XenoNauts

On standard difficultly this was a struggle for me. Must have saved, wiped reloaded 100 times. Near the end I had to save each turn to be able to complete the game.

But after several months of playing on and off it done.

Only another 200+ games to finish.

<span class="bold">Reveal The Deep</span>

Another low-spec game has fallen! And a bloody immersive and creepy one at that, by the way. Reveal The Deep is a -surprise, surprise!- pixel-art, exploration-based, puzzle platformer with some horror themes highly reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft's works.

Without prior explanation, you begin the game wearing a wet suit while standing on the deck of a sunken ship. Your suit is equipped with its own source of light, and you learn pretty soon that something's up with this ship as sometimes the environment changes whenever you switch your light off. As you may have already guessed, this is one of this game's main mechanics and you'll be using it a lot in order to make your way further down the bowels of the cargo ship Eurydice. As you progress, you'll find notes, sketches, and diary pages that'll help you get a picture of what happened aboard this ship before it came to a bitter end.

Now, while it can be accurately tagged as a 'horror' game, it doesn't use the usual repertoire of cheap jumpscares in order to instill fear. Well... it does actually contain one or two jumpscares, but they are appropriately placed and they are absolutely not its main argument. Instead, it manages to convey a permanent sense of uneasiness by way of a bunch of spot-on ambient sound effects, and the use of light. The game would definitely lose most of its atmosphere (and hence, of its appeal) were not for its illumination, which effectively reduces the player's field of view to a small cone of light in front of him/her (if you pay attention you'll find out the main character's gender at the end of the game). The rest of the screen is either pitch black, or it's barely visible thanks to the eerie glow some objects emanate.

It's quite a short game, and while it can probably be 'speedrun' in little over an hour, it rewards thorough exploration in the form of some otherwise easy-to-miss notes and a couple of Easter eggs (like the one in the attached screenshot, which made me chuckle for a good while). Even if you miss some notes and journal pages, by the time the game ends you should have a good idea about what happened to the ship and its tripulation, who are you, and why you were exploring this wreck in the first place. But if not, here's a -highly spoilery!- compilation video that should help you fill any blanks you've got.

In short, highly recommended -- and that's even before taking its ridiculously low price into consideration: you can have it for $1/1€ on Steam, or (even though the devs don't announce it on their website, despite the aforementioned Easter egg...) completely DRM-free and hassle-free on itch.io.


My list of finished games in 2016

Pokémon Trading Card Game (GBC).

It's as fun as I remember it. I wish they kept making these games on today's handhelds. :(

Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox One)

10th-ish playthrough. It has become an annual thing.

Sam is Morrigan? Very nice :D I was also surprised when I found out Marcus has the same voice-actor as Bender from Futurama. Now I can never unhear it while playing Gears :P

<span class="bold">Nox</span>

Finally I got myself to beat it. I played it as a warrior, maybe I'll try it again as a wizard or conjurer at some point, but not right now.

Overall the game was quite ok. Nothing unforgettable, but easy to digest and mostly quite pleasant to play. Mainly there are two things that irritated me and I would change about the game:


1. Armor and weapons deteriorate and break up too fast and too easily. This was a problem especially for a warrior who has to depend on his equipment, armor and weapons. Either the rate at which the deterioration happens should have been lessened a lot (like 1/4 of the current rate), and/or there should be a skill or equipment that lets you fix your gear yourself, OR the game should have allowed you to visit shops which fix them more often.

I don't know if I missed some trick (teleportation or something), but in many levels, especially towards the end, you simply didn't bump into any villages/stores anymore where you could fix your gear. Even worse, when you did, fixing your gear was oddly very very expensive, so usually I lost all my accumulated money from journeys to merely fixing my stuff, and usually even that wasn't enough. I don't recall ever e.g. buying anything from the stores, simply because I didn't have money due to constant fixing costs.

So how I tried to counter this was that first of all I carried lots of extra weapons and armor with me, just in case. Sure the enemies sometimes also dropped armor or weapons, but quite often they were some very poor gear, like "flimsy swords" or low level armor, so you couldn't really count on it. Many enemy types didn't drop any gear.

The other workaround (which I also used in TES: Arena which had a similar problem) was that I simply didn't wear any armor until I faced some harder enemies or bosses, but kept them in my inventory. That way I could minimize damage caused to them. Usually I just wore some basic pants and shirts (because for some reason they are indestructible, go figure), and some cape which healed me over time so that I didn't have to constantly use health potions.

For weapons the problem wasn't as bad after you found that halberd of Nox or whatever it was, as it was an indestructible weapon. The only problem was that since it didn't cause fire damage, you still needed some Flame Sword(s) or something in case you faced some undead creatures like ghouls/zombies, as it seems they only could be killed with fire. Near the end you also found a few boomerang type of round throwing weapons which also caused fire damage, and they were quite good as for some reason they didn't seem to deteriorate, even though they were not listed as indestructible weapons. Unfortunately I didn't find them until the last world (10th, Land of the Dead).


2. The game is supposed to be an action-RPG a bit like Diablo, and yeah you seem to get some skill points and level up every now and then... but frankly that didn't seem to affect my warrior much, at least after some point. I never felt like "Oh my I've become powerful!" at any point. It was your armor and weapons which seemed to mostly determine how powerful you were, not at which level you are.

And since you apparently can't even decide how your character progresses when it levels up, I kinda stopped paying any attention to "levelling up". It just didn't seem to matter much.

So yeah, it is more like an action-adventure game where you get to suit up your character to make it stronger.

Ahhh, finally knocked off Witcher 3. Galaxy tells me I spent 167 hours on it and the expansions. I liked it. It felt to me like a marriage of most of what was good about the first two games with most of the bad parts left out. It has the sense of openness of the first game and the glossy presentation and more hands-on combat of the second game, but in both cases it mostly improves on its predecessors. I do kind of prefer the character customization of the first game, and I liked that in the first game when you drank a potion, it actually showed Geralt drinking the potion instead of it magically taking effect just because you pushed a button. But that's minor stuff. If I had to put the games in order, I'd go 3, 1, 2.

The overarching storyline was fine, although it does get a bit into that odd place where the story seems to indicate that you should be hurrying while the gameplay is sort of saying "No, take your time, see the sights, build your character up." Perhaps a time-limit a la Fallout would have been a good compromise? Where these games have always shined the most is in how they present smaller stories that hinge on decisions you make that are based on philosophical preferences. A lot of RPGs with "morality" meters give you a choice between hugging a baby or drop-kicking it through a stained glass window; the Witcher games rather give you a choice, for instance, between individualism or collectivism, short-term goals vs. long-term, pragmatism vs. idealism, etc. Geralt will always be a good guy, because he's the hero by definition, so what you're figuring out is what kind of good guy he is. I've often seen people say they feel dirty or conflicted when they play these games because "No matter what I do, it turns out wrong!" I rarely felt this way, though, because I always felt that I was able to make a choice that reflected my preferences and values. I never had any expectation that Geralt was going to save everyone because he's just a dude and he can only speak for himself, not everyone else. They're very smart games in that way.

I found this game most enjoyable when I was just wandering the land, and stumbling across interesting and uniquely written scenarios. Instead of making an effort to visit all the question marks on the map, I would mostly just look at the map, or even scan the horizon, and just walk toward what looked intriguing, which were usually ruined castles and stuff. It felt so much like I was playing through a series of short stories about this sword-and-sorcery hero. "Geralt walked through the pounding rain and approached an unlit lighthouse in hopes of finding shelter. But then shit happened..." Made me wish someone would make a Solomon Kane game like this (hey, modders...).

One thing I didn't especially like was how many of the quests are designed with the quest arrow/mini-map in mind. I would have preferred more detailed notes in the journal that would have allowed me to track things down more on my own. A quest description would tell you to meet so-and-so in Oxenfurt, say, but it wouldn't tell you where in the city to go because it assumed you'd be relying on your GPS to take you there, which irritated me because I had turned the minimap off and I was often forced to switch to the map to see where precisely I should go. Not always, but usually.

I think I can mark Stardew Valley as completed.

I'm not at 100%, because I didn't catch every single fish and didn't find everything for the museum. But I have a farm with all buildings, a fully upgraded house, a beautiful wife and a cute son, most people in town love me and the ghost of my grandfather came back and gave me the statue of perfection.

I'm still curious what's in the desert cave, but I can't make real progress there, because everytime I try to get to some deeper levels I either ru out of time or out of energy (but most times out of time).

I spent more than 75 hours with this game and I loved every minute. Will keep it on my HDD and return from time to time (and maybe get the stuff that I'm still missing).

Complete list of finished games in 2016

After avoiding it for a long time, I recently got back into Shadow Complex and yesterday I finished it with 100% of the map and of the items. It's a bit surprising that it didn't hook me up from start to finish, I love metroidvanias and this is one with a theme and art style that generally suit my tastes.

The controls for climbing are pretty awful though, so maybe that was the reason I lost momentum with it and stopped playing. Later, when you have double jump things get a bit better and after you have the triple jump and the hook, things smooth out a lot. Also, after getting all upgrades, including the armor helmet and the golden stuff, you become a walking murder demi god, basically. Last boss was incredibly easy, even if I knew I should be having a hard time just from the setup of the battle.

If anything, the enemies were rather forgettable and as unremarkable as possible. Actually, the main characters were forgettable as well. Still, I'd recommend it for all metroidvania fans, just be attentive to the fact that it really takes time to take off and become really engaging.

Please no. That's a complete dealbreaker if I see it in any game. One of the things I tend to look for first when deciding whether I may have any interest in it (after determining that genre and general... feel of it are passable, of course).

Yeah. Still only played the first, and quite recently at that, finished early last year, but was saying then that I felt that whenever I did one thing I messed up three others and just dreaded to advance because of it. And in quite a few places there were no choices I'd have really cared to make.

Just finished Lifeline last night. Mobile games count too, right? ;)

It was exhilarating. I was so amped about the ending of the game and saving Taylor (the person you interact with during the game) that I lost track of time, and it was after 1am when I completed it last night. GOOD GAME. Damn, it just got better the longer it went on.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (GBA)

Stupidest idea ever to start this game when I have a huge backlog to complete. You are a guy, who has just been left a farm. Your job is more than just farming crops though. You live in a town full of people who you can socialise with, your end goal is to eventually get married and get a kid. Getting a wife is very difficult (though some might say accurate) and involves continuously giving gifts over and over. I married Popuri, mostly out of convenience because she loves getting gift wrapped scrambled eggs, and lives nearby. It only took 300 Scrambled eggs and for all my love and affection she gave me a kid who doesn't help and a pile of mud on a plate. But it is strangely addictive, despite the fact it's very slow paced, yet somehow you never have enough time in each day to do everything. Technically it isn't 100% complete, but that requires spending 51 in game years and my backlog can't wait that long.

Anyway good game, many translation issues (including one sentence that still has the Japanese text in it), I would recommend it. Though I do think I prefer animal crossing.

As I recall the first game maybe pushes that feeling a bit harder, probably because it was the first game and they felt like they had to really lay it on thick to stand apart from the crowd. By the time you get to the third game, things feel more relaxed. It's still gritty and bad things can happen to nice people, but you also get a variety of textures. There's even some outright comedy.

Sword of the stars
Just finally found a race that suits my play style.
Liir I was too busy future farming tech leading me not to expand as fast as i actually needed to.
Morrigi I found counter intuitive when it came to expansion due to wanting to seecolonize as many worlds as possible with as few resources as possible and naturally for them to be effective you need to crash your economy on ships to get the speed to do it.
Zuul is funnily enough too much micro management keeping lanes active and planets resourced by mining splits.
Tarka just don't seem to be good at anything with not have a way to strike quickly and just some better seemingly irrelevant armour; i mean play the game enough and you notice pretty much every ai empire uses point defense and heavy lasers more than anything else.
You want armour shove an absorption section on the front of a cruiser, don't fear innaccurate ballistics... be fastermore agile.
Humans pfft who wants to play humans in a space game, and especially when people are telling you their the easiest starter race for new players. :P

Hivers have everything i need going for them lots of guns with good fire arcs, good chances for most tech, Instant travel, better population growth speed and apparently wider climate hazard range.
Even their Tech speed disadvantage is easy to overcome if you keep expanding forward constantly, instantly grabbing planets & focusing on Environmental Science grabbing anything that increases pop growing speed and then going for mining ships to support overpopulation.
More population, more planetary income, therefore more science.
A 10 billion population empire even with 10% science ability is going to eclipse the fastest expanding empire (humans) if in the same time span they only end up with a 100 million population by comparison.

Gears of War Judgment (Xbox One)

The spinoff title that doesn't focus on Delta squad. Not made by Epic either, and it shows. It looks like Gears, but it doesn't feel like it, I can see why a lot of fans didn't like it. It played much more like a joined sequence of Hoard mode maps instead of the non stop action ride of the regular games. But most of all it lacked the variety of the other titles, every single segment was pretty much the same, no vehicle rides or anything else to mix things up. Having said that, it did get better as it went on. But overall not spectacular.

The highlight was the bonus chapter "Aftermath" that covers what Cole and Baird were doing whilst the rest of Delta were securing the Submarine in GoW 3. Aftermath played like a lost chapter of the original and was pretty decent.
The minute Samantha said her first line in GoW3 I knew it was Claudia Black...a unique voice. I think I could maybe even tolerate being nagged all my life by a woman, if she had a voice like that. She's also been in a few Australian Soap TV series as well. But I wouldn't recommend anyone actually watch Australian Soaps though.