Last game you finished, tell us about it

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Everytime someone prefers ME2 to ME - the universe shifts and darkens.

Well, sorry about the mess. But I'm sure that someone as enlightened as you will have no problem finding their way in a dark universe or at least finding the light switch!

Shadowrun Returns

I finished playing this over the weekend.

I played as a ranged combatant/decker. It was quite good to be able to do the decking properly. However, I don't find that side of the game to be so much fun.

I had played through half of it when it came out but got bored due to the linearity of everything.

I thought I would try again as I have been enjoying turn based combat the past few months.

The game is still way too linear. It's well executed, but except for one mission, it seems like you can't do anything but follow the pre-determined path - and it's important to note that it only says path and not paths.

I still had fun, but it wasn't great. I will be starting Shadowrun Dragonfall soon probably as people have said it was much better.

I am thinking of playing it as a melee adept or maybe a mage. I haven't yet decided.

I enjoy the charisma and intelligence boosts for dialogue options though…

The Bureau - X-Com Declassified

So, I finished a game at last

It's not as bad as it's made out to be, but it's certainly not great either. Average with some decent moments is how I'd describe it. It plays like Mass Effect more than anything else, but with a lot of uneven dialogue and pretty repetitive combat. The story is interesting in places, but ends up a disjointed, unsatisfying thing. Clearly, they had plans that never came to fruition - and it feels like a lot of material was skipped over or omitted entirely.

Good parts include nice scenery variety and a functional combat system with a few neat powers. I'm also a great fan of the setting. Sort of an X-Com meets Fallout vibe.

One interesting part of the experience, to me, is how it demonstrates how well this game would work if they'd taken the X-Com formula more to heart and included more freedom and strategy features.

It's actually very fun to explore alien environments using an over-the-shoulder perspective - and it could have worked much better than one might have thought.

A proper X-Com tactical shooter might be just the ticket, but I guess the failure of this game means we'll never see it happen.

Overall, I recommend it like I'd recommend a fun B-movie on a sunday night.

6/10

Originally Posted by Thrasher
I just finished "Might and Magic X: Legacy" and the "Falcon & the Unicorn" expansion.

Quite a wonderful mostly bugfree experience. Although there is tons of combat, it never really seemed to get boring for me for 2 reasons.

(1) MMX is a turn-based combat blobber. You have complete control over your party members, no default attack behavior, weird timing issues, or bad pathing to get in the way. This is why I prefer turn-based to realtime with pause.

(2) A huge variety of enemies, with different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Makes combat seem much less repetitive.

Another big plus is a wide variety of items and properties. I love me some good looting. Opening a chest was always fun.

Finally, the character abilities and spells were diverse, making leveling up a joy. Promotion and grandmaster quests, and having to find trainers added to the variety.

Exploration was rewarding as well. Finding relics in mysterious crypts and dangerous caves was great.

There are many puzzles in this game. Mostly this was good, but some of the solutions seemed impossible to figure out without a guide.

In general an excellent game, and highly recommended.

Sounds a lot like Elminage Gothic (minus the puzzles. Unless you consider figuring out quest solutions on your own with no hand-holding as "puzzles")!

I may have a game to post here soon, stay tuned!! (Knock on wood. )

You're about to finish the last level of Candy Crush Saga?

GTA V

I finally finished this after buying it for 3 different platforms.

The singleplayer campaign is entertaining, but I don't really care for the characters or the story. I don't understand what it's trying to tell me, since it's mostly satire - but then again not quite.

It's as if they have something to say, but they'd rather make fun of everything.

The gameplay is excellent, however, and I'm still extremely impressed with what they achieved in terms of world building and a truly wholesome gameplay arsenal. You can go on foot, on a bike, on a motorcycle, on a plane, helicopter, submarine, boat and so on - and everything is perfected to have a fluid feel. The gunplay is strong and it even has functional stealth elements.

It could be an utterly fantastic game if they bothered to treat the lore and story with the same respect as the simulation and gameplay.

7.5/10

Dishonored

I decided to complete this as well and I had fun.

Definitely one of the best stealth games of all time. Gameplay is extremely fluid and is perhaps the best stealth game I've played in terms of controls. I feel very empowered as Corvo - the protagonist.

The story was nice - and the missions had decent variety.

The problems are about a relatively limited set of tools available - since you're likely to go either lethal or non-lethal. That means you'll be doing much the same thing for most of the game, and that gets tiresome after a while. I would have liked more powers and tools here.

It suffers from having too obvious clues - and you never have to figure out anything for yourself. It's not uncommon with this genre, but I just wish they wouldn't be so generous with hints and such.

I don't like the exaggerated art style - and there's a distinct lack of detail in the textures and environment. That said, they did an excellent job with the primitive assets they decided to go for - and I admire the level design in most ways.

Overall, I don't think it matches the best in the genre - and I'd put in on par with something like Thief 3.

8/10

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
GTA V
Dishonored

I decided to complete this as well and I had fun.

Definitely one of the best stealth games of all time. Gameplay is extremely fluid . . .

Overall, I don't think it matches the best in the genre - and I'd put in on par with something like Thief 3.. . .

8/10

ummm, ????

Originally Posted by Dajjer
ummm, ????

It's one of the best, but not THE best.

I think it's next on my list. Or perhaps Thief 3.

Kings Bounty: Armored Princess

Finally finished this for the second time after playing it off and on for a few weeks. What a great little big game, quite the match of it's originator King's Bounty: The Legend and a most fitting first sequel.

I 'finished' the game some three islands before the final boss battle, having achieved the kind-of cut-off maximum level of 50 at about 3/4 into the game. This made the last quarter a bit of a speed run as my nearly invincible army zipped through encounter after encounter, each subsequent level up barely being worth it with the rewards halved. But there's still very little room to be complacent as the final boss battle has a good 126,000 health to whittle down, and every last drop of levelling makes every bit of difference for that mammoth task.

Even when the game reaches 'going through the motions' proportions it still remains an addictive and engaging experience that the smallest cock-up could easily unravel, which is also a sign of a good game.

What did I like most? I loved the variety of monsters and therefore encounter variety. This RPG might not have rats, but it has three different types of snake, bear, spider, heck it even has fish and three different type of plant (5 if you could the Ents), yes, even the flora can join your army! Every single battle felt different and a whole new experience as I faced teleporting Demonesses one moment and acid shooting Dwarves the next. And anything I faced I could hire for my own army, if I could find a decent enough seller. The permutations for encounters are astronomical when you consider 100s of monster types arranged randomly into small groups of 5-10.

The itemisation was superb. There were countless upgradable items (each with it's 'unique' battle setting), countless sets to collect (I got one set, but never found the last piece for another set I was holding onto), many items with actual rewards for use, a whole load of general booster items, and some just plain funny items. Every time someone had something to sell or I found something it was like a little christmas present of joy, reading its description for the first time as if unwrapping a gift.

The art style is also superb, an entire world that fits into itself without the slightest hint of a lazy corner or rough edge. From the items to the buildings and from the sprites to the trees and music, everything was born from the same universe allowing for total immersion in the atmosphere, akin to the next best thing to actually being there in person.

I had one crippling bug throughout the game where reading most of the item/spell tooltips flickered the whole screen uncontrolably, but I have no doubt this was due to my system specs as I could find no other example on-line about it. Which also meant I had no idea how to solve it, but I'm not sure I can blame the game for that…? Some of the spells didn't work, which was a bummer, but there were plenty enough that did so that it didn't bother me too much beyond a brief eyeroll.

I would describe these games as Chess, but with interesting pieces and locations. Not quite as deep as chess, obviously, just a whole lot more entertaining. These games might lose points in a long and drawn out "What is an RPG?" discussion, but for what they are about, they are pretty much flawless IMO.

I just finished Talos Principle. The game has gotten great reviews and, IMHO, they are well deserved. It's a bit of a cross between Portal and the System/BioShock games. You're running around, solving puzzles while picking up bits and pieces of a story explaining what the frak is going on.

The puzzles are definitely the main attraction. You'll be using various tools (five by the end of the game) to solve puzzles that will give you access to a sigil, which is just a little tetris-like puzzle piece. You use these puzzle pieces to gain access to more tools and areas. I only found one puzzle that was timed (and failing it a couple of times brought on a little more dialog so I think I was meant to fail at least once). None of them require hair trigger timing, either. Your raw capability is going to be tested here, not your reflexes or your ability to think under pressure.

There are also stars spread around that act as extra hard puzzles. You'll often need to do some exploration just to find out where they are, never mind how to get them. There are a few easter eggs scattered around, too, to encourage more exploration.

The philosophy aspect of the game didn't work out as well for me. You get asked some good questions but your forced to pick from a few, short answers. Philosophy and short answers just don't go together. I found myself really wishing I could just type my answers and have the game pick that apart but I guess the technology just isn't up to it.

Save games left me a little cold, too. All the game seems to be saving is what puzzles you've solved, what you've read, and where you're standing. If you have a puzzle half finished then quit the game, you'll have to start over again. Luckily, once you know what you're supposed to do a puzzle only takes a couple of minutes to re-do so it's no big loss as long as you don't put the game down for weeks.

The graphics are quite pretty and the music is very well done. Total playing time for me was 30 hours but that's going to vary a lot by how quickly you figure out the puzzles (IF you can figure them all out).

The game is very subject to spoilers. You're obviously going to be tempted to just look up answers to the puzzles. Don't! Just sleep on it. It's amazing how much easier a puzzle can be the next day. (Maybe because the game is making you so much smarter? Yeah, I think that's the best choice to believe in. ) The story can be easily spoiled, too. Honestly, even the game's own trailers seem to give away too much IMHO.

So big thumbs up for this game to anyone who enjoys spatial puzzles.

Originally Posted by Zloth
I just finished Talos Principle. The game has gotten great reviews and, IMHO, they are well deserved. It's a bit of a cross between Portal and the System/BioShock games. You're running around, solving puzzles while picking up bits and pieces of a story explaining what the frak is going on.

The puzzles are definitely the main attraction. You'll be using various tools (five by the end of the game) to solve puzzles that will give you access to a sigil, which is just a little tetris-like puzzle piece. You use these puzzle pieces to gain access to more tools and areas. I only found one puzzle that was timed (and failing it a couple of times brought on a little more dialog so I think I was meant to fail at least once). None of them require hair trigger timing, either. Your raw capability is going to be tested here, not your reflexes or your ability to think under pressure.

There are also stars spread around that act as extra hard puzzles. You'll often need to do some exploration just to find out where they are, never mind how to get them. There are a few easter eggs scattered around, too, to encourage more exploration.

The philosophy aspect of the game didn't work out as well for me. You get asked some good questions but your forced to pick from a few, short answers. Philosophy and short answers just don't go together. I found myself really wishing I could just type my answers and have the game pick that apart but I guess the technology just isn't up to it.

Save games left me a little cold, too. All the game seems to be saving is what puzzles you've solved, what you've read, and where you're standing. If you have a puzzle half finished then quit the game, you'll have to start over again. Luckily, once you know what you're supposed to do a puzzle only takes a couple of minutes to re-do so it's no big loss as long as you don't put the game down for weeks.

The graphics are quite pretty and the music is very well done. Total playing time for me was 30 hours but that's going to vary a lot by how quickly you figure out the puzzles (IF you can figure them all out).

The game is very subject to spoilers. You're obviously going to be tempted to just look up answers to the puzzles. Don't! Just sleep on it. It's amazing how much easier a puzzle can be the next day. (Maybe because the game is making you so much smarter? Yeah, I think that's the best choice to believe in. ) The story can be easily spoiled, too. Honestly, even the game's own trailers seem to give away too much IMHO.

So big thumbs up for this game to anyone who enjoys spatial puzzles.

You just had to mention System Shock, didn't you

I don't care much for Portal (well, I liked and completed the first game, but felt that was it for the formula) - and I'm not necessarily a big fan of puzzles, unless they're tied into the lore in a good way.

As in, abstract puzzles for the sake of puzzles are what I hate.

But I do love the mystery of a game like System Shock. The exploration and cool lore to be established.

Would you say this game is for me?

Originally Posted by Zloth
I just finished Talos Principle. The game has gotten great reviews and, IMHO, they are well deserved…
The puzzles are definitely the main attraction…

Are you crazy? Puzzles?
Delete that post and start talking about games with some real challenge to make your brain sweat.
Dark Souls.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Would you say this game is for me?

Probably not - you spend something like 90% of your time doing the puzzles. Buying the game would be like buying an X Shock game even though you don't like shooters.

Joxer:

Sounds like a nice change of pace, actually. I still haven't played all the Myst games, either.

Originally Posted by Zloth
Probably not - you spend something like 90% of your time doing the puzzles. Buying the game would be like buying an X Shock game even though you don't like shooters.

Joxer:

Hehe, you're probably right. I'm still a little intrigued, though.

But thanks for info!

Well I "finished" The Witcher 3. A truly wonderful game. One of the best, IMHO. Don't see the point of repeating all what's already been said, except that the writing is superb and the bugs are minor detractors from the overall experience. I've got lots of unexplored quesiton marks left in Skellige but don't see the point of looting treasure that I dont need. This game should be on every RPG players must play list. I'll miss Geralt's sardonic wit.

Just finished Dragon Age Inquisition. Joxer and Maylander have already aired most of my thoughts on the game, but to sum it up:

+ Far better than DA2
+ Ok story by Bioware standards
+ Choices and consequences open up small side quests and war table missions nicely
+ I like the DA lore, and it is fairly fleshed out after three titles.

- Crappy menu based list interface, but I am pretty used to that after a decade of such shit.
- The areas dont really tie into the story (here it is way behind DAO)
- Respawing should be toned down
- Too much filler content
- Fetch quests galore
- Some bugs that probably wont be fixed given the games age: I could not give Cole his amulet. Streaming of Skyhold made me fall into the void as I could enter places where textures werent loaded yet.

—- Loading times are the worst I've experienced on the PC (several minutes for Skyhold). This doesnt matter all that much for the large areas, but in some places like Skyhold I spent more time looking at loading screens than playing. The loading times also made Halamshiral significantly less enjoyable than it should have been. I made sure to have a laptop around for me to play with while waiting for the game to load.

On the whole a solid but not great game. I'd put it behind the Mass Effect trilogy and DAI, and well ahead of DA2 which is the only Bioware game that I consider unworthy of a replay.

(Mental note: put DA:I on an SSD.)