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I finished Guacamelee! last night.

There were a few minor parts near the end that felt a bit like a mismatch in the game's strengths versus what it gives you (for instance, the jumping in this game is not super precise, and there are some parts near the end that have you jumping between tiny platforms and fighting enemies... it's not too bad though since there isn't much of a real penalty when you fall into a neverending pit in this game) and the Leopard battle was pretty frustrating until I got his patterns down.

Overall though? This game was pretty brilliant. Hands down one of the best PSN titles that I have played, and probably one of the best "Metroidvania" titles that I have played as well. (Also maybe be the only "brawler" Metroidvania titles that I have played, which is neat.) It does a good job of making your power-ups not only open up new areas but feel good just to MOVE AROUND WITH and USE, something that Metroid is awesome at but so many Metroidvania titles fall short on.

It took me about 6-7 hours to finish, which is a bit shorter than I would have liked, but that's about what I expected from this type of game.

I'm playing Lone Survivor: Director's Cut on PSN right now. It's pretty neat. It's kind of like a 2D sprite-based Silent Hill, but more "survival" based... you need to keep finding food and eating, get good sleep, etc. It also has these weird, almost touching parts as well.

I read that it is only 3-4 hours long and considering that I already played it for a good 3 hours, I think that I have to be at least halfway through it. Albeit a large chunk of that time was spent continually dying in the basement without making much progress. But now I'm done with the apartment.

@Zero

I played through it on PC a little over a year ago and loved it. The Steam version just got the Director's Cut update as well, and I can't wait to play it.

I remember the basement being really tough. You're almost at the end though!

@Secret_Tunnel Basement was tough, although I feel like the game gives you an easy escape because I kept dying and it kept like... giving me more ammo because I had run out or something? You can basically exploit this to get infinite ammo by killing a monster or two, running out of ammo and running back and saving, dying, rinse repeat... monsters stay dead and the game gives you more ammo... of course, you're spending a lot of time running back and forth this way, which leads to food problems.

Speaking of which I have no food left, so I sure hope I find some more. Not 100% sure what happens if you straight up run out and just can't go on...

Oddly enough I'm typing this having not really eaten all day, so it's like I'm physically relating to how he must feel when he gets STARVING, heh.

Oh btw, the random part with the field was like one of the most awesome things I've ever experienced in a game. I love when "horror" media takes a break from the horror to remind you that there are beautiful things in the world. That touching "indie" rock song with the field and tree and colors and everything... nice break from the darkness. Mind you I'm not totally sure how it connects to the plot yet, but I have suspicions...

@Zero

I don't want to hype up the ending of the game that much, but reading your post made me really excited for you to beat it. You'll see why when you do. Interested to see what you'll think of it...

Aaaaah, I want to play this game again.

Ha ha. I already have my suspicions on what the ending will be... we'll see.

I was trying to explain this game to my girlfriend on the phone today and I was like "I don't know what the ending is yet, but I'm pretty sure that it's going to turn out to be more about his past relationship than about monsters. I even made her watch a clip of the field part just to be like ISN'T IT NUTS THAT THIS IS IN THE MIDDLE OF A HORROR GAME?! I'm not sure that she quite understood why that was so amazing to me, ha ha, but she seemed excited for me, which works.

I'll probably finish it tonight. I'm outside of the apartment now so... not too much left?

Did you ever try a "pacifist run"? A lot of people talk about that, I wonder how tough it would be. Maybe not too bad. Doubt I'd ever try it though.

Well I finished the game.

I actually had to get online to figure out what the heck the ending meant, and of course it turns out it is one of those games with multiple endings. I guess I got the "middle" blue ending. And it seems like different people have different theories on what the ending means, so... I dunno.

Hmm. So then I went and watched all of the endings on Youtube. Still not totally sure what happened.

I was definitely thinking that this stuff was only in his mind and that maybe he had killed himself before I even got to the end, seems like the first is almost definitely true and the second is something that... maybe is true? The only difference between my ending and the "worse" red ending is that in the red ending when he shoots the um... older him? he starts bleeding as well. I guess this can be interpreted in various ways. I'm almost certain the red ending means he kills himself to be with the girlfriend? that died and made him mentally lose it, but since he did not start bleeding in my ending, I am kind of interpreting it as he is alive but stuck in his delusions and is "with her" in his mind. Probably not the "right" interpretation, but whatever. You get my ending by acting in ways that are a bit "healthier" than the red ending, so I like to imagine a different outcome that leaves a bit more hope.

I guess the green ending (watched on Youtube) shows that he has accepted the truth and is healthier now and (as evident by the fact that he is not "with her") moving on with his life?

Although it's actually a pretty clever story, I kind of wish that I didn't have to piece it together after the fact. Not sure if there is an official ruling on what it all means either, it seems some of it is left "up to your interpretation" or whatever. Would have liked a bit more clarity from the game itself. To be honest I feel a bit torn, it's like... it's clever, but the ending itself didn't leave me satisfied, it just left me going "that's it?", I had to look stuff up to feel more satisfied.

I guess that was true with my experience of Silent Hill 2 as well, which was obviously a huge inspiration here.

So, how did the girl (his girlfriend?) die? People online say that if you piece certain things together it appears that she was killed by a bomb when the city she was in was attacked? More specifically while riding in a bus, hence the bombed out bus at the end? Even more specifically somewhere in the Middle East. Seem pretty accurate?

Also, what do you think about the idea that he actually killed real people after he went crazy, thinking they were monsters? I don't see too much evidence for that, but I dunno... some people online seem to think the game suggested this.

@Zero

...I've only gotten the blue ending, so I don't know what's safe to unlight! I just think it's funny that your comments about being able to exploit ammo and doing a pacifist run were so spot-on. I don't know how much you read about how to get each ending, but taking the blue pill to get more ammo is a huge factor in whether or not you get the blue ending.

I don't know or remember much beyond that. The Director's Cut has a New Game+ mode with some extra stuff, including two additional endings that you couldn't get on your first playthrough. I'm going to play through the game at least two more times, going for the green ending my first time and then just going along with whatever happens in New Game+.

Hmm, well I spoiler the color of each ending I'm talking about before saying anything about it, so you can just slowlyyyyy go through my spoilers and stop when you see the comment is related to a color you haven't played.

The last two paragraphs relate to all endings, I think. Just sort of general speculation on what happened to lead to where things are now based on things you get / see in the game regardless of what direction you take? I think.

Hmm, and what I'm about to say is all blue path based too...

I have to say, once you realize what is going on, it adds such a different context to that field scene in the middle of the game. It's no longer just some random WTF thing, but when you look at it in the context of he went through a difficult thing and retreated into darkness inside of his mind, you can see it as a moment where his mind lets him put aside the darkness for a bit and rest in a good place. As someone pretty close to a few people with serious mental illness, it's kind of a beautiful thought to me that there can be light within all of the darkness.

@Zero

Having only gotten the blue ending and maybe lacking a bit of the context that you have, it seemed to me like the field scene at the very end was just a delusion. Sort of an "And they all lived happily ever after, the end!" kind of thing where the main character had completely lost touch with any sort of reality and is lost in this dream land where everything's alright. I suppose that's better than being lost in a nightmare, so it's not a total loss, but ideally you would snap back to reality.

I've forgotten a lot of the subtleties about the game's story. I mostly just remember a faint outline of some of the things that happen.

The whole relationship side of things gives a whole new meaning to the title "Lone Survivor," too.

That was kind of my interpretation too, that the blue ending was just a new, somewhat better delusion to replace to more messed up delusion he had been living in for awhile.

The difference between the blue and red ending is so subtle that it is unclear to me whether they are really supposed to be interpreted as leading to different results (apparently the red ending actually has you taking the blue pill just like the blue ending, and there is really only one difference in what happens next, as far as I remember.) I guess I can't say too much more about this if you want to experience the red ending on your own. The difference is not necessarily major, yet could lead to a significantly different interpretation of what happens to the guy, depending on, well... how you decide to interpret it.

Director's Cut also adds two more endings... I didn't look really look into those, assuming they are just modifications of the main ones, but maybe I should have.

I decided to go ahead and highlight your spoilers for the red ending, since I doubt I'll ever go for that one. So wait, when you say "older him," are you referring to that gray-haired blue-shirted trickster who shows up sometimes? I never thought of him as being the older version of the main character. I suppose that makes sense. He's definitely some aspect of the guy's psyche; probably the part that wants him to stay deluded and survive the nightmare. He gives you the pills and everything. Though like I said, I don't remember too much about the specifics.

I'm really interested in the green ending. I'll definitely go for that on my next playthrough. You should do the New Game+! Apparently it adds a lot more than just two new endings.

@Secret_Tunnel I'm talking about the guy at the end that you shoot, which I assume is the same one. I honestly don't remember why I decided it was "you" but that is just the impression that I got from the game, and the blue ending made it seem so to me, since he keeps talking about "the truth" and mimicking what you say and when you shoot him you start flashing and your hair goes back and forth between your hair and his hair... maybe your whole body does too but you can't see the body as well at that point. Then the red ending makes it seem even more obvious since the difference between the blue and red is that when you shoot him in the red, the blood patch appears on your as well. This is also why people speculate that the red ending means that you commit suicide... a bit of a stretch, but there are other things that point towards that as well, although they're all in the blue ending too... like "am I dead?" and talking about getting to be with her again and such. So really the blue ending might be suicide too, but I don't WANT it to be that, so I'm going with alive but still trapped in delusions but at least they're now delusions of getting to be with the girl again.

What does New Game + add? I doubt I'd play again unless I went for green but... that also sounds a bit confusing / convoluted so I'm not really sure how to do it and get a sense of whether I'm succeeding in it or not. I suppose I just don't have the patience nowadays to do a run for an ending that I'm not even sure I will get. Also now that I've seen the main endings on Youtube I'm not sure if there is a point to playing through the game again... well, I haven't seen the new endings for the Director's Cut but they seem like the extreme ones... you have to either go above and beyond or just completely F up to get them?

One of the things about this game that is really compelling to me is something that I've been thinking long and hard about how to work into the game I want to make. Way too many games that involve choices give you all of the time or whatever you need and a sort of clear "best" choice, so why wouldn't you make that one? But I like the idea that choices aren't so clear and they depend on execution so it is tough to know what is best and even if you know what you want to do, you might not always be able to do it, etc. This usually requires some sort of real limit, in this case having to sleep and eat and such regularly while having your health depend on various things is a pretty nuanced way to handle choices and such. This is a reason that I liked Persona 4 a lot as well, there was a true time limit, every day you have to decide what to do with that day, and doing one thing means missing out on another...

@Zero

Straight from the developer's blog, New Game+ adds:

-around 6 new locations
-2 completely new endings
-3 new songs
-over 20 new items
-2 new sidequests
-new enemy
-new dialogue for all characters in the game
-many other easter eggs that are better left unspoilt

Might be worth it. You really liked 999, right? Lone Survivor reminds me of that game. You're supposed to play through it a two or three times to get the full story.

What's funny about both games is that I think the endings for your first playthroughs are more effective if you don't know that you're supposed to play through it multiple times. I'm on my second playthrough of 999. Before I beat the game my first time, I already knew that I'd have to play through the game multiple times, so I kind of saw the completely out-of-left-field ending I got coming, but if I hadn't known that there were multiple endings, my mind would have been blown! The Stanley Parable takes that same principle to the extreme and makes a whole game out of it.

The hard part is figuring out the mystery of how to get the best ending. I know you said that in 999, you didn't get it until your fourth playthrough, and even then you had to look up a guide. I guess my current plan is to probably do the same thing, unless I can solve the mystery on my own.

Yeah but 999 doesn't require skill to get different endings, you just pick a different path... made even more easier in Virtue's Last Reward since you can literally go to a decision tree and pick a new path from there. I think it is different too in the sense that um... well, if you haven't finished it, I don't want to say. But it's different. Finish it, and you'll see why!

I would not suggest trying to get the true ending of 999 without a guide BTW. You theoretically could play through the game like 20+ times before finding it on your own.

Anyway Lone Survivor sounds like it is essentially the same story during the game and you just get different endings depending on how you play. New Game Plus might change some of this up, but I can't imagine it feeling like a significantly different experience. I'd maybe want to try it to do a green run but eh...

The thing is I read up on how to do that and it just sounds like... it requires a combination of precise decisions and skill and kind of playing in a streamlined way knowing exactly where you're going and what you want to do so as to not waste time / food / ammo / etc. and everything and you will never know if you're actually succeeding or not until the end... and that kind of turns me off. I mean, maybe it's not even that strict, but how do you really know if you're keeping up or not? Plus I already watched that ending on Youtube, heh. And the new ending that is the next step up from that one just sounds insane to get.

Maybe I'll play through it again someday but it's not necessarily calling out to me to replay. Although after talking about it so much with Shirley she suggested we could play it together when she gets back. But um... if we played it together I think it would be very tough to pull off the green run since she would be new to everything.

I guess this is the official Lone Survivor thread now?

I've been replaying this game. Went for the green ending on my first playthrough, just playing off of what I remembered from when I played the game a couple years ago. Managed to get the green ending, and I liked it!

One thing that's interesting to me is how at the end report the first thing it shows you is your "Days in Treatment." This kind of suggests that the whole game takes place in a mental hospital. The whole thing with not knowing whether the city is in a beautiful field or a desert is cool to me too. I don't remember whether it was in the field or the desert during the green ending, but I'd assume that wherever it is in the green ending is where it actually is.

After that, I checked a trophy guide and did an antagonist playthrough (no using flares or meat; basically kill every enemy you see) on expert without using mirrors. Got the blue ending, then booted up that save again to ruin my mental health even more to get the red ending. New Game+ actually isn't that different at all; there are just a couple extra food items to get and one extra quest on top of that.

Gonna be doing a pacifist run next and attempting to get the white ending. I'm thinking it will have something to do with the white-faced man, since they never really explain why he was in the game to begin with. I'm really curious as to what that ending will be though, since it wasn't even in the original game and the green ending already kind of ties the game up nicely.

One thing I really like about this game is how it's really really short, but there are a ton of different ways you can play it. Seeing how all the systems interact with each other and figuring out how to optimize them to get the best outcome is really fun. It's just like 999; I did beat that game without using a guide! Took me seven playthroughs, but I did it. And what's great is that each playthrough added a little bit of something new to the experience. It was like playing a 25-hour long Phoenix Wright case with the most mindblowing ending possible. I'm gonna have to get started on Virtue's Last Reward in a few weeks or so.

Anyway, here's another game recommendation: Lakeview Cabin. I had been playing this game with my friends for weeks, just trying stuff out and experimenting with how all the items interact with each other. Finally "solving" the game was one of the coolest gaming moments I've had in a while.

Just got the white ending. It's very similar to the green ending, but just different enough to be quite interesting. I don't think I'm going to make 100% sense of the plot (if that's even possible), but I'm really happy with the game's story anyway, having almost fully completed it. Gonna get the yellow ending tomorrow night; not sure what to expect from it. It seems like it will be more of a bonus than anything else.

The PSN is having a weekend flash sale where several games are 99 cents. I picked up Crash Bandicoot 1-3, Everyday Shooter and Tales of Monkey Island 1-5 for less than 5 bucks. Not a bad deal I guess.

I got Spyro 1-3 and Tokyo Jungle using $4 that had just been sitting around in my PSN wallet for the past few years I rented the Spyro games a lot as a kid (I completed the second one 100%, though I never beat the first or third), but have never owned them before now. I figured it was about time I finally got them Also, Tokyo Jungle looks like a really unique game, so for a dollar it's totally worth trying

Hey, no XBLA and PSN talk in my and Zero's Lone Survivor thread! (Or maybe Zero should work some universe-rending magic on our posts and put them into a new thread.)

Anyway, I just got the yellow ending and fully completed the game. I wasn't expecting much, but after watching that ending and then re-watching all the others, I think I have a solid idea on what the plot is about.

"You" and "Her" were a couple that lived in a Middle Eastern city. When the city was invaded by American soldiers, conflict broke out; this was the big war that you can find hints to in the game. "She" was horribly injured in an attack, leading to her hospitalization and eventual death. What we see in the green ending is a flashback to the last conversation she has with you, where she tells you to take care of yourself and leave the city.

When You arrive in America, You fall into a deep, maddening depression over the loss of Her. The exact details of this are unclear; maybe you end up in a hospital (as suggested by the "Days in Treatment" category during the Psych Report at the end), maybe You're going about Your everyday life in a sort of deluded way... the point is, You start to go insane. One particular thing that you cling to in your insanity is the gross doll that she gave you long ago, which you see as a Sleepy Cat Doll.

In the blue and red endings, when your mental health is low, you succumb to this insanity and enter a delusion where You and Her are still together in the Middle Eastern city you lived together in.

In the white ending, you finally get a bit of catharsis. You lie down on the hospital bed, drink a glass of water, and have a dream where She tells you to look at how far you've come since leaving the Middle Eastern city, and that as long as you keep moving forward, you'll see Her again someday. The only thing she asks of you is that you get rid of that gross doll.

In the green and white endings, we see You sitting on two hillsides next to the doll; one in the Middle East immediately after her death, and one in America as part of your delusion. The big reveal in these endings is that, when You turn around and face the camera, You pretty visibly have much darker skin than in the rest of the game, pretty much confirming that You are from the Middle East. (Notice how all the enemies in the game are white, not to mention the White-faced man; You bear a certain resentment towards Westerners.)

In the white ending, when sitting on the grassy hillside overlooking the American city, the gross doll is replaced with Sleepy Cat, hinting that the two dolls are one and the same, and that you need to give Sleepy Cat away. Throughout your white playthrough, You constantly try to give the doll away, but everyone tells You You aren't ready to yet.

So You start up one more playthrough, where you go to Chie's apartment and give her Sleepy Cat. She thanks you for finally getting rid of "that gross purple thing," to which you reply that it was just a phase. Kenny, Benzido, and Chie ask you to dance with them and enjoy the party.

The party wasn't the hallucination-- everything else was.

So, having given away Sleepy Cat and finally moved on from Her, you dance.

THOUGHTS!?