TOEM (XSX Game Pass)

A short little adventure game where you take photos to solve quests and help people along the way to your destination. The graphics are all in greyscale and it's a chilled out short experience. I 100% completed the game with all achievements, the only difficulty for the entire game was getting the pro-gamer achievement- this required completing a rhythm mini game which I found really hard. Everything else just required diligent exploration.

It's quite a good little game for some downtime between larger games and the vibe reminded me of the game Eastshade that I played a few years back- though much different in style.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Spearhead [PC]

My first play-through of the first expansion pack, despite playing the base game multiple times. Same as the base game, except with a bit less polish. Shoot Nazis, except probably too many to be even remotely believable, assault the Berlin, be there to see the end of the war.

You should try the Breakthrough expansion pack, IronStar, in case you haven't played it yet. I went through the entire War Chest back in the day and I have fond memories of the whole experience, especially of the music. I guess I'll play it all again someday in the near future.

Sure thing! TOEM is a laid-back adventure game available on XSX Game Pass. You play it in greyscale and use photography to solve quests and help characters on your journey. It's a great game for some casual gaming during your downtime between bigger titles. I completed it 100%, and the only real challenge was a tricky rhythm mini-game. The game's vibe may remind you of Eastshade, though they have different styles. Hope that helps!

It's next on the play list. I've seen that it got mixed reviews back in the day, lower than full game and Spearhead, but I'm still looking forward to playing it.

PS1
-Tomb Raider: first time 100%
-Tomb Raider II: first time 100%
-Resident Evil - Director's Cut (NOT dualshock version): first time unlocking closet key
-Resident Evil 2: first time unlocking 4th survivor AND did not know about B scenarios way back in the day...
-Resident Evil 3 - Nemesis: I hate Nemesis... otherwise nice game, never played it when it came out.
-Parasite Eve: how come I never played this back in the day?? Oh right, no PS1...
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PC/Mac
-Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition: now this is really strange... back in the day finished the OG, and both expansions. Loved the XPs a lot more than the base campaign but had a soft spot for the OG's Chapter 2 (and a small part of Chapter 3). This time around though? I just hated the expansions and put them below the OG campaign... Guess I'm not the same person I was twenty years ago, though OG's Chapter 1 and 4 can die in a fire.
-Doom - Thy Flesh Consumed: I just loved this episode...
-Doom II - Hell on Earth: yup, never played it back in the day (well, only until like level 7 or something, Mancubi scared the heck out of me). And can I be honest? Every single level just SUCKS compared to Doom I, specially the city ones...
Doom II - No Rest for the Living: pretty damn good!
Sigil: loved it.

Still working on Return to Monkey Island (and to tell the truth, not really thrilled so far... though only played the prologue with the kid and run around with Guybrush for like 10 minutes).

Pokemon Picross, Oct 18 (3DS)-2 years and 242 hours later I finally completed this. I'm not really a Pokemon fan and not really a picross fan (with the exception of Murder By Numbers) but this mashed them together in a really fun way. I really enjoyed collecting the Pokemon and the powers were a lot of fun. There were a ton of puzzles and lots of challenges and additional difficulty. It was fun to play it for a few minutes at a time and was easy to bring it on trips. A really fun and challenging puzzle game with a good theme.

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Tunic, Oct 19 (Xbox Game Pass)-I'm torn on this game. There are a ton of puzzles to solve and secrets to discover and I really liked finding manual pages to uncover more of the story. But it is really really difficult. Combat was far to difficult for me and I quickly turned it to easy mode. And the puzzles were often also far too obtuse to solve without a walkthru. The worldbuilding was quite good but too much of the game was very frustrating to play. A couple of particularly low points, the quarry area with all the screen altering miasma, and the clunkiness of the teleportation ability you get at the very end. I was finding myself stuck on random ledges because of that ability which is essential to uncover a lot of the secrets in the game. Movement and the maps were generally frustrating which was the point but it way overdone. For me to really have enjoyed this I think it needs to be dialed back quite a bit.

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The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes (PS5 PS Plus)

Part 3 in the anthology. This time it's 5 soldiers in a story that has "Aliens" vibes. As soldiers they are better equipped than the usual dullards in these games- but they all have their emotional baggage, as you soon find out. If you like the other Supermassive games, then you should like this as well. Just have to wait for the final part to come to PS Now, these are ideal games for a subscription service- they are enjoyable, but expensive, short and only have limited replay potential.

Hero of the Kingdom played after second part was not a problem, but second one seems better for me. This type of the game is good if you have bad times and need something easy where you cannot fail just to relax and come to different mind. Game is relatively short, let’s say for one afternoon. I really like cute graphics.

SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech (Gog)

I like this studio, they make games from different genres instead of repeating the same again and again. As Dig and Heist, their universe, graphics and gameplay are well done. Not finished all the arena battles but the story yes. I liked it.

About 25 hours playing.

TOHU (Steam)

Charming and short point and click adventure game. In the style of Amanita games.

Depending if you are in a hurry, about 4-7 hours.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

Just finished this old classic. GOG version + Verok's GL Patch. I recommend that patch as it e.g. adds subtitles which made it much easier to understand what someone was saying and what the story was, at least for me.

The game wasn't that hard when you got a hang of the gameplay and what does what etc. While it had console-like save points, it helped that in the outdoor areas you could always teleport to some beacon where you knew there was a save point, so you could always go there and save the game, if needed.

At first I was a bit confused about the story, who is the bad guy etc., but that was mainly because the story wasn't quite as straightforward as I had expected.

In the end, I was more positive than negative about the game, and I can understand why it is considered as a classic.

Bioshock Infinite Complete Edition, Oct 22 (GOG)-A really good game with two really good DLCs or two halves of one really good DLC? I don't know but Burial At Sea was also excellent. The story was pretty good right up until the end which I didn't care for too much. The combat was a little on the easy side but ramped up a bit towards the end and I tended to ignore the vigors as I usually do. Everything looked and played really well in the game. Burial At Sea was notably more difficult with very sparse ammo, healing, and eve. I think I enjoyed the story in the DLC more than the main game especially with the tie ins with the first game. I think ultimately I prefer the original Bioshock but this was still a lot of fun to play.

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Forza Motorsport (XSX Game Pass)

Finished the games career mode, despite my brake pedal breaking its spring in two places during the second to last race. I had to finish that race by hooking my toes around the top of the pedal and puling it back and forwards that way. I replaced the spring with the linear one from the clutch pedal and finally finished up the final race.

From a handling and driving perspective this is easily the finest Forza yet. The physics have been rebuilt and the cars have more weight to them and handle really well- maybe even as well as Project Cars.

I don't understand why Turn 10 bothered to put in a 30fps ray tracing mode, no Forza Motorsport game has ever run at 30 fps before. Who the hell needs ray traced reflections on the other cars when you're driving at 300km/h? I also didn't bother with the performance ray tracing mode that reduces resolution. All that matters in a racing game is view distance, clarity and running at 60fps or higher and stable and consistent. So, I used the 4K performance mode and it was awesome- the only way it should be played. The game was automatically set up to work perfectly with my steering wheel- it is the most common wheel after all.

The reviews on Xbox are barraged with one star, one line, reviews all worded the same "This game is a buggy mess". These reviews are appearing daily, even today. Well, I had no bugs in 40 hours. The reviews are irate console warring fanboys review bombing. They even admit to doing it. Some of the player names even have PS5 in their name tags! That's the problem with allowing any idiot to review games on Game Pass- it's just too easy to review bomb like that.

The one thing that critics have right is that the career mode is quite dull. It will be added to, but it still should have been a lot better at launch. The career mode at launch barely even extends into true race vehicles- just modified road cars. To this day the best ever Forza campaign is Forza 4. I wish they could just do another campaign like that.

So, in the end, from someone that has played every Forza Motorsport campaign from 3 until now- this game drives better and sounds better than ever before and runs locked to its target frame rate just like every game in the series. The campaign that the game launches with is dull and should be better. For a Motorsport entry it is far better to have the driving foundation right and an average campaign mode, than the other way around. They are adding new single player race series monthly, plus the is still the freerace menu where you can just put together your own races. I don't know why Turn 10 don't open the game up to fans to put together and publish their own race championships, just like they allow people to post their liveries and tuning setups.

Overall, despite being the dullest campaign mode any Forza game has ever launched with, I still enjoyed the 40 hours with it because of the great driving simulation. It's also the racing game that almost anyone that isn't in a coma can play, due to the wealth of driving aids and difficulty settings. You can basically set the game up so all you have to do is push the accelerator if that's what you want.

Torin's Passage. Relatively late Sierra release, basically Al Lowe using the King's Quest 7 engine to do something wholesome/non-Leisure Suit Larry for a change. Torin is a nice young man whose humble parents were abducted by a witch and stuck in some crystal, so now he has to save them with the help of his shape-shifting cat(?). But of course things aren't all as they seem.

It's basically fine, although I don't care for this engine once you get past the fancied up animation. The game basically consists of a series of long "rooms" that felt weirdly claustrophobic to me. I found myself missing the old AGI style where you'd explore many screens and have to map stuff. The game is relatively easy, though, and quite charming. It helps if you don't mind Lowe's freewheeling sense of humor in a light fantasy story.