Yeah I know and sadly if it showed up here I'd play it. I think what made the game so bad was that it was actually so close to being really good. A few tweeks here and there, simple stuff life game speed change and better troop selection, would have made it great. All those little things add up and just make it down right annoying as hell at times.

And mafia 2 beaten.


huh. Game was very anti-mafia / anti-gangster. Quiet opposite to first one as it did not glorify the life. instead its one fuckup after another. shitty life which you can lose any day even if you don't die.

Gameplay wise it was much better than Mafia 1 but the first one was so much better plotwise.

I guess I should play Saints Row 2 for some badass gangster life.

Beat Mega Man Zero the other day. Maintained an A ranking through all the stages except the last one. I just could not beat the last boss, so I had to break down and use a couple Cyber Elves (double health and full heal). So that last stage ended up at a B ranking, but I still feel it was something of an accomplishment. That game is pretty hard. Had a lot of fun with it, so all's well.

Finished Arcanum last evening. It's the third time I take it to the end of the numerous times I've played it. I absolutely love this game! The multitude of character types you can play is just crazy and the game really does treat you differently depending on that.
I went with an overpowered halfling assassin this time. Stun + backstab is the most evil thing ever, stupidly overpowered. Never thought of playing this way before. Since I went mostly solo (just Dog) as a crazy overpowered character it was a pretty fast playthrough.

I'd pay good money for an Arcanum 2 done right. They should kickstart this.

So far:
- Splinter Cell Blacklist
- Borderlands DLC campaigns
- Aliens - Colonial Marines
- Borderlands 2
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Broken Age - Act 1
- Crysis 2
- Shelter
- Arcanum

Assassin's Creed III

Probably the weakest game in the series since the original. The areas surrounding the cities are vast and look quite lovely, but there's almost nothing interesting to do there. Side missions weren't as fun this time, and this was the first time I didn't do all of them, simply because I didn't feel like it. The cities (Boston and New York) pale in comparison to the majestic cities of AC II and its sequels. The main character, Connor, isn't nearly as likeable as Ezio was. Why is he so grumpy all the time? The plot wasn't very interesting, because I'm not that into the American Revolution era. I'm sure the players in the US liked it more though. There's nothing reasonable to spend money on, and I really didn't feel the naval battles. And as usual, the Desmond segments were as crappy as ever, but at least they were held to a fair minimum. Overall, the game was easily identifiable as an Assassin's Creed game for sure, as some things, such as the combat and parkour, were still fun. It mostly struggles with the setting, environments and plot, which all were pretty lackluster in my opinion.

I quite enjoyed Arcanum as well, though I must say I like it more for the amazing setting and ideas than the actual gameplay. The "Industrial Revolution in a world of magic" is very well realized. This has to be one of the best implementations of an engineer-type character ever, and having that alongside the classic magics means you can have your cake and eat it too.

However, the real-time battles were utter crap. Luckily easily avoided by switching to turn-based battles. More important were the glaring balance issues. My first playthrough was a tech gunman, and I BARELY managed to complete it. Second was a magick-aligned melee that breezed through everything. Tech items just seem much weaker than magick (although the automatons are cool as hell). Then on a couple throwaway characters I tried bows & grenades and pretty much figured projectile weapons in general are shit compared to melee (largely due to low accuracy and frankly hilarious "miss" mechanics, e.g. shooting an arrow in the opposite direction of your target, or throwing a grenade at your feet and blowing yourself up with it). I think I have a fan-patch sitting around somewhere that's supposed to rebalance some of this stuff, I need to give that a try sometime.

Nonetheless, I'd be totally on board with an Arcanum 2.

----

In other "news" I just 100% finished Koihime Musou again. I really like nearly every character in this VN, which is an incredible rarity. I find it to be very funny, and the art is amazing. The "game" part isn't really worthy of the name, very easy and even if you somehow lose you just restart the fight with more troops - but that isn't the point. I really hope the sequels get an English release someday. More than that I just need to learn to read Japanese, but I'm too easily distracted.

It's not a game itself, but I finished the Master Cave in Ittle Dew (without any hints), which has some incredibly hard puzzles in it.

:D

Finished Love+ few days ago, which I suppose is worth mentioning. Played through it on easy, simply don't have time to fiddle more with it. Tried few times with the standard 100 lives mode, but did get past a certain jumping platform/ball thing. Other than the game is actually pretty great. Slightly similar to VVVVVV because of the difficulty and the awesome C64 style graphics. Not too shabby music either.

JUST finished the 1st Red Faction and I can remember the last time I enjoyed a game that much. Tough but not impossible, fast, sounds great, fast load times, fun fire fights, and minimal timed areas. The system for changing weapons left a little to be desired but apart from that a definite A+ from tinyE.

Deadly premonition.

A bit crashy game with resolution mod trouble and all that.

But nevertheless really good game. At least a bit different than a ton of other games.
It was interesting experience.

todays game is Cubetractor!

another game from the ninja thread so firstly I would like to thank foxworks for the game.

I found cubetractor to be an enjoyable retro puzzle game with a tower defence theme. the game is mostly about placing the right towers at the right place in order to wipe out the red team. the games starts off easy enough but about halfway through a difficulty spike hits you and then the game gets good. I would highly recommend the game or any retro/puzzle lovers.

see what else I have been getting up to here.

Finished Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. It was shorter than I expected but it might be because I really plowed through it. I looked at the achievements and it seems i skipped almost all the side content. I didn't feel invested enough in the game until close to the finish. The shortness of the game is a point against it in this respect. I mean, by the time you come to care somewhat about the characters, the game is over. Calling it a game is also a bit of a stretch. It's a simple story with the only challenging part of the puzzles being the control scheme. I don't really get why it got so much praise. It's not bad, but it's also not very good.

So far:
- Splinter Cell Blacklist
- Borderlands DLC campaigns
- Aliens - Colonial Marines
- Borderlands 2
- Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Broken Age - Act 1
- Crysis 2
- Shelter
- Arcanum
- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Völgarr the Viking

Otherwise a good game, BUT: the lack of checkpoints was very frustrating and I didn't like that. I don't think it was fun to replay the levels over and over again just so I could get another shot at the level boss. C'mon game, I need practice with the boss, not the whole level! I understand this was done on purpose because they wanted to recreate the difficulty of NES/SNES games. But that doesn't mean I should enjoy that. Anyway, I finished the game (obviously), but since the checkpoints are too few and far between, I don't think I'm gonna shoot for the other endings. If there was an option to include more checkpoints, then the game would have been excellent. Now, it's just okay.

Cognition Episode 2 - The Wise Monkey
I still like the series. Atmosphere, graphics and soundtrack are great and the story is still interesting. I have no clear idea yet how the incidents in episode one and two and in Erica's past are connected, so I'm looking forward to play the next episode.

Technically there are still some bugs like flickering characters and Erica walking through walls, but nothing too annoying ore game-breaking.

Complete list of games finished in 2014