Portal
Played Portal 2, which is a lot better. This game is still good, though it only takes 2 hours to complete.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Just finished it a few days ago, just got the platnum trophy today. 55 hours in total. Twas the best game story I've played through in a while.

Magicmaker

An interesting game about creating various spells. There are indeed many possible combinations but frankly, I think "2 million combinations" is far-fetched because each component has 5 ranks which just change the numeral aspect of the spell, not the effect itself (for example blast radius). Furthermore, many components are rather useless, while a few combinations are so good you don’t need any other. Nevertheless, crafting your spells is extremely funny, I liked choosing some goofy combinations just for fun.

Sadly, other aspects of the game are rather poorly executed. Story is forgettable, controls a bit clunky, quests are simplistic and you need to grind a lot to get some better drops to proceed. The game is also rather short, even with the aforementioned grind.

In the end I recommend it for spell crafting system, just don’t expect anything special apart of it.

Full list

Satellite Reign

Well that was a satisfyingly long cyberpunk adventure. Some pros and cons

+ fantastic cyberpunk atmosphere in a meticulously crafted world
+ multiple ways to approach each objective
+ excellent mission descriptions and convincing voice acting by mission giver
+ satisfying agents and item progression
+ loads of unlockable items, upgrades and weapons
+ exciting firefights with pretty weapon effects
+ great coop

- you as well as enemies can get stuck in terrain
- apart from mechs, vehicles are just for show and can't be controlled
- some oversights in AI behaviour, like being unperturbed by the sight of a fallen comrade
- little variation in mission objectives with most being of the sort "get agent x into building y"

<span class="bold">Fallout 4</span> (PS4)

This game is a HUGE open world RPG/FPS. I played close to 150hours and completed one branch of the main storyline plus a whole lot of sidequests, but I feel like I only explored fewer than half of the locations available. There is great freedom, you can go wherever you want and do whatever you want to do. There are a number of different factions you can work for, fight against, double-cross, or ignore as you like.

The game does start to get repetitive after a while. There are only a certain number of different enemy types and eventually you’ve seen them all, and many of the same assets are reused for most of the different locations.

I also had some issues with the PS4 version, I often got noticeable framerate drops in areas with lots of large buildings, and when there were large explosions occurring. These instances were not common, but they were not rare either.

However, after finishing the main story (or at least the version of the main story I chose) I’m now ready to move on to another game, although I will definitely come back to play it again someday with a new character because it is very fun. It’s very much recommended if you’re into this type of game.

Treasure Hunter G. This was apparently the final release by Square on a Nintendo console before they became a Playstation developer. It wasn't released outside of Japan, but a few years back some guys did their own English translation, which is what I played. The translation is okay. There were a couple of technical glitches early on, and there are some awkward parts that just aren't very well-written, coming across as maybe a bit too literal? But for the most part it works fine.

The game is good. It's not some long-lost, unheralded classic, but it basically does everything at least adequately. The graphics use pre-rendered sprites, the music is quite good, and the story is cliched but inoffensive. The combat system is based on the idea of using action points to do your stuff each turn - moving costs you action points but you can pivot within a square at no cost, so ideally you'll want to flank or move behind an enemy, turn around, and nail them for higher damage. For the most part you don't need to worry about it too much - I spent most of the game just beating the crap out of everything straight on - but there are some tougher encounters on occasion that require deeper tactics, and the final boss is a massive difficulty spike compared to the rest of the game (make sure you stock up on healing and skill point potions!), which is mostly easy and doesn't require much if any grinding.

<span class="bold">Pixel Heroes: Byte &amp; Magic</span>

It’s a little hard to describe this game… rogue-like (but not truly, there is a lot of randomness and permadeath though), turn-based (but probably not the way you’re thinking), RPG (but no real choices, just character classes and advancement/upgrades), adventure (but very linear at the same time).

The game has nice pixel graphics and good music. I also enjoyed the humour.

There are many different dungeons you can choose depending on which quests you accept, each has their own themed monsters with different special attacks and resistances.

You get tons of random loot as you defeat foes, but you only have limited inventory space in which to carry it, so after each battle you need to sort through it all and decide what to keep and what to discard.

I completed the main quest on Hard difficulty (“Fools of Radiance”)… Hard is actually the easiest difficulty, and overall isn't that hard once you figure out what you're doing.

Overall I’d rate the game “OK”, I played it many more hours than I originally anticipated because it is quite fun, especially at the start when you’re figuring out how all the different character classes and monsters and items and everything works. But after that it slowly turns more and more into a repetitive grind.

The Witcher, enhanced edition

When it comes to the engine and the technical side of things the Witcher is flawed. I experienced issues from facial hair spasms as if dancing to the rhythm of a Megadeath song and clipping issues all the way to a few freezes and one crash.

The battle system is weird, clunky and often unresponsive. Too often did Geralt ignore my input or did something that I didn't want him to. Couple that with the game's annoying habit of sheathing my sword before combat due to pointless cutscenes and on occasion deselecting signs just for shits and giggles and you have a battle system that I only tolerated, but never enjoyed.

The presentation is mediocre at best. I finished the main game only two hours ago and I already can't remember any of the musical tracks. The models look lifeless and I swear that there is only one model for the two dozen grandmas in the world.
On the other hand, the monsters look rather good and the environments are still pretty. For its time at least.

The story is well made, with many twists and a wast cast of interesting characters. I think I found a few plotholes, but they weren't enough for me to stop enjoying the overall plot.

A few side-quests are very interesting and enjoyable. Unfortunately the amount of overcomplicated fetch-quests greatly outnumbers the good ones. At a few points I felt like a tennis ball, running from one point of the world to another just to return and run the way again and then once more just for the hell of it. And that was just one small insignificant side quest. The backtracking is awful and frequent loading-times didn't help with that.

Overall: 6/10
I liked it enough to tolerate the Frankenstein's monster of a battle system, the game's backtracking fetish and the occasional glitch.
In my honest opinion, it's just an ok game, not much more. But I enjoyed myself enough to recommend it for fans of roleplaying games. I will now play through the side stories, take a short rest from RPGs and later export my save to play the sequel. If what I heard about it is correct, I should like it a lot more.

Metrocide

Hitman + GTA 1 mix. Get a contract. Find the target. Wait for a good moment. Kill. Hide the body. Get some money. Unlock better weapons. Get a more difficult contract. Find the target… repeat. And again. And again. Get killed. And repeat everything from the beginning. And again and again and again.

Don’t get me wrong, I did get some fun from the game but it’s so repetitive… I doubt I’ll play it ever again.


Full list

Finished The Swapper. Very nice-looking game with clever puzzles. I recommend it even though I used a walkthrough for 3 puzzles in it.

Full list here.

Time to catch up again with my list of finished games:



<span class="bold">The Cat Lady</span>

Wow. I had read very good things about this game so my expectations were quite high, but it still managed to surprise me for good. The Cat Lady is an adventure game that touches some adult and dark themes. It's quite plot-heavy but it never lost my interest thanks to its devs' mastery of narrative rhythm: the combination of slow-paced, introspective scenes with more shocking and action-packed sequences worked wonderfully for me. Plus, there's also some classical point'n'click puzzles here and there, only there's nothing to click here as this game is fully controlled with the keyboard. At first this control method felt a little weird to me, but after a while I had forgot about it and I was completely inmersed in the story.

The game runs on the AGS engine but, contrary to most games that also use it, it doesn't use low-res pixel art. Instead it sports a truly unique and characteristic style, with big (but somewhat clunkily animated) sprites, and a limited color palette that perfectly matches the dark tone of the story. Despite the general bleakness, there's also room for a bit of humour and some funny moments: like a short sequence in which you get to control a cat, or [url=https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BsOVQ6lIAAABDNG.png:large]a not-so-subtle homage to Maniac Mansion[/url]. Sound-wise almost everything is voice acted, and quite well I might add. The music is excellent and helps setting the contrast between the different parts of the game.

It's got some replay value as there are several different endings, which depend on your actions throughout the game and, particularly, on a couple of decisions near the end. After experimenting a bit and witnessing some endings I checked a wiki to see what I had missed. Apparently there's a best possible 'Golden Ending', and according to the wiki I had done everything right during my playthrough in order to get it, but for some reason the ending I got was not that one. But frankly, after reading about what happens in this 'Golden Ending', I kind of prefer the one I got.

I know this is a kind of a sequel to Downfall (or at least both games share the same universe and some minor characters), a game I have not played, so I might have missed a couple of references. I'll probably get and play the recent remaster eventually, provided it runs well with the Linux native AGS engine port. This is how I played The Cat Lady, as I got it with some old bundle which only included a Windows version, and it worked rather well except for a couple of inconveniences. Namely: I couldn't get it to render at full screen so I had to content myself with a 800x600 resolution; also, sometimes the parallax scroll failed so the foreground and the background weren't properly aligned; and finally in some scenes the game slowed down noticeably, probably because of some effects, like rain or fog.

Technical issues notwithstanding though, I can't praise this game and recommend it enough to everybody, adventure game enthusiast or not.


My list of finished games in 2017

Yesterday I finished:

- Deponia - It was OK. The plot was kinda ho-hum, and the puzzles pretty hamfisted. Not certain yet whether I'll bother with the rest of the series.

- AM2R - Very impressive. I don't often bother with fan-remakes, but I found this to be exceptionally well done, and I had a blast playing it.

Judging by those posting in these threads about it, I seem to be in a minority of those liking the combat system. (But then again, what am I not in a minority of? Usually very tiny ones too, so this is at least an exception to that, wouldn't have done so well otherwise :p) Only issue was when surrounded by tough enough enemies to need to aim more precisely, not group style and just go at it, since others could get in the way (OTS camera, start to end) of the one you meant to click on. Other than that, seemed to really flow nicely.

About the sequel and importing, there's one thing: If you go through the tutorial with a loaded save, you won't get the money you should when the game actually starts. That's what happened to me at least, and when I looked at the time it seemed common. So can go through tutorial if you want, but then start again with the imported save and skip it. Made sure to end with the sword that's the best of those that can be imported according to 2nd game's stats. But that was about it, computer struggled with it, so just started and left it there. And this one, with just integrated graphics, wouldn't even have a chance I imagine, so never reinstalled since.
Can say that, from that tutorial, quite bothered by W2's combat controls, console-like and stuff.

<span class="bold">Fruits of a Feather</span>

Short and relaxing game from the creators of Screencheat, that I discovered recently thanks to a short review on GamingOnLinux. The linked article explains in great detail what the game's about, but suffice to say it's a relaxing exploration game in which you take control of a small bird on a solitary island.

The art style is rather simple, with cartoony-looking low-poly trees and mountains, but I nonetheless found it quite beautiful. It's got a day-night cycle, so the environments change during the game and they become particularly beautiful at dusk and dawn. The main gist of the game is exploring the different places and environments of the island and enjoying the experience, something enhanced by the soft melodies in the soundtrack, which you can change by flying through different portals which can be found around the island.

For the more goal-oriented players out there, there's also the challenge of collecting all 192 fruits scattered throughout the island. Some of them hang from trees, while others sprout directly from the ground... or from the ceilings of a couple of caves and man-made structures. At first there's fruits everywhere, but needless to say the more fruits you collect the harder the task of finding the remaining ones becomes. Plus, there's a secret hidden somewhere in the island which is worth the effort of finding it.

The only letdown for me was finding the last piece of fruit and being rewarded with some simple credits rolling in, no ending cutscene or anything of the like. A minimalist game indeed. :)

You can find it on itch.io with a pay-what-you-want model, so you can get it for free and give it a try. Don't be stingy though, and toss a buck or two their way if you enjoy it!


My list of finished games in 2017