Games finished in 2024:

01 The Inquisitor (11.02, PC [Linux], single playthrough)
02 Mars: War Logs (14.04, PC [Linux], single playthrough)
03 Alone in the Dark (2024) (15.04., PC [Linux], single playthrough)
04 100 Funny Cats (17.04., PC [Linux], single playthrough)
05 The Excavation of Hob's Barrow (22.04., PC [Linux], single playthrough)
06 Cats Hidden in Bali (26.04., PC [Linux], single playthrough)
07 Cats Hidden in Italy (27.04., PC [Linux], single playthrough)
08 Cats Hidden in Maple Hollow (19.05., PC [Linux], single playthrough)

Mass Effect 1 Remastered

A bit of a surprise. Bought the trilogy for nostalgia, but somehow the game managed to pull me in over the course of a couple of months.
There is of course enough said and known about this specific title. Personally, i found this to be the weakest of the trilogy but with one a very compelling end game. If not for the remastered graphics, i would have never decided to play through this title again! The age really makes its self known on several places, not to mention choices in game design.
For this playthrough i went with Femshep, and romanced Liara for the first time in my life ;). Also let Ash die, killed the spider queen and saved the council.

Hoorah!!!

Let's see what 2 has on offer in the coming months


The story so far

I still need to finish my first playthru but the start was a little slow and I didn't like the combat.

How so?

Dimension of the Past (Quake Enhanced Mission Pack)

I gave this one a second chance, after hating it the first time, and I managed to get through now, but it wasn't much fun. I still stand by my initial verdict that this is the least interesting and least enjoyable of all mission packs included with the enhanced edition of Quake. It starts out well enough but quickly becomes a painful slog through mostly bland and forgettable level design with cheap ambushes and traps, long corridors full of the same type of opponents running towards you, or explosive fights in tight corners, and also a frequent imbalance or scarsity of ammo and healing resources (half of it hidden in secret areas). If you're not part of the 'git gud' crowd, I think you can safely skip this or prepare to savescum your way through it for the sole reason to be able to appreciate the other mission packs with their creative and balanced level design even more, in comparison to this. Meh.

Subterra (Steam)

Small RPG Maker game that I randomly bought years ago for something like 50 cents, using credit from selling those pointless trading cards on Steam. It's a 4-5 hour long JRPG condensed right down to just the essentials. It was worth 50 cents, not so sure if it was worth the time spent though, since much of the time ended up being just finding the objectives within the maze-like dungeons. It was okay.

Its been about a year or so since I played but I think I was expecting something closer to Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights style combat. And the story hadn't drawn me in yet.

Ooh yea figures. . . That is something entirely different. . . Myself, i usually go tank style. . . It is quite fun to have those supporting types with you, blasting through a door and seeing the first 4 enemies getting hit by warp and overload, flying through the sky. I love that, and certainly the combo's you can pull off in 2. Though i try not to get to involved with that shit myself anymore. Just the commander, you here, you there, grenade etc etc. But yea, this game is a lot more active than any you mentioned :) not to mention the clunky state of the first game. If you also enjoy action titles i would try and encourage you to pull through the old styled misery put on you by the first title. 2 and 3 are so much more smoother, the combat also becomes a lot more challenging. it is way harder to cheese through certain situations in the follow0ups

Like a Dragon 8: Infinite Wealth

Just finished the game two days ago and while I adored most aspects like the gameplay and story, a couple things fell short, really short.
A few characters were utterly mishandled and others haven't had enough screentime, but all in all I'd say it's an amazing game, a 8.5/10.
I thought the ending would've been different, but the last boss was a treat nonetheless and I'm excited to see where the sequel will lead Kasuga, well Ichiban, next. :)

Will revisit the game after a short break. I bought the deluxe edition upgrade solely for the New Game Plus Mode, that's a terrible thing to do, I know, but I enjoy replaying my favourite RPGs a second time in NG+. :P

The Punishment Due (Quake Enhanced Mission Pack)

With a name like that, I feared it would actually be just as bleak and frustrating as Dimension of the Past, but this mission pack actually contained four quite enjoyable maps ranging from decent to pretty cool, with only the fifth one aptly explaining the name of the whole thing. That last level presents a contrast to the rest and a huge difficulty spike, because it switches the exploration for pure hardcore arena fights that made me want to quit. But in the end I savescummed and rocketjumped my way through it, also profitting from monsters in-fighting quite a bit. And I have to say, in this case it's just a bit of a skill issue, I guess, and a matter of preferences. I don't really enjoy levels like this, but it was comparatively well designed and fair for skilled players, with a good mix of different monster types, a good amount of ammo and replenishable healing resources. The level was tough but not as tedious as DotP. So I think this mission pack is worth a look, it was much more creative and fun than the name would have me expect. (And actually, the names of the levels themselves were quite amusing.)

This concludes my playthrough of all official and suggested mission packs that are available in the enhanced version of Quake. I might try and install some more custom mods eventually, because this is a game I can definitely see myself coming back to from time to time (which is funny because I never played Quake back in the days, really didn't like the look of it at first and was very disappointed with the pre-enhanced GOG versions, but now with the enhanced ones, I've come to love both Quake and its sequel)..

Finished Draugen. It is a walking simulator with an interesting story even though the ending was a bit disappointing. You get to walk with a young woman who talks a lot, it may be a positive or a negative point, it depends on you :)
Graphics are gorgeous and the walk speed was ok so I liked the game and its story. It is not bery long: ~3h.

Full list here.

Turnip Boy Robs A Bank, Feb 13 (Xbox Gamepass)-Bad but not as bad as the first game. Its mercifully short and pretty easy. There was some plot and humor I suppose but I skipped thru most of the dialogue. Even so I still had to click repeatedly thru multiple conversations. It doesn't do much for the genre. You'll probably like it if you enjoyed the first game and aren't too picky about your roguelites.

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Tiny Tina's Wonderlands (PS5 PS Plus)

It's more Borderlands. This time as another Bunkers and Badasses campaign with Tiny Tina as the Bunker Master. It's like all the other Borderlands games. If you play one every few years it's all good and fun, just don't try to play them all back-to-back or it will wear you out, they are all very similar.

The gunplay is as good as ever, though I have to admit I prefer the tougher more tactical play of the first two games than the more recent Doom Eternal frenetic style of Borderlands 3 and this game. Playing as a sniper just doesn't work anymore. Playing a long-range Mordecai type sniper is long gone in this series, due to the arena horde-mode play style the series has now gone to. It's still fun, but I miss the old style as well.

The humor is still there, some is funny, and some misses the mark- same as anything that tries to be funny. The highlight was Mr Torgue as the Bard, and his version of casting a "Magic Missile" spell. He took it a little too literally maybe.

I had fun with the game, but it also felt a bit too padded out in the end as well. I love the formula still- good shooting mechanics with light RPG character building and Diablo looting is addicting...but Borderlands is declining slowly- the combat is getting too fast paced and frenetic, and the humor is losing its older edginess as certain paths are closed off for fear of angering the feelings of the "Rainbow Mafia" and other groups. The humor is getting sterile, as we all know- it's not really funny until someone gets hurt.

It was okay, but I actually enjoyed the fresher Vampire take on the formula of Redfall from last year. Critics hated Redfall though, so what would I know?

A Plague Tale: Innocence

Lots of (positive) things have been written about this game already, so I'll try to keep it short (for my standards ;)).

I loved:
Graphics, characters, voice-acting (played in English), soundtrack

I was of two minds about:
Gameplay - it was fun in some instances, where you got a glimpse of its potential, but in general I found it much too limiting, due to the linear nature of the game and the story-telling always taking priority over everything else, and also too inconsistent, with regard to e.g. when it allows you to sprint and when it takes away that option for no good reason; sometimes it let's you roam freely in small areas, but too often it expects you to execute that one solution it had planned for you, and it either holds your hand or is very obscure about what that is, which can lead to boredom and/or frustration.
Crafting - while it could feel rewarding to loot materials and craft upgrades, I feel it did not really fit the linear style of the game; I found that in the end I cared more about finding all the materials than being truly engaged in the story and living the suspense. It's the same thing I've always critized about games like Spec Ops: The Line. IMO, it just doesn't work to want to tell an exciting linear story and have the players do busywork like finding crafting resources and collectibles in areas they know they will never get a chance to return to. Also, crafting was somewhat slow and restricted in the beginning because it was gated by the requirement of workbenches and tools, and then when it finally took off, the game was almost over already. Then again, most of the crafting options weren't all that important anyway (I feel like the only one that *really* made a difference was being able to shoot off helmets with your slingshot)
Story - I enjoyed most of the character interactions, the character developments (even though they were a bit uneven and weird in part), the general setting and plague/rats idea (even though it was pretty disgusting and it actually gave me a few nightmares), and I thought it interesting how much it resembled Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, not just for the sibling characters but their journey through landscapes/scenarios of death; I didn't care that much for the general plot though, the villains were rather one-dimensional and there wasn't much of a mystery here either
Checkpoint system - most of the time a non-issue, but occasionally very frustrating, especially since it does not save the crafting resources you picked up so you have to collect them all again on top of everything else, if you make a misstep

I didn't like:
Boss fight(s) - showcasing everything I said about the bad part of gameplay above; they required you to follow patterns or instructions it hinted at, instead of giving you choices on how to cleverly use the game mechanics; and following the patterns was tedious and boring
Limited resources - it's bad enough that you can't return to previous areas and collect stuff you missed, which is understandable given the game's focus on story-telling, but making the throwables dependent on the same crafting resources as upgrades discouraged me from getting creative with them even more. I never tried to find the coolest solution to a situation, but always the most economic one, saving as much throwables as possible so I wouldn't waste resources I might need for upgrades at the next workbench. No fun.

All in all, I liked it well enough, but I was also a bit disappointed and frustrated with the restrictive gameplay from time to time, or - for a a game focused on story-telling - with the simplicity of the plot and the game mechanics that distract from it (like crafting with limited resources that you have to collect). In the end I guess I didn't love it as much as all the praise made me expect I would (or should).

Beautiful Desolation, Feb 14 (GOG)-I thought it was pretty bad. Its got an incoherent plot with a bit of an attempt at a gotcha ending that falls flat. The interface fights you every step of the way. Puzzles were generally easy and of the get doodad from Skull A and give it to Skull B variety. Voice acting was bad across the board with a couple exceptions that were middling. Graphics in the cutscenes were awesome but actual gameplay looked like it was from the original Fallout. Its kind of long for an adventure game which doesn't help when it isn't great to play. And I can't count how many times the characters were involved in acts of genocide. That's not a knock necessarily just surprising that the developers went to that resolution so often. The arena minigame was fun but a little underbaked and too easy but was probably the highlight of the game. Overall very disappointing.

Full List