Games NOT Beaten: 2015

[alienjesus]

@Gamerforlife

I've been into the adventure genre since the Zork days, and I agree the ones you posted above are great games. But I want to know if you've played any CiNG adventure games? They are fantastic, and are my favorites of the genre (if not of all time than at least in the past ten years). This is what they developed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cing#Games_developed

If you haven't played Hotel Dusk and its sequel Last Window, Trace Memory and its sequel Another Code R, you must do so ASAP.

Was there any difficulties for you playing Trace Memory followed by Another Code R? I was under the impression there were some reasonable translation differences between Trace Memory in the US and Another Code in Europe.

I suppose the same goes for Hotel Dusk and Last Window?

[bmoc]

I think I am going to give up on Final Fantasy Type-0 HD. I really wanted to like this game but I just can't seem to get motivated to play it. It reminds me a lot of Crisis Core which I also did not care for (other than the story).

Things that I didn't like about Type-0:

-Mission based gameplay
-Too many characters thrown at you all at once
-Hard to tell which abilities are passive and which are equipable
-Bland cookie cutter towns and cities.
-Sometimes annoying camera angles with Eidolons (I'm looking specifically at Shiva)

With Crisis Core, the story kept me interested but I can't say the same for Type-0. I can see now why it wasn't initially released outside Japan. I made it to Chapter 6 so I will probably just Youtube the remaining cut scenes and stick a fork in this one.

[Exhuminator]

Was there any difficulties for you playing Trace Memory followed by Another Code R?

I did play Trace memory (AKA Another Code in Europe) before I played Another Code R. The only odd thing I encountered in Another Code R were the UK spellings of words like colour instead of color, but it was to be expected.

I was under the impression there were some reasonable translation differences between Trace Memory in the US and Another Code in Europe.

If there are, it'd be alternate spellings and regional colloquialisms at most.

I suppose the same goes for Hotel Dusk and Last Window?

Character names were kept the same between the USA Hotel Dusk and its UK sequel Last Window. The English translation was just fine for me playing the UK Last Window despite me being American. There were occasionally regional slang sayings in the game that were unusual to me, but I got the gist of what they meant. Like Kyle would say "I've gotta make a move" instead of saying something like "I've got to do something about this".

[Exhuminator]

Final Fantasy Type-0

Yeah I've had enough of this crap.

This is a review of the English fan translated Japanese PSP version:

Good: The best graphics you will ever see on a PSP. Frantic combat engine that is fun despite a bad camera. Really nice looking CG movies. Above average OST.

Bad: Type-0 is wholly centered around hours of grinding due to level tiered mission requirements. You have 14 playable characters and all of them require copious amounts of grinding to keep up their usefulness. There's so much bad game design insofar as player inconveniences in this game that it boggles the mind. This game does not respect the player's free time and attempts to stretch about 10 hours worth of game content to 40+ hours by artificial contrivances and grinding, grinding, grinding. Also the plot is a wretched mess full of characters you will not care about with a story that is at once byzantine and banal.

Overall: If you want something beautiful to look at on your PSP, play Type-0. If you want to play an actual fun JRPG on your PSP, avoid this game entirely. After over 20 hours of mucking through Type-0, I now understand why SQEX was reluctant to bring it overseas. And when they did, now I see why the HD version was completely rebalanced and had an Easy mode added.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Good on you for knowing when to quit. Sometimes it's tempting to see things through once you've invested enough hours into a game... But crap is crap and life it too short to be playing something that isn't fun.

I rarely post in this thread, even though I bail on plenty of games.

Some of you may have noticed that I'm doing a Games Beaten Year Challenge where I'm completing one game released per year, 1976-present. I've been going off of a rough draft here - that I made before I started - and I ended up swapping some games out for others. I've made it through 1985 so far. Here's what I abandoned.

Freeway (Atari 2600 - 1981)
Activision's Freeway was released the same year as Frogger and plays very similarly. Except you're a chicken here, and can only move vertically. It's one of those two-players-by-default games; if no one touches joystick #2 the second chicken just sits there and it becomes a race against the clock for player 1. I actually like this more than Frogger, but it becomes very difficult quickly. And unfortunately the timer isn't displayed. Instead a chime starts to play when only a few second remain. I'll probably go back to this one someday. For now I simply got tired of getting my ass kicked.

Laser Blast (Atari 2600 - 1981)
Another Activision game. Except this one isn't very good. It's a bit like a reverse Missile Command, as the goal is to shoot downward towards stationary enemies on the ground while avoiding their shots. Controls are choppy and there's this odd "locking" effect that occurs as you hover your saucer above an enemy. Not a fan, barely made any progress.

Keystone Kapers (Atari 2600 - 1983)
Yes another Activision classic. And a damn good platformer at that. My reason for quitting this one is actually rather fickle. It simply didn't want to cooperate with my Atari 7800 system. After a few minutes it would glitch up. I've always found that the 7800 is a bit finicky with Activision carts, and this one just flat-out refuses to work properly. Someday I'll find the motivation to drag my 2600 out of storage and run through this. What I've played is quite fun.

Cabbage Patch Kids Adventure in the Park (ColecoVision - 1984)
Yes, a Cabbage Patch Kids platformer. Developed by Konami! This isn't awful, actually. It's a Pitfall! type game, with swinging vines, water pits, etc. It just seems endless though - I had no idea how to determine when it was properly beaten or even "looped."

Desert Rider (CoCo - 1984)
I came very close to calling this one beaten. I was able to complete the Easy mode, but not Normal or Hard. However, Easy is the default setting. Nevertheless, the "OCD" side of me won't call this done until Normal mode is taken down, which isn't happening ever. Desert Rider is a driving game with the "3D" perspective of Pole Position and the jumping mechanics of Bump 'n' Jump. The goal here is to simply reach the end of each stage with lives intact; time is mostly irrelevant.

There are multiple hazards on the road like oil slicks and rocks. Hitting one results in the loss of a life. There are other cars as well. The computer simply generates these near the player as it sees fit. Should you burn rubber past the initial cars you'll soon catch up to another pack. Slow down and cars will creep up from the bottom of the screen. Hitting the other cars (while they are in control) directly actually doesn't cause damage, instead they just jostle around. The main cause of death here is getting hit by a careening wiping-out vehicle. See, the other cars appear to be driven by drunks as they're constantly hitting the oil slicks and rocks, and then hurtling towards the player's car.

Now on Easy mode it's not too hard to avoid all obstacles. However, on Normal and Hard mode the game completely breaks down. See, now offscreen cars can hit offscreen obstacles and then hurtle onscreen ride into the player's car. It's completely insane. The only way to avoid this from happening is to either drive fast as shit (bad idea as you'll be too fast for the curves and then crash) or memorize where the recently-passed offscreen obstacles are in relation to your own car (not really feasible). It's a game-breaking flaw. And a shame too. The mechanics are solid otherwise and Easy mode is a lot of fun.

[Fragems]

Super Mario Kart(SNES)

Screw this game so hard . Even the 100cc flower cup is kicking my ass. The whole game just feels merciless. One screw up and you are done for and it's easy to screw up since you slide all over the place like your driving on a skating rink. The quasi 3d is also killer on a few maps such as the Snow stages which have blocks that very nearly match the color of the ground and aren't visible till you are right on top of them.

Controls also felt kind of loose but that may have been my controller or Retron 5 had a hard time getting my power ups to launch when I wanted them to.

[Exhuminator]

Good on you for knowing when to quit. Sometimes it's tempting to see things through once you've invested enough hours into a game... But crap is crap and life it too short to be playing something that isn't fun.

You speak the truth.

I'm trying to live by the credence that if I have to force myself to finish a game, then it's obviously not worth finishing. A good game should have you antsy all day for the next chance to play it.

[Sarge]

Well, I know what I'm not going to pick up and play right now. Thanks, Exhuminator!

The best games absolutely should have you hyped to play them. Unfortunately, as of late, there haven't been that many that have done it for me. But then, that's usually before I get started. The thought of playing Pillars over the weekend didn't appeal at all, then I booted it up and got right back into the swing of things. At least yesterday, I did. But it gets harder and harder to find games that bring me that pure joy of playing. I suspect it's just changing tastes and having seen a lot of what is on offer done before, and often better.

The craziest thing (well, maybe not crazy at all!) is that it's been those good ol' indie games that have done the trick lately. Rex Rocket and Freedom Planet were tremendous games. Now, I don't blithely praise "indie" at all, because there's a metric ton of garbage out there (seriously, it's almost as bad as mobile), but there are games that are special stuff, too.

The other problem is that it's always hard to know when to quit. Some games start awful, and get better. Some start great, and get terrible. Some are terrible all the way through. Lord knows I've given up on a few, and others I've soldiered through to get to the better stuff. Two games that always come to mind are Black Sigil and Infinite Undiscovery. But for every one of them, there's even more that never get good. Probably the majority. So yeah, play what's fun. Life's too short to do otherwise.

[Exhuminator]

Unfortunately, as of late, there haven't been that many that have done it for me. But it gets harder and harder to find games that bring me that pure joy of playing. I suspect it's just changing tastes and having seen a lot of what is on offer done before, and often better.

This happens to me pretty often too, and I chalk it up to over exposure and "been there done that" syndrome. For now I'm just trying to mix up what I play more often to stave the doldrums off.

The craziest thing (well, maybe not crazy at all!) is that it's been those good ol' indie games that have done the trick lately.

Probably because good indie games mix actual innovation with more immediate gameplay bereft of the cinematic fluff modern games are so keen to bloat on.

The other problem is that it's always hard to know when to quit.

This used to be a problem for me... but after over thirty years of playing video games I've honed a pretty good instinct on determining a game's quality and merit of play from a personal perspective. (I can watch twenty seconds of gameplay on Youtube and know more than a five page review is ever going to tell me.) In light of that ability I've decided to trust my gut and if it's saying a game's gone sour and isn't worth my time anymore, I'm just gonna drop it. Whereas in the past I would have suffered through for no proper reason other than plain ol' stubbornness.

[laurenhiya21]

Tekken 2 (PSN)
I really doubted I would get very far in this, but I don't like to assume so I tried it anyway... and yeah I can't seem to get any farther than Round 4 or 5 in the Arcade Mode Not sure how many stages there are (I would assume 10 since that's a nice even number), but the moves are reaaally difficult for me to pull off and are really hard to memorize. I have trouble memorizing things in general, so that doesn't really help.

Oh well, at least the intro was entertaining.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (PS2)
I thought I had played & enjoyed this as a kid, but noooooope I was thinking of a different Lord of the Rings game. This one feels incredibly cheap. You do some boring fetchy quests and then you need to sneak past the dark rider guys (forgot what they're called) but no matter what I do or where I hide, they see me :l Plus they kind of blend in with everything, as it's night time, so I had a really hard time seeing them in the first place.

Maybe it gets better, but this part was just way too frustrating for me.