Topic: Games you've recently beat

Need for Speed Undercover is WOEFUL. Genuinely one of the worst games I’ve ever played. Physics are terrible, the AI rubberbands while also being invincible, they stick to you and push you until you spin out. Graphics are horrible, piss filter galore. The plot though… the cutscenes are the worst thing I’ve ever seen. They wouldn’t make it into a straight to DVD rip off of Fast and Furious. The live action cutscenes have always been crap but there’s charm to them in the PS2 games. I’m not sure if there was some sort of disaster at EA Black Box but towards the end of the game, the cutscenes stop meaning anything at all, it’s like random scenes spliced together. At one point you’re with the police woman and then a scene later she’s tied up by the baddie and then immediately betrays you and kills the baddie. Like I have no clue what went on at all. I cannot express enough just how bad this game is. It’s just dreadful.

One point in its defence, the music’s not bad. Also I tried the modded version for a bit and it plays better and looks better but still has the terrible structure and story so it’s still bad.

@nessisonett They don’t make box art like that anymore though..

Buzzing! Just finished off Norman (the final RE: Revelations boss) to finish my first playthrough on Normal. I’d read some horror stories about Norman, with many people taking over 20 attempts… and some just tapping-out entirely. It came as a massive surprise to me but I managed to take him down first go! 😃

All collectibles done, all missables done and a ‘no death run’ done (although I use that last term loosely, I did die a couple of times during the playthrough but just didn’t continue… and still got the no deaths trophy). So onto Infernal difficulty next, which I imagine will be quite the test… and then if I manage that, a 100 hour grind in the co-op Raid mode which is supposedly very good (and very difficult towards the end).

Bit of a hidden gem this one, really good survival-horror and although I’ve only played RE Remake, RE 2 Remake, RE: Code Veronica and RE4 (on Wii!) of the series so far, Revelations pretty much holds its own with those more illustrious titles.

@Thrillho The box art does accurately reflect the game. In that it’s yellow.

Banishers. Great game! Put 50 hours in it and Im missing a couple of trophies. Its not as polished as the norse GOW saga but I recommand it to everyone who played the norse games.

@Blauwe_Chimay yeah, I’m a huge fan of the Norse GoW’s and have always quite liked the look of Banishers… good to hear it scratches that itch.

I just wrapped up the platinum for Mafia The Old Country. It was a pretty good game, albeit the collectibles were a pain in the butt.

I beat Borderlands The Pre Sequel on normal and I understand why it’s divisive now. The vault hunters are pretty cool but the game is both short and a bit long winded, you never feel like you make much progress in a day because the maps are so big. The zero gravity stuff is OK but also kinda slows down gameplay as it makes enemies more annoying to hit. I did enjoy the story though, Jack is obviously the series’ biggest success and more focus on him is welcome, each vault hunter having individual voiced lines is great too, gives them way more personality. I played as Jack’s body double so had great lines as he’s basically just pathetic in every way.

I’m not sure I have it in me to platinum this one though, there’s a couple co-op trophies that I’d have to find workarounds with second controllers. The game also isn’t as fun to blast through as BL2 and lacks the number of specific drop enemies to farm for a build to take you through, with the focus on the Grinder to make weapons. I still have to play the DLC though so I’ll go through TVHM ASAP and then play the DLC on UVHM.

@Kraven was it a fun plat? i was thinking of going for it too i don't mind a bit of grind for collectables

@nessisonett I’ve had the Pre-Sequel in my backlog for ages. I’ve come close to booting it up many times but something else always took precedence. I’ve all but convinced myself to just skip it and go straight to BL3 if I ever feel like getting back into the series. After reading your thoughts I think I might have to still keep the Pre-Sequel on the list though.

@Th3solution It’s worth a playthrough, I think it would be even better if you played it now rather than straight after 2 like I did. It’s built on the same engine but I think you can tell it’s not the main team working on it, it’s not quite as polished or balanced as BL2.

@Th3solution @nessisonett I played it too and enjoyed it also. Not the best in the series, but still worth a playthrough. I played as Claptrap so avoided most of the oxygen levels stuff, and you can either tone down or turn off the quips.

Think it was made by a dev team based in Australia, which you can tell by the humour in the game.

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah, the Australian stuff was good but also I think they maybe juuuust about overegged it, where it goes beyond being Australian humour from an Australian dev team and starts feeling a little like when you realise the BBC have filmed their new show abroad for tax reasons.

I beat Need for Speed Shift (sort of, the game kept crashing on the final 5 race series so I gave up). Odd game. Basically Aldi Forza/GT. Made by Slightly Mad who went on to make Project Cars and it does show. Handling is very odd though, might as well have been called Kim Car-dashian the way your back end flies around on literally every corner. The progression is a bit annoying too, you need a hell of a lot of stars to unlock each tier of cars and the first couple of tiers you’re using some proper crap cars. Also they make the error of giving you longer and longer races towards the end, which I really hate because you end up just winning by over a minute. Part of why I gave up on the last series was that you do 3 out of 5 races that are 10 minutes each then it crashes and you have to do it again.

Presentation is decent, you have a crew chief guy who speaks to you and isn’t insanely hammy like previous NFS games. Sound mixing is a bit mental though, tinnitus inducing blaring audio even when I turned down the volume, and a soundtrack which I didn’t mind but you end up getting the same 5 songs over and over.

One bright spot in the game though was that I found my favourite car to drive in literally any game ever. The Lamborghini Murcielago in that game with full upgrades is genuinely a dream to drive, I used it throughout the last two tiers without even buying one of the supercars like the Veyron or the Zonda. I would happily use that car in, well, a better game. Don’t get me wrong, Shift is alright and very playable but it ends up as just a bit of a hodgepodge of track-based mediocrity. It won’t last that long in the memory.

Tonight I saw the credits roll on Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and an hour later I popped the platinum
Fantastic game, I really, really loved it, even though a couple of the boss fights overstayed their welcome a bit (in particular the fight against the Lizard and Scream). A few of the side activities veered close to annoying as well (the "unidentified target" tasks had one or two irritating chases), but overall I've had a blast with this game. Bring on the Wolverine!!! (and Spider-Man 3, please).

While I wait for my Ghost of Yotei pre-order to drop, I will pick up Stray again and aim to finish it before letting myself get distracted by other games

@FuriousMachine Congrats on the SM2 platinum!
I’m glad that you ended up liking it, despite the lackluster fan response to it. I do think the game was a victim of its release timing. It came out during a particularly dry season for the first party and had a lot of expectations. Some of the criticisms of the game are certainly valid but it’s a great game overall when evaluated in isolation.
Have fun with Stray!

@Th3solution Thanks I wasn't really surprised that I wound up enjoying it so much, considering my love for the previous two, but I was a bit unsure whether the game as a whole would overstay its welcome with me. The first one did, though only just (I lost interest somewhere near the end of the DLC), but, in contrast, "Miles Morales" was just the perfect length for me. I think maybe my favourite thing about these games is that they nail the characters so well. I'm not a huge fan of the "Ultimate" side of the Marvel multiverse, apart from Miles, but in these games everything really clicked with me

@CaptD, I and another one of our group managed to finish off the last couple of Aliens: Fireteam Elite missions on Extreme and Insane difficulties today. Insane is definitely the correct term btw 😅… some very intense sessions this past week but it’s finally all done. Now we just need to help the stragglers through all those missions again for their respective plats and then we can uninstall… it’ll probably end up becoming the best uninstall ever tbh 😂

@graymamba
It was indeed insane as is the crazy thought of double stacking which has crossed my mind.
Certainly was a lot of fun but as another Captain would say I’m “glad it’s all over”.

As a footnote I really didn’t think I would be able to platinum this so thanks for the help.

Right back atcha 🍻