The last few games you beat and rate them III

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Ceremony

blahem
Jun 8, 2012
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Thief (PS3, 2014)

Usually when I finish a game or a book it takes me a few days before I can write about it on here. I tried writing about one of the last books I read right away and it just didn't work. I don't know what it is or why this happens since I've mentioned before that when I do write something I invariably finish and remember a bunch of stuff I wanted to say but in this case, I've spent so long playing Thief and it's so, so bad and somehow shallow that I don't think I'll have anything to worry about.

When I finished playing Dishonored I remember wanting to play something else with stealth in it. I went back to Hitman 2 which was perhaps not the best decision. For about, oh, twenty seconds of Thief I thought it would have been a much better choice. Now, not so much. Never mind a choice for a stealth game, this was just a bad life choice. Thief is a game in which you, Garrett, are in a city and have to do stuff. It's fascinating.

I have to start with the map. I suppose you could describe the game as open world, but it isn't. It's set in The City, a sort of central hub world with an assortment of locations where you can enter and steal stuff, usually with something specific to target. While I can't remember every game I've played offhand and wouldn't want to speak for all of them, this is the worst map I've ever seen in a game. Even leaving aside the fact that the colour palette is non-existent and everything looks the same, there's never any knowing where you're supposed to go or how you're supposed to get there. There are eight chapters in the game and each has a different start point on the map. Fair enough, except you can't set a custom waypoint in the pause menu to make it easier to know where you're going. The mini-map is, for some reason, able to be toggled on and off. And for some other reason, the default is off. It was about twelve hours before I realised I could do that. It was about another twelve hours after that I was able to use it to any sort of advantage.

Rather than a normal sort of open world map where you can look at the top down view of it and see streets or paths or things like that there are various layers to Thief's maps which are only ever viewable when you happen to be on it. So if you're on the street your map will be different from your map when you're on a roof. Which may be the only way to get to the area you need to go to. And since it's all so dark you probably wouldn't be able to see it anyway. In cases where the way past a seemingly uninteractable building facade isn't up a roof or hiding somewhere it exists purely as a loading screen to go from one area to another. The map isn't big. From the main area you start in you could walk from the top to the bottom in maybe two or three minutes, assuming you aren't spotted by a guard. Yet it's split up into two different main areas and several others within those areas, and there's always a loading screen between each of them. Occasionally you have to go through a thing I haven't seen since about 2008, frantically pressing a button to lift a beam out of the way or something.

I said there are various parts of the map you can interact with. Stuff like windows you can open to get into rooms that have traps or puzzles in them. Fine. You know how in GTA you can walk into a building by opening a door? In Thief you'll be in front of a window you can open. You press square, there's a 5 second animation of him looking at the window, then you need to keep pressing square until it's opened. Then you go into the room for five seconds, and they all looks the same, and on the way out you need to do it again. I don't understand how a game as recently made as this and with such a dull, uninteresting, immobile base world can be so poorly made. The loading times are massive. I don't know if it was optimised better on the PS4 and Xbone or something (I should f***ing hope it was) but my god, you don't stop noticing it. And there's just the constant sense that it's not getting you anywhere.

I don't understand how anyone involved in this game's creation could look at the map and think it was good. I don't know how they could play the game at any point and think the means of getting around was logical, or engaging, or in any way comparable to anything they'd ever played before. Look at the mini-map, it tells you that the area you want to go to is right in front of you. You can't go into it though because there's a beam you have to fire a rope arrow at (if you have any) hidden away above you somewhere. f***ing magnificent. Want to replay a chapter? Well you'll have to remember where it is, because we're not telling you. You can replay chapters assuming you know where it is on the map because there's literally no indication anywhere that it's a thing which is possible. I don't understand how people can be happy putting their name to a game which is made in this way. It's as if they tried to make it as unintuitive and deliberately off-putting as possible.

It would be one thing for me to say that the story is boring and unengaging and I would have done, only in finishing the trophies I was able to garner a vague idea of what it's about. Garrett has a sidekick who gets caught in an experiment of some sort by some old men with something called the Primal and you spend the game trying to fix that. The thing is though, none of the cutscenes ever seem to be as a consequence of anything you've done. You go where the game tells you to go and you find whatever it is it's telling you to find but it may as well show clips from Fantasia in the interim. None of the characters are remotely interesting or engaging. Even despite its visceral terribleness and how recently I played it I only vaguely remember what went on.

In fact I can give you a great example of how disengaging the story is, and of course it comes back to the map. There are guards walking around the city because there's a revolt of some sort going on. Fine, so they're trying to stop you because you're infiltrating all these places and stealing stuff. But then as the game goes on this other faction, the Graven, start taking over and purging the normal guards. And they react to you in the street in exactly the same way, despite the fact you're working for their leader. And of course walking around the streets is a crapshoot anyway since pedestrians don't notice you and try to chase you, only the outfits of the characters are all so dull and similar you'll struggle to notice. And very often you're forced to be on the streets because of how badly the map's designed, so unless you want to spend half an hour just getting to each chapter you'd better hope you're playing on an easy difficulty so you don't get killed when you get bored and just run past everyone. Until after about ten seconds of sprinting your stamina gives out and you can't run any more. Oh and of all the things you can upgrade, you can't upgrade that.

The gameplay is one of the few things I will praise. For about half an hour in the last two chapters on the highest difficulty, with no focus (ie the magic blue vision that shows you where everything is) and with no freedom to kill people, I had fun. Trying to work out the proper stealth way to get through a level and pulling it off, that was brilliant. Very satisfying. Especially finding a way to get past the birds in cages which started wailing if you moved past them, that was great. It did take me about forty hours to get to this point though, so you'd better get used to shooting people with your crossbow. That in itself isn't bad and killing people silently is still a challenge, but it's not memorable. You will want to shoot people from afar, because if you're forced into face-to-face combat you'll die from laughing too much at how bad the combat is.

I don't know what else there is for me to say about this game but it's strange in that there's so little to it yet so much of it which is, for lack of a better word, bad. The story is forgettable, the characters unengaging, the map impossibly unplayable, the gameplay on the whole boring and, really overall quite a short experience assuming you don't play it for fifty hours for trophies like me. I know that previous Thief games are highly thought of and maybe there's reason for that. But this one...

... I just remembered one of those things I nearly forgot. There are various collectibles in the game. Fine. There are "secret areas," dotted around the map and in chapters. 73 in total. Unlike all the other quite detailed collectibles, there's no trace of how many you've found in any of the menus. So if you want to get the trophy/achievement for finding them all you'd better get a guide and keep track of every one. That of course is a shit way of playing a game, even one as bad as this. But for the low low price of 99p you can buy the Thief smartphone app which tells you how many you've found! It doesn't offer anything else worthwhile and doesn't even tell you whereabouts you've found each area like every other collectible listing in the game does, but apparently this game didn't fill you with enough buyer's remorse.

Oh! Another thing I forgot. I mentioned that the cutscenes don't seem to have any bearing on what you've done, well, the chief bad guy is someone called the Thief-Taker General, whose sole purpose in life seems to be catching Garrett. He's not very good at it, even though he looks like this:

Thief-Taker-General.jpg.optimal.jpg


The twirly moustache, the inexplicable bald spot, the big wart on his nose, the peg leg - it's bizarre. Even more bizarre is the fact that of the game's eight chapters (at least four I can think of) end with you running away from this guy who just happened to turn up at the end. Absurd doesn't do it justice.

Thematically, stylistically and creatively this game feels like a very poor attempt at being Dishonored. It's a bad copy of that and a bad game in itself with nearly every aspect of it being poorly executed to such an extent you would find better gameplay aspects in titles from completely unrelated genres. It's bad when compared to anything else, it's worse when viewed solely on its own merits.
 
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GlassesJacketShirt

Registered User
Aug 4, 2010
11,398
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Sherbrooke
Call of Duty (2003) on PC

Most of the original Call of Duty is still fun to play through. I do get the feeling half of the Russian campaign was rushed, and the final missions were disappointingly throwaway.
7/10

Started up United Offensive tonight, and the first mission was stellar.


BTW Ceremony, if you are still doing a go around of previous gen stealth titles, I would recommend Splinter Cell: Blacklist. It doesn't have Ironside playing Sam Fisher and it isn't perfect, but I found it to have some of the best designed levels in any stealth game to date.
 

aleshemsky83

Registered User
Apr 8, 2008
17,797
424
Dark Souls II Scholar of the first Sin

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Beat all the main game bosses, I'll get around to the DLC eventually when I google how to get into them (only in a from software).

Gameplay

As you might remember, DS3 took a lot of influence from Bloodborne. Much faster pace, faster stamina regen, multi-stage unpredictable bosses. You can probably figure out by the way I said that DSII has none of those things. Very slow combat with lots of predictable movesets and no transformations. The bosses that aren't slow as molasses just spam the same attack again and again. Thats not an exaggeration, you will often see bosses use the same exact attack 10-15 times in a row.

This is easily countered by:

1. Increasing adaptibility, a stat that increases your invincibility frames on your roll (yeah, pretty stupid mechanic but you're going to need to put points into this at some point)

2. Equipping the chloranthy ring (mandatory in this game imo) and decreasing your equipment load (this increases your stamina recovery for every 10% increment, again, a bit stupid imo but important), equipping a stamina regen improving shield. The stamina recovery in this game is so slow you need all 3 of these things

Aside from the stamina regen problems, the slow combat does at least have the benefit of making ultra greatswords viable (unlike ds3) which I absolutely wrecked a lot of bosses with.

Im rambling here but overall, it was pretty fun, except for one absolutely awful area. Iron keep. The enemies aggro from across the map. I still can't make sense of it. They can't see you, is there some lore explanation?

Graphics

Its a 360 game, nothing special, dark souls has never had the best visuals.

Sound/Music

Nothing memorable in terms of music, but good sound design and voice acting.

Level Design

Probably, like others have said, the worst in the series. Lots of variety in areas but the majority are very small and uninteresting. edit: you know, I want to take this one back. The level design and variety was pretty good (outside of the lockstone system). I liked it.

6.5/10 edit: 7/10
 
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Ceremony

blahem
Jun 8, 2012
113,012
15,079
Call of Duty (2003) on PC

Most of the original Call of Duty is still fun to play through. I do get the feeling half of the Russian campaign was rushed, and the final missions were disappointingly throwaway.
7/10

Started up United Offensive tonight, and the first mission was stellar.


BTW Ceremony, if you are still doing a go around of previous gen stealth titles, I would recommend Splinter Cell: Blacklist. It doesn't have Ironside playing Sam Fisher and it isn't perfect, but I found it to have some of the best designed levels in any stealth game to date.
I'm not but I do still have COD Classic to finish so expect raptures about Captain Price's moustache now you've given me the resolve to finally finish it
 

GlassesJacketShirt

Registered User
Aug 4, 2010
11,398
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Sherbrooke
I'm not but I do still have COD Classic to finish so expect raptures about Captain Price's moustache now you've given me the resolve to finally finish it

For the record, I think United Offensive is better than the main game so far. Obviously fewer missions as an expansion pack, but definitely a blast.
 
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SniperHF

Rejecting Reports
Mar 9, 2007
42,631
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Phoenix
For the record, I think United Offensive is better than the main game so far. Obviously fewer missions as an expansion pack, but definitely a blast.

There are a lot of semi-obscure expansion packs like that where the gameplay is better than the base game. They really refine and drill down the gameplay after having that extra time with the existing game.
 
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GlassesJacketShirt

Registered User
Aug 4, 2010
11,398
4,131
Sherbrooke
Call of Duty: United Offensive Expansion (2004) on PC

Now THIS is what I'm talking about. Whereas the original had a tendency of feeling generic at times, United Offensive is pure COD through and through. Missions are consistently intense, and none of the three mini-campaigns feel rushed. Only real flaw I noticed: some of the save points fail to work at times, forcing you to go through tough stretches that were not originally intended.

Time to move on to COD2.

8.5/10
 

Oscar Acosta

Registered User
Mar 19, 2011
7,695
369
Batman - Arkham VR (PSVR)

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Not really sure what to say about this game, except the fact it's a total game-changer. PSVR itself is pretty badass, but then you fire up this game and it takes it to another level. The title menu screen itself will blow your mind as you're suddenly standing on a ledge of Gotham City Police Dept. with the bat signal behind you shining into the sky, with a real live city underneath you.

Then you get to suit up, put on the Batsuit, the cowl, grab your grapnel gun and batarangs. Take an elevator down to the Batcave and all of this is insane.

The story is really short about an hour if you know exactly what you're doing, but you generally don't theres a lot of detective work and puzzles to solve. Using the Move controllers it's a lot of fun and totally immersive. Once you finish the story mode which is nuts, you unlock Riddler challenges in every stage, giving it a new repayable mode. Truthfully, it's hard to not want to given the game is so friggin badass to begin with. Interrogating the Penguin, seeing a Nightwing fight in front of you, exploring the Batcave, being face to face with a model of Harley Quinn and trying to touch her boobs to seeing Robin flip around to get you out of a cage and then Gotham City looks amazing. I could go on and on.

It's stupid to think that this is the early game of PSVR that Rocksteady could make. This combined with Skyrim VR combat shows that they're really onto something. To me this is as significant as GTA Vice City was to open worlds in video games. It's the real deal and crazy to think what they will offer us in 5 years.


10/10
 

Frankie Spankie

Registered User
Feb 22, 2009
12,351
389
Dorchester, MA
Rock of Ages II - 6/10

The humor in this game is top notch, probably one of the funniest games I've ever played. In Rock of Ages II you basically control Atlas and have to control a boulder to destroy other prominent figures of history's castles and crush them with it. Each level has some funny cutscenes before them. There's also a defensive side as the AI tries to break down your castle and crush you. Overall, the gameplay is kind of basic but it's pretty fun. With it being pretty fun, I found it to get rather repetitive and it's not even a long game, I finished it in about 4 hours. It's pretty neat, if you enjoyed the first, give this a go. If you're interested, I would just grab the first one on sale first. It's been a while since I've played the first but from what I recall, it's very similar.
 

Ceremony

blahem
Jun 8, 2012
113,012
15,079
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Call of Duty Classic (PS3, 2003, Remastered 2009)

When Modern Warfare 2 was at the height of its trailer release cycle and generating unprecedented hype I was sucked in and decided to pay 50% extra to get the game in a steelbook, along with an art book and a code to download the original Call of Duty which had been remastered. I was mainly motivated by the promise of this early Call of Duty, which was a good thing because the art book is one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen.

I ordered the game online and expected it on the Tuesday, maybe the Monday if I was lucky and it came early like some releases did (I haven't ordered anything line ahead of release in years, game or otherwise). My insatiable need to play MW2 was exacerbated by seeing several people on my friends list playing it early. I think that was one of the first games where the little info bit on the XMB showed you where someone was in the game, showing you which level they were playing. Torture. Tuesday came. No game. Wednesday. Nothing. Thursday I'm trying to figure out where the f*** it is. I think it ended up being kept at the post office for some unnknown reason. I managed to survive one of my classes in school on the Wednesday by covering my ears and going LA LA LA LA LA while one of my friends tried to tell me what happened in it.

Anyway, some point after saving the world I fired up COD Classic where it all began and actually saved the world this time. And now, eight years later, I decided to try it on Veteran. Given the hideous, industry-ruining thing Call of Duty has become it's interesting to see an old game like this which is just a straight-forward WW2 shooter with the sorts of things you'd expect. There is a multiplayer mode, but perhaps unsurprisingly I couldn't find any games.

The only other WW2 COD I've played is World at War, so I was comparing various parts of it with that as I was playing. Functionally, it's a good remake. The auto-aim can be annoying (I was playing on Veteran leave me alone) if you're trying to track someone who's moving. The weapon switching system is awkward as pressing triangle cycles through your two weapons, pistol and grenade, which is very annoying if you get caught out of ammo and need to switch right away. Meleeing people doesn't really work. Grenades don't work either, you can't cook them and the fuse lasts about ten seconds. And you'll be hit if you're even in sight of where you threw it. And another thing, if you have a scoped rifle the ammo for the non-scoped versions you find doesn't count. Sure, I'm using special bullets that have the edges filed off to fit them in under the mount. Great.

One of the bigger problems with this console port is the mounted weapon controls. If you're familiar with the game, there's a Russian mission where you have to defend Pavlov's House, which is actually a thing which you should look up. You need to use anti-tank rifles to destroy tanks that approach the building, but it's nearly impossible to fine-tune your aim because of the controls. The best way I can describe them is being overly sensitive and unresponsive at the same time. I say it's one of the bigger problems because of how quickly you need to react on higher difficulties, it's only really on that occasion you're in any danger. But on the way there you'll be putting up with the annoying checkpoint system which sometimes saves the game right as you're being shot at. I get that games were harder in the old days but there's times where difficulty seems much more like bad design.

I always enjoy how in WW2 games the best weapons are always stolen from the Nazis as soon as you kill one. Partly because you'll actually be able to find ammo for them as you progress, partly because if you actually think an M1 Garand is worth keeping or that Thompson which feels like it's made of plastic you shouldn't be playing shooters. Maybe it's by way of an apology to modern Germany, sorry you have to relive this piece of your history but look, you had the best weapons! Still lost though, because you had to. Whoops.

At least there are moments in the game, technologically limited as it is, where there's still a real sense of the horror of what's being depicted. The usual quotes which follow your death are at least from (some) figures who would have been describing this war and they go together well. Even the Hemingway ones. The picture at the start is of the Russians landing at a dock before re-taking Stalingrad. The boat's getting bombed, the Commissars are shooting people trying to jump off, them once you're on the pier your boat gets destroyed completely. Then you have to run up a hill towards gun emplacements without a weapon. Considering the lack of detail in the landscape (this is only in ruined urban areas, the areas with grass and snow in them look much more vivid) the game makes good use of what assets it has to create a real sense of scale and... action. Perhaps that's the wrong word but there's just so much stuff happening it can be overwhelming, which I suppose it sort of the point.

It's a shame that Call of Duty as it is now wilfully tries to throw away moments like that. Or that when it tries to recapture them it fails so miserably. As much as it's not something I'd hold up now as a good shooter (although I do feel health packs should make a return) there's no denying its tightness and functionality, even fifteen years after it was released. I'm glad I saw the origin of Captain Price, even if the useless tashy :eek::eek::eek::eek: never managed a kill on that f***ing battleship I spent about four hours in. I'm glad I got to play it eventually and even glad I persevered through its bullshit on Veteran. And really, who doesn't like killing Nazis and raising a red flag over the Reichstag?
 

Frankie Spankie

Registered User
Feb 22, 2009
12,351
389
Dorchester, MA
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider - 9/10

Let me start with saying I love the Dishonored games. It's really more of the same from Dishonored 1 & 2 and I'm not complaining at all. The level design is probably the best level design in years (in all the Dishonored games really.) It's like a breath of fresh air and really encourages you to play the game your way. I wish there were more games like that. If you like the Dishonored games, give Death of the Outsider a go as well. It adds more to the story line and adds 5 new missions to keep things fresh. It was pretty short, I finished it in about 6 hours, but for the price, it's about on pace for the full release titles. With it being on the shorter side, they didn't really do too much with upgrades which I actually like more but I can see why others wouldn't like it too much. It makes games feel too grindy going with too many upgrades IMO.
 

No Fun Shogun

34-38-61-10-13-15
May 1, 2011
56,092
12,752
Illinois
Just Cause 3 - A wonder to just wander around and wreck havoc across Medici, but as soon as you get to the actual story missions I found myself just frustrated by how much more confined the game felt. That was especially the case where you were stuck doing air missions and it was immediately obvious that the game had pretty bad controls that were counted by the AI's intelligence going way down to compensate for it.

Still would recommend to any open world fan, but didn't strike me like Just Cause 2 did. Sunk a lot of hours into it though, so I couldn't give it a bad grade.

Solid B.
 

Unholy Diver

Registered User
Oct 13, 2002
19,031
2,955
in the midnight sea
Which one? The reboot?

I have wanted to try that one out. The original was pretty fun. I understand this reboot is completely different.


Yeah the one from last year, I never played the original but I think this just shared the name and was otherwise very different


It's a good game, great atmosphere. Worth a play
 

KingBran

Three Eyed Raven
Apr 24, 2014
6,436
2,284
Yeah the one from last year, I never played the original but I think this just shared the name and was otherwise very different


It's a good game, great atmosphere. Worth a play
Thanks. Almost got it on sale recently. Might have to grab it and add it to my neverending list of backlog.
 

Mikeaveli

Registered User
Sep 25, 2013
5,819
1,795
Edmonton, AB
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch)

I really enjoyed playing this. Some of the best exploration in any adventure game that I've played. Being able to climb virtually any surface gives a great sense of freedom in the huge map. The combat is very simple but I still found it enjoyable, and the game looks incredible even with the Switch's limited graphical capabilities. The only real problems I have with it are that the story is pretty uninteresting, the game is too easy, and there are some performance issues.

8/10

Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)

As a big fan of Sunshine I was looking forward to this but I'm pretty disappointed. Mario feels awesome to control in this game but it's just so boring. Doing the same mundane tasks to hear the same "You Got a Moon!" jingle literally hundreds of times isn't my idea of a fun video game. I beat the main story and have zero desire to go back and collect the other 700+ moons I'm missing.

4/10

I've almost beaten Persona 5 as well and I'll post my thoughts here once I'm done that.
 
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Bring Bak Damphousse

Fire Bergevin...into the Sun
May 27, 2002
7,302
2,013
Canada
Resident evil 7 (ps4)

8.5/10

Loved this game, it actually beat out Resident evil 4 as my new favourite in the series. Finally a return to the “I really dont want to open that door” of the earlier games. My only issue with it, was attempting it on madhouse difficulty, to pick up my platinum trophy I have no issue dying, but on the attic fight against Mia, I’m forced to sit through the cut scenes every time I die. Why cant it just start me at the fight? Died twice and gave up, the frustration of having to grab the fuse, encounter mia cutscene and than running around the attic collecting ammo again and again and again. Might throw in the towel on madhouse.
 

NameInUse

Registered User
Sep 27, 2017
67
63
Elex -PS4

It was frustrating at times at the start, but that made your guy's progression to a total badass that much more satisfying. Overall: good story, good length (my last save clocked at 76 hours), few bugs, and ok gameplay (it controls like Gothic and Risen)... I give it 8/10.
 
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