Ys The Oath in Felghana beaten it on normal in 10 hours according to the game timer. Bet it was more especially some bosses were giving me trouble and had to retry, the last one especially with it's tennis game but still managed to beat it.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. I've always found the chronology of the Wonder Boy series a bit confusing, but if I understand correctly this is the fifth mainline entry in the series. The game makes this clear fairly early on when you walk past a temple and the four stained glass windows each depict the hero of a previous game. Anyway, I'm not hugely experienced with the series but I've played enough of them to know that this is indeed another one and it's pretty good even though it's made by a new studio and not the original Japanese creators.

You run around and kill cute enemies with your sword and you get to new places by transforming into different creature forms. It's generally paced pretty well, although I decided getting 100 percent of everything wasn't worth the bother (apparently for doing so you get a single extra ending screen that teases another sequel). The difficulty felt just about right to me. Most of the bosses have a puzzle element that is generally not hard to figure out, but there was one late boss in the game that I didn't like at all because it was just kind of fiddly and not fun to play against. The controls are fine in the moment to moment gameplay, but there's a lot of switching to menus that I wish could have been streamlined somehow. Graphics are pretty good, cartoony and well drawn, and the soundtrack, which has a lot of homages to previous games, is quite good.

Guild War (NWN:EE, Review)

Mirror's Edge Catalyst (XSX)

Recently got a boost to 120fps on new Xbox consoles, so a good time to finally play it. Honestly going from 60 to 120fps is overrated. Slightly smoother, but hardly game changing and I'd never take a drop from 4k resolution at 60 to something like 1080 just for the frame rate increase. However, in the case of Catalyst the game has no Xbox One X enhancements anyway, so it's 900p whether you run it at 60 or 120...so go with 120 then.

The Mirror's Edge games, in my opinion, have the best stylized graphics in video game history. Combined with very focused game play, they are games that have no doubt what they are and what they are not. Catalyst is even better than the first game I think, better story and smoother mechanics that result in less death falls during parkour running. Just like the first game it's quite short, but what is there is a razor sharp experience- an experience that I think is quite unique to the franchise in that first person fast paced parkour platforming is the main game play element and combat a very distant second. This time there is at least some extra content like timed runs and other side activities like collectible hunting to entice you to fully explore the amazing city if you want to.
Only issue is the ending is something of a mild cliff hanger and clearly set up for a final game as a trilogy, but are we ever going to see another game? DICE are probably fully employed on Battlefield, and Mirror's Edge doesn't sell particularly well. Hopefully there is a current generation sequel being worked on as a side project.

What boss? THe Haunted Mansion one?


Thanks for highlighting this. It looks interesting and I am now tempted to try it out.

The uncle fight. You have do the slot machine just to have the chance to attack and then mess around with the water barrel to hit him, and then use the frog power to get the last barrel in position to hit him...I just didn't think it was fun.

Hexen (normal game not the addon)

It wasn't easy but I did it, I especially had trouble with the three bosses of the last hub.

StarSector

great little adventure/tactical 2d space battle simulator.
the game had me pretty much occupied these past weeks. figuring out all there is to it. If your into space gaming/exploring in the way such as Star Wolves presents or do like your 4x game, on a more personal level i would certainly urge you to give this indie title a good try

https://fractalsoftworks.com/

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2021/post16

Don't go in expecting too much, it's an old module, not too complex, not the best one I've ever played, but one that I enjoyed for its rogue-specific content. Then again, I'm a massive fanboy of NWN modules in general, so I can't guarantee that you would like it, too.

Lords of Darkness 1 - The Fugitive (NWN:EE, Review)

Dear Esther: Landmark Edition (With Developer's Commentary On)

Well I never played the original HL mod version of Dear Esther but I can say that I really didn't notice much difference between this "Landmark Edition" and the previous commercially released version, other than the developer's commentary that I had turned on.
I think the main point is this time it's in the Unity engine for better portability to mobile
So what of the commentary itself? First thing to note is that when you have it turned on it replaces the regular narration rather than playing in addition to it - I guises there would have been a bit much going on otherwise
I found that some of the comments went on a bit to the point where you'd gotten to the next commentary point while they were still in mid flow and you'd have to stand and wait for them to finish (or I cut have cut them short I guess but that would have spoiled the point a little)
It was eye-opening JUST how far up their own backsides The Chinese Room actually are I mean we all know they were QUITE far up there but any further and they'll start coming out of their own mouths again!
There were a few interesting titbits in there and a couple of things I wouldn't have noticed or known otherwise - the horizontal scars cut into the cliff in the first area especially, to be fair!

Full List

Lords of Darkness 2 - The Dark Age of Arboril (NWN:EE, Review)

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, April 30 (GOG)-Not a bad western adventure but a bit worse than the original I think. Dueling was still a pain and I had a lot of trouble figuring out where I was being shot from. There were several levels with seemingly endless waves of enemies that got a little stale. Plot was ok.

Full List

Full Throttle Remastered (2017) (Linux)
(thanks GamezRanker for the recommendation)

Taken this one as a part of my trip to 1995.
At first I thought it will be placed at my top shelf, next to Monkey Island series and Day of the Tentacle. And perhaps it should, but, hey, finishing the game was a pain :) Repeating some sequences in case of some small, non-obvious mistake spoiled a lot of fun for me, I can't imagine finishing the game without use of some walkthrough.
What I liked: the graphics (both classic and remastered), the music, the plot, those scenes of action-movie-style, the protagonist and the sense of humour, Linux installer and F1 for switching between classic and remastered version on the fly.

List of all games completed in 2021.