Outlaws. I last played this one in 2019, it looks like, but I saw that Aaron Giles has added support for it to his DREAMM emulator, so it seemed a good time to replay it. I might have to replay it yet again when The Force Engine finally adds its support, too. It's one of my favorite games, so I don't need much prodding to replay it.

It runs pretty well in the emulator. Last time I played this, I played it on good difficulty because I was in the mood to just be a tourist through it, but this time I turned up the difficulty and I think I've actually gotten good at the game because I didn't have too much trouble with it at all. You just have to move carefully and recognize that the enemies can one-shot you if you're playing stupidly. I've always liked how the reload demands of the weapons force you to play more deliberately. The hardest parts of the game for me are just some of the more confusing puzzle-based levels, like the damn water house where you have to open sluice gates and flip switches to open the paths you need. It's the classic issue of wanting to just wreck stuff in an FPS but the game wants you to slow down figure out stuff. Otherwise, the game is as great as it's always been, with one of the best attempts at a pastiche spaghetti western soundtrack by Clint Bajakian and beautifully animated cutscenes. It also has my favorite enemy noises/taunts ("Where are you, marshall?!").

I never got past that part ... :(

What is the advantage of playing it in an emulator? Did it run better than the native GOG version?

I think phredreeke in the game subforum gave a good answer on that: "IMO the advantage is that you can run the game without resolution switching, and the game doesn't "take over" your computer while you run it. It also lets you run the game under Linux and Mac (including the new ARM Macs) though I've not tested that myself. Since it's an emulator it doesn't let you do anything the original game didn't do, so no widescreen or perspective correct vertical look (hoping for the force engine to give us that eventually) but it's a good option if you want to run the game with the original software rendering without messing around with wrappers"

Basically, the emulator gives a little more flexibility, I think? GOG's vanilla version is fine. DREAMM's purpose is just to emulate every Lucasarts game and ideally let you play them with less hassle than dealing with wrappers and compatibility settings.

I see, thanks for the reply!

Nox

Wizard path

Took around 10h according to galaxy.

I have beaten the game many times. Last time as wizard as well in 2009 almost 15 years to the date.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general_archive/games_you_finished_in_09/post126


It is my most replayed game. I played each path at least 3 times back in the day and wizard in 2009 (dont recall finishing conjurer but did start it)

Simply great fun yet challenging game.

But this is the first time I saw staves with unlimited fireballs or electricity bolts. That made game much much easier as I could just spam them like a machine gun. It results in them being a main weapon of choice in later end of the game.
The swamp section for example was complete cake walk because of them not a huge long chore like I remember with constant retreat to mana crystals

The version I played first time in 2000 definitely did not have them so had to be version 1.0. Unsure if GOG released with patch 1.2 initially as I dont recall them in 2009 either.

Had lots of fund with this playthrough, triggering memories of playing it as a teen. Good times.

Include me.

1. Diggles: The Myth of Fenris | post | Oct 16, 2021 - Jun 17, 2022 + Mar 1, 2023 - Mar 11, 2024 | time unknown | review pending

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Incomplete 2011 list. Add Tropico 3 Gold Edition (finished: Dec 16, review on blog and MobyGames) to it. Also played Forsaken World for a while earlier that year (review on blog and MobyGames), and briefly poked at Perfect World International again after the Genesis expansion launched.

I just wanted to tell everyone that I finally completed the DLCs for Pavel, Khan and Anna in Metro: Last Light (Redux). I have to say they were super-satisfying as always with the Metro games. I did try the Combat Simulator DLC, but I ended up getting my ass kicked too much and finally gave up. =)

Let me know if anyone has any tips for beating that one.

Rollerdrome, Mar 11 (PS Plus)-Tony Hawk meet Max Payne. Its fun but incredibly, frustratingly difficult. I couldn't get to the quarterfinals without turning off challenges and I couldn't get to the semifinals without turning on invincibility at which point there isn't much left. The background narrative felt like there would be more to it but there never was. So the bad guys won but I got a trophy? Did I end up joining them? Was the corruption exposed? The entire storyline had a very unsatisfying non-ending. There's a fun game here but it was just too hard for me. In my defense the game even goes out of its way to tell you that the house players are gunning for you and this a much more extreme season of Rollerdrome than years past. So I'd like to think I could have held my own in those normal prior years, not championship material but solid competition.

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Diggles: The Myth of Fenris

First things first, another huge thank you to Doc0075 for the game. Been poking at it since I received it, 2.5 years ago, and finally managed to finish it. And my notes for a review are huge, but I tried to summarize very briefly...

Despite it all, keeps you playing, checking what's next, except when you need to move camp, which is really tedious, and a serious problem at the end of an area, when it's also timed, so really need to be fully prepared beforehand. And then there's that other moment that you REALLY need to be well prepared for or you're toast. But being able to pack all structures and materials in stores and even nest stores is a great thing. But other objects can't be packed, which grows into an ever bigger problem as the game progresses, and you can't see what's in a store when it's packed, so good luck unpacking the right ones. But the real problem is that the diggles are frustrating in how they decide what to do, and you can't micromanage well enough, and more information would also help a lot. And diggles are really short lived, you really wouldn't expect that of dwarves... And schools can't be set on exactly what to teach, which can also be a serious problem.
Combat is really messy, so it's a good thing it's just a small part of the game and usually easy. Also, would have been useful to also be able to fill in, not just dig, and also have a platform structure, to make it easier to walk over gaps. And building listing has issues. And why can't doors be placed right at the entrance of halls?
On another note, the performance is choppy, there are some bugs with what diggles do, pathfinding and so on, plus the one with the grubs from farms. And cutscenes are annoyingly bad. And it also crashed towards the end, and since at that point I had just unpacked all stores, I wonder if it wasn't because there were too many items. I didn't try to replicate all over again, reloading from before unpacking the last few, but reloaded from a little before the crash and it happened again, so I just left those packed, not like I needed them. And the final boss fight seems really tacked on. And I could have done without the particularly objectionable scenes from the end credits.

Heart of Darkness. Eric Chahi's belated follow-up to Another World. This one is about a Commander Keen-ish boy who has to rescue his dog from an evil wizard in another dimension. In many ways it feels like most of Chahi's games combined into one. Obviously, there's the "earthling transported to another world" aspect and the cinematic platforming gameplay, but the dog feels like he came out of Doggie, while the "seriously, go f$#! yourself" trial and error gameplay and harsh deaths seem to come from Infernal Runner.

The game is quite beautiful and I would say it's good overall, but it can be very frustrating to play at times. Many sections of the game require a lot of precision to navigate but the game's handling can be very imprecise, with a certain amount of randomness in how the boy moves and how his weapons work. You can repeat a section several times and do the same things but get slightly different (mostly fatal) results each time. It's a good thing the game is very generous with its checkpoints and that the game isn't very long or it would be too infuriating to complete.

Webbed

If there's one thing to really criticize about it, I'd say it's that it can be a little hard to get into at first, because it never teaches the most crucial mechanic to the players and makes it something that you have to find out through experimentation, and then, right at the beginning, it throws finicky puzzles/challenges at you that you can't solve without having figured out and mastered this basic mechanic first. This can put off players right from the start, and I don't think it was a good idea. I've seen reviewers struggle with the game because of that, and I myself was also getting kind of frustrated with it, before I googled the first puzzle and instead found someone make mention of this mechanic I was not aware of. Once I knew about it, the game became a lot of fun.

In a similar vein, though less important, I only ever found out at the very end that the achievement stickers you collect allow you to put cosmetic accessoires on your character or turn into a different type of spider. This can also be found out only through experimentation, and who'd usually think of going to the achievement collection and clicking on individual stickers? I don't know any other game that works like that, so it could have been a bit more obvious.

Last but not least, while the general mechanics of moving around in Webbed are really enjoyable, I still wish there were more and better fast travel options at some point in the game. It can be frustrating if you have to backtrack through 6+ screens or so, especially with some of them being quite big or more complicated to move around in. That's one of the reasons why I don't feel like 100%ing the game and finding the last secrets I missed, which I would otherwise have liked to do. But it gets too tedious with the size of the areas and the ways they are connected.

With that out of the way, I have to say I came to absolutely love the game. The pixel art is gorgeous, the animations are fantastic, so detailed, cute and funny, and believe me, I don't usually call insects and least of all spiders cute. The sound is also a delight to listen to, the pitter-patter of spider feet, the guitar string plucking when hopping on spider web threads etc. And while the soundtrack could sometimes get a bit repetitive if I stayed too long in an area, it was very nice and memorable as well. As mentioned, using all the spider techniques to get around, overcome all obstacles, get things done, and most importantly improve the areas so that next time you have to pass through them, it will be so much quicker and easier, all these gameplay aspects were really great, and made the game kind of addictive. Some parts were a little more work, others more casual and relaxing, but I think it was a good mix. Story and dialogues were also sweet and sometimes funny. Definitely one of the most likable indie games I've played in recent years, up there with A Short Hike and such.

Ni no Kuni II Revenant Kingdom (XSX Game Pass)

I thought the first game was an average JRPG with awesome animation and art but dull combat and exploration. This sequel changes a few things up, some things are better, and some are worse- on balance it all ends up being average again, though I personally like it a little better.

The first game featured art and animation by Studio Ghibli, which was why it looked so good. Revenant Kingdom is done by a different art team, but still looks pretty good. The main downfall is the overworld which looks a bit ugly.

Combat is much improved and feels closer to one of the Tales series, your support team utilize their abilities without needing to be baby sat and they also draw aggression from enemies. It all comes together quite well.

The story initially felt really different. Instead of the usual save the world from the big bad person which requires you to find the great mythical sword of ass reaming, this game tricks you into thinking it's about building a kingdom and forging peace treaties with all of the other realms as you manage and build your own land. Sort of like the underrated Fable III. Unfortunately, it was only a trick. In the end it becomes about stopping the big bad dude and finding the mythical sword of ass reaming, just like always. The kingdom management was actually fun, especially recruiting citizens and assigning them jobs so that they can research or make items. In the end though, it's really all just a big side activity.

The other part of the kingdom managing side of the game really sucked. Occasionally the game forces a sort of skirmish combat mode, where you use your army to fight a battle. This was the worst part of the game, and it is forced at several points in the story- including the end game sequence. So, unlike the kingdom building, the skirmishes have to be engaged in whether you like it or not- and I didn't like it.

In the end the game is just another average JRPG as an option to similar games with real time group combat like the Tales series.

The Big Con (XSX Game Pass)

Short adventure game where you play as a teenager trying to save the family Video Store business by conning people out of their money. The gameplay consists of a series of mini games for each of the types of con, as you gain enough money to move onto the next area and eventually the main con.

It's about 6-7 hours long and just has enough gameplay activities to keep it going for that time and sell its story. I have to say though, the story is pretty predictable. It was fun though, with plenty of culture (movies and TV) jokes for if you were around in the 90's.

How does the combat of the two games compare to Tales of Arise? I wanted to play that game but I'm reluctant now after such crappy combat from Ni No Kuni.

I haven't played Tales of Arise yet, but from what I've heard it sticks to the series familiar mechanics. The main Tales game I've played is Vesperia. The first Ni no Kuni, from what I can remember, used a poor man's version of the FF XII system but without much of the depth and no gambit system for teammate AI. Ni no Kuni II and the Tales games use a more real time hack and slash system where you use regular attacks to build up potential for various special attacks. You can still change to other party members for micromanagement, especially for bosses, but the members build their own aggression to hold enemies and they use their abilities adequately for regular enemies.

I think Stranger of Paradise easily has the best JRPG real time party combat system, but that is a linear level-based game, whilst the Tales games are open overworld games like Ni no Kuni. So, it's not really comparing apples and apples. Anyway, I think SoP is only on Console Game Pass, not PC Game Pass.