Monster world rpg by max team kind took me 30 hours to beat but i was rather playing this game much
Decap attack
Toejam and earl
Mafia beaten the story again now for freeride extreme.

Finished Mass Effect for the second time a few days ago, this time on PS3 but again as default Shep and paragon on normal difficulty. Well, it's still great overall but it has undeniably aged since RPG shooters or at least shooters with RPG elements have become more common over the years and I like to think that games like the Witcher series have also shown how to do the RPG aspect itself better in a game like this.

Already mentioned some of the stuff in the "what game are you playing" thread but that won't stop me...

Anyway, I guess the story is still pretty great and the game still has this grandeur to it that I haven't seen in any other game yet, although the writing feels a tad infantile compared to the Witcher series. Everything's so "clean" and even the nastiest characters aren't remotely disturbing, usually kinda comedic or have still some sense of honor left. The politics also aren't nearly as developed or provocative as in the Witcher series. It almost feels like the characters in Shepard's immediate environment are the only thing that has any impact on anything, even the corporations, Cerberus and the Shadowbroker kinda feel pretty weak and meaningless in light of Shepard's kickassery. I'm pretty sure that these things get more developed in the sequels, which I still haven't played, but in this game alone everything feels kinda... small.

And besides that - the combat isn't too bad. It isn't as great as it could be but it generally works and is actually satisfying, it just lacks a bit of depth. It's kind of the same with the character development. It's there, it's functional but it also isn't great. The problem with the latter is that you can max out any particular talent very early (literally after only four levels ups!), halfway through the game you can max out all abilities that matter to you and by the end you basically put talent points in abilities that you will barely utilise. That's at least the case for the soldier class. The loot and equipment system is even a tad weaker with a system that is completely unable to create anything interesting. You basically keep finding the exact same items, they just keep getting stronger the higher your level is. And they are visually completely uninteresting. Meh.

As for the RPG aspect, I guess it holds up better than the other stuff, some players probably still consider it pretty much perfect - personally I already didn't like it back in the day, am even less of a fan now. The pretty much binary moral system is rather weak in my eyes and trivialises what should be really tough decisions. It's practically almost impossible to make bad choices. Now, I did a paragon playthrough again and rarely chose a dialogue option that does not fit in with that profile but even when I did, I pretty much always felt like it's the same result just delivered in a different manner, a bit like in David Cage's games. However, despite that I must admit that it is pretty cool that they managed to create multiple and highly different responses for almost any situation. Even if my choice doesn't change much in terms of mechanics, in a certain sense it does allow to express my opinion on almost any matter that comes up in the game. And I guess that's pretty cool and more developed than in most other RPGs.

Other than that: I felt like there's comparably little content. Don't get me wrong, my (almost?) 100% playthrough took dozens of hours out of my life and I still want to do more playthroughs to see how things can develop with a different character with a different class, profile and background but ultimately there's a crapload of low quality filler content, especially when it comes to the exploration of planets and side quests. After three or four planets it does get kinda old.

And yet, I had a great time and can't wait to finally, finally move on to Mass Effect 2. Alas... I still have to do another playthrough to finally reach that friggin' level 60...

Finished Distraint, a... strange "point'n click" game. Puzzles are ok, not really difficult. Story and graphics are weird, in a good way but quite disturbing. A good game.

Full list here.

Vampire the masquerade: Bloodlines.
Good game, but the endgame when it turns into non-stop combat is pretty ridiculous. Still fun as a shooter, but very different from the rpg gameplay that preceded it. Must be incredibly frustrating/impossible to beat if you haven't built a strong combat character and stocked up on weapons, blood packs etc.

Epistory: Typing Chronicles

On the whole I really enjoyed it

Pros:
Great concept
Neat environments (with a few dull stretches), and particularly the unfolding of the world map
Art and voice acting are enjoyable
Combat (typing furiously and choosing between 4 attack "powers" to maximize effect)

Cons:
wayfinding suffers in a few places
You will hit the level cap well before finishing the game
1 fight in particular seems overtuned compared to everything else - i beat most bosses in 1 shot, but I seriously died in the lava area 25-30 times on that last wave .

I didn't mind the end of the story the way other reviewers have seemed to, though I would say it could have tied in a bit better. I'd probably have to play it again to really figure out how the protagonist gets to where she is...but as much as I enjoyed aspects of it, I don't know that the main story has much replay value. The arena boards might be fun to bust out every now and then.

I'll blame it (partly) on my cheap keyboard and bad desk setup but I was much slower than I expected, topped out at a pretty sad 43 WPM.

It gets obvious in the end that the game was never finished. They didn't even got close to actually finishing it the way they planned to from what I gathered but it is still an excellent game.

resident evil is only game which i complete in 2017.

I have to admit the story didn't do that much for me (though the voice acting really is excellent). I found it very hard to feel any sympathy for most characters...frankly, almost all the vampires are manipulative bastards who try to exploit you and are really quite immoral (admittedly most humans in the game aren't any better)...the society of Leopold probably has a point in its crusade against them :-) But I suppose it's a faithful representation of the World of darkness rpg setting.
I also felt that the game didn't really explore what the sudden transformation into a vampire must have meant for the protagonist...did he/she feel despair and sadness at the loss of his/her old life or exhilaration at the new-found power, or something in between? Felt unsatisfying to me that this plays hardly any role.
But it's a very good game that does many things right, no doubt about it. I even somewhat enjoyed the combat during the endgame sections, as a shooter it works quite well (I actually liked the sewers level which seems to be disliked by many fans of the game). Just a bit sad that the game didn't achieve its full potential.

Saints Row the Third...kind of.

There are alternate endings. :P I'm too tired to do the other one so I'll screw with it tomorrow and then decide what to play next. GTA 4 or Saboteur or something.

Battle Chef Brigade

It's part 2D hack n' slash a la Muramasa, crossed with match-3 puzzle game. It's about an Iron Chef-inspired competition, with two chefs going head-to-head by running out of the kitchen, killing monsters, gathering ingredients, and bringing them back for cooking within the time limit. The combat is fluid and responsive, and the puzzles get increasingly more complex as the game progresses, with the introduction different types of gems, limited-moves gems, combos, and specialties which reward you for particularly difficult dishes.

I bought this on whim based on the weird premise alone and I was not disappointed. Cooking and the Iron Chef competition isn't an easily ignorable backdrop. The story mode is the star of the show here, and they create a world that revolves around cooking monsters. My biggest surprise was how pleasant most of it was though. Almost everyone was super-friendly. It takes at least a couple of chapters for conflicts to get more serious. Before that we still have the competition, and they could've gone the obvious route and made every opponent an over-the-top villain, but instead they are all very sportsman-like, and quick to become friends with the main character. I didn't know how much I really wanted to play something this upbeat and lighthearted until it already got its hooks in me. Now I'm left looking for another fix, with no idea where to find it. Best case scenario: maybe the sales will be good enough that the devs can afford to do the updates they're planning.

Eternal Darkness. Finally finished another one of my Halloween games :) This was pretty good, a bit on the easy side. It's nominally a survival horror game but it provides you the ability to replenish your health, magic, and sanity almost any time you want, enemies don't respawn, and the few limited items tend to be available in enough quantities that you're unlikely to run out unless you're playing quite badly...in that sense it's not much of a survival horror game, which get a lot of their effect from making you conserve resources. The puzzles aren't too difficult but they're a cut above the standard block-pushing Tomb Raider stuff everyone was doing back then. The game feels like it wants to be a point-and-click adventure but went with pretending to be survival horror for marketing reasons.

Not surprising for a second-party Nintendo release, it controls pretty well and looks and sounds very nice for its time. Gamecube games just have this very clean look because of the combination of the console's power and Nintendo's wise art direction. N64 games have aged kind of rough, but everything else seems to hold up pretty well.

The story is actually not bad. Lovecraftian horror and the multi-generational concept keep things interesting. It's fun to see which character comes next and how they contribute to the story and how some re-used locations change over time. There are a couple of parts in which I felt like the game was being padded out ("Take a few minutes to do this thing! Okay, good, now do it nine more times!"), but ultimately I ended up finishing the game in around 14 hours, so it could have been worse.

The much remarked-upon sanity effects (walls bleeding, statues turning to watch you, imagining you're committing suicide, etc.) are amusing but unfortunately they end up being more of a gimmick than a major gameplay feature. It goes back to the fact that you can easily just cast a quick recover spell to refill your sanity meter and it's like nothing ever happened.

Finished a few more games.

Holy Potatoes, A Weapon Shop?! (2015)- 6/10 (12/11/17)
Started off good and was quite fun for the first 5 or so hours. But then the game was 3 areas too long. Too repetitive and the last half of the game was pretty much filled with references and not much else. The music was pretty nice, though.

Tales From The Borderlands(2014) 5.5/10
I got this for free in the halloween sale, i think. I played Telltale's The Walking Dead when that was new and hated it so I suppose I went in expecting to not like it, but I think I actually liked it a little more. The characters were alright, though the entire last episode of the game was just crammed with 'funny references' yet the actual game by that point was so buggy that I had to reload the game because it glitched, and the final part of the game was ruined because the voices were randomly half missing. It suffered from most of the same issues that TWD also did.

We Were Here (2017) 5.5/10 (29/11/17)
Meh. Played this with a friend, it was an interesting idea, it was short and a little glitchy but it was free. Fairly decent artstyle. Sound got annoying though.

GIBZ(2017) 4.5/10 (30/11/17)
Okay, so I didn't actually beat this. I got to (i'm assuming) the final boss before realising that It wasn't designed for singleplayer- Everything targets you, and because you're too slow, you literally can't help but take damage too quickly. I bought a two pack for myself and a friend- the friend tried it out before me and he didn't like it either so I had to play alone.

Oxenfree (2016)- 8/10 (01/12/17)
Pleasantly surprised by this one.
First time in a few years i've actually felt creeped out by the atmosphere of the game, really well done. I actually liked the atmosphere of this more than RE7, i think it even made me jump more. The story was great, though the ending was a little cliché/dissapointing. The artstyle was interesting and mostly well done but a bit odd in a few places. And the soundtrack was actually pretty great, too.
It actually felt like my choices mattered.

Special mention: Hatred- I played about halfway through this and refunded it. I mainly got it because it uses Nvidia PhysX, which it used semi-well but the actual game was repetitive and frustrating because of a couple of annoyances.

Witcher

neat. liked the story, lore and the fighting system (bit on the short side though)

Witcher 2

meh, graphics were nice. The Story I like but there was too little of it and often enough I had to choose between outcomes I didn't like and couldn't make the choice I actually wanted. (can't pinpoint it now, it's been a while since I finished it but I think I like W1 better storywise)

Witcher 3 - Goty

what can I say. Hands down, THE best game I ever played (and I played a few) simply perfect.
I'm inclined to say it's too short but that's simply not true. I played ages actually and found it incredibly fulfilling (I think I finished every quest I found (apart from a few scavenger hunts) and loved each and every one ( not at all like in skyrim/fallout 4 with those stupid radient quests) but there's still stuff I missed out there, I'm sure. World is incredibly huge and diverse but never boring.
I'm sure I'll play it again some day, but I'll wait a few years before going New Game+ I think (actually started one right after finishing Blood and Wine (sooo great, too) but then I remembered there's still thousands of games I haven't tried yet and simply uninstalled to withstand the pull this game has on me.

Wolfenstein - New Order

Great game. Loved Return to Castle Wolfenstein, too but this has the better story and is quite cinematic at times. Great story, great fun killing nazis.

Wolfenstein - Old Blood

meh, more of the same but much shorter and quite shallow story wise. Rather a small the dlc to new order than a game on it's own. skippable

Pillars of Eternity

(hmm, not actually finished yet but there's only the last dungeon left and I'm pretty sure, I'll see the credits roll tomorrow.)
I underestimated the time it takes to play this game a bit (counter says around 150h now) but I feel like a quarter of this time I've spent looking at loading screens. Don't really understand why this game takes more time to load new areas than witcher 3 (I mean, it just doesn't make sense) but it does. And you have to go through at least 4 loading screens to get from anywhere back to your fort, to deal with some visitor and back (6 if you are inside somewhere).
Storywise it's quite nice but also a bit pretentious imho. Don't like all that souls/gods business, but I do like how the party chars have personality and quests and are carved out very well. Also like how your choices matter and the complexity of the fighting system, but then again, this all takes soo much time. Then again, it does suck you in if you care to spend all the time on lore and all the endless conversations and I was quite impressed with weight of some quests like the battle of yenwood field had on me. Would have stopped playing if it weren't really good, but didn't so it is :) Can recommend, but do make sure you have time to spend ;)

EDIT:
finished POE now and I do like the ending(s) :)

Tomb Raider (2013)

Very cool game. Gripping story, fun gameplay and astonishingly great cinematics. Very highly recommended

The Evil Within (Xbox One)

For me, this game was the mirror of Resident Evil 6 that I played a month or so ago. Resi 6 managed to be a showcase of how to do everything wrong in survival horror, trying to be a cinematic shooter and not even succeeding at that. The Evil Within gets everything just about right.

The Evil Within nails the right atmosphere, there's barely a step taken outside your hospital safe zone where you feel safe and it does it all without jump scares. The dread comes from never feeling equipped to be doing doing what you're doing. You play as the worlds worst detective, you run like a 15 year old dog with two broken legs and would be lucky if you can shoot an Elephant in the ass if it was standing 10 paces in front of you. And the game doesn't like giving you ammo. The enemies are tough. You must make everything count. At any time I rarely had more than a couple of shotgun shells and a pistol clip. It always felt unfair, but I finished the game on Survival difficulty, so it does give you enough- regardless of how it feels. So yeah if you don;t like to be stressed, don't play it. But I loved it.

The story is silly in that over the top Japanese horror sort of way. But I wanted to know what was going on and found myself actively searching for all the bits of collectible lore to fill in the gaps and make my theories.

Best of all, the game gets the save system right. A combination of safe rooms where you can save manually as well as a great check pointing system. It keeps the tension that you lose in a "save anytime" game, yet always places a checkpoint in a spot where some trial and error is going to be needed. It results in tension, yet you never really risk losing huge chunks of time and can exit the game without losing your most recent checkpoint. I don't know why so many devs have trouble getting this balance right like this.

Great game that fits it's genre perfectly in a modern way. I'm really looking forward to the sequel.