That was a fantastic post, fwiw.

Cheers to you as well, and wishes for a bright, joyous, and wealth-ful 2016!

Very short list for me, but nothing unusual there.

- The Witcher (reviewed)
- Age of Wonders
- Traffic Department 2192 (reviewed)

Sword of Asumi

I don't usually like Visual Novels, but I liked this one. Helped that it was a "pure" VN without stats/time managements. Only thing that I didn't really like (besides 1 ending having a very stupid requirement) is how Asumi, the trained ninja assassin under cover, went around just bluntly asking people if they knew who "Raven", her target, was.

And that makes 53 games for the year. Far lower than previous years due to 2 reasons:

1. Addiction to Marvel Puzzle Quest, which I finally managed to quit in April
2. Signing up to Crunchyroll in August and then barely playing any games for the next 3 months while binging anime

Here is my list of completed games for 2015, 2 days late.

Flatout
Far cry 4
Watchdogs
Max Payne 2
FEAR
FEAR Extraction Point
FEAR Perseus Mandate
BulletStorm
Torchlight
Tower of Guns
Torchlight 2
Shadow of Mordor
Max Payne 3
Wolfenstein the New Order
Spelunky
The Walking Dead S1
The Walking Dead S2
Crysis 3
Xcom: Enemy Unknown
Ziggurat (all items and characters unlocked, not beaten with all characters)
Far Cry 2
Tales from the Borderlands

Redundant now, but might as well put posts for the rest of my completed games, just for completion's sake.

Expendabros

A free version of Broforce that uses the characters from the Expendables 3 movie. Nice carnage and destruction and it's good that each of the Bros feel different to each other, although I'm not a fan of the game's pixellated look and I don't like the fact that it doesn't allow you to choose the Bro you want and you must instead hope that the game grants you access to that specific one after mission completion/losing a life. Not really sure how it compares to the final version of Broforce; that's something I will find out months later.

List.

Puzzle Kingdoms

I thought that the 1st Puzzle Quest was a pretty cool, albeit frustrating game. What about Puzzle Kingdoms, though? Eh, it's not that good really.

Now, the basic idea remains the same; a match-3 puzzle game combined with some RPG elements like heroes, stats, spells, items, a world map (which is pretty static, though), a tavern and the likes. Everything you do is resolved through a puzzle, whether it is battles, finding new items or recruiting new heroes/creatures in your army. One of the differences is that instead of switching a single gem horizontally/vertically each round, you instead switch an entire column or row. You also no longer automatically get an extra turn when matching 4+ blocks and you can't get more than one extra turn per round, so that at least eliminates the major source of frustration from Puzzle Quest. Just like before, matching gems either increase your mana (which can be used to cast spells), give you experience or cause damage to one of the enemy troops. Yes, I said troops, as the game is no longer a case of a hero fighting another single creature, but instead a hero commanding a small army that fights another small army. Instead of casting a spell or switching a column/row, you can attack with one of your creatures, assuming that you do have the necessary mana for the attack and you win a combat when all the opposing creatures have been killed. That sounds pretty Puzzle Quest so far, so what is the problem?

The problem is tedium. Go to a kingdom, engage in remarkably easy battles, collect loot, defeat the boss and the kingdom is yours. What's the benefit? None, really. Oh, you do get to unlock (by paying gold) more items and heroes/creatures in nearby buildings by playing either time-limited or move-limited puzzles, but they very quickly become massively boring and tedious. They can be skipped, which seems like a relief, but then the game demands that you play a stupid puzzle anyway, if you want to progress through the campaign. Said puzzle requires to you to clear the whole board from blocks, but unlike the move-limited puzzles, you can still get blocks from colours that you have wiped out, so have fun trying to clear the board when the game stubbornly refuses to give you the blocks that you want.

The tedium of course is not only limited to the puzzles and general progression, but also to the combat itself. In Puzzle Quest, the board would reset whenever it reached a situation that would make a match-3 impossible. In Puzzle Kingdoms, that's no longer the case. As a result, you might find yourself dragging a row/column till you get a match-3, only to get stuck in unlucky situations where you get another match-3 after 10 turns, and then, you get another match-3 after 10 turns, only to get another match-3 after 10 turns, zzzzzzz.......

Yeah, just stick to Puzzle Quest. I doubt you'll be missing much.

List.

Neverwinter Nights 1
Baldur's Gate 1

Unreal II: The Awakening

Going by visual impressions, the game looks great, just like its predecessor. Great environments, models and effects. As for general impressions, though... just no.

Seriously, why is your character's movement speed so damn slow? It makes traversing the (at times large) areas a chore and battles are reduced to just taking cover and firing from as far away as possible, as enemies no longer sport any kind of dodging abilities at all. Oh sure, some of them are sponges and can get close and personal with you (and are also faster, what a surprise), but then the shotgun becomes handy for dispatching them. So, how does the game try to get you? Oh, that's right, by spawning enemies behind you once you have passed a specific trigger point! Cheap bastard! Oh, I also love how the game sports a walking button as if the game's default movement speed wasn't already slow enough. I mean, we obviously need it for the non-existent stealth sections!

I also hate how the game wants to tell you a story by forcing you to return to a hub after each mission and having you to listen to a mission objective before you are allowed to proceed. Would it kill the developers if they did it like in Unreal: Return to Na Pali in the form of logs? I don't think so.

Playing Unreal 2 felt more like a chore and less of an entertainment. Too bad.

List.

Battle Group

Battle Group is a nice little top-down rail shooter in which you control a warship and have to destroy aerial and naval targets which stand in your way way. Unlike other shooters, you don't just point and click where the enemy is, because then you'll more than likely miss horrendously. Instead, since your ship is firing slow missiles, you'll have to calculate the enemy's path and fire the missile ahead of him to score a hit. Not all enemies are the same, with varying sizes, speeds, toughness and movement patterns, which will force you to adjust your shooting accordingly. You should also keep in mind that it takes some time for missiles to reload, so you should make your missiles count and not just spam them around, otherwise you are risking running out of missiles during a hectic shootout. As you progress through the levels, you also get access to more powerful warships that can store more ammo and a secondary ability, along with a support warship that can help you take down the terrorists easier.

My only complaints regarding the game are that it can become difficult to concentrate during a shootout and activate your warship's secondary ability or use your support warship as they require you to drag their line of fire in a specific spot, something easier said than done when you are desperately trying to calculate the targets' path. My other complaint has to do with the game's abrupt ending... or actually the lack of an ending at all. I suspect two scenarios:

1) Either the Desura build is outdated.
2) The developers decided to abandon the original's development and instead focus on the sequel.

Whichever scenario is true, it sucks. Oh well.

List.

I don't even remember if I'd already posted in this thread, but as far as I recall, these are the only games I beat last year:

Hotline Miami (missed a couple masks, though, and there's always room to improve on my ratings)
This War of Mine (I survived the war on my first playthrough -- albeit with one character remaining -- and stalled out on my next playthrough. But it technically counts! =) ).

Everything else that I played last year fell into one of two categories:
1.) A sandbox/open-ended/procedural game that you can't really beat;
2.) Something I played a bit of (maybe a few hours, maybe a dozen), then wandered away from after a while -- in many cases, never touching it since.

Battle Group 2 is more of the same (but now with better visuals), which ain't bad at all. You once again take control of a warship that moves on its own and you'll have to blast your way through aerial and naval terrorist forces. Once again, you have to aim ahead of enemies to hit them (while taking size, speed and movement pattern into account) and you'll have to make your shots count to avoid running out of ammo at inopportune moments. You can also have a secondary weapon on your main warship and some further help by a supporting warship. Aside that, the game now offers an option to upgrade your ship (if you have enough cash) to allow for a higher missile count, faster reload, etc. It also grants power-ups that can be used to stop time, instantly replenish all your ammo or launch an EMP that stops targets from attacking and disables any incoming projectiles. The way that secondary weapons/supporting warships work has also changed and become more automatic, requiring only a tap of the weapon button in question, allowing you to concentrate on destroying targets without worrying about your secondary weapon/supporting warship doing nothing. Of course, while all sounds pretty good with the game, the developers have made the same mistake... twice.

The game once again sports no ending! WTF guys, twice in a row?! Will we have a case of third time's the charm or will the Battle Group games become famous for sporting no ending at all? Seriously, I can't even...

Ahhhh, forget it, bring the list.

Funk of Titans is what you get when you combine Greek mythology and funk music. Your character (Perseus) is tasked by the Funk God Zeus with destroying the 3 Titans of pop, rap and rock. Wish I was making that up. Anyway, this being a runner game with mobile roots, he moves on his own and your job is to either press a button to jump, wall jump, grab from somewhere, etc, or another button to attack an enemy that stands in your way. That's mostly it, really. Oh sure, you can also play a plastic-pegasus riding minigame and there is a level-up bar which is filled by doing stuff like x number of jumps, x number of enemies killed, x number of meters ran, etc. and when you level up, you can unlock mostly cosmetic stuff, with some of them able to unlock some otherwise inaccessible doors during some specific stages. Oh, and when you end up fighting the game's bosses, you'll have to do a series of QTEs. That's it, but I do think that the developers missed an opportunity to make the game's world a bit more alive.

Rather than each world being themed according to the tastes of each of the Titans (pop, rap and rock, respectively), we instead get a typical Ancient Greece, a frozen wasteland and caverny/rocky areas, with the music being mostly funky (which is nice, but heavily repetitive) and no presence of pop/rap/rock, except for the boss stages, which is very limited. The game is also pretty easy and at best, you could try accomplishing every heroic mission if you wanted some challenge, but there isn't really much reason to do so, unless you relish the idea of Perseus wearing a Stormtrooper helmet and carrying a lightsaber (HILARIOUS!). Final verdict? Harmless and mediocre.

Full list.

Michael Bay's Thunder Wolves

Just kidding. Michael Bay has no official connection to the game but, damn, those explosions. They are everywhere!

Thunder Wolves is what happens when you combine 90s action movies, helicopters, hard rock music, terrorists and explosions (pretty sure I'm being redundant somewhere). It's an arcade-style game in which you control a helicopter (for the most part), follow a cursor around and blast in smithereens anything that looks funny at you, whether it's some other kind of helicopter, tank, infantry, ship, building, etc. You don't have a whole load of stuff in your arsenal, but what you do have are enough. A general-usage gatling gun, a selection of three types of missiles that require cooldown, flares to prevent yourself from being terribly damaged from enemy missiles, along with a boost that you can use to go faster to your destination as well as enhance your strafing capabilities. The game will take you to a variety of settings through its 13 short levels, which won't take you more than 3 hours in total, so it doesn't outstay its awesome welcome.

Having said all that, there are parts of it that could be better. For starters, the game is a bit on the easy side (on normal difficulty). I can't recall dying more than twice and that was mostly due to me being reckless with it. It doesn't help that you regenerate health/armor pretty fast when you aren't being fired upon. Strangely for a game like this, straying too far from the objective will result in the game warning you to get back to the combat zone, or else consequences will never be the same. Something else I didn't like is that despite there being a total of 9 helicopters in the game, each mission will only give you a choice among 3 and with the available selection not being quite the same in each level, you are unsure of their capabilities beforehand. I could also make a point about the game being deeper and having a bit more meat in it, but I'm pretty fine with smaller games, provided they are entertaining and Thunder Wolves is very entertaining.

Full list.

Somehow my impression of the game after reading this is something along this line:
"I'm the best at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice, or sensible, or complex, or making any sense, but... 'SPLOSIONS!" :D

Obludia

A very short and easy (on normal, at least) top-down shooter/dungeon-crawler (or more accurately, dungeon arenas as there is no exploration here), which didn't take me more than one hour to complete (yes, that includes deaths/retries). Part of what makes it so easy is that you can buy a plethora of ammo cheaply for your stronger weapons, stay afar and just blast them without breaking sweat. The bosses and the last area might challenge you a bit, but then you can just unload your dynamites upon them. Oh, there are also spells that I barely even used and you can also save your progress (but I didn't) which ensures that any challenge that the game had would simply disappear. Maybe on a harder difficulty the game might provide some nice challenge, but I'm not sure if I'd bother with it. It's not like there are any significant variations between playthroughs and I wasn't particularly impressed with the game's unsatisfying weapons to make me want to play it again. Anyway...

... list.