Yeah, kind of funny that the game's card drops take longer to drop than the time it takes to play the game twice all the way through. :) I got it free from steamcompanion.com a while back. I like some of the FPS horror games out there and I think I just gang-added it to my wishlist for that without really looking into the game more deeply or the reviews for it. So I won it there last year some time. I was going through howlongtobeat.com to get a list of shorter games in my catalogue to suggest in the one-day-games thread, and also for possible inclusion in my game list for the Gentleman's Backlog Club thread and spotted Despair so I decided to try it since the time was so short on it.

Terrible! :)

I got annoyed in the duct maze and almost through in the boredom towel there, but went ahead anyway and did my best to walk in the dark as often as possible and conserve flashlight batteries, but you never know if you're going to miss a piece of paper or something important so ended up using more battery power than I'd have preferred anyway. Then I finally got to the water room and through the crevice and then my battery completely died. I had to walk around aimlessly in the dark room that is some kind of maze, not able to see where I was going or what way was up/down/etc. Most people would probably just exit the game and uninstall it at that point, and I planned to do so also but I watched a guy play it on Youtube for laughs and he had the same problem but the exit is highlit in red, so I thought I'd wander around to see if I could find the red. Only took me a few minutes of mindless wandering, then I got out of there. I experienced a weird game hang too, where I moved some thing out of the way blocking a crack in a wall and when it moved it pinned my character. I was stuck intersected with game world objects and unable to move, a pretty reliable sign in any video game that they are using pretty shitty quality collision detection. I just flayed around moving in every direction while mashing the space bar and eventually after 2 minutes it released me back free to move again. I'll bet dollars to donuts the bug you speak of was the same bug as I had. :)

I really didn't want to replay this atrocity though, so I'm glad I got through it without having to do that. :)


I've never played any RPG-Maker games but I'd probably do my best to avoid them as they sound like pure crap from anything I've ever heard from people that have played them. Hard to find it in me to want to play such a game with an extensive backlog present of numerous games I actually want to play though too. :)

Funny enough, I wrote a lengthy review for Despair on Steam too, but when I submitted it Steam just sat there and didn't do anything. It acted as if it took the review but did not post it anywhere or respond like it normally does when you submit a review. I googled around and people suggested that sometimes the Steam servers are in maintenance etc. and reviews don't get through. Ah well. I saved my review locally to try again another time, but here it is:

First Time Bonus GOG Exclusive SkeletonBow review of Despair!!! :)

===========================================================================
This is definitely the worst game I've ever played both on and off Steam, and I'm not saying that to be mean or nasty either. The funny thing is that it's the shortest game I ever played, it felt like the longest game I've ever played because it seemed like it would never end even though I completed it in around 45 minutes.

Here is a list of technical problems/shortcomings I encountered:
- Doesn't support 2560x1600 resolution or 16:10 aspect, and the mouse leaves the game in multi-head.

Short list of what all I found bad about the actual gameplay and game in general:
- Can't skip past boring video and animation sequences
- The stamina bar looks like a bug from the start of the game until you try to instinctively run and realize it is a stamina bar.
- You run to the end of the train tunnel and hit an invisible wall and wonder WTF, maybe get hit by the train and die, then start the game over again.
- The duct work maze is just boring and irritating.
- The batteries in the flashlight don't auto-recharge like in most games that have flashlights. Even though needing to change batteries is realistic to real life, real batteries last more than 2 minutes so that's not realistic in-game anyway, and having to change batteries constantly or else end up running around in the dark unable to play doesn't add value to the game in any way, nor make one want to start it over and conserve battery more carefully the next time, it ends up just being annoying.
- Absolutely nothing in the game is actually scary in any way. If your speakers are loud you might be startled by a loud noise a few times but other than that it's just not scary at all.
- There's no way to re-read notes that you pick up, so if you miss the combination for the pump, you have to just guess what to do when you find it and either randomly push the buttons or count up on it in binary etc.
- By the time you make it to swimming in the water and through the crevice you've probably ran out of batteries completely and are left to run around completely blind in the dark to find your way out of a maze that is almost impossible to navigate in any sense that you know what you're doing, so it's pure random chance if you find the exit door highlit in red.
- You find 2 batteries once you climb the stairs, of which would have been far more useful 10 minutes ago running around in the dark, but you don't really need them barely at all after that until the end. I kept the flashlight off as much as possible after that to avoid running out prematurely again but ended up not really needing them at all.
- I walked over to a closed door in the train and it slid me through the train anyway and through the floor and then I overed a bit until it said "The End - to be continued". Oh please no! Please don't continue this game into a sequel! One game like this is enough Despair for anyone to have to endure!
- The game is $2.19 at the moment, for about 45 minutes of fairly boring gameplay that doesn't contain any action, horror or adventure whatsoever unlike how the game is tagged in the Steam store.
- I got the game for free from somewhere, not sure where but I feel like I didn't get my money's worth because I can never get the missing hour of my life back that I spent playing this game, and I mean that in the nicest way!
- You don't actually find out what happened to the other passengers or yourself by the end of the game. If that's because I missed something, well then I missed something because of poor game design. I picked up every note I found, and never found out anything useful.

Pros, and things the game has to offer:
- You can sell the Steam trading cards maybe to make back 5 cents or so, plus that would be more fun than actually playing the game.
- That's it.

Closing thoughts: This game is truly atrocious and contains no fun gaming elements at all which was a surprise. It makes a game like Bad Rats look award winning in comparison. "Steam Greenlight: The community helped pick this title" -- I didn't realize people had this low of a bar and such bad of taste when selecting games for approval on Greenlight. "Brownlight" would be more appropriate. It's so bad, you're going to want to contact Steam Support to have it removed from your account completely even if it costs extra money to do so. :)
===========================================================================

Puzzles weren't hard? Did you really solve the "flower bed arrangement" one without cheating? I know I didn't!

need for speed hot pursuit 2010

burnout by any other name

right down to the unskippable mini cutscenes each time you crash
which get really fucking annoying as the difficulty in the hot pursuits ramp up

Yes, I did it without cheating. But I have to admit that it took me some tries. The first two flower beds stay exactly where they are in the beginning and when you realize that, there are some others that can only be arranged in a certain way, if you don't want to have any single lines left in the end (except for the one that you'll need).

<span class="bold">The Book of Unwritten Tales</span> (played on Wine using PlayOnLinux)

Bought it last week despite my No Tux, No Bux policy, as I couldn't resist GOG's Weekend Promo. I assume this game must have been mentioned lots of times in these kind of threads, so I won't review it in full. Instead, I'd like to address a couple of points I've recently read about it.

First, I mostly agree with 01kipper about the game's slowness. It's true that the characters having to slowly move to every object in the screen before looking at it can be irritating to some extent (though what I hated the most was the "repositioning" they underwent every time I wanted to change to another character). However, maybe it's just me, but when I sit down to play a point&click adventure, I do it (or better, I can only do it) in a relaxed state of mind, with no hurry, and with a personal predisposition of taking it slow, looking at every object, talking to everyone and trying to exhaust every dialogue option... so I can easily tolerate the slow pace of this game.

Then, I guess the game's setting and overall tone can be hit-or-miss for some people. A great part of its charm comes from the onslaught of references to pop culture and a constant breaking of the fourth wall, which worked wonders for my enjoyment of it (like when one NPC asks one of the main characters why does he want to access a certain restricted area, and the protagonist's reply is that he just wants to look at everything and pick up anything he can because it will certainly be of use later on). But one of these fourth-wall-breakings, which makes perfect sense when it takes place, later on it betrays some lack of internal coherence in the game's world and its plot. Trying not to spoil anything, suffice to say that in the early game there's an exchange between a main character and a NPC about how nobody can die in the game, and what a hindrance this is for the fulfillment of the protagonist's current quest. But later on, there's a whole chapter full of undead beings, tombs, graveyards, remnants of dead adventurers, etc. I know it's no big issue, but I felt quite irritated by it nonetheless.

Finally, I didn't find the ending as abrupt and anticlimactic as some reviews claim. Granted, there's no direct confrontation between the heros and the bad guys, and while some major plot lines aren't tied up at the end, I wasn't left disappointed in the slightest when the credits rolled.

On the technical side, the game worked like a charm on Linux Mint 17.3 after installing it with PlayOnLinux. There were a couple of graphical glitches and a seemingly abrupt transition between chapters that left me wondering whether there was a missing cutscene, but if so they are game-related and not Wine-specific issues (as I could verify by watching a couple of LP's on Youtube).


And now I'm left with the big dilemma: what do I play next? The Book 2, or The Critter Chronicles (which I've only recently discovered it's actually a prequel -rather than a sequel or a spin-off- to the main saga)?


My list of finished games in 2016

Just finished Soldiers: Heroes of World War II.

I just about hate this game. That is, of course, an exaggeration. I don't hate this game, it just goes in and out of being messy, occasionally convoluted, never particularly well crafted missions to a game that I enjoyed and had fun with. The camera is terrible, it has almost no real difference between the three zoom positions and never lets you see almost any of the map at one time. This makes direct control the ultimate pain in the butt because the game doesn't work outside of it. What I mean by that is that the AI for your units is completely, zombifiedly stupid. An example that happened more than I can count: Your guys have SMGs and they are in cover (which is completely moronic and just does not work in this game) and the enemy approaches them with around a dozen completely exposed and near sighted nincompoops. Your guys decide to hold their fire. And hold. And hold. And hold. The enemy soldiers may be dumb and near sighted, but they at least know that they are supposed to kill your guys, which they will. And, unfortunately, you can't always rely on their view to be only a few meters ahead of them and they may begin to fire from a reasonable distance (weapon ranges are ridiculously short in this game, which is forgivable given that the maps are not very big most of the time). So, half of your guys are dead (you never get more than about eight guys at a time, most of the time you only have three or so) and the one guy left is treating his fully automatic sub machine gun like it's a .22 and he's picking at squirrels in his backyard.
This means that you absolutely have to use direct control, this is the only way the game works and the only real fun in the game is when you have reasonable odds and you are taking out the enemies with the reasonably fun shooting mechanics. That is until the game gets finicky and jolts every here and again and then you realize that their is an auto aim that works to your advantage about 60% of the time. This is a huge pain on the tans when your guys keep on hitting the enemy's treads and won't aim at anything else. Thankfully, the damage model seemed to be a hybrid HP and armor thickness one so it wasn't detrimental to the experience, at least not so much as the completely brain dead and self destructive nature of your regular soldiers.
I really dislike some of the mission objectives with a special emphasis on the train yard. Another bad thing is that the game will only occasionally tell you when enemy units are on the move or are being reinforced and it does so by not pausing what is going on, taking camera control away, and showing you directly what is going on. This has lost me a mission or two as even if you are fending off against a tank or two already it will still do this. The game gets down right infuriating at times, but I'll stop whining because I actually kind of like the game. I will most likely never play the campaign missions again but I liked it still even if I absolutely hate its guts.
Onto something good, the voice acting and dialogue is atrocious in the good funny way. Honestly, half the fun in the game is taking the crappy, inane ramblings of your guys and just seeing how much dumber you can make it sound. The voice acting is all in English (for me, anyway) with goofy accents applied. I prefer the Germans and Russians/Soviets speak their native tongues, even if it is more or less gibberish.
Overall, if you already own Men of War and are curious about the earlier entries in the more or less same series then go ahead and try it for yourself on sale. If you like WWII games, once more try it yourself. Like with Faces of War, get it with another game that you are certain you will like just in case this one is a turd for you. The main reason I like this game is probably because I really like the Men of War series.

Although, last thing I promise, I like that they included the MP 41 but the in game model is exactly the same as the MP 40, the only way you can tell is the inventory picture.

FWIW I'm currently playing Critter Chronicles... I'm about 1/2-to-3/4 of the way through. It focuses only on Nate and Critter (so far), taking place before the events of BoUT, and some of the jokes make more sense if you've already played BoUT first. It's a good game so far, pretty much what you'd expect from BoUT although I've found some of the puzzles a bit more convoluted.

Finished Dishonored (actually about a week ago). I tried to go for a clean hands/ghost playthrough from start to end and according to the summaries i succeeded, yet didn't got the achievements. Well it still was fun to skulk around. I usually suck at FPSs so it was a relief to be able to take a non-combat approach. I have little opinion about the combat because the couple of times were i made a mistake or just wanted to have fun before reloading i got mauled quickly... so yea i suck at fps... but it seems i like these kinds of games so maybe at trentonlf's suggestion i'll tackle Styx after i finish some other games to change flavours a bit.

Styx has a couple of story-based combats which are unavoidable, unfortunately. Also sometimes to complete an objective you'll have to kill someone, but these 'objective' kills don't count towards your pacifist rating (or whatever it's called). Otherwise it can be completed with pure stealth/ghost, and is quite fun to do so IMHO :).

I would assume your best bet is to play them in the order released, which would mitigate any worries about spoilers or references.

Finished Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People - Episode 1. It was fun, not too long and the difficulty seemed good to me (not to easy and not too difficult). I'll don't see myself playing all 5 episodes straight so I'll play a bit something else before starting episode 2.

Full list here.

Zombi (PS4)

Here's a game with a great concept but cheaply implemented. Let's start as a port, it's really a lazy one, bad graphics with 30fps, just a straight ports with minor improvements. The game is also filled with bugs and feels janky, i had moments where the auto aim was stuck (ex: i was aiming at the top but whenever i shoot the crosshair went to the center of the screen) or there was this time where i was waiting for something of the story to happen but i was stuck in that area because the event didn't started, since the game only saves when you're at base i had to redo everything until that place (and this was a bug that already existed on the Wiiu version).

But as a game it has good ideas since it's kind of what i wanted for while, a single player (i wouldn't mind coop) survival game where you have to explore and scavenge for items but in my mind i wanted something more similar to Dayz where there's a huge area to explore and look for better equipment, medicine, ammo, food, water, etc.
Zombi (or ZombiU) is a survival game where you have to do some quests, have some hubs (so it really isn't a open world) and gather some stuff for your own survival.

Where does the game fails? Well, the combat is awful, smash, smash, smash and finally kill, it doesn't feel rewarding like, let's say, Condemned. You do get some firearms but since it's a survival title you don't really want to spend ammo and they occupy your bag slots so you can't really carry many of them with you.
And this brings me to one stupid aspect of the game, it forces you to hang with the initial pistol and melee weapon, you can't drop them or store them in the base even when you have a better pistol and a better melee weapon. What the hell? Really? And speaking of that, why can't i unload the ammo that are already on the weapons?
They do give you a lot of firearms but when it comes to melee it's only three of them (and i missed one so i only get to play with two of them).

The game has this system where if you die then you come back as a new survivor and you need to get your backpack back from your previous dead body (now zombie), now, that is a great idea but again it fails because of the story, it doesn't make sense that people treat you as the same person that you previously had, it doesn't make sense... But to be fair, the whole story is a bit confusing and uninspired so... meh.

It isn't a scary game, there's some cheap jump scares and i didn't find it hard, i'm not going to lie, i died 4 times, the first time was because the game in a way forced me to die (there's an explosive enemy and the first time that he appears you're not expecting for him to blow up and you're on a situation that you can't fight back) and the other three was because i got distracted or overconfident with my life (not healing).

In short, it's a bland game that you will quickly forget, it has some good ideas and since Ubisoft likes to create this open world titles then this is a good opportunity for them, just change the name for something better, get a better story (or at least serviceable), add coop and make the game really feel like you're a survivor (not rpg"ish" like The Division, more like Stalker).

Hah, that's exactly where I stopped playing. So it's not just me. :D

Maybe I'll try again, following PaterAlf's lead.

The way I feel it, if I'm stuck on the same minigame/puzzle for 30 minutes without making any headway whatsoever, I press the Hint/Solve/etc button.