How about some spoiler warning.... grrr!

I dunno, I recall mainly lukewarm reviews of it, a bit like mine was. To me it seemed many were irked that on the story side it took too many historical liberties, coming up with bogus characters and events. I didn't mind it that much.

On the gameplay front, at least as far as the single-player campaigns go, it felt like a genuine Age of Empires/Mythologies game. I can't put my finger on it but it felt some gameplay mechanism from earlier game(s) were removed or hidden though, like allies/enemies (the diplomacy thing?), it didn't seem to have similar options for formations like AoE2 as far as i can tell etc.

For its gameplay, it irritated me a bit that some of the differences between different nations seemed pretty artificial, like they just had to come up with some differences for the sake of being different, and also there were lots of units (and even buildings) that felt kinda obsolete and overlapping. Like some nation (was it e.g. Japanese?) seemed to have two or even three different kinds of horse archers (trained on separate buildings IIRC), and it really never became that clear to me which of them were the best, or were they meant for different purpose. And also the naming of many units gave no idea whatsoever what kind of unit they were, you had to either remember it or keep reading the descriptions, which sometimes were not so clear. Yojimbo Ronin something something...

This alone made me long for the first AoE game because in it everything felt clearer, and simpler in a good way. Even compared to AoE2. And less story-triggered events too, I kinda hated when missions pushed you surprises that you couldn't fully prepare to, and had to restart the mission just to take those surprises into account in advance.

Also for some nations the artillery was way overpowered, in the end you could pretty much just build lots of certain type artilllery and destroy absolutely everything around you with them alone. Like those rocket thingies some nation had, as soon as I was able to produce them, they were pretty much the only thing I would produce anymore.

The very last mission in Asian Dynasties gave me a good feeling though because the way I survived it felt inventive to me (not sure if the game designers really meant it to be solved that way?), ie. that after fruitlessly trying to fight the incoming enemy forces in your starting town, just say phuck it and abandon that place ASAP, and start a new town elsewere which the enemy doesn't find as easily and which is easier to defend from one side. I used a similar tactic in one very hard AoE1 mission too, and I loved it there too. Kinda "thinking out of the box" or something, not doing how the developer apparently wanted you to do.

Inside the game, on the desktop there is a program Database Check or something like that.
It is mostly hidden under the main window but that one can be dragged away.
If you run it, it shows you the whole database fragmented to tiles and for each clip watched one tiels turns green (actually yellow that shows last watched one, then to green). So until all turned green I knew we are missing some clips.

SPOILERS INCOMING!

[spoiler]

As for what was actually going on i nthe game, we are quite convinced there was no other person and it was just disorder. I think the other option doesn't really makes much sense. Don't tell me parents wouldn't notice another kid living in their attic for some 10 years and that's only one of the things.
While you could name some discrepancies for this theory too I feel like there was much more for them for the twin theory and it couldn't really work. That it could be still interpreted both ways is, IMO, deliberate action from author who didn't want to make game with clear cut solution on purpose but it could be also seen as inability to construct a proper case without holes. I would have prefered if there was one true solution and I belive one of them is much more likely but I can understand why I let it that way.

[/spoiler]

END OF SPOILERS!

Hand of Fate 2

I played Hand of Fate 1 last year and while I had mostly fun, I also got frustrated quite a lot, much more then was necessary, raged often and couldn't help but feel it could have been much better.

Luckily developers thought so too and made sequel much better in almost all areas.
There are no instant death cards anymore (hurrah!) and overall I felt like there is less events that are only supposed to fuck you over.
Most cards seem to have some use and it is really up to player to pick those that suit them best.
The challenges are now smaller but better tailored with its own storyline, mechanics and special cards.
You can also take much less cards to each challenge. At first I was quite disappointed by it and didn't know what to make of it but as I played the game I learned I like it much more then in HoF1.
It felt like I was able to better accommodate to a quest, to pick the cards I wanted to properly tackle the challenge my way and because of it I felt I had it more in my hands as it was up to my preparation how will I fare.
In HoF1, with up to 30 cards in challenge, I had to put cards in my deck I didn't want, thus making the one I put there because I needed them less likely to turn up. That made the game more frustrating as it was more random in what I will encounter.
That was the biggest improvement in the whole game for me.
Thanks to the game being less unfair, to better made cards and to more focused decks I unlocked every single card and token and enjoyed it while I just didn't have the resolve to do it in the previous game.

I also like there are more gambits than just chance cards. I am absolutely terrible in cards minigame (in HoF1 I got better rate of success when I started to pick the leftmost card every time) so it was nice there were other gambits than cards. Dices were less appealing than others though as there are more down to randomness than the rest.
Combat was somewhat better but still was weaker part of the game. It can be quite wonky, sometimes does weird things and gets repetitive after a while.

I miss ratmen and lizardmen but I certainly don't miss randomly drawn enemies where you could get 2 bosses with dozen of other units cramped on the tiniest maps giving you no room to move anywhere. Here you never get fully random group of enemies and no map felt that small that it made impact on combat (another dumb random thing from prequel).
Companions as concept were all right but in combat there were of nuisance than help.

The game still could be frustrating but to much lesser degree than HoF1 was and it always (OK, most of the time) drove me to try again and do better.

I got all 50 achievements and I think I spent over 50 hours of my leisure gameplay on it and it was certainly worth my time.

Finished games.

Mecha8. This was made for the MSXDev competition a few years back. It's a vertically scrolling shmup and as the title indicates, you control a giant robot fighting alien invaders.

You get one life per game but you have a life bar. There are continues. Your robot is pretty big and slow and it's hard to avoid shots or collisions. Your weapon is also pretty weak and at the start you need to hit most enemies at least a couple of times to kill them. Every so often you'll kill an enemy and it will drop a power-up - speed, weapon power, or a life boost - but if you get hit you lose a level of your speed and/or weapon. So the angle is that if you power up your robot, you can kick a lot of ass, keep your health up, and probably knock the bosses out fairly quick, but it's hard to stay powered up for very long with increasing amounts of crap coming at you. You also have a super-attack that very slowly charges as you shoot stuff.

It's pretty good for a homebrew game. The graphics take some getting used to because they're bright and some enemies and bullets blend into the background in some spots, but otherwise it looks and sounds nice and the controls feel fine. There are well-drawn cutscenes that play inbetween levels, although the English scripting is awkward ("Bring she here!"). I can't tell if it's just a matter of the developer (I think he's Spanish?) not knowing the language very well, or if it was a deliberate attempt to evoke Zero Wing and other Engrish classics.

EFLC

THANK GOD!

How can one game, and this includes the parent game GTA 4, have that many bugs!? It was really fun when it worked but it kind of kills the fun when you are waiting for it to freeze/crash every 30 seconds.

Man, I hope #5 isn't this bad. I need a break from anything defective for a while, myself not included.

On one side note about GTA 4 and the addons, something I really didn't like but couldn't put my finger on until I finished: there really is no story arc. In 3, VC, SA you start out as shit with virtually nothing and slowly take over the city, finally finishing as the grand drug/crime lord. In #4 and EFLC there is none of that. You start off poor and more or less end it poor. You're in no better or worse shape than you are when you start, SO WTF is the point!? XD What a bummer.

RiME (PS4)

This is an easy and relaxing exploration game with puzzles and platforming. The story is focus of the game, but it reveals itself very gradually (and without words) as you play the game rather than through extended cutscenes, it’s up the player for the most part to put the pieces together.

The game is fairly easy, none of the puzzles or the platforming gave me any trouble (and I generally suck at platforming). It’s also quite linear, although there are plenty of secret areas/rooms where you can find collectibles, the game has a story to tell and is always funnelling you in the “right” direction.

The most annoying thing about the game was the checkpoint-only save system, combined with closing off the path behind you at certain points. Personally I really enjoy exploration, but I was frustrated and disappointed in more than one area where my progress was cut off so that I could not go back and finish exploring because I accidentally chose the “right” direction which progressed the story but cut off my backward path.

Although I enjoyed the game at the start, I found it to be too long* and it had completely worn out its welcome by the time I finished.

I’d recommend it if you’re already a fan of the genre, but probably not otherwise.

*I’ve heard some people can finish the game in about 5 hours, I can see that if they just move along with the game and go where it tells you to. Personally, if a game tells me to go right, I want to first see what’s to my left instead and what’s over there behind me too, and does that other ledge lead somewhere I wonder? Etc. So, although I didn’t time myself, I would estimate it took me closer to 8-10 hours to complete.

Of Orcs and Men (Xbox One)

Xbox 360 game played on Xbox One. It's a bit of a mixed game. Its strongest aspect is that the story actually doesn't suck. In fact it's actually pretty unique in that you play two characters, one a sarcastic Goblin (Styx) and the other a huge Orc (Arkail). Together they are sent on a mission through human lines to try and turn the tide of war and years of persecution and enslavement by the humans. Not only the story is good but the way in which the characters develop from not liking or trusting each other initially to being firm partners and even friends is well handled. The game feels like an actual journey.

To tell such a story means a totally linear type of RPG. Very little exploration and that that does exist is unrewarding...not great for an RPG. Equipment progression is also weak.

It's good how the game almost never resorts to the cheap tactic of random spawning, yet unfortunate that every main chapter ending battle is of the " scripted cross a line, get the cut scene and lose the ability to set up how you would like" type of thing.

The combat is actually okay, real time with pause and how you develop the two characters defines how you use them and their tactics in battle. They must complement each other. That is offset by the difficulty curve...most battles fall into one of two types- easy enough that you barely even need to think about tactics, or so difficult that you end up resorting to cheap silly tactics like kiting the enemies around the area for 5 minutes whilst your other character hits them.

Styx plays his role well by sneaking around thinning enemy numbers using stealth before you commit to pitched battle. But then, like mentioned above, in the really hard battles this option is removed through scripted battles.

So for every really good point that the game has, the developers seemed set upon balancing it out with a negative. In the end it's average overall, but was enjoyable because it at least felt different to the usual fantasy stuff and had enjoyable characters. I guess a lot of people liked Styx, since the next two games in the series feature him solo.

Finished Halo Wars: Definitive Edition yesterday on Xbox One.

Well, I liked it a lot and I think it's a pretty decent RTS, not just for console standards. Sure, the base building is very limited, units have only one special power each but frankly I didn't feel like the game was very limited just because it's a console RTS. I mean, base building being limited to slots is something that also some PC RTS games have done (e.g. Battle for Middle-Earth and Conflict Zone) and there are quite a few RTS games where units have only one special power or none at all (e.g. Command & Conquer series). So no, I don't think the game was in this regard particularly held back compared to classic RTS games.

Anyway, I had quite a blast playing through the campaign.The fact that it's a prequel kinda automatically made me care less about the story than I would have if it had been directly related to the main series (and for instance humans discovering the Flood is kinda silly when you've gone through the same thing in the original Halo before) but it was still a nice adventure with admittedly shallow but likeable characters. And the missions were pretty diverse, as were the maps, and most missions had some special feature to them, much like in StarCraft II, and luckily the developers introduced some units that don't exist in the FPS series to make sure that there's enough stuff for an RTS. So I had fun pretty much throughout the whole thing. I really wish the campaign had allowed me to play other factions than USC, though. Will probably play some skirmish matches to see how the Covenant play (not sure if the Flood are playable).

Oh yeah, and visually the game really holds up quite nicely and competes with other high profile RTS games from that time. The music was also quite nice, if a tad too repetitive.

Anyway, what I didn't like was that in the campaign there's very little progression unit-wise, you get to see almost everything very soon, and that the majority of the campaign was very easy. I mean sure, that was normal difficulty, but the game should already pose a challenge before the AI gets some unfair advantages. There were one or two challenging missions but there it was entirely achieved with special mission logic and time limits. I really wish the enemy AI had been more aggressive and countered my strategies. Just spamming a few enemy types that the AI has few defenses against is sadly all it takes most of the time. For instance the Flood is very powerful against infantry but utterly defenseless against tanks and air units.

And finally: The console UI was pretty good but sadly not perfect. Many things, like navigating the map, building and giving orders were done very well. Unit selection was rather meh, though. Everything works fine as long as you have only one big force but managing several separate groups in different places wasn't nearly as good. The game really needed some way to bind units to groups like it's been common since the early RTS days. And also group selection utterly sucks with a circle that never quite has the right size - they should have either stuck with box selection or "paint" selection here. Anyway, most importantly they made great use of radial menus and showed that with the help of those you can really create RTS games of decent complexity for console.

So yeah, pretty good game, actually, not nearly as bad as some make it out to be compared to RTS games on PC. I actually can't wait to play Halo Wars 2 and see how they improved the formula there.

Bit on the downside about completing games and reducing my backlog lately, playing too many MMOs...

Anyway, just finished South Park, The Fractured but Whole : From Dusk to Casa Bonita, a DLC in the season pass.

Nice little adventure, around 3 hours long, maybe just what I needed for a single player game before lauching myself back into games like Mass Effect ! Cool setting, cool new powers, cool new ennemies and ally, that's what I call a successfully thought additional scenario! I really have had a blast, like in the South Park games in general.

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

SUPERHOT (Xbox One)

The most innovative shooter I've played in years.

Edit: I could go into way more detail but "they" told me not to say too much.

Curse of Monkey Island - 4/5

Really glad to have finally played this. I'd rank it slightly higher than Monkey Island 2. I love the art direction and there were some genuinely hilarious moments - definitely among the funniest games I've played. Having said that, I did start getting a bit tired of the game towards the end.

Divine Divinity is undoubtedly one of the best RPGs ever made. There is open world full od possibilities and choices which have influence on your gameplay. Big problem is, that there are also many game breaking bugs, which could prevent you from successful game end. This game have problem with modern systems, re-master or remake would be nice. I will definitely continue with this series.

Have to say it every time: Just don't expect Beyond Divinity to be anywhere near that level.

'Beyond' is a drag, in every sense of the word. It takes a lot for a game to bore me into quitting because I am very easily amused, but that one did it.