Now I'm curious, which game?

I thought McPixel was pretty funny, but it's also a game I played in small doses.

Leisure Suit Larry 5. The series becomes VGA and fully point-and-click. Certainly the easiest of the games in the series so far - most of the intrigue isn't about whether you can solve the puzzles but whether you'll do so with the particular solution that will award you the most points. The game is split between Larry sections and Patti sections - Larry has three major areas to solve and Patti has two - which helps keep things feeling fresh throughout. I liked it more than #3 but the second game is still my favorite so far.

I didn't really want to name names and start derailing this into a games you hate that other people like thread. Let's just say that it's a non-RPG made in an engine designed for RPGs.

Just finished Mafia II. Great game, but, WHAT THE F*** WAS THAT S***TY ENDING? The staff roll song was very fitting, "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?". Yeah. That's how I felt.

Oh, I also updated my list with two Fallout 3 DLCs (Operation: Anchorage and Mothership Zeta).

Soldiers: Heroes of World War II

You have probably already heard about the Men of War series; Soldiers: Heroes of World War 2 is the real time strategy game that gave birth to it.
In its fairly numerous mission you will play as the USSR, UK, USA and German troops in four different operations composed by five or six missions each, plus seven additional briefer but very intense bonus missions.

The game plays like a cross-breed between Blitzkrieg and Commandos: there is no base construction, meaning that you need to succeed with only your initial resources and what you can scavenge from the field; each character has its own inventory and customizable set of orders; stealth plays a significant role in each plan, allowing you to hide your regular infantry to silently inflict unexpected damage on the enemy before being detected or before assaulting their bases with vehicles; each unit can be either assigned to the AI or directly controlled by you, making it more efficient during actions requiring precision or allowing you to target a specific point rather than order to fire in a generic direction (for example, you can control the path, time the launch and explosion of grenades, target wheels, personally operate tanks and so on); the equipment is varied and historically accurate (exception made for the standardized ammunition for each kind of weapon), so that all instruments play and feel differently; same goes for vehicles -which unfortunately don't include aircraft, though.

Despite the very steep learning curve, after the first hour of play the easy to learn commands start to come natural, and once you got grip of how each unit behaves you will find plenty of satisfaction in the cleverly designed and openly approachable maps and the impressively good physics system, which has nothing to envy from more modern games.
Also, the objectives are varied enough to never allow the game to feel stale; you will have to attack and destroy entire camps, ambush convoys in time, defend the position, rescue characters with as less noise as possible, infiltrating behind enemy lines to sabotage artillery, steal vehicles and more.
The level of challenge is always high and never presents an always viable winning “superior” tactic, but unless you stubbornly refuse to adapt your play style to each situation you will have no problems.
The AI is very efficient -most of the times- both for what regards your troops and enemy ones; unlike in many other RTS, you will not see them wiped out in the same instant you look elsewhere, and this will allow you to execute more complex plans.
I said “most of the times” because, somehow, infantry soldiers tend to go berserk whenever a tank approaches rather than waiting under cover to launch an AT grenade -something they don't do when facing regular soldiers on foot.

Another point of criticism is about the soundtrack: while there are no bad pieces, they are not that many either, becoming quickly quite repetitive. I had to shut off the sound on one level, as it was literally playing the same 10-second-long track over and over. Strangely, the very best tracks are reserved for the brief special missions rather than for the epic campaigns.

All in all, Soldiers: Heroes of World War II is a great game that I don't hesitate to recommend to every RTS fan out there, certainly worth way more than its current price; now I'm eager to see how the series has evolved, as it has all the potential it needs to become my favourite in the genre.

Just beat Castlevania Symphony of the Night. I really liked it. It has really cool music, a good Gothic style, and nice violence. I still think my favorite in the series is Rondo of Blood, because the music is better, but any fan of the series or games of this ilk should really give Symphony a go.
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Awesome, I love Men of War, so I will have to try it out. Quick question, have you beaten the original Men of War? I have at least beaten the campaigns to all the other Men of War games available on here, but I have only beaten the German and USSR campaigns in the first one. I just have a really hard time with the American one, thus my curiosity if anyone else has beaten it.

*Slowly nods in approvation*

Connoisseur! XD

Not yet. I have bought it in a bundle during the last Summer Sale (which included Soldiers, Faces of War, Men of war, Red tide and Death to Spies) and now I'm going through them chronologically, so I will play it after Faces of War.

<span class="bold">Memoria</span>

Memoria is a direct sequel to The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav –> review

I highly recommend playing Chains of Satinav first. You don’t need to have played Satinav to enjoy Memoria but if you play Memoria first then the ending of Satinav will be spoiled so it makes sense to play the two games in the right order. If you’re unsure whether to buy just Memoria or both games then simply wait for the next deep sale and get them both, problem solved.

Everything feels a bit more epic in Memoria than in Satinav. The story, setting, music, everything seems to have matured a bit and even Geron’s voice sounds a tad bit less whiny.
Backgrounds are a beauty to behold as usual, only the animations are stiff, awkward and sparse which detracts from the atmosphere a bit. Animation is generally the most resource intense asset of any adventure game and a let-down in the vast majority of titles so singling out Memoria for this flaw would be unfair, especially considering how well done everything else is. I spent quite a lot of time just staring at the scenery and listening to the music. As long as nothing in the game is moving and no one is speaking, it’s a perfect audiovisual treat.

The GOG version only has English audio (why??) but the voice acting is decent in general even if the delivery lacks passion and as a result some potential for dramatic tension goes to waste. Same goes for the German version which I checked out on Youtube, Geron sounds more assertive but other than that no big difference.
This doesn’t hurt the story too much though. Things never get so intense that you’ll be glued to your seat but as long as you don’t get stuck on a puzzle, there is enough momentum to keep you from wanting to take a break.

This time, you follow the storylines of two main characters in different time periods, bird catcher Geron in the present and oriental warrior princess Sadya in the past. Sadya is a stronger willed person than the male main character Geron which should please all the people who keep complaining about the lack of games with properly dressed strong female leads.
Memoria’s story is more eventful and over the place but Satinav’s storyline had slightly better pacing and cohesion. Switching back between storylines in Memoria does break up tension to some degree even if things tie together nicely. However, at the end of the game the story becomes a bit drawn out and feels like the writers tried to tie up the loose ends improv style. The game is super linear and and regardless of which dialogue options you choose, it results in the exact same response and outcome with only one exception at the very end of the game where you can make a meaningful choice.

The puzzles are logical throughout, even when fantasy elements are part of the solution. As in Satinav, the select few magic spell abilities like turning things into stone and back or sending a vision to someone via an object very much add to the gameplay. Instead of simple item combinations, magic adds an extra layer to the puzzle dimension and gives Satinav and Memoria a memorable edge over standard adventures that have no out of the ordinary elements.

In terms of length, I can't say how many hours it took because I started the game 9 months ago, got stuck twice and didn’t play the game for several months before continuing. In both cases, I was surprised at how quickly I got past the points where I seemed completely stuck before so sometimes coming back with a fresh and “wiped” mind does help. Better than starting to "brute force" the game by trying everything on everything which is no fun. Definitely spent more time on the game than the 8-9 hours howlongtobeat.com states.
There are no unfair or overly obtuse puzzles in Memoria but you all know how one can get inexplicably stuck. I’d describe Memoria as only moderately challenging at most with no old school style hurdles - but it’s not a pushover, either. Never felt like a total genius for solving a puzzle but the variety of problems to solve is big enough to satisfy even experienced adventures who’ve “seen it all before”. In Memoria, the puzzles mostly feel like organic parts of the story and not just hurdles to prevent you from walking to the next screen too fast. Even classics like Sanitarium are guilty of the latter and could learn from that.

On the technical side, I found only one game-breaking bug in chapter 6 where I suddenly couldn’t click on an NPC and would have been unable to progress had I not kept my paranoid habit of saving in a different slot every couple minutes, an old habit that simply doesn’t die. Can’t believe the team of 7 testers didn’t encounter this bug and poor me stumbles into it on my first playthrough but that’s life. One can blame the Visionaire engine for some of the other minor glitches as it’s stuff that one encounters in other games using the same engine. Same as AGS, Visionaire is prone to a variety of annoying little glitches but as an adventurer, you get used to that. If every developer had to make their own engine, we’d not get that many adventures.

Conclusion: One of the most beautiful point & click adventures of recent years. If you have any love for point & click adventures don’t skip this one. The Daedalic games aren’t cheap but they go on very deep sales every once in a while so there is no reason not to pick this one up when it’s on sale.


Full list

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin - Despite what is often said about this game, I thought it was of a similar quality to the first game. Sure, it's shorter but that does mean less time going through the same environments. That being said, they really downplayed the "horror" elements in this one. I didn't find the first game that scary, but the Extraction Point expansion definitely had the strongest horror elements of the series so far. This is probably the only horror game that has multiple segments of you piloting a rampaging mech. The weapon handling is very different, now with ironsights and red dots and the combat is extremely fast, which the slow motion abilities help with. The game looks fantastic, with great use of lighting and color.

The story is okay, nothing amazing, but an interesting continuation of the first game (sans expansions). I would like the third game to appear here, just so I could wrap up the story.

F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn - A short campaign following a Replica soldier. It's more of the same, with minimal story elements. It does feel a bit more like the first game, if only because you see Paxton Fettel in passing several times.

Thanks for the review, you convinced me to get started on The Dark Eye (to eventually get to this game.)

You're welcome, I hope you enjoy both games!

Finished Letter Quest: Grimm's Journey. A nice game but a bit difficult at times for a non native English speaker. It is a mix of RPG (you fight monsters and upgrade your characters, weapons...) and scrabble (the damage you make on the monsters dependes on the words you find).

Full list here.

Far Cry 4 (PS4).
A very fun open world FPS. Although I found the "story" missions to be only OK (not great), the open world is simply excellent and very very fun, more than makes up for it, it's hilariously chaotic at times. I only got something like 99.85% completion because I hate the Arena (luckily I was only forced to fight in there once for one mission), so I didn't go back and therefore couldn't unlock a couple of things. But overall, very highly recommended!

Guns and Spurs

Welp, another day another Sakis25 game like Crime Life 3 which I talked about here Guns and Spurs is another Rockstar Games rip off made by a lad called 'Sakis25' in his bedroom in Game Maker 3, this time he's going back to the old west to rip off Red Dead Redemption
you can get it here:
http://gunsandspurs.blogspot.co.uk/

In comparison to CrimeLife 3 it seems more finished and polished with proper intro and finishing cut scenes and he actually calls this one 'finished' rather than a beta. But, on the other hand, missions are less varied than CrimeLife, they are all 'Wanted' mission where you have a take a 'boss' guy and optionally, his posse out before a weird gun drawing rhythm style game to draw your gun in shootout style to finish him off

Still fighting is kinda fun until you realise how hilarious broken the Sniper rifle is - the boss will just stand there and let you peg him if you get a bead on him from far enough away!

Again incredibly janky but better than I could do in Game Maker 3, so... there's that
Also it's a little bit like a short, rubbish version of Red Dead Redemption that is actually ON PC so there's that too!

Full list:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2015/post118