What game did you finish today?

Played through both Portal 1 and 2 over the past few days.

I miss the days when Valve was churning out quality game after quality game.
 
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I just beat Horizon Zero Dawn on PC.

This was a game I almost gave up on entirely given that when it first appeared on PC, it couldn't go for more than between ten minutes to two hours before crashing to desktop for no good reason. The first ten to fifteen hours were spent dashing from campfire to quest point so I didn't lose progress. I wanted to like it, but I couldn't handle the fact that it shat its pants every verse end. And there's me with a GTX 1080 Ti and Ryzen 3700X as well. The patches put out seemed to be token efforts that fixed nothing but Sony had to be seen to be doing something.

Then, I was in the middle of moaning about it on some other board and someone suggested turning on Hardware Accelerated Graphics Scheduling in Windows settings and trying that. I did. I'd already disabled Steam overlays (didn't work), reinstalled and updated my drivers (didn't work), but this... did. All of a sudden it fell into place and it worked. I have no idea why this is.

Excellent game, and on PC with everything cranked right up in 4K it looks gorgeous and has the real sense of wonder and adventure and fits with the idea of Aloy as basically some tribal woman thrust into a world bigger than she could possibly comprehend. I also liked how she is the only character with red hair in the entire game, and has no known parents, making her literally the red-headed stepchild of the Nora tribe and generally mistreated by same. Plot and fluff is really quite tasty and nice though I did think that a lot of the areas were a bit sterile feeling. I would have liked to have seen the machines doing something other than either grazing or patrolling on fixed routes, then respawning once you demolish them and their patch is out of sight (and memory). Maybe machine presence and activity reacting to events in the world.

What was best about the writing, though, was what there was not. There was no stupid quippy dialogue. There was no building up a character by making other characters looks like burbling idiots. I would have liked to see more depth to some of them though, the Sun King in particular. Also Teb. Now he was a real wasted opportunity if I'm honest. He appeared in the prologue, then again just before the Proving massacre, then totally vanishes without a trace or anything and then gets a few token lines later. Had I been designing him, I'd have inserted a side quest where you can try to get parts for unique outfits that only he can produce and that give unusual bonuses. Would have liked to see more of Nil as well myself.

(It's also depressing that in current year I have to give praise to a work of fiction for having something as basic as "character development.")

Still, a very nice game. I'd give it about an 86. Curious about the sequel. Probably not going to buy a Playstation 5 for it though. I'll probably play it on PC in, I dunno, 2023 or whenever it comes out. My guess is that

Ted Faro, or a clone of him, will be the big bad. In fluff he was the smartest human ever to exist alongside Elizabeth Sobeck, and certainly the most egotistical, and it would fit with the Egyptian theme naming for him to have done something like uploaded his mind and declared himself a God, and the just as Aloy is an escaped clone of Ted Faro's friend / lover / rival / worst enemy Elizabeth Sobeck, it would have a nice symmetry. Maybe he is the source of the signal that awoke HADES because he wanted to cleanse the earth and remake life in his image with him as God, but now that's been foiled he has had to put himself into a clone body - i.e. an avatar, or a manifestation - to do this, and with all the knowledge and technology of the Old World and the whole sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic it wouldn't be too difficult to proclaim himself a living deity. We already know that the area HFW will take place in is predominantly inhabited by bloodthirsty cannibals; what better society to decide to be God-King of.

Next on the agenda - the Frozen Wilds expansion for sale. Eskimos vs. mecha-polar bears.
 
The Walking Dead: Final Season

A really satisfying finale to the series; even has some challenging moments, especially if you want to get all of the achievements unlike the previous games where you just went through each chapter after mashing buttons and were garaunteed a platinum trophy at the end. Granted, button-mashing is still present but there's also an aim mechanic that can actually be a bit tricky to use and I admit that I died multiple times on areas where I had to fight/avoid hordes.

There are four episodes in total which doesn't sound like much but they are actually quite long, almost two hours each.

An old character returns and I really wanted to end her but decided to make Clem be a good example to AJ which meant minimal killing. On my next playthrough however I might just go full Frankenstein to see how he turns out...
 
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Just finished playing Captain Spirit, otherwise known as "Alcoholic Dad Simulator". The dad is given away as a drinker the moment you're introduced to him. He's struggling with the loss of his wife but I also got the feeling that he was quite resentful of the fact that he had to give up his promising career as a star basketball player to raise a kid while still very young.

I think there was a thread on this game a while back; people were intrigued by the kid supposedly being autistic but to me he just seemed like a regular little boy who liked comics and superheroes. It's also suggested that he has telekineses.

The game's very short, I spent the first half hour doing chores (got flashbacks from Kara's introduction in Detroit: Become Human - clean up after the substance abuser) and the rest was helping Chris, the kid, find things so that he could roleplay as his superhero persona. I liked his transformation scene when you find all the pieces for his costume.

It's made by the same people who made Life is Strange and is, in fact, set in the same universe as indicated by documents you find around the house. As per usual it's not exactly challenging, you just wander around the house and garden collecting items and in a couple of instances finding numbers to unlock things like padlocks or a phone to complete something on Chris' to-do list.
 
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I finally finished SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom and I'm ashamed I took so long.

There's a weird jump in difficulty from easy to hard when you get to the dream levels, but otherwise it's a pretty good classic platformer.
 
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Bulletstorm Full Clip Edition on PC. Final boss fight was pretty disappointing and a relic of the times, but the combat variety was exactly what I like in a game; gimme tools, lemme work.
 
My friend got me a bootleg version of Pokemon Green for my birthday last month and I've been playing that on and off. Green is of course the Japanese version of what was released as Blue in the states, so it has all the original Japanese Pokemon sprites and it's fun to see how they're different between this and Red. Being a bootleg though there were weird quirks about the game that weren't super great- any number over 100 gets displayed weird, and the HP bar has a stroke whenever you take damage or try to heal. Going to the Pewter museum and trying to look at the fossils makes the game crash, as does spending too long in a full PC box. The last one was super weird, once the box was full a bunch of my Pokemon's names corrupted to random letters and Japanese characters, whole screen had a stroke and the game crashed. I didn't even try the Missingno glitch becasue I was sure the cartridge would explode.

The good glitch? Saffron city is never blocked off so you have a lot of places accessible to you early in the game. That alone will make it very interesting to replay.
 
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Just finished Ace Combat 5: Unsung War (or Squadron Leader as it is called here) and holy hell that last mission (the tunnel part) had me swearing nonstop. But now I understand why it is so highly rated
 
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I finished Dimitri's route in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. One down, three routes to go. Though I will take a little break to play Brigidine.
 
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doom eternal. at first, i thought i was not gonna like it beacuse it was not doom 2016. the first two hours was pure HELL beacuse the lack of ammo and resources you had. even the early fights of the seconded level felt like i was player 2016s final levels. the enemies would not stop coming and quickly gang up and rape you. i died, ALOT (played on ultra voidance) but slowly got better, got more recourses and than became, the DOOMSLAYER (AKA DOOMGUY). every fight was like doing Adderall, it was intense. the battles were brutal but i was worse. the soundtrack was even better than 2016. having metal rock serve as your battle theme makes the fights even more hype.

9/10, game of the year. play it.
 
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Resident Evil 7 after almost exactly four years after its release. I was at the end part of the ship and it took about an hour from there to finish the game. The ship sucks while the beginning of the game and the first boss fight is amazing.
 
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I platniumed "Astros Playroom" and "Bugsnax".

"Astro playroom" was like a decent tech demo for the PS5 controller. Some clever motion control elements but forgettable..

"Bugsnax" was, basically, Sesame Street for Tumblr.

Had an interesting ending, but I just wanted it to be over. It's hilarious why it got glowing reviews for such a shallow game. But, it was free and an easy platnium...

I really want to play "Doom Eternal" but I'm waiting for the PS5 upgrade. So, I'm replaying 2016 Doom for the platnium. I guess that will hold me over...
 
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Just beat Bioshock 1 and forgot how short it was. Was also surprised with how easy it was on PC on normal. Tried it on hard but it was just the usual gay 'double enemy health while halving yours' bullshit. Still enjoyable.

Sigma said:
Megaman X4 again. Probably the best or second best X game even if the plot and voice acting are retarded
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MMX4 is my second favorite of the X series, but it's a bittersweet love since it shows the decline of the series and it's focus on 'gimmick' levels. Jet Stingray's stage being entirely a ride chaser stage became a norm that I hated.
 
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MerriedxReldnahc said:
My friend got me a bootleg version of Pokemon Green for my birthday last month and I've been playing that on and off. Green is of course the Japanese version of what was released as Blue in the states, so it has all the original Japanese Pokemon sprites and it's fun to see how they're different between this and Red. Being a bootleg though there were weird quirks about the game that weren't super great- any number over 100 gets displayed weird, and the HP bar has a stroke whenever you take damage or try to heal. Going to the Pewter museum and trying to look at the fossils makes the game crash, as does spending too long in a full PC box. The last one was super weird, once the box was full a bunch of my Pokemon's names corrupted to random letters and Japanese characters, whole screen had a stroke and the game crashed. I didn't even try the Missingno glitch becasue I was sure the cartridge would explode.

The good glitch? Saffron city is never blocked off so you have a lot of places accessible to you early in the game. That alone will make it very interesting to replay.
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replayed my old fire red, just about done. Getting mew two is a bitch, just trying to get as many as I can with out training.

Just about finished Red Dead Redemption today just gotta do the strangers and freak, maybe some of the little bull shit challenges like tamahawking a bird
 
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The Witness. It's a pretty neat puzzle game but it basically doesn't have a story and the ending is just kind of there. Still, I'd say it's probably worth playing if you like those sort of games, especially with how creative it is with using the environment around you in the puzzles.
 
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