One of the few PS2 games I played through! I'm curious about your reaction to the second game. I started it but didn't have as much fun as with The Precursor Legacy. I don't remember all the details why, but I think it was darker, less light hearted and quirky, and it felt weird that Jak went from not saying a word in the first game to being a badass talker all of a sudden.


Yup, after watching the cutscene on YouTube, I was so glad that I didn't waste my time hunting for the last 10 orbs or so.

Yeah, I actually fired it up already and holy shit. Just before launching it I noticed that the dude's holding a gun on the cover which was the first bad sign. Then I launched the game and the main menu shows a dystopian sci-fi city. In the intro some evil "people" appear, Jak gets tortured and when he's finally rescued he's some talkative pissed off badass. I get out of prison after beating the shit out of some humanoid enemies and what the heck, it's some friggin' GTA clone with vehicles and missions and whatnot. And you can actually beat up passersby. Not off to a good start, certainly not what I expected and wanted after the first game.

The good news is that they addressed some of my big issues with the first game. Movement/jumping feels much better and the health system was fixed.

I'm getting some serious The Two Thrones vibes here and am heavily reminded of how the Prince of Persia went on a misguided quest for maturity after The Sands of Time. Incidentally Jak 2 even seems to have some transformation mechanic similar to the one in The Two Thrones, lol. I keep comforting myself with the similarities to Beyond Good & Evil which was an awesome game.

Also, the emulation on the PS4 apparently has some issues. There's some noticeable frame drops during cutscenes (out of all places), more frustratingly that seems to cause some annoying audio stuttering. I'm starting to question if going for the PS4 versions instead of the HD Collection was the right call after all.

And here's the funny part: my PS4's in the living room where the sun shines straight at the TV in the afternoon. I figured "oh well, Jak is surely coloruful and bright enough that I will still see things". Silly me.

I did resort to a guide for going 100% and with it actually ended up being surprisingly little effort. Maxing things out took me maybe two hours (including doing the last ten or so power cells). It probably would have taken ages without the guide, though. Some of the hardest orbs were ridiculously obscure. Incidentally there seems to be no in-game reward for getting all 2000 orbs, lol.

Year Walk (PC)

Originally a game made for the iPhone / Ipad, this is a point and click / horror game that is based around Swedish folklore. The game is fairly short, a speed run can probably do this is under 20 minutes, though I saw there was an achievement for beating the game without looking at the map so it took me around 2 hours. The puzzles often rely on your observation and memory skills, one puzzle involved listening to the pitch of a song, which I couldn't figure out and just went through every possible answer. I managed to not need a walkthrough, I would highly recommend paper and a pen should you attempt this, unless you have a very good memory. Though it is a horror game, there are really only 3 jumpscares, they got the jump on me because it's often unexpected unlike a lot of games. The story is very subjective, until you complete it, which gives you a hint on how to better understand the story in a 2nd playthrough, as well as leading to a 2nd ending, you don't need to redo all the puzzles to get both endings, as the 2nd ending is relatively straight forward to get. It's a good game, the lore behind it is interesting, but I'd only recommend getting it if it was on sale.

Metal Dead

I've owned it for, like, forever but never got to actually playing through it. I had only ever watched the long intro before. On a whim, I decided to give it another try and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. It's a bit more about the story and characters than the puzzles, you need to have a bit of patience because there is a lot of talking and automated scenes, while the actual puzzles are very straightforward and easy. I was looking forward to writing I solved it without a walkthrough, but then I overlooked one very small item that appeared after a 'cutscene' because I hadn't paid attention to what it was. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have needed any help though.

The writing is quite good, not laugh-out-loud funny but competent and the game managed to entertain me despite the used up zombie apocalypse setting (which offers a few twists, original ideas and clever parodies on the genre though). And while the drawing style is simple and crude, I actually found it quite amusing and I was amazed at the quality of the 'cutscenes'/animations, considering this is such an amateurish looking, small dev indie game made with AGS, not much different than the freeware stuff the AGS community puts out. Regarding humor and puzzles, it's not *quite* on the level with Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please!, but all the animations/'cutscenes' are really great and hilarious.

Curiously enough, considering the title of the game, I thought the music was the worst part. It's not really bad, the soundtrack is actually varied and gets the job done quite well, but it's just very synthetic sounding midi music that can be a bit grating on the nerves. I also found one bug but it was rather harmless and easy to overlook. Worse was one clumsily designed 'puzzle' solution in which you need to stand exactly in front of a cupboard in order to open it and if you're in reach but a few steps too far to the right or the left, the game acts as if the action of opening it will never be possible. I almost thought this a game-breaking bug and was close to giving up on the game until I found the solution, more by coincidence. Other than that, everything worked fine.

Dead Space 2 (Xbox One)

I loved the first game. I played it through three times back to back, including the hardest difficulty. Part 2 starts out great, being everything the first game was. But the longer the game went on the more I came to feel this game doesn't live up to its legacy. The lack of ammo, which is a staple of this type of game I know, is taken to the point of almost being a piss take. But it was still managing to hold up.
Then I got to chapter 14 and it all turned to total shit. What a debacle of a level. The last level before the boss fight and the game totally changes from a slow and tense thinking shooter to being chased by an unkillable enemy whilst fending off spawning enemies. There are save points, but how can you use them when an invincible enemy keeps chasing you? I got through after countless tries, using luck, trial and error, and spamming stasis...but how would someone that hasn't upgraded their stasis do it? What if you're low on healing and ammo?

Then the final boss fight was pretty crappy as well.

So it was okay, but not outstanding, for much of the game. But the lasting legacy in my mind is always going to be the final two levels and how it turned to shit. Anyway it was the 360 version played on Xbox One and like always it ran better than on original hardware. I was originally planning to go to number 3...but now I don't think so.

Grand Theft Auto 2

It was certainly better than GTA 1 but it is still too dated to be enjoyable.
The biggest improvement by far is that it is now possible to save and while it costs decent sum of money, it was great that I could do it and I would likely never finish it without it.

Cars handle better, there is aiming assistance that helps with shooting and the respect mechanism is interesting thing and all of these improve on the game but there is still many issues, like dying too easily, extreme difficulty spikes in mission, crazy acting pedestrian and mad cops, some bugs and bad level design.
While I usually don't care about graphics too much it just is true, that for being from 1999 and only 2 years older than GTA3, it looks quite archaic and not too good.

First district I tried to complete everything I could and I unlocked all 3 bonus stages, but since then I lost interest and also found out those bonuses are crap, so I din't bother anymore.
Even that way it took me some 30 hours to beat the game as most missions I had to repeat over and over again.


My list.

Chinese Paladin: Sword and Fairy 6

Oh boy, what a game! It is a chinese RPG, but feels like a knock-off JRPG. Every aspect of the game was clunky. Not a single thing - on a technical level - was refined enough to call it good.

The gameplay was, on the surface, a worse version of the FF13 gameplay. And if you played that game, you know it already had severe problems by not being refined enough. Delivering a worse version of that, is a feat not everyone can pull off.
Once you get past that, the game smotheres you with a reversed difficulty curve: It starts out extremely hard, bordering on being nearly impossible, to just fizzle out at the end without any challenge left.
If that all wasn't enough for you to quit this game for good, then congratulations, you have a game with a decent story and some very good character dynamics at hand.

Storywise, I can't say much without retelling hours worth of world building, but it borrows heavily from chinese folklore. Some things are probably easier to understand if you have some knowledge, but all the things are adequately explained in their meaning and how they fit into the world.
The character interactions is where this game shines. Each character has a sophisticated backstory, that explains and guides their behaviors and sets up future story plotpoints with mystery and foreshadowing.

Overall an enjoyable game, but even after over 50 hours I have to say: I don't get the game. Some things are not explained at all and I was constantly wondering how to do things. For example: The game features a rune system, in which you can set rune fragments into rune plates to improve your stats. But you rarely find those rune fragments. Some are steals from bosses but even at the end, I only had a couple of those fragments, completely puzzled where to find them. Only after translating some chinese sites for infos on this, I found out that one character has a specific skill to turn enemies into rune fragments. The problem is, that skill only works on enemies with less HP than you. So everytime I tried using that skill it didn't show me any valid targets, leaving me wondering what that skill even does. So much of the customization that the rune system offered, was denied.
Another thing that drove me on the brink of insanity are the side quests. Pretty early in the game you can get a simple fetch quest: Bring 10 items for reputation and gold. I couldn't find those items until 40 hours later in the game. At that point though, was the quest giver killed off in a story sequence and you couldn't finish the quest anymore. But that made no sense! What did I miss? Who knows, I certainly don't.

A really late entry to this year's list, but - Include me if you don't mind

6.7 - Driver Parallel Lines
22.8 - Cthulhu Saves the World
22.11- Orwell

6.7 - Driver Parallel Lines

I have fond memories of playing the original Driver game, and one thin that always bothered me back then (and now, when I think of it), is that you couldn't get out of your car. Why wouldn't I just nick another one when I crash if I'm already breaking every single law known to mankind?
That is fixed in Parallel Lines. That I like, very much. I also like that I get to keep my cars, and that they are upgradeable at the garage. Oh, and it gets dragged to garage even when you leave it trashed on the street so you get to fix it and upgrades don't go away. My most hated thing about games where you can swap cars is fixed then, seems great, right?
However... It seems that I've learned a bit about driving since I was a kid, so I didn't crash even remotely as often as I did back then. AI is ridiculously bad at driving, save for a few missions where they seem to be driving with godmode on. It's really easy to loose the cops, and they are mostly no challenge whatsoever. I didn't really want shooting in my Driver game, but it's really badly done. If you're used to splitting driving controls between ws and arrow keys, say bye to shooting as you can't hold mouse and there are no double controls. Car physics is a bit weird, but some cars handle reasonably (BX-9, I'm looking at you), so I ended up driving spiced up version of that 99% of the time. Story is short and not particularly interesting.
Allltogether, it's a...em...very....meh experience. 5/10 wouldn't bother again.

There are certainly better games to play, but it's not too long, and it's usually very cheap when it goes on sale. You can always scratch the itch at that price. :)

No, stop! What are you doing?
You were supposed to b̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶o̶s̶e̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ help me. :-)

Prey (2006)

I played it out of historical interest, and because I once heard a friend talking about it. I'm not really sure what to think of it. It's a pretty weird game.

The plot is simple and predictable, the writing is tolerable but mediocre. It might be the first game I've played that has Native American main characters, but given the clichéd writing and how unsympathethic the protagonist comes across, I'm not sure that's a good thing.

I was surprised to find so many interesting gameplay ideas in it: It has portals - one year before Portal -, it frequently plays around with gravity, turning rooms upside down, allowing you to walk up walls and on the ceiling (even if it'S restricted to specific walkways), it lets you switch to the spirit world at will, in which you can walk through barriers and across chasms, scout ahead and use your bow instead of alien firearms, and all of the above are occasionally used as puzzles. It has a curious death/respawn mechanic as well, and then there's also some vehicle combat. All things I've seen in other games by now, but never combined like this and before its release date, I think. The death/respawn mechanic basically comes down to you playing a bow shooting gallery minigame in the spirit world, in order to get some health back (both for corporeal and spirit form), and then you respawn right where you died and can continue what you did before. This means that there's actually no need for quick-saving all time (although you still can), and I liked that idea.

But ... it also means that there's hardly any challenge at all in the game. The only punishment for dying is having to spend a few seconds on playing a minigame, and you might come out of it with more health than you had before. Your enemies don't respawn, their health does not reset, you can continue as if you hadn't died at all, and start what you finished, even in boss fights. I'm not one to complain about not having to redo things all over, but still, this mechanic removes any sense of achievement from the game, at least regarding the combat (you have to unlock the Harder difficulty by playing through Normal first, another weird decision, but I don't think it makes a big difference, considering). The combat is not very interesting either. It's kind of like Doom 3, in that most encounters are scripted, enemies popping up all of a sudden, and after a short while it becomes very predictable. It's not the only similarity, btw, AFAIK Prey is using the same engine as Doom 3, so the games feel pretty close to each other, but Prey is less dark regarding the lighting, and even though the theme is horror, too, it's not really scary.

And after the novelty of the gameplay ideas wears of, they feel a bit over- and underused at the same time. They could have been put to a somewhat more interesting use, I think. The puzzles were often very simple, and when it took me a longer time to solve a puzzle, it was often just due to my lack of orientation, me overlooking things. The game is very, very linear on top of it. So in short, while the game has some very cool gameplay ideas and some novel ideas regarding the setting, in the end it doesn't go out of its way to make them feel really extraordinary, because the gameplay and storytelling is so simple and run-of-the-mill stuff.

I didn't regret playing it, it was an interesting experience just to see what it's like, and I had some fun with it, too. It's just not all that spectacular. Or, let's say, less spectacular than all those cool ideas would have you think.

Drakan: Order of the Flame

Something made me think of the game, I forget what, so I loaded up my saved game from 2013 and finally finished it. Fun action game, though the melee combat is kinda clunky, never got used to it. Flying on dragonback is by far the best part of the game.

The final boss was a major dissapointment. The first form constantly got stuck helpless on the scenery - I reloaded the quicksave from the start of the time multiple times, he got stuck each time within seconds of the fight starting. The second form was just a complete pushover, I'm not sure it even hit me once and the fight was over in under 10 seconds.

I think my favorite thing about the game was in the beginning when you're fighting the aliens in the bar and you can crank up the volume on the jukebox so you've got Judas Priest blasting while you're fighting. Otherwise I totally agree with everything you said :) IIRC, Tom Hall worked on the game and he had this preoccupation with shifting gravity and walking on walls and ceilings, which he started in Anachronox and then imported to Prey. Supposedly he thought it was going to be the next big thing in FPSs but they couldn't figure out how to make it work seamlessly, so we just got the walkways here.

*SMALL SPOILER* You don't fight aliens in the bar at the beginning, but you get back there for a short fight later on. I didn't know you could interact with the jukebox though. /SPOILER

It seems like some of the concept ideas date back as fas as 1990, when 3D Realms first thought about making this game, but the setting and the ideas constantly changed and it was only 15 years later or so that they brought the game to life, and they had another dev studio do it for them. Curiously enough, Prey (2006) ends with the promise of the story's continuation, and apparently they did indeed work on a sequel which got cancelled later on. And now we have Prey (2017) instead, which judging by all that I've heard is a totally unrelated game that only shares the name and the vague idea of an alien invasion or something (and is supposed to be a much, much better game though).