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Under the videogaming point of view, this year had a strong start already with the excellent Xenonauts!

WARNING: Xenonauts is not a videogame. It's a damn addiction!
Let me review it briefly: there is enough material to talk about it for days, but I'll try to be essential.

Xenonauts is a turn-based strategy game inspired by the classic X-Com, born with the clear intent to improve the formula of its predecessor. After starting as a compeltely independed project and then being supported by a successful Kickstarter to cover some of the smaller details that couldn't be implemented with the original budget, I must say that it definitely does not fail to deliver.

Earth, 1979. In the middle of the Cold War, the planet is attacked by an fleet of space invaders floating just above the atmosphere. It's obvious that their goal is not the extermiantion of the human race, yet they keep sending landing teams to accomplish unknown mission for unknown purposes.
Your objective: as the leader of the newly recognized Xenonauts oragniazation, an agency supported by a world now united to resist the threat, you must find out the alien's goals, study their technology, improve humanity's defences, foil the baddies' plans and untimately avoid the global catastrophe.

The game is basically organized in three phases: economic manageament, interception and ground engagement.

During the first phase, you'll have to choose the destination of the financial resources the funding nations send to you at the beginning of each month; you'll have to choose wisely how to distribute them between facilities construction, scientists/engineers/soldiers hiring and weapons/armour/vehicles building. During the first in-game months this will be you main problem: you'll need to quickly expand your world coverage with new bases and radar arrays, otherwise the enemy scouts will do what they please undisturbed, worsening your relations with the funding nations they strike and hence lowering your next incomes.
Initially, you will see your finances dive: only an effective interception system will allow you to survive -remeber, if you don't pay for wags and expenses, the game is over- so in a certain sense"who spends more, spends less". Holding the action to save money will almost never help you.
Moreover, starting form the middle stage of the game, the ETs will start to build bases in the "dark" zones and conquer entire continents, so an efficient operative net is needed.

During the second, you will send your interceptors against the ufos with the intent of shooting them down on land for your strike teams to investigate.
You can either auto-resolve the sky enocunters or manually engage the targets; if you choose this second option, you can control your fighters like you were issuing orders whatching a radar screen in a real time with pause gameplay style.
Many underestimate this mode, yet I found it compelx enough to be very entertaining during the entire game and very useful to turn the tides of the battle in my favour. When the encounters start to be 3 vs 3 and your tech three is still way under the new alien battleships, having direct control on the strategy is vital; I have won several battles with the autoresolve indicator signing less than 20% of possible chances -it was not an easy task, but in the end the losses were much more acceptable than those following the automated resolution.

During the third, you will send your soldiers to investigate the Alien wreckage, recovering new technology for the science team to study, scavenging special materials and terminating the remaining invading forces.
This is where the game really shines: a brilliant AI will chase your team relentlessly in turn-based combat while they explore the (partially) randomly generated maps, and only a very good use of tactics could allow your men to survive.
The possibilities are many, increased by a susbtantial number weapons, armours, soldier's stats, altered mind states due to Alien's psionic powers, ground vehicles and different opponents with peculiar features.
Mind this, though: the game is HARD. During my first hours of play I had to save-scum several times to better understand the mechanics and avoid being slaughtered, yet even after lerning them well enough the flow of combat was far from easy. Each error wil cost you dearly, and losing an experienced soldier is always a tragedy.

The three phases will keep on like this for the whole game, yet the developers never give you the time to get used to the encounters: the invasion will escalate quickly, and whenever you will feel comfotable enough against the enemy, apparently being able to tame it with your new tech and expecting no more surprises, the attacking forces will deploy more advanced ships, new troops and more powerful weapons, always keeping you on your toes so that things do not get repetitive.

Depending on how you play, the invaders may start Terror missions to conquer or destroy cities: those particularly difficult mission will put you to test, having dire negative effects in case of failure.
If they feel particularly confident they may even try to attack your base, so be sure to build AA guns and always keep a garrison ready: the sneaky taffers may surprise you when you are busy with another operation.


I found the game as a whole really impressive, my only complaint being due to the excessive hastiness of the ending (considering the fact that this is a game based on mechanics, this is not a big issue, anyway).
Its "just one more turn" appeal guarantees that I will play it more times -after the new 1.5 patch is out with all its improvements- especially at higher difficulties or with the masochistic "Ironman mode" (which prevents you to have free control of multiple saves for a painfully realistic experience).

That said, let me award Xenonauts with the Enebias' Official Seal of Approval™!
Absolutely recommended, if you are a stragegy fan get it asap: you will not be disappointed!
Age of Booty

Th game may seem to be simple but it can be really challenging and entertaining. It's a real time game and you sail on a hex-based map, if there is an enemy of any sort on a neighboring hex you start to shoot at each other. There are several important objects on each map:
- A lair where you can upgrade your ship and where you respawn
- Floating crates with resources
- Villages that can defend themselves but if you destroy them you get some resources
- Towns that can be captured after destroying their defenses. Some of them produce resources and you can upgrade them to boost their defenses (obviously you have to capture them first)
- Merchant ships. After sinking them a special crate will appear with so-called curses (special abilities that you can use)
- Pirate ships (some of them are your allies!)
The goal is to capture a specific number of towns before your enemies. As you can imagine it's a full scale war and towns will change their owners pretty often. And they are crucial also because they produce resources that you can use to upgrade ships (cannons, armor and speed) and towns (better defenses). Keep in mind that if your enemy destroy your town an upgrade is lost. It's not the case with your ship, you will always respawn with every purchased upgrade.

What's the most entertaining part of the game? That in most cases you are not alone but part of a team. Keep in mind that you share the same resources so sometimes it's better to let your ally upgrade his ship. A group of medium ships is better then one great ship and a few barely sailing vessels. Some people criticize this, personally I love it: you have absolutely no control over your allies. They do whatever they think is right. It means that you have to be the smart one and adjust your actions to whatever they are doing. Are they on their way to capture a town? Don't sail to help them, try to intercept an enemy's ship that rush to defend it. Do you see them battling a stronger enemy? Make a decision: sometimes it's better to help them and sink an enemy (it will respawn but lairs are usually located on the edges of a map so you will have some time without his menace) but you can also sneak and capture a town (perhaps the last one you need to claim a victory). This part of a game was really great and that's the main reason I recommend it.

The drawback is that there is no campaign, only a set of challenges with increasing difficulty. I haven't tried multiplayer so I cannot comment on that. The game is fun nonetheless. And believe me: it's not really casual, sometimes it's really hard to claim victory!


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valdaintheking: Hey, you wouldnt happen to know if he's ghostwise?
Who or what is ghostwise?
16.01.2015 - Retention
That certainly was pretentious... It's a game \ psychotest \ photoalbum where you are presented with 80 sets of three photos and you need to pick one of them. Based on your choices you should be awarded one of four ending but I got all four after my first 'playthrough' (and to be clear, by 'ending' I mean one more picture with a bit of text, just like 'gameplay' screens).
So, it's watching nice pictures and listening to relaxing music. For 80 cents. I don't know what else to say.
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valdaintheking: Hey, you wouldnt happen to know if he's ghostwise?
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genkicolleen: Who or what is ghostwise?
I was wondering the same but apparently he's just trying to do some joke since he posted the same question on another thread.
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genkicolleen: Who or what is ghostwise?
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Cyraxpt: I was wondering the same but apparently he's just trying to do some joke since he posted the same question on another thread.
Hmm, Ghostwise is a subrace of Halfling in NWN2. I wonder if that's what he's referencing.
Just finished Rogue Legacy. Damn it feels nice to actually complete a game, I don't seem to do that often enough any more.

The last boss was a little easy (I totally spammed him through some of the items I unlocked) but considering how tough some of the rest of the game was that was fine...

Fun little game, definitely recommend it. Nice little time waster. It's one of those games where you always feel like your time has been well spent (and I love that) because every run through the castle gets you more gold to upgrade your gear and your hero and you learn more about the enemies, or how to beat a particular type of room, or even just how to use one of the classes best. When I first started I was dying after two or three rooms, by the end I was breezing through most of the rooms and only dying on bosses, mini bosses or the really awful rooms.

I'll probably do a New Game+ run at some point, mainly because I still have items left to get and skills to level up...
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Cyraxpt: I was wondering the same but apparently he's just trying to do some joke since he posted the same question on another thread.
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Coelocanth: Hmm, Ghostwise is a subrace of Halfling in NWN2. I wonder if that's what he's referencing.
They are the survivors from the north. They can lay traps unlike Stoutheart and can get feral after they mate. I dont remember if they are the favored class of barbarians. It matters not-sounds like somebody had a successful day's work!
Shadow Warrior(the 2013 reboot)

wangtastic/10
Yesterday 15.1.2015 finished Crusader: No Remorse

Awesome game and no nostalgia involved because it was my first playtrought.

Sure, controls got lot of practice first, but got used to them. Still it was little awkward to play this. Action was good, music was excellent and liked the story, those cheesy fmv's were fun to watch. Lots of secrets to find and usually stuff you get are life saving ones. Levels were usually long, take 2-4 hours to make them complete and i take my time. Will play No Regret next when i finish other games. 8/10
Post edited January 16, 2015 by Demo39
Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death

I didn't expect too much out of the game and I certainly didn't get anything special. In fact, the most entertaining part of the game is the banter between the main character and his flying mask companion. Also, the environments look particularly impressive and breath-taking and the subject matter isn't something you see in every game, but that's really about it.

Those being the best qualities in an action game is certainly worrying, but between heavily linear paths with invisible walls, a fixed and at times really annoying camera, a combat system that relies heavily on button-mashing and dodging, a mana bar that is useless other than some area spells (which take up over half of your bar, preventing you from casting one again after the first one, even after upgrading your mana bar to its fullest) and some throwing daggers which are only circumstantially useful, along with some reskinned opponents left and right don't give the best impression. Nor do the spongy enemies along with the health packs that are everywhere. Couldn't they reduce the number of health packs and just make them less spongy? Just a thought, but that wouldn't still fix the rest of the game.

4 games already. Can I double them within this month?
Post edited January 17, 2015 by Grargar
I just finished Famaze.

Famaze is a free little Rogue-like-like-(like? How many likes and lites are added nowadays?) on Steam or for 3,49€ on Desura. Is there a different in the game?

The game itself is sadly quite boring and the experience system is either bugged or I don't undestand it at all. Because of that I call it finished even though I got the bad end.

Overall it is fun for the first few minutes and it's free.


Here's my list.
17.01.2015 - Journal
Small nice artsy game. Decent story, really nice visuals, a bit of self-awareness hidden as secret ending.
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genkicolleen: The Swapper (Puzzle-Adventure)

You might have noticed that I did not add 'Platformer' to the genre of the game, despite the game being listed as one. I just can't think of this game as a platfomer. There are no death traps, no enemies to avoid, no coins or baubles to collect... it's simply an adventure game that happens to have some platforms in it.
(The post is longer, but I didn't want to quote everything.)


I just finished The Swapper too and I doubt I can come up with a better description than you.
I only have one question. Did you choose "Left Mouse Button" or "E"? I hope this way I don't spoil anything for people who still want (and should) play this game.

Here's my list.
Post edited January 17, 2015 by Dotur
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Dotur: Did you choose "Left Mouse Button" or "E"?
I didn't actually realize there was a choice, so button it was. *shiver* If you made the other choice, PM me and tell me what happened, will you?
Post edited January 17, 2015 by genkicolleen