Blackwell Epiphany
Oh, boyo. Very solid finale to the excellent series. It gets emotional at times but it never tried too hard. I can't really say much without spoiling it.

Moebius
Backer here. I enjoyed it and it was better than I expected. The naive take on politics and malevolent description of people around the protagonist hurt this game the most. Cutscenes were great, dynamics between the protagonist and his new buddy was interesting. If it gets polished, it has good chances to become quite good.

Metal Gear Solid 3
It was like James Bond on magic mushrooms. Use of lightning was impressive and director's cinematic takes in general were very good, atmospheric. A presence of usual Japanese nerdiness about Western movies was cute. Too bad about super-silly fanservice and plot lines were even worse than in a generic Bond flick.
It isn't exactly "so bad it is good" case. More like a unique mixture of good and bad. I understand why it became classic now, though.

Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. This is kind of a weird one coming off Jedi Outcast. It plays the same and looks the same, though the graphics do look cleaner and the physics were slightly altered. However, story-wise, it is quite different. It certainly isn't bad, but it isn't exactly good, either. It lacks the punch of Jedi Outcast. Even if that plot wasn't entirely original, I felt connected to the story. I wanted to help Kyle get back at Tavion and Desann. Kyle may not be the best character ever, but at least his development is rather realistic and relatable. Jaden, Academy's protagonist is a generic goody-two-shoes character who does and says all the right things, with random and unrealistic moments of anger. His/her development isn't natural, and his/her anger crops up only to serve the plot and provide a kind of ridiculous choice later in the game.

Yet despite all that, the game is fun. It is a bit more lightsaber-focused, with a lot more Dark Side force users; you even fight a lightsaber-wielder in the first level. The game mixes things up a bit by allowing you to change to two lightsabers or a double-bladed lightsaber about two-thirds of the way through the game, and both styles play differently enough from each other and the standard single saber that it is worth playing through the game at least twice to use them. Also, I like how the Force development is done. The standard powers like Force jump, push, pull, speed, and sight develop throughout the course of the game. Other powers, however, must be chosen. There are four Light Side force powers and four Dark Side force powers. Before each chosen level (another cool feature: you are given a list of five missions, only four of which must be completed before you can do a mission that furthers the plot), you get to put one force point into a force power. Because of the limited points, you can only fully upgrade a total of five force powers (or four, if you only do the four missions necessary before the plot missions). This allows the player to focus on certain powers early on.

Overall, it's a great game. I wouldn't say it is better than Jedi Outcast, but it certainly isn't worse either.

A bigger update this time. I actually wanted to update my list at the end of easter but somehow forgot about it, even though I visited the forum every day... am I getting old?

Ayakashibito
A good 57,5 hour long visual novel. It has a good story and nice characters. Even most side characters are quite well described. The music did its job and the art was mostly good too.

Bridge Constructor
A 23 hour long puzzle game about building bridges. I completed the game with 100% and got every archivement except the post-a-bridge-on-facebook one.
My biggest complaint is that the bridge doesn't behave itself the same even if I haven't changed anything. I didn't notice it with cars and trucks but with tank trucks it was quit annoying sometimes.

Type:Rider
This is a 4 hour short "Limbo"-like game. A mix of puzzle and platformer. I learned a bit about different fonts but I'm happy it's over. I got most of the archivements except the facebook one and the one were I'm not allowed to die in a certain level.

Savant: Ascent
A very, very short arcade shooter. I finished the story mode after half an hour and I died a LOT.
I know a game like this is about getting highscores but I'm not into that and thus I declare the game over.


Here's my list.

Bioshock 2: It was nice being back to Rapture and everything, but this should have been an expansion to the original game. Everything is basically the same, including the graphics but you get to play the Big Daddy this time. There are some interesting new weapons, yet the story is much less interesting than Bioshock. Unless you are a completionist or a die hard Bioshock fan, I see no reason not so skip this game and jump to Bioshock Infinite after playing through the original (Bioshock 1 was awesome). Edit: Allow me to add invincibility in a game sucks and made the game ridicilously easy! 7/10

List of all games finished in the last years: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2014/post150

I'm playing it right now (one last thing to do in Paris). Feels pretty easy after jumping to Moebius right after completing Samaritan Paradox, but other than that - I don't understand the negative reception. Pretty solid adventure game - not as good as Gabriel Knight, slightly worse than Gray Matter (maybe my personal preference - I like personal stories more than epic, worldchanging tales) but I'm having fun playing it.
Biggest complain: Mr. Rector refuses to pick up a lot of stuff I know I'll need later and forces me to backtrack.

Soulcaster II

More of the same as the original to the point I would call it an expansion pack. No wonder it's sold alongside the first one. But the cliffhangery ending sucks big time.

Full list.

Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons

A lot of positive things have been said here about the game already and I agree with them, so I don't have much to add. Good, original and unique game with awesome graphics, and there are some cool, maybe groundbreaking "wow" moments. Simple and easy but enjoyable gameplay. Emotionally, it didn't have as much impact on me as To the Moon and Gone Home, for example, but arguably that's very subjective and to some extent I guess it also depend on the mood you're in when playing it. In consequence, I didn't find the storyline 100% convincing, and it probably won't be my favorite game ever, but it was interesting enough and I understand, respect and appreciate what they were aiming at with it nevertheless.

A minor thing I didn't like was that there's only one savegame combined with an autosave function and very linear gamepley, which means that you can easily move on too fast beyond a point of no return and miss out on some more exploration because you can't just reload - you'd have to start over, and the game doesn't really have much replay value. Maybe they didn't want saving and reloading to disctract from the emotional experience and that's understandable, but working with only one savegame can also be dangerous (as the case of the horribly bugged Rayman Origins demonstrates). As for the "moving on to fast" issue, luckily it's offset by the older brother indicating the direction you need to go in when you press his action button - that way I always knew where to go last, and only after having a look around. :P

I'm also a bit conflicted about the fact that I basically bought an Xbox controller just to finally be able to play this game, after buying it at full price and not getting it to work in satisfactory ways with mouse and keyboard, PS2 controllers and Xbox emulation. I do understand now why playing the game with mouse and keyboard is a bad idea that undermines the whole concept of building up a connection between the brothers, and I'm kind of glad that the bad implementation of those standard PC controls dissuaded me from trying. I do not think though that you absolutely need to play it with an XBox controller; they could have optimized the PC version to work better with other controllers, too (especially since they only warn that the game requires "a controller", without mentioning Microsoft or Xbox). Maybe you can't really put the blame on them because that seems to be the standard nowadays and they're kind of indie, but still ... Hopefully I'll find more uses for that expensive new controller now. :P

Apart from that, I knew that the game was created by Starbreeze (who I liked as developers of my beloved Enclave), but up until now I didn't realize it was conceived and written by Swedish director Josef Fares (whose movie "Jallla! Jalla!" I quite enjoyed). And I never knew he was a hardcore gaming enthusiast. :D

Grim Fandango. I am a bit disappointed. I liked the game back in the days but never got the chance to play it again until december. It has a great universe, great characters and great dialogs. There are quite some puzzles which were very difficult and for which we didn't get any clue. Also some screens were really too big and/or filler (i.e. no puzzle on them) which made running around in search of the next puzzle item a bit too boring / repetitive.

Great game anyway but I prefer the other Lucasarts classics.

Full list here.

02.05.2014 - Moebius.
Honestly, I don't understand why it gets so much critique. Sure, some models and animations are ugly. Sure, it ends with a big, boring maze (which serves almost no purpose). Sure, some puzzle design choices are questionable (can't pick up an obiect before Malachi knows where he wants to use it).
But: the story is decent, it's nice to play a selfish asshole with health, mental and emotional problems, 'pattern' puzzles are really nice and - what's most important - I had pretty good time playing it.
As for misantropy \ misogyny: come on, people. It's a game about con artists, thiefs, politicians and political activists. I think Ms Jensen was pretty generous in portaing those groups :)
Final thoughts: not as good as Gabriel Knight series, but if they ever make a sequel - I'm ready for another adventure with Malachi and David.

I kind of understand where the criticism is coming from. The graphics is probably off-putting for many or at least it has the effect to undercut serious tone if a player isn't willing to give in imagination.

Might be the case... I played too many freeware adventure games in the time when the genre was 'dead' to be bothered by graphics :)

Finally finished another game: Path of Shadows prototype. It's a free, short student game, but that doesn't make it bad. Instead, it's a very good game. If you have half an hour of free time, download and play it

Papers, Please
This game is evil, but I like how it always forces the player to think about his moral compass and the consequences of his actions. In my first playthrough I did what I thought was right and because of that my son died and I had to flee from my country, leaving parts of my family behind. On my second playthrough I played by the rules and could keep my family safe and healthy. On the other hand several innocent people had to die, because of my actions. Don't think I can declare that as a happy end.

The Guild
Won't put it on the list of finished games, as you can not really finish it. I won missions on normal and hard difficulty, but there's still a lot of stuff to discover and things to do that I didn't even try yet (e.g. most of the criminal actions). Will take a break from the game though (but I'm sure I will return one day).

Complete list of finished games in 2014

I do understand that kind of criticism, I just don't understand why it's coming from Jane Jensen fans. When I read this passage, I could have sworn you were talking about Gabriel Knight 2 (only that there isn't a Malachi in it). :P