Review The Last Game You Beat

[Kenny]

Broken Age: Act I

Loved it, the story was surprisingly very good. I didn't realize it was going to be THAT good. I avoided all the behind the scenes stuff, participating on their forums and everything else about this game because I wanted to experience it the moment I played it. Glad I did too.

If I had one gripe, I felt like it was too short. But since it's only the first part it's not that big of a deal.

[OL]

^^Honestly hadn't even heard of it until now, but looking it up, I'm definitely intrigued.
By the Shay half of the story at least.

[Kenny]

Shay's story is the best one of the two but there's plenty to like about Vella's once it kicks in. Especially the twists and turns the story takes.

Schafer's style is becoming my favorite in the gaming world, playing a game of his evokes a hardcore nostalgia feeling from me. I don't know what it is, it might have to do with the fact his cartoony wackiness aesthetic reminds me of the stuff I grew up with. Even down to the soundtrack, the composer did a great job here.

[ThyDarkAngel]

I'm happy to say that the last game I have beaten (for the Xth time) is the best, most ambitious and beautiful videogame ever made.

[Raithos]

No review, everyone here's already beat it. As if the game wasn't awesome enough as it is, I entered the final dungeon of P4G wearing this...(spoilers)

The fact that it actually changed their victory poses/quotes was icing on the cake. 90+ hours and I can say it was honestly one of the most entertaining games I've played. The story just kept going and it never felt forced once. Plus I genuinely liked all the characters. The Featherman costumes surely cemented its place in my top ten somewhere. And Naoto

[Crimson Ryan]

Chinese knockoff VAIO!

[OL]

No review, everyone here's already beat it.

Not me!

It's weird, as big a fan as I am of the entire SMT franchise, I've really only beaten a small handful of them. Gotten pretty far in others (such as P4), but it's one of those odd series that I absolutely adore even though I rarely get around to beating them.

EDIT:



Finished The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches DLC packs in Dishonored, which both compose a single story covering Daud, the assassin who killed the Empress at the beginning of Dishonored and basically sent everything spiraling into motion.
Have to say, it's easily some of the best DLC I've ever played. Also very happy to say that it doesn't exist only as code online, but is actually included on-disc with the game of the year edition of Dishonored.
The quality of it is absolutely the same as that found in the main game, if not better since some of the supernatural powers have been tweaked and are even more fun to use. The level of gameplay freedom still leaves the game as open and replayable as it ever was before, and some of the new levels are easily some of my favorites in the whole Dishonored shebang (the Draper District and the Brigmore Mansion, in particular). Surprisingly, the levels that are re-used from the main game don't feel at all like a drag to have to go back to, as one might expect; the mission objectives are different enough that they feel like entirely new levels. Corvo breaking out of the first-level prison from the main game is a completely different experience from Daud having to break in during the Brigmore Witches episode.
The narrative is also, for the most part, a little more engaging than that of the main game, with a much more interesting and threatening antagonist looming over the whole thing, a good contrast to the politicians and nobles from before. And to top it all off, it ends up feeling a little more stylish than the main game as well, thanks to a more liberal use of color in the visuals, though the tone is still consistently downbeat.
I think the one place I would criticize the game is in the casting of Michael Madsen as Daud. I like Michael Madsen and think he can be a good actor. He's absolutely iconic as Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs, and as Budd in Kill Bill. But more often than not, he just seems kind of bored when he's in anything other than a Tarantino movie, and it's really no different here. His vocal delivery isn't terrible or anything, it's just... completely unimpressive. Not to mention that the specific gravelliness of his voice just doesn't feel like it fits Daud at all. There are a lot of other actors they could have chosen, and the results probably would have been much better.
And on the subject of sound, it only just now occurs to me that Dishonored as a whole (not just the DLC packs) lacks much in the way of memorable music. In an odd way, I kind of wish it had more of a soundtrack overall. It seems like a legitimate melodic score would have served the game well, especially if it had a kind of Nier-esque vibe to it. As it is, outside of the voice work (have to mention that Susan Sarandon as Granny Rags is great) and the sound effects in some cases (the piano tones signalling that you've been spotted) the game doesn't have much of an aural personality. Unfortunate, because great music makes an audience remember things even more fondly, and as great as Dishonored is, I don't want to see people forget about it in just a few years' time. I'd absolutely love to see it become a series.
The whole thing is, much to my own surprise, probably one of my favorite experiences I've had during the PS3/360 generation. I was expecting nothing but a well-made Thief-clone, but got something so much more. I really hope to see more of Dunwall in the future. The background world that Arkane created here is just too well-thought-out and interesting for them to leave it at only one game and a couple DLC packs.

[Who Really Cares?]

I'm about 8 hours into that but its been so long I might have to restart it.

[Raithos]

Yeah everyone has those in their list lol. You love the game/franchise, sink time into it but never complete it so I hear ya on that. I spent almost 95 hours on it. Was really surprised I stuck with it till the end given it was one big repetitive spam fest (it was, there's no denying it lol), it never got old though.

I did that with Dishonored. Bought it on release day, played 8 or 9 hours and stopped. I got to the part where you go after a certain someone (you know who) and have to sneak into the building with the electricity (might be a library?) and the Tallboy patrolling between the book shelves. I stopped to try something else I had bought and never picked it back up, even though it was an excellent game.

[Ri_oh]

Sleeping Dogs.

Wow, I wish I had played this game sooner. At first the story came off a bit cheesy. Like it took itself too seriously. But after a while it really grew on me. Sure it borrowed inspiration from Infernal Affairs, but never enough to be a total ripoff. It pays homage to Hong Kong action cinema without becoming a souless tribute. I was incredibly invested in the characters and setting by the end, despite the predictability. The fighting was fun, the city is vibrant and full of stuff to do, and the graphics were great. I have a few complaints about the free fun controls. And there were a few ugly glitches. But overall I haven't had this much fun in a modern open world since Shenmue 2. Can't wait for the sequel.

[IrishNinja]

Revenge of the Ninja

awesome, but short

[Axm]

Demon's Souls

The game was so hard for me to get into back in 2010. I constantly kept getting killed and couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, my character seemed so slow and the enemies seemed so fast in comparison. To put it simply. I really sucked at the game and kept putting it back into my backlog time and time again. Then I tried out Dark Souls, fell in love with that and then figured it was time to try the game again. And was it worth it! The game has such a tense and dark atmosphere that you can almost taste. The art designs reminded me more than a little bit of the manga, Berserk and even a couple of the enemies, environments, boss battles and NPCs seemed like they were ripped directly from it. Top marks on the aesthetics side of things. The game is so well designed, but some of the traps found in this game were plain unfair, I'm glad they scaled back on their trolling with Dark Souls.

The boss battles I cannot stop thinking about when it comes to this game, some of them are so easy and some of them are incredibly challenging. Others are frustrating but man does it feels satisfying when you kill them. The final battle against the False King was outstanding (The Old One doesn't count as the final boss to me).

Overall, I think the game is a masterpiece and one of the best games on the PS3. Makes me even more excited for Dark Souls 2 and I was excited enough. It's only a couple of weeks away.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havok

I heard about this from fellow Zero Escape series fans saying it was also from Spike Chunsoft and had plenty of crazy. And man, it definitely had that in abundance. The game is more of a black comedy rather than a "dark adventure" like Zero Escape, but it makes its own identity. The characters are endearing and break past most of their tropes, my favourites being Mondo [the bad ass leader of a bike gang], Ishimaru [the teacher's pet of the group, who's always around to teach everybody about "etiquette" and "honour"] & Yasuhiro [the dopey 20-something who's been kept behind].

My main complaint lodged against it is that it gets really silly towards the end, but each case before the last was really fun and incredibly tense. You literally do not know who is going to get killed next and who the killer is and how they did it. It's so satisfying putting the pieces of the puzzle together and then cornering the killer each time. The sad part comes after when the killer reveals the "why" and you see another side to them. The killers then get executed and they're always crazy and incredibly over the top.

Overall I really enjoyed it and look forward to the sequel.

Do yourself a favour if you plan to play this series, do not Google anything from this series or watch anything on YouTube about it since it's almost guaranteed that you will be spoiled on who the killer is on each case or who the "mastermind" is and who gets killed etc.

[AhmedHazuki]

I give Asura's Wrath 8.5/10. I still feel bitter because im playing a Capcom game. Anyways I liked the story,combat and graphics. I thinks its worth a try for you guys.

[OL]

^^Still need to go replay that and finally get around to the final chapter DLC. Been meaning to for a while.

Anyway, just finished Tales of Xillia.
Loved it, as I generally do with Tales games. Easily the best presentation quality in the series up to this point. The in-game cutscenes are much higher quality than in earlier games, and the use of anime cutscenes (always a welcome sight) seemed a little more abundant than usual. Also, despite some anime zaniness here and there, it really does feel a bit more "grown up" than most others in the series. Sure, it's cheesy just about any time Teepo speaks, but there's eventually a really good excuse for all of that, so it ceases to seem annoying (and suddenly becomes incredibly interesting, actually). Jude's eventual proclamations about how he want to be a true adult and all are kinda... silly, to say the least. You don't become an adult by talking about how adult you want to be. But whatever. The story is pretty good otherwise, and a character or two actually prove to be pretty surprising in certain ways. It doesn't feel quite as epic as I usually expect Tales games to feel by the end, but I give it a pass since Namco obviously already had a sequel in mind, so it isn't the true end of the story anyway.
The battle system is great, as always, and the whole linking system works really well. I rarely have complaints in that regard anyway with this series
I think the only complaints I have overall are that the cities feel waaaaay too small, possibly because of the new freely-movable camera, and the "field" areas connecting them feel incredibly closed-off and limiting. Because of these two aspects, the game feels nowhere near as grand and epic as it ought to. Previous games always felt a bit bigger because they used traditional world maps (which give off a much greater sense that you're traversing a full, complete planet), and utilized fixed camera angles in their cities to show off how big and populated they could be. I think if the series is going to use a free camera from now on, they really need to kick the size of the cities and fields up a notch or two, take a cue from Final Fantasy XII and make them much bigger and more detailed.

Really looking forward to Xillia 2.

[AnimeGamer183]

Glad to hear you enjoyed it so much. As my first tales game I played all the way through, I am definitely looking forward to more. Although the next Tales I plan to play (if its not Xillia 2) is going to be Eternia, since I already started it and was enjoying what little I had played. Also, I am more interested in the games that have maxwell in them now, so I really want to check those out first. I hear outside of xillia, eternia is the next game where he shows up the most, and I think hes just a summon or a special arts in the other games he is in. Also OL you may want to go a few pages back and check out my review for xillia, I actually thought I did a pretty good review for it.