Topic: Games you've recently beat

@BearsEatBeets nice one on mopping up (most of) the rest of the trophies! haha yeah i kind of like the one playthrough for a platinum trophy model too!

@Th3solution oh that sounds really decent actually! I'd definitely be more inclined to see the other paths if you could go back to the exact point you diverged and go again from there. Sounds like they implemented a perfect solution for it!

can you remember if the decision tree rejoins itself at any point? Like can you diverge from a path and rejoin it through decisions later on. That sounds overly complex so I am guessing probably not lol. Did Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls have a similar feature in them?

I've just reread your post and Im a bit confused actually, your saying you cant go back on your initial playthrough but once you have completed it you get to see this decision tree? and from there you can jump back into the story at any point a decision was made and make a different decision?

@ralphdibny I don’t know if any decision tree branches off and then rejoins... it might actually. So in other words there may be two (or more) routes to get to the same ending. Not sure.

I think I read there is something like 80 different endings, although many of them are very similar with shared features so it’s probably closer to 40 endings.

And sorry for the confusion about how it works — partly it’s my fault because I didn’t go back and replay sections to make different decisions. I got a pretty good ending for all characters, and although I kind of regret one of the watershed decisions late game, I feel like I played it to my emotions at the time. But ...I’m pretty sure that you can jump into the map after you’ve completed a chapter and start from any specific decision you want. What makes the most sense though is to play the game all the way without changing decisions and just keep going based on your gut instinct and then go back to individual chapters to pull out new decisions after you’ve seen your ending. But yes, I don’t think you see each chapter’s decision tree until at the end of the chapter and if I recall, and the branches you didn’t follow are redacted so you don’t see spoilers until you experience the events. Like you see the path but don’t know what events and further decisions it leads to until after you finish that path. Also like TT games, it has a feature and shows what percentage of players took that path and made that decision. All I remember was that my final ending was only arrived to by 2% of players.
When you do go back into a chapter decision tree map to jump to a point of divergence and make a separate decision, it lets you proceed with or without saving, I think. So in other words, you can watch what happens without saving your core story and so it won’t affect later chapters, or you can chose to save and it’s like you start over from that point forward and overwrite your save. I think that’s how it works...

Heavy Rain is like Detroit ‘Lite’. It’s is not nearly as complex, but there is a bunch of endings. I’m too lazy to look it up but I’ll say like maybe 10-12 maybe. The game is basically a mystery and so some endings you get to the correct solution and some you don’t. It does not have a decision tree map. You have to go back and replay larger sections of the game and really I think have to replay the whole game a few times basically to get all the trophies and major endings. Maybe someone else on here can remember more, but I only played through it once and unfortunately didn’t solve the mystery correctly and so it wasn’t a great ending but it was a fun ride. I just never really got around to trying another playthrough. It’s not good enough to want to play it again right away. But it is really worth your time if you like these choice-and-consequence games. Again, it’s probably best to play before Detroit as a warm-up because Detroit blows it out of the water in narrative complexity and overall polish so it would be a letdown to play it afterward.

Now Beyond Two Souls I’ve not played yet. I hear it’s the weakest of the bunch and it’s not set up the same way. I think choice has less of a role, but the narrative is delivered in a bit of a jumbled timeline and, well it’s just wasn’t received as well so I’ve not taken the time.

Sorry if this is all confusing. It’s been a while since I played HR and DBH and I’m a little fuzzy on how it works.

@Th3solution cheers, I think you've explained it well! I think I understand it all now. Sounds like the decision tree was definitely a good feature to implement for time conscious gamers

I think these sorts of games are best played to your own emotions the first time around. I guess you will kind of get the experience you would get if you actually existed in the game. Then you are free to replay it as a d*** or a paragon on subsequent playthroughs - though I am assuming here that everyone plays it as a moderate person the first time around and doesn't act like a total knob or a holier than thou person 😅.

Of course your own mood changes day by day anyway, even as a moderate person you may feel a bit cheeky on some days and choose to make some more questionable decisions and likewise you may feel more charitable on other days and make more altruistic decisions. I know in real life I can go from a cheeky trouble maker to a kind and caring person at the drop of a hat. It's just the way humans are.

Anyway, I look forward to playing these games at some point during this year! I've put it off for too long but I will get to them soon.

So just beat the story on Dying Light, still got quite a bit to do for the plat but really solid game that I’d recommend to anyone looking for a different take on the zombie game... it’s real cheap on the PSN store right now too.

@Arugula I’ve heard Odyssey just kinda ends too. Which is strange because Origins absolutely nailed the main story.

@nessisonett in fairness the one dlc pack is a very nice epilogue to Odyssey’s main story, can’t remember the name of it. The other (better) dlc, think it had Atlantis in the title was probably the best part of the whole game.

Beat Yakuza 4 this week.

While I liked the gameplay and the new characters, the story was probably the weakest of the games I've played. It's not terrible, but it feels like someone tried to write a parody that somehow became a serious script. It still has it's moments, it's just that at times it becomes too ridiculous even for this series.

@colonelkilgore Not sure if i would be happy having to pay for dlc so that I could experience a proper ending to a game I've potentially spent over 50 hours in.

@JohnnyShoulder I get it, I picked AC: Odyssey up for £20 and the season pass was about £15 so I didn’t feel to ‘had’ but as I said, I get what you’re saying.

@DerMeister More ridiculous than Yakuza 3??

I quite liked Y4 as the different stories mixed things up and the different combat styles also kept it fresh. The different stories came together pretty well and the last fight is good using all the characters.

I will admit that the rubber bullet explanation got rather silly and overused but Yakuza has history with that with Y2 and every other character ending up being Korean mafia.

Did you complete the dojo/fight club side story with Saejima? One of the guys you have to train is utterly useless and it’s basically luck to win the final tournament with him.

Just finished my little space saga with Space Crew. If you like a bit of real time strategy you can't go wrong with this game. Especially after they updated it to add some new features and some things you can adjust the difficulty with. With one back-up save in the middle it's an easy Plat too. This is my ship and crew that saw me through it.

I will be giving their earlier game Bomber Crew another go after playing some other stuff.

@Thrillho It's mostly the number of betrayals that take it to silliness levels to me. Though THAT twist was kinda a stinker too. All said, Yakuza 4 was still good, I'd be lying if I said I hated it.

I forgot about the dojo sidequest, honestly.

I recall playing this game, thought it was great! For an FMV game that it. I played it several times to get all the endings.

I’m playing Erica right now which is similar.

As we're talking about FMV games, I completed The Bunker last week. It's another one of the older Wales Interactive games. This is more of a point-and-click style game, and doesn't have the choices and dialogue options that some other FMV games have.

I thought it was alright. The gameplay elements are fairly basic, and the story is decent enough.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I've heard zero is particularly good and glad you seem to have enjoyed it so much.

I've decided that when I eventually get around to starting them I'm gonna go YK, YK2, Y3, Y4, Y5, Y0 & Y6. That way I have zero and 6 (2 of the more 'popular' ones) to look forward too. Also, random but apt point... I'm a firm believer that Star Wars virgins should start at Ep4 so that THE reveal (maybe the greatest reveal in cinema ever) in Ep5 carries the power the moment deserves. If you start with the prequel trilogy, you rob yourself of that. Because of that, I always tend to do (play or watch) series in release rather than chronological order (which is slightly out of kilter in Yakuza due to the Kiwame remakes but im sure you get my drift).

Late to the party but yesterday I finished Resident Evil VII. Outstanding game and I regret not buying it when I got my PS4.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Congrats, Foxy! That’s quite an accomplishment. You make me want to go back to maybe someday

I had a couple times where I started HZD and put it down, where recently I just finished the base game and Frozen Wilds on PS5. After finishing it I can understand why so many people rave about it to this day, and while it didn't crack my top 10 favorites I can confidently say I adore this game.

I'm not sure if I'm the only one with this impression but HZD really reminded me of my first time playing Skyrim, specifically with the exploration/discovering new enemies and dialogue with NPCs. Personally I think HZD has some of the best combat in the open world genre and perfected the Ubisoft formula, until Ghosts came out.

Improvements I'd like to see, Traversal: With a game where there's so much verticality I was disappointed to see how little options there were to optimize Traversal. There needs to be more ways to climb up and ways to get down, period. What do you guys think is Aloy's ropecaster could make ziplines? Grappling hooks are overused in games and are always welcome, but in recent games Pathfinder is the only one I can think of who makes ziplines. I think Aloy creating ziplines makes sense in her world and doesn't break the game.

Storytelling/World building: Please for the love of God don't depend on having 200 text datapoints, because in my 50 hours of play I didn't care to read even one, although I did listen to the voice recordings and dialogue with NPCs was always A1.

Combat: With a game where you have to strategize enemy weaknesses, please make it an ability to swap weapons from the weapon wheel like RDR2 so I don't have to pause mid combat to switch to a different bow.

I'm sure I'm overlooking other flaws but these were the ones that stuck out to me, what do you think fellow gamers?

So got to the end of Kentucky Route Zero earlier. Not sure it's something I could say I'd played as its not really like playing, not even sure it qualifies as a game - more like some experimental interactive fiction. Also unsure if I enjoyed it or not! It definitely left me with... something though. A very sombre, thoughtful, philosophising journey. I did get quite hooked around half way just to see where it was going and will definitely be back over next day or so to pick up remaining trophies.
It's not something I could recommend but I think I'm glad I saw it through.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Sacrilege again with the unfinished sub stories! I’m glad you made it to the end though as it is a pretty meaty game.

Kiryu’s personality does take some getting used to but I do like his understated way of doing things and his sense of honour over Majima’s batshit craziness. It’s worth remembering it was the first time people finally got to play as Majima as well so I’m not surprised that got padded out more.

@colonelkilgore I would massively recommend starting with Zero. It does have lots of nods to the other games, more so if you’ve played those first, but it makes more sense playing them in time order. Kiwami also has little tweaks to link to the game too.

@Sorteddan It’s cool to see someone else has traversed the Zero (this post may be getting confusing talking about two different types of Zero!). I loved the game but got a bit burnt out with the fourth chapter. I’m looking forward to another run at some point to try things a bit differently and mop up those last trophies.