Final game for this year finished: Lego The Hobbit
Playing the game was really fun. OK actually I always play them in two player mode with my mum, so I can't say if they are fun if playing alone. But the missions were good, lot's of things to collect and search, many characters to unlock and tons of quests for collectibles. In general the game mechanic was the same as other Lego games, but what was a nice new thing were building things. You could collect materials from smashing stuff or mining stuff and later on build things for NPCs to get rewards.
In short, a typical lego game, in which you can have a lot of fun.

[url= http://www.gog.com/game/clarc ] CLARC [/url]

Summary: An easy-to-learn yet satisfyingly challenging 8-12 hour puzzler with a cute little story about a brave and determined maintenance robot who falls in love with a nuclear missile. She is the bomb! You are the brains!

Presentation wise, Clarc does not need to hide and is a very attractive looking game featuring 3d graphics with cel shading: Imagine Wall-E in Borderlands. Everything is crisp and clear and easy on the eyes which is incredibly beneficial when things get complicated. Clarc’s visuals are particularly impressive compared to puzzle games with minimalist graphics like Hexcells, Lyne, Edge or Sokobond. In terms of gameplay, Clarc is essentially a game about moving around boxes. Yes, there are probably more indie puzzlers and “move boxes from A to B” games than there is sand in the desert. Even adventure games like Broken Sword 3, action adventures like Little Big Adventure and strategy games like Incubation have their fair share of box puzzles. Clarc does not bring anything radically new to the table yet manages to stand out from the pack with its personality and excellent design.

The gameplay is quite similar to Blocks That Matter and Tetrobot & Cho so if you enjoyed those two games, it’s a given Clarc won’t let you down. Aside from moving around boxes, You also get to redirect lasers with special boxes and send laser beams into and out of portal gates but not anywhere as complex as the logic gates in Prelogate (thanks to Ghorphm for the recommendation!) or SpaceChem. Clarc is not a hardcore game so if you feel daunted by overly long or difficult puzzle games which require a lot of stamina to get you anywhere close to the finishing line, don’t worry. This game is challenging enough to occasionally make you throw your hands up in frustration but never so aggravating that you’ll rage quit due to seemingly impossible tasks. With enough determination, even casual players can hack this game, and yet I guarantee that experienced puzzle fans won’t get bored due to a lack of challenge. Hardcore puzzle freaks on the other hand aren’t going to find much resistance here.
Despite the simple mechanics, there is a surprising variety in the level and puzzle design: there are very basic stealth segments, combat, timed puzzles, even escort missions. Due to an impressively well balanced learning curve and ideal total length of the game, Clarc neither overstays its welcome nor feels too short.

I don’t like action puzzles at all and yet I made to the end, only if you’re 100% allergic to action puzzles and can’t handle anything more turbulent than a newspaper Sudoku would I advice you to stay away from this game.
Things can occasionally get hectic because some of the action puzzles have a narrow margin of error but it’s less a matter of manual platforming dexterity than it is about planning your moves several steps ahead, concentration, situational awareness and precise timing. You’re inevitably going to get obliterated by purple laser beams many times whenever your brain didn’t have enough to RAM to manage all the changing elements of the scene (moving laser beams, moving enemy robots). I died a whole lot in this game because my brain apparently doesn’t have enough RAM, especially during segments when you have to run a gauntlet of rotating lasers and pick up boxes on the way and possibly evade enemy robots who move faster than you do and shoot at you with ranged lasers. All this sounds more aggravating than it is because once you have a plan, all the tasks are quite manageable and while there are some iffy spots I had to try a dozen times, there were no unreasonable difficulty spikes that disrupted the flow of the game completely. Unike in Blocks That Matter where the player gets sucker punched by that nefarious - and thankfully optional - Mother killer blob level very early into the game, Clarc players get to experience a gentle increase in difficulty.
In the total 24 levels (not counting the epilogue level) there was only one super cheesy and super simple puzzle in level 16 that stopped me dead in my tracks because I couldn’t see the solution right away. In level 19 and 24 I had two more moments of frustration because I had to do the same segment over and over again and kept dying due to my poor timing and lack of focus. But even in these tougher spots you usually don’t lose more than a minute of gaming time, thanks to the very humane checkpoint system – the game’s biggest saving grace for people like me who like a moderate challenge but don’t like needless punishment and are absolutely opposed to redundant replaying of lengthy segments. I angrily cursed at the game many times but Clarc has enough charm to see you through any frustrating moments.
Having a simple and entirely linear but cute storyline really helps to keep up your motivation and desire to complete the game. Instead of just moving from one puzzle room to the next, there is a basic narrative with some light comedy and sparse dialogue, just enough to brake the tension created by the “stressful” puzzle solving. Giving up was never an option, as Clarc himself says “I must not fail!”

The game controls are perfectly serviceable. You move in tile-sized increments and you can only turn 90 degrees. Everything happens in real time, unlike roguelike games such as Bionic Dues or Sword of the Stars: The Pit. WASD moves you in the 4 directions, the left and right arrow are for turning on the spot and the spacebar is for picking up boxes. You can’t rebind the controls and there’s absolutely no need to do so. There’s also no need for a gamepad, I used the keyboard controls without any trouble. Just keep in mind that once you move, you can’t stop until you have arrived on the next tile. Same goes for turning on the spot, you can’t do anything until you have turned a full 90 degrees. You’ll quickly get used to it as it couldn’t be any simpler than that.

There really is no replay value here but you can expect to get 8-12 hours of playtime out of the game which is decent enough for the current price of $7.99. I played this at a rather leisurely pace and would estimate my playtime at around 10-12 hours. It’s an ideal game to play in short bursts, most levels are short enough to play in half an hour or less. I don’t recommend stubbornly trying to finish Clarc in one go. You still need a fresh mind to tackle some of the more challenging parts and keep up the enjoyment.

As for bugs & glitches, I only experienced lag one single time for a couple seconds and got stuck once and couldn’t move in any direction, other than that Clarc was smooth sailing all around. I did find one dead end when I carried a useless box over a bridge instead of the little worker drone I was supposed to escort to safety. The bridge closed behind me and I had to restart the level, only lost about a minute so not too bad. It’s also possible that you misplace boxes in such a way that laser barriers are going to cut you off from progressing, in which case you have no option but to commit suicide by laser and restart from the nearest checkpoint which is usually very close resulting in only very little time lost. All in all, there is just about nothing that stands in the way of a full recommendation for this gem of a game. As I said above, stay away only if you wholeheartedly hate action puzzles, otherwise do yourself a favor and get this game!


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Sounds good, thanks for the review. This makes it onto the priority list of games to play once I am back home in a few days.

How did you manage to beat Level 14?!
(You know which area I mean...)

Fortunately, I still have the game installed! Can you tell me which area exactly was the problem, was it the second or third or which one?

This:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTNixGns224&t=3m50s

I just replayed the level, I'm not quite sure where exactly your problem was but I'm assuming you got trapped and lasered by the two robots?

The trick here is to grab the first box, placing it on the first pressure plate and quickly moving to the second area where the second enemy robot is. I then hid in the spot marked on my screenshot and took a little breather here. The first robot will try to follow you but eventually goes back to the first area and when you only have to deal with one robot it's much easier. Don't go out there to move the 2nd and 3rd box into their final place when both robots are out in the same area, you'll get trapped and die horribly.
Does that help?

I didn't like the youtube video you linked that much because he/she is taking way too much risk. My way is a bit slow but you won't die. It's quite hard to keep an eye on both robots and I can't manage them both so I cowardly hide in a safe spot where they can't folllow me (box blocks way as shown on my screencap) then I come out when it's safe. Quite manageable, what do you think?

EDIT: crap, I can't attack files to my post, what is happening ??

Of course your files can't attack the posts here even if that might be hilarious ;-)
No being serious, it is a bug that has been introduced ~1-2 weeks ago. No attaching images/files anymore at the moment...

Trapping the first bot was the first thing I did, but somehow I didn't make it through the rest.
I hate time pressure and this one was mean.

Freudian slip since we're talking about all those piercing lasers :P

@Klumpen: I'll try to describe it with words: check PM (better I don't spoiler anything here anyway)

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (2-3 Players Local Coop, Xbox)

Very similar to The Guardian of Light in gameplay, so it's still enjoyable for fans of the predecessor, but to me it felt like this time they put more emphasis on the least interesting parts (scripted events, boss fights, cutscenes, cheesy story and one-liners) and a bit less on what made the first game fun, at least for me (mostly uninterrupted exploration and puzzling, short levels, replayability, the spear). Where the first one just had chronological levels, the second has a big hub area and reward tombs which are probably meant to create some sense of freeform exploration, but in truth it's still a very guided and chronological game. The bigger difference is in the loading times, which took forever on the Xbox, for a game this recent. And while The Guardian of Light (PC) allowed me to customize the gamepad controls, The Temple of Osiris (Xbox) didn't offer such options; I can't say whether this was due to the console platform or a real step backwards regarding the user friendliness. The game's still entertaining enough, and also unintentionally funny, especially in the German version, because the cringeworthy dialogue is spoken with such a lack of enthusiasm that it almost seems ironic. :D

Just before the new year, I finished Dragon Quest 9 on Nintendo DS.
This game becomes one of my favorite in the series. Well made.

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You are welcome and thanks for a nice review of CLARC! I think I'll play this game soon!

Hovertank 3D (10:25am 31st december)

amazing FPS. level 19 is painful but the other levels are quite easy but levels are easy to get lost in.

GOG add this game