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Finished Woolfe: Red Hood Diaries. It starts quite good but then you realize the art and music are fine (though music quickly gets repetitive) but gameplay is not quite good (it lacks a good polish). And then come the forest level with the worst of the worst regarding 3d platforming (bad checkpoints, moving platforms with a view that doesn't allow to really see where we're jumping...). And the story is to be continued... but the dev went bankrupt (the game and assets have been bought by Rebellion but we don't know what they intend to do with it.

Full list here.
Brütal Legend

There are three things I didn't like about the design of this game:

(1) That the game always skips forward to the next song when you leave your car behind for a moment and then get back in again, and I think that also resets your shuffle playlist, so that you often listen to (the beginnings of) the same songs instead of getting the chance to hear them from beginning to end (unless you stay in the car all the time).

(2) An occasional lack of clear pointers; for example, your tour book has info on units, combos, lore, but it lacks a bestiary, and during hunting missions they only ever tell you the name of the beasts you have to kill and then you have to figure out yourself how they look like. I foolishly wasted quite some time fighting mounted reapers when I was told to kill "sickle wraiths", a quite different species as it turned out, but how should I know? And then there are missions in which you have to keep your tour bus from getting destroyed but there is no clear indication how much damage the bus takes; there's smoke coming off it if it's damaged, but no health bar or something to tell you how much more damage it can take.

(3) Some backtracking issues, particularly the handling of death during open world exploration - no matter where you are in the world, if you die, you get teleported to the last checkpoint, which means either where your last main mission dropped you off, or at the last shop location you visited. I hardly ever died fighting, but I did die occasionally while exploring, falling off a cliff or something. It's very annoying when you're teleported to the other end of the world because of that and have to backtrack all the way to where you were, and it doesn't make any sense, since your progress is (fortunately!) saved anyway. The hunter missions also had some ridiculous backtracking; it seems that later in the game they intentionally moved the quest giver as far away from the objectives as possible, to prolong the time it takes to finish the quests.

With that out of the way - I absolutely loved almost everything else. Brütal Legend is awesome! The art design, the creative world building, the lore, the story, the voiceacting, the original mix of open world driving and exploration, hack and slash fighting and RTS stage battles (which thankfully were very light on RTS and mostly short and easy), and last but not least the soundtrack. I've never been a metalhead myself, but I love music, and this game did an excellent job of introducing me to heavy metal and the culture surrounding it in a very entertaining and enjoyable way that helped me learn to appreciate it. Just driving around in your badass car to the sound of those metal tunes is already fun in itself. And I've actually found myself listening to the songs more and more even when I wasn't playing.

I've seen quite a bit of Double Fine and Tim Schafer bashing in threads, but I can't imagine those people ever played through Psychonauts and Brütal Legend, because to me, in their own way, these two games are just as epic as anything LucasArts ever produced, and I couldn't ever be mad at the people who gave these gems to us - what's any controversy about Spacebase DF-9 or Broken Age compared to Brütal Legend? They surely pleased me and the Metal Gods, so let's have a round of Fire Tributes for Double Fine! :P
King's Bounty: Warriors of the North (GOG version)

I don't know what it is about Novembers, but each year about this time i get the urge to play another King's Bounty game. I played legend two years ago and Armored Princess last year. Honestly you need to spread these games out though, as i'll be the first to admit they are really all just more of the same thing, even reusing many of the same areas- they are not games to play back to back for that reason. I played Warriors with the Ice and Fire DLC which apparently tweaks some of the overall game balance.

This game is LONG. Over 100 hours. Anyone that likes these knows already how addictive the gameplay can be, but at 100 hours i still felt the need to take two short breaks for a couple of shorter more action based games (CoD Black Ops turned out to be useful for something after all).

The main theme of Warriors are the new Viking units. These units are without doubt stronger than what you mostly use in earlier games and they are made even stronger by the introduction of units leveling with experience this time around. The mix of Slingers, Jarls, Warrior Maidens, Soothsayers and Axe Throwers became an unstoppable force with the only thing causing concern being the short supply of a few of the best units like the Warrior Maidens which need to be nursed and carefully protected in battle or you will run out of them. The hardest period of the game was a section of the story where you cannot use your Vikings, which really served to drive home just how powerful the Vikings units are.
The Demon box/Dragon Pet is replaced this time by a set of five Valkyries, and they are also more powerful than their previous equivalents. So what i am saying is play this game on a harder difficulty setting than what you may have used in the earlier two games.

Because the game is so long and because you can often go to several locations in any order, you can get difficulty spikes in both directions...you can find yourself in an area where everything is a pushover because you've over leveled by doing some other areas and quests first and vice versa. But that is simply sometimes the price you pay for a game that opens things up and does not level scale.

Overall i enjoyed Warriors of the North almost as much as the first two, though i still think Legend is the best. But i'd still rather play this than play one of the earlier games over again if you see what i mean, each game may be more of the same, but it's not EXACTLY the same is what i'm getting at.

If you read the GOG storepage reviews you will think this game is a buggy crashfest. I don't know if i was lucky, if the game has had some fixes, or if it just likes running on an older OS and hardware, but i did not really have many issues. Of course the nature of PC gaming means the experience you get may be different on your PC. But after reading the reviews i took a safety first approach and saved very regularly and after each battle to avoid losing progress if problems occurred. But not much ever happened. I marked down each and every time the game crashed to desktop...it was 9 times in over 100 hours of play- you'd prefer zero, but that rate of crashes is not excessive in PC gaming. I had one gameplay bug only- during one part of the final battle the battle froze and got stuck on an animation. I reloaded and it didn't happen again. And that's it, for me it wasn't the broken mess that the reviews make it sound like.

So for fans of the series wanting more of the same, provided you can have the same relatively bug free run i had and play it on a harder setting, then i do recommend it. For someone wanting to make a start on the series though i still say just play the first game as it's cheaper anyway and mostly the same. I suppose next November i'll be playing Dark Side.
Post edited November 12, 2015 by CMOT70
Ori and the Blind Forest (Platformer/Adventure)

Options include Resolution (640x480 up to 1920x1080); Windowed or Full-screen; Damage Values, and VSynch on/off; language, and separate sliders for Music and Sound Effects, Vibration (if you're using a controller), Brightness, and Contrast. Controls CANNOT be re-mapped, which is a shame... I'm so used to the Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo Tooie-type of controls that some of the actions would have made more sense to me if I could have changed them. FYI, I played the game on a controller, but it can be played with mouse/keyboard.

Ori is a platformer with puzzles and RPG elements. There are three skill trees, which you expand by finding power orbs and taking out enemies. For those not familiar with the idea, basically you have sets of skills that you can upgrade as you progress through the game. Maybe you'd like your attack to be more powerful, your map skills to be expanded, or you'd like to be able to re-use your "Soul Link" (save points) without having to use up your valuable power points. You can have all of this and more, and you get to decide the basic order of the improvements. Some upgrades you cannot "buy" with your skill points, as they are triggered by in-game events. Want that uber-useful double-jump? Sorry, you'll have to wait 'til you get to the appropriate part of the story! There are many achievements to be had, places to re-explore once you have new abilities, and plenty of hidden areas to find. There are no portals for fast-travel, which is a shame, but to be fair, once you have all (or most) of your abilities, it doesn't take all that long to go from one end of the map to the other.

Something you absolutely need to remember to do is to SAVE THE GAME! I had to replay quite a few scenes early on in the game because I kept forgetting that I needed to save :p There ARE some automatic save points, but they're not spaced very closely together! You have been warned!

You've probably heard about how full of "feels" this title is, and it's completely true -- This game could make even the most stoic of players teary-eyed. The graphics are gorgeous, the imagery evocative, and the music simply breathtaking. The way the devs combine all of these elements makes for a moving and emotional experience. This is not to say that the game does not have flaws, for it certainly does, but the good outweighs its shortcomings in my opinion.

That being said, I love this game and I hate this game. It's addictive, it's frustrating, it's fabulous, and it's quasi rage-inducing. Sometimes I just couldn't stop playing, and at others, I just had to walk away. I've seen some reviews which say that it's not overly-hard, but I have to say that for me, it IS overly-hard at times. Sure, most of the gameplay is set at a very doable difficulty level, but then there are also those times where you just want to hurl your controller across the room and scream expletives at the screen.

There are two elements that cause this extreme flare-up of emotion:

The first would be the puzzles that require perfect timing and lightning reflexes. This first shows up when you learn one of those story-triggered upgrades I mentioned. It's an element I've not seen in a game before; one that allows you to hurl an enemy's projectile (or the enemy itself, in some cases) in any direction you choose, whilst simultaneously jumping in the opposite direction. Hard to explain and harder to master, and you MUST get a firm grasp of this mechanic in order to progress in the game.

Second are the running sequences... Those blasted running sequences! >_< It's certainly an interesting plot device, but hard as heck, and no save points along the way. This is one of those instances where the game auto-saves right before you start, and you're going nowhere until you complete the sequence. Period. Die and start over again from where you began running. GAH!

The game suffers both from moments of game-halting frustration and lack of important information (aka plot holes.) For instance (not a spoiler) I completely did not catch that the forest was actually *dying* until talking to someone about the game... I thought that the seasons were simply changing and that winter was approaching. There are little things like this scattered throughout the game that make you go "Huh?" but are not so in-your-face as to completely disrupt the immersiveness.

Overall, I have to say that Ori and the Blind Forest is an absolute must-have and a must-play, but if you're a less-experienced player, you might wait to see if the developer will update the game to add difficulty choices... Lest you end up with a hole in your wall the size of your controller~

Games Finished This Year List
STASIS

What a f****** masterpiece of a game! :D

This is definitely one of the best point & click adventure games i've played and one of the very few games, that made me shudder; i was so emotionally disturbed a couple of times, that i had to quit playing.

Technically, the game is brilliant;

The graphics have a photorealistic quality that i liked very much; there were times where I wasn't sure if what i was looking at was drawed or actually been photographed and added to the game.

The sound is of exceptional quality and the ambient sounds add to the atmosphere of the game, the soundtrack is great and at some points adds to the tension and the voice acting is phenomenal. I really liked all the voice overs within the game.

The gameplay is simple, just point & click as usual. No hotspots scanning thankfully. Generally an easy game with good pacing, although i had to use a walkthrough just one time where i knew what i was supposed to do, but i couldn't do it. Proved to be much simpler than what I thought though!

There were some bugs but not something game-breaking, just a couple of times I needed to reload a previous saved game because i was unable to move the protagonist on the screen properly. The game features a great autosave mechanism so you don't have to save manually all the time, although i saved the game with a 20-30 minutes interval.

The game is best played with turn-off lights and maximum volume. There are some jump scares here or there but while i don't like jump scares in games (a cheap way to make a game frightening?), these jump scares were actually nice and added to the experience.

Highly recommended to anyone!
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RayRay13000: The game itself is good (arguably great), but it had a few things that annoyed me as well:
Yes, pretty much agree with most of what you said here. The adaptability stat made the game feel unresponsive even though it wasn't and combined with annoying tracking of some enemies it could make the game feel "cheap" from time to time. initially I found DS2 to be the hardest of the Souls games but once I got a few Estus flasks and got the hang of the new mechanics it did become much easier. But I would still not say that DS2:SotFS is easy or dumbed down compared to the others.

I too got the game for about 30 euros and that was a great price for the game. Still, I have to say that after I finished both DeS and DS1 I felt like I wanted to go back and play again or do NG+ but after finishing DS2 I have had my fill of Dark Souls 2. I doubt it's a game I will come back to again but after 90+ hours I'm not complaining.
Fallout 2

I know this is one of the most highly regarded of older RPGs, but I didn't think it was all that great. Don't misunderstand: I had fun with it, and it was good, but I felt that FO1 and even FO3 were better (and yes, I realize I'll be facing ravening mobs with pitchforks and torches for daring to say the latter). Anyway, it just didn't resonate with me like the first and third installments. A number of things I found out of place, some were just too goofy (although I did enjoy a lot of the goofy humor), and I didn't find the story nearly as compelling as I though I would. And for all I've read about the excellent quests... I found many weren't much more than bog-standard fetch quests and some of the convo resolutions were downright laughable. Still, a good game.

Full List.
Pneuma: Breath of Life (Xbox One)

It's sort of a short Myst like game, also available on other platforms i believe. Though definitely not as hard as something like Myst, as i've never even got past the very first puzzle in that, and i finished Pneuma without help except for one of the secret puzzles.
So for people that are really hardcore into these types of games, it probably won't satisfy. But for stupid people like me that have trouble solving puzzles where the solution isn't to fill the air with lead, this game can actually make you feel clever for a short time, in small bursts.

It's starts really easy whilst introducing the basic puzzle solving mechanic, but stick with it and it gets better.

Nice graphics and good sound, though some may find the voice of the character a bit off putting, i think he fitted with the story and what it was aiming for quite well. And the ending does tie things up well.

I don't know what it sells for on Steam, but for a puzzle dumb ass like me it took 4 hours. Real puzzle game specialists would do it in half maybe. So use that to work out how much value you think it has. The game doesn't really do anything badly and was actually pretty enjoyable. But let's face it it, it is a very short game. It's an Xbox One GwG title this month, hence why i have no idea how much it costs.
Post edited November 13, 2015 by CMOT70
Bedlam

I think I'm done with this game, even though I almost played through it in one go, until the final battle. But I don't even know why I kept going, as it got more and more boring and repetitive towards the ending and definitely overstayed its welcome. It's kind of like I experienced Evoland. In the beginning you think it's fun to explore the different variations of a genre, take a trip down memory lane, always curious what comes next - only to be disappointed by the lack of creative ideas and often boring level design. But you don't give up hope until the ending, you keep playing because you can, because everything works ok and is not too hard, until you realize you're not really enjoying it.

Bedlam has a vast and great selection of weapons, but there aren't that many different opponents to try them on, and it also becomes somewhat inconvenient to cycle through them in order to find the one you're looking for. It has that oldschool Unreal/Quake feeling to it, but is still an on-rails shooter most of the time. It allows you to quicksave everywhere, but then takes that option from you during those battles when you would actually need it the most. If you rely on autosaves instead, you will find out that the game sometimes skips saving at important transitions and sends you back to your main mission when you were exploring bonus areas. There is some lacklustre 3D platforming that hardly adds anything to the game, and frankly, I think there is something wrong with a shooter if you die more often falling off the edge of a map than from enemy fire.

In the final battle, all of the above comes together to make it the least fun possible. You have hordes of overused enemies that are easy but tedious to fight and just stand in your more or less linear way to reach the boss. You'll probably just use the same weapon of mass destruction with unlimited ammo against them, as they are not worth the trouble and cycling through weapons is a chore. Then the game requires you to use jump pads and shoot at the boss while airborne, and you have to simultaneously face the boss and try to aim past its shields AND pay attention to where you will land when falling down again, which is most likely the air off the edge of the map. You can't quicksave before using the jumppads and if you fall to your death, you have to restart the boss battle, wasting your time getting rid of the trash mobs again. And worst of all is that the developers seem to be aware of the fact that this is not enjoyable, when they have the heroine make sarcastic comments like "oh great, because Half-Life's Zen levels were sooo much fun". Just like Evoland, this game only seems to 'parody' (or rather humorlessly mimick) the things that made the titles it's referring to frustrating, tedious and boring, without reminding of the things that actually made them fun to play.

Well, apparantly some people liked Evoland, and some will probably like Bedlam, too, but I can't really recommend spending time with it when you could play a more satisfying shooter instead, or even go and do something productive with your life. The only thing that actually makes this game special and unique are the Scottish accents of the voiceactors. :P

EDIT: After watching a YouTube video and realizing that the only things that kept me from seeing the credits were a repetitive jumping/shooting action and a short tedious tower climb without any other risk than falling down and having to climb up again, I decided I may just as well move this post from "Games quit in 2015" to "Games finished in 2015".
Post edited November 13, 2015 by Leroux
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GR00T: Fallout 2

I know this is one of the most highly regarded of older RPGs, but I didn't think it was all that great. Don't misunderstand: I had fun with it, and it was good, but I felt that FO1 and even FO3 were better (and yes, I realize I'll be facing ravening mobs with pitchforks and torches for daring to say the latter). Anyway, it just didn't resonate with me like the first and third installments. A number of things I found out of place, some were just too goofy (although I did enjoy a lot of the goofy humor), and I didn't find the story nearly as compelling as I though I would. And for all I've read about the excellent quests... I found many weren't much more than bog-standard fetch quests and some of the convo resolutions were downright laughable. Still, a good game.

Full List.
I agree, Fallout 1 is the king, followed by it's nephew Fallout 3.
Fallout 2 is a great game but gets the third place from me too.

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Type:Rider (Android)

I was intrigued when I saw that ARTE, the most highly regarded French/German educational TV station, made a game and it was very good indeed.
It's an educational gravity platformer (?) about typography.
You get educational text for collecting stuff in the game and it's really interesting. It explains the history of typography from the cave drawings to the internet.
Overall this game is quite easy but the controls are deliberately difficult since you control two connected objects (a colon).
The bonus level is about Comic Sans MS and is pure trolling where you get chased by a giant cat with laser eyes, get no savepoints at all, extremely difficult and unfair jumps and even see a trollface laughing at you.
I needed about 60 tries and the worst thing was, that in the 45s try or so, I managed to collected everything, get to the very end and fall into the very last gap after the last Z... I managed to make it to the end anyhow and got to see the text about the history of Comic Sans MS. ^^

I recommend this game.

List
Post edited November 13, 2015 by Klumpen0815
Finished Wacky Wheels. I played the bronze, silver and gold competitions and won each time. I didn't play the bonus competitions though. The game is still fun to play but it is definitely better in multiplayer (which I did back in the day, but not this time).

Full list here.
Grow Home (PS4)

A cute and charming exploration game.

You start on a small island in an ocean and your goal is to get up to your mothership in the sky by growing a huge beanstalk-type plant up to a series of various floating islands. If you fall it’s a LOOOOONG way down, but there are teleport stations you unlock as you proceed to quickly get back up to where you were, and you can also pick up flowers and leaves to slow your fall or use as a glider to fly though the air. Along the way there are collectibles to pick up and/or discover (crystals, plants, animals).

The character you play as (B.U.D.) is robot who’s a bit clumsy so the controls took a little getting used to, but after that it was mostly quite easy. The game is a little bit glitchy too (I encountered clipping errors on several occasions).

Overall I found it to be a very fun and relaxing game.
Final Fantasy VII
Let's face it,it's an herculean task for works of fiction to be remembered long after it's release and not fall into Seinfeld is Unfunny territory.
Fortunetly,FFVII does the opposite,after 18 years it's still a blast to play and the story,characters and settings still are as memorable as they were in 1997.
Deus Ex Revision (on the GOG version of Deus Ex GotY)

Found most of the unique weapons from Shifter mod, couldn't find some of them even with guide (custom LAW and Paul's baton). Jock's Boomstick is ridiculously overpowered and enemies, who get shot in close contact, fly away like in some John Woo movies or something.

Sniper rifle without scoping work like modern shooter one - doesn't work even when you put the barrel right
in the enemy buttcheeks. So you must suffer with swaying scope again. Then it magically stop swaying in Vandenberg (still on Advanced). I missed something?
When I tried to sneak to the NSF commander in Mole People tunnel - there is ALWAYS one NSF
mook, that turn hostile and put me in the middle of the shootout.
Few augs use no energy (lungs ench, strength) but his default flashlight in F12 still do.
Got full stacks of assault rifle and buckshots before getting these guns.

There is large crypt added into graveyard map (where you meet with Stanton Dowd) but best part of it - sound and ambient - is ripped from Thief Dark Project. Now Paris catacombs... I swear music here comes from M&M VI from Celeste city. and Arx Fatalis (chest and gates opening sound).
I feel like aug update canisters are a bit rarer, but on the contrary - you can use aug canisters with same aug to work as upgrade.
Eye slot augs are useless. In vanilla you grabbed the one that increase accuracy. Now you can either take nightvision>infravision>seeking through walls or aug giving you info about target. Yeah, they're that useless.

New models looks ugly except 2 (NSF and maybe JC).
New music? What music? It some random sounds watered down so much I don't remember it at all.

Seems like Revision mod is same thing like Complete mods for Stalker series - they wanted to make it accessable for
modern audience.
Honestly - avoid Revision and just install New Vision and either Biomod or Shifter.
Or wait for GMDX.
include me

*indicates previously beaten/replay
unless indicated in parentheses, all games were on the PC

Descent II
Commander Keen: Marooned on Mars
Commander Keen: The Earth Explodes
Commander Keen: Keen must Die
Commander Keen: Secret of the Oracle
Commander Keen: Armageddon Machine
Diablo II Hell difficulty, as necromancer
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii) *
Mega Man 5 (NES)
Star Fox Command (DS)
Metroid Prime (Wii) *
Total Annihilation
Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (3DS)
Diablo II Hell difficulty, as amazon
NES remix 2 (Wii U)
Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GBC)
Super Mario Land (GB)
Metroid II: Return of Samus (GB)
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Wii) *
Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency
Super Mario 64 (N64) *
King's Bounty: The Legend
Dragon Warrior (NES) *
Mystery Case Files: Millionheir (DS)
Punch Out!! (NES)
Dragon Warrior 2 (NES) *
Conflict (NES)
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii) *
Metroid: Other M (Wii)
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Knights of the Nine
Batman (NES)
Rygar (NES) *
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (every single quest.....)
Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles
Monster Party (NES) *
X-wing Special Edition
Dragon Warrior 3 (NES)