Rate the Last Game You Finished

[C0RBETT]

GRID - 9/10 - for me, the best racing game out on PC. The feeling of speed is incredible and the Flashback feature is very nice indeed.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent - 8/10 - most horrifying game I ever played. Maybe it's a little bit short and sometimes repetetive, but absolutely worth it.

[Alcoremortis]

Mass Effect: 9.5/10 Never played it before now, but after the first ten minutes or so I was hooked. The game was just plain old-fashioned KOTOR-esq fun (except for the stupid Mako, which I couldn't control to save my life--or rather, Shepard's). It was just too bad that my PC couldn't really handle the graphics, so I had to play in an itsy-bitsy window just to keep my computer from blue-screening every fifteen minutes... Yeah, no way is Mass Effect 2 gonna run.

[corruptbiggins]

Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Justice for All [DS] - 7/10

While I did enjoy this game, I did get bored with it early into the 3rd case. Up to then it was just the same as the first game but with worse cases. But I eventually got through that to the final case which changed my opinion completely as that one was fantastic from start to the incredible finish. It almost made the drudgery of the first 3 cases worth it. But looking at the overall game, it wasn't as good as the first. My opinion may have been tainted by the fact that I completed the first game not that long before starting the second and with that in mind I will wait a while before I get the third. Also, if I had to give a score for just the first 3 cases then that score would have be about 4 or 5 out of 10.

[DrRocketGenius]

Originally Posted by corruptbiggins

I will wait a while before I get the third.

No, no, no! Trials and Tribulations is the best Ace Attorney game. And it has Godot.

[DrRocketGenius]

Dead Rising 2 - 9/10

Hated Dead Rising because the time limits were set up terribly. They fixed it in this one and it was very enjoyable. Recommended.

[taumel]

Tetris 10/10 Finished? Hahah!

[DrRocketGenius]

Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - 9/10

Holy crap yes. I finally finished this at 3 o'clock this morning. It took me three playthroughs to beat it but it was worth it. The game is insanely heavy on reading, so you've been warned.

[Origami]

^
If I can find that I can have that.

[DrRocketGenius]

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective - 10/10

Ace Attorney. Nine Hours, Nine Persons Nine Doors. Professor Layton. Hotel Dusk. These games all prove something Ive noticed over the past few years- the DS is the platform for adventure games. Ghost Trick drives that point even further home by being awesome. Compared to Ace Attorney (AA and Ghost Trick are by the same man), it can definitely hold its own. The only Ace Attorney game better than Ghost Trick is Trials and Tribulations, but Ghost Trick is so dang close that it deserves a 10.

[JuntMonkey]

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City - 8.0/10

breaks down to

Lost & Damned - 6.0/10
Ballad of Gay Tony - 8.0/10

And yea whatever, it doesn't have to be an actual average.

Sam & Max S3E3 - 8.5/10

[Sarendor]

King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride: 9/10
This game was great, and certainly better than I expected. Don't let the first impressions fool you, this game can get frightening. The music, the plot, the characters and the puzzles were great, but I didn't like the graphic style so much. (If it came a year or too later it would fit the system better.) The option to examine inventory items and rotate them was something I really like. Im my opinion, the game could have started and ended better.

The Silver Lining: What is Decreed Must Be: 7/10
It was exciting to play this game, and I really liked revisiting the Land of the Green isles and meeting the old characters. While the characters didn't look so well, the backgrounds and environment looked amazing. I didn't really like the narrator's frequent sarcastic talk and 'this is a computer game' references, but it didn't damage the game much. The most disappointing thing about the game was the fact that there was only one puzzle. The episode ended too quickly for me, but luckily there is another episode which I started to play just after finishing the first one.

[JuntMonkey]

Spyro the Dragon - 7.8/10

Pretty solid 3D platformer for PS1. It's the Mario 64 style with relatively open levels. They don't give you much direction though like Mario does with the stars - it's just collect a few hundred gems per level, free a few dragons. The lack of structure really hurts it towards the middle. The last few levels get back on track, as they have clearly defined objectives. Looking forward to playing the sequel when it goes up on Playstation Plus for free next week. Apparently many of the problems have been fixed.

[GuruGuru214]

I hope you guys won't mind if I review the last six games I finished.

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

Holy crap. I couldn't have imagined that a Kingdom Hearts game on a portable system could be this good. The original storyline was very good, and a welcome departure from the rut of the same worlds over and over that we've fallen into. The battle system was amazing, with the Command Deck system adding a very nice layer of complexity that some of the other games are lacking. This was especially evident in the optional boss battles, which were by far the most difficult thing I've experienced in this series.

That's not to say the game doesn't have its flaws, though. Each character's story felt very short, though this is a bit understandable when you stop and consider that each world's story has three acts and the overall story is three times longer than each character's story. And the Command Deck system could get a little irritating when it had to be used continuously, like in the aforementioned boss battles, the problem being that when both the movement and command selection systems are mapped to the same half of the system, it's hard to manipulate both at once, and I found myself using my index finger on the D-pad at a few points, which can get painful after a while. Also, while most of the requisite journal report completion crap was actually pretty enjoyable this time around, the Mirage Arena was pretty ridiculous. I would be more okay with it if we only had to go through each challenge once for journal completion, but it's pretty irritating that you then have to do the same challenges over and over again to reach an arbitrary number of medals.

Overall, I thought it was one of the best games in the series, with a lot of innovations to offer and most of its faults being pretty forgivable. 8/10

Kingdom Hearts

Being the original game, it's sort of hard to compare it to the others and fault it. Nitpicks first. I felt it started out a bit slow. The Destiny Islands sequence doesn't bother me so much, but it feels like it took a little too long to get going once you reach Traverse Town, and the first few worlds aren't terribly exciting. Wonderland is all right, but Deep Jungle tends to feel fairly disappointing, and I always dread having to put up with Olympus Coliseum (the only damn world to be playable in all six games so far). Character growth can also be fairly irritating, with the gaining of new abilities and the AP to equip them feeling pretty unbalanced.

All that said, it's a solid first outing for the series, certainly good enough to hook me. Most of the Disney worlds either stick close enough to the original film plotlines to invoke nostalgia or have compelling original storylines, and the selection of worlds covered a nice spectrum. Maleficent was an excellent choice as a leader for the other villains, and Hollow Bastion had a great atmosphere for the game's climax. Xehanort's Heartless, while not necessarily a great boss in his first couple forms, made for a decent villain, and the original portion of the story was decently compelling and did a good job of tying together the Disney portions.

Overall, not my favorite game in the series by any means, but all together solid. 7/10

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories

I'll admit, I wasn't a huge fan of the card system when I played Chain of Memories on the GBA for the first time. By the time I finished Sora's story and got to Riku, I was so burned out on it I just quit. I still had similar feelings about it when I started the PS2 remake some time ago. Then I took a break and started over after playing Birth by Sleep and using the Command Deck system. Suddenly, the card system makes so much more sense. Again, it adds a layer of complexity that the other games don't have. You can't just button mash, you actually have to think about how you've built your deck and what cards you have available to you, either to make the sleight you want or to break enemy cards. Once you wrap your head around it, the system actually becomes pretty compelling, and the changes made to the system for Riku's half of the game and the new strategies they require are a nice game changer.

That said, Castle Oblivion can get tedious as hell. I found that I would begin to favor certain types of room cards, with the result that I would end up going through the same rooms over and over again, until everything started to run together. I understand that this is the PS2 version remaining faithful to what allowed the GBA version (a valliant effort in iteslf) to even function, but it can become repetative and boring. It's also a sharp contrast to the more story-driven games, restricting the story to only certain special rooms and between floors. Riku's story is even worse in this respect, as the story rooms have been mostly eliminated, with most worlds only having one such room that only leads you into a boss battle with little to no context for why you're fighting this boss.

Overall, I had far more fun with it than I expected to, especially after playing the original GBA version, but it has some serious problems getting in the way of really enjoying it. 6.5/10

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

This game was something of a let-down, and a few of its problems can be traced back to making it fit Organization XIII. There's the change from open-world to mission-based, which makes sense for the Organization but takes away a lot from the game. Then there's the almost complete removal of any character interaction or story in the Disney worlds, which again makes sense for the Organization, but removed one of the major components that makes the series good and makes the Disney worlds feel pretty dull at times. Then there's the panel system for stat growth. An interesting idea, but it feels like it gets in the way more than anything else, and playing Tetris to equip myself isn't really my idea of fun. Then there's the challenges, which are just a way to make us play the same dull missions over again but now make some of them criminally difficult.

That said, it does a couple of things well. Some of the story missions with Xaldin in Beast's Castle were a nice nod towards upcoming events in Kingdom Hearts II, and it was nice to have that year gap between Chain of Memories and KHII filled in. The same goes for Roxas's past, as it was hard to care about him in Kingdom Hearts II when he had just popped up out of nowhere. It also made Axel a more compelling and relatable character and made a few nice nods towards the pasts of the Organization members.

Overall, I wouldn't call it a terrible game, but it certainly did a lot wrong and is the weakest in the series for it. 5/10


Kingdom Hearts II

I would probably call this the definitive Kingdom Hearts game. It has everything important to the series, and it has it in good balance. The original storyline takes a bit more presence, and while a lot of people have a problem with Organization XIII, I enjoyed having them as the antagonists and didn't think their presence was too overbearing. The selection of Disney worlds was also a nice balance of old and new and all pretty good choices (with the exception of you, Port Royal), and it was a great move to give each world two sections of story, giving you a reason to return other than item collection.

And speaking of item collection, the game took just about every grinding element and made it all much less annoying this time. Leveling up completely is made easy if you know how to do it right, and with seven Lucky Lucky abilities for a 627.5% drop rate, collecting items for synthesis isn't much of a trouble at all. And most of the minigames were actually pretty enjoyable.

If I want to come up with gripes about this game, I'm going to have to get pretty specific. First, there's Atlantica. As if a poorly executed rhythm game wasn't bad enough, the new songs are all annoying as hell, and the old songs have been redone and are grating to listen to, and then they make you play them all twice. Then there's the three hour prologue as Roxas. I don't have a problem with the premise, just the length. Other than that, my only major complaint is that Port Royal's take on the Pirates story is sort of weak, the undead pirates are annoying as hell to fight, and the character models and voices are...well, bad.

Overall, I'd have to say this is my favorite game in the series. Just about everything it does is done well. 8.5/10

Kingdom Hearts Re:coded

Wow. It seems that they learned from every mistake they made on Days. We're back to a more or less open-world sort of game. The command deck system from Birth by Sleep has been brought over, modified to the DS's controls in a way that makes it very comfortable to use and some nice changes to the melding system. Gone is the panel system, replaced by the infinitely better Stat Matrix. And while all five of the worlds are lifted yet again from Kingdom Hearts and Chain of Memories, the stories have been completely revamped and I found that I didn't mind at all. Even the boss fights, which all felt identical to Kingdom Hearts when I fought them again in Chain of Memories, were made fresh by changing the mechanics completely for each one.

Now the problems. It's short. Very short. The game is supposed to be filled out by encouraging you to go back to worlds you've already been to, playing the story over again, and doing things you couldn't before and completing ridiculous objectives for trophies. That doesn't feel very compelling to me. And the Stat Matrix has its share of problems. Chips can be swapped but never removed, and I always felt like I wasn't getting enough chips, only having gotten enough for 56% of the grid by the time I completed the story. Weapons weren't very good either. I pretty much used the Kingdom Key until I finished the Coliseum, then I used Olympia for the rest of the game until I got Zero-One at the end. I tried using Oblivion, one of the most iconic weapons in the game, only to find that I was taking damage with every hit. It took me a while to figure out why I kept coming close to death.

Overall, I enjoyed what I played of it, but it turned out to be less than I was expecting. While most of this can be understood, given that it's a DS port of a mobile phone game, it still left some to be desired. 6/10

[Hayden]

'Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut' - 81%

I thought this was an extremely enjoyable game. It really was quite repetitive, but this never really got to me since, if you got bored, you could simply engage in a fight with about 15 guards, or search for flags, or stab the annoying beggar women, drunks and lepers who always get on my nerves in the middle of important, time-based stealth missions. I know this decreases your synchronization, but that doesn't exactly matter, seeing as how any guards that happen to catch you committing a murder can be easily thwarted anyway. This game certainly has its faults in many areas, but the good aspects certainly outweigh the bad.

Gameplay - Very Good, I thought the controls were terrific, I loved the ease in which you were able to jump from platform to platform; it resulted in things not getting too frustrating, and it meant that you weren't easily caught by those annoying guards threatening to "cut" me (or is it "catch"?). Not that it would have been a threat if they actually had managed to catch me, seeing as how the counters-based combat makes everything to damned easy. And, while I liked the combat and the different combat sequences (which follow the counter), the whole combat system did grow rather tiring and boring after a while. I mean, the counters are creative, well-designed and entertaining in a masochistic way, it too grew rather repetitive. Overall, thought, despite the repetition and the easiness, I enjoyed the gameplay, and I believe that Ubisoft did quite well in this area.

Story - Very Good, I liked the way the story was constructed and how it unfolded. Although, many of the major revelations and twists in the story were revealed through dialogue, and even though I thought the writing was impressive, I found all of the 'cinematics' and pre/post-stab soliloquies to be so freaking dull. I don't know what it was, but they were just boring me to death, and I couldn't put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the lack of different camera angles, the length of the speeches, the lack of expression on any of the characters' faces, or the slowness of my computer that caused there to be long pauses between each line of dialogue. Either way, it didn't engage me. So, the story was good, but the deliverance of it was pretty crappy, so:

'Cinematics' - Crap

Graphics - Varied... and relatively irrelevant to the quality of the product, except some more facial expressions would have been nice.

There were crappy aspects of this game, but overall it was highly enjoyable. And since the positive elements were more common than the bad, it only really resulted in the game's crapiness becoming the game's 'charm' (if that makes any sense). In the same way the faults in a band's live performance result in the song becoming a more pleasing listening experience due to it feeling more 'human', so Assassin's Creed actually becomes a more pleasant gaming experience because it actually feels like it was constructed by a team of people. But the game isn't crap, it's rather good in most aspects, which is why it survived in the world of mainstream gaming.

[DAISHI]

"The Longest Journey"
Overall Score: 7

Gameplay: Average
When you get an adventure game you know you're going to be solving inventory problems, but some of these were ridiculous, not to mention inconsistent. You get zoomed views of some items but not others, which threw me off. If I get a zoomed view of clamps and a zoomed view of a rubber ducky, and only one of those has something to do in the zoomed view, it's confusing.

Not to mention some of the puzzles are absurd and the distance between them ridiculous. The totem puzzle comes to mind. Solving this puzzle requires maneuvering scattered across the island, and to get from one to the other, only to find you're wrong, is frustrating. Even in instant click mode it takes far too long. The distance keeps you from focusing on what's enjoyable, the puzzle itself.

Ease of use wasn't there for them. Why do I need to go between a book of recipes and a cauldron when I could just take the page from the book... a page I had just independently held in my inventory thirty seconds prior.

Some of the items are held onto for forever.. large inventories accumulate with seemingly meaningless trinkets that add clutter and have nothing to do with the plot for mammoth spans of time.

Story/Setting - Really good, although slightly inane at the end. Even though the game is ten years old I won't spoil it, but the characters the story did such a good job building on in the first few chapters are absolutely discarded as plot remnants. Also, the game is divided into two worlds, one science fiction and one fantasy. The writers bring none of the magic of a science fiction world out while going to utter extremes of high fantasy in the other world. Your barest glimpses of a fantastic sci fi setting come in clips that last seconds of towering high rises and a space station. Then... a return to garbage environments.

There's a really good twist at the end, but the plot doesn't really resolve a lot of questions. It's begging for its sequel, but even minor points left hanging are disturbing. Characters that die bear no consequence on the protagonist in the ensuing chapters. It's like life just goes on, la de da. The story does so well making the final chapters grim but then drops the ball. Its twist ending, while good for the protagonist, doesn't have the weight it could have because 2/3rds of the key characters of the final scene are entirely underdeveloped and rush additions.

To sort of illustrate that in one last final touch, the first few chapters can take a long time, while everything after chapter six (there are 12 total) can take twenty minutes maybe.

Graphics/Audio - Good... for their time. The settings are well designed and hold up in theory but the years have not treated pre-rendered backgrounds well, and the characters have about ten polygons per individual. Still, despite the horrendous character models and aging rendering technology, the DESIGN of the the worlds are themselves quite magnificent. And you go through more settings in this game than some companies dream up in years. Space, forest, mountain, desert, cyberpunk future, utopia future, etc etc.

The voice acting is really good for the most part and the sound effects are sufficient, but it may say something about the soundtrack that I can't really remember any songs. The only one that comes to mind is the one from the cafe.

Final Thoughts: The pacing of this game is hoooooorrrrrible. The first few chapters take forever, but at least they're interesting. You're getting lots of character development and conversations and learning about this sci fi world. Then you get bugged down in this 'quest line' in which you have to collect all these items to save the world... standard stuff, but there's a lot of items to check off your list.

Of those items you only really end up having to do lengthy puzzle solving/questing for two of them, but they're done among the most boring characters in the game. Only the giant you meet breaks up the dullness of the other beings you meet on the desert island in one sequence, because you actually really feel for the giant. Also, at least during this quest part you get to explore the Alchemist's fortress, which was pretty awesome.

So you get these boring races to quest among but, totally awesome times coming right? Wrong. The most interesting race in the game gets shafted, getting about 2 minutes of on screen time, and in the span of minutes you're given all the rest of the items on the checklist. It's obvious that the company started running out of time.

So you get this lengthy plot development and interesting world at the beginning, get funneled into high fantasy in which you'll spend the bulk of the 'item questing' among the least interesting races of the game, then get shafted on the truly interesting ones... like the Dark People and their underwater god. Then the last six chapters are all completable in minutes. It took me a few days, maybe a week of working through the first half of the game, but I think I finished the last half in about four or five hours.

What's bad about that is that two pivotal characters that heavily influence the end get about three lines of dialogue prior to the final scene, and nothing gets wrapped up once it's over. I'm not talking about the larger plot line that can be dealt with in a subsequent game, I'm talking about the details, like the troubled family you deal with that is a major subplot of the game, or the friends that you care for so much after three or four chapters of developing relationships with them.

Anyway, lot of potential, pretty fun, interesting story, but bad pacing and ruinously archaic puzzle design.

[Nintomster]

My brother recently got a PS3, so I've now been able to get two PS3 games I've wanted for it. The only reasons I wanted a PS3 actually. Anyway, they are Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction and A Crack in Time.

Tools Of Destruction: 7/10

I liked this one, it was really good. I don't need to go into gameplay much, as it is pretty similar to the last couple of games, but it felt different somehow. Anyway, it's a platformer/shooty-thing, where you journey to other planets, and shoot the hell out of everything. Then you buy more bigger and even powerful guns, and repeat. It's loads of fun, but it wasn't that difficult. It did get a bit trickier towards the end, and the final boss was a bit tricky, until you figured out a good patern with a gun which I've forgotten the name of. Great game, if similar to the rest.

A Crack in Time: 9/10

More marks? Even though this is similar gameplay to the rest of the series? Well, that's due to the story (which I liked very much) and the weapons. Some were brilliant, if some were already seen in Tools of Destruction, but I liked how you got three guns (a Pistol, Bombs, Shotgun) which were customisable, and you could make them even better. I don't know about anyone else, but I had a great time, just laughing evil-ly and wiping out everything that came at me. Heck, even if it lived (excusing the good guys of course). Some planets looked very nice, and it was funny in parts. A Crack in Time is my favourite Ratchet and Clank game.

[Sabin Stargem]

Tales of Monkey Island - 6 out of 10 stars (above average)
The games collectively form an above average game, but far too often gets caught up in repetition, illogical puzzles, and a really frustrating finale. I really hope that future Monkey Island games are better paced and don't get hung up so often. Enjoyed the acting and the humor.

[DAISHI]

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

In some ways a 10, in some ways a 0.
The guy who wrote this series, Tornquist, struck me as a vaguely vague writer in the first Longest Journey, which had an only ok ending. In Dreamfall he goes full on Neon Genesis Evangelion and writes a blatantly vague story with no real ending or conclusion and even more hanging threads than the first. Awful, awful writing, if there are more Longest Journeys I'm not sure you could persuade me to buy them. Which sucks since I thought Dreamfall started off really well and had great presentation.

[rubygloommel]

F.E.A.R.2

God, wished I'd looked into this more and realised it was an FPS, then I wouldn't have rented it. Anyway I did get it because I was looking for something scary and this kept popping up...it really wasn't scary at all. Maybe one or two jumpy moments in all? It seemed mostly shooting at soldiers with actual tense moments few and far between, which is a shame because it really could've been quite good as a horror game if they'd expanded on that more.

The gameplay was fairly straight-foward, just shoot everything you see. I'm a bit rubbish at FPS's so I had to play it on easy but it was easy getting the hang of it, with the only confusing thing being that you have to press down the RIGHT analog stick to crouch - I don't know if that's the same in other games, but it's never been in any I play and for some reason it really threw for a little bit in terms of finding cover and reloading.

The story's not particularly inspiring, like I said mostly shooty-shoot. One aspect I DID enjoy was little notes and things for you to read being left about, probably the only reason I had any idea what was going on for half the time to be honest.

The graphics were decent, nothing special, the environments were pretty closed-in - you could view that as a good or bad thing: Good because it creates a more claustrophobic atmosphere and makes the game more challenging, or bad because the environments in themselves are pretty uninspiring. The only level I particularly liked the look of was the elementary school, if only for the fact that EVERYTHING is made scarier by the presence of little children :P

Pretty glitch-free, just a bit annoying as you can get stuck on things, just a bit of rubble on the floor could need to be walked around - not good in the middle of a fight.

So, all in all not a TERRIBLE game, not if you like shooters at least. Doesn't really fit into the horror genre at all, or at least it didn't scare me. I think I'll give it a 6.5/10.

[JedExodus]

Originally Posted by GuruGuru214

I hope you guys won't mind if I review the last six games I finished.

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

Kingdom Hearts

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

Kingdom Hearts II

Kingdom Hearts Re:coded

Play. Something. Else.