Technically speaking, I finished The Frozen Throne, the expansion of Warcraft 3. The game took me longer than I expected. I was playing less time each day (than while I was into the main game) and there were also days I didn’t play at all. Apart from that, the game seemed to me more difficult, than the main game, as there were many missions where you are required to attend to multiple things. 3 campaigns: Sentinels (former Night Elves), Alliance (between Humans and Blood Elves, but you mostly control the latter and a sea-creature race), and our beloved Arthas with his undead. And Yes, I used THE cheat again at the last mission of the game, where you are required to capture and hold 4 different spots on the map, but the opponent hero seemed to be everywhere…

There is one tower-defense mission, but it's a secret mission and it's optional. Meaning that even if you fail to hold the defence, the game continues as if you succeeded. There was need to hold for 30 waves. I did 14... Yes, I don't manage in that genre.

Anyway, I now got into a bonus campaign, which I don't remember to have been included in my retail CDs. I'm in Act 1 and, up till now, it plays as an action-RPG, not a strategy game.

Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader, Jul 19 (Xbox Game Pass)-This was my first Warhammer 40K game and actually first real exposure to anything Warhammer, 40K or 0K. The game was...ok. The ship combat was a low point but thankfully it wasn't too frequent. The economy was kind of weird and not like anything I had experienced before. The colony management was amusing but didn't really add anything to the game for me. Regular combat was really lengthy and repetitive and after the start of Act 3 wasn't particularly difficult. Leveling up was overwhelmingly complicated. The map and ship travel were a disaster. There were only enough random encounter for the first half of the game after which they were all repeats. The number of planets/systems should probably have been cut in half and the game itself at close to 115 hours was about 3.5 times too long. There were a lot of things I did not like about this game but I think a lot of it could have been better just by being shorter. The story was a high point but still about average. The writing wasn't bad with the exception of some cases of poor editing. The just really suffered from so many random encounters travelling from system to system that you've seen them all in the first 40 hours and you still have 80 more hours to go.

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Saints Row: The Third - The Full Package

This is the original version, not the remastered. I was gifted it by a former user of this forum who likes to go by nickname The Sorceress. Hope you're healthy and doing fine with your life. Sorry that it took so long to finally finished this game, but I just finally finished Saints Row 2 around a month ago

Played them to 100% save. Which means playing the ending twice and complete the missions, strongholds, activities, and collectibles. Also completing the vehicle theft and assassinations list. Not the challenge though, it's too much busywork without really adding much.

First of all the bad. This is a really buggy game. The most terrible was the glitches when I drive around the town using cars or motorcycles. More often than not the vehicles suddenly missing, you're floating around 10 seconds or so. If you're on a highway there are chances that you actually sink to the ground below. I think it was a problem within the game engine itself as it could not handle the draw distance of a large scale open world. There's also the problem with the sounds, it will out of sync from time to time. If it was any other game or a game that I bought I probably just uninstalled it and request a refund. Those were reoccurring problems that happens also on the Steam version dating way-way back. I will be nice that this is the devs problem and not a mistake from a GOG side.

The mediocre. Steelport is a dull city and dividing it to 7 islands is pointless as there are really nothing to differentiate 1 district to another. The definition of Big but Lifeless. The motorcycles are a downgrade compares to SR2. The activities are too easy and not as fun compares to the prequel. Seems like the activities and challenges are there to just to pad the game. The songs on the radio clearly suffered from budget cuts. Kanye West' Power was the highlight but we're in 2025 now, his weirdness is just too much to be ignored. Nice to hear Talk Talk though.

Now the good. The car driving and airplane are snappy. I have problems with it on SR2 but flying are easy to master and the multiple aircraft have different feel to them. The missions are exquisite and really well designed. I expect some over-the-top madness in this game and it delivers without being corny

I finished The Founding of Durotar, the bonus campaign which was inside the Frozen Throne of Warcraft 3. It's an action-PRG, where we take the role of Rexxar (half-ogre/half-orc), who sides with Thrall and tries to defeat the Horde's foes, as they try to establish their new land. It consists of three Acts, with every subsequent one being much shorter than the previous one. The first may be 8-10 h (for me), the last was around 2-2,5.

I didn't mention that I acquired the whole game of Warcraft 3 from this reseme's post:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/warcraft_3_frozen_throne_diablo_2_3_any_time_soon/post37

If you had bought the games from retail, in their time, you can get it too, by using their codes.

When I finished the bonus campaign, I realized that my "thirst" for strategy games isn't quenched yet! In my No 195 post, I wrote that, before playing Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps, I hadn't played a strategy game in over 3 years.

Broken Sword 3- The Sleeping Dragon (GOG)

Finally got back to my playthrough of the Broken Sword series that I started last year. The first two games were replays, since I already played them back in the good old days when they came out. BS3 I've never played before. Now that I've played it...I almost wish that I didn't.

There is some good. The graphics are quite good for a 2003 game, especially since the game lets you bump the resolution up to pretty much anything your monitor supports (not sure about ultra-wide resolutions). It's a trick though, as using widescreen is achieved by stretching the image, and you don't won't Nico to have a fat ass right? Or maybe you do, that's fine. Anyway, I hate stretching and preferred to play at the highest 3:2 ratio- so basically the 4K pixel density, but not wide screen. It looked really good. The voice work and dialogue are just like the first two games. The story is similar- it is still a Broken Sword game, you can see that.

But the controls! WTF? My biggest achievement was sometimes actually managing to walk in a straight line, rather than someone that's downed 5 shots of Vodka followed by a spliff. Then there's those sliding crate puzzles. Nothing wrong with the occasional sliding crate problem, but someone making this game had a fetish for them. The other puzzles were not much better. Then there were the timed escape sequences...in a game where I could barely run in a straight line.

I know some series fans defend this as saying it's normal for adventure games of the era that were transitioning to 3D. But King's Quest 8 came out in the late 90's as did Gabriel Knight 3. The makers of BS3 had 4 to 5 years to learn from all of the others and still messed it up.

I hope the 4th game is better than this.

I think you may be disappointed. It was one of my least enjoyed games I played last year.

I'll probably try it anyway, maybe with a walkthrough close at hand to speed it up.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Epic)

Played it on Epic as it was another free weekly game not long ago. My first play through was the Xbox One version. Strangely if you look on the GOG reviews it seems like half the reviews are complaining about crashes, bugs and poor performance. If you go to the Steam reviews...almost no reports of crashes or performance problems. The Epic store version ran flawlessly, not a single issue. At maxed settings and 4K the game looks incredible. There is one very important thing to know though...turn off MSAA. It kills the games performance and makes little difference to visuals at 4K anyway. That may be the culprit for many people's performance problems.

If Human Revolution was one of my favorite games of the 360/PS3 era, then Mankind Divided is one of the best of the XB1/PS4 era. The small section of Prague where most of the game occurs is almost exactly how to do a smallish open world. Being small just means it's packed with detail. Adam Jensen is still one my favorite lead male roles in gaming. Dour, serious and perfectly voiced. The side missions are some of the best if you take the time to find them and complete them. Just like the main story, the side missions never truly give you resolution- you rarely know in this game if you really did good.

No one bought the game, and many missed a great experience. The only valid critique out there is the fact that the ending stops at a point that was obviously leading to a third part of the series. A third part that is now unlikely to ever happen. To me it doesn't matter because getting to the ending is still such an atmospheric ride that I like it anyway. Also, after playing the Directors Cut of Human Revolution, I finally see the point of the compulsory DLC they added- it is quite literally the missing link in the story between the two games. I still don't like how it implemented though- taking away the players augments and equipment. Anyway, these two games really need a modern complete version joining both games into one on the same engine. With Squeenix selling off some of their franchises (like Tomb Raider) I wish someone would pick this series up to finish it.

Edit: I just looked it up and Suare Enix did sell Deus Ex to Embracer along with Tomb Raider. I did not know that. So hopefully, they plan to finish the trilogy- provided the rights to the existing games went with it.

The Witcher 3: Hearts Of Stone
Great stuff!

Yakuza 6. After being a bit underwhelmed by 5, this was a great return to form. It's just a much more focused game - no other characters besides Kiryu to control, and the side activities are more or less in line with what the series is about. In 5 I was often kind of zoning out on what certain characters were doing because I didn't care for the extra gameplay styles (e.g., the hunting stuff), but I was much more into everything going on in this one. Also, as a wrestling fan, I was quite amused by the appearances by major Japanese wrestlers, namely a good chunk of NJPW's main event scene from a few years ago (Okada, Tanahashi, Naito, Toru Yano, and TenCozy) and DDT/TJPW's Saki Akai showing up as one of the hostesses.

I wasn't crazy about the baseball minigame. Maybe there was something obvious about it I overlooked but I never felt like I was really doing much in terms of managing the team, and I've always been pretty casual about the batting cage minigames throughout the series. The fishing rail-shooting minigame was alright and didn't overstay its welcome, and I enjoyed the barfly stuff because it was fun to see Kiryu sort of become a cast-member of a Japanese version of Cheers. I also enjoyed wandering the cities looking for stray cats to recruit for the guy's cat cafe.

The game looks great, too. I think it was made on the same engine as the Kiwami games, so it's very up-to-date in how it looks and moves.

Aliens Dark Descent, Jul 27 (Xbox Game Pass)-Its a solid tactical game that really gives the feeling of a guiding a squad of marines like in the movie. The forced stealth sections with Maeko were not great and the extreme emphasis on sneaking and staying undetected with the squad were a bit annoying. Story was fun and voice acting not bad. I do think it would be frustrating at higher difficulties trying to make progress despite constantly getting caught. At least at the lower difficulties you can blast your way out of most encounters.

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Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death (GOG)

Yeah, it's pretty bad, everyone was right about this one. Somehow it looks worse than number 3 that came out 3 years before it...though it does support wide screen resolutions without stretching, so there's that at least. The controls are a bit better most of the time, I could sometimes walk in a straight line here.

The above were the good points! The puzzles were terrible, rarely made any sense at all and then there were those hacking mini games. I started with the intention of keeping a walkthrough at hand for whenever I got stuck for more than 5 minutes. By the end I was just simply following the walkthrough.

As bad as the puzzles were, the story was worse. You can tell that they were making the game just after The Davinci Code became popular and they were into all of the religious conspiracy stuff.

To top it all off George didn't even get to have a threesome with Nico and Anna-Maria. Well, now I can look forward to the 5th game, people say that one even has puzzles that make sense.

Bad Mojo Redux (GOG)

I still have this one as an original boxed edition. The old Quicktime video format makes it annoying to get running, so the Redux version is the one to use now. The only thing it needed was to set the launch properties to force 640p resolution to avoid it running in a small window.

Objectively it's not a brilliant game by any means, but it is also unique and a classic in my opinion. The aren't that many adventure games where you play as a Cockroach. I still remember being blown away by the graphics when it came out. I still like it as much as the first time I played it. The puzzles are relatively easy as you can only do so much as a Cockroach. The real difficulty is finding where you're going without the benefit of an overall map view and so many screens looking the same. It's a very short game though...unless you really get lost or stuck on what to do- about 3-4 hours otherwise.

Tomb Raider GOTY
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Tomb Raider: Legend
Tomb Raider: Underworld

Beaten Thief 2 the metal age in 30 hours.
Still a good game, there were some repeats of levels again. The levels were kinda house, mansion or block sized when not on a street or a totaly different level design. Much less supernatural in the game but there were still some of it like ghosts and certain skeleton warrior.
Played it through on normal so last level i activated 6 towers instead of 5 which i only needed 5 of them.
The machines you can either evade them or shoot two water arrows in their back to stop the big ones or the small one with a single water arrow.
There was even a level very specific if you get in a conflict you lose so no knocking them out.
Still enjoyed it and 99 gog games beaten only 1 more to 100.
The survelience machines don't see in dark and they have to spot you long enough to get red to trigger them, though you can still escape if it's only yellow.