Topic: Games you've recently beat

I finished God of War: Ghost of Sparta this week. Which means I'm almost finished with the original series.

It's really difficult to keep sharing impressions of the games because, while they are fun and entertaining, they're also very identical. If there's something I can praise Ghost of Sparta (and the other PSP game, Chains of Olympus) for, it's that the story has more personal elements for Kratos and tries to humanize him a bit. It's something I appreciate to remind me that I'm not just playing a Greek murder simulation.

The PS3 versions of these games are also very well done. It's easy to forget that these used to be portable games.

@Ralizah @KratosMD So, forgive my ignorance, but is it pronounced “why’s” or “eeee’s”? I’m not sure what sound the name of the game should be making in my brain when I read your posts. 😋

@Th3solution The latter.

Red Dead Redemption 1 Undead Nightmare. It was rather enjoyable. It was fun seeing the characters and the locations of the first game, but in a different genre. The characters were as entertaining as always. The zombies weren't particularly scary or threatening though, as it was easy to run away from them while your health regenerates.

I may have taken the warning about ammo being in short supply a bit too seriously. Most of my battles with zombies involved swinging a flaming torch at them, and running away if I'm hurt. If I needed to use a gun, then I'd use the revolver with the dead eye meter to hit their heads. By the end of it I had so much ammo left over.

So I finished Gris the other night on Switch. Only a 3-4 hour experience but loved it a lot. Gameplay is fine with gentle puzzle mechanics but the art and music are phenomenal. Well worth a purchase if you can.

@Kidfried Thanks! I know the price tag has been off-putting to some people, but if you like Tetris, you're probably going to get your money's worth out of it. The only thing keeping me from returning to it lately is the desire to clear other games in my backlog.

999 and the follow-up game, Virtue's Last Reward, are both amazing experiences. It sounds like you're playing through the remaster on Vita/PS4, which is probably a good thing. While the DS original does some really cool stuff with the dual-screen concept, it's less user-friendly. Every time you got an ending, you had to go back to the beginning and then "fast-forward" through a ton of dialogue you've already seen (and play through puzzle rooms you've already beaten multiple times over) until you got to new choices that altered the trajectory of the narrative. You have to do this in most of the Visual Novels I've played, but it's really kind of a drag. I think I heard this remaster uses a flowchart system which, honestly, sounds so much more convenient. The sequel, VLR, used a flowchart system and it was honestly so much more convenient for seeing everything in that game.

I don't know if they've changed this, but, in the original 999, you had to go through this kind of arcane sequence of events to actually see the game's true ending. It's worth it, though: the twists in the final route are pretty incredible and set up the rest of the series perfectly, as well as adding context to the rest of the game.

I love both this and Danganronpa (the creators are also friends and are currently working together in their own studio), although, this being the older franchise, I was a fan of this first. They're different, but great in their own unique ways. The Zero Escape trilogy tends to forego anime weirdness for intricate plots with deviations into conspiracy theories and light philosophical speculation. Kotaro Uchikoshi is kind of the M. Night Shyamalan of the video game world, particularly in terms of his ability to fashion plot twists that blow people away.

Virtue's Last Reward is one of my all-time favorite games, but I also liked 999 a lot, and they're both essential experiences for anyone who likes plot-heavy games.

@Kidfried

I always found Alice's appearance at the end to be funny. At the time, it's like... "so, this mummy is just hitch-hiking now?" To avoid spoiling anything, all I'll say is that Ms. "All-ice" was never fully explained to my satisfaction. The series, as brilliant as it is, has this terrible tendency to use bizarre scenes and scenarios as ploys to drive interest in the overall mystery without ever actually addressing some of them again.

There's a scene at the true, true ending of VLR (it's essentially a bonus scene you get for 100% completing all the puzzle rooms on Hard difficulty, and which takes a lot more work to see) which seems like it should have MAJOR implications for the entire series, but it's never addressed in the third game, and when confronted about it in interviews, Uchikoski basically waves it off as non-canon, a "what if?" scenario.

Anyway, Virtue's Last Reward is absolutely my favorite game in the series. Some people think it's a bit overly long (it's longer than the 999 remake and Zero Time Dilemma combined), but I really appreciated the slower pace and more epic scope of the plot. It feels much less "horror-ish" than the first game. There's a lot more light-hearted dialogue, philosophical speculation, tough moral choices (the central hook of the gameplay is anchored around a modified version of the prisoner's dilemma), and character development than in the first game. Content-wise, there's just a lot more here (I think there's something like 22 different endings in this game, and they're almost all important in some respect). The pacing obviously isn't as snappy as a result, but I really, really like the way it develops over time. Without spoiling anything, let's just say that this is a story that could only ever be told in a video game. It represents a beautiful, cohesive fusion of game mechanics, ideas, and narrative.

Friendly suggestion: don't read any of the gold files until the end of the game. They spoil stuff.

999 is second. It's quite true that it drags at points during the true ending, and (in the original, at least) I hated how arcane the requirements for accessing the true ending were (reminded me of some of the insane stuff you had to do in old PC adventure games, to be honest), but otherwise it's well-paced, and I really liked how this Saw-esque horror thriller gradually reveals itself to be more of a science-fiction story. I think it does a great job of building up the pivotal plot twist.

BTW, how is Akane's sudoku game represented in the remake? Is it just a split screen? In the DS version, you had Junpei's perspective on the top screen, where all the interaction and character dialogue took place, and Akane's perspective on the bottom screen, where third person narration and puzzle-solving happen. The implication is that, throughout the game, you had two perspectives happening simultaneously: the "present day" Junpei and a more detached morphogenetic guidance from Akane. At least, that's what I took from it.

Zero Time Dilemma... it's... kind of a mess. Don't get me wrong: I appreciate the fact that it exists at all. It took a massive fan campaign from Western fans to even get it made (VLR sold poorly in Japan and put the series in stasis for what felt like forever). I got the Platinum, and, even with all of its issues, I wouldn't take back one second I spent on it. I love the series, and I really like how ZTD takes the horror-ish elements of 999 into overdrive. Unfortunately, the plot and game structure (the plot is experienced in small, non-linear fragments for plot reasons) are... controversial, to say the least, but, more crucially, in a bid to appeal to the Western fans who saved his property, he turned it from a visual novel/adventure game hybrid into more of an interactive movie. Basically, instead of reading hours of dialogue, you're watching hours of cutscenes between puzzle rooms. Unfortunately, that required a much larger budget than they had for the game, so you end up watching hours of poorly animated character models, and it just doesn't work nearly as well as the approach taken in the previous games. Heck, to be honest, I really wish VLR hadn't changed from the fantastic looking pixel art of 999 to the awkward character models in employed, but at least it still played like a VN. ZTD is more like what a Telltale game with a super low budget would look like.

I compared Uchikoshi to Shyamalan earlier. If VLR is his The Sixth Sense, then ZTD is The Village or something: he hasn't lost his mojo completely, but the writing is on the wall by that point.

With that said, I'd still recommend playing it. It's... an experience.

BTW, somehow I managed to luck out and obtain the watch accessories for both VLR and ZTD at launch (they were notoriously hard-to-obtain preorder bonuses). ZTD's watch eventually became more common, but it still costs upwards of $100 to get the VLR one. They're among my most prized possessions. <3

Oh, and what dialogue did you choose when Junpei and June are at the elevator?

I ran through Killing Floor: Incursion last night with a friend. All around it was a good time. I had a lot of fun with the shooting mechanics and meleeing enemies with an axe. Nothing quite like using the limb of an enemy to kill his friends. VR definitely reinvented the wheel with shooting that even being a small shooter is awesome. I also had too much just playing catch with stuff in the game too. Just tossing weapons and limbs around to each other is much more fun than it should be.
Now, all that being said, the game had too many puzzles for a name like “Killing Floor.” Way too many it felt like. All more confusing than the game had any right or be. When it was puzzle time we just didn’t really know what to do and fumbled around until we found something. Also it was confusing in terms of where to go. I’m all for games trusting you to know what to do more, but it think that if any game needed a “stupid” button, it was this one.

@Kidfried Not at all. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. I absolutely love having an excuse to gush about these games!

I think there are actually 28 endings if you include the 4 or so that result from just not doing something you're supposed to do in certain routes. Anyway, it CAN feel a bit overwhelming at times, especially when you start running up against a lot of roadblocks that you have no way of overcoming when you first get to them. The game works itself out, though, if you're willing to kind of go along with its admittedly bizarre structure (they might have retrofitted 999 with a flowchart, but the flowchart structure was first designed for this game, and you'll quickly find it becomes a necessity to follow along with the innumerable diverging narrative strands you'll be contending with over the course of the game).

Oh wow. I just watched the final puzzle on Youtube. That IS a strange and dumb replacement. The whole point of the sudoku puzzle (as funny as it is to see this poor girl being forced to complete a sudoku puzzle in an incineration chamber) is that it's not really the sort of thing someone could quickly figure out.

I do have to admit, though, I'm tempted to buy the PS4 version of this when it's on sale next time, if only to hear all of the lines being fully voice-acted! Everybody speaks in bleeps and bloops in the original.

Speaking of the elevator scene:

That dialogue has always been a favorite. It's a dumb scene, for sure, but then teenagers can be quite dumb, and it reminds me of how weird I was during puberty. It's also just a funny moment in a game filled with horror and dread.

It seems like the remake is missing the third person narration, though, which is unfortunate, as it makes the scene even funnier.

Best non-true ending, is, of course, the one where Clover goes nuts with the axe. It was creepy and utterly unlike anything I'd ever encountered in a game on a Nintendo handheld system before.

I was lucky to get those watches. I pre-ordered both games the hour they first went on sale on Amazon, and even then, I had to fight them every step of the way to get my watches (it worked out, though: I actually got two copies of Virtue's Last Reward for the price of one as an apology for all of the drama involved with Amazon's bungling of the watch distribution!). It's just a pity I never managed to snag a 999 watch, but, then, I played the a year or two after launch, so that's to be expected.

@Ralizah Ah yes ... that elevator scene. First time I saw it in the game, I was laughing all throughout it. I loved how whenever I expected it to end, they somehow came up with even more innuendo.

My favourite of the series is 999. It has the best characters and story and location imo. An old ship was an excellent choice of location. I also liked the dynamics between the characters and how they mostly got along with each other and how they seemed to be co-orporating to try to get out of the situation.

My least favourite would happen to be Virtue's Last Reward, though I still highly rate that game. My main issues with it is the location was fairly bland, and how the characters interact with each other. The characters spent a lot more time fighting and arguing compared to the other games due to the Ally/Betray mechanics. Plus they toned down the horror with VLR, and even though there's plenty of horrific stuff it was lacking the constant threat of danger that the other games had. On the plus side of VLR, I really liked Zero Jr and the Prisoner's Dilemma aspects, plus the story was excellent.

Zero Time Dilemma was a mixed bag, but it's still the 2nd favourite of the series for me. I liked the darker aspects of it which made it feel more like 999 than VLR. The story was generally good but had some issues here and there. The biggest issue for me was the pacing. It could have done with some more escape rooms, especially towards the end of the game, and possibly also a smaller escape room near the start of the game.

@crimsontadpoles It is a lot of fun watching that exchange grow increasingly absurd over time. There's dense, and then there's Junpei growing increasingly terrified that he "has misunderstood life so gravely."

VLR is definitely a much less immediately harrowing experience. I tend to prefer that, however, as it allows the characters room to grow and develop over time, which is important when it comes to AB game. This also ties into the choices the player makes: it feels much less consequential to pick a certain door to go through in 999 than it does to DIRECTLY choose whether or not to stab someone in the back in VLR. Granted, once you're 100%ing the game and have explored all the major paths, that feeling of personal responsibility goes away, but early on, it could get quite gut-wrenching. It also feels much more like a straight-up science-fiction thriller than the other two games in the series, and that's reflected in the themes, too. It's much more concerned with questions about artificial intelligence, language, identity, etc.

I actually really like, in abstract, the aesthetic of ZTD, which made it feel like a horror movie. I liked the brutality of the decisions you would have to make which, again, felt much more consequential than choices made in 999. I liked certain scenarios and plot twists. I really liked the music, and think it probably has the best OST in the series.

However, between the million plot holes, the way out-of-left-field, eleventh hour twists that made no sense and had no connection to anything else in the series, the significant presentation issues, the horrendous English voice acting, and the extremely underwhelming conclusion, it definitely doesn't feel like it lives up to the other games in the series.

Although, as I've said, I still enjoy it, and I do think people exaggerate how disappointing it was. It still felt like a Zero Escape game, and I'd gladly play it again.

Have you ever played any of the PC visual novels he wrote before working on Zero Escape? One in particular, Ever17, prefigures almost every major idea he explores in more depth in the ZE trilogy. It's structured like a dating sim of sorts, but the wide arc of the narrative is almost totally unconnected to romance, and you'll explore a variety of interesting scenarios depending on which girl you choose to pursue in a given run.

I never quite finished it, unfortunately. I might have to change that. Originally, it wouldn't run on a Windows 8.1 computer. I had to edit the executable in a hex editor, which is always fun.

@Ralizah I've not played any of his other works, though Ever17 does sound familiar, I think I've had it recommended to me before. Ever17 does seem like something that I'd greatly enjoy. Shame that it seems very difficult to buy a copy these days. If they ever added it to Steam or GOG or somewhere, then I wouldn't hesitate to buy it.

@crimsontadpoles Pretty much the only way to play it is to find a torrent. The game has been OOP for more than a decade, and it's pretty much impossible to find now: even ebay and amazon show no listings for the localized PC version (some decently priced Japanese PS2/PSP/Dreamcast ports, though). In such cases, I don't mind piracy at all, as doing so is literally hurting nobody.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a localization, although, as I learned last year, when XSEED announced that it was localizing Sweet Sachiko's Hysteric Birthday Bash, the obscure 2012 comedy spinoff to the already fairly obscure Corpse Party series, nothing is impossible in that regard. I buy NOTHING on Steam for full price. The only games purchased for full price on my account were two Bethesda games, and they were gifted to me. But I'm going to buy this game for whatever the base price is when it first launches. I literally can't believe this game is being localized!

Just finished Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. I love the setting so much that looking for every single piece of lore sown around made the game last 19 hours!
As with every Arkane Studios' game, I think the best part is the freedom you have to reach your goal in terms of game mechanics.

@KratosMD Yeah, the twists in the final trial were top-of-the-line stuff.

I'm not sure how much more there is to get out of Apollo's storyline, especially with... where things ends in SoJ.

Also, I know Phoenix Wright is ancient by Japanese media standards, where life seems to end at age 40, but, realistically, PW hasn't even reached his prime age of productivity as a lawyer. He has decades of work left in him.

If the series is going to progress, then I think it's going to need to primarily focus on a new character. Or Athena. Either works for me.

As a side-note, one of my favorite things about the series is its sense of continuity between the entries. It's awesome, for example, to first meet Maya as a teenager and see her come into her own as a nearly 30 year old woman. Ditto with Ema. It's awesome seeing the tiny Pearl become an adult. It's particularly cool seeing Edgeworth go from being a teenage prodigy with no sense of ethics about his job (by way of one of the flashback cases in T&T), to a conflicted young adult seeking to re-examine his place in the universe in his 20's, to a confident and seasoned professional who others rely on in his mid-30's. I hope they keep up. I only regret not catching up with other classic characters in this series. How much better would it have been if Detective Gumshoe had shown up in the DLC instead of Larry Butz?

Danganronpa and Zero Escape don't really have the same developers. The Spike side of the company developed the first two Danganronpa games on its own. Ditto with the Chunsoft side of the company and Zero Escape. They did publish more games in both series after they merged, though and the creators, being friends and co-workers, have influenced each other (much clearer in Danganronpa, actually, which constantly reference Zero Escape games: think of the names of certain trophies, or that entire escape room sequence in DR2).

With that said, Zero Escape is an incredible series, and I welcome whatever reasoning goes into finally introducing yourself to it. It's older and, in some respects, just better than Danganronpa (although I think DR does an overall better job of consistent, game-to-game worldbuilding). Very much a must play for anyone who likes horror, science-fiction, visual novels, or especially "all of the above."

I just spent the past few weeks smashing through Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light. I saw the Redux really cheap and though i'd give it a go. They are REALLY good, I was really surprised. Great story, great atmosphere, really engaging. This has made the new one shoot up my wanted list

I finished off Jurassic Park Evolution the other day.

It was better than I was expecting and quite enjoyed it overall. The different islands stop the game from getting too samey and the main missions on each island give you something different to do. The basic principle of making dinosaurs and creating a cool theme park isn't a bad starting point though.

It does suffer from pacing a little in that each island involves a fair bit of waiting around. Initially this is waiting to make money to be able to do anything (but by the end of the level you have more money than you could ever use) and some missions are on timers so you're sitting round waiting for the time to pass. An ability to speed the game up would be so useful.

Worth picking up if it sounds like your kind of thing.

@RogerRoger It's well worth giving a go but be warned, you'll be sick of the iconic main theme by the time you're finished!

It's also quite reasonable trophy wise. I got 75% of trophies just playing the game organically but trying to do everything. Almost all the ones I missed were taking photos of certain scenarios (something you do while controlling one of the ranger's 4x4s) and I'm not bothered enough to faff doing those.

Finally finished RDR2, i have mixed feelings about it. Controls are kinda crappy but i got used to them so thats ok. I think maybe the main story was a little too drawn out. I found myself just wishing it would end. But i was a really great story and i enjoyed it mostly. The one thing that would of made this game so much better for me would of been a way to fast travel back to camp. Could of been something that u unlocked a little later in game or something. I found myself using cinematic mode alot to go back to camp, pretty much just like using fast travel just takes alot longer. All in all its a great game and im glad i saw it through to the end.

Took longer than it should have, but I finally finished Final Fantasy Type-0 yesterday.

As someone who wanted the game when it was originally a PSP title, I'm happy that my experience with it went well. It's not perfect, but it's enjoyable on it's own.

I like how the story, for 7 out of 8 chapters, is honest for a Final Fantasy game. It's a game about a war, but it's played realistically in a fantasy game. As a result it has a darker tone than anything else in the series (To my knowledge, this is the only FF game with an M rating, which should tell you enough). I normally dislike making something "gritty and realistic" in a setting where reality is repeatedly bent over on someone's knee, but I felt it worked well here, and it even had me more invested in what happened due to the more serious stakes.

Chaper 8 however, reminds you that you're playing Final Fantasy by going to the usual "doom the world" plot and honestly, it felt out of place. It comes without any real buildup, and it felt shoved in to me. The ending made up for it though, by fitting with the game's themes and being appropriately bittersweet in a game (mostly) about war. There are multiple endings, with a "True ending" coming on a second playthrough, but I'm satisfied enough with the normal ending for now.

I think it goes without saying that the graphics are the low point of the game. I wasn't expecting much from a PSP remaster, but it can be jarring to look at the nicely made models of Class Zero next to an NPC who didn't get touched up. Some of the game's cutscenes also appear to be taken straight from the PSP, meaning you see Class Zero's lower res looks here too. Environments aren't much better, being simple and walled off whenever you explore a town.

The gameplay is what makes it worth it for me though, and I enjoyed the battle system here. It's action based, with an emphasis on finding weakpoints via pattern recognition. The game calls this Breaksight (essentially a crit) and Killsight (what do you think?). It makes for fun encounters throughout the game, and the multiple playable characters (14!) give you some good options, from the hand to hand fighter, the gunslinger, or even the....flute player. Never underestimate a flute player. You make a team of three, but you can have just two or even go solo if you want to, you crazy person. I will note that you want at least one marksman on your team, so it's not recommended to have all physical fighters, unless you equip them with magic and have MP to spare.

Oh, speaking of magic, you can upgrade spells in this via the Altocrystarium. When you defeat enemies, you can harvest phantoma, which is used to boost your spells. Depending on the spell, you can upgrade it's range, lower it's MP cost, speed up it's cast time, etc. I admittedly didn't use it that much, but it's a cool feature, and did help the magic I did use.

Overall, I do recommend this game, especially for the FF fans. It's not a classic, and the story does things I don't like, but it's enjoyable to play, and what the story does get right is great. I also want this game to be remembered for more than just having the FFXV demo.