Just finished LEGO Marvel's Avengers

Just the base game, story-mode only, no DLC yet even if I have the season pass.

What to say, apart the fact it was easily one of the weakest LEGO games I've played. I know I know, I've read online that it's much better once you completed the solo campaign and that the DLCs are quite good. But all was so boring that I'm done with it for a while, especially with the last Witcher 3's DLC coming out next week.

Yeah, disappointed, because where other LEGO movie tie-in games did a pretty good job, this one was smelling of pure money grab. On the technical side it's still as good, but dialogues make no sense and are clearly cut-and-pasted directly from the movie, you barely can follow the plot if you haven't watched the movie...

TL;DR : not fun. All the fun seems to be AFTER having completed the game, which is not waht a game should do.

So far in 2016: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post46

Just finished the Soviet campaign in Blitzkrieg, thus completing my first run through the game. Honestly, this game was hard but didn't take quite as much time per map as Blitzkrieg 2. I frankly liked Blitzkrieg 2 better but think that both games are excellent additions to a real time tactics or military game library. This game had a pretty heavy emphasis on the artillery, or at least how I played, and less on quick armor combat. Infantry were interesting, the poor guys bore the brunt of the fighting for me and normally there were only a few individuals of their number left. The game look pretty good also with the pseudo 3D environment; 2D infantry, trees, and buildings; and finally the 3D vehicles. That did combine into some terrible and confusing bottlenecks and traffic issues as path finding kept on messing up with nits seemingly having no idea how to work around certain objects. Easy recommendation.

Warlock - Master of the Arcane (gift from zeo's community steam GA)

As a quasi-4x game, I must say I didn't actually "master" Master of the Arcane yet, but I did tinker about enough to learn the basics and then played through a skirmish mode game (10-11 hours).

It's...an interesting game, and the comparisons to Civ 5 are apt in terms of basic play. However, there are some minor interface issues (the game is a bit too reliant on just left-clicking for multiple actions, and occasionally that gets things mixed up - I swear I'm pressing the icon for 'Rest' and suddenly my unit is off and running to the hex under the rest icon, for whatever reason.

Eventually I learned just to try and make use of some of the hotkeys that do exist ('R' for rest), but it is an example of the game not being perhaps quite as polished as others in the genre.

If comparing it to civ, the economic system is vastly stripped down, as is the 'tech tree' (here it's more of a magic random grab-bag), and the diplomacy. There's also no campaign or custom scenarios to speak

What's left is really just a bit of exploration and combat. All skirmish all of the time.

It's ok in that regard, but not quite as addictive as I'd hoped playing the demo. Part of the issue is the in-game help is often lacking. It quickly becomes clear that cheap skeleton units are effective against archers, and yet fodder against mages. Fair enough. But with the relatively vast array of buildings and units, it was often unclear (to me) what strategy I should be pursuing in city building with cities from 6 different races and why I was not able to unlock certain units at all.

Case in point, I had a quest to build a holy shrine. No option to build one in any of my cities. Quest failed, that deity angered. Much later, get a quest to build a different shrine. Toggle out of game to figure out WTF.

Oh. Answer makes...sense I guess.

Compared to similar fantasy-themed 4x games, or the clear model it's working from (Civ 5) it feels pretty stripped down. The upside is that it's easier/faster to just jump into a game (civ 5 in particular is incredibly slow booting for me).

All in all I guess I'd give it a B-, but in a genre with lots of A/A+ options (and I think this game confirmed the parts I like most about 4x games are exploring, research, and diplomacy), I'm not sure how often I'll come back to this. Still, I quite enjoyed checking it out, and suspect I'll come back and jump in a pure melee from time to time.

<span class="bold">Type:Rider</span>

This is essentially a magistral lecture on the history of writing, priting, and typography, cleverly disguised as a minimalistic (but gorgeous) physics-based puzzle platformer. You control what most people say is a colon, but I'm more of the opinion that it's actually an umlaut symbol, if only because the natural relative position between both dots is horizontal rather than vertical. Pedantic digressions aside, the main goal of the game is to clear levels of varying nature and increasing complexity and difficulty, all the while you collect as many typographic symbols as you can. Every chapter contains the letters from a to z, 6 asterisks (which unlock new pages of the History of Typography), and a relatively hidden, pseudo-challenging-to-find ampersand. Each one of them, of course, in the type corresponding to the main theme of the level, which drastically changes from chapter to chapter in order to reflect the historical period the current font is representative of.

The game mechanics are quite simple and, despite a somewhat counterintuitive and surprising control scheme, the game can be totally completed (with the exception of a couple of silly and dispensable achievements) in a few hours. As a matter of fact I completed all the levels yesterday night in one sitting, and I only had to replay two chapters today in order to find two ampersands that managed to fool me the first time around. The most important thing though, at least to me, is that it managed to get me interested in a topic as dull at first sight as typography. You can of course play it without bothering to read any of the historical info, but I'd strongly advice you against it, if only to be able to discover the long and interesting story behind some fonts you see and use everyday, and probably take for granted.


My list of finished games in 2016

Shadow Warrior 2013.

It's an FPS where the sole melee weapon is actually one of the strongest and most diverse weapons in the game. That's not to say the other weapons weren't any good - It gives the player more options in effective playing styles.
This diversity is what keeps the game entertaining - other than that it's a bit repetitive. Also, there is one battle near the end that almost drove me up the wall - the difficulty spike was out of this world (I never died more than once or twice even in the toughest battles, but in that one I died 8 times in a row).

Visuals were nice (even if there was wayyyy too much bloom in most scenes for my taste) and so is the audio.
It's full of corny/crude/macho jokes, so if you can't stand those, it's better to stay away from this one.

It has some unusually long play time for an FPS (17 chapters, most of which take between 45 and 90 minutes to play through if you go searching for all the secrets). Which is commendable but if it had been even longer I think it would have become too repetitive.

Overall, if you're looking for a fun, lighthearted FPS with some epic badassery, This is an excellent choice.

I just went through Strife, I played with the classic graphics and modern controls. I really liked it, it is definitely one of my favorites of the old, sprite based shooters. However, I did find it rather frustrating for a couple of reasons: 1. Boss battles seemed really cheap to me, usually if I lost it was in one or two hits and I never had a good idea what went wrong. 2. The freaking spider-ceiling-robot-things, I think this was by far the more frustrating aspect between the two because they are really hard to see, sometimes cloaked, and they do tons of damage very quickly. That aside I really enjoyed everything else about the game, the story was a decent 90's comic book type story, the graphics were easy on the eyes, the music was pretty nice and catchy, the level design made more sense to me than other shooters of the era, and finally the shooting was very satisfying. I think that about wraps it up.

Skyrim. I did play a LOT of it this month. I finished main quest, guild quests and most quests I guess. It did almost become my life but now I can play other games again! I had fun and feel a bit empty inside now, ending kinda sucked like always but what a journey.

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

Skimming through my gigantic backlog in search of something to play and finish quickly, I decided on Tulpa. I knew I was up for something short, but I never expected to beat it in a little over an hour! Now, I'm a firm believer in the "good things come in small packages" saying, so its short duration is not the reason I haven't liked it very much. The culprits are instead its poor controls and the little sense some puzzles made.

About the controls: the game seems to have partial controller support, as you can move both main characters and make one of them jump. But you cannot switch between them, nor make any of them interact with anything. Keyboard and mouse it is, then. And considering the secondary character (a ghostly man who floats around) can interact with some objects from a distance, a mouse is probably the best way to control it... or it would be, if the interface didn't feel so unresponsive and laggy.

The game is marketed as a point-n-click puzzle platformer, but in fact most of it are point-n-click puzzles. Considering what I just said about the mouse controls, add a couple of puzzles that made no sense to me and another one in which you could inadvertently reach a failure state without the game telling you, and you'll understand why I didn't enjoy it that much.

On the other hand the art style is gorgeous and quite unique (even though it makes use of a very limited colour palette) and the atmospheric music serves its purpose very well. The story, albeit a little disturbing, seems quite deep and spiritual (not surprisingly, considering what Tulpa is), and I wish I could have gotten more into it.

My list of finished games in 2016

Torchlight 2

After having set the game aside about 2 years ago when my co-op team disbanded, I came back to it again this week. Top character was at lvl 43, so I was already pretty far along. Beat the main questline tonight (at lvl 52).

As a single player game, it's pretty well done. Lots of customizability, and lots of loot. And even with the main quest done there are still things one can do (do a more difficult repeat of the main quest, play through with other classes, buy maps to other hidden dungeons).

On the whole I'd call it a B+ as a single player game- not the most enthralling ARPG ever, but solid where it counts (stabbing, looting). Was definitely a bit more fun back when I had other friends playing it. I think I might have liked it better playing through with a different class other than Berserker, but wanted to at least get through the main quest and cross it off the backlog list.

inFAMOUS Second Son (PS4)

Sony's superpower open world franchise. It's the third full installment in the series. Like previous games you chose to use your powers to help others and generally do good (famous) or destroy and be a general all round dick (infamous). The good part about that is the 4 main powers that you build up have different skill trees based upon good or evil play style. Think of it along the same lines as Light and Dark sides of the Force in a well known Sci Fi Fantasy series of movies. It gives a clear reason to play the game twice if you like it enough to do so. However one issue this system has is that the evil play style doesn't really fit the overall story- which is focused on doing something most people would consider "good".

It's a pretty decent entry into the genre- the powers are fun to use, but once you branch into new skill trees (all story based) there's rarely any need to go back to the old powers except for when the story enforces it. So gaining each new power really feels like a whole new chapter.

I thought the story flowed along okay. The main character I got to like, he's a typical young smart ass type- but not in a way that just makes you think "jerk". He's sometimes quite funny in a sarcastic sort of way.
If there's any issue it's maybe that the side quest of gaining 100 percent control of the city feels a bit "by the numbers' and repetitive.

Overall anyone that has a PS4 and likes these sort of open world games should play it. Personally I liked Saints Row 4 better- it's just funnier and doesn't take itself as seriously. Overall though I like Sunset Overdrive the best because of it's much more detailed and skillful traversal system where getting up to some places is like a mini puzzle instead of just holding down a parkour "run anywhere" button like in SR4 or inFamous. But they're all decent games that I like, so I suppose I'm a fan of the genre then.

I just got through Men of Valor. Kind of don't know what to say about it, it was wonderful about 70% of the time and the rest it was frustrating to the point where I probably won't play the game again.

I'd like to talk about the game but I am so demoralized I'll just give a heads up about the frustrating parts. Those bullets that fly all over the place for ambience in a lot of games? Yeah, they hurt you here and they go through cover a ton of the time. Full health in this game is like MOHAA at 50%. I had to use cheat codes (still reeling from that, I never do that to help beat a game) for the last level there is so little ammo and there are enemies and bullets (not the same per se) coming at you from so many cheap locations that it is ridiculous. Your character gets hung up on too many edges, cannot walk over much and takes too much damage too easily. Honestly I'm not really sure if I should feel bad for using the cheat codes as you still take damage in God mode anyway from the artillery and small arms fire that in most games would be embellishments. The game was great but had so many moments that just dragged on and on to the point that the 30% bad lasted as long to longer than the 70% good. The Easy is hard, I played 99% of the game on medium however and just could not beat that last level without assistance. It's really too bad because the game was great so often that the fact that it leaves this bitter a taste in its wake is frustrating in and of itself. This was the hardest FPS I ever played to my recollection but not because it was supposed to challenge you but because something effed up of was so cheap that you need to memorize the section and repeat the same 30 minutes ten times. I spent three hours on the last level today alone and a few on it last night. For my sanity I had to end it.

Lastly, there are no quick saves or game saves outside of checkpoints and some check points cannot be loaded from. Man. I am depressed. If you like historical games and either do not ind or like the Vietnam setting get it anyway, maybe the game won't hate you, I watched somebody else play and I swear it just wasn't the same game. Our freaking movement speeds weren't the same.

Once again, I recommend if you pass the criteria to get it. I wanted to talk about the gun porn and the setting, but I can't. Too bitter right now.

MGS V The Phantom Pain

151 hours and I still have not gotten through all the side opps. Only 2 extreme difficulty missions remain but I already saw the true ending and all the rest,.

One hell of a game. It's what I wanted out of MGS 4 and what Peace Walker should have been.

Just wish I wasn't forced to take a primary and secondary weapon since I had other equipment that filled that role. Better mission variety would have been nice but I still had a ball with them.

Then there is the cut or unfinished content which felt like Konami just had to get one last middle finger in before everyone was sent back to the Pachinko mines.

I haven't finished that but I think i'm pretty much at the ending or soon. Good game but narrative failure. Still I have much fun listening those quiet songs when riding a jeep in motherbase.

quiet life and too shy are my favourites.

My chopper music was set to "Rebel Yell". I didn't have much of a problem with the narrative myself but I can totally see why people would.

Youtube search mgs v quiet life then there is suddenly quiet rape scene. ok.. what I just wanted that music.