Mr. Luchador
Member
Thanks for link, I'm not sure I'll ever do the Book one, but the movie one I have a chance with. Maybe.
Imagine Michael Bay making a movie after binging on those Americanised-Japanese horror movies from ~2000 (The Eye, The Grudge, The Ring, etc), for me this is basically 'F.E.A.R'. I loved it.
It's a First Person Shooter with some horror elements, it mixes the 'bullet-time' features of the Max Payne franchise, with some dark, twisted horror images from Fatal Frame. The story is pretty straight-forward (much like the corridors you'll spend most of your time walking through), but does it's best to be mysterious as it dripfeeds news and information to you via laptops and answering machine messages left behind.
In truth the story isn't really the hook for the game, or at least it wasn't for me. I was drawn in by the bullet-time mechanic where you can slow down time and rip carnage into the enemies who try to stop you as you hunt down Paxton Fettel. There was some strangely satisfying about turning a corner in slow-motion, and blasting your cannon like shotgun into the soldiers and heavily armed troops. The red mist of blood, and the giblets of limbs and organs spraying, slowly and awkwardly across the room. I'm not crazy or anything, but the visuals and warped audio mix just gave the feature 'something', something extra to Max Payne which is perhaps best known for it's bullet-time.
Besides, I'm a total sucker for insane ragdoll physic deaths... you know what; I'm not doing a good job of painting myself as a mentally sane, upstanding member of society here, am I.
Moving on.
Visually the game has held up since it's release in 2005, even if I did mistakenly start playing without checking the graphic settings (which were all on LOW to begin with). So do yourself a favour and ramp all the settings up to maximum if your rig can handle it. If not, don't worry it'll still look decent for a 10 year old game.
The only real issue I had was with the audio, which seemed strangely unbalanced and left you feeling like your guy had the loudest footsteps in the world. However, in saying that (and I'm no expert) the guns made a great noise, and the bullet cases/shells hitting the floor was pretty satisfying too.
In short, F.E.A.R was a fun, FPS game with a few jump scares based around it's 2000 era horror drawn inspiration. A very linear game made memorable be a few setplays, shotguns and bullet-time. Don't wait a decade to play this game like I did.
My original post is now too long so I'll need to start another:
Game 43: Infamous: Second Son (PS4) 23/7/14
This is easily the worst game I've finished for this project and had I not paid £40 for it, known it was short and turned it down to Easy halfway through I wouldn't have bothered. It's impressive how boring it manages to be for an open-world game about a dude with superpowers. It starts off quite well I thought, the city looks nice and the first batch of abilities you get are fun if a little limited but you soon realise that after that first hour you've seen pretty much everything you're going to see and it really is just an endless, joyless quest to fight another group of guys and move to the next waypoint so you can do it again (unless you really like collecting shit or exploring a city with nothing to do in it) and holy fuck what a chore it is.
Periodically you unlock new skills which is the undoubted highlight of the game and can provide as much as twenty minutes of fun before you accept that it's the same thing you had before with a different skin on. For all the skills you acquire the combat is rarely better than tedious and the boss fights are more a test of patience than skill (this was where I put the difficulty down.) The cutscenes are excruciating, dialogue often doesn't match up with the subtitles (which could've done with a spellcheck on them too btw) and of course they can't be skipped because God forbid you would want to miss the drama and twists of a story I could've written when I was eight. Utterly appalling. And they didn't even spring for a proper Nirvana song for the end credits either
Original post.
Guessing that ScribbleD forgot to do that before they went to hit the books.
Weeks gone 29. Games beaten 30.
My Darkadia account.
Game 26: Far Cry 3 - 62 hours according to Steam but that includes idling and basically 1.5 playthroughs
# Finished main story and most of the side content on the hardest difficulty. Far Cry 3 is actually a game I pre-ordered. Yet with some problems with the uPlay account it remained in my backlog half-finished until now. Started a new playthrough since I had no idea about anything anymore. Overall I enjoyed my time with the game. The main story had some very interesting missions rivalling even the most more linear gaming experiences. That said the side content was very weak. Side quests consisted only of simple fetch mission with little else. It's your usual Ubisoft open world in the sense that there's so much content you can go for if you wish (taking you 100 hours+ easily to get all of them) but it's not like you feel any need to. There's no other proper rewards for doing so other than achievements I guess. Everything you really need is unlocked in the first fifth of the game. Same with hunting and gathering. There's no need to do either of them outside of the early game. There's no challenge with that either. End-game recipes that could act as a motivator to actually bother gathering are just game breaking. It's not like you need them either since the game is rather easy even on the hardest difficulty. Writing was solid with some very interesting characters. Too bad you are forced to kill all of the interesting characters because you have to defend the boring. Funny playing a game like that. I think the variety of approaches to combat the game allowed worked really well. I found stealth very satisfying. It's not hard but you feel like a ninja when you manage to nail an approach. Uplay deserves an extra mention because it's not good at all but everybody knows about that. The game is graphically nothing special.
Game 27: Valiant Hearts: The Great War - 11 hours according to Steam but that includes some idling
# I wrote a small review on my experience with the game. TL;DR I really enjoyed my time with this title.
Game 28: Wolfenstein: The New Order - 11 hours according to Steam
# Story beaten on the second hardest difficulty. Here are my thoughts posted on the Steam thread.
Game 29: The Wolf Among Us - 10 hours according to Steam
# Story beaten. I enjoyed this game. I was a big fan of The Walking Dead by Telltale Games. In fact I think it was my game of the year back when it was released. I'm also a fan of what we have seen of Season 2 of The Walking Dead so far. That's why I was eager to see how this format fits other IP's. I'm glad to see it works very well. Games like these are all about the story. It keeps you interested as long as there's an interesting world and characters to interact with. Telltale Games really shines with that. Gameplay is passable. Nothing special. It's certainly something I would like them to give a little more attention in their future games. EDIT: Got all achievements too. Played it through the second time with different choices. Doesn't make as much difference as I would have wished.
Game 30: Detective Case and Clown Bot in: Murder in the Hotel Lisbon - 4.2 hours according to Steam which I think is pretty close to the truth
# My impressions are in the Steam thread.
And done! I had a lot of fun doing this. Im going to see how many more games I can finish before the end of the year.
thanks for that ScribbleD has been added to the hall of fame as well:
ScribbleD: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=95422324&postcount=85
By this point you're perhaps already aware that Trine is a very visually stunning game, with some great artwork & lighting yet behind all of that lies a really challenging and fun platform puzzle game.
The level designs are fairly basic to begin with an help introduce you to the 3 characters and their abilities without over complicating things. You have a Wizard (who can build blocks and platforms), a Thief who can swing and climb and a Warrior who can fight.
You can only use one character at a time, but the game lets you switch between them easily enough so it's not hard to link abilities together. So, for example you could build a platform with the Wizard to setup an easy jump and climb with The Thief. It's that level of combination and thinking that makes Trine a fun game to play. It also helps that the designers have done a good job of scaling the difficulty at just about the right pace to keep the game challenging, but never boring or frustrating.
The native 360 Controller support is a welcome feature too, and makes gameplay slightly more friendly.
Further more the developers have kindly updated Trine with the engine from Trine 2, which is why it's now referred to as the 'Enchanted Edition'. The real bonus here is if you already owned Trine, it was updated free of charge.
The only real negative could be the slightly wonky fighting mechanics, but that's none issue as the game isn't about the fighting or enemies.
In short, Trine is a fun, well presented Platform Puzzle game that offers a good combination of problem solving, exploring and physic manipulation. Well worth a play.
Currently playing:
1) Super Mario Galaxy Wii (first time)
How are you liking SMG? I loved the game; one level in particular though I remember being just brutally difficult....
How are you liking SMG? I loved the game; one level in particular though I remember being just brutally difficult....
It's greaaaaat!!! Except the manta and ball minigames, but I like the bubble one!!
Are you thinking about the purple coins on Luigi? I don't think it's that hard.
How are you liking SMG? I loved the game; one level in particular though I remember being just brutally difficult....