The Terminator (Sega CD). An adaptation of the original movie, but it's a 90s console game, so that means it takes the form of a side-scrolling action game in which you simply shoot everything that isn't you. You'd be justified in presuming that it's a typical crap licensed game, but in this case you would be wrong because it's actually pretty good.

You control Reese, with the first few levels taking part in the future as you fight through terminators to get to Skynet, only to see Arnold go back in time, so you chase him through the time machine and spend the rest of the game in 1984, matching the movie fairly closely. In the movie, Reese didn't do a whole lot of violence against anyone who wasn't the Terminator, so the game compensates by having you gun down what appears to be the entire fanbase of Black Flag. (See how awkward these old licensed games could be?) Surprisingly, there is no level in which you ride in the car and have to fend off cops and the Terminator running you down. That would have been a good setpiece level.

The game was made by David Perry's group, so it's got a lot of the same slick graphics and animation that you saw in games like Earthworm Jim, just dingier because The Terminator is literally a much darker concept. It warmed my heart a bit to see Silas Warner credited for the programming. Apparently it was the last game he worked on? It also has a soundtrack by Tommy Tallarico that is rockin' like Dokken. I don't which game has a better soundtrack, this or Ys III, but it's a really tight matchup.

It's a pretty basic run-and-gun game - you get gun upgrades, health refills, and you can throw grenades. It's not especially difficult if you just move carefully, but the last few levels in the Cyberdyne factory get tricky because that's when the game starts putting more fall-to-your-instant-death traps in front of you and the extra lives you've built up suddenly start evaporating really fast. Plus there are no continues. But it's fun and definitely better than I expected it to be.

Human Resource Machine

Once again the Tomorrow Corp show they have a great feel for game UI and art design. My only gripe with those 2 elements of the game is the MS Paint label maker. I just want to type, don't make me draw with a touchpad.

So, it is cute and it is usable. There's a plot that is a background to the game. Each puzzle is supposed to be a year of your career, and weird things are going on in the world, but none of that comes into the gameplay at all.

The meat of this whole thing is in the puzzles. The early levels do a nice job introducing the concepts, but that slow intro lasts a bit long for my tastes (a full third of the game before all jump conditions and an ability to increment are available).

Overall I enjoyed the game, mostly because of the nice interface and the ease of putting together solutions. There's no practical limit to the number of executions, so brute forcing will get you through any level, and then there are challenges for optimization to encourage reducing the number of instructions or steps. That said, most of the levels I was able to clear one or both of the challenges on a first pass.

Overall, it was fun and a nice diversion. I was able to clear the game in a single sitting, with a second pass to beat the outstanding challenges I missed. It does not have enough meat to warrant another serious play through, but I may revisit it in a week or so to try some outlandish takes on a few of the challenges.

Overall, if you like the works of the Tomorrow Corporation, if you have an interest in programming but are not a long-term programmer, then I think this is worth a look.

This is unusual but this year i have not finished a single one and not played much at all

TimeShift

Really cool FPS with a Crysis-like suit except instead of Strength/Shield/Speed/Cloak this one has Stop Time/Slow Time/Reverse Time. And unlike most games with "time reversal", this one doesn't reverse you. So while you can't "un-fall" from a cliff, you can "unshoot" enemy rockets and stuff (plus it's used in a few environmental puzzles along the way. The suit also has an AI that warns you of incoming dangers and can even select which power is more appropriate at any given time (though I dunno who'd ever use it.)

Combine this all with a regenerating shield, and you've got quite a huge advantage over your enemies, which the game compensates for by throwing a lot of enemies and ambushes at you. In larger battles, you always have to keep an eye on your time gauge and know where your nearest cover is so you can make it there in time to recharge your shield and time powers. On the hardest difficulty setting I still had to do quite a bit of quick loading after death.

The ending unfortunately leaves more questions than answers to the story. For one thing, apparently your character's identity is a big mysterious deal, you never even see your face, and as far as I can tell there's never even a hint as to who you're supposed to be.

Silver, Aug 27 (GOG)-This was quite a bit of fun. There was definitely a steep learning curve for the combat/interface. Frantically clicking on heroes, enemies, and the pie menu during combat was often frustrating especially for boss fights. The story and characters were ok but nothing great. I had little sense of the world as we seemed to be hopping around from place to place with no real explanation of why a particular orb was where it was or how we knew that. Frequently it wasn't even clear where to go next. Also every level had a locked area with the boss from another level holding the key. It necessitated a lot of backtracking. Thankfully not too far into the game I realized the map menu instantly teleports you to some major landmarks in each level because a lot of those levels were very maze-like. Despite all that I really enjoyed this. The feeling of blasting endless waves of enemies with fireballs was very fun. Fighting to survive until the next save point gave a sense of tension and defeating all of those tough bosses was very satisfying even if I had to frequently consult a walkthru.

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Thimbleweed Park. It really is like a long-delayed sequel to Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken. In fact, it feels more like Maniac Mansion than even Day of the Tentacle did. It's pretty long for an adventure game but it also flies by because most of the puzzles are fairly designed, so you feel like you're making consistent progress most of the time. The use of checklists to keep you focused on what you're doing and an in-game hint feature also help keep you from being stuck too long.

I found the characters a mixed bag. Ray, the female FBI agent, is amusingly hard-boiled but the guy, Reyes, is a bland goody two-shoes type. Ransome the Clown is basically just Krusty the Clown with fouler language, right down to his endorsement deals on hazardously defective products and his gravelly voice, but he's generally funny. Delores is even blander than Reyes. The cast is generally less compelling to me than Maniac Mansion's, which is kind of weird since there's so much more dialogue in this game. Maybe it's easier to project stuff on older games?

I'm not especially crazy about the ending, which seems to be the main controversy with this game. There's one moment in the game in which a character mentions liking the movie Blazing Saddles but being unsure about the ending, which in retrospect was portentous along with all the "fourth walling" going on. I also like Blazing Saddles but am not too wild about its ending. Regardless of the ending, though, I can't deny that I had a lot fun playing this and it's probably my favorite of the adventure game resurgence.

The Walking Dead Season 1

It's been a while, and I have forgotten some things, so I planned to replay the series. Telltale's style is what it is, and you either enjoy them or don't. I do. I just play it through and make my choices and don't try to follow other paths, suspending disbelief that other options are crazy different.

TWD Season One is better than a good chunk of the TV show. I forgot how easy it was to be sucked into Clem and Lee's story, and how most of the cast has a chance to grow on you. There are many no-win choices, and it's easy to feel bad about things that work out, and to feel good about things that don't. Anyway, the story is the real hero here, and it certainly does it's job carrying the game.

400 Days

It's more Telltale does TWD. This expansion for Season One served as a teaser for Season Two, and at the time I was incredibly disappointed that it was pretty short and lacked the weight of Season One.

Look, Telltale's system works when you play straight through, pretend all of your choices are final, and roleplay it a bit. The games are about story and presentation more than gameplay. What carries S1 is the character building and the impact that the no-good-choice moments have on characters you have followed.

400 Days doesn't do that. There are vignettes for 5 new characters, and none of them are very long. By the time you get into a groove, it's time to make the last choice for the scene. These are mostly loosely connected, but there is no set order to play through. Which may have seemed great to the devs, but means it is super easy to pick a story that falls chronologically later before an earlier story. (For example, Russell was my second story). Not that it matters too much.

There is not much continuity with Season One, other than some references. Overall, the expansion feels like filler. I like it better now, but it is still a lightweight entry in the series.

Continuing playing FPSes for some reason.

Shadow Ops: Red Mercury

A good, though obviously old, "realistic", linear, cinematic military shooter. Also very hard and you don't have any quicksaves - if you die you gotta start the level all over. Thankfully the levels are not TOO large - 10 hours got me through the 25 levels, and that's including a bunch of deaths.

I first tried playing on the second hardest difficulty, as I usually do in games with 4 difficulty settings. A bunch of deaths later without being able to beat the first level and I dialed it down to the 2nd easiest setting, which it turned out was a far better match for my abilities. This is also the first game I recall with "realistic" reloading which causes you to lose any rounds remaining in the old clip. Thankfully that feature is only present on the two hardest difficulty settings.

The "final boss" as it was, was kinda BS.

WARNING FINAL BOSS SPOILER FOLLOWS

You have 3 rockets to shoot down a chopper, and all three must hit. If you miss with even one, might as well restart the level because unlike most games with a similar boss, there is no extra RPG ammo to be found anywhere. And if you say "well, that's realistic", then how realistic is it that earlier in the game, just about every single Black Hawk has gone down to a single RPG, but this chopper takes 3 and then still keeps on flying just fine in the ending cutscene.

FINAL BOSS SPOILER ENDS

Oof, sorry, just had to vent.

But I still recommend the game because frustrating as it was at times, it was fun, and there's a real sense of accomplishment when finishing a FPS without the safety net of quicksaves, and the story was decent, and the main character was voiced by Steven "Spike Spiegel" Jay Blum! Wow, hadn't heard that voice in forever since I typically watch anime subbed.

Cornerstone - The Song of Tyrim

After I had already gotten bored with the demo once and after checking out several bad reviews about Cornerstone, I went in with low expectations and didn't think I would enjoy it much. And those reviews weren't totally wrong either: There certainly are things to criticize about this game.

For one, it's very rough around the edges, the kind that can occasionally get your character stuck inside walls. At one point very close to the finish line, I even thought my savegame was broken for good, but in the end nothing I encountered was game-breaking, it could all be solved by dying, reloading or quick traveling back and forth via the map. Still, it leaves a bit of an amateurish impression. Also, everytime I played Cornerstone, the cooling fans in my PC immediately got a lot louder, suggesting that it's much more resource hungry than it has any right to be. Then there are the camera and controls, which can work against you. Sometimes the button prompts for talking to characters or interacting with objects don't show up. And I was particularly annoyed by the decision to assign "Sneak Mode" to pressing the left analog stick on my gamepad, which is also used for general movement, so it happened to me quite a lot that I accidentally pressed it when things got hectic, causing my character to sneak and be slowed down in the midst of combat when I wanted him to do the opposite and run away. And there was no way to reassign that key. The boss battles were a mixed bag, quite uneven - one battle in the midst of the game was much trickier and more annoying than the others, which were rather easy, including the final one. As someone who usually doesn't enjoy boss battles, I loathed the one in the middle (very tedious and annoying) and appreciated that the others were such a cakewalk. And sometimes the "levels" were a bit too long and repetitive.

Surprisingly though, I quite enjoyed playing through the game regardless. While the story and dialogues are nothing special, they work well enough and don't distract from the exploration, puzzle solving, and freedom in combat and crafting. It might all be a bit crude but still fun to play around with. And you could feel that the devs put their heart into it, even if their enthusiasm might have been a little bigger than their actual skills and resources. So, I don't know whether I would recommend this particular game to others, just because I had fun with it, but I definitely recommend not to let bad reviews deter you from trying out games yourself. Cornerstone is not the first title with mediocre ratings that I ended up liking despite that. It's far from being an awesome must-play game for everyone, but I found it cute and fun to play all the same.

Cat on a Diet (2016) (Linux/Proton)

Nice little puzzle game, simple and relaxing, finished in less then 2h. The first game I played with new Steam Linux feature - Windows game installed with Proton. I didn't received most of achievements; the rest of the game worked just fine.

List of all games completed in 2018.

Disciples Sacred Lands, Aug 31 (GOG)-This game started off new and exciting but unfortunately quickly devolved into a repetitive slog through 4 campaigns and afterwards a couple of the standalone scenarios. I really, really disliked only being able to carry one hero forward to the next mission. It discouraged developing more than one character and turned every map into a sequence of fighting a couple battles then returning to the nearest friendly city to heal and repeating until the objective was completed. This is fine and even welcomed in RPGs but for this particular strategy game it falls flat.

The combat was ok and some of the spellcaster types had pretty good attacks. But watching your party miss five times in a row wtih 75% chance to hit and getting destroyed because of it got old. The only time the chance to hit wasn't a problem was when your party was so overpowered that you only needed to connect with one or two hits to kill the enemy.

The resource gathering while unique was not really to my liking and conquering and holding cities was a quick way to drain resources rather than gain them. The diplomacy was also very under utilized and I never once used the thief character.

Despite its flaws I did have some fun and I can see why others would love it and I definitely felt that draw to play one more turn on several occasions.

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After 79 hours i am done with Tom Clancy: Wildlands.

It was silly, annoying at time, and game is buggy for me constantly crashing.

but i did have fun, enjoyed it and not regret getting it. Main campaign, and two dlcs: Narcos road and Ghost...

I did play coop with a mate of mine. made the game better

Not using thieves is a problem. Using thieves well is a very important thing. (And not talking of guildmaster lords who get to do even more with them.) Always have working spies in enemy armies, to know what's coming at you, and poison is great, 20% (of current HP) damage to any enemy. If I had enough gold I'd spam thieves ahead of tough fights, softening that army as much as possible however many of them got executed.
As for needing to heal, not a problem for empire forces, 2 healers in party, try to get +armor stuff too (banners if you can), once they get up to patriarch if they're not killed or paralyzed right away you'll probably finish all battles at full health, if needed try to leave an enemy with low damage alive and skip turns with other units till they heal them.
And works to some extent with undead as well. At least a werewolf to be protected from regular weapon attacks and vampires. My typical high end undead army had 3 vampires, if I could find permanent effect +HP and +armor potions those on the front row got them, and preferred banners for undead would be +damage ones. Opposite tactics to empire, try to finish fights fast, but use those vampires efficiently in terms of life draining to heal themselves, skip other units if they're likely to heal more than they'll get damaged and just use them.
No problem with not developing more than one character for me, tends to be what I normally do, and liked the resource gathering, though yeah, cities should have been able to do something too.

But, yeah, a lot of bad points in this game really. Still, had some things to make up for some of them...

And today I finished Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Satisfied with the ending even though its on cliffhanger. which in my opinion is correct decision as the game is set up for a game which will lead into Deus Ex 1.

shame that it might never happen :(