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I'm thinking about shelving Mr. Shifty. It was an enjoyable ride for the most part, but the last stages are more annoying than fun. The difficulty is upped simply by making the levels longer and throwing lots of stuff at you that's tough to evade the first time around, and like in Hotline Miami, one hit means death and back to the beginning, so you need to memorize where which opponents and traps appear and then practice for the perfect run, which I find pretty boring. I was probably one level away from finishing the game yesterday and kept repeating it over and over again (this level was still somewhat entertaining because it allowed for more freedom than the linear levels, but you have to survive wave after wave of enemies and try not to get hit a single time). But the worst offender is that when you quit the game to take a break, the game doesn't save your checkpoint progress within a stage and makes you start from scratch, so in order to give that last level another try, I'd also have to repeat the levels before it that I had already beat. That's a design decision I don't care for at all and which makes me want to give up on this game shortly before the finish line.
SIlence- Glitch that keeps showing the kid picking up the rock and the cursor completely disappears. Other players seem to have this issue as well.
I'm very close to dropping Ni No Kuni on PS3. I only started playing JRPGs in 2012 and I've tried a fair number of them and the latest being NNK but I think I have to say that they're not for me. I don't really like the characters of most JRPGs but what really kills it for is the linearity. You go from point A to point B and that's it and then you fight a crazy amount of monsters on the way. It's not that WRPGs are better but I do prefer the immersion I get from games like Skyrim, Witcher 3, Fallout etc. because of their darker tone rather than most JRPGs where you play as a pre-teen emo furry that saves the world through the power of friendship.

Maybe you need to have grown up with JRPGs to enjoy them and I didn't. Also the battle system in NNK is just not very good or fun. The game is gorgeous and is a Studio Ghibli game but gameplay and story sucks. Battles are fiddly and the AI is very bad.

It kinda sucks because I would like to get into JRPGs but just can't. I also stopped playing FF10 for the same reason that the JRPG tropes are just too much for me.
After accidentally frying my partitions (short and boring story), I've decided it wouldn't be worth it to reinstall Starbound with Frackin Universe'. Even with a massive overhaul mod like that, Starbound lacks a bit of life to it.
Oddworld: New'n'Tasty (Linux)

Utterly broken. Gamepad support is bad, button mapping broken, videos stutter, overall performance isn't good and the visual design is inferior to the original. Judging by the fact, that all of those issues have been addressed by many people in 2015 already and they still persist, it probably will never get fixed, avoid that studio.

Wasted money.
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Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (Linux / WINE)

First the positive things.
GOG's installer runs out of the box via WINE on Linux.
Visual and audio design is great, movement is beautifully fluid.
That's it.

The game isn't made to be fun, but to frustrate, it's like a giant trolling.
Nearly every time you enter a new screen you get killed in a second and since the checkpoints are so far apart, you have to do the last 5 hard screens over and over again until you beat them all in a row. Even with a walkthrough it's still extremely hard.
In order to free most of the Mudokons, you have to get into absurdly well hidden secret areas that have even more absurd challenges you all have to beat in a row in addition to having to reach the area again every time in the first place since there often isn't a checkpoint before or afterwards either.

All those positive reviews are just nostalgia and ignore the facts, that the game's design has intolerable flaws that remove all the fun.
I aborted that game back then and although I really gave it a chance and played until the second half of the third area, I just had to admit, that it is not fun.

The best way to play the game seems to be using a Playstation emulator with quicksaves, unfortunately that also gives you the worst graphics out of those three options.
Post edited September 03, 2018 by Klumpen0815
Dragon Nest

I put 40+ hours into this MMORPG game with a lengthy story campaign, and much of it was enjoyable though by doing side quests I quickly became way overleveled for the dungeons I was clearing as part of the quests. A lot of the side quests had fun dialog and/or interesting plots, so it was good times. Then I got to Chapter 6, where not only the side quests but even the Main Story Quest line kept sending me back to the same 2-3 dungeons over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Even though I could do each dungeon run in 4-5 minutes, the game simply became a chore to play, so I stopped. Then I read the rest of the story on the wiki (not sure if it's finished or not).

The good news is that at no point as a non-paying player I never felt limited or that I was required to grind due to not spending real money or anything. Maybe that would've come closer to the end game, or maybe not. At this point makes no difference to me.
Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy

Yeah, no, just no...
Shadowrun: Dragonfall (GOG) - didn't realize it wasn't fully voice acted. I don't really want to just read a book, I prefer voice overs as well. That and some mechanics were not clearly explained through tutorials. Combat is clunky and not as polished as XCOM

Shantae: Risky's Revenge (GOG) - Forgot I don't enjoy pixelated graphics. With that in mind, Half-genie Hero is a much better alternative

Tex Murphy: Tesla Effect (GOG) - puzzles are not clear. FMV quality is lower than I would have liked

Steamworld Dig 1+2 (PSV/XB1) - I loved the art and atmosphere, but the gameplay was so repetitive and I hated grinding in order to get upgrades

9/17/18
Ruiner (GOG) - Flashy but very twitchy. Seems like a less polished Hotline Miami with a somehow less believable story. Controls feel off, camera could be better designed. I love the atmosphere and music, which is why I bought the game in the first place. But the gameplay is too repetitive in a bad way to justify me spending more time on it. I seem to be using the same 2-3 abilities because the others just don't feel as useful. Also I have had a massive UI bug in which I can't see the HUD at all since I started playing.

9/19/18
Titan Quest: Anniversary Edition (GOG) dear lord the engine feels clunky. Everyone hates on D3, it's the popular thing to do, but there has not been one ARPG that matches the absolute beautiful polish that is Diablo 3. If you find one please let me know. I'm going to try Grim Dawn eventually but not Torchlight, not Victor Vran, not Titan Quest make you feel like you're straight up demolishing monsters. And I was confused by the story. The hero doesn't seem to even have a basic story line and plops into the town, unless I missed something. Monsters don't seem interesting. Gathering loot is a nightmare. I played for 3 hours and it felt like a chore.

The Darkside Detective (GOG) - clearly I need to do more research when I buy games from now on. I somehow bought this without voice acting + pixelated graphics, even though I know I don't like that style. sigh I've played point and click games without voice acting, but I just know it's going to feel like a drag with the pixelated graphics

10/1/18
Lego City Undercover (XB1) - great art + music with decent story and humor but the gameplay isn't challenging enough for me to justify spending time on. It would be better suited for kids. Here's hoping the rest of the Lego games I still have aren't like this (Avengers, Batman 3)

10/2/18
Legend of Kay Anniversary (GOG) - I want to love what THQ Nordic is trying to accomplish with bringing old IPs to life, remastering them and digitally providing them, but that means not every game will be for me. Like this one. Graphically it looks good. The story isn't the greatest. LoK is a product of it's time - the camera still borks out and the fights can be frustrating even on normal due to design decisions that were made i.e. casting magic is difficult mid-fight Voice acting isn't great but it's better than not having any (stares at Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy; here's hoping that will be better than this)

10/7/2018
Thimbleweed Park (NS) - The opening was great, switching between characters was awesome. Loved the writing, art, and music. Jokes were hilarious especially Ransome's. I was surprised how quickly I stopped caring as soon as I had control of all 5 characters at once. The characters wouldn't communicate and it seemed like 1 less-than-obvious puzzle after another. I think I'm getting more picky about games as time goes on just because there's so many games out there. I don't have time for ones that seem like chores. I still haven't found a series/game that's captivated me as much as Blackwell and the Walking Dead in terms of point-and-click. I have a strong feeling Monkey Island will be added to that list.

10/14/2018
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy (GOG) - No voice acting. Environment seems barren. Game doesn't seem anywhere near as polished and full as a game that released around the same time - VooDoo Vince (which was also remastered). Don't want to force myself to play it -shrug-
Post edited October 15, 2018 by opticq
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (PS4)

I tried playing this game using pure stealth (no interactions with any enemies), hardest difficulty available at the start. After playing for a short while I ended up turning off the HUD for greater immersion and I was enjoying the game greatly. And then the tutorial ended. The game itself was a huge letdown. I continued on playing for several hours, hoping that this was just a temporary thing and the game would get fun again like it was at the start, but it never did.

I simply found the game extremely tedious for a variety of reasons.
- Firstly, there are unskippable movies/scenes, and they’re not short either. This is already a huge no-no in my book, but I also I found the story uninteresting and not gripping in any way.
- Secondly, there is way too much talking (and by “talking” I mean listening to other characters talk while the player does nothing). Way way waaaaaaaaaay too much. The fact that the conversation animations are horrible doesn’t help here either. And this even applies to shops, whenever you want to interact with a merchant you need to sit through talking/animation at the start and at the end of your transaction, each and every time you shop there. And the police checkpoints all over the place, don’t get me started with them! “Realistic” maybe, but “fun” definitely not.
- Thirdly, travelling from one area to another is neither fun nor interesting.
- Fourthly, the rest of the game basically adds nothing to what was already experienced in the tutorial, at least for how long I played it (several hours).

The game is primarily first-person perspective, but there are jarring switches to 3rd-person view which completely break any immersion which may have been left. You can avoid some of these by not using the cover system, but others are unavoidable (eg climbing a ladder).

Definitely not recommended.
War Thunder

This game is perfect, nice gameplay, nice graphics, nice community.

But the developers really try to make you spend some money, even with a premium account you still need to pay to fully enjoy the game.

Very sad.
Ruiner - Flashy but very twitchy. Seems like a less polished Hotline Miami with a somehow less believable story. Controls feel off, camera could be better designed. I love the atmosphere and music, which is why I bought the game in the first place. But the gameplay is too repetitive in a bad way to justify me spending more time on it. I seem to be using the same 2-3 abilities because the others just don't feel as useful. Also I have had a massive UI bug in which I can't see the HUD at all since I started playing. Also this game furthers my preference for voice-acting vs not.

Previous games
Post edited September 18, 2018 by opticq
Call of Duty: Black Ops III (PS4)

(ETA: I only played the solo campaign)

Playing this game was very reminiscent of watching an action movie, the game leads you along from one “action-packed” scene to the next. I suppose for some people this is fun and exciting, but for me I found it linear and boring (I gave up after about 2-3 hours).
Post edited September 19, 2018 by 01kipper
Dead Space hit my record for quickest "out" of a game. Went in blind not knowing a great deal about the game (yeah, been hiding under a rock for a few years gaming-wise), immediately hated the forced OTS design, and got creeped-out by the first Necro encounter (in my condition, not the best idea), so nope, passed on it. I suppose they did a too good a job on the horror aspect for me to truly enjoy it.

Fortunately I had got it free on Origin, so nothing gained, nothing lost.
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Braggadar: Dead Space hit my record for quickest "out" of a game. Went in blind not knowing a great deal about the game (yeah, been hiding under a rock for a few years gaming-wise), immediately hated the forced OTS design, and got creeped-out by the first Necro encounter (in my condition, not the best idea), so nope, passed on it. I suppose they did a too good a job on the horror aspect for me to truly enjoy it.

Fortunately I had got it free on Origin, so nothing gained, nothing lost.
That's a shame. I really liked this game, one of the best I've played this year. I too played it blind. As I recall there were few to no jump scares in my opinion. I felt similar about RE 4 which I also loved and played blind. Both games felt more like an oppressive, looming, inevitable horror than scare me out of my chair horror. Although to be fair I played both with the lights on and engaged in copious amounts of backtracking to save.
Previous games

Titan Quest: Anniversary Edition dear lord the engine feels clunky. Everyone hates on D3, it's the popular thing to do, but there has not been one ARPG that matches the absolute beautiful polish that is Diablo 3. If you find one please let me know. I'm going to try Grim Dawn eventually but not Torchlight, not Victor Vran, not Titan Quest make you feel like you're straight up demolishing monsters. And I was confused by the story. The hero doesn't seem to even have a basic story line and plops into the town, unless I missed something. Monsters don't seem interesting. Gathering loot is a nightmare. I played for 3 hours and it felt like a chore.