TWD is different compared to BttF.

Blitzkrieg 2

Occasionally frustrating but thoroughly amazing game. I have had a copy of it since 2007 but I beat the GOG version. I beat the American campaign about March or so and played a mission or two every day for the past little while as I was stuck in an RTS/RTT binge. Not my favorite WW2 game, but I haven't played that game since before '07.

The path finding is occasionally odd making dumb decisions every here and again. One very good aspect of this game is the effect artillery has on the dynamics of a given battle, most specifically the larger ones where long range artillery are key to your assault and the enemy's defense. The blitzkrieg in the title is reasonably well represented, that is the quick combined arms sort of offensive missions, but there are many good, reasonably in depth tactical missions as well as some fairly fun but not very thought intensive ones but near the last round of campaign missions they are all very difficult.

Easy recommendation to someone that likes RTT/RTS games as well as wargames.

Second game finished this year \o/ Demon's Souls New Game +. It was hard as fuck, because I haven't played the game for three+ years, but worth every second, which I spent playing it again!

Updated list here:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post53

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

I am not a big fan of modern FPS games (e.g. made after 2003) for reasons that are my own, but this game was a pleasant surprise. As an FPS/stealth/fighting hybrid Riddick is a Jack of all trades, master of none. Every mechanic works well and is entertaining, but none of them stand out in my opinion. The combination of stealth and action works much better than those mechanics alone but the fighting is odd and rarely makes sense. Enemies can block sharp objects with their forearms but Riddick can't? Getting close to the enemy and initiating pre-made kill animations is also the best and most efficient method of kills.
The story on the other hand is a throw away joke. Riddick is captured, he devises an escape plan(an a simple one at that), he escapes, he gets captured. The game repeats this process three or four times and than rolls the credits.
Riddick himself feels more like a action hero parody than a real character. His role in this game seems to be a portable One-line dispenser and cinematic ventilation shaft opener.
I give this game a 8/10

Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

Just like Butche bay, only less focused(a bit schizophrenic I would say), more action oriented and more challenging(likes to throw cheap shots at you in the second half). The story is darker and in my opinion a bit more interesting. Riddick is still the same, although the game tries to make him more sympathetic than before. Most characters communicate in the ancient language of swearing(I can't think of a cheaper way to make a game “adult”, can you?).
Overall: good, but Butcher Bay was better.
I give this game a 7/10

Fallout 1 – I sort of finished Fallout 1 for the first time. I found it was hard game to get into, but once I put aside the interface and just focused on roleplaying I had a blast for 15 hours or so. It’s a game I think most people ought to play if they like roleplaying games. My play through unfortunately ended on a bad note. Prior to attacking the military installation with the aid of the brotherhood of steel, my game started crashing frequently and at random. It seemed like all of my five saves had a similar issue, so I was unable to complete the game legitimately. I started cheating because I spent so much time on the game and I just wanted to see it through. I would rate the game as good but not great (7/10?) because it’s hardly a masterpiece with all the bugs (I even had the unofficial patches installed).

It’s most definitely a good game and I think it still holds up even to this day for being almost 2 decades old. I don’t have nostalgia to go on, and I wouldn’t hesitate to say that it could be an 8 or a 9 if my game would stop crashing.

Fallout 4 - Besthesda's latest iteration into the Fallout franchise leaves me a bit conflicted. The weapon customization and the gun play has been improved and it's actually quite fun to play as an open-world shooter. However, I didn't want to play an open-world shooter, I wanted to play a game with rpg mechanics similar to Fallout New Vegas at the very least. Instead Bethesda delivered a game that had a relatively linear narrative and where the rpg mechanics from prior iterations have either been refined, stripped down or both. For what it is, it's a decent experience but one that is disappointing. I would say it's probably a 6/10

In 2015 I have finished nothing :/ let's see if it changes in 2016..

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Finally, after owning the game for years on disc and having never gotten around to it, I decided to fire up my GOG-bought copy and give it a whirl. I can see why the game gets so much praise from the fans of BioWare and Star Wars. I enjoyed it and found it a lot of fun, but I didn't feel it was the greatest thing since sliced bread though. Everything worked fairly well, especially considering I played it on Win7 64 bit and never bothered to meddle with compatibility settings. It froze on me twice and sometimes the movies would make the game minimize to desktop. Other than that it worked great.

I did add the Restoration Mod for it, but not sure how much content is restored. There were a couple obvious things, but they were glitchy. One is a character that is lying on a bed and you can get that one to help you through a section of the game (an alternative to doing this area in a completely different manner) but the character never stands up. So she floats along on her back as she leads you through the area. It's kind of funny, actually, and made me think of when Han Solo is being transported to Boba Fett's ship after being encased in carbonite. Another one is a wounded character in a bed. This character was standing up with the legs below the knee diappearing into the middle of the bed. Not sure if these glitches are a result of me not bothering with compatibility settings, an issue with Win7, or if that's just a quirk of the mod. A bit jarring, a bit amusing, but really didn't affect gameplay at all.

Story was very good in parts with some weak aspects that really didn't detract all that much. But they were there. Pretty much bog standard BioWare writing and characterization with the BioWare standard good/evil/neutral options. Unfortunately, the 'evil' or Dark Side options, as is BioWare's wont, almost always involve making your character just act like a jerk or act like the moustache-twirling supervillain caricature. I played a light side character though (Scout 5/Consular 15), and that was pretty decent.

I didn't bother with the mini games. I tried Pazaak a couple times and found it tedious and I found the swoop racing just plain annoying. Those being totally optional, it didn't matter to me.

Anyway, not much of a review, but I figure pretty much anyone interested in the game has played it anyway, so I wouldn't be saying anything new. Looking forward to firing up KotOR 2 and embracing the Dark Side now.

Bio Menace. Bloody Golden Eye ripoff!

Behind the Reflection 2: Witch's Revenge is a simple, rather tedious hidden object game from Alawar. It looks to be from around 2012, though it feels older in playing style. Some HOGs are reliable fun, with stories that roll forward and puzzles that engage the player, and some feel more like they are designed for monster-loving big kids. This is one of the latter.

In general, each setting has something that needs to be assembled from pieces that are mostly in plain sight, with a final piece obtained by completing a hidden object scene. The completed object points you in turn toward the next thing that needs to be assembled, and so forth. Each also yields up a piece of a larger object that will complete the segment when you have collected all the parts.

There's nothing wrong with this mechanic, but it doesn't hold much interest here, and eventually I hoped each scene would be the last. The story starts in suburbia, where you are the mother of a young boy who was kidnapped by The Evil Witch in the prior installment. She gets loose from prison, zips back to your place, and seizes your boy again. The witch flees using mirrors that bring her to various locations in different times, and you give chase. You'll end up finding the missing pocketwatch for an astral butler, restoring a pet fish to a talking tree, and so forth. Some of the hijinks are fairly amusing, and the art is good and the music is unobtrusive, but overall it felt to me like a string of scenes stuck together without much reason.

The game is available on Steam via the Hidden Object 5-in-1 collection, which I got from a Bundlestars bundle. The collection is a pretty good deal, but the games are all installed under the HO 5-in-1 header; if you're a card collector, then, you'll only get cards for the bundle, not for the individual games, which also don't register as separate titles in your library. I'd probably like the bunch better if the games installed individually.

One of the included games, Mountain Crime: Requital, is quite good; another, Vampire Saga: Pandora's Box, I had played elsewhere, and it's decent but not great. The remaining two titles - Weird Park and Twisted Lands - are both sold as collected trilogy titles on Steam. If you are likely to pick up the collections elsewhere, like via bundles (I already had one or two without actually shopping for them), then the 5-in-1 is less of a bargain. It could have been put together a lot more kindly.

Play time ran about six hours, and some of the puzzles were unnecessarily fiddly. I wasn't that into the game, so I ended up skipping several puzzles, which doesn't affect the outcome any.

What you need to understand is that this was not Bog Standard BioWare at the time. It was something new for them! Then on the success of KOTOR they just copy&pasted the formula to everything else they did.

I didn't enjoy Fallout 3 that much and so I've purposely avoided the entire hype train for this one, but I have a few questions if you don't mind? Is it still fun as a "wander around and hit things with a pipe" simulator? That's where I got most of my Fallout 3 enjoyment, just exploring the world. Is the writing improved or is still your typical Bethesda "I hope the writers were only paid minimum wage, even though that's still a higher wage than they deserved" level of quality? How big is the world and is it more varied than Fallout 3/New Vegas?

Well, having been a fan of BioWare since Baldur's Gate, I wouldn't exactly say I need to understand that. I do. :)

But yes, this was the beginning of the BioWare standard forumla.

I'm just going to say that the writing is comparable to Fallout 3, although I've heard from others that it's actually worse. My opinion on the matter is probably irrelevant to most people, since I find some aspects of the Fallout universe to be nonsensical when I consider the physics of everything.

Regarding the world size, I would say you should look that up to get a definite answer. Speaking of variety It appears to be as varied as other games, although the locations seem much more compact and vertical than prior iterations. You may want to look that up however since that's just speculation on my part.

Finally (I answered your questions out of order unintentionally) I found the combat to much more enjoyable than 3 and New Vegas. I think it will become immediately clear to anyone who has played the previous games that Bethesda really focused on combat more and they focused on weapon customization quite a bit. The latter is quite extensive and enjoyable I think.

This was exactly my feeling with the game as well. I had a lot of fun playing it, but I really didn't like the final battle. But overall that wasn't a game breaker.