Alternate Dimansion Diary is a sick game, I do not recommend it. On game page is info, that here we can buy censored version, but I believe, that is is a bugged as well. I saw two endings (second one was different in comparison what I saw on youtube), but third was not possible to start, because if you put one medal into socket, same problem is report also in Steam bug thread. If I would focus just on puzzles, it is relatively easy, but from time to time it is not obvious what should be next step. Story is not acceptable for me, so I regret buying it even with discount. There is free DLC with additional adult content… Total nonsense in this case, this games should not be played anyone, not only children.

Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 3 continue in story from previous part. Pleasant short game as usually, it could be even better if some clicking could be spared. Basically in this part is important find way how to make money and then it is easy.

Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession (GOG)

My second favorite D&D video game after Temple of Elemental Evil, along with the game's sequel Stone Prophet. I played all three of these DreamForge SSI D&D games in the mid 90's and loved them. Decided to begin replaying them gradually.
This time I played the GOG version for convenience, though I still have the original discs as well, from an SSI D&D compilation.

The Ravenloft games are closest to Westwood's Eye of the Beholder series (so similar to Dungeon Master, but D&D rules). The difference is that the EoTB games were pure dungeon crawlers, whilst the Ravenloft games are more like tabletop adventure modules turned into video game form. So, you have to wander around outdoors, explore a village and talk to people to get a vague idea of where to go and what to do, then you go off and explore.

Initially it felt clunky as hell, but I soon got used to it again and even remembered how to mildly cheese the harder encounters- like retreating through doorways whilst using ranged weapons. Unlike Dungeon Master and EoTB these games are not grid based...well there is an option to make movement grid based but the enemies don't abide by the grid, so it makes it harder and is better to turn the grid off. Best of all, apart from outdoors wandering monsters, everything in the dungeons stays dead after killing them letting you get on with working out what to do and look for hidden buttons and doors.

The Ravenloft setting is a dark gothic D&D setting, and the game does it well. I'm glad to find that the game still holds up well after all of these years.

Markus Ritter - Ghosts Of The Past

An FMV for Gabriel Knight 2 fans. It has several references to the Sierra series. In short, it's a tribute to that type of games. The story of shadows blends with the love story of our bisexual character, which includes his family heritage. You play two characters and there are deads. The game is fairly easy to solve and took me about seven hours to complete. A third game is in the works; the first part is a free demo prologue (not required to play the second part) and is available on Steam.

List of my finished games in 2025. For now:

1 - January 6, 13:45 – First game finished in 2025 has become, to my surprise, Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate on PS4. I got new arcade stick from a sale, so I have tried to complete all Tutorials, which are prerequisite for the two hardest trophies in the game, that I was still missing. The finger coordination with old man’s reflexes was even more challenging for me than in Souls games, but I have somehow managed to overcome all of them :D . Despite excellent new arcade stick, it took me 3 hours and 45 minutes to beat them all. The hardest of the challenges for me was to perform successfully Raiden’s 14-hit Combo, where I had to connect two punches with amplified special move, teleport and another two punches connected into his signature “flying dart” attack in 5 seconds, which took me 16 minutes to learn :D . Completion of all the tutorials also unlocked rare Scorpion and Sub-Zero equipment, Shao Kahn as a match announcer and Ultra Rare Elder God Platinum Trophy for the game, which is currently held only by 0.3% of the players of the game :) .

2 - January 26, 23:00 – After spending a lot of time with Mortal Kombat, fighting King’s Pets and farming Dragon Scales, I have finally finished New Game+ of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin on my PS4. This time, I have encountered Aldia as well, and after winning the fight, I have left the throne for an ending, which I have never seen before. I made this playthrough my personal challenge to defeat every boss in the game without the help of summons. Most of the bosses were fine, including Fume Knight, for which I had to train a little bit my muscle memory, and Gank Squad, which I have postponed until the very end of DLC. But all three of King’s Pets have been major pain in the ass. Lud and Zallen almost made me quit the challenge. Thankfully I got an advice on Obsidian Forums to use Dark Infused Rapier with Dark Weapon buff, which helped me to finally win this encounter as well. I am still missing three more spells for last two trophies, and few items to 100% the game, not counting the PvP exclusive rewards and invisible rings. For that, I will need one more fast run through the base game, and I should have another Platinum Trophy :) .

3 - February 16, 19:30 – After obtaining all 5 online Trophies during Free PSN weekend and little bit of practice in The King of Fighters ‘98 Ultimate Match Final Edition on my PS4, I’ve decided to try out the Arcade mode as well. My pick was Hero Team (Kyo, Benimaru, Daimon). Of course, I have picked up the lowest difficulty, but because I have instantly forgotten all of the special moves, I had it pretty tough. Even on the easiest difficulty, the game is much more difficult than Mortal Kombat 11 on Medium, especially when playing without forgotten special moves :D . The biggest challenge for me, was getting used to different way of blocking, than I am used in Mortal Kombat games. So my first playthrough ended up with many lost fights, and a shameful matchup with final boss Omega Rugal, whom I was able to defeat only after lowering his HP to 1/3rd after few loses :( . Despite that, I like the feel of this retro game, but I have to focus more on remembering special moves to have a little bit easier time with it.

4 - February 26, 23:30 – I have finally decided, it is time to finish my Platinum Quest in Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin on my PS4 and after 923 Deaths and 246 hours I have acquired the last two missing spell trophies. The NG2+ run to Drangleic Castle was pretty fast for my typical pace (took a little bit over 10 hours), but as always, I have started to stumble in the Iron Keep. I did few stupid mistakes, including two just before the last bonfire, while fighting the Black Phantom mob guarding it :D . I’ve been victorious in all bossfights, with the exception of three on first try. The worst fight for me was as expected the Old Iron King :D . Due to my silly wipes at Iron Keep, I started to feel tired, so I have either misclicked a button during last 10% of his HP, or I have missrolled in the small lava pool near the fog gate :D , but I really want to finish the game this night at all costs. After finishing him off on 5th try, the road to the Platinum was clear, and it took me just one last wipe at Mastodons, before reaching Chancellor Wellager and purchasing last three spells.

5 - April 17, 16:30 – 8 years and 4 months after I have booted Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness for the first time on my PS4, I have finally finished my 3rd and final playthrough on hardest Chaos Difficulty. With that, I have acquired the last missing trophy. Skipping most of the quests and optional content, it took me about 23 hours. I had to repeat few boss encounters, because they hit harder than a truck, so my main character was knocked out a lot of times. And I have to say, without the special crafted Reserve Rush gear, which helped me to get faster my “ultimate attack”, it would be much harder and take much longer to finish the game on this difficulty. In total it took me about 185 hours to get the Platinum Trophy.

6 - July 7, 00:45 – Star Ocean: The Divine Force has been finished today on Galaxy Difficulty on my PS4. My first playthrough has been done with Raymond and it ended with Laetitia's ending. The 6th game had IMHO the best story of the last three games for "modern" consoles, but on the other hand the Galaxy Difficulty has felt so easy, that I felt sometimes boredom, when the story has not been moving forward in a timely manner. Thankfully it has changed a little bit before the end, when at some areas even some mobs had made me a little bit of trouble. But this was also a side-effect of replacing a dedicated party healer with another party member, which would be almost impossible to do in previous games, as the healing items has been always pretty expensive. The only thing which I had to watch out for, was to purchase enough of them every time, I have visited a city. In the end I had enough fun to recommend the game to anyone who likes JRPGs, as it is worthy addition to Star Ocean franchise, but keep in mind, you should start at Universe Difficulty to enjoy it better.

7 - August 24, 14:45 – I have been lately busy at work, so I have decided, that I need some easygoing experience, so I have purchased Hero of the Kingdom on GOG and finished it over the weekend. It was exactly what I have needed. Playing with tempo of your own, no stress, just clicking with a mouse to start and finish quests and to gather materials. And as a bonus, I found out, that it was made in Slovakia :) . A little bit over 7 hours was needed to get all of the achievements in the game.

>>>And link to all of my finished games since 2015<<<

Alien: Isolation Would it kill the Xenomorps to just give up standing next to my hiding spot if they're not going to peak into it? (I managed to make it the whole way without ever using smoke bombs, noisemakers, or flashbangs.) Taking multiple laps in a circle around me when there are other rooms to investigate is another way their intelligence is just a little too good. But I like too much of a good thing, and that most modern horror games take after Five Nights at Freddy's instead of this is a crying shame.

Miau Suika
Free on itch.

This is one of those jar puzzles where you drop things in a jar. If two items that are the same touch each other, they merge into a larger shape. The objective is to just keep playing and building up your score until something falls out of the jar.

What makes Miau Suika worth playing is... cats.

Ys V. In this one, Adol is stranded in a strange land being overtaken by a desert and there's a lost city behind it all.

This one on the SNES gets rid of the bump combat system in favor of giving you dedicated attack, jump, and block buttons. It mostly works fine and the game is actually quite easy and not very long. There's a magic system based on finding elements that you can combine in various ways, but aside from a couple of sections in which you're required to use it, the magic is nearly useless. You're not even allowed to use it during boss fights.

The game looks and sounds pretty good, although it's missing a bit of the extra oomph that the PC Engine CD games had with their cutscenes and more elaborate musical scores. The story kind of holds together but there's a sense after a while that stuff was either cut out or truncated, and reading about the game, sure enough, it turns out they had to cut out some stuff to get it done. Despite that, the end-game section runs on a bit, IMO (pretty typical for JRPGs), kind of messing with the pacing.

Fun, but probably the least of the series that I've played.

Cottagecore Dress Up
Price: Free
Storefront: Itch

Okay, so this really is just a paper dolly with a few hidden things (like the mouse) but look...

Think of your favorite game where you can customize your player character, and I'm sure that some of you are going to say Baldur's Gate 3. That's just paper dolly dress up with D&D rules, NPCs to talk to, romance, and combat. At the end of the day, you're still playing dress up with a paper dolly plus other stuff. The same is literally true for every other game that lets you customize your character, well maybe not including D&D rules.

This game is just the customization part and none of that other stuff.

Finished Cult of the Lamb on PS5 yesterday. After its great reception and massive success I was expecting some sort of masterpiece but frankly I've found it to be just an okay game.

The first impressions are fantastic. It looks, sounds and feels great, the premise of running a satanic cult comprised of cute cartoon animals is certainly original and intriguing. The gamepaly format also seems very promising at first, as you go on raids that resemble other indie roguelites like The Binding of Isaac and between those raids you manage your cult, which looks a bit like The Sims or a simple builder game.

It's actually almost intimidating at first how much there is to this game. You have to keep your randomly generated followers happy by satisfying their needs which, besides providing food and shelter, includes custom requests which take the form of little quests. You grow your flock and level your followers up, which makes them generate more Devotion, which in turn unlocks new structures to build. Once a day you can deliver sermons, which levels up the lamb itself, unlocking new stuff for the raids, like more types of weapons, spells and ultimate powers. You can imprison dissenters, manufacture advanced resources, visit other locations where you can e.g. gamble or go fishing. Probably most strikingly you can perform rituals, like sacrificing a follower, for various major boosts like followers not needing any food or sleep for several days. You can also declare doctrines, which permanently shape your cult and determine how they will handle certain situations (like the imprisonment or deaths of fellow followers) or what rituals you can perform. In the late game yet another major resource is introduced, Sin, which adds even more stuff. And that is still not everything.

It all sounds great on paper but in practice I found all of this disappointing, tiresome and even frustrating. For a few hours I falsely thought that the game is extremely addictive - that it's fun and great rewards are around every corner. It soon dawned on me that that's not it at all - it's more like the game drags you into some co-dependency. Yeah, I kept cooking food and delivering sermons and doing rituals and building structures but not because it was fun but because things would go to shit if I didn't or at the very least it would delay the various unlocks - the vast majority of which were utterly disappointing.

I suppose the game's biggest problem is that all the cult stuff is in direct conflict with the raids (called "crusades" here). Going on raids and killing all the bosses is how you beat the game but almost the entire progression happens through the cult and going on raids is actively detrimental to managing the cult. The cult is always simulated in real-time, no matter if you're there or away on a raid. Going on a raid actually hampers progression, as it delays unlocks, and makes you unable to react to various crises that your followers may encounter. I almost crushed my controller when I finally decided to go on a raid after putting it off for a long time and my screen suddenly got flooded with notifications about one follower dying, another starving and yet another dissenting even though things had been perfect just a second ago.

In virtually all other games with a comparable format there's either a cap on how much you can do without going into combat because combat is the main thing that advances progression or advancing time forces you into combat (or doing combat may even be the only thing that advances time). Cult of the Lamb's relationship between these two modes is pretty messed up. And it really only escalated the further I got, since I needed to do raids less and less as the cult became increasingly self-sufficient while level ups started pouring in every 2-5 minutes, which is actually a lot shorter than a raid. I think bones, which are the main resource for performing rituals, are the only major resource you can only (effectively) get by going on raids - however, rituals and thus bones become pretty unimportant over time.

And as for the combat... it looks and feels nice but it's honestly not great. It's kind of just another top-down indie something crawler thingy. There are several different areas with different enemy types but it's very basic and always plays about the same. Dodge, hit, dodge, hit, dodge, hit. All the additional mechanics do very little to mix this pattern up. And also the progression on the player's side is underwhelming. Most unlocks for the combat just grow a larger pool of randomly dropped weapons, spells, ultimates and tarot cards (which grant various perks). The utter randomness of the system meant that I didn't feel any genuine progression whatsoever. And drops are very rare and raids usually rather short - a few times I would actually do a full raid with whatever weapon I was randomly assigned at the start without a single chance to do a switch.

So yeah, I think that this is just an okay game that looks and feels like a great one - but is also dragged down by some really bad design and for the most part botched balancing. Also, to be clear: it's a simple and pretty easy game. I only died one time towards the end because I honestly stopped paying attention, I never got close to experiencing a genuine crisis in the cult management even though I didn't do any sort of planning and I maxed everything out in no time even though I didn't bother with most of the options that the game provides for speeding up progression.

That said, it was still quite an experience. The presentation and premise alone are making the game worth checking out. The combination of cute animals and merciless cynicism is something that makes it provide some memorable and impactful moments. However, also in this area I felt that the game ended up lacking substance. I think it's quite telling that the one thing that I will vividly remember from this game until the day I die was how one cute animal made me bully another innocent cute animal by making it repeatedly eat feces, falsely imprisoning it and eventually sacrificing it "for fun".

7/10

Hollow Knight Voidheart Edition, Aug 28 (Xbox Game Pass)-I had high hopes for this but I really didn't enjoy it very much. It took about 8 hours and reach the City of Tears before I was enjoying it at all, After that I started to warm up to it a bit but it started dragging towards the end. I skipped a lot of the extra content because I just couldn't be bothered. Surprisingly I didn't find it that difficult. Sure the bosses were tough but it only took me 2-4 on all of them. My biggest gripe was never having any idea where to go next and having to retrieve your body with such sparse benches. I'll watch youtube for the other endings and I'll probably wait a long time before I play Silksong.

Full List

Saints Row IV: Re-Elected

Another game I got from Prime. What's the point of redeeming them if they only add to your backlog?

If you as a leader of a street gang already conquered 2 cities then being the President of the USA is a reachable position. I imagine it'd be a fun thing to do, but being a superhero in a simulation world after getting the world obliterated is fun as well.

The powers are fun. Who need cars when you can run fast and jump around anywhere? And who need weapons if you can blast around stuff and throw stuff at people with the power of mind. The human weapons are packed lots of strength when fully upgraded and the wacky alien stuff are fun.

But the mission and challenges are really inverted from Saints Row 3. The main story mission are too easy and too straight forward. Only the final missions are memorable. The loyalty missions are better designed because they adapt it to each homies background stories and personalities. The challenges meanwhile are better because the added superhero powers. Also chain jumping and gliding around getting the collectibles is really satisfying here. The perfect game would be SR3 main mission level design and SRIV challenges.

Also this GOG version not really working well in my machine. I have to reroute the desktop shortcut to sr_hv.exe in my installation folder, bypassing the epic stuff. This prevent 2 instance of the game running at the same time. The game options also not saving properly. While the graphic options save properly, I have to check to subtitles options and uncheck the reverse airplane control options. The game relatively stable when I started playing, only twice I randomly crash, not in a mission but when I was just strolling around the simulation. But the most terrible thing is it could not quit properly. I have to alt-tab and go to the Task Manager and quitting from there. Exiting from the game will make the game stalled and not responding. Seriously if I have to buy them with my own money I'd be even more pissed. I have no idea if the EPIC update is what caused them, if only GOG still provide the older non-EPIC invested version as a comparison.

PS: the radio songs here are better compares to SR3, but the most annoying of them all is "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing". I really hate that song, just unbearable.

Sunset Overdrive (Steam)

Replay of the PC version, the original I played on Xbox One. I have the XB1 version on disc as it came bundled with 4 other games, I left this one until last of the bundle to play because it looked like the worst game of the bunch. Of course, it turned out to be the best game of the bundle and the best Xbox game of the generation. Then it came to PC.

It's a simple PC port, just the basics, but it still looks amazing and plays better with higher frame rate. The game has one bug that is easy to fix- if you run it at high resolution it messes up the anti-aliasing badly and everything looks like it's at 900p from the Xbox. It's a bug caused by Windows high resolution DPI scaling. You just need to set Windows High DPI scaling to off and allow the application to control it under windows compatibility setting for the games exe. Once you do that the game looks awesome and runs even better. Locked to 120fps and at 4K and all settings on never causes the GPU to work harder than 55%.

It's still one of the most fun open world traversal focused games ever as far as I'm concerned. It's nearest relative would be something like Crackdown or Saints Row IV, but Sunset is way better than those games. It has a bit of a learning curve, but after a few hours you're grinding on rails, jumping off bounce pads and wall running all across Sunset City like it's the most natural thing ever. All to an awesome soundtrack. I finished all story and side missions, all collectibles (which are used for upgrades) and did the two short DLC's)- all in around 30 hours. This time I also managed to find out what the song is that plays during the Norton Dragon boss fight. It's "I am Not an Animal" by The Blind Shake. So now I know.

It's too bad that Insomniac will not be able to make even a spiritual sequel...now being owned by Sony! I think Sony will have them making Spider-Man games for modern audiences starring Mary Jane for the next 50 years at least. I seriously wish Xbox and PlayStation would get together and get a port over to PS5...the mission where the PC yells "Xbox give me a weapon" could be made to do a simulated crash of the PS5 as a special joke just for that version of the game. Alas, it will never be.

Gears of War- Reloaded (PC)

Xbox actually added this to everyone's account that already has the Ultimate Edition, since it really is just a remaster port of that game onto Unreal 5 with the improvements that brings- mainly lighting. Since the game is an Xbox "Play Anywhere" title, that means my console Ultimate edition also magically becomes a PC version. Well, the Win Store PC version anyway. Of course, moving to Unreal 5 also increases the system requirements as well, but I found that it ran extremely well- best Unreal 5 performance so far.

Otherwise, the game is just like the original game running on and taking advantage of more modern tech. As far as I could tell it played the same way as the original Xbox 360 and XB1 Ultimate versions, except with much better performance which probably makes it a bit easier to play. It was good to play it again, though I still think the sequels refined the gameplay and are better games. I'm pretty sure that the rest of the original trilogy are also getting reloaded versions, but they are going to take a lot longer since they only have original 360 version to work off and will need a lot more work.

A Shelter Full of Cats
GOG: https://www.gog.com/en/game/a_shelter_full_of_cats

This is part of the DevCat's "Full of Cats" series of games. Unlike the first few games, the helper magnifying glass is not limited and will recharge over time thus making this game even more casual than their earlier titles. Like with all DevCat games, it's full of feel good energy and cats.

FATE - Undiscovered Realms

I've mentioned that I successfully imported my savegame from FATE to this. Well that turned out to be a mistake. The difficulty does not scales properly at all, making my journey around 90 levels of dungeons to be a dull one. Except for the final Kaos boss, it was a 1 or 2 hit ordeal.

I've installed FATE - The Traitor Soul and it turns out you could also import your Undiscovered Realms characters. But I will make a ranged Shadow Elf build on Traitor Soul.