Post here when you beat a game. I mean it! - Page 78

ASS-asn · 02-06-2007, 07:47 AM

beat Naruto Gekkitou Ninja Taisen 3
(in the sense i unlocked everything and bought everything there is to buy)

but i admit i didn't do it alone
endless 4 player battles this weekend did the job
i love this game, especially in multiplayer
fluid animations, very accessible gameplay, not deep as tekken but not so shallow you'd say it's a button basher
the game is complex and fast enough to make it challenging
and im a narutard

sleeveboy · 02-06-2007, 09:36 AM

Got all 50 achievements in Viva Pinata last weekend. I guess that counts as "beating" it. Took me over 50 hours, and I enjoyed every second of it. VP is the most purely enjoyable game I've played in a good while. Very underrated game.

Now to finish Grim Fandango and the last three campaign missions in Company of Heroes.

Brad Gallaway · 02-06-2007, 06:31 PM

Finished Phoenix Wright 2 a few days ago... definitely a worthwhile experience even if the final case is crazy-long... I hope that Capcom keeps it going-- this is one case where I wouldn't mind their traditional sequelitis taking effect. For a while, anyway.

Finished Just Cause last night. It's got a few pieces of goofy fun and I like the way the developers tossed out the traditional money system and just let players access freebies at-will (free weapons, free vehicle jobs, free moving around the island, etc...)

It's certainly not perfect though, look for a review pretty soon.

shun · 02-06-2007, 06:41 PM

Brad, shouldn't that be "phoenished phoenix wright 2"?

Anyway, to stay on topic, I finished Hotel Dusk Room 215 last night. Definitely worthwhile for its design, though I'm not as impressed with the story as was the case in Phoenix Wright. My real issue with the story is that it's too convoluted. Still, the conclusion is pretty well done.

Argh! It's so hard to talk about the game without resorting to spoilers! Has no one beat this game yet?

Brad Gallaway · 02-11-2007, 02:30 AM

Phoenished? hmm.... you're probably right. ; )

in other news, i just finished Yakuza on PS2... that game was *surprisingly* enjoyable, and a class act. the best thing Sega's been associated with since Shenmue II, IMO. big thumbs up... a 2nd opinion is forthcoming.

Kin Korn Karn · 02-11-2007, 07:42 AM

Finished FFXII.

I liked the combat to an extent. I didn't like how some of the really useful gambits did not become available until I was ready to beat the game. Overall, though, I enjoyed combat and didn't mind grinding.

I admittedly did not do any sidequests. I just didn't feel the need. The game was pretty lengthy for me (90 hours) so I felt like it was time to move on.

The story was no good. I respect the fact that they tried to move away from the whole "save the world" bit and kept it down to more of a local/regional conflict. But it just didn't pan out. Boring.

I didn't care for any of the characters. None had any qualities that drew me to them, and I felt pretty apathetic to their cause.

The music was probably the worst part. I have the special edition version that has interviews with the developers and the composer. I can see what he was trying to do to be a bit more minimalistic and "rise up" in combat, etc. However, nothing left an impression. I'm not saying he has to be Uematsu, but for a FF game there should be more effort in this realm.

I'm not sure if I would have finished this FF if it wern't a FF. It almost went the way of FF8 for me: never completed. I am not really sure why it took so long for this installment to come out. Nothing about it is truly revolutionary or special.

I give it a 7/10.

Brad Gallaway · 02-11-2007, 10:46 AM

good gravy, 90 hours?!?

i know you said you didn't do sidequests, but how much of that was leveling up and how much was just progressing through the story?

i've been wanting to get into FFXII, but i draw the line at around 40-50 hours for an RPG, and for something that long, only the best.

for some reason, long playtimes seem to be making a resurgence and as someone who has limited game time, i can't say i'm really happy about it.

shun · 02-11-2007, 11:34 AM

There goes my plan to restart FFXII.

I've been meaning to play the game all over again (after losing interest in my first play-through, which isn't actually a very long one) and god, I have to spend 90 hours for that game? Geez, I guess I'm gonna have to rethink my list of games-to-play-next.

Reharl · 02-11-2007, 12:31 PM

Heck I'd love if a game could be 90 hours long and hold my attention for its entirety. The fact that only half of those hours, at best, offer any entertainment is the kicker. Those 90 hours of gaming will be spent on gaming anyway. Long play times can also be balanced with intelligent save systems, so you don't need to play the old two hour stretches before saving your progress.

I can honestly say I don't mind long games if they can keep me hooked. However, it's usually the small, sweet 6-15 hour titles that manage that. Certainly not the dullness of FFXII.

Now to keep with the thread: beat Sanitarium for the PC (good storyline, environment, a forgotten gem of a game) and consider myself done with Wii Sports (Pro on all sports except baseball, many gold medals in training). Wii Tennis is bloody addictive.

FidgetyAcolyte · 02-19-2007, 12:58 AM

I just beat Metal Gear Acid 2 (wish I could do the trendy exponent 2)

Now, I thought this was a wonderful game. I know the whole feeling on MGA was mixed, but I'm a sucker for turn based strategy games, and it takes very little to hook me. I think its partially the universe, and partially the mystification of the confusing gameplay that kept me playing. I still need to watch the 3D solid eye movies.

Once I got the hang of the "COST" system (i had no idea what was going on for a while) , everything was pretty fun, and I enjoyed the boss fights quite a bit. I haven't played the first one yet, but if its anything like this one, I feel like I might be in for a treat. Perhaps a more realistic setting would appeal to me, though, and maybe the first one has this. Its kinda hard to get behind a story built on a human powered by an OS and whatnot. I'd rather fight terrorists.

Up Next: Maybe I'll finally finish Phoenix Wright 1!

Brad Gallaway · 02-19-2007, 10:19 AM

Glad to see i wasn't the only one to enjoy MGA2. i fyou liked 2, you'll probably like 1... my quick breakdown is that 1 had a much better story but the mechanics were rougher. 2 was a *lot* easier to play and had the rough edges smoothed out, but the plot wasn't nearly as interesting. still, both were great... looking forward to MGA: PO now, it's next up in my queue....

FidgetyAcolyte · 02-19-2007, 11:34 PM

I really wanna play Portable Ops badly, because I would love another MGS story to get involved in, but for some reason I keep finding myself playing MGA more. I already beat it, but I have been playing "expert" mode now, for no reason, other than it kills time satisfactorally (word?).

I should just put it down, because I can't get past the first level on expert. I need to play the other PSP games I bought all at once. Or perhaps finish Drill Dozer and Phoenix Wright and finally play my copy of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.

Too much enqueue. Ima die.

sleepy · 02-22-2007, 12:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reharl

Now to keep with the thread: beat Sanitarium for the PC (good storyline, environment, a forgotten gem of a game).

Glad to see someone else who played and enjoyed this game. The Longest Journey and the Lucas Arts games get all the limited attention reserved for the bronze age PC adventure games, but Sanitarium definitely deserves some love too.

sleepy · 02-22-2007, 01:08 AM

Just finished Rogue Galaxy. Man, I'd forgotten how tedious games could be! The game does have some very beautiful environments but that's about all it has to offer.

The real-time battle system is broken: all-enemy nuke spells are hugely overpowered, killing most mobs in one hit. There's little incentive to avoid using them since melee fighting involves nothing more than mashing the X button and hoping the insanely spastic camera won't make you have a seizure. As the nuke spells don't even require you to aim or be a certain distance from your enemies, you end up going through most of the game simply frying your enemies before the game engine has even had time to draw them (the box may say "no loading times," but that's, how do you say, oh yes, a flat-out lie). Even the boss battles are similarly monotonous: pretty much every single boss in the game (with a couple easy but highly irritating exceptions) goes down quickly to regular distance attacks from the player and autopilot support from the two AI-controller support characters. The weapons have elemental attributes, but I can't say I ever noticed them make any difference, even in boss battles. And the implementation of status ailments is a joke -- your main character can be Confused, yet open his item menu and use the cure on himself.

The story, too, fails in almost every respect. You spend the first half of the game assembling your team of eight misfits, with no inkling of your overriding goal or even a clear sense of what's going on in the galaxy around you (there's supposed to be a huge war going on between two mighty federations, but you never so much as see a fleet of battleships, never mind a space battle). The eight characters all have their own stories, but these are nothing more than crude, unconnected sketches of stock scenarios. This wouldn't be so bad if we at least got to see the characters bonding with each other, but we get hardly any scenes of everyday life on the ship and we learn almost nothing about the dynamics of their relationships. As a result the connections that they've apparently formed by the end of the story feel completely hollow and unearned. Meanwhile the cutscenes which tell what little story there is are agonizingly slow and directed so poorly that the cinematography would get laughed off the Hallmark channel. FFXII may not have had much of a story either, but at least the cutscene artists had some idea of how to create drama with editing, framing, and camera movement.

Despite all the abuse I am heaping on the game it does do some things well. As I mentioned earlier, some of the environments (maybe a quarter or a third) are strikingly beautiful, and the rest are inoffensive. Some of the characters can be amusing; the decision to make the honorable tribal warrior cheerfully spiteful and unscrupulous was an inspired character twist. And the special ability animations are well above average, covering the gamut from awe-inspiring badassery to BDSM humor.

On the whole, though, you'll mostly be hoping for the next cutscene while wading through the tedious dungeons -- and then, when the cutscene does come, you'll be praying for it to end already.

If you want to play a Level 5 game, try Dark Cloud 2 or Dragon Quest VIII. If you really really love them, maybe you'd kinda like Rogue Galaxy.

JackSlack · 03-01-2007, 11:11 PM

Just finished Trauma Center: Under the Knife.

BOO-FREAKING-YAH.

Man. I don't think I've ever played a game that has made my hands shake so damned much.

And happily, I finished the last mission with an S ranking, so I never have to do it again! Huzzah!

ps. Which isn't to say I didn't love it: As has been noted before, this is one of those rare games to make you shout out with delight in victory. It's really damned hard, especially because it demands such speed, which with shaking hands is hard to achieve.