Last game you finished, tell us about it

[JDR13]

It was easy to tell from the demo that FEAR 2 just didn't have the same mojo as the first game. I didn't bother wasting my money.

 

[JemyM]

I never really understood the love for the original F.E.A.R either.
No One Lives Forever, Alien Vs Predator 2 and Condemned were superior in both story and atmosphere, where as F.E.A.R felt like a title that wanted to be both a horror game and an action game at the same time, which was a failure in my book. Also it failed to explain properly where all the soldiers you had to shoot came from, like they were thrown in after the story was written "to give the player something to shoot at on his way". F.E.A.R 2 to me simply offered "more of the same".

 

[JDR13]

The original FEAR was great. It's also not really comparable to any of the games you mentioned, except maybe Condemned, which was certainly not superior to FEAR.

Which soldiers could you not understand the origin of? Everything was explained in FEAR, I'm guessing you simply misunderstood something or don't accurately remember the plot.

 

[JemyM]

The original FEAR was great. It's also not really comparable to any of the games you mentioned, except maybe Condemned, which was certainly not superior to FEAR.

Condemned can barely be compared to F.E.A.R. F.E.A.R is an attempt to make a game out of The Ring/Ju-On, using generic first shooter mechanics with Max Payne's bullet time. There's really nothing more to it.

Condemned offered unique and well executed game mechanics such as first-person brawling and solving puzzles through crime-scene investigation, and actually had a strong storyline (although with a dissatisfying ending). Atmospherically it also happens to be one of the scariest games ever made. One important factor was that it didn't give the player an arsenal of weapons which ruined most horror games at one point. Graphically it was also distinct and well researched as it borrowed the look and feel from real abandoned areas. You never lost the feeling of being alone, abandoned and dropped down without a weapon in a really dangerous area. It's distinct style, themes, atmosphere and unique features makes Condemned a "taste it if you are serious about gaming" kind of game, where as F.E.A.R can be substituted with other titles.

Being horror games they are definitely comparable to Alien Vs Predator 2 and the quality of the storytelling narrative is definitely compareable with No One Lives Forever.

Which soldiers could you not understand the origin of? Everything was explained in FEAR, I'm guessing you simply misunderstood something or don't accurately remember the plot.

Or rather, I didn't buy it. I didn't buy that there were suddenly an army of clone soldiers and atc guards popping out from the blue. F.E.A.R 2 is actually much more connected in that regard.

 

[JDR13]

Condemned offered unique and well executed game mechanics such as first-person brawling and solving puzzles through crime-scene investigation, and actually had a strong storyline (although with a dissatisfying ending). Atmospherically it also happens to be one of the scariest games ever made. One important factor was that it didn't give the player an arsenal of weapons which ruined most horror games at one point. Graphically it was also distinct and well researched as it borrowed the look and feel from real abandoned areas. You never lost the feeling of being alone, abandoned and dropped down without a weapon in a really dangerous area. It's distinct style, themes, atmosphere and unique features makes Condemned a "taste it if you are serious about gaming" kind of game, where as F.E.A.R can be substituted with other titles.

I didn't feel that way about Condemned at all. I found the investigation scenes both unrealistic and incredibly boring, not to mention the fact that they really had no impact on the game at all. What I found really annoying about the game was the very small selection of enemy character models. It didn't add to the realism or atmosphere at all when you had to kill the exact same psychopath 25-30 times in one level. It wasn't a bad game my any means, just not a great one. It was generally rated about 10% lower than FEAR by most critics, which isn't really that bad.

Or rather, I didn't buy it. I didn't buy that there were suddenly an army of clone soldiers and atc guards popping out from the blue. F.E.A.R 2 is actually much more connected in that regard.

I didn't buy the army of clones in Condemned.

 

[Moriendor]

I never really understood the love for the original F.E.A.R either.
No One Lives Forever, Alien Vs Predator 2 and Condemned were superior in both story and atmosphere, where as F.E.A.R felt like a title that wanted to be both a horror game and an action game at the same time, which was a failure in my book.

And not in mine . I thought that the horror/action mix in FEAR worked really well. For a first person shooter I also felt that it was relatively light on the action parts. There were a lot of passages where you just "cleared" room after room and corridor after corridor without encountering a single enemy (or paranormal experience). These silent passages really helped in building up a lot of tension because you just knew that something was going to happen sooner or later but you did not know what. I got a good kick out of an enemy soldier breaking the silence by crying out "Flashlight!" when they spotted you and stuff like that. I thought that they did a really good job at building up tension and suspense, then releasing it in an action sequence (or a spooky Alma scene) and then back to silence and building up tension and suspense again. That worked pretty well for me at least.

Also it failed to explain properly where all the soldiers you had to shoot came from, like they were thrown in after the story was written "to give the player something to shoot at on his way".

Huh? I thought that the origin of the clone soldiers was actually explained rather well. Armacham (ATC) created them to be (telepathically) controlled by Paxton Fettel. If you would have asked why they created them that'd be a better question . World domination? Or just to properly test the prototype's (the payer's) combat abilities? Or were they a secret military project funded and supported by the US government or a separatist group within the US administration (i.e. what is the connection between ATC and that senator that appears at the end of FEAR)? I haven't played FEAR 2 yet but I hope that some answers will be presented in the sequel.

F.E.A.R 2 to me simply offered "more of the same".

If only it would... *sigh* - I have only played the demo so far but I really don't like what they did with the sequel. The HUD is way too intrusive (like Deus Ex Invisible War kind of intrusive). No more leaning, no more a limit on the weapons you can carry at a time, no more quick saving, a much weaker AI, no support for additional mouse buttons (4th and 5th button unmappable) and more general "consolitis" (like those silly flashing arrows and pointers all of the time that break immersion in a game like this BIG time).
I know that I'll be pretty disappointed by F.E.A.R 2 but yet I bought the game because I want to find out how the story continues. It was "only" EUR 32.49 from Play.com so it's OK. I wouldn't have bought the game for the usual EUR 40 - 50 though. Now just need to find the time to get into it... *sighs again*...

 

[JDR13]

The HUD is way too intrusive (like Deus Ex Invisible War kind of intrusive). No more leaning, no more a limit on the weapons you can carry at a time, no more quick saving, a much weaker AI, no support for additional mouse buttons (4th and 5th button unmappable) and more general "consolitis" (like those silly flashing arrows and pointers all of the time that break immersion in a game like this BIG time).

I agree 100%. Within a few minutes of starting the demo, I could tell FEAR2 was designed more for the Xbox 360 or PS3 than for the PC. It's funny that you mention DX:IW, because that's the first game I thought of when trying to compare FEAR2 to something else. Such a shame....

 

[JemyM]

No more leaning, no more a limit on the weapons you can carry at a time, no more quick saving, a much weaker AI, no support for additional mouse buttons (4th and 5th button unmappable) and more general "consolitis" (like those silly flashing arrows and pointers all of the time that break immersion in a game like this BIG time).

I wont comment on the rest since we are down to discussing opinions anyway.

I just wanted to point out that the weapon limit is 4 at a time which actually forced me to give up weapons I wanted to keep. Also I use a mx518 mouse with Logitech drivers and the "überinstall" hack so I could use all eight buttons but I only used 6 of them as more wasn't neccessary.

When it comes to gameplay the game felt solid, just not very unique, even if I agree that the missing leaning was a miss. The demo is a copy/paste job of the game, where things happen in a different order and the maps are connected in a different way than in the actual game. Personally I found the school to be the best part (pieces of the school appears in the demo), but there are parts of the hospital that was quite twisted too. I didn't feel the hud to be much of a problem. It fit the idea that you had some kind of helmet or visir on you that is sometimes splashed with blood/water. Besides that, some of the visual effects that distorts your eyesight looks really good. The discovery of scattered documents/disks etc did flesh out the story somewhat and the presence of ATC forces and replicas are much better explained than in the first game as far as I concern.

But the overall story and atmosphere simply didn't match my expectations. I still remember, in great detail, some of the maps in AvP2 and Condemned, as the strong atmosphere in those games managed to shake my emotions quite a bit, but FEAR 2 doesn't go near that, and the story was really poorly written. This is yet another of those games in which you have to ask the question why they pay a truckload of cash for top quality artists but then fail to hire a professional writer.

 

[txa1265]

I lamented the loss of leaning in Far Cry 2, but as some mentioned the gameplay of FC2 was very different and it wasn't necessary such a loss. But for me, Monolith's strength has come from that sort of 'lean, snap-turn, quick take-down' shooter back to NOLF and before ... and FEAR had that gameplay along with a decently integrated story ... but FEAR 2 was just not worth playing, let alone paying for.

 

[gaboru93]

<<Sorry for the useless spam >>

 

[txa1265]

Heya everyone? Can you guys recommend me some nice games?

Can you start a new thread - this is about discussing games you have recently finished.

 

[Turjan]

So, I finished Jade Empire last night.

I think I now understand why I have often difficulty finishing games. This was no principal problem here, as the game was only somewhat less than 30 hours game time for me (yes, I'm slow ). I noticed once more that endgames seem to bore me. What should be the exciting culmination of a long story looks like a convoluted mess of weird situations to me. One scene near the end, which was supposed to show some great atrocity, looked quite picturesque. The cutscenes did their utmost to show the deep disgust of the NPCs, but they overdid it. I guess the NPCs had to hammer the point home because the scene itself didn't manage to induce the expected feeling. And with this, the whole story lost me and fell more or less apart.

Other than that, the game was enjoyable enough. Much of the story seemed overly familiar, though, and I can see where all the KotoR comparisons come from. It was the quirky details that kept my interest going. As far as game play goes, the fighting was at first okay. Later, I was not too enthused anymore. This might change on higher difficulty levels, but most of the fights were pushovers, with the occasional hard fight strewn in. The hard fights were only hard if you just clicked with your favorite fight style, but got cheesily easy if you used some killer combos. Those killer combos worked reliably, but were unfortunately extraordinarily boring to do. The problem was that there was no mid-ground. No killer combo meant a quick death, whereas the killer combo was tedious, but allowed the fight to end with full health and chi. That was disappointing.

I don't think I will replay the game any time soon, but I hardly ever do this with games, anyway. All in all, it's still a good game, but definitely won't make my top ten list.

 

[dteowner]

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

The complaints have been posted in several news bits. After many many hours (I'd estimate somewhere in the 40-50 hour range for me), I don't know that I buy most of them. Once you get skilled at "reading the board", luck doesn't have near the impact that it does while you're still learning. You'll still get the occasional gift/screwjob with something on the edge, but it's not a significant influence on the battles.

The story is good enough. I thought the cut scenes were fairly well done and did a nice job of moving the story along. Asimov doesn't have anything to worry about, but for an RPG/puzzle blend, the story serves its purpose.

I finished at level 50 (I think there's a cap there) with about 800,000 credits in a well-equipped Vortraag destroyer.

The nice idea of giving you 3 ships doesn't really work. The speed penalty you pay for a bigger ship doesn't offset the advantages, so you're always going to use the biggest ride you can afford. There's no strategy for the henchies--there's 6 to get and there's 6 slots. There IS strategy to the equipment you choose for your ship, but I didn't do too much swapping. In fact, by the end game, I wanted a damage slot, a shield killer, and a turn skipper. All those extra slots were nice, but they didn't matter terribly much.

The introduction of interacting factions is very good. Doing quests for one will often make another angry. Piss off a faction, and you'll be attacked if you go into one of their sectors. Very good. Downfall is that you can increase your standing with a faction via trade. Add in a sector that's practically an ATM if you're willing to invest the time mining, and suddenly the faction consequences don't matter as much. If you have to kill someone, just go sell a buttload of stuff in their sector and you won't lose your good standing.

In conclusion, I definitely enjoyed the game and got my money's worth. Some of the "improvements" from the first PQ work and some don't. They did a good job smoothing out rough edges from the first PQ, but lost some of the strategy depth in the process. If you don't own either game, I'd probably buy Galactrix just for the added complexity of the hex grid. If you've got the first PQ, you'll like this one, but I don't know that paying $20 to play Galactrix is that much better than a replay of the first one.

7.5 out of 10.

 

[txa1265]

Nice summary ... I've been playing along both DS and PC, and have abandoned the DS as it is just a slowed down version with too much load/save delay. I find that it falls beneath the original in pretty much every way for me. But I agree - the luck factor seems to screw you early on, but over time it becomes clear enough how to do yourself some favors and in general it all evens out. I mean, I have taken out pretty strong enemies I had no business fighting in one or two rounds thanks to some amazing drops ...

 

[magerette]

Thanks for the write up, dte. I'm looking around for the game if I can find it below thirty bucks. I'll do a similar little take on Eschalon since someone asked in another thread how I liked it.

Eschalon: Book I is the last game I finished, and the first one I've finished since King's Bounty. Let me give it my highest praise by saying about ten minutes into the game I stopped thinking of it as "an indie game" and just began enjoying it as an rpg.
Character creation was well done, not too overly complex but a satisfyingly complicated combination of skills, stats, and attributes with a dash of personalized history thrown in from the background and beliefs departments.
The amnesia cliche that begins the game is an old one, but does have the advantage of being a tried and true hook to hang a tale upon, and like the rest of the plot, was presented succinctly in a workmanlike manner that immediately invests you in the game. The storyline will never win a Pulitzer, but it was interesting, believable and hung together.
Quests were very much like quests always are, but they also worked. None of them were too convoluted or too trivial, all of them gave you lots of opportunities for exploration, loot and experience. Looking back, I don't see any that really stand out in drama or moral choice, but yet each one was worth doing, and progressed the story and your character logically.
The fun in rpgs for me lies mainly in the character build and combat, and Eschalon gives you solid nourishment in both. I played a ranger, and it's one of the few rpgs I've played where you actually felt that you were an effective killing machine with a bow. There are easy ways and hard ways of doing things, useless skills and vitally necessary ones, so after you discover some of the ways to work the system, the game gets a lot easier than it first appears, but learning that can take the best part of a first playthrough if you don't go reading around on forums and stuff like cheaters like me.
My gripes would be about the same as most others I've read--the slow walking speed of your character making traversing back and forth over entire maps with no quick travel options tedious and time consuming, the over-all shortness of the game(gets quite on rails towards the middle to end) the need to focus your skills and abilities at a very high level for them to be effective while only getting 3 points a level, etc. Overall, though, if you're looking for a game that's short on bells and whistles but long on all the most basic stuff that makes rpgs fun, Eschalon fits the bill.
Score: 8/10

 

[dteowner]

Thanks for the write up, dte. I'm looking around for the game if I can find it below thirty bucks.

I got my copy at the local Gamestop for $20. I pre-ordered, but I doubt that dropped the price much, so you should have little problem getting under the $30 mark.

 

[JemyM]

Resident Evil 5
A strong contender to game of the year.

Introduction
The Resident Evil series is one of the gameworlds greatest franchises. Only counting games considering "canon" this is the eleventh game (including RE0, Outbreak 1&2, Codename Veronica and Umbrella Chronicles) and there's even a recent feature-length fully animated movie that is also considered canon (Degeneration). Part of it's success is that they treated every core game (RE0-4 and Codename Veronica) of the series with outmost respect, never saving in on quality testing and bonus content. It also had a strong story from the first game on with much loved characters. Despite all the fame, RE4's stepped away from the horror genré into a more actionoriented game, which ofcourse pissed off many fans but also created one of the highest rated games ever made. Still the very strong mythology and an on-going story made many fans play it anyway.

Story
Resident Evil 5 takes on the gameplay of RE4, but storywise it ties back to many of the old games of the series such as Resident Evil 1 and Codename Veronica, making Chris Redfield the main hero and the villian is very familiar to fans. The game throws the player right into the story with Chris Redfield arriving to Africa, now member of BSAA, a group that fight bioterrorists all across the globe. He meets up with his new partner Sheva Alomar and together they visit a contact who reveal the name Irving to them. Soon enough all hell breaks loose as everyone in the area turns hostile, seemingly infected with a new type of bioweapon (although somewhat familiar to the Las Plagas in Resident Evil 4). Eventually it's revealed that Chris Redfield have greater reasons to be there than he first revealed. Personal reasons.

Fans have much to get here as RE5 ties the plot of most previous games together. The story is mostly told through cutscenes or scattered around documents that can be read. There are also out-of-game documents that reveal more info on the major characters that can be read between maps.

Graphics and sound
This is easily one of the best looking games available on consoles. It's not that the engine is up to Crysis-standard, but the artwork poured down into each map, character, oponent etc is simply amazing. The maps ok really good and there are tons of minor features that sticks out. The voice acting is excellent, as it should be.

Gameplay
Like I said, RE5 copy the gameplay of RE4. This basically means a 3rd-person over-the-shoulder shooter along with "press this button quickly" type of cutscenes. But it would be a shame to say that's all. RE5 does take on plenty of features that are nowadays in every major title, and also add some of it's own. It's difficult to explain every mechanic in the game since frankly almost every other map have some new unique feature or innovative bossfight that I could mention. Like all current games there are turrets, no game these days can go without turrets it seems. There are a somewhat "free-roaming" map in which you also get to control a vehicle. I noticed the "take cover" element as well as "Hand of Dawn" from Gears of War. The game also feature a co-op play where a second player can take control of Sheva Alomar and play her, otherwise she is played by the console. I found her A.I. to be way above average and there were only a few minor issues I could complain about. I also found it a bit annoying that you must stand still to use a knife.

For those who aren't satisfied with one playthrough there are plenty of stuff to do after you beated the game. You can replay any chapter you like and you seem to keep the inventory no matter which order you play. There are special BSAA badges to find throughout the game that need to be shot to count. You can use money you get to upgrade items and unlock new weapons. Whenever you beat a map you get a score, this score can be used to buy even more custom features such as "figurines" (like a gallery of characters/monsters), infinite ammo for weapons, new outfits to use in the game and "custom filters" that make the game look different. There's also a different kind of game unlocked after finishing the game once which is called Mercenaries, where you get to shoot as many opponents as possible before the time runs out.

Final Thoughts
Any real gamer should have played the Resident Evil series and this is yet another classic delivering content only few games come up to.

 

[xSamhainx]

Thanks for the review Jemy, i know now I wont be able to resist the minute i see it for PC. JDR encouraged me to play RE4, and it was some of the most fun Ive had gaming in a long time, and that was on a pretty crappy console port.

How are the zombies in this one? You know me... I like destroyin me some zombii

Not a strict follower of RE, tho I do own 1 &2 on console and have beatn them both, but never played the "inbetween" installments or part 3.

 

[JDR13]

Not a strict follower of RE, tho I do own 1 &2 on console and have beatn them both, but never played the "inbetween" installments or part 3.

What consoles do you own Sammy? RE3 was probably my least favorite in the series, but RE:Code Veronica is one of the best. RE:0 is very good as well.

 

[xSamhainx]

I have an original NES, a Sony Playstation, and an XBOX. Ive been tempted to fire up RE1&2 on the playstation lately.