Max Payne 2 (PC CD ROM)

Original 3 CD boxed version. First problem was just getting it running. Installed okay, but trying to run was like turning the key in the ignition and not even getting a "click" from the relay. No sign of life. It turns out that the version of SecuRom used has serious issues with many modern optical drives. Hitman Blood Money ran fine, but that uses a different version of SecuRom. Anyway, downloaded a No CD crack, problem solved. Well first problem solved. At least it was now TRYING to run. Turns out Max Payne 2 doesn't like multi core processors very much at all. Forcing it to run on one core (in this case by simply using Win 95/98 compatibility mode) got everything running fine, with no glitches or bugs for the entire game.

I did not run widescreen, simply because this game really does not have it. The widescreen resolutions you can select are just stretching the display and look shit. I looked into some of the claimed fixes to run true widescreen, but none of them really give true widescreen. But hey, i used to play games in non widescreen all the time, and still do, no big deal.
Otherwise, even on just one core, my system easily ran the game with every setting maxed out. And the game looks fine for it's time- very sharp textures, just lacking the poly count of modern games.

Game play did not really live up to the hype to be honest. I like the original, but that was back in the day. MP 2 continues the story and has great mood. But game play wise this is still from the time when you just back through a doorway and wait for the idiot AI enemies to just blindly run through one at a time to their death. They also blow themselves up, and their mates, with their own grenades far too often. To make up for shit AI the developers used the tried and true balancing method of the day- just give the enemies super prescient powers so that they instantly know where you are at any time, and immediately hit you with perfect accuracy the split second even the smallest part of your body just pokes out from cover, however briefly.

The level designs were mostly good, but totally linear and cramped by modern standards. A couple of levels really pissed me off though- the one thing i hate more than anything in a shooter are "escort/protection" levels and Max Payne 2 has a couple of those, and they were not fun at all.

So overall, the game had good mood and story, but only average (at best) game play for me. For about 7 hours of old style linear shooting it's okay. It's a long time since i played the first game, so i can't accurately decide if this is better or worse.

^Max Payne 3 blasted all those issues with bullet holes, in slo-mo.

Sherlock Holmes Vs Jack The Ripper

A lot of obtuse puzzles and poorly thought out mechanics kept me from fully enjoying what is a very creative take on the Whitechapel Murders.

Outside of the main characters the voice acting is pretty bad. Like something that wouldwind up in youtubepoop.

Somehow this game actually looks worse than Awakened which cameoutyears prior to this. Very strange.

4th game finished this year... well to bad that I do not have as much time as 10-15 years ago :( So many games in my backlog, so little of free time :(

Anyway the pleasure of being the next game has gone to first Europa Universalis, and its Grand Campaign played as Austria. It was my first Paradox game, so I went into uncharted territories of gameplay, but in the end, it was tremendous fun!

List of all of my finished games in 2015 is here: -> MMLN.

Next Up: Van Helsing 1

Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (PC CDROM)

This is possibly the hardest game i've ever played. Not hard like throw ridiculous random encounters at you like an old style RPG, i mean hard like puzzle hard. It wasn't helped by my own dumbness either. I have an old CD boxed version and i tried it out and it worked just fine (or so i thought), and i don't buy a GOG version if i have a working boxed version.

But the difficulty of the game really did me in initially when i started this last year. Finally in mission 12 (On the Rooftops) the sort of dexterity and timing needed with the mouse got the better of me and i put it away.

Then i saw it recently still on my PC and the shame got to me, i hate giving up. So i resorted to a look at mission 12 on youtube to see if i was missing something obvious before trying to finish the game. The first thing i noticed was "why the hell is this guys game running so slow?". In the Youtube video the German soldiers were just lazily ambling about taking their sweet ass time. In my game the Germans were darting around like 5 year olds dosed up on Red Bull. Yes...it's one of those games where the speed is tied to processor speed. And now i know. So my game was running at something like 3 times the speed it was meant to be and I'm now amazed that i even made it to mission 12 at all.

Anyway i fixed the speed, went back to mission 12 and completed it and the remaining 8 missions, 12 months after starting. With the speed fixed the games was just difficult, instead of impossible. And it's a great game, very highly recommended, i intend to also play the expansion sometime- that's meant to be even harder.

:D :D :D

Speed issues aside, I'd also blame part of this game's difficulty on its clunky UI. IIRC, Commandos 2 managed to solve all the UI problems and inconveniences and the experience was far more enjoyable.

Rochard + Hard Times (Linux)

I was pleasantly surprised by this one, because I didn't expect something that polished.
Bought in some Humble Bundle it gathered dust for a while but since I needed something short for yesterday, it was the perfect choice. It's a pretty good puzzle platformer with likable characters, pretty graphics and a nice gravity shifting mechanic in addition to the gravity gun.
Seeing some hard workers becoming heroes out of the circumstances instead of the usual ones that don't know what else to do with their lifes is awesome.
The only negative aspects are
a) unskippable cutscenes which is especcially annoying for the last boss since you have to watch it again at every try
b) the open/cliffhanger ending

I've finished the DLC "Hard Times" too by now and although it is not part of the story, it offers quite a nice challenge.

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

Yep. It was actually the first Unity game to be released on Linux and it's still one of the best ones made with that engine IMO. It made me hold great hopes for upcoming Unity games on Linux... Those hopes have unfortunately been greatly reduced after some broken and many shitty games built with this particular engine.

Unmechanical
Nothing much to say. A cute little puzzle game. The puzzles were interesting and had some good ideas, but where all a bit too easy, nothing challenging. And the ending was quite unexpected and a bit unsatisfying.

Criminal Minds

A nice Hidden Object Game with some variety in puzzles. The second case was much more interesting than the first one.

Complete list of finished games in 2015

After Enebias wrote about that game I finally decided to install it a couple weeks ago and lo and behold, I got stuck a mere 2 hours into the game and haven't played the game since. I'll try to persevere though and haven't consulted hints yet because I can't let those smug Daedalic designers win, who probably think they're oh so clever and oh so logical!

This gives me hope of a slim chance that I might one day revisit the Wizardry games. It nags me that I never finished any of them even though I put many hours into Wizardry 7 in particular. I just don't have the patience to spend several months on one game so printing out graph maps and using them seems like a very good idea. Screw those who say that's cheating or not "hardcore", hardcore waste of precious time is what it would be otherwise. As one gets older, time flies by faster so wasting time becomes more and more criminal and needs to be strategically considered. I don't mind wasting time here and there and that's what gaming is all about anyway but it should be enjoyable. Backtracking in Wizardry games is extremely time consuming and at times aggravating due to the high amount of random encounters, and mapping by hand might be exciting as a kid but I certainly don't find that appealing anymore.

Epic, just epic :'D
I can only imagine your pain. The game is definitely hard enough as it is.

I loved that game, and it's rather underappreciated around here! I still haven't posted a review, started drafting up a long text same as with all the other finished games but writing costs a lot of energy so I'm way behind with reviews, not sure if I'll even finish the texts and post them in the end.

I only had one grievance with Unmechanical and it was the magnetic ball puzzle which turned out to be the single worst twitch reflex hurdle I encountered in any game I've every played since the beginning of time. The first one was easy enough but the second one took me a whopping 1,5 hours. I played the game with an XBOX controller but for this puzzle I tried everything and nothing seemed to work (keyboard(controller/mouse). Even if I pressed the action button precisely the same short length on two consecutive attempts, the magnetic ball would randomly and instantly crash into the upper or lower wall. It was infuriating. No matter how precisely I tried to adjust the timing of pressing and releasing the action button, I just couldn't succeed in running the gauntlet. It appears several players experienced the same problem but the majority of players got past this part without any problems whatsoever with maybe 3-4 attempts. It could have been a technical bug because even though my twitch platforming skills aren't very good, this freak occurrence was simply ridiculous. Any other game I would have rage quit at that point but Unmechanical is such a cute and charming game that I didn't have the heart to quit - nevertheless, having to try this puzzle several hundred times scarred even my based soul!

Lost Lands: Dark Overlord

Not bad. The typical HOG list was very lacking. Instead they added more variety with scenes where you assemble things or scenes where you are given objects you have to pair up. So instead of listing the word, "Candle" and you have to find the candle. They give you a box of matches and you have to find what it goes to.

I was very impressed with the animations and visuals. This was a very pretty game. A couple of the achievements are bugged but still earnable.

I would recommend to HOG fans. (although its very heavy on the backtracking and point/click adventure parts). Its not uncommon to have 12 open puzzles and two pages of inventory items that don't match.

I need to get back to the Ultima games soon, but when I was playing through those in sequence (got a little ways into 6 before I had to stop), the one allowance I gave myself was to just print out online maps instead of mapping the dungeons myself. All the note-taking I was happy to do on my own but using maps saved a lot of time, especially since I was never very good at that aspect of old-school RPG gaming even before crap like spinners and teleporters got involved.

Luckily i actually have the GOG versions of Commandos 2 and 3 and i'll be getting to those in due time. Though, for a change of pace but staying with similar gamestyle, i think i'll try out Robin Hood or Desperados first.
Regarding mapping in the old games, i have to admit that i never actually liked it- it was just a necessity. And probably a reason to buy cluebooks as well.
Some people are always complaining about games getting dumbed down, but i'll take "dumbed down" automapping any day. Time is something that should be saved at every opportunity...after all most people die with money or assets in the bank, no one dies with time in the bank.