Sword of the Stars: The Pit Gold Edition

Getting to the end of a Roguelike counts as finished I suppose...even if it was on easy. Anyway it's a tough, unforgiving and often cruel with luck Rougelike that is probably hard enough for most people on easy. I've played a quick play through once in a while over the past two years in between other games whilst working out what I felt like playing next. It's a good sort of game for that. Note: I only use the game up to the Mindgames expansion- so without the three extra micro DLC characters.

I played two normal difficulty plays that ended at or around floors 12 and then I decided to switch to easy difficulty until I at least beat that. I beat the game, on easy, on the 4th try using the Liir Seeker. The Seeker has the huge advantage of not starving to death (unless you play really bad). I was actually throwing food away to clear inventory space. Imagine throwing food away as one of the other characters! Never. As the Psionics specialist, just pump points into the correct skill tree until you unlock the Control Metabolism ability and all your food problems are gone. Likewise, since lots (almost all in fact) of your fighting can be done using Psi attacks, means ammo is also not much of an issue.

The problem for the Seeker is it's very fragile, her special water armor will not last to the end of the game and you will not ever find another set. But at least the Seeker has some good defensive skills to compensate.
The real issue for the Seeker was combat, the main Psi attack hits hard but takes 4 turns to recharge and also lacks penetration against heavily armored enemies. So the Seeker takes a lot of care and tactics (hit and run) in combat and needs to avoid getting swarmed at all cost. Luckily with food and ammo not being big problems the Seeker has the luxury of time and not having to be rushed. But it suited my play style and is the first character I got to the end of floor 40. If anyone plays as the Seeker you should be aware of one REALLY important issue: by the end I had no guns, my Liir starting guns were destroyed and I'd fully learned to get by using Psi attacks. Until the final end game room on floor 40. I simply could not penetrate the armor of the final room enemies (couldn't even put a scratch on them) and had to scavenge back two floors to find the ingredients to make a Laser Rifle that could win the final battle. Sorry if anyone takes that as a spoiler...but I think most people would want to know that in advance before they get to the end and find they can't win! So be warned, take a high penetration gun to the end battle no matter how you play the rest of the game. And with the Seeker you will be lucky to ever find any actual Liir guns and all other guns seem to be used at a penalty.

So future plays will now be in Normal difficulty, but I'll stick with the Seeker for now, since I know how to get it to work for me. I doubt I'll ever bother with the Hard difficulty!

And the freakin bugs. Bugs are everywhere. Damn good game ruined by bugs. I've had several crashes and dead ends due to events not triggering.



Oi Console Peasant, this is PC Master Race forum.

...

Just kidding. I wish they'd bring those console titles to PCs.
*hangs head in shame*

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault

This game was a lot of fun! Sure, it’s got some flaws such as: linear levels, infinite enemy spawn points, and near-invisible snipers. But it’s got a good amount of variety in the missions and somehow it all works, I really enjoyed it.

Anodyne
It looks like an old school Zelda game, it plays like an old school Zelda game, it feels like a drug trip.
The story and characters are weird (I guess this game is supposed to be psychological), but I didn't care about any of this. I didn't like the story or the characters to the point where I became frustrated every time a text box appeared. The whole presentation resembles a LSD hallucination masquerading as a story. And really, it feels pretentious. Maybe You will have a better tolerance to this kind of storytelling than I did.
Now, how about the gameplay? Does it play well?
Well, kinda.
The jumping puzzles are a bit annoying, the collectible cards turn out to be, for the most part, mandatory and the post game is almost impossible to figure out without a walkthrough.
But, it is fun.
7/10

Saints row 2 i beat the whole storyline,didn't do all activities so am at 69% now, am gonna play it a little more to get more %.
While it did lag when driving it was still playable i did change a couple of options even one in the nvidia inspector,worst offender was definativly an activity called trail blazing level 5 apartment since i needed like 4 hours until i mastered it,level 6 was easier though much more laggy on the hill.
Funny how i actually got used to the driving at least when the game doesn't lag.
Otherwise it is a fun game,over the top gangster madness quite action packed.

Please include me on the list? :) From most recent to earliest. Multiplier indicates number of playthroughs done this year.

1. 03/26 Hexcells Plus
2. 03/15 Ori and the Blind Forest (x3)
3. 03/02 Windosill
4. 03/01 Hexcells
5. 02/28 The Purring Quest
6. 02/23 Life is Strange
7. 02/17 Pixel Piracy
8. 02/06 Fort Meow
9. 02/06 It's Spring Again
10. 02/03 The Cat Machine
11. 01/30 Hook
12. 01/27 Message Quest
13. 01/26 Transistor (x2)
14. 01/19 A Bird Story
15. 01/18 Bastion (x1.5)
16. 01/11 The Witcher 1

Putting it all in a list sure makes it look like a lot more than I realized. o.o Several of the games were short but still. XD

This War of Mine

This is the 6th time I finished this game for now. It has a amazing amount of content, every time you start, you mostly get something different, like new characters to play with, other places to visit, loot (food, medicine, crafting components, or some of the rare stuff like weapons, guitar and coffee) and different events in places or by visitor during the day.
Also, I'm happy to hear that This War of Mine: The Little Ones is finally coming to PC.

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

I finished Dark Souls 2 this morning.

The ending was quick has I just backtracked to complete a NPC quest in order to be able to summon him. So before the final bosses, I came with two NPC and another player and it wrapped up pretty fast and easily on my first try. :o)

All in all, it was a great adventure and some kind of achievement as I had some savegames problems on both DS 1&2 which threw away more than 100 hours of gameplay combined. So this month, I decided to re-install DS2 and it took me 80 hours to beat it. I quite liked that I could go through the whole game with the build I had in mind (sorceress with low health, wearing the falconer armor with small shield, just enough dex for some archery and the minimum to use the claymore) and I think I learned a lot of skills (and build optimization) to help me if one day I re-install DS1.

I intended to go out last night, but after a friend's birthday brunch and cabaret I surrendered to the call of a warm lazy evening in on a chilly March weekend. I didn't want to play anything taxing, just wanted to cruise-control for a bit after dinner. Voilá: Mirror Mysteries is a brief, diverting Hidden Object Game (HOG) with a pleasant string of scenes hung lightly on a threadbare plot. Just the thing for two+ hours of easy action without too much fretting.

You're a mom (of course) on a road trip with your two kids. You pull off the highway to rest and eat in front of an oddly-shaped house - NOT A SMART MOVE - and wake from your after-picnic nap to find the kids gone. Inside the house is some sort of humorless spirit who has trapped little Tommy and Sophia (or whatever their names are, this is not a character piece) in a magic mirror, after they went and broke the other mirrors set around the room. Why are your kids breaking into empty houses and smashing the mirrors in there, anyway? This is a question for other games.

Seven mirrors need to be entered and fixed, seven short adventures unfold in the magic worlds within. Mirror Mysteries' puzzles interact with the environments in a comfortable way. You'll have a scene and some sets of things to find, and completing each set gives you an object to either place back in the scene or to stash for use in another location inside that mirror. I got stuck a few times with cunningly-hidden items, mostly things stuck behind other things, but for the most part the finding is easy and linear and there's no penalty for hitting the hint button. This is not really a challenging game, and it hits a happy groove of clicking things along and moving the action forward.

Good art, made in medium-res. Very good voicing, much less bland than the HOG usual. Simply framed, and executed properly. No achievements. I was a little amused and a little put off to note that much of what your character does is housework - tidying up, sewing buttons on a leprechaun's vest, this sort of thing - but really that's what a lot of adventure-lite plots boil down to in the end. "I am a fearsome spirit from beyond, poised to destroy your family unless you can complete these terrible tasks." "OK, but this place is a mess. How can you even FIND anything in here?" I chose to read it as a tongue-in-cheek thing, though that probably wasn't the intent.

A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda

A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda is a 2.5D side-scrolling action platformer. The game is pretty short, with 5 levels and a boss at the end of each level, which takes about 3h to finish on the normal difficulty. But, there is some replay value for a higher difficulty, increased score and secrets.
Also, there appears to be a newer version available: A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda EX, that improves a lot from the original.

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

Duke Nukem II - I enjoyed this one; I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the first one and the sequel is more good stuff. There is an adjustment period to get used to the busier graphics. The game is more challenging than the first, and one notable addition is the inclusion of a flying vehicle for Duke, which is fun for the 3 levels it shows up on. Overall, a worthy followup to the first Duke.

Tom Clancy’s The Division
Tom Clancy’s The Division is one of the most immersive and engaging MMOs out there. Set in a lawless New York City after a viral outbreak, you play as a Division agent tasked to restore order into your once beloved town. In order to truly enjoy The Division, is it really important to understand its SP and MP aspects. A campaign of 18 (~25 min [Normal]/40 min [Hard] each) missions propel you through the depths of NYC in an effort to uncover the truth of the outbreak and aid in establishing and expanding your Base of Operations. Various side missions and encounters glitter the streets for you to grind in between missions. The Dark Zone is a fully enclosed instance where you and other players fight extremely hostile NPCs (or each other) for high end loot. The DZ and rogue system really helps create a lot of fun tension, anxiety, and comraderie with fellow agents.

Although The Division is a really fun MMOTPS imo, it does have quite a few drawbacks. Regarding SP, the side missions and encounters are rather repetitive and reuse the same 4-6 different tasks. The different environments do help change the monotony a bit, but sometimes not enough. The player and NPC models are also fairly characterless. Regarding MP, the developers are still trying to balance the rogue system, and hopefully soon, the Division Tech grind. Throughout either gameplay, The Division is also littered with minor bugs and textural glitches every now and then which really break the immersion.

Overall, I definitely recommend this game only if you do not mind playing a loot-driven game and understand that grinding is required. It is also suggested to play with friends or use the matchmaking system, but playing solo is still a lot of fun.

Masterpiece
- 10/10

Wasteland 2

I can finally say that i finished this one and it's way WAY better than Fallout 4. Starting this game is one of the most hardest aspects of the game, it's so overwhelming the decisions you have to make when creating your party since you have to consider future npc's that will cover certain skills, it's one of those things that you won't understand until you play it and realize how to achieve a possible balance of skills, even if requires you to restart the game after reaching one of the main areas of the game.

I think that the thing that i didn't really liked about this game was the lack of character/charisma of the your party, it's almost like playing one of those games where the main character doesn't speak, you don't really create empaty for your main party of rangers and this is even more agravated after playing the Shadowrun games where that aspect is what makes the games shine.

It's also hard to take the game seriously due to the humor, it has some strong themes (slavery, rape, prostitution, death, etc) but then some npc has some humoristic dialogue followed by a humoristic death, it just makes it hard to imerse in the game.

The music is also bland, i had to turn it off and play some background music while playing.

The combat is well made, you will have to make some decisions that is really important before the fight, the amount of action points that you have and how much you will use it with each weapon, positioning, taking out the hardest enemies first, etc. It's really rewarding but it can also be really frustrating, especially in the 2nd phase of the game where enemies have energy weapons and can even one shot a member of your party.

The biggest advice i can give for this game is press Z to highlight everything you can interact with and rotate your camera, i had to use the internet to search for one place that was just right where i was it, i'm talking about being in the same house where i was but the camera wasn't showing the door for it.
Now that i think about it, you will have to use the internet a lot, what is that item for or where is that place... Somehow i missed 2 locations on the second part of the game and i still don't know how, i had to do some quest to pop up one location but that quest never appeared, therefore, the two locations didn't appear.

One of the best aspects of the game is how you can complete your missions, again with the Fallout 4 bashing, at least in this game it gives you more liberty on how to complete the missions, sure, there will be some that is just straightforward but there will be others where some of the previous quests will matter and change the outcome.

Overrall i will say that this is really a great game, it will be hard to get started but when you finally get it you're set up for the rest of the game, it could be improve in some parts but most of them i can see be related with the budget.

Medal of Honor Allied Assault: Spearhead

This is an add-on pack containing 3 new missions (included with the GOG version of Allied Assault). I enjoyed these missions as much as the original game, there is some new stuff to do which is different from the base game and some of the same type of stuff which made the original fun, a good mix.