Topic: Games you've recently beat

@LtSarge That is indeed a fun coincidence I agree that it would have been unsatisfying if it ended after the boss fight as it is, but I think they could have tweaked it so that we would have wound up in much the same place after that encounter as we did after all that Rattler business. Would have been less bleak, though, as the homecoming would probably have been a bit lighter, I guess.
All in all I'm really happy with what we got Well, "happy" seems wrong, as I did shed tears at the end there (and a couple of times earlier, too... the sequence at the museum had me all weepy)

@FuriousMachine Yeah cool that you have also have finished The last of us 2 by now. That mean there is quite a of a few of us here who has finished that game. Which I think is great. Because it mean that we can compare our experiences of the game. Welcome to let us know if you want an recommendation for short game Iam sure you will get one.

@LtSarge Can't really agree that the ending is perfect for the type of story. Not sure why Ellie deserves to have such a bleak ending, even bleaker than Abby's to be honest. I have many problems with the story and how it was told, but I won't get into that as I don't want to sour too much of your great experience. Anyways, I know some of the things Ellie did were quite awful, but so did Abby. Ellie is also the heart and soul of the series and the reason we played Part II, so maybe Neil could have let up on Ellie a bit in the end and not leave her completely broken and without anything in life, including missing a hand. Pretty cruel treatment in the end, and it wouldn't have felt like there was any positivity in the end just for the sake of it.

@FuriousMachine Fair point! Maybe they wanted to include all of that in order to set things up for Part III? Who knows.

@KilloWertz Well it was a revenge story and revenge stories should, in my opinion, always end with people settling their grievances and stop killing each other. Joel killed Abby's dad as well as other people, Abby killed Joel, Ellie killed Abby's friends, Abby killed Jessie, I mean when does it end? Ellie was about to leave on the boat when she remembered Joel's smashed up face and that's what triggered the fight. Then she remembered happy Joel when he was still alive and my interpretation is that she didn't kill Abby because that's not what Joel would've wanted her to do. Both parties fought until they couldn't fight anymore and that was enough. She ended the cycle. And who knows, maybe if she killed Abby, then Lev would've wanted revenge and gone after Ellie. Then maybe Dina would go after Lev. I mean, the fighting needs to stop. Humans are always drawn to conflict because it's a primitive survival mechanic. You kill the other party in order to stay alive yourself. That's what caused the war between the Seraphites and the Wolves. There's always so much needless killings all the time. So that's why I loved the ending because Ellie and Abby didn't kill each other. They moved on. I can understand if you didn't like the ending if you only liked Ellie and not Abby. But that's the reason why the developer wanted you to play as Abby throughout half the game, in order to see things from her perspective and gain an understanding for her character. She's not an evil person who killed Joel. She just wanted justice for her father. Abby's friends weren't evil either, they too were normal people who just wanted justice. And then Ellie killed most of them. In fact, I even grew to despise Ellie and Tommy towards the end while liking Abby much more. That's why I praised the structure of the game in another thread, because playing as both sides was a great way to see things through different perspectives. This can also be applied to real life as a lot of things we do are based on one perspective. One side always think they're right and the other side is wrong. In order to get a full picture, we need to see both perspectives. This is why I think the story and the ending were perfect.

@LtSarge I think I might have explained myself wrong, as I didn't have a problem with the two of them having a final battle at the end. My issue was with Neil writing it so Ellie was left with absolutely nothing. She comes back home after that and is left with nothing. A missing hand, no girlfriend, no child to help look after, literally nothing. That's too cruel imo.

The first fight though where you replay a fight as Abby was a complete no-no for me. I had to literally force myself to finish that sequence as I didn't buy the game to fight against Ellie. I bought it to play as Ellie. I knew going in there were sequences where you played as Abby, as I intentionally joined in with all the people who read the spoilers when they leaked to know if I'd still be interested in the game, but I also felt her section of the game dragged on and on. I understand the intention of giving you an opportunity to get to experience some of her life around the time of the game, but when her portion of the game seemed like it was almost as long as Ellie's, it became a problem.

I'm not going to say you're wrong, as I obviously don't want to ruin your extremely positive playthrough of the game. I just don't agree with some of it, which is what it is.

@KilloWertz Ah, I understand what you mean now. Honestly, that is kinda weird though right? Why did Dina leave? Because Ellie chose to go after Abby instead of staying with her family? Kinda weird if you ask me. But I mean, I guess the ending was cruel for Ellie as that was her "punishment" for choosing to go after Abby. I just felt bad for Ellie because the missing fingers meant she couldn't play the guitar anymore. I was wondering during the last scene where she played it wrong if I was doing something wrong, but no that's because she was missing fingers. I've never played a guitar so I had no idea how many fingers you need to play it lol. But yeah, I agree that the ending was cruel for Ellie.

@oliverp Thank you for that, but I'm worried that any recommendations will only add to my excessively long backlog I started The Sexy Brutale and am enjoying it so far. Will also try the Stellar Blade demo.

@KilloWertz @LtSarge Although it seems like the deadline for discussing this game has expired, if recent comments on here are to believed, I will risk it and add my two cents under a spoiler wall here.

The bleak ending for Ellie is, in my opinion, the only thing that justifies the "extra" chapters of the end: Ellie has gotten the happy ending she was due, but instead of ending the cycle of violence she can't let it go. In spite of having people who loves her who pleads with her not to go, she sets out again and in so doing loses everything. It's a powerful message, but I'm not sure it's executed as well as it could have been.
The re-casting of the hero as the villain is also an interesting storytelling device, but difficult to pull off. Even more so in a videogame, I would say, because it requires the player to somewhat be "on board" with the actions of the character being played, and that was a big ask. So, for me, the biggest problems were, firstly, playing as Abby at a point where I had no interest in "seeing her side of things" (and I agree, Abby's parts had pacing issues and were maybe too long).
Secondly, when the action switches back to Ellie, she has been (to me, at least) successfully recast as the villain and then I didn't really want to play as her anymore either.
And, thirdly, in both of the "final battles" I didn't want to try to kill the character I wasn't currently controlling.
These are all minor quibbles from me, though. I still found the game and the story to be quite excellent

@LN78 Nope, we're not arguing. We're just discussing the game, which you could choose to ignore if you wanted to and probably should. It'd be greatly appreciated.

@LtSarge The game would be much fresher in your mind than mine of course since I haven't played it since release, but didn't Dina basically threaten to leave if she went after Abby again? I could be wrong, but I do know Dina made it quite clear she didn't want Ellie to go after her again.

@FuriousMachine I think quite a bit of the story wasn't executed the way it could have been, but for me it will always go back to the point I said before where I bought the game to play as Ellie. It's a video game, so in spite of her actions, I would have still wanted to play as Ellie and wouldn't want her as a villain. I knew you would play as Abby at some point in the game because of intentionally spoiling myself, but like we've both said already, her portion of the game dragged on and on. If it was meant to sympathize with her at all, that was already out the window the moment she clubbed Joel in the head. Would I have condoned Ellie's actions in real life? No, but again, it's a video game.
It was still a great game in many ways, but the story was so flawed imo that there's no way I could consider it the classic many do. Changing how Part 1's ending went in the flashback scene was mighty convenient too. It's a shame too as it improves the gameplay of the original in many ways. Combine the story of Part 1 with everything else of Part 2 and you'd probably have the best game ever made.

Rolled the credits on Gran Turismo 7 there this morning. Probably the best racing game I've played since the original Gran Turismo. I know there's a lot of post-game content and you can never really finish it but I think I'm done with it for now. I need that 130GB of space it takes up for other games. It's onto Dragons Dogma 2 and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown for me now. I'm also contemplating reinstalling Diablo 4 to finish the campaign, I feel like that would be a good game for the Portal.

X-Men Legends. I’d played Ultimate Alliance 1 before but this one is really great for the very first entry in the series. Felt a bit boring that my team was mainly Jean Grey, Wolverine, Cyclops and Storm though! There are loads of good characters but I stuck to them.

Armored Core: Project Phantasma

Essentially a DLC for the first game just y’know, on a whole ass disc cause it was PS1. I transferred my mech from the first game though so enjoyed the continuity. The missions were quite small and not the best but the arena’s a brilliant addition!

Just finished Life is Strange: Before the Storm on Series X. So right off the bat I just have to say that either my taste in games have changed or the story in this game was just really good because I was actually very invested in the plot. I remember not caring that much about the story in the first Life is Strange, but I absolutely loved Before the Storm. It's the same thing with The Last of Us: I didn't like the first game but I loved the second one. I think my taste has changed as I've gotten older, which is great!

What I liked about Before the Storm was the characters. I loved Chloe and Rachel and their relationship with each other. They were so much more interesting than Max. In fact, I just want to forget that the first game exists because I just read and recalled what happens in it and it upsets me a great deal. I'd rather just believe that the story ended in Before the Storm and nothing happened afterwards because of how wholesome it was.

Anyway, fantastic game and I'm definitely picking up Life is Strange 2.

@LtSarge I actually liked Before the Storm a lot more than the masses too. I can't compare it to the first one really as it's been probably close to a decade since I've played it (it was one of my early PS4 games). Some don't like Chloe, but I had minimal issues with her in the first game and this one. I don't agree with you in regards to The Last of Us, but at least I do here to an extent.

I beat Miles Morales the other day. Genuinely awesome experience and that ending was superb.

@KilloWertz Ah that's nice to hear! The thing is that even if I don't remember what happens in games I've played a long time ago, I still remember what I felt about the game. And I remember thinking the first LiS wasn't anything special.

On a side note, I miss this type of episodic story-driven games. I feel like they aren't as popular as back in the day. Life is Strange was huge back when the first game came out and then we have the Telltale games. Playing through Before the Storm makes me want to play other Telltale titles I haven't played yet, such as the Batman games, the final season of The Walking Dead and The Expanse.

I beat Gnosia @Ralizah

In fact I even got it's platinum not ten minutes ago I was that engrossed with it.

Got quite grindy in the end as you said in your review and the gameplay loop is so basic and the night time parts really could've used some more events.

But goddamn it was such a breath of fresh air. Beautiful art style. I adored the cast, and they're so well realised and written.

Chippie kinda freaked me out with the whole cat neck thing though

@LtSarge I don't remember well enough to know exactly which one of the two I like better, but I do know I definitely enjoyed the first one more than you did. I know I wouldn't have kept playing the series and more games like it if I didn't. It was the first of it's kind that I played other than Heavy Rain back on the PS3.

Yeah, most of those types of games (even Life is Strange) have gone the more normal route where they release it all at once. I don't really miss it as I always waited for the whole thing to come out first, but I get missing something good from back then.