Fortix 2

Picked this up in a bundle, and it's pretty fun. It's the kind of game where the difficulty level is up to you, not just b/c you can set to easy/medium/hard (you can) but because each board allows you to decide how much risk to take.

It gets lumped into "reverse tower defense" since your objective is to beat a board with towers (and also bats, ogres, dragons, fire-breathing dragons, other dragons, etc.) You do this by running around "capturing" sections of the board by enclosing them - you're safe from most enemies (except bats) while on your baseline, but vulnerable the instant you step out into the field.

You can use the boundaries you redraw to protect yourself from enemy fire and from moving mobs.

So this is where the amount of difficulty you want to take comes in. Want to be defensive and just slowly nibble the board away? You can. It's slow, but you'll die less and possibly not at all. Want to attempt some aggressive captures? Go right ahead.

Though I suspect that Leroooy Jenkins approach probably works less well on later boards where you have multiple mobs plus a barrage of heat-seeking missiles tracking you down.

There's enough strategy to engage my brain a little, and enough action to make my fingers twitchy, but if you prefer one style or the other, the game seems pretty open and flexible enough to accommodate that.

The downside is that it's a short game just to play through the main mission, but if you pick it up free or in a bundle, it's several good hours of fun, imo. Will probably replay it again on a higher difficulty before deleting.

Recommended, assuming you can pick it up at whatever price 3-5 hours of playtime is fun.

Mark of the ninja

The good:
1. beautiful graphics
2. sound design
3. one of the better stealth games
4. the challenges make you approach problems in different ways
5. good enemy variety

The bad:
1. levels tend to feel similar
2. the story is for the most part throw-away and the characters are generic
3. the difficulty is lacking, even on the new game+ mode
4. the game is short
5. checkpoint based save system (which has never worked well in stealth games. NEVER!!!)

*shiver* ? So is that good or bad? I kind of liked the ending. The protagonist was extremely uninspired, but the other crew members (minus that stupid pilot) actually had some character. The actual combat towards the end with the waves of Skaarj wasn't that bad either but again, nothing spectacular.

Gears of War 2 (Xbox One)

Pretty much what you would expect after the first game. A roller coaster, never a dull moment, action ride. Continues the over the top story (not it's strong point) and all the familiar characters come back at some point.
I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but Epic seem to get better results out of the Unreal Engine than others, even on the same 360 platform. The game still looks pretty good for it's time and platform, though the color pallet is dull- but that's a design choice by the devs. I suppose it's not surprising since Epic also made Unreal and the technology is theirs as well, makes sense they'd know how to get the best out of it.

I enjoyed it, but it could have been just a bit longer....but on the other hand, at least they knew not to draw things out just for the sake of lengthening the game. But I prefer the first game, Simply because I have the feeling that the enemy AI was better. In GoW 1 they would flank and charge you and engage in melee, flush you out of cover, they were way more aggressive. This time they seemed more prepared to just sit behind cover themselves and let you snipe them. But still a lot better than the AI of a lot games even now.

I'd go straight on to GoW3 except that I better play Halo 5 whilst it's still free.

I didn't like the ending. I don't want to spoil it for everyone else, but consider what you said about the characters and their respective fate.
As for the combat, yes, towards the end it was better. Still, remember the level where you have to climb that big tower? Didn't you find it kind of boring? I mean, the pacing for the whole game just felt so slow...

Holy Crap, what a goal! I'm surprised the ball didn't go through the net.

Uhhhm, level where you have to climb a big tower? That doesn't ring a bell for some reason :P I remember there was one where you had to rescue a scientist, and you started way below on a bridge in the beginning, and ended on the roof of the facility where you had to defend against waves of enemies until you could be extracted. But that was an ok level for me.

Had to look it up, it has been a while. The level in Avalon, where you have to go to the top of some building to shut down a planetary cannon.

VVVVVV
Short, challenging, annoying, weird, but strangely fun. It's only about 1 - 2 hours long with pointless characters and unnecessary dialog. It's weird graphics and upbeat music create an otherworldly feel and the difficulty adds tension. It's approach to difficulty is to kill you very often but also to put a save point in almost every room. There are also collectibles to help prolong the game and to give a reason for the obsessive-compulsive gamers to stick around longer.
I would not recommend buying this for full price, but it IS fun, even if only for a while.
8/10

Oh right yes, that's the 2nd from last level with all those waves of Skaarj. I relied on the flamethrower there which I learned was pretty damn over powered. It could kill even the toughest armoured Skaarj in something like 3 seconds :P

South Park: The Stick of Truth

South Park: The Stick of Truth was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, in collaboration with South Park Digital Studios, and published by Ubisoft, also Uplay is not require in order to play, which is great.
The game feature almost every character in the South Park universe up to season 17. Beside the awesome story/main quest there is a lot to do here: explore the city for hidden treasure (there is a lot of loot to be found), side quests (they are so much fun to do and the rewards are great, summon an ally to help in battles) and a lot of references from the show of course.
The game takes about 10-15h in order to complete the main quest and most of the extras. There isn't a difficulty level, but I would came back and play this again in the future because it feels a lot like watching the show, which I enojoy doing over and over. Also a quick mention of the soundtrack, that was it.
I enjoyed this from start to finish, and now it's one of my favorite games, unfortunately I'm not interested in the next South Park game, since the new developer is Ubisoft San Francisco and according to the Steam Store page: "Requires 3rd-Party Account: Uplay (Supports Linking to Steam Account)"

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

Hard West + Scars of Freedom DLC

Mixed feelings. On the other hand, I really liked it, but then again there were many bugs that I didn't like. It was also quite inconsistent; in one scenario you're on an expedition and need to handle provisions, on another you need to create blueprints and patents, on another you need to pay attention to clairvoyance energy, etc. Also I didn't like that the posse keeps switching around all the time, making you rearrange weapons and items again, but more importantly, I sometimes got confused what just happened and why. For example, in one scenario your teammate pledges loyalty to you and hopes they will always remain friends. But not 5 seconds later, you are suddenly fighting him without any apparent reason. Just let me stick to one true and tried posse, without jumping me between different parties after every few combats.

I already mentioned the bugs; the AI behavior is sometimes a little weird but the worst thing was how the game kept lagging. Now, I can't be sure if it happened because of my rig, but considering that it's less than a year old, I find it unlikely. For example, whenever I wanted to open my cards tab, I would often have to wait several seconds because the game needed to think for a while. In the 22 hours it took me to finish the game, having to constantly wait for friggin' menus is something I didn't really find tolerable. I didn't see any lag in combat encounters, though.

Bugs and constant inconsistencies aside, the game was good. The combat is fun with different abilities available (gained through the playing cards), there are a lot of different weapons (although they all mostly function the same), the maps are well designed, and nearly all of the scenarios are interesting story-wise. The overall setting is also well done, and quite bleak. With a little bit of extra polish, I would have considered the game pretty amazing.

Grim Fandango Remastered

The strengths of the game are definitely the story, the humour and the unique characters (even supporting characters are likeable and have their own personality).

Puzzle design was ok most of the time, but there are also some puzzles that were annoying or even unfair (you shouldn't have to do an action over and over again when there's no hint that the outcome might change after several tries).

I also had to use a walkthrough several times, just because the camera perspective is very weird in some places and because of that it's easy to miss a location or an item.

Besides that I really liked the game and the time I've spent with Manny and his friends (and also his foes). The remastered version worked fine for me, I didn't find any bugs and I think the improved graphics looked great (much better than the original ones). It's just a shame that they didn't improve the cutscenes as well.

Complete list of finished games in 2016

Blade Kitten: Hollow Wish Collection

It was better than I thought it would be. A very easy platformer with underdevelopped fighting mechanics, but still fun to play, especially for explorers and collectible hunters. Pleasing to eyes and ears with great music, voice-acting, graphic style, animated cutscenes, and likable characters. Controls were mostly fluid and great. The story was a little confusing at times, but not as non-sensical as other reviews made it out to be; I thought it actually suited the characters and the anime style. I also suspect some of the reviews just referred to an early stage when the second part of the game hadn't been released yet. I couldn't confirm that you get too much money in the game; I tried to explore as much as possible and still haven't found enough to buy everything there is to buy in the game. It's true though that most unlockables don't really have any use; upgrading health and stamina isn't necessary due to the low difficulty of the game, you get by without problems if you just buy one of the better weapons, and costumes are mostly cosmetic (but there are some really nice ones among them). It's not a game I would recommend to everyone, because it's not challenging at all, but I enjoyed playing it casually. And the full version is rather long for a platformer (~10 hours), but split into many levels and you can always continue from the last checkpoint, even mid-level.

The only thing I didn't like about it was the last level and final boss fight. While the rest of the game was pretty easy-going, the last level was suddenly all about timing, precision jumping, instadeaths and trial and error, and while I didn't take much notice of checkpoints before, here it could become a real nuisance to have to start over from the last one, even though the level in itself wasn't that long and even the more aggravating spots could be overcome with a little patience, but that sudden difficulty spike did not fit that well with the rest of the game and it wasn't much fun. The final boss battle was badly designed, too, because while the concept of defeating the boss was rather simple and not very challenging, it required you to use a specific move in combination with a quick pressing of another button that wasn't really required to use in the rest of the game, especially not in similar situations, and the game gave no hint that it was required here. Oh, and the constant respawning of some very aggressive opponents in certain levels was annoying as well, as they weren't tough to fight at all but the constant need to hit them during platforming and exploring quickly got on my nerves. It fit the story, but wasn't such an interesting gameplay element.

Still, all in all, quite a nice surprise for a game of which I always thought it was probably just average bundle fodder trash. It's actually quite well done and of higher quality, just not very ambitious in terms of gameplay and difficulty (but maybe that's part of why I liked it?).

Finished episodes 2 & 3 of The Walking Dead - Michonne. Not very long (I'd say 1h30 for each episode) but very good and quite brutal. I liked them.

Full list here.