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I said it when I beat it last year, Episode 1 is why Valve ditched the format. It's awful. Not just as a Half-Life game, in general. I think they even said that their stats showed that most people didn't even beat the game. It's four hours long.Quote:
Originally Posted by gameoverDude
25) Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PC) 138105 XP on "Give Me A Challenge" difficulty
Got Darrow's ending. During the game, the negotations with Sandoval and Darrow failed.(Sandoval offed himself. Darrow refused to give me the code, so I whacked him. ) OTOH, I did get Lee Hong to confess to murder.
Unlike Call of Duty or F.E.A.R. 2 where the pistol is good for nearly nothing and generally gets ditched for something else, I found plenty of use for the Zenith 10mm and the Revolver. I shot out a few cameras with the Zenith, and found an explosive-upgraded revolver useful for robots if I didn't happen to have an EMP grenade. The Heavy Rifle became one of my favorites, especially for cleanup after a blown stealth attempt. The spinup noise is cool, and it feels badass to use the sound to threaten enemies. At the Tai Yong Medical facility, I generally took a Black Ops "no witnesses" approach and shot up everything that moved (even scientists, knowing that they could start the alarms).
The great thing is how there are many different ways to go about objectives in DXHR- like creating a stealth character with cloaking abilities and extra-high jumps to take a Crysis approach, or building up the hacking skill to subvert enemy security systems, etc. Box stacking skills and vent traveling (I loved headshotting an enemy from a vent, and then crawling back to hide) have been useful in spots. Quite often, I found myself thinking "How would I do this differently?".
I'll probably be playing this again on GMAC level sooner or later- trying to rack up some more XP by the end of the game, and maybe getting that cloaking power a bit earlier. DXHR does the FPS/RPG thing better than Singularity or BioShock, IMO.
I wonder if the Combine story will instead be closed out in the early parts of HL3 (whenever that shows up), given that it's clearly not over at the end of HL2E2. E2 is frankly far better than E1.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
7. Super Mario 3D Land
This is the best 3D Mario ever and 'tendo's best game since the '90s. There are precisely two bad levels in the entire game: the ghost house with the three paintings and the ghost house with the three paintings again. Aside from the innocuous-but-goofy purple coin boxes, it is without waste. Stages are short and taut. The placement of every big coin is excellent except one that requires you to light torches to access it. That instance aside, power ups are actually used for powering up. They are not the lock-key mechanisms they've been relegated to since Mario 64. They feel great. The tanooki suit begins its float at precisely the right pitch. Fireballs have a perfect speed and angle. Mario feels like he's lost some horsepower, but I prefer his unusual heft here to his frictionless Galaxy incarnations.
Here is a game that would not be possible without the 3D tech, but never (okay, rarely) uses it dishonestly. I love, love, love this game. It alone justifies a 3DS purchase in my o.
It would be possible because I played it without it. The only times I wanted to turn it on were in those one room areas (and it was really easy to trial and error it anyway)
Really? I misjudged jumps constantly without it and I'm pretty good at these games, I think.
Yeah. But it is my favorite 3D Mario too. Since it has a lot of 2D-ish levels.
Also, I'll concede that the game is aesthetically flat. Not New Super Mario Bros. flat, but flat. Whereas Super Mario Galaxy's soaring around and looking brilliant forgave a lot of its mechanical problems, SM3DL's limpid level design forgives its humdrum scenery and enemies (the bees are embarrassing). We can't have a Mario that looks as good as Rayman Origins and plays as well as this game because then we'd have another SMW2: Yoshi's Island on our hands and we're not ready for that yet.
30. Biohazard 6
http://users.zoominternet.net/~tain/...iohazard_6.png
I've talked about it in the official thread a bit, but it's basically a lot of jank piling on top of a really solid foundation. You'll see teleporting monsters. You'll see stupid vehicle/chase scenes with awkward camera transitions. You'll see performance issues. The herb system is kinda weird. The game doesn't explain anything to you, and this is a game that has mechanics that could use at least some explaining. I'm assuming that playing this solo sucks, as I hear your partner is invincible and stupid. Things that aren't player models look pretty ugly in general. There are a lot of mid-game cutscenes with button prompts in them. Some sections of Jake's campaign are ridiculously bad. I can totally see this game getting shitty scores and not being for everyone due to all of this stuff.
The game shines, though, when it's simply players fighting against a ton of enemies in a somewhat open space. The new player actions are great. The dodge roll takes a perfect amount of time to pull off, and doesn't give you invincibility or anything stupid like that. Sliding under shit and into enemies (for a specific type of stun) is fun, especially when firing up at enemies during the slide. Shuffling around on the ground allows you to avoid a surprising number of attacks for the mobility tradeoff. Quick-shots, flying side kicks, environmental head smashes, counter attacks with tight timing windows... There's a lot to have fun with, here. You have a stamina meter that you need to think about when using most of these options, but it never feels suffocating. The game has a large variety of enemy types, too, and a surprising number of weapons with unique quirks to them (Helena's Hydra triple-quickshot, Ada's crossbow's shitty dodge, etc). There's a cover system somewhere in there, too, but it's actually not all that useful.
The campaigns that tie these fights together are mostly good. Given that the game took me nearly 30 hours, I'm surprised at how consistent the quality is. There are shitty segments, make no mistake, but not even the worst of Jake's campaign turned me off of the game.
I played the game on Professional, in co-op, with the aiming reticle replaced by the RE4/5-style laser and with the non-aim sensitivity jacked way up. I'd imagine this game would be pretty unwieldy on the default camera sensitivity. Professional mode was tough enough to ensure that I'd make good use of the options, but I was surprised at how much easier it seemed than 4/5 Professional. Curious about the downloadable extra difficulty (better be free!).
It's a long game, taking me 27 hours to finish all of the campaigns. Immediately after beating the game I wanted to try out Mercenaries, which wound up being excellent. Maybe my favorite implementation of the mode.
I've had a lot of fun with this game. Don't play it on a Japanese 360 if you like to see heads blow up.
14. Spec Ops: The Line (PC, Suicide Mission)
I'm really glad FirstBlood posted about this previously and then shared that it was on sale for a ridiculous $5.99. It's a fairly standard Gears of War style third person shooter, but the story is fantastic. Unlike most game that let you make moral choices and then feel really confident abut the choice you made, it continues to make you question if you're doing the right thing. There are some really disturbing moments in the game. Some of them caused me to pause to try to consider what should be done. In some of those cases, that delay was a choice in and of itself. I'd definitely buy a sequel... and for a lot more than $5.99.
8/10
2012 Totals:
1 3DS, 1 FC, 2 iOS, 3 PC, 1 PS2, 4 PS3, 1 PSV
2 - 6s, 2 - 7s, 4 - 8s, 4 - 9s, 1-10
26) Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link (PC)
45,740 on GMAC.
It's what really happens when Adam Jensen stows away on the ship from Hengsha to Singapore. There's a little less exploration than the DXHR main game (and just one merchant), but still enough for this DLC which comes in at around the length of your average CoD campaign. Here you start with NO augs- but you fix that early on by finding a pack of Praxis kits.
Knowing that shooting out cameras triggers the alarmed status by itself in the original DXHR (and definitely blows Smooth Operator), I didn't do it here unless the enemy had already gone hostile or an alarm had been triggered earlier. The boss battle format from DXHR's main game has been dropped. Instead, most of the challenge is in reaching the enemy commander- KO him or kill him, your choice. You won't have to pump a few clips into him. Those who play Pacifist style will be pleased to not need a firearm in the inventory.