Games Beaten 2015

[Ack]

1. Renegade Ops (PC)(Multidirectional Shooter)
2. Borderlands 2 (PC)(FPS/RPG)
3. Gunpoint (PC)(Puzzle Platformer)
4. Robotrek (SNES)(RPG)
5. The Tick (SNES)(Beat 'Em Up)
6. Alien vs Predator (SNES)(Beat 'Em Up)
7. X-Kaliber 2097 (SNES)(Action Platformer)
8. Metal Slug (MVS)(Run and Gun)
9. Shadowrun (SNES)(RPG)
10. Quake II (PC)(FPS)
11. The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang (SNES)(RPG)
12. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (PC)(Action)
13. A Story About My Uncle (PC)(Platformer)
14. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (PC)(FPS)
15. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith (PC)(FPS)
16. Catacomb (PC)(Top-Down Shooter)
17. Catacomb Abyss (PC)(FPS)
18. Catacomb Armageddon (PC)(FPS)
19. Catacomb Apocalypse (PC)(FPS)
20. The Catacomb (PC)(Top-Down Shooter)
21. Catacomb 3-D (PC)(FPS)
22. EarthBound (SNES)(RPG)
23. Quake II: Ground Zero (PC)(FPS)
24. Quake II: The Reckoning (PC)(FPS)
25. Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader (PC)(RPG)
26. The 7th Guest (PC)(Puzzle)
27. Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (PC)(RPG)
28. Loom (PC)(Point and Click Adventure)
29. Castlevania: Dracula X (SNES)(Action Platformer)
30. System Shock 2 (PC)(Survival Horror FPS)
31. Final Fantasy V (SNES)(RPG)
32. Descent (PC)(FPS)
33. Mortal Kombat 2 (SNES)(Fighting)
34. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (PC)(Point and Click Adventure)
35. Alien Shooter (PC)(Top-Down Shooter)
36. Alien Shooter: Fight for Life (PC)(Top-Down Shooter)
37. Alien Shooter: The Experiment (PC)(Top-Down Shooter)
38. F.E.A.R. Extraction Point (PC)(FPS)
39. F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate (PC)(FPS)
40. Among the Sleep (PC)(Survival Horror)

I finished a short writing project I was working on yesterday and decided to treat myself with a short horror game.

Among the Sleep is a horror title in the vein of Clock Tower, Haunting Ground, and Hellnight, where you play a two year old child in a first person perspective who is struggling to cope with some very dark themes and has only a trust teddy bear to find any source of light in the darkness. It is not a game about fighting; there is no combat system. When the thing in the darkness comes for you, all you can do is crawl under something and hide and hope it doesn't find you. When not hiding in fear, you must solve puzzles involving finding objects and climbing structures to reach key items or exploring dark and spooky corridors across a series of foreboding imaginary worlds. The ultimate goal is to find your mother, but to do so, you must find objects of memory to open the final door and discover just what it is that frightens you so much.

The game plays convincingly too for the most part. You can run for a while but will occasionally stumble and fall forward(like in Clock Tower 3). You can crawl to fit into tight corridors. You can grab and throw objects but have very limited strength to do so. You can clutch your teddy bear to light up your immediate surroundings You can even lean around corners when normally standing around. But you cannot easily go through all of these, so picking which position you are in is heavily dependent on your situation. Thankfully you crouch quickly; otherwise I would have been toast on at least two occasions. You also cannot easily look at things that terrify you. The visuals waver with fearful intensity when you do, and your heartbeat escalates until it practically thunders in your ears. The first few times this happened, I wondered if the game had a sanity effect a la Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. It doesn't, and you won't die or be driven insane just from looking, but it is not a pleasant experience for either the player or the child to face the nasties head on. Also, I got a kick out of looking down at the toddler's shadow.

The game is short and will likely take only a couple of hours to complete, with only a DLC prologue done in a similar style to keep you coming back. No enemies appear during the first half of the game aside from a few sudden scares, which both allows for a slow but steady build up and lulls the senses into thinking the game will not offer any dangers. I prefer this length and style, because it lets the game last just long enough to get the job done without overstaying its welcome and helps to keep it feeling fresh and interesting. But I also managed to buy the game on discount on GOG for $5. At $20, I think it's a bit pricey for the amount of content I get, especially when considering how much content I can get from other games on GOG for considerably less money. But it is an effective horror game that I greatly enjoyed. Perfect for the annual October festivities that are coming up soon.

[Czernobog]

^@Ack I loved the demo of Among the Sleep, but still have yet to get the game. (The price does seem too steep). That one thing in the kitchen. I have to admit, that startled me.

1. Lighting Returns

I had some problems with FFXIII, but liked it enough overall to beat the game and enjoyed myself. I thought XIII-2 improved massively and actually platinumed the game, which I rarely do, so I was excited to try Lightning Returns.

Lightning Returns is strange. I've never played anything quite like it. Basically, the game starts with a few days left until the end of the world. It takes place 500 years after the end of XIII-2. Lightning has been awoken and apparently been designated as "savior" by Barthandelus, one of the various gods in the XIII lore. She has been giving the task of ferrying souls to a new world. Unfortunately, I found Lightning's constant way of talking about being the savior and brooding one of the most overly dramatic and annoying things ever. The other characters (most of which I didn't ever like to be honest) have made returns as well, because 500 years prior, the final events of XIII-2 caused everyone to stop aging. (They can still die though, and can no longer procreate). Snow has become king of his own party town, which is sort of hilarious. The others are spread around the world, each tending to their own issues. The story does get a little better, but is still often cringe-worthy. One of the saving graces is a little girl who keeps popping up to taunt Lightning and is enjoyably dark and vague to annoy her.

The gameplay is.....different, but addictive. There are encounters with on-screen enemies, but you do not level up by fighting them. Instead, you gain stat bonuses by completing quests throughout the four areas of the game. (Two cities, a desert, and a wildlands area.) Each quest also works to add time to the remaining days (you can get up to thirteen) and there is a clock constantly ticking down. You do have an ability to freeze the clock temporarily using ability points you get from killing monsters. There's no need to rush though, as you can fairly easily complete almost all the quests and still have days remaining. There are a few main quests which can be done in any order, as the game is completely open really early. Fortunately, the quests are fairly varied and some of them are interesting as the whole point is for people's souls to be "saved." There are some crappy fetch quests and tedious things thrown in though. Like finding clocks. Screw the clocks.

The battle system is actually surprisingly fun. It's sort of a mix between the garb system of X-2 and FFXIII's battle system. Most garbs have 1 or 2 unique abilities locked to them, but any open slots can be equipped with any abilities you have obtained throughout the game. You can have 3 garbs equipped at once and switch between them instantly with the shoulder buttons. I ended up having a physical fighter garb, a mage garb, and a buff garb, but also had additional ones for specific encounters. Basically, Lightning is extremely customizable. You can also create additional garb customizations and save them to equip when you want. The stagger bar also returns but has a color changing wavy line effect on the enemies hp bar which I didn't even notice until I had gotten a ways into the game.

Since it's the end of time and everything, you can actually drive nearly every monster in the game to extinction. After killing anywhere from 30 to 150ish(iirc) of a monster type, you get to fight their respective last one (basically a much stronger version of the enemy) and get a powerful accessory. I found playing the exterminator pretty fun. There are also two massively powerful extra bosses, which I attempted but did not beat. Would likely have to do so on a new-game plus.

Overall, an enjoyable game, and I was surprised by how much it was willing to differ from the other games.

2. Half-Life

Decided to play through the Half-Life games at long last. The first one was a lot of fun. Certainly dated at this point, but still enjoyable. I wish I had played this when it first came out as I probably wouldn't have played anything that managed to be quite as immersive at the time. It was noticeably more difficult than any modern fps I've played recently. I don't have a lot to say about it, other than the boss was annoying as hell, but Xen was neat. I tried playing through Opposing Force but ran into a glitch quite a ways into the game that would require a complete restart and decided to move onto the other games instead. Still may go back to that and run through Blue Shift as well.

3. Codename Gordon

This is a little 2D action platformer based on Half-Life that was taken off Steam, but you can still get if you Google how to get it in your Steam library. It's very short, but an alright little game. You hit things with a crowbar, then shoot things with the mouse when you pick up a couple guns. Then shoot down a helicopter and it's over. Manages to nail the half-life look with the headcrab zombies and things pretty well though. Even had some manhacks and vents. Good for a half-hour boredom cure.

4. Half Life 2 and the 2 Episodes

This is where I felt that Half-Life started to get interesting. I liked that the story wasn't spoon-fed to you, but you were dropped into the world and got to infer things through what was happening around you. I would have liked to see some more of the Xen enemies from the first game leaked into the world. The physics engine is certainly fun to play with, especially with the gravity gun, but some of the puzzles were a little too focused on it. Some very cool gameplay ideas, especially in episode 2. Every part of each game sort of feels like it's own set-piece. However, some areas do drag on and on. Especially the first boat section. Like the first game, I wish I had played this when it first came out. I imagine it was extremely impressive at the time. It still plays well, but I have a feeling some of it's more groundbreaking aspects are lost on me. I actually enjoyed the first Half-Life quite a bit more. I am a bit curious where they were trying to go with the story however. Maybe they're a bit curious as well.

5. The Last of Us

Let me preface this by saying I love horror games, but usually hate stealth segments. That being said, I found being stealthy the best part of The Last of Us' gameplay. I actually had a lot of fun sneaking around and landing the stealth kills. The gunfight segments mostly felt tedious. Still, this game was more about the story and atmosphere than the gameplay and it delivered. I really liked that the characters felt human. They were flawed and they had believable reasons for being flawed, especially Joel. Many of the environments were fun to explore and picking up the pieces left behind by other people who had once been there was often a highlight. This was especially true in the case of the boat captain who had made a life in the sewers. I know I'm not going into as much detail as I usually try to for my games beaten, but I am awfully tired at the moment.

6. Sleeping Dogs

Finally played through Sleeping Dogs since getting it on a Steam sale way back, and I wish I had tried it out sooner. I absolutely had a blast with this one. I'm really fond of these type of games when they know how to limit you're capabilities in the world. (I loved Saints Row III, but IV felt like you had way too much power way too early and felt like I had entered cheat codes). The story may have been cliche but the characters kept it from feeling stale, and I was always itching to do the story missions.

However, the best part of the game was the combat. It was just so damn fun. It's similar to the Batman games with the counter mechanic, but feels smoother. Once you get good at countering, you can feel like a total badass by countering every move and laying waste John Woo style. The driving was also fun with it's drifting mechanic and it was nice being able to lose cops easier than some of the GTA games. There's a ton of side mission things I haven't done much of, but I intend to play some more on my clear file and see what else there is to explore.

7. Fable: The Lost Chapters *NEW*

Another enjoyable one. Fable had a lot of charm and quirkiness to it that I appreciated and being able to explore different elements of combat helped prevent it from becoming stale. I did a good playthrough, and thought about doing an evil playthrough down the line, but I'm not sure I'll want to invest the time. Fable sits at a strange place for me. There's an overall feeling of a game of that period but it's also refined enough that it doesn't quite feel the same. Anyway, I enjoyed the main quest quite a bit, and did some of the side quests, but there was tons more I could of unlocked and explored if I wanted. As for the Lost Chapters section, it felt a little tacked on. It offered some new enemies, a new location, and added to the story, but it was short and didn't have much of an impact. You did get a chance to use a powerful sword from the end of the game or a new one if you made different decisions which was nice, but the final boss was pretty disappointing. Overall, it took a while to get into, but once I did I was hooked all the way through.

8. Getsu Fuuma Den 月風魔伝 *NEW*

I did a YouTube video on this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MJ0mo8oJ8

Short version: I really loved it and consider it one of the Konami classics. It's got an overworld like zelda 2 but with the sidescrolling darkness of a Castlevania title and 3D dungeons. It was a bit short though.

9. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater *NEW*

I REALLY SHOULD HAVE PLAYED THIS BEFORE MGS4. Seriously, would have made that game much easier to understand. I had played all the MGS games with Solid as the main before this one, and enjoyed them all immensely. I love the convoluted plot and melodrama. I also suck at stealth games but have always found MG games approachable.

So far I'm really enjoying Big Boss as a character more than I enjoyed Solid. While Solid was virtuous and ended up being more of a hero through his journey, Kojima seems to have done a better job establishing Big Boss's emotions and changes, at least in MGS3. (I've made it a ways through Peace Walker before moving onto ground zeroes, and story/character depth seems to have taken a backseat to new gameplay mechanics.)

The gameplay in 3 is also just more enjoyable than it has been in the previous entries. I played the HD collection and also had the benefit of the free camera. Easy to control and maneuver and lots of possibilities for getting past areas.

Of course, one of my favorite aspects of MGS games is the boss battles. Ever since Psycho Mantis, I've always been itching for creative ones. MGS3 delivered on that front for the most part. The really good ones made me indifferent to the forgettable ones. The End and The Sorrow were especially enjoyable. The End took me about 45 minutes of tracking and sneaking. Once I caught him a couple times I realized I could just chase him pumping the shotgun though. The Sorrow was just my cup of tea. Nice and twisted.
Anyways, now I finally get why most players seem to consider it the best MGS game to date.

[Luke]

Just razzing a few of you guys, but some lists read like:

1) Street Fightr II (w/ Ken)
2) Street Fighter II (w/ Blanka)
3)Street Fighter II (w/Ryu)
4) Street Fighter II (w/Dhalsim)
5) Street Fighter II (w/ Chun-li)
6) Street Fighter II (w/ Guile)
7) Super street fighter II (w/Guile)
Super street fighter II (w/ Blanka)
9) Golden Axe, w/ warrior
10) Golden Axe w/ dwarf
11) Grand Theft Auto V, the first mission
12) Grand theft Auto V, the second mission
13)Grand Theft Auto V, the first DLC mission
14) Grand Theft Auto V, the second DLC mission
15) Grand Theft Auto V, the second mission but with a different outfit/skin

[prfsnl_gmr]

Just razzing a few of you guys, but some lists read like:

1) Street Fightr II (w/ Ken)
2) Street Fighter II (w/ Blanka)
3)Street Fighter II (w/Ryu)
4) Street Fighter II (w/Dhalsim)
5) Street Fighter II (w/ Chun-li)
6) Street Fighter II (w/ Guile)
7) Super street fighter II (w/Guile)
Super street fighter II (w/ Blanka)
9) Golden Axe, w/ warrior
10) Golden Axe w/ dwarf
11) Grand Theft Auto V, the first mission
12) Grand theft Auto V, the second mission
13)Grand Theft Auto V, the first DLC mission
14) Grand Theft Auto V, the second DLC mission
15) Grand Theft Auto V, the second mission but with a different outfit/skin

[noiseredux]

@Ack:

12. Among The Sleep (PC)

For my birthday last year, my sister funded Among The Sleep in my name on Kickstarter. Funny thing, last year, I didn't own a PC able to play it haha.

I loaded it up tonight and got sucked in, and beat it in one 4-hour sitting.

It's sort of like Amnesia. No fighting. Just hiding and navigating. There were several "oh shit' moments that really made me jump. The story gets really F'd up and disturbing by the end #nospoilers.

I'd recommend it, though it is short for the price.

BTW, was bummed that the credits have my sister's name instead of mine due to some mis-communication. :\

[Ack]

Great minds think alike, Noise.

Just razzing a few of you guys, but some lists read like:

1) Street Fightr II (w/ Ken)
2) Street Fighter II (w/ Blanka)
3)Street Fighter II (w/Ryu)
4) Street Fighter II (w/Dhalsim)
5) Street Fighter II (w/ Chun-li)
6) Street Fighter II (w/ Guile)
7) Super street fighter II (w/Guile)
Super street fighter II (w/ Blanka)
9) Golden Axe, w/ warrior
10) Golden Axe w/ dwarf
11) Grand Theft Auto V, the first mission
12) Grand theft Auto V, the second mission
13)Grand Theft Auto V, the first DLC mission
14) Grand Theft Auto V, the second DLC mission
15) Grand Theft Auto V, the second mission but with a different outfit/skin

Yeah, my list reads a bit like this, but every title named is either a different game or a separate expansion pack in the same series, like all 6 of the Catacomb games, or Alien Shooter and both expansions, the F.E.A.R. expansions, the Quake II expansions, the Jedi Knight expansion, etc.

[Kidpanda]

R-type - PCB
I had been struggling with this one off and on for about 10 years, played it on various ports/collections. I get the PCB last week and load it into a cab yesterday. Second play I 1cc it. I don't think R-type needs any introduction, either you love it, or you despise it.

[prfsnl_gmr]

R-type - PCB
I had been struggling with this one off and on for about 10 years, played it on various ports/collections. I get the PCB last week and load it into a cab yesterday. Second play I 1cc it. I don't think R-type needs any introduction, either you love it, or you despise it.

It is my favorite shmup. I have never 1CC'ed it (and I probably never will), but I love it to death.

[MrPopo]

I've been playing it a bit on my SMS and I'm surprised by how much flicker there is, especially since Gradius on the NES has none.

[Sarge]

Just razzing a few of you guys, but some lists read like:

1) Street Fightr II (w/ Ken)
2) Street Fighter II (w/ Blanka)
3)Street Fighter II (w/Ryu)
4) Street Fighter II (w/Dhalsim)
5) Street Fighter II (w/ Chun-li)
6) Street Fighter II (w/ Guile)
7) Super street fighter II (w/Guile)
Super street fighter II (w/ Blanka)
9) Golden Axe, w/ warrior
10) Golden Axe w/ dwarf
11) Grand Theft Auto V, the first mission
12) Grand theft Auto V, the second mission
13)Grand Theft Auto V, the first DLC mission
14) Grand Theft Auto V, the second DLC mission
15) Grand Theft Auto V, the second mission but with a different outfit/skin

Sounds like mine!