Finished Tales from the Borderlands, a damn good Telltale game. And the final episode was great... except for a little cliffhanger.

Full list here.

Dark Souls 1 Remastered

I played the original Dark Souls, and wasn't super into it. In retrospect, I was really bad at it, which probably explains some of that. Dark Souls has a reputation for being difficult, but there are different ways to suck at it, and what I did--wear the heaviest armor available, grind for levels for hours in the Painted World, and just turtle everything--was probably the worst way to go about it, for me. I still sucked at the game, so I had to spend hours on the more difficult bosses, bashing my head against a brick wall until I got lucky with the AI, I found turtling pretty dull, so I didn't enjoy doing it, and because I spent so much time grinding for levels, all my successes felt pretty half-hearted when I finally had them.

When the remaster came out, I decided to give it another go, and had a much better time. I'd decided going in to make a dex build, go through the game without equipping heavy shields, and not grind, and I did these things and enjoyed it. It wasn't even super difficult; I had to take a break fighting Artorias, but I certainly never experienced the hours of frustration I did my first time around.

That being said, the game clearly goes down hill in the last act. Everyone talks about how awful and unfinished Lost Izalith and Bed of Chaos are, which is correct. But I wasn't a fan of the Tomb of the Giants, either, with what I would describe as frustrating enemy placements and weird bonfire locations, and Gravelord Nito is either frustrating bullshit or a piece of cake depending on what the skeleton AI decides it wants to do. I liked the ghost ruins, but Four Kings was a pretty bad fight for me. Forget everything you learned about playing the game! Run up, start hitting, don't even worry about evading damage because you're on a timer. The Archives were fine, I guess, but Seath was boring.

So … in some ways, I'd call the game a masterpiece, but my recommendation would be a lot more cautious than some peoples'. I did understand going in that this was a remaster, not a remake, but it's hard not to be frustrated at the number of things that could have been improved upon.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

Good game, with some annoyances - 4 gun limit, spring gauge so short it's almost useless, and checkpoint only system with only one slot so if it checkpoint saves at a bad time have fun trying to get yourself out of that mess (but hey, at least it doesn't seem to have a save corruption problem so that's something.)

Oh, and some people might get triggered by what happens to the player character in the finale.

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Remix (PS3)

I've recently gotten addicted to getting all the achievements in games, KH2 is one of my favourite games of all time but I've never considered trying to 100% it, I was persuaded when someone I knew claimed they did it and I thought it can't be that hard then. To get all achievements requires you to basically do everything, including beating the record in every minigame (there's about 20, most of them infuriating), grinding for ages against weak enemies waiting for RNG to give a certain drop, killing 15 'superbosses' and beating the game on the highest difficulty mode. Upon story completion there's about 40 hours of grinding, followed by maybe 3-5 hours of fun/frustrating boss fights and then another few hours of trying to be good at minigames. It takes dedication to do all this, though you do get a feeling of pride when beating the hardest boss in the game (Made significantly easier by an ability that reflects all the damage that you can keep spamming). Beating the game on the hardest difficulty wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, the beginning where enemies can kill you in 2 hits is the only frustrating bit. I wouldn't recommend trying to 100% it unless you're a big fan of the series as it is a real pain in the ass.

Escape From Monkey Island

The 4th and weakest entry in the series, while the script is still full of humour it's let down by the gameplay. Movement is done with the arrow keys and becomes really awkward in tight spaces or when trying to walk up stairs. I did require a walkthrough for certain bits, which was mostly down to not being able to find certain items. It's a good game but I'd recommend playing the others first. I have now played all 5 games and enjoyed all 5, I think Curse from Monkey Island was my favourite and Escape from Monkey Island was my least favourite.

Sin + Wages of Sin

Fairly good FPS but not among the best by far. It relies a lot on "look how cool and badass we are" but it rarely feels that way.
Levels, were OK, the guns were kind of meh, and mostly didn't feel impactful. Enemies were bland and not interesting and music and sound were forgettable. Combat was mostly fine with exception of snipers. Biggest issue with it was the weird and quick way the enemies moved and it was very hard to hit anyone who was moving due to their erratic and floaty movement.
Wages of Sin was more of the same with some fairly appealing new weapons and a lot of new mutants instead of differently coloured soldiers.
Main problem with Wages of SIn was that I almost missed it thanks to way GOG does things.
As a whole the game took me some 17 hours (12+5) on normal (I heard some complaints about hard difficulty) and while I don't plan going back to it, I don't regret time spent with it.


Moto Racer
I used to love this game as young and now I was mostly surprised how short it is. Doing all 4 modes could take me some 2-3 hours. There are only 8 races plus each of them can has unlockable reverse mode plus unlockable pocketbike mode and on normal I was able to beat I would say 80% of maps at first try and I am not good driver.
Overall I liked more the street racing more than dirt racing but The Great Wall was and still is the best level.
My main issue was how sensitive the controls were and it prevented me from truly enjoying the game.
What I liked was good sense of speed and that rubberbanding was not present or done in a way I didn't even notice it.

With the controls it was nice afternoon distraction and good trip down memory lane but nothing I would want to play long-time.


Complete list.

Forza Horizon 4 (XB1X)

$1 Gamepass all the way baby! I put 50 hours in the first week alone, then a further 10 hours for each of the following 2 weeks. It's pretty much done, all races of all types done, all barn finds, driven down and explored every road, experienced all the seasons, I own Bamburg Castle and reached level 219. It's now a game for occasional visits for some quick arcade racing...well when I buy it in a year or so on sale.

The map isn't as interesting as FH3...but seriously, how can Britain hope to compare to the sheer spectacle of Australia huh? But that aside, pretty much everything else has been improved in a evolutionary rather than revolutionary way.
First and foremost is 60fps on console just like the Motorsport series...okay only at 1080p and only on an XB1X, but it still looks incredible.
The other change I like is the race system and how you unlock everything. This time you unlock the individual racing disciplines by doing them, instead of unlocking some of each type when you do anything. This way you do road races you unlock more of them, do cross country races and that's what you unlock more of, instead of doing road races and unlocking boring shitty drift events like used to happen.

The changing seasons are a nice feature and winter really is a game changer when it comes, but the other 3 are not hugely different.

The main thing that concerned me prior to release was the promised shared world with other players. Well first off you can disable it any time and then it's just like earlier games. But now that I've used it I'd never go back to the way it was. You see the real players are actually LESS obtrusive in the open world than the AI drivatars are. With the AI drivers they tend to drive around wherever you are in the world getting in your face. The real drivers just go about their business and a session with around 30-40 others just get swallowed up by the huge map. That is until you decide join a Forzathon event, which resemble some sort of bizarre migration of mechanical beasts, as groups of drivers all converge on the same area for a co-op session. And the ghosting system means no one can grief or bother you. Because they can't, they don't. This is how you have multiplayer without any of the real downsides.

Best arcade racer by far, though I'll caveat that by saying it would be a close thing if Playground went back and updated FH3 for 60fps as well (or if my PC was powerful enough to do it instead). I'd still like to see the race AI improved a bit and I thought the radio stations were not quite up to previous games (well the 2 stations I listen to weren't). But really, they can release one of these every two years with a new map and I'll always play them.

Gal*Gun Double Peace

A fun little rail-shooting japanese game, where you play a senior high school boy accidentally overdosed with love power by a trainee cupid. So he only has today to find his truly loved one, or else no one will ever love him. Of course, when all the girls in the school want to confess their love to you because of your pheromones, it's a tad bit more difficult...

Just finished my first run, which of course opened other roads, ala VN. Considering it done for the moment but I might go back later to it, because it's short and fun !

So far in 2018 : https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2018/post12

10,000,000

It's a so-so match 3 with very light RPG elements (upgrade certain attributes, damage, armor, etc.).

It took me about 8 hours to complete - the beginning was dull, the middle was pretty good, and the last 2 hours felt a bit grindy. The goal of the game is to score 10,000,000 in a single run, and over time you get more powerful and unlock score multipliers that make what seems an eternity away early on come much faster.

Like any match-3 there is some RNG -- I think that part is at least reasonably well balanced here.

The main issue really is not the 8 bit graphics, or the fact that it doesn't necessarily feel well-tuned, as much as the layout. The gist is basic match-3, except your matches really only help you progress if the type of square you are matching is related to what's happening in the dungeon crawl window, and it's hard to effectively watch both given that you're on a fairly tight timer.

Ultimately the winning strat seems to be to ignore the dungeon crawler window almost entirely and play it as a straight match 3 just trying to maximize points as fast as possible without worrying whether it is doing anything useful, which makes the whole RPG side of the game feel a bit extraneous.

On the whole, not a bad free/cheap match-3 game, but not a great one either. Just all right if you feel like trying something a little different and getting Match-3 on with your bad self.

RoboBlitz

A bit of a clunker action/puzzler but fun enough levels. Can't say the same for the bosses which were rather annoying.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. I was thinking I might play Tomb Raider 2 sometime soon, but then this game came out on GOG so it scratched that itch well enough for now. It plays so much like a Tomb Raider game that it almost feels like an Indiana Jones-themed total conversion mod. It has that same deliberate pace with you often going into large rooms and figuring out which places you need to climb and jump from to get across or on top of it, moving around very carefully. It's a platforming game, but it feels relaxing to play it.

It can get pretty obtuse at times in terms of solving puzzles, though, and the combat isn't fun. Related to the combat is that the game sometimes feels like it's pushing its engine too far, asking you to take certain actions it isn't really cut out for, and it feels like the designers realized that, but instead of reworking things a bit, they instead just give you more health packs and stuff to compensate. Like the game is designed around the assumption that you're going to unavoidably take damage instead of asking you to improve your skills. There's a level in which you have to ride an inflatable raft through some rapids and it's so easy to bang into rocks and puncture the raft, and you're going to have to ride this thing so many times during the level, that they give you an infinite supply of raft repair kits right next to the starting point. I think this was just something designers were working through during that era of still-early 3D games.

I'm not keen on the actor doing Indy's voice in this. He sounds more like Richard Mulligan than Harrison Ford and his delivery doesn't have any edge to it. This version of Indy really does sound like he should stay in a classroom and lecture instead of have adventures. The villain is also pretty lame.

Darkness Over Daggerford (NWN Enhanced version)

I don't usually replay games, but I've made an exception for this Premium module of which I downloaded and played the previous, free version about a decade ago. By buying it, I mainly wanted to say thank you to the devs, and I was also a little bit curious about the changes in the commercial version. But I soon found out that I didn't remember all that much of my first playthrough anymore, which on the one hand meant I couldn't quite judge just how "enhanced" the new version really is, but on the other hand, because of that, it mostly felt new to me again regardless, and I was able to enjoy it a second time.

I think of all the official campaigns and premium modules for NWN, this is probably my favorite. It's not so much the plot of the main story, which is alright, but pretty standard fare and typical black and white D&D stuff (and for my taste the main quests often involved a bit too much running to and fro between simple and short tasks and your questgiver). No, what I loved about it were all the smaller stories, the big non-linear middle part of the module with free exploration and lots of interesting side quests, both classic and original. To me it's very reminiscent of what I loved about Baldur's Gate 2, and not just because of the BG2 style overland map. It also has the same flaw in the structure as BG2, in that it combines a really worrying and urgent matter in the main plot (the abduction of a friend) with an overbundance of unrelated side quests and oddjobs that make you almost forget about your friend. But since, just like in BG2, the side stories are much more fun than the main plot anyway, I didn't really mind.

The area design in Darkness Over Daggerford is quite beautiful compared to standard NWN, lots of details and color. Armors and clothing are colorful and nice to look at as well, not as ugly as the default equipment; and there are some placeables you don't see that often in NWN. Alll that was probably true for the free version already, I don't suppose the EE version has really changed much visually. But there are a couple of nice new portraits at least. What's definitely new to the commercial version though and much appreciated were all the voiceovers (it's not fully voiced, but often). They certainly vary in quality, a few of them have somewhat subpar recording quality and are a bit flat and boring, but the better ones are a delight, and it really makes a difference when your companions let themselves be heard over your speakers, while commenting on their surroundings, as opposed to just text appearing over their heads which could be easily missed before.

My only, very minor gripes are that I sometimes found it a bit difficult to roleplay a consistent character, since curiosity often got the better of me, and it's almost always more fun and rewarding to go along with stuff you've been warned about or you already suspect of being fishy, instead of outright refusing to do something. Sometimes new choices only open up when you've first made the bad choice, whereas if you decline right from the beginning, the quest just ends and you have no means to act on it in your own way anymore. And sometimes I was missing a third alternative to the either or, or I would have liked to confront quest givers, even after I did their bidding, and was not always able to do so. But considering how many quests there are and how many of them were just perfect and actually offered a suprising variety of solutions compared to the very few quests I would have solved a little differently, that's rather nitpicky. A word of warning regarding the questing though: When you follow the main story, at one point the game asks you whether you're ready to travel somewhere and warns you that it might be a longer while before you get back. But you actually don't get back to any other stuff anymore at all, this is a point of no return that linearly leads to the finale after which the game ends, so you should finish all side quest before it.

All in all, I don't regret replaying it and I don't regret paying for it this time - while it's quite debatable whether the EE is actually worth buying at this stage and to this price, I think Darkness Over Daggerford is good value for money. It's a very enjoyable campaign with a good length (I didn't track time but it's probably over 25 hours if you do all the quests) that takes a character from level 8 to level 15. A shame the new version is only available for owners of the EE (but there's sttill the free version for use with the Diamond Edition as well).

Homeworld

I played the Classic GOG version, maybe I'll try the remastered version too at some point.

Overall I enjoyed it. The atmosphere was quite nice, and there is just something about moving long distances over a vast space and seeing a big battle ensue between your fleet and an enemy fleet. The game was mostly quite easy, I think. Ok there was one very tricky mission, the one where the asteroid is about to hit your mothership. I enjoyed that mission a lot, I was able to destroy the asteroid (after many retries) only a few seconds away from the mothership.

The tutorial mission(s) wasn't that good, it left many things unexplained and as the game didn't seem to come with a manual, I had to google for many things like how to repair your ships with support frigates or repair corvettes, how to form unit groups, how to make units follow (= guard) other units etc. Also, navigating in the 3D space map is quite tricky.

Also, I felt the game (campaign) was quite short. I was a bit surprised when I finished the last mission already, I would have thought I'm in the middle of the campaign or something. Also the last mission was maybe a bit... anti-climatic. I was expecting bigger resistance when I closed up to the enemy mothership, but no, I didn't even lose any units when fighting it and its support units.

But yeah, I still liked it, and I am not too concerned about the shortness of the campaign as I have also Emergence (=Cataclysm) and Homeworld 2 to play next, and apparently the Remastered version has some extra missions too?


EDIT: When you start the Homeworld campaign, it gives you an option (out of two) which set of ships to use. Is it exactly the same campaign with different looking units, or are they two separate campaigns? At least the first two missions seemed identical...

Resident Evil 0 HD (PS4)

I've now played every main resident evil game released before 5, it's probably my least favourite of the games in the series so far. The game has a unique feature where you control 2 characters and switch between them, this is used for solving puzzles. The 2 characters are Rebecca (From Res 1) who is able to squeeze into small gaps and combine herbs and chemicals and Billy who can push large boxes and can deal and take less damage. Now there is an obvious choice of which character is the best, Billy can take about 50% more damage than Rebecca and that's all that matters in a Res Evil game. Another change they made to the series was getting rid of the storage box, instead you can leave items on the floor in any room, this is the most frustrating thing in the game as you have to spend ages moving items from one end of the map to the other because you have so few inventory spaces. It is also the most difficult resident evil I've played, this is the only one where I've had to go back to a previous save because I didn't have enough healing items to survive, the spaces are more confined, you have to look after 2 people at once and there are many annoying enemies including one who becomes a huge pain in the ass unless killed with a certain difficult to use weapon.

Storywise it is set before the 1st game, it sort of answers a question that was left unanswered in the previous games. While I did enjoy it enough to complete, it is still my least favourite, my favourite is either 2 or 4. I'd only recommend playing it if you want to play the entire series.

Right after midnight, I have finished my 3rd Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory playthrough. I went for the prerequisites for the True Ending and meanwhile grinded for Platinum Trophy. After almost 240 hours spread over three playthroughs over 5 years, I managed to fulfill all the prerequisites for all trophies. The game is platinuable in much less time, but I have also tried to complete as much of the game as possible. Still not 100%, but very close. Probably I will never get back to it, due to my backlog, but we'll see. The combat is still fun, silly story as well, but as I said it few times before, this game has the most cutscenes in the series, and it feels more like Visual Novel with jRPG elements, than a classic jRPG. And that is my biggest gripe with the game. Sometimes you have to sit out 30+ minutes of talk, to continue the story. There is thankfully skip cutscene button, but I have forgotten a lot of story in the last 5 years, so I wanted to read through it again. The best game so far from the series is Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2. I just hope Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II, will be closer to mk2 with the cutscene length :)

My complete list of finished games.

Currently installing Battlechasers Nighwar :)