As far as I'm concerned, I've finally beaten Path of Exile. I've been playing on and off since the start of Open Beta, but only just managed to finish Merciless difficulty.

I really like many things about POE. The aesthetic, the huge variety of builds you can try, its just generally a lot of fun to play. At least, until you start getting deeper into it and the leveling slows way down, gear upgrades become incredibly rare, and monsters start hitting like a truck.

See, GGG are all about this online economy thing. They don't want you to find anything good, they want you to buy it from other players. Some people like it, but I think its a load of crap. I want to play the game and find my own shit, not play a market simulator with the trappings of an ARPG.

So yeah, pretty awesome game, but it starts to wear on you after a while if you actually try to get anywhere.

Driver San Francisco
Prototype 2

Perhaps game playing in 4-5 was too similar to in 3. I was quite enjoyed 4-5 too, but felt rather boring a bit.
However the fountain of youth in 4-5 is better than 3. lol.

25.04.2014 - Blackwell Epiphany
Wow, that was sad...

really impressed! I do feel those games are meant to play without that kind of help though

Blackwell Epiphany (25 April 1:30pm)

*a small tear falls from my face*

I liked the ending and it was a fitting ending to the series. I am going to miss it :(

Time to update...

Clive Barker's Jericho - A solid, simple shooter, without exploration of an open world, sidequests, RPG elements, crafting and other stuff. Just shooting. Story is a little bit confusing sometimes, but that's okay, because the game feels like a horror movie from the late 80's or early 90's - those have to be confusing. The whole game looks like a freakshow, with lots of mutilated enemies and weird surroundings.

Call of Juarez - A mix of Tomb Raider and a random wild west movie. You're switching between two characters and gameplay differs a lot between them. While playing Billy, you're exploring a lot, which involves jumping and climbing (the "Tomb Raider" part). Ray on the other hand... Playing him, you're going on a rampage, killing everything that moves. He's your typical wild west badass. Oh, did I mention that he's a Reverend? You can read out of your bible while killing everybody^^

Full list

Mr. Bree+
Fortunately the savegame of the (buggy) beta version I've played some months ago worked fine with the GOG version and so I just had to pick up the missing puzzle pieces, play the factory levels and do the boss fights (which weren't in the beta version).

I like the game, it's design and the music. Especially the fact that there are no enemies (except for the bosses), but just traps which patterns you could just monitor and then solve the level in one go. Or at least in theory, in reality I still died several times, because of not perfectly timed jumps or silly mistakes. But I really belive that it's possible to get to the exit of each level without dying if you just try hard enough.

Boss fights felt a little out of place (because of no other enemies), but I was able to beat both of them pretty fast.

Wasn't able to get one single puzzle piece and wonder if it's a bug or if I overlook something (probably the later).

End sequence was a little dissatisfying. Think there is either a sequel planned or there is another more happy ending once you get all puzzle pieces and beat the final boss.

Complete list of finished games in 2014

Go ahead and add Mars: War Logs (PC) to my list of games completed in 2014:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2014/post79

Shadow of the Comet

Point and click adventure isn't really my type of game, but this is a nice example. The story is excellent and kept me interested. If you enjoy Lovecraft, you'll probably like this.

Being an old game, the controls were really frustrating for me. Sometimes the enemies seemed to be moving at what I thought was regular speed, and then if I had to reload, the same enemies would swarm me super-fast as soon as I set foot in a room.

The story advanced well, and I didn't have a lot of the "where am I supposed to go now" moments. I didn't have much patience with a few of the puzzles and the crypt maze,and would still be in that maze if I hadn't used a Youtube walkthrough.


My 2014 LIst

Cognition - Episode 4
I'm not really happy with this last episode of the series. It's even shorter than the previous ones, there are too many cutscenes, too many action puzzles and not enough real adventure puzzles. Also a new sympathy-based dialogue system gets introduced (that isn't reall good for anything) and the caracters make very strange decisions quite often.

But all in all I liked the series, the characters and the atmosphere of the games. Episodes 1+2 (which are more about single crime cases than about the background story) are the best though.

Complete list of finished games in 2014

Torchlight (Alchemist & Ferret)

I didn't care much for the game in its early hours...always found aRPGs/Hack & Slash games way too repetitive, but by the end, I was definitely enjoying myself. I ended up at Level 35 through a 22-hour campaign.

I've only played a handful of aRPGs (Freedom Force 1 & 2, Titan Quest and Magicka), and this is probably my favourite after Freedom Force, followed closely by Magicka, with FF vs T3R and Titan Quest at the bottom.

Thank you, GOG, for such a great gift.

Just finished: A New Beginning - Final Cut, from Daedalic.

This is a pretty terrible game.

New Beginning has a pleasant enough story, engaging politics, and characters that should be fun to play along with. However, the honking bad translations, the flat voicing, the erratic controls, and the general carelessness that says, to me at least, that Daedalic gave up on this game well before publishing it, render it a tedious and unpleasant experience.

The game-stopping bugs are not as bad as advertised - I had one, in Chapter 8, toward the end, which involved a window that would not be closed once it had been opened. Of course it had to be closed to advance the action, but backtracking half an hour or so fixed the problem. I was able to save games up until the end, though many could not. But that didn't make it any better.

There were long stretches when I wondered if the two leads were being voiced by rendering software; everyone is bland, all the time, unless they're being squeaky or growly. The actors are clearly not native speakers, and the translation is frequently impenetrable. I read here and there that the German version is better; perhaps so, I can't judge. I can say that the scenes leading to the (boring, and often dopey) puzzles rarely contain any clues about what you might want to accomplish next; you're always navigating in a sort of flat fog, pushing buttons and collecting objects in the hope that whatever they do might give you a clue about what you're supposed to be solving.

One of the puzzles, defusing a bomb on a tower high above the ocean, was so bugged that I could not complete it; fortunately, there's a fast-forward button for puzzles, and I used it on several occasions.

There's a good twist at the end, for those who make it that far. The backing art is solid and interesting stuff, but there's rarely anything to really do in most scenes; in the ruined city, when you're struggling with an especially annoying terminal, the pathing is so strange that it occurred to me that the art might have been outsourced to some team that did not develop the game. It would go a long way toward accounting for the disconnect between the interesting settings and the bland, opaque gameplay.

Two games finished in the past couple of weeks.

First is Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death. In short, it's an enjoyable budget shooter. I've only been introduced to Judge Dredd a short time ago through the recent movie, and this was a nice way to dive more in the universe. The gameplay itself is pretty standard shooter, although the inclusion of arrests is a nice addition. The last two or three levels get a frustrating primarily due to the overwhelming number of enemies (which are monsters, etc.), so ammo can be hard to come by.

Next was Waking Mars. This game was impressive, with its serious (but not overly so) story, the rational characters interacting with alien life, and the gorgeous art. This science fiction story is a wonderful break from the typical sci-fi stories for games/movies that get made today, no aliens to shoot here and the world you're saving (or rebuilding) is not your own. The conflict arises solely from the delicate management of the Martian ecosystem you're regrowing. I would highly recommend this game!

Now playing: Far Cry 2 (dodging checkpoints and malaria)

So far:
Carmegeddon 2: Carpocalypse Now
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
Alien Shooter + Expansions
Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death
Waking Mars