Last game you finished and your thoughts

Crimson Shroud, this morning. Once I'd gotten into the mechanics of the game it really blossomed into something special. Hopefully something along similar lines but more lengthy is on the cards - it fell in a little over seven hours, with a pretty dark twist at the end. That said, I did use a walkthrough, and I might stick with it for the New Game +. It's been good fun, overall, so I recommend it to fans of the genre. Enemies of the genre will take against it like a dog would take against a cat delivering the post.

ZeroJones wrote:

That said, I did use a walkthrough,

People have finally finished walkthroughs for this? Links please.

The Last of Us, on Playstation 3. Stunning game, very well paced, not too long, leaves you wanting more. I'd guess if you own a PS3 you've already played it or intend to play, so I don't need to say a lot more.

beemoh wrote:

ZeroJones wrote:

That said, I did use a walkthrough,

People have finally finished walkthroughs for this? Links please.

Ah. Sort of. There's a brief spoiler-free walkthrough on the GameFAQs board for the game, here. To top it all off, it's actually incorrect (or I found it to be so); in Gerseym Waterway you should get a mage to spawn, then immediately target the skeleton to get a skeleton knight to appear. That gives you the item you need.

Good luck!

Star Fox 64 3D: A cracking game whose shortness makes it ideal for filling and refilling the score table during a long flight (I flew from USA and played this until it died, then I listened to Frank Sinatra and fell asleep. Planes are fun  ). I want more of this foxy chap on my 3DS/Wii U. Make it happen.

Completely agree there, NintenDUCK! More genuine StarFox would be grand.

Last night I beat Cloudberry Kingdom's Story Mode (thankfully the game ended after Chapter 6, not Chapter 7). This was a good thing as I was reaching the point of giving up on it. You may have played those levels in Mega Man games where the platforms appear and disappear in sequence, and you either need to be lucky or memorise the sequence? That's what CK had settled into being, so I naturally reached boiling point on more than one occasion. Thankfully, by 'pretending' to be bad at it, you could get a level or two where the difficulty dropped. In short, its gimmick was also its limitation. Oh, and the story adds nothing to it.

Some of the other modes are good and I love the ideas that it threw at you with wild abandon - but I am so glad it's over!

New Super Mario 2. All I could think was 'meh, that it?' but then I assume a proper end boss scrap is available should I choose to discover everything in the game. Which I'm not sure I can be bothered doing  

The game itself was fun (the Ghost Houses are becoming the worst thing about these NSMB games - they're utterly hateful) and the platforming shizz sturdy if now becoming predictable. Only got it for seven quid during a Morrisons clearout though. Is it worth that? Is it worth more? Hmmm *rubs chin(s)*

Rayman Legends - the most fun I've had with a game this year in single player, basically shows how a 2d platformer should be done & the music levels are silly fantastic.

Dead Island.

Bag of crap on a technical level, but still compelling, if overlong.

Rayman Legends some would say I'm not done but I've seen the credits, played for 15hrs that's enough for me.

Journey, finally got a round to playing it last night. Amazing 1 hour gaming, I use the term gaming loosely as it's more art then a game, just how it uses the visuals, lighting, sound (VLS) and everything. Some would say gameplay is dull as basically you go forward for a hour, but as I said more art then game the VLS are part of the gameplay. Of course some would say art has meaning, this doesn't, I did feel emotion towards my character near the end of the game. The game is suppose to be about Life I’m not sure on that but still it was nice to play something that tries something different Understand why it was so acclaimed.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (iOS)

After the DS voting thread, no less. It's hard, summing up my views of this, because reviewing it as a game wouldn't reflect awfully well on it. The graphics are all right and the music's pretty great; but it's tremendously slow-paced, the logic can be iffy, there are more than a few tedious wanders around the environments trying to find someone or something who may or may not be signposted (there's a particular moment in the third case with the stage assistant), and there are a couple of mis-attributions of comments. (And a few grammar and spelling mistakes, mark you!)

Treating it as an interactive novel, and suddenly everything gets much better. Almost all of the characters are well-developed (Edgeworth   ) and the breakdown animations are treats to watch. The dialogue is superb for the most part: I've laughed several times (mostly at Gumshoe), and the ending of the fifth case made my eyes a little watery.

Oh, and as to the iOS port: it's not ideal. The graphical updates are actually pretty good, with only Larry Butz looking noticeably worse than his GBA/DS original, and the increased portability is handy; but the final case, RftA (I see what you did there, translators), has a few problems. (Not like trying to shoehorn DS functionality in wasn't a bad a idea anyway...) The dust doesn't work as you might expect, joining the dots has to be done in a set order or it won't count, and there's a bug at one point that mucks up all the evidence descriptions. So if you can find the DS originals, go for them instead.

I'm planning to wolf down the next two games in the trilogy. No game has gripped me, made me unable to do anything else until the end of the level, in the same way for ages. If you haven't played it yet, you owe it to yourself. Even on the iOS, I'd give it 9/10 (or an objective 8/10).

It's a shame you couldn't pick up the DS originals, but given how difficult that is and their price you did well. Definitely agree about the iOS port visuals, though I did find out that character art is lifted from the original drawn portraits, but it just doesn't look 'right'. And the framerate is a joke, but luckily that doesn't impact the game given its genre.

Mia's not great either, but the same goes for original DS art. I just don't think she was drawn that well. As for Officer Meekins...  

Tried looking in a couple of second-hand stores for Apollo Justice and Edgeworth Investigations yesterday: no luck. I suspect those two aren't going to be easy...

Wonder 101, this second. Good game a bit to drawn out, did I really need to fight one someone 3 or 4 times. Final part is epic and silly at the same time. as balla gave a score I will as well 78/100.

Phoenix Wright: Justice for All (iOS)

What is it with the Japanese and their whip-happy women?  What finally broke the immersion for me wasn't the psychic powers or the channelling: it was Franziska getting away with GBH, over and over again, in a courtroom.  To the point of knocking Phoenix out.  The judge even mentions "assault and battery" about someone else, for crying out loud.

With her whip and her tedious foolery rants, Franziska joins a cast of really annoying female characters.  Maggey, Miney, Lotta, Regina, Oldbag (oh God Oldbag.  The trouble with characters that are meant to be annoying is that... THEY ARE), AA to a lesser extent...  Pearl is at least holding that end up a bit, being adorable and insightful simultaneously; but when Mia, who has only two distinguishing traits, is channelled through Pearl's body, even though she's physically then an adult, it still feels a bit wrong.  (There are annoying male characters too, don't get me wrong.  Galactica...)

As for the gameplay, the Psyche-locks are quite a nice addition, and everything else is much as the last game, except without the shock of the new, and with less Edgeworth... apart from the last case.  Oh goodness, the last case.  Franziska takes a back seat, someone much better takes a front seat, the stakes are high, the villains are brilliant...  The game is worth struggling through, for that last case alone.  Phillips.  Even with Oldbag involved...

It's an 8/10 (or objective 7/10) from me.  Just as gripping as its predecessor, although not as new.

Ending spoiler:

So... guess what's next on my list?

Er... can't think, Balla.

Last night I put Rayman Legends to bed. What a game! It just demanded to be played, almost to its own detriment - it's not all that long and feels less challenging than its predecessor. Having said that, it is more fun, and varied, and has more to do, and more to unlock (though I wish the treasure chest chases had returned properly). Although I still enjoyed Arkham City that little bit more, it's cemented as the second best Wii U game I've played.

No Prize For Guessing Which Game Comes Next (iOS)

...All of you who voted for AA over this, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Brilliant, brilliant characters and story, as well as a great way to tie up the entire trilogy. So many questions answered. And no Lotta or Oldbag! An objective 9/10!

Oh, and the trilogy gets an 8/10. The best games I've played in so so long. They won't appeal to everyone, given that they're slow and almost gameplay-free and have some strange logic sometimes; but they'll appeal to everyone who enjoys reading, especially whodunnits, and well-written characters. The second game is a little slower, I'll admit, but it's definitely worth persevering through.

And although the iOS trilogy does have a few bugs and mistakes, the glitch where holding down the "forward" button speeds up the text makes up for it!

Glad somebody agrees with me about T&T being the best! I was planning on replaying the lot of them after the DS thread but then I realised the first one is down south after I tried to get my mum to play it a couple of years a go. Bring on Christmas I suppose...

Grand Theft Auto V. This is excellent. Everything I could have hoped for, lived up to the hype and then some. Just waiting for Online to launch, where things will be taken up a notch.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

Shanks is wrong: the last case is great.  Sure, I looked at a guide to find one thing (I'd forgotten that one could examine), but the rest was all me.  I thought the tells were a nice touch too.  Good selection of characters, a nice couple of cameos, and only the one real filler case.  (Oh, and don't Wiki minor characters before you finish the game.)  The only disappointment is the main character being nowhere near as good as Phoenix Wright: I'm glad he's back in business for AA5.  

I'd put it somewhere between T&T and the original, I think.  Closer to the original though. 8/10, therefore.  Could have been a nine if the main character was less "spunky".

...Miles Edgeworth hasn't arrived yet.

Whilst the tells in Apollo Justice were a good idea, I felt that they slowed the game down dramatically.
 
Anyway, yesterday I saw off Layton Brothers: Mystery Room. It's all a bit weird: there's only one Layton brother and the mystery room is crime reconstruction lab that the Layton only child runs. This leads to a thin imitation of Ace Attorney, with scouting for clues and asking questions of witnesses. In an effort to be light on spoilers, I will say that although it all starts off rather jolly, darkness descends by the middle of the second pack of cases and it felt somewhat out of kilter.
 
It looks lovely and sounds OK, but there is never any tension as it is impossible to fail. The worst crime LB:MR commits is that it needn't have the Layton name at all. Unrecommended.

GTA V - brilliant stuff and maybe the best story out of any of the GTA games, the online is out soon too.     

The Wonderful 101

Thought to myself last night I'd finish this before Wind Waker came out. I ended up staying up until 5am and now I'm too tired to do anything ...

Within the last hour I conquered SteamWorld Dig (A Fistful Of Dirt, if you want its fromage-y subtitle). Having seen people rave about it on Twitter, here and in ONM, I decided to shell out (actually, I downloaded it at the Nintendo Zone point in Waterloo station, dontchaknow). After the first hour I thought "What's all the fuss about?" but after that I couldn't put it down, figuratively. Though the story is slight and your A button will take a hammering, I can only recommend it. It's a fun and charming Metroidvania with a beautiful ending - though, to be fair, it's a trick they should have pulled much more often, considering how great it is.

I do need to get Steamworld but I always forget about the eShop

I 100%'d Rayman Legends last night, which left me slightly disappointed with a lack of much reward for it. Ah well it was fun whilst it lasted.