Constructor 1997

Played it as a teenager. so i played it and won the same way i did on release

easy difficulty
first map
no enemies :)

took 7h.

managed to get some 4x games through the loop, starting with Humankind, the 300 turn ' expert tutorial experience ' which started out quite bothersome but turned out to be quite oke, and with the game finishing before the modern age really set off left me with an appetite for more

i did not appease myself in that manner but instead pulled myself together and managed to finally finish a game of civ 6 while i'm at it. the game its self lasted for 500 turns but i managed to pull a domination victory around turn 450 ( Japan, Warlord )

the differences of the games are distinct enough to be able to play them right after each other ( in my case, i know some manage to pull a lot of hours in the same game for extended periods of time )

humankind does manage to .... do something which i kind of don't enjoy in its starting hours, during the tutorial game i only managed about an hour or a three quarts of an hour of play before i really could not stand being into the game anymore going over decisions and choices, everything you do in a 4x. I thought it was because of learning a new game, and maybe mood orientated, so did not gave it much thought and accepted breaks between the play reading a book etc but when i recently started a second playthrough i was yet again confronted with me feeling in similar ways, again, maybe the information flow is much higher in this game then in the established games in that genre so that could be at works but it remains odd, i do hope i can find my way either through or find extra info on what could lie on its base

for the next few months i'm imagining myself on playing humankind and civ 6 on a more then regular basis, the 300 turns of humankind was actually a revelation since from early on i managed a conviction that 4x games should be enjoyed on the slowest speeds possible, which actually proved false. i'll probably turn in galciv 3 in to the equation too ... and some slith of course with periods of nier if i really feel the need for something different

finished games so far

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

Quake (XSX Game Pass)

You know how it goes. I just thought I'd play the original four episodes that make up Quake, since in the old days I actually only ever played the shareware first episode. Then a week later I've played Quake, Scourge of Armagon, Dissolution of Eternity, Dimension of the Past and the new Dimension of the Machine expansions (something like 70 levels in one week). I'm still deciding upon whether to install Quake 64 and play that just for laughs as well. Maybe later.

I seriously believe now it's the best classic shooter. I was underwhelmed back in the day by the shareware episode, so never bothered with the rest, I just thought it was dull compared to the Build Engine games. But I don't think that now. It's just so well balanced and paced and with good atmosphere. The new Machine Games episode is especially good and consists of 5 smaller episodes of two levels (plus one secret level), each pair having a different feel- probably each designed by a different person I'd say.

I cannot find much to complain about with this new version either. It has some improved skins and models and lighting, especially noticeable with the weapons. But otherwise you could not mistake it for Quake. It runs awesome as well. There are some graphical post processing effects that can be turned on or off. It's worth it, especially if you skipped most of the game back when it was a new shooter rather than a classic one.

Fantasy General

Finally got around to starting it thanks to the time travel challenge for that year, and while that was supposed to cover June, it took me three months to finish. But that's normal, or even better than in many cases, probably the challenge helping a fair bit in not setting it aside for who knows how long, as I tend to do. (I considered it finished now that I also finished the add-on, had finished the original campaign last week, Friday. I know there are those scenarios there too, but leaving those.)
There will be a review, but if anyone can make anything out of the jumbled mess that my notes are, I'll dump them here until then:
Great music, though it seems to just die at times. Map scrolls instantly in this version, can't go to a spot, annoying. Turn limit sucks! And the UI does remind of that age, takes some getting used to in this day, particularly odd to see what should be settings mixed there with the rest. Especially the first battle on a continent feels like quite a difficulty spike, both because it's a new enemy leader with new abilities and units and because all your volunteers from the previous continent are gone, so if you don't replace them you'll likely be much weaker, and no longer capable of even following your previous strategy. All too easy to accidentally end a unit's turn, or cast on wrong one if you have both walking and flying in same hex. But nice to be able to undo moves, should be able to undo more though, like resting at least... Battle outcome estimate is also good to have, though it can be way off at times (and may not take support into account?). Good to have the show hidden units toggle; those who want fog of war can keep it off, but when there's a turn limit I can't search for enemies. May mention AI moves toggle too. Would have liked to readily see list of units to deploy and select on the fly, use the left side of UI for that. Does let you get carried away through the battle, for better or worse. Tactics really matter, so much difference once you learn. Need to choose which area to attack next based on name alone, description shown after you click and no way to change choice then, and not told which are either/or choices. There should be save details but nothing shows up. Not having access to load game between battles can be a bit annoying. Don't like that recruiting, especially also the automatic one at the end of battle, reduces experience. Interesting to need to balance between research and buying and upgrading units. Mostly you seem to need to try a battle first to get an idea of it, then have a proper go after the initial loss, or losses. AI is decent but not winning prizes and making a pretty poor use of magic, but it's hard as it is. The random rewards for optional locations can make quite a difference depending on what you get... And there's randomness in maps too, which can make a huge difference. And turn limit sure makes the randomness in battle outcome have a huge impact too, since there's no time to even out. If you start with a location granting a reward, you need to lose it and then regain it to get the reward. Why is magical item held by killed unit lost even if you win scenario and kill unit that killed it? And you also don't gain magical items from enemies you kill. If you switch to tactical view and then back, the screen is at the center of the map, not where it was before the switch. Would want to see the turn number and limit always. Burel's Wall is an interesting battle, attacking an entrenched enemy. Different unit classes have their uses, maybe less for light infantry, and even units within class may have their uses, definitely spellcasters are different, but some others too, may not always want each upgrade. Great to have squads that can recover, and injuries instead of just kills. Sucks when you lose not just regular volunteers but also generic heroes after a continent, and you can give items to those heroes and they don't leave them, so those are lost too. Terrain color scheme in part five looks bad. Part five seems oddly easy, but may be more about my strength than enemy's weakness, just in next to last battle it took a few tries to not lose important units (or any, once I got it right). Units with Raise Dead are awfully powerful, nice that you can have them. Can't see movement method (open/closed) even in the detailed unit information. If on the last move you capture a reward location that produces an enemy unit, you win anyway, even if the enemy now has one unit again, not sure if that's good or bad.

Twelve Minutes (XSX Game Pass)

Short and modern take on a point and click time loop mystery. I don't generally enjoy time loop mechanics, but this one at least ends before it wears out its welcome. Sort of.
The game play themes and story ideas are okay, but sometimes the execution is not. For example, I got really stuck during one of the loops and could not work out what I needed to progress with the story. It turns out that I had everything I needed, I even knew what I needed to do, it was just an execution thing. all I had to do was click on an object I'd clicked on many times, only this time my character gave some new insights that I simply would of thought were now common knowledge. Once I found this out, I whole new set of conversation options opened up. It was like the modern version of pixel hunting in the classic adventures in a way. Maybe I should have just thought of re clicking on everything earlier, like the old "try everything on everything" brute force method in the old point and clickers.

The entire game is set in one small apartment, just three rooms and a closet. So lucky it is only short.

Anyway, it was okay, but not outstanding. It's about 4 to 5 hours depending on how stuck you may get in any of the loops.

It had potential to be better with more options and happenings and with so famous actors there was surprisingly few lines and stuff. I mean they didn't do their best or it just was the writing. I did like the experience, it was different.

Myst (XSX Game Pass)

The newly released version of course. First time I ever played this, I always avoided it because I've never liked these slideshow puzzle games because of how illogical and trial and error their puzzles can be. However I'm pleasantly surprised with Myst and really enjoyed it. All the info needed to progress is absolutely within the game and right there for you to take notes or sketches, you don't even have to really search hard. It's no where near as difficult as I expected it to be, and much more logical than games like Monkey Island and similar.
It is much shorter than I expected it to be though, but it was good whilst it lasted.

So, today I beat Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017) and its free single player DLC, Resurrection, on PS5 (no enhancements).

So, a while back I posted my impressions after beating Battlefield 1, where I concluded that it has perhaps the worst campaign in any AAA war shooter ever. For whatever reason I still hoped that Battlefront II's campaign would be great or, if not great in terms of story and level design, at least some kind of stupid fun. It really wasn't and I cannot grasp how DICE, who were off to such a good start with the Bad Company games, can get single player campaigns so wrong.

Now, this part is super subjective but I couldn't get into the story. I just don't like the style of "new Star Wars" that was introduced by the prequels and has somehow bled into Disney's approach to Star Wars. It's just too goofy and shallow and driven too much by fanservice for my taste. While the game starts out with a cool premise - witness the last days of the Empire through the eyes of the bad guys - it quickly devolves into a boring piece of fan fiction seemingly designed exclusively to make new characters meet as many of the original ones as possible. Meh.

Now, I could live with a meh story if I got something really fun in return but I just don't. Like some other campaigns in DICE's shooters, Battlefront II walks an awkward path somewhere between its multiplayer modes and a legit single player experience. You don't get any super carefully scripted levels with exciting moments here nor are the levels themselves interestingly designed. It just feels like walking from one basic arena to the next and getting swarmed by enemies. Like in some Battlefield games you get some fairly spacious areas here where you start out in a very barebones stealth mode and the moment you're discovered practically all enemies in the area just blindly swarm at you. You can sometimes literally just stand at one corner and gun down all enemies in the area as they walk up to you. The idiocy of the enemies doesn't end there, though. Very often enemies will just glitch and crouch, stand up and crouch again in a loop until you put them out of their misery - which can get tricky because hitting an enemy in this bugged state isn't all that easy. Besides these stealth arenas you also get ones where you have to defend someone for what feels like ages which isn't any better either. What takes the cake, though, are the space missions where you sometimes have to just keep shooting down enemy fighters until something happens - and new squadrons spawn just as you've destroyed the previous one. It's dull and stupid.

The game tries to mix things up once in a while and you get sections which are supposed to be a bit more adventurous or exciting. There's e.g. a section where you walk around as Han Solo and have to find someone in a pub. This kind of content sounds like a fun variation but it's not - it's made so incredibly cheaply, it feels almost like something from a really crappy indie game or one of those ancient shooters that clumsily tried to emulate Half-Life's opening sequence. There's also a section where you fight bugs in a cave and it's... just fighting bugs in a cave. It feels like something that belongs in an ARPG rather than a modern AAA shooter and even an ARPG would have more diverse and fun action. And gaining control of an AT-AT turns out to be the world's worst rail shooter sequence. Oh yeah, and also, often the game just fails to tell you properly what to do. Sometimes you have markers that guide you, at other times - for some inconceivable reason - they are absent and you have to guess whether you have to go somewhere or whether you've missed an enemy who's lurking behind a box somewhere and has to die in order to advance the sequence. What also struck me is that sometimes even important story dialogue isn't subtitled. There's literally an important dialogue at the end of the game where the villain's lines don't have subtitles while the hero's lines do.

Oh and to top it off they really shove multiplayer stuff down your throat here. They force the multiplayer mode's loadout system on you here, so you either have to die or find a special container if you want to switch guns. Sometimes you can find a heavy weapon, which you could carry through the entire level, but if you die, it's lost and finding another one can prove difficult or impossible. You also have three class powers here that you can replace using cards that you unlock with progress which is kinda okay, I guess - what isn't okay is that the game just changes your equipment and cards when you reach new levels and changing them back is an unnecessary pain in the ass.

So, basically everything about the game's single player campaign is half-assed crap except the cutscenes and voice acting as well as many things that the single player mode inherits from the multiplayer. The game usually looks pretty great, most of the time it sounds amazing and also the guns are pretty satisfying to use for a Star Wars game. Even though the guns go pew pew and shoot visible projectiles, they feel responsive and powerful and downing enemies is more satisfying than you'd expect from a Star Wars shooter. If only anything else about the game's single player campaign were as good.

Next one down, Star Wars: Squadrons. I played this one almost entirely in VR on PS5, sadly without any PS5 enhancements.

I've been a huge fan of the original Star Wars flight sims, especially TIE Fighter, since forever and the idea of playing this kind of game in VR has always seemed like a dream come true. While Squadrons may not be everything a TIE Fighter fan would want to see in a modern Star Wars space combat sim, it is a lot more inspired by the old Star Wars sims than I thought it would be and all in all it is a pretty awesome game. Also, it is perhaps the best VR experience I've had thus far.

So, it's not entirely TIE Fighter. It's a lot more story-driven and naturally "dumbed down" compared to the old Star Wars space combat sims. It feels a lot less like a simulator and more like an arcade game, however, I was still impressed by how much the game is inspired by the classics. It was almost touching to manage energy levels between guns, engines and shields, cycle through targets and fly loops in order to avoid incoming missiles. Even many smaller details, like which ships have shields, are directly inspired by X-Wing and TIE Fighter. But of course the game is heavily modernised in many ways and redesigned so the buttons on a standard controller are enough to control the thing. It's simpler and more forgiving than the classics. You can now actually repair your ship (and wingmen will even repair you automatically once in a while) and after almost every main objective there's a checkpoint so you don't have to replay 20 minutes because you accidentally crashed into an enemy.

Anyway, besides being more accessible and forgiving the biggest difference is surely the approach to mission design. Where in the old games you got these pretty complicated missions with tons of objectives and you often had to develop an actual strategy in order to complete a mission (especially with all its secondary objectives) things are a lot simpler here. Missions are really tightly scripted linear series of objectives and most of the time you just have to press the "select objective" button and you will be told exactly what to do. Follow this ship, destroy those fighters, now destroy this capital ship and so on. Most of the time you don't really need any deep situational awareness - just keep shooting the bad guys and you're good. And sadly, much like in Battlefront II, enemies will keep spawning infinitely until you do that one thing you're supposed to do. So the game is neither as demanding nor as satisfying as TIE Fighter but it's a decent compromise between the classics and a modern story-driven AAA game. And at least you get something in return: missions with some really impressive set pieces. Quite often you will engage in dogfights next to some massive structures, asteroids or wreckages of capital ships and even fly through some tunnels. It's pretty exciting stuff. The one thing that has seriously annoyed me is that there's only a single button for cycling through targets and you use a radial menu to select the button's behaviour. It's an annoying solution that has made some sections a lot more annoying for me than necessary. But in the big picture it's not that big a deal.

Anyway, if you have the option, play the game in VR. Sitting inside the cockpit of an X-Wing or TIE Fighter is exactly as awesome as you imagine it would be. I thought the game would probably be unbearable in VR, constantly doing barrel rolls in space and such, but it is in fact very bearable thanks to the bulky cockpits and totally worth it. I was worried that the magic would pass quite quickly, that you'd only stare straight ahead of you and it would be like staring at a screen anyway but it really isn't. Following targets with your head is a game changer in this kind of game and I can't count the number of times that I've had to move my head a bit, to look past the instruments or follow a target through a small window above me. Or you know, staring at the radar until the target is actually in front of you and then lock your eyes directly on it. It's honestly just awesome. I played a mission or two without VR because I felt a bit too tired for VR and it felt like such a downgrade. So, for this experience alone the game is worth it. Also, even on PSVR the game looks fantastic. The only difference I noticed was the smaller resolution and it was perfectly fine.

Then there's the story. Actually I liked this one. It's about a personal vendetta between two captains, an Imperial captain and a traitor who has joined the rebels and there's also a pretty decent strategic plot that can affect the outcome of the war that still drags on after the rebels' victory at Endor. I have honestly zero complaints here. What I do have some complaints about are the characters. So, I don't generally get riled up about "SJW" stuff but Squadrons sure made me roll my eyes a bit. Between the ~12 characters in the game there's literally not a single white male. There's progressive and then there's fucking ridiculous. Sure, I get it, the rebels represent freedom and equality so squeezing in a few more women and different ethnicities or sexual orientations into their ranks to establish that fact and update Star Wars to the modern political landscape is okay. But when even the Imperial side consist of a young Asian female captain with a hip short haircut, a constantly pissed-off punk girl, some generic woman, a guy with an Asian (or potentially Hebrew) name who never takes of his helmet and a homosexual Asian dude I'm starting to wonder why the Empire are considered the bad guys again - they do seem to be pretty darn tolerant of different lifestyles. Not to mention that it's just not Star Wars if the Empire does not have at least one posh white dude with a stick up his ass. Honestly, as far as I'm concerned it's just silly and misguided. So, I found that part pretty darn weird.

Anyway, all those things aside - it's a pretty cool game and an amazing VR experience and I sure hope we won't have to wait another twenty years for the next Star Wars space combat sim.

Loop Hero

About 70 hours of fun game.

1st boss: beat with the warrior.
2nd with the necro.
3rd with the rogue (the best).

And fourth level, i win 6 times the Omega, two with each character. My prefer, the rogue.

Tips:
Warrior: up Defense and vampirism.
Rogue: Evasion and atk. speed. Use the arsenal.
Necro: more skeletons.

Doom Eternal - The Ancient Gods part 1 (normal difficulty)

After months since finishing the main campaign, I decided to come back and play this. And, it's more Doom Eternal. I don't know how nerfed this was since the release, but even though it's hard as nails, I didn't find it impossible, which I thought it would be.

There are a lot of pretty unfair fights that are placed in wide and complex enough arenas to allow you to keep on the run fairly easily, with fodder enemies a plenty to farm back health, armor and ammo. And you start out maxed out. So it balances it out, most of the times. There are a few new enemies and they're all gimmicky, which sucks. The spirit is the worse, because it buffs other demons (usually demons that run like hell after you) and after you kill the possessed demon, you have only one way of killing it and have to do it fast before it possesses another.

You don't get to carry your lives from the main campaign into the DLC, though. And there's no immediate way to farm a lot more like in the main campaign (the first life in the first level is behind quite a few hard fights), so it seems that you either get good or die tryin' at first. Well, I'm not that good, but I managed to go all the way to the final boss without farming lives, but once: to beat the second slayer gate, I got back into the first level and traversed it until the first life once. As I said in the beginning, it is hard, but not impossible. I didn't die as many times as I thought I would, and I always felt that I was advancing in a steady pace. Also, the game really expects you to be quick swapping guns (for me, usually double barreled shotgun and ballestra) to kill harder enemies quickly.

Right before the final boss, I had watched a video of the fight and felt that I should try and farm a few lives, just to be sure that I wouldn't be restarting the fight too many times. So I checked online for how to farm lives for the DLC and... there's an easy way that's even easier than the main campaign. The game gives you three new runes, two locked behind slayer gates (in level 1 and 3) and another is pretty much given for free at the start of level 2. Like in the main campaign, you get whichever you want at any given opportunity and there's one that allows you to kill a demon who killed you to get your lost extra life back. Just restart level one from the main menu with the infinite lives cheat and equip the rune, and every time you die, you get a free life that accumulates for the normal progression of the campaign. I went into the final boss with 26 lives, and finished him with 22 left. And I had quite a few dumb deaths.

The new levels look amazing, just as the main ones. They have way less secrets and collectibles, and they are quite large as well. The story goes into some obvious places only hinted at by the main campaign, and is about as interesting as that.

Overall, the DLC stressed me out less than the main game. It's more Doom Eternal and if you liked the main game, you are certainly going to like this one as well.

Strider (2014). This is basically a remake of the original arcade game, like the story and some of the enemies are the same, but it's shifted to a metroidvania design. It's actually still pretty linear, but you're able to backtrack and pick up a few odd items that you had to miss because you couldn't open doors of a certain color before. The main thing that seems to be missing is the jungle stage, IIRC.

Although I would say they did a reasonable job of redesigning the game, I think it stands as a good example of how sometimes just doing a linear, stage-based action game is sometimes the better way to go. I kept finding myself thinking, "I haven't played the arcade version in a while, maybe I should be playing that instead..." It also doesn't look quite as good as the original. Obviously it has more advanced graphics, but they have that kind of plastic-y, antiseptic look that you get with modern rendering compared to the high quality pixel art of the original.

Assassin's Creed Rogue (XSX)

Remastered edition, so runs at 4K and now also 60fps thanks to the FPS boost feature of Xbox. I have actually played the 360 version to 100% before and this is where I'm up to with my replaying the series.Rogue is sort of the greatest hits album of AC. It has a bit of everything, a decent sized city, a naval area and a combined wilderness naval area. Other than that though, and the fact you play as a Templar, it's a pretty standard AC game.

Just beat Wolfenstein: The Old Blood on PS5 (no enhancements). I beat The New Order last year or so and enjoyed it immensely. In my opinion it was not only a surprisingly well-designed game, it was also a surprisingly ballsy one with IMO excellent writing and acting. Everyone I've talked to said that The Old Blood is worse but somehow I expected that they exaggerated. They didn't. If anything they gave the game too much credit.

This one's a prequel that pays tribute to the older entries in the series. The game actually begins with Blazkowicz infiltrating Castle Wolfenstein and unlike The New Order this one also features occultism. What's IMO instantly striking is how low budget this one feels compared to the first game. It uses cutscenes far more sparingly and lacks the impressive set pieces of New Order - and when cutscenes do appear, they are shoddily-inserted pre-rendered ones. The levels are super generic military bases and caves and feature very few scripted sequences and - again - the ones that are there are very humble compared to New Order. And frankly, besides the story almost being shit by default due to the game being a prequel (yes, I really hate prequels), it's just not an interesting or engaging one and the villains just feel underdeveloped and bland here.

But you know, despite a lower budget and meh story the game could have been great but it just isn't. Even though they recycled all the individual elements of New Order, in particular the mixture of stealth and brutal and almost arcadey combat, this one just isn't as good. In particular the level design is just so much worse and makes the game feel like an arbitrary sequence of those stealth arenas and even the arenas themselves feel kinda smaller and simpler than in the original game. Besides the IMO crappy final boss there was just one sequence that stood out, a shoot out in cable cars, and it wasn't even a good one. The game also utterly lacks fun weapons and enemy types and does not feature any environmental puzzles. A notable new item is a pipe that you can use as a melee weapon (but probably won't) and for opening certain passages or climbing up certain walls but technically it doesn't do anything that you couldn't do with generic vents and ladders. It's just bizarre.

What perhaps hurts the most is that this one has a sillier premise than The New Order and you would expect some grindhouse over-the-top fun but ironically New Order had more of that. Eventually you encounter zombies but somehow Machine Games has managed to make fighting them incredibly boring. All in all the game is just sad and grey.

I know, that was a mouthful and made the game sound worse than it is. I mean, dual-wielding assault rifles and mowing down Nazis is still fun. However, as far as I'm concerned there's not a shadow of a doubt that The Old Blood is worse than The New Order in every regard and they wasted a ton of opportunities here.