Topic: Games you've recently beat

@CaptD yeah I see there was a trophy for kissing 50 women or something along those lines… I haven’t kissed one yet 😅

@Kidfried I mean, if you really love the series or craved for a smaller game I can see why people would like it. But to me it just felt a bit like a smaller version of the games they have been releasing anyway, without anything feeling particularly new or innovative.

I'm glad I kind of played it as a secondary game as it wasn't incredibly gripping, but it is still fun to tackle some areas bit by bit from time to time. I never really got the sense I wanted to explore the world like in the others games though, despite it being a really cool setting, there was no draw to go and find anything, it was literally just quests and side quests, with some giving the slightest bit of freedom in approach to make you feel more like the fact you are an actual assassin matters a bit more than in the other modern games, where the gameplay was basically the exact same anyway, but you could also do other stuff.

Personally, I got more out of the last 3 titles, even though they got progressively bigger, you could still skip stuff and focus on what you wanted, in the most part and they were more fun because of that because there was more freedom to explore.

I wouldn't say to avoid it or anything like that, it really depends on mood, how you feel about the other games and what else you have to play as well. It might even be better to just crack on and finish it in 2 weeks, but for me I spread it over a number of weeks and months here and there, despite it only being probably a 25 hour game

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - a very very good pre-2018 God of War clone that starts off a little bland and uninspired but consistently improves throughout what is a fairly longish campaign for the genre and ended up being a thoroughly enjoyable romp. Gameplay-wise it couldn’t be more similar to the pre-boy exploits of the family-murdering Spartan demi-god but any lack of creativity within the gameplay itself is more than balanced out by the incredible art-design, score and final narrative twist.

I have a fair bit of work left for the plat, which will probably involve a further two playthroughs but there are worse fates. I’ve also decided that I will definitely be playing Lords of Shadow 2 as part of my PS3 farewell tour. Though it is generally considered to be far poorer than the original. I’ve seen enough positivity (and evolution of the mechanics within the game itself) for it to warrant my time.

@colonelkilgore glad you enjoyed it. Certainly a fun action. Don’t think I’ll play 2 asap. Taking my time here. Especially since I’m bouncing back between more than one game.

@Yousef- yeah I won’t be moving straight onto the sequel, I’ll be giving it time to breathe but I’ll be playing it sometime before 01/01/2025 for sure. Similar thing happened with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed a couple of months ago… went in with no expectations and with no intention of playing the sequel but ended up having such a good time that the sequel needed to be crowbarred into an already rammed schedule.

@colonelkilgore I’m glad that so far I haven’t led you astray and that some of these PS3 action games are still holding up. It’s been so long since I played them that I could have been looking back through rose-tinted spectacles.

I guess the only one that has fallen flat was Enslaved.

@Th3solution yeah it’s pretty much been banger after banger fair play, with special mentions to Spec Ops: The Line and The Saboteur, both of which l’ll consider as all-time classics. Even Enslaved was good Sol, it just wasn’t as good as I hoped is all.

All in all, it’s just been a pleasure to go back and clear my 7th gen backlog… as much as I loved the PS4 (my fave ever console) and am enjoying PS5 (reports of it underwhelming are vastly overstated in my personal opinion), the PS3 does have some… innocence (might be the wrong word but it’s the closest approximation that I can think of) that has seemingly left the industry since the beginning of the 8th gen.

As you’ve seen over the last few months, I’ve continued to add to my PS3 backlog this year and it’s now unlikely that I’ll actually clear everything by 2025 (which really ****s with my OCD in all honesty 😅), still in with a shout though if I can really knuckle down .

@colonelkilgore I do think that we forget just how awesome PS3 was/is. It stumbled out of the gate but crescendoed into a great generation, no doubt.

I don’t think you were around when we did that big megapoll to rank every single PS3 game into one big list from best to worst, were you? It was a Herculean task that was organized by forum legend @themcnoisy who we don’t get to see around much lately 👀 but put together some really awesome megapolls over the years. The rank list of every single PS3 game was probably the most impressive feat because we had to shift through every single game (I seem to recall there was like 900?) and so had to break up into sub groups to split hairs between all the annualized sports games and other dross. 😂 I can’t seem to find the forum threads for that, so perhaps they’ve been removed since that was long ago.

It’s been a while since I referenced it but I did save the results of the top 100 somewhere. I’ll pull it out and post it over on the PS3 thread just for grins and nostalgia for those interested.

@colonelkilgore Still in with a shout? What, are you going to just scream and your backlog will go away?

@Th3solution yeah I’d actually be really interested in taking a look at that if you’re able to find it 👍

@KilloWertz yeah not sure my working-class British colloquialisms translate across the pond… I’ll try shouting at my backlog though just in case 😉

@colonelkilgore You used a big word and my head almost exploded. Damn you.

Anyways, you do that. I think it'll still be there when you're done though.

Just finished DiRT 3 on Series X. Another fantastic DiRT game, although not as good as DiRT 2. The main thing the third game lacked is presentation. I mean, the campaign of DiRT 2 felt like the Horizon Festival in Forza Horizon as you move around in an actual festival. While in DiRT 3, you just navigated through uninteresting menus.

Moreover, there was a huge lack of freedom and variety in DiRT 3 compared to the previous game. In DiRT 2, you were constantly given the choice of doing a different race or playing a fun mini-game like smashing boards. In DiRT 3, you had to follow a certain path in order to unlock the next race.

On top of this, the experience was bogged down by racing events called "Gymkhana". What you do in them is drive around a course and doing donuts, smashing boards, drifting, getting air time and so on. It sounds fun on paper, but the controls were so hard to figure out when doing e.g. donuts. It wasn't until towards the end of the game when I finally mastered them and at that point, the game was constantly giving me these events and they just got old really fast.

All in all, when looking at this game on its own, it was an enjoyable experience. But comparing it to DiRT 2, it feels like everything was a step back.

@LtSarge awesome. I’m willing to pick this up. Great to see it’s got positive reception.

@Th3solution I found the thread;

https://www.pushsquare.com/forums/ps3/all_1442_playstation_3_...

Good times.

@themcnoisy Ah yes! There it is! Actually ended up ranking 1151 games. Good times indeed.

I hope you’re getting along well, buddy. Living your days in happiness and peace. 😄

@Yousef- It's definitely worth checking out. After having played both DiRT and Grid, Codemasters has become one of my favourite racing games developer. They make excellent racing titles.

I picked up Severed for the Vita a couple of days ago, and now I have beaten it and got the platinum trophy for it. It was such an incredible game, and might just be my favorite game for the Vita, alongside Persona 4 Golden.

@Th3solution doing well my mate. Just 1000g samurai shodown and hopefully starting octopath traveller 2 over the next week. So things are swell!

How are you brother?

@themcnoisy Sounds great. I’m hanging in there, thanks. Always short on time, but I can’t complain. I’ve got a combo of games going all the time and still working my way through Dark Souls 2 and a bit of Immortals of Aveum on the side. Hope I can dust off Immortals this week.

I’m really curious about Octopath Traveler II, so drop some thoughts if you think of it, boss. I’ve been tempted to pick it up for no other reason than it looks beautiful.

@Th3solution will do. I'm playing a strange mix strategy game called merge and blade atm. So once it's done, it's OP2 time.

The world's gone mad close to me. There was a mass stabbing up the road from my work. 3 kids have died so far. Horrendous.