, the worst being a buttonmash sequence in the final mission that I could only pass by building a macro on my Logitech G15 keyboard. The time between pushes is appearently timed to the framerate, and I have a very fast computer, making it impossible to press as often as you have to with human hand.

You will sometimes see that the AI isn't foolproof. 1 out of about 20 cars have it's rear side smashed in, and you often see cars bump into eachother, something you will do too, maybe because it's impossible to drive cars slow. Also, if you stand in a corner next to a street, the traffic will stock up sooner or later. It's as if the AI can create a temporary scene, and need you to simply pass through the area to keep looking real.

Gameplay
GTAIV have a missionbased gameplay, in which you open a mission, then you carry it out, and the game will autosave when the mission is done. These missions usually include carchases or killing something/someone. The carchases are really well done, relying on physics to make them feel very realistic. Cars all have unique features and having the right vehicle might be neccessary to finish a quest. Walking on foot plays like a 3rd person shooter. You aim, you shoot, you reload, you take cover, you shoot again. There are shotguns, submachineguns, pistols etc, with unique advantages to them. One might feel that the amount of weapons is a bit limited though, there's no silenced pistol for example.

Almost every mission have something unique in it. Which is great, considering the game have over 80 storyline missions. Beyond the missions you have lots of custom stuff to do. You have several friends and you can get girlfriends as well. These NPC's have an upkeep, you need to go out with them once in awhile to keep them happy. If you do, they will often give you an unique ability. Roman, your Cousin, will give you the ability to call a free cab. Going out with a friend/girlfriend is content as well. You might visit talkshows with actual comedians, watch magic shows, go for a game of pool, darts or bowling, or you might just eat something together. Beyond that you have custom missions like stealing cars, assassinations, vigilante missions (meaning hacking into the computer in a cop car, finding a criminal and kill them) etc.

Yes, this is a humongous game, possibly the largest I have ever played, including Gothic 3 and Oblivion. It's the first in a long time in which I had to skip content to get through the game in reasonable time (still took me several weeks). Playing an entire day would make me progress 2-5% on the completion. Despite finishing all main missions, I ended the game with 63% completion. But it allows you to continue after the final mission in case you want to do the stuff you skipped (I did no assassination/vigilante missions, and I didn't bother about several friends).

The mission system might be my greatest issue with the game. The story progress by usually giving you 3 missions at a time, and after finishing all three you will get three new etc. You have no choice to do a mission, even when you feel that it makes no sense. There was a bank robbery that I didn't feel to do, with a character who I never really liked but the game pushes on you as a friend. Not to give any major spoilers, but the game also assumes that you care for someone towards the end of the game, which at least I never did.

The worst part is that if you fail a mission, for whatever reason, you have to start all over again. Sometimes you have to chase down a car, drive a couple of characters from point A to B, then engage in multiple shootouts and carchases, and at any time something unexpected can send you back to zero. I have been forced to replay for accidently bumping into an exploding barrel, numerous times for a key NPC dying on me, or bumping into a policecar by accident, which lead to a deadly carchase. For a game so polished otherwise, this was poor gamedesign as far as I concern. A game doesn't need to be that unforgiving, especially not when it have so much content in it that you don't need to make it longer through replays.

Final Verdict
GTAIV is many ways a milestone in gaming. What it does, it does from decent to well, and it presents you with the largest virtual world ever created. It's very polished and offers a very unique experience. However, the game demand you to have both time and patience if you plan to get through the entire game. It's a very long one, and it can be very frustrating at times when you redo the same 20-30 minutes over and over and over again.

That was a surprisingly positive review, JemyM. I've been curious about this game for a long time; the setting and theme appeals to me, although I never was a huge fan of GTA's mission-style gameplay. I might pick it up somewhere along the line -- even if it seems likely that it'll be yet another game I'll enjoy for a while and then drop before finishing.

Sorry about the awful english btw, it was below average for me but I am rather tired.

The missions are the most frustrating aspects of the game as far as I concern. It didn't need to be so unforgiving and it could have given you a lot more choice in how to end missions, or what missions you would accept or not.

I half agree - I think the story and characters are cool, but the gameplay sucks, the PC implementation sucks, and the overall game is 'meh'. Sorry - I'm here for the game, not to be a pawn in someone's scripted movie cutscene.

I just finished the tower defense flash game Gem Craft - Chapter 0… the prequel to Gem Craft - Chapter 1: The Forgotten.
Actually, I finished it a few days ago, but there is still so much stuff to do (and a new mode to master after the game's goal has been reached)… anyway, Chapter 0 managed to fix the main exploit of Chapter 1 by dropping one skill and adding several others. Difficulty went up a notch and different levels actually demanded a different strategy so you had to make use of the 'reset skills' button this time. The boss levels were very different this time: you had to kill the bodyguards first to get the armor level of the boss down to a manageable level.
All in all, Chapter 0 was weeks of fun (although it meant more cursing due to the higher difficulty).

Wolfenstein (2009)
The sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein offers a new opportunity to shoot nazis and paranormal freaks in a WW2 setting. As a 2009 homeage to the FPS that started it all, does it revamp the genré again, or will it be forgotten before it's predecessors?

Note: Due to a savegame-corrupting bug as well as a broken final boss, I ran the final maps with cheats. More about that in "bugs".

Story
Wolfenstein takes place in an alternate reality, WW2 setting. Inspired by 60'ies pop-culture the nazi are experimenting with the occult. They have found a new force known as the "Black Sun". With this power, the nazi can build superweapons that might lead to their victory in WW2. The American spy B.J.Blazkowicz is sent into the midst of third reich, to the fictional city of Isenstadt, to investigate and deal with the new threat.

The supernatural WW2 setting, with a hero like Blazkowicz, Wolfenstein feels a bit like Indiana Jones light. The story is told through well rendered cutscenes, but the world is also fleshed out by other means. You can find intel that is added to your journal. These include memos, photographs and illustrations and might unlock buyable upgrades for your equipment. You also have the ability to speak to allies who might have a lot of opinions on what you are doing. I encountered a few lines however that was out of touch with the timeline, such warning me about a dangerous boss that I already killed.

The game tries do do everything right when it comes to build up a story, but it feels like it fails to drag you in. It tries to be emotional, but it isn't. It tries to let NPC's comment on the situation, but it's difficult to care as the voiceactors feels like they are reading from a script, and you never get attached to NPC's anyway. There's little character development, and little buildup between the protagonists and the main villain, but it never really stuck with me.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
As tradition with Raven Software, Wolfenstein uses the latest ID Software engine. This time the one used in DOOM 3 and Quake 4. There are ofcourse plenty of enhancements, such as adding havoc physics, soft shadows, depth of field etc. The depth of field and shadoweffects are used to the fullest which sometimes give a movie-like feel to the game. The game looks alot better than the previous titles, but it's no Crysis. Graphically, it feels a bit out of date.

Character models in particular looks like previous generation. Unlike Crysis or other recent games, that at least tried to make foes look a bit different, all foes in Wolfenstein of the same type, have the exact same faces like they are all clones. You also have several "enhanced nazi" in the game that also look quite cool, but if you have played games like Fallout or S.T.A.L.K.E.R you might feel like you seen them before.

Animations are quite good, especially when shooting someone. The game is pretty gory. Shoot someone in the face, and the entire face will be teared off, and you might even shoot off limbs.

I will discuss the veil more in gameplay below, but the art direction for the veil was pretty cool. The monsters felt different, and the alternate world felt different and a bit eirie.

The voiceactors are ok. They speak american with accents, which is fine, but they often feel tired and unenthusiastic. Still, the sound is good enough to help you play the game. I sometimes tracked foes using my 7.1 speakers, and I made tactical decisions based on what I heard. Sometimes a foe shouts "he's reloading" to encourage others to attack me, and other times I heard a foe shout "I am reloading", which encouraged me to attack them.

I kinda liked that Blazkowicz have a voice, which he didn't Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Gameplay
Wolfenstein is ofcourse a first person shooter, and as a such it does what it have to. The classic elements are all in, the weapons respond as intended, aiming work as intended, movement work as intended, with jump, run, crouch etc. But that alone wouldn't go far 2009, so there are of course several twists to regular shooters.

The first to mention, is ofcourse the "veil", which is Wolfensteins main gameplay element. With the help of an artifact, you can jump into an alternate reality, a green eirie place. Using the veil unlocks special powers, that can also be upgraded over time. These powers are nothing we havn't seen before though, you can empower your bullets to shoot through walls, you can summon a shield that stops bullets, you can slow down time and using the veil also help you spot enemies better since they shine in green while in the veil. All these powers work as intended, but I didn't feel they came into much use. Granted, I ran the game on "normal" setting, but most of the game I felt I had too much power. There's particulary one that obliterates every foe near you, a power that can be used over and over again, with the only problem that you won't get any weapons that way (the weapons are disintegrated as well). When all else fails, you can just run into rooms and spam that power over and over again and it will probably solve the situation.

The veil is sometimes used to get through puzzles, but not enough. Most of the puzzles you have to deal with is in the beginning of the game, but later on using powers to get past obstacles is rare (except for foes that is).

The mapdesign should be mentioned. Compared to the open world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R, or the railroad experience of Half-Life 2, Wolfenstein is semi-open. There's a central hub, where you can find the headquarters of your allies, and whenever you go on a mission, you can go there from the central hub, but you will not be able to return until you are done. There are optional missions to take, and they doesn't always need to be taken in order. The missions are quite linear, with a fixed path through the maps, where as the main hub can be explored. However, the main hub is so small that you get through it in a minute if you run from one side to another. The hub also feels very compact. There are very few open areas in the game.

Like most games of today, Wolfenstein enourages replay through chasing hidden collectables throughout each map. You find hidden gold (used for upgrades), tomes (empower your powers) and intel (for fun, or unlock upgrades). Some of these are obvious, where as others can be well hidden. I was a bit ticked off when I found the final tome though. Finding all tomes in the game gives you all veil upgrades at once. I didn't know that. Right before that mission I had already bought them all, money that I could have used to upgrade weapons instead.

Any first-person shooter is dependent on the weapons. Before telling you about my issues, I have to say that they all feels quite good to use, like their WW2 counterpart.

That said, I found the weapon selection a bit odd. You get no pistol and no shotgun, but you get two assaultrifles that are very similar to one another. Once both were fully upgraded, I felt no reason to use one of them, as the other became an universal do-all kind of weapon. There's also a rifle that can be updated into something of a sniper rifle. A really effective weapon once upgraded, with an instant-kill melee attack. Then you get a flamethrower which I didn't care about since most foes pop up at long range anyway, and you have some really strong melee attacks. You get a rocket launcher which can be upgraded heavily, which is odd considering there's almost no ammunition for it throughout the entire game. Finally you get several experimental energyweapons, like a teslacannon that bursts through everything on short range with electricity.

Overall I felt little balance in the weapons. Towards the end of the game I had used one of the assultrifles almost exclusively. It have a sniper scope, x4 more ammo than the other weapons, is accurate on long range, deadly on short range, and if you empower it with the veil it's even more deadly. If all else fails I could pump the power that kills everything nearby. Again, since i ran the game on normal, perhaps higher difficulties use this more.

Bugs
I ran into two gamestopping bugs. The first one corrupted my savegame, so I was forced to download a finished save from the game. Unfortunally they hadn't bothered about finding all gold/intel/tomes that I did, because of that I ended up cheating through the final maps just to see the end of the game. The other bug I ran into was in the absolute final map, with the end boss getting stuck in geometry no many times I re-ran from the checkpoint. I had to replay the entire map again, not dying once, to solve it. Both of these bugs are reported on the forums so I am not the only one who experienced them. The savegame corruption is a particulary nasty one.

Final Verdict
Wolfenstein looks good on paper, in reality it's very traditional shooter. There are some good ideas here, that I hope to see used more in future games, but here they aren't fully utilized within this game. The veil is the main gameplay element, but it's barely used in puzzles and the powers are sometimes too overpowered as a "use this power throughout the entire game" kind of way. The weapon selection feels unbalanced and doesn't encourage you to mix them around. The story is not memorable at all.

It might sound I ripping the game apart, but no. If you like the genré, or just want to shoot stuff, pick it up. There aren't too many shooters on the market right now anyway, and it's not a bad game, even if it isn't original.

Originally Posted by txa1265
I half agree - I think the story and characters are cool, but the gameplay sucks, the PC implementation sucks, and the overall game is 'meh'. Sorry - I'm here for the game, not to be a pawn in someone's scripted movie cutscene.

Feel free to give me a better description. I found the gameplay optimized for what it intends to be, even on PC, and it didn't have more cutscenes than average.

I'm surprised you didn't mention how short Wolfenstein is. Most people here already finished it last week.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm surprised you didn't mention how short Wolfenstein is. Most people here already finished it last week.

It's the same length as 9 out of 10 shooters these days. Perhaps even slightly longer.

I spent ~9-10 hours on it, and I didn't search for secrets beyond the first couple of levels.

Oh, and I'm pretty good at these games

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
It's the same length as 9 out of 10 shooters these days. Perhaps even slightly longer.

I spent ~9-10 hours on it, and I didn't search for secrets beyond the first couple of levels.

Oh, and I'm pretty good at these games

Is that so? I guess some are faster than others…

Originally Posted by JDR13
Is that so? I guess some are faster than others…

If I'd breezed through it, it'd probably be somewhere between 6-8 hours.

This, unfortunately, is the norm these days - even shorter very often.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
This, unfortunately, is the norm these days - even shorter very often.

Sad, but true.

Hell… Wolfenstein was epic compared to the last few Call of Duty games.

Originally Posted by JemyM
Feel free to give me a better description. I found the gameplay optimized for what it intends to be, even on PC, and it didn't have more cutscenes than average.

I guess what I'm saying is that I found a mismatch between the thoroughly modern narrative style and the same-as-always gameplay and missions. Nearly every mission has exactly *one* solution, which plays into someone's movie-making fantasy of how i should look on the big screen. They aren't cutscenes, just scripted missions.

I found Wolfenstein slightly longer than average too, but I was careful to search for secrets in every level, which might have given me more time with the game. I wouldn't say that translates into quality time though, considering what you do is to run back and forth in the same area forever trying to look in every corner of the map. Feels like a MMO mechanic when stuff is simply spread out on the map like that, with no real relation to the story.

Originally Posted by txa1265
I guess what I'm saying is that I found a mismatch between the thoroughly modern narrative style and the same-as-always gameplay and missions. Nearly every mission has exactly *one* solution, which plays into someone's movie-making fantasy of how i should look on the big screen. They aren't cutscenes, just scripted missions.

True. I accepted it because that's how things are done. Blaming GTA4 for it when I fail to blame every other game for it, would be a bit unfair. I rather praise the games that do it differently. In fact, I could even praise GTA4 for sometimes giving me the option on how to finish a quest, which happens like 4 times or so. I can barely mention a game outside the RPG genré that allows that.

Should I ever get an X360 or a computer able to run Windows, I would play Wolfenstein for sure. For one thing, Wolf3D got me hooked on shooters, and it's a franchise I really like. Then: Raven. They made so many of my favorite games. The hub-style play sounds a lot like Hexen; the 'veil' Jemy mentioned instantly reminded me of Soul Reaver (when Raziel entered the spectral realm) and Undying (the Scrye spell), other favorites of mine… but alas, for the time being it's just wishful thinking.

Originally Posted by Jaz
Should I ever get an X360 or a computer able to run Windows, I would play Wolfenstein for sure. For one thing, Wolf3D got me hooked on shooters, and it's a franchise I really like. Then: Raven. They made so many of my favorite games. The hub-style play sounds a lot like Hexen; the 'veil' Jemy mentioned instantly reminded me of Soul Reaver (when Raziel entered the spectral realm) and Undying (the Scrye spell), other favorites of mine… but alas, for the time being it's just wishful thinking.

What computer do you have that can't run Windows?

Originally Posted by Jaz
Should I ever get an X360 or a computer able to run Windows, I would play Wolfenstein for sure. For one thing, Wolf3D got me hooked on shooters, and it's a franchise I really like. Then: Raven. They made so many of my favorite games. The hub-style play sounds a lot like Hexen; the 'veil' Jemy mentioned instantly reminded me of Soul Reaver (when Raziel entered the spectral realm) and Undying (the Scrye spell), other favorites of mine… but alas, for the time being it's just wishful thinking.

It all sounds good on paper, but it doesn't work well in game. It's as if they knew what to add, but not how to make it fun. It's features that are in the game, because other games have them, not because they add something or play an important part of it. It boils down to a first-person shooter, with features that aren't needed and aren't used. If you ever get to it, do not get your hopes up, it might actually help you appreciate the game more if you don't hope for the second coming.