I haven't really contributed to this thread this year (and have been frequently banned from the forum for my trolling efforts), but just came here to buy Atom rpg Trudograd, so while it's being downloaded I might write a short comment.
So far I've finished in 2022:
- The Settlers 2 (original campaign):
Played this in the 1990s, but stopped at Level 6. Now managed to complete the entire original campaign. It's far better than I remembered. Really fun. Only downside is that your control over some aspects like transporting goods across sea or the entire military sector is really indirect and it sometimes requires some fiddling around to get good results.
My rating: 4/5.
- Gibbous.
Ok adventure, very nice graphics, also liked the characters, pretty funny in parts. But puzzles are very easy, and the story ultimately is an incoherent mess. Still would recommend when on sale, it entertained me quite a bit.
My rating 3/5.
- Star Trek: Armada.
Has some nice ideas like capturing enemy ships and decent mission variety, but ultimately quite mediocre as an RTS. Story is on the level of fanfiction, as with most Star Trek games it's completely lacking any of the more profound moral content of the show's messaging, it's just about alien invasions, intrigues and space fights. I still had some fun, but unless you at least like Star Trek TNG somewhat, I wouldn't recommend it.
My rating: 3/5.

Now I'm playing Atom rpg...pretty nice hommage to Fallout 1/2, weaker in some parts, but also stronger in others. I like how you come back to various locations again and again and build a relationship with individuals and factions throughout the game, this is better than in the Fallouts where places like Shady sands or Junktown are irrelevant beyond the early game. I also really like the more realistic setting with its background in the real Cold War, Fallout's retro-futurism never appealed that much to me, and Fallout 2's juvenile humour and constant 4th wall breaking were downright repellent. Atom rpg still has quite a bit of silly content, but I find it to be more immersive
Combat and dungeon design are pretty weak, but so they were in the Fallouts.
You definitely notice it's an indie title, but for the price you get A LOT of game, have been playing for weeks and still haven't seen the end game content (not even entered the Dead City yet). Definitely recommended to anybody who liked the original Fallouts (and personally I didn't even enjoy Fallout 2 that much).

Slipstream 5000 (1995) (Linux/DosBox)

Good old game, I think. Controls are clunky as in most games of this kind and of this era, but after remapping keys and a few races I started to enjoy it :D I had not patience to repeat and win the tournament on High difficulty settings (needed to unlock some tracks), so I've used a cheat to try Tokyo and NYC. I must say that for this kind of graphics finishing Tokyo, with all its neon lights, is quite challenging. I wasn't always sure where a track is :D

Except of spending some time in game I've also spent twice more tweaking dosbox settings :D with some minor successes (making full screen mode more full screen;) and failing to use MT32 or GUS to play midi soundtrack (but GOG provides music as downloadable mp3 files generated in HQ).

List of all games completed in 2022.

Good to see you here! :)
Gibbous is not perfect, but it's also one of my best classic p&c experiences for a long time.

It's a good game, pretty impressive for what was the studio's first effort. iirc the developers intend to release another game set in the same universe, I would definitely like to see some of those characters again.

After taking a long break from it I finally beat Resident Evil 6 with my wife in local coop on PS5. Briefly put, it's a mediocre game that becomes decent in coop but sadly nowhere as good as Resident Evil 5.

The game is indeed this bizarre attempt to turn a Resident Evil game into the biggest blockbuster possible by ticking all the boxes for blockbusters: explosions, trash-talking tough guys, dramatic slow motion leaps, more explosions, intrigue, war, personal drama and even more explosions. To be fair: they spared no effort on this one. The scale and production value are insane. It's twenty hours of dramatic action, cutscenes, diverse locations, a zimmeresque soundtrack and everyone sounds like Troy Baker and one character actually is voiced by Troy Baker. It's utterly misguided but they did try something.

I suppose one could defend a lot about the game by suggesting that the campy bloated result is reminiscent of Kojima's games which are also a kitschy blend of Hollywood and anime. One difference is that MGS is very self-aware, like a low budget splatter film or something. The other is that MGS still has brilliant gameplay. RE6, in its pursuit of appealing to the CoD gamer, sacrificed a ton of things that made RE4 and 5 brilliant games.

Now, speaking purely in terms of design, RE6 feels like this intense push to make the series conform to the western AAA action games of the time and comes with many "improvements", many of which actually even sound sensible on paper, but just turn it into a bland mess. RE5 looked a lot like a western shooter but still played like RE4 and inherited its brilliant core design. RE6, however, really tried to become CoD. There are literally levels in a warzone and there's lots of badly executed cover-based fighting against armed enemies who wield hit-scan weapons. You can finally walk around while aiming your gun and you can now actually effectively kill enemies with melee attacks but all it did was make the game a very bland and mediocre action game. RE4 and 5 were engineered around intense and highly tactical encounters which required lots of manoeuvring and quick thinking - RE6 is just a boring chaotic mess by comparison.

The game does have its moments. It is divided into four campaigns and especially the first one, Leon's, actually surprised me positively after everything I had heard about the game. There are even levels in an old mansion and catacombs and whatnot, you even get to fight real zombies and the good old zombified dogs. There's the occasional special encounter which requires you to stay away from unkillable enemies and use the environment and almost makes it feel like there's still some Resident Evil under the hood. But sadly even those moments don't get close to RE4 and 5.

To me the game is saved by the coop mode but also that one isn't nearly as good as in RE5. RE5 felt entirely designed around coop but here coop feels more like an afterthought by comparison. There are fewer sequences specifically designed around elaborate cooperation (and the ones that are there are worse), the claustrophobic level design and frantic combat don't support tight coordination quite as much and also the way the economy and inventory work is just worse. And in the case of Ada's campaign coop is literally an afterthought. While the other campaigns at least narratively assume that there are two protagonists and there's two characters even in singleplayer, Ada's campaign was actually designed for singleplayer. In coop the second player assumes control of some anonymous masked dude who is absent from all the cutscenes and just teleports to Ada whenever she escapes through a door or uses her grappling hook. There's even a puzzle where the problem is that Ada can't be in two places at once which could be easily solved by having the second player pull a lever for her but he just can't interact with it because the puzzle was designed for singleplayer!

And sadly RE6 repeats that weird split screen mode from RE5 which uses only half the surface of the screen and where everything is literally only half the size as in single player. It wasn't great in RE5 either but I suppose it worked better there because the game was well-lit and the combat was low-distance most of the time. RE6, on the other hand, has a ton of shooter combat in dark environments and is often a brutal test of your eyesight in split-screen (though at least they replaced the laser sight, which was hard to see in RE5's split screen mode, with an on-screen crosshair here which is always perfectly visible). It's actually not as terrible as I make it sound but it is a bit of a problem, even on a 50" screen.

However... we still had a ton of fun! The plot is dumb, the controls are pretty clunky and so on but it is still a pretty solid AAA coop action game - with split-screen multiplayer! And it really does have its moments and put a smile on our faces quite a few times, some moments were epic, a few even gave us goose bumps in spite of the kitsch. And as I said, it's 20 hours long so it's definitely worth its money (though it does feel like it drags on forever and should be played in small doses). It's not complete garbage and I actually do recommend it in coop - though you'll probably be better-served by playing it online or on a ridiculously massive TV.

Weird West (XSX Game Pass)

This game is like an isometric open world Thief/Dishonored type of game. You play through the journeys of 5 characters that are all related by the strange brand on their neck and who are all obviously part of something much larger. When you finish the journey of one character you move to the next. However the world is continuous and you can track down and even recruit your previous character into your posse. In fact you really want to do this to at least get all your good gear and relics from your old character.

The game is often labelled as RPG, but I'd say it is only one in the lightest sense. Character progression is baked in via collecting relics in the world. Again, it is much more like a game such as Dishonored, which makes sense since some of the key designers worked on those games apparently. The story is linear, but the world is not. There is much you can do in between the next story arc if you choose. The combat is the games weakest aspect, though I feel maybe deliberate- just like in the Thief games, to drive you more towards stealth and using the environment. If you try to play it like a twin stick shooter you will really find it hard. I favored long range bow and rifle stealth attacks when possible.

Story is really good. You suspect what may be going on, but never quite sure. The quirky characters you keep meeting are well done and mysterious in a way that makes sense when you get to the finale. The Heathen in particular was a great character that you keep stumbling upon.
The world is a fantasy version of the American West.

I found it to be an awesome game with a the type of story I like. Its reviews are very divided though, I suspect a lot of people don't quite understand what type of game it is. People see what looks like an isometric Diablo action RPG, when it is nothing like that. The Xbox version ran really well, had no bugs during my play through, and crashed to desktop randomly two times in the 28 hours or so that I spent exploring the world. Definitely recommended.

Panzer Dragoon: Remake (XSX)

Great remake of a classic game. The other version I played was the unlockable version in Panzer Dragoon Orta, which was basically a port of the PC version for OG Xbox. This new version is much better. Very short rail shooter made for replaying to get better scores. Perfect for a quick play between longer games. Only problem is that I think the two sequels were much better. Hopefully PD 2 will get similar treatment. Orta is still sold on the Xbox store and runs perfectly well on modern consoles, but a port to PC would be good still.

Additionally to completing the main storyline in Baldur's Gate 2 I also defeated Kangaxx (Core Rules, No Guides)

Whom I'm sure is painfully familiar to many of you.

Kane & Lynch - Dead Men...again



Kinda off replaying it now, it has some moments of 'nice' but then goes back to being a slog before the awful final act. Still a pretty curious point in history for both video game media and a game being known more for stuff around the game rather than the game itself.

Legend of Kay Anniversary
(Well, almost. See below.)

I still had a score to settle with this game, because I had to abandon my PS2 playthrough many years ago out of frustration. But I had played it with a friend, and we both had enjoyed it well enough until this point. So now I gave the PC version a try, with the friend watching once again.

This time I took a precaution and used a cheat to get unlimited lives. Because the thing is, in addition to health points, the game already has checkpoints that you get reset to if you lose a life. But if you lose all lives, you get reset to the start of the current level, and that was way too oldschool for me. It is a story-oriented 3D action adventure, not a score based 2D platformer or something. Having to repeating the whole level from scratch is just a tedious waste of time. Not that it's hard to prevent your character from losing a life most of the time, in general the game is pretty easy. But at some spots it can suddenly become frustratingly tricky, due to a combination of 3D platforming, terrible camera (that tends to zoom in and/or lock the angle at the most inconvenient times) and off-screen hazards which demands a bit of trial and error, and before you know it, several lives are gone and you have to start over. But not this time.

And yet, I came close to abandoning the game once again, in the same level as with the PS2 version, even if for a different reason. I persevered and eventually overcame what I thought was the worse spot in the game, although in hindsight I realize now that it could have been much easier if I hadn't forgotten about a special Jump move that was taught at the beginning of the game but then never really used - it is only required at two single spots in the whole game, not counting the tutorial. So my bad memory is to blame, but I also think that's not the best game design. If you want players to remember a move, you should make sure that it's required more often.

Apart from that, the game was quite alright, mildly entertaining and amusing, at least with the original German voiceovers. The story was so-so, simple, full of stereotypes and silly bravado, didn't make all that much sense. But it still had a certain charm. The characters all looked funny and there were several adorable details, like how the cat hero shook his fur when climbing out of the water, or how he sat down to meditate when idle etc. The gameplay was a mix of platforming (okay), combat (somewhat fun) and ... obstacle course racing (with instant startover if you hit a wall). The latter made me groan a lot whenever it showed up again in various forms and demanded to be beat before the game progressed, and it also didn't make any sense in terms of story, most of the times. But it was kind of amusing (moreso for my friend), how the game insisted on tormenting me with this like a running gag. Most boss battles were super easy, and I liked that, but you could rely on such an easy boss battle to be followed by yet another annoying obstacle course racing immediately after. XD

The last boss battle though I gave up on when I died in the third phase by falling off the arena platform and was supposed to start at phase 2 again, which I had already thought extremely boring (and phase 3 was even worse). Up until the end I thought this might be a game were the boss battles are tolerable even to someone like me who usually hates them, but the last one was exactly what I hate about them. Spongy boss, tedious routines, bad camera etc. Despite all that I had already endured before, I still had enough self-respect to not waste my time with this and just watched the ending on YouTube (it was kind of lame anyway). So while technically I did not beat the game this time either, at least now I've seen everything in it from start to finish and can scratch it off my list.

It wasn't all bad, I quite liked some parts of it, and even the worse ones were kind of entertaining in the company of a friend, but I'd probably not go out of my way to recommend the game to others.

Portal 2 (Single Player)

While stocks last receive unlimited free portals when you purchase this game. Certainly had a lot of test chambers and new types of challenges that left me scratching my head fairly often. Hilarious kind of deadpan humour and fun puzzles.

Game no. 105 completed.

I love to play different games and I really like to re-take the games I already know. Because my husband and I often collect game-themed collections. Sometimes we organize parties and contests to win prizes from our personal collections. I think that you will also be interested to know about SoD raid boosts. Such special collections are of interest to literally every gamer. And it doesn't matter if you're a professional gamer or not.

I sometimes like even better to replay some old favorite game as well.

Call of Juarez (2006) (Linux/Wine)

I think there's a lot to like in this game.
· quite interesting story – it's "B" class, but well done; I liked the idea of two parallel threads and switching characters
· really nice visuals and different settings – I enjoyed riding a horse or climbing the nest (you'll know)
· it allows you quick-save whenever you want, which makes the game easier for those who without great skills
· it's western! and sometimes it feels like Indiana Jones – it's just fun! :)

What I didn't liked is that it's extremely linear. You need to follow narrow and heavy-scripted path, which is a real pain when you look on all these pretty outdoors. I appreciate a good story and plot twists, but I also like a bit more freedom. That's the reason hunting rabbits was the best quest here (you'll know).

The game works well under Wine. I've faced a few small graphical artifacts, but other than that it was perfect. I've played dx10 version (which is a bit enhanced).

List of all games completed in 2022.

What Remains of Edith Finch, Aug 20 (Xbox Game Pass)-An interesting little story but it didn't quite draw me in. It reminded me a lot of the The Virgin Suicides, the movie not the book. It's not bad it's just kind of average and it's very short. It's also very dark and I'm not talking about the narrative. The visuals were really hard to see in some scenes.

Full List

Ion...Fury (I still think of it as Ion Maiden in my head). This was pretty good. In comparing it to the classic Build engine games, I would say it's maybe not quite as good, but at the same time it honors them well enough. It's not like it's closer to TekWar on the Build engine spectrum. There's a lot of low-brow humor and the protagonist quotes popular movies a lot, which I guess is what post-Duke Nukem heroes are supposed to do. I ALSO ENJOY POPULAR MOVIES. The levels are impressively huge and have all the neat Build engine effects. I was somewhat surprised at how little you could interact with. You could flip light switches on, flush toilets, turn on faucets, get soft drinks out of vending machines, but there were various things strewn about that would get no response if you clicked the use key on them. The combat is satisfying, with the exception of those spider-head things. Those little bastards constantly force you to slow down and check the ceilings in every new room. I really like the bowling bombs, and it has a pretty good shotgun/grenade launcher. Alt-fire modes are generally useful and I felt the game did well in encouraging me to use the whole arsenal. They did a fine job and will hopefully do more in the future.