Stalker: Clear Sky

Generally gets a lot of criticism, but not a really bad game imo, actually quite decent, if not as good as its predecessor. There are quite a few improvements, e.g. upgrades for armor and weapons, you can now repair them, I liked that. There's also a faction wars system, that doesn't work perfectly, but it's actually a nice idea imo. Gameplay is somewhat sandbox-like, if you like that type of gameplay you can have some fun with the game.
There's a heavy focus on action that gets somewhat excessive at times imo...at lot of it is well done, but the endless combat gets tiresome at times. Difficulty is pretty hardcore...I played on veteran, and it was doable, but this isn't exactly casual gaming. The endgame was pretty frustrating. I didn't do the very last section in Chernobyl because the concept seemed ridiculous to me, only watched the ending cutscene in Youtube.
Story could have been told better, but had interesting elements, if you take the time to talk to characters, you can get some nice additions to lore and background of Shadow of Chernobyl. The story is also quite poignant if you think about it (there's a reason why the Clear Sky faction appears only in this prequel...) which I liked.
Not a game one has to play, but actually better than its reputation. If you like some well-done action and aren't afraid of hard difficulty, this might be for you. Just be prepared that the endgame sucks.
My rating: 3/5.

Abzû

Very, very relaxing game. No text except the animals' names, no voices, light riddles, pretty forward with a nice mediation mode.

A very good way to relax, to be honest.

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

Glass Masquerade ($1 Fanatical Star Deal)

Just an amazingly beautiful jigsaw puzzler with the conceit being that the puzzles you are making are stained glass depictions of various countries around the world. Base price is $5, though I got it for $1 and it's currently 50% off on Steam.

Pros:
Did I mention it's beautiful?
Actually manages to be somewhat challenging without being annoying
Music is nice, if perhaps only for the first few hours.
Would replay solo, will definitely let my kid play it

Cons:
Very short if you're any good at puzzles. But for the cost/enjoyment, that's probably ok.

Looks like they occasionally put out free additional puzzles as well. The default setting gives you 4-6 pieces as "anchors" at the start, that are marked with little dots to get you started - you can actually turn this off under settings if you wish to raise the difficulty a bit.

Puzzles are only 33-60 pieces, generally, and are very nicely organized on two rotating discs that lets you scroll through them. Despite these advantages, and the anchor pieces if you have that on, the game actually manages some difficulty:

1) pieces are out of orientation until you pick them up
2) pieces are black until picked up
3) you won't generally know what the final picture looks like unless you are replaying or have looked it up online
4) even when a piece is picked up, because it's "stained glass" there's no differing texture at all, and even colors may not tell you much. Color will get you part way, but you'll be heavily reliant on working by shape, which some people are better at than others.

3-4 hours for one pass, but replayable and very delightful if you like jigsaw puzzling at all. Up to you if it's worth full price, but on sale I'd def. recommend it.

Yeah, just figured that out when I tried again a bit ago, with the quotes, so got those, and also stumbled into a word to unlock one of the remaining three (handy polysemantic words, because I didn't have that meaning of it in mind!).

Edit: And done. After lots of random attempts, I had (yet) another close look at the videos right before and after the two I was still missing and could actually figure out correct keywords. First one required three though and I considered it rather still a shot in the dark, but worked... and then I saw a word in there that I was sure I had searched for before, why I hadn't tried it now, but guess not.

So played between Mar 30 and Apr 1, with the possibility to "finish" it appearing on Mar 31, when I still had some 30 or so videos to unlock, or maybe even more, not sure if I counted quickly after or tried a few random words which may have unlocked a bunch first. But said I wasn't done then and today I finally figured out all of them.
Calling it a game is questionable though, and so is saying that you "finished" it. There is an end state, when you say so, but with that being all there is and the player being left to draw their own conclusions... Like I said, questionable.

Review on blog and MobyGames.

[POSSIBLE SPOILER]

As for which of the theories is right, I'll watch the whole thing in order right from the game files now to see if I think differently, but I was thinking of a mix between the two. Yes, those answers at the end confuse everything, but... Can't it be both?

Ugh, Quiet City

It was once part of some Humble Bundle and I recently got it for free when they made it available for some time.
It is stretch to call this game, it is some kind of experiment perhaps and it took me 10 minute most to "finish". There is pixel town with cirlces. You walk into cirlces, person starts to do something. When you fill all circles, you turn into spark, has to fly to each circle and person stops doing what they were before giving short text reasoning.
When all ends short scene happens and the game ends.
This took almost longer to write that to play the "game".

Game finished this year.

Well, I found everything to be found there and the game had nowhere to progress so I consider it finished.

I just wasn't able to find everything I admit some things I just didn't think of but the "yes" and "no" I don't know is used that way, so wouldn't been ever able to find it. We also played it translated to czech so my girlrfriend was able to understand it and it made it much harder to find everything thanks to grammatical inflections in czech. Where there was 1 word in english there could have been even some 12 possible options to try in czech and it was har to keep track of it and just slog to try it all so we couldn't be bothered and rather used the extra commands.

SPOILERINOS!!



[spoiler]



As for the endings, as I said, it was ambiguous on purpose to make it more muddled but it was driven to point where no option could be fully correct. Yours idea is interesting but even less likely IMO, but as it was, there is no option to be chosen as the definitive one
so I guess it is as good as any other. :-)



[/spoiler]

1. Ys IV (PCE CD)
2. Exile (w/ Unworked Designs patch)(PCE CD)
3. Macross 2036 (PCE CD)
4. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (PC)
5. AM2R (PC)
6. TaleSpin (NES)
7. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (PC)
8. Super Mario 64 (N64)
9. Star Fox 64 (N64)
10. Thunder Force V (US ver.)(PS1)
11. Kirby's Adventure Wii (Wii)
12. Caesar III (PC)
13. Final Fantasy Adventure (GB)
14. Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (PC)
15. Märchen Maze (ARC)
16. Ys: The Ark of Napishtim (PC, 2015 ver.)
17. Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition (PC)
18. Vixen 357 (MD)
19. Master of Magic (PC)
20. G-Darius (PS1)
21. Splatterhouse 3 (MD)

An interesting if flawed take on tilted view beat 'em ups, with nice presentation and branching paths. Comparing it to the prequels it really should've been more varied and had more weapon pickups, maybe one more level too. The special moves are generally overpowered but you pretty much need to spam them at some points. I don't think I'll go for the best ending any time soon, at least not on Normal.

Another rpg maker game this one was short so i beat it in 2 days. It's called hell gates 1 action rpg it has no words but is pretty understandable by all the pictures it shows.

I finished 3 games over the weekend:

Rakuen
To the Moon
A Bird Story

Rakuen is a great game and it's currently available in the $1 tier of the Humble Indie Bundle 19.

To The Moon is also decent but A Bird Story is just lame. :D

Vikings - Wolves of Midgard Demo (Steam)

Had considered buying this when it was on sale because it looks really cool.

But the gameplay at least through the demo left me a bit cold (get it?). Might pick up someday for $5, but ... I'd say it was just ok.

Better than Diablo 3, I guess.

I played and finished others from that Humble Originals indie bunch that Quiet City was from.
They are all tiny so it kind of feels like cheating but here you go:

Hitchhiker

You sit in car as hitchiker. Driver talks to you, you get to look around, reply like 12 times throughout the whole game, you get to make some 2 important decisions the whole game and it gets weirder and weirder as it goes on.
It has Firewatch-y look but textures are quite low-res and not too smooth. It was also quite choppy sometimes when looking around. The outdoors scenery repeats a lot. Possibly because of wierdness of the ride but quite possibly because of budget restraints.
It is only supposed to be first part of something bigger (more drivers and more weird stuff as well I suppose) but I don't think I'll be there to experience it.
I guess it can be appealing to people who think even walking is redundant in walking sims but enjoy mysterious ride-alongs.
Took me some 25 minutes.

Crescent Bay

You come to your friend house to find her murdered and by connecting words from the list you were given you recreate actions that occured. Then you have to sequence them correctly, it plays to you, you get to new area, mysterious voice tells you to go to Crescent Bay to find more and the game ends there and, as far as I was able to find out, there is nothing else planned out.
The scene creation and sequencing of events is like in Sherlock games or Ethan Carter but you only get to choose from words so you don't even need to look at clues at murder scene, you can try to randomly or logically try to connect them to get results.
It was easy (too much I would say) and big omission was that you can't replay scenes when in sequencer (I had to go out of it, connect the words and only then I could view it).
The game looks nice and ran well but it would be nce if the character in sequence didn't go through sofa.
With some tweaks it could be good start to some decent mystery detective game but as it is, it doesn't offer much to player.
It took some 20 minutes to beat at most. It took me longer as near the end I went to main menu by mistake and the game doesn't asve its progress so I had to start over.

Thor.n

The same devs as Crescent Bay.
It is basically first-person dystopian clicker.
You are locked in your apartment and you try to get citizenship in some futuristic totalitarian society as you turn 18. That is done by creating items for society in clicker fashion. You click to ship it in and wait, click to prepare it and wait and then ship it out and wait to get credits for it. For credits you unlock other terminals to make other stuff (uniforms, rations and then ammunition), and buy upgrades. Ultimate upgrade is automation of the process. In that moment the proper citizen can probably relax until the end of his life. You get citizen points as you gain credits and produce goods and those give you levels. When you get to level 15 new area unlocks and the game abruptly ends.
All your actions are accompanied by achievement pop-ups (those are supposed to appear in-game to your character I think, to show him he is doing good job, not as oog addition) and by friendly-yet-menacing computer that eggs you on and praises you for your citizen efforts. It also tells you who just had to be eliminated and other very friendly and not at all miserable things.
The computer voice, what it tells and how, is the best part of the game.
The game is pretty but either thanks to motion blur or just plain low FPS it doesn't move well and was quite nauseating to play.
It is good proof of concept but as game it doesn't offer enough. Just like Crescent Bay.
On one hand the clicking part gets quickly boring and I certainly wouldn't want to do it in full-fledged game so I don't know where it could
head if it was turned into actual game but as it is, it is too short and offers no satisfying resolution.
This one took me some 18 minutes.


I also tried Keyboard Sport but that one is marked as preview version and the full game is supposed to be released on Steam soon so I am not rating that one as finished. It is game where one is suposed to use the whole keyboard to move as the floor is divided according to keys layout and your characters goes to the place of key you pressed and you are supposed to move across various obstacles to get to your destiantion. Could possibly be good experience for some but I didn't have much fun with what I have played.


I am quite close to finishing another game, so I hope there will be many new posts before I do as I don't want to take this over too much. :-)


Full list.

The Enchanted Cave 2

A very addictive dungeon crawler with some rogue-like elements. You enter a dungeon and have to make it to level 100. You can escape anytime (after you found a certain item) and when you make it out alive, you'll take over all the skill points, gold and magic items that you've obtained during your run. When you die, you'll lose them and have to start again.

I think I've completed the game in 5 or 6 runs, but it was a very close call (I had no potions and about 50 HP left when I beat the final boss). Played a little bit of New Game + after that, before I decided that I will start again to build a better character (mine would have had serious trouble with New Game +).

Complete list of finished games in 2018

Finished Scanner Sombre. Not bad but nothing really interesting except for the unique core gameplay. It's good that the game is quite short though.

Full list here.

Zombie Driver HD

It's OK, I guess.
You drive in car, you kill zombies, you get weapons and slightly better cars, you improve both of them for money you gathered, you kill even more zombies and you follow some silly story until it somewhat ends.
There is not much else to it.
Then there is Slaughter mode where you don't follow any story and buy upgrades, you just pick them and kill zombies.
Last mode is Blood Race where you, well, race. During that you kill you opponents and zombies.
I beat the story mode, fulfilled all secondary objectives there and got gold medals in all maps of Slaughter mode but I only tried Blood Race and abandoned it as racing is not something I wanted to do in the game and it also wasn't pleasant experience with the game camera. To complete 2 modes out of 3 it took me a bit over 10 hours.
It was all mindless mild fun but nothing I would like to ever get back to.


See my awesome list.

22. Herzog Zwei (MD)

One of the most creative console games of 1989, Herzog Zwei is a fast paced RTS which puts the typical off-screen commander role into an on-screen mech avatar and focuses on grabbing bases to increase production and eventually overpower your opponent (it's similar to Dawn of War but more stripped down). It holds up surprisingly well besides some control/interface and enemy AI issues, but those weren't really improved in a big way until the mid 90s for this genre and the latter isn't much of an issue in 2-player vs mode. It's a real shame this game didn't sell and was a one off for Technosoft, although there was apparently a spiritual sequel of sorts made recently by a different dev that I haven't tried yet. The music is also great, and I've actually covered one of the tracks as a request on my YT channel.

Beat all the maps on A type (easy/default) difficulty and about half on B type.