Burial at Sea (360)

Both episodes, so that concludes the full BioShock experience for me then. The best thing about Burial at Sea was that it pretty much backed up the conclusions that I'd made after the end of the main Infinite story. It's good to know I was on the right track with the story and the ending.
The overall BioShock story must be one of the saddest and most disturbing story experiences in gaming. Burial really ties it all up well, especially seeing in the end how they indoctrinate the Big Daddies by tormenting them until a little sister saves him- the "Lion and the Thorn". I feel more sympathy for the Big Daddies than the Little Sisters.

That being said, the game play in Burial episode one wasn't a highlight of the series. It backslid a lot to System Shock 2 syndrome- the same enemies respawning the minute you walk through a door, this is all within a closed off area. The series had really improved in that area, so it was unfortunate to see Burial at Sea slip back into that cheap old habit.
Episode 2 was better, but mainly because of the focus on slower paced stealth mixed things up a bit and made the cheap respawning a bit less intrusive.

Overall Burial at Sea is a good expansion upon the BioShock story, it's not essential but I think you miss out on something by skipping them.

<span class="bold">A Boy and His Blob</span>

After patiently waiting for a fix to the game-breaking bug I found right at the beginning of the final boss fight, today I've been able to finally complete this game. A game I discovered when its HD remastered edition was released here on GOG earlier this year (as I had never heard of the original NES version or the Wii remake), but which I couldn't help but getting it since I instantly liked the concept and its cute graphics.

Now I've beaten it, I've only got 3 complaints about it: 1) some unskippable animations (usually during Blob's transformations) rapidly overstay their welcome and become tedious to look at; 2) some of the 'challenge levels' (which on the other hand are completely optional) require a ridiculous degree of precision and can easily become infuriating for the player; and (constrasting a little with the previous point) 3) the game isn't too hard to start with, but it further lowers its intrinsic difficulty level by throwing big in-game tips at your face telling you what kind of bean you need to use in order to overcome an obstacle/enemy/tricky situation. And this goes on well into the game, maybe even past its halfway point... Now, I'd be OK with it all if these tips were optional and you could de-activate them in the settings menu, but they're not and I feel like they worked to the detriment of my enjoyment, at least to some degree.

But other than that, the pros greatly outweigh the cons and the colourful HD graphics, the splendid OST, some greatly designed levels, and its overall cuteness (FFS, there's a button dedicated to hugging the Blob, which otherwise has no other effect in gameplay whatsoever, how cool and cute is that?) makes it worth of your time. If you enjoy puzzle platformers, that is.


My list of finished games in 2016

Borderlands (main story)

Yep - just finished the main story mode of Borderlands, actually I killed the final boss and saw the credits roll on Friday but I still had to turn the last mission in to Tannis for the cash reward and I had a side-mission still on my list that I just finished too

I can sort of see why some of you guys might think it's everything wrong with modern gaming - dumbed down, co-op based RPG/FPS with regenerating health and respawn points that make dying a minor inconvenience but... what can I say? I was crazy fun and one of the more enjoyable games I've ever played

I guess it depends whether you glass is half full or half empty whether you're going to compare this to Deus Ex and Baldur's Gate or, like, Quake - seen as a FPS with RPG elements added, in a semi-open world it's far more interesting that a 'straight' FPS, I'm still glad 'deeper' RPGs exist and will continue to be made but this game, as part of a balanced gaming diet really hit the spot!

Plus I played the whole thing single player and hardly ever felt like I was missing out or treated like a second class player

I will say though that it's a bit of a shame you pick your character at the start and kind of get locked into their class and never really get to play around with the other 3 classes and special abilities

Plus the humour falls a bit flat - it's like they built a setting and a cast of crazy characters with a lot of potential for humour but then.. somehow.. just forgot to write the jokes! I think one of Tannis' journal entries where she's descending into paranoid, isolated 'castaway' style cabin fever madness that genuinely made me laugh but that was about it, sadly

Loads of DLC and sequels to be played on Pandora yet but for now I'm moving on to Vampire: Bloodline...

Full list:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post255

Secret Files: Sam Peters (11:03pm 1st may)

ok point and click game. short (5 or 6 parts). Sam isn't funny

Watched playthroughs of those (it and HotS, just the movies from WoL), still say they did a good job with Kerrigan and that whole arc, to the extent that you can in an RTS.

It just seems to me like Blizzard isn't good at presenting the story well anymore. The stories themselves are good, but the presentation matters i.e. Diablo 3 Act 3 had awful repetitive dialog. And Amon's buildup in SC2 felt a bit too fast

DARK SOULS III
As a Dark Souls newbie, this game was extremely punishing at first and tested my patience to the next level. It took me approximately 2 hours to beat Iudex as a starting Merc. but the thrill and adreneline post-battle was truly something no other game offered.

As I fought my way through the story, I began to become enthralled with the lore and progression system. Bonfires are placed just when you truly need them most. Although the world design is fairly spectacular, it was mostly linear with moderate exploration required for completionists. However, the world is still HUGE. 19 total bosses with several mini-bosses in between. The extremely well planned level and boss design (minus a couple bosses) easily makes DS III the most memorable game I have ever played. I can clearly recount most of the paths in every area along with every bosses' movesets and shenanigans. Beating the game in about 37 hours, I am pretty confident that beating it again with a new character can be achieved in under 10 hours all due to the power of knowledge.

DS III launched with quite a few minor grievances, mostly sporatic FPS drops, but all of them have been fixed. The only major issue atm is regarding softbanning due to "Data Inconsistencies" which may occur due to advancing in the game offline (de-syncing with the server) or from online hackers.

I can't stress enough how much I really enjoyed playing DS III. I really regret never playing the earlier two during their hayday, but at least it gives me something to do while i lament the end of this great journey.

Masterpiece
- 10/10

At least play the General Knox DLC, it's great.
Pretty sure there's a lot more jokes/humour.

<span class="bold">Lumino City</span> (played on Wine v1.9.9)

I was searching my backlog for some short and relaxing adventure-like game when I stumbled upon this little gem that I got inside a piñata last September. And I'm glad I kept it even though it's not available for Linux (why it had to be done with Adobe AIR, why???), as I got it running on vanilla Wine with no problem and I've wholeheartedly enjoyed it from beginning to end.

Lumino City is a direct sequel to Lume (or rather the latter was just a short introduction for the former, as you prefer), and as such it begins just where the other ended: with Grandad arriving home from the City with very important news to tell his granddaughter Lumi. But alas, he gets kidnapped even before the poor girl can finish preparing the tea, so she immediately sets forward in his pursuit. During her adventure, Lumi (just as I did during my playthrough, I'm now having a hard time ignoring the fact that Lumi means prostitute in Spanish) will visit all the amazing and colourful corners of the titular Lumino City and its bizarre inhabitants. Rotating houses, electrical circuits powered by lemons, merchant ships trapped at several hundred feet above sea level... you can expect to find all this and even more in this fantastic world.

Everything in this game has been literally handcrafted and the end result, at least graphically, is astounding. Some of the puzzles can fall a little flat as it may not be obvious what must be done with them, and sometimes the lack of a "hotspot indicator" can leave you wondering about what to do next for a while, but at least for me the rest of the experience (music included) more than compensates for these little mishaps.


My list of finished games in 2016

That DLC is almost better then the main game. One of the few truly great pieces of DLC.

Android:
+Lifeline: Silent Night

You probably remember what I wrote about the original Lifeline in this thread, right? Enter Silent Night. A direct sequel to the original Lifeline's events, Taylor is now on board of a ship in a sector (of space) that isn't even trafficked. So what could possibly go wrong when a marine ship lands on the ship Taylor is in? (Hint: Exactly what I implied).

The story's best ending is harder to reach than the original's best ending. Despite the setting of the game, Taylor finds themselves quite capable of throwing pop culture references at you whenever possible.

Games finished in 2016

Ori and the blind forest
Blades of Time
Fallout 4
Doom

-----

Hi everyone :)

I'll keep my reviews short since I'm not good at describing (and remembering) all I liked or didn't like about a game, but the fact that I finished a game probably means it can't be that bad (to me) ;)

Blades of Time
Fun little Action game, that let's you run around as a blonde model in high heels and almost no clothes jumping around and killing monsters via swords and guns (unlimited ammo). Also you can multiply yourself by going back in time a bit and fight alongside your other timeline self and you can do that however often you want. The difficulty was more on the easy side (played standard I think) but some bosses were a little tedious until you found out how to deal with them (usually by attacking with multiple selfs in a certain way)
Finished it + the dlc in around 17h and had some light fun, though I always wondered how the hell the Heroine can run, let alone jump, around in those shoes. It's baffling really.

Fallout 4
I very much enjoyed this game. After logging around 350h into skyrim a few years ago and countless hours into oblivion and morrowind and fallout 3 and new vegas, I guess I'm just pretty darn habituated to the bethesda open world rpg way. And so it isn't odd that I put around 250h into their newest fallout game. And I did have loads of fun, but sometimes it does get tedious, too. (esp. if you try to get every achievement for no reason. Never bothered with something like that before, but somehow I did now)
So I did like the story (not so good as in new vegas but good enough, I think) and what's more I loved the tidbits of lore or mini-stories you find scattered all over the commonwealth (i.e. terminals where employes were playing tabletop rpgs via mail or the vault stories or the companion stories etc.) it's soo much stuff, and I'm sure I haven't even seen half of it.
As for the looting, it's good that all the useless stuff lying around can be made use of through the settlement building/crafting part. It is a nice thing to do, but once you have the stuff you want it get's less interesting. Combat is okay but nothing new (I'm always the sneaky coward with the sniper rifle anyhow) what I really liked is the new power armor system (don't be afraid of using them fusion cores there's more than enough around) and flying( well jumping higher) around with a jetpack is quite fun.
The radiant quests, I didn't like in skyrim and I hated them in fallout 4, too. But it's possible to just not do them and turn your back on that quest givers. :) Fuck 'em, I say!
Still nice game, waiting for the expansion now...

Doom
with the Brutal Doom mod. it's so much fun I played through doom without the use of cheats for, I think, the first time now (despite having played doom in the '90s, too.) But I always had the difficulty set too high for my skills and went for iddqd and idkfa pretty soon always. Well not this time :) hurt me plenty is much much easier than ultra violence and that way even I can do it :D And it really is a great game made even better with this grand mod!

NWN - HotU. Or Neverwinter Nights, Hordes of the Underdark. Expansion as such.

Yet, I am a major Valen Shadowbreath fan - if only his CHAR had been written and voiced during Dragon Age era!

Had it not been for Valen, I would not have bothered to take epic "will" and "fortitude" save for my second play-through rogue, and taking bard levels to same effect. Valsharess is not meant for rogues, IMO, intrinsically.

Rogue high output damage (critical / sneak attack) falls upon immunity, meaning a grind-down fight on will / fortitude ensues. Which is really poor for a rogue lead char.

Why could I not name Valen as my champion, with bit of sweet fan service dialogue? ;-)

Mark of the Ninja
Medal of Honor Pacific Assault
Medal of Honor War Chest
Frozen Cortex
Flatout