Deadpool

Originally, the game was supposed to be called "Learn how to be meta and break the fourth wall with Deadpool". Then Deadpool himself commented that it was too long a title and it was renamed to Deadpool Simulator. Then, Deadpool complained that the game was nothing at all like all those Simulator games and, eventually, it was decided to just name it Deadpool.*

*The above story is completely legit and no part of it was fabricated.

Anyway, Deadpool is an action game, in which you control the eponymous character. With him, you'll be slaying bad guys, more bad guys, cracking crude jokes, constantly breaking the fourth wall (even more so than the 2004 version of Bard's Tale) and parodying stuff, video-game related or not. I'm not completely sure how faithful is the game to the comics (I have been informed that it is, but I can't personally verify it) but, assuming it is, I wouldn't recommend the game to people who don't like the Deadpool comics, as a lot of its charm revolves around the main character's comedy routine. Remove him from the game and you end up with a decent, but button mashing hack and slash game complete with swords, guns, grenades and upgrades, filled with various setpieces and a bad camera. I did personally enjoy it, though and I can't hold it against a game that made me laugh from the beginning to the end.

Full list.

Gone home

A walking around and looking at things simulator.
Under normal circumstances I wouldn't pay for such a game. But it was on sale and I had previously watched a video review of it by Super Bunnyhop, so I decided to give it a try.
And I was utterly disappointed.
I had expected at least something, and I got nothing.
I won't say that the story is bad, because it isn't. But I will say that it barely qualifies as a short story.
It's short, it's hollow, it's a game only under the loosest definition possible and the developer expecting 20$ for it is nothing short of an insult.
3/10

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS)

The 4th game in the Ace Attorney series, this game follows a new protagonist Apollo Justice, through 4 cases, with his assistant Trucy Wright. The prosecutor is Dante from the Devil May Cry series, however he's actually a lot more helpful than previous prosecutors. Phoenix Wright plays a supporting role and seems to know everything but rarely tells you anything.

Though it only has 4 cases, the 4th is ridiculously long, involves flashbacks and 3 trials, making it probably the longest game in the franchise. It makes use of skills used in the last episode of the first game, including 3D crime scene diagrams, the ability to examine evidence more closely and one part involves you carefully analysing footage and audio from a concert. Another new feature is the 'percieve' feature, that allows you to check for nervous twitches when cross examining a witness.

In my opinion, finding contradictions does prove a lot more engaging, and the fact the games are no longer ports of Japanese GBA titles shows itself. In terms of bad points, there are a few plotholes, there are several moments where common sense doesn't seem to occur to anyone, the biggest is thinking a blind child could wield and fire a 45' revolver. Also Winston Payne actually has hair in a game set almost 10 years after he went bald. Apollo doesn't really compare to Phoenix and it can be understood why they switch back to Phoenix for the 5th game in the series. It's not the best game in the series, but I wouldn't say it's the worst either.

Binary Domain. A cover-based shooter with relationship-building elements. You have a team of supporting characters that go into action with you and it's important to tell them stuff they want to hear, be a badass in combat, and try not to shoot them. Doing these things makes them trust you more, which improves the quality of the ending you get. My understanding is that this concept was rooted in Sega's interest in creating a Mass Effect 2-like title, but of course it's Sega and they totally blew the marketing of the game, so it bombed even though it's really very good (made by the Yakuza team, btw).

One of the game's big features is that you can order and respond to your crew with a headset, but the game is best played without this feature because the voice recognition feature is way too sensitive and even at lowest setting kept misinterpreting my breathing and ambient noise in the room as various commands.

What's really cool about the game is that you're fighting robots all the way through, and locational damage plays a big part of the game. E.g., you want to take away the enemy's gun, you can literally disarm it by shooting its arm off; if it's rushing you and you want to slow it down, blow its legs off and force it to crawl. My favorite thing to do is to blow their heads off, which doesn't kill them but makes them confused and causes them to turn around and start shooting their mates. Blasting pieces off of these robots never got old for me.

The game looks really good, it's mostly fast-paced and even the interludes are fairly short, and it controls very well. It deserved better than it got.

Shadow Warrior: Twin Dragon

Good game. It didn't really add much new, just more levels, but that's okay.

Finished Htach & Slay. Not much to say about this one. Not very good but not bad either. It only takes 2 hours to beat the game and all you need to do is click to kill dinos, lots of dinos.

Full list here.

Velvet Assassin

Sadly not available on GOG, but I bought it a while ago on GamersGate and finally got a chance to play it all the way through.

You play a female assassin called Violette who (shallow person I am) is not too bad to look at, especially since it's played in the third person and you can rotate her around and... look deeply into her eyes... which do kindof look rather haunted... Which is fitting because this game is set during the 2nd world war and as you listen to some of the conversations of the "enemy", you realise not all is black and white. So the tone of the game is bleak, but that's probably a fair reflection of reality in a war.

Velvet Assassin is a stealth game at heart, and I think it's very well done. You get a good sense of how hidden you are, and with the lighting system being as good as it is, you really start to cringe as you sneak across a well lit area. Sometimes you need to be outside in the daytime and you need to hide behind objects or within long grass for example, and so long as you don't try to move when a guard is looking directly in your direction, you're reasonably safe.

I'm not a fan of checkpoint save systems, but with this game it's implemented perfectly. The checkpoints are spaced far enough apart that you build up a little tension, but not so far apart that you're scared of experimenting a bit because you're dreading having to start over. For example, you can whistle to attract guards from well lit areas into darker areas so you can take them down quietly, so sometimes you need to experiment to find the best position to whistle from.

Being a stealth game, you're going to need to perform a lot of silent kills, and the developers have done a good job of having a number of different animations so that the technique never starts to feel stale. Those developers have a little of a dark sense of humour too which will be evident when you see one of those animations closer to the end of the game. All I can say is that whilst Violette may be a looker, she ain't the kind of girl I'd want to ask out on a date. But if there was a war I'd definitely want her on my side.

Despite being a stealth game, there are a couple of occasions when you do need to go in guns blazing, so the gameplay does provide a decent amount of variety.

Sometimes Violette needs to don enemy clothes but here the developers also had a bit of a sense of humour because she walks with her chest jutting out and her back arched at an impossible angle, that it's difficult to believe she's not attracting more attention that she wants to avoid.

There is an rpg-lite element as you can hunt for trinkets on each of the levels and once you've found enough, you can level up one of three attributes, namely the speed she can sneak, the damage she can take, and the potency of the morphine syringes she finds. To explain the latter, she can use the morphine as a temporary invulnerability where time around her stops and you can use that time to either take down a difficult guard or to run across an open area to get to better cover. There are also some secret objectives that give you bonus points if you complete them. However, if you suffer from OCD and need to complete every objective, you're best off consulting a guide because **spoiler alert** one secret objective is to kill all the guards on the level, but not all of the guards show unless you make sure you are seen, something that's a little counter-intuitive ** end spoiler **.

All in all, it's a game I can recommend if you are a fan of the stealth genre.

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (PS2)

In this game you place a Soldier suffering from Amnesia, but you also have psychic powers. Infiltrating a terrorist organisation ran by psychic commanders. The soldiers however, don't have psychic powers, so they are merely cannon fodder for you to treat them how you like. The game can be played with stealth in mind, or action, both are fun to play as, whether you sneak up behind an enemy and explode their head, or use telekinesis to throw them off a cliff or into conveniently placed furnaces. The game is good fun, but the 7th level does spoil it a lot, filled with invisible creatures that swarm you if you go near them, puzzles that involve carrying things with telekinesis over long distances, and a boss that is incredibly difficult to beat if your low on ammo, other than that level the game is great. The strategy to killing bosses usually involves throwing things at them, so the tactics aren't too had to figure out. Overall I enjoyed it, though the ending was a cliffhanger which is always annoying.

Interesting. I think most of the reviews I've read found that it's rather frustrating, and when I played it myself, I gave up on it pretty soon, too, but then again I'm not really a fan of the stealth genre. Still, maybe I should give it another try some time. Thanks for the detailed review!

I played it, I gave up too.
It just felt so awful to play it, I guess I'd rather spent my time on a better game. :P

I finally finished Pillars of Eternity
game that I loved to madness from start to end. it is my first game of 2016 started in 2015.
of Pillars I liked the world inspired with unique mechanics (not D&D but still really good).
I loved the story until the end of act 2 (after that it's still good but not great). And Endless Path of Cad Nua is a really good secondary quest.
the best of Pillars I think is that when you are Onest really often people start to know and trust you...

Also today I finally finish a project for the university... a Java, multi-player, game:
BattleShip
It is my very first game with multi-player, I'm really happy that I managed to do it.

Soon or later I will create a game that I will publish here (not in Java of course... maybe I will use Unity3d like my last game, or Unreal Engine if my future computer can handle it).

Velvet Assassin

I played it on the easier difficulty setting. Violette may be tough but I am not!

The beginning of the game, at least the first couple of kills, were a bit tough until I understood how the stealth mechanic worked. I tried to take out a guard with the knife held in aiming mode, not understanding that silent kills are almost like a QuickTime event which needs to be performed when in stealth mode - you need to get close enough to the guard and then you get an option to perform the kill. After doing this a couple of times you'll find it becomes very easy. The other silly mistake I made much later in the game was thinking the reload button didn't work, not realising I needed the weapon held in aiming mode to be able to reload it.

Also, it's a little tough when you get to the first time you need to use the morphine because they give you just enough time to make it across to the guard. After that, I really enjoyed the game.

There were a couple of tough areas later in the game, but when I read the guide afterwards I found that there were easier ways to get through those sections.

Sure, the game isn't perfect. There were a couple of times I entered the void, but I've encountered this so much more frequently in Gothic, which I am playing at the moment. And I've just had to replay a couple of hours worth because I died and saved my game instead of loading it.

I consider myself a gamer of average ability, so I don't think I needed any special skills to be able to appreciate it. This is one of those games that gives me the impression it was a labour of love for the developers.

Edit: added the game title

I just finished Heavy Rain! I've been wanting to play it for YEARS and finally had picked it up maybe last year... but I work so much I never get around to playing a lot of games anymore. Anyways, I'm finally trying to make time to play more games so I started with Heavy Rain..

I liked it. I'm glad it wasn't a long game either... I know I'd have to play again to choose different scenarios, but for now I'm content with the game I finished.

I'm looking towards my next game which might be finally finishing The Last of Us or Resident Evil 5 or 6... I've beaten RE5 but on 2-player mode and that was when it first came out! So I'm looking forward to beating it on my own.

Games Completed in 2016:

01) 2016-02-04: Despair - review
02) 2016-??-??: Redshirt - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post437
03) 2016-02-16: Half-life: Opposing Force - review
04) 2016-02-18: Half-life: Blue Shift - review
05) 2016-06-05: Space Trader: Merchant Marine - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post1073
06) 2016-06-13: Aztaka - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post1073
07) 2016-07-21: Life is Strange Episode 1 [Steam]
08) 2016-07-23: Blackwell Unbound [GOG]
09) 2016-07-24: Blackwell Convergence - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post1282
10) 2016-08-11: Shadowgrounds - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post1357
11) 2016-09-10: Blackwell Deception https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post1474
12) 2016-09-12: The Blackwell Epiphany review
13) 2016-09-17: <span class="bold">Dracula - The Resurrection</span> review
14) 2016-09-20: <span class="bold">Dracula - The Last Sanctuary</span> review
15) 2016-09-24: <span class="bold">Back to the Future - The Game: Episode 1: It's About Time</span> review
16) 2016-09-24: <span class="bold">Back to the Future - The Game: Episode 2: Get Tannen!</span> review
17) 2016-09-25: <span class="bold">Back to the Future - The Game: Episode 3: Citizen Brown</span> review
18) 2016-09-26: <span class="bold">Back to the Future - The Game: Episode 4: Double Visions</span> review
19) 2016-09-27: <span class="bold">Back to the Future - The Game: Episode 5: OUTATIME!</span> review

I've written reviews for some/most of these on Steam if anyone is curious what I thought about them.
<work in progress, need to dig up all my latter thread posts and import links here and tidy things up>

Despair - It's only 45 minutes long, and it was free - but it was the worst game ever and actually cost me money by causing me emotional harm due to neither containing any action, any horror, nor any adventure - despite the game's categorization on Steam. In fairness, I read about it first so I guess you could say I engaged myself in self-harm to play it. :)

Got a tonne more games (both GOG and Steam) that are in progress or currently idle, many of which I hope to finish before the end of the year.