Tales of Illyria: Destinies

The game is great but the difficulty spike midgame just ruins it, i can't continue the game because my characters end up dying in every battle due to enemies being way more leveled up. Not upset though, the game feels more of the same compared with the first one...

Punch Club

Meh, it feels like a p2w game but without having anything paid (besides the game, obviously), later you will have to grind a lot to be able to withstand the battles, not to say that you have to balance the training with other activities, making the game boring due to the repetitive nature of it.

But what really made me quit was the game mechanics that are broken, you unlock some skills but you can't deactivate them whenever you want, i unlocked one that doesn't allow me to use defensive actions/skills in exchange of extra damage. Good deal, uhm? Nope, one of the best skills grants you more stamina during the battle (and trust me, you really need that skill due to the stamina limitations) but i can't use it due to the first skill that i mentioned.
This means that even if i do more damage it doesn't matter because i'll still miss and end up without stamina, without stamina i can't attack and basically i'm a defenseless punching bag.

The Witcher 1

Tried really really hard to enjoy it, even forced myself to play it for about 10 hours.Then I thought to myself, why do this to myself? I don't mind the battle system, but gameplay in general is just too tedious. Map & navigation, inventory, looting, controls, quests, and dialogue are all bad. This is probably the first game I quit midway, ever. It sucks that I won't see the rest of the story, but frankly, I'm pretty sure there are so many other good stories to be experienced elsewhere too.

Furi (PS4)

It sounded like a good idea. A string of 8 or so boss fights tied together by some cutscenes and dialogue. But it didn't take me long to realize it's not the type of boss fights I like. Basically at any one time you can only do one attack or defensive move that works. You watch for the signs and then hit the appropriate action. So it's more a puzzle QTE cross type of thing. Oh yeah and the fights go on forever through many scripted phases and the boss health just keeps on magically resetting. Some already love it, but it's not for me. I prefer the Bloodborne/Souls type of boss fights where you can use any number of different tactics that suit your style and just wear them down.

I don't usually post here, but this time I must.

ZOMBI (PC), also known as ZombiU on the WiiU.

"Hmm, zombie survival horror in fallen London", I thought, "that has to be interesting. I'm going to give it a try." But, the game being a Ubisoft production, I should have known it would be complete garbage. It starts out well enough; almost similarly to Dead Island, in fact. But after the initial introduction phase, you're in for a feast of shit. Everything that's wrong with the game, I'll list here:
- Missions are nothing but fetch quests.
- The plot is utter shite.
- Ammo for the guns is really rare; most of the time, you're repeatedly bashing zombies in the head with a cricket bat.
- The enemies rarely pose any kind of threat, so you're just wasting your time bashing them repeatedly in the head with a cricket bat.
- Inventory management is god awful; the worst I have ever seen in a video game. You kinda have to experience it yourself in order to fully understand how fucking backhanded it is, but for example: simple item swapping? "Fuck you", says Ubisoft, "you don't need to swap items. It shall be a fucking clusterfuck instead and you're gonna like it".
- Forget any chance to experience an open world; everyone knows London is comprised of only narrow corridors and alleyways and the only way to go to another district is via manholes.
- And the final nail in the coffin: "I see it's been some time since you last saved your game", says Ubisoft. "It would be a shame, if the game suddenly......crashed", after which it crashes. I rebooted the game, and what the fuck?? There's no autosaving, at all? Are you telling me I just wasted 2-3 hours worth of progress and it didn't bother to autosave even between missions? Worst yet, I had just spent those hours finding these damn letters the game doesn't bother showing on the map (yet you are required to find them in the most obscure places), and now I should do it again? Fuck that.
- Oh yeah and the map sucks.

This game is a horrendous piece of shit. Ubisoft is a piece of shit. I should've trusted my instincts right when I saw they made it, but like they say: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Ubisoft can go fuck themselves. I hope Vivendi swallows them. I'm never going to bother with another Ubisoft game again, no matter how interesting it looks on the surface.

Fallout 1.5: Resurrection

The Fallout 2 fan-made mod that's all the rage right now, and which apparently took a decade to make. I was forced to quit the game because of a game-breaking bug right at the doorsteps of the end. You can't imagine how fucking pissed I am, getting all the way there but then being forced to quit prematurely. I guess the developers were inspired by the original team in more ways than I anticipated.

Despite the really sour taste in my mouth at the moment, I can't deny I didn't enjoy the game - I did, it really felt like playing the next "genuine" Fallout game. There are some parts in dialog where it's obvious they cut some corners (like some of the player reactions), but mostly it's really solid stuff. This definitely feels like Fallout - more than can be said about Bethesda's modern contraptions.

All I can say to those interested in the mod: whatever your instincts tell you, do not in any circumstances save your game after you've had a conversation with the guy in charge of the final facility of the game. You can save before you talk to him, but after it: a big no no. A nooooooo no no. Not if you don't want to end up like me. And remember to bring explosives with you, too. Those are the two mistakes of mine that ultimately prevented me from seeing how it all ends.

Advent Rising

Just couldn't get past the (bad console) controls, dull graphics, cheese ingame cutscenes and repetitive action.
It's a meh-game, imo.

Black and White

I abandonned at the 3rd island.

Game is too long and repetitive, when you play as a good god, you have to repeat the same action again and again to upgrade trust of the village that you have to conquer. There is no real challenge, just not to be bored before succeeding.

Some bugs block some side quests.

Divinity Original Sin: Enchanced Edition

After spending about 80-90 hours in the game I was unable to continue with the story because the game actually keeps you from proceeding if you haven't collected 12-15 star stones that are spread out in different areas, some of them are hidden. I didn't feel like trying hunting down all these stones without even having any idea where they might be. If these stones are so important they should have made sure you got them in your quests.

There are a bit of pixel-hunting throughout the game to find hidden switches and so on to complete puzzles. Often the puzzles made no sense to me why they were there in the first place other than slow down the player. One of those puzzles/mini-games is the paper rock scissor, felt like they made no effort in implementing it.

Quest log is pretty bad, it's a big mess. It's nearly impossible to figure out which quest is a main quest and which ones are side quests that you can ignore. If you don't take long break between sessions then it might be okay but for me I had to spend like 2 hours figure out which quests were important, where to go and so on. By the time I quit the game I had about 20-30 incomplete quests that I couldn't find a clear way to continue them so just assumed they would be resolved as I explored and played the game but that wasn't the case at all.

Lastly, I found the story very generic and just couldn't find any interest in the plot or characters which made it difficult to enjoy the game like I thought I would. I think this game has one of the worst game designs with the exception of the combat that seems to me can be played in number of ways because you can use the environment to your advantage.

<span class="bold">Forsaken</span>

This game was always on my to-do list ever since it appeared on PC, as I at least used to be a big fan of Descent 1-2. I recall playing some demo version at some point, and liking it. So finally I got myself to install and try it. I got it to work fine on my Windows 7 PC, with Direct3D acceleration and all, even the CD music is playing fine. I installed the 1.01 update I found online.

Playing in the hardest difficulty (Total Mayhem), the gameplay overall seems pretty ok, like Descent. At least the first level seems a bit too cramped though, narrow corridors after narrow corridors. I preferred the more open spaces in Descent games, not sure if this game has similar levels later on. In the first level most of the enemies were quite manageable, it was mainly those enemies with a zap lightning weapon that gave me a problem as you can't avoid their shots if they get a bead on you (the ide is to try to circle-strate them as they can zap you only if they face you), and some other enemy later on which seems to take awful lot of shots to kill.

Two things killed this game for me though:

1. At least in this difficulty level, you seem to constantly run out of ammo. I don't feel I've been especially wasteful with my shooting, yet I am constantly running out of ammo for all my weapons already during the first level. Many of the enemies are just such sponges, taking lots of bullets before dying. After you run out of ammo, you only have some sort of basic weapon that shoots one measly bullet every two seconds or so, doing very little damage to enemies.

2. But even worse, the levels have pretty tight time limits, you have to find the exit before it runs out or otherwise it is game over, even if you have lives left. I generally hate games that constantly rush me to go forward, especially this kind of game which has secrets to find etc.

It is made even worse in Forsaken because the rooms seem to be generally constructed so that you must destroy all enemies in the room before you are allowed to continue to the next area, so avoiding fight and outrunning enemies to the exit is not an option either! The game simply expects me to rush killing all enemies in the level in time.

So there I was, about maybe 75% of the level done, and I'd say I tried to rush and was not fooling around wasting time... yet I ran out of time. So am I now supposed to restart the whole level, just try to be even faster this time? Phuck it.


I think the developers were poopoo heads with these kinds of design decisions. I mean, WTF? (Welcome to Finland?) Was their intention to make the game frustrating and irritating, or what is it?

Of course I could choose to play the game e.g. in the easiest difficulty level which I presume makes it much easier to reach the exit in time and kill all enemies without being killed yourself, but I don't see much point in that either. It is interesting to note in the 1.01 patch readme file that apparently the game had some serious difficulty balancing problems before too, as it says that the 1.01 patch makes the Easy and Normal difficulty levels about 50% easier than in the earlier version. So apparently even those difficulties were originally far too hard for many people.

I just hate these game designs which seem to make the harder difficulty levels pretty much impossible for everyone to finish. If someone complains they are too hard (as in, impossible in practise), then I guess the developers just come up with "well then, maybe you should play on easier difficulty levels then?". That is a cop out, I want a phucking video proof with two independent witnesses that the developers and playtesters themselves can complete the whole game in the hardest difficulty. If they can't, then they should have dropped that difficulty level from the game.

A-holes, I hate you!

Realms of Arkania 3. That endgame bug combined with bad save game management from my part almost gave me an apoplectic fit.

Pokémon GO: The game is very innovative, hard to argue with that. Also quiet fun and extremely addictive. But it also is like an Alpha game in its current state. Very buggy and also exploited by cheaters. It has a much bigger potential than it actually shows, I hope new mechanics will be implemented later. But if I were to sink a significant amount of time to a game, I would play a more polished MMORPG.

Games quit in recent years: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Crash Bandicoot, Killzone, Borderlands, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Guild Wars 2, OddVille, Hitman: Codename 47, Pokémon GO

Rebel Galaxy (PS4)

This game was already on my wishlist, so I was pretty excited when it turned up as one of this month's free games. However, it has one jarring flaw which completely ruined my enjoyment of the game: your movement is entirely in 2D!! So if there's a planet in your path you can't go above or below it, only around to one side or the other. Same thing with attacking enemy ships, although the enemy can swoop up and down and around, you are limited to moving right or left only! I found this so immersion-breaking that I could not enjoy the rest of the game and I had to quit.

I'm contemplating ditching LIMBO. 2 hours in, 23/39 levels complete.

While I don't use the term in RL, it totally feels like I'm hate****ing this game. At this point I'm continuing mostly just because I don't want the damn game to have the satisfaction.

The conceits seem to be:

-Visually everything is black/white/gray, so puzzle solutions often come down to determining which shadows are important and which are just shadows - which vines are for climbing and which vines are just...well, not decorative, but present.
-The game wants you to die.

Which is fine to a point, but in a few circumstances you'll be locked out of a solution and just stand there for 10-15 waiting for the water to catch up and kill you. Sometimes you'll have to kill yourself to go back 10-15 sec without having to reload even farther back.

But solutions often feel arbitrary - one puzzle will kill you for not reacting instantly to sudden movement, where the next puzzle will kill you precisely for reacting instantly to movement. A gap that looks too wide to jump sometimes is and sometimes isn't, but you won't know unless you either try (and perhaps die) or run around ruling out other solutions first.

Edit - case in point, there is a puzzle where there are two depressions you must cross with a button in the center of each one. In one you will die if you step in the depression but are safe on the button; in the other the converse is true. As best I can tell there are no cues to tell you which is which. You get to cross it once, and then for whatever reason you get to run back through it the other way with shadowy figures chasing you. There's absolutely nothing "hard" about it, you just either read the designer's mind, or you repeat the sequence.

With a few exceptions, these aren't really "puzzles" as much as just trial and error sequences. If x kills you this time, for the most part it's going to be stupidly easy to do y instead, and then you'll cruise on until you hit the next binary decision tree.

The "brain worm" sequences are often annoying. While I've figured out how they actually work (beat the first few just by stumbling around, appropriately), in the vein of legions of PvP complainers on various boards, losing control of your character and having them die in front of your eyes while you bang on the keyboard with no recourse is, by and large, generally not a fun mechanic for a lot of players.

The controls aren't awesome, but other than a few hiccups they're not terrible either. Story, at least to this point is non-existent and you're wandering through environmental hazards and dart-blowing enemies...because something.

The creator(s) definitely spent a lot of time on the often-creative and elaborate death sequences, which I guess is great and all if your goal in playing is to see your character die in new and exciting ways. Or drown. Again.

But by and large it feels like I'm just trouble-shooting a computer - there's been few puzzles with a "A-ha!" moment of celebration - they're either obvious, or largely trial-and-deatherror, occasionally leaving me shaking my head in disbelief at the solution the designers decided was the "right" one.

With only 2ish hours to go, presumably, I'll probably finish at some point when I decide I want to distract myself by focusing on really hating something intensely.

Uncharted 4 (PS4)

I saw this had great reviews, so I borrowed it from my local library to try it out. Wow, what a huge disappointment.

The setting and environments looked very nice and interesting (from what I saw), but where this “game” (and I use the term here very loosely) was a letdown was in gameplay. It extremely linear, leading from one scripted event to another with virtually no player choice whatsoever. I kept going, assuming it was simply some kind of tutorial/intro at the start and it would soon end and the real game would begin… But nope, it’s never going to end because this IS the game apparently :(.