Last game you finished, tell us about it

[JDR13]

I finished Prey, after 50-ish hours. I left a few side missions, but I saw all the endings.

I liked it a lot for the gameplay and the story, but there are difficulty spikes that can be frustrating.

I thought Prey was a little on the easy side. It starts out challenging, but you become OP in the second half due to the overabundance of Neuromods. It's still one of my favorite immersive sims though. I love the atmosphere.

About the endings:

Spoiler

I'm a little disappointed that all endings are actually the same. I first did the nullwave transmitter, then I thought that making the station self-destruct without leaving it would save Earth, but it wasn't the case. Ah well, not a big issue.

I've also noticed something if you prepared both the nullwave transmitter and inserted the keys into the core control for self-destructing the station: if you launch the self-destruct sequence on the bridge, the computer for the nullwave transmitter shuts down, so you can't use both at the same time.

Another thought was to choose the self-destruct and prevent anyone getting back to Earth, but I'm not going to test that. From what I've read, it doesn't provide another ending.

Spoiler

Doesn't one of the endings also depend on how many Typhon Neuromods you installed? I can't remember, but I thought that could affect the outcome.

 

[bjon045]

I thought Prey was a little on the easy side. It starts out challenging, but you become OP in the second half due to the overabundance of Neuromods. It's still one of my favorite immersive sims though. I love the atmosphere.

Spoiler

Doesn't one of the endings also depend on how many Typhon Neuromods you installed? I can't remember, but I thought that could affect the outcome.

I also found it fairly easy but I think that was a good thing as it let me focus on enjoying the story and exploration.

I think the ending does change slightly but not in a significant way. I don't think I would play it again though as I don't think I will forget all the plot twists anytime soon

I bought and played it off recommendations on here and it was money well spent!

 

[bkrueger]

I finished Prey, after 50-ish hours. I left a few side missions, but I saw all the endings.

I liked it a lot for the gameplay and the story, but there are difficulty spikes that can be frustrating.

About the endings:

Spoiler

I'm a little disappointed that all endings are actually the same. I first did the nullwave transmitter, then I thought that making the station self-destruct without leaving it would save Earth, but it wasn't the case. Ah well, not a big issue.

I've also noticed something if you prepared both the nullwave transmitter and inserted the keys into the core control for self-destructing the station: if you launch the self-destruct sequence on the bridge, the computer for the nullwave transmitter shuts down, so you can't use both at the same time.

Another thought was to choose the self-destruct and prevent anyone getting back to Earth, but I'm not going to test that. From what I've read, it doesn't provide another ending.

But the main twist in the ending is something completely different, if I remember correctly:

Spoiler

In the end you find, that everything was a simulation, you are one of the aliens and you have the choice to either live in peace with the humans or not.

 

[Redglyph]

But the main twist in the ending is something completely different, if I remember correctly:

Spoiler

In the end you find, that everything was a simulation, you are one of the aliens and you have the choice to either live in peace with the humans or not.

That's the gist of it.

Spoiler

There are 4 endings (or 2, depending how you see it):

• you take the escape pod before finishing the main quest => you are immediately dismissed, "We failed, this isn’t the one. Start over." (since there's no explanation, the player needs to see another ending to understand this laconic conclusion)
• you destruct the station, you remain on it => debriefing
• you destruct the station, you take the escape pod or the shuttle => debriefing
• you use the nullwave transmitter to kill the typhon => debriefing

At the debriefing, your actions are weighed to decide whether or not Alex and the others let you live(*). Then Alex shows you that the world has been taken over by the typhon and says you have run a simulation based on Morgan's memories.

He asks you if you understand and see if humans exist. There, you can choose to shake hands or kill Alex and the drones. That could be seen as the only difference in the endings.

It would have been easy and more satisfying to let Earth untouched by the typhon in one scenario, which wouldn't be a simulation. The debrief would need to be different but it could be very simple. But I get it, the whole story is just a selection test for typhon forms to see if they could live together with humans, and so all the endings are actually the same (except the very short one if you defect).

(*) According to this article, the debriefing changes depending on whether your actions were terrible or not. What I observed, however, was different, so I'm not sure it's correct.

 

[Carnifex]

And yesterday I fully wrapped up Seeds of Evil, the most recent content for Mutant Year Zero. I had a great deal of fun with the base game and expansion, and hope to see more from these folks. The way things were similar in the expansion yet basically forced you out of comfort zones first was irksome, then made a great deal of sense and was fun. I highly recommend this game if turn based shenanigans are what you crave, with a little real time tossed in for good measure.

 

[JFarrell71]

And yesterday I fully wrapped up Seeds of Evil, the most recent content for Mutant Year Zero. I had a great deal of fun with the base game and expansion, and hope to see more from these folks. The way things were similar in the expansion yet basically forced you out of comfort zones first was irksome, then made a great deal of sense and was fun. I highly recommend this game if turn based shenanigans are what you crave, with a little real time tossed in for good measure.

You do know that there is already more from these folks? It's called Miasma Chronicles, I believe.

 

[Carnifex]

I've heard of the game yet had no idea it was from the same studio! Guess that gives me another gem to look forward to playing someday.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Portal 2

Such a blast of a sequel. I didn't pay it much attention when it initially released, but it's significantly better than part 1. Both in terms of new puzzles and mechanics, some of them absolutely mind-melting; but especially in terms of the plot and characters. And surprisingly I only had to lookup one puzzle level (Chapter 8, puzzle 16 was a beast; not sure I could've made it through on my own).

I especially loved how large and open the spaces were, and how puny you feel in a lot of the locations. And I also consider it a sign of good exploration and level design when I'm not sure I'm going the right way, and I'm not sure whether I broke the level and got to somewhere I wasn't supposed to. The portal gun is an absolute stroke of genius in terms of how versatile it is, both in exploration, level traversal and puzzle involvement in a vast multitude of ways.

It's now pretty obvious Portal 1 was a mix of a tech demo and some narrative context to it all, but Portal 2 just improves on everything, especially narrative-wise. And the two characters, Wheatley and GlaDOS, were an absolute blast to constantly hear interacting. But even separately they're significantly more humanized than in the first game. Such a fun duo. And such a good narrative arc to them both.

I'm more mixed on the ending, I kinda wished it ended differently. This was the game I probably wished didn't end on such a sarcastic note. I really grew to like GlaDOS. Wheatley's ending was also hilarious. Just before the end, I just randomly clicked and the ending was triggered. And only then did I realize the lunacy of it.

Anyway, I think I can easily grant the game a 10/10.

 

[Carnifex]

I finished Arcadian Atlas today, and overall it's nice game, along the same vein as Final Fantasy: Tactics, among others, save that this one is a bit easier and more simplistic. The story gets off to a slow start yet gets better as the game progresses, and the combat is fairly decent, save for some battles where the opponents just do weird things, like healing themselves when not even damaged. If there's additional content forthcoming for this one, I'll be picking it up for sure. It took a long time from when the kick starter campaign first launched, yet they've got a nice little gem here.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Quake 2

Quake 2 was a decent fps, that was still enjoyable in 2023. I never played the second Quake game when it came out, the third was only multiplayer and didn't have an inkling of an interest to try the 4th one. But the second is pretty solid, even though I'm more than a dozen years too late.

I'm not sure I liked the switch in setting and everything else. So, if I had to give it to one, Quake 1 had better atmosphere. The second one relied too much on the cyborg theme. Quake 1 had a stronger and more subtle horror vibe, while 2 tries too hard with the body-horror element.

The shooting mechanics and maps were solid, as would be expected. So were the maps, but there was also quite a lot of backtracking across maps; enabling/disabling whatever device, to clear your path, and the backtracking on the original path. I have to say I made a lot of use of the compass that Nightdive Studios introduced into the remaster.

The only annoying thing about the game was some of the enemies, especially the ones that took movement control away from the player. The ones that lunge at you, and there's basically no way to dodge it, aside from if you're lucky to have geometry between you and it. And even that doesn't always work, since they seem to be scripted to hit something when they start the lunge. Those, and the spidery-appendaged creatures that grab and pull you from afar. Those were absolutely brutal and infuriating. The ones that resurrected enemies were dangerous enough, but nothing close to the other two. Having your control taken away from you, in a game where movement is vital, is a real annoyance.

All in all, a decent shooter. Definitely nowhere near as good as the Doom games, or even Quake 1, but still worth killing some time through it, if you've never played it. Though, I'm pretty sure I don't have a much of a motivation to ever return to it; most probably. Unlike Doom, which I like to go through every couple of years, if I have nothing else to kill time with.

So, a 7.5/10 from me.

 

[Redglyph]

I don't remember much about Quake 2, except that must have been one of the last game I played without GPU (not that I didn't try but it was impossible to get a Voodoo card because of the demand). I was quite excited there was a new Quake game so I didn't care one bit; I had to upgrade the CPU though.

Funny that you're playing that now, and good to hear it has aged well.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Funny that you're playing that now, and good to hear it has aged well.

I played it since it just received a remastering by Nightdive Studios, and its now running with their own engine; from what I read. I think they did the same for Quake 1, and I played it then too.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Dungeon Lords Steam Edition. Haven't finished it, but I think I had enough. It's absolutely in a terrible state. I forced myself to reach the sanctum of the mage inside Fargrove. There I met my end to a death spectre I cannot seem to damage. I probably need to work around its invulnerability, but I've not read anything or heard anything ingame and I'm not about to go googleing for a walkthrough for this game. Anyway, my review for as much as I played.

I've given this game more than it deserved, I feel, since it initially gave me some feeling of how Gothic 1 initially seemed like. Meaning rough in the implementation, but with a solid heart. Well, a diamond in the rough this is not.

I've reached Fargrove, the first town. Cleared my way through the imense sewers underneath it, and came out inside the town walls. I even grinded and cheesed the huge troll in the sewers, which took forever.
The town itself feels very generic and copy-pasted. It felt like a string of samey alleyways, with the same copy/pasted facade.
And it felt just like the outside. I was attack by a bunch of random bandits, right in front of city guards. I was attack by bats.
I was attack by some high level enemies that portaled into town and started attacking me, with no context as to why. Thank god the guards helped in taking them out.
Then I was attack by some high level goblin, from which I ran away.
And somehow I stumbled onto the temple where apparently I was supposed to go, and got a key to unlock the next area.
Reached that next area, some sanctum of some mage, where he is now, and kept prisoner by some death specter which I apparently cannot damage at all.
I do not believe I read anything ingame as to how to kill it. No journal notes, unless I missed something, as to how to tackle this.

In short, this game feels very much unfinished, unbalanced and probably released early due to budget constraints.
I can appreciate a low budget game, but this really takes the cake.
The combat is absolutely awful. But I would've kept with it, since I managed to spam my way through most of it.
But then the other shoe drops. Enemies respawn. And you don't get to not have any respawing enemies, just the degree to which they do. I cannot fathom how they thought that was a good idea, with the awful combat mechanics they have.
Besides the bad combat, you also have a very rudimentary and buggy movement and collision system, with both enemies and the environment. Can't say how many times I got stuck in the geometry of the world.

The long and short of it is that this game was definitely not finished, or at least polished to any acceptable level. But it was a lesson in what rough a shape a game can be in. Gothic and its sequels are absolute diamonds compared to this.
A 3/10.

Also, I just notice this. Did I play a completely different game? I'll give it that its a huge world. I did not see anything resounding good character progression. I got to level 8 and felt exactly the same as level 1, just higher stats.
Fun combat? Now that has to be a joke. Rewarding loot system? I don't think I've seen anything as bare-bones as this.
Anyway, didn't mean to put Fluent on blast. But it is interesting to see such discrepancy of opinions.

 

[Shattermind]

Its been awhile since I played this, but I think that with that spectre you have to do something with the candles or something. It was a pretty annoying fight. It only gets worse from here, so if you hate the game now, you probably picked a good time to bail.

I don't know Fluent personally, but going from what I've seen from his posts, he seems to like literally everything.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Its been awhile since I played this, but I think that with that spectre you have to do something with the candles or something. It was a pretty annoying fight. It only gets worse from here, so if you hate the game now, you probably picked a good time to bail.

I don't know Fluent personally, but going from what I've seen from his posts, he seems to like literally everything.

I was expecting to see a city in Fargrove, but I think that's probably where the game died for me. It felt like such an unfinished mess, especially with those higher level mages and soldiers attacking me (not sure if that was supposed to happen, but there was no narrative explanation as to what was going on). And all of it so samey and copy/pasted. I literally got lost through the maze like alleyways.

About the specter, I tried interacting with the 4 artifacts, or whatever they were, in the corners, but didn't see anything. I guess I missed the candles, or the book/dialogue/context as to how I was supposed to know about the candles. But I did check my quest log, and pretty sure nothing was there about it. But then again, this is the sort of game where I definitely expect for that sort of thing to not be logged. And I maybe skimmed over the dialogue? The location of the sanctum I found only through direct dialogue with the priest. And I know for certain the quest log didn't log that in. So it's likely the same thing happened with the candles, if there was any mention of them.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

One interesting thing to note that I now realize, is that I even made it this far into it since I think there is a core in there, underneath all that mess, that seems good. But it's so unfinished and unpolished that you really need to have the patience to put up with everything. But some of the design decisions are just beyond me. The decision to respawn with a combat system like that, I cannot explain.

 

[Shattermind]

Believe it or not, early versions of the game, everything was even more empty. The inns were empty, the elven area was empty, and so on. I think it was either v 1.4 or the CE that filled in some of the content. So yeah, it used to be much, much worse. There were some puzzles later on in the game where it was pretty easy to break the game.

The game gets supremely annoying when monsters start hitting you with stun and gas attacks (and if I recall, the air pocket spell didn't work on those). I think I derived some satisfaction overcoming all the tedium (or maybe I just hate myself lol), but I don't think I'd want to play it again. I did like the character system in the CE though (as mentioned in the other thread). I wish someone would rip it off and use it on a better game.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

The game gets supremely annoying when monsters start hitting you with stun and gas attacks (and if I recall, the air pocket spell didn't work on those).

Yeah, that and getting slammed to the floor by the troll in the sewers was also annoying. And the goblin mage throwing fireballs through walls.
But the worst were probably the ballista goblins. They auto-rotate to you and you can't get behind them, and they keep knocking you down. So annoying.

 

[Shattermind]

The gas ones you just run around coughing and can't do anything else. Seeing a mob of giant red worms is something I still dread

I will say one thing: dragons are pretty badass. It felt like an accomplishment downing one.

 

[Lakorus]

I just finished Horizon - Zero dawn. I enjoyed it immensely: the presentation, gameplay, the world-building, graphics, the difficulty-level, the story, the characters; everything! I must admit that I got a bit burned out towards the end, especially in the Frozen Wilds add-on, because the fights got a bit annoying. There was much less tactics involved in comparison to the first half of the game, because the machines are super-aggressive and fast and have a lot of HP. But I collected over 90% of the achievement, pretty much everything except from the replay-ones, ultra-hard and some challenges that I just couldn't beat.

I can only recommend the game to anyone who likes open world games.

Well, after two and a half months and almost 90 hours that I spent with the game, it is time to take a small break from gaming for me for a few weeks... That's my intention at least, maybe I play one or two very short games before I start something as massive as this.