Last week, I beat Mario Bros. 3. It was the first game I ever owned back in the day and I finally beat it. The only problem is I feel guilty after using a bunch of restore points to save scum. Kinda feels like I tainted any sense of victory I should have... but then again the only time I saw someone beat it as a kid was with a game genie.
Still, I'm going to keep replaying until I don't suck.
Beat Deus Ex: Mankind Divided yesterday. Was pretty damn good, probably my favorite Deus Ex game. Gameplay is improved, augmentations feel great, visuals looks great, level design is superb (Golem City blew my mind, so fucking good), soundtrack is pretty cool,writing is leagues above the crap that was HR, side quests are pretty fun, augmentation social conflict fit in much better with the Illuminati conspiracy conflict than it did in HR, and Prague is a really good hub to explore. Main issues with the game come from the writing:
They didn't retcon the ending of HR totally (they actually expand upon Eliza being at the end to direct the player towards the four buttons which really annoyed me)
The beginning is very jarring if you just finished HR and there's a bit they don't explain (How Jensen got signed on with TF29, how he got signed on with the Juggernaut Collective, what happened after Adam pushed the magic signal button at the end of HR, how he survived the explosion, etc. I'm guessing the first two examples are explained in some book or comic)
Ending feels a little bit like a cliffhanger despite wrapping up the main conflict pretty well.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune its the first PS3 title I have beaten, I completely missed out on this console in favor of the Wii and 360. I completely regret that decision.
I managed to beat Wizardry 8 for the third time. First was with a party for a modded version, second was an all-Rawulf party. This third one however was a party consisting of myself and other Kiwis such as Jaimas and Ntwadumela.
Got all the endings in 999. Including the true one.
I was pretty confused by a few things initially, but after a bit of thinking and retrospect, the story actually makes a lot of sense. At least in the context of what was going on. Gotta say, I'm impressed.
The final puzzle I ended up having to look up unfortunately.
I've been marathoning through the entire Assassin's Creed series on the Xbox 360 for the past few weeks. I've played through:
Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed II
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Assassin's Creed: Revelations
Assassin's Creed III
Early this morning (5:00am), I just completed AC3. Just finishing up a few side quests right now and then I'm off to AC4: Black Flag, all installed and ready to go.
I don't know why I'm playing these games though. Most of these games I bought for very cheap from yard sales and eBay. I guess I am picking up everything I skipped over the years when I fell victim to a serious World of Warcraft addiction. I'm also getting a huge e-peen e-rection over those DANK Xbox achievement points.
Overall, I guess I'm doing the video game equivalent of Netflix-binging. It's comfy as fuck, and I got a shitload of other Xbox 360 games that I'm playing concurrently.
Great game. Probably my favorite in the series. (Although I haven't played the first one)
Story felt way more personal and emotional due to the role of Prince Lyle, it fleshed out a lot of stuff that was brought up in the last game, the characters were quite a bit more memorable, I love the little quality of life improvements they added since the last game. (Recorded conversations, what is essentially an auto-map) and the soundtrack is amazing.
Unfortunately, I slightly spoiled the good ending for myself when looking up how to acquire it, so some of the emotional impact that I would have had when I found Lyn was brought back to life was lost on me. But still, I felt satisfied with it. (Corny narrator aside)
The King's Field series as a whole are a bunch of great and underrated games, and I feel that anyone who's a fan of the Souls series should check these games out. If only to experience FromSoft's roots.
Marathoned through Megaman 1 2 and 3 on the Legacy Collection.
Was extremely disappointed to learn they fixed the yellow devil pause trick, and I probably tackled the bosses in 3 in a completely wrong order since I pretty much had to use the buster on every boss.
Have no idea why some people think 3 is the best in the series, 2 is without a doubt a way better game, so much so that the best parts of 3 to me were fighting the bosses with the same weapons as the bosses from 2.
Beaten Salt and Sanctuary for a second time. Made a back up save before the final boss simply because I find the Nameless God to a rather fun fight. There's no sort of irritating gimmicks like with the Witch of the Lake.
Jade Empire
This game completely boggles my mind for all the wrong reasons. Why the FUCK is this never talked about? The setting is cool as hell, the story feels a lot like KotOR's (mostly bad thing for me, but a lot of people like that story), companions are pretty fun, quests are pretty fun, combat isn't half bad, the music is decent, it actually attempts to deal with morally grey decisions unlike later Bioware games, and did I mention the setting is just cool as hell? Like fuck, I don't even know what you'd categorize the technology in this game as.
Steampunk? Doesn't run off steam, but design reminds me of it sometimes. Magicpunk? I don't even know if that's a thing. Chinkpunk? Shit is just plain cool, haven't seen it anywhere else. I'd say it reminds me of Arcanum a little bit, but that game is just unplayable for me so I can only base that off of the 5 minutes I attempted to play it.
So where's the talk about it? Why do other old-Bioware games get so much discussion and this is an afterthought?
It was actually pretty recently, but Enderal - the game conversion mod for Skyrim.
It really blew the original game out of the water for me.
The landscape was great (if not hardware straining), I actually cared about the characters, the changes it made in general were pretty well thought-out.
Even though I almost exclusively did the main quest, it still took me a little under 70 hours to complete (possibly owing to the removal of fast travel - myriads and teleport scrolls help though).
Probably my only real complaint is a lot of Skyrim mods don't work with it, although some modders are starting to make compatibility patches. It also doesn't use any DLC assets, which I guess is great if you only own the base game.
I'm not much of a story critic, but I liked it. It was an interesting take on the "Chosen One" story type, and the lampshading was really well done. Even if you didn't catch the significance of a story hint at the time it was introduced, you can't help but admire the subtlety when it is explained.
The only thing that racks my brain a bit is that Nehrimese commander (I forget his name) who becomes one of the Big Bads later on. He was his own brand of crazy, but the way he tried bargaining with Tealor to stop fighting the High Ones and he'd "stop senselessly murdering everyone", even though the Cleansing would just kill everyone anyway - or "ascend" them rather. His psyche was otherwise dismissable as a barbaric war-chief, but his sheer resolve just makes ya think.
Now I'm just debating on 100%ing or playing back through the previous SureAI titles.
It was fun, Gen 5 is great in general and the lack of old Pokemon until the endgame is both an incentive, and helps the game feel fresher than some of the others.
