Games Beaten 2015

[ExedExes]

I beat MAFIA back in 2007 on PC. That game gets to be extremely hard at times and has wonky driving physics. It had an above average story though, and really impressive graphics for its time. It was a love hate thing for me.

It had its frustrating moments, but a good story, a few folks from The Sopranos providing voices, and the cool Freeride Extreme missions that you got after completing the single player mode.

[Exhuminator]

It had its frustrating moments

It was quite an impressive game on PC for its time. And the story was way above average. The game felt authentic outside the wretched driving physics. That wouldn't have been so bad except driving was often mandatory. Like this "gem" of a mission:

NEVER FORGET

But the missions where you had to survive massive shootouts were always a blast.

This reminds me that I have Godfather and Scarface on Xbox and still haven't played them.

[Gamerforlife]

Metal Slug 3 (PS4)- With all trophies



I don't know if I've ever beaten Metal Slug 3 before. The last level is such a drag and the game itself is pretty hard unless you've played it to death and know it like the back of your hand. I've always generally found Metal Slug games harder and more annoying to play than Contra games.

That said, this is a pretty good port. It has a save state feature and you can adjust difficulty or give yourself 99 lives. So there's really no excuse to not be able to beat this, and even the trophies aren't that tough due to the 99 lives and use of save states. And you gotta love cross save between this and the PS3/Vita versions

For whatever reason, I've found myself liking other Metal Slugs more than this one. The game just seems too long and it's very repetitive in a lot of areas. It's a bloated game.

But the whole series in general doesn't do much for me gameplaywise. Again, I prefer Contra's more methodical design. I've always loved the character designs and style of the Metal Slug series though. It outdoes most Contra games on the presentation front due to them being arcade games and looking and sounding like an arcade game should. As well as the overall wackiness and humor of the series.

So if you like MS3, you might want to pick this up. After releasing this, it seems a poll went up asking players if they wanted other Neo Geo games to come to Playstation systems. I voted for Sengoku III. A port for that game done similarly to this one would make me happy

[ExedExes]

NEVER FORGET
But the missions where you had to survive massive shootouts were always a blast.

I knew you were gonna bring up the race even before I clicked the spoiler tag. Did you know it got so difficult they released a patch that let you select a difficulty level? The version I played had that. I also dug up an old article possibly explaining the reason the developers made it so hard. That was an example of poor control there.

One of the toughest parts for me was the parking garage shootout near the end. But nearly everything I did in Saints Row took me back to Mafia, so many similarities.

[GSZX1337]

1) Cannon Spike - Dreamcast
2) I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream - PC
3) Mighty Gunvolt - 3DS (as Mighty No. 9)
4) Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X - PSP (Vile Mode)
5) StarCraft - PC

6) Naughty Bear - Xbox 360

Wow, I had no clue that this game was shat upon. Reviews average at about 50%, but comments I've read on those reviews make the game sound like the worst thing in the world. I guess Classic Game Room and I are in the minority on this game. I'm not saying this game doesn't deserve any of its harsh criticism, the game is rather shittily produced with sub-par graphics, terrible framerate, and inconsistent performance. The gameplay is rather limited with every "mode" boiling down to kill the other bears and not dying. This might not be so bad if it weren't for the fact that you're forced to play through several of these rehashed levels in order to progress to the next proper level. This leads to the game getting old rather quickly.

I know I'm kinda shitting on the game myself, but now I'm going to list the positives. The style of the game is great with it basically being a slasher movie with teddy bears. It brings a mix of the cute and demented that at first made me a bit uncomfortable. Those poor bears. Kicking down doors, smashing in faces, and ripping out stuffing make this game an absolute joy for anyone with pent-up aggression. This isn't a lengthy adventure epic, but instead plays like an arcade game with a scoring system and leaderboards. The points system has actually been thought out and encourages the player to employ a variety of murders in his/her massacres. When approached with this mindset, I think Naughty Bear can provide hours of face flattening fun.

Due to its shoddy production and insistence on you playing the same levels over and over again, I'd recommend playing this one in small doses, perhaps between other lengthier games. The difficulty is almost non existent until the end, so there's no need to worry about jumping in at a harder part of the game right after finishing another title. I would've done this if I hadn't rented the game from GameFly.

7) The Last of Us - PS3

I decided to rent this game from GameFly since it's so well-praised and because I wanted to see if I'd like Naughty Dog's newest property better than Uncharted. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Well, not by much at least. To quickly compare it to Uncharted 2, the last entry I played, the gunplay and action in Uncharted is superior while the characters and story are better in The Last of Us. The latter isn't saying much, though.

The plot while superior to Uncharted's isn't a tour de force of storytelling. The sequence of events are predictable and can be seen a mile away. The characters are alright, though not the most complex. At least when the characters showed sadness, it didn't come across as lame whining. I found the characters to be more likable and the plot more entertaining than Uncharted's. The gunplay, and gameplay itself, in TLoU is quite inferior to Uncharted. The combat is clunky and stodgy. There's a ridiculous amount of weapon-sway and overall the combat feels cumbersome. This in addition to the insta-kill zombies make for a frustrating campaign. The surprising amount of human firefights are fine, but nothing stellar. The frustrating element of gameplay is the one that it shares with its predecessor: The game grinds to a screeching halt when you come across an obstacle and waits patiently for you to place the plank, move the floating pallet, move the ladder, etc. These segments kill whatever pacing the game had going for it, and they're just boring.

You might be wondering why I beat the game since I'm shitting on it. Well first, the game does get better later on when you're able to afford upgrades and the flamethrower. More importantly, I wasn't really sure until after I thought about it. The experience I had with this game is the same as the one I had with Uncharted 2. The conclusion I came to is that because this game has very high production values with the occasional peak and inoffensive gameplay, it's lead me to finish the game despite not enjoying it much. In that sense, it's like Lay's Potato chips: You make the mistake of buying the chips, ear a couple, think they're kinda bland, decide to finish the bag since you already opened it, and regret it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to eat another bag of tater chips.

8] Eets (100-percented) - PC

I don't know if not 100 percenting would count as beating Eets since you can view the credits from the title screen and the only confirmation you get is when you complete the game 100%.

This is a fun puzzle game, pure and simple. The interface works wonderfully, it looks good (well, at lower resolutions), and has interesting puzzles. Unfortunately, the game doesn't look as good as it did when I first played it in 2008 due to it running at a low (by today's standards) resolution. Things look nastily stretched out and aliased; complete crap. I'm not the biggest Puzzle game player, but I love a good one, and this is a good one.

[Exhuminator]

Did you know it got so difficult they released a patch that let you select a difficulty level?

No, I wasn't aware of that when I beat the game. I wish I had known that though, because that stupid race took me wayyy too long to get past in the unpatched version.

[MrPopo]

1. Painkiller - PC
2. Front Mission 4 - PS2
3. Wasteland 2 - PC
4. Arcanum - PC
5. X-COM Terror from the Deep - PC
6. Military Madness - TurboGrafx-16
7. Unreal - PC
8. Shadowrun - SNES
9. Warcraft III - PC
10. Dungeon Keeper - PC
11. Final Fantasy X-2 HD - PS3
12. Descent - PC
13. Quake Mission Pack 2 - Dissolution of Eternity - PC
14. Quake 2 Mission Pack 2 - Ground Zero - PC
15. Sokobond - PC
16. Hybrid Heaven - N64
17. Sonic the Hedgehog - Genesis
18. Castlevania - NES
19. Super Castlevania IV - SNES
20. Castlevania III - NES
21. Castlevania II - NES
22. Castlevania Rondo of Blood - Turbo CD
23. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders - PC
24. Fractal - PC
25. Kirby's Adventure - NES
26. Pillars of Eternity - PC
27. Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den - PC
28. Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour - PC
29. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - NES
30. Punch-Out!! - NES
31. Doom 3 - PC
32. The Even More Incredible Machine - PC
33. Contra - NES
34. Dark Forces - PC
35. Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - PC
36. X-Wing - PC
37. TIE Fighter - PC
38. Bloodborne - PS4
39. Gradius - NES
40. Marble Madness - NES
41. The Witcher 3 - PC
42. Mega Man X5 Zero Playthrough - PSX
43. Wolfenstein The Old Blood - PC
44. Might and Magic Book 1 - PC
45. Hexen: Beyond Heretic - PC
46. Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter - PC
47. Duke Nukem - PC

I've been playing this little game off and on for the past few months and finally decided to make a push for the end a week or two ago. Duke Nukem is the best and the worst of the DOS-era and DOS-style platformers. The controls are quite good for using the keyboard and there are a few cool mobility powerups that get used in interesting ways; it's not so much a Metroidvania in that regard because it's a linear set of levels but the way it forces you to use those mobility items is reminiscent. The game doesn't overstay its welcome but isn't too short either.

The bad comes from the general design ideas of the time. The first thing you'll notice is that compared to the platformers you see on the NES the view is extremely zoomed in. It's not as bad as Metroid II on the Game Boy (that's Duke Nukem II's issue) but you still have a major visibility problem. This forces you to take things slowly or have extremely fast reflexes (and more likely it's you mashing fire as you run because enemies react the instant you get on screen). This leads into the hazards; the stages are littered with various hazards and many times you can very easily run into them without knowing they're there; spikes at the ends of jumps/drops are the common offender because you get a split second to react due to how zoomed in the view is. The game compensates by giving you eight bars of health and then you die when you take a hit after they're gone (think of it like shield units and you die when you get hit while unshielded). Health pickups are fairly plentiful so usually you are ok but your health does carry over level to level.

The other thing that sucks is the game relies a bit too much on leaps of faith and general wandering around. Most of the maps are fairly mazelike which is compounded by how little viewable area you have. This is what leads to the leaps of faith; Duke can jump further than you can see if you hold right/left the entire time. You learn to recognize in the level designs when they want you to make such a leap.

Oh, and the conveyer physics blow. They move you at the same speed you run at, so if you're running over them you go at double speed. This also means that trying to run against it holds you in place, necessitating jumping to go in the reverse direction. Now about half the time this is fine; they might do something like put a ceiling at character height so the conveyer becomes a one way passage or place it so you do short hops to make it through. But there's a few levels that put in conveyers arranged precisely to make you have to jump around like a madman and coordinate when you need to move with it or against it to not get stuck/fall off and have to repeat things/die horribly because you got stuck in a corner under an overhang and right in front of a spike trap and you get knocked back slightly when you die and fuck that second to last level for killing me so many times with that damn trap you don't know is coming.

Still, it's probably one of the best platformers of the DOS school of design. I just prefer my Mega Man and Mario.

[Gamerforlife]

Congratulations Arkham Origins, you are no longer the worst Arkham game.

[emwearz]

Wow! Big statement, which version did you play? I hear the PC version is utterly broken from a technical standpoint, but rarely hear anything about the actual gameplay/story itself.

[Gamerforlife]

Wow! Big statement, which version did you play? I hear the PC version is utterly broken from a technical standpoint, but rarely hear anything about the actual gameplay/story itself.

Yeah, I've heard the PC version was outsourced to some crappy company and is a total debacle. I think they pulled it from Steam

There's a lot I don't like about Arkham Knight. The Batmobile is, for the most part, very poorly integrated into the game. The combat and stealth that I've enjoyed in the past they went and messed around with so much that I rarely enjoyed them in this game

There are bugs and glitches I've encountered, which I don't think I ever had happen in the last two Arkham games that Rocksteady worked on. Ironic, the technical issues, particularly on the PC version, when everyone crapped on the team that developed Origins for that.

There are some high points and cool elements (like John Noble's performance as Scarecrow which completely outshines every other voice acting performance in the entire series, the really fun Harley Quinn DLC, gliding around Gotham City skies while chasing Manbat, and those moments when you get to team up with Nightwing), Arkham Knight is not a terrible game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a poor Arkham game by the series' own standards. The whole thing is just very uneven. Every time I enjoyed something about the game I would quickly discover something I didn't like or be reminded of something I didn't like (oh joy, time for another crappy Batmobile versus tank battle).

The game actually jumps the shark when it has you using the bat mobile in a stealth mission against tanks.

At that point you're thinking, "is this really happening?"

EDIT: Oh, and I just have to throw it out there. Shadow of Mordor melee combat > Arkham Knight melee combat