Topic: Games you've recently beat

@GirlVersusGame congrats on a well-earned plat by the sounds of it. Good intel on the ps5 crashes too, will keep that in mind and play it on ps4 when I get around to it 👊

Just finished the main story in Suicide Squad and while there is a fair way to go in terms of the platinum… as well as the subsequent story missions that were added with the seasons, I’ve had a good time.

Do I get why people were disappointed… yes. There is a decidedly small amount of actual story missions, though the ones that are there are very good. People used to Rocksteady’s usual output were no doubt a bit miffed by that. And the side-stuff is no doubt repetitive but the core gameplay still makes them fun enough to complete.

Post-game here I come!

So I apparently finished Assassin's Creed: Valhalla yesterday without realising it. There were no credits and there was still one final area I needed to clear before I was done with the game. The actual storyline however was over before I did the final area.

I still have Dawn of Ragnarok left to play, but I still felt like sharing my thoughts of the game now as I'm not sure when I'll start up DoR. It took me 95 hours to beat the game, including the season pass DLCs, and it was an absolutely fantastic experience. Unfortunately, I didn't like Valhalla more than Odyssey because of the setting. Ancient Greece was simply much more interesting to explore.

However, Valhalla improves upon many aspects of the AC open world formula. For instance, there isn't a plethora of weapons to find. There are fewer and more unique weapons this time around. I also liked the freedom of choosing how you want to level up your character through the extensive skill tree. Moreover, there weren't clusters of icons everywhere on the map and most of the stuff you find are useful. One aspect I didn't like was not being able to switch between two weapons. You're able to dual-wield two weapons but you can't switch between one of them at a time.

Another aspect that is better is the amount of story missions, which has been increased while the amount of side quests has been lowered and also shortened. This change is welcoming as I want to feel like I'm actually doing meaningful missions. I also liked the concept of going to different parts of the region and forming alliances.

Furthermore, I played through the DLCs Wrath of the Druids and The Siege of Paris. I enjoyed the first one more than the second one mostly because the story was more interesting. Both were really good though. I also did the crossover DLC, which was super cool. It definitely solidified my love for Odyssey.

All in all, I really liked Valhalla and it's become my second favourite AC game after Odyssey. Crazy to see the main story over now after having played the game for roughly two months now, but I still got Dawn of Ragnarok to play! Although I'm going to be focusing on getting through Indiana Jones for now.

Just finished Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on Series X after roughly 30 hours of playtime. Absolutely phenomenal game and my second favourite game of the year after Persona 3: Reload. It was just such an engrossing experience from start to finish. It felt like experiencing an original movie, but most importantly, it played like what you would expect for an Indiana Jones game. Captivating story, well-crafted characters, a multitude of locations to visit and explore, tons of puzzles to solve and thrilling combat.

I just want to stress how brilliant the puzzles were. I basically never had any problems with solving them, all the while I thought the game respected the player by giving us the necessary tools and then letting us figure out the puzzles with no assistance. The puzzles were never too easy or too hard, the difficulty was just about right for the vast majority of them. And it was satisfying as hell whenever you solved one. Words cannot express just how much I loved the puzzles in this game.

In contrast to other similar franchises, such as Uncharted, the Great Circle felt first and foremost like a game. Each level was like a sandbox where you were free to explore, tackle missions, collect stuff and basically have fun beating the crap out of the enemies. The levels were fairly large but they were still densely packed with content. There aren't too many of them, which made each one memorable. I can barely remember all the places you visit in an Uncharted game, but I will always remember the levels from the Great Circle as you spend so much time in each of them.

The combat is heavily reminiscent of the Condemned series, which I coincidentally experienced for the first time just a few months ago. It's in first-person, you find melee weapons everywhere in the levels, each one has a durability meter and you can also wield firearms. You can even use firearms as melee weapons, which I believe was also a thing in Condemned.

All in all, I had a blast playing through this game. It's the first time in a long time for me where a new release has actually offered some refreshing gameplay compared to most games these days.

Now I've wrapped up the Dawn of Ragnarok DLC for Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. It took me about 10 hours and I clocked my overall playtime to roughly 105 hours. Didn't really enjoy this one as much as the season pass DLCs as it just didn't add much to the game. I was also expecting to have superpowers in the DLC and while there were "some", they weren't that interesting. Ubisoft played it incredibly safe with this DLC. It simply isn't worth your time if you had enough of the base game.

I beat Silent Hill 2 yesterday on my ps5 and all I can say is that this game it´s a masterpiece. Really enjoyed it, played on standard difficulty and it took me about 26hrs to finish the game. Looking forward to NG+ some time in the future and hopefully we´ll get some new SH or at least next remake

@Bentleyma I didn't even have any expectations going into this game and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. Hopefully you'll enjoy it as well when it comes out on PS5!

@GirlVersusGame Absolutely a worthwhile experience. Really loved it! "Before the Storm" didn't quite reach the same heights for me, but it was still a solid game with some great emotional beats.
I haven't dared playing any of the follow-ups yet, as I fear they will be only pale imitations (though I hear they are quite decent)

@GirlVersusGame Alan Wake is another game I enjoyed quite a bit, also with the Twin Peaks/X-Files vibes with a solid dose of Stephen King. A combo that works exceedingly well with me when well executed, and Alan Wake truly nails it. I hated the DLC, though

@GirlVersusGame I would recommend playing the other Life is Strange games if you had a good experience with the first. They are all good. It might be a bit much to play them all in sequence without a break, but LiS2 and True Colors are very different from a story perspective from Max and Chloe. The gameplay and art style is essentially the same though, so that’s why it might be good to take a little break between them next one. I haven’t played the latest, Double Exposure, yet. It’s not been as well received, but I can’t imagine I won’t like it since I’ve enjoyed all the other four. Honestly, I think Before the Storm might be my favorite.

Edit: It is optimal if you play The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit before you play LiS2. It was originally the free demo for the game that came out before release, but unlike most demos, it actually has a completely different story not contained in the main game, and yet somewhat important to it. It’s more like DLC in that sense but was designed to be played beforehand, and it takes only about an hour or so to play. But don’t worry, if you find it boring the main LiS2 game is a lot better and has much better pacing. And you’ll be happy you played the demo when you experience the main game.

@GirlVersusGame I’ve never been massively into games with a predominantly narrative-focus but I was pleasantly surprised by the original Life is Strange and have been playing one a year since (I’ve now played the trilogy) and have Before the Storm and Double Exposure left to play. I found myself connecting with the second one in particular and would be real happy if a future game returned to those characters.

Good start to this year as I just finished my first game this year, which is Injustice: Gods Among Us on Series X. I'm gonna be honest, I wasn't that good at this game as 2D fighting games aren't my forte. But I still enjoyed the gameplay and the story was rather entertaining as well. It took me 3 hours to finish the story, which is a good length for this type of game. It also felt good to play through a short game for a change. Really excited to check out more 2D fighting games from here on out that have a good story mode, such as Mortal Kombat.

I finished Forspoken on PS+.
Not the best game ever but it's perfectly fine, with a decent twist at the end.
I went back to do some post game quest and see how much I'd need for a platinum, only to find out about half of the map is still undiscovered 💀
So I'm not too sure I'll be doing that

@Voltan From what little I've played, it seems like a decent and fun game to play. Will you be checking out the DLC? If I recall correctly from the Push Square review, the DLC's story is apparently better than the base game's.

@LtSarge Hmm it's 70% off right now so I might just as well

@Voltan I was considering that as well, but I think I'll wait until I've played the base game.

Just to correct my previous post, the overall DLC is better than the base game according to the Push Square review. There wasn't much story in the DLC though.

Also finished LEGO Marvel's Avengers on PS5 today. Was hoping it'd be a good LEGO game but it was rather mediocre. Some levels were fun, but most of them were so slow-paced and tedious. It's definitely one of the weakest LEGO games that I've played. I'm glad that I didn't buy it and instead played it through PS+ Extra.

Just finished playing through Far Cry 5 again, this time on PC. My brother gave me his previous gaming PC for Christmas and it is has an RTX 3060 which is quite a decent setup. I bought FC5 off a Steam sale as a cheap benchmark to test the rig and was getting over 140 fps with every graphic setting cranked up to Ultra at 1440p. Looked incredible especially the foliage. Any other graphically impressive/interesting games you all can recommend for relatively cheap that I can test my new rig out on?

@PegasusActual93 Kingdom Come: Deliverance might melt the PC at maxed out settings, but it is worth a shot to see how far you can push it, it is a perennially cheap sale game and the sequel is only a month out 😁 might be able to max the first one out at 1080p at least?

The Witcher 3 always worth a mention.

Both of these were developed with a PC first attitude and the console games were scaled back from that.

Cyberpunk 2077? 🙈💀👀

@GirlVersusGame Oh yeah, for sure. All of the others in the series deal with heavy subjects to some degree. So depending how much you relate to the characters it can be emotionally draining.

Hopefully you feel up to trying LiS2 (with the Captain Spirit prequel first) and LiS: True Colors eventually after emotionally recovering.

I do like games that really make me feel something like that, even if the emotion is unpleasant or challenges my view of the world. These types of experiences are usually more memorable for me than other games. It’s why I liked TLoU2, Hellblade, RDR, Returnal, Brothers, Shadow of the Colossus, etc, etc. If it makes you think, cry, or makes your gut churn, then it’s doing something right.