Finished Bad Rats. It was pretty bad: ugly graphics and a really bad physics engine. I completed some levels by starting the simulation 10 times in a row without changing anything. It just went differently...

Full list here.

Gomo
I like the design (graphics, animation and music), but I have to say that it's not an adventure game. It's a number of escape-the-room-puzzles which are hardly connected by a nearly non-existant story. The game is laughable short and easy. Most of the so-called puzzles can be solved by clicking on the right spot. Pretty sure that even my seven-year-old godson could complete this game in under three hours.

Complete list of finished games in 2014

Xenoblade is done. Amazing game in every way, one of my favorites now, actually beat it a few days ago and the fact it's over, for many reasons, left me depressed.

Finished a couple VNs.

Harukoi Otome by BaseSon: This one was a romance/drama, one of the better ones I've played. Possibly the best, though I'm not sure if I like it better than Kanon and Clannad or not. It's close.

Saya no Uta by Nitroplus: This was a disturbing piece of work. Fairly short (completed in 3 hours or so), but quite well written. Just disturbing.

Finished Dishonored.
I am a huge fan of the sneak sneak, stab stab games and this one did not disappoint. At first I was not too impressed with the game, but I was going at full chaos. I restarted and tried not to be such a blood thirsty monster and found it much more enjoyable. Doing so, you really had to take your time and plan out your moves: figure out guard patterns, case buildings and know where to hide the unconscious.

I may try to replay the game in ghost mode (never seen). I probably wont try full chaos though, the game really seems to discourage it. So if you are wanting to play for carnage, I might stay away.

Bulletstorm

When I first saw the "Duty Calls" minigame, I sighed. Yeah, very funny Bulletstorm. What was funny however, is that Bulletstorm is a pretty cinematic game that tries to be serious like Call of Duty, making the "Duty Calls" minigame pretty hypocritical on the part of the developers/marketeers. Oh yes, it also tries to be funny by having the characters swear like drunken sailors and it also features pretty explosions and setpieces like, you know, Call of Duty. For a supposed parody of FPS games, it really doesn't succeed very well and comes across as yet another serious FPS game (with a vibrant and colourful palette, mind you).

The good thing is that the gunplay can be very satisfying and the end result can become pretty messy, with heads exploding even by your humble assault rifle, bodies torn in two by the game's shotgun or even whole enemies blown apart from the bouncing grenades. The leash you get can be very fun to use, pulling your enemy close to you and then just kicking him away (yes, even Bulletstorm's kick is very satisfying). When you get the thumber upgrade, you can even use the leash as an earthshaker that sends enemies to the sky. Yes, it's silly, but very satisfying.

As for the so-called innovation of skillshots, my first impressions were "Achievements that give points to purchase upgrades" which would be a pretty stupid idea. Thankfully, while you indeed get more skill points if you unlock skillshots, you can also totally ignore them and just kill the enemies your way, as the points are only used to upgrade your weapons' maximum ammo capacity (either for primary or alternative fire) and for purchasing ammunition and even then, you'll still be able to completely upgrade all the way and have enough ammunition to breeze through the game.

Oh yes, I did say breeze. You see, Bulletstorm is not a particularly hard game on Normal and dying can usually be attributed to you being very careless or, ironically, trying to get a weird/tricky skillshot. It's funny, but Bulletstorm can be a pretty relaxing game, the opposite of what I expect from an FPS. At least, it ended up a bit better than I expected; that is, the overall game, not the cliffhangery ending which was very, very bad.

List has been updated.

Finished Deponia.. it was a bit short but it's very very funny. Now I'm currently playing Chaos on Deponia :)

CStW is not an RPGMaker game - they used their own engine :)

Ok, I didn't know that. Now I wonder why someone uses an aown engine just to create something that looks exactly like a RPGMaker game. ;)

1080p support for one thing, even if it is pixelated 1080p support.

RPG Maker is still stuck in the 640x480 land - and with the VX you actually have to jump through hoops to get even that.

np :)

I'm sure there are other features Zeboyd games have (Remember they also did Penny Arcade Adventures 3 & 4) which aren't available in RPG Maker, but I'm not familiar enough with the engine's limitations to know for certain.

Aug 15 - Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren's Call
A well done hidden object game. Only felt lost about what to do next a couple of times, but all around pretty good.

Did you have the various hint options enabled (highlighting where on map to go next, etc)? I'm afraid I abused those a lot in the first NftD.

We did, but the map highlighting wasn't always helpful. It marked places with hidden object scenes and puzzles that we knew about, but didn't show us where we'd completely missed an area in part of scene that needed to be examined closer (magnifying glass when you hover it) and that contained the item we needed to proceed.