By Kieron Gillen on November 20th, 2008 at 11:22 am.
To celebrate Half-life being 10 years old this week, Valve have thrown a special offer. You can get the original half-life for 98 (count ‘em!) cents until November 21st. That’s literally cheap. Also, inexpensive. Also, value for money.
Er… that’s all. How can I enliven this post. Oh, I know: I’ve still never completed Half-life 1. What enormous gaping holes are in your play-histories, readers?
I have failed to finish every game of the past 5 years, except for Portal. I have a very low attention span.
Vaguely related and totally worth mentioning is the the black mesa source team have released some new shots and they look good.
http://www.blackmesasource.com/media_levels.php
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Psychonauts.
Meat Circus.
Don’t want to talk about it.
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Never completed Dues Ex. Working on it.
Never played Bioshock.
Never finished Thief (got to the second level)
Never played Thief 2.
Never finished Thief 3 (almost got to the second level :P)
Played about half a level of SS2
Missed out on most games pre-2000/2001
I’m not really one for finishing games much either so there are a bunch I never have and never will finish.
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Seems Valve will not opensource Source, because theres money do be made in Counter-Strike in development countrys (The 2th and 3th world, and maybe people like australia that have poor internet conexions)
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Kieron – I’m not impressed with your claim but it takes a big man to admit it so well done.
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I’m joining realmenhuntinpacks’ club.
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I haven’t done thief or deus ex either…
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“Psychonauts.
Meat Circus.”
Join the club. I must have played that level for over 3 hours in total. And apparently I haven’t even got to the really bad bit.
Anyway, I was quite impressed to see that Valve patched the original Half Life engine last week. That’s what I call ongoing support.
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Finished games are special. Pretty rare for me these days to actually finish one. Let’s see – Portal, max payne, Hl 1 +2, Ico .. the list is pretty short.
I count half life and opposing force as “finished” even through I never beat the end of game bosses. I watched the closing scene on a website. Nihilanth was just a pain in the ass to fight. I actually loved Xen though – no game before or since has so effectively taken me somewhere new.
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lollerskater – more of a support group. Hug?
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I have never played a single LucasArts or Sierra adventure. Not a one. Tried Escape from Monkey Island a few years ago, but couldn’t get it to run on my PC.
May God forgive me.
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postdata:
Aarggh… I mean GoldSrc. Source is HL2.
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I never completed Quake 2 after several lengthy plays :(
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You’ve …. never completed Half-Life!?
nabeel
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Never completed Half-Life as in gave up in Xen, or as in didn’t actually finish the good bit?
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@Tei,
I was going to get offended about what you said about Australia… but you speak the truth. =(
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Got bored of psychonaughts in the acting place thing. The “wackyness” bit got a bit boring.
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last game i finished was HL2
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Oh thank god! I thought I was he only one!
*sobs uncontrollably*
Really, though, who is there still out there that doesn’t own this? I’ve got two copies.
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I dont buy many games, so its rare for me not to complete one im playing. Does the singleplayer of Unreal Tournament 2004 count? that goddamn malcom. Never completed Starcraft or Conquest: Frontier Wars because the level/s I was on bugged out and I had no previous saves.
I cannot remember how long Meat Circus took me. Many hours.
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I love Neverwinter Nights 2. It’s great! I’ve not completed it and I’m not sure if I ever will now.
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@Cabbs: … StarCraft bugged out on you? o_O
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I have all my games sorted into piles of finished/yet to finish/yet to start. The size of these piles makes me embarrassed to bring girlfriends home.
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Haha, it’s less dan an American dollar and still I can complain about it.
Because, well… it’s not the Source edition! D’oh!
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Everyone has this game, they give them out at birth.
And complete half-life NOW!
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It took me ~5 years to complete Half-Life, for no discernible reason. This time I didn’t get past the tram section as one of the automated gates shut in my face. Awww.
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I never really completed one of these UT games. The one with the insanely hard guy in space. In the end, I remember getting a shot or two on him, and then I ran away, hiding under some stairs for the rest of the game.
Hey, that’s creative thinking, that is.
I also think I might not have finished Red Alert. I’ll rectify that, though.
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I’ve got something more horrendous than not finishing half life…I finished Half Life…on PS2!
I don’t actually own a proper PC copy, I do have the Half-Life: Source version, but it’s just not the same is it?
Also I completed Psychonauts, well not 100% completed, but I reached the ending with credits and whatnot. Also I didn’t think Meat Circus was that bad.
A game that I really should finish is Thief 3, I had just got past The Cradle on my first playthrough when I managed to bug the NPC I was following by making it walk into a wall constantly. Then I had a HDD wipe, had to do it again, and when I got to The Cradle again I just didn’t want to continue and just mess around in there with the happy denizens.
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I only completed Half Life last week, I’ve had it forever but just didn’t get around to finishing it. It certainly livened up my lunch times at work for a while.
To any one who has never completed it all I can say is quit as soon as you reach Zen. I forced myself through it but it just doesn’t play as well as the rest of the game.
IMHO Half Life doesn’t play well as a first person platformer. Its put me off even trying mirrors edge.
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I’ve finished most games. I even conquered the whole map in Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion as the Eastern Roman Empire.
I never finished Far Cry, though. I got to the volcano, then gave up in the bastard corridor filled with men with rocket launchers.
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I finished Baldur’s Gate 2 but not Baldur’s Gate. In general, I’m pretty terrible at finishing games, but it’s not quite as noticeable on PC as on console because I’m mainly a strategy gamer on PC.
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I’ve completed Half-Life enough times to make up for everyone who hasn’t, so balance in the Universe is restored.
The games that I’m slightly-embarassed-about-not-completing are: KOTOR and Tron2.0. Oh, and I’ve never played Thief 1 or 2 but did play and finish Deadly Shadows.
Perhaps balance isn’t restored after all. :(
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^ You must be pretty bored to finish the campaign for Rome TW. Games I have on my comp now that I haven’t finished: Deus Ex, Sacrifice, Syberia. I’m scared to boot them up, cos once I’m playing, I can’t stop.
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I got HL in a charity shop recently after having been introduced to the universe by the Orange Box (which I brought for Portal). I was quite surprised when I entered the CD-KEY into steam and got a huge number of source games into the bargain. Still not finished it though, got up to the tentacled beastie and lost my saves when I upgraded my computer and discovered that the steam backup function doesn’t backup save games.
Also have only briefly played Deus Ex, although I intend to get back to it, and couldn’t work out more than the first few minutes of Thief.
Got to the endgame of NWN but never finished it, although it was my first RPG and with hindsight I’m pretty sure I made a completely useless character.
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Embarrassed about starting, but not finishing:
1. Half-life 1 (but I saw my housemate do it, so that counts for something)
2. Half-life 2
3. Morrowind (but finished Oblivion)
4. Guild Wars (never “ascended”)
5. Company of Heroes (single-player campaign)
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Never finished Far Cry (the bit with you with a shotgun vs a whole island filled with monsters defeated me). Never finished Final Fantasy VII, got all the way through to the boss fight and suddenly the difficulty went right up. I started playing Hostile Waters a while back (on the recommendation of you lot), but I upgraded my pc, forgot to back up my saves, and was too busy playing new and shiny games instead, that I’ll have to rectify at some point.
Apart from that, I’m pretty good at finishing games, I put it down to years of being told I couldn’t get a new game until I’d finished the old one, I’ve even been putting time into Far Cry 2 in an effort to finish it so I can play L4D without feeling guilty… (only 23% done, might take a while)
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I played HL1 by the book – but couldn’t get a hold on how to kill the Nihilanth so I cheated – but only a bit:P
And to all the people who didn’t finish Meat Circus – I shared your pain – but it is possible! Go watch walkthrough youtube vids – you will get some tips.
I never finished Beyond Good & Evil – that final boss didn’t have the patience.. but after completing Meat Circus afterward I think I should give it another try:)
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Somebody asked me last week “what was the last game you finished?”, and I was like “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”.
I’m terrible terrible terrible with finishing games. Actually, it’d be easier to tell the very few games I finished (System Shock, Half-Life 1, Tomb Raider, Riven, Portal.. oh, and King Quest VII because I got it with my PC at some time).
I also missed lot of classics, mostly because for years I’ve been a penniless kid/teenager, with parents who don’t think that videogames worth any time or money, and with – myself – no ideas of what was actually going on in the gaming world.
I never played Doom, Quake, Unreal, Thief, Psychonauts… I’ve only played the Sierra/Lucasart classics for a couple of hours, never finished the first 2D Prince of Persia, Grim Fandango, System Shock 2, Deus Ex (working on it, though), V:TM:Bloodlines, STALKER, Morrowind, any Hitman, Mafia, Outcast, Penumbra or Fahrenheit.
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Funny that games quite often lose points for being too short, when so many of the best reviewed games are never even completed!
Personally I loved the smaller but tighter games like CoD4 and Ep2. Although they don’t have the traditional length the superior pacing and lack of fillers (example being the repeated grey corridors of Halo and numerous other games) make up for it.
I’d definitely rather play 8 hours of really good game than have a 30 hour game, with 8 good hours of gameplay mixed in with 22 medicore ones.
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It took me a year to summon up the courage to go back to the Meat Circus level (that and the acquisition of a new gamepad). So glad to finally complete that.
Okay…
I also have quite a small attention span, so te number of games I finish is small. I never got anywhere near finishing Half-Life (in fact – heresy – I didn’t enjoy what I played hugely), and don’t finish most FPS games (which is kind of pathetic given how many of them I buy).
I also don’t play MMORPGs (with the exception of Guild Wars occasionally, and so have never played World of Warcraft, either. I keep meaning to finish Deus Ex and System Shock 2 too. And Max Payne and a Grand Theft Auto game. And I really ought to play my copy of Terra Nova.
That’s just a small selection. I am truly pathetic.
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I swear.
Meat Circus.
I still have nightmares.
I skipped through Nihilianth. Not a great boss.
Im currently working through Deus Ex for the first time.
Then on the list to play is :
Thief 1+2+3, System Shock 2, BGE, and maybe some of the old lucasarts ones.
Man. I’ve got a way to go.
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i play and complete any game that matters with the exception of xbox360/ps3 exclusives cause i don’t have any of those
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I finish most games I play but some major ones I didn’t finish are Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall (notice a pattern there?), Fallout 1, System Shock 1 and Unreal 1.
Currently replaying Fallout (guessing I’ll be ready for FO3 sometime next decade) but I keep getting distracted by shiny things so not sure how that’ll end up.
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I never played Half Life 1.
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ive never finished most of the final fantasy games. id get 2 thirds of the way through and then another game would come out, and then another when id finished that one…and id kinda forget about the FF
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@soylent robot
i literally fell asleep controller in hand playing final fantasy 10, i took that to mean i didn’t like it and vowed never to play a final fantasy game again, i did finish 7 & 8 though
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I used to be terrible at finishing games, but turned over a new leaf and decided I did want to see the ends of at least the classics.
I’ve finished a fair amount including all the Half-Life 1/2 games, Bioshock, Crysis, Call of Duty, the Deus Ex games, FEAR, Thief 3, VtMB and the Max Payne games. Once I finish the Thief and Dark Brotherhood questlines in Oblivion I think I will consider that “finished”! I really should finish NWN1 – after what seems like a 100 hours of gameplay I’m got stuck at literally the final battle.
P.
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I bought it!
Anyone else?
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I seem to be the only person who didn’t find the Meat Circus quite as bad as all that? I mean it was exceptionally frustrating but I got through the whole thing in one sitting. That last purple coins mission in Mario Galaxy was worse, imo (but I did that too, eventually).
KG, I’d have thought a frenzied gaming evangelist and shameless Valve groupie like yourself would know Half-Life back to front! I wouldn’t bother with Xen though, the final boss fight was a medieval botch.
I, for one, have a massive list of shamefully unfinished games. Some of the most guilty ones:
Half-Life 2
All the Fallout games
Planescape: Torment
Resident Evil 4
Warcraft 3
both Freespace games
Doom 3
All the Metal Gear Solid games
Gears of War
Halo 2 (haven’t even bothered with 3 yet)
Silent Hill 2 and 3
the list just goes on and on…
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oh, and Bioshock, among others.
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It’s so embarrassing to list uncompleted games because most of them I utterly adored and spent hours on:
All the Thiefs (Thieves?)
Jagged Alliance 2 (My favourite game of all time)
Mass Effect (Played til the last mission)
Far Cry (Like, obv.)
Oblivion (Teeeeedeeeeeeouuus)
Any Total War games (is it even possible?)
Psychonauts, I did complete. Couldn’t let the Meat Circus stop me. Although in the brain tank bit I had to do the last level with the screen completely black due to a bug, guessing what might have been onscreen. Worth it though. Oh, just remembered how much I want Psychonauts 2…
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The last game I finished was FarCry back in 2006. I did manage to finish Morrowind GOTY completely once, though. It was a bit of a trek.
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I can’t begin to tell you how many great games I never finished. I’m certain I should be punished somehow. I’ve recently decided to not start any new games until I finish the one I’m playing first…which has been difficult considering the amount of AMAZING games that have come out recently.
For starters, I bought Fallout 3, Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Red Alert 3, and Left 4 Dead…Now, I finished Fallout 3 on Tueday (Wow, what an awesome game) and I’m gonna move on to Gears, I think. Need to change up the pace a bit. I’ll lace that up a bit with L4D. I’m not allowed to move on to Fable until Gears is done. Once Gears and Fable are done, I’ll move on to Red Alert 3. And then, hopefully, there will be a lull in awesome gameyness.
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I finished Team Fortress 2
and Unreal, HL2 (plus episodes), Diablo II and WarCraft 3.
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I didn’t finish a bunch of games that come up on RPS regularly.
System Shock 2 ( never got past Deck 4 )
Psychonauts ( quit on Black Velvetopia )
Planescape Torment ( somewhere half-way i think )
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I thought the twist with PURPL gaining control of the Sons of the Patriots was a little contrived, but BLU Heavy’s last-minute sacrifice got me right here.
Cuh, forget Psychonauts 2 — after Activision’s kamikaze attack on Sierra, we’re not even getting Brutal Legend. Come on publishers, surely one of you can trick some unsuspecting Guitar Hero fans to buy it on aesthetic grounds?… they’re not an intellectual market!
Just this morning I was reading an article about the President of Mexico selling off the national telephone company without divesting it of the country’s phone infrastructure, thus putting the country’s whole telephone infrastructure in corporate hands; “What a scandal!” I thought to myself — then I remembered that, of course, it’s the same thing Howard did with Telstra. Thanks, free-market chumps! Why learn to fish when you can pay a fisherman?!
Naturally it took a grievous amount of attempts to shepherd Little Ollie to safety, but apart from that bit, I didn’t have a huge problem with the Meat Circus. Is that the one part everyone hates, or do people hate the whole thing and I’m just totally good-looking and awesome at the other bits?
I haven’t been able to drag myself all the way through Mass Effect; I’m not terribly inspired to keep going with Fallout 3 either. Scandal!
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“You must be pretty bored to finish the campaign for Rome TW. ”
Well, by some point where you’re stable it becomes pretty easy, and you can defeat most foes in battle with ease (especially as the enemy often didn’t advance to engage you until you’d perforated most of them). Barbarian Invasion was better than most TWs at staying challenging for a longer time, mainly due to a challenging campaign map – Rome became trivial pretty early, if you were good at fighting battles.
So the point at which I became confident that I’d won was much later – some time around my defeat of the Western Roman Empire and the subjugation of Britain, by which time I just folded all my armies in on Central Europe and won.
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Actually, Tim Schafer’s one person I respect for not (apparently) milking his ideas for sequels. I’d rather see another original Tim Schafer idea, since he has so many good ones, than a tired rehash of a game he’s already done.
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I’ve just recently tried to go back and finish a bunch of games that I didn’t ever finish, for whatever reason. I went all the way through BGII and the expansion for the first time (and am now halfway through another run through to play it differently), but Planescape Torment I still haven’t made much progress in. Beating Meat Circus was such a relief, but when I went back to Bioshock, I found my most recent save game just crashes whenever I load it.
I played Oblivion for hours and hours, and frankly in my mind I completed it – got to the top of all the Guilds I cared about and explored a fairly huge chunk of the world. I just never managed to get far into the main quest at all :P The exact same thing is happening to me in Fallout 3 right now, but with the even greater annoyance that I’ve hit the level cap (with a LOT more exploring still to do). And I haven’t heard good things about the engrossing-ness of the main quest there either :(
Also World of Goo is sitting in my Steam games list, glaring at me every time I open it up to start Fallout 3, but I will definitely get that finished soon.
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@sana – I don’t believe. The final boss in Team Fortress 2 was insanely hard. I don’t see how anyone could’ve escaped those tentacles.
As for me, I will usually turn on cheats to complete a game once I hit my frustration limit, as by that point I want to find out what happens more than I want to play anymore. Fallout 3 is the most recent casualty of this, although that’s due to a bug that prevented me from finishing the main quest with my main character after > 30 hrs, and I didn’t feel like starting again and slogging through.
Nihilanth was awful. Meat Circus was awful. Just two data points for my “Bosses are shitty game design” thesis.
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I’ve never finished Fallout (for shame), and have yet to play a game of Civilization through to the end despite having bought and loved two installments.
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Hopping on the ‘skipped Nihilianth’ train, except we didn’t have youtube back then so instead I cheated to kill it. And unlike most everybody else, I actually enjoyed Xen, because it felt like something new and alien, and they got the “You’re totally alone out here” atmosphere just right.
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ChaosSmurf: @Cabbs: … StarCraft bugged out on you? o_O
One of the early-ish zerg missions. had to protect or retrieve some floating brains or something, there was nothing left to kill, and I couldn’t get the brains to interact with anything. It was a long time ago.
Its always possible that I was too stupid to work out what to do. I prefer to believe my install was broken or something.
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I am another one who is not above cheating for the sake of finishing a game just to find out what happens (there was no fecking way I was goign to play through the bastard-bitching library in Halo without hax), and I also tend to resort to gamefaqs the instant I get stuck, as I consider my time too valuable to be spent wandering around making no progress and not knowing what the hell to do.
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Insert Comment Lamenting Lack Of Edit Function Here.
Blasphemy Velvet Fist! I thoroughly enjoyed Meat Circus. The only game that I can forgive for having boss fights.
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I don’t think I’ve actually finished any of the Fallout games…looks like 3 will be the first for me (though I’m still chugging through and life’s getting busy again…)
Also never finished Baldur’s Gate 1 or 2. Must be something with RPGs. Just finished HL1 last winter, went god-mode to beat the final boss. I’ve actually finished most RTS, though not Warcraft 3 (whatever the latest is). Also haven’t finished the STALKERs, got 1 then TF2 snagged all my time. After buying 2, I then purchased Fallout 3 and FarCry2, and only one of those has occupied my time since.
If it really counts, I’ve never ‘finished’ Dwarf Fortress. No Happy Fun Stuff for me.
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“Naturally it took a grievous amount of attempts to shepherd Little Ollie to safety, but apart from that bit, I didn’t have a huge problem with the Meat Circus. ”
That’s the bit I couldn’t finish. I used go back to it every few months and try for half an hour or so, but after failing the same freaking jump (or occasionally making it, but too late to save Ollie) one too many times, I just abandoned the game.
“Is that the one part everyone hates, or do people hate the whole thing and I’m just totally good-looking and awesome at the other bits”
No, I adore the rest of the game.
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Umm, why are you pointing down there?
I also enjoyed Zen (Xen? ohh Xev…) in Half-Life, if only for the low gravity. For some reason I really enjoy games that change the gravity occasionally.
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i think he means the whole meat circus, in which case, yeah people hate the whole thing. Although again, I found it fairly comfortably doable, if extremely frustrating and unfair in places.
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@Gap Gen: You are proving the point.
The campaigns in Total War are way too long. One problem is that you are almost guarenteed to have increased your skill considerably after the first 10 hours or so. You’ve now completed less than half of the campaign and are so strong that even if the rest of the world attacked you at once you would still win. Why would you possible waste hour after hour pushing towards the end with not chance of defeat? That’s the definition of boring. They really need to add in some kind of win condition that recognizes that you are unstoppable.
The other problem in Total War is that the tedium dramatically increases as your empire does. Just moving your troops around in one turn can take forever.
Obviously, I’ve never come close to finishing a Total War campaign.
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I never finished Guild Wars Factions, played it got bored with it, the Eye of the North expansion i have yet to finish…
I got pretty far into Deus Ex once, up the French Mansion part, but had hdd failure and lost all my savegames.
Got really far in Morrowind, got to the point i could finish it but again lost my savegames in a hdd failure..i have tried and failed to get back into it, perhaps i’ll give it another go in ’09..
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I practically never finish games, but my brother usually picks up the slack, so I never miss out on an ending; I have, however, finished both Max Payne games an ungodly number of times.
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I’ve only ever completed one and a half campaigns in a Total War. But on the other hand I hate the idea of the shorter campaigns invariably introduced in the expansion packs. They water the thing down way, way too much.
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JUST REALISED.
HALF-LIFE IS ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD.
I’LL WAIT FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND.
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Shush.
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Normally if I buy a game I will complete it (eventually) but I still have not managed HL1 or any of its expansions – every time I go home I manage another half-hour’s worth of progress. Personally I can’t play a game without completing it fairly quickly, I find that I need to know what happens… Well, apart from Ninja Gaiden 2, I have played that all of twice, but that is on a heathen console. My main problem is games unplayed – ones which I have never bought and feel silly for having not done so. I think GoG will help in this respect, as soon as they get SS2 and a few Monkey Islands on there.
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A quick look up to my gaming shelf reminds me I’ve yet to complete:
Oblivion MQ – Levelling made my generic knight extremely weak.
Tribes: Vengeance – Just lost all motive to continue playing.
Project Nomads – I’m not far off the end I think.
Baldur’s Gate – Stuck right at the end.
Test Drive Unlimited – Still haven’t done the ’round the island’ race.
NWN 1 & 2 – Won’t be finishing 1, probably get back to 2 some day.
Plus many others.
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I have a history of playing games all to the final boss and then just coudn’t make it past:(
Gears of War 1 being a good example – General RAAM… tried it couple of times couldn’t really master it – I just gave up:)
Almost happened with Meat Circus – but by God I made it:)
You know what I REEAAAALY can’t beat?
the second boss in No More Heroes – that bitch with the baseball bat:((
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Oh there’s so many games that I’ve started and then for some reason or another not finished. Maybe because some other game came out or that it just was too long. Most of these are PS2 games for some reason. Most PC games I try to finish. The games that I really have to try to finish at some point are amongst others S.T.A.L.K.E.R and The Witcher.
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Just remembered, I never finished Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, and I always finish adventure games (call it obsessive compulsion). But I don’t really think that’s a priority; besides, only reason I couldn’t finish it was because it kept crashing in Glastonbury.
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Oh, and despite being a big fan of adventure games, I have never played a Monkey Island game.
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Never completed a Total War game. I’ve got to the position where the world is blatantly mine several times, but I never meet the victory conditions.
Had to cheat my way through the stupid end levels of Far Cry.
I never finished Planescape either. Although a housemate who was playing it after me did finish it and I watched him play most of the end sections.
Didn’t finish Oblivion either. Lost track of what the main quest was and got bored of the side-quests.
So far haven’t completed Fallout 3! I’m a good way in and have been avoiding the main arc to explore, but at the moment it is at risk of never being finished due to excessive Left4Dead!!!
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Superman 64.
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“Why would you possible waste hour after hour pushing towards the end with not chance of defeat? That’s the definition of boring. They really need to add in some kind of win condition that recognizes that you are unstoppable.”
Sins of a Solar Empire suffers badly from this.
All of you Monkey Island avoiders really, really need to pick up a copy of ScummVM immediately. They’re among the best games ever made.
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Is it even possible to finish Half Life without turning on a god mode cheat at the end? The final boss battle is one of the worst things I’ve ever tried to play. Definitely quit Half Life as soon as you get to Xen.
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Ted: I didn’t use god mode but I did have to use noclip at the end due to a bug where I got stuck inside his head. There was no fecking way I was going to reload and do the whole fight again so I just fudged it. WORST boss fight of all time.
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I don’t know what all the fuss is about the Nihilanth. It was shit, sure, but it wasn’t that hard once you got the hang of split-second quick saving. A few rockets to its soft, pulpy baby brain and your laughing. Naturally I chose to ignore the G-Man when he made his offer. Being teleported in front of all those hornet-beast-thingies was awesome. OMG, DECADE-OLD SPOILERZZ!
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EVERYONE GET THIS AND INSTALL ACTION HALF LIFE!!! Its free mod, and awesome!
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Hang on, I wrote Superman 64. I meant Ecco the Dolphin.
That game was tough. Like adamantium tough.
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Never finished Planescape or Dues Ex. In fact I never even finished the first level of Dues Ex. Yup.
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Nihilanth wasn’t [i]hard[/i], it was just a [i]fucking awful[/i] piece of shitty game design. A boss whose attacks teleport you into a separate room full of irritating little enemies, and whose weakspot can only be reached at certain short intervals by navigating an incredibly prpecarious set of terribly imprecise jump-pads? Great idea, Valve.
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Niahilanth wasn’t as bad as the god awful ‘Eye beast’ at the end of opposing forces – shoot the eye – kill the spawn – shoot the eye – kill the AAAAAAAAGH I actually thought the game was broken, or that I was broken until I checked online. Still finished it though, little bit OCD, played half life through 4 times, same with half life 2, usually after hardware upgrades to check out new shineys
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Despite playing HL and HL mods for about 6 years, I never actually finished the original SP game, but instead got distracted by TFC and counter-strike. Pity. Maybe I should get it over with sometime.
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Anyone remember the boss at the end of HL-2 :) Was there a boss:))?
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Planescape Torment. I’ve failed to finish it twice now. It is my secret shame.
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There are many games I’m too elitist or impatient to go and give a go. In particular games that appear too ‘arcadey’ usually get scrubbed straight off the list.
And I’ve never played any of the Final Fantasy games, in fact, I refuse to do so.
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“The campaigns in Total War are way too long. ”
Well, in Rome and M2 I’d agree. Shogun and Medieval were better as they had provinces, plus ships that could insta-transport armies from one end of the map to the other (in Medieval) so you could win quickly. I conquered the entire map a few times in Medieval.
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Just a comment on the Nihilanth: one of my favorite gaming memories was the time I managed quite accidentally to drop on top of the Nihilanth’s head, saw its skull open up and beat the damn thing to death with the crowbar. A personal-best epic win.
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You people are strange =). I always finish every game I start. Completed about 250 games (Yeah I keep a list) in my years of gaming. Only game now that I can think of that I failed to finish was the original Rayman.
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Random: You’ve never ever gotten bored with a game, or merely sidetracked by another game?
P.
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Nah, I dont install new ones before the old one is completed =).
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Random: We demand to see the list!:)
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Random: That is a single-mindedness I could never achieve. I must have a few dozen games across three formats (PC, Wii and GBA) that I could consider I’m currently playing, albeit some of those I parked a year or two ago.
P.
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Random: We demand to see your medicine cabinet!:)
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Anyone who hasn’t finished Planescape really needs to. Especially if you get to a pretty much complete ending where you’ve discovered the underlying truth of your character, the ending cut scene after the final run of dialogue is just beautifully poignant.
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G-man looks like David Byrne. Creepy.
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I think I’ve worked out why developers insist on having rubbish endings. Based on what people seem to be saying here, no-one ever finishes anything.
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I for some reason cant get Team Fortress 2 finished, even after 500+ hours of play!! I’m not even the least bit bothered or embarrassed by it either. :)
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Never finished Spore, The Longest Journey, Oblivion, any Monkey Island Games, Thief 3, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: IW, Warcraft 3, Halo, or Pathologic.
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Fallout 1+2, and Max Payne 2 come to mind.
Of course there is Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines – Watched a fucking speedrun to see the ending. The game kept freezing on my, at some point I didn’t have the patience anymore to reboot every 20 Minutes just for the sake of being more and more frustrated by the bad endgame.
This are the games I am unlikely to ever finish.
I guess I could name alot more, but I pretend I’m just taking a break from those for a few months(years, really).
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Games I played, never finished, but intend to finish one day (or at least would like to):
Planescape Torment
Anachronox
The Witcher
Grim Fandango
Monkey Island (any of them, tbh)
Hot shit, it pains me to know the games I would like to finish are exactly the longest of them.
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Pikmin is probably the only unfinished game I actually want to finish, just never bother hooking my Cube up. It’ll happen this xmas, I think.
I’d like to play Baldur’s Gate to the end, but after starting it twice and giving up (once for the typical RPG bullshit of being under-levelled to move on in the story and once since my favourite party member left me because I was getting too many good boy points) I don’t think that’ll happen. It’s on my “save it for co-op at the retirement home” list now.
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I rarely finish any story-driven games, which is why I’m drawn to online shooters, simulations, and “skirmish” games (GalCiv, Sins of a Solar Empire, SupCom, CivIV)
Some notables I need to finish: Deus Ex, Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Fallout 1 and 2, Titan Quest, Diablo II
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I never finished Space Quest 6 since a bug in the game meant that my computer was incapable of getting past the part where you stick the goon’s hair sample in the medical scanner thingie.
From what I’ve heard from people who were able to play past that point, my computer was doing me a favour.
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Chronomaster
Might have been crashing that prevented me, but it always bothered me I didn’t play more of this game.
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
This game still makes me unsettled to this day. I got to the part where they were all in a cage, but could never motivate myself to finish it. I remember it being frustratingly hard as a game.
Odium
Played this games demo, enjoyed it, then bought the game because of it. Played the finished product for about 5 minutes, then never touched it again.
Grim Fandango
No excuse.
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“I dont install new ones before the old one is completed ”
If I had the patience to do that I’d be a rich man. Or, at least, less skint.
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Btw, what’s the longest game ever? Apart from optional stuff that is.
I finished Okami in about 47 hours and say 7 were spent sidetracking & etc.
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I’m ashamed I never finished WC3: The Frozen Throne. That mission where you had too free the paladin and take out the narga base in less than 30 minutes was too hard for me. I enjoyed it up to this point, but my brain is incapable of being decent at RTS games it seems.
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Half Life 2
Deus Ex
I’m working on both.
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Don’t worry guys, there’s a support group for those of you who never seem to finish games:
http://backloggery.com/
I find it helps me keep track of what I should go back to playing when the wallet is a bit tight.
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Hmm.
Never played: Psychonauts, Ico (and in a similar vein, Shadow of the Colossus); Okami, Uplink, Darwinia, any of the Ace Attorney series, that Elite Beat Agents thing, Grim Fadango, Full Throttle, Planescape; Torment, Fallout, Anachronox, any of the Thief games, World of Warcraft, Warcraft, erm… post some more classics, I’ll probably not have played them.
Completed? The above list, obviously, plus 4/5 my current game collection. I’m not very good at finishing videogames. I did finish Half Life 2, though, on my first playthrough. So I’m kinda pleased about that. I also finished Unreal 2. And, erm. Some other things, I think?
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Psychonauts is free over gametap btw, as is fallout.
free that’s like £1 less than £1… actually, with the way the pound is free falling against the dollar its probably less than that!
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Yay, i can finally try The Specialists
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I used to very rarely finish games, partly because I played a lot of sandboxy/sim stuff, partly because I was utilitarian about it: I extracted all the fun I needed for the time being, on to more productive endeavors. I’ve been trying to be more open to narrative-driven games lately, though, and have been making a point to see them through.
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Eh.
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@Urinat0r:
That’s actually what I was also interested in. Needless to say, I’ve purchased this for me and a friend who already owns it, but has lost the disc. (Plus, it’s something that will run on his laptop)
As for Psychonauts, eh. I’ve never really been too interested in playing it.
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As for Psychonauts, eh. I’ve never really been too interested in playing it.
Don’t let that stop you!
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Well I’ve never finished Half Life either. I got up to a silly platforming section around what I believe was a reactor and thought to myself… ‘Enough. I want to shoot, not jump.’
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What about the fact that ages of countless praise has rendered me bitter about it, in a classic case of Hype Backlash: what with all the gushing about the unique story and amazing characters and oh you must try this level where a thing happens and it’s so amazing you should play it you’ll be supporting indie developers and Tim Schafer Oh God I love Tim Schafer play it why aren’t you playing it yet play it play it play it and so on.
It’s like Dark Knight all over again. And yes, I know that I did like that after I watched it (heck, I saw it twice in cinemas: such a thing is unique for me), but that had pencil-based killing and a scene with my favourite weapon (the RPG: Oh how I love thee) which reminded me of GTA IV in a good way.
But anyway. I guess what I’m trying to say is: I’m weak-willed and unoriginal. I know what I like (violent death with a side of guns and explosions), I like Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty 4 because they feature both.
Also, I’ve never watched The Middleman or Firefly, and I never listened to Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog.
Feel free to burn me now.
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I think we’ve all been in that position; it’s a matter of making an effort to give something a chance. The praise is particularly loud because the game only found a large audience after being unfairly ignored at release. All I can give you is my word that, then, that it really is that good, and endears itself to you with great speed.
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Man, I am quite surprised at the responses here! I would have thought posters on this site would be the kinds of people to finish everything. I certainly do and the only exceptions is when a crash is preventing me which Dead Space is currently doing :( I don’t think I’m better than anyone because I do finish 99% of my games though, I am just genuinely surprised!
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Oh yeah, I should probably add that, after playing games for many many years, I am very good at knowing which games will interest me so I don’t have any games that fall into the “I got bored/didn’t like it pile”. There have been some that pushed me though and I only completed them for the story eg Bioshock and FEAR
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Fine. I’ll download it.
But I’m not playing Beyond Good & Evil, because there are some lines that I must keep if I am to have any appearance of misanthropy. And I’m not buying Darwinia (or goddamnit, Multiwinia); I already bought Defcon, and that’s impossible to play (I’m not a strategy fan). Still, it gains points for having Mutually Assured Destruction.
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Meat Circus? Thanks for reminding me of that – that little niggle in the back of my head of never finishing an otherwise awesome game just became huge again!
My list is endless – I buy games at a faster rate than I can play them, which is retarded but there it is. do the same with books too.
Lessee; Psychonauts, SS2, NWN2, either Baldurs Gate (just ordered the second one though), Dead Space, Lego Batman, Bioshock – the list goes on. Oh, and I’ve yet to beat any of the many Roguelikes which distract me from playing the other things :)
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I have a long list of games I’ve started but never finished… The most painful ones are those that I really enjoyed, but for no particular reason stopped playing and never went back to.
Half-Life is a special case, though. I haven’t finished it either. I played it when it first came out. I honestly didn’t like it. It annoyed me. But I got right to the final boss. And then stopped playing. Not because it was too hard. Just because.
Even though I didn’t like the game, it always bugged me that I’d never finished it. But I’d sold my copy. So I finally gave in, bought another copy for £1 many years later, and tried again. Enjoyed it *a bit* more this time, but was stopped by the infamous ‘lift bug.’ Gave up in disgust, threw the disc away(!).
Now it’s 2008, I’m a L4D fan, I bought the Orange Box last week… so maybe I’ll buy Half-life for the *third* time, and give it one more shot.
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98 cents (actually $1.14 after tax, through PayPal) seemed too good to resist. I bought it. Hopefully I will enjoy it, and finish it, on my third attempt.
I also wanted to mention my worst ever case of ‘unfinished game lingering guilt.’ Westwood Studios’ groundbreaking, brilliant Dune II.
I bought it in 1992, and absolutely loved it. My brother and I played it for weeks, until my monitor blew up (seriously). At which point I think I cried. Anyway, I got beaten by the final mission (I was quite young and crap at the time). And I gave up.
I was haunted by the feeling of unfinished business until last year when I reinstalled Dune II, gritted my teeth, played through and completed it. You know what? It still holds up well to this day. A great game, and really not very difficult.
Now I just have to complete it with the other two factions…
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Actually, Meat Circus isn’t that bad now I’ve completed the game three times. Sure it’s annoying, but once you know what to do and have practice at the controls, it’s not all pain. Once you complete the acrobatic-flooding section, it’s plain sailing.
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“I never finished Far Cry, though. I got to the volcano, then gave up in the bastard corridor filled with men with rocket launchers.”
Christ, that place was a mess.
I mean, it starts off pretty bad when they throw you out of the chopper with only 10 shots and an island full of tridgens. Then the volcano, then that corridor with men behind each pillar that all step out at the same time.
It get even worse than that when you fight Kruger, and then it gets ABSURD. There’s also a twist in the last 5 minutes of the game which is kind of lame. Hard as HELL on realistic
HL1 isn’t that hard though. I love the platforming. Or at least like
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I just want to leave everyone with the ability to download the high-def pack for Half-Life free through steam.
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Half-Life_High_Definition_Content
Then click on the link in the black box.
The game will look better.
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- All Baldur’s Gate games and everything else that runs on the engine.
- Thief series
- System Shock series (couldn’t get into it)
- Fallout 2 (couldn’t get into it)
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“But I’m not playing Beyond Good & Evil, because there are some lines that I must keep if I am to have any appearance of misanthropy. ”
Oh, go on. 1Up FM are doing it for their next backlog game.
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Never finished Far Cry. I gave up at the Monster Island stage, but I was getting pretty bored by that point anyway.
I loved the eerie atmospherics of Xen, but why the hell did they fill it with those damn jumping puzzles? Took me forever to kill the stupid Nihilanth.
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Hey guys, is the one-dollar Half-Life the ‘unmolested’ original, or is it Half-Life Source? I’ve been playing it, but I have no idea what to look for to check (water, I figured, but I’m still none the wiser).
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Oh yeah, ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, I haven’t finished that yet either; I just don’t find it very enticing, it’s… almost like a po-faced ‘Psychonauts’ in tone, what with the whole incongruous Saturday-morning-cartoon aesthetic (it’s just incongruous for a different reason, I guess). I kind of enjoyed it a bit, I just never think of returning to it, even when I’m bored.
…That teaser for the sequel was totally awesome though.
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I’m G-Man / AND THAT’S A FACT! / I’ve found out / Vortigaunts don’t help! / Vortigaunts think / They’re real cool cats / Stealing my Gordon / We’ll see about that!
Those Vortigaunts don’t need money / They’re living on crabs and zombies / They think they know what’s best / They’re making a FOOL of us!…
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Baldur’s Gate: The Brief History of Time of videogames.
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@solomun:
Much better if you can find a good friend to spend weeks playing it in 2-player co-op. Yeah, easier said than done…
Note: I’m awake right now due to Half-Life.
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Games I have started but not finished:
Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout: Tactics
Final Fantasy 7 (will finish)
Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X2 (got about halfway through each game, realized I didn’t care about the story or game.)
Planescape: Torment (might finish)
Nethack
AliensRL
DoomRL
Dwarf Fortress (no victory condition, still fun.)
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (way too much work to finish)
Deus Ex
HL2 (This game makes me seasick, don’t know why. I might finish it with the mod Synergy. HL1 is worse, I only played the demo.)
XCOM (Have squad ready for final mission, have not finished final mission. Aliens will rule the earth!)
Many of these would go faster if I used quicksave more often. This does not include games I started but did not intend to finish, nor games that I haven’t played.
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Wow, very surprising to see so many people don’t finish games. I’m pretty OCD about it in comparison, can only recall not completing Descent II a long time ago and Bioshock more recently. When I get frustrated with a game, cheat codes usually expedite a quick finish just to get it over with.
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One day, before I die, I sincerely intend to save the princess in Super Mario Brothers.
Thought I had once. Turned out she was in another castle.
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The list of games I haven’t finished is entirely too long.
I’ll try:
Bioshock
Psychonauts
Half-Life 1
Spore
Fallout 1 & 2
Sacrifice
Command and Conquer 3
Consoles:
Gears of War
GTA 4
Zelda: Twilight Princess
Ghost Recon
Viewtiful Joe
God I can’t even remember all of the games I never finished. I usually get bored of a game after a while. Once I’ve played it enough to see what the game is about I usually stop playing it. Most games throw all of the good stuff at you so early on, there’s no enticement to contiue forward.
Or maybe I’m just lazy.
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Sacrifice (Marduk can go hang), Theif 2, Every Final Fantasy except 9, System Shock (pirated copy (hey, it’s out of print, I refuse to feel bad) lead to a constantly crashing game), any Civ game.
On the other hand, I completed Meat Circus on the second attempt; the platforming was a bit grating but not impossible.
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Sacrifice. Company of Heroes. Medieval. Call To Power. KOTOR. Planescape Torment. Morrowind. Neverwinter Nights. System Shock 2. No-One Lives Forever (which I would have played more of if it had had autosave). And off-PC, Shadow Of The Bloody Boring Colossus.
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This topic makes me sad, because people here are hardcore, most people might own and never play true classics. When I don’t finish a game, generally its because its crap or obscenely hard, often then I’ll just cheat.
But I have about 15 games on the go at any one time, they don’t get uninstalled until I’m done.
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Actually, me and most of my friends are either unemployed or at a company on the verge of folding, so I might actually get to co-op Baldur’s Gate. Yay economic collapse!
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Completed Halflife a couple of times. Completed Deus Ex probably somewhere about the 9/10 mark. What about all those games that it was only possible to complete by taking advantage of a bug (Vampire: Bloodlines anyone?). I don’t think I would ever be able to complete HL1 again because I can’t look at that giant baby at the end without crying a little. At least Valve redeemed themselves beautifully with all subsequent titles. Roll on Episode 3.
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Only played 3 levels in dues Ex (gametap) and lost the KOTOR install disk before i could play it.
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Boy, I see there are a lot of us who still haven’t finished Grim Fandango. We’re a bunch of sad people, that’s what we are.
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Impressive lists so far.
Never finished:
Lands of Lore: the original one. But due to a bug that wouldn’t let me advance.
Dungeon Keeper
Thief
Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.
Crimson Skies: stopped playing for 6 months & upgraded PC; game is not compatible with newer GPU drivers.
And all Mario games–I just lose interest.
Out of all the games I *have* finished, by far Deus Ex was the most rewarding and replayable.
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http://backloggery.com/dracos_death
That about sums it up :)
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