Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Th3solution not particularly tbh. I probably will at some point but the choice system felt unreliable to me so I quickly became detached from all the characters anyway

It's reasonably well acted and there are some decent moments it's not all terrible. Just disappointing

It must be bad if all the characters have to go on the no carbs diet. I'd imagine that would be pretty uninteresting to play in a video game though.

@JohnnyShoulder Haha! Actually, typo notwithstanding, the “everyone diets” playthrough sounds fascinating. Having seen people do the keto diet, they can lose their minds and get borderline maniacal pretty quick. 😂 Maybe it could be the opposite of Don’t Starve where you try to starve but not go insane while also trying to defend yourself against all your camp friends who are slowly losing their minds and trying to kill you because they are all crash dieting. There could be a “Cabbage diet” enemy type and a “Atkins diet” enemy type and a “Mediterranean diet” enemy type, etc. There’s been sillier game plots. 😛

Evil Genius 2

I was thinking of doing a longer write up of this but I can’t be bothered to give such an average game the time.

I’m a sucker for this sort of game and the setting of playing an Evil Genius sounds great but game is really flawed. The game is really repetitive and the fact you only every have one lair limits the building side of things; I think I hardly built anything in the second half of my 40hr play. It also means you’re kind of stuck with any mistakes you make in your layout early on (not a problem for me as I had to restart after a game breaking bug 10hrs in..)

I completed every side mission and there are a stupid amount that are all quite similar. And being able to do one at a time means it takes forever to get through them. It also means a lot of your play time is spent sitting around waiting for things to happen.

The world map is also a bit of a mess and trying to find the marker for specific main or side missions is much more of a pain than it ought to be.

Despite all that, there is a fairly fun game in there but I don’t think I’ll be going back to to try any of the other Geniuses out.

I finished Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception Remastered. Playing through the PS3 Uncharted games again has given me a new appreciation for them. I think the third game is my favourite. I spent quite a lot of my play through thinking to myself “I can’t believe this was originally a PS3 game”.

@Bentleyma It is mightily impressive, isn't it? Nice to see a fellow fan of the oft-overlooked third game!

@RogerRoger It really is impressive. For some reason the third game was the one I remembered the least of from my first playthrough. I'm pretty sure I thought the first two games were better back when I played them all on PS3, but this time I found the third game to be the most enjoyable by quite a large margin.

Just finished off the authentic playthrough of Sniper Elite 4. Loved the game so far and just a little bit of mopping up now for the plat. Can’t believe I’d completely missed this series before!

@JudgeDredd not too bad mate. I was speaking to @render earlier and saying that it probably helped that I was pretty familiar with the missions etc. but yeah, only started my authentic run yesterday, so made pretty good time like.

By the time I mop this one up, I imagine I’ll be all sniper’d out for a while… I’ll be back for Sniper Elite 5 some time in 2023 though for sure.

@colonelkilgore I can’t put an exact figure on how long it took me to do that run but I think you’ve put me to shame with that time 😅

@render no shame at all fella… you were almost playing it blind having returned to it after a few years away. I played it through twice (once blind and once for collectibles) over the last couple of weeks… so was just like pushing a pace on a local running route (in a parlance to which you’d be accustomed 😉).

@Bentleyma A lot of folks have gone on similar retrospective journeys with the Uncharted series, and it's quite gratifying to see, at least from a selfish perspective, because I always preferred the third game (although it's worth noting that I was a bit of a latecomer to the series, so I was oblivious to the revelatory hype surrounding Among Thieves and the minor disappointment caused by Drake's Deception). They are starting to become "classics" the more time passes, though. I keep saying that I struggled through a recent replay of Uncharted 4 but then have to remind myself that July 2018 wasn't actually all that recent!

@colonelkilgore I did a lot of wandering around in circles and plenty of dying. Glad that doesn’t happen too often when I’m out for a run 😂

@colonelkilgore I am playing this on Switch (I haven't finished yet, but I am getting there).

But it is so beautiful. I loved the art style. I think this one flew under the radar for many people.

@HarmanSmith Sniper Elite?… nice, glad I’m not the only one. It must be an eye strain on the handheld screen though… I’ve actually found my eyes hurting from playing it on a 65inch. Fair play to ya!

Tomb Raider III is complete. Well that all got a bit frustrating in the end. I actually really liked the opening Antarctica level but the last 3 levels of the game are just plain annoying. The Lost City of Tinnos especially is a big old maze with about 7 MacGuffins to hunt down before you can get into the exit. Then the final boss is a complete mess. He kills you in one hit with a homing attack that can’t miss. Spent far too long trying before I realised that if you sprint using the barely used sprint button then you can make it back before he uses that attack. Glad the game’s over, it’s not as good as the first two but it does have some interesting ideas. I’m definitely intrigued as to where the series goes next.

Just finished the Momohime storyline of Muramasa: Rebirth after 10 hours of playtime. Apparently there are multiple endings and another character storyline so I think I'll be checking that out as well. Anyway, the first playthrough was so much fun. Even though this is pretty much a Metroidvania, it didn't really focus that much on exploration since each area is very linear. The level design isn't that great either, it's mostly the same kind of areas all the time. The focus is clearly on the gameplay and the game does a great job of delivering a satisfying combat system. Not to mention having RPG elements where you level up and spend souls in order to unlock better blades. It's just such a fun game that I want to keep playing it and I'm glad that there's so much content, not just in terms of e.g. extra dungeons but also different storylines and also DLCs which add an additional 10 hours of new content. I can definitely see myself playing this for the foreseeable future, it's a really underrated game on the Vita.

Homefront The Revolution. Garbage. Absolute garbage. From the painful plot that takes itself way too seriously, to the sluggish gameplay, it’s an absolute chore to play. I wonder if they actually realised that having the North Koreans be referred to as ‘Norks’ the whole time was worryingly close to ‘J*p’ or ‘Ch*no’ or if they were too busy slapping themselves on the back for AMERICA. Also every single female character in the game dies. Literally every one of them. God I hated this.

lmao 😂 😂

@ThereThere So satisfying to see somebody else say that ME3 was their personal highlight of the original Mass Effect trilogy. Even without the Citadel DLC it was nearly there, but that's such a perfect expansion, and absolutely tips it over the edge. And then following it up with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, my favourite modern Tomb Raider game...? You're a gamer after my own heart! Congratulations on your new platinums, and best of luck chasing Lara's latest, as well. It's doable, trust me!

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@nessisonett Well, at least you enjoyed some parts of Tomb Raider III, which is more than can be said for Homefront, it seems! That one-hit wonder of a final boss has quite the reputation, but I didn't realise it was your reward for navigating what sounds like one heck of a frustrating maze. I'm sure you'll find The Last Revelation comparably breezy, but it does share a fourth-quarter uptick in obtuse level design and challenge, so it'll be interesting to read your comparison, as and when. For now, nicely done!

And yeah, as much as the idea of an unlockable TimeSplitters 2 interested me the other day, I don't think I wanna give my money to Homefront any more. Thanks for taking one for the team.