Apotheon (Linux)

It has been a fun game although it has an extreme focus on fighting for a metroidvania and very few tools.
I seem to have found all the secrets and it was easier than most games I usually encounter.
The bad things are that only XBox gamepads are supported and as so often nowadays there is no button mapping or even recognition of classic USB gamepads and that the physics are completely messed up. Hits of your enemy or yourself often result in ridiculous 30 meter long/high flights and in combination with the controls and graphics it feels a bit like a Java based browser game although a very good one.
I especcialy like, that every weapon and shield is destructible - not counting the secret one from Hermes.
The design and very well executed mythological theme are the biggest upsides of this game of course, I was pleasantly surprised that this game is actually full of quotes from the old Greek books and the devs seem to know what they were actually coding about, which is a rare thing.
It's made to look that you are watching an ancient Greek vase come to life, you can even see the surface of the vase all the time which casts some nice shadows.
I wasn't able to look at the multiplayer mode since it doesn't even start without having two M$ gamepads connected.

Overall a nice game, special only in appearance but I had my share of fun although it's mostly killing people, finding keys and opening doors. I wish that there are more games with properly executed mythological themes to come and not just half-heartely thrown together creatures from some set.

Maybe I should mention to my American fellows here, that this game is full of tits (nymphs) and boners (satyrs with constant erections), which kind of comes with the territory. ;)

List:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2015/post68

Finished Broken Age. I really liked it. First act was great, a bit too easy though. So difficulty is more present in part two but the game was really good. If you like point'n clicks, do yourself a favor : ignore the drame around the kickstarter, the delays, the split in two acts... and just buy the game and enjoy it !

Full list here.

The Stanley Parable

Having played the original, free HL2 Complete Convo mob and the demo with the completely different content, the full version of The Stanley Parable didn't have THAT much new to show me but I still love Douglas Adams / Monty Python humour and Hyperspace is still my favorite Choose Your Own Adventure book so The Stanley Parable still feels like I'm exactly the sort of person who should be playing it and I still love how it's like a 3D Choose Your Own Adventure computer games that's ABOUT computer games and the nature of choices within them, it's totally meta and about stuff but with an amazing sense of humour about it and even has a part where it mocks 'arty' games
I used guides to find just about every little hidden ending and easter egg and I still only racked up 4 hours of playtime but it was 4 hours well spent!

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

Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)

I finally finished this huge epic with my save sitting on 97 hours played. The best JRPG i've played, though not without some annoying bits.
Many won't know about it, but it's a huge Wii exclusive JRPG in the play style of more recent non-turn based FF games. It's rarely been reviewed lower than 95%. The game was very popular in Japan, but never looked likely to make it to the rest of the world. Finally Nintendo relented to demand and made an English version...but when the game was finally finished the Wii was also finished, and it only trickled onto store shelves. Disc versions sell for a descent price now on Ebay, as it's the only way to play it on a Wii. Luckily it was recently released as a emulated digital download for WiiU and there's also a 3DS version.

Story is the high point. It's pretty unique Sci-Fi/fantasy setting on a world set upon of the dead bodies of two giant Titans, the biological Bionis and the mechanical Mechonis, that died fighting each other thousands of years ago. About 85 percent of my play through involved playing the story, so it is truly epic.

Graphics are the weak point of course, though the outdoor areas look amazingly natural, but indoor areas for some reason are a bit ugly. I think the graphics are a product of having to fit so much content onto a single disc as much as limits of the Wii's processing- it has no hard drive so everything has to run off the disc. Bethesda could learn something here though, in almost 100 hours of play in huge complicated world and not one single bug or glitch.

Combat is most like WoW, but party based. Auto attacks are supplemented by special abilities (arts) on a cool down timer. It seems shallow at first but actually has a lot of depth the longer the game goes. For example your party must act as a team and for some types of enemies they only cause damage by chaining their attacks in a certain order. Different party members also have special abilities that make them far more suited to certain types of enemy- Mechon, Telethia etc. There's far more to this than immediately seems obvious.

The games weak point is the non story questing and how it all ties into the games difficulty. There are 100's of sidequests, you could spend another 40 hours doing them all, but i only did about 60% as they are honestly dull and feel like the generic generated quests in Daggerfall- even though they are not randomly generated they feel that way. You can ignore them, but the game sort of assumes you will be doing them and sets the difficulty accordingly. By the end of the game you can find yourself badly under leveled for the boss fights- and even unable to do damage. The answer is to grind unfortunately...either by doing the sidequests or just simply finding mobs of the right level and grinding that way. How much you grind is up to the player and how difficult you want the late game bosses to be. They are set for level parity as "normal" difficulty, under level and you are playing "hard" difficulty and need to really understand the tactics and work hard. Over level to make the boss fights easy. At first this system bothered me, but i soon found that grinding monsters is faster than i thought, so it wasn't so bad in the end.

The game won't make anyone buy a Wii or WiiU, but for anyone that has one or access to one and loves JRPG's then i highly recommend Xenoblade Chronicles, with the proviso that you're not put off by just a bit of grinding towards the end game. It has a lot of depth and good ideas. Also, it's best played with the classic controller and not the nunchuck for people more used to other consoles. The game uses no motion controls at all.

Broken Sword 5: The serpent's Curse

So much better than fourth and third game in the series. Maybe not better than BS1 but close (BS2 is the superior one)

Had lots of fun. I kickstartered the game but only got roughly 30 percent into it when first episode was released before I stopped playing. some other games were on my radar.

I really hope they will make the sixth game. that was fun. they already have the engine and technical expertise how to make the game for modern systems.

FlatOut - A fantastic racing game with some great environmental interaction. The races are lap-based with some shortcuts dotted throughout the track, with plenty of environmental hazards (trucks, barrels, etc.) that you can slam into. The thing about this game is that even if you're in first place for most of the race, one slip-up that causes to slam into an obstacle too quickly and you will be ejected from your car, and find yourself trailing behind. You're treading the fine line between controls and chaos in this game. Highly recommended.

Gratuitous Space Battles - A fun little tower defense-like game where you construct your own ships. There's no direct control of your units, so you have to assign units orders and directives; once you start the battle it plays out on its own. It's got some challenge as you try to create a fleet with a mix of abilities to defend against the opposing fleet. However, there are a couple of weapons that break the game, make some ships with only those weapons and you will probably win. It's got quite a lot of detail despite its simple appearances. Destroyed ship components are shown on fire, and when ships are destroyed you can see the escape pods.

I'll play them all ... one day. I think I finished the first one 1,5 times?

Im just finished Witcher 3 after 3 months of playing, and i got a good ending, such a great game.

My last finished games were Shadowrun: Returns and Dragonfall. Love the setting and story.

Randal's Monday

I'm very positively surprised by this game. I've read several reviews that said that the game isn't funny and that the main character is completely unlikeable. But I had a great fun with Randal's Monday. Almost every scene is a reminiscene to a movie, computer game or comic book and I had to laugh out loud many times, because of the funny dialogues and bizarre situations. And Randal isn't unlikeable at all. He might be kleptomaniac sociopath (isn't every adventure game character one?) and he does awful things to his friends, but he regrets his deeds and tries hard to make everything right again. For me he's much more likeable than Rufus from the Deponia games (who is just a narcisstic asshole).

Game isn't perfect though. The last chapter was a little too long for my taste. I've also encountered a bug where no dialogue options where available and I had to reload (it happened twice). And while the voice acting is very good, there is a problem with the speech volume (which varies a lot).

Puzzle design is good most of the times, but I still had to use the internal hint system (a walkthrough that only reveals a little bit when you click on it) several times, because I've missed a certain item or had no idea what to do next. And even if I did so, it took me about 15 hours to complete this game (which I consider quite long for a modern adventure game).

All in all this is my new favourite Daedalic game and I can recommend it to everybody who likes geek/nerd humor.

A big thank you to mchack who gifted me that game!

Complete list of finished games in 2015

Ah! I keep meaning to post here regularly, but alas, I forgot once again. So I have a lot of games to report! I'm up to 91 for the year!

Block Block - I had never heard of this game before and it was an okay Arkanoid clone. It kinda went on too long (just a tad over 2 hours for Beginner and Normal modes) for my liking since it's the same thing over and over, but oh well.
Captain Commando - Pretty standard 90s beat-em up, but still fun!
Dead or Alive - I don't like this one as much as the second one, but it's still fun to play and ultra fast.
Myth: The Fallen Lords - FINALLY! This was one of the first PC games I ever purchased (I didn't have a PC until 1998) and I'm just now finishing the campaign. I always thought it was really hard back in the day, but I didn't have any trouble at all with it. Don't get me wrong, I made plenty of fatal mistakes and reloaded a lot of levels, but I never felt like I was going to be stuck. If you've never played this, I highly recommend digging up a copy.
Eco Fighters - Eh, this was an okay arcade game. It had some neat ideas for the shmup genre, but wasn't terribly interesting
Decathlete - I hadn't played this game since the 90s and had a surprisingly large amount of fun with it.
U.N. Squadron - I never saw this in an arcade and I didn't have a SNES growing up, so this was my first round with it. It's a pretty fun, though very difficult shmup. Good thing I had unlimited continues :)
Fighting Force - Here's another high school game that's been nagging at me for years. I only recently picked it up, but I remember looking at magazines back then and wanting to try it out. Despite the poor reviews, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Suikoden - Woohoo, I can scratch a JRPG off my list! I actually started playing Suikoden II, but quickly decided to start with the first one instead. It's aged surprisingly well and isn't terribly long (24 hours with some walkthrough usage). Now I just have to play the sequel...
Fighting Vipers - Too bad Sega has no interest in reviving this highly underrated fighting game :(
Virtua Cop 2 - Umm...okay, how did I got this long without playing this game!?! I loved the first one and the second one is just more of the same...and that's a good thing!
Battle Monsters - This was a pretty terrible fighting game. I knew it was supposed to be bad, but man...not this bad.
Rez - This has become one of my favorite games over the years. It's challenging, yet relaxing at the same time.
Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye - So I guess I'm still hooked on Mahjong Solitaire. I played this sucker on my trusty 'ol Sega Genesis.
Apocalypse - Hey, look here, another high school game! And yet another one that I didn't actually purchase / play until recently. While I had a lot of fun with it, it wasn't a particularly good game. I think I would've enjoyed it more in the 90s since that would've been before I was spoiled with other twin stick shooters like Geometry Wars and Beat Hazard.
Final Fantasy VII - I'm not even sure how many times I've played this game, but here's another playthrough, this time on Steam. I like this game. A lot.
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus - I played this game many years ago and thought it was good, but not great. This time, with the HD version, I thought it was great. It's aged really well and was nowhere near as frustrating as I remember.
Pac-man World Rally - And here we have another terrible game. Could they have copied Mario Kart anymore? I mean, I know there are other kart racers out there, but at least they TRY to distinguish their games. This was almost identical and nowhere near as good. I don't think I even lost a race the entire game and generally won by a mile, but somewhow I was frustrated 99% of the time. I'm not sure how that happened.
Hiyakuke no Omoide + Himekuri: Girls in Motion Puzzle Vol. 1 - Oooookay, this is a weird and mildly creepy game! I have a habit of picking up random Japanese imports for my Saturn and this is one of them. You basically put together a jigsaw puzzle of different girls, but the twist is the puzzle pieces and background is moving, like a movie clip. It's odd, but I was hooked and enjoyed it enough that I'm trying to track down volume 2. And no, it's not an "Adult" game, you don't see anything you wouldn't see on the beach.
HuniePop - Now this is a game where you'll see things you wouldn't see on the beach, at least if you're playing the uncensored version. I hadn't played a (true) dating sim / visual novel in 15+ years, but I REALLY liked this game! The puzzle aspect was the star of the show. Finally, a "match 3" game that isn't completely random and requires some strategy!
Grand Theft Auto V - What can I say, it's a really good game! This is only the second GTA game I've actually finished, with the first one being GTA 3, so it's been a while.
Darius Gaiden - Another tough as nails shmup that made me glad I'm playing with unlimited continues :) I've always enjoyed the graphics in this game.
Katamari Damacy - I play this game (or at least one of the Katamari games) every few years and it never gets old. Come on, Namco, bring it back!
Vice: Project Doom - I'm gradually playing through the various NES games that eluded me when I was a kid. This was a very interesting action game, but man is it tough! I abused the hell out of save states to get through this one.
Daytona USA - I was randomly looking through the Xbox Live store and noticed this was on there...instabuy!
Christmas Nights - I finally tracked down a copy of this game and played it, 'nuff said.
Diablo II - I replayed this one because I want to play the expansion, which I've never played.
Crash Team Racing - I had heard great things about this game, so I decided to give it a go. It was pretty good, though I don't think it's aged as well as the other kart racer from that era (Mario Kart 64).
The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling - I played through this one while making a YouTube video of it. it's not a very good game haha! Here's the video though, if you're interested: https://youtu.be/D8Sjey9GaiU
Bust-A-Move 3 - I love the Bust-A-Move games and this was my first time playing this one. It good.
Haunt the House: Terrortown - Despite being in my Steam library for who knows how long, I had never heard of this game. I was looking for a short game to play one morning and this is what I chose. It's a decent game, but I wish I would've waited a couple of months to play it for Halloween :P
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Much like Myth, I had never played through the campaign on this game. I played about half of it before and played some multiplayer, but this time I played through the whole campaign. It's a very good game I'm looking forward to playing the expansions and sequel.
Battle Arena Toshinden Remix - This was the first Toshinden game I've ever played and it wasn't very good haha!
Last Gladiators: Digital Pinball - Okay, I'm terrible at pinball. I only say I "finished" this game because I played a game on each of the tables. It seems like a pretty nice game overall, but man, I'm just so bad at it!
Jetpac - I had never heard of this game until I loaded up Rare Replay. I decided to give it a try and 26 minutes later, I had played through each of the levels. I thought it was a lot of fun and definitely glad I gave it a chance.
R.C. Pro-Am - This game destroyed me as a kid! And guess what, it destroyed me as an adult! But this time, I had a rewind feature and save states! So this time I had the last laugh, muhuhahaha!!
Blast Corps - I played through this one a few years ago on my N64, but this time I played it on Rare Replay for the Xbox One. I've always enjoyed this game, but it gets pretty tough later on. I had some freezing issues too, so I couldn't finish all of the achievements, d'oh!
Destiny - I picked this game up since it was $20 and was VERY pleased with it! It took a while to get used to playing an FPS on a console, but once I did, it was a very enjoyable game. I played it solo and enjoyed every second.
Defend Your Life! - I love tower defense games and this one was quite enjoyable. It's fairly challenging too.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary - After I finished Destiny, I rolled right into this remastered version of the first Halo. I had played the terrible PC port of Halo before, but this version was much better. I'm looking forward to playing the rest of the series now that my fingers can play console FPS games again :D


Full List + Completion Times

Fran Bow

After playing the demo a couple months ago, it became obvious to me that this would be an awesome game and that I would have to get it. There was only one question: Would the game be long enough to warrant a full price purchase or not? I like supporting indie developers who deserve it but I’m not the Salvation Army so price/value considerations are a factor. Before going into any more detail, yes the game has enough length and quality to be worth a full price purchase at $15. That’s really all you need to know so you can go and buy the game right now if you like the screenshots, enjoyed the free demo and have a remote interest in point & click adventures with imaginative writing and art.

Depending on how long it takes for you to figure out the puzzles, you could get through this game in anywhere between 7 to 12 hours. There are 5 chapters, each taking around 1.5 hours except for chapter 3 which is longer and involves a lot of walking around an area of about 18 screens. That’s a large area for point & click adventures, even if the hotspots are limited.
So in total, you can expect a playtime of around 8 hours if you progress fluently, don’t get stuck anywhere and aren’t rushing through the scenery like a madman. Do yourself a favor and don’t rush things because the scenery is lovely, it’s like being abducted into a children’s book and you’ll want to savour every moment of that. Lots of imaginative details and careful worldbuilding on par with what you can find in a Benoît Sokal game.
Unlike the more realistic looking Daedalic adventures such as A New Beginning or The Dark Eye series which look great on screenshots but awkwardly stiff in motion, Fran Bow’s style of animation is in perfect harmony with the illustrative children’s book artwork. Figures move in the adorably dorky manner of Asian shadow puppet theater and it’s a perfect fit.

Which brings us to the atmosphere. Provided you’re older than let’s say 10-12, Fran Bow is about as scary as Salad Fingers which means not really scary. Salad Fingers is occasionally more creepy than Fran Bow despite Fran Bow having some very gory imagery that could fit right into Harvester and Phantasmagoria. For Salad Fingers fans, there’s a direct reference to the following notorious scene very early into the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p33NkAQ5jCA
Fran Bow feels more like playing through a Brothers Grimm fairy-tale, not the sanitized Disney versions but the original more grimy versions that often include grotesque brutality, albeit in a somewhat childishly abstracted way. Fran Bow’s visuals are so adorable that even the depictions of severed limbs and rotting corpses come across as cute instead of disturbing, and artistic instead of disgusting. There are no crass jump scares so if you’re easily unsettled, have no worries. The gory stuff is not shown in action but in still imagery.
There was only one moment that I found slightly disturbing, not going to give any details but it was an art imitates real life kinda thing, a reference to some of Dr. Mengele’s “finest” work. When you venture into that sort of territory even the cutest art style is going to be at least a little bit creepy. Overall, it’s more of a mind trip like Sanitarium rather than about cheap thrills and shock value.

Whether you want to let your kids play the game or not very much depends on how sensitive your kids are but I’d say most kids aged 10-12 should be able to enjoy Fran Bow without getting permanently traumatized. The cute art style does go a very long way in reducing the horror effect and the general feeling is closer to a pretend-scary Tim Burton movie than to an actual horror movie. If you have any concerns as a parent, you might find comfort in the circumstance that the game designer Natalia appears to be a 100% non-violent and friendly person, someone who clearly has a very lively and creative imagination but isn’t likely to be a danger to society or going to corrupt the fragile minds of your children, or your own mind for that matter. The quirky personality of Natalia really shows in the game, not only in the art style but also in the writing. One of Fran Bow’s highlights is the commentary of the 11 year old protagonist who sees everything in a naive but adorable manner, and many of the other characters have an equally innocent and whimsical nature.

Watch these developer videos to ease your mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uke3qJrVukM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BcnNHI2U4o

How difficult is the game? I found the puzzles to be quite logical, they flow very nicely with the story and don’t come across as cheap or needlessly obtuse roadblocks which would only artificially bloat gaming time.
The only part where the flow of the story is disrupted is during the lengthy third chapter when the accessible area opens up and you have to complete a series of tasks. The world building is amazing in this part with a ton of allegorical qualities but the shift of focus from story to serial task completion makes you more aware of being in a typical adventure game which reduces immersion a little bit. Balancing between gameplay meat and fluent story immersion is a balancing act that virtually no adventure game consistently achieves and Fran Bow does a better job at that than many well known classics.

Of course, they had to include a sliding block puzzle at some point in the game but the one in Fran Bow has a twist to it which makes it a fun little challenge. Apparently, every adventure game has to have at least one sliding block puzzle, must be a conspiracy among game designers. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Gomo, Machinarium or The Neverhood, - mandatory sliding block puzzle is mandatory.
Despite the lack of any deeper challenge, Fran Bow’s puzzles have just enough meat to keep you engaged. There are many overly obvious puzzles but the overall easiness doesn’t descend to insulting levels.
I got terribly stuck on one occasion in chapter 3 where I had the right idea right off the bat but mistakenly thought I had tried it already and as a result ended up spending a whopping 3 hours being baffled and not making any progress whatsoever. During those 3 hours, I became very frustrated and started to come up with all sorts of complex puzzle solutions – none of which I could put into action as the game is a traditional point & click adventure and therefore 100% linear with only one exact solution for each problem. I can’t hold this against the game as it’s a common occurrence that when you get stuck in a traditional adventure game, enjoyment will sink below zero. There is no progress until you finally find the exact thing you had to do and when you finally get it right, the satisfaction most often doesn’t outweigh the frustration of having been stuck, often for the silliest reasons and slightest oversights. This is the bane of the genre and has been so for as long as I can remember.
In that regard, I’m glad that Fran Bow did not have any obtuse puzzles, there are always clues to be found in the game and you never have to take an unreasonable leap of logic. If you get stuck, it’s likely going to be your own fault as it was in my case.

All in all, Fran Bow is among the most enjoyable point & click adventures I have played and I can recommend it very highly, even at full price. The quirky dialogue and commentary, imaginative worldbuilding, adorable artwork and organic relationship of story and puzzles give this game a wide appeal for players of all experience levels. There are many adventures games that provide more challenge but few that have more personality. A well deserved 5 stars!


Technical warning: A minority of players, including myself, have experienced unacceptably long loading times when booting up the game. In my case the game takes 3 minutes to load, other players have reported even longer loading times with a variety of different GPUs and operating systems so it appears to be a problem with the game and not just a matter of me having a slow computer. The programmer is aware of the problem and has said he’ll try to fix it. Since the game is otherwise playable and I didn’t encounter any in-game glitches or bugs, this issue had no influence on my rating of the game (5 stars).


Full list

Edna & Harvey: The Breakout

As the first adventure game from Daedalic (born as a university project and later overhauled), Edna & Harvey: The Breakout is very rough in the technical department, yet it has nothing to envy from later titles.

The plot revolves around Edna, a young inmate of a psychiatric asylum, and her stuffed, “talking” blue rabbit Harvey.
The two have no memories of why and how they have been imprisoned there, so they try to escape the complex and remember what happened before they were taken there.
As always, Daedalic does not even remotely try to be politically correct: during your quest, you will have to play along with the inmates and satisfy their obsessions to obtain their help, and the clueless (and definitely not quite mentally stable as well) protagonist will often dive into absurdity and madness, producing a good number of nasty gags as result.
Many have classified the game as “comedy”, yet that definition is imo unfair and misleading; while it retains a constant sense of humor similar to the one you might find in Deponia, the underlying story is serious and disturbing, an aspect significantly enhanced by the art style (very simple and lacking details, cartoonish and deliberately reminding a child's drawing) and the “tempomorph” sessions, where Harvey will personally move in Edna's memories to help her recalling a few significant episodes of her past.

The puzzles are on the same line as those of Monkey Island, neither cryptic nor immediately evident (despite a single one that I needed to solve with the help of a guide; it was one of the funniest, but also way too over the top to be easily understandable); like in Chaos on Deponia, the majority of the game takes place in a single, enormous area -the asylum- that may leave you a bit disoriented at first, since it contains and gives you access to all the problems you have to solve and all the instruments you need to do it right from the start.

While I liked both the plot and the puzzles, I have several complaints about technical issues that, even if excusable considering the history of the project, can certainly mine the enjoyment: the coding is not really great, and it “freezes” the game in a loading state for several seconds each time you change screens, a real major problem for an adventure game; there are no shortcuts for actions and items, meaning that you have to use the mouse for everything; sometimes, a few subtitles are hidden by the “developer commentary” icon; in the English version of the game, a puzzle and the ending are bugged, forcing you to reset the game and to watch the last lines on a video; you cannot decide to opt for the original voice acting while maintaining English subtitles.
This latter one is particularly annoying, since the original dubbing is much better then the simply awful English one; I tried to trick the game into believing that the German audio was the English one, but with no success -it seems it was possible with older versions of the game, but not any more.

It's a shame that such a good game is so badly maintained; Edna & Harvey: The Breakout is imo one of the very few games that really deserves an overhauled new version.
I would recommend it to the adventure genre fans, yet considering the current state of the English version I think that waiting for a good sale is in order. It's a real shame, since the core came deserves more than what has been delivered.

witcher 3 -loved the game besides my save not transfering >.<

metro last light redux

now I'm waiting for wb to fix batman one day so I can play/finish that also