Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, Jul 22 (GOG)-Not bad but I think I’d rather play something like Final Fantasy instead. I’m not sure I’m willing to put in time and effort to play the rest of the series.

There were only about 4 or 5 different dungeon skins and they were repeated throughout which got a little stale. The plan/crafting mechanic was interesting. As someone who usually ignores crafting completely in all games this was a good way to keep me trying new things. All of the combat skill were fun but at the end the designers threw in too many characters that were only around for a tiny bit of the game. I would have preferred just the 4 CPUs with Iffy and Compa since those were primarily the ones I played with. Also, I didn’t really understand how the lily rank system worked so I mostly ignored it.

I’m not sure if this was a particularly bad translation or if the original was just as bad. I’m fine with breaking the fourth wall and the random comments by everyone but the actual dialogue was pretty bad. I can’t recall any specific examples but things like verb-noun agreement, verb tenses, prepositions, idiom usage, etc were often incorrect or awkward. The voice acting was overall pretty good for what they had to work with.

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Soma, Jul 23 (GOG)-This felt like a poor man's System Shock 2 but there are certainly worse things to be than that. I played the game in normal mode not the safe mode mod but I think that was a mistake. Too often I was busy running from enemies than reading about the inhabitants of Pathos-II. Those enemies were more annoying than scary although there were some scares. I often found myself waiting impatiently for an enemy to finish its patrol and on at least one occasion failing repeatedly to get one's attention at a safe distance. I think safe mode could have solved this issue for me.

The story was quite good but a little disjointed and hard to follow at times but that may have been due to me finding information out of order or missing things entirely. I did think that the ARK project and launching it was a bit of a silly macguffin. Catherine's insistence on launching it and other characters' feelings either for or against it seemed strange to me because I didn't really agree that it was somehow a continuation of humanity.

Overall the game was good but left me wanting something more like System Shock 2 or Dead Space which I hope I can recreate in Bioshock.

Oh I almost forgot there were a couple parts where I got stuck in a wall or pit or on some debris that were quite annoying and required a reload.

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I just picked up <span class="bold">Submerged</span>/ on Steam yesterday and spent a few hours going through it, finished it off a short while ago with 100% achievements, not that I do achievements per se, but I wanted to find everything in the game so it just sort of turned out that way. :)

Was a short but fun diversion from the usual.

Severance: Blade of Darkness (aka Blade: The Edge of Darkness)

I beat it twice as the knight, once without all the runes the see the "bad ending" and then a second time with the runes. Then I replayed it all the way to the last boss as the barbarian. And then I played both the adventurer and the dwarfs first level. The game is definitely good enough for a third playthrough as those characters, but I'm just burned out so I'll move on and save that for a future opportunity.

The combat in this game is one of the best I've ever seen in any videogame. It has a high skill ceiling, meaning you are still learning and improving as a player even as you reach the later levels. It is tough and put up a challenge that grows as you progress, so the "skill floor" also becomes pretty high at some point. But what's most impressive is how adaptable it is.

You can play in very different ways and be successful. You can go in swinging your sword like a maniac, you can stand behind your shield and circle strafe Souls-style, you can use range to avoid getting hit and only hit heavy blows, and all these strategies will work and be equally challenging too. The combos, the short dodge and the special attacks are elements that elevate the game beyond what you would expect from a 3D hack'n slash.

Level design is mostly good, with just a few moments of frustrating platforming to remind you it's a game from 2001. And the levels look really good, which is something I was surprised by. I did my first playthrough without any graphical enhancement mods, and I recommend it because there are many things about this game that are so ahead of it's time - especially the lighting effects - that if you mod it first you'll just assume it's the mod that's doing it.

There are some bugs, nothing game breaking but a couple that are very easy to replicate. There are no fixes to these bugs that I know of, so I guess it's really up to the player to roll with it or not.

The story is barely there at all. There is sort of a plot, it's minimal and not particularly original either. Personally, I like it this way. If you are not going to put a lot of work into the story, don't waste the player's time and goodwill with long sections of bad story exposition. What story there is in Severance is so minimal that it never annoyed me and became endearing and interesting even. Later in the game, it becomes excessively generic but still not prevalent enough to ruin the experience.

Surprisingly, this amazing game was made by an inexperienced team of Spanish developers. It's really a shame they didn't get the opportunity to keep working together and make more games. The gaming industry as a whole fails when a team shows such promise - even if the sales didn't match the games quality - and it doesn't generate opportunities for that team to keep at it. It's also a shame that the game got removed from GOG after Codemasters lost the rights to it. I hope the current rights owners eventually sort it out. If there ever was a game that deserved a remaster with all the bells and whistles, it's this one.

Mad Max. I went ahead and wrapped this one up, leaving a lot of points of interest behind on the map. I don't think I missed too much, though.

It's a very nice-looking, well-optimized game that generally does a good job of capturing the feel of the Fury Road movie, with a few nods to the earlier movies (e.g., Gastown is very Barter Town-like). You drive your car and you have a sidekick who operates weapons like the harpoon, and there's a lot of Batman-like melee combat, although a bit slower-paced since Max isn't a super-martial artist.

I really liked the game in the early stages because the open world is full of stuff to do and resources are so scarce at first that you have a lot of incentive to explore to get more ammo, fuel, and money (scrap). The need to scrounge for everything is very appropriate to the setting. As you go along and conquer enemy camps, you develop a steady income of scrap, you upgrade everything that can be upgraded, and well before you've gotten close to clearing the map, you no longer really have that incentive to go out and find stuff.

The game could have used more variety in the major mission designs, because everything comes down to you beating people up the same way, except maybe for having more guys coming at you, or smashing cars the same way. In particular, it's missing the sort of big convoy battles that three of the four movies end with, you driving a huge rig while a fleet of guys are trying to board it. It would have been cool to have to set up turrets for crew to occupy, scamper around the exterior of the vehicle to make repairs, leap to other cars and commandeer them, etc. The boss battles are all basically identical, too.

I was happy to see them include a dog for Max, but they apparently couldn't come up with anything interesting for the dog to do except to be used for boring bomb-sniffing activities, and you have to drive a specific, weakly-designed car for him to ride in, too, so that was a bit disappointing.

Basically, it's a good game that ends up with many of the same issues that many open world games have today in that it's a bit too big and repetitive by the time it ends.

Probably most notable bug, if you save within sight of a trap, weird things may happen. In my case, it made my character invulnerable, and took me a while to realize it, since I was really careful not to get hit. Lucky I kept a long enough trail of saves to get back to the one before it happened.
And remember the archery duels and baiting archers to give me arrows, ducking in and out of cover, zigzagging around, then rushing to pick up the arrows fired after me to be able to fire back.
And the vampire was quite nasty. And was interesting that you could take his weapon even if you couldn't store it as a normal one... and it drained your health while held, so had to fight and hit enemies to make up, so didn't play with it for long, but yeah, interesting option.

I got invincible for the boss fight in the knight's first level. Three times the big sub-boss that shows up in Dal Gurak's Tower and in the Abyss just froze in place for some reason - I'm almost sure it's got something to do with switching weapons as soon as he spawns. I had one save - this was the strangest bug - in Dal Gurak's Tower where if I loaded it and didn't move immediately my character would die from lava, despite not being anywhere near a lava pit. The most annoying and easily reproducible bug I found is probably the unintentional first person mode you get if you try to move around and switch weapons while aiming with the bow.

It probably helps if you're a fan of the movies. I've always loved them, so it probably worked for me a bit better than someone who's more casual about them. (Although, because I am a fan, I also noticed certain aspects where the game was a bit lacking, too.)

Liking the movies helps a lot, so does just having a liking for driving games in general- like me. I enjoyed Mad Max way more than most it seems, just like I enjoyed Mafia 3 with it's lack of fast travel and copious driving.

The missions do get repetitive, but I'm 120 hours into the Witcher 3 and if you take away the elaborate 15 minute long cutscene chains for every quest, then 95% of them are just the same thing-go somewhere use your magic Batman vision to find a clue and follow the trail until you kill or talk to something. Repeat. You never hear anyone saying the Witcher 3 is repetitive though. Enjoyment just comes down to weather the gamer likes the game mechanics and the world really.

Spider-Man PS4 - 7/24/19
A Spider-Man game by Insomniac!? The story and game play were fantastic. It played pretty much like an updated Spider-Man 2 with almost the same combat style and a lot of moves were brought back. One trophy away from the platinum.

SOS: The Final Escape (PS2)

Also known as Disaster Report in the US, SOS: The Final Escape can be best explained as a disaster movie turned into a video game. The game takes place on an artificial island that has just been struck by an earthquake and continues to be affected by aftershocks, causing roads, bridges and buildings to collapse. You have one goal, get yourself and any survivors you meet along the way to safety. There are about 7 different endings, determined by choices you make during the story, as well as how you treat certain characters. Whilst travelling across the destroyed city, you have to brace against earthquakes, shelter from falling debris as well as making sure you stay hydrated by drinking plenty of clean water. It's a fairly short game, only a few hours long, but its game time is extended by trying to get all the collectables and achieving all endings. I'd recommend it.

The Journey Down: Chapter Three (Steam)

This game is the third and final part of the point-and-click adventure trilogy.

The artwork is very nice and it has decent voice acting for the most part. However, I found this particular entry to be quite linear, it’s extremely easy and there are a lot of cutscenes. The plot is rather generic, but has humour.

However, when viewed as a casual and relaxing game where the goal is just to go along with the story (rather than provide a challenge) then it can be enjoyed on that level.

Rusty Lake Hotel (2016) (Linux/Wine)

I really liked the little game. Perfect relaxing puzzler similar to "escape room" idea. Keeps you focused on a very limited number of items and space, which reduced frustration and made it nice, relaxing, sometimes challenging puzzle.

List of all games completed in 2019.

DISTRAINT: Deluxe Edition

Short and depressing, that's what I would call it. I played DISTRAINT as a short pause in between my Baldur's Gate playthrough and I can't honestly say that I'm impressed. There is some overall premise but it's definitely not enough (it took me a bit over an hour to finish). Story is... decent, nothing really oustanding here and again - too short. Puzzles are very basic, the amount of handholding is almost offensive. Overall a not so fun, bleak and depressing little game, I'd give it 5/10. Apparently there's a sequel but I don't think I'll be playing that anytime soon.