Sprawl (PC)

Another recently released boomer shooter, with cyberpunk aesthetic, Max Payne bullet time, wallrunning, and fast Quake-like gameplay. These are many of the things I look for in games. You have several dual-wielded weapons, along the classic rocket launchers, railgun and chaingun. The gameplay is really fast and smooth, and the bullet time works great. You progress in many of the levels by finding keycards or flipping switches, like in the good old shooters.

There is no difficulty modes to choose from. What you see is what you get. It's not too hard or too easy. It's just right. Health and ammo are handed out like candy, but you will die quickly by even common enemies if you're not careful. The three episodes took me 5 hours to complete, but there is a horde mode that can add some extra playtime. More content is also on the way. Some of the soundtrack and level design feels heavily inspired by Ghost in the Shell, which fits the style of the game really well.

Thank God for gamepass \o/

Atari Mania. I took the rare step of actually installing and playing one of the free Epic games. The premise is that you control the caretaker of an Atari museum and something is possessing the various game characters, causing them to run amok. To cure them, you have to complete various minigames that basically mix different Atari 2600 games together.

It's cute, but unfortunately cuteness doesn't make for a good game and this really isn't very good. The framerate is weirdly low, the hit boxes for the minigames seem ridiculously big to me, and the controls aren't very responsive and in some cases are downright baffling. The Combat-inspired games, for instance, don't have the classic controls of the original game, where you push left or right to turn and push forward to move. You just push in the direction you want to go and the ship will very slowly turn and go. It feels very sluggish. Say what you will about Atari 2600 games, they really nailed how a game should feel to play (they certainly didn't have much going on with graphics or audio). In our supposedly more evolved gaming industry today, the makers of this game couldn't come close to capturing the feel of the games to which they were paying tribute.

It seems that if you're interested in celebrating Atari's 50th anniversary, the title to go for is Atari 50, which seems to have gotten generally favorable reviews. This one can be comfortably skipped.

It Takes Two (2 player co-op)

Two points of criticism: First, the general plot is simple and silly and the story arch predictable, but that's fine with me. What I didn't like so much is that the character growth is spread across the game in a rather uneven pacing, which makes it less credible. For a major part of the game, the main characters just go around in circles, instead of evolving. They are not exactly sympathethic people either, and they behave pretty childish und dumb most of the time. That might also be fine for a comedy movie, but in a game it feels a bit strange to actively help someone (or rather make them) do terribly dumb things just because the story demands it, even though you as a player already know better and have no real motivation to do it other than to progress in the game by doing what it wants you to do. I know it's odd to mention these games in the same sentence, but I felt the same way about Spec Ops: The Line. And also about these devs' other co-op game A Way Out. The stories are entertaining but the characters are all a bit weird, not really relatable or believable, and I as a player felt detached from the characters I was playing. It Takes Two is mainly an action/platformer/puzzle game though, so it doesn't really matter all that much, but there is quite a lot of talking regardless.

The second point may be more on me and my old PC setup, but I did meet the minimum requirements and most of the recommended ones, too, yet the cutscenes were often laggy and completely out of synch for me, sometimes to such an extent that the woman's voiceover lines were played after the man's lines that reacted to them. It may be that 8GB of available RAM is just too low for this game, or that it needs a SSD instead of a HDD, or, as some other players with these issues suspect, it's connected to UE4 and shaders caches or lack of preloading or something. In any case, I don't have this in other games with similar requirements from around the same time, so maybe the PC version isn't optimized all that well. This somewhat decreased my enjoyment of the game when it occurred, but like I said, that's probably on me, and it was mostly just in cutscenes. On the other hand, my friend who didn't have these issues, often complained about mouse clicks or key presses failing to register reliably or the game not displaying what keys it expected him to use since he re-defined them (he played with M/KB, while I was using a gamepad which worked fine for me). EDIT: Oh, and one time, I got hopelessly stuck in a wall, and since there is no button to kill and reset your character, we had to choose "Start from last Checkpoint" and do a whole section all over again (when you die, the positions you are reset to are usually very fair or even generous, but this "Start from Last Checkpoint" option in the menu was different and made us lose quite a bit of progress).

Apart from the technical and storytelling issues though, we had a lot of fun. Where the game really shines is creative art and level design and offering a lot of variety. Puzzles and combat were somewhat casual and easy, but they worked well for co-op, were never quite the same, not at all formulaic. The game constantly switched things up, every new section actually was something new, visually as well as gameplay-wise. You never knew what to expect next, and it was quite the ride. So contrary to the plot, levels and gameplay weren't predictable at all, and managed to be entertaining all the way through to the end. And it's not a short game either, there's quite a bit of content here.

That's why, despite the flaws mentioned above, I'd still say it's one of the best light-hearted co-op experiences you can currently have on the PC or maybe even in general. There are not enough games like this.

Quake II: Ground Zero (mission pack)

It was fine, quite fun actually. So I don't understand why this seems to be a rather unpopular campaign. Maybe It's because I played it now, with the enhanced edition - I suppose they made some changes? -, and also that I played it last, after having finished the newer Call of the Machine, or maybe it's my playstyle, playing cautiously, on Normal difficulty, instead of rushing into rooms on Nightmare, and making use of Quicksaves instead of going on an Ironman rampage or something, but I didn't have an issue with any of the points of criticism that others raise:

Granted, the new weapons in this mission pack aren't all that cool and useful, but they aren't all bad either, and you already have plenty of different weapons and ammo isn't sparse, so I was actually spoilt for choice with the weapons (I might actually have overlooked some, even). The medics being able to revive fallen enemies is annoying, for sure, but they weren't overused and posed a fair challenge in Ground Zero, contrary to Call of the Machine where I really hated them. The spiderly robots I was already accustomed to from CotM as well. The turrets fairly announced themselves and were easy to take out once you knew where they were, and you could dodge their missiles if you kept moving, too. I actually liked them, but as mentioned, that might be due to changes in the EE or due to my playstyle; I can see how they would be more frustrating on harder difficulties for less cautious players. But I thought it was nowhere near as tedious and hard as Dimensions of the Past for Quake. The level design and missions were actually comparatively interesting and I probably enjoyed them more than those of the main game.

Sadly, that concludes my adventures in Quake II, but I had a lot of fun with this edition. It was a great game to play on the side these past months, when I needed to relax or get some adrenaline kicks to stay awake. As with the first Quake, I never imagined I would actually come to like these games so much. I used to prefer Doom, but I think the fantastic new editions have completely changed my mind about that.

Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle (2006) (Linux/Wine)

Well, it took me a while to finish this one. The game has some irritating features, perhaps old-school gamers can ignore it, but be aware. I've made some rework (do not collect mushrooms before you get a basket, go back for a phone if a battery is low and it seems to teleport to your room for charging). But if you like old-school adventures with some unique atmosphere, this one is still worth playing. It takes a few hours to complete.
It works like a charm with Linux/Wine.

List of all games completed in 2024.

Devil's Kiss (2020) (Linux)

Perhaps I'm just spoiled by reading books. And I read a lot and some really good ones. I guess that's the reason I find most of VN games as flat and boring, wordy and annoying. This one isn't different for me, sorry.

I've found and interesting "Gameplay Guide" and it nicely describes a gameplay of the game:
– Click a dialog option
– Repeat until game ends

List of all games completed in 2024.

This game serves more as a companion / puzzle-piece to Lair of the Clockwork God. In fact, if you ask for help enough times in LotCG you can replay Devil's Kiss during the game in order to get the solution to a puzzle. :)

Lost in Random

A bit of an odd mixture, but I liked it. Setting and artstyle are reminiscent of Tim Burton or Psychonauts, and as for the gameplay, it's part adventure game but without actual puzzles, more for the walking and talking and doing favors for NPCs in order to progress, and part real-time combat action with the same recurring enemies and telegraphed attacks that you can dodge, and both of these parts reminded me very much of Alice: Madness Returns, but I found story and characters more interesting and fun than in the latter, and Lost in Random also didn't overstay its welcome as much as the former did (there was one level near the end that I thought wasn't particularly interesting visually and that could have been cut from the game without much of a loss, but I still enjoyed playing through it). Contrary to Alice:MR, there is no platforming though, instead, curiously, the third element is deckbuilding.

I know, there are tons of card battlers and it's getting old by now, but Lost in Random uses it in a way, I've never seen before. During battle, you can't really hurt enemies until you've collected enough energy to roll a dice, which you do by dodging through enemies and/or shooting crystals off their body with your slingshot. Once you roll the dice, time stops and you get dealt a hand of cards from your deck. They each have a cost from 0 to 3 and the dice determines how much points you can spend on them (you start with a D2 or D3 and it's upgraded to D6 in the course of the game). Cards give you melee and ranged weapons, healing and bonus effects for the real-time combat, like bombs, time slowing bubbles, ability to hurt enemies by dodging through them etc. They only last for a shorter time though, so while you use them, you also need to collect energy for your next roll again. I've seen players complain about this system, calling it slow, boring, repetitive and pointless, but personally, I found it interesting and fun. Admittedly, fights were pretty easy, and even more so once I found out what cards worked best for my playstyle and built my deck accordingly. But I didn't mind that.

All in all, while it wasn't the most perfect game, I still thought it was pretty nice, memorable and original, and I'm glad I played it.

A Tiny Sticker Tale

This game looks very cute, but my experience with it was mixed. At first, it seemed barely a game. You pick up objects in the environment and put them in your sticker book, then you place them somewhere else. For example, an NPC asks you to bring 5 trees so he can sit in their shade. This felt so simplistic and pointless. But it actually gets better later on, when you collect more interesting stickers and even NPCs and have to figure out where to place them. And for a time I really had fun exploring and progressing through solving simple puzzles and minigames. But the few minigames there were were rather tedious, especially the slow pong clone, which was truly terrible. And shortly before finishing the game, I got seriously stuck because I was missing a couple of hidden items, so I had to use a walkthrough, and finding a walkthrough that could actually help me wasn't easy either. When I finally figured out where to get the items, the game was over in a minute and I'm not sure if all the trouble was even worth it for that ending.

Technically, I also thought it was very annoying how the sticker inventory is opened and closed automatically when your cursor moves to specific parts of the screen. So sometimes it would open by accident because my cursor got too close to the bottom of the screen, and very very often it would close while I was trying to put something in it, because the cursor slid ever so slighty beyond the book's border - which can happen very quickly when you play with a gamepad (maybe it's more suited for mouse controls in that regard, but it can also happen with a mouse).

So I'm not sure whether I would recommend it. It's not bad, but not all that great as a game either, IMO, despite the nice looks.

Pilgrims (2019) (Linux)

II like Amanita and their games. They're somehow fascinating and crazy, as only Czechs can be ;)
The game is actually an adventure game composed of a few simple quests and items. The mechanics is interesting as it resembles card game a bit, but it's a point and click in its core – just find items, use them and solve some quests leading to the final one. The problem is that an hour is enough to complete the game. It's intended to be played many times to get different solutions (and perhaps even different ending?), but I'm not sure if a gameplay offers enough to make me to replay the game.

List of all games completed in 2024.

Fuga Melodies of Steel 2, Jan 28 (Xbox Gamepass)-Its more of the same which I enjoyed. They added some airship mechanics which were also present for some plot reasons as well as a mini soul cannon. There were some familiar faces and an over the top plot. One new mechanic that I didn't like was the automatic loading of the soul cannon when you dropped to 50% health in a boss battle. It would start a turn timer and you had to finish the battle before the timer was up or the soul cannon would fire with a random character. It was annoying because some boss attacks would take you from full to half life instantly which would start the timer and healing back up to full health wouldn't stop it. I was frequently in no danger of dying but I had the constant threat of that stupid cannon rushing me in otherwise fairly easy combats. I often found the accumulation of damage during the smaller combats more of a threat than the bosses. But it was fun and apparently its supposed to be a trilogy so I'll play the last one when it comes out.

Full List

I just finished Timeshift. I expected an average shooter but got instead a good one instead. On the technical side, it's far from perfect as I had to install two patches (an official one and and unofficial one) to be able to launch the game.

Once in the game, you get to play a very decent FPS with good shooting during which the time manipulation features are a necessity to avoid dying to often. I enjoyed it.

Story-wise it was pretty bad though :)

Full list here.

Singularity. The final game Raven did before all-knowing, all-wise Activision proclaimed that everyone would be better served if Raven just did Call of Duty forever afterward. It's a time travel FPS in which you play as a soldier sent to investigate something weird in the far east part of Russia. As it turns out, the Soviets were doing some weird experiments on some alien minerals that eventually lead to you getting sucked back to 1955 (seems like there's a Back to the Future reference in this) and inadvertently causing a massive change to the timeline that leads to the Soviets taking over the world. So for the rest of the game, which unlike Wolfenstein is classically linear, you're fighting enemy soldiers and mutants while trying to put things right.

The main gimmick is that you get a device that can reverse or fast-forward the status of objects, like restoring fallen staircases to a pristine state or vice versa or reducing humans to skeletons, so you use that to solve simple "how do I get up there?" puzzles and sometimes belt enemies in combat. Otherwise the game plays like a modern post-Halo FPS where you're limited to two weapons. You can also pick up stuff to upgrade your abilities and weapons. As typical for Raven, the gunplay is really well-done. The weapons manage to be interesting and satisfying to use despite generally being the standard FPS loadout (pistol/shotgun/machine gun/chain gun/grenade launcher/rocket launcher). It's just a very well-crafted FPS and although it's kind of short, it was kind of refreshing to play something that was just linear and built around a few setpieces and boss fights.

The story is interesting in a grim'n'gritty Back to the Future kind of way. The game includes a bunch of notes and audio logs you can find to flesh out the setting a bit, although the audio logs take the form of bulky reel-to-reel tape recorders, which becomes inadvertently funny when you start picturing these harried, starving island survivors lugging tons of these recorders with them while trying to survive the mutants and environmental hazards. Unfortunately, the game doesn't have a satisfying ending. I find it's typical of video game storytelling to offer you a few choices and all of them are underwhelming and negative. "Your choices are crap, diarrhea, or gas. Choose wisely!" But other than that, I quite enjoyed the game.