Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Herculean Yeah, and I'm the kind of gamer who prefers a more laid back gaming experience over the adrenaline pumpers, so this should be in my wheelhouse.
I really don't like inventory management, though, so that may be a big part of it (as I understand it, the main thrust of the game revolves around just that). Additionally, I didn't particularly enjoy the controls, but both of those things might diminish as one gets deeper into the experience. I haven't written it off, so I will most likely give it another go at a later date. Now that I have a better indication of what I'm getting into, I may time it to better fit my gaming mood next time

@Werehog Thanks for the write-up on Ace Attorney! It sounds like it's less open than I had hoped, but I'm still hopeful I might get a kick out of it. I do enjoy legal settings very much in TV shows/film, so either way, I imagine the core loop of the narrative will intrigue me whether or not it's giving you the freedom to fail. But yeah, I totally get what you mean with how the investigations follow a clear path that you might not always be in line with. That'll always be the hard part to manage with a system like this. It's hard to account for all the variables of how people might think. I'll put it on my wishlist and see when it gets a good sale!

Just beat Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1+ after roughly 40 hours, which will be my final PS4 game for the time being.

Wow. Just wow. What an experience. Yes, the visuals aren't up to modern standards. Yes, the balancing is kind of wack. Yes, it is rather grindy. But it is just so freaking fun. The character interactions were almost always funny, and I laughed out loud quite a bit during the reading sections 🤣. Also, it not being censored and being the exact same thing as the Japanese version of the game is a plus. Since my PS4 is going to go on hiatus for a bit, I am asking for the Switch 1 version of the whole Re;Birth trilogy for my birthday present in a few months. It's already been ordered on Playasia.

But back to Re;Birth1. I'm not kidding when I say it's my new favorite video game, it's just that good. After a long reign of almost three years, Pokémon Violet has been ousted to second place. Now it's back to playing a lot more on Switch for me, until I finally get enough money saved up for a Switch 2.

Score: 10/10

Beat Need for Speed: The Run. One of the worst games I’ve ever massively enjoyed. On paper it’s rubbish, the story mode lasted me about 2 hours of gameplay with an extra hour of loading screens. The physics are wonky, like you’re being sucked to the ground at all times and you slide about, bashing into every barrier. Plus the rubberbanding is silly. The story… is abominable. Starting that one guy from shows I sort of half recognised and a de-boobed Christina Hendricks, it was a series of cutscenes where both have one eyebrow raised at all times and deliver the worst one liners you’ve ever heard. Add some awful slow motion panning over PS3 girls and you’ve got a true clanger. The premise alone is great though, a big race from San Fran to New York. Instead it turns out like a bad bad straight to DVD movie.

There are positives though! The art direction is gorgeous a lot of the time, the rural tracks are absolutely brilliant and it makes the cities feel even more drab in comparison. The particle effects have aged pretty well since it’s Frostbite too, lovely fog, leaves and snow at times. The game is also just really fun, properly tense at times but coming off like if you soaked a Big Mac in Monster and crack and then fried it. Truly not a good game but fun enough to enjoy. Apart from the QTEs. It was that time where every game had QTEs, but these are particularly bad. At certain points, you have to run away from things on foot but all you do is press buttons like PRESS X TO KICK DOG. It’s rubbish.

The game has several bosses that you take on across the race, these include vaguely implied lesbians, a rich girl driving a girly car, an ex-boxer, a Latino with his own name tattooed on his neck who drives an El Camino at 220 MPH and has a gang, and a Mafia guy trying to kill you. Very creative. The final race against Mafia guy in New York is crazy, you end up in the subway dodging trains and all sorts. So when I finished the game, my palms were sweaty and it was a total adrenaline rush. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for a bit of crap fun.

Should you bother playing Need for Speed: The Run? Probably not. Would I play it again? No. But do I regret playing it? Not in the slightest. Its highs are fantastic, racing down a mountain during an avalanche and so forth. Plus the story is so so crap you have to see it to believe it.

@Tjuz If and when you do try the Ace Attorney series, please share your thoughts! I'd be real interested to see what you make of 'em, given your approach.

@nessisonett Speaking as somebody who values style over substance, I was always interested in Need for Speed: The Run and part of me regretted that I never got around to it. I can't decide whether it sounds like I dodged a bullet or missed a schlocky masterpiece, but what I do know for certain is that I thoroughly enjoyed reading your thoughts! Thanks for sharing!

@Werehog Forgot to even mention that the playable character looks like literally every single other playable character in gaming at the time. I swear, the early 2010s were just variations on the one skinhead guy.

@nessisonett Yep, despite never having seen him before, I have definitely seen him before!

Clive Barker's Undying on the Steam Deck. Absolutely amazing game and people who like atmospheric/horror games with mystery added to it, this is the game!

@Zuljaras Congrats, I'd love to see him being involved with more games. He has so much material that would translate so well to a game or series of games. Did you ever play Jericho? It wasn't bad. I'm curious to see how Hellraiser Revival turns out, it's based on the first two movies and Saber have proved they understand how to properly translate a movie franchise into a game. There are still people out there who haven't seen the movies, maybe the game will be that needed push to experience them.

@nessisonett

Always wanted to try that even though I never cared about racing games.

@GirlVersusGame only watched it but it was not my thing. On the other hand the Hellraiser movies are awesome!

@Zuljaras Oh, I've never heard of Clive Barker's Undying, but consider me intrigued! How much of it is narrative-driven versus being a first-person shooter romp?

@Tjuz It is a shooter but not a really fast one. Most of it is just atmosphere. It is an old game after all.

Also the spell + weapon system will remind you of Bioshock but it is waaay before that

It is all narrative and not like DooM where you go from one arena to another.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
Completed: 01-02-26
Hours to complete: 21
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This game impresses in many ways, but is brought down by weak dialogue, boring characters, Ubisoft tropes, and bad acting. The game is gorgeous visually and is constantly impressing with its grand vistas and detailed jungles. The gunplay and gameplay feels generic and familiar. However, it has impressive freedom in the first person free-running system. The third person update was excellent and improved the game experience for me.

Hogwarts Legacy
Completed: 01-07-26
Hours to complete: 22
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Took me a few years to finally complete this one as I wasn’t too fond of the intermittent fetch quests to unlock required spells for main quest missions. I finally finished off the main story and was pleasantly satisfied with the core of the game and the attention to detail displayed throughout the environments. The voice acting was hit or miss and the writing was average at best. Really enjoyed the spell combat and variety of enemies. Music was awesome.

Lords of the Fallen
Completed: 01-14-26
Hours to complete: 26
— A souls game with a unique and technically impressive game mechanic. Quick and fluid movement. Solid build crafting and weapons. Some solid bosses and some weak bosses. Final boss was disappointing. Played this game fully in co-op and it definitely added to the fun of the game and made it an easier game overall.

Assassin’s Creed: Mirage
Completed 01-18-26
Hours to complete: 15
— Refreshingly classic stealth gameplay with a concise linear story. The parkour felt worse in this game compared to previous AC games which surprised me and was disappointing. I frequently glitched on walls and ledges. The voice performances were okay but the volume and effect on some of the vocal performances felt inconsistent and generally off. The game felt like a budget AC game but I wasn’t expecting much and found myself pleasantly content with the whole package.

Tekken 8 Platinum
Completed 01-28-26
Hours to complete: 12
— Amazing fighting game and a very well rounded trophy list. The online trophies were fair requiring very little play time. Three trophies require a win in three different online competitive modes which requires some practice but is very obtainable for any skill level. The story mode trophies required completion of each mode which was quick and fun.

Alan Wake 2
Completed 01-30-26
Hours to complete: 16
— Remedy went above and beyond for AW2. The production levels are incredibly high. The acting, voice acting, and sound were all superb. The environments were gorgeous and felt like a real place in the PNW. The horror elements were surprisingly strong at first then became a bit more tame and the jump scares were slightly repetitive (although some were impressively well placed). The story is captivating and makes you want to marathon it to see where it goes. Very enjoyable experience.

I was able to finish The Invincible yesterday. It wasn’t a very long journey, and I think it took me (a slow player, mind you) about 6 play sessions, each an hour or two. My reported “Time Played” by the PS App says 10 hours, for what that’s worth. I ended up with 37% trophy completion, so the game has a lot of missable trophies, fyi.

Overall, the game was okay. It’s a narrative driven game, categorized as a Walking Sim, but it’s got a little more gameplay than a pure Walking Sim does. Although you predominantly walk from story beat to story beat, there’s a few small side activities mixed in, some tools you can use and a map to follow, and some vehicle driving, and general exploration including alternate branching paths which affect the story and some of the content you experience. There’s not a huge narrative variance but there are parts that you can miss if you take one route versus another.

One of the negatives with the game for me was the gameplay mechanics being a little rough. The environments look nice enough, if not a bit bland, but the game world is made up of invisible walls everywhere to funnel you where you need to go. That’s all fine, but several times I had to run around an area bumping into cliffs and rocks until I randomly came upon the area I was allowed to climb up.

The presentation on the whole was decent, and fitting for the story and setting, but it’s nothing transformative and so don’t expect anything jaw-dropping from a graphical standpoint. It’s all fine though.

The main draw is the story and the game being based on a classic Sci-Fi novel by Stanislaw Lem is the real reason to play it. It takes a while to warm up, story-wise, but by the end it has the core of really solid Sci-Fi storytelling. It was enough to tempt me to read the source material. After completing it and getting my ending, I looked online to see how the game compares to the book, and apparently the association is not 1:1. Some people were saying it acts more like a prequel to the novel, while others were saying it really is more of an alternate version of events outside the main story of the book. I’m not sure. I think the book gets a lot more philosophical than the game is, but the game still had me considering some ethical and moral issues, so it does a decent job of being true to Lem’s work in that regard.

Overall, it’s a decent game if you want a classic pure Sci-Fi story and like walking sims. It would depend on one’s interest in the source material, so somewhere around a 6 or 7/10. In my opinion there’s better walking sims out there. However, I am glad I played it, simply because the story eventually came through in the second half and gave me food for thought, and really if a game can do that then it succeeds in my opinion.

Tagging @FuriousMachine and @GirlVersusGame who had expressed interest in the game. Sorry if I missed anyone else who might have mentioned it as well.

@Th3solution It sounds like the kind of game to follow Infinite Wealth if I ever finish it. Friday or Thursday I said 'I'll surely have finished this by the weekend'. It never ends, I saw the point of no return message and did what was required but it's still not over. I played until four in the AM, and still it goes on. I need to finish it today, it's incredibly long but I did clear up some trophies too. I'm not sure I want to grind to level seventy unless I binge some movies on another screen and enter the farming zone but even then there's the question of time spent productively. I don't think I've played many walking simulators. I had a quick look online and only Death Stranding comes to mind. Everything else on the list I haven't tried but maybe should. Names that stick out are: What Remains of Edith Finch, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, Lake and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. I'm definitely due something casual and relaxed. The Invincible does sound like I expected, which is a good thing. I think I heard of the novel first then saw a reprint with the game art, then saw the game. I might try Thank Goodness You're Here for that easy guilt-free one hundred percent too. Walking sounds nice though, I feel like I should have played a walking simulator by now and not just all of the others.

@Th3solution Thanks for reminding me, I had already forgotten we were talking about it not long ago! You may have pushed my BG3 run a bit further into the future (but probably not by much - I typically go for a "palate cleanser" like this between the real bigguns

Just finished Assassin's Creed Origins Ubisoft really nailed this one! Ptolemaic Egypt is an amazing setting. Also visiting places like the Sphynx and inside of the Pyramid of Khufu in the game and comparing them to the real life experience is special! Also Bayek is one of the best protagonists the franchise ever had!

This time I got all of my equipment upgraded to the max, got all synch points and all of the map locations. Also got all 25 papyrus riddles!

I think I will start Odyssey next. I have played it before and also really liked it but I kind of rushed it to the end. This time I want to visit all of the islands!

Infinite Wealth - And now I need an infinite rest. There's not much to say that wouldn't be taken as a spoiler and since I haven't played any of the others I can only judge it as one stand alone game. Story-wise it was very involved and well written, it does a good job of introducing new players to the franchise. As for the game-play itself it's very meaty and there is a lot to do and see, turn-based combat is a God send. I think I'm only missing three trophies for platinum, two of them are dungeons and one is level seventy. Some non spoilery advice: Farm the man who sells pee, like literally just keep rotating taxi runs to keep spawning him because the weapon is worth it. Don't buy shark fins with dungeon credit just fish for them, it took about ten minutes to get one fishing. All you do is press one of three buttons for fishing, no button mashing or skill involved just some basic timing.

SEGA being doubly careful with their copyright.

@GirlVersusGame So, I’ll give a little of my own “gaming systemization according to Sol” here, and say that the when we use the term “Walking Sim” is sometimes misleading. In my opinion a true walking sim has minimal gameplay, no fail states, mostly a linear story-driven experience where one walks from place to place gradually uncovering a narrative, and usually is first person viewpoint. I’m not sure what the online definitions might be.

So even though a game like Death Stranding has been called a “walking sim”, it’s not really what we usually mean when we use the term. Even though DS has a lot of walking/hiking at its core, there is actual gameplay involved with the walking (balance of your load, strategizing pathways, potential for falling and death, etc) and also multiple other elements of an action-game nature (shooting, stealth, riding vehicles, building structures, crafting, etc). Even recent games where the gameplay is more exclusively simulated walking, hiking, or climbing, like Baby Steps or Cairn are not quite what was originally meant by a “walking sim”

When you play The Invincible or another more traditional walking sim, I think you’ll get what I mean. “Casual and relaxed” is usually the way most walking sims are, so one of them would be good if that’s what you’re looking for.

Of those listed, my favorite is What Remains of Edith Finch. I found that one quite creative and it probably has some of the most varied gameplay for a walking sim. Next up, I’d also highly recommend The Stanley Parable. It doesn’t have much with gameplay, but its story and humor is really top notch. The next best tier of Walking Sims that I’ve played would include Gone Home, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Firewatch, and Virginia, and The Invincible would fit in at this level. Any of these listed would be good entry points to try the genre though