Games Beaten 2013

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Company of Heroes PC
Super Mario 3D Land 3DS
Far Cry 3 PC
Mega Man 2 3DS
Resident Evil: Revelations 3DS

Capcom did it. They built a Resident Evil game I liked well enough to finish to the end. The pacing was spot on, building up from tense scares to fast paced action, back to slower more deliberate pacing. They even managed to throw in a few turret sections without them feeling completely out of place. The graphics for a 3DS game were incredible, rivaling stuff I've seen on the Wii in terms of lighting and effects (I'm really growing to appreciate the 3DS' on-board cloud-partical-processorthingy).

I'm sad they dropped the ball on the environments later on in the game because the ship is just a beautiful thing to look at in the beginning. About halfway through though you end up just traversing some average brown and grey corridors which is a shame. Luckily it's a psuedo open world of sorts, and you're free to run about most of the ship as you please. It reminds me a LOT of RE1's mansion, which is a good thing.

The bosses were quite a bit of fun and pretty challenging, but the rest of the game is pretty easy. Half the time you really don't even need to shoot anything, or dodge anything for that matter. That said, the last boss is definitely deserving of note as being one of the cooler bosses I've seen in quite a long while. Once you figure out the pattern he's pretty easy, but, the arena and design are top notch.

Story has never been a strength of RE but this one was surprisingly tolerable, with pretty well delivered lines and no huge glaring plot holes. I didn't realize it was a prequel to RE1 till the very end which is actually pretty neat. There are a few times of notable cringe worthy dialog though, and it just wouldn't be an RE game without some of that I guess.

If I have one complaint, it's the controls, rather a lack of options for them. I ended up using option C, which controls less like most RE games and more like a 3rd person shooter. This is swell and all, but I really wish I could have used the face buttons for movement and the analog pad for looking. Having it the other way around worked fine after lots of practice, but my accuracy in aiming definitely took a dive. It does support the CPP, but since I have an XL and live in the US, that doesn't really mean much to me.

It's a shame most RE games aren't as good as this one was. If they were, I'd probably like the series a lot more.

[Hazerd]

January 2013:

Mario Kart Wii
Mario Kart 7
Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse

February 2013:

Chrono Trigger DS

[BoneSnapDeez]

February 2013:

Chrono Trigger DS

How'd you like it compared to the original?

[Hazerd]

February 2013:

Chrono Trigger DS

How'd you like it compared to the original?

Sorry, didnt leave any descriptive info, but this was my first play through of Chrono Trigger.

I didnt enjoy this game as much as i enjoyed other RPG's of the time, like Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy 6, maybe they were just more entertaining as a kid.

Played it through with just following the main required storyline using a faq in gamefaqs from time to time, beat it in 13 hours 32 minutes with Crono/Magus/Frog in my party, only did 2 endings, the one after you get Masamune (ending #6), and ending #1 (The Fated Hour).

Im not sure what next game i will play, was thinking Pokemon SoulSilver now that i have it.

*edit*

May re-visit Chrono Trigger actually.. seems there is alot of extra stuff to do i feel i cant get away without doing!

[Gamerforlife]

1. Thomas Was Alone - PC
2. Sam & Max Save the World - The whole season - PC, GOG versions
3. Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space - The whole season - PC, GOG versions
4. Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse - Episode 1 - PC, GOG version
5. Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse - Episode 2 - PC, GOG version
6. Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse - Episode 3 - PC, GOG version
7. The Walking Dead Series - PC

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time - PS3



This is an EXCELLENT sequel that only got better and better as I kept playing it. It sticks close to the already established formula rather than taking the series in a new direction. However, given the rarity of 3D, mascot platformers today, it still feels fresh. Every thing you know and love about the series is here, with a few little additions and refinements that don't drastically change the formula, but do enhance it.

The hub worlds have taken on some Metroid inspired elements. Some areas can only be accessed with certain abilities. Those abilities come in the form of different outfits Sly can wear, and different Cooper ancestors you get to play as. You'll need to use these in the main story missions as well and they add some fun twists to the gameplay. One Cooper character in particular plays like a cross between Sly Cooper and Carmelita, and has a cool quick shot ability that allows him to slow down time while lining up several targets and quickly eliminating them all in quick succession like a cartoon version of Clint Eastwood. There are plenty of collectibles to be found in the game, more than previous installments I think, but it's all optional. They brought back the collectible bottles from Sly 2, as well as the artifacts requiring you to bring them back to your HQ before time runs out. Depending on what collectibles you get, you can unlock really useful new abilities for Sly and the gang, or unlockable goodies like arcade mini-games

The game has the usual mix of stealth and platforming and lots of different mini-games. One thing the Sly series always offers is variety, and the same is true here. A lot of mini-games are call backs to previous games, but there is some new stuff too and I haven't even unlocked all of the optional arcade games yet. They've incorporated six axis gameplay into this title. It works really well and isn't something the game does too often. When it's there, it's usually simple stuff or really short lived mini-games. Just be aware that if you're using a third party controller with no six axis support, you're gonna have some problems finishing this game. Also new to the series are quick time events. For people who hate those, they usually consist of the game telling you to hit one button and giving you all the time in the world to do it. However, there is one MAJOR quick time event battle in the game that feels a lot like a similar fight in Resident Evil 4 between Leon and a certain villain from that game. It's very easy though, because they give you so much reaction time. The boss fights are all excellent, though there are some occasionally cheap feeling attacks that they use. Some cool refinements to the series include mid mission saves (the game checkpoints frequently), enemies showing up as red dots on the radar(making it much easier to stay stealthy), an item you can get that helps you track down collectible bottles, and a lot more character upgrades than I remember from previous games.

The art and music are pretty much what you expect from the series. It's the same, great, cel shaded style, with great animations and that same sort of Looney Tunes style influence present in a lot of the stuff you see characters do(One of the enemies I knocked off a ledge even held up a sign Wile E Coyote style before falling to his death LOL). There have been a few cosmetic changes to some characters, but nothing major. They've slightly changed the look of Sly's face. Carmelita seems to be wearing a short skirt rather than long pants, and Bentley's girlfriend has been given a much more attractive look than I remember her having in Sly 3. The music fits the game well with some jazzy influences and stuff that sounds like it could fit a James Bond movie. The voice actors are all the same, though I'm not sure if Carmelita's voice is the same. They change her voice actress so many times in this series it's starting to feel like a running gag.

One of the things I have always loved about Sly Cooper games is the writing, from the story to the jokes to the characterization. I've always felt that the series is stronger in those areas than the Jak and Daxter series or the Ratchet and Clank series. I had mixed feelings about the writing in the first two chapters. Things really pick up in Chapter 3 though with some hilarious, memorable moments. The quality of the dialog picks up in this chapter too. Chapter 4 brings in a story twist that may come as a big surprise to people who have played through Sly 3. By chapter 5 I was invested and wanted to see what else the story had in store for me. By the time I finished the game I can say that I felt I had played a proper Sly Cooper game as far as the overall quality of the game's writing goes. They even manage to slip in some surprisingly adult stuff in there, but in a way that won't seem obvious to kids. I'll just say that one mission involves a female reluctantly using a little sex appeal to distract some guards in a scene I found a little surprising for a kid friendly game. And one villain actually threatens to brutally chop a character up into little pieces, with the tongue being the last thing he cuts off in response to that character's witty insults.

This game retailed for 40 bucks. Both the PS3 and Vita versions are on sale for even less at Best Buy right now I think. If you buy the PS3 version like I did, you get the Vita version for free with that whole cross play thing. It's a good deal in my opinion and I hope the game has good sales figures. The ending leaves things open for another sequel. Overall, I don't know if this is the best in the series(nothing in the game quite reaches the awesomeness of Sly 3's pirate chapter), but it's good enough to hang with its predecessors and good enough to fool you into thinking that the game was made by the same developers who did the PS2 trilogy.

Minor complaints:
The load times are pretty bad
The game does a lot of hand holding. To be fair though, some of the trophies for this game seem to offer a fair challenge from what I've seen, including getting high scores on some of the unlockable, arcade mini-games, and getting through some parts of the main adventure quickly or skillfully. For example, one trophy requires you to complete a rhythm based section of one of the game's missions with ZERO mistakes. That took me a couple of tries and got a little annoying, but I did it.

[BoneSnapDeez]

May re-visit Chrono Trigger actually.. seems there is alot of extra stuff to do i feel i cant get away without doing!

Try to get all the endings in the New Game+. Some of them are pretty interesting.

You might want to glance at a walkthrough, as some of the endings must be achieved during a very limited window. StrategyWiki has a pretty good section about all this.

My latest game completed...

Astro Avenger II
(on the easiest setting)
PC

A shmup developed in Belarus. This beast has 50 levels!

I enjoyed it.

[Ack]

1. Sniper Elite V2 (PS3)(TPS)
2. Teen Agent (PC)(Point and Click Adventure)
3. Alpha Protocol (PS3)(RPG)
4. Beneath A Steel Sky (PC)(Point and Click Adventure)
5. Imscared - A Pixelated Nightmare (PC)(Horror)
6. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (SNES)(RPG)
7. Celestial Mechanica (PC)(Platformer)
8. Gravity Bone (PC)(First Person Adventure)
9. Secret of Mana (SNES)(RPG)
10. Lure of the Temptress (PC)(Point and Click Adventure)
11. Mario's Early Years: Fun With Numbers (SNES)(Edutainment)
12. CoD of Duty (PC)(FPS)
13. The Bard's Tale (PS2)(RPG)
14. The Great Circus Mystery, Starring Mickey and Minnie (SNES)(Platformer)
15. Deus Ex (PC)(FPS)

Ok, I finally played through Deus Ex and took the time to get all three endings (New Dark Age, Illuminati, and Helios). In general I enjoyed the game. Was I blown away? Well...no. I must admit that I admire many of the ideas in the game, but I also have to admit that I'm coming at this one more than a decade later, and many of its ideas in game design I've seen done in later games in better or more expansive ways. That's not to say I thought poorly of Deus Ex's system! I believe it deserves its place in gaming history. But its open nature I've now seen expanded upon in titles like Far Cry, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and the later Deus Ex games, of which I had already completed both 2 and 3 before starting here.

So, where to begin? I think I should take time to point out both what I liked and disliked about the game, so let's begin with what I liked: the interfacing of technology with humanity, the use of machines to accent and improve biology. I admit, I find some of the augmentations a little ridiculous, such as the nanobot shield which detonates explosives. But some of that technology I find realistic, such as an artificial heart, the use of nanotech to protect vital body parts from radiation or sudden impact, rapid regeneration...in fact, I actually feel that Deus Ex was limited with its scope of powers somewhat, but I realize that they were also being used as a design choice to help shape the way we played. I played JC as a walking tank, so I focused on bolstering defense, regeneration, protecting against environmental hazards, etc. I admit that I did take cloaking, but I found I only ever used it against mechanical beings because I could easily overpower human and augmented humanoids. Instead, I mainly used cloaking to disguise myself from security robots...that is, until I had the heavy weapons skill up high enough to simply blast them with a GEP's rocket and not worry about them anymore. But that is how I wanted to play, and if I instead wanted a character based around moving silently and invisibly, using a UAV to spy on enemy locations, then I could easily do it.

I did like that level design was also pointed around different playstyles. Yes, I realize that some of the levels could be considered unrealistic for various reasons, such as blocky buildings(it was a post-Unreal game, after all), bizarre vents, etc. But I did not feel constrained by my choice of play, and after a little exploring, I often found other methods for a completely different playstyle to access the same areas. In fact I made it a point to explore as much as possible, because I never knew where I might come across a new weapon upgrade, multitool, or even a candy bar.

The plot also didn't bother me. Yes, it's a mixture of a variety of conspiracy theories, but it is set in a dystopian future where mankind is unsure of how to succeed. The worst part about this is that the one individual who ultimately decides the fate of the planet, JC Denton, may not even be fully human. But in the meantime, plague is the norm, criminals roam the streets, the homeless and destitute are everywhere, and rival government factions make war while ultimately a merchant tries to gain the power of kings...it's a dark age not brightened by futuristic technology but instead limited by it. So I find the intent of Tracer Tong to put the world into a new dark age to be somewhat laughable since the world is already there. I could see a person arguing that the game is anti-capitalist, since the ultimate villain is a mega-rich 1%er whose avarice is only beaten by his pride...but then again, his allies are overreaching government agencies claiming to represent and protect the people while keeping them under their thumb and manipulating politics and the public through press reports and petty bureaucratic fighting. Really, the ultimate villain here seems to be any concept of one-world government, either via a human being or a collective of human beings, as even the Illuminati ending reveals they primarily influence as opposed to outright control, and the Helios ending involves the massive control of an AI merged with a man, not simply a man.

And then there is the music, which I enjoyed. Not only because I often felt it fit the mood, but also because it did not stay stagnant in the same way: I didn't constantly hear the same battle music from the opening to the end. Now sometimes I admit to finding this change jarring, as going between Hong Kong's shopping district and the Lucky Money Club was not a subtle moment. But the music kicked in when I needed it to provide me information and keep me pumped for any areas or combat experiences I was about the encounter. Now the sound effects...well, there was some hit-or-miss there. Listening to people fucking through a door was...odd. The range on that seemed stark. Voice acting was good for its time, and in general there were no characters that I thought were notable for a poor performance, though admittedly some of the East Asian accents felt a little hammy. Weapons sounded great, as did the resulting explosions and death throes of their usage.

I do have some complaints about textures, particularly advertisements and posters, which seemed to fade in and out of reality or become mere slashes of some kind of image depending on my distance. Also walls and floors would occasionally disappear and allow me to stare through empty space to other portions of that particular section of the map. If it had only happened a couple of times, I wouldn't mind, but both of these occurred consistently throughout the game. I also had some wonkiness with the reflections, though I never did encounter Hobie's angled-mirror-falling problem, despite my jumping around and trying to see it for humor's sake.

Now I do admit to disliking the opening area, but I realized a little ways in what it was: I don't care for the weapons provided early on in the game. Deus Ex was actually a bit tough for me to get into until I found my first shotgun. From there, I felt I could finally play the way I wanted to play, as opposed to running around with only the pistol and a bunch of melee or non-lethal weapons I didn't care to use. The sniper rifle was a great weapon too, but I had to upgrade my rifle skill to at least advanced before I really started using it to pop skulls(sometimes at point-blank range. That rifle was a beast). One issue I had with the skills is that they must reach a certain level before they really become useful, quite often advanced. Swimming I got away with trained for a long time, and environmental defense skill was rendered nearly worthless once I built up my augments. But I could have used a much more accurate firearm early on, as I greatly dislike many of the non-lethal weaponry due to the lack of range or the wait time it took for a dart to work if I didn't hit my target in the head(which didn't happen as often as I would have liked without a decent accuracy).

And the stacking item thing did bother me too a bit. It just felt like it broke from the world I was trying to experience to remind me that I was playing a video game.

Oh, slight annoyance to point out, and this is not something I'm criticizing Deus Ex for, but something I just wanted to say: the headlight augmentation maps to F12, which Steam uses for screenshots, so I occasionally had to delete a bunch of awful images when exiting the game. That's more a gripe for Steam's button configuration, not for Deus Ex, but I figure since some folks might choose to play it this way, they should get the head's up.

[Luke]

1. Batman Genesis
2. Golden Axe Sega CD
3. Streets if Rage Sega CD (I'm keeping the typo)
4. Streets of Rage 2
5. Super Mario Bros. 2 NES
6. TMNT Fall of the Foot Clan Gameboy
7. TMNT 2 The Arcade Game NES
8. TMNT Hyperstone Heist Genesis
9. Call of Duty Black Ops 360
10. Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis
11. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Genesis
12. Sonic CD Sega CD
13. Kung-Fu NES
14. Mega Man 2 NES
15. Out of This World snes
16. Flashback snes
17. Altered Beast genesis
18. Pit-Fighter genesis
19. Aladdin genesis
20. Aladdin snes
21. Ghosts n' Goblins nes, twice
22. Contra, NES
23. Bionic Commando, NES *new*

BC has one of the best endings in 8-bit history, so it's worth beating the game for that reason alone. The other reason to beat it is that it's incredible.

The controls, the graphics, the music, the controls, all pretty perfect. I can basically coast through he entire game, but only because I've been playing it since it was released. The only issue I still have is making a clean swing to the boss door in level 3 (the purple level). I also forgot which radios go with which levels, but that's trivial.

[dunpeal2064]

Damn Luke, you are kicking some 8-bit ass! I've been playing Bionic Commando recently, for the first time, and it really is fantastic. It takes some adjusting, but after maybe a half hour of play, I pretty much entirely forgot that I couldn't jump.

Since you seem to be pretty boss at NES stuff, I'm curious if you can clear Ninja Gaiden? THat game has been driving me insane, and I'm about ready to shove it in the "Games not Beaten" thread and move on

[noiseredux]

1. NHL '94 (SCD)
2. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (Sat)
3. Bust-A-Move Pocket (NGPC)
4. Sonic The Hedgehog (DC)

FINALLY. This was my third attempt this year at beating Sonic. I can always breeze through early levels, but by the last few I'm pulling my hair out. But I did it! This is the first time I've done it since the early 90's, so it feels awesome haha. And I must say that playing it on DC (Sega Smash Pack) through VGA looks amazing. Seriously amazing. Although I probably consider Sonic CD my favorite, this is a close contender. Which is kind of funny. There's so many damn water levels. I hate that gimmick of searching for air bubbles. But what can I say? Even those frustrating levels are so well designed that it's always fun to come back to.