The last game you completed, and rating.

Tormentum: Dark Sorrow (6.5/10)

I'd never heard of this but took a recommendation from somebody else's "spec me a point 'n' click" thread. Ideal because even though I loved all the old Lucasart stuff I can't generally be arfed with point 'n' clicks these days... combine this with that... get stuck and wander aimlessly from scene to scene clicking on everything... no patience for it these days!

Anyway, this does away with all that... not too much aimless wandering as paths will be shut off once you have completed all that's required in that particular area and... the puzzles are not particularly difficult. Welcome elements as progress was swift and no puzzle rage required :p

It's a dark game full of heavy metal album cover artwork and obvious HR Giger influences. It has moral choices and different endings as a result.

Three hours of dark and doomy clicking around. Nice enough :)
 
Doggie2k said:
Valiant Hearts: The Great War 9/10

Wow I can't believe this is a ubisoft game and the fact I took so long to play it. Great story line, great game mechanics. If you have this sitting in your steam library give it a go this weekend.
Click to expand...

I am doing as instructed Sir.

I will report back here for debriefing once the mission is complete.
 
Shadow of Mordor 6.5/10

+ Excellent Graphics
+ Excellent Combat
+ Okish story

- utterly soulless and repetitive gameplay
- world environment repetitive and boring

First map mainly great game. But it is such a shallow game (the nemesis system notwithstanding) Yes combat gameplay is excellent but its far too easy and even when you do "level" a chief up to level 20 i didnt find them that hard at all (esp when you can brand them all and chiefs/captains seem quite weak when ganged up on by just a couple of normal orcs). Second map i couldnt be bothered to continue with the add-on quests.
 
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Valiant Hearts: The Great War (7/10)

Enjoyed this though gameplay wise it is limited and did begin to outstay its welcome. Great narrative and story, set during WW1, which not many games are and was educational with it. Treads the line between interactive storybook and game however so probably not for everyone. Possibly a decent 'palate-cleanser' between more action orientated titles.

Walt, however, 10/10 :)
 
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Ryse: Son of Rome: 6.5/10

I rather enjoyed the story of Marius and his journey but other than that there isn't much, the game play was far too easy and linear and you are literally unable to fail any QTE. Combat skill required is minimal, the executions become boring after the first few levels and the boss fights are rinse and repeat.

The game is quite good looking (especially the detail of the main characters faces) but ran like a dog on my system (i5 3570k / GTX 970).
 
Great Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

8/10

Very nice looking platformer featuring two sisters who the player can interchange at will. The gimmick is that each sister inhabits a slightly different take on the game world. They each also have a unique special ability.

There are 3 levels, split in to a number of stages. The game started a bit weakly, with a too-easy first stage, and a slowly cranking difficulty curve, but by level 3, the challenge was fairly tough. The tougher levels really benefits the gameplay enjoyment - you start to need much more precision and more expert use of the abilities.

I finished the game on Saturday, where I started playing at about 10.30pm for a "quick blast". Played the penultimate two stages before tackling the final stage incoporating the final boss fight. Proceeded to spend about 3.5 hours and 99 deaths attempting and dying to beat the final boss, before finally cracking that nut on my 100th go - man that was hard (but also, the sort of challenge I bloody love :D )! Was so engrossed that I totally lost track of time, thought it was about 1am but it was actually 3am when I finally got to bed, it's been years since I stayed up that late gaming, before being woken at 6.30 when the kids got up.

Was totally worth it :D

(p.s. there's a bit at the end of, I think, stage 1-6 where you need to jump on a moving conveyor belt and duck down to avoid low ceiling spikes. At this point, I had no idea you could duck and got past this section without use of ducking - it was so hard that I died more than 100 times doing it! It was totally worth it, though, for some reason that was one of my favourite bits!)

(p.p.s. You may notice the interesting game title - the older among us might recognise Great Giana Sisters from the 8-bit days, where a game by that name appeared as a blatant rip of Super Mario Brothers (hence the name) - arguably the best game on C64, it was quickly withdrawn from sale due to copyright infringement)
 
Shadow of Mordor. 8.5/10

Stunning graphics, great gameplay, great atmosphere and story telling. Gets a bit easy after PC has levelled up a bit, despite the fact I was playing on 'Ultra' difficulty setting and game doesn't last very long. My playthrough was 30 hours....still sidequests n that to do and there were areas in the game that I never even visited, but pffft.

I stalled on getting this when it first came out because I thought it would be raging gay just like the films were, but as it happens, the caricatures in the game for the most part were to my liking. Only the dwarf with the Hollywood Scottish accent and braindead stereotypical gung-ho banter really gripped my *faeces*.
 
MatTheCat said:
Shadow of Mordor. 8.5/10

Stunning graphics, great gameplay, great atmosphere and story telling. Gets a bit easy after PC has levelled up a bit, despite the fact I was playing on 'Ultra' difficulty setting and game doesn't last very long. My playthrough was 30 hours....still sidequests n that to do and there were areas in the game that I never even visited, but pffft.
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There was an interesting article written a few years ago at Penny Arcade about games like this (IIRC, it was written originally about Assassin's Creed 2). They were trying to figure out why so many reviews of the game were very different, with some reviewers loving it and some very "meh", and this seemed to be different again from players who had bought the game.

Turns out that if you rush through this type of game (as most reviewers do because they get very short windows to do the review before release day), then you do the main storyline missions and miss all the other side quests. This gives you a very different playing experience, missing important side stories/quests/upgrades, etc.

For games like Borderlands, Assassins Creed, Shadows Of Mordor, Mass Effect, Fallout, Far Cry, Elder Scrolls, Kingdoms of Amalur, etc, missing the side quests and racing through the main story is like eating the meat on the plate and missing the side dishes and other courses that go with it. You're just not getting the full experience of the game world and narrative as it was designed.
 
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Mass Effect trilogy 9/10.

Loved it, using the saves from each game trying to keep them all alive apart from Kaidan... has any one actually ever chosen him over Ash? lol
 
Halo Spartan strike 6/10

Much the same as the last game but with in my view a much weaker story which at times just seems to have been made up down the local pub.
One good thing low price which means if you want something cheap and easy to play this could be for you
 
lotr war in the north 7/10.
its no skyrim, but still a fun not too difficult game. had to revert an older ati driver to stop the game from crashing though.

next up Shadow of Mordor. am holding out until my new r290 arrives :)
 
Wolfenstein The Old Blood - "Meh."

Pretty boring really, and by the end it felt like a chore to play. It's short (about 6-8 hours), and plays like Castle Wolfenstein, but without any of the big set pieces. A lot of it seems to take place in tunnels so makes it feel very much on rails, and even the few more open areas are cluttered to feed you into the map one way. The story (such as it is) it brief and unnecessary, and adds nothing of any note to the game, certainly not any good NPC characters. I nearly gave up on it a few times, but knowing it was short meant I continued to the end to see if things improved.

This would have been fine as a DLC or a couple of chapters at the beginning of Castle Wolfenstein, but as a standalone game it's not really got much in the way of the essential "fun factor", and doesn't bring anything new, interesting or particularly entertaining.
 
Hitman: Absolution 9/10

Fantastic game, love the Hitman series in general, this one being the best out of the lot, very good graphics, beautiful scenery.
The story is good, the mechanics do get a little repetitive though after a few hours, but still enjoyable.
Silverballers are awesome to use too.

On to Contracts mode next.
 
Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut (7.5/10)

I've been looking for an RPG to play of late but after starting and giving up on both Divinity: Original Sin and Dragon Age: Inquisition I picked Shadowrun up cheap in a deal to see if the Steampunk setting might inspire me to persevere with it. It did, though to be fair this game is perhaps more an 'RPG-lite' as it is fairly linear. I still put 34 hours into it though, doing all of the side-quests.

Combat is turn based and I enjoyed it though, some challenges aside, I felt I was going through the motions with it towards the end. The graphics are ok however there is very little in the way of character animation and so with all of the dialogue / text in the game it was a little like playing an interactive story at times ie: you would read about the motions of a character however this would not be represented on the screen.

Personal highlight: One of the characters can switch between a shotgun, assault rifle and sniper rifle at will during combat. That I loved. Stay back and pick enemies off with the sniper rifle. Enemies creep up at you, BLAM! Shotgun time :)
 
Divinity Original Sin 8.5/10

111 hours to complete. Definitely the best turn based RPG since Temple of Elemental Evil.

Music (as per all Divinity games) half makes the game what it is. It creates a fantastic atmosphere.
The game does not hold your hand at all, it was refreshing to learn a new character building system, the last time I had that much fun learning what Drakensang.

It looses half a point because the story felt a little disjointed and the ending was below par. A full point was lost due to it being too easy. There were only two hard fights where I had to use all my mage skills to their full extent; the Void Dragon and Braccus Rex.

Defining thought : No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses.
 
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