The Whispered World: Special Edition (2014)

It was love at first sight. The game is probably one of the most beautiful point and clicks ever created. I loved the style. But the further relations was, hmm, more complicated. I'm not exactly compatible with Daedalic sense of humour, however some subtle jokes made me laugh. I was also quite frustrated with pixel hunting, but - on the other hand - it's really nice classic gameplay adventure game with some fresh ideas (Spot!). Well, I'd say it left me with mixed feelings. Nevertheless, worth trying, I think.

The last game finished in the last day of 2017 :)

Oh, and thanks to Daedelic and GOG for adding the Linux port! I still have some hope for "Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav" for Linux...

List of all games completed in 2017.
And now let's jump to 2018 thread.

Last game of the year for 2017, Steamworld Dig 2 on the Switch.

Yeah, the PC version, on Uplay. It's sort of ironic that everyone flipped out over the first game because of Obsidian's reputation, but this game made by another studio seems significantly buggier.

I finished 52 games this year. That might be my most ever and I'm not even sure how I played that much considering how busy I've been. Then again, playing games made up the bulk of my down-time. A few of the stand-outs:

Hollow Knight
Beyond Oasis
Brigador
Def Jam Vendetta
Freedom Force (replay)
Metal Slug (replay)
Tomba
Darksiders
Persona 4
Project Firestart
The Lurking Horror
Odallus
Dropsy
Slain: Back From Hell
Owlboy
Metal Gear (MSX version)
Yoomp
Freedom Fighters
Castlevania
Megaman 1 and 2
Botanicula
Saints Row 4

I still have a lot of catching up to do in this thread. Let's get to it...


Sanitarium (Android)

As of late, the Humble Mobile Bundle has become for me a source of games that aren't available for Linux on PC. One of such games is Sanitarium, the critically acclaimed horror adventure from the late nineties.

The graphics look inevitably dated (especially the cutscenes), but the overall weirdness and creepiness of both the story and the environments more than make up for any technical deficiency. That is, if we don't take the controls into account. To put it simply: they are horrible, the worst I've found on a touchscreen adventure ever. However, after reading some reviews of the PC version I learned that the controls were also an issue there, so I guess I cannot blame the Android port for them. Plus, this version includes an interactive-hotspot-highlighting feature, which was warmly welcome more than once during my playthrough.

Story-wise it plays the 'amnesiac who founds himself in a strange place' trope, which I guess it wasn't still so overused back then, but even by today's standards I think the game gets away with it quite well. Almost every setting you visit and every character you incarnate are kind of related to the overarching story of the main protagonist and make sense in the end.

Overall, a notable game that gets a little tarnished by really bad controls. If you can get used to them and survive the first 10 minutes of gameplay, you're in for a really good horror adventure.


My list of finished games in 2017

Armikrog.

I never played The Neverhood, neither back in the day nor more recently, so I didn't have any pre-built expectations towards its Kickstarted sequel, Armikrog.

I was aware of the generalized disappointment it meant for most of The Neverhood fans though, and also of the buggy state in which it was originally released. As I said I cannot really comment on the former, but I certainly can on the latter: despite having received several patches, the current 1.05 version is still buggy. Not to the point of rendering the game unplayable, but annoying nonetheless. I'm talking about many graphical glitches, like some sprites 'teleporting' from one place to another when moving, and sound bugs: at one point both the music and voiceovers went away and only the sound effects remained; I had to quit and reload to get them back. Plus, the controls are not the most user-friendly out there.

All these deficiencies, combined with how short the game is (unless you get seriously stuck a lot), made it a lackluster experience for me. A real pity, because the art style is great and really stands out from the crowd, and the characters are so adorably quirky. But in the end, all that outstanding style needed a little more solid substance to stand on.


My list of finished games in 2017

iBomber Attack

iBomber Attack was originally an iOS game, just like its iBomber Defense 'cousins', but unlike them I think this one works better in a PC than in a mobile device, if only for the simpler controls.

Be as it may, this is an ideal game if you are in a low mood and all you want is some mindless action and blowing things up. That, iBomber Attack provides in spades: you and your M4 Sherman tank alone against the 3rd Reich.

There are 24 missions that take place in 12 different levels where nearly everything can be destroyed. Most of them can be approached in an almost-stealth manner: picking your fights one by one, a few enemies at a time. But some of them include timed goals, like e.g. intercepting an enemy convoy before it escapes the area, so sometimes you've got no other option than storming the place guns ablaze. As you complete missions you'll obtain victory points and gold that will let you unlock upgrades and buy secondary weapons for your tank, which are much needed in the later missions.

However, if played smartly and only rushing it when necessary, this is not a difficult game. I achieved all the primary and secondary objectives in all missions with the "Not So Easy" difficulty setting (the highest of the two available ones) without much effort. In fact, what bothered me the most were the frequent crashes the game experienced after completing a mission. Luckily, no progress was ever lost whenever one of these crashes occurred, so in the end they didn't undermine my enjoyment that much.


My list of finished games in 2017

Curse of the Crescent Isle DX

Short and relatively easy retro-looking platformer. At first sight it might look quite bog-standard, but soon enough one realizes it's got its own quirks and charms. Like e.g. the mechanic of jumping on top of enemies and being able to grab them, 'borrowed' from Super Mario Bros 2. It's also got some interesting puzzly elements, most of them involving the aforementioned mechanic of riding, grabbing and/or throwing the appropriate enemy in order to make progress. The few boss battles in it are rather nice too. Oh, and there are a few not-so-well-hidden coins here and there, but I couldn't find out what purpose they served (Steam achievements, maybe?).

I don't remember much about the story as I played this game almost 3 months ago: something about a prince or a princess having to get married... I think. You can play as a male or a female character, but I'm not sure whether the story changes much depending on who you choose. What I do remember is that the transition between the final boss fight and the ending cutscene was very abrupt, and left me wondering if there was something I missed there, or an intermediate cutscene that wasn't properly triggered.

On the technical side, when trying to play it in fullscreen mode I got some terrible screen tearing, so I had to resort to playing it in a 1600x900 windowed mode. That was on Linux, by the way, so your mileage may vary with other OSs.


My list of finished games in 2017

Trine 2 Complete Story

After completing Trine: Enchanted Edition earlier this year, it was only a matter of time until I jumped into its renowned sequel.

To anyone who's only played the first game in the series, the best way to describe Trine 2 is: just like Trine, but longer, bigger, better, prettier, and also (to some extent) harder. It improves almost everything that was lacking in the first part: enemy variety, exciting -but fair- boss battles, more 'dynamic' levels, and new kind of puzzles. Apart of course from the improvements brought by the new engine, which on the other hand were already there in the Enchanted Edition.

Despite having played it only solo, it's obvious that it must be a blast in co-op mode... though a tad easier, maybe? I finished it on normal difficulty, and I found it significantly harder than the first game. Especially when it comes to finding secrets and all the experience vials in each level. I left many non-perfected levels along the way in my first playthrough, and I started trying to 100% them afterwards... until I realized the level experience counters didn't seem to work: after combing a particular level several times and still lacking 5 experience points from it I resorted to a video walkthrough, only to find out that I hadn't missed anything. That's when I decided to stop for good and mark the game as done, as it seemed that I could only draw frustration from it from that point on. Did I mention that the in-game achievements didn't work properly, either?

But these little nuisances notwithstanding, this is without a doubt a superb game. Probably the pinnacle of the 2D (or rather 2.5D) puzzle platformer genre. I can easily see me replaying it more than once in the following years.



Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power

I had so much fun with Trine 2 (and its included DLC: The Goblin Menace), that I went straight into Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power afterwards.

I won't beat around the bush here, let's talk about the two elephants in the room:

1) The leap from 2.5D to 3D: I didn't find it as bad or as disorienting as many people say. Granted: the uncontrollable, 'on-rails' camera could do a better job sometimes, and the Wizard's powers have been drastically reduced in quantity and utility as a result of this change. But on the other hand, the levels are now larger and way more interesting to explore and traverse. Plus, secret areas can be hidden in a wider variety of ways and places, so finding all the trinangles is more challenging than ever.

2) The game was released unfinished: when I first heard/read about that, I thought people meant that the game was hurried out of Early Access too soon, with many areas unpolished or bugs unfixed. To my relief this was not the case, as Trine 3 looks as shiny and pretty as its predecessors. The truth is probably worse, though: what's unfinished is the story! The game unceremoniously ends after a boss battle when the crew still has 2 of 4 Trine pieces to recover! And it doesn't seem that Frozenbyte has the means nor the will to ever finish it. What a bummer.

It's undeniable that the move to full 3D drastically augmented production costs and the length of the game suffered from that. There are way fewer levels than in Trine 2: to be precise, there are only 7 'main story levels' (plus one final boss battle) and then there are many "challenges" or "side quests" (i.e. mini-levels of sorts). Some of these challenges are simple arena battles, which are quite bland and uninteresting.

If Trine and Trine 2 had never existed, and if the story hadn't been left unfinished, this game could only be considered as a good one. An excellent one, even. But of course, those are two big, huge 'ifs'.


My list of finished games in 2017

The Tiny Bang Story (Android)

Another Android game that came in a recent Humble Mobile Bundle, this one is basically a hidden object game with some strong Samorost vibes. Mainly for its art style, but also for the surreal general atmosphere of the game.

The story is really barebones, and it basically consists of a planetoid being smashed to pieces after the impact of a football (a soccer ball for our American readers). As a consequence, lots of jigsaw pieces have been scattered throughout the land and you must find them in order to re-compose the world.

Along the way, you'll need to solve some puzzles and find other hidden objects in order to unlock new areas and make progress. Most of those puzzles were alright, but a couple of them were too annoying for me and I ended up looking up a walkthrough to get past them.

The game is divided into 4 or 5 chapters, and at the end of each one you get to put together the jigsaw pieces you've found so far. Or... do you? In fact, it doesn't matter if you find all the hidden pieces or none of them, as you have them all available at the end of each part, so there's no real incentive to spend any time hunting for those last elusive pieces before ending a chapter and moving on.

All in all, a decent time waster with a nice art style and a couple of clever puzzles, but not much else. As I said, I played the Android version, but it's also available on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux.


My list of finished games in 2017

Memoranda

Based on some short stories by Haruki Murakami, Memoranda is a point-n-click adventure that I find rather difficult to evaluate.

On the artistic side of things, it falls very short of being a masterpiece: beautiful graphics and backgrounds, excellent soundtrack, and pretty good voice acting (with perhaps the exception of the secondary character Stephanie, which sounds as if she recorded her lines from inside a small closet).

But on the other hand, the game suffers from many narrative and pacing problems, as the focus of the story seems to quickly shift from one thing into another, and many storylines are left unfinished at the end. I could excuse some of this 'chaotic narrative' as an unavoidable consequence of adapting a magical realism fiction like that of Murakami, but there are other aspects that cannot be described as anything else than bad game design: e.g. sometimes you just need to go back to the main character's home only to return to exactly where you were in order for the plot to advance. Also, new locations in the town map seem to appear there for arbitrarily or unexplained reasons. At least the aforementioned map allows you to quick-travel to any location in the game, saving you a lot of slow walks around town.

The dialog system is not that sophisticated either: most of the characters keep repeating the same lines all the time, and I even found a funny bug by which a character was repeating his usual replies to me even though he was taking a nap at the time.

To finish on a positive note, I'll point out that the protagonist generally refuses to pick up something if it belongs to someone else and she doesn't have their permission to do so. I know this kind of behavior tends to annoy some players, but I find it a nice touch, as the usual 'kleptomaniac protagonist' trope from most of point-n-click adventures is a pet peeve of mine.


My list of finished games in 2017

Almost done... only a couple more games...


What Game is it? (Android)

A simple but addictive free mobile game about videogames, What Game is it? is like those Excel-based games that were the rage around ten-fifteen years ago, in which you had to guess a celebrity or a TV show from some low-res pixely drawings. In this case the image represents a videogame character and you are then given a bunch of letters to try to guess the name of the game.

The range of games covers most of the platforms, genres and budgets, from the most famous AAA console hits, to the semi-obscure indie PC game, with a couple of well-known mobile games thrown in the mix.

It's not so hard if you know your games, and it works as a good 'fast-food' entertainment for your brief sessions of mobile gaming.


My list of finished games in 2017

Bulb Boy (Android)

Here's another example of a game I would've gladly bought when it was released here on GOG, if the devs had bothered to create a Linux build. Instead, I got it for Android (and much cheaper) with the Humble Mobile Bundle Halloween, literally 6 days later. Their loss (and collaterally, GOG's too).

In the end I guess I'm kind of glad things went that way, as this game is really short: 1-2 hours tops. Rather than a full-fledged point-n-click adventure, it feels more like a bunch of single-room mini-puzzles cobbled together, and a not so difficult collection of puzzles at that, I must say.

On the other hand, both the art style and the atmosphere that permeates this game are deliciously gross and totally resonated with my somewhat twisted sense of humour. If you frown at poo jokes, this game is definitely not for you. If you don't, you'll probably have a good time with it... while it lasts, that is.


My list of finished games in 2017

Rusty Lake Hotel (Android)

Also obtained with the recent Humble Mobile Bundle Halloween, Rusty Lake Hotel was the first non-free Rusty Lake game I ever played. Unsurprisingly, it's been also the best.

All of their previous games were dark, weird, and surreal. This particular one, while retaining most of those characteristics, I would rather define it as 'phlegmatically macabre'. How else would you describe the story of 5 anthropomorphic animals who are invited to stay in an isolated hotel, each night one of them going amiss, and then being served a special dinner which looks and tastes suspiciously like the missing member of the group?

Of course, you'll be the one tasked with procuring the... ingredients for those meals, and trying to obtain the best marks from the surviving guests. That you'll only achieve if you choose your visits to the guests' rooms in the correct order, and you'll get a special reward in the form of a code that you can use in another game of the same devs to get an Easter egg. I didn't particularly care much about that Easter egg (because I had already seen it in a video walkthrough for that other game), but nonetheless I replayed the game several times until I nailed it and I got full marks for all my 'culinary creations'.

The game's available for both Android and iOS devices, but also if you prefer it for PC (Windows and Mac only, unfortunately) either on Steam or on itch.io.


My list of finished games in 2017

...and here comes the last one!


The Mammoth: A Cave Painting (finished on 5 December)

My last completed game of the year was more an accident than anything else. I was tinkering with SteamCMD in order to find DRM-free games on Steam, so I activated a couple of free games just to test them. One of those games was The Mammoth: A Cave Painting and it turned out to be DRM-free indeed. It also turned out to be very short (like, 5-10 minutes short), so I beat it in my first try.

Despite its extremely short duration (understandable as it was made for a Ludum Dare game jam), it's a cute game with a well-done graphic style that simulates a prehistoric cave painting. In it you control an adult mammoth who must find its children and at the same time protect them from human hunters. Losses are unavoidable, as this is one of the main points of the game.

Perhaps it's a somewhat sad way to close my list of finished games of the year, but it actually fits my mood of late quite well (just look at the nosedive my game completion rate took these last two months). I hope to get back on track in 2018. :)


My list of finished games in 2017