The first Evenicle great game, what a ride. It certainly can count as a cultural masterpiece.
Gotten all cgs, scenes, locations, gal monsters, seen all heart events and flirt events. Only thing i left out were the mega monsters since i didn't feel like getting all of them. Not gonna spoil anything as it's something adult people should experience themselfs if you can get over the more creepier stuff but no problem here.

A Short Hike (XSX Game Pass)

I played this a few years ago on PC, it was a free Epic game. I decided to play it again because it is short and a bit of casual fun. This time I discovered many little side quests and mechanics that I totally missed the first time. Like those flowers that you can water to make jump pads...I definitely did not discover those the first time. Also, the game has a setting that reduces the pixel sizes to change the look from pixel art all the way to sharp and simple modern look- I cannot remember any other game that does this. Anyway, it's a fun little game- whether you just play it to climb to the peak or do all the side stuff. It's on GOG too.

More games completed that have cats.....


inbento - available on GOG
https://www.gog.com/en/game/inbento

While the cats don't show up during gameplay, they show up in all the intermission images. Gameplay is that you are the cats making the lunch boxes. No screen shots are needed as the cats are all over the GOG page.


Costume Quest - available on GOG
https://www.gog.com/en/game/costume_quest

Screen Shots -
https://imgur.com/TQoUPMR.jpg
https://imgur.com/v9ueajM.jpg

The screen shots are dark, but that's just my laptop. They didn't look this dark on my prior computer. Anyway there's essentially two cats in this game - the one that helps you out (first screen shot) and the cat costume.

The cat costume is considered to be one of the weakest costume in the game entirely because the special power that it has causes enemies to flee. However you get it really late in the game when you might already be maxed out on experience and not need anymore, which means that it might be useful to get rid of enemies that you don't want to be bothered fighting. I wouldn't use it for a boss battle. For the boss battles, I like to use vampire, unicorn, and knight... then the knight is later swapped with the yeti for the very last boss battle.


Costume Quest 2 is not on GOG.

The issue here cannot be the pre-order costumes because you can hex edit any version of the game's executable to unlock the pre-order costumes. I currently on the Epic version (that never got the pre-order costumes) and was able to make the four Steam exclusive and one PS exclusive pre-order costumes available in my game.

The other reason why this game belongs on GOG is that the first Costume Quest ends on a cliffhanger where your characters are in this area between worlds, essentially demanding that you play a sequel in order to get the actual ending.

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/costume_quest_2

Psychonauts 2. More like Psychonauts 3 or at least 2.5 because if you didn't play the VR game, Rhombus of Ruin, you'll feel like you've missed some stuff (I haven't played it) and the game has to fill you in a bit. Raz has graduated to the Psychonauts intern program, so instead of kids his age he's now mostly forced to interact with older kids and adults who all treat him like crap (the game is weirdly anti-child). Stuff happens and he has to save the day while resolving some old mysteries about where the Psychonauts came from and why Raz was able to join them in the first place.

Overall, it's a good game and a worthy sequel, although it isn't the tight little well-cut diamond that the original game is. First off, the beginning is utterly disappointing. Literally ALL of the new characters you're introduced to at this point are greatly inferior to the original game's cast. The other interns are bland and only memorable in how deeply unlikable they all are, and the main new addition to the adult cast, a woman named Hollis, is the sort of uptight bureaucrat that a younger Tim Schafer would have cheerfully mocked but for some reason in this game we're supposed to unironically like and admire her. Contrary to the impish sense of humor that has always characterized Schafer's games, the opening levels here are almost shockingly lacking in humor but instead go for topical satire and and a relatively sober treatment of mental illness. The original game was made when it was still okay to make jokes about things like suicide as everyone still understood that you could have a little joke while still appreciating it as a serious topic, but this sequel doesn't do that because people today apparently can't make those distinctions (the game has a very prominent trigger warning screen at boot-up).

Once you get beyond the first couple of levels and the story properly begins and you're forced to endure fewer cutscenes of Raz having to interact with the losers, the game settles down considerably and starts to actually feel like a sequel to the original game. Raz gets to explore the base on his own, figure things out, and when he interacts with his family members the humor comes back because it's about his personal relationships instead of bitterly trying to make points about the healthcare system and ism/phobia. The later levels of the game start showing the kind of cleverness the original had in the variety of visuals and how you interact with the particular worlds. One world looks like a psychedelic 1960s cartoon, another is a perverse cooking show, another is based on exploring books, etc. It's a pretty easy game - I don't think I died even a single time - but it's creative and stimulating most of the time. There are some holes in the story, but I would say it holds together better than something like Broken Age. It's just really too bad about that intro, which also bloats the game a bit and the game does start feeling a bit long by the time you're in the later stages. There's a particular world based around riding a raft and jumping over water that takes way too long to finish compared to most of the others. It's definitely worth playing for fans of the original, although I can't see myself replaying this nearly as often as the original.

Beaten Serious Sam the first encounter for the first time.
Was very close to the ending and though why not try beating it where i left it and so i did.
Guess i am gonna try the second encounter then.

Bramble The Mountain King, Sept 16 (Xbox Gamepass)-Its in the vein of games like Limbo and Little Nightmares so I wasn't expecting to like it much. Its got some of the most disturbing imagery I've seen in a game and I probably haven't been as creeped out since Soma. But I don't really play a lot of scary horror games so its hard to say. The game looks and sounds really good but the gameplay was just very boring. And the last few bosses very tiresome. Thankfully the developers were rather generous with checkpoints during those last boss fights. Not as good as advertised but better than I expected.

Full List

Hero of the Kingdom II is very pleasant surprise. Generally very easy game which reminds me Ding Smallwood, only without RPG elements. It can be recommended as short family fun for one afternoon. In later parts of the game was a lot of time re-selling goods to make enough gold for possibility to buy necessary equipment what is only negative side of this game.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker (XSX Game Pass)

What an odd year. It's September already and I'm trying to decide if my favorite games played this year are this one or SnowRunner. The lesson is that I need to play more working simulators it seems. Take on the job of breaking up starships for salvage- the solar systems most dangerous job. So dangerous that it is statistically certain that you will die- hence the company provides you with clones as spare bodies for when the expected death occurs. All you have to do for your immortality is pay off your 1.4 Billion Credit debt to the company. So dangerous that I managed to set myself on fire before I'd even finished the tutorial! I have the achievement to prove it.

It's amazing just how engaging it is to safely and profitably dismantle a huge Javelin class Freighter, for example. The first time took me over 3 hours and I almost died from being crushed between the outer hull and the inner structure. Then there was that time that I got lazy and decided to yank out a type II reactor without going through the proper steps to make it safer...only to get it stuck and KA-fucking-BOOM!!! The last thing I remember, before being vaporized, was the blinding white flash of light. Or the time I miss aimed my cutter and it reflected into the fuel tanks. Or that time when I got a beam stuck on some structure and I decided to just give it a really good hard pull, only to see it suddenly come loose and smash through my visor. And I'd do it all again!

Awesome game. Even the simple story has a great little ending that makes it feel like something you really earnt and worked for, which you quite literally did. I've always thought that my dream job is to work in one of those remote Firewatch towers, with no other human anywhere for at least 200km- just an internet connection and a good gaming setup...for when I'm not watching for fires. But Shipbreaking would be a close second.

Rayman 3. Some *checks notes* black lums come to start some trouble but Rayman fights them off, but then the leader gets swallowed by Rayman's buddy Globox, so Rayman has to travel around the universe to find some doctors who can get the thing out of Globox's stomach while also keeping the evil black lum from figuring out how to reproduce and create an army to take over everything. This mostly takes the form of you running and jumping around obstacles while throwing your fist at enemies.

I think Michel Ancel's games are some of the loveliest to just look at. Much like the second game, the colors and lighting in this game somehow seem richer and more vivid than most and the designs are full of personality. Truly gorgeous work and it kind of makes me wish they would do Rayman comics. They play pretty well, too. It takes a little getting used to the fact that you have very little control over the camera in this game but it generally does okay. There are a few spots where I felt the camera started obscuring things or making the game harder for me, but not that many and for the most part it's not a very difficult game. I think I missed a lot of collectibles, though, as I hadn't unlocked all of the bonus levels by the end and my score on a couple of levels was amazingly low, as if I hadn't gotten any extra scoring or discovered any secrets at all.

It's also not a very long game and it came out in that era when campaign modes often clocked in around 8-10 hours. They try to mix up the gameplay by having you do on-rails segments, which I wasn't crazy about, and there's this odd concept they repeat where Rayman shrinks and has to pilot one of his shoes and play bumper cars with his other shoe in order to proceed. It was funny the first time and then started getting a bit old the next couple of times they did it, but at least the game overall is relatively short.

Cyberpunk 2077

I like a lot about this game, but I don't love it. Even after all those patches, it's a janky game, every now and then, you're running into minor problems. Nothing game breaking, but they're there. I like it best, when it's being an Open World game. It's fun to run around exploring the map, finding minor quests and activities to do here and there. I don't like it too much when it's telling the story of V and Johnny Silverhand.

With so many games featuring a main character with a sidekick (and many with one in their head), I'm surprised they made V and Johnny's conversations and banter how they did. Johnny is almost always an asshole, and what could have been fun bickering between the two, ends up being annoying and tiresome. Which is appalling, because Keanu Reeves is an actor who is popular exactly because he is such a charismatic nice guy. The story is all over the place, often feeling sewn together from many different ideas, and, though the game talks so much about trying to save yourself, it's clear that the main interest of the writers was redeeming Johnny. Which, again, is not helped by the fact that Silverhand is almost always an asshole, even after you more or less manage to redeem him (as much as the game allows you to).

I don't think the writing itself was bad, mind you, just that choices that seemed cool on paper, in the end, weren't really, and, again, a lot of stitched together things from all over the place. It's bizarre how much the plot jumps around, how much importance it asks you to put in things and characters that aren't really there for long enough, and how easily and quickly it dispatches interesting plot points and characters. I remember early on, when you're betrayed and left for dead, I was immediately thinking how I wanted to finish the traitor off, and, then, I was like "Nah, I'm pretty sure the plot will require me to side with him and forgive him for the best ending". Less than a minute later the guy was shot dead by someone else in the following cutscene. I was like "really?"

The way the characters talk was also another thing that got to me, there's so much slang and cursing all the time, it takes you out of the game and starts feeling like a thirteen year old edge lord speaking (even if it's leagues better and more varied than an actual thirteen year old edge lord). It doesn't help that I would often choose a conversation option that seemed reasonable on text only to hear V go on a screaming rant out of nowhere.

Another thing is how often the game asks you "Hey, want more content or can we cut this thing short right now?". And it doesn't always tell you that it's asking this exact question (though it often does tell).

I could go on ranting about many more things, but I'm way past the post size anyone would read. :P

Finally, the Brazilian Portuguese adaption was great, even if it couldn't really improve the writing of the game. Though, certain aspects of it are sure to make date the translation very quickly (for example, there's a military gang type character who was voiced following the speech patterns of now ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, essentially making fun of him).

Frankenstein: Through the eyes of the Monster (PC CD ROM)

It's like a Myst style point and click adventure game, starring Tim Curry as Frankenstein and you as the monster. It released on Mac, Windows (3.1) and SEGA Saturn. Back in the good old days, I remember being stunned at the visuals which looked photo real on my big 14" fishbowl CRT monitor. I also remember not being able to get even close to remotely solving the game. Whilst I had no internet and no way of getting many walkthroughs, I still finished all the Gabriel Knight games and many other point and clickers. I never finished this game until years later when I found a walkthrough on a magazine disc.

I seriously doubt many people would have the patience to solve this game without a walkthrough, not without plenty of time and patience and trial and error anyway. The entire game is like one large maze with too many screens looking identical and that's before you even get to the actual garden maze. I played it again for nostalgia (making copious use of what seems to be the only walkthrough)- it may not objectively be much good, but I have fond memories of it anyway. It has the usual quirky performance by Tim Curry and a disturbing atmosphere, even if the story doesn't really make much sense in the end- plenty of random things and events that are not explained.

It uses embedded video actors in static screens, which is why it can be an annoying game to get to work. The videos are encoded in Apple Quicktime which can be problematic on new system (actually it was problematic even back in 1995!). The easiest way to play it is to use a Win 98 PC installed with the correct Quicktime version. Play this one if you really like those old quirky and rough adventure games, or if you're a Tim Curry fan.

Didnt complete any other?

Truthfully

Not yet

Started quite a few though

I'm 47 hours into BG3... then Phantom Liberty is about to drop, so not restarted CP2077 again

Last day of vacation is always a good time to postpone the dread pf going back to work. In that vein, I’ve just finished the campaign of Titanfall 2. I’ve picked it up on some silly discount, as a recommendation by a friend. You’re going to like the campaign he said, it’s straightforward and has everything you’re looking for. Well…yeah, he was right. It’s a bit on a short side, but has mechas, guns, explosions and all the nice stuff. I’ve played better, but I’ve played significantly worse and more boring lately.

Chained Echoes (XSX Game Pass)

Excellent RPG done in the 16 bit SNES style of JRPG- but made by a German. This results in a game with the mechanical feel of the Japanese made games, but without the obnoxious teenage heroes saving the world with swords 3 times larger than themselves. Also, in this game, bosses almost always stay dead after you defeat them instead of kicking your ass in a cutscene and running away. So, a JRPG without the worst of the usual tropes.

The game is quite literally coded by one person, just the music and localization done by others. The pixel art is as good as anything out there. The story is a way more of an epic political tale and has some definite Mass Effect elements to it- without the space travel. I thought the characters were really well done too, all of them developing in a way that makes sense as to what their motives are.

Combat is pretty traditional turn-based fare- no active time inputs or any such thing. You have 4 front row characters and 4 back row characters that you can swap in at will- meaning you can keep your primary healing and buffing members in reserve until you actually need them.

The only aspect of the game that I'd prefer to see done differently is the equipment upgrade system. There is just too much of it, so much so that you generally find the next stronger version of each characters preferred weapon before you really get a chance to upgrade the first one. Call me old fashioned but I still prefer the D&D or Spiderweb Software games where items feel special because they don't just drop every few minutes and you either have to explore hard, beat tough enemies or save up to buy them. I like to keep weapons and armor long enough to at least grow attached to them. The equipment system aside, this is still an excellent game- it is on GOG too.