Costume Quest (XSX)

Xbox 360 version via backwards compatibility. I played Costume Quest a few years back and really enjoyed it as a quick JRPG turn based style of game, but done in a western way- so none of the annoying Japanese trends like bosses that run away 5 times whilst smack talking you. Now that I finally played the first game I can say it's pretty much the same. They are really nice quick games to wind down with after a really long or difficult game. Costume Quest is only about 6 hours long. You play a bunch of kids trick or treating on Halloween, where their costumes give them special powers. It actually plays very similar to South Park: The Stick of Truth, just without the profanity and adult themes. I think both Costume Quest games were actually free on the Epic store a while back, so many people probably have them.

Firewatch, GOG

Firewatch is a walking sim but don't let that scare you away. It's a pretty good one with a mature story about loss and relationships and sickness. The game is quite pretty with a distinct art-style. I did have a bit of micro stutter but that doesn't matter much in that type of game. The first 60-70% of the game is very good but sadly the last part of the game isn't nearly as good and suffers a bit from bad pacing and rushed gameplay.

Still it's a good 5 hour game and a solid 7/10.

Just beat the story mode of Zombie Driver: Immortal Edition on PS4. I played Zombie Driver a little bit on Steam a few years ago but now I stumbled upon it at random while looking through the PS Store and for whatever reason it was free. Turns out that I got the PS3 version from PS+ a few years ago and the Immortal Edition is a free upgrade for any owners of the original version. Sweet!

Anyway, the game's title kinda says it all: it's a vehicular shoot 'em up game with zombies. At first it seems like it's a bit of a zombie-themed Crazy Taxi clone because you have to pick up and deliver some people before they get killed but soon it turns out that this taxi gameplay is only a small part of the game. Above all it's indeed about massacring tons of zombies by either running them over or destroying them with several weapons. And frankly it's a pretty good game.

Incidentally the game's kind of the opposite of Hatred, which I beat just a few days ago: it's totally designed to be arcade fun and isn't held back by realism that nobody asked for. Ammo and repair items are scattered throughout the city and respawn after a while. Drive over a weapon and just blast away with machine guns, a flame thrower or a rocket launcher and later also a rail gun. It's honestly just crazy fun: drive towards the marker, use nitro or fire your guns to push through massive crowds of zombies with ease and once in a while destroy some zombie nests. Frankly the game is almost too casual: there are time limits, either as optional objectives or because you have to pick up survivors before they die but 1. those time limits are generally VERY forgiving (and 2. on most missions you either don't have to hurry at all or you're free to drive around the city as much as you want once you've picked up all survivors. Basically whenever you're running out of ammo or health you can just drive around a bit and replenish those. And you're often free to just drive around the city and rack up big combos and thus farm money which you can spend on upgrades for your unlockable cars and weapons. And the game really isn't hard. The one serious danger are big explosive zombies but those are very easy to spot and avoid thanks to being huge and surrounded by a green cloud.

The game isn't some game design masterpiece - it doesn't do anything original, some weapons don't make much sense, the missions aren't as diverse as they could be, it doesn't really require mastery of any sort but there's simply nothing serious to complain about. It isn't frustrating, you don't constantly get stuck on indestructible obstacles, you don't get attacked and destroyed out of nowhere. Maybe it's a bit too monotonous but you do get the occasional mission in a tank, a bulldozer or a fire truck which keeps things a bit fresh. The story is generic zombie stuff but you do get some fun lines from the people you pick up, some of which suggest that things aren't exactly as they seem and it kept me motivated to keep going (though, admittedly, the ending was a letdown). And in my opinion the campaign consisting of about 30 missions is just short enough that it's over before things get seriously boring. I beat pretty much the whole story mode in 5-6 hours, I think.

So, it's fun, it looks great, it sounds great, it handles nicely - if you're like me and appreciate old-school vehicular action game this one's IMO a very good choice. Oh yeah, and besides the story mode there's also some racing and survival stuff which I haven't checked out yet. Going by the story mode those make Zombie Driver also a decent game to return to if you just need to let off some steam.

FEAR Extraction Point, Jan 23 (GOG)-Its a good addition to the original game. This one ups the fear factor and the difficulty a bit compared to the original. There's also a final battle even if no final boss and even if it was rather easy. Also quite a bit less buggy.

Full List

After many years I finally got a good Reigns ending (tricking the devil). I had to use a walkthrough, and I could see in the comments how that walkthough is a collective work. Reigns could be a casual game, but beating it is hard, because the devs trick the player in any possible way and the hints are subtle. Also, even when you know what to do, you need luck for the right cards to shoow up and trigger the chance for an event. I finished it on my phone but I could replay it on GOG and different languages.

Dishonored (#1 main story, still working on the DLC - gift from Doc's battle royale game thread, thanks Doc!)

It had been a while since I truly finished a game, and since it's on GoG rather than Steam I'm not sure how long it took, though I'm guessing somewhere between 10-15 hours? Maybe a bit more - played in a predominantly stealth mode which requires more patience and watching.

It was a bit uneven, but parts of it were truly fantastic, and overall I'd say it was strong despite a few flaws.

One of the benefits of waiting is that you often get to hear some really great NPC conversations, though you also get to hear one guard ask another "Do you think after what happened last night you'll get your own command?" a zillion times.

The first half of the plot is great, though the big plot twist [no spoilers[ feels....a bit incoherent frankly. Not so much who, but the rationale. And why does [Spoiler] randomly dump your gear somewhere completely unguarded and leave you in a place even I probably could have escaped from with only like 3 guards? It makes no sense.

Most of the maps/missions were well done, though 1-2 I got to the point of just trying to get through them as quickly as possible.

Still, on the whole probably 8/10 and I am looking forward to seeing the DLC content, even with a different main character, possibly improve on the formula.

Yesterday, I have finished Shadowrun Hong Kong - Extended Edition Deluxe – Bonus Campaign. The bonus campaign was little bit more fight ready than the main one and less to talk. Despite me being more the guy who like to solve the things the peaceful way, I think the main campaign was to much verbose even for my playstyle :) So I've enjoyed this campaign more.


list of all my finished games in 2021 can be found here.

Lands of Lore 3

Another rushed swan song from once great developers. Voiceacting was decent, had no gamebreaking bugs beside not being able to use gauntlet in Warrior Guild again to explot infinite XP before final push, last gates did not raised. Wonder why...
And you might use that if you join more than 2 guilds, otherwise raising levels is way slower in comparison to one guild only.
You travel to weird worlds via portals but most of them were boring. Except certain base in the desert, with mad wizard/god underground... nice NOD to other game from that developer :]
Game was ugly, sprites resembled those in Might & Magic VI Mandate of Heaven but more frames were made to give it 3D looking feel.
And you meet some old faces.
It's wasn't that long, new worlds took like 1-3h to complete? And there is infamous White Tower from LoL1, which was the shortest one due to failure. There was a scene where amazon-like NPC fought with.... fireball spaming flying chicken? What?
Anyway - I've checked guides, she should survive and give me task to explore the whole tower. But somehow she died, I was wandering aimlessly and landed in throne room to get mirror shard (it's McGuffin here). Weird.
Oh and said amazon was queet herself. Huh.

Glad it's over.

Doom 3 (XSX)

A lot of games loose their way towards the end- developers run out of ideas, time pressure, padding to extend game length etc. Doom 3 is one the few games I've played where the opposite happens. I was almost ready to quit at the halfway point, it was one of the most boring shooter experiences ever. Almost 10 hours in and I was still running down the same narrow passages looking for passkeys and PDF's to progress. Still fighting the exact same enemies that keep on spawning when I open doors, spawning in front and behind me. Seriously it was like a one trick pony. Every encounter was the same thing. Having enemies spawn behind you out of thin air only works for maybe the first 20 times or so, then you expect it and plan for it. The game just kept on doing it. I think there must have been just one guy designing all the encounters and I'm guessing it was the intern.
But then I got to hell, and as strange as this sounds, hell was like a breath of fresh air. The scenery changed...hey even hell looked good after all those identical passages. You get the artifact and finally get a new game mechanic to play with. Suddenly I was enjoying the game. Then 3 hours later it was over. But at least it finished on a high. The better final levels cannot totally erase the dullness of the earlier ones, but it rescued the game somewhat.

Some excuse its faults by trying to say its a survival horror game not a traditional shooter. I don't agree. As i said above, the spawning and ambushes become so predicable by as early as level 3 that there is just no sense of fear or tension left. Also there is ample ammo and armor. It never felt like survival horror like Dead Space to me at all. It mostly felt like a slow dull shooter that was mostly made as an amazing graphical tech showcase for its time. If they removed half of the games early padding then it would be a fun 6 hour shooter.

I started the Resurrection of Evil expansion campaign...but haven't decided if I'll go on with it yet or whether I've had enough. I'll see what I feel like tomorrow and will update here if I finish it.

Edit: Decided to finish the expansions. Resurrection of Evil was actually way better than the actual main campaign. I actually enjoyed it. It was shorter, it introduced some new weapons that brought some extra gameplay with them- though one of them is just the gravity gun from HL2. I'd say not to even bother with the main campaign and just play RoE instead, it has all the good stuff and less of the bad.
Lost Mission on the other hand was the opposite. Despite being only 2.5 hours long it took all the dull bad stuff from the main campaign and turned it up to 11. It felt like a continuous grind from start to finish, especially when you get to Hell- just one long continuous path designed to use up all your ammo before you get to the boss. It worked I only had shotgun shells left and my carefully hoarded BFG rounds. Luckily the boss was easier than the tougher main enemies.

UFO Extraterrestial

Lack of useful shortcut keys hurts. Battles are mostly waste of time unless you start taking down battleships.
Story and cutscenes are quite meh.
Way too many times there are collision issues where you can spot aliens but can't shoot them or throw grenade here while enemies don't have this problem.

It comes in Gold Edition which is just fan made patch and tweaks.
Sadly most useful one (visibility range) can't be put more beyond default without crashing, even though game is not demanding at all for my fossil PC.
And you can't choose firemode for reaction fire, I mean you can techincally but it's not working as designed. Every time you need to change it you have to go to main menu and change it in mods options.
In a game where such function is crucial - that's bad.

AI also is far from perfect. There is option where last remaining aliens rush at your position but AI just breaks and run into one of the map corners.

It's 2021 already and still no news regarding sequel (Battle for Mercury)...

So, I just platinum'd Zombie Driver: Immortal Edition. What that means: I also completely beat its Blood Race and Slaughter modes (got gold medals in all levels) and I think that's deserving of another review because those modes offer a lot of playtime and differ heavily from its main story mode.

First off: Bloodrace, which turns Zombie Driver into something along the lines of Death Rally or Mashed. I enjoyed this one a lot more than I thought it would and Zombie Driver works surprisingly great as this kind of game. There are a few tournaments, each consisting of up to eight tracks, I think, and there are three types of tracks: a basic Race against several drivers, Endurance where you have to survive for as long as you can by going through checkpoints and killing zombies and my favourite: Elimination where you have to rack up frags by killing other drivers while following the track.

The basic race mode is a bit meh because the driving and the tracks aren't all that great but it's enjoyable - it also shows that the weapons aren't too great for combat racing, i.e. there are no weapons that can be aimed backwards which feels like a massive gap. Still, it's okay. I hated Endurance at first because this one's a bit cryptic but if you play it a bit more you will develop a strategy that mixes killing zombies with going through checkpoints as fast as you can - it's actually pretty cool and allows for different approaches with different vehicles. Elimination is theoretically the most primitive of these modes as you all have to do here, really, is drive ahead and shoot at or ram any other driver you stumble upon but dear lord, it's just so god damn satisfying! And it does require some skill and you develop more precision with your weapons and ramming over time. I loved it and the limited weapons didn't feel like a big problem in this one as the gameplay is really just about lining up enemies in front of you.

The Slaughter mode is just a survival mode and surprisingly this one is a lot worse than Blood Race IMO even though it seemed like a safer bet, given that it's more similar to the story mode. Anyway, unsurprisingly it's just about surviving for as long as possible in one of several arenas as infinite amounts of zombies keep spawning. This mode can put you in a kind of trance (especially with the motion sickness-inducing camera) but it's not great gameplay to be honest. Especially the very limited and samey amounts of zombies make it extremely repetitive as do the four weapons. Admittedly once the entire screen gets flooded with zombies the weapons become much more diverse and interesting than in the campaign, as e.g. suddenly the rail gun's ability to pierce through infinite amounts of zombies becomes a powerful tool but still, it's not very good. There are many far better survival shmups out there.

One cool thing is that the game has leaderboards and at least on PS4 they seem to not have been hacked and when I hit the top 10 on a few levels I considered to keep going. Sadly it does not have any other form of multiplayer which could have immensely improved the game. And a nice little bonus is that cars unlocked in different modes carry over between those (upgrades don't however) so if you have a bit of trouble in either mode you can always return there with new vehicles. That's neat.

Aaanyway, if you love games like Micromachines or Mashed, the Blood Race mode is a pretty cool choice and on sale the game may be worth getting for that one alone.

HuniePop (2015) (Linux)
(thanks, Seb369, for the key!)

OK, this game is smart. And different that everything I've played here :)
I guess most of people put it in one of 2 categories: adult games or anime/vn (ok, whatever is the name of this style/genre). Both are not exactly my cup of tea. But this one is simply a good game with a bit of spicy humor. If you don't use uncensored trick, you'll get a game being not so far from Larry series available here; nothing very explicit). The mechanics is a blend of a puzzle game (match-3 with a slightly different rules, which is great!) and memory game (where you should memorize some info about girls, which is not fun at all). The girls are totally different and at first dialogues are really interesting and fun. At some point you'll see the same sentences again and again, which kills this part of gameplay and you'll only try to quickly grab some points by clicking the right answer. For me – there should be much more match-3 puzzles here, all this babbling is completely unnecessary :)

List of all games completed in 2021.

I sadly didn't have much time playing games for 2 years and my backlog grows and grows. But this year I finally want to beat some games (especially since I finally got a RTX 3090) and started today with :

1 : Call of Duty : Black Ops Cold War (2020)

I have played only 2 other Call of Duty games before (Call of Duty 2 and Modern Warfare Remastered), because those games were always a bit too expensive for their short campaigns to me. But after this latest installment got so many rave reviews, I decided to give it a try. And I'm very happy that I did. The campaign was short again, but damn was that an interesting story. I really loved the 80s setting, throwbacks to the Vietnam War, the effects of Trauma, the music, the characters and the story twists. The game took some inspirations from classic WW2 FPS games like "Medal of Honor", f.ex. there is an entire mission inside the KGB building, where you are a mole for the US government and have to sabotage everything, while trying to stay unnoticed. Some moments of that mission even reminded me of "Wolfenstein : The New Order". This mission was so much fun and ended in some amazing action. The other missions were also fun, but most of them were the typical "enemy hordes" shooting, which is one of the main trademarks of this franchise. But they were a lot of fun, because most of the action was held a bit low-key and I actually cared for the characters. Of course, there's a lot of shooting etc., but it wasn't as over the top as I had expected. You can even find "Evidence" in each mission and some of that evidence helps to get access to 2 optional missions. I thought that this was a nice touch, even while the solution to get access to one of those missions drove me crazy lol
The big Story-Twist comes literally out of nowhere and was copied from one of the greatest games of all-time (no spoilers here). Even while that Twist has already been done before, it was well copied and took me off-guard. Very good writing. The writing is also good in the Character interactions, since none of those characters is a hero and all of them have hid some darkness within. It was refreshing to not play some perfect American patriots, but a bunch of psychos instead.
The graphics were also very nice and the game even used Ray Tracing. But the Ray Tracing effects were surprisingly low-key and only improved shadows for the majority of the game. No dealbreaker, but I expected some shinier effects for a game like this. But even while the game looked very beautiful, there were a very few instances where the engine showed its age. None-the-less the performance was amazing in 4K and I even reached 100 FPS several times, which is amazing for a modern title.

I was positively surprised by this game and had a lot of fun with it. It was a very good start for my 2021 gaming journey, even while I wish it would have been a little longer. Please keep in mind that I haven't played many other CoD games, so I can't really compare it with other games in the franchise.
I haven't tried the Multiplayer part yet and might start with the Zombie's mode tomorrow.

Haha, yeah, I actually got interested in the game after seeing this video. I laughed my butt off and yeah, the game is surprisingly good, actually. :D Never finished it, though. Might give it another try one day.

I finished Celeste Classic 2 earlier this week. Afaik, it's an official sequel to Celeste Classic, the prototype from which Celeste was born. And it's visible the improvement from the first Celeste Classic to the second, both on graphics and on gameplay. It almost doesn't feel like a PICO-8 game, tbh.

As a precision platformer, it still can be as hard as the other Celeste titles. And it plays well in a keyboard (coming from someone who almost always plays on controller), and it also has native support for controllers.

Overall, I found it pretty good, and I wonder if it's the prototype for another Celeste (fingers crossed that it is).

It's available on Itchio as a ready to run downloadable app & and as a browser game, and it's available on PICO-8's official site as a browser game and as a downloadable raw cartridge file to play in the PICO-8 app. Both versions are totally F2P.