Topic: Last Game You Beat

Infernax a few nights ago. Incredible Metroidvania style game. Great visuals, and that old-school feel was amazing. Not as hard as I thought it would be (except for the final "castle" which was freaking hard).
Love all the little secrets it has. And even a morality system to decide which ending you get!
Probably will go back to it for another ending sooner or later but right now my backlog is just too big.
Now I'm gonna jump back to Yakuza 0 which I need to finish once and for all.

Return to monkey island. I have mixed feelings on it. My first couple of hours were a blast as I have not played a game in the series in over a decade and was really nice to see old friends. But as time went down I got a little bit bored with its puzzles and found the ending really dull.

@Balta666 I felt largely the same regarding RtMI.... I personally found it a bit too linear, and only really enjoyed Act IV where things opened up a bit more. I must confess I miss the classic '9 verb' interface, and found that a lot of puzzles were solved almost automatically by having less options to choose from.

If you like Point-and-Click - I would highly highly recommend 'Thimbleweed Park', which is the creation of Ron Gilbert (famed for the MI series). Thimbleweed is a real love letter to classic adventure games, and much more challenging (in a good way) vs RtMI. Check it out!

@CJD87 I have played it a few years ago. It is very cool!

I beat FF7 Crisis core, but on switch.

Finished up Samurai Maiden today! I think it's more Ninja Gaiden/DMC with some Warriors elements than a Warriors clone (granted, it's more clunky than NG/DMC would be), and surprisingly challenging as it goes on. I think I may finish maxing out all the girls' affinities as I'm already pretty close to doing so, but I doubt I'm going to try & finish it on the higher difficulties as I think the only real reward will probably be extra concept art, which while neat isn't a huge motivator.

Oh, and for what it's worth it was patched last week (at least on Steam) to remove some of the wonky localization (or "censorship", depending on who you ask). When it launched all instances of "High School" or "High School Girl" were changed to "Gen Z" in the English subtitles which made some dialogue clunky as sometimes she was clearly describing a place (in one egregious instance, an explanation of how modern education goes from Elementary, to Middle, to High School, and University was changed to describing the differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, & Boomers), however all High School references have been restored.

The new Saints Row. And to be honest... It was fun. Not great. Not as good as the true Saints Row games... But yeah, it was fun. I was laughing out loud a few times (and cringing at the dialogue others) but overall it was a fun experience.

Resident evil 2 remake

Chained Echoes which I found alright but as the game does not have grind all battles are challenging which after some time it is just boring (in the last third I lowered the difficulty as I just wanted to see the story to the end). Storywise it definitely has some surprises but I have to say it has too many lol and can't say I was that satisfied with the ending.

Also finished God of War (1) for the first time as I managed to build a good setup with a tube TV in my office and will be playing a few PS2 and gamecube I missed over the years of playing exclusively on PC. The next in line is Shadow of the Colossus!

@Balta666 playing chained echoes as we speak. Only a few hrs in, but enjoying it thus far. One thing I do love is how fast the characters move..makes for exploring much quicker.

Out of curiosity, how long did it take you?

@NintendoByNature it as fairly long game. I want to say about 30h even with that last part in easy mode. The second act alone took me some 12/15h

P.s: it will get even quicker when you unlock something you already know.

@Balta666 ok very cool. Looking forward to the rest of the game.

I recently beat Crisis Core Reunion, having never played the original on the PSP. To be honest, I bought it hoping that it'd get me in the zone before we got an announcement about FF7 Remake coming to Xbox but alas, not the case (I'll probably just get it on Steam).

The core combat of the game was pretty fun and Zack was a likeable protagonist, but I was ultimately nonplussed by the experience. I found the story to be incredibly naff and Genesis to be a total wet fart of a villain – about 80% of his dialogue is quite literally quoting from an unfinished play. My man needs to read another book. You also have to grind a hell of a lot if you're after the achievements – and I just couldn't be bothered to rinse through all the 2 minute hallway combat encounters to get them.

It's a great-looking game in places and the ending still rules, but I'd wait for sale if you're interested in it. Zack also pops up in the trailer for FF7 Rebirth so I'm a bit worried they're going to bring Genesis and his mopey poetry back...

Last night I finished the final mission in Marvel's Midnight Suns, and that game surprised the hell out of me. I never quite clicked with XCOM 2 and I'm not invested in the MCU in the slightest – yet I still loved my time with the game.

The character writing is a bit irritating and I don't know why everyone talks like they're composing a Tweet, but I did end up warming to the cast by the end. I think I'm just a sucker for Three Houses-esque relationship-building and how that feeds back into the core gameplay loop.

And what a loop! I love games like Slay the Spire so the deck-building element was really addictive, and there's a proper rush when you're in a tight spot and you end up drawing the ideal hand and mowing down a wave of villains. The time really melted away as I played and I can see myself firing up NG+ in the future. I think it's already on sale so I'd happily recommend it to anyone who's interested – and if you're turned off by doing yoga with Blade you can always skip through the dialogue and simply enjoy the stat boosts.

Hope everyone's doing well, ta.

Echo Generation.

Really, really liked it. It's a little grindy (it's a turn-based RPG) and a little simple but I loved the atmosphere, the humour, the creepy parts. Really enjoyed it.

Resident evil 3 remake.

Death Stranding. One of the longest (and most awesome) endings ever.

@DoeNutz just finished death stranding too. Great game and I was at a point feeling the game would end with no answers but I am happy that it is not the case (for the most part at least)

@Balta666 Haha yep, this game has so much to explain that the incredibly long ending is actually justified. Can’t wait for the sequel.

@DoeNutz yep, me too!

Ryse: Son of Rome (Steam) - Xbox One launch sword & sandal actioneer is only $10 on Steam. Worth it?

Time to march on & show our worth.

• The main campaign consists of 8 linear missions with a flair for the cinematic (the third mission in particular seemed to give Saving Private Ryan a roman era makeover, as your legions are brutally dismembered by arrow & catapult fire as you make landfall on Brittania, an inspiration the devs don't even try to hide as "Saving Private Marius" is the name of the achievement you get for clearing the mission). All in all the game took me 7.5 hours of playtime to clear on the game's equivalent of Normal difficulty.
• Combat seems to take a page out of the Arkham playbook as you tend to be surrounded by enemies and you must strike down a rhythm of strikes, parries, & dodge rolls to engage in a rhythmic dance of death. When an enemy is low on health you can trigger a brutal execution move (these can be contextual, as when you are near a ledge Marius may throw the enemy over, for example). It's not a particularly novel setup, but works smoothly & feels good when you get into a groove (it does a decent enough job of introducing one or two new enemy variants each mission as well, so things don't get too repetitive).
  
  I've disarmed you.
• There are 3 perks you can swap around as well, which are activated whenever you perform one of the aforementioned execution moves. Depending on which one you have equipped, each execution will either restore some health (I kept it on this), grant you extra EXP (I was practically able to max everything out without using this anyways), or quickly fill your Focus meter (an ability you can trigger to slow down time, I never had to use it much).
• There are also some light "shooter" mechanics, for a lack of a better term. Sometimes archers will be firing on you from afar, and you'll have to wait for openings to throw spears back at them. Other times you'll have to man a ballista (which puts things in a first person orientation) and fire away at waves of foes, striking exploding barrels & knocking over cauldrons of boiling oil for maximum carnage. The former segments can be a bit finicky, while the latter are pretty fun & make you feel powerful.
  
  I'll give it a shot.
• One of the game's big twists is that at certain points you can command a legion of soldiers into battle. Occasionally this means marching in a line (these segments feel overly cinematic, where your only options are to move forward, raise shields to block arrows, and throw spears to retaliate, but are nonetheless cool) or getting to slightly alter your next combat encounter (you can have them cover archers while you're left to melee encounters alone, or they can help you on the battlefield but you still have to dodge arrows), but mostly this means a lot of escort/tower defense objectives (probably two or three for every one of the previous types of situations). For example the line may be held down by ballistae positions, and it's up to you to go around on your own to take them out before they whittle your soldiers down (likewise, most of the time your in the ballista seat, you're trying to thin down the waves so they don't overwhelm your line).
  
  Take command.
• It also naturally features boss fights, but these tended to be the easiest encounters in the game, IMO. They're almost always one on one fights & they don't tend to have much of a deeper move pool than regular enemies, so they mostly feel spongy rather than challenging. Well, then there's the very last confrontation in the game which is just a hallway of QTE prompts.
• There's some longevity added to the campaign in terms of collectables which are hidden in out of the way locations right off the main path (sometimes you may have to break down a gate or some such to reach a little hidden area). There are a bunch of these & despite thinking I did a pretty good job combing through the levels I still missed quite a bit. You have "Vistas" (environmental concept art), "Scrolls" (character, enemy, weapon bios), & "Chronicles" (comic book pages that tell side stories/go deeper into the lore). It's the Chronicles in particular I missed a bunch of, they seemed to be well hidden & there's more of them than the others.
  
  Wonder what's behind there?
• There's also an entire gladiatorial themed multiplayer mode included, but I haven't tried it out (at this point I can't imagine there'd be many people playing it anyhow). Though I do know you get to customize the look of your combatant & there's some sort of DLC related to this mode as I saw a "booster pack" option in it's menu.
• Graphically it still looks pretty modern & even impressive looking at points, especially the environments (some of the less important NPCs still look pretty "PS360" though). There is some hilariously uncanny valley stuff going on with a few of the female characters though. It's clearly at the point where they were motion captioning real people for the important characters and there's one scene where a prominent woman is in a very serious conversation with Marius, however they decided to map near DOA levels of jiggle physics to her chest so she's just bouncing around as she lightly walks around during this serious moment, lol. There are a handful of other scenes where such effects make some sense, but this didn't feel like one of them.
  
  
  
  
• In terms of vibe it's very much a sword & sandal genre effort from the era where 300, Spartacus, & the OG God of War games were the most prominent names in the field. It's very gory (you can almost guarantee an arm or a leg is coming off during the execution moves, and goops of blood always), and you're not making your way through without seeing some boobs (queue the decadent orgy party showing how corrupt/out of touch Roman leadership is).
  
  
  Whether you want to see bodies, or... bodies, this game has you covered (hopefully that second screenshot is still covered enough to be safe here).
• Story is pretty simple but sets the stage well. You play as Marius (a young soldier with a family legacy in the Legion), and after being sent off to quell a revolt in Brittania he must question loyalties as the sons of emperor Nero just make things worse with each decision. In the end he'll have to make choices that'll effect the future of Rome. While it's not to the level of the GoW games, there is some level of supernatural/divine work at play as well (though your only foes are fellow humans... and a few elephants).

Overall:

• While it's GotY material or anything of the sort, it's still a pretty solid action game that's well worth the inexpensive $10 (that's not even it's sale price). As far as short launch window "look what our box can do" titles go, I think I liked it more than the other brand's The Order: 1886.
  
  A new legacy is born.