Raptor: Call of the Shadows

I was actually able to beat it without cheats so I was happy with that, but I did use the "loophole" of repeating a sector that has a weapon that can be sold.

Fallout

It's very obvious fallout has come a long way since the original game. It's a rpg, but a relatively short one. While it was enjoyable, there were a few annoyances. Followers are incredibly important in the early game, and it's not really obvious that you can have followers, the manual didn't mention it as far as I could tell. Also the critical hit mechanic is BS, it can result in enemies dealing almost 20x normal damage. I prefer the newer fallout games, but it was good to play its roots. Also I managed to keep Dogmeat alive to the very end, which is a lot harder than it sounds.

Far Cry 5 (PS4)

I played with no HUD, Hard difficulty, and I also never used “Fast Travel” or Co-op. It took me a bit over 100 hours to complete (excluding DLC).

This game is fairly similar to Far Cry 4, I liked some of the changes they made but not all of them. The open world is very fun, it’s a huge map where you can go wherever you want and there’s lots to explore and do, and it is the reason I play and enjoy these types of games (open-world games are my favourite genre).

The side missions are OK for the most part, but not great. The worst things about the game are the main story missions, which is typical for the genre and so not unexpected. (I think the reason why I always dislike them so much is because they are linear in an otherwise non-linear game). They vary from “meh” to purely annoying, I did turn down the difficulty level for some of them just so I could get them over with faster.

The three DLC so far (Hours of Darkness, Lost on Mars, and Dead Living Zombies) are basically small maps with new some gameplay and new enemies. I’d say they are a fun bonus, but not worth paying extra money for. They also change up the gameplay significantly, LoM has no stealth element and adds bullet-sponge bosses and enemies which can pop up right beside you. DLZ is a pure railroady action shooter. I didn’t enjoy either of them. HoD was fun though, being the most similar to the base game of the three DLC, and it took me about 6 hours to complete (although I have to say I must be pretty slow because most other people have reported 1-3 hours).

I’d certainly recommend the base game if you enjoy open-world games, it is very fun.

Finished Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Not a bad game but very repetitive and the story is lacking. The best level was probably the last one with a very good boss fight.

Full list here.

Aven Colony

Fun game.

Didn't beat two of challenges but had fun with campaign and after failing the challenge i decided its time to move to something else.

Dead Rising (PS4)

A survival horror/time management game. You play a reporter, whose heard of a rumour in a quiet town in Colorado, dropped off in the shopping mall, you tell your pilot to pick you up in exactly 72 hours time. The shopping centre becomes overrun by zombies, fortunately these are the slow moving kind of zombies, unfortunately there are thousands of them. You need to go through the mall, looking for survivors, and trying to solve the mystery of how the zombie outbreak occurred. Oh but it's not just zombies you need to worry about, the mall is also host to a number of 'psychopaths' who take the place of the bosses in the game. You only have short time windows to complete each mission, its actually possible to fail the main quest if you're not quick enough. If you watched story cutscenes alone, you'd probably think it was quite a serious game, however there's extensive amounts of humorous scenarios and weapons to keep you entertained.

Now... this game was incredibly frustrating, mostly as a result of one thing in particular, the survivor AI. Survivors will struggle to manoeuvre around corners and down small ledges, they get displaced by cutscenes, they often attack you, in large groups they struggle to move around each other and if attacked once they will become surrounded. To 'save' a survivor, they need to be escorted to the security room, the journey to this place usually involves passing hundreds of zombies and there are no checkpoints in the game so you must restart from your last save. Another annoyance is that because enemies don't get stronger over time but you do, the hardest part of the game is actually near the beginning, the game actually becomes easier as you go on.

The game is actually quite long, and once you know what you're doing its quite good fun. I'd recommend it, though if you get angry easily I wouldn't.

Red Dead Redemtion 2 (PS4) - 1/10/19
Just finished RDR1 for the first time right before playing this and the story is amazing for both games, hoping for single player expansions.

Ratchet and Clank 2 (PS3) - 1/16/19 - Platinum Trophy
I've lost count at the number of times I've played/completed this actually :P Just got the platinum trophy this time though

Dear Esther: Landmark Edition - 1/22/19
Interesting story, probably will play through again for the rest of the achievements.

Assassin's Creed 2 - 2/2/19
Fantastic game with a few movement annoyances that come with auto jumping. Second AC game I've completed, looking forward to playing a few more.

Ratchet and Clank: Into the Nexus (PS3) - 2/17/19
My brother had this one and I never finished it for some reason. Very short but fun, will play through a few more times for the platinum.

Ratchet and Clank 2016 (PS4) - 2/19/19 - Platinum Trophy
Only had to play through three more times to get the platinum ...well three more times than what I already did since release, did I mention I like Ratchet and Clank games? :P

Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time - 2/23/19
For some reason I kind of ignored the whole Future series until recently. They're fantastic and the controls are great (A complaint of mine when I first tried them, but must have gotten used to it?)
Again another one that I'm likely going to try to get the Platinum for and most everything seems pretty do-able, except that mini game one :P

Age of Empires 3 (Proton) - 3/16/19
Played a lot more like Age of Mythology than an Age of Empires game but I really liked AoM. The card system was kinda cool. Now onto the expansions!

Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands (Proton) - 3/31/19
I really liked this one, except the Prince looked weird for some reason :P Really smooth and upgraded controls from the AC engine especially compared to the original trilogy. The combat wasn't as good I thought, it also got very easy once I unlocked most of the combat upgrades. No glitches or that one end game glitch I read about thankfully.

Assassin's Creed Unity (PS4) - 4/19/19
Pretty good Assassin's creed game. Not my favorite for story, that's probably Rouge, but still pretty fun to play through. And apparently The Dead Kings is a free expansion so onto that!

Half-life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 - 4/26/19
Just finished them again, and they're still fantastic.

Half-Life: Blue Shift - 4/27/19
It's basically more Half-Life!

Metro 2033 Redux - 5/10/19
I originally quit playing this around a quarter in a couple years ago. Decided to give it another try yesterday and turns out it's fantastic. I just started on Last Light today.

Remember Me - 5/17/19
The first game from Dontnod, and it's really good. The story was great and the combat was fun for the most part, just a bit repetitive. There's platforming sections that remind me of Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands. I've heard they have a story written for 2 and hope they end up doing it someday.

Spider-Man PS4 - 7/24/19
A Spider-Man game by Insomniac!? It was fantastic, the story and game play. It played pretty much like an updated Spider-Man 2 with almost the same combat style and a lot of moves were brought back. One trophy away from the platinum.

Ninja (C64 and Atari 800). An old budget game, seemingly influenced by Karateka (hey, GOG, get Karateka), in which you control a ninja that has to steal 7 idols from a castle stuffed full of enemies. Six of the idols are randomly placed throughout the floors, and once you have all those, the entrance to the highest floor opens, which has the final idol guarded by Akuma and four goons. Get that and then return to the starting screen to win.

The game scrolls one screen at a time, and changing floors resets the enemies in each room, which you can use to your advantage by switching from one floor to another until you get a more favorable set of matchups. You can do a basic set of martial arts moves, use your sword, and you can pick up throwing stars or daggers to throw. I found that getting three stars was the ideal because the dagger, although more damaging, was more likely to not register a hit (it tumbles in the air like a real dagger would, so it's only effective if the blade is actually pointed into the guy when it hits him). The stars are always effective and three of them will kill every single enemy in the game. Throw all three, run up to collect them and retreat, and repeat with the next guy until the room is clear. You want to stay at a distance mostly because the damage you do seems somewhat randomized - the sword will often kill a guy in one hit, but it sometimes doesn't and enemy ninjas (the most dangerous of the enemies) can often one-hit-kill you. You can win the game in about five minutes once you get the hang of it.

The graphics are nothing special but fine for an 8-bit game, and the music is pretty good, especially on the C64 version. The C64 version also has slightly prettier graphics, with touches like little birds flying in the background. Controls are a little fussy, and it can be a bit of a pain picking up the thrown weapons sometimes or pulling off the particular move you want to do.

Approaching Rainbow Room :D

Completed My Brother Rabbit, with help of youtube.
Left with two achievements locked, but it was really charming adventure. Puzzles where 80& collect them all type of puzzles, and you had to collect all pieces of a puzzle in order to play actual puzzle. This was my first experience with Hidden Object Games.

no HUD remote mini-map?

FC5 doesn't have a minimap, instead everything is indicated by icons on the display (wherever you're looking) and on the compass. I turned off all those icons and the compass, but I could still access the main world map when I wanted to take a look where I was.

SteamWorld Dig 2
I won it in Doc0075’s giveaway, thanks again!

Bigger is not always better. Sure, the game is indeed much bigger than its predecessor, more polished and well thought with a decent amount of well-implemented backtracking typical for Metroidvania. So where is the problem? The charm of the predecessor is sadly lost. While in the first game I really felt that it’s my task to manage a mine by carefully planning tunnels, placing lamps and ladders, here I had an impression that my task is to explore a mine. The beginning is promising but very soon you acquire several upgrades which allow you to move around almost freely so that the design of your mine stops to matter almost at all. This is quite sad because the aspect I loved in the first place is lost here.

So yeah, you are left with exploring the mine and its surroundings. This part is not bad at all, can be really enjoyable. You have a lot of secrets to find, caves with elaborate puzzles to solve and many upgrades to purchase. To get some of them you take a standard approach: dig gems and minerals, sell them and buy upgrades, while others are more sophisticated: first you need to unlock a certain upgrade (leveling up yourself and your equipment, getting a blueprint) and then you have to spend cogs that you find during your journey. In this case you can switch your cogs at the workbench so you can experiment with different upgrades. It also encourages you to look for more cogs, which again is very nice.

The map is pretty big and divided into several distinct regions. While it may not seem to be bad but in this game it actually is - many of these regions have extremely limited amount of diggable blocks so once again it’s all about exploring and not managing your mine. Sure, some terrain diversity is a nice touch but for me SteamWorld Dig was all about digging and its successor is more like a standard Metroidvania.

Fighting various enemies is nothing special, just like it was in the first game. Here there are more boss battles which are not well fitting to the game. The last one is particularly frustrating. I had to take a break, play a few arcade games and then come back and finish the game. Training with other games (bullet hells in particular) helped a lot and I took the final boss down even without using true survivor upgrade (it completely heals you once while taking a lethal blow, resets at town).

It's not that I didn’t enjoy the game, because I did have some fun, especially with caverns and puzzles. But as I said before – the charm of the first game is lost so I don’t think I’ll replay it anytime soon or even ever.


Full list

Include me

2015
2016
2017
2018

1. Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30
2. Limbo
3. Steamworld Heist
4. Day of the Tentacle Remastered
5. Mini Metro

Dark Souls (PS3)

Started this playthrough back in 2017, got about 2/3 of the way through before getting stuck on a boss, went back to it in 2018 and ended up getting stuck on the final boss, went back to it 3 days ago and completed it. After beating Demons Souls prior to starting this game, which is arguably more difficult, however I used a walkthrough for that game, which basically revealed over half the bosses can be easily killed with a bow. So I decided to do this playthrough without a walkthrough, which I regretted on a number of occasions. I decided it would okay to ask friends for advice, because I had loads of friends who said they'd beaten the game as well, unfortunately it turned out most of them had confused 'beating the game' with 'watching Pewdiepies lets play'.

What can I say about the game, it's difficult, which is why it's famous. The reason why its difficult is because most enemies and bosses can kill you in a few hits, sometimes 1 hit. Combined with slow, clunky controls, one mistake can cost you dearly, and it's back to the last checkpoint you go. This means each boss fight is a repetition of dying repeatedly, attempting to learn the bosses moves, then eventually getting it. Some boss fights may require you to change strategy, although the main difficulty in boss fights is learning where the opportunities to attack/heal are and what attacks can be blocked and what have to be dodged. One boss actually requires platforming ability, I hated that boss.

Story is good, although the minimalist nature of the game means it's easy to miss bits of lore. Music is great, however you only hear it during boss fights and safe zones annoyingly. There are numerous glitches, including no clipping through the world, invisible walls and at one point 'You have died' briefly appeared on my screen while I was very much alive.

In my playthrough I didn't touch magic and went with a spear/shield combo for most of the game. It worked well in Demons Souls, and it worked alright in this game, albeit damage output is quite low compared with swords for example. Ornstein and Smough are supposedly the toughest boss, but it only took me 3 tries. The boss that made me quit was Gravelord Nito, simply because the path from the checkpoint to him is so awful. Ironically upon returning to the game I found out most of his attacks go over your head if you stand right next to him, which is true for quite a few bosses. The final boss was very difficult, I eventually beat him by switching to a sword and upgrading my shield to an 'Artorias Greatshield' which it turns out is very overpowered and made the fight much easier. The worst boss in the game, based on mechanics alone, is four kings, simply because you can beat them by just spamming attacks and healing when necessary, they don't have attacks powerful enough to even warrant needing to dodge or block.

Although it's an achievement I have no desire to play the sequels because I'm just not a big fan of the series, though I might play Bloodborne. Oh and because I didn't use a walkthrough, I apparently missed out a lot of things, mostly down to not knowing what humanity was for. If you wanna show off/torture yourself, then you should give it a go.

Also a little fact I discovered. Based on trophy percentages, it seems the boss that causes most people to quit isn't Ornstein and Smough. The biggest drop comes after earning the trophy for beating the Taurus demon, which suggests its actually the Bell Gargoyles who cause the most rage quitting. The 2nd biggest drop does come after O & S though.