Butcher
I won it in Doc0075’s giveaway, thanks again!

Solid mindless entertainment. Nothing more but also nothing less. No real plot, no decisions, no interesting world. Pure carnage. Imagine being a terminator with a task to terminate everybody. Fun but sometimes frustrating. And not because the game is hard (it is) but some mechanics are weird. My biggest complain is ammo limit. I mean you control a freaking terminator who can carry shotgun, railgun, flamethrower, chainsaw and a few other weapons at the same time! So why the heck he cannot take more than 50 clips?! In this way the game kills a lot of fun. I expected that more sophisticated environmental kills (spikes, lava...) would be rewarded but actually they are not. When you reach an arena with many enemies spawning constantly you are free to use your weapons as you like - after all fallen enemies will drop enough ammo replacement. You should only save the ammo when you are about to finish the section so that you may continue fully equipped.

Nevertheless the game is fun. I have finished it on hard and harder and... I'll be back 


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Just beat Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior. I was among those to instantly write an unflattering review when the game arrived on GOG but admittedly I had never fully finished it. When I started playing the GOG version I actually started wondering if maybe two stars were too cruel - yeah, the game is very mediocre but also somewhat enjoyable. But halfway through everything goes to shit and the game deserves such a rating.

I could go on and on about what is wrong with this game. The truth is that it sadly gets almost nothing right. It starts with the technical stuff and presentation. It's ugly, its audio is poor (there's not even in-game music), hit detection and collisions are flawed and in the PC version the mouse aiming is just broken. The guns lack a punch, there are few enemy types (visually there's some more but most later enemies are mechanically identical to earlier ones) and the level design is awful. The levels are very monotonous, uninspired and often barely functional, offering you little to no space to actually manoeuvre. Scripted sequences are so cheap it hurts.

But when Chaos Space Marines become the standard enemies, that's when things really go to shit and all because of how their basic weapon, the bolter, works. The gun has huge spread, some splash damage and harms your HP, even if your shield is full - and of course you will also start using the gun because that's the one you find the most ammo for. The result of how the gun works is that it's utterly random if you hit or get hit. Move around or stay put, it doesn't matter, it comes down to luck whether you get hit or not. And the same is true the other way around so every fight against Space Marines with both sides using a bolter is just absurd randomness with little you can do to improve your chances. There are similar problems with any other weapons the Chaos enemies use like plasma cannons and rocket launchers. The biggest kick in the crotch are the sorcerers or whatever they are called, though, as it appears that their attacks are virtually undodgeable and it seemingly boils down to killing them as fast as you can - which is particularly nasty in their case since they also teleport at random. And of course their attacks also directly hit your HP. It's insane! There's a mechanic in place, the shield, that provides a buffer against unavoidable damage and the developers just took a big dump on it for no good reason! To top it off Chaos enemies are increasingly often spawned in unfair situations, e.g. right in front of or even behind you. And hilariously almost all "really hard" enemies like bosses and such are much easier than these generic ones. I killed one of the bosses in a matter of seconds with four easy headshots without taking any damage!

Honestly, the one redeeming value the game has are the cutscenes. They often still look pretty decent and also have better dialogue and audio than the game. They also have pretty good music so it confuses me even more that they decided to go without any form of in-game music.

Anyway, just stay away from this game. It's just not worth it.

The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav, Aug 26 (GOG)-This was just an average adventure game. The story was fine but the main characters were not very interesting. There were some pretty interesting locations that could have been better used in a different game or maybe a different genre. Most of the puzzles were ok with one I really enjoyed (getting the ring) and one I thought was terrible (getting the arrow). I much preferred the sequel, Memoria, which I didn't realize was a sequel until after I played it last year. I'd recommend skipping this game and going straight to Memoria.

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Thea 2 - finished multiple times by now, at least both big quests.
I also believe I finished Trine 2 this year

So you said :) May want to put them all in your OP-linked post?

Thank you. I forgot in which year I finished Trine 2. Done what you said.

The witcher 3 and expansions because it's good. Might fish up some loot in Skellige someday

Teslagrad (2013) (Linux)

OK, I have not exactly beaten the game, as I skipped 3 of 5 boss fights, including the final one. But the rest of the game – I loved it! I'm not great at this kind of fast-paced puzzle platformers requiring great speed and precision, but in this case it just works. I was rage-closing the game dozens of times and I was often launching the game again after only 10 minutes. It's strongly addictive, it has interesting puzzles, various locations and intriquing atmosphere. Checkpoints are close enough to avoid making the game frustrating. Sure, I'll be often frustrated, but there is no need to make a lot of long replays, so it's fine. Also replayed locations tend to be easier when revisited, because of additional equipment you've got. Only boss fights was too much for me. Each and every shot kills you instantly. The sequence to beat them was just to long to be precisely executed, sorry. Respect to those who was quick enough ;)

List of all games completed in 2019.

AL2: Crimson Tides of Tethyr (NWN)

I didn't mean to play through it so soon, given that it is much longer than AL1: Siege of Shadowdale (20+ hours?), but somehow my curiosity got the better of me and I got drawn into it as well. Despite the typical D&D fantasy plot and the rather predictable ending, I thought it was very well written, the characters and individual stories were interesting, the companions memorable, and the story approach not one you see in every NWN module (taking part in a war campaign, marching with an army and doing missions with the goal of weakening the enemy). There are also some tie-ins to Baldur's Gate 2 (Suldanessalar), and, to a lesser extent, AL1. The story offers a good balance between grim and heroic; you're no messiah, although you do end up as overpowered 'demigod' again. There wasn't much roleplay involved, most of the times in conversations you could only chose between being a goody-two-shoe or unsubtle villainy, with an occasional middle ground of "whatever, if I must". But on the positive side, actions and words were often acknowledged as shifting the PC's alignment towards lawful, chaotic, good or evil, and there were xp rewards for learning about others and some use of skills in conversations (e.g. Spellcraft).

It's a good idea to save often, and in different slots, because from time to time I ran into glitches, like scripts not working as intended or characters getting duplicated (I played it with the Diamond Edition, btw), but reloading always fixed the issues. In one spot NPCs were awkwardly placed on or near a bridge and it kept happening that they completely blocked my path, but fortunately in the end I always got past one way or another, even though one time I already feared I would have to kill them in order to continue (which is always risky in NWN, attacking neutral or friendly NPCs).

Anyway, apart from that it was quite well designed and fun to play through. The downside is that I'd be ready now for playing AL3: Tyrants of the Moonsea, and there's still no mention of a release outside of Steam ... >:(

STRAFE: Millennium Edition

A pretty good Roguelite FPS, but after the 13 hours it took me to finally get a win I'm ready to move in instead of going at it again with other weapons/strategies/mutators/etc.

None Because people in my family won't get off my damn back!

Whack a bot. An online game on GOG.com. It got old pretty fast.

Was saying it was sure I won't be finishing another game by the end of the month after Regions of Ruin, and ended up finishing 2. Granted, the first feels rather like cheating, but this isn't. So I'm up at 5 games finished this year by the end of August, most since at least 2010 (hard to figure out before that, and basically impossible before 2007-2008) except for 2014.

Syberia

I gave up on adventure games pretty much completely more than 15 years ago, but found myself sort of curious to try this one ever since it was given away for free on here and now I did. And I was stubborn enough to never glance at a guide, figuring everything out on my own, the fact that I was able to do so quite clearly meaning that there wasn’t much Moon logic involved. There were also no inventory puzzles, and in fact there were few items in inventory at any one time, being able to pick up an item usually meaning that it’ll be used soon, and the pointer indicating invalid actions doing away with the need to actually try everything. For that matter, most of the time there was just one actual available action, the trick being to find it. That did lead to a few moments of searching the entire current area from one end to the other for something I missed, but those were fewer than expected, and once or twice the solution had been staring me in the face all along, and actually more interesting than I thought.
Other than that, the story was interesting enough, and while Oscar was rather too much to ask in terms of suspension of disbelief, the rest of it did quite well in walking that line between being too mundane for such a game and too ludicrous for one nevertheless placed in this “reality”. Also, quite liked the locations, the backgrounds, the whole setting and atmosphere. Liked them enough that I wasn’t bothered by the screens that had no relevance from a gameplay perspective, though I would have been if I wouldn’t have quickly discovered that double clicking made Kate run. The 3D characters didn’t fit so well, and they moved particularly oddly, but I guess that has to do with the technological limitations of the time. Stairs were always annoying though.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3)

A port of the Xbox 360 modern remake of Ninja Gaiden, with some added extras to make certain aspects less tedious (though a few bits became more tedious). Ninja Gaiden is an action game in the same vein as Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, it has a reputation for being hard, something I would agree with. However the hardest parts of the game are in the beginning, where your health is low enough to be killed in a few hits and you haven't yet learnt the strategy for the game yet, which strangely makes the game easier as you go along. While you have a relatively small health bar throughout, so do the enemies and bosses, meaning you can kill anyone fairly quickly. The story is typical of an action game, an ancient evil sword is stolen and you have to get it back while battling ninja's, soldiers and demons. The PS3 port features additional levels where you play as Rachel, who while having more powerful attacks, struggles to dodge as her breasts are too large. For the most part the game isn't that difficult once you learn what attacks work and you get health upgrades, if you don't learn that then expect a frustrating challenge. It's a good game, however it's not my favourite of the genre, however it is the only game of this style that doesn't repeat bosses everywhere. I'd recommend it.