Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Kidfried Guess who just pulled an all-nighter attempting The Challenge. I convinced myself that I’d do it, which I did not. So, so many attempts. I actually got onto the final final puzzle but just ran out of time as well. I only got onto the pillars twice out of between 70 and 80 full attempts. I’m going to do it but I think I need to go scream at a wall for a while first.

@nessisonett @Kidfried The Witness — the Soulsborne of puzzle games? 😛

@Th3solution I’d say it’s harder than any video game I’ve ever played. This section tests your mind far more than games test your reflexes. It’s mad how quickly I can solve the puzzles already but it’s not quick enough.

The Witness platinum is probably the one I like best. If only because the final bit is such a ridiculous ask. The best bit about the final challenge thing is how some of the puzzles are totally unsolvable and you need to work out that they're unsolvable quick enough to reset them and still have enough time to finish solving the rest. Someone messaged me on PSN asking if I'd do the challenge for them on their account so they could have the platinum. They offered me $5.

While I'm here I should probably say that I recently beat Control, and it was alright. I don't see the hype for this one though, if I'm honest. It was fun enough but the story never felt like it took off, and the map was an absolute joke. Spent probably ten hours across my playthrough absolutely bamboozled about where to go. The combat was radical though. And I really liked the main character and some of the side people. Darling and the Janitor were ace.

Just finished Assassins Creed: Black Flag... worth it for the naval stuff alone in fairness, brilliant stuff. Now to see if I can get any multiplayer going to get the online trophies on route to the plat.

@nessisonett Ugh, that sounds rough. I played the opening area of The Witness once and quite liked it, and have always felt like I need to go back and give it a proper go. But for me who struggled with even completing the basic Tetris Effect endgame levels due to the accelerated drop rate, I don’t think I’ll be able to get the platinum if it involves timed puzzles. I’m not wired for quick thinking and rapid problem solving. I made it through standardized testing for school mostly on pure will of force and luck.

@Kidfried There’s definitely luck involved, especially in the ‘impossible puzzle’ section! Sometimes I can pick the right one just from a quick glance, other times it slows me down enough to kill the run. The main problem for me is the triangle section inside the maze. I worked out the maze layout trick but the puzzles inside it stump me most times, only beat them three times now. By the time I reach the pillars, there just isn’t enough time to fully think about the puzzles! Hopefully I’ll get there 😂

I've had a bit of a blitz this last week.

I really enjoyed Jedi Fallen Order which hit a sweet spot of combat, story, and exploration with it taking bits from loads of different games. It has Souls-esque meditation points similar to bonfires and combat has some similarities where low level enemies can easily overwhelm you if you're not careful and bosses are best taken slowly while learning attack patterns. There's also a heavy dose of Uncharted with its big set pieces and some of the traversal.

I had been reluctant to play it after hearing of people having technical issues but that wasn't a problem at all. I had one cut scene where the audio went out of sync and a few autosave points where the game froze to load the next area (which always went on just a little bit longer than you though it was going to take). The game looks great though (Wookiees aside) and the story is more than serviceable to a part time Star Wars fan like myself, even if Cal does feel a bit wooden at times. The only other criticism would be that revisiting areas for collectibles could be a bit of a chore as you cross this massive planets with a slightly cumbersome map.

A more than achievable platinum too if that's your thing.

After that (and my PS5 woes) I thought it was time to finally have my second run through Kentucky Route Zero which got me the platinum for the game.

My thoughts on the game are pretty much the same in that it really is unlike anything I've played before and I adore the art style and music in the game. My run felt a lot quicker than before as I knew which bits were "unnecessary" and in chapter 4 I went for the opposite choices to before (basically always choosing to stay on the boat) which seemed quicker too.

And as before, chapters 1-3 are fantastic, 4 drags on a bit, and 5 is just a bit of an odd ending to the experience. I was glad that overall it still held up second time around though.

Finally, I decided to delve into my PS+ library and went for something quite different with Titanfall 2, especially after hearing so many good things about the campaign.

To be honest, I was a little underwhelmed. The campaign is not particularly long at all but has some fantastic settings and some pretty furious gunfighting. Switching between playing as the Pilot or as the Titan was quite refreshing and the latter has enough different load outs to keep things interesting. The Pilot sections were fine but the wall running mechanic doesn't feel particularly novel as it may have done on release.

The campaign LOVES throwing trophies at you though (but seemed to come with quite a lag from completing non-story objectives and the ping coming) with the shortest gap between trophies being just four minutes! I got a significant chunk of them overall and even gave online a quick blast too for a couple of them. Overall, a fun and short blast.

@Thrillho Glad to see you were still able to take advantage of your time off, even after the death of your PS5.

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As for myself - I completed Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy, a game I had left partially finished for quite some time. I finally put it out if it’s misery and got the shiny platinum. And to be honest, the game was reasonably entertaining. Nowhere near the top of the Telltale heap, but serviceable for what it is. Story was fair, gameplay was expectedly shallow, and the technical performance was predictably abysmal. But the voice acting was alright and I actually liked the voice work and presentation of Star-Lord / Peter Quill. Nolan North does a great Rocket Raccoon too.

Overall, it scratched the Telltale itch for me, so I can’t complain. And I love the GoG property, so that was a plus.

I think the only Telltale game I have left in my backlog is the final season of The Walking Dead, so I’ll get to that in a few months.

Kentucky Route Zero looks like the sort of game I should like, but I think it'd probably bore me to tears. I'm not cultured enough to properly appreciate it.

@Ralizah It’s just a different mindset for a game in that it’s the experience of it over everything.

It’s a wonderfully crafted story but you have to be able to ride with the fact it often doesn’t make all that much sense, and understand your decisions don’t affect he story but make it your story instead.

The pacing is a bit all over the place but if it’s something you think you could enjoy, then I’m sure you would. It really is unlike anything I’ve played before!

And @RogerRoger I had also forgotten how frustrating the Xanadu section is too.

@Arugula It certainly plays with your expectations comrade.

I... Didn't realise I was so close to the end of Cyberpunk 2077.

I haven't finished playing it (I hard saved, multiple times, before the point of no return) but I did end up getting one of the endings.

Specfically I got the ending where V ... Takes matters into their own hands and ends things on their terms. So not one of the official/trophy earning endings.

I'm surprised how calm and accepting Johnny was about this . Especially after he'd just taken control of V for a bit, revealed himself to Rogue and wants to kill Adam Smasher... I dunno if this is because I was good friends with him or something? Seemed a bit odd but oh well.

Have to admit I did think that this was actually done rather well and did make me feel incredibly guilty about taking that that ending. Especially Panam's scathing words. But Vik and Misty had some pretty good dialogue here too.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy That was what my uncle said. He said it was like you got the big Cyberpunk logo and Act 2 started and then within another few hours it was the point of no return. I get Witcher 3 was really long but.... did this one have to go so far the other way?

Yeah... I've only spent 25 or so hours on it @nessisonett & I spent over half of those just playing it last Fri, Sat and Sunday

Granted I've left a LOT of sidequests at the wayside but... I've said a couple of times in my posts about it that the main storyline seems to have flown by far too quickly with very little meaningful progression being made on my part.

I guess that's better then the Witcher III's wild goose/Ciri chase but at least that had some decent world building and characters.

I can't say I particularly like much of Cyberpunk's cast to be honest.

I like Vik & Misty. But they aren't in it all that much. I like Johnny as well (... I'd rather have him as a romance option then what fem V has tbh) but he's an absolute barstool at times and I can easily see people loathing him.

Can't even say I really like V to be honest as I think they're far too developed as a character to be a self insert for the player.

Despite having chosen Corpo as their background it really feels like an afterthought in pretty much every conversation I've been in, like V's been some hot headed streetpunk their whole life not only the supposed 6 months after the prologue/end of the lifepath.

Doesn't help me in the slightest that the female option is voiced by Makoto "Even Beige Wallpaper is more interesting then me" Niijima

Can't say the open world is anything different or exciting either. The only thing really different to me in particular is the setting. Otherwise the openworld is as generic as you might get mechanically, all the shops are pointless and does feel rather lifeless at times.

Doesn't help that the ending I achieved felt like the first proper choice I had in the game either? It at least had some consequences to it unlike any other time I supposedly had choice...

@nessisonett @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yep its the side quests which bulk up the length of the game, and some of them play into the main quests too. Think it took me 115 hours to finish and I still had a lot of side content left. Think the reason cdpr said was that a lot of players didn't finish TW3 so decided to make the main storyline of Cyberpunk a lot shorter. But the content is there in the game if you want to extended your time with the game.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy It's a pity that main plot of Cyberpunk is so short, and the characters are largely uninteresting. The characters are broadly what saved TW3 for me, as there's a lot of great dialogue, choices, and interactions over the course of 100 hours or so.

The sheer gulf between expectations and reality with this game is pretty massive. Even if we ignore the monstrous hype leading up to launch, it just sounds like a worse Deus Ex. I feel like some people are holding out for CDPR to massively improve the game over time with updates, but I feel like that's probably just polishing a turd.

Was the music decent, at least? Aside from some terrible rock music, I've not heard much in the way of music from this game.

Can't say I see myself playing Cyberpunk for 115 hours @JohnnyShoulder!

At least just with the one character.

Maybe I'd get closer to that with trying out a male V too... But I don't see it playing any differently (as I haven't really found the hacks with an intelligence based build all that useful) or the main quests going in a different direction.

If you're talking about The Samurai/Refused tracks by the terrible rock music in your post @Ralizah... I actually like those the most

I loathe all the other music that's played over the radio stations so I've ended up axing the radio entirely when I have to drive around Night City.

And whilst there IS music composed for the game... I honestly can't recall any in the slightest. Well there was one track that I noticed but that was more thanks to the sequence it was in rather then the track itself.

Certainly nothing memorable like The Witcher III's polish folk music that's for certain!

Thing is... I have this huge laundry list of thoughts regarding it that go from minor annoyances to things I just plain don't like about it Ral... And yet I don't hate it.

It hasn't garned that intense negative reaction from me like I had for Nier and my dislike for V is nowhere near as bad as say Deacon from Day's Gone.

Bit surprised myself actually. There clearly was/is something good here.

It's just painfully ironic that a game about corporations and the power they wield & the destruction they can cause through unfettered greed as they milk consumers for all they're worth with an exploited workforce... has been tarred by the descisions of upper management at CDPR to rush release a game that was made under ridiculous crunch, that's clearly unfinished and buggy to high heaven with absolute scumball marketing practices 😧

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Wait... female V is voiced by Makoto Niijima?! Sold! Wasn’t going to play Cyberpunk but now I gotta check it out. 😛

@Th3solution I've never heard of her before, but I really like her as V and put her up there with some of the best VO from last year such as in The Last of Us 2, Ghost of Tsushima and FFVIIR.