Topic: Games you've recently beat

@stuzster Oh no, that’s both a massive shame and incredibly ironic! I think L.A. Noire shines in its immersion, the city is such a faithful recreation along with them having actual radio show clips from the 40s, the cars control like crap and most of the police are dodgy, racist or entirely incompetent. It’s a game I’d definitely play again and aim for the platinum.

In one of my more erratic gaming moments, I drifted away from the ‘flavor of the month’ and a game I seriously am loving, Ghost of Tsushima, to finish off my orphaned and forgotten playthrough of The Council.

I’m not entirely clear why I reopened this Pandora’s box of a game because I honestly forgot about it after casually placing it in the back of the cabinet like my little jar of marmite. “Maybe I’ll try this mixed experience again when I’m feeling adventurous...”

Well, for whatever reason, (and spoiler for those who’ve played it) and the only logical explanation is that a daemon possessed me and took over my thoughts to lead me to do this irrational act 😜 I was led to randomly click on the game in the waning moments of a difficult week. I think I felt the surge of satisfaction after finally completing Bloodstained recently and subconsciously gravitated to a game that I knew I was close to finishing.

I don’t think I played the game for at least 6 months, I’d guess. I enjoyed episode 1 (and I believe I left some early impressions somewhere) and episode 2 a little less so. By episode 3 I was feeling a little put off and struggled to even feel motivated to start episode 4, but I had the “well, I’ve invested this much time into it and I bought the full season so I might as well...” thoughts and I started the penultimate episode all those months ago, where I finally just stagnated and abandoned it in the first chapter of episode 4. And there it sat for ages until a few days ago when it was resurrected, and now, completed finally to strike off my backlog list. 🥳

I won’t make this into much of a proper review, but I’ll say that the game has its strengths. Obviously it has plenty of shortcomings too, and I would be hard pressed to endorse a recommendation to the average gamer. But the last few chapters actually got quite interesting and once I reached a certain point in the story (again, huge spoilers here —) when you discover the truth about Mortimer being a daemon and being Louis father that’s when it really made it worthwhile and I was excited to see how everything was going to play out. So the final episode, number 5, was not nearly as much a slog because I was honestly fascinated at what could transpire and how my choices could affect things.

And I’ll give the game credit here too — your choices do matter. They seem to matter quite a bit. In fact, I’m rather upset with myself because I got a rather disappointing ending. And it seems that I was headed towards it fairly early on by some of my decisions even in the first few episodes. As ‘multiple ending’ type of games do, there is diverging decisions that occur pretty late in the game too, but in this one, I was not able to try to get a good ending by simply going back an hour to the point of a binary decision and just replay the last hour to get a different outcome (I know because I tried). No unfortunately if I wanted a good ending, I was going to have to replay the darn thing from at least episode 2 onward. And the thought of that made me feel like I’d rather have marmite toast than that.

So in the end, I think that speaks for itself. In a game where you can choose from one of 3 original classes at first, has a pretty open decision making narrative as well as RPG mechanics to build an individualized build out of your talents and abilites .... yet it plays in such a clunky manner that it’s just not very re-playable. At least not for me.

The story feels glacial at points - seemingly going nowhere with nonsensical narrative arcs, and the puzzles are sometimes quite difficult. The game allows you to paint yourself into a corner if you don’t have the right abilities leveled up to more easily solve a situation or puzzle. Fortunately I never got stuck beyond progression, but it can be a little frustrating.

Anyways, it’s too bad, because the game innovates wonderfully. And everyone here knows how much I champion innovation in gaming. I can’t say I regret playing it or that I didn’t have some enjoyment from it, and like I say, the ending sort of makes all the lull in the middle worthwhile. All five seasons is probably about 15-18 hours of gameplay, so it’s not too long. So, if you like the ‘choose your own adventure’ style of story driven experience like Telltale and Life is Strange, yet have grown tired of their repetitive recipe and approach, then it’s worth a try for you. But Big Bad Wolf studio has some ironing out to do to make the gameplay more pleasing and the mechanics more passable before the next project (Season 2?)

Tagging @RogerRoger here on a separate post so you don’t accidentally see the spoilers in an email. I think a long time ago you had some level of interest in The Council and wanted to know my thoughts on it. 🙂

I played the first chapter of the game and loved it. For free it was great. I heard that the other chapters sucked and didn’t go any farther.

From what I am hearing that has not changed.

Finally got round to beating Crash Bandicoot as part of the N-Sane Trilogy. It was pretty good, classic platforming but dear lord, is it frustrating at times. The bosses are flat out annoying to be honest, you die every 5 seconds until you work out what you’re even supposed to do. I did still enjoy it mostly, although I completely cheesed The High Road. That level is evil.

@nessisonett Did you manage the Stormy Ascent DLC level? That was brutal and I can see why it was cut from the original game.

@RogerRoger Oh yes, no qualms about that one. None at all.

@Thrillho I played it a few times, died and then thought just nope. There was no way I’d beat it to be honest.

It took me like 60 lives @nessisonett to beat it and it really wasn't that fun at all. I can't imagine what madmen would try doing the time trial for it!

I really quite enjoyed Crash 1 myself with it's focus on pure platforming.

Well done on beating the game!

@nessisonett @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I did it after completing the game and think I used up pretty much all of my lives trying to do it. I got the gem too which isn’t too bad.

@RogerRoger I don’t think there will be a second season, mostly because I don’t think the game sold particularly well. I haven’t seen numbers, but I just get the feeling it bombed because the game pretty much disappeared from the gaming news site public consciousness after the first episode. It has had a bit of a ‘slow burn’ sales-wise I think because I was able to find a couple smaller sites that had some playthroughs and guides, but there is surprisingly little online chatter. I did find a smaller site that had the most info and I think that’s where I saw the criteria to get the good ending and how the requisite decisions involved even early episode paths which I’d not taken.

I’d have liked to see something like the Detroit Become Human or Virtue’s Last Reward flowchart system where there is more disclosure about the branching narrative, but The Council is nowhere near as sophisticated a game as those, even if it does have the RPG elements which are absent from other choice-based multiple ending story games.
Nevertheless, I think the idea warrants a second season, even if it’s to use the same mechanics and gameplay outline and just do another area of alternate history and explore a similar setting with different characters. (Perhaps instead of Napoleon, Washington, Godoy, and Co. in the turn of the 18th century they could focus on a council between Lincoln, Victoria, Pius IX, Wilhelm, etc in the mid 1800’s or something like that). A follow up season or outright sequel would be good, if they fine tune the issues I mentioned and help the flow. Unfortunately I don’t think it will happen.

A quick google search shows Big Bad Wolf Studio’s current project to be Vampire: The Masquerade — Swansong, which apparently is based on a popular table top game and a follow up to previous attempts to turn that into a video game franchise. It looks like it might play out like a narrative driven game with RPG elements so it could play similarly to The Council, I don’t know. I’m not as intrigued by a vampire game though as I am the historical fiction setting.

@Th3solution VtM is definitely worth checking out, the original Bloodlines game is a flawed masterpiece and the sequel’s looking great so far. There’s a few spin offs now so it’s pretty cool that team’s working on one of them.

@nessisonett Are you a fan of the table top game? I’ve never seen a Vampire table top game before.

@Th3solution I haven’t been massively into tabletop stuff in years but the original Bloodlines game is one of my favourite games ever. It did so much right, it just got rushed out and so runs like crap and needs about 5 patches to work.

@nessisonett @Th3solution There are actually two Vampire: The Masquerade games coming out. The aforementioned Swansong by Big Bad Wolf Studio, I've not seen much of that and don't know too much about it. And then there is Bloodlines 2, a first person action RPG which sounds like a mish mash of Cyberpunk 2077 and Dishonoured.

@JohnnyShoulder I so wish that the original Bloodlines was on modern consoles/actually finished properly. If the second one lives up to that potential, it could really be one of my favourite games this gen. Immersive sims are such an underdeveloped genre and it’s pretty crazy that games like Deus Ex and Thief are in some ways more impressive than their modern counterparts.

I beat the main campaign of DOOM 64 @RogerRoger & @Ralizah

That last level without being able to close any of the portals or use the fully powered Unmaker was quite possibly one of the most evil boss fights I've ever had! 😥

My quicksave usage was totally justified there!!!

I probably will go through it again a bit more thoroughly next time (And in hindsight not use the quicksave as I was actually pretty fine going through it most of the time) and get to the secret levels so I can see what the Unmaker's like fully powered up.

Plus I have the lost levels to go through as well which should be fun!

I really have enjoyed it and I can why you rate it so highly Ral in particular!

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Awesome! Good job.

Yeah, the final boss level is just brutal without a powered-up Unmaker. Like you, I didn't collect the demon keys on my first playthrough and had to face the Mother Demon after mowing down hordes of demons, and it wasn't easy. The only way I managed to beat her initially was by continually stun-locking her with point-blank Super Shotgun blasts and rhythmically moving immediately afterward to avoid her fire attack.

Going into that final stage with a fully powered-up Unmaker in a subsequent playthrough is hilarious and sweet, sweet revenge.

The extra campaign in this game is surprisingly challenging, btw.

Glad to hear you enjoyed it! I thought it addressed almost every issue I have with classic DOOM. Amazing game. Can't imagine playing through it on this controller, though.

@Ralizah One thing I’ve realised playing Ocarina of Time on a DS4 is just how accurate the N64 stick is in comparison. It’s somewhat too accurate in that it feels slippy at times but I actually like the fork controller.

It took me a good ten minutes of retrying the mother demon alone with the various weapons before I reached my wit's end & just ran straight into her and used the BFG9000 @Ralizah. Luckily the three shots I had remaining seemed to be the magic number in wiping her out easily 😄

I've only handled a N64 controller a couple of times to play Pokémon stadium and even then it was awkward to hold so... Hats off to anyone who beat that on the N64!

@nessisonett I don't like the design, but I'm also not a three-handed alien.

The N64 stick was very... brittle. So I imagine it probably works well for smaller, more accurate movements. Still not a fan, though. And playing an FPS without either a mouse or a second analog stick seems insane to me. But then I remember people used to play DOOM games with just a keyboard. I can't even imagine!

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Nice. Overpowering the thing didn't work for me, unfortunately, because normal tactics led to it throwing me around the battlefield with its attacks and quickly killing me.

It's definitely the hardest DOOM boss I've fought to date.