The Games You Played in February 2014

So list the games you've completed or played significantly for the first time if you so choose in February and along with some thoughts and grade/rating of some kind if you'd like.

I can only remember two games for February, plus the DLC for The Last Of Us.

Tearaway: super-charming, great to look at, and it has some really great uses of the Vita tech for once. 4/5

Stealth Inc. (aka Stealth Bastard): there's some pretty great puzzles in this game. The only thing I didn't like is that it would occasionally respawn me further back than I'd have liked. 2013 is the year that saved indie games. 4/5

The Last of Us: Left Behind: Plenty of interesting new diversions in the exploration bits, including the only good QTE ever and a neat way of bringing back one of my favorite parts of the full game. But the combat got in the way and it's only redeeming feature was something that should've been in the full game already. 3.5/5

I guess I also played Metro: Last Light, but I kind of got tired of trying to find the gameplay in that game. I feel like I must have played something else, but I can't put my finger on it

Started in other months, finished in February

Zone of the Enders
It ended up being extremely repetitive and had a ton of pointless padding. The voice acting was absolutely atrocious and the boss fights were shite, the environment was dull and the story was uninteresting. The gameplay was fairly simple and managed to look cool but unfortunately this is let down by a lack of enemy variety.

Gravity Rush
The world is absolutely brilliant and I adore the character designs. The gameplay got pretty damn dull and infuriating after a while due to the camera and in all honest I preferred it at the start when you can only manipulate gravity very briefly compared to the end where you basically don't need to worry about it. It does have a ton of side content but I haven't touched it. Overall it was alright, if they fix the camera issues for the sequel and expand the combat (Or just redo it from the ground up) I think the sequel will be great.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
I never got the true end to this game because I already know it but I did beat chapter 4. It's a fairly enjoyable game and the base building mechanic was pretty cool and it managed to have one moment that made the rest of game worth playing just like you'd expect from Kojima. The AI and boss fights were pretty damn awful.

Started and may have finished in Feburary

Zone of the Enders 2
Now this is certainly an improvement in many ways over the original. The visual style is gorgeous and has a varied amount of environments. It manages to pack insane amounts of enemies on the screen and yet still performs flawlessly for the most part. It keeps the simple controls that still manage to make things look cool however it feels much smoother to the point I don't think I've ever played a game that feels so smooth to control. It keeps a varied amount of mission objectives with a few of them being 10/10 true video game moments. Unfortunately though this game is really let down by the couple of shitty escort missions it has and boss fights that end up being more infuriating than enjoyably challenging - I didn't finish the game because the last fight was pissing me off so much.

The Last of Us: Left Behind
It's neat. Clever use of mechanics with interesting and detailed environment to explore. It also finally pits hunters and infected against each other although the AI is pants on head retarded. I wish it focused on different characters though.

Dante's Inferno
It was free and I want to kill some time, okay? Combat is essentially GoW and it's jam packed with stupid design like having the pop ups take a nice chunk of the screen and stay there for 5 seconds. I'm enjoying seeing the circles and how fucked up they are although it's just disappointing that they didn't do something that was genuinely good with this.

Armored Core: Verdict Day
OHBOY, I FUCKING LOVE LOADING SCREENS. The other 5% of the game is trying to figure out what the fuck all of these stats mean while you're building your mech then going online and getting thrown against bots or SSS ranked players who will kill you at melee range before you even know they're nearby.

Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires
I forgot how fun these kinda games can be. I haven't properly played a Dynasty Warriors game since the start of this gen, a surprising amount has changed. It's still the hack and slash gameplay but Empires adds a nice layer of tactics over it. It's also gotten much sillier; running around with a boat as a weapon and summing tidal wave in the desert as a basic move kinda silly.

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions
Sure is one ugly looking game.

Persona
Won't be finishing this one for some time. It's difficult trying to get use to the first person dungeon crawling, but I look forward to going back and giving it the time it deserves in the coming months.

Rainjar wrote:
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions
Sure is one ugly looking game.

No.

Star Command: Since you IOS bastards get FTL and the majority of the 7 billion people don't, I'm stuck playing this. I actually quite like it and recommend it for both gameplay and humor.

Tales of Xillia: Haven't quite finished it yet. If I had played it last year it would've made top 5 for sure. The combat blows Symphonia away.

I don't even know what FTL is. I just don't really like playing games on phones.

FTL was originally a PC game

pspiddy wrote:

Rainjar wrote:
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions
Sure is one ugly looking game.

No.

Yes. The one on the GBA looked x10 better, War of the Lions looks so drab and dull in comparison. Haven't played much of it to tell if it's a good game or not yet but I assume it will be.

I loved the cut scenes in War of the Lions, a really great style. Too bad I didn't like the game to see more of them. Strategy RPG's are't for me. I liked Jeanne D'Arc more.

Rainjar wrote:

pspiddy wrote:

Rainjar wrote:
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions
Sure is one ugly looking game.

No.

Yes. The one on the GBA looked x10 better, War of the Lions looks so drab and dull in comparison. Haven't played much of it to tell if it's a good game or not yet but I assume it will be.

I much preferred the visual style in FF Tactics compared to FFTA. I found FFTA to be a bit on the cutesy side. I guess that somewhat fit the theme of FFTA, but totally wrong look for FF Tactics PS1/PSP. The original Tactics is a far better game, IMHO. The content is much more cohesive and I felt like the job system was stripped down from the PS1 game to the GBA game.

For February:

Bravely Default: Awesome game very reminiscent of SNES/PS1-era Final Fantasy games. Might be my favorite 3DS game to date.

Pokemon Y. I don't jump into every Pokemon gen, but this game has been pretty awesome.

Etrian Odyssey Untold: Still hammering away at this one. I rather enjoy old-school dungeon crawlers.

Strider HD: This, shockingly, is the first PS4 game I've gotten that wasn't a PS+ freebie. I really like it.

Lucifer Ring- Review game. Everything wrong with PS1 era 3D is in here. Avoid.

Rekoil Liberator- Review game. One of the worst shooters I've ever played. Avoid

Spelunky- Daily challenges are awesome. I love this game, but it hates me.

Strider- Haven't beat it yet, but enjoyed it so far. Just a really solid Metroidvania

Dragonball Z Battle of Z- Review game. Haven't beat it yet, but really meh so far. Combat's awkward and has a really uneven difficulty.

Dark Souls- Actually enjoying this a lot now. Game's still too far up its own ass for my tastes, but the way you explore the world is just awesome.

Spelunky is probably in my top 10 of last gen. No joke. It's awesome. Making real progress is a grind, but it's so great when you discover something you never knew about

Here is what I finished (I hate grading stuff but since it is just an internet thread I will throw some in for the fuck of it):

The Last of Us: Left Behind: Loved this. Really impressed with some of the stuff they came up with to populate the adventure side of the game. A-

Tomb Raider Definitive Edition: Still feel the same as I did about the main game. Good cinematic action game, borderline terrible Tomb Raider game. The PS4 game is so pretty though and runs great. C+

God of War Chains of Olympus HD: The worst God of War game by far. Misses the mark in so many ways. C-

God of War Ghost of Sparta HD: Great improvement on CoO. Love the new locations and enemies. Story is the series best. B+/A-

God of War Ascension: Probably a little underrated based on the reception it recieved. Some cool new ideas here, but a few missteps as well. A little been there done that too. B-

Dustforce: This is the kind of skill-based platformer I really enjoy. Feels like a Super Meat Boy kind of. Hard to get used to the controls, but when I did it was great fun and very rewarding. And the janitor theme is fun and fresh. The Vita version doesn't run perfectly though. PC version is probably the way to go. I didn't technically beat this, but feel I put in enough time to know how it is. B

Killzone: Mercenary: I only played the campaign and it was kind of blah despite the great shooting the series always seems to have which is present here. Really short too. No grade since I didn't play any of the MP.

I also tried Outlast and didn't really care to play it again. I think Thief isn't for me either. Might just send it back to Gamefly and get something else.

Forgot to put in Left Behind. Have a review on Rotorob for those curious. http://www.rotorob.com/2014/02/24/video-game-review-left-behind-dlc/

And here's the other two I mentioned

http://videogamerrob.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/psn-review-lucifer-ring/

http://videogamerrob.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/xbla-review-rekoil-liberator/

Is this transitioning to the games we played in March? If so...I beat Guacamelee, still working on the Deus Ex: HR Director's Cut (which is great mostly because it's still Deus Ex and I love it), and slowly but surely chugging through Devil Survivor 2 but have hit a grinding wall (again, a money-grinding, not XP grinding wall which makes it so much worse - tips Kay?).

Other than that...I SHOULD pick up some of my other games in my backlog but I'm scared and paralyzed by my own fear. I have a LOT of smaller indie or platformer type games in my steam library but just not quite feeling it. Also a lot of big RPGs as well, which also aren't entirely floating my boat.

Well I was just putting new ones up at the end of each month to sort of encompass the whole month with little reviews looking back. Your post looks like regular old now playing post. I mean you beat Guacamelee... but there is no mini-review. And you are still working on the other ones.