Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders (XSX Game Pass)

Played the new remaster version that is packed in with Hexen as well. I have the GOG version since they added it to everyone's account that already had the originals. However, I played it on XSX with Game Pass for no real reason other than it's on there and gives me daily rewards for more Game Pass when I play it.

It's an excellent remaster/source port overall. It looks vastly better and runs better. I did start up the original GOG version to compare and there's no way I'd now play the original. There was one bug in the new version that a few people have commented on online and it happened to me. Episode 4 map 2 (Blockhouse) wouldn't drop the central platform for the yellow key...and prevents progress. The only real fix if it happens is to reload the level from the start. Since I killed everything except 4 enemies on the map already, I didn't want to restart so used a cheat to get the key.

The first episode is the best part of the game by far. That was normal back in the old shareware days, since developers would put their best and most polished gameplay on display to entice you into buying the full game. Overall, the original three episodes were really fun, probably better than Doom. The two expansion episodes that made up the Shadow of the Serpent Riders version were not as good. The extra levels become tedious and are the proverbial Pony that only knows one trick- release hordes of damage sponge enemies all around you from sliding walls whenever you pick up a major item, artifact or key. Every single time. Plus, many of progression aspects become annoying puzzles that slow down what is meant to be a run and gun shooter. So, I really had fun for the original Heretic levels, but I was seriously ready for it to be over by the end of the expansion content.

Beacon Pines

GOG Store Page: https://www.gog.com/en/game/beacon_pines

I like this game a lot, but the genre description for it is completely misleading. Yes, you control a character that you can have walk around the screen.... but that's as far as it goes in terms of any similarity with either RPGs or adventure games. I am far more comfortable saying that this is a Visual Novel, which is a genre that I actually do enjoy.

As you're progressing through the game and its story, you'll encounter what are called Turning Points. These are critical moments in the story where you need to make a choice in how things proceed using what the game calls Charms. Each Charm will yield different results and send the story down a different branch.
https://images.gog-statics.com/2b74bdb231763db9f2449eaf266c1a0b8bd212e033858fb4d86890ed8c423d5a.jpg

Also because the game has one good ending and many bad, you're mostly playing through to find and unlock charms that you can then use to go back to Turning Points to find different results.
https://images.gog-statics.com/474ff74cf0c4d8efe584bc012875340adce923f23ae15a2e573dda7398a20226.jpg

The Shapeshifting Detective (Steam)

FMV investigative game with a paranormal angle to it. It is made by the same team as "Dark Night with Poe & Munro" and is set in the same town and many of the same characters, including both Poe and Munro themselves who make some references to the events in the other game.

The funny thing about FMV games is that, like most people, I used to enjoy making fun of them back in the 90's- yet I still enjoyed some of them and occasionally find myself missing them and getting the urge to play one. Anyway, this one has just the right amount of professional vs cheesiness that you expect with its acting for an FMV game.

The story is an interesting one, it in the title- you're a special detective that can shapeshift to imitate other suspects to coerce information that they otherwise may not be able to obtain. Being a fairly linear FMV game doesn't allow the excellent idea to be explored as far as it deserves, but it was good fun just the same. It's especially funny to deliberately poke and antagonize people just to see what they do. Someone needs to run with this idea for a more in-depth sort of game.

Lust Epidemic (GOG)

A balanced gaming lifestyle should include one NSFW title at least every two months. This one is a very long point and click sort of adventure. It's quite hard at points- probably for the wrong reasons as it has some obnoxious pixel hunting that sometimes gates progression. To be fair though, a lot of the pixel hunting is side stuff and not critical path story stuff.

It gets a bit tedious with a lot of backtracking and fetch questing. But overall, it was better than I was expecting from a game like this. Story was okay...your sister-in-law was selling a powerful aphrodisiac to college students to keep her school in the black. It was all fun and games until someone started releasing the elixir into the water and it was repurposed by an ancient evil cult. You can totally see how things could get there.

Anyway, the game has two sequels- so I better play those at some point.

So, I did the utterly irresponsible thing of immediately following up my playthrough of EDF5 with Earth Defense Force 6.

I had no idea what EDF6 is about other than that it is a sequel to its predecessor rather than another reboot. EDF5 didn't end on a particularly happy note but I wasn't ready for this! I was immediately greeted by a depressing Mad Max style world where the pathetic remnants of mankind are only delaying their inevitable demise. The entire world is a wasteland, humans only come to the surface to occasionally hunt down a few of the abandoned alien survivors, who your comrades actually express pity for, and take desperate measures to slow down the unstoppable spread of giant insects. It's slow and sad and pointless. Jaysus!

So for a couple of hours I assumed that that's just what the game is like and I thought to myself "oh well, at least they tried something different this time". It turns out, however, that that is not what the game is like at all. At least not in its entirety. Eventually the game introduces a time travel theme and it does provide a genuine EDF experience. The game goes as far as reusing entire missions from EDF5 with relatively minor changes, which many players took issue with. I was also disappointed by this at first but two dozen hours later or so I concluded that this is my favourite EDF game to date. And another two dozen hours later the credits rolled.

Yes, it's little more than a huge expansion pack for EDF5. It looks pretty much the same, it plays almost the same, a lot of content is taken straight from EDF5 (and I'm not just talking about the missions taken from EDF5 but also weapons, music etc.). But: in the end it's a bigger and better EDF with many welcome additions like a ton of new enemy types (a lot more than EDF5 added over 4.1) which really shake things up, some very cool and spectacular missions but most importantly: I absolutely love what the game does on an emotional level.

All the depressing and boring moments and reuses of content end up only serving the experience. They only make the stakes feel so much higher and moments of victory so much more satisfying. EDF5 quickly established this pattern that everything is fucked and any glimmers of hope are only a setup for devastating disappointment. Coming from that, EDF6 manages to reintroduce genuine optimism and enthusiasm. I know that all of this sounds stupid as hell but man, this is just one hell of a ride and few games manage to get me this excited these days. And honestly, even the reuse of EDF5 missions is not only not an issue, the developers have used them for some glorious payoffs that justify all of it in my book.

And EDF6 has also introduced some very welcome gameplay additions and quality of life improvements. Most notably most classes have gained an additional "backpack" slot which allows equipping items such as grenades or turrets in addition to guns and they can be thrown by simply pressing a button. It's a small and simple feature but it greatly expands the number of viable builds and tactical options. And importantly, companions seem to have a lot more health this time around. One of my main issues with EDF5 was how quickly allies go down (especially from friendly fire) and particularly on higher difficulty levels I usually ended up alone on the battlefield in now time. This time allies remain useful. It does make the game a lot easier (this time I managed to beat all levels on hard difficulty) but simply also a lot more fun.

So, while the first couple of hours are quite rough, I ended up absolutely loving this game and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to buy all DLC for both EDF5 and 6 sooner or later.

The Witcher 3
I just finished Blood & Wine. Longest game I ever played (I started the main game end January), but so worth it!
It's high up in my top something of best games ever!
I'm going to miss Toussaint now; it was my virtual summer vacation.

Quantum Break (Steam)

The Remedy game that most people don't play. I still rate it as one of the best games from the Xbox One era and it sits in well with Alan Wake and Control- they are even all tied together if you pay attention. I played it on Xbox and have it on disc. Of course the problem is that it runs at 30 fps. Playable but the PC version is better and is now easy to run, plus the game still actually looks great. The PC version has one area where it is massively below the console version- the TV movies (that make up an important part of the game) can only be streamed. On Xbox the full 100GB of movies can be downloaded and at higher quality. So much smoother gameplay on PC, or way better movies on Xbox. I've also heard that the Win Store version that you would use with Game Pass has its own special issues, but I've never tried it.

I love the game. It's a Remedy story, has well-known actors that put in great performances (including Littlefinger being an asshat like usual) and the third person combat is very serviceable with fun to use special time warping abilities- very much a precursor to Control in gameplay. Obviously, it's very cinematic- but Remedy are one of the few developers that can pull off "cinematic" in a game without pissing me off. For a short cinematic experience, it's still a game I recommend- especially as the sale price on Steam is only around $5 which is cheap enough to take a risk even if you're not sure about it. Don't bother waiting for a GOG version...to be truly DRM free would require all 100GB of movie files broken down to 4GB installer chunks, all on top of the 80GB of game files. Not going to happen.

Or both, if you play on PC and download the movies (you know, from "somewhere").

I was prepared to look into alternative options for the movies if needed, since many reviews on Steam say that they no longer work at all using streaming via Steam. But I ran the game normally to see first, and everything worked fine for me- the movies streamed and worked when and how they were meant to. And the game ran fine all the way at 120fps (except some 30 fps cutscenes).

Red Faction - 2/5

It feels like Volition had an idea for a video game mechanic (destructible terrain), then clumsily tried to build a Half-Life around it. The problem is that its attempts to be like Half-Life are half-assed.

It tries to do the thing of always having a seamless connection from one level to the next, but then it seemingly just gives up on that idea. The protagonist doesn't speak...that is, until there's a cutscene - and then you question whether video game protagonists should ever be allowed to talk. The weapons selection interface looks noticeably similar to Half-Life's, yet, the organisation feels questionable: a shield & a flamethrower are together in the same category; and it just feels odd to me that the SMG is placed in the "heavy weapons" category.

I can't imagine that Volition thought too deeply about gunplay - several weapons just feel superfluous, which becomes more and more true as you progress further into the game. The combat isn't too bad to start with, but then in the final stretch of the game, it becomes a huge slog; far too many enemies can suddenly instakill you from around a corner, or even through a wall.

The idea of destructible environments definitely makes for a cool gimmick, at least in theory. In practice, it's underutilised, and very arbitrary as to which walls can be blown up - there's nothing more disappointing that wanting to blast through a wall, but when the smoke's cleared from the explosion, all you're left with is a big grey blotch on a still-intact wall.

I really wish this game was something more than it is. Who knows, maybe the second game will feel a little more worthwhile.

Gravity Bone. Many years after this got a lot of buzz, I finally decided to check it out since I realized I had acquired it at some point (it's free). It's a first-person adventure that's a sort of 1960s spy game. You appear with a card telling you to find an object and take it to someone and then you have to exit, then a second mission involves you doing similar except this time someone shoots you and you have to pursue them while doing some platforming challenges. And that's it. It's about 15 minutes long - I'm not sure you could even call it a demo since most demos are significantly longer. It's like an interactive teaser, I guess, which is maybe one of the reasons why people got behind it so much - they wanted it to be a full game so badly.

It is impressively done for what it is. The block-headed, pre-Minecraft graphics and the Sims-like gibberish the people speak are amusing, and there's a jazzy soundtrack to set a good mood. It's effectively designed in that it's easy to figure out how it works, where you should be going and how to interact with stuff. It's just that it feels like a slickly made student project, and it appears that the sequel that was belatedly made a few years wasn't much more substantial.

The Allure of Wanton Cove (Steam)

This is basically a NSFW CYOA Gamebook with a Cthulhu setting. You arrive at a quiet and creepy island fishing village looking for the son of a friend. There's some twisted shit going on. The artwork is excellent, the writing and the way the investigation flow is not so great. Each day just boils down to running around the same locations and talking to the same people to see if something new happens. Loys of stuff happens that appears random at first but is actually tied to your stats and skills. It's a great idea but not executed all that well.

Dredge (Epic)

Another great free weekly EGS game. This one is rated overwhelmingly positive on every platform it's sold on. It's a fun and chilled out experience where you are never rushed. It's a fishing adventure game with some mild Cthulhu sort of horror in the background.

So, you cruise around in your little Trawler exploring the map and catching fish- some off which are strangely mutated. You meet people and solve their small quests, all whilst upgrading your boat with more varied fishing equipment and storage space. The main quest takes you to all corners of the map...and with a bit of extra exploration you will find the optional revelation that allows you to get the good ending and make sense of the story.

This is not a fishing sim, or a tense horror game. Nor is it a survival sim, the games few detractors mainly seem to criticize it for not being those things rather than what it is- a fishing adventure game with a horror twist. I really enjoyed it and got the two endings by exploring fully and fully upgraded my boat. I didn't bother continuing on to catch all fish types, as that's optional and would take a lot longer. I got the fishing manual completed to around 70 percent though. Probably best Indie game I've played this year, and the best part is that if you collect the free Epic games, then you already have it.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Pros:
- Story. Despite Lara's journey more or less still revolves around seeking artifacts that are said to hold powers to immortality, just like the first game, I'm happy with the fact that the second game finally focuses more on Lara's personal history with her father or just her family in general as we get glimpses of flashbacks of her memories about her relationship with her father in the past back when she was younger. This was really well done, especially with how the Blood Ties DLC gave to us the player together with Lara the opportunity to find out what actually happened to her parents in more detail than what was initially explored through the main story. About her father, and her mother, how they felt towards one another, and what the younger Lara saw in both her parents during her lonely childhood years. I was so emotionally invested in the story that I felt happy to know that I get to accompany Lara in her next adventure in the third game of her Survivor Trilogy
- Journals. Finally, the devs fixed the issue that I had with the first game where it seemed like the individuals' journals (part of the collectibles) were racing with the main story in regards to which of the two gets to reveal the major plots of the game first. Without spoiling the first game, basically if you tried to collect as many collectibles (in this case, the journals being one of them) before completing the main story like finishing all the side quests before facing the final boss, you'll realize that you've been spoiled of the game's major plot points. And worse, in the first game, Lara would still act surprised whenever she discovered an unexpected development in her story, which also happened to be something that she should've realized had she read the journals she collected. This affected my immersion of the game pretty badly. But, this time, it didn't happen in this game. I'm glad the devs tried to pace the individuals' journals more properly this time while taking into account Lara's current progression in her main story
- Great action sequences. There are quite a few levels in this game that happen to be my favorite, taking into consideration all the enjoyment I had with the first game. The underwater stealth, the 1vEveryone in a small room full of pillars, and a few others I refuse to include in the list for you to play for yourself
- Puzzles. The puzzles and the tombs have definitely experienced an improvement since the first game. They're still not as many as the ones in Tomb Raider: Anniversary (I've never played the original Tomb Raider games), but the ones that are here are much better in terms of difficulty compared to the first game. So I really appreciate that
- Stealth. Yes! Finally! The stealth in this game is just much better than the first game. It's been quite some time since I last played Tomb Raider (2013), so I can't quite recall if that game had any bushes for Lara to hide in against patrolling enemies. That said, I'm going to assume that that was a missing feature since I feel like the existence of bushes as part of the game's stealth mechanics has made the stealth gameplay a lot more enjoyable to take as an alternative to just going guns blazing at every enemies encounter. Back in the first game, it also felt that the map layouts just didn't really support for a stealthy approach. Either it was the awkward placement of covers, the rooms just being too small, or maybe the game just missed the opportunity to add bushes and TREE BRANCHES. Yes, I just remembered how such a wonderful addition the tree branches are to the game, both as a means of traversal and an ambush takedown feature during stealth gameplays. Last but not least, I also appreciate the new ways Lara can now interact with the dead bodies of the enemies she's just killed by putting things like a poison bomb, and more. Again, it's been quite some time since I last played the first game, so this feature may have already been implemented in the 2013 reboot, I'm not sure. Bottomline is, I enjoyed the stealth in the second game a lot more than in the first game
- Graphics. The graphics just look gorgeous here. Love the visuals, the character models, the sceneries, and more

Decent:
- Side quests
- Swimming. Why just decent? Because you can't dive deeper than what the game allows you to do. But hey, you still get to swim unlike in the first game

Cons:
- Graphical bug, where there were times when Lara, or even her environments would turn black for some reason. And after looking around the internet for a solution, it turned out that disabling the tessellation option in the graphics settings should eliminate this problem completely. And try experimenting with having the DirectX12 enabled or disabled in the game. For me, enabling DirectX12 helped with improving my game's performance
- The game would sometimes freeze, but not long enough for you to have to resort to using the task manager to forcefully close the game. Still, a bug is a bug. It happened only in one or two levels out of many tho

Condemned: Criminal Origins (Steam)

An old Xbox 360 game that I never got around to. So, I got the PC version on sale, rather than the Xbox version which would be limited to 30fps- since the game received no frame rate or graphics enhancements under backwards compatibility, unlike F.E.A.R which runs at 60 fps now. Initially I was regretting not buying the 360 version digitally...as it was soon pretty obvious that the game has massive issues on very modern hardware. The frame rate was around 50 fps and soon dropped below 30 after a minute of play. I'd have been better with the Xbox 360 version! As well as the poor frame rate, the graphics looked like 720p despite being set to 4K. So, something was badly wrong. Not to worry, a simple click on the Steam forum for the game revealed that someone made an FPS patch that magically made the game run at 120fps and actual 4K with correct UI aspect ratio. The game also ran all the way through without any bugs or issues. So, get that unofficial patch if you play this game on modern hardware.

As for the game itself, it was something of a surprise. It genuinely creates a sense of tension and unease. The enemies are not easy, especially for me since I never quite got the hang of blocking very well. So, I relied heavily on the Taser and kicks. The story was a bit weird, and the game had a bit of an unpolished feel to it- but I honestly ended up enjoying it. Except for the final level anyway. The end level sucked...after getting the hang of using the Taser and relying on my torch light...guess what they did in the last level? Yeah, took them both away! I felt like I had to completely relearn the game for the final level. Pretty good game overall though. Too bad the sequel doesn't seem to have ever got a PC version...so maybe I'll actually have to get the Xbox version for that.