Topic: Games you've recently beat

Finished The Expanse, A Telltale Series. A fairly short, and very sweet, game in the traditional Telltale mold. I loved the character Camina Drummer from the books and Cara Gee's portrayal of her in the TV series, so it was nice to see her back in action here. The story is good, though not exceptional, but I think I'll be down for anything new Expanse for a long time to come, so here's hoping they'll make a sequel.

Now I've started Control, which I also hope to finish. Got a bit worried with the feel of the shooting aspects of the intro segment, but I see that there are plenty of assists and setup tweaks one can make, so hopefully I'll be able to adjust it if I end up getting frustrated.

@FuriousMachine Oh as someone who recently beated Alan Remastred it would of course be awesome as to get to know more about how Control feels at some point in time hehe. But dont feel to stressad about posting any impressions (I can wait). As with regadars to Spider-Man-Man Miles Morales I actually beated NG+ the ohter day (which feels nice). But there is still some misc trophies I need to get in order to earn the platinum something which I think will take some time of I manage to do it at all.

@FuriousMachine @oliverp I played Control early on after getting my PS5 and had a blast with it.

The combat does feel pretty clunky to start with but as you unlock new abilities and weapons the combat becomes much more fun. I loved the whole world they built though and thought it was clever how they incorporated Alan Wake into it (subtly in the main game and much more overtly with the DLC).

It had lots of performance issues on PS4 but I had no issues in performance mode on PS5. My only annoyance was the utterly atrocious map.

@FuriousMachine @oliverp I’ll second @Thrillho regarding Control — it was really one of my favorite PS5 experiences so far. The combat can get chaotic, but it’s great fun. The haptics on the DualSense and the ray tracing on the PS5 version are really sweet. The story is like a fever dream, but you have to just roll with it.

I never played Alan Wake, which is something I should do, given how much I enjoyed Control.

@Th3solution @FuriousMachine Control was definitely one of my favorite games from last gen. I only play a handful of games multiple times, but that was one of them. I haven't played the PS5 version yet, but I do plan to, so that would be three times.

I do second what @Thrillho said. The map is pretty bad, figuring out where things are being way more difficult than they needed to be. It's not so bad that it ruins the game by any means, and it's not like The Witcher 2 where it's so bad I couldn't even finish the game. The greatness of the rest of the game far outweighs that issue.

@Th3solution @5KilloWertz Oh Cool to know that so many of you guys have had a good time with Control. I guess I will try to play it sometime next year hopefully. Are a bit busy with other games atm hehe.

@oliverp Ah, I see. I had done all side activities and such before starting NG+, so at that point I only had a few left (the ones that required NG+) and speeding through the story, so it went by fairly quickly. Nice plat to get, though

I loved Alan Wake back on the X360 in my green days, but didn't finish it until earlier this year with the remastered. Naturally looking forward to AW2, which is already in my library, so I really want to get through Control and the DLC to get the full story. Will let you know what I think when I'm done with it

@Thrillho @Th3solution @KilloWertz I hope I'll like it too; lots of people raving about it and I do enjoy me some Remedy gaming Will hopefully get some time to play more this weekend and get properly into it.

Finally saw credits on "Alan Wake 2". Not a bloody clue how this garnered so many 10/10 reviews. The basic walk and talk or shine and shoot gameplay isn't much of an improvement over the first game, the light and storyboard puzzles are variously frustrating or repetitive, the (ultimately pointless) mind palace sections are methodically banal, the protagonists are either dull (Saga) or irritating (Alan), the usual Remedy cast of eccentric side characters are a headache and it goes on for far, far too long. Incredible presentation (graphics and music are both superb), a couple of standout sequences but an abstruse and convoluted story that runs out of steam by the halfway point of the runtime means that this might just about scrape a 4/10 for me but I'm docking it an extra point for being digital only so I can't sell it on eBay to get some of my money back. Remedy have taken a massive step backwards from "Control" here. 3/10. Awful.

Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise. It's essentially a Yakuza/Like a Dragon spin-off, but set in the FotNS universe and with FotNS characters. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, and the main hero Kenshiro knows a deadly martial art which can cause people to explode by striking their pressure points.

The game has most of the hallmarks of Yakuza, including the combat system, side content, substories, and even the user interface. There's quite a bit of the usual content, such as a cabaret club and a twist on the batting cages mini-game, plus some old Sega arcade games such as my beloved Out Run. There's also a rhythm mini-game, though I didn't think much of the song selection. It's even got Kiryu's voice actor playing a similar role for the main character Kenshiro, and Majima's voice actor is here with the voice for a psychotic opponent obsessed with the main character.

The major difference between this and Yakuza is that there is a desert wasteland that you can drive around outside of the main city. There's some races and other side activities to do there, along with finding vehicle upgrades to improve performance. The driving controls can be a bit clunky, but the driving can be a nice change of pace.

I completed the main storyline, and did all of the sub-stories, including the post-game optional superboss battle with Amon. Even when not picking fights with Yakuza, he's as strong as always. I had to drop the difficulty down to easy to have any chance against that opponent. I'm not going to worry about 100% completion or the Platinum trophy though, as they're too grindy to go for.

I'd argue that the main story here isn't as gripping as the Yakuza storyline, and the gameplay feels a bit more clunky here. But as a fan of both Fist of the North Star and Yakuza, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this.

Resident Evil Village. It was fun as long as it lasted (which was not for very long).
I would say that it was a cool mix of horror and action. Maybe not the best but one of the better Resident Evil games that I have played. Very worth checking out I would say. It feels nice to have finally beaten the game as it is a game that have been in my backlog for quite some time.

Final Fantasy VII Remake (again)

Still have massive issues with the Kingdom Heartification of it all but there are large parts of the game which are brilliant. Midgar was never my favourite and they do bloat it beyond all recognition (every dungeon in the game is about half an hour too long) but the bits where the action stops are the best single player Final Fantasy has been since what, XII? Maybe even X? The whole stretch of chapters with Aerith are probably the most consistently good part of the game, minus the crane puzzles. The soundtrack’s amazing too, even if I do wish they’d gone for more synths than orchestra for some specific tracks. Some of the original tracks are great too, the one that plays while you’re with Aerith after escaping her house is as good as anything from the main soundtrack.

Was it the game I hoped it would be all those years ago? Probably not. Do I think the game would be just as good if the narrative changes were completely glossed over like the Resi remakes instead of it being some sort of weird sequel? Yes. Rebirth has the potential to be either much better or completely balls it up, there really are only two ways this can go. It’ll probably be a while before I get round to it though.

@nessisonett It could have gone either way for me, as having not played any of the Kingdom Hearts games I didn't know what to make of the Nomura stink that came with it. I almost hated the direction the game took, but ended up loving it by the end lol. Probably the hardest part was coming to terms with not getting a straight up remake, but eventually preferred not exactly knowing what to expect next.

Just "finished" Forza Motorsport (2023) on Series X after 33 hours of playtime. I did the four main tours in career mode and seeing as how those are the only ones you get achievements for, I figured I've finished the mode. The other available tours get added and replaced over time as this is a live-service game, so I'm not going to bother with them.

So what did I think about the game? Well, to sum it up, it was a good but very disappointing entry in this series. We waited five years for a half-baked overly realistic game? Not worth it in the slightest. The fact that you're forced to play through the same track twice (practice and race) because otherwise you won't get enough credits to purchase the required car for the next tour is just BS. I don't care if that's how it's supposed to be, the previous games weren't like this and I liked that setup much better. Not to mention that there is a severe lack of tracks. In terms of actual content, there's so little here because the idea is to release new content over time. Which begs the question, what the hell were the developers doing during those five years?

It's a good but very disappointing game.

@LtStarge Oh its nice to read a wrap up of a racing game as it feels like you dont read to much of those these days. Thanks for sharing.

Just finished Heavenly Bodies… went straight in on the Newtonian physics difficulty as a playthrough on that was a requirement. Was different… and tough 😥, quite an ingenious gameplay design that will test your gaming skills in ways that your average video-game does not fair play.

@oliverp Thanks for reading! I love racing games, especially the Forza series. I've played all mainline games, except for Forza Motorsport 7 and Forza Horizon 4. So you'll most likely hear me talk more about it in the future!

Finished RoboCop and the Hearts of Stone expansion for the Witcher. I really enjoyed RoboCop, the ending was so over the top and it was just a solid shooter game all round. Some of his one-liners were hilarious. The Witcher was great as always and the expansion was a nice length, I'll probably play through Blood & Wine over Christmas

‘Completed’ a season of NBA 2K2 on the Dreamcast which is one of the best sports games I’ve ever played. The Dreamcast was ludicrously ahead of its time, the graphics are probably better than even PS2 sports games. Went the Lakers because they’re clearly overpowered and yeah, kinda steamrolled the competition up until the playoffs which were really hard. Shaq being 100 rated, the only time in the series, definitely helped. Man I love the Dreamcast. Visual Concepts deserve way more credit than they get.

@nessisonett Love the Dreamcast. I never got to experience it in its heyday I opted for the PS instead. To be quite honest I was tired of getting burnt by Sega at that time, having previously bought the Saturn and how long they supported that thing. However I manged to pick up a Dreamcast along with a few games a fee years ago and OMG I made a big mistake back in the 90s, lol. I still have it to this day but I need to get some cords or something so I can hook it up to my modern TV. Definitely an awesome console.

@Tasuki Yeah, my first console was the GameCube and I get totally similar vibes from the Dreamcast, which I also picked up only a few years back. The fact it wasn’t really taken seriously in the graphical arms race despite being a bit of a powerhouse maybe says something about Sega’s reputation at that time but I just love the vibe you get from the games, there was a hell of a lot of creative devs working on it.