Made me lol. You summed that one up pretty well. :P

The entire Call of Duty series reviewed in one sentence.

<span class="bold">Metro Last Light Redux</span>

Starting a few days after the events of Metro 2033, Last Light puts you once again in the shoes of Artyom, who has now become a ranger.
Your commander will send you on an apparently simple mission, but from there on everything will turn for the worse and you will be needed to act fast to avoid a war that could bring the last few remnants of humanity to extinction.

Comparing it to 2033, I must say that last Light looses its mystery: this time the problems Artyom will have to face are all very “human”, and there will not be that shroud of creepy mystery that surrounded the first episode; yet, the plot is well thought, thrilling an perfectly working -the developers have just swapped a main theme to another.
The atmosphere that made its predecessor great is still there: once again, the games of light and darkness, smoke and spiderwebs, rubble and post-nuclar nature grants always an impressive sight, always appropriate on every context, and the new graphic engine helps a lot. Not only the visual fidelity is nothing short of impressive, but unlike Metro 2033 the game runs very well, flawlessly form me unless I tried to set everything to very high. There, I suppose any machine would struggle, but in truth it is not a big problem, as lowering the options a bit offers just a minimal visual downgrade for a great improvement in performance.
Also, all animations are much smoother than in 2033 and the physics respond massively better, especially when displaying the effect of a taken bullet.

For what concern the rest, the game is the same as its predecessor with several refinements: the weapons and in-game markets makes more sense now, allowing you to customize your weapons of choice rather than simply selling gear you could easily find on the ground; the shooting is just as good, especially in Ranger mode, where 4A tried to use maximum realism, with the limit of two weapons carried, a very high damage output for both you and the enemies, non-regenerating health and a series of expedients that will force you to spare your resources and play like in a real survival game, genuinely fearing for your life each time you are forced to fight, especially the horrible and ravenous mutated beasts.
I have particularly appreciated the effort put into making the world more believable: the developers managed to craft multiple approaches to most maps, thankfully abandoning the corridor/cutscene scheme that defined the first Metro. This time you will not be submerged by cinematics (even if there are still a lot of them), and many time you could learn more about what is going on by eavesdropping, reading logs or simply watching your surrounding to deduce what did or is about to happen.
Stealth is not a nice addition anymore, but one of the main points of the game; this time, you can pass almost every human inhabited area without being noticed, and other that using sneaky predatory tactics “à la Riddick” you can also ghost entire sections without ever being noticed, with the help of your watch (it signals when you are visible), the night vision goggles and a wise use of light switches, light bulb unscrewing, engine shuttings ans several other distractions.

The only thing I still don't understand is the morality system: once again, to obtain the alternate ending, you will have to generally do good deeds (and this is right), listen to certain conversations and finding corpses of stashes.

The game entirely revolves on Artyom, but Last Light Redux contains a few additional, optional missions starring other characters you met on your travels that give a nice background of what was going on behind the scenes.

All in all, despite losing a bit of its mysterious charm, I found Metro Last Light to be a massively better game than Metro 2033, one that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to everyone.


Suggestion: the game, like Metro 2033, has an extremely long sponsor presentation sequence. To avoid making the game take more than three minutes to start -I'm not joking- you can cut 2/3 of the legal blubbering by replacing the file "legal.ogv" with a modified text file bearing the same name.

DRIVECLUB - Season Pass DLC (PS4)

New cars and whole heap of new events (more events than are in the base game). Many of the events are a step up in difficulty from the base game, it’s noticeably harder to earn stars (but still within the realm of reason, it’s not overly frustrating). Some events now have weather effects and there are some new tracks, but otherwise they are mostly similar to the base game… I would have liked to see at lot more new tracks though. (I purchased the DLC at the same time as the base game, so I’m not sure exactly which cars are new to the DLC and which are not, because the DLC cars are unlocked for the base game too.)

Is this DLC worth it? If you’re more of a casual racer and just want to play a few events now and then, then the base game will be enough for you (and I do recommend the base game highly) because you can still get the weather effects and the new tracks in the base game by creating your own event or driving in a multiplayer event. But if you want more cars and more events, then the DLC is for you.

Company of Heroes.

I actually beat this game Thursday, I just forgot to mention it here. Good not great game, strange since I was really expecting to like it a lot just based off reviews. I do like it though, just kinda got frustrated with some strange quirks like when my M10s would turn around every time I told them to shoot at a Panther. If you can find the vanilla version cheap I would recommend it if you like WW2 games, you don't need the disc in the drive for it to run. One last thing, it is not what I would consider an RTT like Faces of War and is definitely more of a normal RTS at least to me.

Eternal Senia

Free RPG Maker game on Steam.

It's quite ordinary RPG Maker game. It has very simple combat, you just walk up to enemy and you hit him and in response he gets chance to hit back for amount depending on their attack and your armour. Bosses are more complicated but they are not rocket science either. It's mostly about evading their attack and them move up to them to hit them when opportunity arises.
There is item progression and crafting but it's just about increasing the same stats bit more by the same stat of equipment.
Story is so-so with fairly decent endings. There are 3 of them and are probably the strongest thing about whole game. Still I could imagine better.
The game is really easy and it is almost impossible to die except for boss fights.
I did everything there is, grinded every equipment, crafted all items, found all chests, killed all necessary enemies and fought all bosses on hardmode and it took me around 4 hours 30 minutes to beat it.

For free it's fairly decent game/time-waster and for something like 2-4 bucks would be as well. Anything higher? Probably not.


My list.

Just finished San Andreas for the 5th time. Guess I should break down and start Saints Row 2 though the controls, even though you can change them, are not as flexible as GTA.

Just managed to finish the original Tropico 4 campaign this evening. Wondering why didn't I get the achievement for surviving 10 disasters (unless it means in a single scenario?), or why whenever I built a weather station and upgraded it it didn't seem to help save people, just had no victims on a tornado outbreak when it was scripted, and built the weather station in time as requested, so missed those other achievements for disasters with no victims too. Few others missed, but either because they really didn't happen (3 eruptions in one mission) or because I didn't go for it (import 10k materials, hire an unemployed citizen as minister (as in fire the candidate first, I assume)). Plus the one for 1M in tourism profits in one mission, which I guess I never got to even though I did my best on tourism as well on a few maps.

Otherwise... *shrug* It's Tropico. Fun enough. In Tropico 3 time limits were more the norm, or at least that's how I seem to remember, so glad they're used rarely now (though when one hits it's omg what do I do???), but at the same time not keen on the multiple goals in a row approach as opposed to the model I seem to remember from Tropico 3's original campaign, where I think you were mostly given end goals and left to do your business to reach them.

Not keen on Modern Times now though. Not keen on modern times in general, and doesn't seem to fit the atmosphere I expect from Tropico either. But let's see.

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

If you forced me to pick a single videogame genre, puzzle platformer would probably be my answer. No wonder then that I highly enjoyed playing this little gem to completion (a gem that inexplicably never made its way to GOG: go vote for it on its wishlist if you want it here).

Originally released on iOS to be played on an iPad, it later on made the transition to PC with great success. Granted, it's got no controller support, but honestly I can imagine controlling the "coloring cursor" with a thumbstick as nothing short of a pain in the ass. And anyway, this game can be played with keyboard and mouse without any problem whatsoever.

In Nihilumbra you play as Born, a small blob which escapes from The Void and must run away from it ever since, all the while avoiding a variety of hostile creatures sent out by The Void itself to stop you. During your evasion you'll visit 5 thematically different regions, and in each one you'll unlock a new power that will help you overcome the obstacles and enemies in your way to freedom. Each new power is associated with a particular color and the area in which you get it, and grants you the ability to paint floors, walls, and ceilings in order to change their properties (e.g. blue makes them slippery, green makes them bouncy, etc.). You've only got a limited amount of paint, but in practice you'll never have to worry about it running out.

Story-wise, I still haven't decided whether it has a deep, mature narrative about life, death, and the very concept of existence (or non-existence, hence the nihil part in the title), or it's just a pretentious, cheap, philosophical banter provided to you in short fragments by a deep-voiced narrator.

The main flaw of the game, as others have already pointed out in earlier iterations of this post, is that there's a huge imbalance between the first 40 regular levels and the 40 extra 'Void Mode' ones. The former are very, very easy and can be relaxedly completed in a short single sitting even if you've never played a puzzle platformer before. In sharp contrast, the bonus levels mark a sudden and huge increase in difficulty, to the point of driving many players away forever. According to the devs, the difference in difficulty was deliberate and I'm perfectly fine with it, but in my opinion the most difficult, frustrating, and disconcerting 'Void Mode' levels were among the first 10 or so. Maybe it's just that I became better and better as I played along, but I'm pretty sure that the bonus levels could do with a reorganization in order for them to become significantly less frustrating and rage-quit inducing.

Finally I wouldn't like to end without mentioning that BeautiFun Games, the studio behind this game, is based in Barcelona, and that they had the gesture of including Catalan (my mother tongue) as one of the available languages. More props to them for that! :)


My list of finished games in 2016

Devil May Cry(re release on the HD Collection)
Awesome game that started one of my favourite séries of all time. I have some problems with it mainly the platforming and how hard the "Seinfeld is Unfunny" trope hits it.

Hero of the Kingdom 2

I really enjoyed the first one so when i saw that the sequel was available on a bundle i went for it... Well, what can i say, it does have new stuff but it's more of the same, not that is a bad thing, the first one was short and so is this one (around 5, a little more if you want to do the achievements) so you never really get bored doing the same stuff over and over, it's a good adventure game where you really need to manage your inventory/resources and there's not much to say about it than that... except... OH LORD THE STORY IS AWFUL!!! So much cringe having to read something out of a teenager fan fiction, while the first one also didn't had a good story at least it was bearable.

In general terms my thoughts about this series are very similar to yours (I also found Chapter 2 to be overall better put together than the first one, and I'm eagerly waiting for Chapter 3 to be released), but I definitely cannot agree with that assertion about the protagonists being generic and not memorable. How many games do you know with a set of Caribbean-sounding characters, the likenesses of which are based on African masks? :D

<span class="bold">Puzzle Agent 2</span>

A great sequel, same as the first game, but this time with even more inventive puzzles.

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

Include me, please. Finding myself playing more games around this time, it would be nice to share.

-' Jan 02 - LEGO Pirates of The Caribbean
-' Jan 12 - Shadows - Heretic Kingdoms Book 1 (apparently there should be more released)
-' Feb 06 - Mars: War Logs
-' Feb 08 - Mars: War Logs (yes, again)
-' Feb 16 - Mafia II (bought (first) Mafia CD PC game from eBay right away; Mafia III is to be released this year)
-' Mar 13 - Please, Don't Touch Anything!
-' ...

I agree that graphically they are very unique and memorable, I was referring more to their personalities and their roles in the game.

EDIT: I was also referring to all the secondary characters, not just the protagonist.