Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Kraven The Switch is the only "safe" system to play on out of the three consoles if you don't want to get bothered by trophies/achievements. It's just such a nice feeling to know that the games on there don't have those. So for me, it's the complete opposite as I just want to avoid trophies/achievements as much as possible, even before yesterday. But I do agree that it's difficult to stop thinking about trophies, especially when you have most of them and there are only a couple left to get. In my case, I'm just so frustrated by trophies after yesterday's incident and I let that feeling motivate me to avoid them. Hopefully it works out with the current games I play.

@Kraven Probably because you know you're not missing out any trophies when you play a Nintendo-exclusive game. Whereas, with anything non-exclusive, a little voice in the back of your mind is whispering about how you're doing all this work in the game and missing out on trophies you could otherwise be getting.

@LtSarge You could always disable notifications for trophies/achievements if you feel that way about them?

@JohnnyShoulder You know, that's actually a good idea. I didn't even think about that lol. That way, I can play games like I would on the Switch and not think about trophies/achievements at all.

@Kidfried Blows my mind we're in 2024 and 2D Mario games still have, like, the worst boss fights. 3D Mario games get interesting, creative boss fights. Why not the 2D ones?

Wonder wasn't a terrible game, but I also didn't enjoy it much more than most of the NSMB games, tbh.

@WaveBoy Except for a small cameo in Mario Land 2 Nintendo hasn't used Tatanga at all. Heck even using Wario as the main villain would be a refresh.

I have yet to play Mario Wonder to be honest my platforming skills have diminished big time since a was a Jolt guzzling preteen playing SMB3 and SMW all day and as a result I don't find them fun after playing them for an hour or 2. Mix that with uninspiring levels that I have seen done a million times and the same plot and villains.

@Tasuki interesting perspective. Guess I’m not alone in falling out of love with Mario for reasons not too asimilar. I’ve also not picked up wonder, as I don’t think it’s for me anymore.

Wario should forget about that Mario phony. He’s at his best when he’s in his own adventures, just wish WarioWare would start getting good games again.

Recently finished Jusant which was a lovely game through and through. Not going to lie, the ending had me tear up, as I'm just a sucker for that type of bittersweet ending in things like this. And I loved the simplicity of the relationship between what basically felt like the last few remnants of hope left alive.

And last night I also finished AC Mirage which was less impressive emotionally, but there was a decent enough twist. I feel like that game was the most generic of the last 4 releases, however. It really was like a long drawn out DLC. Stunning world, yet again, great history. But it just felt a bit more "games by numbers" even though there were a few instances where you could kind of plan an assassination, but not really, as it was still pretty much on rails.

By the end it just reminded me how bat sh** crazy the plots have become, however, and I think the series needs a hard reset and a kick up the arse. The Isu stuff just annoys me at this point, but at least it will be the last of the damn "order of ancients", "cults" and "hidden ones" segment of the historical war, and it can at least get back to the state of things post Altair, I guess 🤷

Still, stuff like this was fun

And the city was really nice crafted

Just rolled the credits on The Saboteur and it’ll have to go down as one of my absolute favourite 7th Gen games. Loved every minute of the campaign and still excited to mop up all the side stuff for the platinum (which should take another 30 hours or so).

A nice open-world rendition of WW2 Paris that can be scaled like someone with the creed of an assassin. Decent array of weapons and explosives, a nice disguise mechanic and decent third person shooting for the time. If (and they won’t… but if) it was remade/remastered I’d buy it day one and look forward to enjoying it all over again.

@colonelkilgore
Nice, you whipped through that quickly.
I'm pleased you enjoyed it as it is a severely underrated gem and sadly the last game from that studio before EA does what EA does.
A few grindy trophies as I recall, I do remember standing at the top of the steps in one of the parks waiting for ladies to wander by, tbh not unlike .... hmm I will stop there.

I too would buy a remaster.

@CaptD yeah I see there was a trophy for kissing 50 women or something along those lines… I haven’t kissed one yet 😅

@Kidfried I mean, if you really love the series or craved for a smaller game I can see why people would like it. But to me it just felt a bit like a smaller version of the games they have been releasing anyway, without anything feeling particularly new or innovative.

I'm glad I kind of played it as a secondary game as it wasn't incredibly gripping, but it is still fun to tackle some areas bit by bit from time to time. I never really got the sense I wanted to explore the world like in the others games though, despite it being a really cool setting, there was no draw to go and find anything, it was literally just quests and side quests, with some giving the slightest bit of freedom in approach to make you feel more like the fact you are an actual assassin matters a bit more than in the other modern games, where the gameplay was basically the exact same anyway, but you could also do other stuff.

Personally, I got more out of the last 3 titles, even though they got progressively bigger, you could still skip stuff and focus on what you wanted, in the most part and they were more fun because of that because there was more freedom to explore.

I wouldn't say to avoid it or anything like that, it really depends on mood, how you feel about the other games and what else you have to play as well. It might even be better to just crack on and finish it in 2 weeks, but for me I spread it over a number of weeks and months here and there, despite it only being probably a 25 hour game

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - a very very good pre-2018 God of War clone that starts off a little bland and uninspired but consistently improves throughout what is a fairly longish campaign for the genre and ended up being a thoroughly enjoyable romp. Gameplay-wise it couldn’t be more similar to the pre-boy exploits of the family-murdering Spartan demi-god but any lack of creativity within the gameplay itself is more than balanced out by the incredible art-design, score and final narrative twist.

I have a fair bit of work left for the plat, which will probably involve a further two playthroughs but there are worse fates. I’ve also decided that I will definitely be playing Lords of Shadow 2 as part of my PS3 farewell tour. Though it is generally considered to be far poorer than the original. I’ve seen enough positivity (and evolution of the mechanics within the game itself) for it to warrant my time.

@colonelkilgore glad you enjoyed it. Certainly a fun action. Don’t think I’ll play 2 asap. Taking my time here. Especially since I’m bouncing back between more than one game.

@Yousef- yeah I won’t be moving straight onto the sequel, I’ll be giving it time to breathe but I’ll be playing it sometime before 01/01/2025 for sure. Similar thing happened with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed a couple of months ago… went in with no expectations and with no intention of playing the sequel but ended up having such a good time that the sequel needed to be crowbarred into an already rammed schedule.

@colonelkilgore I’m glad that so far I haven’t led you astray and that some of these PS3 action games are still holding up. It’s been so long since I played them that I could have been looking back through rose-tinted spectacles.

I guess the only one that has fallen flat was Enslaved.

@Th3solution yeah it’s pretty much been banger after banger fair play, with special mentions to Spec Ops: The Line and The Saboteur, both of which l’ll consider as all-time classics. Even Enslaved was good Sol, it just wasn’t as good as I hoped is all.

All in all, it’s just been a pleasure to go back and clear my 7th gen backlog… as much as I loved the PS4 (my fave ever console) and am enjoying PS5 (reports of it underwhelming are vastly overstated in my personal opinion), the PS3 does have some… innocence (might be the wrong word but it’s the closest approximation that I can think of) that has seemingly left the industry since the beginning of the 8th gen.

As you’ve seen over the last few months, I’ve continued to add to my PS3 backlog this year and it’s now unlikely that I’ll actually clear everything by 2025 (which really ****s with my OCD in all honesty 😅), still in with a shout though if I can really knuckle down .

@colonelkilgore I do think that we forget just how awesome PS3 was/is. It stumbled out of the gate but crescendoed into a great generation, no doubt.

I don’t think you were around when we did that big megapoll to rank every single PS3 game into one big list from best to worst, were you? It was a Herculean task that was organized by forum legend @themcnoisy who we don’t get to see around much lately 👀 but put together some really awesome megapolls over the years. The rank list of every single PS3 game was probably the most impressive feat because we had to shift through every single game (I seem to recall there was like 900?) and so had to break up into sub groups to split hairs between all the annualized sports games and other dross. 😂 I can’t seem to find the forum threads for that, so perhaps they’ve been removed since that was long ago.

It’s been a while since I referenced it but I did save the results of the top 100 somewhere. I’ll pull it out and post it over on the PS3 thread just for grins and nostalgia for those interested.

@colonelkilgore Still in with a shout? What, are you going to just scream and your backlog will go away?

@Th3solution yeah I’d actually be really interested in taking a look at that if you’re able to find it 👍

@KilloWertz yeah not sure my working-class British colloquialisms translate across the pond… I’ll try shouting at my backlog though just in case 😉