Topic: Rate The Last Game You Played

[NWR_insanolord]

I'm making the most of my medical leave from college due to my broken ankle by playing through as much of my backlog as I can. I started with Henry Hatsworth, which I'm holding off on reviewing here until I finish it (right now I'm stuck in world 5).

My most recent choice was Phantasy Star 0 for DS. It works well enough, but a couple flaws make me think I'm not going to spend too much time with it, which sounds like a textbook 7/10 to me.

My initial reaction was that I really hope they make a follow-up to this on 3DS, because I think it would work a lot better there. Analog control would be a massive improvement for the game. What's less obvious is how they'd fix the camera controls. As it is, the camera remains stationary unless you center it behind you with the L button. Mapping the camera to the D-pad on the 3DS might help, but it really needs at least a bit of automatic management. Aside from those issues, the game is basically Phantasy Star Online with a more substantive story, which is just fine by me, and I'd probably sink a lot of time into it if not for the aforementioned problems.

[broodwars]

Dead Space 2 - Not a masterpiece, but a decidedly creative and exciting follow-up to the much-beloved original Dead Space.  The game starts out strong, hits a nice stride around the middle, and then sadly starts to wane as the story approaches its conclusion and level design starts to become "have player walk through generic room where 30 Necromorphs attack him nearly simultaneously."  The final boss is a joke, and the lack of bosses in general is disappointing.  The best thing I can say about the game is that there are lots of appreciated tweaks to the Dead Space formula (stasis now recharges, kinesis is more useful, you can equip any suit you've previously purchased, and different suits convey different stat bonuses) and a much larger focus on big set piece moments, but the game still feels true to the spirit of the original Dead Space (even if Isaac Clarke feels strongly inspired by Master Chief this time).  I completely ignored the multiplayer, and I suggest you do the same considering the poor reception it has gotten.

And yes, I did in fact manage to complete the game on Hard Core difficulty (where the enemies and ammo are set to higher-than-normal difficulty, you have no checkpoints, and you get only 3 saves the entire game), thus earning me my 28th Platinum trophy and the Hand Canon weapon.  Bang!  Bang!  Pew!  Pew!  Pew!   

[Halbred]

28th Platinum? Holy geezus! I haven't even earned ONE yet!

[ymeegod]

Alan Wake (Xbox 360)

What can I say I love this game, yeah it's a bit cheap with the scares (guys jumping you from behind similar to Doom 3 Imp's) but the story is great and the way it's told.  It's not the longest game (think I logged in 6 hours) but it's a masterful piece of work.  My biggest gripe was the whole "funny-man" side kick.  Why would you throw in a chester in a game that's all about supense? It's kills the mood.  Liked the game best when your alone--no allies.

I never did get to the DLC pack the Writer but I plan on buying both today.  The game's on sale for download for $12.99 or something and the Writer is on sale for $7.  Damn shame the game just didn't sell.

[broodwars]

Alan Wake (Xbox 360)

What can I say I love this game, yeah it's a bit cheap with the scares (guys jumping you from behind similar to Doom 3 Imp's) but the story is great and the way it's told.  It's not the longest game (think I logged in 6 hours) but it's a masterful piece of work.  My biggest gripe was the whole "funny-man" side kick.  Why would you throw in a chester in a game that's all about supense? It's kills the mood.  Liked the game best when your alone--no allies.

I never did get to the DLC pack the Writer but I plan on buying both today.  The game's on sale for download for $12.99 or something and the Writer is on sale for $7.  Damn shame the game just didn't sell.

Just grit your teeth and get through The Signal, because that DLC is terrible on many different levels.  The Writer, on the other hand, is excellent.  I share your sadness at the game failing to sell, though.  Alan Wake was one of the more enjoyable games I played this year, and Red Dead just wiped it out.  Damn open world Rockstar games...

[broodwars]

Tron: Evolution - Before you ask, I received this game as a gift from a co-worker, since he bought the game when it came out and he received a PS3 copy of the game for Christmas.  Thus, I felt obligated to put the time and effort into this game to play it through, and I even got my 29th Platinum (I don't know what's more surprising: that the Tron multiplayer servers are still up, or that there are people online actually playing it.    ).  Having played through it 3 times for that lovely little task, I have to say overall the game is just below average.  I've seen far worse movie-based games like Enter the Matrix and Terminator Salvation, as well as far worse games in general like Dark Void.  The game suffers from all the usual movie tie-in-game problems: lackluster visuals, a relatively nonsensical plot that is very poorly told, an extremely short running time, an uninspiring multiplayer mode, and gameplay that's utterly bland.

In fact, I would have loved to be in the boardroom where some rather-brave soul had the sheer nerve to pitch a half-assed Prince of Persia game with a Tron Legacy skin.  The "programs" in the Tron world must be ridiculously athletic, because apparently the only way to get anywhere in this generic and empty world is by wall-running, ledge shimmying, and platform-springing.  The on-foot gameplay isn't terrible, but it isn't the least bit exciting either (it's basically 6-8 hours of throwing discs at different varieties of guards "programs") and makes little sense for this game world.  Considering that everything in the game glows a neon color at some point, it can also be strangely easy to lose track of where the game wants you to go, and cheap deaths from the poorly-designed platforming (particularly at the end of the game) are common.  The vehicle sections fare much better, especially the sections of the game where you control a Light Tank and cruise through highways blowing up everything in and above your path.  The Light Cycle sections aren't what you think they would be from watching the original Tron, but they work alright though they are rather fond of springing obstacles and disintegrating roadways on the player before they can possibly react to them.

As you might have guessed, my biggest problem with this game is that as bland as the gameplay is, this game just doesn't feel like a Tron game.  I haven't seen Tron Legacy yet so I don't know how the world has changed since the original Tron, but I don't get the sense playing this game that this world and these characters exist as programs inside a computer.  It just feels like a generic action game with a slightly retro-80s vibe, and I've played far worse action games.  Hey, at least it isn't a crash-factory like the games I've mentioned.  For all its problems, I never had a single game-killing bug.  Mass Effect 2 on PS3 sure as hell can't say the same.

Speaking of which...

Mass Effect 2 (PS3) - It's Mass Effect 2...on PS3!  Yeah, I already played through the 360 version and loved it, but I could get this version for cheap and hey I could always do with more trophies so I picked this one up as well.  Overall, the 360 version is still the definitively better version.  The PS3 version tries valiantly to replicate the Mass Effect 1 import with a decent (if poorly placed) interactive comic that lets you import 6 key choices from Mass Effect 1 into Mass Effect 2...with no context whatsoever (seriously, why would I choose to kill Wrex if you're not going to give me any insight into his character and the context for the scene?).  The comic needed to be longer to flesh out the story, but at least the essentials are covered.  However, as decently as the comic works, importing 6 choices can't replace importing the hundreds from the original Mass Effect on 360.  There's a noticeable emptiness in the experience on PS3, though the game doesn't suffer too badly for it and you do get all the DLC 360 owners had to pay for.  What does kill the experience, though, is the totally inexcusable level of sloppiness in the port job.  The Overlord DLC is especially atrocious, with textures constantly corrupting around the Hammerhead as it moves through the overworld and the Hammerhead often sinking right through solid ground.  And the game frequently crashes when the game stops to auto-save or load textures as the user moves through environments.  Until Bioware issues a patch that fixes these problems, stay away from this version if you have any interest in it.  Otherwise, stick with the superior 360 version.

[jrlibrarian]

Professor Layton and the Curious Village: Headache ending/10
Just as great as I was expecting from Crimm's explanations of it on RFN. I still have about 30 puzzles to go since I've completing the main game, but I'm going to let that wait for a while before picking it up again.
 
I'm about half way through playing Sigma Star Saga for GBA. Anyone here played that before? I love it so far, even though it's very easy to get lost trying to find your way to your next objective.

[KDR_11k]

They never released Sigma Star Saga here, I was pretty interested in that back in the day.

[ymeegod]

Just finished up Transformers: War for Cybertron (xbox 360) and here's my review.

If you're looking for a short-forward shooter with bots this this game's for you but for everyone else there's plenty of other shooters worth your attention.  The game has a great backstory but it never gets around to telling it?  What happens between Megatron and Optism in the past?  It's bought up in the game but there's no flashback or memo or anything?  Just some bad blood between the two and that's all you as gamer needs to know?  Thanks a bunch!  What this game needed to do was shift down a gear and let the gamer into the unverse the developers created.  Instead the game focusses on just action--pure action.  Go there and shoot that--here I'll highlight if for you--that's basically the whole mission outline.  As a gamer you were never given a chance to think for youself. 

I'll give it an 5/10--it could have, it should have been Great.

[ymeegod]

Resonances of Fate Xbox 360  

Yeah, I'm a little late to the party since a few already reviewed it but here's my take if anyone gives a crap:

The game's plot is just like Blood said "utter sh!t that goes nowheres", if any game felt incomplete I'll say it was this one--nothing is really explained or what was the importance of "freedom from the stone " when the outcome is illness anyhow?  There's a few funny scenes that i enjoyed but the developers needed to pick one--gloomy kid with a troubled past or happy goof who googles at boobies.  Can't have both.

As for the combat, Tri-Ace should at least get credit for trying something new--I'll give them credit--but it needs a lot of refinement.  As others pointed there's issues with the balancing.  For some reason even though I had everything  I can do to block poisoning I ended up losing anyhow?  90% chance of block with 1/2 damage yet I end up infected and dead.  It's the same mission KDR and Blood bitched about so I'm glad those three giants gave everyone else issues as well.  Some ablities also made you a tank at the same time, Hawk-eye or whatever reduce your enemy's shields down to 0 so all you had to do was shoot once?  Ended up killing the end three bosses like that.  So there's lots Sega's Tri-Ace team needed to do to get a "fair" balance.

I'll give this one a sad 5/10 as well.

[broodwars]

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so I'll just do a quick synopsis of some stuff I've beaten (all but Judgement, anyway) lately:

Stacking - Another overrated Double-Fine game.  The experience is particularly dull (the lame music certainly doesn't help), the story isn't particularly interesting, and the game's mechanics are way too simple until nearly the end of the game when combination effects come into play.  I'm glad this game was free via PS Plus, or I would have felt ripped off paying $15 for this.

Nier - Surprisingly good.  An above-average soundtrack compliments a game that's a little schizophrenic (each dungeon in the game changes up how the game plays) and a little repetitive (most of the dungeons in the first half of the game are repeated in the second half).  There's some very funny writing, though, and the story isn't half-bad...though understanding it is a little dependent on the player having gotten one of the alternate endings in the PS2 game Drakengard.  There's a lot of little jokes at the expense of Zelda and RPGs in general.  The game has an interesting New Game Plus mechanic, where new cutscenes unlock upon replaying the game to flesh out the story.  Pity the game's...well...not up to Square-Enix standards graphically.

Bulletstorm - The most fun I've had with an FPS in years.  Excellently designed and well-written in terms of being pretty hilarious.  The campaign slowly unlocks new weapons and upgrades, and along with them new skill shots that use those mechanics.  This means that the player is constantly encouraged to experiment with the game's mechanics and change-up how they play the game.  The only real weakness is a very lackluster final chapter and extremely obvious sequel-baiting.  The game's more intelligent than most would give it credit for.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Overrated as far as hype is concerned, but it's a decent game that gets better the further in the player gets.  The level design is pretty shoddy, though (I frequently didn't know where the game wanted me to go), and the secret to unlocking the game's second half isn't hinted at in the least in-game.  The localization is...well...legendarily bad and the music is surprisingly poor and unmemorable for a game named after music.  I was satisfied by the time I completed the game, but I really had to fight to get through the first few hours of this one.  Still easily bested by both of the "Sorrow" Metroidvanias.

Castlevania: Judgement - Yep, it's crap, though it does sell me on the idea that maybe a Castlevania fighting game doesn't have to suck.  The game's a snore to play through, with the story mode topped off by one of those cheap Final Boss Encounters truly there because the designer hates the player.  I'm glad I picked up this one used so I could just return it the next day.

Dragon Age 2 - This game is getting a lot of crap and anger thrown at it right now and it doesn't deserve it.  I couldn't muster the interest to care enough to play the first Dragon Age more than an hour or so, but I was really hooked by this sequel.  Dragon Age 2 actually plays like a modern console RPG, rather than an homage to mediocre PC RPGs like the first Dragon Age.  The combat is fast and fun (at least as a Mage), the horrible dialogue trees have been replaced by a Mass Effect-style dialogue wheel, and the game is as well-written as most Bioware games are.  The game's serious flaws are an incredibly slow first Act (where you literally just do sidequests until you have enough cash to buy into the Act's big Main Story quest) and a lot of repetition in environments and enemies.  It's not up to the standards of a Mass Effect 2, but I enjoyed it and its emphasis on actual Role-Playing.  I do think the plot wouldn't have worked nearly as well if my character wasn't a Mage, though, and so had a personal stake in the story.

Mega Man 10 - I wasn't particularly fond of Mega Man 9.  It was ridiculously hard, mainly due to cheap level design.  Maybe once upon a time when I was growing up on my NES, I would have really gotten into it.  But I'm in my late 20s now, and I just don't have the time or patience for NES-era Mega Man B.S.  So I decided to give MM 10 a try on Easy mode, and I had a pretty enjoyable time with it.  First Mega Man game I've beaten in years.  I do think the game (even without the extra platforms and nonlethal spikes) plays a little on the easy side with easy and obvious enemy patterns (and enemy weapons that aren't particularly useful), but like I said I enjoyed being able to beat a Mega Man game for a change.  The game has one of the better Wily Castles I've gone through in a while as well, with some excellent fanservice for longtime Mega Man fans.

I've also been playing through Castlevania: Rondo of Blood on the VC, and to my delight it's probably my favorite traditional-style 2D Castlevania game.  I haven't beaten it yet, though.

[Caliban]

Stacking's a good game.

[broodwars]

Stacking's a good game.

Eh, to each their own.  Like pretty much all Double-Fine games I've played (Psychonauts, Costume Quest, Stacking), the game thinks it's funnier than it actually is.  There's just something about the gameplay in Stacking I didn't find altogether compelling.  It's a lot of wandering around until you find a given doll that can do something useful, and then using it.  The game doesn't do a really good job of fleshing out its mechanics and increasing the complexity of solutions until the game is nearly over.  I was pretty bored almost the entirety of playing the game.  DoubleFine's apparent new design decision to cheap out on the music and have no voice acting whatsoever really hurts the experience as well, IMO.  It's not as lame a game as Costume Quest, but this game is getting some seriously good reviews and I can't understand why.

[Oblivion]

Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy
 
Very amazing sequel to the first Dissidia.

[broodwars]

Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy
 
Very amazing sequel to the first Dissidia.

So I've heard.  Pity it's cursed with being on PSP instead of a platform people outside Japan actually own.  Would've liked to play a PSN version of that.

[Caliban]

Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy
 
Very amazing sequel to the first Dissidia.

It's a prequel.

[broodwars]

I'm in something of a Castlevania mood right now, so I've been trying to get through some of the ones I have in my backlog and I finally just finished one:

Castlevania the Adventure Rebirth - Weak.  Yeah, that just about sums it up.  The music is bland (and sounds so synthetic it sounds like it's coming out of a Sega Genesis), the enemy designs are just odd (rolling eyeballs?  Really?), the action and visuals aren't anything extraordinary, the level designs aren't particularly interesting, the game is extremely short, and there's pretty much no reason to replay it.  The experience is just surprisingly average for a CV game.  There's also a very strange difficulty curve: the first two stages are absurdly simple, and then there's a huge leap in difficulty starting with stage 3.  It's not the worst CV on the Wii while Judgement exists, but if you really want a good 2D Castlevania game stick with Rondo of Blood or Super Castlevania IV.  At least this is one CV game I could actually beat after a few attempts at stages 3 and 5.

[Halbred]

Rolling Eyeballs were in the original GB game (Castlevania: The Adventure). Awwww, I love Rebirth!

[broodwars]

Rolling Eyeballs were in the original GB game (Castlevania: The Adventure). Awwww, I love Rebirth!

But that's the big problem with the game: it plays like strictly a remake of a GameBoy game, with none of the advancements brought on by the later Castlevania games (aside from route changes, but that's nowhere near as well done as Rondo of Blood since they never lead to new stages, just slightly different routes of the same stages).  Given that it would have been the first 2D action-based Castlevania game since Rondo of Blood, you'd think Konami would have pulled out all the stops and made something really special that encompasses the best of what 2D Castlevania can do.  Instead, it's a somewhat lame remake of a very poorly-regarded GameBoy Castlevania.

[Halbred]

I think it's just an hour of fanservice, which is really all I wanted. ;-)

[broodwars]

Infamous - I tried to play through this game almost 2 years ago, but just got frustrated and ended up putting it up.  Now that I have a bit more free time on my hands (and a mountain of podcasts to listen to), I finally got around to finishing this game (twice) and getting my 31st Platinum.  Overall, I don't really care for Open World games but as far as Open World games go, this one's ok.  The powers on both Alignments are fun to play with, there's plenty of stuff to explore and discover without being too much, boss encounters are usually well-done, and there's a good sense of progression to the game.  Unfortunately, the enemies in this game are ridiculously accurate with their machine guns from a truly ludicrous distance and height, so you spend most of the game soaking up gunfire (usually without knowing where it's coming from)...especially since the enemies actually have better range than your standard lightning bolt shot.  On Normal and higher difficulties, it can get extremely irritating but at least you can minimize it a bit by performing sidequests that banish the enemies from the rooftops.  You also obtain a Power late in the game that lets you block enemy gunfire that's extremely useful.  Oddly, for a game that has some fairly decent music, there's barely any of it in the game.  The "comic book"-style cutscenes are very well-done, though.

Unfortunately, this being an Open World game means the game's also loaded with glitches and crashes.  I crashed twice playing through the game, and had several really odd glitches (like one where every time I hit solid ground, Cole started sliding through it until he hit the "water" underneath and died) and areas where I could easily walk through ledges and obstacles.  The game's "Good vs. Evil" alignment system is also legendarily goofy, frequently fond of giving "gray" moral choices akin to "I could save this orphanage, or I could shoot this box of puppies."  I would laugh at how extremely binary the "choices" are if the game wasn't actually expecting me to take them seriously.  What's especially odd is that the game is named "Infamous", Cole's voice the entire game reeks of "evil", yet the story is clearly geared towards Cole being a Hero.  I played through the entire game once on each Alignment, and being utterly evil changed a grand total of 3 cutscenes and some minor dialogue, none of which have any real impact on the story and Cole frequently acts in cutscenes as if he's a selfless hero.  The collectible Blast Shards are also not the least bit fun to scour the map to find (the main map doesn't display them at all despite them being on the Legend, and they're frequently hidden on your minimap by water), especially if you're trying to get all of them for the associated trophy.  Finally, the animation is this game is very weird, with movements very sudden and at angles.  It's a style that worked in the Sly Cooper games due to their Cartoony style, but in the "realistic" world of Infamous it just looks silly.

The game's decent overall, but I hope Sucker Punch stepped up their game with Infamous 2 with a more fleshed-out world; more interesting powers; less irritating enemies; a better-designed moral choice system (or at least stop pretending it's a real moral choice); and more user-friendly collectibles.

[ymeegod]

Finally gotten around to playing Fable 3 (Xbox 360) and I actually found myself enjoying it.

What game allows you to have a 5 person orgy that are all male?  Better yet, it upgrades my weapon at the same time.  :0.  The game is filled with humor and even a bit of more serious topics and it mixes the two rather well IMO.  Not many games could do that. 

There's always a few drawbacks from the Fable series like it's freaking to damn easy.  Even if you die, you'll just continue from where you left off without the soul points you collected.  Hell I had to let them kill him just to see if I can die--yeah the game is that freaking easy that you can just tape down the magic button or fire button and beat the game.

Also, there's alot of fetch quests though these are easily done now with a killer quick travel but I really didn't need to be jumping from one town to the next as a mail carrier.  The overall quick travel map worked well enough but I wouldn't mind a map to go alone with that.  The game provides an trail to follow (yellow no less) but a couple of times I found that it didn't work 100%--ended up wasting as hour+ running laps.

Overall I like this game the best of the Fable series and anyone looking for an RPG with Sims elements than this game for you.  If you're a diehard stat RPG gamer than you'll better off skipping this one.

8/10

[Halbred]

(Discusses Infamous)

I got that game for Christmas (late to the party, much?) and while I enjoy the game, I'm not loving it. Interestingly, I had purchased Prototype like a year before because I thought it looked cooler. Turns out it was pretty lame...the sidequests had nothing to do with the story, and even most of the story had nothing to do with the story. The powers were cool, though. InFamous is okay, but I'm not really digging the city and enemies have too much leeway in targetting and generally being powerful. I feel like my character should be much more powerful, this many hours into the game, but he's really not.

[broodwars]

(Discusses Infamous)

I got that game for Christmas (late to the party, much?) and while I enjoy the game, I'm not loving it. Interestingly, I had purchased Prototype like a year before because I thought it looked cooler. Turns out it was pretty lame...the sidequests had nothing to do with the story, and even most of the story had nothing to do with the story. The powers were cool, though. InFamous is okay, but I'm not really digging the city and enemies have too much leeway in targetting and generally being powerful. I feel like my character should be much more powerful, this many hours into the game, but he's really not.

Yeah, I took advantage of a 1-hour trial for Prototype on PSN, and I was extremely unimpressed.  I liked the mobility of the player character, but that was just about it.  If your character is way too underpowered in Infamous, your character is way too overpowered in Prototype.  I was playing the game and was left wondering why I should because there was nothing in even these early hours of the game that could pose a significant threat to me.  Plus, despite the narrative problems with Cole in Infamous, I felt even less attached to the psychopathic Alex Mercer in Prototype.

Infamous has its problems, though now that I'm finally allowing myself to view footage of Infamous 2 it looks like many of them may have been addressed in the sequel.  Cole seems to have a lot more mobility now, including being able to slide along walls.  I'm about of the same mind as you on the original, though: I enjoyed my time with it, but more as an indication of what we could see in the sequel (much as I very much dislike the first Uncharted but love Uncharted 2).  Hopefully, the copy & paste side missions from the original game will be trimmed down and made more unique for the sequel as well.  Some alterations to the climbing mechanics so Cole doesn't stick on every surface in his path when you're trying to make a jump or drop would be nice, too.

[broodwars]

I recently finished Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and its sequel (Platinums 32 and 33, btw).  Overall, I'm pretty amazed that the original game was such a fast seller and even won several writing awards, because neither game is above-average.  Their stories aren't particularly well-told, their gameplay gets more than a little monotonous (though IMO less so in the sequel simply because the combat's more entertaining), and both games are lacking in length.  At this point, the second game is getting a lot of criticism thrown at it by fans of the first game, and to be honest I don't understand why.  Force Unleashed 2 is practically the same frickin' game, just with a flimsier story; less physics/platforming puzzles (which I have to admit I miss); less repetition of environments; and better moment-to-moment gameplay.  That said, I did enjoy playing these two games.  Sometimes I'm just in the mood for a simple experience where you run around mowing stormtroopers down by the dozens with blasts of Force Push and finishing off big enemies with cinematic Quick-Time Events, and both games fulfilled their end of that bargain.

I haven't truly beaten Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 yet, as I still have to beat Arcade mode with 12 remaining characters.  Still, I think I've played more than enough to pass judgement on this one, as the game is so utterly lacking in content that if you've beaten the game once, you've seen all there is to see.  Overall, this game is just lazy.  Despite such a huge emphasis on the scenario pre-release, the game itself has no story.  It's just a string of random matches until you fight Master Hand Galactus (same difference.  They attack the same way, and you fight them the same way).  You beat Galactus, and you're treated to a 20-second completely random "ending" for whoever delivered the finishing blow, and calling that "underwhelming" is quite the understatement.  There's a Vs. mode and Online Play, but neither really seem worth the effort unless you're really into playing Vs. matches ad infinitum.  If I ever needed a reminder why I routinely ignore online play, I certainly got it today when I was right on the verge of winning my first online match ever in the game, and the jerk I was playing against disconnected, thus depriving me of the match actually registering with the server.  The game is pretty and can be fun to play in short bursts, but the experience overall is archaic; repetitive; and dull, especially with Fighting Games out there like the BlazBlue series that actually try to expand the genre experience with a plethora of modes.

On the upside, considering I suck at fighting games (as an online game today against apparently a true master quite shows) I am pretty proud at having completed 160 of the 360 "missions" (combo-oriented scenarios) to earn the related trophy.      Sure, it was only a bronze, but considering some of the missions I completed had around a dozen steps in them I had to do in quick succession, I'll take my glory where I can get it.   :