It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
avatar
lukaszthegreat: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire

What a game.

I played as University, on Talent difficulty as I cant concentrate too much playing games. Kids and long hours of work prohibit commitment to fully pay attention.

And this game is hard lol! At least in the beginning.

but after 150 years or so after breaking Hive nobody could challenge me.

Miraim tried. declared a war on me. So i kicked her butt taking 3 or four cities.

made peace as my goal was not world conquer. She very quickly betrayed me. So next war was total. she tried to contact me but not once she offered surrender. So i took all of her cities.

and then spend another 150 years just building up and getting secret projects watching the videos.

Could have ended it earlier as there was no real opposition to me anymore

Yesterday I declare myself supreme leader. today scientific victory after reload, and after another reload. I nuke everyone else. Morgan, Lian, and Gaian's once city which had my cities around. A small sacrifice.

what an amzing amazing game!
avatar
Austrobogulator: First time?

I played it for the first time (well, I completed a run of it for the first time) a couple of years ago. And, yeah, truly an amazing game. Almost certainly the best turn-based 4X game.
Nah. Played it shortly after release. did not know what to do so it failed.

but in 2004 or so I played it properly and managed to do world conquer.

tried few times to play in last few years but failed big time.
DEAD SPACE

I ask for the GOG version of Dead Space a few days ago on the gifting thread and somebody kind enough to gift it.

It held up really well and the graphics imho still very-very good. The GOG version work flawlessly for my win 10 PC and I have no bugs or glitches playing it. The story itself was predictable but still decent. But the music and atmosphere are top notch. What I enjoy the most was the gunplay and weaponry. The plasma cutter is simply one of the greatest basic weapon in gaming.

It's kind of a short game with me finishing it in less than 12 hours. The medium difficulty that I choose is kinda easy for me. Once I'm familiar with the gameplay and enemy type it was a cakewalk. There's a new game plus mode but I'm gonna skip it.

So thank you again for one that gifting me the game. I had a real blast
Twin Mirror

Possibly DONTNOD's least liked adventure game? And I can see why: it's short, a bit slow, mostly talking, but lacks the emotional impact and outstanding characters of other titles, and the crime story is predictable (I say that as someone who never cares about guessing whodunnit - if even I can see it easily, they weren't trying very hard to conceal it). There are choices and different endings but it's not always clear what they mean and will result in, and it also doesn't make that much sense that they are so mutually exclusive and there is no middle ground between them. And at times the game can feel a bit too linear, giving you choices about smaller things (with only one correct solution) while not asking you about more impactful ones (some of the things the main character does without the player's influence are rather extreme).

Nevertheless, I still found the story and character relations interesting enough to play through the game once. I saw it as a plus that it's not that long, and I got the ending that seemed most fitting for the story, so I'm okay with my choices, too. I also liked some of the ideas revolving around the mind of the main character; these elements felt refreshing and also familiar, like a hallmark of DONTNOD games, reminiscent of LiS but particularly of the memory puzzles in Remember Me. So all in all, while it's not the best game of all times, I still enjoyed my time with it, and I don't regret playing it despite the lukewarm reviews.
Post edited May 01, 2024 by Leroux
Edna & Harvey: Harvey's New Eyes

Yeah, this was way more fucked up than I expected it to be. The entire Act 1 is fucking horrifying to play and the tonal disconnect of the actual story and how it is treated by the narrator feels strange to say the least.

The point and click gameplay is fun as always though, and I liked the puzzles. And the fact that they came with the skip button.

Overall, enjoyed the gameplay but was weirded out by the story.
Post edited May 01, 2024 by Nunya_009
Beyond a Steel Sky

This was a game that I got from Doc0075's donation in February 2024 community GA. Why I just finished it? In February my ISP speed to GOG is really-really bad, can't even get 1 Mbps. Downloading the first bin file is very frustrating so I decided to download it when it get better. Shitty life, Month of Ramadhan and a terrible bout with influenza then happens. I almost forgot about it but after finishing Dead Space I instantly installed it.

Why I ask for this game in the first place is because I already finished the prequel perhaps 1 or 2 years ago. Forgot exactly when but I really love it.

The game itself is a worthy sequel. A blend of nostalgia and modern QOL. When Foster went back to LINCspace I have a wide grin on my face. Also Joey is back! And it still the same old little Joey! A reminder of how great Beneath a Steel Sky is.

My criticism is the puzzles. This is maybe one the easiest adventure/point-and-click games that I have ever played and like Dead Space a few days ago this is on the shorter side of games. Also I don't think this game would really entice people that haven't play the prequel to try them. But anyone should play Beneath a Steel Sky, it's free and a legit enjoyable experience.

So thank you once again Doc0075 for donating this game. Without you I don't know if I ever gonna play this game
Post edited May 01, 2024 by zlaywal
avatar
zlaywal: Beyond a Steel Sky
I played this one for a bit, need to go back to it (unfortunately my puny 1050ti can't run well on High settings).

What I really hated was how the player character basically [spoiler]murders an innocent robot for his "rare, no longer manufactured" power cell just so that he can enter the city.[/spoiler]
Post edited May 03, 2024 by kalirion
I've just finished Overload and my god, is this game sweet. Awesome combat, great visuals and sound design, fantastic gameplay, this is the best Descent I've ever played and the best part: It's here on GoG!
Another great thing about Overload is that you can save almost anytime you want, I love it!
I'll give the game 8.5 out of 10 little space ships :)
Elli

A pleasant surprise! For a game that's normally priced 3.99 only (and that I bought for, like, 40 cents on sale, heh), I didn't expect it to be such a nice and complete game, with 6-7 hours of engaging gameplay and a variety of different environments that made sure I never got bored and was always curious for the next area. It's essentially a 3D puzzle platformer with very forgiving difficulty, kind of casual but sometimes you have to explore a bit to find the solution (the level design is pretty nice), and some sequences are timed. However, you never really lose much progress on dying, and even the timed sequences are very much doable and don't require that much skill, so I thought it was almost relaxing. The only thing I didn't like that much were the timewalking levels where you have to flee from a moving wall and start from scratch every time you die (which is a tedious idea, IMO). But thankfully there are only 6 of them, plus they turned out to be short and mostly easy, so that I beat the majority of them without dying. The graphics were cute and atmospheric, the characters and sounds were sweet and funny. All in all, despite its simplicity, I really liked the game and played through it in a couple of evenings.
I fnished Kingdom come deliverance at third attempt. Yea fighting system is annoying and lack of thirdperson camera option is terrible!. Other then that game have fantastic content. Worth to play (first third of game is little bit too hard for new player or when you get swarmed. Dlc are worth to play too, best to get Royal edition that have it all.
Eiyuden Chronicle Rising, May 5 (Xbox Gamepass)-Its a short action RPG with some light metroidvania mechanics. It reminded me quite a bit of Dust An Elysian Tail. It was very lighthearted with some amusing humor. CJ was the easiest, smoothest character to use for platforming and combat, the other two were very clunky and I mostly used them for puzzle solving when necessary. There were a lot of side quests but they were generally easy to complete. It was overall a short fun experience but at about 12 hours and most of the optional content done I'm ready to move on.

Full List
Post edited May 19, 2024 by muddysneakers
STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor (PC Game Pass)

Recently added to basic EA Access and, therefore, Game Pass. I really liked the first game, and this sequel is as good. It's better than anything vomited up by Disney in recent years, that's for sure. Respawn are a really good developer- I've said this before, but EA should just get then to make all of their games.

The game follows on 5 years after the events in Fallen Order. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really make any effort to explain why Cal was a death dealing Jedi master at the end of Fallen Order and has now lost all of his abilities. But hey, it's a video game and at least they didn't do the old amnesia thing. The story was decent up until the very final part. The combat system is better than any other Star Wars games. The bosses were easy up until the final two. Unfortunately, the final two story bosses were scripted cutscene infested shite- just as you start laying the smack down, the game interrupts you with a cutscene where you get your ass handed to you in a cutscene. Then it does it again, and a gain, and again. Like always, I feel cheated when a game does this. On the other hand, the game is free of this type of thing for most of its length.

Most of the crew return from the first game, Merrin is still the best and I need to look up her voice actress- she does a great job. So, if you like the gameplay from the first game, you should enjoy this too- IMO they are clearly the best Star Wars games ever made...though the bar isn't all that high.

The PC Game Pass version that I played is, of course, the EA App version which recognizes the Game Pass membership. It also means no achievements, because EA does achievements everywhere except their own app! I could have played the Xbox Series X version, but I decided to use this game as the first really serious test of my new PC. Jedi Survivor is known to be a very demanding game to run and also has a bad reputation for performance and crashes on PC. I did not have performance issues. I ran a performance overlay to monitor temperatures, loads and frame rate, since this was the first real test of a new system. The game suggested epic settings at 4Kwith the inbuilt AMD Fidelity FX to quality. I averaged 100fps and it was very stable- usually around 95fps in the open world and 105fps inside. I tried with the AI upscaling off as well, and performance dropped to 65fps, stable. Honestly, the game looked better with the AI upscaling on at the quality setting- especially with the better temporal resolution from the higher frame rate. I tried Ray Tracing and it's a waste of performance like usual. I did side by side comparisons with RT on and off and all I could see were a few sharper shadows, a total waste of performance.

Despite the game's reputation on Steam, I had no crashes at all- not a single one. The game does noticeably increase its CPU usage over extended play sessions, and I suspect that the game has a memory leak issue, so that people with 16G of ram may be having crashes from that. If you have a both a low to mid PC, and a current console, you are probably best playing on console as they are now stable at 60fps by all accounts.

I had one bug, which is well known and never totally fixed. There is an area where Merrin is needed to open a path for you, but she moves to the next area too soon. This was originally game breaking if you saved at this point. I saved at this point, not knowing. Luckily, reloading the save opened up the way and allowed progression- so, even though the bug still occurs, it seems like the dev's put a safe guard in place. Otherwise, bug free.
Post edited May 07, 2024 by CMOT70
Prodeus

Technically, I haven't beaten the final boss yet, so officially I didn't quite finish it. But I've seen all levels now and I think I'm done with it. I don't really have any incentive anymore to try and beat the boss, even though I know I would eventually succeed - but for what? There isn't even a proper ending (I've checked on YT). I've seen people call it the best of the new wave of retroshooters, so this review might be an unpopular opinion, but personally, I enjoyed DUSK, Amid Evil, Ion Fury, Hedon, HROT, and even the original classics like Quake I & II a lot more. This one never fully clicked with me. Maybe that's because I enjoy atmosphere and exploration in FPS more than challenge. Prodeus felt much more game-y/arcade-y.

Speaking of challenge though, at least Normal difficulty was an odd mix: no manual saves, just checkpoints, and if you die before reaching the first checkpoint, you have to restart the level from scratch (which I didn't like). But once you've activated a checkpoint, you will just be revived there on death, and nothing else will reset, so death becomes rather meaningless - you can keep shooting at the enemies until you die, come back, shoot them some more, die, come back and finish them off (which I didn't like either).

It's not quite an arena shooter, there is free exploration just like in the others, but most of the times enemies come in waves and spawn directly in front of your eyes, which I was not that fond of. I much prefer finding them during exploration and also being able to surprise them sometimes or jumping when they lurk behind corners unexpectedly. I was also unimpressed with some of the enemy types because they were just lightning blue versions of types I had encountered before, they just took longer to kill. Other enemies had shields, which - unless I overlooked something - also just meant they were more bullet sponge-y, and that's rather boring to me.

The general gameplay and the weapons were nice enough, the level design was hit or miss. A few levels were very memorable and fun to explore, with distinct settings that differed from previous levels (and while playing those I felt like this game is awesome), others were comparatively bland or just arenas, all the environments and textures felt same-y (while playing those I thought the game was kind of lame and boring). In some levels, ammunition was balanced well (or bordering on generous), in others it was sparse, or infinite. There were optional challenge levels based on a speedrun principle, and that didn't interest me at all.

The game has you hunting for ore collectibles, mostly in secret areas. And on the overland map (yes, this might be the first FPS I've seen with with level selection through overland map, not sure if I like it or not) - on the overland map you can select a store level and spent the ore on new weapons. I think some weapons and abilities are only available through such purchases, and not to be found in the other levels. It was a decent motivation for finding secrets, felt somewhat rewarding, but only somewhat, because you still need to collect quite a bunch of those in order to afford something, especially later on. Now that I've been through all levels, there are still two weapons and one other feat that I haven't purchased yet, and I don't feel like replaying levels on the off-chance that I will find secrets I missed the first time, or playing those speedrun levels over and over again, until I find 40 more of these ores or so, just to see one or two more weapons, when I've already (almost) beaten the game anyway.

I've seen people compare Prodeus to DOOM (2016), and maybe that's accurate in some ways. So if you loved DOOM (2016), chances are you might like Prodeus, too. But so far, I couldn't really get into DOOM (2016) either, for similar reasons as I listed above. Don't get me wrong, I still think this is a very competent retroshooter that you can have fun with, and some of the time I really did. I just wasn't as excited about it as I was about the other retroshooters I've played. Decent recommendation, but to me certainly NOT the best of the retroshooters. YMMV, due to different preferences.

PS: Oh, right, there was a story of sorts, too. Don't ask me what is what about. Something similar to Quake and Doom, I guess, but I never really got into it enough to care, so it seemed a bit unnecessary to me (it's mostly told through level description text only).

PPS: Another oddity I noticed - you have to click six time on the menu screens in order to get to the game, i think more than in any other game I've ever played.

PPS: Prodeus has modding support for custom levels though, which is pretty cool. The music, while a bit minimalist, was nice too (same composer as Amid Evil, if I'm not mistaken)
Post edited May 09, 2024 by Leroux
Loddlenaut

Kind of what you get if you cross Subnautica with Viscera Cleanup Detail and turn the result into a short cozy casual kid friendly retro-style indie game. It was somewhat cute and enjoyable, and I applaud the effort to create games like this that are accessible to all ages, not all gloom and doom and don't rely on violence as central game mechanics, but ultimately it lacked something that could have made it truly memorable and actual fun. I can identify several possible reason for that.

For one, you are not really playing a character like in games as A Short Hike or Lil Gator Game. Your loddlenaut is not only name-, face- and genderless, they also never talk. Really the only think that gives them a hint of personailty is that your quest giver makes some comments that suggest the loddlenaut might have taken a liking to loddles (some sort of fish or tadpoles in the game). The loddles themselves can be named and fed so that they evolve, but the game doesn't really give you a good reason for doing that, it's completely optional and has no real meaning. There are also too many of them to get really attached or something, at least once they start reproducing, so while initially I though it was fun to give them names and care for them, it soon felt pointless to me. There is a bit of a story to discover in the form of employee tags with quotes on, but there is not much to it.

The gameplay mechanics revolve around cleaning a small ocean. You remove gunk and goop and collect trash that you can recycle into crafting materials. With these materials you can then built new gadgets and tools for your loddlenaut. And this could have been fun and motivating, except the crafting system is very basic. The game is only a few hours long and there are only a handful of upgrades that you can craft, plus the selection of craftable gadgets is gated by your current quest stage. Which means you can't decide to build stuff before the game deems it necessary. You get a new quest to clean a new area of the ocean, this area involves a new way of cleaning, so the game unlocks the gadget required for it, and then you absolutely have to craft this gadget in order to progress. All of these gadgets are just necessary tools for the chores you have to do. So you get some kind of scooter to ride on at some point, but it's only good for cleaning puddles. You don't really get a vehicle that facilitates movement or exploration or something like that, potentially increasing the open world fun, nothing that a player would really be enthusastic about. And that's where this system fails, IMO. Yes, you also get upgrades for being able to breathe longer underwater or for prolonging your boost ability, but these are not fun upgrades, they only ever so slightly diminish inconveniences you have to deal with - why is there a limited boost ability anyway? It adds nothing, just makes the game slower.

And that brings me to another decision I thought unfortunate: Whenever you clear an area, you get a quick travel point to it, a small ship/station that you can travel from and that you can also use as storage. But there is very little reason to quick travel to areas you've cleaned already. It would have been much more useful to have these quick travel points and the storage nearby while you're still working in an area. Instead, I always had to backtrack on "foot" when my backpack was full or I needed to get back to the home zone in order to recycle and craft. This only prolonged the game length, but without resulting in much additional value, because even though the ocean is comparatively nice to look at, you won't be all that amazed anymore if you constantly have to do the same trips back and forth. And the game intentionally forces you to backtrack, e.g. by making the microplastics vacuum cleaner hold less miscroplastics than are to be cleaned in area, so you have to travel back to the home zone to empty it. The backpack is also too small for the various types of trash you can find, especially if you also carry crafted tools. Though with regard to the latter, I only found one of them useful (oxygen rings) and never understood what you should use the others for and why. And last but not least, I often had to search for the last element to be cleaned in order to finish a quest about clearing an area, while I was at 99% already. And then it often turned out to be just a single bottle or whatever somewhere that I hadn't been able to pick up immediately because my inventory was full. Talking of a needle in a haystack. Even the radar did not always help to locate such tiny spots in a big ocean area.

All in all, I mostly enjoyed my time with this cozy game, though in the long run it felt a bit more like colorful busywork. I was more distracting myself with Loddlenaut than really having a fun time. There just wasn't enough here to remember it for long, no future indie classic, it's all a bit too linear and simple.
Post edited May 11, 2024 by Leroux
Lost in Play, a beautiful adventure game, the animations are incredible, the graphics are like watching an animated series. The mini games are great. For adventure game lovers, the game reminds me of other games like Tsioque.
Outcast - Second Contact

Another game I finished that was donated by CarChris in April Community GA. Thank you once again.

I'm kinda torn with it. On one side this is a buggy remake with glitches everywhere. On another side is the world of Adelpha and its inhabitants is as charming as ever and the quests are still fun and enjoyable. If only it ran more smoothly.

I manage to 100% it so it's an additional bit of fun for me
Attachments:
Post edited May 14, 2024 by zlaywal