What game have you COMPLETED this week

[nakamura]

Finally completed Secret of Mana after 18 years of trying! Not sure why I never did before, it wasn't that hard but boy is it still amazing all these years later.

[Rayne]

Well I completed Arkham Asylum today. The ending was absolute crap - so many loose threads that are obviously being left for a sequel I'm actually quite annoyed at playing for so long only for so little to be resolved at the end of it.

Then there's the combat, that was far, far too hectic this time around. Too much to keep my eyes on D:

[nakamura]

Clock Tower 3 also finished today. Clunky control aside, a really good game with some fresh ideas and a decent plot. Voice acting was good too.

[sscott]

Phineas and Ferb on PS3

Not sure that 'counts!'

[theantmeister]

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed.

Meh, it was ok. There are moments where you feel genuinely powerful, but those moments are few and far between. My major issue with this game is that the designers obviously realised early on that having an all-powerful Sith as the main protagonist was a bit of a challenge. Their solution? Make everything else as powerful as a Sith! Genius!

Except to do this, they needed to invent some insanely powerful Storm Troopers. They've given them shields, teleporters, rocket launchers, guns that can paralyse a Sith, flamethrowers, sniper rifles, all sorts. This, in a word, is BULLSHIT. Where did all this advanced weaponry go by the time A New Hope rolled around? If the Empire had Storm Troopers that could flatten a Jedi, why the censored did they have so much trouble shooting some droids and a censored farm boy from Tatooine?

The Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games didn't have to resort to this kind of bullshit. The designers of those games created something challenging and fun - even though Kyle Katarn had access to the full range of Jedi abilities and didn't have a problem using blasters.

And that's just my main gripe with the game. There are a multitude of other problems - the framerate, the glitches, the epically stupid AI... Actually, I need to single out the AI. At one point you are freeing Wookies from cages. You're in this corridor, with sections of it closed off by instant death force shields. You free the Wookie from his cage and he promptly jumps straight into the shield - frying to a presumably very smelly crisp. I can only guess that he was trying to kill the troopers on the other side of the shield. Ugh. Oh, and you can easily pick off the troopers by force-pulling them into the shield. You can do this over and over, because none of them run away in terror. You would think after watching 2 or 3 of your friends dragged to their death, you would run away. The QTEs, the lightsaber that may as well be a rubber baton, the terrible targeting system, the fact that the time it takes for you to stand up after being knocked down is almost always just a little longer than it takes for enemies to reload. The game seems to actively encourage lazy and cheap tactics. I found going in with my lightsaber almost never worked. I just ended up electrocuting almost everything.

And yet, it isn't a terrible game. I did enjoy myself. Some parts were a little frustrating, but most of the time I didn't struggle too badly. JazzFunk mentioned a major windup at one point, but I didn't get to that I don't think?

[Treguard]

I've sort of complete Super Mario 3D land- done all the standard levels without cheating, just the special levels to go.

[SJ_Sathanas]

Finally got all 101 fighters in R-Type Final so I'm claiming that as finished. Haven't finished that final long level, but meh, I've seen it and it looks like a right old slog.

Just aquired PS2 Rez so I'm moving on.

[Black Ridge]

Finished Shadows of the Damned last night.

What a GAME! Funny as hell. Not sure what to start next. Its not often that i complete games, but afterwards im always a little lost.

Bit pee'd off that the achievements dont stack on the difficulty settings. I finished the game on normal but have to do it again on easy to get that achievement. Really cant be doing with that. if it is to be done again it will be on HARD

[SexyWayne]

Ratchet & Clank 2 on PS2.. pretty good but not a patch on the original imo, too much shooting stuff and not enough platforming.. gonna make a start on #3 tonight, hopefully this one isn't as frustrating as #2 got in the later stages of the game

[nakamura]

Doesn't sound promising Wayne. I have all three main games and yet to start them. Might get rid of 2-3 and just play no1!

Completed Rygar on PS2, already. Only took around 5 and a half hours which is a shame as it was bloody good.

[SexyWayne]

Don't get me wrong it's still a pretty good game it may have sounded like I didn't enjoy it, but overall I did, it just seemed more combat based this time round and the door lock puzzles are timed too, whereas in #1 you had unlimited time to work them out, there's two types of puzzle in #2.. one looks like amidar with electric moving around the grid and you have to switch gates in the direction the electric is flowing.. easy enough really, the second type is a sphere with multiple contacts that you have to basically get electric from the start point to a certain amount of contacts and then back to the starting point, but the thing is the sphere rotates on screen so you quickly lose track of the direction you need to be going in... and theres a very tight time limit to beat too.. about 10 seconds to hit every contact and there's multiple routes that lead to dead ends.. ggrrr, I'm not ashamed to say I used a walkthrough for the last puzzle, otherwise the pad would have gone through the TV.

The combat isn't something I would normally complain about as the R&C games do it pretty well, but there's just a little too much of it... two arena battles for example... and you HAVE to do them to obtain certain objects to keep the game/plot flowing, space combat is also now included.. it makes a change from the usual gameplay but is a little unforgiving, like when you have 2 waves of 25 enemy fighters and you get killed on the last enemy on the last round... yep you guessed it, you go back to the very start of the very first round..

My one tip to anyone who's gonna play it is to save every bolt you get because even tho your weapons now level up gradually, by the time you get to the last few levels your weapons that have served you fine for the majority of the game are now completely effing useless, you'll need some serious firepower later and that's just for the normal enemies..

I appear to have made it seem like a bad game again.. it really isn't... I'm just still feeling the frustration of those last couple of hours of playing it

Oh did I also mention the completely useless unresponsive controls while grinding on rails while having to keep jumping from rail to rail while being chased by trains, around 15 attempts later and I finally got through it

Overall a very decent game, just quite frustrating later on, all those people who moan about too many checkpoints in modern games will be begging for them later in this game

[JazzFunk]

Just finished Assassin's Creed 2 on 360. It frustrated the hell out of me a lot of the time, and I found much of it to be tedious/boring yet somehow I feel a bit sorry to see it go...

...which is just as well/unwell, seeing as I've got Brotherhood currently installing into the 360's HDD....

*Ah, well, gets 'em both out of the way*

[Vyothric]

and I found much of it to be tedious/boring

A lot like the first one then is it?

[JazzFunk]

^It's like the first one, except *slightly* less tedious/boring and quite a bit better-looking. It's like they've made this huge, lush open world and the funnest thing you can do in it is stick minstrels in the neck with a funny-shaped mini-knife. Adds OCD collection/upgrade stuff into the mix, which lessens the chore-like vibe. Well, a tad.

Needs the ability to decapitate/de-limb NPCs, would add a bit of fun savagery to the mix, I know a lot of folk found GTAIV boring (I loved it!) but even they would agree that there was some fun to be had smashing cars up during fallow periods, non-destructible horses simply do not cut the mustard.

[ShadowNeku]

Final Fantasy 1 via the PS1 Origins collection. On Normal difficulty.

Standard Final Fantasy fare. An awful lot of grinding for the first half of the game and some harsh difficulty spikes, plus the fact that for around 20 hours the Warrior is the only decent member of your party. Its all worth it though when you finally class up and everyone becomes super powerful.
Pretty happy to say this is also the very first FF game i have completed! (despite owning I through to XIII-2)

Quite proud