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Ethan: Meteor Hunter
This is a very good puzzle platformer and it's a shame that it was such a big failure for the developers when it was released (they sold only 127 units in the first month).

While it might not be the prettiest game in the genre (the cutscenes are quite ugly), it has a great level design. First levels are quite easy, but things get hard in chapter two and very hard in chapter three. I stopped playing for completion very soon and just tried to get to the exit of each level. The platform sections are challenging and you will have to replay some of them many times to find the right strategy and get perfect jumps. Fortunately there are several checkpoints, so you only have to replay a small part of the level each time you die. Some of the puzzles were quite hard as well and I had a good time solving them.

All in all I would recommend this game to everyone with some love for puzzle platform games. It's definitely one of the better ones in this genre.

Complete list of finished games in 2015
Post edited November 12, 2015 by PaterAlf
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penumbren: The Journey Down, Chapter Two
How long is the 2nd chapter compared to the 1st? The 1st chapter is only about 2+ hours long which is definitely too short for the $8.99 price even if the game's quality is above average. Chapter 2 which costs $10.99 has never been on a steeper sale than 10% off so far, I've been patiently waiting since playing chapter 1 last year (review)

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PaterAlf: Ethan: Meteor Hunter
Thanks for the review and reminding me of this game, I had kicked this off my wishlist a couple months ago because there were just too many negative reviews saying that the platforming is aggravating. This really raised all kinds of red flags to me because my platforming skills suck to begin with, I even struggle with platformers that aren't considered that difficult. I'm currently playing Escape Goat and find the normal levels challenging enough, anything harder than that and I'm most likely only going to get frustrated. Also playing The Swapper and that's much more my kinda speed, relaxing platforming and predominantly about the puzzles.
Just installed and completed the demo of Ethan Meteor Hunter, I like the puzzle mechanics and visuals etc but died plenty of times even in the easy demo levels so I doubt I'd be having much fun in the later game judging from the way you and most people are describing it.
I like this type of puzzle solving but the precision jumps etc are to ADHD for my taste. One thing that really annoys me is the floatiness when you land and slide a bit further before stopping. That already bothers me in Escape Goat but in Ethan it's even more pronounced.

Of course, I can just resort to pure puzzlers like Mousecraft which I'm also playing at the moment but I do enjoy light platforming, moving and jumping around is lots of fun just as long as it's not too spastic and not crazy with too much going on and OCD control freak fascism demanded from the player. Seems there aren't too many games in that category where the platforming is very easy but the puzzles are challenging. The Swapper is really and exceptional game in that category.
Post edited July 17, 2015 by awalterj
Tomb Raider The Angel of Darkness

Yes i really did play it all the way to the end, in my quest to play all Tomb Raider games. TRAOD now gains my award for "worst game controls of all time". I mean the previous Core TR games didn't exactly have brilliant control, but they worked okay for the block based worlds you ran around in. But for TRAOD they actually managed to make the controls even worse! They are sluggish at best and don't work at all when they are at their worst- eg the mouse control is worthless and i ended just playing keyboard only just like earlier games. The controls would be bad enough if this was a point and click game like Gabriel Knight 3, but this game actually expects you to do timed platforming sections! Though luckily not many.

At least it was mostly bug free. The only bug that cropped up occasionally were textures not loading in sometimes, which could be fixed simply by reloading the save again.

Despite the controls i persisted and still managed to enjoy the game overall. Graphics are nice for the time, the atmosphere is okay and the story may have been good had they had the time to complete it with the following sequels that were planned. It had potential to be so much better. I think they were trying to make an "Uncharted" action/adventure game before we knew what one was, and using tech that simply was not up to the task.

There's probably no point anyone playing this game really unless, like me, you just want to be completionist and play all the Tomb Raider franchise with all it's reboots...just because. Now i can switch to console and do Legend, Anniversary and Underworld.
Post edited July 17, 2015 by CMOT70
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DProject: Grand Theft Auto V
Speaking of the Rockstar Social Club, just to be clear, can you play GTA V's singleplayer offline and do you actually have to create a Rockstar Social Club account just to play singleplayer offline?
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DProject: Grand Theft Auto V
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NoNewTaleToTell: Speaking of the Rockstar Social Club, just to be clear, can you play GTA V's singleplayer offline and do you actually have to create a Rockstar Social Club account just to play singleplayer offline?
You need a Rockstar Social Club account and the game logs you in before the game starts and saves all your stats and whatnot there, so I guess that means you can't play the game offline, which admittedly sucks donkey kong.

Edit: there seem to be mixed messages, looking at this: https://steamcommunity.com/app/271590/discussions/0/611703999964650653/#p1 but I'd say you will need internet connection for the very first launch, at least. Regardless, the Social Club account is mandatory either way. Note that I had the non-Steam version of the game (a Rockstar code), don't know what happens if your version is on Steam and you have that in offline mode.
Post edited July 17, 2015 by DProject
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penumbren: The Journey Down, Chapter Two
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awalterj: How long is the 2nd chapter compared to the 1st? The 1st chapter is only about 2+ hours long which is definitely too short for the $8.99 price even if the game's quality is above average. Chapter 2 which costs $10.99 has never been on a steeper sale than 10% off so far, I've been patiently waiting since playing chapter 1 last year (review)
It took me over four hours, although I'm not the swiftest point-and-click player. (I grew up on them, but I'm not good at playing them for speed.) I really enjoyed it, and none of the puzzles struck me as illogical/impossible, although I did resort to a walkthrough for one of the final puzzles (rotating symbols) because it was late and my brain would not allow me to figure it out.

I actually picked it up as part of Indie Gala's Adventure Mega Bundle at the beginning of May. I'll admit that I largely picked that bundle up for this game, although $3.99 for that set of games was a steal no matter how you look at it. Too bad they were all Steam, though.

It's currently [url=http://isthereanydeal.com/specials/#/page:game/info?plain=journeydownchaptertwo]on sale at GreenMan Gaming[/url] for $4.49 and you can use the 20% off voucher with it, so that's not a bad price.
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awalterj: Thanks for the review and reminding me of this game, I had kicked this off my wishlist a couple months ago because there were just too many negative reviews saying that the platforming is aggravating. This really raised all kinds of red flags to me because my platforming skills suck to begin with, I even struggle with platformers that aren't considered that difficult. I'm currently playing Escape Goat and find the normal levels challenging enough, anything harder than that and I'm most likely only going to get frustrated. Also playing The Swapper and that's much more my kinda speed, relaxing platforming and predominantly about the puzzles.
Just installed and completed the demo of Ethan Meteor Hunter, I like the puzzle mechanics and visuals etc but died plenty of times even in the easy demo levels so I doubt I'd be having much fun in the later game judging from the way you and most people are describing it.
If you think the normal levels of Escape Goat are challenging, then Ethan: Meteor Hunter is definitely not the right game for you. Did you play Unmechanical? It's not really a platformer (because you can fly), but it's a very well designed puzzle game that you really might enjoy.
Shadowgate

I admit I have never even heard about this game before it appeared on the GOG main page, yet it immediately drew my attention for its peculiar style in both art and gameplay; searching around on the Internet made me aware that this game is a remake from a very old (1987) Mac game then ported on other platforms (NES included) which gained a “cult” status.
How much has the remade title retained the old-school values of its ancestor, though?
After having played it, in my opinion the answer is obvious.

Shadowgate is a point and click adventure in first person perspective: you take the role of the young Jair Cuthegar, an inexpert warrior following the call for help coming from a mysterious robed figure appearing in his dreams.
His task is to travel to castle Shadowgate, the former stronghold of the Circle of Twelve (an order of powerful mages), now conquered by a malevolent Warlock who promises to move death and destruction form there, drawing an immense amount of power from somewhere in its depths.

The mechanics have been largely untouched, allowing the players to choose from several different actions (much like in the earlier Lucas Arts adventures) presented as verbs to interact with almost everything they can find in the castle.
Unlike Lucas Arts titles, though, this time there will be plenty of ways to horribly die and waste your progress, and you also have time limits: each action requires a turn, and after a fixed amount of them (I don't know the precise number, as the game does not precisely inform you on how much time you have left) you can either be killed by a curse you have been victim of -if you are not fast enough to cure it- or fail in stopping the Warlock, who brings his plan to fruition.
The difficulty of puzzles and the time limits are set when you choose one among the four difficulty levels; the developers made sure to craft a system where every kind of player could be satisfied.
On “Normal” the game will treat you like a total noob, mostly giving away the solution for each of the extremely simplified (and reduced in number) puzzles; on “Apprentice” the difficulty scales up a bit, forcing you to use your brain and transforming torches in consumable items; on “Journeyman” your time limits and torches run out much faster, and you can finally have a good challenge that requires thinking to be overcome, presenting tough but fair puzzles with a good amount of subtle hints to help you navigate the Castle; on “Master” you'll face total insanity with the only aid of torches that run out like matches.

My personal recommendation is to play it on “Jouneyman” (the closest experience to the original, it seems), as each puzzle will give you plenty of satisfaction by always being reasonable and without ever being too difficult or unfair while also avoiding to hand over the solutions; the high quality of the riddles, the good level of challenge, the compelling and atmospheric hand drawn screens, the evocative soundtrack, the great voice acting and its respect for the player make Shadowgate one of the best adventure games you can find on GOG, imo.
“Normal” mode is useful if you are having difficulties in understanding what to do next but you don't want to use a guide: that way, the game will point you towards the objectives and give you the location of some of the most important items you need without spoiling the riddles. I suggest to start two “parallel” games (one on Normal and one on Journeyman) to get the most out of the game.

My only complaint is that the “Master” difficulty level is absurd. You could take everything I wrote until now and reverse it: you have so little time to do things, you are left completely clueless and the solution of several puzzles are so nonsensical that they draw all the fun out of the game.
In any case, the “sane” modes are so good that they make the last one completely irrelevant, so you will lose absolutely nothing by skipping (or dropping, as I did) it.

I can definitely vouch for Shadowgate's quality, and I recommend it to everyone -especially to every adventure fan out there. I'm also eagerly waiting for the sequel (the remake of “Return to Shadowgate”), announced for 2016 after the end credits.
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Enebias: Shadowgate
+1
Always enjoy reading your reviews, so thanks for this.
Just beaten Mark of the Ninja today. Off I go to Dota 2.

Great game, probably will write a short review or smth.
Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries

Meh. I actually wanted to defend this game from some of the criticism leveled against it, because it's not such a bad game as some make it out to be, but sadly it's not that good either. Graphics, sound and platforming are actually quite enjoyable, and while the writing is cringeworthy at times ("CEO" in a steampunkish setting, Red Hood: "Cut the crap"), I didn't think plot and story-telling were that terrible; there's quite some potential in the setting and characters, and it does remind a bit of Alice: Madness Returns on first look, which is a good thing. But it doesn't really deliver. I don't mind the game being over after 2 hours, but I do mind it ending with a cliffhanger and a "To be continued ..." message, when the title and store page suggest a full game and not the first episode of a series. It also introduces a new move in the very last battle and tells you it will become important in the future, which makes it feel even more like a demo or unfinished product. And the developers commited a few cardinal sins that make me wonder whether they actually enjoy playing videogames themselves or just went by the (wrong) books.

The checkpoint placement is pretty off. Sometimes there are very short spans between them when you don't have to do anything challenging, other times you have to complete several challenges in a row, only to be completely set back after the slightest misstep (and some of those situations are trial and error on top of it). Mind you, the game is not really challenging in itself, in my playthrough most of the deaths were due to unclear camera perspectives, a lack of clues where to go (sometimes it's hard to distinguish what you can interact with and what is just background or wall) or the rather awkward fighting. And sometimes there is instadeath without obvious reason (I guess there always is a reason and after a while you understand why, but it's very obscure at first). In those longer passages between checkpoints, there are often sequences that just require you to wait or do things you will always succeed in before you reach the tricky parts, so being set back to the last checkpoint results in tedious repetition and testing your patience. The same goes for the (very few) boss battles with several stages that are mostly easy but can also kill you in an instant and then have you start over and watch all the cutscenes again. You can skip some of them, but that takes time, too, before you get back into the action, because you always have to confirm that you want to skip them. In the end, although the game showed some promise, I was rather glad that it was over after roughly three levels and I didn't have to endure more of this kind of "challenge".
Post edited July 17, 2015 by Leroux
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penumbren: It took me over four hours, although I'm not the swiftest point-and-click player. (I grew up on them, but I'm not good at playing them for speed.)
So it is longer than the first chapter, thanks for the info! I grew up with point & click adventures as well and I'm not the fastest with them, either. On the contrary: It generally takes me way more time to complete any game of any genre with only a few exceptions like Secret Files: Sam Peters or Chapter 1 of The Journey Down. Aside from those few exceptions, my playtime is virtually always considerably higher than what howlongtobeat.com (howlongtocheat.com?) lists. Even if I didn't get stuck a lot, or at all. Makes me wonder if I'm just that slow or if the other people are BS-ing.
I have noticed that a whole lot of people confuse playtime and game length. If you got stuck somewhere for 2 hours then that doesn't increase raw game length but it did increase your personal playtime.

I do like to marvel at the scenery and don't skip the dialogue if the voice acting is good and I like to experiment/explore so I'm not always going straight for the finishing line. But even if I do try to finish a game without much diddle-daddle, it still takes me longer than what HLTB lists. Naturally, it's not a "contest" but I would like to have a reliable source where one can see how long a game is. HLTB is sometimes off, here's an example: Broken Sword 5 Episode 1 is listed as taking 6,5 hours which seems about right, took me that long as well. But Episode 2 is listed as taking only 3,5 hours and that makes no sense. Even though there are fewer locations and less tasks to do in the 2nd chapter, the puzzles are more challenging than in the first chapter (chapter 1 only has one puzzle that's slightly tricky). 3,5 hours for chapter 2 is possible if you never get stuck at all, figuring out everything instantly. But I highly doubt that this accurately reflect the average player's experience.

The playtimes in Steam reviews seem to give a more varied picture, on the other hand playtime is often inflated there because the game counts your afk time as playtime as long as the game is running. Which means I still have to keep track of my break times etc in case I want to review the game and give an idea as to the actual playtime. I try to keep track of where I got stuck and for how long so that I can more accurately compare a game to other game's in terms of raw game length because personal playtime is too random anyway, greatly varies from person to person.

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penumbren: It's currently [url=http://isthereanydeal.com/specials/#/page:game/info?plain=journeydownchaptertwo]on sale at GreenMan Gaming[/url] for $4.49 and you can use the 20% off voucher with it, so that's not a bad price.
Oh crap, that site looks dangerous. An entire website where you can keep track of sales from different services? How come I've never heard about this? It's not like I've been hiding underneath a rock, then again it's probably for the best if I don't use that service because I'm currently on a Stop Buying Games self therapy and will have been clean for one entire month by tomorrow.

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PaterAlf: If you think the normal levels of Escape Goat are challenging, then Ethan: Meteor Hunter is definitely not the right game for you. Did you play Unmechanical? It's not really a platformer (because you can fly), but it's a very well designed puzzle game that you really might enjoy.
I played and finished Unmechanical a couple days ago, just haven't posted a review yet.
The Swapper and Unmechanical are right up my alley. Also Toki Tori but I put that one on hold as I'm finding the levels to be increasingly anal, there's exactly one way to solve them in most cases. Being forced to find one exact solution doesn't bother me in other puzzle games but in Toki Tori it can be strangely aggravating. The game isn't as easy as it looks.

Definitely hoping for more games like The Swapper / Unmechanical. It's really too bad that there are so many cool looking puzzle platformers out there (Adventures of Shuggy, Gateways, Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack etc etc) but most of them seem way too twitchy to me in regards to platforming, even if I'd love the puzzles. Can't put a verdict on Escape Goat yet. If I can finish it without having to eat my controller, I might keep Escape Goat 2 on my wishlist. Otherwise, I'll punish the developer by not buying the game and by passive aggressively making an angry review no one will read.

Perhaps I wasn't born to platform. But I'm trying!
Post edited July 17, 2015 by awalterj
Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside

I've never played an adventure by Humongous Entertainment when I was a kid and yet I think these games are extremely charming. Of course you shouldn't expect any overly hard puzzles or challenges, but there are likeable characters and funny situations and a light-hearted atmosphere.

I'm not sure if it is the same for all HE games, but at least this game even has some replaybility, because some aspects are randomized which means you can find items and puzzles in different locations.

I will play the other Pajama Sam games as well (not right away, but in the near future).

Complete list of finished games in 2015
Adventures of Bertram Fiddle - Episode 1: A Dreadly Business

Another game that ends after two hours announcing "to be continued", although in this case at least the title is an indication of its incomplete nature. I would have preferred a series with different cases per episode to a case split in several episodes, but apart from that I liked the game. It's a simple and easy point-and-click adventure made for tablets but working well on the PC, too. Original art style, funny voice-acting with British accents, silly puns and wacky story, and no walkthrough needed - what more could you ask of something like this? Well, it's probably not all that memorable in the long run, but I enjoyed the time spent with it.
The Legend of Zelda (Wii Virtual Console)

Doesn't really need any description, everyone knows Zelda even if they haven't played it.

Always wanted this when i was a kid, but my family never got past Duck Hunt and Excitebike on the NES (the only two games we had). 28 years late, but now I've finally played the original and it actually stands up quite well to be honest. I now realize that if i had of had this when i was 16, i probably would have played Zelda instead of school work- so in hindsight it's for the best i suppose.

The Wii Virtual Console works fine and all the games for it are original and not updated or remade. I'll be getting a few more selected titles apart from the old Zelda games that i already have, early Metroids and Castlevanias and Chronotrigger at least. Some people say that Nintendo VC games are too expensive, but the cheapest two price tiers that the NES and SNES titles are on are cheaper than the equivalent two GOG tiers when translated to my currency (with the A$ in it's current sorry state)...so if the Nintendo VC games are overpriced then so are GOG games. Of course GOG games are more likely to have sales, whilst Nintendo games almost never go on sale. But it saves finding old cartridges, or ROMS and emulation.
Post edited July 18, 2015 by CMOT70