Call of Juarez, Oct 21 (GOG)-This was short but it was quite fun. I don't really remember enough about Gun to compare the too. I really enjoyed Billy's bullet time with the bow and arrow. Ray's bullet time was quite a bit more difficult. It was a lot of fun blasting seemingly endless waves of bad guys even if it was a little ridiculous that 100 bandits were trying to rob a train or guarding a ranch. The stealth and platforming parts were forgettable. The duels for Ray were interesting but the responsiveness of the mouse made them more difficult than intended I think. I think a couple of these mechanics could be tweaked a bit to make for a better experience but I still enjoyed it.

Full List

BUTCHER on Hard difficulty. This was my first time playing this game and damn was it both a lot of fun and a lot of frustration because of some really challenging parts (looking at you Club Fort). Might be my favorite action platformer at the moment due to the very dark setting, the great music and the very responsive controls. I just wish it had a few more levels on each zone. Especially the jungle levels where a lot of fun.

Reventure

It's a cheeky game. It's got some cute moments, so frustrating bits, and a little bit of clever. In the end, the game knows it is precocious and so it gets a bit tedious. It's never bad, but it's also never great. The first 30 minutes are pretty nifty, and the game doesn't ever really get over that hump. It often takes what could be interesting twists and throws them out for humor. I'd wish for more from it, but to be fair, there is a central conceit and the game sticks to it.

Not a bad way to pass the time, and if you are at all interested in sussing out deaths and playing with interactions, it is worth a shot. If the humor is up your alley, it is an easy recommend.

Metroid Prime 2 (Gamecube)

I would've put Metroid Prime 1 up here, unfortunately there was a disk issue that didn't crop up until 1/3 of the way through the game, so I moved straight on to the sequel. The Metroid Prime series was an attempt to turn the 2D 3rd person Metroid titles into a 3D 1st person Metroidvania. The game also includes new equipment, visors, which can be used to scan enemies and objects to find out their weak spot, or to search for invisible enemies. Metroid Prime 2 is set on a planet split into 2 dimensions: Light and Dark. The Light is fairly normal, whereas the Dark is filled with terrifying enemies, poisonous water and air that slowly drains your life unless you're standing in light. You must traverse both dimensions in order to retrieve the life energy from the dark dimension and bring it back to the light dimension. I had a few gripes with the game, the first being the lack of an input to control the camera (Think Mouse or Right Analog stick), the camera follows behind the player and to move the camera up or down requires you to hold the R button, it is very fiddly, especially for boss fights, and can be occasionally frustrating. Speaking of boss fights, because the game has so many, it seems the developers had the idea that every boss needs a different method to be killed. This results in some very interesting boss fights, while also resulting in a few incredibly frustrating and finicky boss fights, the final one in particular has a mechanic that took me 45 minutes to learn how to use and still ended up only working 1/3 of the time. My biggest gripe was the back tracking, at several points in the game you're in one area of the map and you unlock a new ability, only to find out after 40 minutes of struggling to find a way further in, that you were actually supposed to travel to the other end of the game map, to an area you haven't been to in 2 hours. The only reason I can think why they did that was to increase the game time, it's absurd.

Overall I didn't think it was as good as the 2D games, the first person perspective works, however the amount of backtracking and annoying boss fights was a let down for me. It was a good game, but I'd only recommend it for those who are fans of the Metroid Series.

DARQ

I liked the artstyle, the atmosphere, the music and also the fact that it's quite short (completed it in 3 hours). Puzzles are not very hard, but interesting and every level introduces something new. You shouldn't play it for the story though. It's pretty much a nightmare without a conclusion.

Complete list of finished games in 2019

God of War 2018 (PS4Pro)

So it's all finished except a few postgame/endgame things. Though to be honest some of the endgame stuff is a bit grindy and I'm wavering on whether to stop short of full 100% achievements or not- just 5 to go.
Overall it's an outstanding game- maybe not the "best game of all time" like all the media is saying, but it's a well balanced and polished brawler with a Metroid style progression.

Not much to complain about technically. I have no doubt that this game gets everything possible out of it's hardware- as a first party console exclusive should. I don't think it's as impressive as Horizon Zero Dawn (which uses the same engine) or Spiderman. But it's a great looking game just the same, especially the cutscenes- and you can't have a Sony game without lots of cutscenes after all.

The combat system is the best I've ever played in a brawler. It has depth and pace and tactics, without having to use hard to remember combos. I have a lot of trouble in games like Devil May Cry remembering to press triangle triangle, square cross, triangle triangle(hold) just to get one attack to go. God of War is much easier for people like me that seem to have poor short term memory retention issues! In this game you never have to remember to use more than two buttons presses at a time. It's easy though on normal difficulty. For new game+ I'll definitely play it on the harder setting if I ever get around to it. The tougher enemies like the Travellers are a lot of fun. The only combat part that was bad were the story boss fights. They are totally scripted and you keep losing control so the game can throw in another micro cutscene or even a QTE sequence. I hate that sort of shit.

Exploring the world is very engaging, though I feel now that I did it wrong. As is my nature I tried to explore fully as I went...but in hindsight, as a Metroidvania, I think that just wasted lots of time. You may as well get to the near the end when you have your full set of abilities and then go on an exploring run all at once. Trust me it will save lots of backtracking that I did using my "complete" as I go method.

The only other thing that didn't work for me was story based. Or more accurately your side kick- who is your son. To prevent the game from feeing like a huge escort mission, the devs made him invincible. Just like in Uncharted and The Last of Us. The problem here is that your son is not just invincible (okay he can fall down if you gets mauled, but only briefly before he up again), when you upgrade him (which you can do very early) he also kicks ass. He can clear out enemies all by himself whilst you just sit there defending with your shield up. All you have to do is keep pressing the square button. So whilst the combat is awesome in a technical sense, in a balance sense it's not. Maybe this would be addressed at the harder difficulty somewhat, but I doubt it since all the abilities are the same and your son is still invincible.

So in summary, this game does nothing to change my rule of thumb for Sony first party produced games- where I always look at the Metacritic and subtract 10 to see where it really sits compared to other games. That's makes this about 86/87 Metacritic which is spot on. It's a well polished and technically brilliant game that should be played, but still has the Sony overemphasis on story telling first and foremost- which is not my priority in games. So I've played all major Sony PS4 exclusives up to and not including Spiderman and Days Gone. I think God of War sits just behind Horizon Zero Dawn for first party stuff, and quite a bit behind the third party games like Bloodborne and Nioh. But it's been a fine generation for the console for sure.

Edit: don't forget, anyone in a location with PS Now (which just got halved in price) can play this on PC..as long as you're happy with lower resolution and slightly more input latency. So you do not need a PS4 just to play this. Of course PS Now is not in Australia...

Planet Alpha

A gorgeous run&jump&stealth&puzzler with good atmosphere and "I guess it's OK" gameplay. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend it for anywhere near the undiscounted price. Myself, I picked it up in a Humble Monthly, and all in all I'm glad I decided to keep it instead of trading it away like I did most of the rest of that bundle.

Took 6 hours for me to complete, which includes repeating 1.5 chapters to pick up the remaining (of 4) collectible that I missed which was required to get the true ending. Also, it's best to watch the normal ending at least once before getting the true ending to get more of the story.

Game didn't perform too well on my 1050ti. Widely different performance in different scenes, and even on Low settings it sometimes struggled to keep 60fps. So I kept it on Max settings (minus Vsync), which means the framerate usually stuck between low 30s and high 50s, averaging somewhere in the 40s maybe. Gameplay's not all fast and twitchy, so it was smooth enough for me.

Minimized

Another one of those Raycasting Game Maker games, and like most of them (at least the ones I've played) it's pretty bad. Finished only out of stubborness, but at least it took me < 2 hours to do so. Game ends with a still "to be continued" screen, and there's a $2 DLC that probably continues and maybe even finishes the story, but I'm not spending a cent on that.

Minimized II

I know, I know. I guess I'm a masochist. But this game is twice as good as the prequel because it's twice as short! Actually it's more fun anyway, with the levels being far more varied - every small set of levels has a completely different look&theme - and most better looking than the original's to boot. Very easy except for the last level set where you have to really conserve bullets or it's game over as you can't run past the zombies and there's no melee.

The ending however is even more abrupt than the first game's - not even any text.

Heretic II

This is not fair. Like AvP2 it's the best game in the series yet it's not available in digital stores for some reasons.
Fluid gameplay, smooth controls (it's TPP game from 1998 yet you're not fighting with the camera positioning in weird way, which is astounding), puzzles are easy, there is a little backtracking but nothing serious.
All weapons and spells are useful, which is amazing.
Had to use VMware again because - just like Return to Castle Wolfenstein - it crash a lot on my Win7 64bit despite numerous fan patches available online.

Devastation

Aka that game with Eminem doppelganger. It was meh, AI was horrendous and you rely on your teammates. Good test of patience if you ask me.
Guns were solid but akimbo/dual-wielding was bugged. If you hide left hand weapon then clips are empty but ammo won't return to the pool. And the only way to get ammo are enemies or respawns (yes, you respawn in single player).
You can hear characters and their voice actors caring less and less with the progress of the story.
Don't remember any music.

um

oh snap
Why did I put "Hexen" instead of "Heretic" there?
fxd

Conarium (Epic)

One of the recent free Epic games. It's a psychological horror walking simulator. Well it has a couple of simple puzzles as well, that are only made a bit difficult by the diagrams that you get as clues looking kind of nothing like the actual puzzle. I solved those the brute force way in the end.

Only average in the end. It started out quite interesting with good atmosphere, but ended up going long enough for the tension to become boredom. A bit like what happened with Layers of Fear. I think it has multiple endings, I have no clue what the ending I got meant.

Graphics are just fine and it ran well. Only issue was that despite having a v-sync option in graphical settings, it didn't work for me. With no in game frame cap it just ran between 90 to 140 fps at random and felt a bit inconsistent and with frame tearing all over the place. I didn't try solving it in the Radeon settings, it's a short game anyway and I couldn't bothered.

Yeah heretic 2 was fun.....the talking spellbook, the lore, the gameplay & levels, the staff upgreades, etc. Too bad no more(afaik) were made

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (switch)

I played Wonder Boy III about 3 or 4 years ago when it was emulated to the Wii, it was difficult but fun and a neat experience. When I saw this game announced, it looked like a direct sequel, finally when it was on sale at a decent price I snatched it up. Monster Boy see's you play as a young boy, whose uncle goes mad and turns everyone into animals, including the main character. Your task is to gather 4 magic orbs that can reverse the spell and turn everyone back to normal. Each orb also unlocks a new form for you to transform into, either: Pig, Snake, Frog, Lion or Dragon. Obviously the Dragon is the best choice, so once you unlock it, it renders the rest of the forms obsolete except for puzzle solving. The game is a metroidvania with lots of puzzles and hidden collectibles, most puzzles require the use of one or more forms to complete. The story is pretty basic, with lots of cheese and stereotypical characters. The art style is pretty great and is one of the strongest aspects of the game. Some of the puzzles are hard, but some very few people could solve without a guide (These often involve hitting invisible or barely visible levers or revealing an invisible object using a method that shouldn't work). The combat is one of the poorer aspects of the game, there is little enemy diversity and it would have been nice to have enemies that have to be taken down with a specific form. Some of the boss fights are alright, other are meh, one is an atrocious puzzle disguised as a boss fight. I managed to (almost) 100% the game, the only thing I missed was all blacksmith upgrades because I couldn't be arsed to grind money for 2 hours. Overall it's a good game, not a great game.

Blake Stone: Planet Strike

Fun game, though obviously had no business competing with Doom or Doom 2. Only had one level with those awful plasma alien generator things. Final Boss was actually NOT a push over unlike all the other bosses of both this game and the original BS: AoG.

I found it much easier overall than the previous game. What do you think?

P.S. It's funny that these simple-minded Wolf 3D clones can have so much appeal now - I enjoy them even more than Doom for some reason.