Four Last Things

I thought this point-and-click adventure game was really creative in its concept and audio-visual execution, a bit less so in the writing department. I really liked The Monty-Pythonesque "remix" and animation of Renaissance-area paintings combined with a great soundtrack (even if not specifically created for the game, but the choice of public domain recordings and their integration in the game was an achievement nevertheless). And the premise of the game - to commit the 7 deathly sins in order to be able to confess them at church - was quite hilarious (be warned that really pious players might find the religious content pretty offensive or even blasphemous instead). The puzzles were all logical and very easy for experienced adventure gamers, some of them weren't much of a puzzle to begin with, which might feel a bit cheap, all in all I found the majority of them enjoyable enough though. I never even had to consider using a walkthrough, but in my book that's a plus. The pacing was never really slowed down for long and so I was able to complete the game in more or less two hours.

The jokes were hit or miss, in my case mostly miss, which doesn't mean the writing was terribly bad but it wasn't particularly great or funny either. Occasionally it managed to make me smile a bit, but most of the time I just felt lukewarm towards it. That's because it relies mostly on self-referentialism, obvious or obscure pop and culture references and innuendos, the standard fare of your average (as in "lazy and mediocre") adventure game writing. I'd say that the characters talk ridiculously modern slang/lingo is still halfway funny and fitting for this game, but the constant fourth wall breaking as opposed to creating its own consistent world is a bit lame. All in all the writing is okay, serviceable but rather forgettable. Personally I much preferred the wordless humor of the artistic vision behind the game, the funny animations and ideas not directly connected to the dialogues. There's also the occasional typo in the dialogue text which I wouldn't expect in such a short commercial game; if there was proofreading/playtesting, it must have been somewhat sloppy.

Another negative point is the absence of manual saves - the game only knows a single autosave slot. Then again, there are hardly any alternatives or things you can miss in your playthrough, and if you miss something nevertheless, the game is short enough that you can just start another quick game and check it within a few minutes (if you know what to do and don't need to read the text anymore, I bet the whole game can be finished in like 10 minutes or so). One time, I ran into a bug where the character was suddenly walking outside the regular paths and couldn't interact with the hotspots anymore; fortunately, quitting and reloading the game fixed it, since the autosave is only done after specific tasks are completed, so it didn't save at the point where I was stuck in a game breaking situation. Still, for a moment I was afraid it would - single slot autosaves are quite prone to ruining your game that way.

Anyway, to me the positives outweighed the negatives. Even though I probably won't remember any of the writing and jokes in a week or so, I will definitely remember the presentation, puzzles and situations for years to come, and those will be fond memories. Not sure about the full price, but I bought it at 66% off (~$3) and thought it was definitely worth that.

Meteor 60 Seconds! (Steam)

This game is quite short, fairly funny, and rather silly. The premise is that you've just heard on the news that a meteor will kill everyone on earth in 60 seconds, what do you do?!?

The game is FREE so there's really no reason not to try it out if you enjoy short silly games. Recommended.

After the developer was so kind to fix the bug, which I have encountered in the final bossfight, I was finaly able to finish StarCrawlers. Very enjoyable game for me, despite few small bugs. Developer also provided new free update for the game, which added hacking to it, so there is big motivation for me to play the New Game + again in a near future :)

Additional games, which I've finished in 2018.

RiME (XB1X)
Pretty awesome 3D puzzle game. Without a word of spoken or written dialog the game introduces the simple puzzle solving elements and tells a simple story. I particularly like the difficulty level and style of puzzles. If you think a puzzle game isn't hard enough unless it forces you to look up a walkthrough, then you won't like this. It's not that difficult and whenever I temporarily wasn't sure what to do next, it just meant I hadn't fully explored. The solutions always become obvious by exploring enough.

Add in a nice art style and suitable music. It took me 6 hours without hunting for all the story based collectables. Maybe at it's price point, when not on sale, the shortish length is about the only thing that maybe would put anyone off playing this.

I played it using Xbox Game Pass, so the price is not an issue there. Which is why game rental systems really are a good idea, I try fringe games and games I'm not likely to buy at the time and some of them turn out to be brilliant like this one.

Baobab's Mausoleum Episode 2: 1313 Barnabas Dead End Drive (Steam)

This game is hard to describe, perhaps the best adjective is "trippy". Everything I said in my Episode 1 review also applies here, as they are quite similar. The game world in Episode 2 is more open and less linear, slightly longer (~3hrs) but on the other hand I think there was less variety in the minigames. The plot continues (loosely) from the first, and you meet some of the same characters, but it's not necessary at all to be familiar with the first game.

The game doesn't tell you anywhere which keys do what, so here is the list of unexplained keys:
spacebar = action key
p = switch day/night (important, because characters move around and have different things to say day vs night!)
control = fire (or ice after finding a certain item, depends on kind of cigarette selected in the pause menu)

Overall I'd say if you played and enjoyed Episode 1 then this one is right up your alley. If you haven't played Episode 1, I'd recommend that you play that one first because it is a slightly better game than Episode 2.

Borderlands 2 (PS4)

(I played this game entirely solo).

This game is a FPS set in a semi-open world (there are many separate maps, you can travel between them only at fast-travel stations). It’s also got some RPG elements, because you can choose a class and earn XP to unlock your choice of abilities from ability trees.

The characters you meet are very funny and entertaining, this is definitely the best part about this game. I really enjoyed listening to everything that everybody had to say. This also made the missions much more enjoyable.

The game has a strong focus on respawning enemies and random loot (similar to Destiny in that regard). To me personally, this is the negative part of the game. Once I clear an area, I want it to stay cleared. I find it annoying that when I go back to an area the enemies have come back (even in as short of a time as 30 real-time minutes later)! I have absolutely no desire to fight the same enemies (and bosses) over and over again to grind for better loot. At the start of the game this is not so much of a problem because everything was still new and fresh, but by the end I was pretty much sick of it. As I got to higher levels the enemies began to feel more and more like bullet-sponges. The missions also scale to your level when you unlock them, which makes levelling feel almost pointless. And I only played in “normal” mode, after completing “normal” mode you unlock a new game plus type of thing where the game restarts but with more powerful enemies and better loot (and I think theres another mode or two after that, so you can keep on replaying the game over and over)… No thanks!

I did enjoy the game, I completed the main quest and all of the side quests that I discovered (except the arena combats). However, by the end I was completely done with the game. The PS4 version also comes with all the DLC missions, but I cannot motivate myself to complete them. Maybe after taking a break.

Overall it’s a fun game and I’d still recommend it though.

Far Cry 2
I played it for the combat, not for the plot.
Even with that clarifier, certain combat things got very stale and were just a slog game-chore that had to be endured so I could finish Far Cry 2 and see the ending. Beating Far Cry 2 and watching the ending made me realize that Far Cry games have always had terrible plots, with dimishing returns on gunplay and gameworld interactivity with each Far Cry sequel.

Paul Pixel - The Awakening (Steam)

This game is a 2D point-and-click adventure with a blocky pixel art style.

The puzzles are quite easy and the game is very linear. It is a very light hearted game and it does have humour. The game is also quite short (~2hrs).

Overall it doesn't have any stand out qualities that would make exceptional. I'd recommend it if you enjoy casual point-and-clicks, if you can get it cheap (I paid CDN$0.60), and if you have a Mac because there is no Windows version available.

Axiom Verge is yet another quality Metroid-style game. The premise is like Another World in that you control a scientist who has a lab accident that transports him to an alien world that's full of monsters. There's more to it than that later on and the story leaves a lot to interpretation. I think I've got a pretty good idea of what's going on but we'll have to see if a sequel gets made to get any sort of confirmation.

The game has a very striking look in that it's "fake NES" pixel art (I guess if you wanted to get nitpicky you could say it's closer to PC-Engine graphics, although either way it's more than any 8-bit console could ever do) with a lot of HR Giger influence. It's easy to look at screenshots and see how it looks but the soundtrack was a pleasant surprise to me. The game was entirely made by one guy, so apparently he's not just good at drawing but knows music, too. The music is electronic/synth work with a lot of bottom end.

I like that the game has a ton of weapons to choose from, many of which are nothing like what you use in the classic Metroid games, plus you have the "glitch gun" which lets you open new areas and mutate enemies, and you also have a little drone you can send out to get into small areas. As much as the game wears its influences on its sleeve, it still offers its own ideas, which is important. I never did get the hang of the password system, though. I finished with 80 percent of the collectibles, which qualified for the true ending.

The Little Acre (I played the Steam version)

This game is another short point-and-click adventure (it took me just over 1.5hrs to complete).

The focus of this game is primarily the story, it's pretty linear and the puzzles are not very difficult. However, I didn't find the story to be that engrossing, it's pretty average. I was also not a fan of the animation art style.

Overall it's still an OK game if you're a point-and-click enthusiast, but otherwise there are plenty of better point-and-click games out there.

Halo Wars 2 (XB1X)

Pretty good RTS campaign for someone like me that isn't really that into RTS to begin with. I think it's appeal is more for people that are Halo fans anyway and want an RTS in that world. In that respect it works, it has the Halo feel, all the iconic vehicles and units and the story sort of follows on from the first game.

It has a good variety in the campaign missions, from base building races to defence missions and smaller unit actions where you start off with only a couple of units.

I don't think the more hardcore RTS fans would get as much from it. Anyway, I played the campaign and then tried out the blitz mode and skirmish mode against the AI. The game looks great...as this one gets a patch to 4K and for this type of game with lots of small units it really makes the detail stand out. It ran well too. Only downside to the presentation is that the well done cutscenes, though rendered in engine are pre-recorded and so are at the original 1080p instead of 4K- so the gameplay looks far better than the cutscenes which is kind of backwards to normal.

Anyway, another one played through game pass. Like I've said before it's perfect for these types of games that I'm curious to try but don't want to buy.

In late nineties I played a lot X-COM: Terror from the Deep, but never finished. At that time I did not know about some critical bugs, which can ruin the whole game. Luckily today we have OpenXcom which repairs all critical things and also have some improvements. So nowadays I greatly enjoy it and finally beat the game, what was extremely rewarding. If you like turn based tactical games with strategic planning I can recommend!

Investi-Gator 2 (Itch.io)

"Investi-Gator 2" also includes the first game "Investi-Gator".

These two games are simple, cute, and funny point-and-click mystery adventures. It took me under 30minutes to complete both games together.

I got the game free less than a week ago from Itch.io, and for that price I'd certainly recommend it although definitely not for $1000 as the current price...

Eye of Beholder III - Assault on Myth Drannor

In 2015 I made playthrough of EotB trilogy but stopped at 3rd game. It runs badly (alt+tab once and you gotta reset) and first dungeon (Mausoleum) was so rough (damn beasts) and no working mapper for that game made me give up on the trilogy run.

Three years later, out of curiosity I found that man behind ASE mapper made one for EotB3 in 2017, so it was good reason to resume my adventure with my team. Found old saves (all hail cloud data), learned how to use ASE3 (it was tricky) and was ready to go.

Mausoleum was rough but after that - game was a cackewalk, I even tried new team and despite decent protection shortage - it was not hard, even for someone like me who never played old cRPGs 20+ years ago.

Not gonna lie for the monotony of 3rd game - each map have 2 enemies, some of them recolored version of old ones.
Undead beasts and those nasty blobs eating my weapons were awful and made massive slow down in the mage guild.
Good thing my team hoarded all these magic wands and spammed them on these nasty creatures.

Recruitable NPCs were useless, serves only as a packmules for my wands and other items. Except Father John, Mage/Cleric is best combo for backliner.
I wonder if there is a way to reach higher level, I got some high level spells but could not use them.

And final boss was a mistake. Both bosses were mistakes.

Just finished Mirror's Edge on PS3. Oh boy... this one certainly hasn't aged well. It's probably one of those games that I would have appreciated much more if I had played them when they were remotely new but that really doesn't justify flaws that were originally simply covered up by the game's novelty.

First off: content-wise it's very lame. So it's urban explorer hipsters versus evil conformist cops. Everything else about the story and universe feels like it was forcefully attached to this simple vision. I don't feel attached to these "runners" who, for all I know, could be hitmen working for drug lords. Faith's affinity to killing cops doesn't help - towards the end it's explained to her that these guys are from a private security firm but the fact that she doesn't know that before that point kinda still makes her morally a cop killer, doesn't it... anyway, the plot is uninteresting, the characters shallow and stupid. Couldn't care less about any of that stuff. Also: the cutscenes look like Samurai Jack done by eight-year-olds.

Gameplay-wise the game doesn't hold up well at all. For one, for me the parkour system isn't interesting enough on its own for an entire game and the only other aspect of the game, the combat, is shit. Secondly, the parkour itself isn't executed as well as it should have been. Sure, it was (probably?) the first game that did this stuff and I respect that, but in my opinion they made mistakes that could have been avoided already then.

The camera behaves very badly, there are some really stupid limitations to it that make it hard and tiresome to keep aware of one's surroundings. For instance, while climbing you sometimes can't look around at all, so if you didn't take a good look before latching onto something you may not even know when and where you should jump later on. There's also some very stupid thing going on, at least in the console version, where turning becomes much slower if you look up or down. It's honestly the only game I know that does that and it's atrocious.

Then there's this utter lack of any aids. I came to Mirror's Edge from Prince of Persia 2008, basically also a parkour game released the same year. There you have a third-person view and the game goes out of its way to keep you from making any mistakes which made the game almost too easy. In Mirror's Edge you can't see shit because it's first person AND there's nothing "protecting" you AND you need an ungodly level of precision - plus I'm pretty sure sometimes Mirror's Edge just fails to register that the character should grab a ledge and you will fall to your death even though you jumped exactly the way you could. And early FPSes like Unreal kept you from falling off ledges when walking slowly, Turok demonstrated how to make FPS platforming that doesn't require you too look at your feet. Mirror's Edge just failed to solve these fundamental problems which is just painful considering what kind of game it is.

But I have far more fundamental problems with the game. The game can't quite decide if it's a "first-person racing" game or puzzle game. There's clearly sections that are supposed to be either about speed or about solving "platforming puzzles" (although "puzzle" is giving the game too much credit). The "puzzle" sections are pretty boring (there's NO interesting challenges there) and demonstrate how technically flawed the game is, especially when it comes to jumps from and towards ledges. The "running" sections on the other hand fail to be as much about keeping momentum as the game wants to be. The right way to go is communicated badly, which is kinda absurd since the game's graphical style was clearly meant to make clear where you have to go at all times - level art is not at all utilised properly to communicate the right direction. Then there's the thing that the game keeps ruining your momentum for bullshit reasons. You keep losing momentum even when playing perfectly, e.g. due to long drops and climbing, with climbing ladders and pipes being the worst states possible (and it doesn't help that jumping from suspended positions is a crapshoot). There's no fluidity to it, the moment you have built up speed and are about to finally have a longer rewarding section of fluid movement, the game will throw a stick in your wheels either because you have to perform a manoeuvre that brings you to a halt or because the level art doesn't communicate where you have to go.

And then there's the art style that, while some find it pretty (I don't) has the downside of making every location in the game, regardless of how thematically different, looking virtually the same. There were moments where I thought that the game looks quite nice but all in all the sterile low-detail style just eliminated any sense of visual progression which was already present in some of the earliest first-person games.

I still enjoyed the game a bit and once in a while I was having genuine fun but the game suffers from some serious self-sabotage that reminds me every couple of seconds of what could have been and what it is not. And luckily there's very frequent checkpoints so the game isn't nearly as frustrating as it easily could have been.

Anyway, the good thing is that we got Dying Light which shamelessly ripped off Mirror's Edge's first-person platforming mechanics and put them to good use in a far more interesting game.

On a different note: the game kept crashing on me on a specific level which is a well-known bug. The solutions I found online were: taking a different route (tried it, didn't work), disconnecting from PSN (screw you) and reinstalling the game (fixed it). This is the first instance of an entirely game-breaking bug I have ever run into in a PS3 game.