Topic: Games you've recently beat

Just finished God of War: Ragnarok and it not only didn’t disappoint… but it even exceeded my great expectations. Sony Santa Monica are on a level all by themselves amongst the Sony stable for me… incredible!

@colonelkilgore Glad to hear. I'm probably about 20 hours in now and it's an awesome experience thus far. Yes it's not without a few issues but for how good the combat and story are I can forgive those. Can't wait to see the ending but I also can as I don't want it to be over so soon

@render well I hope you enjoy where the story goes as much as me… how they interweave the various key moments of the actual Ragnarok tale as well as just Norse mythology in general into this narrative is genius. Neil Gaiman would be proud.

@colonelkilgore So I’ll ask the inevitable question (albeit trite at this point but I know your love of both runs deep) GoW Ragnarok or Elden Ring? Which gets chiseled into your gaming Mount Rushmore? (Sorry if that American reference doesn’t make sense). Or rather, which game are you going back into a burning house to save?

@Th3solution so long story short… it’s God of War: Ragnarok (which in all honesty could well be to do with recency-bias more than anything else). You know how much I love From Software… but god damn it did Sony Santa Monica produce something that speaks to my wants and needs perfectly. It’s like playing an unbelievably good mythic fantasy film that also has brilliant combat gameplay, good exploration and very clever use of the games implements for solving puzzles.

The PS4 version came with the PS5 version on the Collectors edition (& Jotnar Edition) and I will definitely be playing through it all again in a year or two for another plat, it’s incredible!

@KAIRU Ha, ha! No, it’s an open question, so no worries, bud. But I was pretty sure about where fall on the debate. GoWR just didn’t quite reach gaming nirvana for you, I see. But @colonelkilgore has a special undivided relationship with God of War, had completely altered his gaming schedule around its release so he could synergize his 100th platinum and yet, he was also willing to throw all his plans aside for Elden Ring because of his deep love for FromSoft. So I can see it was an internal struggle for him to choose his favorite child, so to speak. And so now I know… he’ll let Elden Ring burn to ash while he runs in to save GoW Ragnarok. Perhaps the real question is, would he choose to save Mrs. Kilgore or his collector edition of GoWR? I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that. 😂

But for you, @KAIRU I might propose a harder burning house dilemma — Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, Elden Ring, a partially cracked disc copy of Bloodborne which will only allow you to play the game twice before it breaks, your Nintendo Switch, or your favorite anime series? You only have time to save one. Which will it be? For arguments sake, in this fictional scenario all future possibilities of buying another copy of any of the above are gone because of the post apocalyptic world you are living in. 😄

@Th3solution always prioritise Mrs Kilgore sol… happy wife happy life and all that. Besides, Kratos could look after himself I reckon 😉

@colonelkilgore @KAIRU 😄 Very good and I like your logic. Thanks for indulging me with my sinister hypotheticals. Hopefully in the future Push Square will employ something like it in their reviews. 😉 It’s good to know just how good a 10/10 actually is in real world terms.

I reckon I’ve derailed this poor thread enough though.

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (PC). Originally released in 2002, and is the second game in the series. It's enjoyable, and has aged a lot better than the original Hitman: Codename 47. It did take a bit of fiddling to get it running properly on my modern PC, but that's not uncommon for games of this era.

There's still quite a lot of jankiness to it though, and players familiar with the modern trilogy may have a hard time adapting to the classic mechanics. For instance, non-lethal takedowns are only possible with anaesthetic, which has a limited supply and wears off eventually. And running is frowned upon by the NPCs, and will quickly make everyone suspicious of you. Thankfully they introduced mid-level saving to this game, which removes most of the tediousness that the previous game had.

The level design had improved a lot with this game. There's still some iffy levels here and there, but a lot of levels use a sandbox approach with more than one way of accomplishing a task. I was playing on the easier difficulty, which gives you the max number of mid-level saves per level, and can make the guns blazing approach a viable strategy for when stealth fails.

Rhythm Paradise Megamix (3DS). Also known as Rhythm Heaven Megamix. This is a wonderful collection of various rhythm mini-games. It has most of the best mini-games from each of the previous Rhythm Paradise games (including the Japan exclusive GBA game), as well as a bunch of new mini-games. There's a lot of creative ideas for the mini-games, and the music is rather catchy.

One quality of life improvement that helped me enjoy this game a lot more was that the bottom screen gives an indication of how accurate each button press is. Perfectly timed notes produce a large starry circle in the centre of the screen, and early/late notes make a smaller circle towards the left/right of the lower screen. It's a simple feature, but it helped me a lot with understanding what mistakes I was making.

Professor Layton Vs Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney (3DS). I'm super fond of both the Professor Layton and the Ace Attorney series, so naturally I had a lot of fun with this. It does a good job of incorporating the gameplay mechanics from both series, and it's great to see Layton and Phoenix interact with each other.

Mass Effect 3

First time I ever played it beyond the first few hours. The overall experience was quite good, with the Citadel DLC being the highlight of the game. That was probably one of the best DLCs I've ever experienced, and some of the best writing of the series in terms of comedy.

I'm not one that has to have their hand held at all times, but the game did do a poor job of explaining where to find certain things or what to do exactly with some of the side missions, requiring you to look it up online rather than search for long periods of time. Nothing Google couldn't fix, but one thing I will say is I wasn't able to have Shepard live in the end even though I chose the Red ending simply because websites had conflicting numbers you had to have for the War Effort to allow her to be alive in the end, and obviously the game was no help there either (I guess to be expected there). I had well over 6,000, so it's a bit of a joke that it still wasn't enough. I suppose in the end it's fitting since technically he/she is dead in canon as far as I know, but it was still a bit frustrating in a sense. It was a somewhat proper send-off for the character though.

Unlike at least 80% of gamers, I didn't actually have much of a problem with the ending. Like I said, I thought it was a fairly proper send-off for Shepard even though I was expecting her to live. A fairly proper ending to the trilogy that will go down as one of my favorite series of all time. EA and BioWare re-releasing the trilogy in the Legendary Edition package was a great treat.

@KilloWertz Congrats on finishing the Mass Effect epic. It really is a great series.
I believe I got the green ending, but I can’t remember how I got it, only that I did just about every side mission and recruited everyone. It’s been a while and so I’ve forgotten a lot about the game, but I do remember really loving ME2 and ME3. I need to go back so I can experience the Citadel DLC

@Th3solution Thanks.

I have a feeling I would have hated the green ending if I got that one if I'm understanding it correctly in a description of the endings, but it would have been easy to not know exactly which ending you were getting at the time. At least for me, I only knew it was on the right because it was red, but I also wasn't paying much attention to the Catalyst because I already knew which ending I wanted beforehand. Or at least which one I thought I was getting.

Now searching to see who all of the characters in Mass Effect 3, I'm disappointed that I obviously missed out on at least a side mission or two. One of my favorite characters from Mass Effect 2, Kasumi, made an appearance via a side mission. I guess that would be a legit complaint I had with 3. I did every side mission that popped up for me from talking to people and walking around the Citadel, but I guess somehow I didn't do enough and still somehow missed out on side missions, which also goes back to why I didn't have enough EMS to get the true ending I wanted.

I still highly enjoyed the game, but I would knock it down a peg now knowing how easy it was to miss side missions even when you were making the effort to get them and do them all once I got them. It's still also a great trilogy as a whole, with the first one still being good even though it is showing age, the second being the pinnacle of the franchise, and 3 still being good but slightly flawed.

@RogerRoger Thanks.

I did not know that obviously. Not that it means anything, but I guess I can forgive the website I was criticizing now as I guess they didn't realize that they changed the totals back (even though their article was posted after the Legendary Edition was released. I would have at least considered the Synthesis ending as well then if I had known ahead of time. I was waiting for the scene showing Shepard still being alive to come, but it never did. I will say they did a decent enough job of sending her off in the end though, so it wasn't all bad I suppose. My issue is more with the totals you need rather than the ending, unlike the masses.

The Kasumi part is probably the only thing I missed that. My total was well over 6000. Like I said, she was one of my favorite characters from 2 (especially her mission, being something totally different for the series), so it would have been nice. It's not the end of the world though. As for the endings, after experiencing one of them, I'm not quite sure why it was so controversial. I know having Shepard die would never be the preferred way for most people, so if that's the main reason, then ok I guess. Making the TMS so ridiculously high is also an understandable criticism. I was still fine with it as the whole final mission made plenty of sense for the story, and I honestly would only change the fact that Shepard dies.

@RogerRoger @KilloWertz Yeah, that original ending with only the color filter difference was the one I experienced. So it looks like I need to not only play it again to pick up the Citadel DLC but also to see the modified ending.

Where will I ever find the time… 😅

@RogerRoger Weirdly, I rarely watch YouTube or streamer playthroughs. I have some kind of strange mental block there. I do look up videos to help me when I’m stuck in a game, but as a practice I haven’t watched gameplay for enjoyment’s sake alone. Sometimes I’ll watch a snippet as part of investigating a game for purchase, but rarely even that.

But it’s a solid recommendation, nonetheless. Maybe I’ll try it for the ME3 DLC and endgame curiosity. I’m somewhat worried that it might start me down a rabbit hole of watching video game streaming from which I’ll never climb out. 😅

But honestly I still have plans to pick back up my renegade FemShep run from ME1 and continue her journey eventually. I lost access to the Legendary Edition when my EA Play expired so I need to buy the game, but I’ve just been waiting for the right time (and price).

@RogerRoger A couple times I’ve watched some footage of a game I completed, just to see what commentary might be out there. The main example I can think of was Nier Automata where I enjoyed a couple of the videos put together dissecting the philosophy and some of the symbolic parts of the game. Otherwise, my video game YouTube viewing is primarily to watch a guide of some kind, like a boss guide for a FromSoft game or a video of where a well hidden collectible is. The hint system on the PS5 is basically what I do with YouTube.

It’s strange because I can watch a friend play a game and be really interested in it, but if it’s a random streamer then it’s harder to really keep interest. I think it’s fun to see a friend or family member experience a game for the first time.

Edit: And I do have ME Legendary Ed in my wishlist, although I see physical copies sometimes that are fairly cheap. Pretty consistently less than $30.

@RogerRoger Ok, then I kind of understand why people would have at least been a little upset about that. If I had experienced that ending after putting in well over 100 hours into the trilogy, I probably wouldn't have been happy either. The feeling of "that's it?" would have definitely crossed my mind. Why they just didn't do the extended ending from the start, I don't know. It honestly wasn't that much longer, aside from the ceremony honoring the fallen, but I would consider that essential to the ending after experiencing it all. Oh well I guess. I'm assuming the after credits scene was added on to, which didn't really matter in the grande scheme of things, but was a nice little touch regardless.

@Th3solution I would definitely recommend picking up the Legendary Edition again and picking up where you left off if you think you have the time to finish it all. Obviously you can do what I did and play other games in between each one. I ended up pushing Mass Effect 3 off longer than I intended, but it worked out in the end since I highly enjoyed it.

I may be slightly biased since I love the series after finally playing through 3, which was the only one I had never played much of back on the Xbox 360, but I would only resort to watching a playthrough of the Citadel DLC if you truly don't think you'll ever be able to play them all.

90 hours, @RogerRoger? If I remember correctly, it only took me roughly 50 hours to finish Mass Effect 3. Granted I missed some of the side content of course, but I doubt that would have added on 35-40 hours.

@AgentCooper Man, I must have somehow totally missed the fact that you jumped into the XBox pool. I just thought you were really busy lately but you’ve actually been busy with team green. I guess The Last Guardian was the final straw to jump ship, wasn’t it? 😜

But seriously, how’s it been going? What’s your general impressions as a PlayStation gamer going over and experiencing the Xbox side of things?

Edit: I realized that might come off as rather “fanboyish”, which was not my intent. As someone who has considered getting an Xbox and a Switch many times, I’m honestly curious as how it feels when you are new to an ecosystem.

@RogerRoger Ok, I guess I made the wrong assumption there. I do wonder how I would have felt back then if I had played 3 for more than a short time. I doubt I would have been very happy either, but I don't really think there's anything in the extended ending that really affects the after credits scene though. They technically don't acknowledge that Shepard is dead until they honor the fallen in the extended ending, so maybe it's the fact that they don't directly acknowledge whether Shepard died until the end credits scene without the extended ending.

It's fine if you really did spend 90 hours in the game. I was just shocked since I didn't spend near that time in the game and wondered how your total may have been so much longer.