The Charnel House Trilogy
Nice and creepy (and a bit mind-fuck-y) point and click adventure from the makers of Richard and Alice. Bought it mostly for Jim Sterling's voice acting but I'm really happy with the purchase.

Alien Isolation on X360


I loved the aesthetic design of everything in this game. It looked the part and made sense on a practical level. The graphics go from pretty standard to quite good in some places, but hey it is the 360 version so the next gen and PC versions will look way way better. Music is decent but not memorable. Voice acting is cheesy except for a couple of characters. Amanda Ripley is actually stellar in my opinion.

On this version however there were graphical bugs nearly everywhere. Aliasing issues and texture as well as asset pop in were fairly frequent. At one point I hate to uninstall it from my HDD because it kept freezing during one particular load screen. A few floating objects were found. Really quite a mess to be honest.


TLDR Good but get it on a next gen console or PC. Items are usless and human AI is borked. Alien is really good.

mortal kombat complete
story mode

a retelling of events from mortal kombat 1 2 and 3 with minor and major alterations
and making the whole story a lot more coherent and compelling

if mortal kombat X is a direct sequel to this one though they are going to have a hell of a time connecting the stories
considering quite a lot of the main characters have ceased to be

Moorhuhn - Tiger and Chicken

A cut little action/hack&slash/RPG about a shaolin chicken (well, rooster) which must rescue his childhood friend and stop the evil Terracotta Emperor in the process. The combat mechanics are very simplistic and quite easy to abuse, but I still had fun playing this one.

I keep an Excel file with all of the games I've completed. Last year I didn't get the first few months. But when I started keeping track in March, I ended up finishing 31 games from that point on, with 24 of them being games I completed for the first time.

This year I've been busy finishing up school, so I've only got 7 games under my belt.

Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 3
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon
Earth Defense Force Portable
Tales of Hearts R
Battlefield 3 (finished that one today)

I'm trying now to play games as if they were a TV series- spaced out over several weeks- so I can play multiple games at a time. I find if I try to drill down on one game, I'll get 75-80% of the way through and then burn out, only to finish up the last bit a year later. I figure if I try to make my games episodic to an extent and play multiple genres simultaneously, I'll be more inclined to actually finish them before I've managed to lose the plot.

Ah, it looks like you've joined the complaining-about-the-third-episode-of-Crystal-Caves club.

BTW, there is a cheat to reverse gravity so you can get out of there:

"While playing, hold Z + E + U + S to toggle god mode. While it's on you can press "G" to toggle gravity."

Renegade Ops

My first thought when I saw the cover of Renegade Ops, was that it looked like G.I. Joe. The impression was made stronger with the game's plot and its FMVs (which are all rendered in comic panels). What kind of game is Renegade Ops, though? It's a neat top-down shooter, in which you control a combat vehicle around large stages, fighting infantry, buggies, tanks and the other forces of the evil C̶o̶b̶r̶a̶ ̶C̶o̶m̶m̶a̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ Inferno.

To accomplish this, you have your trusty primary weapon (your machinegun which can be upgraded with powerups collected from the stages), a choice of secondary weapons with limited ammo (rocket launcher, railgun, flamer) and your speed boost function which can help you reach your destination faster, but also makes your vehicle harder to control. Before you do all this, you have to select one of the characters that the game offers. Each character comes with their own combat vehicle, with each of them differing in speed, toughness and general handling. What they do have in common is a very nice sense of weight, in that what you're driving is really a buggy/jeep/4X4/whatever you want to call it, rather than a bloody motorbike or spaceship. Aside the aforementioned differences, all characters have a unique ability to help them in combat (such as Riz who can use an EMP to disable all enemy weaponry, or Gunnar who can ground his vehicle to the spot, effectively becoming a turret that can dish out huge damage), and their own unique upgrades, which either enhance an attribute of their vehicle or their unique ability.

Of course, to upgrade your stuff, you need to obtain upgrade points. You obtain upgrade points by levelling up. You level up by increasing your high score within a stage, and you increase your high score by, you'll never guess it, blowing shit up... and it's glorious! Michael Bay would be so proud of this game. But, I was only saying half the truth above. You can also increase your score by completing objectives and in almost each stage, you are given a secondary objective, which you can choose whether to do so or not. A factor that can make the completion of secondary objectives a bit hard is that primary objectives are time-limited and if you fail to complete them within the alloted time, you have to restart the whole stage, which can be quite annoying, as some of those stages can last well over 20 minutes. You'll also have to restart the whole stage if you lose all your lives (you can't save in the middle of a stage), but the game isn't really that hard on normal (this only happened to me once during the final stage), for this to occur regularly.

Despite the long stages, the game doesn't really last, though, clocking in under 5 hours (even with the DLC campaign). Still, playing it with a different character and in multiplayer can certainly give it enough replayability and the flaws I mentioned above, weren't enough to prevent me from really enjoying the game.

List updated.

Finished To The Moon. I heard a lot of good things about that game but in the end it was a bit disappointing: the story was good but it was way too slow so it became a bit boring in the end.

Full list here.

So far, 5 people seem to have finished the game this year.

Pillars of Eternity

A modern classic, right there with the classic DnD titles. However, I would not necessarily put this game above them though, for one reason: the (main) story is incredibly difficult to follow. Perhaps it's just me, I don't know. There's a whole new lore in which to get yourself acquainted with: but it's just so massive, it's hard to absorb all of that in one go. And that's not even the main problem: in my opinion, the main quest is so riddled and cryptic, I probably wouldn't have gotten all of it even if I knew everything about the lore. I'm a Watcher, an eternal being with access to other people's souls / memories, and someone who was in great position in her previous life - I got that. But who was Thaos? Who was Waidwen? Why did they try to accomplish? What did I do in my previous life, besides serve Thaos? I have answers to none of these questions. They might have been explained somewhere, but I completely missed them in that case.

The side quests are really good, though. As well as the characters you meet in your travels. Or, well, at least most of them. I didn't like Durance and The Grieving Mother, because I couldn't read them at all. But I did like Kana, Aloth and Hiravias in particular. And as with any classic DnD, it's fun to simply explore, find new, better gear, etc. The world is really beautiful, which makes exploring all the more worthwhile.

All in all, a great CRPG, plagued only by a main quest that's way too overly ambitious and epic, which make it hard to follow. The rest is gold.

<span class="bold">Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis</span>

After playing my second LucasArts game, I think I'm strating to understand why that studio still retain its glorious reputation.
I am usually very sceptic about vidoegames related to famous movie brands, and that is probably the reason why Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis surprised me even more than it would have otherwise.
Graphically wise, the visuals are stunning. Considering that the game was released in 1992, there is little place for doubt when saying that under that point of view it must have been one of the most impressive games ever made. More importantly, the pixel art can imo be declared as immortal; considering the revival this style has in the last few years, even modern games can still rightfully envy Indy!
The only downside is that the last third of the game is set almost exclusively in underground mazes, which add a bit of repetitiveness (not gameplay-wise, fortunately).
The sound isn't bad either, with a soundtrack based on the movies' canons but still original and perfectly fitting the themes, even if it might not be as catchy and unique as other LA titles.

On the puzzle side, I must say this has been one of the most pleasant experiences I had in adventure gaming: all puzzles are thought to be challenging but never frustrating, requiring a clever and varied use of many different objects in just as many different environments, never getting repetitive or requiring pixel hunting and encouraging exploration and experimentation while always remaining logical.
The lower part of the screen is dedicated half to "action boxes" (allowing you to choose the appropriate action, if you prefer avoiding keybord shortcuts) and half to the inventory, just as many other classics.

The feature I liked the most in this title is the replayability: after the intial third of the game, Dr. Jones must choose how he wants to deal with the situation. Choosing a certain path (teaming up with another character, choosing a "solitary" adventure or going straight into the action) will have different outcomes for the middle part of the game, developing in three possible ways with different puzzles and interactions with other characters.

I will not neter in more details to avoid any kind of spoiler, as narrative and personal experience are the best values for an adventure game.
I will just limit myself to say that -just like in the movies- action has the major role despite the good characterization of the cast, and the game never takes itself too seriously, provinding a satisfying amount of genuinely funny moments right from the beginning.
To be fair, I think that the first two are better than the action one, mostly because in the latter Indiana Jones will necessarily have to fist fight his way trough the Nazis using a really not great basic combat system.
Anyway, this minor flaw does not diminish the overall value in any way: regerdless of the chosen path, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is an excellent adventure game that will guarantee a satisfying experience for every player, well worthy of another Enebias' Official Seal of Approval!

Dungeon Siege 1

Really enjoyed this game, was better than Diablo 3 [in my opinion] I played with 7 characters and a packmule [who kept getting stuck!] , spent most of the time, trying to work out what gear to give each char. a very nice ARPG, no hand holding, just wandering around, in hope of finding your objective.

There was a horrible bug, that when you saved sometimes, the game would just freeze [that hurt after 2 hours of gameplay without saving :( ]

But the ending....

I Downloaded Killahs fix for the expansion, which I'm playing now..

Arcanum
LSL MCL
Postal 2 Complete Original Version
Shadowrun Returns
Shadowrun Dragonfall
Shadowrun Dragonfall Director's Cut
Hotline Miami
Postal 2
Arx Fatalis

99 Levels to Hell

Not much to say about this 2d run-and-gun roguelike, other than the fact that it's kinda easy, looks like a flash game, has an unbelievably repetitive layout for a game with randomized levels and doesn't have much of a variety to offer in terms of items, enemies, weapons, etc. At least, it is short and can offer some replayability through the choice of different characters, but even then, you'll have to unlock them first. You know, if you can stand playing it again and again.

My full list.