Topic: Games you've recently beat

I also ended up beating Need for Speed Most Wanted 2005 today! Pretty good game, much more user-friendly than Underground 2 but it sacrifices the vibes. This game is the definition of piss filter. Pretty ugly but the cars handle decently. The pursuits are almost fun but border on the frustrating due to tiny mistakes or being unlucky causing you to fail. Decent though in general.

@NeonPizza I agree, I found Village a overall more balanced experience than 7. I've not played the dlc for Village but did for 7, and thought it was quite good.

@Ralizah Ah fair enough. It sounds like the steam deck has been a success in regards to shaping an experience, it’s funny how that works. My memory is too vague and foggy at this point to remember how fond of Spyro I am, though I did enjoy the trilogy.

Congrats on finishing Bloodborne, just a shame it didn’t have the desired impact. I intend to return it one day though I do find the setting of these types of games a little oppressive at times and the prospect of spending tens of hours with it can seem a tad daunting.

Gutted about GoT, I’m really looking forward to it as I’m a big fan of old samurai movies. If and when you return to it I hope your experience improves.

My gaming plans have been obliterated recently due to properly getting into Vampire Survivors 😂 I can’t seem to bring myself to play anything else.

Samurai Western. Almost incredible. Apparently it’s a Way of the Samurai spin-off (never played the series) but it’s just a really tight PS2 action game split into old fashioned stages that range from easy to beyond frustratingly hard. At least you can level up, but it only saves if you complete the level so you end up replaying earlier stages. There’s tons of customisation with gear you can wear that you can resize, reposition etc over your body that increase your stats. Ended up with a gigantic hat and tiny little boots. The gameplay is seriously close to being great, it’s a bit like a spectacle fighter with a smaller moveset but every enemy has a gun whereas you have a sword, so you have to deflect bullets and dodge in close to kill anyone. The problem is stunlocks. It is so so easy to get hemmed in by 5 enemies who’ve staggered their shooting animations so that you get riddled with bullets. The bomb throwing enemies can wipe out your life bar in a few seconds if you get unlucky too. Bosses are largely annoying more than fun.

That being said, it’s a fun game. You fly through it but it encourages replays with a hard mode unlocked and extra stages etc. The range of weapons is decent too, although high stance weapons were the most fun. More than anything, it’s just nice to play a game that goes for one single theme and concept, and executes it mostly successfully. It’s a samurai slashing cowboys in half. The PS2 was amazing.

I recently beat Judgment and I really enjoyed it! The story is dark, intriguing, and satisfying. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good story with a smaller open world. The gameplay is very fun and flashy. The writing and Japanese voice acting are awesome. The English voice actors have some great talent including the Peter Parker voice actor. Absolutely recommend this game.

The original Armored Core. Really brilliant… after I remapped the controls for two sticks. Seriously, those original controls are awful. Enjoyed it though, it starts pretty brutal but once you kit your mech out a bit better then it’s way more manageable. The giant pit you climb in the final mission is up there with the one from God Of War as one of my least favourite sections in gaming though. It’s Getting Over It irritation levels but not self-aware.

Just finished Binary Domain on Series X. Really fun 'Gears of War'-style shooter with a captivating and thought-provoking story about robots and AI. The gameplay can get a bit repetitive but that's why I played it in between my TLOU2 sessions for some variety. There were some great twists and the characters were for the most part likeable, even though they were cheesy at times. But all in all, great game!

Started and finished It Takes Two with a friend this week.. finally! I'd been begging anyone and everyone I know to play that with me for years, but no one ever seemed particularly interested until now. What a lovely game. Enough has been said about the game over the last few years, so there's probably not much I can add to the conversation other than to repeat it was a delightful time.

I do think it ran out of steam a bit towards the end. The later worlds were not quite as good as the starting ones and I wasn't all too happy about the ending. That concert was a great disappointment after all the build-up to it! I think the game as a whole could've used a few cuts here and there and the framing of the last few worlds narratively was a bit boring, but the creativity on display throughout always managed to keep it entertaining nonetheless.

Some really fun characters as well even if the main storyline was nothing special. I know it's been discussed plenty times, but the elephant scene was a piece of darkly comedic genius. My favourite world was probably the clock, even if just for the art design. The steampunk-y feel was so gorgeously done I couldn't help but stop and take in the sights. My least favourite was probably the snow world. It was one of the least visually interesting ones and the tasks there were not very fun.

All in all, a great experience I'm glad I was finally able to have and it deserves the love it received. I probably wouldn't rate it quite as highly as some, but it was a great game nonetheless and gave me everything I expected of it.

Just watched the credits roll on The Last of Use part II - Remastered and what a great game that was! It did drag out a bit, though, the last few chapters felt unnecessary and tacked on, even from a story point of view, but I'm not going to hold that against it. The need for New Game+ to secure the platinum makes me doubt that I'll bother to go for it, but I haven't uninstalled it yet, just in case I feel the pull

There are a gajillion options for what to tackle next from my backlog, but I think I'll try a shorter game. I think I may give The Sexy Brutale a go.

@FuriousMachine What a coincidence, I also finished it yesterday. I agree, it's a brilliant game. While I kinda agree that the last few chapters were too much since it felt like the game was just about to end after that "boss fight", I wouldn't have been satisfied if it ended there. So I'm glad it kept going because the actual ending was perfect for this type of story. It was really powerful stuff, I nearly shed some tears at the end. Absolutely brilliant game.

@LtSarge That is indeed a fun coincidence I agree that it would have been unsatisfying if it ended after the boss fight as it is, but I think they could have tweaked it so that we would have wound up in much the same place after that encounter as we did after all that Rattler business. Would have been less bleak, though, as the homecoming would probably have been a bit lighter, I guess.
All in all I'm really happy with what we got Well, "happy" seems wrong, as I did shed tears at the end there (and a couple of times earlier, too... the sequence at the museum had me all weepy)

@FuriousMachine Yeah cool that you have also have finished The last of us 2 by now. That mean there is quite a of a few of us here who has finished that game. Which I think is great. Because it mean that we can compare our experiences of the game. Welcome to let us know if you want an recommendation for short game Iam sure you will get one.

@LtSarge Can't really agree that the ending is perfect for the type of story. Not sure why Ellie deserves to have such a bleak ending, even bleaker than Abby's to be honest. I have many problems with the story and how it was told, but I won't get into that as I don't want to sour too much of your great experience. Anyways, I know some of the things Ellie did were quite awful, but so did Abby. Ellie is also the heart and soul of the series and the reason we played Part II, so maybe Neil could have let up on Ellie a bit in the end and not leave her completely broken and without anything in life, including missing a hand. Pretty cruel treatment in the end, and it wouldn't have felt like there was any positivity in the end just for the sake of it.

@FuriousMachine Fair point! Maybe they wanted to include all of that in order to set things up for Part III? Who knows.

@KilloWertz Well it was a revenge story and revenge stories should, in my opinion, always end with people settling their grievances and stop killing each other. Joel killed Abby's dad as well as other people, Abby killed Joel, Ellie killed Abby's friends, Abby killed Jessie, I mean when does it end? Ellie was about to leave on the boat when she remembered Joel's smashed up face and that's what triggered the fight. Then she remembered happy Joel when he was still alive and my interpretation is that she didn't kill Abby because that's not what Joel would've wanted her to do. Both parties fought until they couldn't fight anymore and that was enough. She ended the cycle. And who knows, maybe if she killed Abby, then Lev would've wanted revenge and gone after Ellie. Then maybe Dina would go after Lev. I mean, the fighting needs to stop. Humans are always drawn to conflict because it's a primitive survival mechanic. You kill the other party in order to stay alive yourself. That's what caused the war between the Seraphites and the Wolves. There's always so much needless killings all the time. So that's why I loved the ending because Ellie and Abby didn't kill each other. They moved on. I can understand if you didn't like the ending if you only liked Ellie and not Abby. But that's the reason why the developer wanted you to play as Abby throughout half the game, in order to see things from her perspective and gain an understanding for her character. She's not an evil person who killed Joel. She just wanted justice for her father. Abby's friends weren't evil either, they too were normal people who just wanted justice. And then Ellie killed most of them. In fact, I even grew to despise Ellie and Tommy towards the end while liking Abby much more. That's why I praised the structure of the game in another thread, because playing as both sides was a great way to see things through different perspectives. This can also be applied to real life as a lot of things we do are based on one perspective. One side always think they're right and the other side is wrong. In order to get a full picture, we need to see both perspectives. This is why I think the story and the ending were perfect.

@LtSarge I think I might have explained myself wrong, as I didn't have a problem with the two of them having a final battle at the end. My issue was with Neil writing it so Ellie was left with absolutely nothing. She comes back home after that and is left with nothing. A missing hand, no girlfriend, no child to help look after, literally nothing. That's too cruel imo.

The first fight though where you replay a fight as Abby was a complete no-no for me. I had to literally force myself to finish that sequence as I didn't buy the game to fight against Ellie. I bought it to play as Ellie. I knew going in there were sequences where you played as Abby, as I intentionally joined in with all the people who read the spoilers when they leaked to know if I'd still be interested in the game, but I also felt her section of the game dragged on and on. I understand the intention of giving you an opportunity to get to experience some of her life around the time of the game, but when her portion of the game seemed like it was almost as long as Ellie's, it became a problem.

I'm not going to say you're wrong, as I obviously don't want to ruin your extremely positive playthrough of the game. I just don't agree with some of it, which is what it is.

@KilloWertz Ah, I understand what you mean now. Honestly, that is kinda weird though right? Why did Dina leave? Because Ellie chose to go after Abby instead of staying with her family? Kinda weird if you ask me. But I mean, I guess the ending was cruel for Ellie as that was her "punishment" for choosing to go after Abby. I just felt bad for Ellie because the missing fingers meant she couldn't play the guitar anymore. I was wondering during the last scene where she played it wrong if I was doing something wrong, but no that's because she was missing fingers. I've never played a guitar so I had no idea how many fingers you need to play it lol. But yeah, I agree that the ending was cruel for Ellie.

@oliverp Thank you for that, but I'm worried that any recommendations will only add to my excessively long backlog I started The Sexy Brutale and am enjoying it so far. Will also try the Stellar Blade demo.

@KilloWertz @LtSarge Although it seems like the deadline for discussing this game has expired, if recent comments on here are to believed, I will risk it and add my two cents under a spoiler wall here.

The bleak ending for Ellie is, in my opinion, the only thing that justifies the "extra" chapters of the end: Ellie has gotten the happy ending she was due, but instead of ending the cycle of violence she can't let it go. In spite of having people who loves her who pleads with her not to go, she sets out again and in so doing loses everything. It's a powerful message, but I'm not sure it's executed as well as it could have been.
The re-casting of the hero as the villain is also an interesting storytelling device, but difficult to pull off. Even more so in a videogame, I would say, because it requires the player to somewhat be "on board" with the actions of the character being played, and that was a big ask. So, for me, the biggest problems were, firstly, playing as Abby at a point where I had no interest in "seeing her side of things" (and I agree, Abby's parts had pacing issues and were maybe too long).
Secondly, when the action switches back to Ellie, she has been (to me, at least) successfully recast as the villain and then I didn't really want to play as her anymore either.
And, thirdly, in both of the "final battles" I didn't want to try to kill the character I wasn't currently controlling.
These are all minor quibbles from me, though. I still found the game and the story to be quite excellent

@LN78 Nope, we're not arguing. We're just discussing the game, which you could choose to ignore if you wanted to and probably should. It'd be greatly appreciated.