Done with Stein's;Gate. Somehow I missed 1 CG while getting all the endings and I missed a couple minor achievements, but its too much trouble to figure them out. All the endings are done and that's good enough for me.

Steins;Gate is one of the best VNs I've played to date. The art by Huke is gorgeous, and the music is really well done too. Using an in-game cellphone as the primary means of interaction instead of standard menu choices was novel, but a little annoying to work with sometimes.

I don't want to spoil too much for those who haven't played the game or watched the anime version, but the story is basically about time travel and all the things that can go horribly wrong when you mess with the timeline, and using time travel to save the person closest to you at any cost. Its pretty moving and really well told. Requires a hefty dose of suspension of disbelief - the "time machine" is a microwave that can send email to the past after all.

Steins;Gate is set in Akihabara - one of the biggest centers of otaku culture. As such there are a quite a few references to anime, manga, internet memes, and things like that. Knowledge of these things will help a lot with getting the humor in the writing, but it shouldn't be required to enjoy the overall story. There's also an in-game encyclopedia to explain all these things (along with various scientific and mythological terms that come up), but of course a joke is less funny if you have to look it up.

Saints Row 2. I actually quit Saints Row 2 around a week ago, fed up with the mandatory side missions, vehicle combat missions and all around obvious padding, and as I guessed I was indeed on the last mission, and a half hour or so ago I decided to just go ahead and finish it.

In short, I don't think this game is anywhere as good as Saints Row: The Third (or IV for that matter). Mandatory side missions, an annoying respect mechanic and repetitive missions (even by Saints Row standards) really hurt the game. It does have positives, Stillwater is more varied and definitely more interesting than Steelport, the soundtrack is more varied as well, the character interactions are entertaining (something Saints Row as a series excels at) and the non-vehicle combat is fun.

All in all I had a lot of fun with it but also was left frustrated on a frequent basis, if you've played the other Saints Row or if you like the GTA style of games in general then I would recommend Saints Row 2, otherwise I wouldn't recommend it.

I got a sort of "meh" relationship to SS. Its basically the current gen version of what GTA used to be.

What happened?

Few games from last week:

11-16-14 - How to Survive
This actually surprised me. A zombie survival with light RPG mechanism and iso-metric view. Add little bit of crafting ala Dead Rising and Minecraft style day cycle/shelter mechanism. Not bad at all! Almost expected the story to be more messed with all the zombies and all. Some DLC for this also available, with new extra dudes/outfits and different type of gameplay levels. Which I seem to already have, not that I have luxury of testing them anymore :)
11-15-14 - Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon
Day after finishing FC3 I went through this. And must admit, did not like it as much as I had expected. Sure the game is even more streamlined than the main game and the 80's theme is amazing. Just couldn't get really into this the same way as I did to FC3. Not as much freedom with the strongholds and did not really care for the new monsters.
11-14-14 - Far Cry 3
Simply awesome. Really like hostile environment and the open world action in here. In my eyes this is more polished than FC2, which I really liked as well despite its flaws. The story had lot of potential and obviously the Vaas is a great character, just shame that the story fell bit flat. Also few of the scripted/boss events were somewhat shite. The strongholds were no doubt my favourite thing here.

I just finished Evoland, and was very happy with it.

The store page tells you pretty much everything you need to know about it.
I was surprised that the game actually turned into a pretty fun RPG, and it was bigger than I expected.
It took me about 6 hours to finish it (trying to find every item), and it stayed funny and fresh pretty much the whole time.
The only complaint I have is that the random encounters on the world map got a bit repetitive and boring.

Overall, I really loved this game. It was an impulse buy, and it worked out really well for me. It is one of the modern gems in my catalog.

My full list.

Back to the Future - The Game (WInXP)

Not bad at all, a bit simple and not much freedom, but it's got many good ties to the movies.
You have to ignore a lot of plot holes though and the last episode is very buggy.
My GoG version actually has German audio (which I didn't use because the English one is much better), although the game card says German is in text only. Is the description wrong or do I have to avoid downloading the current version here in the future because it was taken out of the files?

Full list:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2014/post695

Bad Mojo Redux (WinXP)

The first time I saw this game running was actually in a museum with an exhibition about bugs back then when the game was brand new. I always wanted to play it ever since but never got my hands on it, later on I got it on GoG.
Overall a pretty good exploration game. It's really well made if you take its age into account and has nice graphics and story.
What really miffed me was, that I probably found everything in the game but one unimportant scene and only because of that, I am not able to get the good ending. There is no indication what I might have missed and I've found more than enough to make it clear what I'm supposed to do, in what it will result and I've seen all (?) the information about his and his fathers past.
I finally decided against going through the whole game again to find whatever I might have missed
Spoiler:
only to be able to throw down the cigarette and see the ending where he rescues his father,
/Spoiler
I watched it on Youtube instead.

Full list:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2014/post695

Since I forgot to mention it before, let's do it now.

Trine

I always thought of Trine as the indie puzzle-platformer. When I first tried it, I wasn't impressed too much but, hey, I'm always willing to give some games a second chance.

Visually, the game looks excellent, especially when you consider that it's "just" an indie game, which was released 5 years ago. Lots of colour and a wonderful scenery help into making this game feel like a fairytale come alive. I can't say really say the same, though, for the music which bore me to tears. Sure, you could argue that it fits the fairytale atmosphere, but I can't remember a single track from it.
As for the game itself, you control one of the three characters (the knight, the thief and the wizard), which you can switch at will at the press of button and each of them has their own way of progressing through the game's enemies, traps and deadly platforms (Unlike my initial impressions, the game is lite on the puzzles). As you kill enemies and pick up the collectibles from the stage, you can also level up and enhance the characters' existing abilities (like allowing the wizard to spawn more cubes and the thief to shoot more arrows at the same time).

The knight is slow and heavy, which means that he can't jump too high and far, but he is also the only one with a shield which can also block fireballs and make it easier to navigate traps. He can also fight enemies using his sword, which, unfortunately, is weak and lackluster (among other things, he can only hit one enemy at a time, while an enemy behind the enemy he is hitting can and will hit him, forcing you to avoid attacking more than one enemies with the knight and instead run around the areas, picking them off one by one). He does get a strong hammer attack later, but he can't use his shield while equipped with a hammer, meaning that you must keep your distance from your enemies.

It is funny, then, that the thief can be better at crowd control, as she can hit with her bow from afar and deal some good damage without worrying about being hit by melee enemies. She is also faster, can jump higher and can also use her grappling hook to latch onto surfaces and jump, Indy-style, on other platforms. Unfortunately, jumping with the grappling hook can be wonky at times, especially if you latch into a platform without trying to gain momentum beforehand, as trying to gain it afterwards can be tedious. It also doesn't help that it's not always clear if one platform is grappable or not.

Finally, we have the wizard. The wizard doesn't have any way to directly defend himself, which means that if your knight or thief has died, you should run, run, run or you'll be well done. The wizard can move existing objects around and he can also summon either cubes, bridges, or floating triangles by holding the right-click and drawing the shape of the object you need, which can be used to reach otherwise difficult spots. He is so good at this that he can easily override all the fancy acrobatics that the thief might need to do to get across a chasm, merely by placing some cubes on top of each other. I did say above that the wizard can't directly defend himself. He can, however, drop objects from above, which will instantly destroy any evil skeletons. Still, trying to make a cube while being attacked by skeletons can be pretty difficult in the middle of the combat, as you must remain stationary and, thus, vulnerable to attacks. Speaking of skeletons, it's definitely disappointing that the game's enemies are limited only to skeletons and bats. The game could definitely do with more variety.

The game isn't particularly difficult, even on hard mode. Since you are always fighting either bats or skeletons, it becomes a routine, after a while. Oh sure, they might be placed on annoying locations, but thanks to the thief's broken ranged attacks, it's not really that big of a deal. Platforming is certainly harder, but not by much, as you can just upgrade the wizard to use a crapload of cubes and bridges to safely reach the other platforms. Add the generous checkpoints to the mix and you have a game that is more relaxing than demanding. Nothing wrong with that, though.

Note: I played the game's original version, not the enhanced one. I am aware that some of the problems above (like the knight's sword suckiness and the thief's wonky momentum physics) are fixed. Still, since the enhanced edition is using the sequel's engine, I'd rather play Trine 2 than replay the first one.

Full list.

So I've beaten Ys Origin with each character now. On one hand this is an excellent Zelda-like hack-and-slash game with excellent production values. OTOH the game has an issue with crashing right at the very end cinematic. I had to beat it at least twice with Yunica and Hugo because of this crash issue, and I've beaten it something like five or six times with Toal, but the game won't register that I've done so and unlock the bonus content because it absolutely refuses to not crash at the end of his campaign.

I've looked up the problem online and it's clearly a common issue, but remarkably no one seems to have a good answer for how to clear it up. "Try the patch/change your resolution or graphic settings/turn off the cinematics and just watch the ending on Youtube!/etc./etc." Nothing's worked so far. I probably will just watch the ending on Youtube, but it's frustrating that I can kick this game's ass and yet it won't acknowledge my supremacy over it :p

EDIT: Oh, good. The 12th time was the charm. Now I can put this one away and feel good about it.

***SPOILER ALERT***

Ha, same here! I only managed to get two of the bad endings which are A) Just Roger surviving and B) everyone in the building dies.For the good ending where both survive and the 3rd bad ending where only Roger's dad survives, I watched it on Youtube as well.
I was a bit miffed as well because one of the vision video sequences clearly suggested that you have to trigger the fire alarm and the only flammable thing I found is the toilet paper and the only thing that's already burning is the cigarette. I remember not being able to move the cigarette, maybe there was another cigarette that I missed though, the one I'm thinking about is the one in the ashtray on top of the toilet.

***SPOILER END***

Spoiler:
Yep, it's the right cigarette, when you've found everything in the game it's burnt short and you can throw it down to trigger the alarm, if you've missed anything in the game (like me, whatever it might have been), it's still long and stuck in the ashtray. I really thought I had solved all puzzles.

Argh, that's a crap mechanic! Rather frustrating when one has the right idea but the game won't allow you to execute it because you didn't 100% reverse engineer the designer's thought process or miss a tiny detail, that's major BS. I'm aware that they are trying to prevent metagaming paradoxes or straight out crashes that way but it 's still frustrating.

Spent a couple days playing through Kira Kira, yet another VN. I think I've played through more of these this year than all the other types of games combined. I should diversify a bit.

The first chapter is about a school club that is about to be disbanded, so they decide to form a band to perform at the school festival and go out with a bang, as it were. This part is pretty interesting and fun to read. The middle section is about them deciding to go on a tour during their summer break, but this part just dragged on and was pretty boring. After that it goes into the individual stories for each route. I enjoyed Chie and Sarina's routes, but honestly there was anything super-special about them. Kirari's route looked like it had the most heavy drama, but I skipped through a lot of it. Kirari is one of those characters that I can't stand, so no matter what sort of drama surrounds her I just can't make myself care.

The protagonist was actually the high point of the writing for me, because I really identified with him. He has nothing he cares passionately about, doesn't care to keep living but doesn't really want to die either, and ended up feeling detached from the world and has difficulty emotionally connecting to other people. He just sort of went with the flow joining the band, but it changed him for the better. I can really relate to his mindset, and I wish I could find something to be passionate about.

On to the more technical aspects of the game. Art was good, but nothing you can't find anywhere else. The music was quite good - the game is about a band, so it has several solid rock songs sprinkled throughout. The translation was not very good though. This was one of MangaGamer's earlier releases, before they had things like native English-speaking translators and quality control. I didn't notice anything that was outright incorrect in the translation, but it was frequently stiff or awkward. Spelling and grammar mistakes abound as well.

Kira Kira has its good points and bad points, but overall I think it was a pretty mediocre title.