Yoshi's New Island: never played the SNES one for more than 10 minutes so... Not a terrible experience like everyone else claims. However, completing that game (every star, red coin and flower) is still on the list... Damn, that's hard...

Weird Park - Scary Tales

A HOG game that started very weak and got better the longer it lasted. Some of the cutscenes were quite nice and I also liked the music. Nothing special, but an ok game, if you want something relaxing after work.

Complete list of finished games in 2016

Finished all episodes of Game of Thrones (the Telltale game). I don't know Game of Thrones, only by name. I was pleasantly surprised by the game as the tension never drops in the game and all choices were difficult to make. Off course, I know the consequences can be limited in Telltales games but it wasn't visible. I really recommend this one if you liked the first Walking Dead (or other Telltale games).

The only downside is that the end doesn't really feel like a real ending to me. It seems there is a season 2 on the way.

Full list here.

I have it in my collection but shied away from playing it, since I haven't read the books or watched the TV series yet. Good to know you can enjoy it without prior knowledge as well, thanks!

To be fair, it's a bit difficult to track everyone in the beginning (the season follows the story of 4 persons so, in the beginning, we have to lear about people around those 4 persons).

Anvil of Dawn

The good
Great graphics and detailed animations that make most modern pixel "artists" look like delusional amateurs.
The atmospheric music does a good job at setting the dark and hopeless mood of the world.
No sound when bumping into walls (Much appreciated.)
a few rather clever puzzles that require you to think "outside of the box".
A good assortment of enemies, all with their own attack timing, animations and sound effects. You will fight mystical creatures, eldritch abominations, gelatinous blobs of human blood and Scottish clansmen.
A unique world with several interesting concepts and lore.
Great dungeon design. All the levels look and feel distinguished from one another.

The bad
Some creatures make unbelievably annoying sounds. Cough-Templeofthemoon-cough.
The game has some of the most frustrating spinners I have ever seen. Or rather experienced, since they're all invisible.
There is no real skill progression, I didn't feel more competent at taking down enemies just by increasing my sword skill.
Magic is rather under-powered, situational, and takes a long time to develop a skill in it. Not to mention that it takes too long to cast it. The animations are good, but it's still a bad choice to specialize as a magic user if you ask me.
The combat can get boring if you play for a long time.
The confrontation with the Warlord is so... disappointing.
The setup is rather generic. Evil guy uses evil to do evil etc.

Overall
Great, but definitely has it's share of annoyances. I advise you play it in small chunks, like a dungeon or two at a time followed by a break.

08/10

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

After two false starts, I've finally finished this game, which the store page boasts is "Arguably one of the best RPGs ever made."

To which I say, "nah."

It did grow on me towards the end; I'll get to that soon. But for me, this game did so many things wrong that it never entirely recovered. Geralt, the main character, has amnesia, which is a plot device that can be used well but basically never is. In this case, the game starts with some thieves storming the Witcher stronghold, killing some dude, and making off with some "Witcher secrets." The entire rest of the game is then structured around your crusade of vengeance, except ... so what? The dead dude got maybe five minutes of screen-time before he snuffed it; who cares about him? Not me, the player. Geralt, the amnesiac who only knew him for a few days? Get real. Oh, but they stole the Witchers' secrets! That's bad! I mean, Geralt is an amnesiac who doesn't even remember who any of these people are, and I the player have absolutely no emotional connection to them, but ... but Geralt is apparently very upset that a bunch of people he doesn't remember have had some secrets whose nature he can't recall stolen from them, so I guess I'm supposed to have some sort of emotional connection to this? I don't. How could I?

Then the first two chapters happen, and ... nothing. We hear a little about the racial tensions in the city, but aside from some idiots hassling a dwarf, we never really see any of these injustices or are given a reason to care about them. In fact, when I decided not to randomly slaughter a bunch of elves in Chapter One, the game lectured me about it in Chapter Two, because that was apparently "choosing a side," and the game is explicitly telling the player not to care about one of its major plot lines, which is a unique move, I'll give it that. Chapter Two could have been interesting, giving the player a chance to conduct a serious investigation, except that my "investigation" was basically randomly accusing everyone the game let me accuse, then backing off because I didn't have any actual evidence or anything, until I got to conduct an autopsy and figure everything out. It was also badly structured in terms of time wasted having to run to and from the swamps, and the swamps (trash mob central) were irritating.

After two chapters of stagnation--they could have basically been cut out of the game without impacting the plot--things did pick up in Chapter Three. Chapter Four, where the entire game paused so they could tell a totally unrelated murder story, and also I resolved some kind of racial conflict without ever quite learning what the conflict was, was just kind of baffling, but things picked up again in Chapter Five and the epilogue. And in fact, I'll play the game an explicit compliment: the way things worked out with Alvin was super clever, and not what I was expecting.

I don't know ... I mean, I'm totally "live and let live" when it comes to video games, so if this is really one of your favorite games, hats off to you. I've liked plenty of games that other people didn't. But I don't get this game, or why it's received the praise it has.

I already own The Witcher 2 from some sale or other, and I'll give it a try, but that will have to be in the future; I'm about "CRPGed out" for the moment.

Does help quite a bit if you read at least some of the books. It is, after all, quite a labor of love by major fans of the series and aimed at the same. Can definitely play it just fine without caring of even knowing about the books, most do after all, but if you're looking for reasons for emotional involvement and rhyme and reason for it all, that's the place to start, so while the character may not be aware of his background at that point, you the player will be.
... though that also leads (at least in my case) to seeing the romance in that one as all sorts of wrong... Until you go that way through 2nd and into 3rd and then THAT feels all sorts of wrong in the way it's steered.

BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT - Review HERE

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Cursed (Adventure-lite)

Options include separate sliders for sound effects and music, system or custom cursor, Windowed or Full-screen, Tutorial (OFF by default), and Advanced Mode (also OFF by default.)

At the bottom of the screen is our standard inventory bar, whilst at the top are buttons for Menu, Map, Hint, and Navigation (highlights exits and items you can zoom-in on). By default these items retract until you bring your cursor to the top or bottom of the screen, but if you'd like them to stay visible, you can "lock" them in place by clicking on the skull in the bottom left corner of the screen.

The graphics are quite nice, although some of the animations of people speaking and moving (especially early on) is laughable. I really loved the "guardians" (no spoilers!) and the way they were animated... It's just the humans that didn't move naturally. The music is a nice mood-setter, the voice-overs fairly good, and the sound effects appropriate.

The flow of the game is simplistic. "Here's an interesting lock, I wonder where the key is... Oh never mind, here it is, right in the next room." Sure there are things you have to do that will take a bit longer, but very little thinking (or waiting) is involved, and chances are that if you need something, you'll find it within a scene or two.

The achievements are all obtained via playing the game... In other words, you don't have to work for them. No point to having them there, really.

Something I really appreciated about the game is that there are some items that stayed with you throughout the game. You know, those useful things that most games take out of your inventory after you use them once? Another thing I liked was that there was at least one (that I found) instance where -- when something I wanted to do wouldn't work -- the game told me WHY it wasn't going to work.

There's nothing unique or groundbreaking about Cursed, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. The game took me less than two hours to complete, but at the current $0.49 price point, that's quite a steal.

Recommended for those who are seeking a non-challenging game with some spooky moments, and those who enjoy pretty graphics.

Dungeon Journey

For a $2 game (and one I got as a GA gift at that) this is a much better, longer, and ...even slightly deeper game than I expected. Not counting having to restart from scratch about 14 hours in, this took me over 20 hours to get one character through.

While the core mechanics are pretty simple (click to attack, space to block) enemies have a range of strengths, and attack speeds, and the 5 characters, despite having some similarities, also play moderately differently.

In the end, the Paladin was the "easiest" and most predictable to quest through. Each level has a healing and mana potion, and the paladin by about lvl 10 can transfer healing/mana 1:1, so it's easier to bounce back from mistakes. Also much less RNG reliant on certain spells or other things popping.

While I had some minor complaints, like certain skills seeming unbalanced (Wizard golem summon too expensive to cast, Paladin "consecrate" ability - while passive - is nearly useless, etc.) this is a simple game, but if you struggle with timing (or play music to block the game's sound which is a hint of some ambush attacks that really hurt, or play tired/spaced out) the degree of difficulty goes up.

Not a masterpiece, but it was pretty much everything I hoped it would be and more.

Thumbs up.

SteamWorld Dig, GOG

I bought this game god knows when, probably during some kind of sale or other since it doesn't seem like the type of thing I'd have leapt to pay full price for, and it languished in my backlog until, somewhat exhausted from playing three RPGs back-to-back, I decided I wanted to play a short indie game and arrived at this one.

I enjoyed it; the game cycle (dig, go back to town, upgrade, dig deeper...) was satisfying and production values are high. I know some people think it's too short; personally, I think it would have worn out its welcome if it had gone on much longer (the game cycle was satisfying, but it was the exact same thing over and over). If Galaxy's tracking is right, I spent about four hours on it, which sounds about right.

(Full list

This morning I was feeling too lazy to get out of bed so I grabbed my phone and I installed a pair of recommended Android games with good reviews in order to kill some time. Both of them turned out to be pretty short so I finished them in little over an hour. :P


<span class="bold">Drop Tale</span> (Android)

Puzzle game about a living water droplet that can change its state (ice, water, vapour) at will. The graphics are beautiful, the voice acting not quite, and there are dung beetles in it! Pity that they are bad guys...

The levels are mostly on the easy side, though one of them got me thinking for a while. Each level poses the player 3 challenges (well, 2 really, as one of them is always beating the level), and some of them cannot be achieved at once so there is some replayability value. The 'world map' shows three main areas: the tutorial/Lab area with 3 levels, the Forest area with 10 levels, and the Castle area with... God knows how many levels, because they are not in there, and the game abruptly ends after the Forest levels.

That's when I realized this game was a students' final project, so I think it's OK for a free game with no shady permissions. I hope they develop it further into a full game as it's got potential.



<span class="bold">There You Go</span> (Android)

Interesting mix of a puzzle and a 'escape the room' game, made with voxels. You start in a small bedroom and you have to keep advancing through different rooms until you reach the end... which is not that far as there are only 10 rooms (and one of them is a hidden Easter egg). Except the first one, each room contains a sort of puzzle that needs to be solved in order to advance. Some are more straightforward than others, but all of them can be solved with the in-game hints.

My only complaint is that sometimes an extremely high degree of precision was required in order to interact with some elements, so I just kept tapping my finger on the screen of my phone until I got it right. Later on I discovered this game is also available for PC on itch.io and as it turns out, playing it with a mouse is much better.



My list of finished games in 2016

Broken Age

Putting aside all the controversy around the game's funding and development, and just talking about its merits as an adventure game here.

It was good, very very good. Seriously, I fail to understand all the complaints around Act 2 in all those reviews I read. The game follows the modern adventure game trend of having a relatively small number of locations to explore, but they are all interesting and unique. Most characters are extremely well thought-out, my favorite the fork-knife-spoon set is hilarious :) The puzzles get progressively harder, and the final moments of the game are old-school Lucas Arts hard. I see this as a plus, as the more difficult sections are very well balanced with more obvious puzzles to keep the game's flow. The overall presentation, story, dialogue, music, and visuals are all high quality as well.

In the end, I am very satisfied, it was one of the better adventure games I've played this year. A lot of memorable moments.

Were you able to solve them without a walkthrough?