What do those armors give? Only better health? Or some cool ability, too?

Hmmm, as long as they can be helpful in combat, not bad.

I beat Spirited Hearts Deluxe, sort of, I guess.

It's a dating/life sim. This is not a genre I normally play (Long Live the Queen is the only other game I've played in it), but I got the Winter Wolves Bundle on the cheap at some point, and I recently made a solemn resolution to actually play some of the damn bundle games I own.

It is not a very good game. Tedious, luck-based job and stat mechanics, flat, uninteresting characters and cliched writing (I ended up with the woman who seemed to be totally greedy and mercenary, but actually needed to money to pay for her sick mother's operation. Jesus.) (Winter Wolves boasts that there are ten romance options. I'd have rather had five well-done ones). I actually beat the game yesterday. I can no longer even remember the name of the woman my character married, if that tells you anything.

At one point I accidentally ended the romance I was working on with a single dialog option, and didn't even realize it until I finally noticed that she wasn't showing up any more, and checked the character screen. Save scumming is your friend.

So I "beat it" in the sense that I got my character to marry and that ends the game. Winter Wolves obviously expects that you'll replay the game multiple times to get different endings, rather then beating it once and walking away, but I'd have to be pretty bored to look at this game again, and my backlog being what it is...

Jazzpunk

Strongly reminiscent of Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving, only longer, sillier, more colorful, a bit more interactive and less linear (although it still is quite linear). With a lot of nerdy puns thrown in, which were either cringeworthy or over my head for the most part, but luckily there was also enough fool-proof slapstick to make me laugh and enough original ideas to make exploration fun. Art direction and soundtrack were awesome.

The savegame system is convenient, but could use some more work, as it doesn't save every little detail exactly like it was (e.g. after reloading, an already completed side quest and its dialogue was reset, or objects were at a different place than were I had left them). Then again, it hardly matters for the progress, as most of what you do is just for fun and not important enough to be properly stored.

All in all, I liked the game.

Hard Reset: Extended Edition

I had a lot of fun with this game. Great graphics, great oldschool (but more Painkiller then Doom style) shooting, somewhat confusing story where it felt like not enough background info was given to know what's going on - but whatever. And Normal difficulty was actually challenging without being frustrating!

And if you play this game, do yourself a favor and use that first upgrade point to get the Shotgun - it rocks!

My only minor quibble is that due to the way the weapon system is set up, it often took two key presses to switch to the gun I wanted.

Crimsonland

The original version of Crimsonland, when it was released in the early 2000's, was one of my favorite Finnish indie games at the time and I spent countless of hours playing it. Recently, they released a new and updated Steam version of this underrated little classic, so of course I had to pick it up. I finished the game on Grim difficulty - the hardest difficulty, because I felt the game wasn't truly beaten before I had won the ultimate challenge. It's a really good top-down shooter with tons of gore, I mean TONS. I don't remember seeing this much blood in any game before and since it. I looked at the statistics after I was done with the quests, and saw I had killed about 180,000 monsters. That should tell you enough. The ground is always filled to the brim with dead corpses and blood after the levels are over.

The only flaws of the game are:
- Two huge difficulty spikes: one in the final level of the 2nd chapter and the last level
- The majority of the weapons sound pretty weak: only the shotguns and the rockets have enough "boom" in them sound-wise: Ion weapons sound especially lame
- A few of the weapons are pretty useless and especially the levels with those difficulty spikes mean that you have to have good enough luck to score a decent weapon drop right off the bat or you may as well instantly restart
- Not necessarily a flaw, but there aren't that many new additions compared to the original version.

But other than that, it's a really addicting game. Although there are a huge number of weapons, they're mostly pretty well balanced and the majority of the levels can theoretically be beaten with any weapon, which is nice. This means you don't always have to rely on your luck to score a rocket weapon at the start of a level, for example. And I should again mention the amount of gore: it is insane. I would easily recommend the game to anyone who's interested in the genre. It can be difficult at times, but it never ceases to be fun.

Finished Cognition - Episode 2 (The Wise Monkey). Good story and puzzles were good (not too easy and not too difficult) except the final one that bored me a bit. The animations and walking were a mess which is strange as it was ok in episode 1 (not great animations but at least they weren't that buggy).

Full list here.

Red Faction

It was alright. Rather forgettable plot, not much variety in opponents, but quite nice setting and environments, fast-paced and enjoyable combat, and some variety in gameplay due to vehicles and stealth missions (I wasn't very fond of the stealth missions, to tell the truth, but at least they tried something different). The ridiculous difficulty spike in the showdown due to the sudden lack of health packs made me savescum a lot, and it would have been more fun if I didn't have to resort to that, but in the end I got through, so it wasn't that hard. Oh, and it was kind of amusing what a jerk the hero of the game is, and refreshing to see that the game didn't glorify him. :D

There was one serious bug due to high framerates - the submarine vehicle exploded on contact with the water (!) - but I was able to resolve it with the help of Pure Faction and its command console.

Couple days ago i finished Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs - and just now "Daylight" (got with GPU).

And oh boy that Daylight was crappy. No idea what they were thinking when doing it nor what Nvidia thought when they put to the box with the GPU. utter disapointment. Atleast it lasted no longer than 1,5h. Just running in random maze. How very exciting :(

The second Amnesia definitely didnt live up to the first one - but atleast the plot was interesting in all its weirdness. Also there was actually unique surroundings and not just bland dark corridors with "boo" monsters.

Jun 29 - Catacomb Abyss

A nice retro FPS that's good for a quick play. Thankfully this one doesn't suffer from the sticky walls and looping level progression of Catacomb 3D, however, the strafe key doesn't seem to work with the mouse at all.

I finished NuThief a few days ago, and was actually pleasantly surprised. I came into the game expecting it to be bad, but besides the godawful story, it was quite fun. However the lack of proper rope arrows is still very disappointing.

Duke Nukem - Manhattan Project (1st july 5:45pm)

A nice little Duke game. Not the best Duke Game ever but it is great to see Duke Nukem in the platformer again. I must say I gave up this game early last year since I couldn't beat the first boss. The shame