Completed Left Behind, pretty good. The chase at the very end, although linear, was really good fun. It wrapped up more of the story. I thought parts with Ellie and Riley were great, developing the relationship really well. The photo booth was great fun and that whole part offered some light hearted relief from caving the infected's heads in. You knew something was bound to happen Spoiler I thought it was going to be when Ellie closed her eyes . The arcade machine part was pretty cool too. Reviews said it was short and yup, it's a game you wish was longer, that's for sure. The whole 'Last of Us' experience surpasses Uncharted 2 in my books. So polished, great playing environment, great sound (a distant clicker noise sets you on edge). I'm smitten. What a fanboy.
My deepest respect for that - I ragequit after the second chapter on nightmare difficulty. Spoiler The part where you have no gun, only your flashlight and have to fend off all those baddies while the AI cannot aim for s*it - yeah f*ck that part. The atmosphere is great and the story is nice if you like Stephen King, but I just couldn't be bothered. Dishonored is great albeit a bit too easy. Go for a good guy stealth run first, much more fun!
RAGE (id software) This game was stunningly beautiful. The atmospheric lighting and complex buildings combined with id Tech 5 engine made for some really jaw dropping scenery. They did a fantastic job of creating a strong contrast between the different factions, the style of the buildings and the way they had been crafted was clearly very well thought out, from the rancid blood filled hallways of the bandits to the musty mechanical tinkerings of the gearheads or the sharp futuristic citadels and plasma weaponry of the Authority. Along the story skirmishes into these enemy strongholds gave a refreshing glimpse into a new and interesting area to explore. Carefully crafted and intricate maps with different architecture and props ensured that the main missions didn't become dull and repetitive. It was a shame, then, that vsync issues have plagued many players. A patch released on steam reduced the headache inducing rips across the screen but some fiddling within the GPU driver console seemed to be a necessary step in eliminating its nauseous presence. The racing aspect of the game felt a little out of sorts with the quake4 style sneaking around indoors and shooting some rather impressively tactical AI. While the races didn't seem to serve much purpose other than allowing you to upgrade your vehicles, it was a fun 'minigame' with which to take a break from the story missions. These upgrades tended to be pretty useful as most of the missions involved some amount of driving across the wasteland where you're guaranteed to be attacked by some buggy driving bandits with skilled rocket dodging moves - something I never quite managed to replicate. There are also various jumps to hit while roaming, THPS style. But even though bandit kills were rewarded by various NPCs, their unrelenting presence was very unwelcome while trying to get some sick air out in the rocky deserts. The controls had clearly been designed for console users, and little to no effort had been made in translating this to a sensible keyboard layout. The mouse sensitivity was way too high and the unconfigurable mouse acceleration seemed to be set to 9bajillion. Within the game I was a big fan of the different ammunition types and array of weapons and tools that I could use to my advantage. But selecting what I wanted was complex enough when standing around and almost impossible while engaged in a firefight. Selecting the wrong ammo by mistake and having to reload three times in a row while under enemy fire was frustrating enough to just stick to running around manically with the shotgun blowing heads off and point blank. The construction menu was much simpler than the fallout series, and allowed the construction of some pretty neat items without having to find 50 different unique components. I like that they tried to work in some missions that required you to use them. Unfortunately the enemies were too smart to just stand there while I drove a remote controlled car strapped with C4 up to their feet. The AI in general was good, enemies hid behind cover, and wouldn't come out so long as you were shooting in their direction, instead shooing over the top and around obstacles. They were pretty snappy at running away from grenades, requiring you to pre-time the fuse accurately. While struggling to kill some guys holding shields I tried throwing a grenade at them, but they turned to face the grenade, shielding themselves from the blast. Thankfully their plasma shields couldn't stand up to an EMP blast, revealing another great aspect of the game - the animations. The story was interesting enough, I felt a certain reminiscence of hl2's tale of a mute loner joining a growing resistance against an authoritarian technocracy that was engaged in questionable experimentation and weaponisation of humans. But the implementation of this was very different - both for the better and the worse. Some of the characters had strong personalities, and I was often asked to take part in some form of genocide towards a group of people I didn't hold much animosity towards. Since this wasn't an RPG I didn't have much choice but to slaughter my way through hoards of gearheads, swearing at me in Russian as I interrupted their diligent work operating a powerplant... the product of which they were already providing us with. There were a few boss battles thrown in throughout the missions, which made fun and interesting challenges, albeit a little unexpected. I feel like that's the id software way - to throw in a few massively OP enemies just because they can. This led me to great disappointment when the ultimate battle was against a hoard of "super" mutants, who patiently waited to only attack in groups of two or three. Inside the incredible architecture of the Authority stronghold, this might have been a fierce battle but with two heavily armed robot arthropods at my side and the unstoppable plasma gatling gun that I had just been gifted resting firmly in my grip, they never made it more than a few steps before being reduced to goo and dissolving into the floor. After pressing a few buttons this was followed immediately by the end game cutscene, after which you were sent back to the main menu unable to return to attempt to 100% the game. tl;dr Beautiful game, great shooting action and scenery. Not so sure about racing aspect. Slightly disappointing ending and terrible PC controls. 8/10
The last game I completed was Mark of the Ninja, really awesome platformer. Love the responsiveness of the controls and the ability to complete levels in different ways. I've still got about 5 games in my backlog of purchased games so I'll be off to play those soon.
Haha, i have about 100 games in my backlog (Thanks steam sales!) and i fear I wont ever get through them!
Metal Gear Rising - 9/10 could do with a few extra levels imo but its been designed to be played multiple times. I still get goosebumps at hte games OST and the bosses are brilliant. I wish Platinum would release more games our way.
Wolfenstein: New Order. It was fun, ready to play the alternate timeline. Wish that weapon scaling took place when changing FOV.
Darkness 2 Not bad got it from gmg £3.19 with the 20p credit on my account. Considered Grid 2 but Grid Autosport seems like codemasters saying this is how we should have done it.
Doom 3 BFG edition, I was going to start the original release that i have but got the bfg edition for 99p and thought i'll do that on instead. It helped having the flash light mounted on your shoulder instead of either having your gun or the flash light in hand. Generally quite a fun game and i was happy with the sound which sometimes made for a slightly creepy experience.
Antichamber. Bought this in the Steam Sale (it's been on my wishlist for some time). There's a sprawling, interlinked map of corridors and chambers, each of which contains a puzzle. Not every puzzle is soluble at first (sometimes you need certain items), but you can go back to the hub and teleport to another puzzle if you get stuck. There's echoes of Fez in exploring the extent of the map and finding all the secrets, which I really enjoyed. If there's one criticism its that the game doesn't do much to teach you about the core concepts. This lack of hand-holding means that experimentation is very much the order of the day. It's not focus-grouped like AAA titles, which can be frustrating but so very rewarding once you work out what you're supposed to do. The final sequence, where you have to put everything you've learned into practice, is some of the best puzzling I've played since Portal. It's well worth picking up.
Finally got round to playing through Bully Scholarship Edition, must have bought and installed it Christmas sale before last on Steam, had only played it for about 45 minutes but my save had gone. Decided on Thursday to play through it and finished it yesterday. I decided against doing 100%, just did all the yellow star missions, races etc as everything else seemed a little pointless with their being no achievements on Steam. I got all the classes out the way by about halfway through my playthrough, that gave me time to do whatever I wanted and whenever I wanted with no police in the town etc chasing you down for truancy. Pretty good game, enjoyed it start to finish. 7/10
Crysis 3: Yep, it's been over a year since i last played it on 360, but i finally completed it this evening, and my, what a dull, drab ending it was. Having said that, still not completed Crysis, Better do that at some point then. Sam
Just finished Sniper Elite V2, decent enough game, controls with your main rifle are great but the other weapons a big loose open crosshair made the stealth bits like the museum a chew on or where you get rushed by the enemy and have to fend them off with Thompson / MP40 etc. Still, I enjoyed the game, played through start to finish since Sunday so it held my interest.
