I just completed the Blood and Wine expansion for Witcher 3 on Xbox One. I loved this expansion a lot. The new area was amazing and the plot of the main quest had some really cool twists.

Halo 5: Guardians (Xbox One)

Microsoft made the odd move of making it free to play for a week, still 3 days left too. I thought it would be just the multiplayer, but no, it's also the single player/co-op campaign as well. Which is strange as the single player campaign is all I'm interested in and is only 8 to 10 hours long, so now I've finished it and don't have to buy the game!

First of all, it's an 87GB download! Which I think makes it the biggest single game download I've ever done. Lucky XBL is fast, my internet is fast and my ISP treats anything Xbox as unmetered.
It's still Halo. The story gets continued, but I don't like where it's gone so much. The Covenant are still one of the best enemies to fight in a FPS with their combined arms tactics and pretty decent AI. The newer Prometheans are still not as much fun to fight as the second enemy, but at least they're better than the deceased Flood.

The maps that the battles occur on are huge and quite open and now have far more vertical freedom thanks to the new movement abilities the Spartans have. The smarter enemies like the Elites happily use the map to get around behind you if you're stupid enough to loose track of them, and like always- getting hit unaware by an Elites energy sword is instant death. I've always liked how the main melee weapon in Halo is also one of the deadliest weapons in the game.

Gameplay changes up often as well. One minute your driving a Scorpian Tank, then you'll be flying a Banshee and then on foot with the usual Halo necessity of constant weapon changes requiring you to mix up play style.

So it was decent, it still did a lot of the good things well. But overall I don't like where it's gone. The story for a start, and the shift of focus off Master Chief. But my main issue is the now constant and compulsory addition of having 3 squad mates. Halo has always had play sections where you have companions as part of the story (like the Arbiter), but it was always essentially about a single character- well okay and his non physical AI companion. I don't like having tag alongs. Some of the enemies seem to have had their health way upgraded to compensate for the extra team firepower, I don't like that much- the Hunter Worms and Knights are now bullet sponges to a point that is almost ridiculous!

But it was still good shooter fun and the good stuff is still there and not outweighed the unfortunate new features. Like always with these sorts of games, if single player is the only interest then it's initially WAY overpriced, the real value is in multiplayer which is as popular as ever. That is why I never expected to be playing it for a few years yet, when it drops to about $20. But the opportunity to play it free presented itself, so opportunity taken.

<span class="bold">Life Is Strange</span>

Life Is Strange is an episodic game developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Square Enix. There are five episodes, each takes 2-3h to finish, depending on how much you explore and interact with everything.
The game has some great visuals: , [url=http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=715796852]#2, , and an amazing [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnG6icGIm0o&amp;list=PLT1zim-_E9NEHF7GfkgInhE_glOTcK9S-&amp;index=1]soundtrack.
When I first saw this game, I thought it would be similar to games such as: The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands. To some extent it actually it is that, but a lot better for the following reasons:
- no quick time events
- choices matter, also there is no timer to decide
- the gameplay mechanics that involve rewinding time to solve puzzle are fun to use, also the puzzles are great
There is a lot of replay value here, mainly because of the choices, they do matter. Also you can interact with so many little things, such as: almost any character you see, take many hidden photos(collectibles), and you can interact with almost any item as well.
I have nothing bad to say here, I enjoyed this from start to finish and I gonna play it again really soon.

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

Mirror's Edge - My annual playthrough of this game, as enjoyable as always. Though I always forget how short the game and how early some moments (especially the storm drain) happen. The atrium portion during the "Kate" level is still one of my favorite parts of the game.

Star Wars: Starfighter - An arcadey space combat game, compared to others in the genre like Freespace this one is extremely simple. You don't have to manage shields or speed in this game, but it's still a fun game to power through without too much challenge (that comes in the later missions). The final mission turns into a 6-DOF game when you fly inside the droid control ship.

Ultimate General: Gettysburg - Wow, this game has had me entranced for the past week as I have been playing through the Gettysburg battle, trying different tactics to outwit the surprisingly challenging AI. The simple graphical representation of the battlefield makes understanding what's happening quick, but figuring out how to position infantry and artillery tricky. Overall, an excellent strategy game that contains enough detail and nuance to make it worth revisiting.

Just finished the original Tomb Raider 1 for the 12,384th time. Think I might have another run at Anniversary to see how they match up step for step.

I really pity people that have at least never played the 1st three TRs. They are such classics and, while the graphics have aged, they simply do not lose their flare and their fun.

Samorost 2 (Point-and-click)

Samorost 1 is free-to-play at the developer's website, HERE, along with several other short adventures.

I really love games by Amanita, with Botanicula currently being by favorite. They're quirky, they're cute, and they're fun to figure out.

The Samorost games contain my favorite character, the space gnome, but be aware that the first two are very short, and among the first created by the company. (See the full rundown of release dates on Amanita's wiki HERE.) The earliest titles were made to be browser-based flash games, which is why the Samorost 2 playing area takes up a smallish area of the screen (if you have your destop set at 1920x1080, anyway.)

The game will open up full-screen with a black background, but if you hit the Esc button, it will play windowed. Gameplay itself consists of finding clickable areas, then figuring out the correct sequence -- and sometimes timing -- to allow you to progress.

There are seven levels to complete, and as you start each one, you will be given a level code so that you can return to that area if you need to turn off the game, or just feel like revisiting. You can find the walkthrough HERE, and the level codes are the first thing you'll see, so no worries if you don't want spoilers. ;)

In closing, Samorost 2 is a short, fun romp through one of Amanita's earliest games. I personally would not pay full price for the game unless I was buying directly from the developers in order to support them, and recommend getting it on sale. Definitely looking forward to Samorost 3!

Bioshock Infinite

I've realised why it's not called Bioshock 3, it's an almost completely different game compared with the last two. The game was more cheerful than the last game, mainly because you are in wide open areas a lot compared to dingy wet run down areas. The music is really good, and I like how they made Older versions of newer songs like "Everybody wants to rule the world". Only problem I had was how the last 15 minutes of the story is continuous plot twists and confusion, and then it gets even more confusing after the credits end. I would recommend this game however, especially seeing as you can get it quite cheap now with all the sales on.

Make sure you play the DLC's. (The ones taking place in Rapture)
I'd say they're worth playing.

Invictus: In the Shadow of Olympus

The game I got from "The Community Giveaway", donated by PaterAlf. I picked it because it was just staying on the list for a long time sad and unloved… so it’s not sad anymore because I did get it and I have just finished it. As for the love… well, it will remain unloved ;) I had some fun with it but it’s definitely not the game I may ever love.

The game is a RTS/RPG hybrid. At the beginning you can choose two out of ten heroes. Later you can recruit additional two. I went with a female team and chose Hippolyta and Electra at the beginning and added Arachne and Atalanta later. Each hero has some command points and before each mission you can recruit some units. Each of them has a different command and gold cost so you can bring just a few of them. During a mission you can’t recruit new units, you have to fight with what you have. You can, however find some useful items and replenish your reserves of troops that you can hire in between missions. As you can expect you can level up your units and thus getting better bonuses etc. Obviously your heroes are the most important part of your army, each of them has a special move called appeal (be that fireball, lightning, transformation into a huge spider and increased speed for my chosen heroes, respectively) that you can use from time to time (you have to spend god points for them). So in theory the game seems to be fine…

…sadly, in practice it’s not. I’m not even complaining about ugly early 3D graphics. The game is rather clunky and controlling your troops can be frustrating. But that’s not the reason I call it a bad game. There is something worse: the game is simply boring. You do the same all the time: take your troops here, kill some enemies, explore the map even farther, kill another group of enemies, repeat until you win the game. Sure, I exaggerate a bit, there are some mission with slightly more complicated objectives (for example you have to hurry and kill a group of bandit before they kill helpless villagers or solve extremely simple puzzles to open a new area) but nothing to keep the game interesting. The biggest challenge of the game is its clunky controls. Sure, a few of your units die here and there but my team of heroes was rather weak and I finished the game without problems. What was supposed to be entertaining in this game? In the oldest base-building RTS games you at least had a sense of progress: you start with a single building with little defenses, whereas your opponent’s base is fully developed. You have to defend yourself, build a proper base, create a lot of units and destroy him. Sure, it’s very simple and modern RTS games add a lot to that concept but it did work well in 90s. Invictus has nothing like that. You just pick your opponents one by one. You don’t even have to manage your God Points as I finished the game almost without using any Appeals at all. From time to time I changed my troops but I never noticed a significant different. Every build seemed to work more or less the same. So the game failed at challenging me and thus it gave me just a little bit of fun. The only thing I enjoyed a lot was multiple Greek mythology references.

TL;DR: not a bad game per se but nothing special to keep a player entertained.



Full list

Day of the Tentacle Remastered

Probably my favorite classic adventure game (The Walking Dead is my favorite modern adventure). It could be that I remembered scenes from the original version just enough so that I didn't run into too many "how the F was I supposed to figure to try that?"-moments, that so often plague adventure games. I mean, sure there are a few, but for the most part things actually make sense - well, more or less - which you wouldn't believe at a first glance, given the wacky setting. Having a cartoon mindset helps (like for example, how can you make a cat look like a skunk?)

The graphics overhaul looks amazing, I really like the visual style. The game is a bit on the shorter side but I don't mind: it's better to have a short but golden experience from start to finish rather than artificially lengthen it. I mean, okay, if there's one thing I didn't care for that much, is that you need to run between the Chron-O-Johns quite a lot, especially if you're not sure which items are needed and where, but that's pretty much my only complaint. I really like the charm of this game and its characters, so if for some reason you're an adventure game fan but haven't tried this one out yet (although I don't see how that equation could be possible), I would definitely recommend this game! And even if you have beat the original version in the past, I would still recommend the remaster, because it just looks so damn great now.

You don't need to run between the chron-o-johns.
You can just drag the item to their portraits in the inventory.

Oh. That would have been useful to know beforehand :D

Super Mario 64

One of the original 3D platformers, this game sees you running around Princess Peach's castle trying to collect Power Stars in order to rescue Peach from Bowser. There are pictures throughout the castle that each to lead to levels where you have to complete a series of tasks to get each star. It's very different from any other Mario game I've played, Mario can punch for once thing. There are times when it can get really annoying, particularly turning on tight ledges is a real problem and the lack of friction between Mario's shoes and the ground. Overall it was a good game, I think I prefer the 2d games though.

Reverse Crawl

A short TBS game with lots of different troops, traits and upgrades. It was a little easy in the end, but there is still New Game+ (which I asume is harder) and an endless mode (which might be gun for a while).

I liked it. The title is misleading though. You might be a dead king and your daughter a necromancer, but you are not really the bad guy here and you don't prevent heroes from conquering your realm.

There's some replaybility, because you can choose different battles, unlock different stuff and make different decisions. Guess I will replay it at some point.

Complete list of finished games in 2016

I'm close to finishing that as well. Might have this afternoon if I hadn't installed 'To the Moon' instead :)

Agree with your points, and also generally enjoying it and find it entertaining though not sure I'd actually get to replaying it.