MetaWare High School (Demo), July 17 (Itch)-This is probably the game I've played so far this year that has elicited the greatest emotional response both in terms of range and absolutes. The game is quite humorous with its self-awareness but the ending felt really bittersweet. I think even the rather short time you spend with the characters makes the ending impactful. There's not much else to say without spoiling it.

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Death and Taxes, July 18 (Itch)- You're Death (one of many) and you're tasked with deciding who lives and dies in a city. You're presented with a handful of bio each day and instructions on who to kill. There's usually not much wiggle room if you follow the instructions. I assume the game will end early if you disobey the instructions often enough. Then you get little updates on the happenings in the world and humorous ways the various people presented to you have died. You can also buy things with your salary for...reasons? I never bought anything.

I guess I find games like this pretty dull. I'm just not invested enough in the world when it is only presented to me in 1-2 sentence bites. Choices don't really matter when you don't care about the consequences. Not having any character motivation doesn't help. Maybe if the plot was something like I was secretly trying to sabotage my boss and take his job I could try to play that way but when there's no real goal there's no real point. That said if you like these types of games its more of the same and you'll probably like this too.

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Titan Quest Anniversary Edition + Immortal Throne + Ragnarok + Trials of Atlantis

AT LAST !!! I maybe started the game from scratch 2 or 3 times because I could never figure how to defeat Typhon, the base game final boss... Had to use a guide about builds and then I could continue with the expansions.

So as almost everubody must know, Titan Quest is a Diablo-like, or more like a Van Helsing/Grim Dawn/Torchlight game: Looots of enemies, looooooots of loot, a skill tree to build with XP, randomly placed boss... An old and solid recipe. So, did it work with TQ? Yes... and no.

TQ is a good game: interesting and underexploited setting (ancien Greece/Egypt/Babylon and the likes) with lots of quests, main and side, interesting "skill trees" (War, Nature, Dream, etc.), quite beautiful graphics even now (if you don't look too closely to the characters...), a real atmosphere and hours and hours of gameplay. I really like it!

But...

With the expansions, it's far, far too loong to my liking, especially because some whole areas seem to be artificially dragging out (like the Hades part in the Immortal Throne expansion). I really had to not lose my focus to not give up the game. Trials of Atlantis and Ragnarok are a little shorter and a little more bearable, but I felt sometimes that they should have made a sequel instead of adding DLCs after DLCs...

And...

There are not really so many "viable" builds. Magic builds seem to be notoriously underpowered.

And the last straw on the camel's back...

You have 3 difficulty levels and the game is supposed to really shine from the second level and really be great on the hardest. But you can't play a harder level until you haven't finished the difficulty level just under. Which means doing TWICE that horribly long game to supposedly have a blast.
nope.
Nope.
NOPE !

I've played the easiest difficulty and will likely never touch that game again. Just because it's far too long. What a pity.


11 - Nightmares from the Deep : The Cursed Heart

An Artiflex Mundi HOG/Puzzle game. Unfortunately the Steam version is plagued with horrendously badly coded cutscenes. Apart from that, it's a really good game, not too short, not too long and visually quite beautiful. I'm now playing the sequel.

So far in 2020 : https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2020/post29

Call of Juarez Gunslinger - Short and sweet game. Finished in one session.

Dark Eye Chains of Satinav - Decent adventure game. Puzzles vary in complexity, but they are all logical. The characters and story are mostly bland, but I liked how you got to journey through so many diverse locations.

Half Life - I wouldn't say that it aged poorly, but it's not as cool as it would have been in 1998.

Halo 3 - The campaign was decent, but it's my least favorite one so far. The multiplayer was enjoyable for several hours, but you need to constantly be at the top of your game to compete with gamepad users aim assist.

Nier Automata - The pure soul and vision behind this game made its many frustrations easy to forgive.

Sonic Adventure - Enjoyable in a 'so bad it's good' way. The BetterSADX mod improved it somewhat.

Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim - Liked the tropical island setting. The gameplay is less refined compared to Origin. The music was a letdown with the exception of Ernst's boss theme. I had a decent time overall.

After 960 deaths, I was finally able to defeat Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin in Dark Souls II on my PS3, and finished the game for the first time ever. Most of the bosses, with the exception of Ancient Dragon were for my Sorcerer pretty easy to learn, but on some of them, my old bones were to slow to react, so I had to spent longer time wiping the floor there :P . Then there were areas like Shrine of Amana and Dragon shrine, where the enemy placement was so ridiculous, that it raised my death counter to sky high levels :D . Shrine of Amana has become for me officialy the worst Souls level ever, beating by a long margin even the Blighttown and 5-1 area of Valley of Defilement. I still need to get into NG++ to be able to get all of the trophies for the game, but I need small pause to relax on a less demanding game :) .

List of all my games finished in 2020 can be found >>>here<<<

Well, I finally Don´t Escape: 4 days to survive, is a post-aapocalyptic adventure game, in which every day you must to survive to a different disaster or danger. It has quite replay, i finally three times until to see the good final. I played off-line, without see any achievements (i didn´t like), I recommended a lot in a hot night.

Now i have to decide what ´s next game to play that all the backlog, Technobabylon or Whispers of a Machine calls my attention.
Regards!

Alwa's Awakening (2017) (Linux)

I've been charmed by this game. At first. It has great retro style and relatively smart mechanics. However, some aspects become more and more irritating with the hours played. First goes the music theme. Then re-exploring old areas (I'm afraid they are simply not interested enough to keep you returning them for some collectibles). And then Altar of Echoes comes. The game for the most part is quite easy, more focused on puzzles than on precise controls (it's reasonable, because physics is quite simplified here), but at the very end you need to face really difficult rooms with not enough checkpoints between them. At this point the game becomes really frustrating and ruins a lot of good impressions from the beginning.

Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily (2016) (Linux)

I do not recommend it. It's published by Artifex Mundi, but not made by them, which (now and often) results in lower quality. There are much better HOPAs around. This one is just extremely boring.

List of all games completed in 2020.

Metamorphabet (2015) (Linux/Proton)

The game made by Vectorpack, people who made also Windosill – with the same style and imagination. This time is not even a puzzle, it's rather animation, you just need to push forward by some simple interaction. It took me 22 minutes to make a whole journey from A to Z ;) Interesting experience, especially if you like vector graphics and can appreciate creative animation.

List of all games completed in 2020.

Morrowind:

It's my third play through, the first with OpenMW and I think I enjoyed it more than the second time, three years ago. It's still my favorite in the series, even though I like some aspects of Skyrim and Daggerfall better.

I love how overpowered you can become, travel through the whole map flying in seconds, kill almost everyone in a couple of hits and be, overall, nigh invulnerable. :)

I'm still not particularly fond of the expansions, though. Tribunal has some good ideas and storytelling, but is quite lazy in a lot of it's aspects. Bloodmoon is better, but I just don't find the island all that interesting compared to the main game insland.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition (+mod to „unlimited“ inventory) for the first time. Interesting game which is after remaining Witcher games somewhere in the middle. Assassins of the Kings is better in comparison with previous part, now is obvious where story takes part in whole Witcher universe. Engine reminds me graphically Wild Hunt, but game mechanics are closer to the original game. You see many things, but they are invisible walls, if you see a trunk you must go around, jumping and swimming is not allowed. Battle system was changed fundamentally, still I like battle system from Wild Hunt most (some people recommended mods, but since it was my first time, I wanted more vanilla experience). During gameplay I did not met any game breaking bug, but saw many little things which could be repaired, it is a pitty, that there are no new patches. In sum I would say, that Assassins of Kings is average game, which lead to absolutely fantastic Wild Hunt!

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

+ Great RTS!
+ Very cinematic, good FMV.
- The first few Scrin missions were a bit TOO difficult.

Doom 2016 and Eternal

Great Games

Quantum Conundrum

It's not very good. The puzzles are acceptable but everything else is weak. The developers hired a famous actor for the narrator role, but didn't hire a good writer to make his lines worth listening to.

Chrome

It's fun for people who can appreciate some classic jank. Level design is great, with big levels open for several different approaches. It inserts Deus Ex-style augments on a pure FPS setting in a proto-Crysis kinda way - and they do it in a fun way. Unfortuntately, the AI is one of the worst in any FPS game. If you aren't prone or crouching, you'll be hit by bullets as soon as you enter the enemy line of sight.

Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean

Classic 16-bit JRPG on a 32-bit console. It's OK, but anyone who isn't experienced in the genre should play the classics first. Some late bosses have ridiculously huge health pools and take easily more than 30 minutes to kill, which sucks.

Prey (2017)

Got this one on the GOG Summer Sale. It's a true immersive sim from the same vintage as Deus Ex and System Shock 2. I beat it on Nightmare difficulty with survival mechanics turned on in about 45 hours - and I'm already itching for a second run at it. It's that good.

If you love the original Deus Ex and System Shock 2 and you think they just don't make games like that anymore, you owe it to yourself to pick this up.

Another World

This game is cool but kind of annoying. I can only imagine how much more annoying it was back in the day, without being able to google a solution when you get stuck and having basically one checkpoint per level - the 20th anniversary edition gives you more checkpoints through the levels. I'd say it's worth playing after a bit of reading about the game, how it was made and it's historical importance. That knowledge will give you motivation to push through when the game kicks you in the nuts several times in a row.

Super Mario World

More than a quarter of a century after I began playing this game, I finally did a full 96 exit run. As a kid, I always used the Star Road to cheat my way to Bowser, so the entirety of Chocolate Island and Bowser's Valley was new to me. I also had never played the Special levels. What can I say? It's a flawless classic.

Damn, it took me about 20 hours on the same difficulty. I wonder how much content I missed.

27 the Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] Despite the name and the GCA esthetics it's a new game that re-elaborates Eric Chahi/Another World gameplay of 2D action adventure, doned with a CGA-like graphic art style. The soundtrack does that John Carpenter/Vangelis thing. The "remaster" lays in the more modern gameplay, the fluid well animated movements. The jump is assisted, a little bit like Dead Cells does, so platforming does not get frustrating. If you fall it's your fault, not of some stupid 1 pixel miss. The storyline is a bit vague at the beginning but as you proceed the puzzle gets more pieces and you can put togher a simple story. Still after the ending I am not sure of something.
There are traps to be detected, small environmental puzzles. A boss battle was a bit messy but the last two ones were satisfying. Despite a bug happening a few times that forced me to restart it, also the entering sequence of said last boss was too long to be still enjoyable for so many times. You save in specific places that also renegerate your health. You can find close ranged weapons and fire weapons, sometimes they are drops from enemies. There are some shining fragments to be found but I only found half of them, I don't know if finding them all gives you anything else than an achievement. What matters is to find all the fragments of the "glider" to make your starship fly again. You are a person, either an Adam or an Eve, who has crashed on a planet and some classic evil villains have taken them to my understanding. Also there is some sort of war going on but I could not figure out the details and was disappointed at the lack of depth of the world and its characters.
You find items that enhance your characters and can decide to deactivate them, but I can't thnk of a reason to do so. It's short but it might get you some time to figure out some stuff, and I think a second run would be much shorter. I would call it a 3 or 4 hours game.
I had waited for a year for this cutie to come on GOG but eventually I gave in and got it on Steam for 3 euros. I'd happily support a GOG version and you can vote for the game in this wishlist entry:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/the_eternal_castle_remastered
It already has 80 votes at the present time.
official trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXqrU65vkNk&amp;feature=emb_title