Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga... even though it's kinda cramped in a little 640x480 pixel sized box at the center of my wide screen laptop display (haven't exactly mastered fiddling about with the widescreen mod yet and tinkering with the accessability magnifier didn't help one bit!). I'm continuing to be impressed with all the things they could do using that little Infinity Engine. It started raining one of the days while my party was traveling! There are different things going on in the towns from whether you are in them during the day or at night! Geez... I thought that only more recent games were capable of doing that, so mind=blown. The cut scenes did not age well (Seems like texturing during the 90s was sort of iffy most of the time amirite? :-P People got a better hang of it later in the 2000s?) but overall, wow what a game. You can get lost in it for days trying to explore every little nook and cranny of each area. Takes me back to the days when you sent away for computer games by mail (Remember ads in the back part of catalogs and in comic books?) or went into physical software stores (Remember when those were a thing? Where they had shelves upon shelves you could peruse for things in by genra?) or there was a dedicated software and games section in some of the department stores (I remember as a small child disliking going with mom for fitting back to school clothing, etc. but agreeing because getting to look at the games section over by toys was liek OMG!). Back when LAN parties were for only the elitist of gamers and going on the Internet was a rare special occurrence but a stack of floppies or case of CDs could keep you near endlessly entertained. Pulling off my nostalgia goggles though, there are a few flaws with it... for one thing, when you go to the inventory menu to change equipment set ups on characters in your party the combat unpauses (this seems like a very strange mechanic to me and yes, if you take too long messing around with set ups you can get your ass handed to you by monsters and bandits). For another, wow, I have been having to grind like crazy just to level up a teeny tiny bit and I guess we get spoiled some by the pacing in newer stuff. O_o Still, even though most of my characters are still only level 1 Faerun is this big, interesting place to run around doing quests and slaying a veritable menagerie of various monsters and miscreants in. If I could just... find a way to blow up the play screen bigger D:< ! Curse you Sarevok & your malignant compression ratio!

Recently started playing Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl again after a couple of months break. I plan to finish it this time unless it breaks down again... *sigh* It's an amazing game as long as it works.

After SoC I have a few other games I've started but never finished for various reasons like Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and Fallout that I'll be giving a go again.

Spider and Web. Never knew that I'd fell in love with IFs.

Thank-you!!!!

Trying my hand at Albedo - Eyes from Outer Space. After initially switching on all graphical options I decided to turn off all the superfluous stuff. Not only does it run a lot smoother, but I'm actually better able to make out what's what in the environment.

That user interface could use an overhaul as it's quite awkward. The voice acting is just plain awful, and, no, not to a level of it's so bad it's good; it's simply painful to listen to, especially since the same lines get repeated ridiculously often while searching for puzzle pieces. Which brings me to the issue of hunting for items in a 3D environment. It's something that I've never found to be great at the best of times, and they're way easy to miss here even with that 'hint that is not really a hint' button.

So, yeah, it's got its share of quirks, but it's not all bad. Would I recommend it though? Probably not.

Spirits of Xanadu is unfortunately leaving me a tiny bit disappointed. The story and overall writing is very well done, the graphics look good and the voice acting is great but the action-y parts are not very fun. To avoid frustration I went ahead and switched to the "peaceful" mode, but it unfortunately makes an (apparently) already short game even shorter. I'm enjoying the story but I'm not sure I'm getting $15 worth of enjoyment out of it.

Diablo 2 is like good wine. It aged very well.

Still struggling my way through Albedo. I don't know why because I'm less and less enamored by it as time goes by. Let's just say the whole combat shtick should just not be there as it's terrible at best. But hey! at least the voice acting doesn't suck nearly as much as I found out that for whatever reason they dubbed this game... twice! One with UK and one with American voice actor. What boggles the mind even more is that the shitty latter one is used as the default voice-over.

I wouldn't be surprised if I stopped playing before reaching the end. =/

I'm having an overdose of Pillars of Eternity! :P

I'm progressing trough the main questline, but since I reached a point that prevents me from completeing a few side quests, I think I'll revert to a previous save and clean up my tasks first. Besides, I should really get a few better pieces of equipment, since I have become filthy rich!

Aslo, I'm ready form my return to Na Pali in Unreal. I excpected the last levels to be tougher, but the main campaign was great. Also, the impressive "Extreme High End" texture mod really enhances the graphic quality of such an old (1999) game.

Don't know what to pick... help anyone?

If I could choose one I'd go for Divinity: Original Sin, as it is near the top of my wishlist.

Speaking about those that I have already played, I can recommend you Xenonauts, as it is phenomenal!

I'd recommend Rogue Legacy.

Xenonauts. It basically does the original X-Com better than the original X-Com. If you feel a little nostalgic about X-Com's jankiness, don't fret, Xenonauts still has its fair share of jank :P

Beat Albedo yesterday. Very short game. I only played in small bursts. Still can't recommend it to anyone. It's just below average at best. Oh well.

Moved onto Jade Empire (first time), and I seem to be blazing a trail through that one. Most of the different combat styles other than the some of the initial ones seem pretty useless. *shrug* The whole shmup parts that are thrown in are just plain weird. I wonder who came up with that strange idea. That said, overall I am very much enjoying this Asia fantasy romp. :)