ObsCure

Damn, the school this game takes place in, sure has a lot of guns and ammo lying everywhere. I guess the plant monsters weren't the only problem they had. Anyway, I actually liked the game a lot. It reminded me of Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and the movie The Faculty. The controls gave a really, really bad first impression and it took me a while to get used to them (I played with an Xbox 360 pad). Just think about it: the left trigger raises the weapon (aim mode); pressing the right thumbstick activates the boost mode of the flashlight that's taped to the gun (it hurts the monsters' defense), and A button fires. Seriously, think about that. You'd need two thumbs on your right hand to make it work. Therefor, I either disregarded the flashlight entirely, or took a support role and only flashed the enemies, while my AI partner would actually kill them (this worked really well once I found a revolver for Ashley, the best shooter of the team). So yeah, once I had gotten used to the controls, the game turned out to be a solid survival horror game. I don't think anything was particularly wrong with it. Although I was a bit surprised by the length: it only took me 6 hours to beat the game on medium difficulty, and on later playthroughs (if I did those, haha) I could probably squeeze the length to about four hours. Oh, wait, there was one thing I disliked: the camera would sometimes be really horrendous. If I'm running a straight path, I don't need to see what's behind me - I need to see what might be in front of me, such as monsters. You should know that. But yeah. Aside from the camera, controls, and short length, I thought it was a pretty good game.

I just finished Ys I, the full title of which I believe is Ys I Chronicles+ Ancient Ys Vanished: Omen
Which is a mouthful for a game that could just be called 'Ys' (and I'm still saying it in my head like 'Wise' even though I know its supposed to be more like 'eese')
The remake of a remake of a remake of a game from, I *think* the Famicom (or Super Famicom?) that started the series that's huge in Japan
Its nominally an RPG but you have 1 guy called Aldo who has the class 'swordmaster' and has no magic, no ranged weapons, is level capped by about half way through the game and attacks by running into stuff, serious no button mashing just this 'bump attack' system so its more like an isometric puzzle-action adventure with RPG features
But if you like the Japanese style but don't like the FF style turn combat of these things then it might be right up your street
I really liked it, easy levels and tough bosses though and I'm feeling a bit boss-battled out generally now, also had to consult the walkthrough A LOT to work out what to do next and not miss anything fun
Its a bit short but I guess that''s why you get both parts for your money (In fact they were originally conceived as one game, apparently)
Look forward to playing part 2 at some point, on to Anodyne right now though...

Full list:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2014/post64

BloodRayne 1( 26th March 10:48pm)

Apart from the odd maze like levels it is a fun but easy game apart from the final boss. I do like Rayne's look also which doesn't hurt. Sadly due to something to do with the FMV I had to disable them so I didn't see the ending

Jan 8 - Sanitarium
March 12 - The Testament of Sherlock Holmes
March 25 - South Park: The Stick of Truth
March 27 - Leisure Suit Larry 6

Today I finished two games.

- Zombie Football Carnage. Technically there is no ending to this game but I played a few waves and I'm done with the game. It's quite fun & addictive but only worth a few bucks (glad I got it in a bundle).
- Bird Assassin. Some mindless birds shooting. I played in easy mode and it was really easy. Finished the game in less than one hour.

Complete list here.

Not much time to play games, but I squeeze some playtime every once in a while. And what do you know? I managed to complete a game!

Vector

The Man is oppressing you! Fight him using... parkour? Yeah, your job is to run from The Man using your best parkour skills while The Man's guards are hunting you down. It's an OK platformer controlled entirely by swipes with a simplistic art style but some very nice parkour animation. What keeps it from being better are the extreme focus on trial and error (Should I have jumped? Should I have slidden? Should I have just kept running?) along with an, at times, really bad framerate. It chugged at my 2012 Google Nexus 7, which is quite a surprise and even changing the graphical settings to medium and low made no difference. Needless to say, these two factors made the game a real pain in the ass, which is a damn shame.

And I updated my list.

Edit: Post 666? Vector is Satan's game! That explains everything!

Evoland - Well, not quite, I was patient until the very ending but finally resorted to watching the last boss battle on YouTube instead of playing through it myself.

I had already abandoned the game before, but for some reason I decided to give it another try tonight. I don't know why I bothered. To me this game is the incarnation of MEH. It's not all that bad, but I can't find many good things to say about it either. It's like a tech demo combined with a virtual (guided) tour of the JRPG museum. The graphics are nice enough, the music is fitting, but everything else just works without being much fun. Evoland deliberately assembles every cliché and bad design decision common in JRPGs while omitting almost all the things that make them worthwhile despite all. The story is just the bare minimum, the few characters disposable, the humor is sparse, pretty lackluster and uninspired. The boss battles are tedious - you immediately know what you have to do to defeat the bosses, but doing so is not much fun. Apart from a short and easy puzzle section in the middle where you actually have to think for yourself for a change, most of the time you are told what to do or at least it's extremely obvious; the game is very linear, too.

On the overland maps there are repetitive turn-based random battles every 3-5 seconds or so when you just want to get from A to B, and they are completely pointless and boring. Now, I admit, that I don't care much for this JRPG style of combat anyway, but the game isn't even trying to make it interesting. You could set your party on auto-pilot if there was such a function because fighting doesn't involve any tactics, you hardly ever have more than three options (use your attack, heal yourself or run) and it would actually be more challenging to try and lose the battles than to win them. Gaining XP and auto-leveling has no real impact on the game other than allowing you to endure even more pointless battles with greater quantities of enemies. It's all just for show, a mockery of actual (J)RPGs. You do lose a lot of time with that though, and the save system works towards the same goal of stealing your time. If you die (most probably during the real-time, Zelda-style sequences), the game is over and you have to return to the start menu to load the last autosave. The game saves both at (rare) visible checkpoints you activate and also at certain points that aren't apparent to the player, e.g. when entering a new area or shortly before a boss fight. It doesn't always save after a boss fight though, so if you don't watch out, you might have to do it again. And often it saves your progress in a dungeon (like puzzles you solved, doors you opened), but still forces you to start at the beginning and run all the way (through the open doors) to the point where you died. This is particularly annoying if it means that you have to slog through a few random battles and watch the same unskippable cutcenes again before you can continue where you failed.

I don't so much regret spending my money on it (although I'm glad I didn't pay the full price) as I regret wasting my time with it, although it's only about 3 hours long. But it really wasn't worth it. Because it doesn't succeed in highlighting what's really to like about the games it refers to, it's not a very good homage, but seeing that it's not really funny either, it also falls flat as parody. IMO there's not much point in playing it unless you're terribly bored and don't have anything else to do with your time. Anodyne does a much better job in paying homage to Zelda, and there are tons of freeware JRPGs out there that actually have a story, characters and tactical combat, if that's your thing.

"Kaptain Brawe," a point-and-click adventure on Steam. It was short, marred by a terrible translation, and ended with a rape joke. Why do I even own this thing? I have never heard anyone talk about it, ever. I've never heard of it. I was looking through my Steam account one day, and there it was. Did I impulse buy it for a dollar during some sale or other? That must be it. Anyway, it's done. On to better things.

I just finished The Witcher. A wonderful RPG. The games' story, character , atmosphere were superb.
I liked even controversial battle system,but almost useless items and alchemy was dull. All in all this is one of the top action RPG I have played.

My List

All right....beat Titan Quest, only to find that my warfare/storm character was boring the crap out of me. That killed the idea of carrying it over to an Immortal Throne run, along with not knowing that the best way to do Immortal Throne is to run it with a fresh character since it's Titan Quest with extra bits to make it better and an expansion on the end. So yeah, get to redownload it and run through the whole game again. Son of a gods-damned bitch. In between avoiding that like an early onset arthritis-inducing plague, I'm about to finish Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. The one for the Super Nintendo. Mentioning it pre-finish since I'm pretty sure that unless the game ends with anime girls coming to life Weird Science-style, it's not going to suck any less. No idea why I thought playing it was a good idea. That is, to date, the most boring FF game I've ever played. Not the worst, mind you, but the most boring. I can play FF 10 until I hate all of humanity and I'm almost certain that 13 made me hear the sound of my own brain cells screaming as they killed themselves, but this....
Once it's done, I can continue stomping my nostalgia-stained glasses to slivers by running through more SNES JRPGs.
For every nugget of gold, there's a mountain of shit.

I have neglected the list for a while, so adding to it:

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising 18.2.2014.

It is really frustrating for first hour or so. Once you get used that you are hunting pixels, realize that unscoped guns are useless and head on take will just get you killed and start using the radar on the top of the screen it gets quite good. I felt let down when I realized that campaign 1 is actually the only one. I really wanted more of it. Oh, and AI is cheating.
________________________

Jisei - 10.3.2014.

Visual novel with nice GFX style. It's fairly short and not worth the 10$ price tag IMO. Worth playing if you got it in a bundle though.

________________________

Alpha Protocol - 22.3.2014.

Thief meets Mass Effect. For spectacular effects. Now, I heard this game was buggy on release, but I didn't run into any major bugs so I guess they sorted it all out. I really wish Obsidian makes Beta Initiative or something as SEGA doesn't want sequel to it. If only the would let the rights to Obsidian....

________________________


Binary Domain - 27.3.2014.

I really, really, really wish the game gave you freedom of choice like Alpha Protocol/Mass Effect did. I'll just leave it at that. Oh, voice command gimmick is shit too.


Full list here.

Anomaly Korea

Fun fact: I have neither finished, nor actually own Anomaly Warzone Earth. Have to fix it someday. Anyway, Anomaly Korea then. A very enjoyable game and, very surprisingly, a bullshit-free android game. No grinding, no microtransactions, just good gaming. An inverse of the Tower Defense games in that YOU are actually the attacking mobile forces and the enemy are the stationary defending ones. A bit on the short and easy side (at least on Advanced difficulty, can't speak for the Hardcore mode), but very enjoyable nonetheless. And it looks very pretty too. And now for Anomaly 2. (Yes, no Anomaly Warzone Earth yet.)

Updated full list.

At the end, when the villain gets transported into prison, and ha ha, he's gonna get raped.

I find that stuff really distasteful, and it probably colored my opinion of the game somewhat. Obviously when I was playing it, I enjoyed it enough to keep playing it, and the puzzles tended to be logical (which also meant that the game was a tad easy, of course, but I'm OK with that).

On an unrelated note, I finally knocked Arkham Asylum off of my backlog. Past time. A mostly great game, saddled with lousy boss fights (especially the last one; what a tedious letdown).

Oh dear, you also have one of these threads. My number isn't that impressive this year, though I suppose I will bring my list over sometime. 2013 ws a much better year, where I beat over 100 games...