Blaite - hardcore platformer with poor controls and an unpredictable jumping monster that completely breaks the game since timing is of the utmost importance and you don't have the leisure to wait for it to get out of the way.

Brut@l - an otherwise fun roguelikelike where all of 99% of failed runs will be attributed to platforming sections. Fall in a pit = die, in a permadeath game. Who the hell thought it was a good idea?

Unreal

I've started this game a few times over the years and I do like the first few levels, but soon it starts to slow down, then the enemies become bullet sponges and I start getting bored.

It's probably supposed to be 'atmospheric', but since the plot line is about as much as 'prisoner on ship that crashed' - good luck and have fun it's not my thing.

The game is good. I know it should be good, everyone who reviews it says it's good. But either I don't have time or I've just never really 'gotten' the world.

Whatever, I find it gets boring before I manage to finish it and this last attempt was no different.

Quake 2 released around the same time and I can play that game over and over, and almost never get bored of it. Each to their own I guess.

Half Life.

Aha! Another classic shooter and I do love some crowbar wielding alien smashing action. The first half of this game is fantastic, but after a while the game wears out its welcome. Too many jumping puzzles. That bit where you have to incinerate the massive alien plant - arggg. Bag, bang, bang - death, bang, bang, death. Ba- death.

I have completed this game a long time ago, but playing it recently on a nostalgia trip just didn't do it. A lot of cheap kills, annoying jumping puzzles annoying level design made me quit before finishing it.

I've heard this sentiment from others and while the game is overall brilliant because of the standards it set and the rules it changed, now years later when those same rules have been perfected in better games half life can't quite hold up to my nostalgic eye.

I can't call it a bad game, I just didn't have enough patience to complete it - again. It still gives a bunch of laughs and the world it creates is quite believable. Except for the lift bug where you'll have to have pre sensed where the lift will bug out so you can jump and not get stuck in it! Only to have to grenade your character and re do much level because you forgot to save not knowing a simple lift was going to be your demise. This can also lead to scripted events just not working. Kaboom!

I recently dumped Vikings Wolves of Midgard. Mandatory grinding in a single player game is lazy game design to me. 3 of the 6 artifact weapons caused the game to freeze up when I tried to assemble them a grand total of 5 times. And the final boss glitched out and just stood there for the 1st round of the fight and then caused the game to crash taking the whole computer with it in round 2.

I know MMO's are supposed to take a lot of time but for some reason it really got under my skin when I tried to go back to Star Wars The Old Republic I'm really hoping this means I'll be able to say no to World of Warcraft when the urge hit to go back to that thing again.

I'll probably dump Secret World Legends soon if Funcom doesn't start talking to us about the Congo world zone that is supposedly the next place we get to go. Its been about a year since we went to South Africa and its been radio silence about the Congo ever since.

Zombie Shooter (2007) (Linux/Wine)

I've lost my progress (or perhaps the game does not provide proper saving) and I'm not going to complete the previous levels again. The games seems to be quite short, I've completed halt of missions in 1h, but, well, no real need to finish the game. Nice mindless fun, indeed, but not exactly my cup of tea.

Works well under Linux+Wine.

List of all games completed in 2019.

Idle Wizard

For a fan of idle management games there is a lot to like in this game, and a lot of the <ideas> are clever, but...

if you're looking for a game to actually be enjoyable, in the end I can't recommend this one.

Pros:
-Lots of features
-Broad mix of classes and pet combos
-Challenges are for the most part a neat idea
-Multi-tiered leveling system (multipliers, gear, bonuses, class/pet unlocks) is generally good if occasionally screwy or asking you to do inane things for unlocks.

Cons:
-UI is clunky
-Many features aren't well explained, or not really explained at all
-Most class/pet combos are fairly useless

The game also pretty much forces you to leave it running, in some cases days on end (thus my 500 hours of steam-recorded game time), to complete a particular objective. While I could play non-steam games or watch movies with it running in the background, I normally shut my computer down overnight or when not home, and playing other steam games was not possible.

If there were a sequel, I would probably play it just to see if it improved on the flaws here. Likewise, I'd recommend it to someone who wanted an idle that goes a bit deeper in its options/designs/systems than the norm and wanted to explore (I certainly did).

TLDR: The concept of this game is great, thus why I kept sticking around even for long stretches where the thrill was gone. Those moments where it really works, are great.

Overall, the execution left me wanting, and I finally realized my limited gaming time is much better spent elsewhere.

God of War Ascension (PS3)

It's a Sony first party game, so take out the cutscenes and time you're not in control, take out all the QTE's and you have a 3 hour game with some decent environment puzzles for a brawler. But those QTE's...damn, mostly right at the end of long boss fights. And all that platforming where you instantly die if you don't see the green grapple point in time. And the worst part of all, the big hard fights often result in the camera going so far out that I can't even tell which is my character and which are enemies, let alone know what way I'm facing.

Still the game is short, fast paced and I was going to finish it, then I got to the legendary "Trial of Achimedes" near the end. Everything that sucks about the game multiplied by 10. Three huge waves of damage sponge enemies, QTE's to finish each main enemy, no health replenishment, no save points between waves. I could persevere and I'm sure I'd beat it, but I just can't be assed. It's not fun. I went and mowed my front yard instead, whilst pondering why people rave so much about Sony first party games.

I have EA Access (aka Origin Access on PC) for a month, so I’ve been trying out a lot of games I might not otherwise play (I didn’t even try the sports games, my interest in those is zero). Here are the ones I tried but didn’t like:

Anthem (solo only, PS4): Destiny, but with crappier combat.

Battlefield 4 (single player campaign only, PS4): This “game” is a linear series of scripted events and cutscenes interspersed with shooting gallery gameplay, I couldn’t take it very long before I quit.

Battlefield Hardline (single player campaign only, PS4): Extremely scripted and linear with lots of cutscenes, plus I couldn’t get into the whole arresting/evidence thing, it just wasn’t interesting for me. I quit before getting very far into the game.

Mass Effect Andromeda (PS4): Normally I don’t like games with a lot of story and dialogue, but I thought I’d give this game a chance. However, I ran into a couple of issues even before I got sick of the plot/dialogue: (1) the horrible combat (it’s just plain bad); and (2) the save system: this has a checkpoint-only save system, I completed an optional objective and then died, the game reloaded me without having the optional objective completed… screw that!

Need for Speed: Payback (PS4): Yo Dawg, I herd you like checkpoint races…

Star Wars Battlefront II (single player campaign only, PS4): The only enjoyable thing about this campaign was the ability to kill those traitorous rebel scum, unfortunately the gameplay was too linear and even the starship combat was boring.

Burnout Paradise Remastered PS4

The game is great but 15 hours in the game crashed for the first time and erased/corrupted my save file so I would have to start over and it's one of those games with only one save file. I just couldn't be bothered to start over even though it's a great game.

The Jill of the Jungle triology. I played all three for around ten minutes fighting the urge to get away from the games, then I quit and now after having avoided the games for months I decided I am not going to ever touch them again since I cannot stand the type of gameplay. Not for me -- quit for eternity.

If you post a comment in the Deus Ex thread, the developer will help you with this.

Let's see: gave up on both Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and The Witcher 2 for the same reason: too many keyboard assignments! I can play Deus Ex okay, but I much prefer a game that just uses the mouse, like Shadowrun, or FTL.

You should try Hidden & Dangerous or Independence War. XD

Only if it has a zero-player mode, so I can watch it play itself. =)

Ah hell, xenonauts again. It's just going to take way too long, and the cover mechanics is too rage inducing

AdVenture Communist (Android)

The follow-up to AdVenture Capitalist, this game is a pretty big stretch thematically. "Comrades" are your most basic resource, and you start out harvesting potatoes (get it?), but beyond that you'll be surprised to know the game doesn't really have anything to do with economic or political philosophy, and is a polished, but ultimately fairly shallow idle/resource game.

I got to roughly level 50 (I believe the current cap is 89 based on most recent patch notes), and based on the upgrade cards, it looks like it will ultimately cap out around 120. That's like, a shameful amount of weeks/months.

The game really has two phases - the standard game phase, which gets slow and dull somewhere around level 20-30, at which point you start spending days just waiting for enough comrades to accrue to complete whatever missions are in your queue, because 80% of the missions come down to how many comrades you have.

The more interesting and lively phase are the "weekend events" which is a bit of a misnomer, because they run for nearly 4 days, so slightly more than half the week. These have cutesy (yet somehow actually amusing) themes like "Communism in the middle ages!" and "Communism in space!" (much like the original had you do capitalism on the moon). Because it's timed, and because you're always starting from scratch, this part of the game feeds the dopamine receptors much more effectively, and helps avoid the drag that the main part of the game becomes.

Both parts of the game, though, do suffer a bit from how shallow the mechanics are (charming and intuitive, but not deep), and moreso from the fact that this game is a cash shop abomination.

This game is constantly pushing you to spend cash (you can buy comrades! you can buy a time warp! you can buy science/research!) both in the main game and the weekend events, the former by highlighting how damn slow things are if you don't want to spend money.

The latter because you're racing and best I can tell unless you literally didn't sleep for 4 days, I don't think it's possible to reach the ultimate goal through normal play without paying a significant sum.

Don't get me wrong, part of my brain will miss the flurry of the weekend events, but the part of me that needs to sleep and participate in real life, really won't. And the main game is more dullness and drudgery than interesting by this point. There's just not enough variety in the missions, or depth in the mechanics to justify continuing to pour more weeks and months into it.

If you can have some self-control against giving in to the $$ shop for small boosts in a game where there is always more grinding ahead, and don't mind something that requires attention but isn't particularly challenging to distract you from the meaninglessness of life via the meaninglessness of an android game, well, then this has a lot going for it.

Ultimately: Mildly charming, well polished, but not deep, and more cash shop offers than you can shake a wad of cash at.