A Little Social Experiment

[McJobless]

If as many as possible could quickly participate in this to the best of their ability, that would be fantastic.

 

What I want to know is your experience of a video game you recently played. Please jot down a few paragraphs of what you remember.

 

How to format your response:

• I'd like to see it in the form of a short story, as if you were writing a diary based on your exploits within the game. I'm sure almost all of us here have written our own stories, so do exactly that, except this time it'll be a first person story based on you playing this video game.
• You don't need to cover the entire story of your experience if you don't want. Just a few paragraphs of your most memorable moments in the game (be those cutscenes, boss fights, crafting, walking around town, glitching the game, menus etc) are enough.
• I want to know what you liked and didn't like, as well as what was neutral or boring. If you remember it happening, tell me.

Rules:

• DON'T DO ANY RESEARCH! I want to see what you've retained at the end of your experience.
• Be as specific as possible where possible. I want to any and all the details you can provide.
• Feelings and thoughts are just as important as physical facts. I want to know how you felt, as what kind of thoughts and logic was going through your head during the entire experience if you can remember it.
• Be as casual as you want. Don't try and treat this like it's a formal essay. It's more important I get your honest and relaxed thoughts.
• Make it very clear whenever you lost immersion. Also, subtle things like how you refer to the player character. Were there moments when you and the player character were one and the same, but other moments where you were yelling at the player character for not doing what you told it to do?

You can do more than one game if you'd like. Don't forget to tell what the game was, how long you think it took you from start to finish (of you first playing it up until you quit the game forever) and how long ago you played it.

 

Thanks.

Edited July 10, 2014 by McJobless

[BobaFett2]

I played Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon from start to 100% completion a few days ago for the first time. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

I have not played any other Far Cry games, so the game I would compare it to is Just Cause 2, an open-world regime-change shooter. Blood Dragon is 1st person, I prefer third person. I actually got nauseous a few times from the motion, generally after a few hours of play. There's a lot of great humor in Blood Dragon, although the things your character says when he's stealing cyber-hearts get repetitive after a while. The gameplay is fun - you shoot stuff, mostly robots/cyborgs, and they shoot you. My favorite way to kill enemies is through the melee attack. A really convenient feature of the game is the self-healing ability, which allows you to heal yourself partially, no matter where you are. Obviously doing this while being shot at is a bad idea, but if you can take cover for a few seconds, it's really helpful. The difficulty curve of the game is a little off - the open world bits are pretty easy, although the hostage rescue missions are also easy to mess up - but the most difficult level is in the middle, and the end of the game is actually fairly easy. This is because you have to fight two Blood Dragons at the same time - Blood Dragons are basically dinosaurs that shoot lasers, and they are ridiculously strong unless you have the Killstar (which you don't at that point) or an explosive sniper rifle (but in the confined space in which you have to fight them, the weapon is a lot less useful). After that, there is one more somewhat difficult level where you fight hordes of the running dead (zombies created by...something, I'm still not sure what), but I didn't die once there. This is because you can dive into the water, and while there are one or two crocodiles, all it takes is rapidly pressing one button (randomly selected by the game) to kill them. The running dead can't follow you there, so it gives you a chance to catch your breath and move to the other side of the map. Also, the hardest running dead fight is the first one in the level, because you get a pistol, which is next to useless if you aren't getting headshots (which isn't hard, but which is easier with the laser assault rifle). When you beat that, you get the killstar, which kills anything other than a Blood Dragon in one hit, and kills Blood Dragons pretty quickly. It eats at your life, but not very quickly, and it shoots a laser continuously, so it's really easy to aim. Because of this, the final level was really anticlimactic - you invade Sloan's (the big bad guy) fortress to prevent him from launching rockets filled with zombie juice and have to kill hundreds of soldiers (not all at once, though), mostly from the front, but it's not too hard with the killstar. Then you get to ride a blood dragon with a mech suit (which only responds to the killstar), but you don't take any damage in there. It's fun and you get to kill a lot of guys, plus rockets, but your performance there, as far as I know, has no effect on the game. Then, you meet up with Sloan, who kills your mecha blood dragon...and then it's a cutscene for you. Seriously. The final big bad is killed in a cutscene. In Just Cause 2, the you fight Panay in a ridiculously epic battle which takes you soaring on nukes being aimed at the world's superpowers...but in Blood Dragon 3, you just watch a cutscene. It's cool, but extremely disappointing.

 

The cutscenes in general aren't the greatest, due to the fact that they're done in a retro-ish 2D. They're not awful, but I think they would be better with a different 2D style. The freeworlding is fun, although limited - Just Cause 2 has a much bigger island and a few more types of things to do. Also, there are only 6/7 vehicles you can drive, even though there are also golf carts, supply trucks, and one or two other vehicles around the island...they're just unusable. The driving in general is awful. Also, it was irritating trying to go up hills, and the climbing didn't work well on rocks, which I would expect a cyborg supersoldier to be able to handle.

 

Still, negativity aside, I loved the game. It was entertaining and funny, and the game's open world bit wasn't stretched out with endlessly repetitive bases (in Just Cause 2, there are hundreds of villages, a lot of towns, and a ridiculous number of military bases to take over - it's fun, but really repetitive, with a few exceptions). It was a bit small, and there were one or two issues, but it was a fun game that I would recommend to others.

[McJobless]

Hey Boba. I do appreciate you going to the trouble to type that all up, and it's a very interesting opinion, but not exactly what I wanted (and it's my fault for not being clear enough).

 

You gave more of a review. That's great, but I'm looking for more of a short-story type of thing that details exactly how you went through the game.

 

I'll update the OP now to give a better idea of what I'd like.

[someswedish]

OK, I'll give it a shot (proper this time)

 

So the game i chose is called Faery - Legends of Avalon which is a fairy tale RPG i found on steam.

Since there's allot of story, i decided to split the stories into chapters and put them into spoilers.

 

Warning, spoilers for the game!

unless you already played it or don't mind being spoiled, i would recommend not reading past the prologue!

 

Prologue

The game begins with a character creator in which you create a faery, i made my character a male with slightly dark tan and dark brown hair. Then i gave him the name Louet, since i though that seemed kinda fantasy-ish.

 

So i started of being frozen in a crystal in which two small fairy twins broke me out. they served as a tutorial for the controls, It was rather quick and flying around the map was really easy and fun.

 

The fairies told me to talk to the king to continue the story, i learned that the world that i was awoken from my stasis as the world is being endangers due to humans who stop believing in fairy tales. Therefore i need to enter the mirrors that leads to different realms and fix whatever is wrong there, but first i needed to find some people who would join me on my quest.

 

I explored the town which i was on and found a lady faery who where about the same size of me, and she was being attacked by tiny goblins with fish on their mouths. I decided to help her, and i was introduced to the combat, i learned that you used action points to do anything from attacking, casting magic to using potions. So you only need to worry about running out of HP.

 

After the battle she told me that she would join me if i helped her explore an cave that used to house dragons before they left, it was infested with those fish goblins and crabs that i had to fight. in the end of the cave was a giant crab boss, and i had to fight it. once i beat it, i discovered a abandon dragon egg. Since i love dragons, i of course decided to take it with me.

 

The next party member was an troll who unlike his two brothers, rather read books and solve problems with diplomacy. i found him being attacked by his brother and decided to fend of them for him. Before he could join me, i had to gather some missing pages that where scattered around the map.

 

The first piece had sunken under the water, a local fisherman knew of a mermaid who could get our page for us. To summon her we needed to use a special shell horn that the fisherman was given, however he wanted us to help him with a task before he let us use it. when i was about to leave, i noticed that you could cause a distraction, which lead me with an opportunity to steal the shell.

 

After i found myself with a stolen shell, i called the mermaid who asked how i got on hold of the shell. felling a little guilty for stealing it, i decided to be honest and admit the theft. while she was not happy with the fact that i stole the shell, she was pleased with the fact that i was honest with her and gave me the first page.

 

the second page was actually cut up into a dress by one of the faeries, however a local tailor was happy to fix the page up. the third one is quite interesting however, it was taken by a seagull (who BTW was really huge since my character is about as big as a bee) and used to build its nest. at this point i had two options, i could simply beat it up, but i decided to be nice and lure it away with some fish.

 

Problem is i didn't have any fish. I could have asked the fisherman for a fish, but he wasn't very happy with that little theft and refuse to talk to me. Instead i had to go back to the dragon cave and take it form those goblins that had fish on their mouths.

 

once i had gather all the pieces, the troll has decided to join my party, and just in time for his brother to come back for revenge. With my two companions i took down the brothers again, and went to the king for continue my adventure. He now told me to enter one of the three mirrors and solve the problems that occurs there.

 

There where three mirrors, i decided to enter the one with a giant tree...

 

To be continued...

 

Part 1; The Giant Tree

When i arrived to the land beyond the tree, i found out that it was really huge. (or i was simply really tiny) I asked around the locals who lived there and apparently the tree is dying due to the hornets that have made their nest onto the tree. while i could have just went into their nest and take them all out, i decided to go the roundabout way and make a very stinky concoction to smoke the hornets out.

 

But before that i decided to look around the tree for people who needed help, and also if there's anybody who knew how to hatch the dragon egg that i found in the cave. the tree was really cool level and you where free to explore every bit and branch, though it did make it hard to find people sometimes. at one point i found a painter who gladly helped me with hatching the egg, he told me that the egg can be hatched with the help of the local birds who nests on the tree, but first i needed to check what the eggs color is so that they don't realize that the egg isn't theirs.

 

once i done that the painter told me he would keep an eye over the egg until it hatches, i decided to go and gather the ingredients for that stinky concoction and help anybody else that i could. when i was about ready to make the potion, the dragon has hatched! it was a very small baby dragon who was quite fond of me, i decided to have him on my party as much as i can.

 

To get the concoction mixed i had to talk to the lady chef to help me mix the concoction, she was happy to help and waited for me on a branch bellow the nest, this makes me wonder how she got there since she couldn't fly.Once we got the ingredients together, the concoction was almost ready. But we needed someone to direct the smoke to the nest with the large leaf, that was given the honor of one of my party members, then we had to let the dragon ensure that the pot was hot enough to produce smoke without harming the tree.

 

This left only me and the lady Faery left to fend of any hornets that might attack, but fortunately we manage to beat them and the rest of the hornets. Now the tree was safe form any more attacks form the hornets, but the tree was still dying however. After some more investigating i found out that there where termites who where harming the trunk of the tree.

 

But before we got the chance to figure out what to do, i found a funny looking man with a top hat besides a rather large raccoon stuck to a large man trap. he was very bitter but wanted to help the raccoon, so we decided to ask around how to loosen the trap, we found out that the tears of ones who never cry can rust the trap loose. after looking around, a nasty lady next to her house was apparently the perfect person to get the tears.

 

I told her various stories, but when i get to sad or violent parts, she gets really exited and stop my story dead on its track. I then figured out that the lady hates happy stories that doesn't have anything bad happening, in fact she falls into tears due to the lack of violence and despair. After obtaining the nasty lady's tears, we manage to set the raccoon free, the funny looking man was very pleased with us and decided to join out party.

 

I should mention that the party members can do various things besides fighting for you, like suggesting special action or giving special information that they have. and if you treat them right or do things that hey like, they can give you an item as a gift. I got a gift from every party member i manage to recruit so far as they seem to like me, the dragon however doesn't seem to have a gift, in fact to make it like you more  is to baby talk it when its not in your party. i guess that makes sense considering its a newborn baby dragon who can breathe fire at our enemies.

 

Back on our hunt to rid of the termites, we found a nest of ants which according to top hat man, could easily rid the termites for us. we got some honey from the trees bee keeper and used it to lead the ants to the termites nest, some of the termites where in the way of the trail, but we took them down and the ants finished the rest of the termites with no problem.

 

Even after all this the tree was still dying, we later found out that a huge barrel was dug into the ground next to the tree, possibly by a human. we got many of the villagers to dig out the barrel, but then a giant moss monster attacked us. We manage to beat it and found out that the barrel was actually making the monster act funny, so we dispose of the barrel with the thanks for a seagull and finally saved the tree. all we needed to do now is return to the king and report what happened, and prepare to enter the next mirror...

 

To be Continued...

Part 2; The Flying Dutchman

The second mirror world is the flying Dutchman itself, its very dark and gloomy which is quite fitting for a ship of the dead. While it is my least favorite of the three mirror worlds, it is still a fun place to explore every nook and cranny of the ship.

 

Okay, so the first thing i encountered is that some pirate lady (who is our party member for this place) is being attacked by one of the ghost pirates, and since the pirates are actual humans, they are huge. i decided to step in and fight against the pirate, however the lady, while wiling to join my party, isn't exactly the nicest person around. actually i think she wants you to be meant to her to show that you are tough to make her like you. which i did the opposite and she ended up hating me.

 

So the problem in the pirate ship is that there's apparently theses creatures that became plagued and started attacking people, so the pirates locked them up in the ship. I had talk to them to figure out what is wrong with them, but first i had to find a way to get in. A friendly pirate gnome had a cannon we could use to break open the door, but i had to find some gunpowder and some musket ammo to use as a cannonball. (since the gnome and i where extremely small compared to the ship itself)

 

Once we manage to make a hole in the door, i found their leader and apparently some kind of monster who acts as their guardian is sick as well, and we need to either kill it or cure it. I decided to go with curing it, so i had to gather some ingredients to make it vomit whatever it ate, charming...

Anyway,  once i got all the ingredients, I had to fight the guardian to weaken it. Once it was weak enough, i gave him the potion and he became better after throwing up, yuck...

 

But that was not the end of the problems as there was still a few things wrong with the ship. The first thing i discovered was a ghost lady in front of the ship who attacked me, after the battle she told me that she was the captains fiance and tried to protect him form his own munitions crew. I had to fight the crew member too convince them to behave and got to talk to the captain.

 

But the ship could yet not set sails, apparently some local mermaids are preventing the ship from moving. One of them told us that we could give them gift to convince them to leave, or that we could fight them. While the other mermaids where hardly friendly, i decided to not engage them in combat and give each of them a gift. After every one of them left, the ship was ready to leave and my work was done.

After reporting to the king yet again, i was ready to head for the final mirror...

 

Part 3;The Dessert city on a giant beetle

(Will be added later)

 

Epilouge

(Will be added later)

 

Edited July 21, 2014 by someswedish

[aidenpons]

Ooh, I just played LR2...

SPOILERZ GUYZ SUCH AS BONUS MISSION LOCATIONS, SHORTCUTS, AND SPOILERS FOR RIEGEL, AND SPOILERS FOR SPOILERS

Had trouble with the installer (ran it in comparability mode for XP SP2 and as admin, thank you so much Biorune). The main menu was a little confusing, with too many options immediately there: I should have actually read the manual first. But I went with 'ok, they probably highlighted 'Adventure' at the top of the list for a reason, let's go with that' and off I went to Sandy Bay.

But first I had to make a car.

Lego Racers 1's car builder was about twenty-nine times easier to use. GARRR... It took me a while for Sparky to tell me the controls to delete bricks. And you still can't change your chassis once you've selected it. Why must they do it with the numpad? PEOPLE HAVE MICE FOR A REASON.

 

Sparky then promptly decides to spam me out on the controls for a racing game. What are the controls going to be? Duh, obviously the arrow keys. (and a about the link) He didn't even tell me about powerups, which took me a good couple of minutes to get those keys and he didn't even tell you how to talk to people. OH COME ON. He also didn't tell me about the bonus games and the car upgrades, I found them out of Dino Island when I was exploring.

LR2 PHYSICS:

Because wouldn't your car rather be facing BACKWARDS?

Some things about this: You get used to it.... eventually. Your car is made out of rubber, and has no suspension at all (bumping over small bumps, anyone?). Furthermore, turning in midair causes your car to do a 180 when you land, screwing up races.

And I'm not going to mention about driving up hills... no, yes I am.

Let's go to Dino Island after we've beat Sandy Bay! Driving around, exploring, hey I saw something up theeeeeere, *drives straight up cliff* *falls off the other side.* You could get onto the trees if you knew what you were doing (and you could fall off them very easily if you didn't).

In racing: Bumping into stuff and losing bricks. Let's go to Mars! Entering the alien mine from the side you enter in Riegel's Racetrack. If you turn left into the place where the terrain goes / (and at about that steepness) you will get a very nice shortcut, and you should spot a gold brick beneath you as you fly into the air. When you land: If you land on even a slight slope, you don't lose any bricks. If you land slap down wha-bam then you will lose some bricks.

 

Playing it when I first started, I drove into a pole. And then I lost a brick for that: even with the Shield Generator. Your car is made out of very light rubber, has no suspension, is completely destructible, can go up vertical cliffs, can hover upside down (Xalax loop-de-loop, anyone? "This is a loop-de-loop. It's great fun to drive through." ), and can drive perfectly well on two wheels. Speaking of that. how does that work with treads?

 

Powerups are impossible to aim. I've missed several times at point blank with that disc. Plus it means that the AI never hits you (but for some reason they do...). But if you had LR1 aiming (auto target) then everyone would be running five seconds in. But that's because one hit from anything and you lose about 9 (out of 20) bricks. Also, the shockwave powerup is completely OP and it you do get it, there's not way to 'drop' it or something (like if you ran into a green red brick you stay you could run into another brick and it would swap them). Furthermore, there's no speed powerup (Yes, the drill and the brick bar, but meh) so there's not much of a way to catch up on AI if they're a long way ahead of you.

 

Raced against the digger, took me a good couple of tries to beat him (Hey, I'd never played LR2 before)... and you know how all the other races go. A couple of things about them:

Not many powerups on Sandy Bay: I suppose that is so that one doesn't get blasted.

Sam Sanister is far far harder than Rocket Racer for a couple of reasons:

 - His upgraded engine, which makes him far faster than you

 - His looooong track (which is actually probably a good thing) that makes it easy for you to get lost on it (the beach anyone?)

 - The amount of repair stops (Three of them - Rocket Racer never takes the one on his track)

 - And the fact that it's still the beginning of the game.

Ooh, Mars! Races are pretty easy here, got a nice speed and grip upgrade now, my aiming is getting better (once I sniped someone with the disk, firing backwards, and he was at the beginning of a straight section and I was at the end. I wuz happeh.), oh look I can now play against the boss, haha he says his car is indestructible, see what the shockwave powerup says to that Mister Riegel...

OH NO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT

SO THAT'S WHY THE ICON WAS THE RED PLANET PROTECTOR

OH NO OH NO I'M SO HORRIBLY SCREWED

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP

*half an hour goes past*

Oh, I finally beat him... Hooray! *sigh of relief*

Hey, free shield generator... (You never give it back to him when he meets you at Xalax)... does it actually do all that much? All it seems to do is make your car go into PRETTY COLOURS YEAH when you bump into stuff.

Arctic... This isn't too hard, I preferred the Mars biome (not quite sure why), beat the racers, and now onto the Berg. Bah, I know he's an ice monster and from reading on RRU I know how to find the shortcut...

WAIT HE GOES AT THE FIRST RED LIGHT AND DROPS STALAGMITES BEHIND YOU

OH NO

*another half hour goes past*

*another sigh of relief* If you know about the shortcut, The Berg is easier than Riegel just because of that. Otherwise he's nigh on impossible to beat.

Aha, Xalax! Exploring... this world is so small.. hey, the icons on the loading screen show all this other stuff... where is it? Oh well, I've found the bonus games (and beat them, yes) and the golden bricks so off we go to race!

Oh, that's where all the stuff is, it goes on the tracks... It's an object.

Wait: the Xalax cars are indestructible? Nooooooooo... I've hit them with about six shockwave (for some reason I got a lot of them) powerups and THEY DIDN'T LOSE ANY BRICKS? I shot one with a disk and all it did was bounce into the air! At least I have good upgrades...

Aha, Rocket Racer, finally. Are you ready to le race?

He's not really all that hard. I took the jumps because ME WANTZ POWERUPS and I won (Sam Sanister was harder) because I blew his car into tiny bits, in thy mercy. The ending wasn't all the glamorous, and you have to watch through the credits... but at least you have something else to watch while you're there.

 

Ok, so I'll go and redo some of the first races again just for fun. I liked that Mars biome... but now I'm far too fast to make them a challenge.

Hey, what are these other options on the first player menu? Arcade? What's that?

Ooh, it's all the races! So it's basically LR1 but with a really fun adventure mode in!

And that's the sort of stage that I'm up to . I've tried the other things but meh, Arcade it my favourite part now.

[Drill Master]

Is there a specific due date for this?

[McJobless]

Is there a specific due date for this?

No. Please take your time, but remember that the "No Research" rule is important.

[Drill Master]

 

Is there a specific due date for this?

No. Please take your time, but remember that the "No Research" rule is important.

Alright then. I shall begin typing up something for the game I have in mind.

[Cirevam]

I'm still playing FUEL but it never really "ends" as there's no overarching goal. Please note that the following isn't finished yet. It's fun to write so I'll keep adding to it.

 

 

You find a beat-up book with a strap over it, probably a journal or diary. Read it?

 

There is a small message on the inside of the cover.

 

"These were once fertile lands. But nature waged war on man. The seas rose, the sun scorched the earth, and the people fled. Some... remained behind."

 

The rest is illegible.

 

 

There appear to be several bookmarks laid in the pages, each with a different number.

 

1

 

We've finally made it far enough west to set up camp, so I might as well write some of this down. If those planet-wreckers ever come back and all of us down here have died, maybe they'll find this and feel bad. Or maybe they'll laugh. Or maybe a tornado will kill them all

 

Camp's setting up near a shack, just off the shore of a large lake. Some of the guys are calling this place "Offshore Shack." The heat must be getting to them. The first order of business is to see if the water's any good, then look for game to hunt. If we're lucky, there will be fish here so we don't have to go so far. Then we're taking the scout cars out to look for fuel. I think I saw some tanker trucks on the way in, a few miles east. That could be a good place to start. Maybe there will be some wrecks we can salvage too.

 

Some of the others are checking the shack to see what's good. I think they're building a ramp too. Maybe we can take some quads out for a spin. It doesn't hurt to have some fun, right? The world's dying after all, so we might as well make the most of our lives while we have them.

 

 

2

 

Some of us have headed northwest to the coast, since the shack didn't have much food around. We struck gold! Black gold, at least. There's a beached tanker a few hundred feet off the beach, and one of its tanks is still good! We radioed in and everyone rushed up here. This is going to last us a long time.

 

Considering that there are dozens of other beached shipwrecks out here, we've started calling this place "Tsunami Reef." I'll let you figure out why. But then, why have we set up camp so close to the shore? Maybe the heat's getting to me now...

 

I found a pretty interesting wreck in one of the forests not far from here, maybe ten miles north. Surprisingly, it was in pretty decent shape. More surprising, the driver was inside. Dead of course, with a tree branch through what used to be his chest. Perhaps he lost control and headed straight for this tree. A rotten way to die, but it's better than being sucked up by a tornado and tossed half a mile. Maybe. Anyways, the vehicle is a rear-wheel drive buggy. It was painted to look like a spiderweb over the front, and since the former driver is dead and is probably haunting me for jacking his ride, I've called it the Spider Wraith. It fishtails like crazy and accelerates so quickly that I'll probably get whiplash, but I love it.

 

 

6

 

Stargazer's Heights... an observatory looking to the skies for another planet to screw up! Sometimes I wonder where those shuttles went to. Some of the older guys said something about terraforming Mars a couple decades ago. That's rich; we revived a planet just to start killing it again!

 

12

 

A tornado hit a ghost town south of Dustbowl City. A few of us went out as stormchasers since it's only one twister instead of a dozen, and I started snapping pics from the middle of the convoy.

 

 

 

The inside of the back cover has something written on it.

 

You can't win. You can't win against an entire planet and the forces of nature. You can only tip the odds slightly more in your favor so you don't die as horribly as the last guy.

[Fluffy Cupcake]

Not going to do the experiment until I get home. Though I do still currently have one game in mind I may talk about when I get back.

-LR2 stuff-

Sorry, when it comes to LR2 I just can't help myself , buuut...

I honestly didn't find LR2 car builder that hard to use, perhaps because I learned it before the original racers.

Fun fact: There is an unused Sparky line about powerups.

One of the reasons you pointed out Sam for being harder than Rocket was that Sam has an upgraded engine. I garunte, Rocket is upgraded too (see those flames he produces like you do when you upgraded your power? Big hint right there).

The Xalax cars don't have much to lose, only two bricks, so there isn't much to see them lose, but yes they are destructible.

[BobaFett2]

Sorry that my format wasn't what you were looking for. I'm currently playing my first actual Pokemon game (I've only briefly played others, and they were owned either by my friend or some pokemon tour group). When I finish I'll post my thoughts.

[le717]

Warning: Game spoilers are present.

Spoilered for length.

I bought LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes on April 17. I have played it for a total of 23 hours over the course of a week and a half, and I last played it two weeks ago. Almost every time I played, I always play it with my brother rioforce (we usually play TT Games, even demos, together). In that time, we completed the entire Story Mode, and (last we played) were going around the massive world. We've only replayed one level so far (I was doing school when he started, so dad and he played that one while I finished up and joined him later).

Downloading the game took a few hours, but then again, I had to download 3.something GB from Steam, so of course it would take a while. We had played the demo when the game was released and thoroughly enjoyed it, so we knew somewhat what to expect. Upon loading the game, I was loving the graphics. They had really improved since LEGO Indiana Jones 2. Upon reaching the first cut scene and level, we were slightly bored because we had played that same level a few times in the demo. After that, excitement started to build. For me, I think the best part of it was the storyline. Instead of following the plot of a movie or series of movies or TV shows as in the past games, LEGO Batman 2 had an original storyline. While you could somewhat predict the theme of the story, you never quite knew how it would be enacted, and that is what intrigued me. The voices and personality for each character only further built up excitement, as each one seemed to fit perfectly. Batman is this smart, pessimistic, serious guy who takes himself too seriously at times; Robin is a happy sidekick who keeps getting picked on; Superman is a manly man hero who is always eager to help; Joker is The Joker, not much there, Lex Luthor is this crafty fellow who has a good public image in order to cover up loads of stuff (as the Batcomputer later reveals). The characters are somewhat the best part of the game. Sure, the DC characters did not get much character buildup, but those who did got it well.

As the game progress, it was the same old TT Games. While I continued to be amazed by the quality of the (highly non-LEGO) worlds and the characters, it was the same old pattern. In one level closer near the end, rioforce said "Hang on, it looks like there is a small area behind that statue's foot. I bet there is a canister there." Sure enough, there was. The game play and mechanics was that predictable.    That behind said, it did not always feel like they were holding my hand. There was one level in particular that felt like the exact opposite (more on that later).

One thing that quickly got annoying was what I called a good part of the game: the story. More specifically, the cutscenes. While we watched them (it is where the whole story is told, after all), at times it felt like I was watching a movie-oh wait. I was. Some of the cutscenes seemed to go on and on. I am positive some of those cutscenes had to have been 5 minutes ago. Sure, a 10 year old might not feel the same way as a 19 year old, but considering kids that age usually cannot play video games for three solid hours a day for nearly a week, let alone just three hours a single day, without getting distracted or bored or something and counting the fact they probably have limits on their play time, the cutscenes make play time longer than expected. I know many times rio and I were done playing and wanted to quit, but since the "Quit to hub" button was removed on the level complete screen, we had no choice but to sit there, watch the cutscene, then when the level loaded, quit to the Batcave and shutdown. To be fair, though, levels did load rather quickly and the game closed so quickly we thought it might have crashed. The cutscenes and voices combo also seemed to drag down the game's humor a bit. While it was still present, the grunts allowed you to imagine what they might have said, what they were thinking. They did not think for you. This is one reason the voices have not been one of the best additions to the series lately. What humor they do have is at times overdone. For example, the level where Batman and Robin are fighting the Joker in the Gotham Funhouse parking. While throwing a pie, Joker says "Do you like pies, Batman? Because I think they like you!" Haha, real funny Joker. Once we beat that obstacle, Joker throws another pie (these are special pies, BTW) and makes the exact same joke. He did this five times. FIVE TIMES. Granted, the fifth time he gave up mid-way ("What's the use"). but really now? Tell a joke once, it's funny. Tell a joke twice, it's funny but not haha funny. Three times, "gee, how many times will he tell the same exact joke?" Any further, it's pure overkill and not funny at all.

As touched on earlier, this is the predictable TT Games formula, but it did not feel like I was being guided along all the time. Occasionally I would have to think about what I needed to do next, and there was one level in particular I felt like they deserted me. I can't seem to track down level names, but the subtitle was "Mr. Luthor is Expecting You", where Batman and Superman go to Metropolis and have to have Lex Corp.'s robot receptionist. While they showed me how to defeat it per the cutscenes right before I played, after that I felt like the level was near to impossible. The robot fired so many shots so rapidly and moved around so quickly, it was hard to target and hit it with Batman's (hideously ugly, slow, and bulky) Power Suit to turn it's three hearts from Silver to Red so Superman could zap it with his laser vision. If there was one word to describe how many rounds we went through to defeat it, it would be frustrated. We played that one part of the level for a solid hour and still did not beat it. We ended up playing it again the next day and finally beating it that time.To me, PeabodySam's blog post about Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds mid-game swap describes how this level felt.

Another part about the game that didn't work too well was the ending boss fights, plural. (Note for McJobless: I did not do any research for this post. I am writing this all from memory. I am only linking this video for reference. I watched the thing soon after finishing Story Mode. I have not watched it since nor did I watch it now.) As kNIGHTWING01 so nicely put it in his

[RobExplorien]

I'm a big fan of games that give you freedom in the sense of roaming a vast world and/or creating things in an 'endless' amount of ways. RCT and Terraria are two of my examples and the latter is the game I'm currently playing.

 

 

It starts up nice, for one thing you have lots of customization options for the character so I can create a personalized player. Just quickly skipping through the multitude of different settings and off I go into the unknown.

Okay, I'm in. I've done my research a bit and with my 'Minecraftian' knownledge I know that chopping down trees it likely the first thing to do. Good, I got wood, I can build a shelter to protect myself from the baddies that come out at night just ready to devour any unskilled player that knows little more than getting wood and running around pricking slimes. Good thing I got a guide NPC to help me out a bit in the first minutes of the game. It tells me some basics (e.g. how to handle the tools and to gear up) so let's just follow his advice. Soon I discovered the crafting menu and I now got my basic set of wood armor and weapons.

Oh, night falls, quick, get inside. I haven't got a door yet so I just enclosed myself in wood. Ah, zombies are approaching, let's see about that. I'm breaking out with my wooden sword and a little while later I succesfully killed my first undead creature. I get that feeling of invincibility already and see another one approaching. I run up to him, hit him and soon I discover that he is practically resistant to knockback. Now flying eyeballs ram into me from the other side and I'm already thinking that this is the end of it. I flee back into my wood shed and enclose myself once again. I guess I'll wait it out and understand that the same kind of enemies come in different strength and health levels. The game reminds me of the 'think twice fool' and the next day I make a protected area around my place and went exploring a little at daytime.

That guide NPC also gave me a tip about crystal hearts to increase your maximum life, so I went underground to find the said hearts. The game now reminds me of 'think thrice fool' and a boulder flattened me. I died already. Okay, I now start to understand that this is harder than I figured, as the next day a slime ambush resulted in another killing. So now I'm extra wary of everything. I found various ores underground and I used them to create the next tier of armor. It feels good to upgrade and see that those enemies now take longer to once again slaughter you. I find out that knockback is the key to protect me from enemies.

 

So this is how I spent the first few hours ingame, just exploring the underground, creating a big suitable home and gearing up. There are just a ton of different types of weapons so there's a lot of experimenting what suits you best in which situation. Every biome has its own enemies, and the further you go from the spawnpoint, the stronger they get, so you're building up to the bigger stuff. The vast amount of treasure that can be found in the world also makes exploring rewarding, and with all the decorative items creating a home doesn't stop at just building rooms and then closing it off from the outside.

Later on I found a summoning item deep underground used to summon a boss. I prepared all (ingame) day to set up an arena and gathering some potions to increase such things as my defense, and regeneration speed. I'm not lying when I say that my heart was pounding when I almost got to the point of summoning the boss, I mean I had no idea what to expect really. At the moment I summon it you hear this roar in the background and the music changes, creating this whole new hostile ambiance. Long story short, it was quite a challenge, and I constantly stayed focused during the fight, and then beating your first boss feels so exciting, and rewarding when you gather the loot afterwards.

 

Right now I'm still going, exploring new places and prepping for new challenging boss fights. Because of all the stuff that the game offers, it doesn't bore you any time soon. It's a whole adventure where you have to learn from the environment to know what tactics you need to apply. The world is also very lively with all the various friendly (fish, birds, critters) and hostile (zombies, slimes, skeletons) mobs and the background music and sound effects.

At the moment I have a single remark. For one thing the crafting is still a puzzle when it comes to potion brewing or just making some specific furniture items. There isn't some sort of (recipe) book in the game that you can find to see how to brew these or craft them, and using an online wiki is just annoying when you're playing the game.