[Serenity]

Still thoroughly enjoying GTA V's story mode. Love the variety in the missions, too many highlights to mention. Just starting to do the groundwork for the Union Depository. It's the first game I've played since Witcher 3 where I'm thinking "I don't want this to end".

[Mentalist]

Finished "Of Orcs and Men" yesterday. Not a great game by any means, but not bad. Although it was quite linear, there were a bunch of (equally linear) optional things to do, creating the illusion of some choice, which is nice. Plot was nothing special, but the characters were nice, there were some neat revelations about them, and the banter dialogue between Arkail and Styx mostly worked. Combat wasn't exceptional either, but it worked, being more of a puzzle than a twitch-fest. The whole thing took about 15 hours.

next, I moved on to Spiders' first-ever independent game, "Faery: Legend of Avalon"

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 20 February 2018 - 12:15 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Neplunker Zero can eat

My whole

Entire

A S S

I'm literally one hidden treasure away from platinum on MegaNeps, but to get it, I have to complete Neplunker Zero twice. It's fucking hard. It's like MegaNeps said HEY WE HAVE MEGA IN OUR NAME, WHO'S THAT OTHER GUY WHO'S CALLED MEGA, LET'S DO THAT FOR A BIT.

[Serenity]

Finished GTA V's story mode yesterday. I am very surprised by how much I loved it, given that I've never been the biggest GTA fan (despite playing most of them at least a bit). I think it was down to the character switching and the heists.

Now I'm a bit torn. Continuing my trawl through older games that I never finished, I can't decide between Arkham City, Witcher 2, or BioShock Infinite. Think I'll play a bit of each and see which grabs me.

[Aptorian]

Mentalist, on 19 February 2018 - 05:42 PM, said:

Finished "Of Orcs and Men" yesterday. Not a great game by any means, but not bad. Although it was quite linear, there were a bunch of (equally linear) optional things to do, creating the illusion of some choice, which is nice. Plot was nothing special, but the characters were nice, there were some neat revelations about them, and the banter dialogue between Arkail and Styx mostly worked. Combat wasn't exceptional either, but it worked, being more of a puzzle than a twitch-fest. The whole thing took about 15 hours.

next, I moved on to Spiders' first-ever independent game, "Faery: Legend of Avalon"

I liked Of Orcs and Men despite it's tedious game design. I think the writing is great in the game. I originally decided to play Of Orcs after finishing the first Styx game. You should definitely check that one out as well if you liked the Styx character.

[Malankazooie]

Serenity, on 21 February 2018 - 10:54 AM, said:

Finished GTA V's story mode yesterday. I am very surprised by how much I loved it, given that I've never been the biggest GTA fan (despite playing most of them at least a bit). I think it was down to the character switching and the heists.

Now I'm a bit torn. Continuing my trawl through older games that I never finished, I can't decide between Arkham City, Witcher 2, or BioShock Infinite. Think I'll play a bit of each and see which grabs me.

Of the three, I've only played Bioshock Infinite. I believe some here have varying opinions about it, but I really enjoyed it. Some have criticized the FPS mechanics, but it never caused me too much heart burn. And some dislike the story or found it underwhelming or hated the ending. I loved the story and thought the ending was awesome. Not sure if that will sway your choice or not, but Bioshock Infinite is the one you should go with if you want my opinion.

[Mentalist]

All 3 games have merits.

Bioshock has an interesting story (that borders on, but, imho, doesn't quite slip into pretentious) and okay combat. Skyhook was nice, but there wasn't as much variety of plasmids as previous games and after Bioshock 2, the combat was a step down, imo

Arkham City was a fun little open world where side-stuff fed into the story, which was nice. The story was convoluted, but generally interesting, and the boss battles arguably the best of the 4 Arkham games. My one complaint would be the same one that can be lifted against most open-world games- there's this fun side stuff to do, but the story is SCREAMING at you that there's this absolutely extremely urgent stuff Bats has to do, and it creates a kind of dissonance.

Witcher 2 is a very decent action-RPG with a skewed difficulty curve, b/c the player starts out with a serious handicap and must spend the early levels to remove these to make himself "adequate" . Beyond that, the branching story is good (but REALLY necessitates multiple playthrough), but once you get past that novelty of "2 totally different Act IIs", there's not a lot of actual stuff to do that's not the main line- which is strong, don't get me wrong--but it's really a game that makes your feel like it could've been more. (Which is what TW3 ends up being- in a HUGE way)

[Tiste Simeon]

Serenity, on 21 February 2018 - 10:54 AM, said:

Finished GTA V's story mode yesterday. I am very surprised by how much I loved it, given that I've never been the biggest GTA fan (despite playing most of them at least a bit). I think it was down to the character switching and the heists.

Now I'm a bit torn. Continuing my trawl through older games that I never finished, I can't decide between Arkham City, Witcher 2, or BioShock Infinite. Think I'll play a bit of each and see which grabs me.

Bioshock Infinite is immense! One of the best games I've ever played. Witcher 2 was meh IMO but I'm not the biggest fan of that series anyway. Arkham City was excellent, better than Asylum and much better than Origins. Not played Arkham Knight but I've heard it was pretty good.

[Morgoth]

Tiste Simeon, on 22 February 2018 - 05:50 AM, said:

Serenity, on 21 February 2018 - 10:54 AM, said:

Finished GTA V's story mode yesterday. I am very surprised by how much I loved it, given that I've never been the biggest GTA fan (despite playing most of them at least a bit). I think it was down to the character switching and the heists.

Now I'm a bit torn. Continuing my trawl through older games that I never finished, I can't decide between Arkham City, Witcher 2, or BioShock Infinite. Think I'll play a bit of each and see which grabs me.

Bioshock Infinite is immense! One of the best games I've ever played. Witcher 2 was meh IMO but I'm not the biggest fan of that series anyway. Arkham City was excellent, better than Asylum and much better than Origins. Not played Arkham Knight but I've heard it was pretty good.

I too loved Bioshock Infinite. The best of the three in my opinion. It had these genuinely human moments between Booker and Elizabeth, something that's rare in video games. The only other examples I can think of of the top of my head is Red Dead Redemption and The Witcher 3.

[Aptorian]

Naughty Dog is great at those moments as well in the Uncharted and Last of Us games.

Same with the latest Assassin's Creed game. I thought the relationship between Bayek and Aya was remarkably mature and touching.

I liked Bioshock Infinite as well but it does drag in the middle and I wish they'd gone for a 4 gone weapon selection system, rather than the boring 2 gun choice.

[Serenity]

Totally agree about Naughty Dog - the relationships between Nate and Elena in Uncharted 4 and Joel and Ellie in TLoU have those sorts of moments in abundance.

Thanks all for your thoughts. The only problem I have with BioShock Infinite is it gave me motion sickness when I played it on release. I had to play it in really short bursts, half an hour or less at a time. I thought I might try it again after solving the problem in Borderlands 2, so we'll see. According to Steam I played 11 hours first time around, so I got a fair way through it. I must try it again as the first game was probably my favourite I played on 360, along with Dead Space.

I decided to give Arkham City another go. It's the third time I've started it but something about it just doesn't click with me and I think it must be the city itself, because I loved the first game. I'll stick with it a bit longer this time and see if it grabs.

I didn't give Witcher 2 any further thought at this stage. I think the fact that Wild Hunt is now pretty much my favourite game is putting me off it a bit. Bizarrely, scanning through my Steam library yesterday, one RPG came completely out of left field and grabbed my attention - Kingdoms of Amalur. Steam tells me I played it for four hours back in February 2012 so I'll see if it hooks me more this time.

[Aptorian]

I tried to like Kingdoms of Amalur but it felt like playing an MMO felt with copy pasted content. I played it a lot I think but never bothered to finish it, which is rare for me.

[Morgoth]

Alternative Goose, on 22 February 2018 - 09:32 AM, said:

Naughty Dog is great at those moments as well in the Uncharted and Last of Us games.

Same with the latest Assassin's Creed game. I thought the relationship between Bayek and Aya was remarkably mature and touching.

I liked Bioshock Infinite as well but it does drag in the middle and I wish they'd gone for a 4 gone weapon selection system, rather than the boring 2 gun choice.

The last of Us is another excellent example. I loved that game.

I'm not sure if it came through properly, but what I mean by moments of humanity are those moments in game that does not progress the story, but are just there to show the characters being people. I love those scenes - when done right - all the more so for being so rare. The Witcher 3 is the undisputed master of it I think, which is probably why I loved it as much as I did. When you have a scene in Bioshock Infinite that is just Booker playing guitar for a little with Elizabeth halfway dancing to the tune, that's when the connection between the characters becomes believable to me. When they take a break from the headlong rush of getting from A to B.

[Mentalist]

Bioshock Infinite was a bit strange like that. You'd have these calm moments of just messing around different parts of Columbia, absorbing in the civilian life. Then the plot would pull a switch and everyone would flip psycho, which made less sense in the context than in Rapture, because here people didn't look splicer-level crazy.

Of the 3 games we're discussing, BIinfinite is the one with least replay value for me, imho. I played through Arkham City like 3 times I think, it's one of my most played steam games. TW2 I also did like 3 or 4 playthrough.

Anyways, I finished "Faery: Legends of Avalon" . I don't usually say things like that, but best words to describe this game I can think of are "lovely" and "charming" . I finished it in 10 hours, and I'm disappointed that it ends with a "to be continued".

The gameplay is primarily adventure-like, where you do tasks for pretty much everyone you can talk to. There's no inventory, so you usually obtain items you need through dialogue or combat, and you " use" them on intractable environment and/or correct characters the same way. Basically, all you do is flit around one of the 4 "zones" from character to character doing fetch quests. But you literally flit - your character is a fairy, with wings, so you just point the mouse into any open spot of air, press the RMB and fly. I cannot describe how fun it feels, and the visuals largely work well enough to make the worlds seem immense (even though it's all just a matter of scale)

There's also an RPG leveling system that's clever- you obtain combat skills by mutating parts of your body, which changes how your character looks. There's turn-based combat, which got a bit tedious towards the end when enemy HP bars got longer, but a lot of it can be avoided through dialogue options. There are also up to 8 companions to choose from, and choices of "nice" and "nasty" dialogue options (color-coded for your convenience to affect how people personal perceive you in some occasions).

Basically, it's a really neat little game, it's a shame it didn't do better and never got its sequel. It's much more polished that "Of Orcs and Men" , which was it's contemporary.

Anyhow, I moved on to Remember Me and...
God DAYMN, but Neo-Paris is jaw-dropping. I'm still getting to grips with the combat system, but those visuals are just... astounding. Makes me excited for Vampyr and how Dontnod make post -WWI London look.

Edit: this is my own screenshot, but it's very similar to one of the in-game Ch 1 artwork shots:

https://steamuserima...0E0296BB98BBC6/

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 22 February 2018 - 03:29 PM

[Serenity]

Alternative Goose, on 22 February 2018 - 11:02 AM, said:

I tried to like Kingdoms of Amalur but it felt like playing an MMO felt with copy pasted content. I played it a lot I think but never bothered to finish it, which is rare for me.

It's definitely got a Warcrafty kind of vibe to it, yeah, probably because they were also working on an MMO before they went bankrupt. The story and the setting are pretty generic but I'm enjoying the WoW-meets-Fable style and especially the combat, which is fantastic. I'm not going to say it's the best thing ever, and I'm not sure how long it will last, but I played about a dozen hours over the past few days and it's hitting the spot at the moment.

[Mentalist]

I'm finding myself really overthinking the story in Remember Me (just finished Ch 4, so no spoilers plz).

Technically, the game has incredibly pretty aesthetic, which sometimes makes it too cluttered to look for collectibles (which sucks, b/c the most abundant collectibles are lore pieces, which I like, but which are sometimes hidden in plain sight, but hard to spot due to the visual clutter). I'm liking the combat system- I read a bunch of reviews and it's often compared to "Enslaved- Odyssey to the West". In that aspect, although Monkey probably had more interesting combat, "Enslaved" literally had THREE enemy types- so Remember Me automatically becomes a better game in my eyes just because its encounters are more varied and interesting, even if technically they may not be as good and polished.

I've had a few visual bugs, and the framerates jump like crazy, which is annoying considering I'm using a 1060 to run the game. But overall, I'm liking it a lot.

[Maark Abbott]

Just about to fight the Rokwyrm at the end of the Temple of Pyrynn in Skies of Arcadia.

The next two bosses are, from memory, a pain in the ass. There's the unwinnable fight vs Recumen where it's just a case of survive, and then the FUCKING LYNX. God I hate that ship so much, it's just bastard hard for that point in the game. Thinking of grinding a little in the temple itself so that Fina gets Sacres as it's a huge help in that fight (Aika already has it but she has limited MP).

[Maark Abbott]

The combination of the Recumen survival battle, the Lynx (still the hardest boss in the game) and crossing South Ocean ensuring I got the 3 Discoveries took about two hours, jeez. Finally reached Ixa'Taka though. I fucking HATE South Ocean as well. It's not enough that Recumen/the Lynx are pretty hard, when you get to South Ocean you have Gravers, who know the spell which will kill a party member 100% of the time when cast unless you have Delta Shield up. And if you get back attacked, well, you may as well reset the game cause u gon die. I reverted to my tactic of saving after every damn random encounter!

[Maark Abbott]

The Swampfather, on 28 February 2018 - 04:19 PM, said:

Are you playing it on the actual GC or some other platform?

On my Gamecube. Had that thing for about fourteen years now!

[Tiste Simeon]

Maark Abbott, on 01 March 2018 - 08:10 AM, said:

The Swampfather, on 28 February 2018 - 04:19 PM, said:

Are you playing it on the actual GC or some other platform?

On my Gamecube. Had that thing for about fourteen years now!

And how much will you cry if it suddenly breaks?