It took me 10 hours to finish the game + expansion in "Homicide" (Normal)

I'm using Windows 10 Pro 64bits and after installing dgVoodoo with the Widescreen patch everything worked perfectly fine at 1080p / 60 FPS. The game crashed maybe 4 times but only when I tried loading my save after dying, so I didn't lose any progress anyway.

Oniken is a pretty good action platform game inspired by NES games, especially the slightly darker ones from companies like Natsume (e.g., Shadow of the Ninja, Power Blade...). You control a guy who's basically the hero from Fist of the North Star except he has a sword that you use to decapitate everything. Unlike a lot of retro games, they were really trying to stick to the limitations of the system, except in maybe a few aspects, similar to Shovel Knight except even more austere.

Maybe the most striking thing about the game is how fast it is - if you memorize it and really know what you're doing, you can probably blow through the whole thing in less than 20 minutes? I'm lazy and just played through one level at a time since the game is nice enough to save your progress after you complete a level (there are seven in all). I like FotNS and I like good NES games, so this game works just fine for me, but if you're not into those things, the game's appeal might be lost on you. The guys who made this went on to make Odallus, which I would say is a better all around game, but this is still pretty cool.

Include me.

Jan 2nd - I finished Darksiders 3 and it was actually a good game, but it was very hard and there was not enough checkpoints. 8/10

Jan 17th - I finished The Witcher 3 Hearts of Stone. It was a great DLC with a great story. It was worth all the money. 10/10

Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius, Jan 7 (GOG)-I wasn't very impressed with this as my first visual novel. First the battle portions of the game. This could have been good. The first 4 or 5 battles were difficult (on Captain difficulty) but beatable but I hit a wall at the first escort mission (sadly not what it sounds like) and I had to lower the difficulty to the easiest. The main problem was the endless waves of enemy reinforcements before I even have a chance to defeat the initial units. This kept snowballing making the battle unwinnable but I wasn't invested enough in the game to feel bad about lowering the difficulty especially since this was billed as a visual novel.

Now the story portions of the game. The story was pretty cliche. The tone was all over the map. It ranged from slapstick comedy to attempts at high drama but it failed most of them. I suppose I did chuckle a bit at some of the scenes. But somewhere around midway through the game the captain (ie you) starts getting really melancholy and lamenting the war (yeah we know its bad) and saying his allies are just as bad as the villians (who had a Deathstar) and all of it just came off really annoying. Then there's the terrible translation with typos and grammar errors all over the place. They misspelled Veniczar at least once, which is a word I'm pretty sure they made up for the game. Also they used Veniczar like a name rather than a title during the wedding scene and maybe a couple other scenes as well which was a little weird. And I'm not sure what a burrowed frow is but I'm pretty sure its German. Lastly, several of the characters spoke in 3rd person and I could not tell if that was intended as a quirk of the character or just poor translation.

The best part of the game? The snarky quips the girls made during combat.

Full List

titanfall 2 campaign had a call of duty 4 vibe to me, which is good. makes sense though since a large hunk of ex-infinity ward employees started and left to go to respawn entertainment.

Star Wars Battlefront Elite Squadron [2009] [PSP version]
Star Wars The Force Unleashed [2008] [PSP version]

Game of Thrones Telltale - Well it seems choices don't actually matter very much in this game so I've only tried one play through. Bit lazy on Telltale's part. Also part of the story is kinda unfinished. Otherwise it captures GOT universe perfectly and you feel fully immersed in a captivating story. So if you want a story I recommend, I'm just not sure there's a point in more than one play through. I'm not actually sure it's a game either.

I second this, finished it last month, very enjoyable in a hold your hand kind of way. But now Arkham City keeps crashing on me. I need

Just finished Elite Force II.
Now I want more TNG games... just not shooters! Guess it will never happen. :-(

Oh, and platforming elements (jumping) just don't work well in first person games (IMO).

I felt the same about Back to the future; too easy, too linear, not enough interaction. The BTTF part was all well done - the other aspects of the game... make me feel nostalgic about the old Sierra and Lucasarts adventures (as in: I'd rather play those).

Dungeon Rushers (non-GoG GA gift)

Hard to render a judgment here. Some things I liked, but the game makes the mistake of assuming that quantity increases quality.

Several of the devs news posts even seem to highlight that: "Game is now 30 hours in length!"

Sadly, the combat isn't quite good enough for 30 hours to be enjoyable. And while each dungeon on its own is pretty quick (presumably where the "rush" in the title comes from) a lot of the experience is grind. Which, if I'd played 1-3 boards a day for a month or so, might have been spread it thin enough to enjoy.

Pushing through it in about a week (22 hours to beat), however, it was fun/interesting at times, and a slog at others. The whole goblin map (stage 2) in particular really detracted from the experience.

The irony here is that the game actually has elements to it that would have lent it to a much shorter game trying to hook players on repeat play. It features:

*10 characters in a game where only 5 can be in your party
*Not enough skill points (max level = 10, for 20 skill points out of 30-35 to cap out), so replay would let you try different builds for some/all of those characters
*Build/share level design
*Challenge level

I still, in theory, could go beat all the heroic levels (I did about 20%, but frankly other than XP the rewards are meh, and the challenge not really that great), and improve my gear by earning widgets from the challenge dungeon. But...

I do kiiiinda sorta recommend it if you like fairly stripped down JRPG-style combat with some interesting non-combat and tactical features, and a craft system that feels a little underpowered/underdeveloped, but does have its moments. A number of the level designs and general strategy ideas are pretty well done. The story isn't as funny as it wants to be, but it's vaguely charming at times.

On the whole, I'd say this is not a terrible game, but not a great (and probably not quite even a truly good) game. If I had to score it up/down, I'd give it a thumbs up with some significant caveats. But it did enough I'll be curious to watch the development of the other games this group is working on.

Yono and the Celestial Elephants

Cute graphics (with some characters reminiscent of Tove Jansson's Mumins, IMO), good soundtrack, nice enough story, lore and writing. Gameplay is rather simple, combat is trivial (and works on all opponents the same way, no matter how big and 'frightening' they may be), and most puzzles are super easy. For the average gamer there's hardly any challenge here and no serious risk of dying, which reduces all the extra heart containers to meaningless collectibles. Yono plays a bit like a kid's very first Zelda-style game, with simple variations of well known tropes (cellar rats, undead, rogue AI, scripted boss battles etc.).

The slightly weird thing is that there is quite a bit to read as well, and many of the dialogues and the prose in the lore books have a philosophical leaning and don't seem to be aimed at children in particular, musing about life, death, human history, power, war and politics, in simpler but not necessarily kid-friendly terms. So it's one of those games that make it hard to pinpoint its actual target group, a relaxingly simple kid's game for grown-ups with somewhat lower standards? Nevertheless, I enjoyed it enough to play through it within one or two days (should take 5-7 hours).

It takes a bit of getting used to for a PC player that the major part of your high resolution screen is occupied by an elephant's trunk and buttocks instead of giving you a good overview over the whole room, since the camera is zoomed in so closely (partially a design decision, I guess, partially due to Yono originally being a Nintendo Switch game?). I noticed some occasional lack of polish (namely the game displaying keyboard controls in the tutorial parts, even if you're using a gamepad), and some minor bugs or glitches (one time my elephant carried a 'shadow' of an item on its back and I couldn't get rid of the graphical 'residue' unless I quit and reloaded - I think the game saves in each room, so it wasn't a problem -, and another time I entered an area with one of three required quest items on my elephant's back, which made the game think I had gotten it from the area in question, therefor removing the quest item from the puzzle in that area and confusing me for a while; the solution was to return back to where I found the first quest item only to discover a new copy of it - so it essentially let me skip the second puzzle by getting two copies of the quest items from the same location).

The balance of loot and collectibles also seemed to be a bit out of whack - during the course of the game I easily collected twice or three times the amount of letters required to unlock all the lore books while being far from collecting enough money to buy all the elephant costumes. But maybe that's intentional, encouraging you to aim for your favorite costumes only.

Anyway, all in all I liked the game, but it's a bit tricky to recommend to others. I read a review that said that it all comes down to how cute you think that elephant is, and maybe that's true. XD

Unavowed

I'll keep spoilers to an absolute minimum, but if you want to be completely surprised by the game, obviously, read on at your own risk.

Unavowed was actually closer to the Blackwell series than I expected. Despite being independent of the former, it soon becomes apparent that this story still takes place in the same universe and city as Dave Gilbert's previous adventure games (and there are some cameos, too), the angle is just expanded by revealing that there are even weirder things going on in it than ghost hauntings. So the general gameplay is still pretty much the same, in that you're tasked to investigate supernatural happenings and find out the stories behind them. Nevertheless there are three obvious changes to the known formula:

1. Examining doesn't require clicking on objects anymore. If you move the mouse pointer over the various hotspots, a description pops up automatically at the bottom of the screen where otherwise only the object's name would have been displayed. This works perfectly due to the higher resolution used this time (while keeping the pixel art style), and it greatly facilitates getting a quick overview over a room.

2. It takes heavy inspiration from Bioware's companion systems, meaning that you'll assemble a team of companions but you can only take two of them with you on each mission, which leads to choices and consequences - dialogues and puzzles slightly change depending on who's in your party, as they all have different abilities, and the companions also initiate conversations between each other occasionally (which is cool; don't rush through the game and leave screens too quickly, or you might cut them off). And between the missions you can visit all companions in their quarters in order to talk and learn new things about them (which is something I always considered a bit clumsy in Bioware's system, but I've grown accustomed to it and it's completely optional anyway). Also, the game has several different endings, and (to an extent) choices matter.

3. For the player character you get to choose between two genders and three previous professions - each with their own playable origin story -, but this comes at the cost of the PC not having a voice. While Rosangela Blackwell was an interesting character in itself, the PC of Unavowed is more of a role. You can give him/her a name but it's seldom used by the game afterwards, if at all, and you can give him/her a bit of personality by way of the dialogue choices you make, but this never adds up to a full blown character like Rosa. It can feel a bit odd at first to play a point and click adventure with voiceovers where the main character has no voice him-/herself. But it does make sense for the approach the game chooses.

So Unavowed is kind of a "roleplaying adventure" combining the best of both worlds in terms of storytelling and it actually works quite well. And while several gameplay and story elements reminded me of the Blackwell series, Maniac Mansion / Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect and Planescape: Torment, the game is still an original, unique story and gameplay experiment on its own. I really enjoyed playing through it, enough to try different paths simultaneously and one with developer commentary enabled, so you could say I actually replayed it several times, and I don't usually do that with other games.

If there's one small criticism I can think of, regarding the puzzles: I don't mind that the solutions to them are usually so easy to spot that they don't get in the way of the story (and you can even get hints from your companions, so you won't ever need to consult a walkthrough in order to complete the game); I also don't mind that there are very few inventory puzzles and progress is often made by talking alone; but I thought the puzzles were a bit too routine at times, and repeating themselves, especially where the recovery of passwords was concerned. Still, great entertainment if you value the storytelling more than tricky puzzles and moon logic in your adventure games.

Technically, there are some minor issues with the perspective, caused by characters being able to move a bit up or down, that is to the back or front of the screen, without shrinking or increasing in size, and when several characters are standing on different lines but all keep their original size, it can look a bit weird. Occasionally they also conflict with the background or objects in the room, but I only noticed that one or two times. And I found one or two very minor continuity errors in optional dialogue options. But that's to be expected with a game as complicated as this one which leaves you so much freedom as to with whom, how and in which order you tackle the challenges. All in all, Unavowed has a very high level of polish, with a good length, it's very impressive and more than worth the asking price.

TL:DR
It's another fine Dave Gilbert / Wadjet Eye Games adventure, familiar and still new and different. Get it, it's awesome. ;P

I've finished Just Cause 4 Only

I'm surprised that people actually make it to the end in any Just Cause game. I still play Just Cause 2 and have played it sporadically since the release back in 2010. The sandbox is great, but I will probably never finish the game.

Are the missions better in JC4, or about the same?

Jotun

Started on NY night, thought might as well, something that seemed like I could finish quickly, maybe. The 2nd jotun was really nasty, dozens of deaths, was starting to think I was very wrong regarding finishing, but once I somehow finally killed that one, the rest went smoothly. Died 2 or 3 times (1 of them in one of the areas before that same 2nd jotun) in regular areas and got killed once by 1st and I think also last jotun (was just earlier, but not entirely sure anymore), twice by 4th, I think 3 times by Odin (again, just earlier, but that was just insanity, mind not set on keeping track, darn surprised I managed to defeat him so soon). 3rd jotun seemed a joke, was never in any danger.
Don't care for Valhalla mode now, though I gave a few tries for 1st and 3rd and got my ass kicked thoroughly, these much stronger and faster versions are quite different beasts. So, yep, considering it finished.

There will be a review, but for now the little notes made to base it on, as usual:
Much better as a work of art than a game. Pretty graphics, interesting touch with the language of speech, music not bad either, and they do seem to take care with the mythology. Nice touch with the creation myth in Ymir's Blood area. And all right how she presents her story after each section too. But camera is just awful, just seeing your shadow when under or behind something is a problem, attacking takes insanely long and leaves you exposed since it can't even be stopped (bar by dodging). There is that quick dodge attack, but tricky and weak. No manual saving is awful, plus it seems better to die and start over areas since you're fully restored while otherwise you continue with what you had. You do keep what you gain, but have to go through the level and combats all over each time, and after quitting, restarting in Ginnungagap means walking to the area too. Map is hard to use, being rough (may even be mistakes?) and not showing where you are. Couldn't see the right part of the last constellation in the Northern Sky area, at least on my resolution, on 2nd try I took screenshot of the image on the rock and compared there.

Edit: Review now up, on blog and MobyGames.