The Good Life (XSX Game Pass)

No, it doesn't feature voice acting from Felicity Kendal. I wonder how many people are old enough to even understand the reference without using google. This game is actually the latest from none other than SWERY. It feels like a cross between Twin Peaks and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. Take all the weirdness of Twin Peaks and set it in an English rural village with cartoon characters.

It plays as an open world adventure game. With a story to follow, but it's also a life simulator...you have to eat and rest and if you don't look after yourself you get sick etc. It looks like a PS2 game, but at 4K...or whatever resolution you run it at. So it's simple, but razor sharp. It also ran perfectly and was stable the entire game, so it's not a typical SWERY game in that respect.

The story is bizarre, as expected. All the characters are strange, but you come to really like them anyway. When the story forces you to do some bad stuff, you really feel guilty for the people you're effecting. I cannot say anything more about the story, it's best to experience it without even mild spoilers. The game is a bit rough, it feels low budget (and it is, only just making its kickstarter target). I also think it was an awesome game. I'm going to miss Rainy Woods and my trusty Shteed (that's spelled correctly) Tipsy. I can only imagine what SWERY would come up with if someone gave him a proper budget to work with, though at the same time, something would probably be lost as well. Looking like Indie Game of the Year at this point.

Cookie Clicker

Another game that technically has no end (and that technically I'm still playing intermittently), and there are parts of the game I haven't accessed, like the holiday events.

It gets overwhelmingly positive reviews, but I'm going to run against the grain a bit. Most "clicker" games try and walk the line between pleasing both an active clickie crowd and a an idler audience.

Cookie Clicker has some pretty good bells and whistles for the clicking crowd, but as a player who engages with the genre from more of a 70% idle / 30% active lens, there's really not much here for the idle crowd after the first few resets other than a lot of clicking.

I will say that it was successful in pulling me into being more active initially than other games, but that was partly because if I wasn't actively engaged at all times, nothing happened. I was excited to log in the first 3 days, but that enthusiasm tapered off pretty steadily and two weeks later I log in every few days for a few minutes.

There are a few 'strategy' features via the farm/temple/wizards, but it doesn't scratch much of an itch for me after a few dozen hours of play. Was it worth $5? Probably. (Though you can play it free via browser as well) Was it my favorite foray into the idler/casual/clicker space? No.

The Procession To Calvary (XSX Game Pass)

Short point and click adventure with a Monty Python style of humor. It also bases all its screens and characters on classic paintings. Even your own character is from a Rembrandt painting I believe. The puzzles are generally easy and logical. There are three possible endings, one of which requires a very specific solution to all the puzzles- they can all be solved one of two ways. It was fun, I may even play the developers other games some day.

Just finished Mega Man 11. It's not very long, and I did play it on one of the easier difficulties, so I'll probably go over it again. It was on sale on Gamestop's website last weekend for about seven dollars so I thought it was worth the risk. I thought I recalled hearing bad things about it, like that is was one of the worst games in the series. If it is then I should point out that the last time I played a proper Mega Man game (in contrast to the Z series) was on some website I doubt exists anymore before I was aware that was piracy.

Things that are good about the game include the graphics. I like the MT Framework engine visually and thought this was a nice send off for it. Also, I was not sure how I'd feel about it but the game being 2.5D (3D graphics, 2D gameplay) instead of purely 2D and sprite based worked pretty well. I did like the 8-bit graphics to the ninth and tenth games (that said, I never did buy or play those), but since I am not also familiar with the eighth game (I apparently bought it for my PS3 at some point) going back to an older style seems odd and I'm glad to see what an actually modern main series game looks like.

As a person who loves games but with rare exception is not generally good at them, this one was not easy but with the difficulty selection not too bad either. The gameplay was pretty solid, I never really got the classic Mega Man titles and I may never yet. It feels good to shoot and platform correctly, even when the level design gets sadistic, but the powerups are not much of a hook for me.

The only real downside is that I had a hard time caring about the story scenes if they lasted any real length of time; but that's kind of a downside to all of the games in this franchise so far.


While I mention that I like MT Framework, I may as well mention that RE Engine has not made much of an impression on me but one engine that does is Unreal Engine 4. I hear all the benefits to the engine for the programmers and designers and whatnot, but as an end user I cannot stand its proliferation among Japanese devs. Sould Calibur 6, Tekken 7, Trials of Mana, Tales of Arise, and Dragon Quest XI are all horrible mixed bags. Even on an Xbox One X some of these games look fuzzy. Asset streaming has also been a problem for me on various platforms. I cannot always place my finger on what it is exactly is wrong with a UE4 game's presentation but I have literally no game that uses the engine where there is not something that feels off.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood

Beat this one last just before bed. I love this game. I first got it on the Wii back in...2010? (2011 maybe?) Can't quite remember which year exactly...I was still in high school. Anyway, of the "Classicvania" games, this one is definitely my favorite. The graphics are by far the easiest to go back to from a more modern perspective (in fact many of the sprites are the same as in the Metroidvania entries). Additionally, the CD based music is just fantastic to this day. The ability to slightly adjust position mid-jump also makes this one more accessible than some of the earlier entries, particularly the NES ones. The level selection screen is also very helpful, contrast with older games with branching paths that would have required playing the entire game again from start to finish to see everything.

The ability to play as Maria was also nice, but not something I historically made much use of. That is largely because I always felt her more whimsical adventure juxtaposed with the grim setting and serious story. That said, the final fight with Dracula become pathetically easy when playing as Maria. Using her I did him on my first try without dying once (maybe once at the most...I've beaten Dracula something like five times this week). Anyway, it is still nice as an option for those who want to do it.

For what it's worth I got all three endings.

This really is my favorite Castlevania game, especially of the old style. The only one that really comes close to it is maybe Chronicles with its amazing soundtrack. Sometimes if I just want to play a Castlevania game, I play the first few levels of this one. My only real complaint would be that some of the levels get pretty frustrating. Special mentions go to the normal stage 4 (I was stuck on this one for months on my Wii, it still gives me nightmares) and stage 6 (the boss rush).

Apparently I beat No Man's Sky on PS5 today... kinda. Something. That is: I finished one of the confusingly organised main quests and reached the point that was definitely the ending of the original game even though I did not really achieve the goal of the original game. I am confused. And I feel empty inside.

So, almost everyone knows that at launch NMS was one of the biggest disappointments in video game history (well, not to me - I knew that it was gonna be shit :)). It's also not a secret that NMS has had a series of massive updates over the years and it's (supposedly) an entirely different game at this point. I didn't play the game back in the day but yeah, remembering everything that I had read and heard in the early days of the game it appears that it's an entirely different beast now and some of my first thoughts were "damn, there's a shitload to do in this game!" which appears to be the opposite of how players felt back in 2016.

I haven't played survival games all that much. A bit of Wurm Online back in the day, more recently bit of Valheim, Subnautica and a lot of Genesis Alpha One. Okay, I've played a few more than I'd like to admit. Anyway, as far as I can tell NMS' current incarnation is basically one of the biggest and most polished survival games out there. There's obviously a ton of farming and crafting, there's also base building (which is basically Valheim in space), space travel and combat and a practically infinite amount of worlds to explore with different environments, resources, creatures and so on. Oh yeah, and you can engage in trading, do missions for three civilised species, become overseer of a settlement, build and command a freighter fleet or... get a pet. There's underwater exploration, different kinds of vehicles and a bunch of questlines. Oh yeah, and there's a multiplayer hub and the option to play in coop. And probably a bunch of other things I don't remember or haven't even discovered. Sounds pretty amazing, right?

So, for a couple of hours NMS was genuinely impressive and it was addictive for 20-30 hours, mostly thanks to the base building. The base and its various quest lines seemingly always gives you something to do, something new to discover, something to look forward to - also certain other systems sometimes manage to achieve that. However, not one of the systems in the game is genuinely good. The planetary combat is utter garbage, the space combat is kinda cool but shallow as heck, farming is boring. Even the base building isn't as good as Valheim's because there's far less skill involved in designing a good base here (e.g. in Valheim you need to be clever about the placement of fires and ventilation - you have no meaningful limitations when building in NMS). Oh, and after 5-6 years some of the systems in NMS are still in a rougher state than they were in Valheim at its early access launch. Ouch. So the game kinda reels you in with the promise that something cool is just around the corner and it just never quite happens.

But the "core" of NMS should still be all that procedural stuff, right? Practically an infinite amount of procedurally generated planets and creatures, even procedurally generated music! And frankly this is where things get really awkward because like any other procedurally generated content ever, No Man's Sky's just isn't good. There's a shockingly small set of types of content and quite honestly only those are genuinely distinct. Within the types (e.g. types of skeletons for creatures or types of planets) the differences are utterly negligible. A good example: the music. I remember hearing a certain melody at my home base one time and I thought "dang, that's some beautiful stuff!" and was genuinely impressed by the game's procedural music system for a second. I foolishly believed that I'm the only human to have heard this melody (at least in No Man's Sky). Then I noticed that it's just one of a few melodies in the game, it's just the arrangements that get altered a bit - and that's really how ALL the procedural content works in the game. It's like a student copying another one's homework, making just enough changes so that the teacher hopefully won't notice the similarities. But he does. Students are stupid.

And then there's the problem that the non-procedural stuff in this game isn't good or plentiful. You will constantly see the same planets, the same space stations (there's apparently only a single space station design in the entire universe!) and the same NPCs saying the same lines and you will be doing the same things. There's like 3 or 4 actual enemy designs in the game and those few enemies suck. They aren't interesting to look at nor to fight and they love to glitch out. And as I said, there are only three civilised species in the game who have a long history and apparently home planets somewhere but of course you will never see those. The whole universe is filled with the same corridors and buildings, inhabited by the same guys. And thus NMS, whose main feature is an infinitely vast universe, just feels pathetically small. I can't shake the feeling that the developers could have easily created a far more interesting universe just by handcrafting a bit more content instead of pouring all their effort into procedural generation.

And finally the quests / story. The game couldn't feel lower budget in this regard. It's awkwardly written and the delivery is even worse. The game opts for text boxes that often describe dramatic things happening while you're staring at an NPC just standing and perhaps gesturing in front of you. Even how the text appears on screen (even its font!) feels cheap and frankly the writing is equally awkward. The story tries really hard to be sophisticated and meta (so meta, in fact, that it feels like trolling) but it's pretty simple and childish stuff that often also fails to work with the open structure of the game. The latter is particularly noticeable in the optional quest lines where you're usually way ahead of everything and are rewarded with or have to collect stuff that you've already owned for a long time. And if you're hoping for lore as engaging and clever as, say, Mass Effect's, you're in for a really nasty surprise.

BUT: I like this game. For all my complaints I (usually) feel pretty good playing the game. It sounds and looks and feels nice in a zen way. It's shallow and not particularly engaging in the long run but it's a pretty beautiful (if sometimes depressing) experience and even though I've seen the vast majority of what the game has to offer and its spell should be broken at this point, I still feel like putting on my space suit another time and visit new alien worlds. Damn you, Hello Games.

Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft was pleasant surprise for me, although it is not a game from my perspective. Since I love Lovecraft stories I enjoyed it very much. Dagon is a short story narrative presented in a slow manner with themed background and some facts about H. P. Lovecraft life and stories. Full tour take approx. less than an hour.

So, because I'm an idiot I've put another dozen hours or so into No Man's Sky in order to get the Platinum Trophy which wasn't far away.

First off, NMS has actually one of the easiest platinum trophies out there and it doesn't actually take much time or effort to get it which is kinda crazy considering the game's premise. Hilariously not one of the trophies is strictly story related, all you have to do is to max out the basic milestones. That is: do shit like running around a lot, warping a few dozen times and so on. And frankly all of these milestones are badly designed nonsense. For instance you have to scan all animals on a planet ten times. On most planets that's almost impossible to achieve because the game loves not to spawn underground creatures and apparently also underwater creatures. So the key is to visit planets that have none of those or ideally planets with only one ground creature - scanning all species on such a planet takes a couple of minutes at best (and there's a ton of such planets). Then there's a milestone for spending 32 "Sols" on "extreme" planets. So what you do is find a safe spot on a dangerous planet and just keep the game running and you're done with this shit after a few hours of doing nothing.

Even though the platinum trophy does not require you to complete any of the later content and features I figured that I'm gonna use this occasion to pursue some of that stuff since it's supposedly impressive and cool and fun and God knows what. So I basically completed managing a settlement, I built up a fleet and sent it on a ton of missions and also finished another main story path that was apparently added in a patch and also allows beating the game. It all sucks. All of it is superficial crap. The management games make Farmville look like Crusader Kings - even the trading and brotherhood mini games in the Assassin's Creed series have more depth. And I am NOT joking or exaggerating. And that alternate main path called The Atlas Path can be done in an hour or so. Then the quest log glitches out or something, you google what you have to do and after a couple of minutes you're done with the game.

During this last effort I've honestly seen more of the galaxy than during my actual playthrough and now I am even more convinced that the game kinda sucks at the only things it was supposed to do in the first place. Everything looks the same, there's nothing particularly dangerous in the entire universe and the story trivialises everything anyway. And the way the game is structured I have no idea why people keep playing it. It's not like in an ARPG where you can keep farming for better gear almost endlessly. The highest upgrade tier is in your grasp in a few hours if you're clever and there's really no use for it as even the basic gear is more than enough to face any "challenges" the game might throw at you.

Oh well. I still kinda like the game for a number of things like its feel and aesthetics and as I've previously said, some of its loops are addictive and satisfying for a while - but the same way Farmville was.

After pretty long journey, I've finally finished main story-line of Rebel Galaxy from GOG. When I started it, I've really not expected, that I ever finish this game, but my long lost love for space simcades has successfully engulfed me and I moved slowly through all of the sectors pursuing the main story-line and missions to become neutral with local pirates :) . I was able to get all but one achievement. To shoot 500 torpedoes, which will be the most boring thing, if I ever decide to get it. Despite a lot of grinding for the Red Devils Pirates, I pretty much had a lot of fun with this game, and I am very sad, that almost no one is making these type of games :( . Thankfully Double Damage Games have released a prequel to this game, which I will be getting soon.

List of all other finished games, can be found here :)

Agent A: A Puzzle In Disguise, Oct 31 (GOG)-Its a quick little game but its fun. The puzzles are good and none of them require weird leaps of logic but they are a bit on the easy side. I really liked the aesthetic and style of it. The story is rather cliche but it does feed into the atmosphere. But you're probably playing it for the fun puzzles not the story anyways. Overall its a worthwhile game you can finish in a day or two.

Full List

Spec Ops The Line, Nov 2 (GOG)-I liked most of this game. The gameplay was fun and I liked having a little squad even if I didn't utilize them very well. All of the levels were fun. The story was pretty interesting too until it got a little overzealous with The Message. The second half of the story and the ending both felt a little heavy-handed. I know what the developers were trying to do and I think it could work in the right game but it just fell flat here. I think a much better story and ending would have been continuing with the plotline of the 33rd vs the CIA with an entire city at stake. Maybe at some point you're forced to pick sides or go with the lesser of two evils. But ignoring the plot letdowns its still a pretty fun shooter.

Full List

I finished a few ones since last time (in July):
- Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments: A really good detective game. There are several cases to investigate.
- Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus: More of the same. A bit lengthy if you do all the side stuff such as assassination missions.
- Tell Me Why: A good narrative game like Life is Strange. The later was better but I really enjoyed this one too.
- Reversion: An average point'n click (3 episodes).
- Divide by Sheep: A good puzzle game, not too lengthy. Some of the puzzles were really difficult though.


Full list here.

WHOA somebody played my mods in 2021, awesome haha.
Thanks for the compliments. I put quite a lot of work into them and didn't get a ton of players because by the time I finished using Larian's tools D:OS 2 hype was in full gear and D:OS player counts cratered.

For some background, Dunamis is actually the older mod, originally made for D:OS Classic and I converted it. I was 100% a green modder when I started it and the scope of it was pure ambition. I went for everything as you noticed with all the Gothic (I love Gothic btw) references lol. Everyone and their mom was complaining about how hard Larian's editor was to use so I stubbornly wanted to prove it could be done by a one man band with no experience.

A Necromancer's Crusade as you noticed, is the much more polished mod. I designed everything from the ground up before doing any modding and had the full experience of making a complete mod in Dunamis before hand. The goal of it was to be a short and snappy dungeon dive that used all of D:OS's features (Dual dialogs, unique items, puzzles, Co-Op) and tied into Divinity lore.

Alas my mapping skills are subpar and always will be, The opening area for Necro was just way too big but resizing D:OS maps in the editor is nigh impossible. But I think you could see the improvements in my maps from Dunamis to Necromancer, particularly in the Parsonage/Crypt.

Thanks again for playing.

Oh, whoops, I didn't even realize both mods were by the same author *blush*. I also didn't know they were created by a fellow GOG user. :)

It's totally awesome and at the same time a little sad that you're the only one who ever created something worthwhile to play for D:OS then, but all the more impressive since the modules are so big and involved and quite professional on the whole, despite the learning curve. How long did it take you? And did you have prior modding experience with other games? Ever did something for Neverwinter Nights or similar? And did you give the D:OS2 editor a look afterwards, or were you done with D:OS by that point? :D

I'm planning to play a custom module for D:OS2, too, eventually, Pyramid of Shadows, so I just double checked that it's not one of yours as well, haha (are you familiar with it though?). Anyway, in doing so, I found out you're also the author of the 4-player mod for D:OS which enabled the 3-player playthrough I did before Dunamis and A Necromancer's Crusade. Thank you so much for all the work you put into these three mods that gave me so much enjoyment and more than doubled the fun time I spent with Larian's game!

Btw, if youre a fan of Gothic, you are probably familiar with Nehrim (for TES: Oblivion) and/or Enderal (for TES: Skyrim), too? Just asking because the latter might be the next game I review here, since I'm currently in the midst of playing through it. Gaming would only be half as much fun without modders like you and SureAI and all the others out there dedicating their free time to give players additional high quality content.