Topic: Games you've recently beat

@Tasuki I know 2 got a 360 release but it’s looks pretty grim compared to the One version. Probably not worth playing an inferior version!

@nessisonett I also have heard that the Xbox One version had more content in it to. I am not sure what exactly since I never played the 360 version, I only played the Xbox One version. I am sure there's plenty of videos and such out there comparing the two.

I just recently finished 2 a few months ago in preparation for 6 and I really enjoyed it. Definitely a huge jump from one so I can understand why people hold it in such high regards especially if you played it right after the first game.

@Tasuki The main thing I’ve noticed with 1 is how rigid the roads are compared to 4, which had a lot more off-roading. You realise it was a bit of a golden age for open world racers, between that and the still decent Need for Speed games, Burnout Paradise, Test Drive Unlimited 2 and Driver San Francisco.

@nessisonett Yeah it seemed with one they were trying to make an open road racing game but then also keep it somewhat like Forza Motorsport. By the time 2 came around you can see that its closer to those open world racing games you mentioned but not as structured. Yeah they had a story but allowed alot more freedom on how to play the game. Definitely interesting to see the evolution of the series.

@nessisonett I played the 360 version of FH2 back when it came out because I didn't have an Xbox One and yeah, it's bad. You're very limited in where you can drive, the X1 version is much more open. Moreover, in order to get 100 percent, you needed to do every race 10 times for every car type (muscle, sport etc.). It was absolutely ridiculous.

Congrats on finishing Motorsport 4! I think it's my favourite one out of the Motorsport games. My first Motorsport was 3 and it was actually my first 360 game back when I got mine in 2010. So the 360 era Forza Motorsport (and even Horizon 1) hold a special place in my heart. They were absolutely phenomenal racing games.

I'm so glad that I still have my 360 and physical copies of the first four FM games. I also have FM 5-7 on XB1. In all honesty, the fifth one is pretty lacking. Cool launch title for Xbox One but it doesn't have a lot of content and career mode is so repetitive. Sixth one is fantastic and it also introduced weather effects. Still haven't played FM7 yet but I'm saving that one for a rainy day.

It's sad that the most recent FM was severely underwhelming but it goes to show that you can only do so much with racing sims. The future of the Forza series definitely lies with Horizon. FH6 was absolutely brilliant and I can see how they can expand upon that and maybe even make a racing game more akin to Fast & Furious with a more story-driven experience. There's just more potential for refreshing and interesting experiences with FH compared to FM.

Out of curiosity, have you played the Project Gotham Racing games on OG Xbox/360? Fantastic games! If you still have the itch for more 360 era racing titles, PGR is the way to go. Still need to play the fourth one. Also saving that one for a rainy day!

@LtSarge I’ve put a bunch of hours into Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast but unfortunately PGR is one of those series that’s just really hard to emulate so I’d have to go for original hardware! I loved the couple hours I played of the first PGR though and the music station idea across each city was massively cool. The current state of racing games is on the shoulders of Playground Games to be honest, outside of the sims.

@LtSarge @nessisonett One of the reason I enjoy the Horizon series so much is its made by some of the people that did the MSR/PGR series.

Finished DeadSpace remake - it's ok but the hype is not justified IMO.

@Th3solution Oh, wow. I didn't know Baldur's Gate 3 didn't have a physical release. I guess it makes sense since it doesn't have a publisher attached other than Larian, but I still never thought of that as a consequence. Pretty sure it still sold bonkers though, so I doubt it hurt them at all. Funnily enough, an argument in favour of those who think physical releases have outlived their purpose... The last thing I wanted to achieve with this discussion!

You make a solid point with the ability to scale a game's runtime being very valuable to how ''worth'' it can be to you as a player. If you're stuck with a 100+ runtime, the game is going to have to justify itself much harder to someone with limited gaming time than if you're able to finish the same game within a fraction of that time to satisfying results as well. Baldur's Gate 3 seems somewhat the opposite, where you can argue it is scaleable, but to the detriment of the experience. I can't imagine just rushing through that game instead of taking it all in. Even if you're not as completionist about it as us, it's still bound to last you a long time. I have to imagine that the difficulty of fights might also just get too out of hand if you're dead set on going through it as quick as possible. I don't think it utilises level scaling or anything, so surely the game would just become impossible (or at least frustratingly achievable) eventually.

Though I haven't played a large amount of the first Horizon, I have to concur with what you said about the side quests and the stories surrounding them already feeling incredibly bland from the get go. Funnily enough, if we're going to be talking unpopular opinions, I'm going to have to come out and say I don't think The Witcher 3 is all that either. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game. I just think the storytelling it's praised for is somewhat overrated. I will not elaborate further to save myself from any incoming pitchforks, nor do I want to shape your opinion on a game that you're clearly excited to try out eventually! Besides, this is coming from the person who prefers the first Divinity: Original Sin over the second, so what do I know?

Yeah, I do get where you're coming from in terms of the DLC and whatever importance it may or may not have to the main game. When you're talking about DLC that was blatantly cut from the game to resell players, or the types of DLC where it feels like it should've been a part of the main game, I totally agree. I think you do yourself a disservice writing off DLC as a rule however! Something like Burial at Sea for BioShock Infinite, for example, is some of the best stuff in that entire franchise and a must-play even as a stand-alone experience. It's the type of DLC too that simply couldn't have been integrated into the main game except as some kind of epilogue anyway, which is exactly the kind of purpose DLC can serve. Separate Ways for Resident Evil 4 is an equally great DLC. Such a fun time to relive the campaign from the perspective of this mysterious outsider, while introducing some fun new mechanics and bosses. I don't think either of those would've really benefited or made sense being a part of the main campaign. You could argue both should've been there from release as an epilogue, but I think the main campaign feels complete enough and justifies its existence enough that I wouldn't expect the devs to put all that extra work in for no additional cost.

Now, if you're going to tell me that you played both of these main campaigns without the DLC afterwards, I think I'm going to have to invite you to Tjuz' DLC Conversion Camp. It's for your own good, I promise! I hope you've been having a better time since the weekend and been able to get more gaming hours into Saros. Sorry to hear that last week was rough!

@Tjuz Yeah, BG3 was a huge commercial success despite the fact it didn’t have a physical release at launch. As an advocate for the continuation of disc releases though, I wouldn’t say that its success in spite of no physical version means that it couldn’t have done even better with a disc version at launch too. They eventually did release the game on disc with a sort of collectors / deluxe edition much later and it sold out immediately. Also, for some reason the initial disc release was only in Japan, so if you look at eBay most of those you’ll see for sale are the Japanese versions. Regardless, there was a substantial demand for it on disc and the second-hand Japanese copies (which still contain the English voice work) still sell for around $50-60, with the English collector sets selling for way, way more of course. ($250-$3000!!)

It’s also an example of why the digital sales numbers are skewed, since the game was a huge seller and there was no option to buy a disc at launch and so those millions of copies sold all got dumped into the digital sales data whereas there would surely have been a decent split otherwise. Not to derail and further open the can of worms but the claims that physical game sales make up <10% is just not reality. I suspect it’s closer to 30% for PS5 and maybe even higher for certain releases. Anyway, there’s plenty of discussion elsewhere on such things, so I digress…

DLC. Although I do agree that there’s good DLC that functions as supplementary and yet borderline essential for the full experience, I think it’s tough knowing which are important and of high quality and which are not. That is, until there’s a good amount of reviews and player feedback. You hurt my soul when you mention Burial at Sea and Separate Ways because both are DLCs that I actually would like to play, or rather would have liked to have done back when I played the respective base games. In the case of Burial, it wasn’t out yet when I did my run through Bioshock Infinite back in the day, and I’ve yet to do a replay. And in the case of Separate Ways I picked up the base game on sale and it didn’t include the DLC at the time and so I was just waiting for a chance to pick it up. Burning Shores will be the same scenario. It feels weird to pay almost the same amount for the DLC that I paid for the base game. And it’s always tough going back to a finished game when there’s so many others in the backlog and so I quickly get pulled into a new game and sometimes forget to go back and do the DLC. So I’m going to have to take the heat for missing those but I hope to rectify that at some point.

I might as well admit now and get it all out there at once… but I’ve also never played any of the Mass Effect DLC and I know some of the best BioWare stuff is in these. The Shadow Broker and Citadel content are especially glaring holes in my gaming repertoire. Similar to Bioshock, these DLC were not available back when I played the base games near launch, and I’ve just never gone back to complete a replay. I have the Legendary Edition with all of it now and so I need to do that. My only excuse is time, or rather the lack thereof.

A lot of the good DLC seems to be of the epilogue type, as you mentioned, where it stands on it own and yet fits as part of the main campaign, independent yet attached if that’s possible. But I’m always so impressed when games do this on their own where occasionally I’ll play a game and think that the games over and then there’s a chunk of extra, usually toward the end, that feels like the developer could have sold it back to us as DLC but they choose to make the base game content complete. A good example of this is what Rockstar did with RDR and RDR2 (perhaps GTA are like this too) where both stories end and it’s like this huge climactic wrap up and then there’s another several hours of epilogue that keeps going and going. To a lesser extent TLoU2 did this too. Also Nier Automata (although they did release some DLC but it was just a non-story arena, I think). I know there’s others but I can’t think of examples right now since my brain if fried.

Speaking of, here’s hoping for a better week, and thank you for the empathetic response. So far this new week is not off to a very good start, although I did get some time with Saros over the weekend and so I might drop some thoughts on it elsewhere.

@Tjuz Sorry for the late reply, been an incredibly busy start to the summer for me.

I really enjoyed reading your impressions on Sea of Stars, thanks! It’s unfortunate that the game started out so slowly but at least it picked up steam and proved to be worth your time in the end. I still think that’s putting a lot of faith in an audience known to not even finish games but at least those that do are properly rewarded.

I really like that characters are continually returned to and fleshed out to push the narrative forward. RPG’s do generally work best when they’re character based. I wonder, does this make the game feel smaller or grander?

I have to admit, the lock system doesn’t sound like my cup of tea but I’d still be willing to give it a try to see how it feels in practice. I don’t mind the concept of using trial and error to discover what specific damage type the enemy might be weak to but throwing a time limit on that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. Certain enemy tells or patterns could have made this interesting but if it’s just RNG, I don’t know…obviously it works well enough to not be a deal breaker though!

Good luck with Baldur’s Gate 3. My buddy has well over 1000 hours into it across multiple play through’s and still sings its praises regularly. I think you’re in for a treat 😄

I finally beaten Persona 1. Now I can boast about being a true Persona fan whilst arguing with people on the internet 😂

In all seriousness, it was a much better game than I anticipated, but one I can only seriously recommend if you already love Persona and want to see where it started.

Just beat Dante's Inferno for the first time and it was really good! I loved the depiction of each circle of hell. It is on the short side but I don't mind that (around 6 hours)

In the end scene we have a "To be continued ..." but we never got a sequel There was even a third game planned ...

It was going to be like the God of War original trilogy

@Th3solution Allow me to add my belated congratulations to your triumphant completion of Horizon Forbidden West, good sir, as well as my sincere best wishes for better weeks ahead.

For what it's worth, and separate from both my own encouragement and the subsequent conversation about your approach to DLC, I think you made the right call to leave Burning Shores for now, simply because you noted a potential risk of burnout. Forcing yourself to play it when you weren't in the mood for more might have ended up damaging what sounds like a largely positive experience. I've said this plenty before, but it's always worth repeating: gaming is our hobby, not a chore.

To that end, I hope you enjoy Saros, and here's to Burning Shores going on sale soon!

Several rhythm games are down. The original Guitar Hero is a nightmare because HOPOs blatantly make no sense but I strummed like a madman and ignored any attempt to tap notes and somehow made it through Cowboys from Hell and Bark At The Moon. Gladly will never play that game again.

Somehow beat Guitar Hero III after a LOT of tries. Raining Blood was insanely hard to beat but once I could scrape through Mosh 1, the rest of the song wasn’t too bad. The issue was the final fight against the Devil, which I tried maybe 60-70 times. I remembered from my childhood there’s a way to beat him by hitting a whammy attack right as he gets a massive row of greens so I restarted over and over until I got a whammy power up. That took genuinely hours. And you still have to stay alive throughout the first couple of minutes of the song to even get to the first power up. I could probably play along to The Devil Went Down To Georgia without even seeing the notes after that. Of course, beating him unlocks Through The Fire And Flames… which I don’t think I’d ever be able to beat. It’s just too long and gruelling and that’s coming from someone who beat a 10 minute song in Rock Band. I’m ok leaving it unbeaten for now, I’ve finished the game at least.

And then I beat Rock Band Unplugged. It’s sort of like Amplitude with an almost identical copy of Rock Band 2’s setlist and structure. Really great game once you spend a good few hours learning how not to be crap. I regret to say I didn’t beat it on Expert though, I had to drop to Hard towards the end of the game just with how insanely hard some of those songs get. The gist is that you play all 4 instruments at once, playing one until you hit your combo and then you have to jump to the next with the triggers. If you drop a single note in a block of them, it breaks your combo and makes you keep playing that instrument until you can move on, meanwhile your other instruments are missing notes and dropping your health meter. It’s a lot to keep track of but if you get into the swing of it, you’re essentially playing one instrument at a time while jumping to the next seamlessly. Super fun on Expert but not quite as perfectly musical on Hard so it was a shame dropping down. Turns out @get2sammyb reviewed Rock Band Unplugged back in the day but didn’t look like a game you’d be returning to anytime soon from that review!

Decided to finish my playthrough of Half-Life 1 on the Steam Deck

It is a wonderful game with unique atmosphere. Yes Half-Life 2 is superior but this is a gem from a forgotten era

That reminds me that I have to play Black Mesa.

This is finished game number 23 for this year

@Zuljaras Unfortunately Black Mesa isn't as good as I hoped it would be. It looks really good though but it's a bit rough at times.

@McSavage That is unfortunate. Thank you for reminding me to watch some reviews and retrospectives about the game

Jaws Retro Edition (Switch) A fun quirky game that isnt a bad movie based game once you know what you're doing. I highly recommend playing the enhanced edition version it for one adds some story elements to explain what to do which is very nice. Of course by now there are walkthroughs and YouTube videos explaining what to do so you can play the original edition and have an idea what to do. Also with the Enhanced version they broke the game up into 4 chapters which each coincide with each movie rather then just continously looping like the original. For a classic look at an early NES game I recommend it. You can beat it in a couple of hours easily.

And so that brings an end to one of the banes of my childhood NES experiences. Definitely will end up a yearly replay game around the 4th of July till its safe to go into the water again.