Topic: Last Game You Beat

@KilloWertz I think that's fair enough and I don't disagree! The Uncharted influence is a key part of the Tomb Raider reboot series and it's a good thing.

It's been some years since I've played Rise so the events of it slip my mind a bit. I mainly remember Russian snow bases and some Baba Yaga DLC. Same with the first game, but I feel like it's fresher because I've seen the movie adaptation. Though I can't remember what bits were in the game and what bits were in the movie 😅

I think it's just where I was in my life that affected my perception too. I played shadow right at the end of a long pandemic year of blitzing through over a hundred games so I was more inclined to 100% it as I had more time to actually play it which meant I got a lot more involved with it. Also being more familiar with games in general made it easier for me to know how to approach certain things in that game specifically, if that makes sense.

Whereas when I played Rise and to a lesser extent TR, it was much more of a blue moon thing. I was playing very few games back then because I had less time due to work. My general gaming skills were rusty and I was less inclined to 100% anything but a select few games.

I do still kind of have a loose and unwritten tier system for how far I will go in a game. Whether it's 100%, story and then some, just the story or give up early. Normally I know by the end of the main story which category the game falls into.

Just finished BioShock on PS4. This game has been in my backlog forever and it's taken me 14 years since it came out before I finally played through it. Not to mention that I've started it multiple times but never finished it. Well now that I have finished it, I can say this was an absolutely phenomenal game. I can definitely see why people were blown away by it when it came out in 2007. It was unlike anything people had seen back then. I mean, having a city underwater with a story that takes place in the 1950s and investigating why everything went wrong with this "experiment" is actually pretty mind-blowing for a 2007 game.

What grasped me the most was the gameplay loop though. Although I have to say at first, I thought the game would be more like a horror experience. It felt like that for the first couple of hours but after that it just became a standard first-person shooter. Which is totally fine because I absolutely loved switching between so many different weapons and fighting all the different enemy types. It did feel a bit repetitive once you got to the later levels but fortunately it didn't overstay its welcome. The ending was also really cool, I just love the amount of creativity that went into this game!

So overall, while the game was just a normal fun experience for me, I can still acknowledge how cool it was for the time. Definitely one of the most influential games of the PS3/360/Wii generation. I'm so glad that I've finally experienced it!

Thought to tag you here @ralphdibny since I remember you asking me what I thought about the game when we were playing through it on Push Square Game Club last year (it's actually been almost a year since then, time sure does fly!).

@LtSarge ahh nice one and well done on beating it! Very interesting to read your thoughts there. Sounds like a long break did the world of wonders for your experience with it! Unfortunately I burned out pretty quickly and while I did see it through to the end, I can't say I enjoyed it too much. Now I've started the series though, I've got to finish it 😭. I'll get around to Bioshock 2 at some point in the next year, I'm sure!

@ralphdibny Yeah really, I remember before I took a break from it that the game felt too easy since I was always full on ammo. One year later I had forgotten everything about the game so it was like resetting the difficulty. I was getting absolutely destroyed, lol. But yeah, I can definitely see why you got burned out, it gets kinda repetitive towards the end.

I'm mostly excited for BioShock Infinite myself. BioShock 2 was apparently not as good as the first one according to a lot of people, but Infinite looks very interesting due to a change in setting and also more interesting protagonists. Not to mention Infinite's DLC which is about what Rapture was like before disaster struck.

I'll still play the second game first but I'm so glad that I'm one step closer to Infinite now.

@LtSarge I think infinite looks good too, more traditional steampunk vibes than the first couple. I think I would have appreciated them more if I had played them when they came out tbh. It can be harder to appreciate without the zeitgeist surrounding it. Maybe they just didn't gel with the games I'm sort of digging at the moment/the way I'm playing them. Plus the first game is quite long for what it is, I think around 12 hours. I think Infinite is much longer so hopefully it does more to fill the time!

Just finished Observer on PS4. Full disclosure: I loved this game! I just think the first couple of hours should not have been included simply because of how slow the game is during this part. I genuinely thought that I wasn't playing a horror game for a long time. Walking from door to door, asking the tenants if they've seen anything suspicious, it was truly agonising. You do that so much that I actually thought I was halfway through the story, which is why I eventually took a break from it because I didn't think there was much of the game left. When I resumed it yesterday, I realised that I was only 1/4 of the way through the game and that after this part, it's pretty much a roller coaster of crazy, "Bloober Team"-esque, sections. This is when the game gets truly amazing. Just like with Layers of Fear, I absolutely love the surreal psychological aspect. Visually, it's like a sensory bombardment during these parts and it's great. The devs are honestly so creative and I can't imagine how much work they must've put into making these sections.

As a horror game though, I find it to be weaker than Layers of Fear, mostly because of the boring initial few hours but also because the game focuses too much on its cyberpunk setting and creating cool levels rather than focusing on the horror aspect. I rarely got spooked throughout my playthrough. As a whole though, the game was a phenomenal experience and I'd honestly say this is the second best game Bloober Team has made.

I'm glad that I completed this game today because tomorrow The Medium arrives on Cloud Gaming and I'm so excited to give that a shot. Don't know if I'll play through it from beginning to end since I haven't done that with a game on the cloud yet. But if it works out great then I might just do that.

Just finished Devil May Cry 5 on PS4. While this game had some issues, I still think it's the best DMC game I've played. I didn't really like the older DMC games because they haven't aged that well and aren't that good in general, particularly DMC 1 and 2. 3 was good and 4 was very good but these games have all felt rather difficult to play (except for maybe DMC 2). So I've been playing them on the easiest difficulty, while with DMC 5 I decided to play on Normal difficulty and I managed to get through it with not that much hardship. Only the final boss fight gave me a lot of trouble so I had to use up like 7-8 gold orbs, lol. But that boss fight was easily one of the coolest ones I've experienced in video games. It almost felt like a Dragon Ball Z fight with all the teleporting going on lol.

So the issues I had with the game were first and foremost V as a playable character. I wish the developer would've just focused on Nero and Dante instead of letting us play as a third character that has the slowest and most unsatisfying fighting style of all three characters. Second, I thought the level design was rather shallow and uninspiring. The first couple of levels were great but then you're just going through tunnels, sewers, hell-like levels over and over again and it became stale. Finally, the game repeats one particular boss fight WAY too often. They should've probably toned it down a bit.

Another thing I have to mention is just how god tier the soundtrack in this game is. Nero's theme and Silver Bullet alone are just phenomenal tracks that I will never stop listening to in my free time.

All in all, I highly enjoyed this game and it was an absolute blast to play as Nero and Dante. Hopefully we'll get Devil May Cry 6 in the near future and won't have to wait a decade for the next game like with DMC5.

Just finished Steins;Gate on PS Vita after roughly 40 hours of playtime and reaching all endings. I also managed to get my Platinum trophy #36.

This is one of the best games I've ever played. It's been a very long time since a new franchise has managed to resonate so much with me. The franchises that I hold near and dear to me are exclusively Persona, Trails of Cold Steel and Danganronpa, but now Steins;Gate is also up there among those series.

The first thing that I loved about this game is all the unique and memorable characters. At first I could barely remember their names because they were in Japanese but after 40 hours I pretty much remember all of them. This is the primary reason for why this game resonated with me because I simply adore getting to know high school anime characters over the period of the game. You can probably see why based on the pattern of my favourite games as mentioned above. Persona, Trails of Cold Steel and Danganronpa all fit this bill.

The second thing that I loved is the unique story and the excellent character writing. All the characters have such memorable personalities and this is reflected in their dialogues. Like how the protagonist is the "mad scientist" with a made-up name, laughs maniacally and so on. Or how his childhood friend always enters a room by saying "Tutturu", calls the protagonist by a nickname and always wants her bananas or chicken. It all just feels so natural, like I've always been a part of their lives. The level of immersion is just incredible and the fact that I've been playing this game for 40 hours for the past two weeks without it feeling like that much time has passed just goes to show how invested I've been in this game.

Overall, I simply adored this game and I genuinely cannot wait to play the other two titles on the Switch. This is now my new favourite franchise and it feels great to feel excited about another franchise once again. In the meantime, I'm just going to sit down and enjoy listening to the game's absolutely stellar soundtrack.

What a great experience this was!

Just finished Resident Evil 2 - Claire B on Vita (PS1 version). I played through Leon A earlier this year and after finishing his scenario I decided to take a break from the game before starting up Claire B. I finally decided to play through Claire B now and it was definitely worth playing through. At first I was skeptical since it seemed like the same game again but with minor differences. However, there are enough differences here to make it worth going through. New areas, new characters, new puzzles and most importantly for me, you finally get to see Mr. X, lol. When I played through Leon A I was confused as to why Mr. X hadn't shown up for me as everyone mentions this guy whenever RE2 is brought up, especially when RE2 remake came out a couple of years ago. So when I finally saw him in Claire B I was surprisingly very glad lol. His inclusion truly made the game much scarier.

So overall, the game is truly a classic and it's crazy to me that a PS1 game from the late 90s holds up so well today. Now that I'm done with RE2, I can finally continue playing through this series with Resident Evil 3, which I'm really looking forward to.

Just finished Jak 3 on PS3. This game was much better than the second one. Better checkpoint system, less frustrating missions (but still quite a few frustrating ones that feel like they should belong in Jak 2), more variety, better weapons (without the rifle that bounces shots around, I think I would've honestly enjoyed this game a lot less) and a more interesting story. Not to mention that it was much shorter than Jak 2. I finished Jak 2 in 15 hours and Jak 3 in 9 hours, which is nice to see because Jak 2 had a lot of padding in my opinion. At the end of the day though, I didn't like Jak 3 that much. I thought it was a decent game but it just doesn't feel good to play and it leaves you frustrated more often than it should.

I honestly just don't see the appeal of this franchise anymore. The first game was brilliant because it had a clear focus, which was to be a 3D platformer collectathon game. And it worked out great, I loved that game! Then Naughty Dog decided to switch up the formula for the second and third games and I think the series became worse as a result. The mechanics just weren't as good as the platforming mechanics. Shooting sucks because you can't aim and there's no strafing either. Racing sucks because of wonky controls and dying instantly if you drive into a wall and you have to start the race over from the beginning. Driving in general was an absolute pain in Jak 3 as well. Like I just don't find these games to be fun at all and I don't understand how anyone would want another game in this franchise. I know people have been wanting Jak 4 but I don't want one at all if it's going to be just like the second and third games. If it improves the shooting and driving mechanics then yeah, I'm all in. But based on what I've played so far, I don't want to play more games like these. They're awful, I want more games like the first Jak in that case.

And I mean, just look at how the other PlayStation franchises have evolved compared to Jak. Ratchet & Clank is an amazing series because the satisfying gameplay has been preserved ever since the first entry. Sly Cooper is phenomenal as well, I played the second game last year (might play the third one soon as well) and it felt like such a huge step-up compared to the first game and most importantly, it still felt like Sly Cooper! These franchises have evolved nicely, while Jak seemed to have just poorly replicated whatever was popular at the time.

Regardless, I'm finally glad to be done with the PS2 trilogy after almost a decade of having it in my PS3 backlog. I won't be playing Lost Frontier on PSP because I'm done playing Jak games in the style of 2 and 3. However, I do have Daxter on my Vita because a lot of people have spoken fondly of it so I'm definitely giving that game a shot.

Just finished Little Nightmares on Switch. I have mixed thoughts about this game. I absolutely love the game's creepy atmosphere and focus on 3D platforming as well as puzzle-solving. It feels like playing a 3D sidescrolling variant of LittleBigPlanet and that's really cool. The thing is that I was truly enjoying the game only during the first half. After that the game starts adding enemies and then it became a frustrating experience for me. It honestly feels like the game was made by people who grew up in the 80s with cryptic and frustrating NES/Master System games where the games don't tell you where to go, what to do and what your character is able to do. A lot of the times I genuinely didn't know what to do and there's very little room for exploration when there are enemies patrolling the areas. The presence of enemies also make it difficult to experiment with what your character is able to do. I was stuck in an area for such a long time because I didn't know you could pull a certain item and the enemy's movements made it hard for me to figure it out on my own. I've seriously died so many times in the later half of the game. There have also been so many instances of insta-death moments simply because an enemy showed up and there was very little time to react to it. It doesn't help either that after you die, you have to wait for upwards of 60 seconds before you respawn (at least in the Switch version).

I'm not kidding when I'm saying this, this game nearly broke me towards the end. It completely drained me and made me almost dislike the entire game. It just feels like a fundamentally awesome game bogged down by poor game design with regards to the enemies. At least it didn't overstay its welcome and it's fairly short at 3-4 hours for the main story. I'm definitely going to give the three DLCs a go and I'm hoping I'll be able to enjoy them more than the second half of the main game. I really want to like this series because I've heard so many great things about it and the second game looks great. Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy it more, I definitely want to give this series another chance.

I have finished nier automata (5 main endings plus 3/4 extra). It is a game I was allways waiting for a huge sale as I am not very keen on platinum's gameplay style but I like a good narrative.
I found the game easier than bayonetta for instance and as it swaps between hack and Slash and Bullet hell it never got boring.
And story wise is just unbeliveably good. I want to say my second favourite game of all time behind the Witcher 3.

Well I just finished the three DLCs of Little Nightmares on Switch and overall, I think my opinion of the game has become a bit more positive. The first DLC felt like a mash of areas from the main game, so it felt pretty meh to play through. The second one was more interesting where you had to collect friends to help you progress, which was cool. The third DLC was the best one though, as it had you exploring a mansion sort of like a Resident Evil game. You're supposed to go to different rooms on different floors, collect statues and bring them to a room in order to progress to the final area. I absolutely loved solving the puzzles in this area and it felt like a nice change of pace compared to the main game. The twist at the end of the last DLC was also really cool.

So overall, I think the last DLC single-handedly made me like this game more and I definitely want to check out the sequel now!

Dogfight 1942 (PC/Steam)

Gameplay:

• Mission based arcade dogfighter that's pretty simple to grasp (especially if you've played anything similar, the controls feel almost exactly the same as those in Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders, which I played on Switch).
• Missions usually consist of two or three objectives separated by checkpoints, and range from typical "shoot everything down" stuff (sometimes with a defensive objective, as you can see below where you have to destroy all bombers before London's life bar is depleted), to ship bombing runs, landing challenges, and even a stealth segment.
  
• Sometimes a mission will let you choose between a few different planes (usually 2 or 3, though I think the final mission gives you like 6 or so options), though just as often you're required to use a specific plane (like one where you're in a sea plane). Special weapons seem to be pre-determined as well (everything has a machine gun, but mission objective determines whether it's joined by bombs, torpedos, or rockets).
• Played it on Normal and found it to be an extremely easy & short experience (not a complaint mind you, just a head's up). Your plane actually has auto regen (just fly away from the action for a few secs & you're good to go), and even if you do fail the missions tend to be short enough that it'll take you no time at all to get back to where you were (especially considering the aforementioned checkpoints). All in all you can knock this one out in a couple of hours.
• It has a more arcadey focus though, so if you really get into it there's replayability in the form of it's grading system (you earn 1-5 stars upon mission completion depending on score, which you can improve upon by completing optional objectives, taking out non objective required enemies, and chaining together kill streaks) & multiple difficulty settings. There's also online co-op, dogfight, and survival modes which I haven't tried.
• There are also two extra DLC campaigns (Russian & I think African campaigns) which I intended to buy in a bundle (base game is $10, and the bundle with everything is only $12, so it's definitely the way to go if you buy it), but I got a little ahead of myself and just got the base game. I'm sure I'll buy the expansions eventually though, as they're just $3 a pop individually.

Story:

• There's really no overall narrative, you just jump from famous battle to famous battle, either as the US fighting Japan in the Pacific or the UK fighting Germany in western Europe. Unlike other games of the type each side isn't even separated into it's own campaign, you'll just play two missions as the US, two as the UK, so on so forth until it ends. The Battle of Britain, Iwo Jima, Midway, and Okinawa are just some of the battles you'll take part in.
  

Audio/Visual:

• Originating as a 360 game it's not the most advanced looking game, but it still looks relatively modern & clean. I was able to run it in 1080p at max settings, & while the bombing raid over London was the "troublesome" mission dropping to just above 80 fps at times, pretty much every other mission was showing to run with framerates in the multi-hundreds (over 4-500 frames at times, not that I would even be able to perceive that), so I'm sure any relatively modern PC could run it without issue.
• I should also mention that the game is glitched in that it doesn't render trees (they're there, but you can't see them). This isn't a problem 98% of the time, but there is exactly one objective where you have to land next to a plane crashed in a field where you'll be crashing or bouncing off of the things since you don't know where they are. This can apparently be fixed by changing the PC's internal clock to before the year 2012 (the year of the game's release), but I never bothered and still completed the objective after only like 3 tries.
• It's soundtrack consists of generic war music. Hardly anything memorable, but it gets the job done.
• I should also mention that being a WWII game, you're going to hear a certain Japanese racial slur repeated about 5,000 times. Understandable given the context, but it'll probably make some uncomfortable nonetheless in this day & age.

Conclusion:

• I was actually looking to see if Blazing Angels was available (I played it back on the Wii but never finished it at the time), but apparently Ubisoft pulled it & it's sequel from Steam back in 2015 (likely due to expiring plane licences?) so I looked for something similar & found this, and it did the job. Nothing revolutionary, but a nice time for those who like arcade dogfighters. A nice easy transition into PC gaming for me.
  

Just finished Mad Max and loved it do recommend!

Just finished both Omno and Raji.

Omno was a very lighthearted exploration title with no combat. It’s decent enough to checkout but I didn’t get too much from it. Finished it up for the achievements.

Raji is a bit more involved; it’s beautiful but the combat was really frustrating in my opinion. She would rarely do what I wanted lol. Also despite the unique location and setting, the story was actually… It feels like a disservice to say generic but it kind of was. Fantastic narration though - I hope whoever voiced Vishnu (I missed it in the credits) gets more work!

Glad to have played them both on Gamepass though. Now onto Last Stop.

@K1LLEGAL Congrats mate! I thought Raji was a decent game but in hindsight, it could've been improved in many areas. The combat for instance didn't have that much depth and it honestly got a bit repetitive for me towards the end. It was cool though to learn more about Hindu mythology even if the story wasn't the greatest. I totally want to see more games like this in the future though!

I've also played a fair amount of Omno and it's fun but not anything special. Although I do have to say that I like that the game doesn't get too fixated on its formula and is open to introduce different sections in order to keep things interesting.

But yeah, it's so nice to be able to experience games like these on Game Pass. I would sadly never pay for them individually because they don't feel like must-haves like other indie games such as Hollow Knight or Celeste.

I finished fable 3 the other day and enjoyed it quite a bit although many of its UI chances are rather strange and hard to adapt (no minimap, no health bar, no direct menu, etc). I found the story much better than the previous entry apart from the "last year" that was very messy.

Now that I played all 3 main games I would rank them as 1 (anniversary) - 3 - 2 from best to worst (I know this is not the consensus at all)

@LtSarge thanks! The problem with me is that I probably would have paid for these games had they not been on Gamepass (well before gamepass was a thing I would have) and then I might have regretted it. Again they aren’t bad games but you’re looking at like £16-£22 for these games at full price which is a bit much in my opinion.

Raji is definitely a well made game and I actually enjoyed the platforming and environments but yea just the combat was the big negative for me.

Just finished Persona 5 Royal on PS4 after 146 hours of playtime over the past 1.5 years and got my Platinum trophy #37. Another testament of why I absolutely adore this franchise and why it's my favourite series of all time. There are just not that many games like this and that's what makes them special to me.

So I had already played the original Persona 5 before this version and I thought that one was very good, but Atlus truly upped their game with Royal. It isn't just an enhanced edition with extra post-game content. There are hundreds upon hundreds of changes that have been made throughout the base game, which has made for a more enjoyable experience. Changes to the RPG mechanics, there are more confidants to hang out with, more places to visit and so on. It truly feels like the developer revised the entire game and added tons of new stuff that makes it worth playing through again. I also managed to finish this game on Normal difficulty thanks to these changes, which I struggled with in the original P5. On a side note, this is the first time I've finished a Persona game on Normal since I wasn't good with JRPGs when I started with Persona 4 Golden five years ago. Really proud that I've been finishing more JRPGs on Normal now (also finished Trails of Cold Steel IV earlier this summer on Normal).

However, as I've said in the past, I prefer Persona 4 Golden over Persona 5, even the Royal version. That's because the underlying issues I had with P5, e.g. not that many likeable teammates with good dynamics with each other and the darker theme of the game in general, are still there. I vastly prefer the P4 cast over the P5 one. Another thing that I was hoping they would improve with the Royal version was the inclusion of more events with your friends. P4G had so many great, fun and memorable events while P5R barely got any new ones and the existing ones were always cut short by the main story.

It honestly feels like the developer forgot what made P4G so special, which to me were the normal and relaxing moments you had with your friends. I feel like they were trying to streamline P5R to make it more cinematic and appealing to the mainstream audience, which was apparent in the newly added third semester. Won't spoil anything about it, but I didn't feel as fulfiled by it as I had hoped I would be. Like my idea of a quintessential Persona game is one where you separate your role as a Persona-user and your role as a high school student. I don't want to see both of them getting mixed together, which they were constantly in P5R.

At the very least, they made one significant change in the Royal version that I wished for and for that, I'm so grateful to the developer.

All in all, even though I went for a bit of a rant towards the end (but that just shows how passionate I am about this series I guess since I love it so much), Persona 5 Royal is one of the best games ever made and an absolute must-play JRPG. I truly hope that one of these days, it will get added to Xbox so that more people can experience this phenomenal game.