Just finished Crysis Warhead, not the GOG version released this week, but the DRM-ridden Origin version that I had almost finished already when EA released the game here.

Crysis Warhead is a fun game, playing much like Crysis, to which it is sort of an in between betwixt an expansion to Crysis and a separate game. It's a separate story taking place parallel to the happenings of Nomad in Crysis. The main character in Crysis Warhead sees action on another part of the island. He, Psycho, a British nanosuit combatant fighting for the Americans has more personality than Nomad, in some cutscenes the emotions he goes through are vividly portrait and well acted out. The inbetween separate game and expansion shows mostly in it's length: it's clearly an addition to Crysis and not nearly as long. Though I had fun with it and it would be well worth this weekend's €7,29 sales price to me were it not I already have the game, just finished it and with my backlog being that huge, I don't think I'll return to this one. But I had lots of fun finishing it.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I started this playthrough about a week or 2 before the HD remaster got released, which means I'll probably delay my playing of the HD version for a bit. I thought I'd do a playthrough on master difficulty, as I'd naively assumed that I was good at this game. It was a challenge, I grew an immense hatred for the Dawnguard DLC, which would spawn 3 heavily armoured dude or 3 tough vampires at least once every hour it seemed. This is my 4th playthrough, the first one where I completed the crown of Barenziah and the first I played as a rogue. I think my fond memories for the game blocked out the memories of all the glitches, there were many. My highpoint was finally getting 100 pickpocket and going around stealing everyone's clothes, another was accidentally using fus ro dah in the middle of the cease fire meeting, low point was not being able to complete the Malacath daedric quest due to a glitch. My favourite questline is the thieves guild, closely followed by Dragonborn DLC. Least favourite is civil war.

My first copy of Skyrim was on the PS3, which I got the day it came out. Of course this meant I had the worst version, having the dlc delayed for months after the PC got theirs, and the infamous water freezing bug. My first playthrough I lost Esbern while escorting him to Delphine due to a dragon attack and was unable to continue the main quest. Somehow despite all that it ended up becoming my favourite game, and I must've sunk about 200 hours into my book hoarding quest. I'm not sure if they'll end up releasing an elder scrolls 6, Black Marsh or Valenwood would be cool I think. Anyway in summary: Great game, great music, great story, many many glitches.

Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice (PS3)

It's be hard to realise that this game should be a generation ahead of the previous one, the graphics run smoother but the sprites and backgrounds still look similar to those from Disgaea 2. The story seems to have jumped on the Harry Potter bandwagon by being set in a school for demons, where the best demons are those who never go to lessons. The main character Mao, seems to be a nerdy copy of Laharl from the first Disgaea, both basically start out in a strong position, both have daddy issues and both slowly become more good with the help from their friends. I preferred Adell to Laharl but I know I'm in the minority. Characters from previous games can be unlocked through post game content or through DLC. Gameplay is pretty much the same as every other game in the series, except you spend Mana to power up your moves instead of having to train them up through usage.

As I played through this game, all I could think about was how much I preferred the previous 2. If you want to get your fill of Disgaea than this game is a good choice, however if its your first time I'd suggest one of the previous 2 first (Both of which are either on or coming to PC). One oddity about this game was the fact you don't get any trophy's (Achievements) for progress through the story, yet theres about 25 you get through fighting pirates. There was also one for dealing over 10,000,000,000 damage in a single attack (I think I managed a 450,000 before I got bored). Anyway, it's a good game, but there are better ones in the series.

I finished Risen last week. The game is quite decent but it has some glaring flaws that ruin the fun. First of all the hero is a bland, unsympathetic asshole and his snarky comments are just annoying. The Story is pretty boring and the Island is just generic with only very few interesting, memorable places.
Worst of all is the melee combat, it's utter shite. You're forced to run around and block enemy attacks. The enemies keep on hitting you so fast that having a chance to counter their attacks comes down to sheer luck. This drags out the fights way too long and makes them just frustrating.
The endboss battle is a bad joke! It doesn't matter if you trained your character as a swordfighter or mage as you're forced to use a certain weapon for the endboss. The battle itself is also just annoying. You're running around on platforms which keep disappearing, dodge the boss' attacks and can only hit him if you reflected one of his attacks on him with your shield. He has no life bar and no real hit feedback so you have no clue if you hit him or not. This endboss battle plays like an action game and has nothing to do with a RPG, it's just plain bullshit.

At least exploring the island and searching for treasure was fun. There are also a few interesting quests (like the one about the Gyrger) and decent characters like Patty. So Risen was at least somewhat fun to play but it's nowhere near as good and memorable as the Gothic games.

All in all i was disappointed because with more attention to detail Risen could have been a good RPG. It's just slightly above average and i'd give it 3/5 stars.

Thanks for the review!

I hate boss battles like that, so I think I'll push Risen a bit further back down the backlog list.

Yeah, that final boss battle was really messed up. Felt maybe at home in some JRPG, not there, and couldn't figure out what I should be doing at first.
Combat otherwise though, was rather fond of it because it allowed me to clear nearly the entire island untrained. And, as is typical for PB, if you want to be a mage you will be untrained in the relevant ways for quite a long time. Slow and steady, tactical, very defensive and catch openings to just chip away at the tougher enemies, but with a few exceptions you can take just about anything from the get go.

I've reviewed Risen earlier this year as well, if you want to read some more about its pro's and con's. In most points I agree with Impaler26 though.

PC:
+Touhou 8 - Imperishable Night (Reimu & Yukari, 1CC Normal wiith good ending, five lives and no bombs, default settings)

This installment of the Touhou Project had quite the interesting system: time. Collect enough time orbs in the first five stages in order to reach the real Stage 6, fail in one and you get sent to the fake Stage 6. Either way, there is a lot of gold and treasure to be obtained at the end of either side. They're your nail-bitingly hard bullet hell games after all (but is it nail-bitingly hard for me anymore?)

My list of games. Imperishable.

Thanks for your excellent review.

Have to say, this is a great thread for helping you find the games you'll enjoy and avoid the ones you probably wouldn't. I do plan to play Risen sometime in the future, but there are plenty of other games in front of it on the list.

Just finished the main campaign of Dying Light after dozens of hours

I was quite well surprised by this game as while it's not necessarly very original, it makes a really good job at mixing several games into one: sandbox x parkour x melee fighting x guns x grappling hook x lots of loot.

Although you could play it as a survival game by not leveling up your skills (and thus making it quite hardcore), there are several ways to quickly level up all your stats and getting extra skills which while they make the game easier, they also make it more "fluid" and pleasant to play as you can make your way through the city the way you want and have more fun.

Like in many games, the main story is awful and boring and it was quite a pain to finish it. The side quests are more fun to play and in general, it's more interesting to explore the open-world than going straight to the finish line. I still have the DLC ("The Following") to play and naturally, complete all the challenges.

Just finished NOX with the Wizard.
This was my very first playthrough of the game, and it was way better and way more fun than I expected it to be. Terrific sound design. Character control felt really good. Massive levels, though some of the fights (not to mention the kill count) became a little absurd in Chapters 9 and 10. Undoubtedly a pleasant surprise, this game.

The Last Door

I'd already beaten this at some point, but my memories of the story were pretty vague, so I replayed it in preparation for playing Season Two.

It's good! I mean, obviously I must have thought that, since I'm replaying it in preparation of playing the sequel. The graphics are still kind of off-puttting (I'm not going to pretend not to care about the visuals in a visual medium), but not enough to ruin it, while the music is amazing, and it maintains an effective atmosphere. I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to call it scary, in the way that e.g. Amnesia was, but it's certainly brooding. The story is often called Lovecraftian; I'm not sure how specifically true I think that is (there's a sequence with a violinist trying to compose his masterpiece that strikes me as being more Poe than Lovecraft, and the things that people seem to describe as "Lovecraftian" are often pretty generic, appearing also in the works of e.g. Algernon Blackwood), but it's pretty clearly embedded in the Weird Fiction genre that Lovecraft worked in, if not Lovecraft himself.

Of course, the real question is: having set up the story, can it stick the landing? One of the (two) reviews of the second season on GOG is critical of the ending, while the Steam reviews seem more positive. I guess I'll be making up my own mind soon enough.

Hehehe, I also got Season 2 on the Halloween promo and I'm considering replaying Season 1 before tackling it, as I felt quite lost even after watching the intro/recap of the first 4 chapters.

I agree, the graphics put me off at first, especially no facial expressions. But just in this one case, I think the low key graphics added to the Lovecraftian atmosphere of impressions and not in your face.

Finally finished Populous: The Beginning yesterday. I've owned the game since 1999 and approached it dozens of times over the years, I feel almost depressed now that I'm finally done with it. Well, at least I still have the expansion ahead of me, although it annoys the heck out of me that it's one of those expansions where you can instantly pick all levels instead of having an actual campaign and which don't add anything other than new maps. Anyway, truly magnificent game, I wish there were a single other game in this vein out there.