Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

The prequel to the reboot of this classic game. Really short compared to its sequel, but very enjoyable nevertheless. Smooth controls, satisfying weapons, excellent graphics and nice audio. What could you ask for? Well, more, of course!

To be honest, the story is on the weak side compared to its older brother. They didn't bother to develop characters like they did before and thus, if you don't take the time to collect all the letters and files hidden in the game, you'll lose a bit. Plus, you don't really understand the hows and the whys of the main story, even when you beat the final boss. But it still ties in pretty well with The New Order.

So, yes, I hope Machinegames will one day make another game of the size of The New Order, I want to continue to follow the adventures of B.J. Blazkowicz!!

At least, if you like FPSes, that one is guaranteed to keep you hooked!

So far in 2016: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post46

Penarium

Good game in short bursts. The game's pretty short anyway (the campaign took me only an hour and a half). It's a 2D arena platformer, and your task is to avoid various death traps while breaking (=touching) barrels, pushing buttons in the correct sequence a la Simon Says, popping balloons that are on a timer, etc. It's quite a simple game, really. The plot is pretty non-existent; you're just a farmer boy that's hoaxed into joining this hellish circus and that's it. Like I said, it's a good game but I wouldn't pay more than a dollar, maybe two for it because of the short length.

Dang! Another wishlist game for the PS3 I don't have! lol~ Thanks for the recommendation! ^__^

As much as TNO's story kicked ass it was nice to play Old Blood and not having your control being taken away every two minutes by a cutscene :D

Splinter Cell: Double Agent

A different spin on the splinter cell series, this one sees Sam Fisher, his life a mess, deciding to take on one of his riskiest operations, going undercover in a terrorist cell seeking to blow up new York with a bomb. You must perform tasks in each mission in order to keep the trust of both the NSA and the terrorists. This game also has a coop mode but I didn't try that. There were some framerate issues and glitches (I accidentally saved just before a game crashing glitch occurred and had to redo the whole mission at one point). The Stealth score has also been adjusted to be even more difficult, knocking enemies out causes you to lose stealth score now. There are also some ridiculously difficult missions, like one on a boat where there are no shadows anywhere. The story is much better than other games but the gameplay is worse in my opinion, I would recommend this series but not this game in particular, The original 3 should be where to start.

Far Cry 1 (11/7 11:20pm)

I can't believe ow bad the game gets towards the end. They made an enemy so powerful it is annoying. The game should of ended after the nuke. Still the first half of the game is fun.

Beneath a steel sky
A great improvement over Lure of the Temptress even thou the Virtual Theater engine still makes things more cumbersome than needed. You still end up waiting around for that one specific character to walk into the scene, but it is not even close to the bs that was Lure of the Temptress.
You can die in this game and unlike some of you, I salute this game for it. The difficulty is rather tame, going by the genre's standards at the time and the length is appropriate.
The graphics, animations, music and voice acting are excellent. The characters are interesting and the world is intriguing. However, the game's tone is all over the place. The feeling of a dystopian future with a rogue AI and an outsider searching for answers mingles badly with humorous characters who have a habit of cracking corny jokes.
Overall: not perfect, but I recommend it to all Point and Click fans as well as non fans.
7/10

I just completed Quake 2 last night. It's an improvement in terms of gameplay from the first game but I really miss the settings and enemies from the first game.

Risen

I'm of two minds. Well, mostly my impression was quite positive, but I also found some things to nag about.

It plays like a somewhat more modern Gothic, with better graphics and without the clunky controls, but otherwise extremely similar. And it offers everything I liked about Gothic, partially even better: The exploration was just awesome; even after hours and hours of checking every nook and cranny and thinking by now I knew the island in and out, cleared out everything and picked up all there is to find, to my surprise I still discovered new things that I overlooked before. And everything was there for a reason and looked like real landscape, not some procedurally generated random boredom. No, it was a joy to explore, and it gave me a real sense of adventure. There's also a great sense of achievement and progression, when you can finally beat the creatures that gave you so much trouble before, and explore the areas that you didn't dare to go before. The soundtrack by Kai Rosenkranz is strikingly beautiful again, among the most memorable I know, and it adds a lot to the atmosphere. The German voice-acting was quite nice as well, not perfect, but really amusing and enjoyable. (Judging from the little I've seen, the same can't be said about the English version though. In a scene between the nameless hero and a pirate captain, both sounded like bored accountants, not at all piratey or like a big talking bandit. Comparing the intro movies in both languages, I also noticed significant corruption of the original meaning. So if possible at all, I'd advise anyone to play the original German version.)

All of the above made the game a lot of fun to me, for countless hours. As an open world exploration RPG, it rocked. What I'm not quite convinced of though is the balance between this free exploration and the way the story progresses. The game is split in chapters, and when it moves on from one chapter to the next (you might be able guess which events cause it, but there really is no clear indication), your current quests might be aborted. And you might miss out on a significant portion of quests and xp, if you move on too quickly. Just like in Gothic, there are three factions you can join, but contrary to Gothic, the game can lock you into two of the three "camp" areas early in the game and either make you decide which faction to join or force one on you before you're free to roam the island again. And in these two camp areas, most of what you do is talking and fetch quests for hours. So on the one hand you have the free wilderness exploration, all on your own, and on the other you have the forced "camp" questing (only one of the three "camp" areas allows you to do both and without forcing you to join yet).

This design made me hesitate to go anywhere near those "prison" camps until I had already cleared almost all of the whole island by myself, which was really exciting at first, but it made chapter two a bit boring, since there was almost nothing left to fight and explore, but the game still made me run to and fro across the now empty island in order to follow the story. Also, you don't get to learn the highest lockpicking level before chapter two, which means that I found quite a bit of containers I couldn't unlock yet during my exploration in chapter one, and to open them, I had to backtrack to all of them later in the game across the huge and empty island. This told me that while you can play the game any way you want, you're probably meant to delay your exploration of the island until chapter two, and you're meant to go to the "camp" areas and choose your faction early instead. And choosing a faction also means knowing what class you want to play, because being a member of a given faction shuts you out of certain options the other ones offer. You can't really experiment that much with your options, you have to know what you want beforehand, or just go with the flow and accept what the game decided for you. I guess the latter is the best thing to do, unless you feel like worrying all the time and studying guides before even starting the game, and you can always do a second or third playthrough if that's your thing, but the way the game is designed in some areas can be a bit of a nightmare for completionists like me who don't like to replay RPGs (and control freaks who want to plan ahead). And IMO it clashes a bit with the awesome free exploration parts.

You can, btw, solve quests in the open world without anyone telling you to solve them first, and you get the according xp for solving them, which is great. And some times, if you meet the quest giver after you've already solved the quest, you can have a perfectly fine conversation about it, with the quest giver first telling you about their problem and you then informing them that you already took care of it. But other times you'll never know the story and just get to say you solved the problem, without even knowing about it, which is a serious oversight in a free exploration game. Another thing I didn't like was how the game blocked me from going to certain areas by way of magical barriers (which is still alright, I guess), and then at some point gave me the means to bypass them with scrolls, making me think I could now go everywhere, but then I had to find out all by myself that these scrolls only work on one or two barriers and all the others still blocked my path ("because those were blue barriers, of course, and the scrolls I gave you were only for red barriers, duh! didn't I tell you? no? ok, but you still learnt that the hard way when you didn't get any reaction whatsoever from trying to use the scrolls on blue barriers, right?"). Also, the game doesn't offer the option to make your own map notes, despite all the secrets and backtracking to areas after you've leveled up and learned required skills etc. So I actually had to draw my own map with pen and paper in order to keep up, just like in the early 90's, in a free exploration game that came out 2009.

Story and setting are nice enough, but nothing to write home about, especially if you've already played Gothic, because then it will all be kind of familiar to you. At times it almost felt like Risen is a remake of Gothic (this old German GameStar parody is spot on). And often the plot just felt like an excuse to make you explore the island, so seeing that I had already done that before moving on with the story, it came across as particularly uninteresting and lame (the side and main quests in Risen involve collecting five armor parts, collecting five gold bowls, finding five gold discs and procuring .... wait for it ... FIVE armor parts again, because, as everyone knows, sending the hero on a quest for five items are the basics of Fantasy RPG 101). Oh, and the final boss battle sucked, a total bore in its endeavor to be different and epic, but I've come to expect that in almost any game.

On the technical side, everything works well enough, but there are also quite a few glitches. Your character might get stuck on a spot, or he might glitch a few levels of terrain up or through a wall, or if you rotate the camera near a wall, you can suddenly see beyond the facade of the immersive landscape. It doesn't happen that often and it's not that bad, and the glitches can also be exploited to quickly "climb" down from great heights without taking damage, which is good for saving time through shortcuts, but be prepared that you might have to reload occasionally also due to these technical issues, quick save as often as you can.

TL:DR
Risen is an awesome free exploration game with lots and lots of things to discover. In this context however, I perceived the way that story progression and factions were designed as rather counterproductive and uneven due to its restrictions, clashing a bit with the otherwise open nature of the game, and that marred my fun a bit. But not enough to dislike the game, because exploration and atmosphere were that awesome. Best played in German though.




Neuland (Risen TC demo)

A short German language demo to prove that total conversion mods are possible in Risen. Worked well enough. Writing and voiceovers were rather amateurish (to be expected, as done by the modders themselves), but visually it was very nice, and especially the intro and outro cutscenes were impressive. Too bad noone seems to have followed up with creating a longer adventure as total conversion mod for Risen.

Shadow of the Colossus (HD Remake)

One of those games people say is 'really good' and it was finally on sale so I only had to pay £6 instead of £20. In simplistic terms this game is just 16 boss fights, but it's much more than that. You are a young knight
or something like that, who must defeat 16 colossi/colossodes/colossuses in order to bring your sister back to life. Joining you is your horse to help you navigate the land to find these colossi/odes/uses. To defeat them you have an Ancient Sword, your trusty bow and incredible finger strength so you can climb up the guys. I'll start with the bad points, of which there are very few. The game is short, it took me about 5½ hours to complete, and the HD version doesn't come with a manual, and the in game tutorial wasn't exactly helpful, so I did spend the first 20 minutes messing about. The Landscape is great looking, the boss fights are really good, story is good, music good. I would recommend this game, though the non discounted price is a rip off when compared to some of the other prices of games.

Dishonored Definitive (Xbox One)

Definitive in this case just means all DLC bundled into one package and with a (very) slight graphics upgrade. If you have everything on 360 or PS3 then absolutely no reason to buy. That being said, if you don't have the game then this is the version to get for console as the DLC is well worth it.
I have (and have played) the base game on 360, since it was a free GwG game long ago. I liked it and always planned to play it again in a different style and to purchase the DLC. I don't normally buy things I have already, but EB had the disc Definitive Ed. on sale for the same price as buying just the DLC for the 360 game...so pretty much a "no brainer" then, I got it.

The first time I played it I did what I usually do and just played however I felt like. That mostly meant killing everything, since that's what I usually feel like. This time, for a second play, I decided to self enforce the "no killing no getting detected" rule to go for the associated achievements. And I did just that. It was fun playing that way, but I happen to think it's the easy way of playing the game too...mainly due to the enemy AI being a bit poor when it comes to alertness.
Also the game gives you so many fun and varied ways to kill things that it's almost criminal not to use them. But it's still a damn fine experience overall. Obviously with no killing I ended in low Chaos. The first time I played I also got Low Chaos, which was odd considering I did a fair amount of killing, which makes me wonder what sort of atrocities do I have to commit to finish with High Chaos? I may play it a third time someday to find out.

The Knife of Dunwall

The first story DLC. Like most Bethesda published DLC (post horse armor I mean), this one is pretty solid. It's standalone and selected from the main menu and not accessed from the main game. You play as Daud the assassin and the story unfolds events from his perspective. It all happens at the same time as Corvo is going about his thing in the main story.

I thought it was a pretty good expansion upon the game. Game play is pretty much the same, as is character progression. The main difference is a character that mainly has a completely different point of view.

The Brigmore Witches

The second story DLC. It follows directly on from the first DLC...in fact I wouldn't recommend playing it unless you played The Knife of Dunwall first. Again, you play as Daud and it finishes up the his story quite well and ties directly to the games main story. I liked this better than the first DLC as the three main chapters (there's four, but the first is a short prelude) each have a different feel- especially the creepy final chapter around the Witches Manor.

I decided to stick with the theme and played both DLC in Low Chaos and no killing no detection. The game always gives non lethal alternatives if you take the time to look for them.

Overall the DLC was definitely worth the effort. You don't miss anything essential by not playing them, but it's a good parallel stand alone story to the main Corvo story.
Of course there is a third DLC, Trials of Dunwall, but I have no interest in Challenge map style DLC, so I'll probably never bother with it.

Black Mesa

BM is a remake of Half Life and is still in Early Access. It's a fairly good representation of HL with all the levels we know from HL minus Xen. Some have been improved like "On a Rail". As a game it's decent with all the HL weapons but sadly enemies are quite bullet-spongy and they will pack a punch even on Normal. The AI is not the best and will often feel cheap more so than difficult. The levels are old-skool in that there are no arrows pointing the way so you will get stuck from time to time (if you can't remember the puzzle from HL). The game looks nice and is using the Source Engine and runs fairly well with load-times of about 5 secs. The environments can feel cluttered though.

Most of my issues with the game mostly stems from the notion that I don't think HL has aged well. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED the game back in the day and count it as one of the most influential games of all time but I don't think that corridor-puzzle gameplay holds up today. Combine that with an over the top difficulty and being stuck quite a few times (even though I have finished HL) and you have a recipe for frustration.

Maybe I'm just getting old but I can easily go back and play Deus Ex, Thief 2, System Shock 2 and Quake but with Black Mesa/HL that is harder to do. But I did get a good 20 hours out of it.

Sniper Elite III (PS4)

This game is a third-person shooter, and has (as expected for a sniper game) special mechanics for stealth and long-range shots. It also allows you you to save your game anywhere, anytime :)!

It’s quite easy (even on Sniper Elite difficulty and with the aiming assistance off), because the AI is not very smart. It also can get repetitive after headshotting the first few hundred enemies, because they are all more-or-less the same. New enemies also often appear on map after complete objectives, and many levels contain an action segment :(. I also wish there was incentive for a ghost-style play, instead the game seems to reward you the most for killing everyone and destroying everything on each level.

Still, it’s undeniably fun, but I’d recommend it more for playing in short bursts.

Thank you to omega64 for recommending this game :)!

I still quite enjoyed Double Agent, but the PC port is lousy. The JBA base portions were a great mix of deviousness and time management. It was my second time going through the game, and I discovered some surprising things this time around; one of the JBA base missions can be completed in a rather unexpected but awesome way, and there's a secret mission at the end of the game depending on certain decisions you make in earlier missions.