Toonstruck. One of the best oldschool adventure games I've ever played. although to be fair that isn't very many.

As of this day and time i beat teh Meat Circus and am an official member of the...

Psychonauts!

Man, I hated that last level...

Lost Horizon 2

How could they screw it up so badly. Broken Sword 3, Gabriel Knight 3 and Monkey Island 4 all have the excuse of wanting to use the new 3D technology or wanting to port to consoles, Lost Horizon was a great example of a 3d Point and Click, they didn't have to change much for a great sequel. What they have done is turn the main character into a light hearted rogue who hated being used by his government into an emotionless spy with an annoying catchphrase related to the many uses a knife has. He is joined by Anna, a Mossad trained spy hoping to get justice against the Nazi's who killed her father, who unfortunately is just as emotionless and displays her 'brilliant' intellect at one point in the game by being unable to work out how to find a location inbetween two other locations (which is itself ridiculous), despite possessing a map to said location, a puzzle with an absurdly convoluted solution involving making hot air balloons out of plastic bags and fishing wire. The story involves stopping former Nazi's and KGB agents from aquiring a cure to radiation poisoning that was used by the Ancient Norse Gods (I kid you not). A twist then occurs that makes the actions of certain characters entirely unneccessary and leaves the story in even more of a wreck.

The game adds some new things from the last game to try stay innovative. Firstly they added quick time events, these make the cutscene extremely laggy, don't line up properly with the actions on screen and failing them results in a plain black game over screen, however they must have realised how bad they were because they don't make an appearance again after the first chapter. Secondly they made some actions require dragging the mouse in a certain way to turn gears and push doors, which starts off as a novelty and later becomes a chore when your using it to dial a rotary phone and wipe dirt off huge tablets. Thirdly they added a walkthrough that is present at all times at the bottom of the screen, I had to use it quite a bit as at certain points you have huge amounts of items in your inventory of which half the items don't end up being used.

I know it's just a rant, but god, how could they screw up what was a great 3d point & click. I would not reccommend this game, not even if you want to find out what happens to the characters from the 1st game, because you will not be satisfied with the answers.

Just like when I finished Kingmaker, wouldn't really count this as a finished game, I'd say I'd need to finish all 3 modules and then count the expansion as a whole as one, but either way, also finished ShadowGuard this afternoon... Though there at the end I got fed up of trying to get the kills and the experience and pretty much let allies take care of it, first clearing the way in the Market District and then the final battle as well, just cast a few spells from a distance to lend a hand.

They tried to do some interesting things with this, and points to a bigger story, but in itself it's short and has just a few areas, is very low level and seems basically a prologue, ending when it should really start. And not even a hint about why it starts as it does. Interesting job with that book that's "acted out". Rather appreciated the small attempt to limit rest spam with the food, not that you don't find a whole lot of it anyway. And liked having the best damage cantrip unlimited on staff all the way, and some other stuff with uses per day.
On the other hand, really infuriating how you lose plenty of experience all those times you have ungrouped allies stealing kills, and having to have companions too sometimes, with the slavers Markus even shows up next to you again even if you left him behind (and if you did leave him, he won't be a companion, so full exp loss for his kills). Speaking of slavers, at the start of that part it's a matter of reloading till you survive, and there may be issues with getting weapons back too. At Control Stone it may be a matter of reloading like that as well.
Bugs, for one can't seem to take screenshots, creates an empty file with no extension that shows up as modified whenever I try to make a new one. Works with KM and WW, but not with this. And the fact that in some areas it autosaves instantly, so as soon as you load in them, makes the autosave pointless. And then it's how companion equipment works, that you can't take away anything they start with unless you make them dual wield, in which case you can take the main weapon away, but it becomes a "plot item", which you can't sell or give back... unless you use the trick on yourself, dual wielding with it as main, but then the off hand weapon will also become "plot item". Also, gave the enchanted longsword to Markus to carry and he wouldn't give it back, acting as if it'd be part of his gear, had to use the dual wield trick to get it back. Huh.

Just finished the arcade mode in mortal kombat 4 with all characters. It's not so bad but most of the game was easily won by using forward hp hp hk back hk
Shinok is a weakling and goro can get hard to beat until you learn the way.

Bloodborne (PS4)

I started this game right when the coronavirus hit, then after an hour I remembered I didn't enjoy the slog in Dark Souls. The game is basically dark souls, but set in a city based on Victorian London, replace the focus on souls with a focus on blood and making the player fight more offensively. For once I actually understood the story without having to look it up, basically some cult decided they were going to put the blood of some lovecraftian gods into their bodies and it started turning everyone into werewolves and as a hunter, it's your job to slay all the werewolves and stop the old gods from... well okay maybe I didn't get the story after all. There are no decent shields or bows in this game so the only defence is dodging, or you can stagger an enemy by shooting a shotgun in their face (This is how parrying works in this game). I would say the game is slightly easier than Dark Souls, mostly because the journey back to bosses who kill you is much less of a slog. However the beginning can be quite slow, the first unmissable boss is quite far away from the start and a lot of them can be quite tanky (They gave one early boss the ability to heal), whereas once you get a decent weapon the later bosses become much better fights. I'm glad it doesn't use the humanity system from Dark Souls, because that was my least favourite part. I didn't really struggle with the final bosses as much as I thought I would, but they were still a challenge. This is probably my favourite FromSoft game so far, but I don't see myself playing DS2 or DS3. I would highly reccommend it for those who like a challenge, but not for those who hate the souls style combat, because it hasn't changed much from the other souls games.

Just beat Spec Ops: The Line on suicide difficulty. Not yet sure what to make of it. Something always put me off about the game, even all the way back when I first read reviews of it. It just seemed pretentious to me from the get-go. I approached it two times in the past and abandoned it like thirty minutes in both times due to how mediocre it instantly felt. A while ago I installed the GOG version and ended up never playing it. Now I needed some HDD space and figured that I'm finally gonna beat it before uninstalling it.

I stand by the point that it's a very average cover shooter. Some things are done right, others are done badly, but nothing about the gameplay is extraordinary. Gunplay is okay, the controls are largely shit (with some of the most outrageous bindings I've ever seen, e.g. the same button being used for melee attacks and vaulting over cover) The military setting also means that in many regards the game can't be too imaginative by default, so there's no surprises here in terms of enemy, weapon or level design. They tried some stuff with burying enemies in sand but that's just a little gimmick that is available in several pre-defined spots. You can give orders to your squad mates but the feature is ridiculously useless as it's pretty much limited to telling the sniper whom to shoot and giving the order typically takes longer than to just shoot the target. Contextually you can tell the others to throw a flashbang if you're suppressed or to heal the other squad made if downed but that's it. And typically for a (fairly) early cover shooter there's issues like arbitrary definitions of what can be used as cover and very unresponsive controls when it comes to sticking to cover and especially "unsticking" from it. Surprisingly the game is also pretty easy. I played on "Suicide" difficulty, the third of four difficulty levels, and besides one or two checkpoints in the game it was a breeze and I beat the thing in less than six hours.

The thing that makes the game stand out is obviously the narrative which even in the first previews was presented as an adaptation of The Heart of Darkness, with Dubai having fallen into some weird state of tribal civil war under the rule of some colonel Konrad. Frankly I don't know the original story well enough to comment on how well the game actually captures its message but what I do know is that Spec Ops is just a war shooter that tries very hard to shock you and pulls some ambiguous psychological horror cliches. It mixes increasingly absurd over-the-top action with increasingly graphic imagery but in the end all of it is just far too detached from reality to have the intended effect as far as I'm concerned. Like Hotline Miami or BioShock it tries to send you on a guilt trip for all the shit you've done but neither do I feel responsible as a player, because the game doesn't provide enough control over the oh-so-awful actions, nor do I feel that the protagonist, Walker, went through a terrifying transformation or anything with the way everything is set up - the game could have just as well presented his state of mind as justified anger at utter assholes. The fact that the game quite actively tries to pin the guilt on you / Walker only makes it worse. It's like the game is yelling "FEEL GUILTY!" and I'm like "shut up the fuck up, I just don't!". To be fair, half-way through the game there are some impressive and fairly ballsy moments but they aren't brilliant, they just stand out because it's exactly the kind of shit that war shooters normally actively omit so players feel good about themselves while slaughtering thousands of humans. As it stands the one notable difference form other war shooters is that here most enemies wear American uniforms.

So... gameplay-wise it's okay, narrative-wise it's okay. It's okay.

Might and Magic VI The Mandate of Heaven, March 22 (GOG)-This was my first experience with M&M and it was a mixed bag. This game started out really good, got really frustrating during Darkmoor, then got better again, but ultimately dragged on way too long. I felt like the game could have been cut in half and it still would have been quite long. It wasn't a bad experience overall but it wasn't great.

The graphics were fine but they felt really bad for a 1998. They seemed only a marginal improvement over something like Betrayal at Krondor from 5 years previous. Inventory management was generally terrible and the interface was lacking a lot of quality of life improvements.

The story, what story? I mostly went from map to map and dungeon to dungeon clearing out everything but paying no attention to the dialogue. I, like 99% of the characters in the game, had no idea what was going on in this world. The quests and combat were also a little lackluster. The endgame was also rather blah. In fact almost everything after Darkmoor was on the easy side.

I'm glad to have played something in the series but I'm not looking forward to another one for a long time.

Full List

I remember reading an interview with the game's writer in which he said that the point of the game is basically to make you not want to play it, so with so many games I'm looking forward to playing, I just figured I should take him at his word and pass this one by *shrug*

Interesting thread, I found a lot of games to play

I just completed Bioshock Remastered. It was a great experience mainly due to the atmosphere, visuals, and worldbuilding, but I found the actual gameplay to be rather dull and shallow (especially since it's labelled a SS2 successor). Bioshock 2 apparently has much better combat and level design, yet most people consider it inferior to the first game for some reason. Maybe I'll just skip Bioshock 2 and go straight to Infinite, which everyone seems to think is amazing.

And I beat another game today, the PS4 remaster of Yakuza 4. Given that the game honestly can't be judged without drawing comparisons to other Yakuza games and nobody here seems to give a rat's ass about the series I'm gonna be brief.

The big difference over the previous games, which I wasn't aware of before I started playing, is that this time there's four playable protagonists, including the series' main hero, Kazuma Kiryu. The idea is that each quarter of the game is dedicated to another one of them and eventually their paths obviously cross. The different perspectives should make for a lot of variation but it honestly did not feel like it. Luckily all of the four characters are fairly likeable in my eyes, especially with the first one, a loan shark with a heart of gold, being a pretty interesting fella. All of them differ actually a lot in personality, and they do have different fighting styles, but in the end the gameplay still always feels typically Yakuza and I don't feel like the quests utilised the characters' different backgrounds enough. As a matter of fact the sidequests were some of the most bland ones I've seen in the series yet. Sadly the main effect that the four protagonists had on me was that I didn't care much about anything but the main story since I knew that anything I would get out of doing a lot of optional stuff would become meaningless in an hour or two as the next protagonist appeared.

The writing is decent but among the worst I've seen in the series so far. It starts out quite amazing and different from the earlier games, thanks to that loan shark fella Akiyama, but then things quickly get worse. At this point I'm tired of certain ridiculously corny patterns of the series ("defeated villain grabs gun on the floor" happens THREE FRIGGIN' TIMES in this one alone) and the main intrigue is so unbelievably convoluted and implausible that I just couldn't give much of a damn. It's literally a soap opera with Japanese gangsters.

Also: TOO LITTLE MAJIMA!

Anyway, besides that it's same old. Same map, same structure, same combat system etc.. It's a decent game all in all but I was really hoping for a lot more. I'm definitely gonna take a break from the series for now but I'm hoping that the next one, Yakuza 5, is gonna be a lot better. Well, it should be, given that it's the last game they made before the utterly brilliant Yakuza 0.

Secret Files: Tunguska

The 3rd game I've played from the animation arts collection and the 1st game in the Secret Files series. Tunguska is a point and click where you play Nina, a girl searching for her scientist father who has disappeared while looking into the Tunguska meteorite crash from the early 20th century. The characters aren't all that intresting and the story kept going off in different directions. It's a fairly decent length and there's no ridiculous solutions (at least until the end). It's not the best point and click but it's still pretty good, although the last level can be a bit long and convoluted.

There's never enough Majima!

Sorry, didn't read your post in case it contains spoilers as I still have to beat Yakuza 3. :P

I hope Yakuza: Like a Dragon hits Europe soon. :)

Perfect Dark. I remember playing most of the way through this on my N64 but never finishing it, but I decided to finally try to beat it. Upon getting to the final level, I remembered why I had never won it. Thankfully, this time around I was using the 1964 emulator, which allows mouse/keyboard controls in addition to greatly increased resolution and a mostly smooth framerate.

The game is basically Goldeneye 2, but they couldn't call it that because of licensing reasons, so James Bond is now a woman and the game is set in a cyberpunk future. They do try to give you a variety of tasks to accomplish on missions, with a lot of the objectives requiring the use of neat spy gadgets like computer hacking tools, although sometimes it's a bit unclear what exactly you're expected to do.

With the higher resolution and smoother framerate, it's almost startling how nice-looking this game really is. On the N64, it was clearly quite advanced but it was also very clearly pushing beyond the console's limits in certain ways, resulting in a murky, sluggish experience. On this emulator, it's razor sharp and beautiful. The mouse and WASD controls do make it a bit easier, but if any developer ever deserved to have its games neutered by "cheats" it's Rare and the game is still pretty tough in the later stages. This is before "save anywhere" and checkpoints became a thing for console gaming, so when you die on, let's say the final boss, you get replay the ENTIRE LEVEL and hopefully you didn't spend too much time on it. Even when I was younger, I had stuff to do with my time beyond playing video games, so I ended up quitting on the game when I started feeling like it wasn't respecting my time with bullshit difficulty spikes and obtuse level design. I don't mind admitting I used savestates this time around because I have even less time now to replay 90 percent of a level repeatedly just to get to the one part that's giving me trouble.

Anyway, it's a pretty okay game, but like many classic console FPSs it pales next to the PC FPS classics.