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Dragon Quest Builders 2 (Switch). 200 hours played. I obviously loved it, despite all the bugs and design flaws.
Bayonetta 2 (Switch)

I enjoyed the first Bayonetta, it had one of the most fluid and reactive combat systems of any action game, as well as numerous over the top boss fights and a quirky sense of humour. While the story was slightly confusing it ended up being a pretty good game. The sequel is mostly more of the same, the first level has you facing off against 3 giant bosses already. The setting has changed to a more greek inspired setting, with lots of use of water and sunlight. The story is just as confusing as the first game and the main antagonist isn't that unique or memorable. Also the game was surprisingly easier on normal difficulty than the first game, helped a lot by the removal of some of the more annoying QTE's, and also helped by making the majority of the bosses fairly easy to stagger and dodge. If you loved the first game, you'll love the 2nd but there aren't really any new mechanics other than a few new weapons.
Finished both The Banner Saga and The Banner Saga 2. I had to replay the first one to refresh my memory about the story. The sequel is as good as the first one on every aspects but the story grows more epic. Gameplay and technology have been polished and improved a bit but everything was already quite good in the first one.

I highly recommend those games and I'll probably soon launch the third one :)

Full list here.
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teceem: Mass Effect 3

IMO, the best one of the trilogy.
Now, should I give Andromeda a chance, or play pick something else? Maybe Jade Empire?
I really loved Andromeda, almost as much as I loved the Mass Effect trilogy. Almost, just because it was not "my" Shepard the main protagonist (of course, duh...)
Except from that, I had the chance to play it not at release and I found it really quite polished. Loved the story also. It is far from perfect, of course, but it is really enjoyable.

Now you ask about Jade Empire... and frankly that one too is great! I played it a long time ago, but I have nothing but fond memories of it. Tough choice !
Recently, I finished Warstone TD and Book of Demons

Warstone TD is, as its name, a tower defense game. Very classic, but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable! The only "problem" is that it's a "work in progress" and only the first chapter is completed. But even with only the first chapter, you can count on a good 10-ish hours of gameplay, Various units, various spells and skills, that's quite enough to spend enjoyable hours of gameplay.

Book of Demons is also a "work in progress", in that it's only the first of many games planned in the same universe, the Paperverse. ^_^
Book of demons is a diablo-like game, in where you have to save a village from an archdemon. Seen and done already. The NPCs will be the Innkeeper (bounties), the Monk ( heal and mana points), the Sage (item identification) and the Fortune teller (item boosts and combination).
So, it's all classic, except that your items, spells, skills will be cards, that you have to find in the dungeons, along with ingredients to get better rewards and items to recharge your cards.
Where the game is interesting is first, visually, everything being depicted as folded paper, it has a strong visual identity. Whether you will like it or not is up to you, but at least it's not a clone of already-seen-to-death graphics. Second, the game allows and even promotes cards hot-swapping during the play, to better adapt yourself to the situation (fire/poison/cold/etc.). Plus card boosting at the Fortune Teller can really be rewarding to unlock new capacities on your items/spells/skills. Third, you can actually decide of the length of your game by choosing the size of the dungeon! It can go from quick 15-minutes fix to full-fledged more-than-an-hour-long dungeons! For busy players, it's really well-thought!
Three classes are available: warrior, rogue and sorcerer and even if I hav only completed the warrior playthrough, I think I'll dive again soon for the other two classes!

So far in 2020 (veeeery slow pace) : https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2020/post29
Post edited March 03, 2020 by xa_chan
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GameRager: Good, now go back and do all the other choice paths(I don't mean the endings). ;)
Nah, too many other games still left to play. I'm sure there will be differences, but also a lot of repeating of what I just did.

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GameRager: If you play andromeda be prepared for weird facial animations(on some characters), meh voices(on some like Director Tann), and some other things.
I read they fixed a lot of it since the initial release...

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xa_chan: Except from that, I had the chance to play it not at release and I found it really quite polished. Loved the story also. It is far from perfect, of course, but it is really enjoyable.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I wasn't going to jump on the hate train...
I think I'm going to finish some games that were left unfinished now. Mostly because Andromeda isn't continuing the story AND if I wait until I upgrade my graphics card, I'll be able to play it on full Ultra! :-)
Post edited March 03, 2020 by teceem
Blazing Chrome (PC)

After going through the list of games I get with the Xbox Game Pass I came across this run n' gun game. Set in an apocalyptic future where robots rule, you play the resistance, humanity's last hope for survival. Set across 6 missions, you rush through waves of enemies, usually fighting a miniboss at the end of each stage before reaching the final boss at the end of the mission. It's a 1 hit kill in this game, fortunately most attacks are easy to dodge and you have 5 lives to keep you going, dying sends you back to the beginning of the stage which usually takes you back about 5 - 10 minutes of gameplay at most. I found it fun and fairly challenging, it only took 3 hours to beat. I'd recommend it.
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teceem: Nah, too many other games still left to play. I'm sure there will be differences, but also a lot of repeating of what I just did.
Fair enough, though if you have time much later on there are some interesting things to find with some of the other major choices(like save council vs not save in the first game).

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teceem: I read they fixed a lot of it since the initial release...
They did, but there are still some weird/odd looking bits here and there still.
Vaporum

Great dungeon crawler. Seems to be a lovechild of Legends of Grimrock and BioShock to me. Loved the steampunk setting and the way you could stop the time during battles to make it more or less turn based. I'm not really good with real time combat, so it made the game much more enjoyable to me.

It's also nice that you can use your skill points to customize your character and it's abilities. There are lots of different skills, I mostly stayed with blunt weapons, shields and evade and in the end I had a very good melee fighter. Hardly used any long-range weapons (except for some rare battles near the end and some turrets) and always had much more ammunition than I needed.

Puzzles are nothing special (a lot of crate shoving and finding levers), but it was fun to search for secrets (didn't find them all) and the story was interesting enough to keep me playing till the end, Looking forward to the prequel game the developers are working on.


Florence

Many people might argue that it is not really a game, but I really liked it. Beautiful art-style and fantastic music. Story was slice of life, pretty much a situation that everybody has encountered him or herself. But the way it was told was great and it worked very well without any words.

Game is very short though (under one hour) and there isn't any replaybility. I hoped that my decisions would influence the outcome of the story and there would be several endings, but that's not the case. Game was still worth the $5 I've spent. I would recommend it to people who like relaxing and narrative indie games.

Complete list of finished games in 2020
Halo: Combat Evolved. The singleplayer campaign was awesome and better than Half Life in my opinion. Multiplayer is like a poor mans Unreal Tournament, but I guess you can't expect much more from a console shooter.
Post edited March 06, 2020 by zazak09
So, I also beat Prototype 2 now. As I mentioned a few posts above: I had heard that it's a major improvement over the original game and my first impressions confirmed this. I always figured they just polished the first game but it feels like the developers genuinely made a new game with a similar premise. The graphics are pretty good for a last gen sandbox game, the city is far more detailed and natural, controls are much tighter etc.. I'd say this time the game is pretty close to the Infamous games in terms of visual and technical quality.

A massive change over the original game is also that this time we play as a different character, James Heller, who sets out to kill Alex Mercer (the original game's protagonist) after the "Mercer virus" that was unleashed in Prototype 1 killed his family. That mission fails and Heller himself gets infected by Mercer, gains super powers, and then the intrigues begin all over again. The big difference is that Heller is a positive character, in spite of being "evolved" by the virus, and the first thing he does is help the common folk against the occupation by Blackwatch, the government organisation that created the virus and is now fighting to contain it, among others by basically setting up concentration camps and often slaughtering civilians. This seems like an invitation for a major dissonance between the guy in the story and the one we play as but, surprisingly, it didn't feel like it as I played the game, even as a few dozen civilians died due to some irresponsible use of my powers, lol.

The overall formula hasn't actually changed much: you play mission after mission and gain new powers and, when you feel like it, also do optional challenges or side missions for extra XP. An interesting touch is that there's several skill lists and unlocks on most lists require you to finish specific types of side content - that really made those missions and unlocks a lot more rewarding. And I can't stress enough how much more polished everything is now. Missions are much better scripted, use of powers has been simplified and polished and military bases and such have become mini dungeons instead of the same building over and over again.

HOWEVER, it's still far from perfect. A few hours in I noticed that the controls, while greatly improved, still lack precision during combat and I failed a mission or two because I just did not manage to lock onto the right character. Enemies are easier to read now but there's still weird collision glitches and so on. Very few enemy types have been added. And the truth is that, while everything is of much higher quality, I didn't quite care as much about the story and the ending was very disappointing to me. I think the first game did a much better job at world building and the sequel lost a lot of the original's appeal, becoming much more conventional in terms of narrative. And the flashbacks which I loved about the original game have been "improved" in that they are even flashier and feature lots of video this time - and I just had trouble following them.

That said: all in all it's a really good sandbox game. I recommend it to people who liked the original's premise but had serious concerns about its execution. Still not Infamous but helluva lot closer.
Kingdom Hearts III (XB1X)

Recent Game Pass edition. KH 3 is approximately the 9th game in the series, I've only played the first one as part of the 1.5HD collection. Moving from the first to the most recent obviously leaves huge gaps in the story...but honestly I don't think even fans that have played them all totally understand the story anyway.
What I can say is that whilst the first game was a mix of Disney and Final Fantasy, KH3 pretty much has no Final Fantasy left in it- it is all Disney now.
It's an incredible looking game, especially with regards to spectacular special effects in combat- the attractions in particular. It's a real light and sound show. Add to that near Pixar quality animation and top voice acting. It's a slick presentation. The Xbox One X version I played has the best resolution, so would be the sharpest but all consoles share pretty much the same settings otherwise- so all look good. I played using high frame rate mode which was generally really smooth, though I'm sure the game does drop frames down from 60fps, it stays in freesync range if you have that option.

As for the gameplay well, you often hear people say that some games are better than the sum of their parts. Well this game is quite bizarre in that the parts are better than the sum. The story is...well almost non existent for most of the game, really just an excuse to send you through a series of 9 Disney worlds. Each of those worlds has their own stand alone story and some are better than others. I loved Corona Kingdom and The Caribbean, but despised 1000 Acre Woods. With the other worlds fitting in between. All worlds change up the graphics style to suit them. I'd say this time the worlds are modern Disney compared to the first games more classic Disney worlds. So overall the experience was a bit up and down depending on what stage of the game I was working through.

The end game chapter became a bit of a drag. Just an endless series of boss fights joined by an equally endless series of cutscenes. The cutscenes were becoming so long that the Xbox was going into it's screen dimming power save mode because of lack of input. That how long the cutscenes were. The final boss went for about 4 stages...I did defeat it on the first try at least, I'd hate to have had to restart that one right from the beginning a second time. Honestly, overall the story made no sense to me...not sure if it's entirely because I've not played the seven games in between or whether it's just the general weirdness the series is known for.

Overall I have to say I liked the first game just slightly better, though KH3 had it's moments for sure. Mostly I'm just glad that Japanese developers still do their own thing and make games like this. Despite being uneven it was still quite an experience. I really need to play the games in between now. I've still got my PS4 1.5/2.5 disc...it will be interesting to see if I end up with a PS5 first or if the remainder of the series ends up on Game Pass first- meaning I'll just play them that way if so. Square Enix just loves Game Pass.
Post edited March 07, 2020 by CMOT70
Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places) (1988) (Linux/ScummVM)
Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals (1989) (Linux/ScummVM)

I didn't like Larry 2, but quite enjoyed Larry 3. The sense of humour in the series becomes more and more abstract and ending of part three is, well, quite crazy. What I disliked is that none of the games may be completed without walkthrough (if you did it – my respect!). I made a lot of mistakes, died a lot of times and even replayed some scenes without any idea of the reasons of my failures. Looks unbeatable for me. From these two Larry 3 one has quite interesting plot.

List of all games completed in 2020.
My Brother Rabbit

Nice casual puzzle game, and HOG done right, similar to Tiny Bang Story, and a bit reminiscent of Amanita games perhaps, but contrary to most other titles in the HOG genre. In this one nothing feels out of place; I mean everything is random and weird due to the setting of a child's fantasy/imagination/nightmare/dream, but it's consistent in itself, and there's no separation between hidden object screens and adventure screens, everything is a hidden object screen.

The music is nice enough, but maybe a bit sparse, IIRC there were occasional silences and songs kept repeating themselves in a noticeable manner, while you were searching the screens in a chapter.

Sometimes progress was steady, fast and easy, often I was shortly held up by something but then managed to find he solution of my own accord, but occasionally I felt stuck so hopelessly that I actually looked for a walkthrough. I think part of that was connected to slightly vague tutorial instructions - I have to admit didn't really get what they meant by "-> item is here" until later in the game; then I understood that this function is quite essential if you don't want to waste time searching screens for items that aren't there. The game actually gives you hints what items you haven't found on which screen yet. The other thing that could make the game a bit frustrating at times is the whole gameplay is clicking around on the screen, trying to find out what can be interacted with. There are no indication for hotspots and some things just don't react when you click on them. This isn't much of a problem as long as you have many different things to do and look for, but in situations where you have to find that one correct thing to click on in order to progress, desperately clicking everywhere on the screen without getting hints or reactions can mar the fun a bit. And lastly, several things you can only pick up or interact with after you learn what you need them for, before that they are sort of locked.

So, I had a bit of a rough start with it due to what I described in the paragraph above, but all in all it was an enjoyable distraction to be played in small chunks, and I guess I liked it well enough, but I did not really love it and will probably forget it again, soon.
Post edited March 08, 2020 by Leroux
high rated
Betrayal at Krondor

I just finished this game half an hour ago. I don't want to go into too much detail because, honestly, BaK is considered an all time cRPG classic and there are already hundreds of reviews out there for people to read if they want to know what it is and why it's special.

Let me just say, it's as good as people say it is. Phenomenal writing and story, some of the best in any videogame, period. Plus, good combat, good exploration, very acceptable presentation for a game from 1993. Overall, a very enjoyable experience. It's the real deal, a true classic and totally worth playing still.