Divinity 2: Director's Cut - This is a meaty RPG, with lots of combat but feels underwritten. The base game is very combat focused, while the expansion content was much more enjoyable to me, with its emphasis on questing and less so on the combat. The combat mechanics doesn't have any glaring faults, but it can be tedious to fight through many hordes of enemies. Playing as an archer didn't pose any problems, except for a few indoor fights that thankfully weren't too challenging. It's a fun experience, with some impressive vistas, but the story is underdeveloped and frankly not that interesting until the expansion content. The expansion content has many more quests, often multistage ones that overlap with other ones as well. Overall, it's a enjoyable game to immerse yourself into and fight some mobs.

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault - This game, following a squad of soldiers in the Pacific Theater, can get quite intense at times and outright frustrating at others. There's some basic squad commands, but I was never really sure that they were working - it's not the same level of control as in Brothers in Arms. Also, although you're in a squad, you're doing all the work - you have to push ahead to get your fellow squad members to follow, all the while they're shouting at you to accomplish some objective (and asking why you're taking so long) or shooting you in the back. This squad chatter would be good, but the repeating nature of it can grate. The gameplay is fine, set in mostly jungle locations, at times it can be quite atmospheric and tense. Overall, it's a typical WWII first person person, it doesn't impress but it doesn't disappoint either.

<span class="bold">Foul Play</span>

Foul Play is a great brawler, best played in co-op mode, that takes about 4h to finish. There is no life bar, and you cannot die in this game, the player performs to amuse the audience and complete a different set of challenges each level, in order to unlock different abilities and charms (items that provide bonus stats).
Sometimes, I encountered a few game breaking bugs(2-3 times), and had to restart the level, one such bug occurred during the final boss battle, right before the final hit.
Even though the game has the already mentioned problems, it's still great and a lot of fun to play, especially in co-op mode.

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

Weird, I had the exact same experience. :P

Spider Solitaire

Came with the PC, only just completed it with 4 suits.

Minesweeper is better though.

The Dig

This is an OK point-and-click adventure game, not one of the the best I’ve ever played, but not bad either.

On the positive side it’s got an interesting setting, nice graphics, no game-ending dead ends, and good voice acting. On the negative side, the game does have its share of pixel hunting, obscure puzzles, and the exits from each screen are not always obvious. In addition, it has too much story and dialogue for my personal preference.

Still, overall it’s a fun game and I’d recommend it if you like sci-fi point-and-clicks.

Shardlight (31st may 10:30pm)

Overall it is great point and click title with a good story. the only issue with the game is important items are in junk piles so most of the time you don't check them.

Also the art work is better then most wadjet eye games

Freespace 2 (vanilla GOG version)

Finished it with the Insane (hardest) difficulty level. While there were some very hard missions here and there that I had to retry countless times, overall it wasn't as frustrating experience as the first Freespace game in Insane level (or then my skills have gotten better from when I played the first game...).

Especially the last mission was surprisingly easy compared to that frustrating experience in the first game. In FS2, all you apparently really need to do is to make sure you stay alive until the timer runs out, and then jump out in the node before the time runs out. You don't necessarily even have to participate in the combat, it doesn't seem to matter one way or another to the outcome of the last mission as long as you survive.

Now thinking of playing either Descent 3, or Independence War... At some point I might try the modded port versions of FS and FS2 with better graphics.

<span class="bold">Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today</span>

I'm highly disappointed with this game. No, it's not because of its semi-hidden episodic nature (of which I was aware and, all things considered, I don't think the ending is as abrupt as others put it). Nor is it because of its several design flaws, or bad voice acting on some characters. Above all, it's because I feel like the authors present a terrific and promising scenario, they slowly build up the mystery surrounding the main character and the events that led to the current apocalyptic world, but they withhold most of the revelations until the very end, when everything is explained in a rushed manner. I would still be OK with all that if said explanations were coherent with the scarce hints you have been given during the game, but they are not and they make no sense. I'd very much like to go into more detail about these final revelations but I'm afraid that'd be too spoilery, so I'll stop here.

It's a pity, really, because it was so promising in principle: it's got an excellent graphic style that perfectly matches the grim and dark themes presented to the player (as indeed this is a game for mature audiences, despite its 12+ PEGI rating) and an intriguing story, but I was left with the impression of a big wasted opportunity.


My list of finished games in 2016

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
It's really about time I finished one of the Civ style games. I think the problem was that I got the complete collection that came out at the same time as Civ IV, so I could never stay focused on one game for long enough to finish it. Ironic that the first one I did finish wasn't even an actual Civilization game.
I played on the easiest setting, and crushed everything in my path. I got 1166 points and a rating of 43% (whatever those mean). It was a little sad actually I had 14-4-1 fighting against 1-3-1. If I played again I'd definitely bump the difficulty. I quite enjoyed all the little quotes and wonder (sorry, secret project) videos. I found the unit design a little tiresome, because of all the special powers. The sci-fi flavour was good. Overall though, I think I prefer the original Civ games.

Yeah... The game touches subjects like questioning your own morals, cold-blooded murder, post-mortem mutilation, degenerative diseases (kind of), taking advantage of the handicapped, rape, prostitution, suicide... you name it. But hey, there's not even a single nipple in display and the language employed by the characters is quite mild, all things considered. 12+ it is! :\


Maybe I could create a thread in this game's subforum (with a big SPOILER ALERT in the title) to discuss the ending... I'll probably do it later today when I've got the time.

Tell me via PM if you do, I doubt I'll remember to visit the subforum without a reminder xD

I am Bread (PS4)

This is another game from the makers of Surgeon Simulator. In this game you are a piece of bread, you are put in various rooms and your goal is to explore around and find a way to toast yourself (without getting too inedible in the process).

In addition to the main Story Mode, there are also other modes (not all of which I completed): Bagel Race (boring), Rampage (even more boring), Find the Cheese (very difficult!), Zero G (pure awesome), and Free Roam (where you can explore each level as any type of bread from the other modes).

It’s not a good as Surgeon Simulator, but it’s still a lot of silly fun and I’d definitely recommend it!

Legend of Zelda (1st June7:32pm)

I can't believe I jut beat it. I have been playing it for nearly a year now. I only just got it (in how to ply it 2 days ago) and it is fun.

Puzzle Series Vol 5: Slitherlink (DS)

Made by the same company that makes those wordsearch books you buy at train stations, Puzzle Series is a series of games which contains a series of 1 particular type of puzzle (Vol 1 was Jigsaws, Vol 2 was Wordsearch etc). Slitherlink basically involves creating a single joined route through a grid of numbers, with each number determining the route it can take. There are 270 puzzles ranging from a 5 x 5 grid (about 2 minutes to complete) to a 32 x 19 grid (about 30 - 40 minutes to complete), though there is only 1 type of puzzle it is quite addictive. It took me 84 hours to complete this game, though my combined time for all the puzzles was around 52 hrs due to my reaction to realising I made a mistake to just restart the puzzle.

Bad points, it was only released in Japan, so I had to guess what most of the words said, and theres some slight lag in the larger puzzles. Though I did enjoy it and am considering getting the Nonograms version of the game.