The last game you completed, and rating.

Hitman: Absolution 8/10

Really enjoyed it, very good level design, and interaction. Played levels multiple times to try and get all the challenges, gonna reply it on higher difficulty when I get back round to it. Favourite Hitman game yet.
 
Finally completed Far Cry 3 - 9.5/10

One of the best games i've played, some of the story will stay with me forever. The twists and turns kept me engaged from start to finish..

PLEASE DON'T READ SPOILER UNLESS YOU'VE COMPLETED THE GAME!

the only reason it wasn't a 10/10 was because....
Vaas gets killed of too early, he is the best game villain ever! Truly terrifying.
 
Spec Ops - the line 8.5/10

Completed it on "suicide mission" diffculty - did all 4 endings. Not sure if I can bring myself to replay the other "make a choice" bits.

Excellent story, well told, generally very enjoyable experience (in an "oh god that's horrible" way, but you get what I mean).

Lost a point because I occasionally had some issues getting my character to do what I wanted (sprint and cover on same button means sometimes "run away" gets interpreted as "move to a slightly different part of that sandbag wall, just next to that grenade").

Lost half a point because the gameplay was fairly generic, and I feel a bit mean about it. Might come back and bump it to a 9.

Probably best story-led game I've completed in quite some time.
(basically IMO at the moment if you want a story game, get this, if you want open world get FC3)
 
Bioshock - Infinite 8/10

Really beautiful game and the combat is interesting, however, by the time I got the hang of combat tactics and using vigors/guns properly, I was close to the end! I'll have another play through when there's some DLC.

I still think the original Bioshock is a better game all round; I preferred the claustrophobia created by being under the sea. The Skyrails in infinite made for some really great fun combat, though. Elizabeth's character is really well done, too and it added a different dimension to the game. I like companions (especially as I don't do much MP gaming).

I thought there was some very clever, if sometimes confusing writing in Infinite. I'm still trying to piece together a few things in my head. :p
 
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Deus Ex : Human Revolution

6/10

Overall i think i enjoyed it but i got tired of the fake open world mechanic that they used, plus the broken boss fights, and upgraded skills that never got used.

The game makes a big thing about playing it your way, heavy weapons, hacker, stealth so lets you develop your character accordingly. So i played as a stealth hacker which worked fine, until i got to a boss fight and realised that my ace hacker with a stun gun wasnt going to get this guy down. This also caused a problem with the general level design.

You can play stealthy, a hacker, a lone soldier, one man army but certain rooms you need to get to then need to have at least two routes in. This means that if you find a locked door, you know there is an air vent just waiting to be found. , too often I'd find myself blindly crawling down anonymous ventilation shafts or sewers, hoping that the inevitable obstacle at the end of it would correspond to my particular skill set. If not, I'd have to retrace my steps and spend another half hour looking for the route that you just know has been placed there specifically to cater for your particular skill combination.
yes they're expansive and they offer all sorts of choice, though I wonder maybe a little too much? While I may have found my way into a secure complex through a secret route, it was often entirely accidental. Apart from the odd roof approach I don't recall ever really surveying the landscape or using my knowledge of the world to make a decision or even an educated guess about how best to plan my next steps. I really like it in games when you feel you've used the information to your advantage, even though you know deep down you've followed a path that's been carefully designed for you.

A true open world game like GTA or even Assassins Creed does it better. They say here is the target, steal/kill it. That's it, now you can choose how you want to do it, up close or snipe, crash a car into them, poison them etc. In a more linear game its more like an adventure in that you are following/discovering a path laid down by the developer. With AC2 I'd find myself looking at a bulding, working out the route up whereas with Deus EX:HR it was more, right wheres the vent shaft. When you get this half way house it kinda breaks the "reality".

Hitman was another example that did it right. For each level (Bloodmoney) you had an array of weapons/chances to kill them and got rewarded for how you did it. On each level you knew there was a "right" way (Silent Assassin )and part of the fun was trying to find that way. Like the opera level where you switch the fake gun for the real one and booby trap the chandelier. Stand in the lobby wait for the gunshot, count, blow the chandelier and casually walk out of the front door before the sound of smashing glass stops.
 
in the last week i've replayed gta3 and vice city. i must admit it's only because i don't have a gaming pc at the moment. i probably wouldn't have bothered if i had something capable of playing something newer. :o

that said, epic games well worth playing again. even though i despise 80's music, there's something just right about it when playing VC. :D
 
Ugley_Matt said:
Deus Ex : Human Revolution

6/10

Overall i think i enjoyed it but i got tired of the fake open world mechanic that they used, plus the broken boss fights, and upgraded skills that never got used.

<snip>.
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I think 6/10 is a bit harsh in all honesty. I played the stealthy hacker role as well but yes, I found the only way I could deal with the bosses easily was with the Typhoon. It's a bit cheap though, it felt like an "I win" button.

I thoroughly enjoyed HR when I played it but I did feel really let down by the cop-out ending.
 
marc2003 said:
in the last week i've replayed gta3 and vice city. i must admit it's only because i don't have a gaming pc at the moment. i probably wouldn't have bothered if i had something capable of playing something newer. :o

that said, epic games well worth playing again. even though i despise 80's music, there's something just right about it when playing VC. :D
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Vice City remains the pinnacle of GTA for me. Later games have added bits and bobs, some of them good, but VC just nailed the feeling, the design of the city, the radio stations. Genuinely an almost perfect game (rose tinted warning, obviously).
 
one thing i forgot to mention is that the older games are definitely more challenging - and that's a good thing. i completely forgot the coppers can bust you just by getting close to your car. also, they're much more aggressive when on just a few stars. and gunfire/crashes can wreck your car pretty much instantly giving you no chance to get away.

gta4 is far too easy in that regard. you can escape from pretty much any situation if you're not stupid.
 
Ugley_Matt said:
certain rooms you need to get to then need to have at least two routes in. This means that if you find a locked door, you know there is an air vent just waiting to be found. , too often I'd find myself blindly crawling down anonymous ventilation shafts or sewers, hoping that the inevitable obstacle at the end of it would correspond to my particular skill set. If not, I'd have to retrace my steps and spend another half hour looking for the route that you just know has been placed there specifically to cater for your particular skill combination.
yes they're expansive and they offer all sorts of choice, though I wonder maybe a little too much? While I may have found my way into a secure complex through a secret route, it was often entirely accidental. Apart from the odd roof approach I don't recall ever really surveying the landscape or using my knowledge of the world to make a decision or even an educated guess about how best to plan my next steps. I really like it in games when you feel you've used the information to your advantage, even though you know deep down you've followed a path that's been carefully designed for you.

A true open world game like GTA or even Assassins Creed does it better. They say here is the target, steal/kill it. That's it, now you can choose how you want to do it, up close or snipe, crash a car into them, poison them etc. In a more linear game its more like an adventure in that you are following/discovering a path laid down by the developer. With AC2 I'd find myself looking at a bulding, working out the route up whereas with Deus EX:HR it was more, right wheres the vent shaft. When you get this half way house it kinda breaks the "reality".
Click to expand...

An interesting perspective, and I can definitely get where you are coming from - for example in that main first HQ building you start off in, there's loads of offices to break in to, but you know the ones with a high hack score required must have some sort of 'backdoor' and in some cases it is a bit depressing having invested a lot in hacking to break in only to later on find a keycode, vent access or whatever.

However, in order to create an 'unbreakable' game, and one where the majority of players can experience the majority of content, there are very few alternatives of how to set it up. The games you cited like GTA and AC don't really have the same RPG elements in terms of diversity of skills that players could have, you can have different weapons, different vehicles etc but by and large every player approaching a mission will have the same base set of skills which means you can design the level with that in mind. Imagine in AC if you couldn't climb buildings above a certain height, or swing between certain bars until you skilled up (and I mean actively skilled up by choosing [or not choosing] an upgrade, not an 'automatic' skillup you always get at a certain point in the story) - would you really have so many options on how to approach a mission? And then if we are talking linearity, how about the fact that both GTA and AC tend to 'lock you in' to missions, once you start a mission that's it, you are just doing that mission until you pass or fail (making mission design, continuity etc much easier for the developer), whereas games like Deus Ex tend to let you do multiple missions at the same time.

I think it would be possible to create more 'open-ended' missions in DE:HR, but at the expense of some of the RPG elements, you'd need to have much less variety in potential character development. Personally I view this type of trade-off as just a 'fact of life', it isn't really feasible for a developer to invest time in giving players too much freedom in terms of how they can access story content; ultimately to get a return on your investment you need to create a game that players can experience the majority of, you need to guide them down the path. Designing a game with 400 hours of potential gameplay and then having over half the players complete it in say 10hrs just isn't going to work; and you have to in the back of your mind always worry about the potential for players to get stymied by choices they have made earlier in the game (hence all the contrived multiple routes in DE:HR, and indeed hence why the boss fights came in for so much criticism, because they were sections that bucked the trend).

However, the point made about feeling you like you are using information you've learned is a good one - I thought Vampire Bloodlines was very good in this regard. For example, I hacked some doctor's computer and deduced from his emails he was porking one of his patients, so I decided to blackmail him later on.
 
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HangTime said:
An interesting perspective, and I can definitely get where you are coming from - for example in that main first HQ building you start off in, there's loads of offices to break in to, but you know the ones with a high hack score required must have some sort of 'backdoor' and in some cases it is a bit depressing having invested a lot in hacking to break in only to later on find a keycode, vent access or whatever.

However, in order to create an 'unbreakable' game, and one where the majority of players can experience the majority of content, there are very few alternatives of how to set it up. The games you cited like GTA and AC don't really have the same RPG elements in terms of diversity of skills that players could have, you can have different weapons, different vehicles etc but by and large every player approaching a mission will have the same base set of skills which means you can design the level with that in mind. Imagine in AC if you couldn't climb buildings above a certain height, or swing between certain bars until you skilled up (and I mean actively skilled up by choosing [or not choosing] an upgrade, not an 'automatic' skillup you always get at a certain point in the story) - would you really have so many options on how to approach a mission? And then if we are talking linearity, how about the fact that both GTA and AC tend to 'lock you in' to missions, once you start a mission that's it, you are just doing that mission until you pass or fail (making mission design, continuity etc much easier for the developer), whereas games like Deus Ex tend to let you do multiple missions at the same time.

I think it would be possible to create more 'open-ended' missions in DE:HR, but at the expense of some of the RPG elements, you'd need to have much less variety in potential character development. Personally I view this type of trade-off as just a 'fact of life', it isn't really feasible for a developer to invest time in giving players too much freedom in terms of how they can access story content; ultimately to get a return on your investment you need to create a game that players can experience the majority of, you need to guide them down the path. Designing a game with 400 hours of potential gameplay and then having over half the players complete it in say 10hrs just isn't going to work; and you have to in the back of your mind always worry about the potential for players to get stymied by choices they have made earlier in the game (hence all the contrived multiple routes in DE:HR, and indeed hence why the boss fights came in for so much criticism, because they were sections that bucked the trend).

However, the point made about feeling you like you are using information you've learned is a good one - I thought Vampire Bloodlines was very good in this regard. For example, I hacked some doctor's computer and deduced from his emails he was porking one of his patients, so I decided to blackmail him later on.
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Some good points and i think i tend to agree with you. I tihnk that DE:HR is in that difficult middle ground between total open game world, and a heavily scripted "corridor" game style.
 
Gibbo3771 said:
Just after playing a few hours of Tomb Raider, utterly bored of it so thought I would do a quick pro and cons of it.

Pros:

Decent characters make it more enjoyable to follow the story, good voice over and animation with detailed cut scenes. The graphics, post effects and the hair...all pretty damn good for what you get. Plenty of "hidden package" gta style things to collect, even if they are kinda uninteresting.

Weapon customization is versatile and well thought out and the guns feel good, literally it feels good to fire them for some reason.

Controls feel smooth, moving about is easy.

Unfortunately, that is about as far as I can stretch it.

Cons:

QUICK TIME EVENTS, there are lots of them. It almost made it feel like a interactive movie where you get to decide what happens next, not only are they boring and repetitive but unresponsive even at 50fps.

Gameplay wise it seems catered towards the "chilled" gamer, in the past Tomb Raider games were based on puzzles and exploring where ledges = deadly, this game won't even let you fall from a height.

Too many failsafes, autograb, autoduck, autoclimb/jump.

The UI, it is just tedious to navigate, even after you get used to it you still find yourself entering a menu and forgetting why you even went there due to the fact you are lost.


Overall:

Another attempt at reviving an already dead franchise, it is not as bad as Tomb Raider Legend but it is no Chronicles/II either.

Over all I would rater it a mere 4/10, 2 for effort, 2 for looks.



Hope you enjoyed reading my harsh view :) :p

Anyone else got anything to add?
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I thought the EXACT same thing on each of the cons as you did before I got past the wolf part and the QTE's faded into memory. Sure they do pop up again at another point later in the game, but until then you can enjoy what turns out to be a great game. I also thought the game was pretty damn uninteresting at the start and didn't see the appeal at all, yet when you find more weapons and unlock more and more abilities, the game really opens up on how you can approach encounters and allows you to complete some rather complicated puzzles using specific equipment such as fire arrows or rope arrows etc.

For you, I'd definitely say have another crack at the game and see what you think of it after a few more hours. I'd be surprised if you really dont take a liking to it when the QTE stuff dies off.
 
Heres another tomb raider!

9/10 for me.
I wouldn't call it a....game...really....
Its more like a intense interactive thrill ride.
It has great combat I think, loving the bow, but I need to use mouse and KB to used the ranged combat effectively as I have little aiming skills with controller.
Story is great, its on rails most the time and its very fixed, again its basically a thrill ride that you occasionally interactive with.

Anyway, yeh its pretty good :)
 
Crysis 3. 9/10

I'm probably one of the few that absolutely loved that game. Dialogue is bang on, gameplay decent enough, graphics obviously great. I almost got overwhelmed at some areas as there's so much to look at it. Lights flashing, guns going off, grass and trees swaying. Sensory overload.

The story, as usual, made little sense. But then again, I usually pay very little attention to story in Crysis games.

I'm starting another play through tomorrow. On the hardest level this time.
 
Clipsey said:
With Bioshock Infinite, I've never played any of the series. Would it work just starting with Infinite? I like all the high ratings of this game :)
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Bioshock Infinite is a standalone game you don't need to have played Bioshock 1 or 2 to understand it. It's a great game, I think you would enjoy it. :)
 
Tomb Raider - 9/10

A Great start to a legacy of tomb raider games, as its a prequel to show how lara becomes who she is in the current day and age,
enjoyed it thoroughly from start to finish, combat was fine, quicktime events weren't too often which was good aswell as if they were spammed constantly it would've gotten repetative.
The whole stealth non stealth aspect was pretty good too, although you always seem to get caught eventually and have to start a gunfight.


Bioshock Infinite - 10/10

I honestly Can't rememeber a game i've enjoyed quite as much as this one, i've literally finished it 5minutes ago as of typing this out, and i'm still sat here in awe at the ending of the game, utterly brilliant twist after twist, i'm pretty mindblown about the whole thing to be honest!

Fantastic graphics which set the whole city of columbia up, i felt immersed in everything and spent a good while just walking about looking at everything there was to see,
Elizabeth is an amazing side character along with the appearances of the letunces?* Every character has a part to play and the whole thing is written brilliantly,
Can't recommend it highly enough!
 
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