<span class="bold">Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords</span> (I played the Steam version because it has Mac support, I also installed the Restored Content Mod)

(MINOR SPOILERS may appear in this mini-review).

I finished KOTOR about a year and a half ago, and enjoyed it a lot, so I decided to play the sequel. However, after over 25 hours of play I’m calling it quits. I’m not exactly sure why this game didn’t grip me the same way the first one did.

I think part of the problem is that it felt like my character was advancing way too fast. By the time I completed Telos (only the second area in the game) I already felt like my character was pretty much maxed out with nothing further to gain. I enjoyed how in the first game you started with no force powers, and grew into them slowly. KOTOR 2 however starts you off as a Jedi, and with a special feat which gives you extra hit points (the latter is pure bullshit in my opinion).

Furthermore, the NPCs are still just as annoying as the first game, and they have special items and/or powers which are outside of the standard rules (which is again bullshit in my opinion). The game also expands on crafting with many more options (*yawn*).

I also felt like there was a lot more dialogue, but that could just be due to my growing impatience with the game. And the plot, well somehow I just didn’t feel motivated to continue on, I really didn’t care.

No, it's horribly verbose and has really bad pacing, you're getting overwhelmed with endless dialogue (none of which I found very interesting)...I found that to be the major flaw of the game, also stopped playing after the first planet or so.

Constructor. Incredibly fun, but very difficult. I'll try again someday, perhaps once the HD version comes to gog.

Not a Hero + A Fistful of Gun

Way too hard for me to handle. I had actually got decently far in Not a Hero before ragequiting. If I were willing to throw more hours at these 2 games in order to actually get better I am sure I could finish them. They didn't even have the soundtrack to back them up like Hotline 1+2 do, both of which I was able to beat. Also I've recently decided to streamline my backlog and simply don't have time for games I don't enjoy/seem like a chore.

Wizardry 6+7

Literally unplayable. Ancient games that aged terribly.

Not sure about Wizardry 8 though, but after my experiences with its predecessors there is no doubt that i'm not going to play it anytime soon.

<span class="bold">Wedding Escape</span> (Android)

As its title clearly states, this free game is about having second thoughts the day of your wedding and running away like there's no tomorrow. Of course, these commitment issues are just an excuse for the actual gameplay (and for selling you a considerable amount of 'playable characters' too), which is actually quite good for a match-3-like game and features a mechanic that has probably already been used elsewhere, but I had never seen before. There are only 4 types of elements (golden and silver coins, and blue and pink diamonds), and instead of switching the place of two adjacent items in the grid, or moving an entire row or column, in order to perform matches what you need to do is tap a coin or a diamond to change its colour. Well, in fact you can tap several adjacent elements to create multiple and bigger matches, and there's always the satisfying 'cascade effect'. Matching a certain amount of items of each type will grant you powerups to help you clean the board more efficiently. Each level you are given a limited number of moves and you need to clear an increasing amount of items. All in all, a highly addictive and fun gameplay.

So, why did I quit it? Because it gets repetitive very quickly, and its progression system is severely skewed towards making you spend money in it. There are some passive abilities (cheaper powerups, augment the number of adjacent items you can flip, etc.) you can unlock with the fake in-game currency you earn after each run, but each successive ability level costs double than the last so it all becomes a tedious grind pretty soon. But what annoyed me the most is the slot machine you get to play at the end of each game, in which you can earn extra fake currency or an extra move to keep playing. At first I won something every single time, but after a while (and despite having obtained abilities that increased the number of attempts at the slot machine, and the quality of its prizes) it began giving me the middle finger on a regular basis. This is where I decided I had enough and uninstalled the game.

Painkiller Black Edition
Doesn't seem like there's any depth or story? Go into a room, kill all enemies. Rinse repeat. I could overlook it if the problem was just the lack of the story but it seems like there's no difference between levels/ramping of gameplay. Don't think I can buy the other ones if they follow this same pattern.

Star Wars Battlefront II
Game has not aged well :/. I used to love playing this on my PSP however. Tried it last year on my PC as well and I wasn't feeling it. Don't think I will be trying again. Was great for its time.

edit: nvm, wrong thread

Yeah, the formula doesn't change at all and the original Painkiller is by far the best entry in the series so there's no point in getting the later ones (none of which were made by the original developer, by the way) if you didn't enjoy the original. I gave up on the series after playing Resurrection or whatever the first standalone expansion was called and sadly also the remake (Hell & Damnation) was an utter disappointment.

That said, to me Painkiller is easily one of the best shooters ever made and I've finished it far too many times, including a playthrough during which I unlocked all tarot cards which requires you to finish the game on the highest difficulty setting, which is sheer madness. But oh well, to each their own.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

42gig DL, only to find out it suffers from consoleitis.
Multiple actions bound to single keys. :/

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

This is a FREE game, however I still feel ripped off.

It’s basically just a series of set pieces/cutscenes strung together by minimal/linear player input. It fits my definition of “movie” more than my definition of “game”. If I wanted a movie I'd watch one, what I wanted was a game.

I will admit that I quit in disgust quite early into this so-called “game” so maybe it changes later, but for me personally I had enough.

Gothic

I played this for about 30 hours and got quite far into the 4th chapter. My impressions were mixed...it's not a totally bad game, there's an element of exploration that's actually quite fun. But ultimately I was a bit disappointed. Gameplay is fairly limited, you don't really have many choices in quests, and you mostly run around through wilderness areas populated by monsters and kill them (until you've done that...then you're just traversing vast empty spaces; there's no option of fast travel so you just spend minutes running from one place to the other). And the combat is just horrible. There are people who claim there's some system to it, but I never got it...in my experience it's just button-mashing, killing the enemies you can/avoiding stronger enemies, luring enemies from groups one by one (if you get surrounded you're usually dead, but enemy AI is so dumb you often can lure single monsters from their groups), leveling up and getting better equipment...then repeating the same with the enemies that before tore you to pieces but which now are quite easy, all the while avoiding the next tier of enemies too strong for you...pretty simplistic in my opinion. I came to a point where it was rather tedious. Maybe the game is more fun if you play as a mage instead of a warrior as I did. I kept my saves and maybe will return some day to Gothic, but for now I'm done with it.

Pity you didn't like it, I enjoyed quite a lot. In that case I'd advise you against buying STASIS, as it's basically the same.

It's a game that always polarized people, so fair enough if it's not everything you hoped for. I still rate it as one of the best RPG's ever.

One thing I know you've missed though, or maybe didn't get far enough into the game, is that Gothic definitely has fast travel. You get access to it by gaining teleport runes, maybe once you reach a certain point in the story (it's been a few years since I last played it)...you can then fast travel between all the camps and major locations.

Edit: thinking about it some more, maybe the teleport runes were only for mages, I can't remember- I know I've used them in each play through of mine though.

Yeah, narrative-driven games are not my thing. It's my fault about CAYNE really, I didn't spend enough time to research it before I started playing, if I had done so I probably wouldn't have bothered trying to play it in the first place :).