Rate The Last Game You Played

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dragonfliet

I write stuffs
Apr 24, 2006
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The Witcher A+

Okay, the game's combat system was lame as crap, there was a bit too much running back and forth between a few areas for quests and sidequests and the lady's man getup was beyond ridiculous, but damn this was a great RPG. Strong story, pretty decent writing, wonderfully set up upgrades/loot/etc. system and they integrated choice into the game extremely naturally. I'm very, very pleased with that.

I've actually owned this for close to two years, but playing the intro section completely turned me off (because of that damned stupid combat system not having anything cool, just a lame rhythm game), but I'm so, so glad I finally sat down and played through that. I don't know why more people aren't talking about this game and the sequel is next up on my list of games I need to play.
 

Vaskadar

It's time I look back from outer space
Feb 12, 2008
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Fort Lauderdale, FL
You'll kick yourself in the pants for not getting the sequel sooner. It is also an amazingly well crafted game in its own respects.
 

dragonfliet

I write stuffs
Apr 24, 2006
3,754
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You'll kick yourself in the pants for not getting the sequel sooner. It is also an amazingly well crafted game in its own respects.

It came out like a month ago. That's fine by me. I just loaded it up to mess around a bit with settings and the like and it's beautiful. What is annoying, however, is they've gotten rid of the toggle things i can interact with button. damn that is annoying. You know what, devs? Beautiful, well filled games are wonderful, but it's a pain in the ass running around into everything just to find what I can pick up--you know, with a button...like the one you had before. Oh well. The combat is already about 382x better. Yay no fucking rhythm games and autoblock!
 

GreatEmerald

Khnumhotep
Jan 20, 2008
4,042
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Lithuania
Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 - 8/10

The Card e-Reader is pretty amazing and makes the game interesting to play, even if it's rather difficult to emulate it. I also liked the fact that they had ported the Cape from Super Mario World and also allowed you to use the Boomerangs of Boomerang Bros. However, after playing SuperTux for a long time, I find the controls quite unresponsive and slippery. I got used to it later on, however.
 

SlayerDragon

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLADIES
Feb 3, 2003
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Dragon Age: Origins - 8/10 - Solid game. Quite difficult, but fun. I'm not sure how I feel on the replay value. I got about 90% through the game the first time, but restarted it after not playing for a long time, so I'm a bit burned out on it right now. That being said, however, it is quite fun.

I'll try not to spoil anything here. The story is interesting, as you are thrown into the world of the order of Grey Wardens defending the land of Ferelden from the darkspawn, and you have to learn about it through the eyes of a new recruit suddenly thrust into a very important role. I think the introduction to the world via the origins system is interesting. You pick your character's race, background, and archetype (warrior, rogue, or mage) and that determines how you will begin the game. This gives you a different experience for the first couple of hours of the game depending on your choices, and it will also affect how people react to you and how events play out later on in the story as well. The characters can be a bit one-dimensional, but they do have some depth to them if you choose to engage them in discussion and participate in their companion-specific quests. The world is somewhat generic fantasy, though with a darker bent, and with some twists I hadn't seen before.

The gameplay has its ups and downs. Battles are played out in real time, characters have auto-attacks and abilities that can be set up in the Tactics system for each character to tell them how to behave in battle. In this way, you can customize each character to do exactly what you want. There are also a few basic types of Tactics setups you can use if you are lazy: Defender, Scrapper, and Archer for melee-type characters; Damager, Supporter, Controller, Debilitator for mages. You can also configure up to 3 custom sets to save. Along with Tactics sets are behaviors, which dictate the overall behavior of the character on the battlefield: Default, Passive, Aggressive, Ranged, Cautious, Defensive. The actual Tactic rules are pretty customizable and can be defined by self, ally, or enemy conditions, and then dictate what actions to take based on that. This makes it a highly customizable system, or a system to dictate basic behavior for your party when you aren't controlling them directly. At any point during the battle you can select a character in your party and tell them what to do, which is a highly likely scenario. The battles can be tough, and despite there being automated actions, they're not likely to be the correct ones. In some ways I feel like it might have benefitted from being turn-based or having some sort of initiative system that allowed you to tell each person what to do in turn, because it can be downright hectic at times. But, beating some of the tough fights is very rewarding because of this. One of the nice things is that you can use the scroll wheel on the mouse to change the view angle of the screen, taking it between a three-quarter view and a behind-the-back view and some stops in between there. The top-down view is nice for directing characters in battle and getting a view of the opponents and allies involved.

There is a relationship system of sorts for interacting with your party members. This includes romance options. Each character has an approval rating, which changes based on your actions in the game, your discussions with them, and whether or not you choose to give them gifts. Gifts are special items labeled as such that can either be sold or given to a party member to boost their rating. Each party member prefers specific types of gifts. There are also plot gifts that can unlock some bits of story or even quests. I felt like this was pretty cool, and I did enjoy getting to know more about the characters.

There were some clunky parts of the game, too. I didn't really like the inventory interface. I especially didn't like how some things that stacked together in the interface still had each item count toward the total number of items you could carry. I understand needing to limit how much you can carry so that you have to make choices about what to bring and what to leave behind, but it was frustrating at times looking through the inventory. The crafting system didn't really add depth to the game in my opinion, it just added to the amount of bullshit I had to carry around with me at all times. You leveled it in the same way as any other skill, and you had to find the recipes in order to make what you want on top of that so it was essentially a pain in the dick and I'd rather just buy what I need or find/steal it. Aside from that, there are also some really annoying bugs such as somehow making Leliana unable to teach me how to be a Bard.

Dragon Age: Origins Witch Hunt - 7/10 - It was a fairly short standalone campaign, with a few new companions to join you in the journey. I can't reveal much without spoilers, but the end was really cryptic and honestly didn't explain much more beyond what happened at the end of the original story so it felt rather pointless. You can import your old character or generate a new one for this campaign.

Dragon Age: Origins Leliana's Song - 9/10 - This was really cool! It is a story of Leliana's life before you meet her and before she joined the Chantry, when she was still an Orelesian bard taking part of the Orlesian nobles' game of intrigue. The story takes place in Denerim, and it has a fun heist movie feel to it.

Dragon Age: Origins Golems of Amgarrak - 8/10 - Another short campaign sends the Warden (you can import your old character or generate a new one) back to the Deep Roads to seek out the abandoned thaig of Amgarrak, which means "Victory" in the Dwarven tongue. As you can imagine, it centers a lot on golem lore and you fight a lot of them as well. It's actually a pretty tough campaign due to the limited party selection (you have no choice, you only get two other characters total). I enjoyed, it however, and it was an interesting tale that was told.

Dragon Age: Origins The Darkspawn Chronicles - 9/10 - This campaign was pretty cool. You play as a darkspawn captain of sorts that can recruit and control darkspawn during the final battle of the original campaign. It is sort of an alternate history, where your character wasn't involved and instead the Wardens are led by Alistair. Fun to play through, for sure.

Dragon Age: Origins Awakening - 8/10 - I think I enjoyed the campaign more but again that might be due to having grown tired of the original one. You get a whole new set of companions (minus one returning character from the original game), without the romance options but still including the approval rating, and personal quests. You play the role of the Grey Warden Commander-General after the Blight, starting out with arriving at Vigil Keep, the new home of the Wardens in the Fereldan arling of Amaranthine. You get to explore all new areas, and investigate why the darkspawn have not fled to the Deep Roads as they did following the slaying of the archedemon leading previous Blights. The story ends up being pretty cool, and the gameplay remains essentially the same with some new talent specializations you can select for your characters. There is also an item you can buy to completely respec any of your characters, which is nice if you want to try different things. Since this is billed as an actual expansion, it is much longer than the DLCs.

Overall, a fun game and DLC and expansion. I had some issues getting it all to work in Windows 7 because the shitty DRM service wouldn't install properly, leaving me unable to access the DLC that I had paid for. I eventually got it working after searching the web for solutions.
 

hal

Dictator
Staff member
Nov 24, 1998
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I agree with you, SlayerDragon, and I think Leliana's Song and Darkspawn Chronicles were probably my favorite among the DLC as well. You mentioned that there were quite a few different beginning portions of the story and that it also affected the interaction throughout (as well as the ending you get), but there are also a number of choices you can make throughout the game independent of your origins that have an effect on the ending sequence.

It's really a pretty ambitious and spectacular game. It did a great job of always offering you something new to do. I only felt once or twice that I just wanted to get on with it.

If you picked it up for $10 at the last Steam sale then you'll be even more pleased with your purchase.
 

SlayerDragon

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLADIES
Feb 3, 2003
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I bought the game when it first came out and then re-purchased the ultimate edition because it was cheaper than getting all the DLC and Awakening separately.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is a really shitty bug in Awakening that happens when you enter the Silverite Mine. Details in the spoiler tags, but make sure to keep a save file from before that point.

Shortly after entering, you will encounter The Architect and get knocked out and have all your gear taken away. After you wake up again, you will have the opportunity to break out, and as you progress through this area you will encounter "experiment subjects" that have the gear of each character in your party. Apparently there is a bug that causes the one with your main character's gear not to spawn, or the chest near the Qunari merchant not to contain the gear, I am not sure which is supposed to happen but I know neither does. From what I read, if you see your character in just his/her underwear inside the jail cell then the bug occurred. If they have on civilian clothes like the rest of the party then it should be fine.
 

Manticore

Official BUF Angel of Death (also Birthdays)
Staff member
Nov 5, 2003
6,374
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MotoGP 2008 (PS2)- 8/10

I haven't played any motorcycle games in a long time but I this one was a lot of fun.

Sort of made me want to get back on a motorbike and I haven't done that in a long, long time.:D
 

SlayerDragon

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLADIES
Feb 3, 2003
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Deus Ex Human Revolution - 9.8/10

This was definitely one of the best games I have played in a long, long time, since ... Fallout 3? Well, no, maybe Splinter Cell: Conviction.

It stayed faithful to the formula of the original game: choices. You're given a mission, you have certain abilities and tools at your disposal and you can accomplish that mission any way you want to do within the boundaries of the game. It works out pretty well. Personally, I found both of these games (the original and this one, never played Invisible War) much more interesting if you approach them as stealth games. Now, I usually like to try a nonlethal approach. DXHR makes it even more satisfying with the cover system and the takedown system. Tap the takedown key to do a non-lethal takedown, hold it for lethal takedown. You can upgrade it later to allow for taking down two enemies in one go, which can be really useful.

I tried for a stealth/non-lethal playthrough. It seems I failed. I took the stealth achievement literally, thinking "no alarms" meant no alarms going off, not just enemies in the orange-red hostile state. Seems I was wrong about that. I somehow failed non-lethal. I suspect the body of a knocked out dude falling into the electrified water was the cause of my woes, if not a taser dart murder. Oops.

The story was pretty comparable to the original game. I have heard people call it predictable, but I think that if you played the first one you already know what's coming. They worked pretty hard not to retcon the original story, and I think they managed to pull it off for the most part. Human Revolution definitely follows on the same themes and methods of the original game's story. I think it was well done.

Now, my main detraction was the forced boss fights. This wasn't terrible, really, but for a play through trying to be stealthy it made it a pain in the ass. I knew ahead of time, so I kept a lethal weapon or two around for murdering purposes. Now, they did provide plenty of said weaponry on the spot in "boss arenas" so it could be worse. I don't really know what to make of this. The bosses were not necessarily key players in the story, but replacing them with faceless generic badguys in terms of their plot involvement wouldn't work all that well either. This is where I really detract my 0.2 points. It's a bit contrived to force the fighting, but at the same time it also seems necessary based on how the characters were introduced and written into the story.

You may not agree, but the story isn't the end-all-be-all of this game and its prequel(s). I really just enjoy the approach of "here is your playground, here is what we want you to achieve, good luck." I spent a lot of time breaking down each level. I would find my way in somehow, and start wrecking each area from within until I had knocked out every enemy, hacked every computer and divulged all the secrets. I still somehow missed the 29 unique e-books. :mad: It was ultimately pretty satisfying to be able to accomplish this.

I also took over a hundred screenshots during my play time. There was a lot of cool shit to see, lots of little things that I enjoyed finding whether in the environment or dialogue or in the emails you find by hacking computers.

A fucking great game. I will definitely be giving this some more of my time in the future. For all my previous naysaying, it turned out to be amazing. PLUS, I never saw an in-game advertisement.

If you don't have this, get it. It's definitely one of the best games in recent memory.
 

dragonfliet

I write stuffs
Apr 24, 2006
3,754
31
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Another DX: Human Revolution review: A+

This game is truly stunning. Okay, it isn't stunning looking, but it isn't bad at all. The guns are cool, if not particularly thrilling and the plot is flat out stupid. This isn't the game for that. As much as this is a game that is centered around a plot, the job of it is to keep you moving, to give you motivation for going places and for doing things. It does that extremely well. Characters are interesting, for the most part, and when they aren't in caricature, they are often surprisingly nuanced.

Fans of the original will have plenty to love about this game a little bit to hate. Fans of excellent games will find the same. First, this is a game about the choices you make. While it can't be bothered to integrate these choices into the narrative in any real way, unlike games like The Witcher (apparently I forgot to review it: here is the mini review of it within this review: absolutely beautiful, great combat, strong story and an absolutely breathtaking acknowledgement of your actions within the storyline make it one of the best game in the last decade), it lets your actions speak very loudly. People that want to run in and shoot everyone in the head are free and able to do so--they'll even think this is the only way to go. People that want to sneak, smack people upside the head and hack their way around are free to do that. Kill everyone you see or kill no one at all and try to talk your way into and out of situations. It's your choice. Okay, that's not strictly true. If you don't want to be closed into the corridors, you'll have to spend a few points on hacking, want to or not, and the boss fights are unavoidable and you WILL kill them in a cutscene. I don't even want to talk about the one cutscene where your character does something INCREDIBLY stupid that hurts to even think about. But the flaws are so small that you forget about them, you forgive.

The AI is for the most part solid, and while their simplistic patterns in such a modern game feels a little silly, they will at least turn around if you club a dude upside the head two feet from them (I don't care if you're trying to be silent about it, choking a man into submission makes noise), the levels are very solidly designed, the level of interaction is sometimes spotty, but for the most part logical and awesome. I could go on. This is just an awesome game.

It is not, however, a particularly long one. While I apparently missed a single sidequest (that you get from going to the limb clinic the second time you're in china (for a plot reason, I didn't go, not realizing there was a sidequest there), I finished the game on the hardest difficulty without killing anyone in just over 30 hours. A GREAT amount of time, if you ask me, but some people just want more. If you run through killing people with less of an emphasis on stealth, and if you don't care about the many sidemissions, you could probably get through in 15 hours. That being said, this game is not only excellent to play through, it will almost undoubtedly provide you with opportunity and reason to play through again.

This is the longest review I've put on here, but it's worth it. In nearly any other year, this would be hands down the best game of the year and that it isn't automatically this year is only because Portal 2 and The Witcher 2 (both VERY different games) are also absolutely fantastic. 2011 is an excellent year for gaming.
 
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NeoNite

Starsstream
Dec 10, 2000
20,275
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In a stream of stars
Finished this one a couple of weeks ago. Well, it was "stretched out" over many months, because I lost interest in it every so often.

Unreal 2:

This game felt like a real drag. That's my lasting impression. Every mission felt the same. Defend this outpost against hulking behemoths, save this scientist, go find an artifacts, defend yet another outpost or so.

Not to mention the ending. What an anticlimax. Heh, but I sort of knew that would happen so I wasn't that shaken.

Nevertheless, to me the game felt.. despite it's (for its time imho) gorgeous environments, just so tedious. I just wanted it to be over with, but after each similar mission I skipped the game for weeks if not longer.

And you hardly get to fight Skaarj anyway. And imo they're no real fun. They're just really annoying.

/shrug

Not sure if I'll ever play this again. Given time, perhaps. But most likely not.

6/10
 

Manticore

Official BUF Angel of Death (also Birthdays)
Staff member
Nov 5, 2003
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Portal 2-9/10

I've been totally sucked in by this franchise in the past month and played P1 and P2.

In my opinion these games are some of the cleverest virtual reality games ever. (Yes I know you can TP in other games but the whole way this works is great).

I usually prefer run and gun games and hate puzzle games but this stuff is a cut above and genuinely created some new gaming experiences; in my opinion.

Portal was disappointingly short despite the great game-play but they fixed that in Portal 2 and added some new game mechanics.

With Portal 1 I haven't played through the boss level at the end of the game.

With P2 I keep finishing a room expecting the boss level to come up and get so many more levels to play with instead. This game just keeps on giving.

Great value for money.

One of the cleverest game concepts.... ever.
 
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Sjosz

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Dec 31, 2003
3,048
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Edmonton, AB
www.dregsld.com
More game updates!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution 9/10
Awesome as everyone's already said. Story is pretty weak and it's host to the most obvious plot twists since the invention of plot twists, but the mechanics and the level design is fantastic.

Shadows of the Damned 8/10
Very funny game, and pretty crazy.

Fallout: New Vegas 8/10
Finally finished this, pretty satisfying game. Spent a lot of time just exploring, and I can't wait for Skyrim to finally hit.

Mercury HG 7/10
Entertaining enough little puzzler.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village 7/10
Decent puzzler, though not the best as far as letting you know what you're supposed to do.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future 8.5/10
Good puzzler, and much better implementation of things than the first game. Pretty neat story with unexpected twists, as well.
 

Manticore

Official BUF Angel of Death (also Birthdays)
Staff member
Nov 5, 2003
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Bioshock is stunning.:eek:

Games for me fall into about four categories:

1. This sucks.

2. It's o.k. but I never finished it.

3. I have to finish this game.

4. My wife will threaten to leave me again over this game. ;) :lol:

I think this one is definitely a "four". :D

9/10
 

Manticore

Official BUF Angel of Death (also Birthdays)
Staff member
Nov 5, 2003
6,374
230
63
Optimum Trajectory-Circus of Values
Gahahahahaha! Ahhh, that's rich.
It certainly is.

195010-the-pip-boy-3000-box.jpg



Now available at Walmart (kidding).