openxcom - trailer

Managed an ironman playthrough on veteran difficulty, without using mind control or blaster launchers (except to knock a hole in a UFO's roof). I decided against mind control and blaster launchers because they make an otherwise challenging game really easy.
It still holds up after all these years, and I would definitely recommend it to any strategy or tactics fan. Once you're done with it, there's lots of cool mods to try out, including some big mod packages that completely change the game through the addition of extra aliens, extra weapons, and cut content like men in black. There is the total overhaul mod x-piratez which I'm dying to try out, though not before attempting an ironman terror from the deep playthrough.

Alright, on Sunday I finished Dark Forces, on Tuesday it was Dark Forces II, and after tag teaming with my brother today it was Mysteries of the Sith.

Dark Forces: I think this may be my favorite of the old old shooters I played. This game occasionally frustrated me but I really liked the way the shooting felt for the main blaster (decent sized explosions, good sound) and the way the setting was used. I thought that for all of these games they used the Star Wars setting really nicely, not used as the only selling point and the setting never seemed to be limiting to what the devs could do.

Dark Forces II: Dark Forces II is probably better than Dark Forces, but it's not the easiest thing to say. They are almost too different to compare effectively but at the same time for the first few missions DFII feels like a truly 3D Dark Forces. The addition of the light-saber was more fun than I thought it would be and I liked how the game looked. The level design was better here as a general rule, but I commonly asked myself, "Well, how was anyone supposed to think of that?" But, more often than not, I did. I really liked what little plot there was and while I realize that tech probably limited how much plot they could have I thought that it could have been a little more fleshed out. But, whatever, what was there was good. I liked the shooting mechanics here as well and I thought that the melee mechanics (not for your fists, that never worked well; not even as well as in DF) worked very well in either First Person or Third Person camera. And the stupid thermal detonators are practical, as opposed to their more deadly to you nature they had in Dark Forces.

Mysteries of the Sith: Not quite as good in any way as DFII honestly, but it's not very long. It felt harder near the end honestly but that was when the plot got good, also. (Honestly, the last level was frustratingly had and m fun) Otherwise it's cool to get to play as Mara Jade, wish her story here was more than a few side quests basically with a very small amount of actual plot.

I just completed the main mission in Shadow of Mordor (Game of the Year edition). I really liked how they added to the Lord of the Rings setting like with the background of the elf ghost. I plan to play through Bright Lord soon.

Just finished The Wheel of Time.
It's like I took a a nostalgia pill that lasted the entire playtime. Man, it was awesome going through that game again.
It can be downloaded for free (legally), but doesn't include cut-scenes or in-game music, so I watched the cut-scenes on YouTube after beating each level. I thought no music would bother me because I remember the soundtrack being quite fitting, but the excellent ambiance made me forget that pretty quick. Huge levels, aggressive and relentless enemies, and all those Ter'angreal to choose from...yeah, just a really fun Unreal-engine based FPS. Really hope GOG gets this someday.

Alan Wake - Finished another playthrough of this, and it's just as enjoyable the second time through. The characters and setting combine to make a wonderful environment and atmosphere. Not much more to say, other than I highly recommend the game.

Prune - A relaxing puzzle mobile game (what else would a mobile game be? :) ) about growing trees by selectively pruning branches while avoiding obstacles. It's enjoyable to dive in and play a level or two at a time. That being said, it's rather unclear how levels are cleared apart from growing your tree enough so that the level completes. There's no clear feedback, but apart from this it's still a relaxing game.

Frozen Synapse - 55 levels of simultaneous turn-based strategy. I had started to play this several years ago, but my laptop struggled to compute the AI moves and often crashed. This time I was able to run it without any trouble, apart from the occasional, perplexing bug. The cyberpunk setting is interesting and the story has some depth to it, with lots of lore to read through, and a few surprising twists throughout. The ending was a bit underwhelming to me, but the story's not the highlight of the game. This game expands the planning stage of the early Rainbow Six games into an enjoyable experience. While you can certainly spend a lot of time planning out enemy moves to counter them, I didn't spend much time doing that. It's a good game for the turn-based strategy fan.

"Beware Planet Earth!"

A cartoony tower defense game that took a lot of inspiration from Plants vs. Zombies (in this case it's Cows vs. Aliens). It wasn't bad, but it wasn't something special as well.

I liked the graphics and the music. Game could need an additional difficulty mode though. On normal is was very easy (except for some levels in the last chapter), but on vereran mode it got extremely hard after a while. Some of the challenge levels were pretty good.

Complete list of finished games in 2016

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

I'm a very bad FPS player and even on easy difficulty this was probably the hardest FPS game that I've ever completed. I enjoyed it though, because the level design was excellent throuout the whole game, there was even some gameplay variety (e.g. stealth missions or missions with a timer) and the AI was very good (enemies use cover and try to kill you from behind).

I didn't like the supernatural foes (Zombies etc.), but fortunately there weren't too many levels which included them.

The final boss was quite easy to beat. I wonder who had the strange idea to use a melee fighter as a final boss in an FPS game when the player has a lot of long-range-attack weapons.

Names of the Nazis and the German voice-acting are hilarious. As a German I really had a good laugh from time to time.

Complete list of finished games in 2016

I got rid of the helper right away, so I only had to deal with the zombies and Heinrich. I still neded some tries, but it was by far not as hard as the fight against the Über-Soldier and the two Über-Soldiers at the end of level 6.

Yeah, those were all pretty bad.
I'm pretty sure I never beat it legitimately before a few days ago was because I never noticed the helper was shooting those. :P
Just kept trying to kill the boss.

Close Combat (PC CD-ROM)

The MS original. I bought it when it first came out and found it hard to get to grips with and gave it up, at the time I was still really into turn based wargames and the real time play was a bit hectic for what I was used to- so I shelved it. But I decided it was time to give it another try since my gaming habits are a bit more versatile now.

Basically it is a real time tactical simulator that focuses on realism- especially combat psychology. It covers 43 days of the US 29th Divisions slog from just after getting off Utah Beach, through the Bocage to St. Lo. The ideas as the US forces is to better history and get to St. Lo faster- historically it took twice as long as hoped. As the Germans delay at every opportunity using fighting retreats.

It's a pain to get this game running on newer Windows. Not only is it Win 95 era, it uses Indeo Video codecs and refuses to work until you have working codecs. The codecs on the disc won't even install to 32 bit Windows let alone 64 bit. Luckily there are more modern Indeo installers which you can find. At least it's not as bad as old Apple Quicktime games. Anyway, I eventually got it going, but found the game to be a bit prone to freezes on 64 bit Windows, so I played on 32 bit Vista which worked fine.

This time I stuck with it and finished the game twice- once for the Americans and once for the Germans. There is only the one campaign, but it can be very long since it's partly dynamic and can really drag on- especially if you're doing well as the German defenders. You can find yourself fighting over the same terrain multiple times- just like they did historically.
This is definitely not C&C. Units have no health bars and die from one hit. They do not blindly follow suicidal orders. Troops are effected by morale and combat stress. Once I got the hang of the game I really enjoyed it. There is no pausing to issue orders and no saving during battle- you must live with your choices and treat you troops with care.

I've decided, based on this game, that I'll now work my way through the entire series- provided I can track all the earlier ones down. According to fans the second game (and the last one published by MS) is the best, so looking forward to that one.

Minecraft (PS4)

OK, OK, I know I’m a little late to the party, but still… My son got this game last year for Xmas, I finally got around to trying it out myself recently and I got sucked right in! It’s a very fun open world sandbox game, there are always so many things to do. This is a game you can never really complete so I debated whether to call it “finished” or “quit”, but I played it for many hours (I didn’t count but I’d guess close to 20) and I enjoyed them all, so I’m calling it “finished” :). I will probably return to it to play it again (a new world) sometime in the future though.

<span class="bold">DmC: Devil May Cry</span>

I have yet to play any of the other Devil May Cry games, but I enjoyed this one quite a bit. DmC: Devil May Cry is similar to METAL GEAR RISING: REVENGEANCE in terms of gameplay.
The game is pretty linear with some replay value, there are a lot of hidden keys/rooms/items/ghosts throughout the levels, and there are many difficulty modes as well. There are a few puzzle, but they come pretty rare and are easy to solve. The combat is great, there are a lot of moves to unlock and a huge variety of weapons to use.
DmC: Devil May Cry was developed by Ninja Theory, the people responsible for ENSLAVED: Odyssey to the West an overlooked title, that deserves more attention.
Overall the game is great, it is highly enjoyable.

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

*nudge*

Did you grab the Sunset Overdrive season pass in the sale last week?

I did get it actually. Sometime this year I'm going to replay the entire game again with the two DLC expansions.