phantom_leo said:

Updated with a game I --NEVER-- thought I'd be able to finish!!

Awesome now buy the Virgil DLC. Its awesome. Unless you are playing for the story, there isnt much.

I beat Kid Icarus finally! FINALLY!

Updated with  Dead Space 2 (PS3)

Updated with ICO HD and Shadow of the Colossus HD.  Copying my write-up here.

04. ICO HD (PS3) - Beaten 02/04/13

I've had this HD Classics collection since it was released two years ago even though I have both games on the PS2.  I finally felt like revisiting the games on a decent TV and in HD.  Actually I felt like playing Shadow of the Colossus but thought I may as well take this opportunity to experience ICO in HD as well since it's on the disc.  

The game looks beautiful.  I love the use of light and shadow, the sun-bleached colours of the environments, the cinematic feel of it.  The castle the game takes place in is huge, daedalian and harrowing.  It is a place where shadows dwell, the spirits of hundreds of kids left in sarcophagus tombs to die.  ICO is one such boy, born with horns and considered cursed by his village he is taken to the castle as a sacrifice to prevent something terrible befalling the village.  Breaking out of your tomb, your task is to make your way out.  You soon meet Yorda, a weak and pale girl whom you literally free from her cage and thereafter assume responsibility to keep her safe and to help her gain her freedom.  You also need her because she appears to posess some magical properties and opens doors for you which you can't do yourself.  You basically have to find your way through the labyrinth of the castle by solving a series of room puzzles.  The only enemies you are faced with are a bunch of shadow guys who basically try to snatch Yorda from you and carry her into the shadows.  

Technically the game has some huge glaring issues.  Namely the camera and the controls.  The camera behaves as though it's main purpose is to piss you off.  You are constantly fighting it to try and get it into a half decent position but it has a mind of it's own.  You constantly have your thumb on the right analog stick even as you're trying to jump on walls and ledges and swinging on ropes and pushing blocks etc leaving you with no easy way of pressing the face buttons.  It never stays in a natural position for you to do what you have to do.  It contantly takes the weirdest of diagonals making even a simple jump seem more like a leap of faith.  The controls are very wonky and imprecise.  Especially the jumping and the latching on.  Also your movement is based on where the camera is pointed, and since that is constantly moving and swinging this way and that, it makes moving Ico a nightmare.  But anyway the puzzles are good, the setting and the locales are breathtaking, and the underlying story is very moving and leaves a lasting impression which stays with you forever.  I love this game.

05.  Shadow of the Colossus HD (PS3) - Beaten 06/04/13

I went into this right after finishing ICO.  Fumito Ueda said that it's kind of like a loose prequel to ICO.  You can see several connections and the world feels like it's the same or at least connected to that of ICO.  In this game you play as Wander (or Wanda if you're playing the PAL version).  At the start of the game you carry the body of a dead girl (presumably your love), which we are told was a result of a sacrifice, into a huge temple reminiscent of the castle in ICO and you place her on a kind of shrine.  Then a voice from above (or is it from below) tells you that you will have to slaughter 16 ginormous beasts who roam this forbidden land, the titular Colossi, in order to have a shot at resurrecting the girl.  But there are no guarantees.  And this is what you set about to do, one after another you fight these sixteen beasts to get to the end and to see what will happen.  However it's not long before you realise that these are in many ways innocent giants merrily grazing and minding their business while you are the invader who hunts them down to slaughter them for your own reasons as well as to serve the machinations of whoever it is that is guiding you.

The game is breathtakingly beautiful, even more so than ICO.  You have a massive sprawling land to explore in your quest to find the colossi who are usually hidden in secret areas you get to by following little "secret" paths off of the main map.  The environments are huge and greatly varied but everything has this soft light hue, much like in ICO.  There are deserts, forests, lakes, underground passages, waterfalls and various bits of masonry waiting to be discovered.  To move across the huge map you have your trusted horse Argo (or Agro).  

The game is plagued with the exact same issues as ICO.  The camera is your worst enemy.  Here you are fighting these hulking huge creatures trying to cling on for dear life and to jump from limb to limb to get to their vitals and the camera is doing its best to obscure what it is you need to be looking at.  So again you are having to keep your right thumb on the camera stick (for all the good it does) and having to come up with fun new ways of pressing the face buttons.  Wanda controls abysmally.  The Colossus battles are meant to be like puzzles, not endurance fights, nor technical skill contests.  Supposedly your task is to discover what you have to do to kill them.  Instead, even after you know what you want to do, you may have to try it a dozen times because Wanda can't jump where or when you want him to.  The horse AI, well this is either brilliant or terrible depending whether you believe the developers.  She has a mind of her own and will very rarely do what you want or think you are asking her to do.  It's very annoying but Fumito Ueda said they wanted her to behave like a real animal so that was their intention.  The biggest problem the game had when it was released in 2006 was the frame-rate.  During the fights with the Colossus it would get very unsteady and sometimes dip to very low numbers.  This has been taken care of in the HD version, which is a huge deal.

Despite the flaws and frustration caused by the controls, this game is a masterpiece for me in several ways.  I love how focussed and single-minded it is.  You have one goal.  You fight only bosses.  Your path is determined.  Your fate decided.  You don't have to mow a thousand cabbage heads to get to a boss fight.  Most of the Colossi are very different and you have to make good use of the weapons at your disposal (your sword and bow and arrow) as well as your horse as well as the terrain and the environment.  It is also very thought provoking in ways games don't normally care to be.  The feeling that grabs you when you land the final blow to kill the Colossus and bring it down is really hard to describe.  It's not the elation you feel when you get the "You Defeated!" screen in Demon's Souls.  There really is no other game like this.  Anyone who has played it (I trust most have) will know why Fumito Ueda is so highly revered as a game director despite a resume of just two games, and they will also know why it is so sad that we will never get to see and to play The Last Guardian

edgecrusher said:

Edge's Finished Games of 2013:

  

Updated with the disappointment of the generation.

edgecrusher said:

Edge's Finished Games of 2013:

Updated with the badass The Last Story...great great RPG. Any RPG fans starved for a new one, if you haven't played this do so soon. Totally worth picking up regardless of it being a Wii game.

And after 25 years I am happy to announce that I have finally beaten Solomon's Key!

Foolz said:

I played through and finished a 10 hour game in 3 days. Is this how normal people play games? Vader? It was an odd sensation.

No I do it in 2 days.

Only 12 games so far this year.  And the highest rated game is still Asura's Wrath, the first game I beat.

The month of May has come to a close and I almost say "Thankfully" Gaming-Wise. Never before and probably never again will I be so engrossed, for better or worse, in a single game series. So many themes I try not to think about came to the forefront of my mind and it was utterly exhausting and fascinating all at the same time. The BioShock Series now ranks even above my favorite Nintendo frachises. I appreciate the games now, as a slightly older adult, so much more than even just a few years ago and they just mean more to me than the adventures of Samus, Mario or Link. If I didn't have "Daddy Issues" or didn't find myself caring more and more these days about the possibilities of having my own family or child, Mario or Metroid would be enough for me, but these days...