Just Finished Gaming: ... Created 11 years ago2012-08-13 16:27:46 UTC by The Mad Carrot

Name the games you've recently finished/completed and write a short mini review whether you enjoyed it or not.

I finished Wolfenstein (2009) recently. I liked it, but it has its share of annoyances such as voice actors with overly annoying accents and continuously respawning Nazi's.
Still, I enjoyed it. The ending was pretty darn spectacular too.

I completed the game of life... wait, you can't do that.

On a serious note though, I can't even remember what was the last game I finished. I know I started playing Bastion a couple of months ago, and progressed quite a bit, but then exams came and I had no time of playing. The game is a nice combination of hack&slash and beautifully crafted visual arts. Not to forget about the soundtrack. Its universe is colorful and inspiring.

I wanted to also finish GTA4... well, I can't even remember the last mission.

The last game that I seriously finished and enjoyed was Stalker: Call of Pripyat( ah, so I do remember!). When I bought it I was like "meh, Steam sale, why not, I'll give it a try". After a couple of hours I got addicted and I felt bad when I finished it!
The game combines very well the simplicity of an intuitive interface with a great variety of items and weapons, as well as trading. The addicting part for me were the thrilling adventures in forsaken places for artifacts and other "treasure seeking" activities. I remember there was a big complex of city-like structures(it was also the place where at some point you'd travel underground to the city part) where night caught me. I was crapping my pants. It is that genuine feeling of traveling to a "dangerous" place, then going asap to a "safe" place that made the game so wonderful.
One thing I felt the game lacked were vehicles. Other than that, really a great game.

Skyrim is the last significant title that I finished. Now, I love the game, don't get me wrong, but the main questline was a snorefest. Also, the war questline, which should have been epic, was a dull walk from A, kill everyone at B, walk back to A affair.

Awesome game, but I think I'll spend more time exploring next time I play.

Dankeschön, Lord TMA! I don't like to see a good sticky thread go to waste

Right, so, Duck Game. The deceptively simple appearance on the surface may make you think it has less depth than it really does. The gameplay could be described as a mix between Worms and Super Smash Bros.. Each round is won not necessarily by whoever plays the best, nor whoever kills the most other ducks, but simply by whoever is still alive after the smoke clears (if anyone is still alive after the smoke clears). This, combined with the typically very short lenth of the rounds, makes death feel far less like a penalty. Unless you're a very serious player who confuses "fun" with "winning", I can't see you being likely to get angry playing this game. You're more likely to just laugh at the silliness of the death. Penguinboy's custom title springs to mind: "Haha, I died again!"

Behind all the inanity, however, there's more than just a mindless laugh factory, and if you indeed are a serious player, that doesn't mean you won't get your fix here. The gameplay is very well balanced, with a lot of different ways to kill someone, and also a lot of different ways to defend yourself. Everyone starts a round evenly with no weapon; sometimes you'll all be spread over the entire level, sometimes you'll all be right next to each other. All levels have a different spread of weapons and layouts, and your approaches will have to adapt to suit. You might be on the level where everyone starts next to a sword and a suit of armour; do you pick those up and just try to hack each other to death, or do you try to make it to the single magnet gun in the middle and pluck people's swords right from their wings (or, indeed, latch onto the suits of armor with the ducks inside and drop them over the edge)? Maybe you've got a choice between the risky grenade or a trusty pistol — which one will do the trick on that duck waiting for me on the other side of this wall? Sometimes it all comes down to reflexes, but not as often as you might expect. More often, it comes down to your tactics. To be honest, besides Worms and Super Smash Bros., this game scratches the same itch as TF2 in a way I can't quite describe. Oh, and there's Worms Armageddon-esque challenges for singleplayer, if you're into that kind of thing.

Oh, and I almost forgot. There's a quack button. It makes you quack. It single-handedly distils every laugh, taunt, expletive and cheer into a simple, humble sound expressing so much more than it itself. Whether or not it's better than a voice is up to you, but I'd take a humorous little quack over a squeaky 12-year-old any day.

If I have anything to say against it, it's that a number of game-customising features are currently exclusive to local on-the-couch play. According to discussions I've seen on the Steam Hub for it though, they're working on extending them to online. Playership also seems a little low.

tl;dr: http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-duck-game/2300-10243/

tl;dw: This is one of the few games I've encountered where winning is completely irrelevant to enjoying yourself.

I've just finished System Shock 1. Quite good, until I got to the end, where I fell victim to a graphics setting related problem which made the final battle unwinnable. Attempting to fix it by messing with the graphics settings led me to discover that I had been playing the entire game on minimum settings. I know it's an ancient game with ancient graphics but after playing the entire game in 320x200, seeing the change to 640x480 felt like real life.Anyway, the game was good, and if you can get past the archaic controls it would be well worth playing for anyone who liked Bioshock.

One thing I found interesting about the game was that the difficulty selection at the start was surprisingly in depth. You could individually set the difficulties of combat, puzzles and hacking. Not only this, but you could set these difficulties to zero if you just wanted to play the game for the story and atmosphere, with no gameplay.

I only ever played a demo of System Shock 2 that crashed Windows 98 after about 1 minute. Not enough to catch my attention. Yes, it was 1999.

SS2 is one of my favourite games. If you're willing to give it another try, I would recommend it. There's an updated version on Steam that probably won't crash.

I thoroughly disliked System Shock 2 but loved the first game.

My thoughts so far on System Shock 2 are that it's not bad, but it's not really System Shock either. Apart from the combat, which so far seems to be quite clunky, the game seems like it could be really enjoyable so long as you treat it as an entirely separate entity from the first game.

That's the best way to play most games, IMO. If you're focusing too much on your opinions of the previous game, you often overlook the merits of the game because you're too busy looking at what's different.

Not that I'm saying that changing the formula is always a good thing. But in many cases, it's not as bad as people make out.

In my opinion there is nothing redeeming about SS2 but I'm just going to leave it at that.

I'm just gonna go with the popular opinion that System Shock 2 is one of the greatest games I've ever played, while SS1 is unplayable garbage by today's standards.

I think both your opinions are far too extreme. Almost every game has its own merits and is good in some way. So what, the games are different? They are both very highly regarded by critics and players alike. To say that either game is "unplayable garbage" or "has nothing redeeming" seems quite ignorant.

You might not personally like a game, but that is often a reflection of your own opinion, not of the quality of the game itself. Of course you're both allowed to think what you want, but I'm equally allowed to disagree

I bought System Shock 2 during the sale for, like, a buck or so. I should get around to playing it sometime. Wasn't it made by Looking Glass? I have faith in them ^^

I bought System Shock 2 during the sale for, like, a buck or so. I kept playing and then quitting and trying to return to it only to quit later again. It's not a bad game, but it's clear that this was no match against Half life back in the day. It's as if the game is trying to get you to avoid combat as much as possible, but at the same time making it necessary as well. Due to my persistent habit to hoard ammo (especially good ammo) and other items, I basically HAD to play most of the game using only the yellow wrench (even against rumblers). This is also the reason I had huge trouble playing fallout new vegas as well.

Not only ammo, but given the nature of health and psi hypos (e.g. they are very limited), I had to basically spam-save to play the game as well. I have this thing against using the vita chambers so basically when I get low health I either have to go back to the nearest surgical unit or die and restart where the last mapchange was. Getting thru engineering cargo bays was a nightmare and I had to stare at that panoramic of the hive for like 50 times. At the end of the day, games should be fun and I was not having that much fun dying and restarting over and over, along with making lengthy trips thru chemical storage rooms to clear my inventory. At the end I accidentally went into the hive without realizing it and there was no way back, so I basically lost all my ammo and items that were left in chemical storage rooms. So I had to quit.

[this is what happens when you double click alot]

I exaggerated on my opinion of SS1, I couldn't get past a few rooms due to it's 90's af interface, thick as a brick. Not my tastes.
I just have too much damn fun with SS2 to let the flaws get in the way, I can't really describe it.

I bought System Shock 2 during the sale for, like, a buck or so. I should get around to playing it sometime. Wasn't it made by Looking Glass? I have faith in them ^^

Co-developed with Irrational Games, though you'll notice a lot of Looking Glass touches, and not just because it's a Dark Engine game. Could be the Looking Glass fanboy in me, but I think it's fair to say the best elements of the game come from their influence.

The original System Shock was really basically an attempt to translate dungeon crawler gameplay to a sci-fi environment. Shock 2 sticks with that but updates the interface and storytelling to more modern (at the time) conventions.

It's not as minimal as Thief in terms of UI, there's a heavy emphasis on inventory/resource management and RPG-style character building. You can't run and gun this game like a regular shooter, and there's no character build you can possibly come up with who is a master of all trades, so you can expect to have a lot of 'skill blindspots' where you'll have to get more creative with your gear.

I love it to bits.

I suppose I am being a bit too extreme as I did enjoy the sound design and voice acting which was top notch, as well as the concept of The Many, but overall I really don't think its that great of a game.

I'm quite surprised there are people out there who really despise System Shock 2! To each his own, but I'm kind of interested in why.

I did enjoy the sound design and voice acting which was top notch

Terri & Eric Brosius along with Stephen Russell. They are... or were, one hell of a combination.

Side note: Terri and Stephen are now working on Underworld Ascendant, in veeeery early development from Paul Neurath's new team, OtherSide. At the very least I'm expecting aural greatness.