"In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason."
-Ernest Hemingway

This War of Mine
10/18/15

I played this game... a lot... as soon as it was released. I learned everything I know "in the field" and still haven't done any reading about it online. There are still things I have not seen, but mostly because I'm a wimp and prefer my survivors to survive. For instance, I know the Military Base is extensive by how far you can move the screen over, but I've just traded at the front near the guard tower. :)

I played dozens of times, then reinstalled when it received an update, I imagine sometime in January. This update added a second shelter, nerfed the guy I used to make things easy(er) (trader at the Garage was extremely generous with spare parts until the 2nd build), and showed 12 initial setups, which were just given out at random in the first build. I decided to play through all 12 setups. Picture attached. I began in February, then got bogged down in tax season and only just returned last month.

In 12 playthroughs on this build I lost three people. Pavle in game 1, Marko in game 2, and Zlata in game 7. All of them were shot while out scavenging. I have lost survivors to starvation and freezing, but it has been a long time. Basically, your survivors just need to sleep, eat, and not freeze to death. All else is just bonus.

Last night I finally loaded a current build and the trading seems better (you receive more bang for the buck). I ran through a week of an easy setup (the cook, the builder, the negotiator, and the carrier) and was living in a tropical paradise - I had already built the hydroponic workshop, which I rarely got around to crafting on that second build I used even given a full 45 days. With random setups on the stingy build it normally took about 17 days to get comfortable.

I'll add more of a review later this week. I love this game and will continue to play it for years.

-My favorite survivor is Boris because he can haul so much. If starting with him, it will be much easier to survive.
-My worst time of it was game 8 with Zlata and Emilia. They were robbed blind over and over every single night until Pavle finally arrived about 3 weeks in and helped as a 2nd nighttime guard. Brutal. Zlata was shot on Night 29, but survived.
-I really enjoyed the Marko solo setup, which I ran as my final twelfth game. Rather simple, actually, with the size of his backpack. I was able to craft a fair amount of household items despite having to carry all my belongings every night.

Apothecarium: Renaissance of Evil:

Buggy mess of a HOG. Not fun, tons of problems.


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I've seen quite a few folks come right out and make the direct comparison. I agree with you, they are very different games and I'm glad Thief 4 wasn't exactly Dishonored. I loved them both quite differently. I wish I hadn't lost my Thief 3 review. I doubt I could recreate it and it went into great lengths about why it was still fun and also rightfully compared against the original games in the series. The same applied to Thief 4 IMHO. Standing alone its a great game. Compared against the previous "Thief" games, its got some issues, but none that I couldn't easily get passed.

Halloween is an Atari 2600 game that is inspired by the John Carpenter movie. You control a babysitter who's in a really big house with Michael Myers. Your job is to run around evading the killer and escorting little kids to the safe rooms on the far left and right of the house. Occasionally you can also pick up a knife and stab the killer to make him run off the screen. The more kids you save, the faster Michael moves, so he's going to catch you eventually.

This is really a high-scoring game as there's no way to "finish" it but I figured I'd list it here anyway. It's kind of fun but the crudely rendered Halloween theme music gets repetitive really fast and I feel like there's too much running around just trying to find the kids and not enough real action. The most entertaining part of the game is the ancient 8-bit gore - when Michael gets a kid, he stabs him to death with little red jets of blood shooting out of the body, and when he catches you he instantly decapitates you, causing your character to run around headless while blood sprays out of your neck like a Japanese swordfighting movie.

Trine 2

Beat the main storyline - will save the extended quest line for some other day.

But really enjoyed this game and would recommend it highly.

The art and story are great, and the platforming/puzzle elements generally work quite well together. In a few instances it's necessary to sort out a puzzle to progress, but in most cases the puzzles involve finding secret rooms or collecting extra tokens for experience.

I've been whittling away at the Arkania series for what seems like ages now...
Finally finished Arkania 3, i forgot how utterly frustrating the last two section are.
Meh 900 & something out of 1000 at the end, shit missed something.
I refuse to go through the labyrinth section again, call it done and move on.
Would of been nice to get 1000 / 1000
Oh well, great games nonetheless with a superb sound score.

As the final episode got released yesterday, I've completed Tales from the Borderlands, which I owned thanks to the generosity of ThePunishedSnake :)

What a ride, what a ride! I don't know about Telltale's Game of Thrones or Minecraft, but Tales from the Bordelands is the PERFECT spin off-tie in to the already great series of Borderlands!!

Of course, it's more a cinematic adventure than an action game, but the narration, the plot twists, the characters, the music, everything respects Borderlands spirit to the very core.

In the Borderlands galaxy, it's up to par with Borderlands 1 & 2, the weakest one (and still very good) so far being the Pre-sequel.

So, yes, if you want a different shot at Borderlands, try it! You certainly won't be disappointed!

So far in 2015: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2015/post2

Tales From the Borderlands Ep. 5 (Xbox One)

So now it's all done, for this season. No idea if there will be a follow up season. It's a great supplement to the Borderlands games which are my absolute favorite AAA titles in recent years. The story ties into the main games well, and even gives some hints as to where Borderlands 3 will be going. Really can't say much about these types of things without spoilers so...

If Loader Bot is not a playable character in Borderlands 3 then I'll be very surprised.

Did you try the Directors Cut? It extends it and tweaks it somewhat.

Still one of the best games in my recent memory.

I quit at the shadow version of yourself. :l

Indeed, played the Director's cut, hence the temptation to try the different paths towards the end ;-)

HuniePop (uncensored version bought from the developer's site)

I unlocked alpha mode this evening and i guess this counts as finishing the game. :D

Though i will keep playing in alpha mode and see how far i come.

Leon's Cool Game

Pretty cool mechanics. Try it yourself! https://twitter.com/leonscoolgame

Hotline Miami

I went into it totally cold, without reading anything on the net first. Started using keyboard and mouse which almost ended right there. It was like WTF? Then i plugged in the 360 controller and it was just a twin stick shooter after that. I found the first 4 levels to be the hardest because i was getting the hang of the controls and getting nailed constantly by shooters off screen.
Then i accidentally worked out how to extend my view in chapter 5 (left bumper and right stick!). After that it got progressively easier, now that i could target lock people from far away and kill them before they got me.

The only problem for me later was the extra missions (after the final chapter) initially had me learning to play again, since my favorite "Don Juan wait behind door with shotgun" tactic was rendered useless.

I did not get all the letters, partly because i didn't even realize they existed until accidentally finding one halfway through the game. Maybe I'll replay it sometime to take care of that. But for now I'm done.

Good fun game.

FALLOUT 3

First off, I'll say I can understand some of the complaints about the game from hardcore Fallout fans.

Having said that, I had a blast with this one. I was playing the GOTY edition, so had the DLCs installed as well. I've started and abandoned the game several times before; sometimes due to lost interest, sometimes due to constant crashes. Just never really got into it for some reason. Recently, This Thread, suggesting it's more enjoyable if approached as a free-form sandbox game, prompted me to give it another look. So I modded the shit out of it (graphics mods, weather mods, additional monsters, higher difficulty, etc) and was loving it. But, alas, it crashed about 30 hours in and all my saves were corrupted. So I decided to go back to square one and minimize the modding. What I used was:

Unoffical patch (patching is always a good thing)
CASM (Cipscis' Automatic Save Manager)
Darnified UI (UI improvements for PC? Yes, please)
Better High Detail Map and Icons (prettier map - and easier to read - again, yes, please!)

IMO, CASM is an absolute must for the game. I set it to save every couple minutes and it was a very wise decision. The game crashed a few times (not a ton, but enough to be annoying as hell if I didn't have a recent save handy) and this mod saved my butt. Highly, highly recommended.

Anyway, I spent just over 180 hours going through the game and I believe I soaked out pretty much all the content I could. I did resort to a walkthrough a few times to check if there was something I'd missed in some areas (and wow, you can overlook a lot of things if you're not thorough - and even if you are!) I maxed out my levels about 90 hours in (so around half way through the run) and didn't find it bothered me at all. Not too shabby for someone that likes to get that regular levelling reward in RPG-style games.

I built a stealth-oriented character that relied mostly on the Deathclaw Gauntlet and the Sniper Rifle. Still used a healthy amount of other weapons (combat shotgun, assault rifle, some mines and grenades), but those were my two staples. There's something terribly satisfying about sneak-attack sniping at several hundred yards distance to cull out the mobs, then closing in and getting up close and personal with the hand of a dead demonoid monster. Add in the Bloody Mess perk and things explode with alarming regularity.

The story wasn't the greatest and, in fact, I kind of forgot about it for most of the playthrough. I think what Bethesda has trouble with is creating a story big enough for the games they make. Quests hit the whole spectrum from very good to very mediocre.

I did like the expansions, although I think my favorites were Mothership Zeta (I loved sneaking through the ship and waxing those aliens) and Point Lookout (I liked the area, and found it amusing to be fighting mutated hillbillies).

By the time I finished, I was well satisifed with the game, and could see maybe giving it a go again with more mods. At the end, I returned home to Megaton, kicked back in the shack with Fawkes (I love Fawkes) and cracked open some of the numerous bottles of Scotch I'd collected throughout the wasteland. My vault dweller will retire there with good booze and good company. Damned good fun.

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