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What Games Have You Completed? (2021 Edition)
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Join Date:Posts: 52103
Game|Platform|Game|Platform
Megaman X2|SNES||
Streets of Rage 4|PC||
Sekiro|PC||
Megaman 7|SNES||
Megaman 8|PS1||
Megaman X3|SNES||
Megaman & Bass|SNES||
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim|PS4||
Broken Sword: Director's Cut|PC||
Command & Conquer: Red Alert|PC||
Mischief Makers|N64||
Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus (DLC)|PC||
Deception 4: Blood Ties|PS4||
Final Fantasy Adventure|Gameboy||
Virtua Racing|Switch||
Thief 2: The Metal Age|PC||
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead|PC||
Crysis Remaster|PC||
Crysis Remaster
I wasn't that big a fan of Farcry. The AI is shonky and when the mutants arrive the game gets pretty bad. I always figured Crysis would be the same, a tech demo with slightly ropey gameplay. It definitely retains the shonky AI but Crysis is actually a pretty good game. It still looks gorgeous and the level of destruction you can cause is hilarious and impressive. However the nano-suits various functions make Crysis a lot of fun. Stealth is a little bit janky but even if you get caught the fire fights are wild and fun.
I heard a lot of complaints about how the game goes downhill with the introduction of the aliens but it's not as bad as I was lead to believe, these sections only last a couple of minutes.
The remasters graphics are a bit of a mixed bag. You get better lighting but then bafflingly they reduce the reaction of the vegetation to stuff like grenades. I really liked that attention to detail in the original. It's a strange in between meaning there's still no definitive edition of the game. The software ray tracing is nice despite the large performance cost. I noticed some flaws in it but it's impressive it works. I'm still however not convinced ray tracing adds anything to games that traditional rendering can't already do to give 'close enough' results. Maybe when we have full path traced games but we aren't close to that yet with current tech.
Not the best FPS ever but it's still a heap of fun.
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Join Date:Posts: 52103
Game|Platform|Game|Platform
Megaman X2|SNES||
Streets of Rage 4|PC||
Sekiro|PC||
Megaman 7|SNES||
Megaman 8|PS1||
Megaman X3|SNES||
Megaman & Bass|SNES||
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim|PS4||
Broken Sword: Director's Cut|PC||
Command & Conquer: Red Alert|PC||
Mischief Makers|N64||
Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus (DLC)|PC||
Deception 4: Blood Ties|PS4||
Final Fantasy Adventure|Gameboy||
Virtua Racing|Switch||
Thief 2: The Metal Age|PC||
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead|PC||
Crysis Remaster|PC||
God of War: Chain of Olympus|PS3||
God of War: Chain of Olympus
This is a HD port of the PSP game. I liked this game a lot more than I expected. It's a nice condensed GoW experience for a handheld and doesn't translate too badly to the PS3. In fact I'd rate it above GoW3 which I didn't enjoy. It's a nice brisk game as well.
Graphically it's a bit rough. It's not quite the level of graphical polish as the PS2 games but for a PSP game it was stunning so not really the games fault it looks a little basic on the PS3. Performance on the PS3 can be iffy. It runs mostly at a stable 60 FPS but the PS3's ineptitude with transparencies means some busy scenes can chug and even some tearing can creep in although this is rare.
The game has a few flaws related to the handheld nature of the game. It tries to cram in too many controls into too few buttons meaning you can forget how to activate some moves when you return to the game. Also the game will present you with a mechanic then forget about it until much later when you have forgotten it (the last boss did this to me, thanks gamefaqs!).
The story is overwrought guff but then it's GoW. It's a prequel meaning Kratos isn't the completely unlikeable bellend from GoW2 and beyond. He has a shred of humanity. The gameplay is full of enough spectacle and fun to make it a quick compelling blast. It surprised me.
Even better is that I heard the sequel, Ghost of Sparta is a big improvement on an already pretty good game.
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Tomb Raider Definitive Edition.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Remastered (The Ezio Collection).
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Astro’s Playroom
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
Bugsnax.
Cyberpunk 2077
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered
Spider-Man: Miles Morales DLC
Rage 2.
Rage 2: Rise of the Ghosts DLC
Rage 2: TerrorMania DLC
Mass Effect Andromeda. Completed and platinumed.
Originally returned just to clean up some trophies which could have easily taken me about 6 hours at best on new game plus. However, I ended up spending another 40 odd getting side tracked because the world and its characters are just so good.
For those who don't know, the basic set up is this: You’re part of the Andromeda Initiative which consists of different races from the milky way galaxy from the old games, such as Asari, Salarians, Krogans, Turians and... us. (can't talk about the Quarians without going into spoilers.) Each species has an ark with its own pathfinder, i.e. the person tasked with finding a home in the Heleus cluster of the Andromeda galaxy. Unfortunately, the other arks and their pathfinders went missing for various spoilery reasons leaving only your ark and your human pathfinder, Ryder. What you’re essentially doing from here on out is trying to make planets viable. Each one has their own environmental challenges but the one adversary they all share is that they are overrun by the troublesome new enemy faction, the Kett.
I'll cut to the chase: I love this game. It really does feel like a space adventure from the way it’s shot to the score music to the Bioware film grain (which, unlike their other games, actually serve the visuals) to the way every discovery is a victory. All of the planets are interesting to explore from the late game ones like Kadara - which is just a lawless wasteland where you can’t trust anybody - to Eos, your first home.
The first home on Eos feels like a major milestone with all the NPCs - even those who initially doubted Ryder - coming out of the woodwork to sing praises, especially because previous attempts by the Initiative to establish a home had failed. The only planet I wasn’t fond of was Havari. It’s cramped and difficult to traverse and you can’t walk 5 feet without enemies attacking because it’s such a dense map. Early in the story you’re tasked with choosing between going to Voeld or Havari. Definitely go to Voeld first. In fact, Havari can be avoided in the critical path if you choose Voeld first.
I remember complaints about there not being enough new alien races which I think is a valid criticism. However, the new alien race, the Angara, is great and it shows tremendous capacity for faith that they trusted the Initiative after the Kett broke their trust (without getting too spoilery). Usually themes of inclusivity and diversity in stories make me vomit but here it feels organic. Every choice you make is not necessarily about the consequences, as most outcomes are largely linear. It’s more about what type of explorer you’re shaping your Ryder to be. Are you a foreign conqueror trying to impose your way of life on a planet’s inhabitants? Are you a team player who wants to befriend new races and learn new cultures? Your very first encounter with the Kett poses this question in a subtle and tasteful way.
The voice acting is quite good overall IMO, especially from the main cast. No, the two Ryder siblings are not Shepard but they’re not trying to be. Also, there’s a side quest involving the Ryder family that sows the seeds for an amazing sequel but sadly it’s not to be.
Your ship crew are great and their loyalty missions are amongst the best side quests in the game. There's a beautiful conclusion to one of them involving plants that I won't spoil but it's basically a non cheesy, metaphor for the entire game. It's moments like these that show how Andromeda excels even in its small moments as well as its grand escapades. Romances on a subsequent playthrough almost make you mournful for your previous romances. Like when I did a character's loyalty mission the second time and remembered that in my “previous life” a football match turned into something more. The ship crew are that loveable. Additionally, navigating the politics of the Nexus (Andromeda's Citadel equivalent / central ship for all the Milky Way races) and its hilariously incompetent leadership will test your moral judgement.
Overall, the side quests are where Andromeda really shines. To skip them is a disservice and will negatively affect the ending. They're so integral to the story and lore you have to wonder if they were ripped out of the critical path at the last minute.
And the combat is fire once you get more abilities (the best ones are typically locked behind others). I made a tech biotic build that favoured CQC and anyone who got within my vicinity would instantly die so that was neat.
The jump height is about a hair off and the cover system is too loose but on the build I had for my second playthrough I never really used cover so YMMV. Apart from Havari, there isn't as much combat as you would expect which again ties in nicely to the way this story encourages exploration and discovery over throwing hands.
Of course, there is also the obligatory multiplayer which is…ergh. You have to fight waves of challenging enemies and then on the final wave make it to the extraction point in time. Fun on paper however, in typical EA fashion, it’s extremely microtransactions driven. Unfortunately, Bioware is not as skilled as Dice is at incorporating MTs without it breaking the balance of the game. If you’re defiant like me you’re going to be grinding the multiplayer for a long time with crappy weapons. A shame really because I can tell it’s a blast when you get proper weapons but the need to monetise everything just ruins it.
Thankfully, a grindy multiplayer doesn’t spoil an otherwise great game with an earnest overall message. I truly believe that if this was the first Mass Effect it would have been praised for the story and characters at least. Though I appreciate nothing exists in a vacuum, to call Andromeda “bad” is a little bit harsh. This is my Days Gone, I guess. I really love this game and hope when enough time has passed people will look back on it more fondly.0 -
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Tomb Raider Definitive Edition.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Remastered (The Ezio Collection).
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Astro’s Playroom
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
Bugsnax
Cyberpunk 2077
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered
Spider-Man: Miles Morales DLC
Rage 2.
Rage 2: Rise of the Ghosts DLC
Rage 2: TerrorMania DLC
Mass Effect Andromeda
Late Shift
Subnautica. Completed and platinumed.
This is tied with Astro’s Playroom for my GOTY so far. Couldn’t put the controller down (until the battery ran out :pac: ).
It starts off as your fairly run-of-the-mill survival game in that you have to do the thing to get the thing to build this thing to use that thing so you can build that thing and so on and so forth. The discernible difference is that what you need to do and where you need to go is very clear from the onset. The game has excellent tutorialisation and QOL so if you ever get lost all you have to do is consult your datapad for clues. This is because it’s attempting to actually tell a story and knows that in order to do that the player needs to have some form of purpose and direction.
I won’t go into the story too much because part of what makes it great is working out what happened via the written and audio logs left behind by other survivors. As you’re doing this you’re scanning and acquiring blueprints to make vehicles that enable you to go to lower depths to get the resources needed. In short, it’s a space adventure set under water and the goal is to escape the planet.
IMO survival games often feel designed to frequently frustrate the player then provide short bursts of satisfaction in between long stretches of soul crushing disappointment. With Subnautica the “grind” is just as rewarding because you’re unlocking a piece of the puzzle to the story every step of the way. Additionally, because the story has a beginning, middle and end the gameplay is also progressing. You’re not locked in an endless loop of mining and crafting that's designed to keep you playing for thousands of hours. Although you can do that if you so wish, the developers accept that many will check out once the story is over.
It’s downright scary at times too, especially the deeper and deeper you go. As someone who hates horror games I even appreciated this aspect, as I went from never wanting to go to places like The Lost River again, which is filled with all sorts of nasties, to building a second base there “just in case” I needed to stop for supplies. Even when you lose valuable items in your inventory due to death you don’t waste too much time rebuilding because you’ll know exactly where to look if you’ve been using your beacons or scanner room. Death may temporarily set you back but it doesn’t undo the hard work you’ve put in before; you’re always in forward motion.
It's also surprisingly non-linear. I did a lot of late game and mid game stuff earlier than I was supposed to because I was constantly going off the beaten path to explore. However, you will eventually hit a wall if you do it this way. On that note, my one regret was not finding all laser fragments much earlier to explore the ship you crashed from, as I would have found the blueprints for the bed which in turn would have negated early frustrations with the super quick day and night cycle. So my advice to anyone who has not played is that as soon as you get the radiation suit make finding all laser fragments and exploring the Aurora ship is your number one priority.
The only flaws I can think of are the exceptionally long save times and no auto save besides death, so if the app crashes heaven help you. In fact it only crashed when I started saving more in the third act so perhaps ease off on the frequent saving. Also, you quickly learn not to eject out of your seamoth vehicle when in motion as sometimes you can eject in front of it for some reason resulting in a really silly instant death.
Finally, I have to talk about the Cyclops because it’s one of the last vehicles you’ll build and it’s glorious. Upon constructing it that’s when you’ll know you’ve really “made it”. You’ll feel like the captain of a badass space ship having to manage power consumption on the fly by deciding stuff like whether to turn on the sonar in the dark or when to deploy enemy decoys, or to withstand hull integrity punishment at the risk of the ship leaking and catching fire (which you can put out quickly if you install a fire suppression system). You’ll only ever need the Cyclops when you’re going far and deep so you have to make sure you have enough supplies for the trip, enough power cells and, if you’re playing on Survivor mode, enough food and water. (I played on Freedom mode which has no hunger/thirst meter so not sure how well tuned it is but I trust that it’s fine). It really does feel like a road trip…without roads. It’s great. Has all the potential for a great multiplayer game, methinks.
In short, the reason why Subnautica worked for me is that you go from feeling like prey trying to survive each day by the skin of your teeth to becoming a capable explorer while uncovering a story that’s genuinely compelling, and by the end, quite heartfelt. Taking one last look at my base before the end and seeing how far I had come was a great final memory.
TL;DR: Turns out games that reward you… are rewarding! A definite recommend for anyone who likes exploration games.0 -
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Retr0gamer wrote: »Such a long write up and you never answered the most important question.
Why?
I did.
Tomb Raider Definitive Edition.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Remastered (The Ezio Collection).
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Astro’s Playroom
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
Bugsnax
Cyberpunk 2077
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered
Spider-Man: Miles Morales DLC
Rage 2.
Rage 2: Rise of the Ghosts DLC
Rage 2: TerrorMania DLC
Mass Effect Andromeda
Late Shift
Subnautica
Anthem
Tacoma. Completed and platinumed.
I’ll keep this somewhat brief. It’s fine as far as walking simulators go but I was expecting something more given the praise it got. I won’t get into the story as it’s only 2 hours long (at the most) and it’s better to go in blind. Let’s just say it takes place on the Tacoma space station and the player’s goal is to find out what happened to its former inhabitants. The general story outline is interesting but getting into its characters and piecing together what happened requires you to read fragmented text (in addition to reviewing visual recordings) which works within the context of the narrative but is a pain on the eyes and may put you off reading them.
The reveal is a little bit predictable and the ending might disappoint but it’s not punching above its weight so I'm more forgiving of it. I will say that the voice actor for the space station’s A.I. is very good as he gave me the creeps throughout.
Art direction is pretty but the optimisation is pathetic. The game crashes when you pause it, crashes when it's loading new areas, stutters all over the place etc but thankfully the auto saves are generous.
If you like walking simulators it’s worth a go but it’s one of the more forgettable ones. It won't blow your mind but you won't feel like your time has been wasted either.0 -
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Tomb Raider Definitive Edition.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Remastered (The Ezio Collection).
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Astro’s Playroom
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
Bugsnax
Cyberpunk 2077
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered
Spider-Man: Miles Morales DLC
Rage 2.
Rage 2: Rise of the Ghosts DLC
Rage 2: TerrorMania DLC
Mass Effect Andromeda
Late Shift
Subnautica
Anthem
Tacoma
Days Gone. Completed and platinumed.
Trigger warning: I’m aware that it has a passionate fanbase so I get no joy out of being down on it. I almost considered not posting this tbh out of respect for others' feelings. Please remember that this is just my opinion and that how anyone feels about a game should not affect your enjoyment, nor does it mean you are wrong for liking it. If anything, you are the true winners here because you got the most value for your time. So if you feel the need to respond, great, but please do so constructively and in good faith. Cheers.
That being said, Days Gone is one of the worst games I've played in my life. It doesn’t have the worst mechanics or the worst story or the worst anything but I can‘t remember playing a big budget AAA title that has failed across the board in what it’s trying to do, as well as having so many ridiculous quality of life oversights that ruin any chance of enjoyment at every turn.
By the time I realised it just wasn’t for me it was too late – I was so far in the campaign that I had to see it through to the bitter end otherwise it would have all been for nothing. I got the platinum only because it’s hard not to platinum seeing as you can’t really do anything without doing everything (I use ‘critical path’ liberally here). Even getting the platinum didn’t feel rewarding and I won’t be doing the free DLC trophies, despite being focused on the one thing I consistently enjoyed (hordes), because one of the trophies requires a second playthrough.
Apologies for the lengthy post in advance (I'm trying to cut down on the waffling, honest lol). If I was to sum up the main problem I would say that Days Gone wants to be your cookie cutter Ubisoft game but it wants to be a punishing survivor horror but it also wants to be a narrative driven epic at the same time and it just doesn't work. These styles are inherently at odds with one another in better games but the developers here make so many baffling design decisions that make it even worse.
Let’s start with the open world structure because this was my first red flag. Most open worlds that require you to level up your character allow you to do so independently of the critical path. Days Gone does not. Each region of the map has a camp that Deacon, the protagonist, must do missions for in order to earn ‘trust’. The more trust points you earn the more upgrades you’ll be able to acquire from these camps. Each camp has different upgrade benefits so, for instance, one might have weapon upgrades whereas the other will have upgrades for your bike.
But these camp missions are locked behind campaign progression which means you can’t just bang them out one after the other, you have to wait for each of them to become available. So already they've undermined any reason for this game to be open world. Then halfway through the story you get locked out of the first three camps (there's five in total) for no good reason until the end. What’s worse is that there isn’t enough camp missions to get trust up to the max level before then which means you’re entering into that second half knowing you’ve left stuff unfinished. The only way to max out trust beforehand would be to grind freaker ears for another 50 hours which would be unreasonable. That’s the name of the zombies in this world, by the way, “freakers”. They’re technically not zombies, they’re alive and infected humans. Anyway, you can turn in freaker ears to the camp as bounties to prove you’re doing your bit, but the currency and trust you get for it is so little that they may as well have not even bothered.
This segues into how awful the economy is in general. Firstly, each camp has their own currency which, in gameplay terms, is silly. At one point I had way more credits with one camp than another because the camp I was lacking for didn’t have any missions left for me to earn it. The only way to level up would have been to grind freakers ears again. The weird part is that these two particular camps form one militia so having different trust and credits made no narrative sense. The developers know the economy is trash because I remember reading that if you repeatedly fail any mission that requires upgrades it gives you the option to skip it............ So, in short: bad mission structure, bad economy.
Then there's the fact that Days Gone also wants to be a survival horror so typically that involves a lot of scavenging and crafting. The carrying capacity is so low that you will grow fed up of being constantly told your inventory is full. This also affects some of the open world activities you do like the freaker infestation nests, which have to be burned out. For much of the game the only way to do this is with molotovs or nearby fuel cans that can be ignited. The thing is, you don’t always have enough to complete the job due to the limited carrying capacity and there aren’t always explosives fuel cans nearby the nests. This easily fixable by allowing you to store resources in your locker so that when you’re out in the world you can access one of the many safe houses and retrieve items from them, rather than wasting your time by making you come back later to finish the job.
With a skill upgrade your carrying capacity does increase but the camp merchants don’t adjust their stock to accommodate this. What I mean is, I can carry six grenades at max and if I run out I can just go to a camp I have enough trust with to top up. Except each camp only sells up to four grenades each which means if you want to fully stack your grenade pouch you have to fast travel to another camp to get the additional two grenades... Why not just have each camp sell the maximum amount of grenades the player can carry?
It’s made even worse by the fact that camp NPCs spam the same lines of dialogue each time Deacon is within the vicinity to point where you have to wonder if it’s broken. Sometimes Deacon will pass an NPC and they’ll mutter something to him and then moments later he’ll pass them again and they’ll say the same line of dialogue as if they’ve just seen him for the first time. And every time you make a purchase - and I mean after every item you buy - the NPC has to comment on it: *buy* “yep” *buy* “that’s right” *buy* "okkk” *buy* “yep, that will do it”. I had to mute my headphones.
And then there’s the fuel system, oh my Gawd. The bike consumes fuel aay too quickly. You can never just be at peace riding around because you’re constantly worrying about it. The devs realise how obstructive it is but they don’t know how to fix the tuning so instead they take the easy way out and just spam fuel cans at checkpoints because they’re petrified that you’re gonna be stranded and possibly deterred from completing the story as a result.
Also, I will always drag a game for making fast travel needlessly time consuming, and Days Gone has one of the stupidest ways of implementing a fast travel penalty I’ve seen in some time: So, you can't fast travel directly to the location you want if you don’t have enough fuel. You have to fast travel to the closest camp or fuel can to top up and then fast travel to the place you actually want. Why? It may be ‘realistic’ but the very concept of fast travel is not realistic so, in gameplay terms, forcing the player to fast travel twice makes no sense! Bike upgrades do little to alleviate the problem – and I got all upgrades, including the Death Stranding that was added post launch (because they knew the fuel tuning was trash too).
So the fuel tuning is bad but then it gets worse (it always gets worse). You can’t get missions while standing in the camp which means you have to ride out to 'trick' the game into thinking you’re in the middle of something so that a camp NPC can call you with a request. You then have to ride back into camp so the NPC can give you the mission face-to-face; they won’t just tell you what they need on the radio. Why? Bearing in mind that while it's wasting your time like this your fuel is going down rapidly. Often these “missions” just require you to drive all the way to an NPC on the other side of the map so they can give you one line of dialogue - not even a cut scene - one in-engine line of dialogue and then the quest completes. WHY?
And much like the camp upgrades, Days Gone bypasses fuel requirements the moment you’re on the critical path. There are also lesser ways that it forgets all its free roam mechanics during story sequences, like refusing to let you off your bike while an NPC is talking.......... At one point, there’s a massive all out war that takes place in a camp but afterwards the camp continues like nothing happened. There’s no visible change to the environment and the NPCs still spout the same braindead dialogue they did prior. (On that note, the final boss battle is absolutely absurd. Those who have beaten it know exactly what I'm talking about!!!)
All of these QOL and immersion breaking issues could be forgiven if the moment-to-moment gameplay was fun but it’s passable at best. It's simply not strong enough nor varied enough to demand 45 hours of your time. The stealth is rudimentary with virtually no meaningful progression throughout. It doesn’t allow for you to get creative enough due to the A.I. behaviour and Deacon muttering the same thing each time he clears an enemy base only highlights its repetitiveness. There is also some mandatory stealth tailing missions that result in auto fails if you’re spotted which is just pathetic in 2019, I’m sorry. Why not a fail state where being spotted results in having to locate information by other means?
The open combat isn’t great either and there’s no point speccing into the gun skill tree early on because the guns you have at the beginning are intentionally terrible; it would be like putting lipstick on a pig. That leaves you with the melee and survival trees. You will eventually switch from a melee to gun build in the late game but even with all the skill upgrades and better weapons the gunplay remains clunky and no amount of ‘focus’ (slow time when aiming) can mask it. Enemies are spongey as hell too so head shots are the way to go.
Speaking of skill points, they are so drip-fed throughout that by the time you get one you’ve forgotten about it, and all the best skill points are locked behind the many, many useless ones.
By far and away my least favourite thing to do were the tracking missions. Ever since The Witcher 3 every open world needs to have the obligatory examine clue-track-examine clue-track structure and Days Gone is the breaking point, I feel. There was one where I had to track down a bounty but it wouldn’t allow me to examine the blood clue on the ground because, 'bike not nearby'. Talk about spoiling the element of surprise. In other open worlds like GTA or Watch Dogs there are cars all over the place so if you’re on foot when the target drives by you can just jack one and continue the chase. Days Gone obviously doesn’t have a bunch of bikes lying around so it has to warn you beforehand.
The bike chase missions are another example of how the survival mechanics are at odds with the action hero moments. You have to shoot the target’s bike with your pistol to bring it to halt but you will eventually run out of ammo. At that point you’ll have no choice but to ram your bike into the target, but in these missions the game remembers your bike can take damage.... So in order to preserve your bike you’ll have to stop to take out ammo from the saddlebag and then continue the chase, provided the target hasn’t escaped while you were doing that. If there are saddlebags on the bike why not give the option to auto fill the gun during chases as opposed to making you stop to get it out?
The only time when Days Gone shows a degree of competence is when it comes to the hordes but you won’t be able to go up against one until the 40 hour mark which is a big mistake considering how heavily marketed that feature was. The hordes are a looming threat throughout, with some early story missions even dedicated to simply scouting them out (but never engaging them). You’ll see them shambling around in free roam too but you’ll want to avoid them. The first time you take one on it’s a mandatory story mission and it’s by far and away the best gameplay moment. Suddenly everything comes together: There’s an actual point to the stamina meter because now there’s a penalty for running too much without making active progress to whittle the horde down. Suddenly, the shooting and throwable items feeling so imprecise makes sense since you’re supposed to spray bullets and throw molotovs over large areas.
If you’ve made it this far wondering what kept me going seeing as I disliked the game so much, the answer is simple: it was the story. Emphasis on ‘was’. Halfway through the story there is a very powerful payoff where all the narrative threads come together beautifully. If Days Gone had just ended it there with some other loose ends tied up I would have said, “you know what? Not without its problems but that was an alright game. Roll on the sequel”
But rather than quitting when it's ahead it meanders for another 20 hours . It’s trying to be an epic like The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2 but those games earn their lengths for the most part. All the significant story beats are sandwiched between repetitive fetch quests that feel like glorified side missions. Narrative threads get dropped and reintroduced so late that by the time they wrapped up I no longer cared. For instance, those aforementioned auto fail stealth sequences have some of the most interesting mysteries in the game but the full reveal doesn't come until after the credits in an easily missable secret cut scene. The main character, Deacon St. John, is alright but has no character development and his relationship with his wife is hackneyed.
TL;DR: Look, I don’t want to dismiss Days Gone altogether because clearly it has its fans and I can kind of see why one could get some enjoyment from it, but IMO it wears out its welcome and has too many nonsensical design decisions that pile on top of one another over a 45 hour campaign. I don't recommend it at all but if you do decide to give it a go just know that how you feel at the start will be how you feel 50 hours in. On that note, I am partly to blame because I should have listened when those in the main thread advised me exactly that lol. Sometimes you have to cut your losses, I guess.
If anything, it gave me a newfound appreciation for just how good Ubisoft and Rockstar are at their craft.
*****@mods, is there a way for me to collapse my post into some sort of box so that it doesn't take up the entire page? Thanks!****0 -
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The Raging Bile Duct wrote: »I honestly can't fathom why you would spend 45 hours or more getting a platinum on a game you despised.
Trophy hunters, just like the trophies they are after, don't make sense. Well unless you factor in OCD and skinner box psychology.
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The Phantom Pain wrote: »Didn't you once say that you respect people who get xbox achievements but not playstation trophies (even though they're basically the same thing)? The psychology of trophies is similar to that of getting good weapons in looter shooters. It doesn't mean trophy hunters are suffering from some form of mental illness.
Eh, respect sounds like I'm fanboying. I definitely didn't say that! It's more that xbox achievements work far better as they have been engineered into the xbox eco-system from the start. It means they load insanely quickly and are easy to check. Playstation trophies on the other hand are classic sony, great hardware, awful software. They were shoehorned into the PSN environment and still have issues where doing stuff like chekcing trophies or comparing them to friends takes ages to load, so much so I usually give up on it before it loads.
It's an interface thing rather than turning my nose up at trophy hunters!
Also not sure how you can collapse those write ups but I am enjoying them.
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Game|Platform|Game|Platform
Megaman X2|SNES||
Streets of Rage 4|PC||
Sekiro|PC||
Megaman 7|SNES||
Megaman 8|PS1||
Megaman X3|SNES||
Megaman & Bass|SNES||
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim|PS4||
Broken Sword: Director's Cut|PC||
Command & Conquer: Red Alert|PC||
Mischief Makers|N64||
Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus (DLC)|PC||
Deception 4: Blood Ties|PS4||
Final Fantasy Adventure|Gameboy||
Virtua Racing|Switch||
Thief 2: The Metal Age|PC||
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead|PC||
Crysis Remaster|PC||
God of War: Chain of Olympus|PS3||
Resident Evil Village|PC||
Resident Evil Village
Left my thoughts on the main thread. While it's not an absolute classic I really enjoyed by time with this game. It's also nice to play a relatively brief by modern standards and well paced action game. I like how each section plays a little differently and the developers have fun with that. Level design is a high point as well with a Dark Souls-esque inter connected world.
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Tomb Raider Definitive Edition.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Remastered (The Ezio Collection).
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Astro’s Playroom
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
Bugsnax
Cyberpunk 2077
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered
Spider-Man: Miles Morales DLC
Rage 2.
Rage 2: Rise of the Ghosts DLC
Rage 2: TerrorMania DLC
Mass Effect Andromeda
Late Shift
Subnautica
Anthem
Tacoma
Days Gone
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Remastered (The Ezio Collection). Completed and platinumed.
I used to think Revelations was nothing more than a cash grab that started Ubisoft’s doomed love affair with rushed annual releases. Whilst that is still true, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a decent game. HOWEVER, this is mostly because of the story and how interwoven it is within the gameplay mechanics. As the final instalment in the Ezio trilogy it only works if you’ve played the previous two, as it hinges on the player’s adoration for him.
Ezio is searching for the meaning of his life having reached middle age (which was practically ancient back then), more specifically trying to understand whether the choice he made all those years ago to join the Brotherhood was worth it seeing as the Assassin vs Templar war is never ending. That’s what Revelations is really about but if you want the actual plot synopsis then he’s also looking for some keys to open his ancestor’s vault and has to take down a bunch of templars that have them. The ancestor in question only means anything if you’ve played the first Assassin’s Creed. Consequently, the emotional payoff at the end is one of the most iconic moments in the series and beautifully ties up both Ezio and Altair’s story.
The modern day side of things is not so great because this series was never conceived with Revelations in mind. Basically, following the traumatic event at the end of Brotherhood Desmond is now in a coma and has discovered that his ancestors’ memories are bleeding into each other and his own. The only reason why he’s not dead is the animus is stabilising his vitals (the animus can’t do that but whatever). He now needs to find and relive a moment in time where both memories of Altair and Ezio converge so his own memory can be separated and he can wake up, hence the plot.
The story is kind of a blessing and a curse. To elaborate, there is a beautiful short film called Embers,which is the final farewell for Ezio (and is also included in the Collection). Revelations is like taking what probably should have been in that short film and turning it into a fully-fledged game, but I don’t think the ideas here were enough to justify that. Everything it does well or improves on was already in Brotherhood and what few new additions it has are not good. Alex Amancio directed both this and Assassin’s Creed: Unity, and his insistence on making the historical setting nothing more than a backdrop was a mistake both times. While it’s important not to Forest Gump everything, cities like Rome and Venice worked specifically because of how Ubisoft incorporated history into their overall sci-fi lore, and helped you understand Ezio more since a person’s cultural background forms a large part of who they are. Constantinople just seems like a reskin of those cities without a personality of its own so I was never invested in the background politics when the story required it.
It would be easy to dismiss Revelations on that alone but then… they go and make this my favourite version of Ezio. Darn it. He has grown wise and less prone to impulsive actions while still being a badass able to inspire and lead. Additionally, I love how he mentors his assassin recruits and, on that note, one of the few improvements made over Brotherhood is how you go about recruiting assassins. They now have unique, hand crafted quest lines that entail a number of mission types, not merely ‘rescue civilian from guards’. The goal is to get them to ‘Master Assassin’ status which is always a hoot as a massive fan of staff management mechanics.
As mentioned, Revelations also brings some new ideas to the table but they’re rather controversial. Perhaps the most polarising is the turn based den defense mini game. In short it requires you to defend your Assassin den against an invading templar army. While seeing Ezio command his recruits is cool for the character, it’s not for the player as it goes against the sense of freedom that the series is known for. That said, bar one mandatory main mission, the entire den defence is entirely avoidable provided you don’t raise your notoriety. Even, notoriety becomes a non-issue when you train seven assassin recruits to master level and assign them to dens so they can’t be attacked. Ezio’s frustration with the never ending cycle of Assassin vs Templar conflict is also cleverly reflected in the den defence sequence, i.e. the cycle of reclaiming a den then losing it via a failed den defence mission then reclaiming it again and so on. But, again, that’s story over gameplay.
The other big new mechanic is the bomb crafting which doesn’t do anything for Ezio or the gameplay to be honest. In previous instalments you had only smoke bombs and the carry limit for them was quite low whereas here you have all sorts of bombs for different purposes: poison bombs, distraction bombs, smoke bombs, smoke bombs that also distract etc. The way you can use different ingredients to make unique types is quite in-depth but does not disguise the fact that it’s a gimmick desperately trying to justify this game’s existence. It’s not intrusive but just unnecessary and it’s likely a lot of players will ignore it entirely since its inclusion in missions only pertain to some optional objectives.
It has to be noted that this is a remaster and on that front it’s aged extremely well. Out of the entire trilogy, Revelations is probably the best in this regard because Ubisoft didn’t actually change anything. Aside from some texture enhancements it’s exactly the same, and is what they should have done with II and Brotherhood. Desmond’s drastic face model change still haunts me though and I’m glad they fixed it in Assassin’s Creed III! Once again, multiplayer has been removed and all DLC has been included. Consequently, the DLC trophies replace the multiplayer ones and it’s the hardest DLC of the lot. Any game that requires me to do first person platforming without making any mistakes can go straight to hell. :pac:
TL;DR: I’m a gameplay first person but a great story can carry me through an average game and I do love Ezio and enjoy seeing him be successful in everything he does. Playing Assassin’s Creed I, II and Brotherhood is required homework and if you enjoyed those then you should definitely play Revelations (and watch Embers) to witness the conclusion of one of the greatest character developments in video game history.
This completes my Ezio Collection playthrough as well as all platinums for currently available mainline Assassin Creed games on Playstation. It’s been a great journey replaying these gems as a massive fan of the series. I’ll probably do the 2D side scroller ones now which I never touched upon release.0 -
Revelations was a great game. I had my issues with it, but as an ending to Ezio's trilogy it was fantastic. Also one of my favourite game trailers ever. The hype I had for this game was unreal.
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Join Date:Posts: 52103
Game|Platform|Game|Platform
Megaman X2|SNES|Live a Live|SNES
Streets of Rage 4|PC||
Sekiro|PC||
Megaman 7|SNES||
Megaman 8|PS1||
Megaman X3|SNES||
Megaman & Bass|SNES||
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim|PS4||
Broken Sword: Director's Cut|PC||
Command & Conquer: Red Alert|PC||
Mischief Makers|N64||
Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus (DLC)|PC||
Deception 4: Blood Ties|PS4||
Final Fantasy Adventure|Gameboy||
Virtua Racing|Switch||
Thief 2: The Metal Age|PC||
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead|PC||
Crysis Remaster|PC||
God of War: Chain of Olympus|PS3||
Resident Evil Village|PC||
Live a Live
This is a weird one. Very late SNES RPG that never made it to the west. At the start you have 7 selectable characters and each one is a 1-3 hour RPG scenario that does something unique and interesting with the genre. The ideas probably wouldn't support a 40+ hour RPG but work perfectly in as bitesized RPGs. Each chapter is illustrated by a different manga artist.
Caveman: A RPG set before language. There's no written dialogue and everything plays out in pantomime. This chapter is great fun. It's full of great visual gags and laugh out loud funny at times. The MC Pogo can also smell where battles will occur or where plot items are. Had a lot of fun here.
Ninja: Infiltrate a castle and take out the evil leader. This takes place in a Massive Shogo era castle and courtyard. It's a very open ended chapter with many ways of beating it. You can take it entirely stealthily only killing the final target or can rush in and kill everyone (with a hidden reward for killing all 100 people). There's plenty of traps and devices to keep you on your toes. One of the longer chapters but really enjoyed this one. JRPG Hitman.
Present Day: This plays out like a RPG megaman crossed with street fighter. You basically play as a fighter in a tournament trying to become the strongest. There's 6 fighters you can choose to fight and you can learn each fighters abilities. You basically have to find a route that will allow you to gain abilities that will help you defeat each opponent as some are near impossible with out the tactical advantage of some moves. Very short but fun chapter. Yoko Shimomura provides the soundtrack for the entire game, which is excellent, but really plays off the street fighter 2 influences here because.... well she composed that soundtrack as well.
Near Future: This is a mish mash of anime tropes. Mecha, psychic troubled teens, shady government laboratories and.... a plot point about stealing a child's panties. Stay classy Japan. This sounds awesome but it's far and away the worst chapter. The MC can use psychic powers to read peoples minds but it just means you have to talk to everyone twice. It's also the worst designed and worst written of the bunch. Also for a chapter called 'Mecha' you get to use the Mecha for 2 minutes at the end of the chapter. At about 3 hours this one is a chore.
Sci-Fi: A RPG with no combat. This predates all those RPG maker visual novel type games. In this you play as a robot helping the crew of a spaceship in what feels like a 2001 Space Odyssey/Aliens Homage. This is pretty short but also my favourite. Lots of fun and the robot is super cute.
Kung Fu: You play as an old kung fu master selecting 3 students to pass his skills on to. It's an interesting concept that doesn't quite work. Only one student will make it through the chapter so the optimal way is to pick your favourite and just train them. This one is a bit ordinary but short enough that it doesn't out stay its welcome.
Cowboy: High noon the RPG. You're a cowboy tasked with defending a town before gang of bandits arrive to cause trouble. You have a set amount of time to collect items to use as traps and then have to task the towns people with setting up the traps. Some towns people will take longer than others to set traps while others will balls them up. When the time is up the bandits will arrive and the traps you set up will thin them out for the final battle. This one works great and is loads of fun. My only issue is I'd like more of this one!
There's an extra chapter that plays like a standard save the princess JRPG but then really subverts that trope.
In the final chapter all the characters have to join forces, take on some optional dungeons and bosses to get the best equipment and then face a (pretty brutal) final boss. The final chapter takes a couple of hours and plays more like a standard RPG so is the least interesting but a nice way to wrap everything up.
Live a Live isn't entirely successful but the chapter based approach to it's gameplay keeps it lively and it's always fun to finish a chapter and find out what the next one is like. Ultimately the overarching narrative doesn't come together in a satisfying way but it's just such a fun experimental game that it's hard not to like for what it tries and how interesting it is.
There's some talk of a re-release or remaster and it might just happen, square have put out some pretty deep cuts in terms of remasters recently and the director of this game is now pretty high up in square and has been tweeting about it.
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Mr.Fantastic wrote: »I heard about this on a youtube channel before and it sounds nuts. Cool idea with the branching paths all converging as one I might check it out!
Well it doesn't really come together that well in the end but definitely worth a play as it's so interesting and fun. You can polish a chapter off each night and it will be somethin new each time.
Always wanted to try it but the recent retronauts episode pushed me over the edge. The fan translation has been updated to 2.0 and was done by the aeon genesis team with tomato who is a games translator full time so it's really good quality.
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Game|Platform|Game|Platform
Megaman X2|SNES|Live a Live|SNES
Streets of Rage 4|PC|Clockwork Knight|Saturn
Sekiro|PC||
Megaman 7|SNES||
Megaman 8|PS1||
Megaman X3|SNES||
Megaman & Bass|SNES||
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim|PS4||
Broken Sword: Director's Cut|PC||
Command & Conquer: Red Alert|PC||
Mischief Makers|N64||
Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus (DLC)|PC||
Deception 4: Blood Ties|PS4||
Final Fantasy Adventure|Gameboy||
Virtua Racing|Switch||
Thief 2: The Metal Age|PC||
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Spearhead|PC||
Crysis Remaster|PC||
God of War: Chain of Olympus|PS3||
Resident Evil Village|PC||
Clockwork Knight
Launch window Sega Saturn platformer. It's actually quite a lot of fun despite being obviously rushed. It's very short with only 4 stages, each with two levels and a boss and a final boss. It's an easy enough game other than the annoying final maze level and the penultimate boss who I wasted nearly all my lives on. Lives are pretty plentiful in this game so I had enough to figure his pattern out.
It's a pretty simple platformer. One of the first 2.5D platformers of the 32-bit era. It doesn't make a whole lot of use of the third dimension other than hazards coming in from the background and other than that it plays pretty much like a SNES or megadrive platformer. It's a nice looking game and has aged well. It has a toy story aesthetic but predates that film by almost a year and while the sprites are all prerendered they are well animated and high res thanks to the saturn being an absolute 2D beast.
Controls are a little slippery but it's very responsive and any deaths I had were down to my own cack handedness. It's such a shame the game was so rushed, Sega probably needed a platformer since Sonic was MIA. It's far better than early PS1 platformers such as garbage like Pandemonium. And while it's not as big a game as Crash Bandicoot, it's much more fun and well designed than the first game.
There's a far more substantial sequel which I'll get around to. The game didn't really impress at release, the gameplay wasn't that much different from SNES and Megadrive games of the era and it can be polished off in an hour with not a lot of replayability when you have splashed out 400 punts for a next gen saturn and a 60 punt game. It's a much better game in retrospect and while not amazing it's a nice slice of Sega Blue Skies gaming.
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