Bridge Constructor (2013) (Linux)

I liked it and completed all levels (most of them with trucks), but after 3 hours I don't feel I'd like to spend more time in the game. It seems it's just a bit repetitive at some point and it also does not reward enough for interesting solutions (like e.g. some Zachtronics' games do). However at the current price ($1.5) it's a nice game which may be played a few minutes a day or during watching some boring Netflix series with someone ;)

List of all games completed in 2021.

Wanderlust: Travel Stories (2019) (Linux)

At first I was charmed by the photos, music and writing. At some point I realized it's not good enough to keep me interested. A lot of Paulo Coelho style, too much stories of some random people, not enough real interest in different places and different cultures. There's also actually no gameplay, which makes playing the game a pain if you're no longer interested in some stories/parts of reading. All in all – I don't like it. I was catch by a demo (part of Bangkok story), but the whole game is not what I expected.

List of all games completed in 2021.

Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded (2013) (Linux/Wine)

I completed classic Larry series a year ago. The first one was not the best one of the series, as far as I remember. This remake is less frustrating for sure, but still quite disappointing – there's still a problem with money and taxi consuming much more time than it should. I liked the graphics, but it's not always the same quality and style. And the game is really short. I guess remakes of the next parts are much better.

List of all games completed in 2021.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (XSX)

This game has something of a legendary status as an early Xbox 360 game. It was on sale for $3 recently, so I got it. It's status is well deserved I think. It fills a really good middle ground between hollywood war movie style shooters like Call of Duty and simulators like ARMA. It was made by the original Rainbow Six developer. It has a good campaign, where you need to use somewhat realistic tactics with your 4 man fire team, leapfrogging down streets providing overwatch fire between cover spots. The enemy can kill you fast, but don't posses superhuman reflexes either. The missions have decent variety. Overall it's one of the best military shooters I've played for some time. I've already got the sequel, which is rated as highly by fans.

There are three different versions of the game, all by different developers and each a different game that simply shares the same story line. The PS2 game barely runs at 20fps and should be ignored unless for historical interest. The PC version is more of a true squad tactical shooter, but has poor AI that apparently verges on breaking the game when combined with it's super human enemies. The 360 version came out in 2006, so an early game for the platform. But it looks quite good for its time, especially with AI HDR applied through backwards compatibility on a new Series console. Best of all though, the game runs excellent. Despite the 360 version being capped to 30fps, due to some glitch revolving around how the game implements V-sync combined with the emulations enforced V-sync method- the game bypasses it's frame cap and runs unlocked. And does so without any bugs or glitches at all. So on a 120Hz freesync TV it runs far better than on original hardware. Hopefully the sequel works the same way, because if I have to return to 30fps for that one, it will be a real pisser. One of this years biggest surprise games for me, I got way more out of it than expected.

HeXen: Beyond Heretic is a good game, with great level design if you go through the level for the first time… Second time looking for some special place where something maybe change is not so fun. From this reason I prefer Heretic, but enjoy both of them. In hexen I did not feel similar challenge like in Heretic, of course except for game close to the end.

So, I'm on vacation (nothing fancy, just visiting family) and got a few Switch games for that occasion including Metroid: Dread. However, I felt that the Switch is a bit awkward to use on a plane so I also dug out my PS Vita. Incidentally I haven't been able to log into the Vita store (even though AFAIK it should still be online) so I figured "what the hell" and hacked my Vita. Long story short: I just beat Metroid: Zero Mission, the GameBoy Advance remake of the original Metroid, on my PS Vita using Retroarch (with achievements and everything!).

One of the reasons I decided to play the game was that there were some things that seriously frustrated me about Dread and everyone on the internet and their uncle is like "duh, that's just Metroid". Well, in my memory oldschool Metroid (Super Metroid and later, that is) wasn't like that - and I was right.

I actually played Zero Mission (and Fusion) in the past on a GBA that I borrowed from my cousin, though I couldn't quite get into it back then (I did almost beat Super Metroid on SNES, though). As far as I can tell Zero Mission is basically the original Metroid remade on Super Metroid level in terms of technology and design. There's a map, you can crouch and shoot diagonally and over the course of the game you get most abilities from Super Metroid. At first glance the level design is actually quite similar to the original game's, as are many (most?) of the enemies, though surely there are numerous differences that utilise the new abilities. And you do get a whole new epilogue.

Now, what can I say? It's Metroid. The intro tells you to destroy Mother Brain, so you spend a few hours exploring alien caves and tunnels, shoot all sorts of creatures which aren't metroids, get new abilities which allow you to open new doors, destroy certain blocks or just reach places which were formerly out of reach, finally kill some metroids and ultimately also Mother Brain. It's honestly as basic and pure metroidvania as it gets.

The core loop of metroidvanias is of course satisfying here as ever, though I must say that it would be more satisfying if I also got ablitiies that I didin't know from earlier titles in the series. It frankly feels like the developers ran out of ideas for the series very soon (and even Dread reuses mostly stuff from Super Metroid, sheesh). But it does work. As a run and gun game and platformer it's competent and for the most part very casual compared to other oldschool titles. You have tons of health and if you keep exploring and gathering health and ammo upgrades even the bosses become easy as you can take a lot of hits and just spam missiles then.

The biggest challenge in the game is the navigation, but even that one isn't all that difficult. The map, which is structured in a square grid and thus super easy to read (unlike Dread's abomination of a map), basically saves you all the trouble of having to remember where you saw which kind of door. The map does not show you destructible blocks but what it (most of the time) does tell you, is your next destination (another thing Dread doesn't do). With the information you're given and the structure of the world it's pretty easy to find the only possible connections and spam whatever ability you just got in the right places, hoping to find a secret passage that will lead you to your next goal. It's not super difficult but it is still satisfying when a whole new part of the map opens up because you found that one little fucker of a block. And once in a while finding a passage, mostly the optional ones, even borders on a puzzle but those cases are frankly disappointingly rare. But even outside of the map the game handles guiding the player quite elegantly. Its world (unlike Dread's) has a pretty good flow and sometimes also makes big things happen when you pass an earlier spot just to confirm that you're on the right track and don't miss a hint. Honestly, my only complaints here are that it could be a bit more puzzly and should have interesting abilities that Super Metroid didn't have.

As I said, story-wise there isn't much going on inside the game itself, but you do get some fancy comic panels for certain bosses. HOWEVER, then you get the epilogue which turns the game into thel shittiest stealth game ever and apparently ties Zero Mission into some bigger lore that the series got over the years - you do get some somewhat cryptic story event with some messianic nonsense going on and then the shittiest stealth game turns into a pretty good metroidvania again. The end.

In summary it's basically "bonus levels for Super Metroid!" or something. It's good but I'm also disappointed. Not just because it turns out that the series apparently didn't introduce much stuff after Super Metroid but also because these definitive Metroid games haven't aged all that great - not because there's anything wrong with the games themselves but because there has been SO MUCH new stuff in the genre since and now Metroid is about as barebones as it gets and frankly does not even boast an exceptionally great execution.

Welp, going back to Dread.

Zero Mission gets talked up a lot by people who favor Super Metroid over all else and they like that Zero Mission basically Super Metroids up the original game. Not that I have anything against Super Metroid, but I beat the original Metroid back when it was new and I've always felt it was a great game as is. Giving it a proper save system and getting rid of the need to grind for health when picking up after you leave off would be nice QoL changes, but all the extra Zero Mission stuff is unnecessary, especially the lame endgame stealth section, IMO.

Just finished Gabriel Knight 20th Anniversary. My first time playing a GK game. Very good game. I enjoyed every minute of it. I loved the musics and the voice acting. Great adventure and puzzles. Much higher standard than the Secret Files series that I played just before.

Yoku's Island Express, Nov 15 (GOG)-This game was so much fun. It's easily my feel goodest game of the year. It's just a relaxed, laid back game of delivery pinball with an adorable little beetle. And the soundtrack was stellar as well. The only knocks are some fiendish shots required to get all the collectibles and hidden areas. I rarely 100% games but I did with this one just because I wanted to keep playing. It was such a joy.

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Slave Zero

A pain to get running on my new Win10 machine, but I got it working okay with D3D and Peixoto patches (until the last few levels with an enemy type that would crash the game, replied to a thread about that in the SZ forum)

An okay 3rd person mech combat game if you get it running, I think I got it for $1.50 on sale (back when it was 5.99). Shogo had more personality and iirc was somewhat light-hearted (not always), Slave Zero is much more "edgy".

I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, maybe if you have a Win7 or older machine and wait for a sale.

Jesus Christ. I just beat Metroid Dread. Most difficult game I've beaten in a long time. As my post about Zero Mission already suggested, I don't think it's a very good game. I'd give it a 7/10 and I swear to God, if the game weren't named Metroid, its metascore would also be closer to 70 than 90.

There's a ton of things to unload here. The game feels almost as if the developers couldn't decide how retro or faithful to its predecessors it must be. The result is IMO quite awkward and for the most part merely solid, sometimes awful and rarely great. And it feels more like a modern remake of the old games than the next generation of Metroid. It plays things mostly safe, by depending almost entirely on stuff we've known at least since Super Metroid, and then selectively adding or changing a number of things and frankly I feel that almost all of these are a bit of a mess.

How did they modernise Metroid? Besides obviously making it 2.5D they made various technical and quality of life "improvements". For one, there's the ability to aim freely in all directions and honestly, it friggin' sucks. Like in the old games you can aim up or down while running by also tilting the stick vertically but that technique is of course super inaccurate - the additional directions only make this even less accurate than when you could aim in only eight directions. For more precision you can hold down the left bumper - then you aim using the left stick instead of moving. This is fine in terms of accuracy but obviously having to stand still is usually very awkward. I realise that they had good reasons not to go for twin stick controls (as a matter of fact the right stick does nothing in Dread) but well, the result feels like an awkward compromise. And it gets even worse if you want to shoot aimed rockets. Then you have to hold down RB for shooting rockets instead of the standard bullets, LB for aiming, aim with the left stick and finally press the Y button in order to actually shoot - you have to hold it down if you want to fire the more powerful guided missiles in the late game. In my opinion it feels terrible and is unnecessarily hard to pull off. I took many hits due to how awkward executing this basic action is.

Then there's the thing that they changed a lot about the level format. All Metroid games I've played had levels organised in equally sized square cells with larger rooms consisting of numerous cells. Here they got rid of that and the level design is a lot more organic. Sure, it feels more modern and theoretically makes the levels more interesting but in practice it also has the side effect that the levels are extremely awkward to navigate compared to the old games, hidden connections are far more difficult to find and the map screen is an unreadable mess.

You may have heard that God of War creator David Jaffe got ridiculed by the entire internet for getting stuck in the beginning of the game. So did I - and I don't know how long I would have been stuck there if I hadn't checked after 10 minutes or so whether it's the same spot where Jaffe got stuck. Even though I am familiar with Metroid and its destructible hidden blocks I did not think of shooting a ceiling that looks like one solid mesh without any signs that it is destructible (as a matter of fact the indestructible parts of the ceiling looked more destructible). By going 2.5D while keeping a (largely?) tile-based level format with destructible blocks, Metroid breaks many patterns that players have been taught over the last twenty years. You do get used to Dread's approach after that unfortunate moment where Jaffe and I got stuck but seriously, it's kinda bizarre and unlike anything out there.

And I read a lot through the comments under the videos about Jaffe getting stuck and people keep saying stuff like "that's just what the old Metroids were like". No, they weren't! The old Metroid games had a simpler level format where it was easier to tell where secret passages can be and often made destructible blocks distinct form their environment. And while we're on "that's what the old Metroids were like": something I saw a lot was "Jaffe needs quick time events". You know what Dread has? Quick time events! And a ton of them! And I hate them! Quite a few enemies have melee attacks and you can usually counter them if you press X just at the right moment when a little particle effect appears. They are goddamn QTEs and feel all sorts of wrong in a Metroid game. And while they are for the most part optional (though far more effective than just shooting an enemy) they do become critical in several boss fights - some bosses actually require you to successfully execute QTE sequences in order to defeat them, at the very least the final boss of the game.

And while we're on the bosses: I hated most of them. What perhaps sucks the most is that they have rather unclear collision boxes. It is often utterly unclear where you can move in order to evade the attacks without taking damage from touching the actual boss. The most ridiculous case is a spider-like boss who sometimes moves into the background, allowing you to move in front of his head in order to avoid some of his attacks but there's no strong visual distinction between those states and I died numerous times because I was in front of his face as he moved back into the foreground even though both states look virtually the same. Also the return of Kraid, that big dragon-like boss, suffers from Dread's modernisation. He generally has the same pattern as in Super Metroid but they added a QTE here and I didn't successfully execute it a single time because that effect that announces his melee attack just drowns between all the particles caused by you shooting at him. The only boss I must praise is the final one. He is difficult and sadly largely depends on QTEs (there's actually a phase where only QTEs can hurt him) but he suffers from none of that ambiguity that the other bosses suffer from. It's a basic matter of learning and mastering the pattern. I struggled with him at first A LOT but when I finally beat him I barely lost any health. That's a sign of good boss design. But generally, I have no idea why Dread is as difficult as it is.

Anyway, I guess my single biggest complaint about the game is how you're guided through the world. What's actually a complaint even among Metroid die-hards is that Dread is highly linear and yeah, Dread does this pretty weird thing where you're often literally unable to just explore the entire world and have to complete a pretty long linear passage. You can often break out of this tunnel and go look for some upgrades but then you're left with no guidance as to where you should go next and are left staring at the incredibly shitty map screen where it's almost impossible to find the way back into that path that you're supposed to follow. And unlike some older Metroid games Dread does not tell you the next destination on the map screen. One time I failed to follow that obvious linear path and all I was left with was a huge area with a ton of dead ends and the map provided not a single hint as to where that one little motherfucker of a destructible block could possibly be located. Honestly? In my opinion that's just shitty design and Dread is just much worse in this regard than the 2D classics of the series.

I'm also not a fan of the graphics at all. Dread has this weird simple graphical style that seems to pay tribute to the GameCube. To me that generation of 3D graphics just looked utterly meh and IMO the enemies and environments just look utterly generic as a result. Dread has IMO none of that Alien or Aliens mood that the old Metroid games had. I just beat the game and already all I remember is just a blur of the most generic industrial sci-fi shit. If I look at screenshots now I am literally unable to tell you which worlds they belong to. And the sounds and music are also meh.

But does Dread have something good going for it? Sure! It's still goddamn Metroid and when the game does not piss you off it's still a pretty good metroidvania game. Not original at all and IMO worse than some other modern metroidvanias (e.g. my beloved Darksiders) but still pretty good and solid.

One thing that some players keep complaining about is something new to the series: the EMMIs. Those are indestructible robots that you must outrun or evade using a cloak which only works temporarily. It's during those moments that Metroid gets some of that Alien charme. I see why some players hate these sequences - they can be frustrating and sometimes an EMMI will randomly just block the only route forward, which friggin' sucks, but to me they were for the most part exciting and something fresh and reminded me of that intense survival sequence in the village in the beginning of RE4. And oddly enough I usually had no problem finding some way to outrun an EMMI and if the escape route wasn't obvious I could gain distance by performing some loops with shutters blocking the way behind me. And whenever you are finally able to destroy an EMMI it's usually still challenging and stressful and has some Terminator vibes, with that machine getting closer to you and you just barely being able to destroy it before it kills you. It's honestly good stuff! Funny thing, though: the EMMIs are supposed to be entirely new but frankly they are quite similar to that shitty stealth sequence at the end of Zero Mission where you can't kill enemies either, heh.

Aaaanyway, that's Dread for ya. It's an okay game.

Forza Horizon 5 (XSX Game Pass)

50 hours in just over a week, you could say I enjoyed this. The story mode this time consists of making into Horizon Hall of Fame. I did that, plus raced and won every race the game- circuit, street, dirt and offroad, plus all the super events like the Goliath. Found and restored every barn car. Drove down every road in Mexico, bought all the houses and have every song of every radio station pretty much imprinted in my memory for at least a month to come.

I also found out that the best offroad vehicle this time is not a Baja Buggy, or a Trophy Truck or even a modern rally or the Warthog. No, the best offroad vehicle is a Mercedes Benz racing truck- that thing just bulldozers through anything, especially useful for the trail blazing events.

I cannot fault anything technical about the game, it looks great and does what it is meant to- streams in all of it's detail at 60fps even when driving across country at 300km/h. The only faults, in the early days, were the servers were a bit janky for online stuff- as player numbers were huge. Unfortunate, because the online racing is really fun. The servers seem to have settled a lot now though.
I've said this for every entry in the series, Playground can release another game with a great map every two years and I'll play it, no questions asked. Best open world racing in the business. I'll be coming back for a day or so for each new season, to do some of the seasonal events- but other than that I'm now waiting for the next full Motorsport entry.

Bridge Constructor Medieval (2014) (Linux)

I liked it. And I've decided to collect all golden crowns this time (in BC games you can finish the level and make progress by building "good enough" bridge or fulfil some additional condition to get a full score) – perhaps medieval setting is more appealing to me ;) In some cases it was necessary to look for some help in the internet, but in general this game seems to be easier and shorter than "Bridge Constructor".

List of all games completed in 2021.

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Nov 21 (GOG)-I beat this one last night. The visuals and audio and generally all production values were top notch but the gameplay itself was a bit of a letdown. The game was very repetitive. The first level in particular was a series of sneaking, depowering an enemy, one hit takedown, find a gun, lose a gun, and repeat. The rest of the levels were try to sneak, kill a commander, set off an alarm, kill huge waves of enemies and then roam around in an empty level. The forced stealth really didn't work here. The game was just chugging along and then about 2/3s of the way through they added zombies which actually made the game quite a bit harder. The last couple levels particularly the one where you use the mech I just rushed through because I was having such trouble with the zombies. But the whole thing felt really silly.

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Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (XSX)

The story follows on directly from the first GRAW, so it's a true sequel. It plays just like the first game, but with some slight refinements to the UI. Overall it's another really good military squad shooter. It also features the same beneficial V-sync glitch that causes the game to bypass it's original 30fps cap and run unlocked when played under backwards compatibility- so it runs a lot smoother than on an original 360.

What I like so much about these games is that they have the best balance between you and your squadmates and having to perform somewhat realistic tactics. Most games with sidekicks make them useless morons, that are bullet proof, and just there for story reasons. They don't do any damage and the enemy ignores them and focuses on you...basically how an Uncharted game works. In the GRAW games, your team act like well trained elite soldiers. If you put them behind cover on over watch, they will shoot an enemy that pops their head up. Take an anti tank guy with you and tell him to shoot a vehicle, he does. They are good at what they do, and that is balanced by the enemy being the same. Your job as player is not to do everything by yourself like in COD, it's to correctly use your troops as assets to get the job done. Very much like the excellent older Hidden & Dangerous games but a bit more action oriented. The next game in the Ghost Recon series was Future Soldier, which seems to have changed direction a bit, but still has its fans, next Ubi sale I think I'll get that one too.