The last few games you beat and rate them III

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GlassesJacketShirt

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The first couple of times, but after awhile you get used to it.

I would use a few more Support/Ranger guys per mission than in X-COM 1 because they can cross more distance.

I used to use a lot of Heavies in X-COM 1 but almost cut them out entirely (Grenadiers) in the sequel.

I noticed that early on as well, but I still hold at least one due to their grenade launchers and Salvo Fire ability. Combining the two can turn the tide very quickly.

That and the Sniper's Serial skill. The game's final battle had my sniper stuck by some teleporting enemies, but he was able to kill all three vipers plus get a key shot on the Avatar on the same turn. Saved me a world of hurt.

Those two gave me a ton of help in crowd control when the enemies kept popping in non-stop, and it allowed my other operatives to focus on the main threat more easily.
 
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NyQuil

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I noticed that early on as well, but I still hold at least one due to their grenade launchers and Salvo Fire ability. Combining the two can turn the tide very quickly.

That and the Sniper's Serial skill. The game's final battle had my sniper stuck by some teleporting enemies, but he was able to kill all three vipers plus get a key shot on the Avatar on the same turn. Saved me a world of hurt.

Those two gave me a ton of help in crowd control when the enemies kept popping in non-stop, and it allowed my other operatives to focus on the main threat more easily.

Yeah, I've played with 1 or 2 snipers pretty much in both games.

They're so important and they end up with the lion's share of kills. It's not fun when your sniper gets mind controlled. ;) I actually managed to use the "break weapon" skill successfully on him and then kill the mind controlling alien.

I will say that, as I got better at the game, I used "Assault" and "Ranger" a lot more than when I started.

You lose the odd one but they can do incredible damage at close range. Using two as a pair with a support to heal is a pretty good strategy.

I think Heavies are more useful early when your aim is worse and those grenades are more crucial.
 

Unaffiliated

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I thought XCOM EU/EW was harder than XCOM 2, but to be fair most of my memory of XCOM EU/EW is actually of the brutally hard Long War, so I may be conflating things.

I just feel that the reduced squad size of XCOM 2 ended limiting the complexity.

I loved XCOM 2.
 

GlassesJacketShirt

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Yeah, I've played with 1 or 2 snipers pretty much in both games.

They're so important and they end up with the lion's share of kills. It's not fun when your sniper gets mind controlled. ;) I actually managed to use the "break weapon" skill successfully on him and then kill the mind controlling alien.

I will say that, as I got better at the game, I used "Assault" and "Ranger" a lot more than when I started.

You lose the odd one but they can do incredible damage at close range. Using two as a pair with a support to heal is a pretty good strategy.

I think Heavies are more useful early when your aim is worse and those grenades are more crucial.

If I were to have a second go at it, I would consider using two snipers as well, one fitted as a gunslinger.

One thing the Heavy is great at is tearing through armor should he/she have the right abilities, while the grenade launcher is more useful for destroying masses of cover at once. A lot of it comes down to playstyle, so for someone like me who prefers keeping my soldiers alive I love the versatility to overcome any situation.

The final mission had my grenadier do just that, having the shredder ability along with salvo as a way to deal with armored opponents and crowds. The avatar and Psi-Op personnel let me control two enemies at once, thinning the opponents' forces while also providing me additional cover. The Sharpshooter would deal the big damage when needed, while also having the ability to kill several targets at once if the situation got dire. That left the Ranger and my two specialists to track down the Avatar full time, though I further improved my odds by having one specialist control a MEC, which ultimately brought my "party" up to ten individuals at once.
 

GlassesJacketShirt

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Dishonored

7/10

Really enjoyed this one. Liked the art design and world, also enjoyed the mission structure despite some glitches and quirks.

Felt the story did not live up to expectations, and a fully upgraded character can be overpowered.

Otherwise, a fine title. I would purchase the DLC, but with a wait needed for more money to go on paypal I'll simply move on to Dishonored 2, which I also got from Steam's Summer Sale.

Steam Summer completed:

1. XCOM 2 - 9.5
2. Dark Souls - 9
3. Dark Souls III - 8
4. Dark Souls II - 8
5. Dishonored - 7
6. COD: BOII (Campaign) - 7
7. COD: Ghosts (Campaign) - 6
8. COD: BOIII (Campaign) - 4
 

Unaffiliated

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I thought the shotgun class in XCOM 2 was pretty OP and the Sniper was pretty underwhelming.

I played with Commanders Choice on, picked a rookie with godlike aim to be my sniper, but he was drastically outdamaged and outkilled by my main shotgunner.

The higher pace doesn't really lend itself to setting up a sniper somewhere and squadsighting turn after turn from safety.
 
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NyQuil

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The higher pace doesn't really lend itself to setting up a sniper somewhere and squadsighting turn after turn from safety.

For me it's really more about coverage.

I'm a little less worried about spreading my squad out if I have him/her with full action points back there.

If you do happen to make a mistake, they can clean it up for you.
 

MetalheadPenguinsFan

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Just Beat:

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7.5/10

Great game but it relies a little bit too much on firearms IMO. If they had limited the number of missions where you needed to use firearms, I'd have given this an 8 or an 8.5
 

SolidSnakeUS

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Persona 5 - 10/10

Jesus Christ. I didn't think that they would be able to top Persona 4, which I think was the best RPG of the last decade. Well, P5 has taken that crown. Better characters, more depth in the combat, features and how things are done. Morgana is much better than Teddie. It might be my new favorite RPG of all time, or at least right next to Chrono Trigger. Took about 94 hours for the first playthrough. Made sure to get full social stats (since they pass over) and as much money as I could (which does go over as well). I can focus now fully on reading the in-game books, the trophies and also getting all social links to max (since I have no limitations now on who I can talk to because of social stats being too low).
 

Frankie Spankie

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Jotun - 7/10

Jotun was recently free, hopefully everyone picked it up. You play as a viking in a beautifully hand drawn world. The art style is absolutely top notch and was actually a pretty big reason why I even bought the game. There are basically 5 worlds to travel to, which you can take in any order, for each of the viking gods. You unlock powers and runes to unlock the boss battles.

The boss battles are where the game shines. The bosses are very well designed and very difficult. You really feel like you're a regular viking going up against gods. That being said, it's not impossible. I highly recommend collecting all the god powers before even taking on bosses. If you take on the first boss when its available, you'll likely keep dying.

The game itself is pretty short and I wish there was more to do while collecting the runs to unlock the bosses. There aren't many small enemies throughout the game, a lot of the work outside the bosses is exploration or avoiding environmental damage, but at least you get a beautiful world to view while you're doing it.

I think the game is worth it at a discounted price, it's too short for $15 IMO (only took me 4 hours.) It was free which you would have been stupid to choose not to take had you known the offer. The bosses were very well designed though and it made the game a lot of fun.

I'm sure they made it free because the devs are releasing Sundered next week. I'll probably end up playing that as well after playing Jotun but not sure if I want to buy it at full price yet.
 

aleshemsky83

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The Surge

This game impressed the hell out of me. Really enjoyed it, the bosses are much more fair then souls games, they're more Zelda like in that they have weak points you need to figure out, the parry and Dodge windows are also much more forgiving. You can also bank exp. Only less fair thing is that if you get to a boss with a lot of exp you're screwed because there's no teleport item.

The story is also very impressive. Nothing groundbreaking but it keeps you interested in the audio logs. And it was genuinely shocking when during the final boss I realized the consequences of not finishing a side story was [spoil] the little girl got absorbed into the nanomachines singularity[/spoil]
Only issue I had with the story is that it's very obvious what is going on when you listen to some of the audio logs but your character (who is not an avatar he has dialogue and a somewhat implied backstory) is 100% clueless all throughout

Edit: Also, there are two endings. Without spoiling it, the first time you see the nanite mass (the enemt is invincible and shoots lightning, you'll know it when you see it) there is an easy to miss computer by this enemy. Whether you upload the virus to this computer or not determines the ending you get. Apparently this also makes it possible to kill these invincible guys but I never tried since it was so close to the end.
 
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Oscar Acosta

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Persona 5. As of now, its my game of the year. 10/10

Got it day one, preordered and was hyped off Persona 4. But I got as far as the first apartment when dude is like you live here and don't screw up. Haven't touched it since. Just didn't get a hold of me yet.
 

Commander Clueless

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Finally made my way through the Witcher 3. Absolutely fantastic game.

My only real gripe is with the couple times I got bored traveling from one point to another thanks to the world being gargantuan...something that I'm sure some people wouldn't even consider a negative. :laugh:


On to Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine.


Despite some minor glitches and annoyances like above, this game is an easy 10/10 in my books (nothing's perfect, but this is a masterpiece).
 
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SniperHF

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Half-Life - Yes that one

I'll just do this in linear fashion.

So the game starts off with an impressive for 1998 (but much too long) intro sequence that features some effective bite sized story telling. Early in the game there are a lot of clever scripted sequences and events. You can shut off computers or lights and the NPCs will admonish you for it for example. Or scientists/guards following you will open doors or heal you if you're below a certain threshold. This level of interactivity is definitely surface level impressive for 1998 but it's not systemic in a way that Thief (released in the same year) is. Certainly a cut above most yet not as far ahead as some portrayed it.

Where Half-Life shines, and is perhaps still underrated, is the actual shooting bits. Once the fighting begins the early game is very much about resource management. Do I "use" health and fight in melee knowing I'll take more damage? Do I rip off my only 8 shotgun shells hoping I'll find more?

The enemy AI is probably the best example to date (1998). They'll throw grenades (frequently and even if you're hiding), they'll retreat, they'll call for help. And to boot the combat is quite lethal, especially in the early-mid game where you aren't fully charged most of the time on you're suit energy which works like armor.

Half-Life moves on from the labyrinth style levels of Doom,Duke(to a lesser extent), and Quake. But it does leave enough room to explore. I don't think the maps are quite interesting enough to really allow for significant differences in approach in comparison to another contemporary Unreal, which mostly does a better job of straddling the fence between full on labyrinths and corridors.

For as forward thinking as Half-Life is in some areas, it does have a few throwbacks. Enemies will outright spawn on top of you. There are plenty of insta-deaths around corners or other places you can't see.

It's also a pioneer (though not originator) in final act changeups. The last areas are very platforming heavy and they even grant you a special jump pack that you only use for 1/5th of the game thereabouts. But the worst part is all the great reactive AI of the soldiers are gone and you're stuck fighting the various critters you've seen time to time in the game. Some of them are deadly and they love spawning out of nowhere. But shooting into a bunch of HP sponges is just not particularly entertaining and never has been. With how successful Half-Life was, I'm surprised the developers of System Shock 2 and later Crysis made the exact same mistake since it would have been well apparent.

Half-Life is well worth you're time if you've never played it and it mostly holds up almost 20 years later. The meat of the game is just good clean FPS fun, don't let the trappings distract you.

8.5/10
 

Commander Clueless

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Finally made my way through the Witcher 3. Absolutely fantastic game.

My only real gripe is with the couple times I got bored traveling from one point to another thanks to the world being gargantuan...something that I'm sure some people wouldn't even consider a negative. :laugh:

I was cordially informed that I'm an idiot and harbours are, in fact, a thing in Skellige that one should use. :laugh:

On to Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine.

I'm actually going to hold off for a bit. Too much of a good thing and all that jazz. I need an RPG break, so I'ma blow some stuff up in Wolfenstein.
 

Unaffiliated

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Witcher 3 was not exactly my favorite game but I got to learn the optimal way to travel is to change your current quest to something in a different area - it makes your current wayfinding path thing to lead you to the closest signpost. Then you just fast travel to the closest signpost to your actual goal.
 

SniperHF

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I'm actually going to hold off for a bit. Too much of a good thing and all that jazz. I need an RPG break, so I'ma blow some stuff up in Wolfenstein.

Unless you were really careful not to do them (or didn't install the pack) you might have already done some HoS side quests.

Blood and Wine is definitely worth saving for later as it's pretty well self contained.
 

Lost Horizons

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Lego City Undercover ps4 6 out of 10 typical lego game. The main issue with this game though is there might be too much to do in terms of unlockable characters. There are 300+ playable characters to unlock. Wtf! Including cars boats etc there something like 400+ unlockables not to mention red bricks etc to locate. Another annoying thing is the color swapping gun. You can never find the colors you need etc or they are too well hidden throughout the city to be useful.
 

Commander Clueless

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Unless you were really careful not to do them (or didn't install the pack) you might have already done some HoS side quests.

Blood and Wine is definitely worth saving for later as it's pretty well self contained.

Perhaps? I'm not sure. They were installed.

I definitely didn't start the quests with the big labels on them yet. :laugh:
 

Ceremony

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Rayman 2: The Great Escape (PS1, 1999)

When I finished this last night I searched on here to see if I'd posted about it the last time I beat it, which must have been three years ago now. That time, much like this one, I beat the whole game and collected all the lums in about six hours. I still have my original physical copy of this. The instruction book has long fallen apart because of me nervously chewing it as me and my friend would take turns trying to beat it. I still remember how long and arduous certain sections of it felt. The Cave of Bad Dreams, for instance, a platforming section I still have trouble with playing now. There are later levels which are even harder, in part because of technical limitations I'll come to later. The underlying sense I have of this game, even after beating it completely in six hours, is still one of scale. Of it being a large, varied unique world centred around a hero's noble and successful quest. I like that it persists as such.

You are Rayman, the pictured hero who has hands and feet and a head and no neck, arms or legs. While the original Rayman was a 2D sidescroller with an incomparable colour palette and the most drug-addled soundtrack imaginable, its sequel takes a cue from Mario 64 and opens up levels with collectables and enemies, but still with a focus on the platforming of the original. An army of mechanical pirates have destroyed the heart of the world and started taking prisoners, and it's up to you to save everyone. Again, all very nice, and you can see why to a ten year old it feels like such an undertaking.

The gameplay is much more immersive than the original Rayman, and not just because you can move in more directions than left and right. Right away you can use Rayman's hair to hover in mid-air and shoot at enemies and relevant environmental objects. The controls still feel sharp even though I'm playing this on the PS1 version downloaded from the PS Store. The age of the game does show at times however. You use L1/R1 to rotate the camera. Moving the right stick fires shots from Rayman's fist. Since it's a short game, by the time you get to the end you'll still be trying to move the camera (which it should be said barely ever moves at all - more often than not you'll get a thing in the top left corner saying you can't rotate it) and being mildly annoyed by this inconvenience while you're trying to kill an enemy. I'm sure I can't fault a game for existing at a certain point in the history of games and having resultant quirks which are strange to me 18 years after release, but it's not something that goes away. It also can't be overstated how bad the actual camera control is. There are frequent sections where you'll be climbing along walls, jumping from section to section and being unable to see properly where you should be going. It all feels so... unnatural. There's a few sections too where you have to carry an object from one place to another, throwing it on to ledges along the way. You can imagine what trying to see where to go with them is like.

As far as combat and enemies go there's not really much to say. You get an assortment of robot enemies which are all pretty much the same. You shoot them, you wait for their invulnerability to go away while dodging any of their attacks, you shoot again. Repeat. Some of them move around in different ways but aside from the Ninja robot who teleports right next to you who you have to jump away from there's very little variety in the combat. Even the, uh, organic enemies amount to much of the same. You can press R2 to target an enemy and make dodging attacks easier, but when you're up against more than one it's a disaster. In fact scratch that, it's a disaster normally. There seems to be a real lag in the controls at times for enemies that move around. When you're targeting you never quite manage to aim at them properly or shoot when you want to.

The bulk of the gameplay, which I'm happy to say is realised much more fully and much more competently, is in the platforming. Whether it's your standard jumping from platform to platform, climbing sections, taming explosive shells on legs to ride them through obstacle courses or flying through tunnels of lava, it's pretty much all the right balance between challenging and satisfying. I'm a large fan of gameplay which can best be described as satisfying, the sort of thing where you can get into a rhythm when moving around or doing what you're doing, even when the difficulty ramps up. There are times when the camera can be an issue and there's one section in particular towards the end when you're flying on a shell and the controls/camera combine to make the blind path you're supposed to take an act of sheer luck and nothing else, but given the time it was released it's still a good game, which brings me on to my next point which I said I'd touch on earlier.

With Rayman 3 after this and certainly in the Origins/Legends from last gen, and the original, Rayman is known for having a game world which is extremely vivid and stylised. Lots of colours, lots of elements, lots of distinctive different areas. If I ever manage to finish everything in Rayman 3 HD I'm sure I'll mention it. In 2 though, it's very dull. There's a lot of green. There's a lot of basic areas with very little in them - the first boss fight is effectively a big blue slide which may as well be in space, because it's just black along the sides, making it feel like you're completely disconnected from the rest of the world (and certainly from the level which preceded it, which is underwater and very distinctive in itself). Being released in 1999, and coming after the original sequel which was a 2D game like the first game was scrapped, you get the distinct sense that this is a game constantly at the limits of what was technologically capable at the time. I think it's why I'm able to write off its faults so easily, at least the ones which can be attributed to the time it was made. The reason I bought this from the PS Store (P.S. it's a crime the PS1 and PS2 classics are no longer a thing) was actually because of a problem with my disc version. The sound was screwed up and hey, here's something that's legitimately one of the best games ever for 3.99. Bargain. But besides that, in terms of the levels and just the way some of the elements in them are made and put together and the graphical flaws you see in them, I don't feel as if it's because the game is badly made because the gameplay confirms it isn't. For that reason, as I still play old games on occasion, I like seeing the flaws. I like the cutscenes where there's voices without any character moving or giving the impression that the voice is coming from them. It gives me a sense that gaming develops because games like this exist to push the medium. At least it got polished up for the PS2 when it was re-released.

So, everything about it is good and everything that's bad about it is good because it's bad. I'm sad games from history like this are pushed out and go unplayed because of the nature of video games and the focus on money and progress. The gameplay holds up, the characters are developed and interesting, even though the game is short and feels oddly constricted (certainly as far as levels go the end seems to come a lot quicker than you think) there's still a tremendous sense of scale.

I'm especially glad Rayman 2 is like this, because when you beat the final boss you get to play some of the originally planned sequel, and it's even more ******** than the original. Maybe one day I'll beat that.
 

GlassesJacketShirt

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Love me some Rayman. :yo:

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

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Oh dear, this game was one hard son of a *****. Imagine Commandos if it gained a color scheme and was set in Medieval Japan.

8/10
 

H3ckt1k

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Jan 9, 2015
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Beat blops 3 campaign. For some reason really felt like playing a call of duty game again after not really playing them in 3-4 years.

Would give it a solid 6.5 out of 10. It's a fun game overall, I enjoyed playing it for about the 10 hours or so it took me. It does get quite repetitive, and the main mission that I believe is supposed to be "cool" and "epic" is pretty boring to play. I didn't find the story too great, but my friends that played it really liked it. Characters were okay for the most part. They start to get annoying but that's kinda part of the plot. Anyway it's fun just like any cod game is but I'd rate the campaign mode on the lower end of all cod campaigns.
 
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