Just finished Evolva.

A pleasant surprise.
Loved the huge and colorful alien world. Action was cool, and allowed a good bit of customization through the unique, adapt-on-the-fly Mutation system. Light puzzles (mostly bomb transporting) made me use my head a bit. Has a few kick-ass, quick-paced music tracks that I'll be listening to outside of the game. Graphics hold up quite well for a game that just turned twenty. Some dodgy team AI, and there's very little story, but the reason for all the killing was successfully established quite early on - defending the mostly defenseless and preventing a parasitic planetary outbreak.
I had been looking at the game for a while. Glad I decided to finally purchase it and play it soon after.

Fate of Kai (from the Humble Trove)

It's one of those interactive comic puzzle games like FRAMED, but much simpler. It' very short, an hour at max, but maybe that's for the better, as I didn't find it particularly good or interesting, apart from the general idea. To me it plays more like a demo of the concept, without it really knowing where it wants to go with that gameplay idea, which mostly just consists of stealing simple thoughts like JUMP or OPEN from thought balloons and inserting them in other frames. In the first chapters, due to extremely limited options, everything you have to do is so obvious that you can't even call it a puzzle. The last two chapters are a bit trickier, but not much fun either, because it's mostly trial and error, and when I got stuck I felt it was just because the objectives and the hints in the comic were rather obscure. I didn't really get the story either. But I don't think I've missed anything of importance there. Apparently it's your typical pseudo-deep indie parable, where an adventure in a fantasy world actually stands for inner conflicts in the psyche of a modern everyday man (yawn). I guess graphics and music were nice enough, but like I said, the visual language of the comic could have been clearer.

Lucius Demake. I haven't played the original 3D adventure, but this top down, C64 8 bit style version always tempted me. It's not available on GOG so I took the occasion of a Steam ga to get a copy. It's a short and fun game, a couple of action sequences might become frustrating but it's generally ok. The worst was cutscenes dialogues advancing too fast, I did not have time to read some sentences to the end in German.
Vote here if you'd like to see a GOG version:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/lucius_demake

I finished My Brother Rabbit, I got for free on Big Fish. Short, casual, well made, colourful, no frustration HOG. I skipped a couple of puzzles without remorse.
https://www.gog.com/game/my_brother_rabbit

Most recently, I finished:
Resident Evil 2 Remake,
Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1+2,
Sherlock Holmes Nemesis,
Myst,
The Suffering.

Still going through the ever-increasing long backlog of video games I have, but it's always nice to when you finish one and move onto the next!

Entertaining game indeed.

The Awakening: the Dreamless Castle, HOG from 2010 and first of the series of 7. It didn't age so badly, all considered, and I'm looking for more of the series, and its devs Boomzap, also makers of Oddworld. Where Oddworld is darker, the Awakening, at least this first episode, is a "sunny" fairytale. You wake up atfer a 100 years slumber and free all the cobolds that were waiting for your awakening. The hint system will not tell you were to go and is sometimes really useless. There is a solitaire mahjong included, that you can play from the menu, outside of the game. Solving its levels will give you teach you lore from the Awakening woorld.

Additional modules first included in Neverwinter Nights: Gold

It's sort of cheating to consider these another finished game, but I have little chance to add to this year's number otherwise. Also, some 13 years after starting the original campaign and more than four after finishing Hordes of the Underdark, playing through these means I can now finally say that I finished Neverwinter Nights: Platinum, not counting that multiplayer module, and really am just that incomplete Witch's Wake away from finally, finally finishing Neverwinter Nights: Diamond. So I'm adding this here for those three scenarios, even if there's not much to them other than insane difficulty if you'd use characters of the recommended levels. I used my level 33 sorcerer with insane gear that went through all three main campaigns, however.
That said, The Dark Ranger's Treasure basically consists of two big battles in one area, one when you go, with a couple of enemy types, and one when you return, with a single enemy type, and a lot of heavy loot to grab in between. Frustratingly, once you make your way back, you can't go back out, whether to grab more loot or clear any remaining enemies. The Winds of Eremor, on the other hand, starts with the loot, a new character possibly finding some useful items before the fighting, but then it just consists of two areas and an endless swarm of a single enemy type, with just a couple of exceptions in the Crypt, the numbers and the respawn rate at times making even my overpowered character simply unable to push through without powerful spells. If for some reason you want to, you can keep playing endlessly, continuing to fight those swarms after completing the quest. As for To Heir Is Human, it shows that it was created by a different person, having a few different enemy types, a few areas, a little additional quest, a merchant that also sells things, and hinting at a bigger story that was to follow. The difficulty remains insane for the recommended levels, and at the end even my character risked getting in trouble, admittedly after I carelessly rushed in.

Tales of Vesperia Definitive (XB1X Game Pass)

Another 60 hour JRPG done this year. The first game in the Tales series that I've played. Just an average sort of JRPG really. The graphics are great, looks exactly like Japanese anime- the real thing and not the usual game imitation of anime. The music is also high quality.
The usual JRPG stuff wears a bit thin towards the end however. These people just don;t know when to shut up and get moving. They talk and talk and talk and are even self aware of the fact, often mentioning to each other in game that they need to get on with it because the world is coming to an end and all. But still it's all blah blah. Of course the characters are all idiots and never finish off boss enemies, stopping to talk to them and let them get away. Not once, not twice, not ten times...try more like 15 times. You think they would learn. I'm there yelling at them after each boss fight "finish him, he's going to get away again". But do they ever learn? No.

It sounds like I hated it, but it did have a pretty good tactical sort of combat- well as far as real time combat systems go. It also had a good world and the way you get around it evolves nicely- from running everywhere to getting a ship and eventually an airship. The lore is quite original- no old Elves and Dwarves fall back here. So overall it was just average, well behind the Atlus games I played ealier in the year or Xenoblade Chronicles for example. Not sure if I'd play any others in the series, I need a rest from JRPG's for a bit.

I'm curious, what multiplayer module are you referring to? I wasn't aware of anything like that.

I see, thanks!

Battletoads (XB1X Game Pass)

Excellent game, this is how you bring an old franchise into the modern era. No pixel art to advertise fake game retro, this one looks like a cartoon from the 80's (just with foul language) and it looks awesome and runs just as well. I find it funny in a self aware sort of way, but some people will find it overly silly I'm sure. The voice work is pretty good, especially the Dark Queen- my favorite character by far.
The best thing about the game though is it's variety in levels and how no game play type dominates and becomes boring. Sometimes devs fall in love with some thing they come up with and don't know when to stop. Like using the gravity gun to plug holes with cars in Half Life 2. First it's a novelty, clever. After 15 minutes of doing it, yeah I get it please move on. After 30 minutes it's "please stop, enough!". Battletoads is side scrolling brawler followed by on rails gravity bike levels followed by speed platforming levels followed by puzzle platform levels, twin stick shooter levels and throw in boss levels, hacking puzzles, rhythm levels and so on. All levels are short enough so that frustration and boredom don't set in. A number of difficulty levels so that even nuff nuffs can get through on easy, which you can change at anytime if any level type gives you issues.

Only one problem, it's quite short at just over 4 hours of actual gameplay- not including repeating checkpoints if you're playing at high difficulty. Classic games in this genre were about the same length though, and the difficulty levels do change the nature of the game quite a bit and make replaying for high scores a thing. For someone that uses Game Pass to play some big games and has some spare time for something shorter, play this.

Just beat The Last of Us Remastered on PS4. There's no way I can talk about this game without coming off as a snob, a hipster and a ton of worse things. I did not like it when it came out, I still don't like it now. Any analysis I can provide for this game will ultimately say more about me as a player than the game itself since it's already a universally established fact that this is a masterpiece. In fact not liking it disqualifies me from delivering any commentary on any game. Not liking The Last of Us is like not liking ice cream - it makes you a monster unfit to live in any human society.

Now, don't get me wrong: I think I understand why people love this game so much. You get attached to the characters, many scenes are quite ballsy stuff that you won't get in almost any other game, the atmosphere and presentation are great. It actually has a lot in common with, say, God of War (2018) which I absolutely adore. The Last of Us just doesn't resonate with me on a visceral level at all. It's interesting scene after interesting scene after interesting scene - much like the Uncharted games. And like in the case of Uncharted this pattern bores me to death. This pattern of a game as a long series of interesting but ultimately very random stimuli just doesn't work for me. Incidentally my favourite moments were the ones where the game basically comes to a standstill and takes the time to build up one thing at a time, in particular cutscenes where character relationships are built through a longer dialogue or important decisions are made - and oddly enough those are quite rare.

I think both in the narrative and the gameplay the main problem boils down to the same thing for me: the lack of immediate and intermediate goals. It's like you generally only have this one big goal: getting Ellie to the Fireflies so they can develop a vaccine. That one is important and I care about it but it always feels super distant. Very few other things in the game feel like they are meaningful steps towards that goal nor are they substantial on their own. It's hard for me to experience a feeling of accomplishment for putting up a ladder when it only gets me a few feet closer to a goal that is miles away or to feel good about slaughtering bad guys when there's a million more of them and I don't feel like I'm making the area any safer or better. Ultimately the game does introduce one bad guy who also is an actual character and unsurprisingly the sequence between his introduction and his death was the portion of the game that I enjoyed the most. Well, besides the ending. I loved the game's ending.

As for the gameplay itself - I honestly can't say that it's more than okay. The stealth is a bit satisfying but riddled with things that I considered immensely frustrating as a very experienced player and great fan of stealth games - open combat is only solid. And in my opinion they made some terrible choices in the game economy and progression that just made the game feel awkward to me. They have a dynamic ammo drop system inspired by Resident Evil 4 but it's far too obvious (especially given the game's much more realistic style than Resident Evil) and motivates you to stick with the tactic you're already using. Keep stealth killing and enemies will rarely drop any ammo - slaughter enemies with guns and they drop ammo all the time. To me that's fundamentally wrong. You can craft stuff but it's only useful for offensive tactics (besides perhaps the smoke grenade which I didn't use even once) - when you're already in combat just shooting is usually less of a hassle than using the crafted stuff and the hoarder's syndrome is very strong in this one any way due to how small your inventory is and how rare crafting components are. There's upgrades for Joel and his guns but VERY few of those address any actual problems like the limited supply of ammo. And again, there's almost nothing there for stealth. Frankly I could go on for hours with pointing out quirks in the gameplay that annoyed me. I swear to God, if people didn't love the narrative and presentation so much they would consider the gameplay average at best.

But on a higher level what annoys me the most about the game are these two things: The first thing is that it does not use the gameplay at all to explore any of the game's themes. It's happy with being a third-person shooter with stealth mechanics, period. Frankly that sucks. Secondly, I feel that the game acts like it's a brave exploration of matters of morality and human nature but actually it's not. It's like an edgy teenager who proclaims "people suck" but when you ask him why people suck he just yells "you don't understand me!" and runs up to his bedroom to listen to Marilyn Manson or something. The game boldly shows you scenes of people cruelly murdering people but doesn't dare explore why people are like this (or why they weren't like this before the outbreak) - it's like the developers were super afraid of accidentally humanising the bad guys and making the player feel too bad about the shit they have to do in this game. And I feel that that's exactly what they would have had to do for the game to become truly valuable from an artistic standpoint.

Well, I said it in the beginning: I'm gonna come off as a snob. The one defence I have for my standpoint is that satisfying my requirements would not have made the game any worse for those who already love it.