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2014 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD


RIPPA

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I finally finished Tomb Raider last night.  Keep in mind that I *DID* like the game as I give my thoughts:

 

- beautiful graphics.  This is a really good-looking game.  It's not Uncharted 2 or Ni No Kuni but it's really, really good.

 

- as I mentioned before, the pornographic breathing/gasping/grunting of Lara is realllllllly annoying after awhile. 

 

- those ultra-gruesome death animations that turned people off?  Loved 'em.

 

- the game was reaaaaaly repetitive.  Hey look, ANOTHER sequence where Lara is sliding down a hill on her back and has to shoot obstacles in her way.  Or it's cutscene #371 that involves Lara bouncing and falling until she gets a fingertip grip on something.

 

- I know it ain't mean to be realistic but Lara carrying an unsheathed axe the entire game on her leg, and then falling/bouncing/tumbling dozens of times without ever cutting her leg off, was just stupid

 

- I liked that the bow & arrow remained a useful, viable weapon throughout the entire game.  I was still killing bad guys with it on the very last level

 

- Wish they'd made Lara little beefier.  She weighs like 90 lbs in the game and really needs to be more "athletic fit" than "model thin". 

 

- Way too many sequences of Lara bouncing from huge heights and landing back first on concrete without injury.  Makes the one or two sequences where she's actually hurt and has to seek out medical attention stick out really badly

 

- The storyline is a convoluted, incomprehensible mess.  It's all over the place and ends up just being stupid.  Something about an ancient queen cursing an island and her crazy followers kidnapping a friend of Lara's.  It's a mess.

 

- stuff that just doesn't make sense: Lara has to do all this highwire act stuff to get from point A to point B but her other crew members don't.  Or she has to do all this crazy stuff to get up to someplace and then CARRIES A PERSON while coming back down.

 

- the final boss fight was way too easy.  The fight before that one was a lot tougher

 

- I ran into more than one occasion where I had to look up a puzzle solution on Youtube - only to discover I was actually doing things correctly just not from that one single pixel the game wanted me to be standing on.  There's also a few occasions where the game simply doesn't give you enough visual information for the solution it's expecting

 

- As I mentioned before, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much "you can climb here but not here" stuff, like in Uncharted.  You're telling me Lara, who can scale mountains, can't climb onto a dock from waist-high water?  Or climb a gate that's 10 feet high and has footholds?  Somebody call Ubisoft and ask to license the engine used for the AC series.

 

- Another gripe: there's plenty of times where you're expected to make a jump that's really long - longer than jumps that you'll have tried earlier and failed on.  Hate that. 

 

- the game takes awhile to get going.  The last third is really intense and fun though.

 

 

So, anyway, a good - but not great - game.  It's a blatant ripoff of Uncharted but doesn't reach that series' heights.  I think they've laid a solid foundation for a great Tomb Raider 2 though.

 

7/10.

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I'm about 40% of the way through Tomb Raider and it is pretty ridiculous how much punishment Lara takes.  I don't even think a Terminator could survive some of the stuff she goes through.

 

I agree that it is a pretty blatant ripoff of Uncharted, but it is still fun - I got it for $20 which I think is a good price for it since I don't see myself trying to 100% or doing much of the multiplayer.

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- The storyline is a convoluted, incomprehensible mess.  It's all over the place and ends up just being stupid.  Something about an ancient queen cursing an island and her crazy followers kidnapping a friend of Lara's.  It's a mess.

 

- the final boss fight was way too easy.  The fight before that one was a lot tougher

 

I thought the story was relatively easy to understand. Its ridiculous but not an incomprehensible mess, especially if you actually read/listen to the various notes/journals you find. Its more blatantly obvious than anything else.

 

Pretty sure the real final boss fight is the one before it.

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Fallout 1.

 

It's good until the end phase where you have to kill the Master and get to the Military base, then it sort of goes to shit. I beat the Master with the speech path (by showing him proof the mutants are sterile so his plans for world domination are hopeless), but I still took the automatic eye injury from walking towards him. Which is fine except no doctor in the whole fucking game seems capable of healing it. Even if I take my HP's down low, then go see the medic in vault 13, they just heal my HP and I still have a perma-eye injury, which as far as I can tell isn't supposed to happen, but it does. So now I permanently can't aim for shit, which makes getting to the Military base essentially impossible because even wearing a Cathedral robe, the Super Mutant groups in the desert will still attack you. Don't even get me started on the fact there even are wandering groups of a half dozen super mutants to begin with.

 

Rest of the game is fine for what it is, an idea too big for its time (I've had to grind just to get to level 9). But this end stretch is complete bullshit.

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Okay so I sort of did, then went back and cheated like fuck and used a walkthrough.

 

"Nullifier", eh? Well... I guess. That seems sort of silly, but there it is.

 

I do hate when games change their own rules "so the end is harder" though after you go through 15 hours or whatever of knowing what's what.

 

The Millitary base is really a bitch if you don't play it smart and sneak in with robes. As it should be. And honestly that way makes more sense anyway. "Should I fight the invincible mutant army, or sneak by them and blow them all up in one go? Hmmmm."

 

It's a good game, though with some flawed design points. I enjoyed like the first 90% of it. A really interesting game, especially for its time it does some things that seem really different. I do LOVE the concept of the Fallout world though. It would make a terrible movie because you'd have to condense too much, but it would be a really cool TV show. Looking forward to exploring the world more in Fallout 2.

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My gripe with Tomb Raider is how hard it tries to do everything....does it want to be a cinematic action/adventure game like Uncharted or have it be a Metroidvania style game like Batman: Arkham Asylum? So it tries to do both, fails at both, and doesn't have its own identity as a game.

 

I'm pretty close to Platinum'ing the game, but Square Enix/Crystal Dynamics can suck a fat one for the multiplayer.

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... and the Fallout 2 installer seems to seriously fuck up for me, for some reason. Serious problems that I cannot explain. It SEEMS to install, but at the end when you click run game and close the installer, I just get a black box for a command line and nothing happens. Oh, and it completely locks up Windows Explorer so your whole computer is fucked. Just clicking the Fallout 2 icon on the desktop after a restart gives an error.

 

No, it's not a "run as administrator" problem. First thing I checked.

 

Thee runs at an install, three lockups of my computer at game launch.

 

GOG no longer offers support for those games so, uh, I guess I'm done with Fallout.

 

Oh well.

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so the main gameplay rule of Risk of Rain is that after selecting an initial difficulty (basically casual/hardcore/insane) the difficulty raises on its own over time, so you have to become efficient at farming and exploring while you progress through the levels of the game to avoid getting trapped at one of the higher difficulties and having to wait through harder waves to get things done

 

the names of those higher difficulties? Insane, Impossible, I SEE YOU, I'M COMING FOR YOU, and HAHAHAHA

 

I had just crossed over into I'M COMING FOR YOU when I beat the game for the first time

 

i think i love this game

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... and the Fallout 2 installer seems to seriously fuck up for me, for some reason. Serious problems that I cannot explain. It SEEMS to install, but at the end when you click run game and close the installer, I just get a black box for a command line and nothing happens. Oh, and it completely locks up Windows Explorer so your whole computer is fucked. Just clicking the Fallout 2 icon on the desktop after a restart gives an error.

 

No, it's not a "run as administrator" problem. First thing I checked.

 

Thee runs at an install, three lockups of my computer at game launch.

 

GOG no longer offers support for those games so, uh, I guess I'm done with Fallout.

 

Oh well.

 

Noooooooooo!

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Actually GOG's support came through for me. As a last update in "DFA's adventures in installing things".

 

They've taken down the option to send a ticket directly for the Fallout games since they stopped selling them, though there are still basic support articles up that cover the usual blither blather ("run as administrator", "try resetting", "do not operate this device underwater" blah blah). But I went through the general "help me, my problem isn't listed" form for everything, and a couple days and 2 emails later they sent me an alternate .ini file for (I think) Direct Draw settings and... well, it works now.

 

So considering they no longer even sell the game, their support network is pretty damn awesome. Like, I've seen enough *really bad* customer support online over the last 15 years or so to appreciate how nice it is to get actual, timely help.

 

Will dig into Fallout 2 in the next few days for sure.

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Beat Tomb Raider, which will be traded in. Fun game but I have no desire to hunt down all the collectibles to 100% it.

Played the first level of Medal of Honor Warfighter, which seems decent but totally derivative of any number of FPS games and war movies.

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Neil why would you trade in Tomb Raider for the what 3-4 bucks gamestop will give you? Game like that seems keep able for that trade in price.

On the gamestop note they have PS2 games for 75% off right now. Got a pretty nice haul yesterday.

Contra Shattered Soldier

Guilty Gear XX Plus

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne

GTA Vice City

Star Wars Bounty Hunter

Spiderman 2

Rouge Galaxy

For the whopping total of 19.07. Only downside is no cases at all. That's actually a pretty big downside for me.

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Gog just added BLOODNET: A CYBERPUNK GOTHIC, a game that captured my imagination when I first saw ads and articles for it when Iwas in high school. I've never played it, I understand it's not really that good. And anyway, no game from 1993 is going to live up to 15-year-old Cliff's fevered expectations.

I bought it immediately, of course, and will install it as soon as I get home from work.

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Neil why would you trade in Tomb Raider for the what 3-4 bucks gamestop will give you? Game like that seems keep able for that trade in price.

On the gamestop note they have PS2 games for 75% off right now. Got a pretty nice haul yesterday.

Contra Shattered Soldier

Guilty Gear XX Plus

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne

GTA Vice City

Star Wars Bounty Hunter

Spiderman 2

Rouge Galaxy

For the whopping total of 19.07. Only downside is no cases at all. That's actually a pretty big downside for me.

 

 

Nice haul -- SMT Nocturne is getting to be pretty rare to find nowadays (ebay prices have it start at $9 - $10).

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TBH I used to have a pretty bad issue with "collecting" games. I still have a bunch sitting in a storage locker. I know Gamestop gouges you on trade ins but I don't have the time/interest to go any other route and the game would sit around collecting dust otherwise.

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So I beat Xenoblade Chronicles after about 150 hours. Yep. 150. Holy crap was it awesome. Really enjoyed the ending, too, even if it was a bit cliched. The one thing I enjoyed was that Shulk was actually a strong lead character, even with his flaws.

 

If this game was this massive, the next Monolith Soft X game...I can't even imagine.

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So I beat Xenoblade Chronicles after about 150 hours. Yep. 150. Holy crap was it awesome. Really enjoyed the ending, too, even if it was a bit cliched. The one thing I enjoyed was that Shulk was actually a strong lead character, even with his flaws.

If this game was this massive, the next Monolith Soft X game...I can't even imagine.

Out of curiousity what control set-up did you play with? I started with the nunchuck but a couple weeks ago I picked up a classic controller plus. That seems to be the better option.

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TBH I used to have a pretty bad issue with "collecting" games. I still have a bunch sitting in a storage locker. I know Gamestop gouges you on trade ins but I don't have the time/interest to go any other route and the game would sit around collecting dust otherwise.

Oh I have that issue. Combine that with loving a deal and I'm prob very sick. I'm half tempted to send you a $10 for it but I think I'm waiting for the next gen rerelease.

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So I beat Xenoblade Chronicles after about 150 hours. Yep. 150. Holy crap was it awesome. Really enjoyed the ending, too, even if it was a bit cliched. The one thing I enjoyed was that Shulk was actually a strong lead character, even with his flaws.

If this game was this massive, the next Monolith Soft X game...I can't even imagine.

Out of curiousity what control set-up did you play with? I started with the nunchuck but a couple weeks ago I picked up a classic controller plus. That seems to be the better option.

 

Went with the classic controller. It made things a lot easier. 

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