Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Ralizah If you're playing on PC, there is a mod called Long War which is known for improving the game massively in loads of different ways. I only ever played on console so can't attest for how it is though.

XCOM2 is fantastic though. It makes so many improvements on the original game and the War of the Chosen update makes it close to XCOM2.5 with a whole heap of improvements including soldier fatigue (so you can't use your same squad of super soldiers), XP which you can use to buy skills from outside of their class skill tree, team mate bonds etc. The Chosen are also excellent with nemesis-style strengths and weaknesses. The base game itself introduced more mission types and the terror missions are nowhere near as annoying (civilians even fight back!).

@RogerRoger The battle system in Mario + Rabbids is extremely similar to XCOM. Although the big difference there is that M + R is much more focused on giant bursts of movement, whereas, generally, your squad will inch across an XCOM map, as too much movement can easily mean an early death for your character.

I didn't mention the permadeath in my mini-review, I noticed. Your troops are kind of expendable, as you can generally buy as many as you want, and they can easily die on the field. I imagine the only big loss is the skills they've accumulated over the course of many battles. Although I'm unsure what happens to their equipment if they die, as I pulled a FE and reloaded my last save anytime someone kicked the bucket.

@Thrillho Interesting. I probably should have picked up XCOM 2 when it was in humble monthly a while back (unlike PSN, you actually get to keep those games when you drop the service), but it seemed pointless when I still had the original to play (and a pretty extensively large backlog as is). Another big thing making me nervous about it is I've heard missions are timed. Is that true?

Oh, and have you played Xenonauts? I've heard really good things about that from classic XCOM fans, but the level of complexity there sounds a bit intimidating.

@Ralizah I've not played Xenonauts I'm afraid.

XCOM2 does have some "timed" missions where you normally have a set number of turns to get things done. War of the Chosen reined them in a bit and they are a pain in the arse but mainly because they put you under so much pressure. Most of the time, those missions are about making planned escapes more than anything! Often the main goal is capturing a target but they are certainly the mission type I've failed most.

I think the Long War type mod for that allows you to remove those missions but I think they do have their place.

Mighty Switch Force! 2
I nabbed this when it first released, but I never fully finished it before now. It's a lot like the original in that the gameplay revolves around solving environmental puzzles and platforming, both of which are reliant on the block-switching mechanic. Like the original, the 3D is extremely effective and helps with the gameplay. Other than using your fire hose to douse flames, the gameplay is extremely similar to the first game. It can probably be completed within an hour if you just rush through it, but I got a good 8 or so hours out of it by speedrunning levels and trying to find all the hidden babies (which you humorously kick to safety).

Nothing incredible, but the pixel art is attractive, the gameplay is tight, and it's a good time overall. Also, the music is surprisingly decent. Especially the awesome ending credits theme.

Finished my playthrough of Detroit Become Human last night. My experience is mildly tainted by having a cold presently and just overall feeling rough because of that. Having to pause the game frequently to blow one’s nose tends to be immersion breaking. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience a great deal. My ending was only chosen by 2% of the world, which speaks to the significant differences that your choices make as you progress. The game is very well crafted, beautiful, and runs great. Only once can I remember a hiccup in the performance. There are a ton of trophies in this game and I had them popping with regularity. I got a total of 29 by the end yet was still only 54% of the trophy completion. I want to go for the platinum, but I don’t think I will right now. Too many other games are vying for my attention.
But in short, Detroit is highly recommended if you have even the slightest interest in narrative driven choice based games.

@Th3solution Yeah having to stop to blow your nose would be immersion breaking. Unless you are playing something like Sneezing Simulator 2019.

Good to know you enjoyed your time with DBH. It is very much on my Gamedar after really enjoying Beyond Two Souls.

@JohnnyShoulder Lol, yes sir. I think Sneezing Simulator 19 is an Xbox exclusive. Or wait, no - that was Yawning Simulator 😜

As for Detroit, I would say if you liked Beyond TS, then you’d like Detroit. I didn’t play BTS but Detroit is pretty similar in play style to Heavy Rain, but just much better.
It’s had a permanent price drop to $40 (well worth it at that price) and will probably be $30 or $20 at Black Friday. One of 2018’s best.

@Th3solution I've never played a David Cage game before. Does the game require constant interaction as it goes along, or are the cutscenes largely automated, besides making choices on where to take the narrative?

@Ralizah The game requires fairly constant interaction. Some of the scenes are cut-scenes for brief viewing, but it isn’t very long before you need to make some kind of input. Whether it be deciding what to say, picking something up, defending yourself with quick-time event inputs, etc. It’s a very interesting combination of heavy storytelling and casual game input — it’s not as sedentary or passive a game as you might expect like Telltale or Life is Strange where you make a choice then watch stuff happen, then make another choice, and on and on. In this game, you pretty much have to pay attention the whole time and mostly have your hands on the controller or you might miss an input. There is a lot of walking around to trigger the next story point as well. I’m trying to remember Heavy Rain but I think it was more or less the same, but not near the amount of branching paths or complexity of outcomes. And not near as much choice and interaction with the environment, as I recall. As for Beyond Two Souls (which I didn’t play), I got the feeling it was less interactive and more like - play and then watch a scene.

@RogerRoger Thanks man. I do feel better now. Stupid cold just makes you feel like death for 2 days until it finally let’s up. Yeah, I honestly do think you should check out Detroit. Then if you like it, you can go back to Heavy Rain and maybe Beyond TS.

@JohnnyShoulder The only good thing about being sick is that I have gotten quite a bit of gaming done. I also finished Oxenfree finally. I was sitting there 30 minutes from the end for like 2 weeks because I was enthralled with Detroit and then Red Dead and SoulCalibur. But I mixed in Oxenfree tonight and finished my first playthrough. It was a really cool little game, with unique presentation, a strong story, and fantastic voice acting. I was glad to have played it and it’s too bad it’s often overlooked. It’s another game I’d like to replay to see how the other endings and dialog options turn out, but I probably won’t be able to right now with all the other games I have going.

@KratosMD I played that on PC at the beginning of the year because it was being distributed for free on GOG, I believe. Not really my sort of game, but I mostly enjoyed my time with it. Great voice acting. I also liked the dialogue system: it's not one of those games where there's obvious "nice" and "tough" things to say, and that helped make a lot of the conversations feel more naturalistic to me.

@KratosMD Glad you enjoyed it so much! Will you be replaying it?

@KratosMD Sorry dude not replayed it, I assume that is how you get the different endings. A quick Google and apparently there is new dialogue as well.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-06-03-theres-a-reason...

Thinking about the game, I forgot that it is quite chilling in places and proper freaked me out. Not too many forms of entertainment manage that these days.

@Kidfried Eh, I disagree. The level design sucks (the game practically mandates more cautious gameplay and increased use of guns to avoid getting nailed by an enemy off-screen with a long sight line), the different character abilities are often gimmicky, the plot is all over the place, and it's lacking in the atmosphere that made the original game so memorable.

I platinumed the original on Vita after playing it exhaustively on PC, but could barely motivate myself to finish the second game once.

Glad you enjoyed it, though. I'd love to see another game more in the style of the original.

I just beat Never Alone. It was a fantastic. It was a little frustrating with the platforming at times, but the story was amazing. It's based off an Inuit tale. A girl sets off from her village with a fox friend she found to find a the source of a blizzard that could threaten to cause her village to starve. Throughout the fox and spirits helping gave the game a very spiritual vibe, and it really made me think. The way she's helped (and saved) by spirits throughout the game as well as other things which felt like they were divinely guided even though not directly shown made me felt it was largely about divine help we get knowingly and unknowingly - as well as the importance of the help we receive from others as well as using our own gifts (that we sometimes gain from others) to get through problems. A lot of balance overall. It also has short videos about the Inuit culture that help explain that and the game reflects their culture a lot. It was definitely story that felt like it was meant to be played too.
It only took me a few hours to finish as well, which was the perfect length for it. The puzzles did get a little tiresome towards the end, but if I ever had someone to play this in Co-op with I would give it another go. I feel like I get something different from the story too.
Shout out to @JohnnyShoulder and @KratosMD for convincing me to look at indie games. I had this from Plus so I decided to try it. This is the kind of game I want ton Plus. Something that I probably (and shamefully) wouldn't buy on my own . Getting stuff like this is one of the best things about the service.

@Jaz007 Yeah, Never Alone was pretty good. There are a ton of other PS Plus indies and lesser known games that you might have sitting in your library. The Unfinished Swan, Gone Home, Abzu, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Fez, Valiant Hearts, Rime ... some of these I haven’t gotten to myself either. Burly Men at Sea fits the bill this month too.
Just stay away from Drawn to Death.

@Kidfried The thing I really love about the first game is how the level design, sound, and environmental interactivity transform something as usually mindless as storming around a level murdering people into something of a puzzle game. Especially some of the mid-to-late game levels, such as "Hot and Heavy" (my personal favorite level in the game, partially due to how satisfying it is to FINALLY master it). While the game practically necessitates the abandonment of any hesitation when killing to get the best score (mainly due to the score multiplier, which is brutal even with the mask that lengthens the window), through continual retries, you gradually develop complex strategies about the best way to clear out an area. "Well, if race around the corner and batter this guy when I first come through the door, I can steal his gun and not worry about him popping out to snipe me later. Then, if I shoot this guy through the window, I take out an immediate threat, and the sound will draw these other guys from areas x, y, and z to my location, where I can flank them. Then..." etc. etc. etc. Absolutely crucial to this, of course, is the reliance on sound design and environmental interactivity. If I race into the kitchen without a weapon, I can quickly grab the pan to knock a guy to the floor, and then use the boiling water inside to kill him. Guns are loud and draw immediate attention, so if you're going for the best grade in a level, they're often useful as noisemakers. Shoot the wall of a room where a bunch of enemies are gathered, hide, and then ambush them. Even then, though, you might find, to get the timing of the level right, that you only kill a few of them at the time and let the others walk back a bit so you can refresh your multiplier as you make your way across the level.

Well, sorry for the fanboy screed, but I wanted to communicate what I really loved about the first game. The second game is filled with overly large, often window-filled levels filled with gun-toting enemies, and the placement of enemies with guns, unlike the original, punishes creativity as opposed to using them as another engine to enhance your puzzle-massacre, and some of the masks give abilities that are often... super specialized, to the point where it's hard to take advantage of all the emergent layers of the gameplay. Some of the masks in the original do this, but the vast majority have small quirks that make certain strategies more viable than possible.

The music is still great in the sequel, though, for sure, which I appreciated.

Despite regarding the original as a flawed masterpiece (all of my favorite games, I think, are ones that have obvious flaws, but do certain things incredibly well), it does have some issues. While it doesn't happen to the point of irritation like in Hotline 2, enemies popping you off-screen will occasionally happen as well. It's just a function of the overhead viewpoint and some enemies with guns being able to see you before you see them. Thankfully, this doesn't often happen, as the placement of gun-toting enemies is VERY deliberate in the original. Another (BIG) criticism is the boss battles. Hotline Miami wasn't built with boss encounters in mind, so getting instakilled by a powerful boss a hundred times in a row until you figure out the gimmicky manner in which you're supposed to beat them isn't fun. They're not common, but they're there. Any levels involving stealth obviously suck, although this is more of a general gaming rule I've learned: unless a game (like MGS) is built around stealth and sneaking, incorporating those elements into a game only weakens it. The worst parts of Gravity Rush 1 and 2, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the Hotline Miami series, and I'm sure other games as well ALWAYS involve stealth.

I also had issues with aiming with the PC on the mouse, and with the sticks on console (small taps of the right stick turn into big movements for the character due to the limited size of the sprite when turning), but the Vita version brilliantly addressed this issue of mine by allowing for a lock-on system via the touch screen. It really made guns viable for me.

I actually picked Hotline Miami 2 back up this year and tried it again. Couldn't get it into it, but count on me doing that again in a year or two when I kind of forget what made me dislike it in the first place. I think the problem with it is the problem that crops up with a lot of successful indie games: the creators take the material for a winning game and change stuff about it to justify the existence of a sequel, but it usually makes the game worse. Hotline Miami is VERY intentionally designed, so them messing with elements of the gameplay and level design kind of broke it for me. Similarly, even though I actually liked it, Velocity 2X tacked on unnecessary additions that overcomplicated the twitch brilliance of the original Velocity Ultra (another scenario where I platinumed the original, but will likely never do so for the sequel). Same thing happened with Amnesia (although at least, in that circumstance, the developer actually changed).

Well, again, sorry for the novel, and for interjecting my opinions, but thanks for the reply! I do love talking about this series.

@KratosMD Oh so it does change quite a bit then? Tempted to fire it up again.

A word of warning regarding Axiom Verge, although I enjoyed it, it took me around 30 hours to complete! It can probably be beaten a lot quicker than that though.

Not sure if i could only play indie games though, I like to have a good mix going on. But I can see why you would at this moment time.

@Jaz007 Glad you got your gaming mojo back. I tend to pick and choose which AAA games I play, and only pickup a handful max on day 1. I don't feel the need to play everything as soon as it is released, as i know not every game is gonna be for me. And especially this time of year, who on earth has the time to play them all? The way it seems to be working these days is that it will only be a couple of months until some of the game will be reduced, by that time you may feel differently and fancy a more substantial experience.

One for my gaming bucket list: I beat the original Super Mario Bros. last night.

I've spent a lot of time trying to beat it the "old-fashioned" way, by trying to beat it in one run, restarting the whole game when I got a game over. Once I got past World 7 though, I cracked and used save states on the NES classic. World 8 is crazy hard compared to the rest of the game.

But, I'm glad either way that I beat it. Now I wanna see if I can beat the rest of the Mario classics.

@KratosMD Thanks for the write-up. I had a feeling it wasn't going to be really good, despite enjoying the demo, which is why I passed on it in favor of Ys VIII (which turned out to be a fantastic experience). I feel like it'd be a fun $30 purchase, though.