Evil Pumpkin: the Lost Halloween.

Middle of the road game, advertised as a HOG, but very little of that is included. Its mostly puzzle solving with puzzle difficulty ranging from easy to "game mechanics are too screwy for this type of puzzle". A little polish and this could be a neat game. Feels like a college project in most places, but has some charm in other places. Lots and lots of backtracking, but a nice map tool is in place that points you to locales with unfinished business (love this concept for puzzles/point and click games/etc, but it didn't work on a few occasions in this game). Recommend as a bundle purchase for HOG hybrid fans.

duke Nukem Forever (9th march 3:30pm)

Its shit. Do I need to say more? The second to last level was good and the end boss was fun but everything else was boring or just meh

just one of the many problems of the game was that you couldn´t carry more than 2 guns, that was a terrible design choice

I had a rare day off this time of year yesterday. The weather was beautiful! So I sat inside and played games. :)

March 8, 2015

Braveland

I completed Braveland last year, but wanted to play it again before attempting Braveland Wizard so I did another run-through. It is kind of light and casual, but a relatively satisfying TBS. Too short!

In retrospect, there wasn't much reason to play this again before B.W. and the latter was slightly repetitive played back to back. Though there were (just) enough additions to make it slightly fresh. This scenario will be on my mind when Defender's Quest 2 is released - I will NOT replay DQ1 right before DQ2.

Braveland Wizard

If you liked Braveland, you will like its successor. Everything is very similar, though your units skew more towards magical attacks instead of melee. A playthrough of the first game is somewhat suggested - there is an item at the end of Wizard that will likely only be available if you know the story of the first game. Though missing it wouldn't really denigrate your experience. But there are other nods to the first that will bring a smile if you are aware of them, such as fighting the units that were once on your side.

There are a couple of battles near the end, when the djinns are encountered, that were really cool and different from the setup of most of the battles.

The magical attacks for the main character allow some experimentation and choices, as you won't be able to learn anywhere near all the spells and effects now available.

There are some other additional choices in the gameplay that weren't present in the first.

It remains very short.

Of minor note: I played both games on Normal and this one seemed a very little bit tougher. I lost a few more units in most battles it seemed. In my replay of Braveland I only lost one battle and it's the one near the beginning that you are not supposed to be able to get through and have to return to once stronger. I also only lost one battle in B.W. on Normal, but that loss was encountered in order and I actually had to change my strategies to make it through on the 2nd attempt.

If you liked the first game, I would definitely recommend Braveland Wizard. There are enough minor expansions to keep it relatively fresh and it is a slightly deeper game. I'll pick up the next installment for sure, and probably give B.W. another run to choose some different paths. Even if you don't grab it full price, it's worth a purchase at 50%.

full list

I think they updated that to 3 or 4 guns in a patch - at least by the time I played it last year.

4 guns, but only for the PC version.

it was too late i think.

The only game that i finished in 2015 so far was singularity, my 3th run maybe. Great game, a little bioshocky which is a plus, i recommend it.

Dawn of War 2 - Chaos Rising

This one starts off as an enjoyable enough expansion, especially when playing as Chaos and thereby being able to avoid things like not breaking certain items (much harder than it sounds when troops are wearing Terminator armor and destroy almost all terrain by walking), or protecting troops you don't really give a crap about.

The Chaos mechanic itself is rather simplistic, giving you the chance to become corrupt by using certain items or by taking certain actions during the campaign.
As you become more corrupt, you gain abilities or have current abilities altered somewhat to reflect your newfound evilness.

However, that started getting more than a little silly when certain members would become corrupt in response to me not taking them along for certain missions, as if they sulk so hard they eventually turn to Chaos as part of a childish temper tantrum.

Also, it became more and more clear that the designers were essentially trying to fit round pegs into square holes by the end of the whole thing.
Getting chewed out and threatened by one of the heroes, then being sent by that same hero to save everyone seemed more than a little psychotic.

I really figured that someone would notice my team's descent into madness a lot sooner.
Wouldn't the Space Marines have noticed that not one, not two, but EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of my team was so chock-full of darkness that they actually glowed red? How did no one notice that?

Oh, right, it wasn't brought up because the script told them to not notice. Of course.

And for that matter, why didn't Chaos try to cut a deal with my team? I would have been willing.
Fuck the sector, let's kill some good guys and party!

But no. Not an option. Even as bad guys, I still had to kill the big bad at the end.

The whole thing feels like they wanted to do a more expansive dual path of either light or darkness, but they weren't fully willing to commit to the effort making a unique dark path required, so they stuck it in when it was convenient, overlooked it when it wasn't.

To their credit, though, they did at least make multiple endings depending on light or darkness level. Would have been rather silly if they didn't.

Aside from the whole light/dark thing, everything stays the same. Lot of random items, lots of gameplay taken from Company of Heroes, lots of increasingly annoying voice acting as everyone tries to out-Space Marine each other in loudness and projected fervor.

No wonder I made sure they were all damned by the end.

Oh well, screw it. Just one more game, and I can finally put the entire Dawn of War thing to bed, since I'm not exactly confident that Sega will get Relic on anything other than making more DLC for Company of Heroes 2 any year soon.
Given that, not holding my breath for DOW 3 any time before 2020.

2 months after the game's release. Mind you, though, you had to enable it from the options menu.

really! just 2 months, i never knew haha

Star Wars: Dark Forces (Alias: Jedi Knight 0) (PC)

A childhood friend of mine recommended this game to me about 18 years ago (he was Polish and had all the stuff from his cousin) and it was just now that I finally had it and a system to play it.
I played through the Linux package from GoG, just changed the controls to WSAD and horizontal mouselook without movement.
I usually play those old Doom style games with game engine recreations in HD with HQ-Texture packs, but since the one for this game is still in alpha state, I went the retro route.
The low resolution wasn't much of a problem since it still looks good in motion.
The mission design as well as the weapon balancing is surprisingly good and although just like most games from this time quite hard, it is possible to beat it even if you're not the best gamer.

A well designed FPS overall, it just lacks vertical mouselook and the possibility to deactivate auto-aim.
Hopefully, someone will finish the game engine recreation someday, so I can play this again in HD widescreen and with proper aiming.

List:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2015/post68

a played a shareware versión of this game, the first 3 levels i think. It came with Full Throttle, i dont know if it was a magazine especial edition or what.

great game and great soundtrack. kyle katarn should be on the new movies

The Last Door: Collectors Edition

A fun, rather short, serial that focuses on a Lovecraft-like setting. I thought that the pixelation that gives the game some of it's charm to be an interesting decision by the developers. My one problem with it is that it could be difficult to see what some objects were supposed to be, or that they were there at all. I found myself just moving the cursor around the screen hoping to land on something I could interact with, rather than looking for objects.

The puzzles were pretty simple, and the story quickly drew me in.

To be a horror game, I found the inability of your character to die to have the opposite effect. There just didn't seem to be much suspense knowing my character couldn't die.

Overall, though, very nice, and I'm looking forward to the next installments.

Finished Master Reboot. It was a rather strange game (FPS view with some platforming sequences and mostly puzzles). Except two annoying audio-based puzzles it was quite good.

Full list here.