Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) (GOG)

I wanted to play this mainly to see where Heavy Rain came from. Now that I've played Fahrenheit, I'll be honest and say that if I had of played this years ago before Heavy Rain, I would have suggested locking David Cage up, destroying the key and making sure he never makes another game again. But with hindsight I know that this mess of a game did end up (with the help of Sony $$) being the seed that grew into the outstanding psychological thriller that is HR. Beyond Two Souls was okay too, but the paranormal story of Beyond is no match for HR.

I started Fahrenheit with mouse and keyboard and the game would have ended at the tutorial, the controls were so bad. I set up the 360 controller, but the right stick doesn't work as the game was original Xbox era. I used a profiler to assign Z and X rotation axis to the right stick and that at least made the game controllable. I actually found the QTE stuff easy- pointless but easy. But every other aspect of controlling the game is a royal pain in the ass. I have no choice other than to strip Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness of it's previous award of "worst controls ever" and award it to Fahrenheit from here on. Sorry Lara. And I don't even want to talk about the stealth sections of this game. My 360 controller is lucky to be in one piece still.

Then there's the story. It almost feels like they ran out of budget and left out an hour of story at two main points of the game. It doesn't make sense what previously rational characters choose to do and what they believe later in the game.

It's not completely bad. The soundtrack is pretty good and, for me, the game ran smooth and had no bugs or crashes. The graphics at high resolution look like any older low polygon count game played at high res- simple shapes but very sharp and clear textures.

Anyway, for people into weird stuff like self flagellation, that is what playing this game is like and for them I'd give it the highest possible recommendation. For everyone else I'd say give it a miss unless you're like me and are curious to see where Heavy Rain came from.

I liked it :P It started out good, got progressively worse, and the ending was complete trash, but the bad parts has that "so bad it's good"-factor. Still though, it managed to keep me entertained and somewhat interested in the story throughout the game. It also made me interested in other David Cage-games. You should check out Omikron: The Nomad Soul. It's somewhat clunky (it only uses the keyboard, no mouse), but the story and soundtrack is pretty great. As you know, I recently bought a used copy of Beyond Two Souls, and borrowed a PS3. I also borrowed Heavy Rain, and I'm looking forward to playing them. If I can just get BeyondTS to run.. Argh! :/

Actually I have an original PC boxed edition of Omikron that I bought when it was released. I got about half way through playing it back then and really liked it, but for some reason I stopped- probably during one of my military postings. I have it on my subconscious "playlist" for this year sometime, and this time I'll finish it.

The Banner Saga (WinXP)

I had to boot Windows because the Linux port isn't available DRM-free, wtf? GoG, please do something about it, the Linux port of Larry Reloaded is still missing after years too.
This and a few minor bugs aside, it's a very good and unique game.
It is a genre-mix of "turn based strategy" and "interactive book" with a bit of micro-management. The visual and audio design is stunning. The characters are drawn and the landscapes are pixel art in very high definition. Along the way you constantly have to make hard decisions, often all of them leading to undesirable results or leaving a bad taste. Times are hard, there will be losses and you can't save everyone, be prepared. My ending was really sad.
The fighting system has one big problem/deviation, your and the enemy units as a whole get one turn each but each character still has a turn order. This leads to the problem that if you go the sensical way to kill off the small enemies fast in order to be able to focus on the big ones, the big ones get more turns - making it even harder. So you need to get the enemy units to 1HP (which also makes their attacks weak and useless though) and kill them off when all are weakened. I didn't get this until right before the end.
Since your decisions lead to slightly different stories, the replay value is quite high and I will definitely play it again.
Unfortunately the devs have announced, that they are not planning to release episode 2 and 3 DRM free since they are convinced, the DRM free release of the first one has led to lost sales (which is bollocks imho, but there you go). Hopefully they'll rethink their decision and I hope that the Linux port of the first episode won't stay Steam exclusive like many others.

Thanks again to the friend who gifted this gem to me on christmas.

List

3 days ago i finish Wanted a mod for half life 1, and the following day i also finish tomb raider 1. the last level of TR 1 was quite impressive. also in the 14th level you get to fight a clone of yourself which does everything you do, only in reverse. so if you shoot at it, it shoots right back at you killing you and the clone in the same time. there was a very intelligent way to defeat it without you dying too. i'm glad i figured it all out by myself - i had to consult a walkthrough only once because i didn't know that some levers can and some can't be used while being underwater

Bioshock

There you are happily relaxing on a plane, when suddenly your in the ocean surrounded by wreckage. You swim to the closest building which happens to be an elevator to the underwater city of Rapture, it looks magnificent, until you reach the 2nd building and witness a man get repeatedly stabbed in the chest by a fast moving maniac. From then on it's all about survival as you try to find the man responsible for this city and find a way to escape, all whilst avoiding drugged up maniacs, killer robots and diving suits with drills for arms.

The game is like a light horror/FPS game, there's always a tense feeling as you hear your enemies moving around, looking for you, ammo conservation is also a key part (And if you didn't conserve ammo like me you end up struggling massively in the later levels). There are some moral choices, you'd have to be pretty heartless to do the bad ones. Everyone in the city are addicted to plasmids, chemicals that change your genetic code in a way to make you superhuman, such as shooting electricity or lighting enemies on fire (They have a 12+ age restriction...) though I didn't use them as much as I think I should have. Overall it's a good game, well it was good enough to get 2 sequels, good graphics, sound and I would recommend it.

Gothic

Finally played this one for the first time (although I picked up the Gothic Universe collection on disc years ago). Overall a fun game, which offers some nice choice at the beginning when you're deciding which faction to join. Becomes fairly linear after that, although still enjoyable enough that I understand why the game is generally so highly esteemed. I did like the combat and the fact that opponents are pretty much always dangerous if not taken one-on-one, as, if you're mobbed, even low level monsters can put you in significant danger (as it should be, IMO).

I modded the game with textures and high resolution fonts, as well as using the Gothic 1 player kit. Not sure if these were the culprit, but I had numerous crashes (although not enough to make me quit playing). As well, there was one area that had some real problems with freezing, crashes, and total lockups - to the point where even CTRL/ALT/DEL to kill the game with the task manager sometimes required multiple attempts to be successful at getting back to desktop. Luckily, this was in a tower (and in the tunnels underneath) that was related to a totally optional quest. But, with a little perseverence and a whiole lot of saving, crashing, and reloading of the game, I managed to get through that area enough to be able to successfully complete that side quest.

Voice acting was... spotty at best, but this really didn't make much difference to me. I found it more amusing than annoying when it was at its worst.

I can understand the comments about the controls now. While you do get used to them, they're pretty abysmal. Yet despite all this, the game is just plain fun. I very much enjoyed it and am looking forward to firing up Gothic 2 to see where the story goes from here.

Full List.

Darkest Dungeon

A really, really great game. It will keep you on your toes for its entire length, and no encounter should be taken for granted. I also really enjoyed the story and learning about the Ancestor's businesses with those who would later become the different bosses of the game, was really intriguing. I almost got wiped in the last boss fight, with the remaining two survivors both being on death's door. I can't remember the last time I've played a video game where I was so completely unsure how the battle would end. It was really intense.

My only complaint about the game is that it shows some information incorrectly. For example, an enemy might have "a 40% blight resistance" but it doesn't take into account the trinkets in my possession - such as a +40% blight chance trinket. Therefor, it's a bit of a guessing game whether or not a blight will work on that enemy. There's also some RNG involved, and it might bother some people, but with careful planning I was able to go around it somewhat, as I was constantly trying to avoid any unnecessary risks, if possible.

All in all, I can't recommend the game enough for those who are into turn-based dungeon crawling! Everything about the game is absolutely fantastic. Were it not for XCOM 2, this would definitely take the #1 spot on my current "Best games I've played this year" list.

You said it yourself and I thought it's rather obviously an image of spikes which kill you hundreds of times in the game.
I loved it btw.

Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, 3DS

This really felt like a return to form for me. I enjoyed some of the more recent 3D Zelda games, but it seemed to me that the series was going in a pretty non-Zelda-like direction, minimizing exploration and poking around in exchange for stories that were, frankly, not worth the tradeoff, and the regular 3DS games seemed to go even further in that direction. A Link Between Worlds draws its inspiration very directly from A Link to the Past in structure (i.e. do three dungeons, then do seven more "dark world dungeons" while using dark world/light world portals to switch back and forth between worlds), which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. It's also by far the least linear Zelda game (except possibly the very first one?) thanks to a "rental" system that enabled you to have whatever items you wanted when you wanted them, as opposed to the more controlled "Find the item in the fifth dungeon that you need to open the sixth dungeon" structure that you see in previous games. It was a system that I thought I'd hate, but which worked out really well. In practice, I was able to purchase all the items pretty early, thanks to the game being quite generous with rupees.

Let me see ... great soundtrack and beautiful graphics. Also, I actually enjoyed the 3D effects--usually I find that they give me a headache.

I will say--whether you view this as a negative may be a matter of taste--that it was quite easy. I never got seriously stuck on the puzzles, and according to the end-game statistics, I died nine times total (which is even less than it sounds, because three of those deaths was against one boss, another death against another boss, and a fifth death against the last boss means that I only died four times while exploring dungeons or the world map. I didn't die at all fighting the remaining seven-or-so bosses). When you beat the game a hard mode unlocks, which in practice seems to mean that all the enemies do way more damage to you. Rather than that, I just wish that the normal mode trended slightly harder.

Just be careful about installing NotR (I think the GOG installer forces it? so I heard at one point at least, didn't install my copy), makes everything a lot harder, and requires a lot of planning ahead in character development and squeezing every possible bonus and bit of exp. Still possible, but struggling and not with the way I like to play, so gave up multiple times so far. Still something I'd like to finish someday, but... someday.

Great atmosphere though, for both of them.

It's not forced, but it checked by default, so you have to uncheck it. I installed it anyway and am looking through a couple threads of advice for newbies on character building. (So far they seem to be good about avoiding spoilers). Thanks for the heads up though. :)

They made it optional again?
The checkbox was removed at some point and when I asked them about it, they sent me an older version which still had it although it was English and therefore worthless to me (since it's a German game and the translation doesn't even seem to be good).
Did you install the current version?

See those threads:
https://www.gog.com/forum/gothic_series/forced_to_install_notr_in_g2
https://www.gog.com/forum/gothic_series/removing_night_of_the_raven

Everything that Cavalary said about the addon is true and finishing it with a mage is a real chore since you have to finish the addon region with a magic circle that is too low and screws up the balancing.

Saints Row: Gat Out Of Hell (Xbox One)

This had some really weird pricing during a recent XBL sale. SR4 by itself was A$11, Gat Out OF Hell was A$10 and buying them both as a bundle was A$9! It felt like they were paying me get Gat. Maybe it was just a pricing error because the bundle initially wasn't in the sale it just suddenly appeared. Anyway it sounded like a fair enough bargain even if Gat is nothing outstanding.

Gat Out of Hell, as most people that follow the series know, is really just a "more of the same" stand alone SR4 expansion. Take that any way you like, but if you played SR4 and feel like some more then that's what it is- just not as good. To be fair the game was never sold as a full priced game, it was always priced as what it is.

Anyway, I did have another 12 more hours of simple fun. But some of the things that are great about the Saints Row games were missing here- no ability to create your own unique character tailored to however you want it to look and sound. You play as, and can swap between, Gat or Kinzie. That really is a mistake. And also very noticeable was the lack of radio stations and any good music. Those two things are staples of the series and I missed them. But flying around like a superhero was fun again, whilst it lasted and was worth the price I paid- which like I said, felt like I paid nothing.
Voice acting was excellent, just like every Saints game so far- but special kudos to the Satan himself.

It was all smooth and bug free.