What game did you finish today?

[Springblossom]

Finally redownloaded and finished Black Mesa. I feel like it did a really good job of modernizing and expanding the original Half-Life, and I'm looking forward to the Xen levels when/if they get released.

 

[LordDarkrai]

I finished Rogue Legacy and started new game plus. God, its a rough game that takes some time to get much too, but its a lot of fun. This could be one of my new favorite games so far.

 

[c-no]

Return to Castle Wolfenstein. As much as I hate how deadly enemies get, I did like doing the last stealth segment of the game. Also kinda surprised at how easy the final boss was compared to a few others but then again, I had some strong weapons on me by the time I fought him.

 

[RetardBus]

Last night I officially got 100% in Hotline Miami. I got every single achievement. As insanely fun as it was, I have to say, this game really loses it's replay value once you've got all the masks, got the secret ending, and overall have done everything there is to do in the game. The sequel has been on it's way for awhile, so I hope it has a lot more replay value than the first one.

 

[Watcher]

Just beat Jedi Outcast on it's Jedi Knight difficulty.

Still an epic game though it had a lot of bullshit moments. Like the last level in particular was a big puzzle level with an overpowered final boss, who you could kill super quickly by collapsing a pillar ontop of him

 

[Kamen Rider Black RX]

I just beat Tomba 1. I never was good at it as a kid (guess it's stupid to rent games when I didn't own a memory card). Going to start on the sequel tomorrow.

 

[Overcast]

I just beat Tomba 1. I never was good at it as a kid (guess it's stupid to rent games when I didn't own a memory card). Going to start on the sequel tomorrow.

I should play that game again. It's been YEARS since I last played it.

OT: Just completed Spyro 2. Minus the Skill Points which I don't really care about getting.

 

[Watcher]

OT: Just completed Spyro 2. Minus the Skill Points which I don't really care about getting.

Getting the skillpoints is interesting because it doesn't tie into 100% completion

But you still get something out of it. Which is an epilogue that shows a slideshow with what happens to all the characters after the game.

I didn't know about it until like 14 years after the game released.

In a lot of games with "skill points" they tend to unlock the coolest things. Like I remember in the Tony Hawk you'd unlock almost all the NPCs in the game to free skate as. Including random bystanders and stuff. In Ratchet and Clank I remember you could unlock cheats for obtaining skillpoints.

 

[Overcast]

Getting the skillpoints is interesting because it doesn't tie into 100% completion

But you still get something out of it. Which is an epilogue that shows a slideshow with what happens to all the characters after the game.

I didn't know about it until like 14 years after the game released.

In a lot of games with "skill points" they tend to unlock the coolest things. Like I remember in the Tony Hawk you'd unlock almost all the NPCs in the game to free skate as. Including random bystanders and stuff. In Ratchet and Clank I remember you could unlock cheats for obtaining skillpoints.

Oh, I'm aware of the slideshow, I just didn't feel it was enough of an incentive to go after all the skill points.

Strangely enough though, I kinda like going after the some of skill points in the Ratchet and Clank games.

But yeah, usually I'm not much of a completionist when it comes to a lot of the games I play. If it's a platformer, which usually encourages finding absolutely everything, then I usually go for it. But when it comes to RPG's or large open world games, I just don't feel like it.

 

[ordinarycough]

So I finished Season 2 of The Walking Dead.

Spoiler

I enjoyed the hell out of the game, and it was much bleaker and more hopeless than the first season by a wide margin. I think playing as Clementine worked.

But I can't help feel I fucked up and picked an ending that isn't necessarily bad, but somewhat unsatisfying. I think it might partially because there were month long gaps in between when I played the episodes and because of that I'd forget a lot of small details in between each episode. I plan on playing back through the whole season as a whole soon so I suspect I'll end up feeling better about it.

 

[Springblossom]

YEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

 

[Overcast]

Just beaten Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

An interesting game. Kind of annoyed at the cliffhanger ending though. Oh well, looks like I'll have to play Soul Reaver 2 one of these days.

Until then though, I'm going to be playing Blood Omen so I can learn more about Kain's rise to power.

 

[Watcher]

Just beaten Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

An interesting game. Kind of annoyed at the cliffhanger ending though. Oh well, looks like I'll have to play Soul Reaver 2 one of these days.

Until then though, I'm going to be playing Blood Omen so I can learn more about Kain's rise to power.

It's worth noting that Soul Reaver's cliffhanger ending was made because of how much content was cut from the game.

The original ending of the game involved Raziel having to kill his final brother Turel (who doesn't appear in the game and who's boss fight was recycled for the Sarafan tomb guardian). And getting the ability to ascend this large smokestack (which was also cut) to Kain's stronghold (which was also cut) where you'd have this final confrontation with him. The player would have to absorb Ariel's soul to augment the soul reaver to be powerful enough to kill him (which would turn it yellow). Upon which Raziel would kill Kain and absorb his soul. Giving him his final ability which allowed him to phase between the material and spectral realm at will (which was cut but restored through cheats/trainers). And would turn his reaver red. Then the player's final objective given to him by the Elder God would be to go back to the Silenced Cathedral. But a bunch of new enemies would spawn on the way there from Kain's stronghold and you'd need to take advantage of the shift at will power. And upon which you'd have to climb up to this previously inaccessible section and open the pipes of the Silenced Cathedral and kill all the vampires in Nosgoth with this concentrated sound burst. Which was actually what the Silenced Cathedral was built for.

All of this was sorta left in the game in an unfinished state. The Ariel and Kain Reavers are still in the game (and are usable with cheats). The endings, the confrontation with Kain and Ariel and the Elder God's speech toward the end were all left on the disk fully voice acted but not implemented.

The devs later stated they overdeveloped the game a little and it was too ambitious to make a single full complete game during the time Eidos gave them. Which was what prompted them to make Soul Reaver 2. However that game was made in significantly less time and is arguably not as good as SR1.

Blood Omen meanwhile was always designed to be a stand-alone game and it's two endings reflect that. It's also my favorite in the series due to it's quality of writing, depth in the world and the amount of hidden content that's available to find.

 

[Overcast]

It's worth noting that Soul Reaver's cliffhanger ending was made because of how much content was cut from the game.

The original ending of the game involved Raziel having to kill his final brother Turel (who doesn't appear in the game and who's boss fight was recycled for the Sarafan tomb guardian). And getting the ability to ascend this large smokestack (which was also cut) to Kain's stronghold (which was also cut) where you'd have this final confrontation with him. The player would have to absorb Ariel's soul to augment the soul reaver to be powerful enough to kill him (which would turn it yellow). Upon which Raziel would kill Kain and absorb his soul. Giving him his final ability which allowed him to phase between the material and spectral realm at will (which was cut but restored through cheats/trainers). And would turn his reaver red. Then the player's final objective given to him by the Elder God would be to go back to the Silenced Cathedral. But a bunch of new enemies would spawn on the way there from Kain's stronghold and you'd need to take advantage of the shift at will power. And upon which you'd have to climb up to this previously inaccessible section and open the pipes of the Silenced Cathedral and kill all the vampires in Nosgoth with this concentrated sound burst. Which was actually what the Silenced Cathedral was built for.

All of this was sorta left in the game in an unfinished state. The Ariel and Kain Reavers are still in the game (and are usable with cheats). The endings, the confrontation with Kain and Ariel and the Elder God's speech toward the end were all left on the disk fully voice acted but not implemented.

The devs later stated they overdeveloped the game a little and it was too ambitious to make a single full complete game during the time Eidos gave them. Which was what prompted them to make Soul Reaver 2. However that game was made in significantly less time and is arguably not as good as SR1.

Blood Omen meanwhile was always designed to be a stand-alone game and it's two endings reflect that. It's also my favorite in the series due to it's quality of writing, depth in the world and the amount of hidden content that's available to find.

Wow. That's a damn shame. Sounds like a real fitting way for Raziel to go to.

But yeah, the game did felt incomplete by the looks of things. You had the ability to sneak, but there was pretty much no reason to other than very minor instances that didn't require it. From what I've read in the instruction manual, you actually had the ability to grab humans and drain a little bit of their souls without actually killing them. Again, no real reason to do so as you could kill them right off with no consequence. And most of the magic spells are very situational as you almost never face more than two enemies at a time in the material realm.

I also knew ahead of time that the game would end on a cliffhanger. But I didn't expect it to be so abrupt. And I was expecting SOMETHING to be resolved by the end of it.

Soul Reaver really sounded like it was going to be something amazing, and really the game as it is does have a lot of cool moments. However, by itself, the game doesn't have very strong legs to stand on it's own in my opinion.

And I can totally agree with your reasoning with Blood Omen. It kinda reminds me why I love Metal Gear Solid 3 and consider it my favorite game in the MGS series. The game could stand on it's own and you didn't really need to have played the other games in the series to get the full experience from it. Sure, there were the occasional nods to previous games, but nothing major.

 

[Watcher]

From what I've read in the instruction manual, you actually had the ability to grab humans and drain a little bit of their souls without actually killing them. Again, no real reason to do so as you could kill them right off with no consequence. And most of the magic spells are very situational as you almost never face more than two enemies at a time in the material realm.

Well technically, if you don't kill these two humans relatively early in the game, every human you meet is immediately friendly and gets down on their knees in worship to Raziel.

This was apparently going to tie in more strongly to the human stronghold you can visit in SR1. In the final release the only reason to do so is just to get a collectible. But originally there was going to be this human priestess that would lead on this very long and interesting sidequest where Raziel could gain a possession ability (similar to the one in Blood Omen). The possession ability like all the others is still in the game files and can be toggled with a trainer.

And I can totally agree with your reasoning with Blood Omen. It kinda reminds me why I love \M/ETAL Gear Solid 3 and consider it my favorite game in the MGS series. The game could stand on it's own and you didn't really need to have played the other games in the series to get the full experience from it. Sure, there were the occasional nods to previous games, but nothing major.

A great deal of lore was actually retconned after Blood Omen. Stuff like Nosgoth being portrayed as a country in BO1 and "the world, existence and reality itself" in it's sequels. Kain clearly goes to hell at the very beginning of BO1 when Soul Reaver retconned that and had it so that people who die become souls in the spectral realm. Stuff like that.

It's still a phenomenal game though, and one of the very first games I played with a clear character arc the protagonist goes on. Kain starts the game off as a nobleman and his reasons for playing an assassin at the start are entirely because Ariel promises he'll become human afterwards. Of course as the game goes on item descriptions become steadily more sadistic and Kain's motivations and methods are more and more sinister. Leading up to it's choice of two endings. The bad ending of which is revealed to be canonical in SR1 and revealed to be the better alternative in later sequels like SR2 and Defiance.

 

[LordDarkrai]

Well, I finally gave in and tried Depression Quest, and it's really wasted potential. The concept is a great idea to tackle, but everything just feels lazy. I keep thinking that the game should have been much more to it then what it is.

 

[Overcast]

Finished up Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.

I kinda have mixed feelings honestly. On one hand, I kinda like the premise of the story, the variety of weapons and items to use for combat, the soundtrack, the voice acting, ect. But I feel the game has a couple of missteps as well. The constant loading screens for example made switching out items and weapons pretty tedious, the story got kinda confusing towards the end, and some of the "weaknesses" you had to deal with as a vampire, i.e., rain and snowfall damaging you and the sunlight supposedly making you weaker, didn't really impact the game much. I'm not asking for the game to be brutally hard, I would just like for it to keep me on my toes. That way, when I do get those upgrades that protect me from stuff like the rain, I would feel like I earned it.

Between this game and Soul Reaver, I don't know. They both are interesting games that had a lot of cool ideas, but execution wise, they could have been better in my humble opinion.

Perhaps someday I'll come back to Blood Omen and get a better appreciation for it. It took me two playthroughs to realize how much I enjoyed Fallout: New Vegas.

EDIT: After watching the cutscenes again, I kinda have a better understanding on the story. It's actually pretty well told and the fact the game didn't go for the whole LoZ route of going after each member of the circle in his own temple did pleasantly surprise me. So I'll definitely give this game credit where it's due.

 

[Watcher]

Finished up Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.

I kinda have mixed feelings honestly. On one hand, I kinda like the premise of the story, the variety of weapons and items to use for combat, the soundtrack, the voice acting, ect. But I feel the game has a couple of missteps as well. The constant loading screens for example made switching out items and weapons pretty tedious, the story got kinda confusing towards the end, and some of the "weaknesses" you had to deal with as a vampire, i.e., rain and snowfall damaging you and the sunlight supposedly making you weaker, didn't really impact the game much. I'm not asking for the game to be brutally hard, I would just like for it to keep me on my toes. That way, when I do get those upgrades that protect me from stuff like the rain, I would feel like I earned it.

Between this game and Soul Reaver, I don't know. They both are interesting games that had a lot of cool ideas, but execution wise, they could have been better in my humble opinion.

Perhaps someday I'll come back to Blood Omen and get a better appreciation for it. It took me two playthroughs to realize how much I enjoyed Fallout: New Vegas.

EDIT: After watching the cutscenes again, I kinda have a better understanding on the story. It's actually pretty well told and the fact the game didn't go for the whole LoZ route of going after each member of the circle in his own temple did pleasantly surprise me. So I'll definitely give this game credit where it's due.

1. Silicon Knights admitted later a big reason why the game had loading times of that scale was due to the amount of RAM the ps1 had, and that it wasn't sufficient to do as much as they thought. I have still played through the game numerous times and I never found the loading times that much of a factor in my enjoyment.

2. The weaknesses you get like rain and snowfall mostly damage you while in them. This is more of a factor toward the beginning of the game, and you can completely nullify these weaknesses with a bloodfont for both. Likewise sunlight does make the player weaker (You do less damage in sunlight and take more damage from enemies). The night and day system impacted a great deal of the game's secrets. For instance every spirit forge in the game would only be open on a certain day, and there would be a hidden way to teleport into one in the town that it was close to. Likewise there was a hidden Werewolf city that is only open during a full moon.

3. The only "confusing" part of the storyline I noticed was at the end when

Spoiler

it's revealed Kain is the pillar guardian of balance

As a kid I had to rewatch the end cutscene a few times before I understood that and all it's implications. And then suddenly things like all the pillar guardians already knowing who Kain is made sense.

It's also worth noting if you fly to a Pillar guardian's location in bat form, you miss a great deal of content along the way. Mostly powers and weapons as well as commentary Kain makes. Like there's a great deal of exposition given about Dark Eden if you walk there.

 

[Overcast]

1. Silicon Knights admitted later a big reason why the game had loading times of that scale was due to the amount of RAM the ps1 had, and that it wasn't sufficient to do as much as they thought. I have still played through the game numerous times and I never found the loading times that much of a factor in my enjoyment.

2. The weaknesses you get like rain and snowfall mostly damage you while in them. This is more of a factor toward the beginning of the game, and you can completely nullify these weaknesses with a bloodfont for both. Likewise sunlight does make the player weaker (You do less damage in sunlight and take more damage from enemies). The night and day system impacted a great deal of the game's secrets. For instance every spirit forge in the game would only be open on a certain day, and there would be a hidden way to teleport into one in the town that it was close to. Likewise there was a hidden Werewolf city that is only open during a full moon.

3. The only "confusing" part of the storyline I noticed was at the end when

Spoiler

it's revealed Kain is the pillar guardian of balance

As a kid I had to rewatch the end cutscene a few times before I understood that and all it's implications. And then suddenly things like all the pillar guardians already knowing who Kain is made sense.

It's also worth noting if you fly to a Pillar guardian's location in bat form, you miss a great deal of content along the way. Mostly powers and weapons as well as commentary Kain makes. Like there's a great deal of exposition given about Dark Eden if you walk there.

Hidden werewolf city huh? Cool.

And yeah, initially, I just flew to Dark Eden and only realized after I was finished with it did I realize how much I missed. Thankfully, I went back through the area and got Kain's commentary about the area surrounding it.

And from what I found, you can also learn about how Kain

Spoiler

became the pillar guardian of balance through the library in Wilendorf. Definitely made the ending made a bit more sense to me.

What I didn't quite get at the ending initially was the monster form of that necromancer. Apparently he was supposed to be some "Dark Entity" or as Ariel called him "The Unspoken". But I didn't quite understand all of his dialogue initially. So I was kinda confused when the Necromancer, who was trying to fix everything by turning Kain into a vampire, was suddenly taunting him.

But yeah, looking back at all the cutscenes and catching the little details, this game's plot was actually really well done. And I did like how Kain was constantly struggling with his thirst for blood and his fear of becoming a total monster. And in a way, I feel that incorporates pretty well into the gameplay as well. Getting health upgrades was both a blessing and a curse, as the amount of blood I need to keep my health full gets higher and higher. And since powerful enemies became more common and actual humans became more scarce, I found myself saying "I need blood" quite a few times while playing. Not sure if that was the developers intention, but it definitely made the game more interesting to play with that mindset.

 

[Watcher]

Hidden werewolf city huh? Cool.

The game has 100 secrets, and half of the reason why I adore Blood Omen is due to those secrets.

For instance, the dungeon to get the Possession ability is found in a secret area, that you trigger by doing a puzzle in reverse. There are dozens of really interesting secrets you can find if you backtrack to prior areas with powers like the wolf form, the mist form and others.

Spoiler

What I didn't quite get at the ending initially was the monster form of that necromancer. Apparently he was supposed to be some "Dark Entity" or as Ariel called him "The Unspoken". But I didn't quite understand all of his dialogue initially. So I was kinda confused when the Necromancer, who was trying to fix everything by turning Kain into a vampire, was suddenly taunting him.

Ahh I didn't really find that confusing mostly because it's further explained in great detail in SR2. SR2 went into great detail about the motivations of the entity and the reason why the pillars were erected in the first place.

But yeah like you said it is something that is further explained if you rewatch the cutscenes. And it can be be inferred that

Spoiler

The Necromancer was possessed by the dark entity, murdered Ariel to corrupt Naupraptor which would corrupt all the pillar guardians and decay the pillars, and turned Kain into a vampire and had him kill all of them.

This was also before SR2 retconned the way people become guardians of the pillars. In BO1 as a kid I always thought the entity's plan would've destroyed the pillars.