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Catacomb Armageddon

One thing I forgot to mention regarding the Catacomb 3-D series, is that the layout of the maps can be really confusing, resulting in a lot of wandering circles. Doesn't help that you'll have to destroy walls to create new paths and you'll end up scratching your head as to where exactly you are. About Catacomb Armageddon, you ask? Well, not that much to say, just a reskin of Catacomb 3-D and not really more enjoyable. Supposedly, it takes place in the present day instead of a fantasy past, but I can't say that I noticed much difference, aside 1 level. Now, only Catacomb Apocalypse remains...

Full list.
Post edited January 30, 2015 by Grargar
Just finished Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Old-school Zelda FTW. Though I think I'm getting dumber in my old age, had to look up a walkthrough to get through the Eagle Tower and Turtle Rock dungeons.

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xa_chan: HuniePop

Yes, yes, I know, it's not the kind of game you actually boast playing, even less completing,
Well, if nothing else I've played and listed worse things here. Though I don't usually make a full post on them just because I doubt most people would be terribly interested in what I think about some of the nukige I play.

Anyway, I bought HuniePop yesterday and am about to start it now.
Sleepwalker's Journey
A relaxing puzzle game. Very well designed with hand-drawn graphics and a very nice soundtrack. Game isn't very hard, but if you want to reach a gold medal on every level (collect all stars, all moons and reach the exit on time) things can get tricky from time to time.

Controls work fine, but you can clearly see that the game was created for mobile devices with touchscreens.

Complete list of finished games in 2015
I just finished Avadon - The Black Fortress.
This is my first spiderweb RPG.
I bought this with Geneforge and Avernum on bundle sale at GOG. I will play other spiderweb RPG too.
I enjoyed quite political story which is rare for RPG.
Later boss battles were tough nuts, some requires luck to beat (I look at you, lady Antje). I dont like them.
Also once all items(usually 2 or 3) bought from a shop, the shop didn't sell this anymore. I hardly get lock-picks, which was annoyed.
All in all I enjoyed this vast contents world.

Full list
Risen. A few years ago I gave Risen a try and quit about a quarter into it, without having many nice things to say about. Last year, having burnt out on Skyrim and having (temporarily) lost the will to play Divinity II after losing my saves, I decided to give Risen another chance. I'm quite glad i did.

With Risen Piranha Bytes once again prove that they can make a handcrafted and believable world that rivals (and at times completely surpasses) their fellow genre members such as Bethesda. The island that Risen takes place on is rather small at first glance but not a single inch of it is there just for the sake of being there. The island is filled with ruins and temples that go deep underground, along with a port town, a bandit camp/settlement, a monastery and a few assorted farms. Characters follow a complete 24 hour cycle, Blacksmiths will work at their forge creating weapons during the day and sleeping at night, aspiring mages will practice their staff fighting in the courtyard of the monastery during the day until retiring to their quarters at night, etc etc.

Gameplay wise it's similar to Gothic 3 in most respects. The melee system has been slightly altered to include a combo system for the player, and enemies have their own attack patterns. The biggest issue I had with melee is that you sort of autoaim/autofocus on enemies, often times you'll get stuck fighting a group of enemies with you constantly focusing on the wrong enemy. Ironically, magic has no aim assistance so you'll have to learn to be precise with your shots. There is a good selection of utility spells (most in the vein of spells found in the Gothic series), but very few offensive spells, Frost, Fire and Magic Bullet are your main offensive magic spells. There is a conjurable skeleton but no other creatures you can summon. With magic you can use Crystal Magic for Frost/Fire/Magic Bullet, for the others you have to either use scrolls (which you can now learn to write) or use a Rune.There is less of a variety of melee weapons as well, compared to the Gothic series. Once you commit to being either a warrior or a mage then you have some skill limits, mages for example can only raise their Sword ability up to level 7 out of 10, and warriors have to use scrolls.

Their faction system is again impressive, with plenty of choices and consequences to be found. The two main factions are the former ruling society (that was openly crooked) turned rebel bandits and the Inquisition, the new overseers of the island, the two are at odds with each other for obvious reasons. Both has plenty of grey areas, The Inquisition want to keep everybody safe but to do that they lock citizens into the town and send any captured rebel/outcast to the monastery to become a soldier. The rebel bandits give the impression that they're just trying to make ends meet until they can try to recapture the island. As with past Piranha Bytes games you can side with a faction, double cross members, etc etc.

The story and writing in generally is generally well done though nothing amazing. While not "technically" a Gothic sequel, it's written to follow the events of Gothic 3's neutral ending. The story begins that you're a stowaway who got caught up in a storm and landed on the island, no info about your past is given. The world is being besieged by great storms caused by Titans (ancient beings that have awoken) and the future looks bleak. As mentioned, the story is decent but you're not likely to remember too much of it. The dialogue is stronger than in past Piranha Bytes games, most of the characters sound like believable humans, and their is humor and charm throughout.

The quests follow the Gothic formula, "go fight this creature", "bring me ten of this item" etc etc. However a few quests are really interesting, such as one that requires you to solve a murder and another where you have to catch the town's thief. The quests often involve puzzles, such as shooting an arrow at an out of reach switch to open a door, or using the Telekinesis spell to pull a out of reach lever to disable a trap, or using a transformation spell to become a small crab like creature to slip into holes in walls to get into new areas.

Musically it's well below the Gothic games. The songs that are present are enjoyable but there are very few of them, it feels like you're listening to the same song over and over unless you get to a special area. It's not like Gothic 3 where every defined area has its own theme. You'll be sick of the exploration theme before you're a quarter into the game.

All in all I wouldn't call Risen an amazing game, but it is a clear step above games like Two Worlds. If you enjoyed the first three Gothic games then you'll enjoy Risen, as it's Gothic 4 in all but name. I'm really quite happy that I gave Risen another chance, it was a fun journey.
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NoNewTaleToTell: Risen. *snip*
Good review, and I too am glad I gave Risen a second chance (I'd given up on it the first time after only about 30 minuted of play). My only real beef with the game was the end battle, which I didn't particularly enjoy. The rest of the game I had a blast with.
Star Wars: Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith: Leeza's Destiny
Wow, that's some long title :) It's a four level mod for Mysteries of the Sith about a dark Jedi \ ex-Emperor's Hand trying to learn about the Light Side. The story is not that impressive but level design, various challenges (fights, puzzles, running like mad) make it fresh and enjoyable.
It took me well over 4 hours to finish. That's more than some commercial games on my list. So, if you're playing MotS and original 14 levels are not enough for you - give this one a try.
Finished Fez, Danganronpa and Danganronpa 2.
Playing Danganronpa 1 and 2 made buying a vita worth it.
Post edited January 30, 2015 by omega64
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NoNewTaleToTell: All in all I wouldn't call Risen an amazing game, but it is a clear step above games like Two Worlds. If you enjoyed the first three Gothic games then you'll enjoy Risen, as it's Gothic 4 in all but name. I'm really quite happy that I gave Risen another chance, it was a fun journey.
Good review, I agree completely. I never really got the hang of melee but then I was a mage.

It's funny, I enjoyed playing Risen, and I'd recommend it, but now that I've beaten it I don't really feel like going back and trying a different path. One playthrough was exactly enough Risen for me, and that's fine. Not every game needs to be endlessly replayable ...
Post edited January 30, 2015 by sergeant_citrus
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NoNewTaleToTell: Risen. *snip*
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Coelocanth: Good review, and I too am glad I gave Risen a second chance (I'd given up on it the first time after only about 30 minuted of play). My only real beef with the game was the end battle, which I didn't particularly enjoy. The rest of the game I had a blast with.
Yeah the final battle was a bit of a let down, extremely easy once you catch on to what all is going on.


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NoNewTaleToTell: All in all I wouldn't call Risen an amazing game, but it is a clear step above games like Two Worlds. If you enjoyed the first three Gothic games then you'll enjoy Risen, as it's Gothic 4 in all but name. I'm really quite happy that I gave Risen another chance, it was a fun journey.
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sergeant_citrus: Good review, I agree completely. I never really go the hang of melee but then I was a mage.

It's funny, I enjoyed playing Risen, and I'd recommend it, but now that I've beaten it I don't really feel like going back and trying a different path. One playthrough was exactly enough Risen for me, and that's fine. Not every game needs to be endlessly replayable ...
I agree, I don't see myself giving Risen another playthrough, I'm not THAT curious about what goes on on the bandit rebel's side. Plus I couldn't imagine having to use melee in every fight with that autofocus "feature" haha. Still I did enjoy it and like you I wouldn't have an issue recommending it.
Finished Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart and it was a fine hidden object game. I only skipped 2 puzzles.

Full list here.
Ravensword on my Samsung tablet, a pretty good fun game to sit back on the couch with. Enemies are a little static/dumb but it shows a good future for tablet games.
Star Wars: Rebellion
What a nostalgia trip! Sure, it was on easy and the smallest galaxy setting, I just wanted to see how well I remember it... and it looks like I remember it quite well :)
Great, complex, very underrated game.
January slipped past with a surgery and recovery with my family, so I had no chance to game during my downtime. I'm glad to slip a title in before the month is completely gone.

In a lot of ways, Dream Chamber is a missed opportunity. It's a hand-crafted point-and-click comic detective story noir from Microids and Darkwave Studios, an Italian game company, released in October of 2013; I picked it up as part of a Groupees bundle. It was clearly intended to be the first game in a series featuring the adventures of Charlie Chamber, the clueless dreaming protagonist of the title, but it was received with lukewarm notices, so I guess there aren't likely to be any sequels.

Which is a shame, because there's a lot to like about the game. Much of it doesn't click in its current state, but the errors are in the right direction: Dream Chamber errs in shoving too many new mechanics and bright ideas into the pot without cooking them up properly. The resulting stew is scattered and jarring, but also interesting.

The plot is routine and forgettable - priceless object stolen from museum gala by faceless menacing secret cartel - but the characters are genuinely interesting. Or, at least, Charlie is. Charlie is a sheltered, daffy rich kid in the heart of the Depression, given to mistaking poverty for rustic settings and wondering, whenever he sees something nice, if he might have owned it somewhere along the way. He's become a detective out of boredom, and he's chauffered to the various locations in the game - museum, police station, speakeasy, docks, and so forth - by his manservant, Gregory. (During the rides, Charlie natters on about topics of the day - Gandhi, aviation, ball players - which is amusing but gets old fast, especially since the menu of topics is limited and cycles through quickly.)

Charlie has a special talent. Bumbling and silly as he is, he has an active photographic memory that works through his subconscious, so after visiting a new location he can explore it again by sleeping and walking through it in his dreams. Things he overlooked the first time, or which he saw but couldn't examine because it would have disturbed nearby characters, can be added to inventory in the dream world. This is a great idea, but it's larded on without much thought, so in practice it amounts to just coming back later when the NPC has left. If the devs had integrated this mechanic more carefully, it would have been a real winner.

Not so charming is the bizarre mini-game that dogs certain meaty conversations. Charlie explains that he gets bored easily, so he likes to imagine conversation as medieval warfare to keep his interest up. At key points when he's talking to important witnesses there's a blared fanfare and we are shown a castle garlanded with towers which we will, ahem, bombard with the cannonades of our dialogue choices. Choosing the right option, which is far from obvious, will raise the damage done by our cannonballs. To "win" the conversation, players need to pass a damage threshold by knocking down the towers, and - well, I could see what the devs were trying to do here, but it's really bizarre and not much fun. It only happens about five times, but it's jarring every time.

Similarly, one of the features of Charlie's dream state is a golden portal that appears in his bedroom, inside of which is ... Charlie. He can talk to himself about the turns of the plot, which could have been fascinating but in fact is largely a complete waste of time. One clue is passed over through this method, but, like most of the things in the game which don't fit properly, it's annoying overall.

The cartoony art is odd and appealing, and the Prohibition-era jazz soundtrack is in fact all new and written for the game. In exploring each environment, Charlie voices his observations to each clickable object, and much of this is genuinely funny, but it involves clicking each object four or five times, and that gets old fast. The minor characters are not very meaty, but voicing is largely good - I had some quibbles, but nothing game-smearing. The script bears the marks of translation, but most of it works, and the puzzles are largely within the bounds of point-and-click reason.

The game is not very successful in communicating what it expects in certain situations, so I did check a walkthrough a couple of times, both for ludicrous-solving help and to make sure I wasn't missing obscure stuff: in most cases the game doesn't offer much in the way of clarity about when it's time to move on. In one instance, for example, despite Charlie's insistence that he needs to find a way into a location that I'm not going to tell you what it is because spoilers, the player needs to take him out of this spot to go somewhere else to read a book that has defied previous attempts at reading, which will give him pointers about how to get in there. Since we've just watched a suspect enter this location, it's counter-intuitive to leave while the narrative is unfolding.

Dream Chamber is short, but I played it in short helpings. At first I was skeptical about the whole thing, but I warmed to it as I got used to the level and flavor of absurdity in the gameverse. With a little more design time to develop and integrate the good ideas that are stuck on to this attractive vanilla point-and-click adventure like extra arms, this game might have been a gem. As it is, it's a curious trifle that can probably be explored pretty fully in five or so hours of attentive play, and it's worth it if you like this sort of thing.

My list, which so far comprises a single title.
Post edited January 31, 2015 by LinustheBold
Finally just finished Duke Nukem 3D. I do understand why people hold it in very high regards, but there are a lot of issues:

Terrible AI - or maybe the enemies just really love walking into walls over and over again and shooting at nothing.

A lot of things don't have much use or don't make good on their potential (holo duke, laser trip mine, steroids, expander/shrinker, freezethrower).

Far too many switch combination 'puzzles'.

General jankiness/glitchiness: The way perspective works in the game made me feel ill - particularly on very vertical levels (I did start getting used to it though), enemies clipping through walls and floors, colour filters/lighting carrying over to menus - making it hard to see things.

The occasional ugly graphics - the main offender being crudely cut out of photos used for the palm tree sprites. But there are also other graphics that don't antialias properly to certain backgrounds.

Secret areas are wildly inconsistent - A lot are pretty well hidden...but then there are secret areas which literally just involve opening a door (Some 'secrets' are even required to beat certain levels).

Some really nasty level design - parts where you can reach an unwinnable state, levels where you instantly take damage (if you start low on health, you can die immediately through absolutely no fault of your own), and some excessively convoluted and confusing level designs.

Of course, that's obviously not mentioning how obnoxious/misogynistic/plain unfunny 90% of the humour is.

And on a related note: Repeating dialogue can get incredibly annoying. Repeating dialogue can get incredibly annoying.

Having got all that off my chest, I did end up enjoying it a fair bit. I really am a sucker for sprite-based shooters. Once I got into the game, I really got into it and just had to keep playing. As a counter to what I said above, there's certainly a fair amount of clever and fun moments. I think my favourite level would be spin cycle - I have a thing for simple/elegant level design.

If you want a tl;dr: A lot of things I dislike, but evened out by being a mostly fun experience with some sparks of genius here or there. I'd consider it to be a solid three star game.
Post edited January 31, 2015 by Austrobogulator