Endless Space 2 on hard. Pretty cool, but pretty easy. Fearing at this stage that the AI might just not be that good. Always a concern with 4X games.

Cayne, Oct 31 (GOG)-Short game. Reminded me a bit of Sanitarium. Not particularly scary, more of a gross out vibe. It also felt like it was trying to hit every horror trope in existence. Good for some eye rolls and not much else.

Full List

The Outer Worlds (XB1X)

Mass Effect crossed with New Vegas. I can't think of any way to sum it up better. It wasn't a 100hour epic, so as long as you don't go into it expecting that then if you enjoyed other Obsidian games I think you will get fun out of this. It took me 38 hours and that was exploring pretty much every inch of every map and doing every side quest. Apparently people that do just the story missions can finish it under 20 hours. But I don't think playing that way is getting the full (or best) experience here.

First off, I did not have a single game crash or glitch. None. It also ran well on an XB1X, at 4K to top it off. It is not a graphical powerhouse, but has a great colourful world just the same. Like most limited budget games you will notice more character model repeats than maybe a full AAA game and the enemy variety certainly runs out as the game goes on. But honestly there's not much to complain about. Apparently the game was finished last year and waiting for a publisher deal...the extra playtesting time without a hard deadline seems to pay off.

The gameplay is like you expect from an Obsidian game. Collect some companions and explore, fight, steal, talk your way through a pretty well written adventure, mostly as you see fit. All without distracting cut scenes popping up every time you open a damn door. Also no stupid scripted settings where your character acts like an idiot just to progress the story line. Here if you want to just walk in and shoot someone in the head without listening to word they say, you can just do it. The writing is quite good, some of the companions are better written than others, the worlds backstory is actually compelling, and not all as expected as you delve into it.

Not much I didn't like. It has weapon wear that had me concerned at first, but it turned out to be not very intrusive at least. Balance is pretty easy and I think it's because the game has lots of things that mainly exist for people playing on the hardcore mode where ammo weighs something and you have to sleep drink etc. Just like New Vegas. So there is abundant ammo lying around everywhere- so that people playing hardcore don't run out I suspect, but playing on other difficulties means things are pretty easy. Next time I actually will play the hardcore mode to try that out.

Play it, it's good. I used Game Pass of course, because I have it anyway. But I'd have no hesitation in buying it if I had to. I'm looking forward to the sequel and just hope that they don't use the bigger budget to turn it into a cutscene infested Sony game movie style of thing.

A Short Hike (Steam)

This is a relaxing open-world game.

Your character is on vacation on a small island, and wants to get to the top peak in order to get reception for her phone. But of course it’s all about the journey, there are many things to explore and discover along the way, such as NPCs, collectibles, and minigames. The island is an open-world, you can take it at your own pace and just do whatever you want to do.

The only downsides are the graphics (which I found eye-bleeding when I first started, but quickly learned to enjoy them) and the fact that the player has no control over the camera (this never gained my full acceptance, but I eventually got used to it).

A truly great game, very highly recommended!

Afterparty (XB1X)

Was really looking forward to this one since it's made by the same devs as Oxenfree, which I enjoyed. But Afterparty didn't grab me as much. It lacks the mystery hook of their other game, which leaves you with just slowly walking around whilst characters talk a lot. Doesn't make much difference what you do or say, or even if you say nothing.

As a walkie talkie simulator it needs a better story, because what else is there? Well the story is you find yourself in funny hell and need to try and get out by challenging Satan to a drinking game. The whole story felt like just a setting to allow some one liner jokes that were hit or miss, there were some funny moments but lots of it was a bit flat. The drinking itself was a good mechanic that allowed you extra dialogues that were pretty amusing, but it wasn't used as much as the story would have you thinking. There were three mini games that I found annoying and I just deliberately lost all of them except the dancing, because the game forced me to keep playing until I won that one.

Looking at some "pro' reviews now that I've played it, most seem to like this one. But I'd prefer they make their next game more of a mystery thing like Oxenfree. Can be played on Game Pass if you're not sure you want to buy it.

Spyro the Dragon (Spyro Reignited Trilogy)

I thought about whether I should wait until I finish the trilogy and count it as one game, but then decided that would just be silly.

Anyway, having never owned a Playstation (or any consoles outside of an Atari really), I have no nostalgia for the original Spyro games beyond a vague recollections of seeing TV ads for them. For the same reason I cannot say whether or not the feel of the originals is preserved in these remakes. I can say that the game's absolutely beautiful, with varied and imaginative level themes and enemies that really feel like a fairy tail, and runs pretty well though not perfectly on my i7-920 + 1050ti.

Gameplay wise, I thought it was all right, though I had a hard time controlling Spyro during flight and boosted runs. I died a whole bunch of times, and almost all of them were to falls into the great abyss. Difficulty wise, I found the first game mostly easy to beat, but 100%ing it (not even achievements but just the in-game collectibles and stuff) is probably beyond my frustration threshold. That's were most of my deaths were - falls into the great beyond. Those last two Flight levels and the tree-tops series of boosted jumps - ugh....

Story wise it's about as basic as it comes - need to defeat big bad, and decrystalize dragons on the way, that's it. No better or worse than Mario saving the Princess I guess.

Overall I enjoyed the game, but probably more for the presentation than anything else. Maybe 3d platformers just aren't quite for me (I did quite dislike TY the Tasmanian Tiger remaster recently).

Blade Kitten (episode 1)

It was OK. Quite easy outside a couple segments. I didn't come close to collecting everything, but got enough currency to buy all blades (mostly used the most powerful but slower sword), most upgrades, and a few costumes. Story ends with sort of a cliffhanger, I'll probably get Episode 2 if I see it on Steam sale for 75% off.

Super Strawberry Man

A below average indie action-platformer with very bulletspongey enemies. Thankfully short - took me 2 hours, at least half of which was spent struggling with the second to last level, and then afterwards with a rather unfair final boss fight which I somehow managed to eventually squeak through without even a single red pixel-wide bar of health left on the HP bar.

Just beat Gears of War 3 on Xbox One. It's okay.

It's certainly better than Gears 1 but I feel that it's worse than Gears 2. It lacks any meaningful changes or improvements. The biggest change is certainly that the glowing Locust from Gears 2 have become an actual faction with various own enemy types. Sadly the game does little to make them interesting in terms of lore or story and if anything they make the Locust less intimidating - but my biggest problem is that they just aren't satisfying to kill. There's a few new guns that are actually fun to use but no game changers. One of the new guns is the "retro lancer", which is just a stronger but less accurate variation of the standard rifle and the result was even less variety in the gameplay as I was often inclined to run around with two very similar weapons.

As for the campaign itself: the first half was superbly boring to me, the second half got pretty good but not nearly as good as any chapter in the second game. A big chunk of the game is dedicated to establishing the new status quo and includes an utterly misguided attempt to give more depth to Cole Train, a character originally written and in my opinion only suitable for comic relief. Luckily things eventually pick up steam: the squad gets a specific goal that will determine the outcome of the war and it revolves around Marcus Fenix' father - it's emotionally engaging and relevant to the plot at once. The main villain is sadly still the Locust queen who looks like a rejected Disney villain but it could be worse. The finale is a pretty satisfying conclusion to the original Gears trilogy as far as I'm concerned.

I guess my biggest disappointment, though, is that Gears 3 fails to offer genuinely interesting situations. Gears 2 was loaded with memorable custom situations, be it that fight in a hailstorm, huge centipedes serving as movable cover, that ride through the woods on the back of a massive vehicle, that "horror" section with a new enemy type jumping out of glass containers, a long (if at times frustrating) tank section or a really dramatic bossfight in the air etc.. Gears 3 has some stuff like that but not nearly as fun or memorable. Off the top of my head there's meh "catapult" sections and an admittedly beautiful but underdeveloped rail shooter sequence in a submarine. Sometimes you can run around in a mech suit but it introduces less change over the standard gameplay than it could or should. At least the final bossfight was pretty spectacular. Also, the first couple of locations were visually quite boring to me but halfway through the game the places become a lot more interesting and some of them are admittedly visually stunning and show that at that point the developers had learned how to squeeze every last bit out of the Xbox 360.

I presume that there may have been many massive improvements in the game's multiplayer mode but as far as I'm concerned they were utterly out of fun ideas when designing the singleplayer campaign. As a singleplayer experience Gears 3 is just an okay game to me.

100% finished Monster Boy on the Switch. Not bad considering that I didn't care too much for this game.

In spite of an account-related problem I managed to buy the DLC campaign RAAM's Shadow for Gears of War 3 by utilising what seems like a vulnerability in the Microsoft account system (I was not able to make any purchases through the browser or the Xbox One marketplace but managed to finally buy it through the interface of Gears of War 3 after adding some funds to my account, lol).

Anyway, it's a pretty brief prequel campaign set in the first days of the war which follows the exploits of a different squad. Reviews said that it takes about three hours and I'd say that's accurate. It's actually quite decent. I mean, three hours isn't enough to make me care about the characters and the fact that it's a prequel means that I don't feel like there aren't any stakes involved whatsoever (seriously: screw prequels) but all in all it's a pretty decent campaign. Plus: none of the crappy glowies from Gears 3's base campaign, so that's a big plus.

Anyway, there's not really anything new here. Due to the setting it's a bit like a blend of the first two Gears game with some of the additions and the polish of Gears 3. The most fun addition are clearly sequences where you play RAAM yourself whose only attack is his trademark Kryll swarm. You basically paint targets who then get torn to pieces by the swarm. That's cool, although they didn't bother to make it particularly interesting, i.e. there's virtually no challenge whatsoever in these sequences.

What I enjoyed is that there's some pretty massive and intense encounters here, at times I thought "okay, this is it, in a moment a cutscene is gonna play where my squad is gonna get saved or killed" but actually you just have to keep pushing against overwhelming odds. The pinnacle is the boss fight against RAAM himself which is pretty intense.

Anyway, 7 bucks was a bit much considering the amount of content but it is high quality content, don't regret buying this. On to Gears of War: Judgment, I guess.

One Finger Death Punch 2

There are 2 unbeaten maps but i just cannot beat them. 1000 enemies each.

managed to beat the final challenge map. the video was....

very strange.

How much time did it take you to finish it?

Hob.

Loved every second of it, and it was a reasonably long game too so that's saying something (my attention wanders and so if I actually manage to complete something, it's worth taking note of). Lovely graphics with a pretty long draw distance here and there which really gave a sense of real depth to this strange world. Lots of collectables and secrets with quite a few nice fights thrown in too. A bit difficult to judge some of the jumps because of the perspective, made even worse because I had to use keyboard because the game wouldn't recognise my gamepad.

Beautiful game.

Can't really say for sure tbh, but probably not more than 20 hours at most, maybe less. The module has quite a bit of content (and there are also evil paths at two points in the game which I didn't play through, so there's some replayability), but it was never meant to be a full-scale game lasting dozens of hours.

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile (Steam)

Ska Studios make some of the best side scrolling brawlers ever. What I didn't know was that they are no longer Xbox 360 exclusives. Well the first Dishwasher game "Dead Samurai" for some reason hasn't been ported, but Vampire Smile and Charlie Murder have been on PC for 2 years now.

Vampire Smile is a direct sequel to Dead Samurai. You play as the undead Samurai who used to be a washer of dishes at a Café. It's got the mood, art style and music of something heavily inspired by The Crow movie. The revenge story is also like The Crow. The action is ultra fast, ultra violent side scrolling fighting. It's more about maintaining a rythm and chaining finishing moves. There are two 3-4 hour long campaigns where you play as The Dishwashers himself and the other as his step sister Yuki who has a different fighting style. Their stories interlace, but the levels and bosses are mostly the same.

Then there is the music. Anyone that has seen The Crow will remember the roof top guitar scene. Well the game has that as well. At certain points you come across amplifiers where you can take a break and your character will perform a song that plays out as a Guitar Hero style rhythm mini game. Completing these gets you bonus goodies like money for upgrades or food.

Only annoyance is that the very monochrome art style can make it hard to see which way your character is facing when the screen is full of enemies.

I think Ska Studios are only a two man team, yet they make these excellent moody games. Anyone that loves side scrolling beat em ups should get this one for sure, and you no longer need to have an Xbox 360 to play it. I still have no idea why the first part hasn't been ported though...