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Another entry - Minoria NG+ and all achievements.

Treasure Adventure World
I got it from the community giveaway, donated by Rosalumina, thanks a lot again!

I really enjoyed Treasure Adventure and I always had a feeling that a remake was not necessary. And now, after completing the game I am... actually sure of it. Yeah, the original is just better. Don't get me wrong though, there is still plenty of fun here! After all most of great thing from the original are still there! Some new additions are welcome, especially the late part of the game consists of more interesting things.

So what's the problem? I don't like how the game looks like. I'm not a hardcore fan of pixeleted graphics but it did suit better here. The other problem is that with this new graphics you can actually miss some enemies that are just in front of you as some bush may block your view. I mean such things should be in the background so it won't block your view!

The game is also poorly optimized. It takes a lot of time to load and a few seconds every time you change an area. Considering that you have to visit many houses on your way and entering/exiting takes a few seconds every time it can get really frustrating.

But let's focus on the game itself. As the title suggests it's all about looking for treasures. The world is divided into several tiny islands and very soon you get a boat and you can explore them. At the beginning there are many places you can't reach and puzzles you can't solve. But as you progress you gain new items and abilities that help you with your exploration. This part is very well designed as you usually know where to go (you can ask your parrot for a hint) and when to go back to previously visited area. In time you even get the ability that helps you to backtrack much faster so things are fresh all the time.

All in all you can expect intense platforming, nice boss battles and puzzles which sometimes are a bit hard. Sounds great right? It is but the original is still better so maybe you should check it instead. Especially because it's free. I don't regret my time with the remake, far from that! But I just don't feel it's worth it...



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Heroes of Hammerwatch + Pyramid of Prophecy
I got it from the community giveaway, donated by DampSquib, thanks a lot again!

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Simple as that. Heroes of Hammerwatch is a very enjoyable Gauntlet-like game. You pick a character that suits you best and go exploring some dark caves and structures with hordes of enemies, treasures and secrets. While it's often considered to be a game designed for co-op I can assure you that playing alone can be a lot of fun.

As I said at the beginning you can expect most of features of the original Hammerwatch. It is just bigger and better with some interesting additions. I particularly enjoyed how you can expand the town. If you like upgrades and always try to max everything the game will surely scratch that itch.

Controls are very responsive and fights even with tons of enemies are very entertaining. Sure sometimes things will get a bit chaotic and may die because of that but... who cares! You can jump (almost) right where you were.

Puzzles and secrets are very nice too. I definitely missed a lot of them and so I think I will sooner or later get back to the game and of course I will go with different character. And maybe by that time I will get the relatively new DLC.


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Beat the singleplayer campaign of Battlefield: Hardline on PS4 yesterday. Not great, not terrible.

The very first impressions were quite awful. It's one of the uglier games I've played this generation, the pacing is terrible in the beginning and the car controls are ridiculously crappy (also: one time my car just fell through the street and I died). However, then I discovered many things to like here: the characters are quite likeable, the story is just interesting enough to make you care and most importantly: there are some police-themed mechanics here that really mix things up compared to all the war shooters out there, including other Battlefield titles.

To my surprise Hardline has a lot of stealth gameplay. You can actually perform simple takedowns on unaware enemies or make arrests, which means that you have to flash your badge to unaware enemies and then you can capture them. The latter is actually a pretty cool mechanic because enemies need to be either isolated, so yelling "hands up" or the held up enemy won't alert other enemies, or grouped tightly together, so you can threaten all of them with your gun - if an enemy is not threatened for a few moments, he will reach for his sidearm and open combat ensues. There's also a mini map that shows enemies along with their vision cones and a scanner that allows marking enemies after which you can see them through walls while using the scanner.

On top of that you can throw empty bullet cartridges to attract enemies to certain points. It's not a very deep mechanic but made the game far more interesting than I expected a Battlefield singleplayer campaign to be. Furthermore the progression system exclusively rewards non-lethal takedowns and once in a while there's an enemy with a warrant and you get even bigger rewards for those - these guys need to be first identified with the scanner. And since you can replay individual levels, failed stealth is not too much of a setback so the stealth gameplay doesn't feel too forced. And the combat itself is of course pretty fun and solid since this is a Battlefield game.

Also, you can collect pieces of evidence which belong to cases and every time you close a case you get further gun unlocks. Collecting evidence is fairly straightforward but surprisingly rewarding. Again, the scanner is your friend since it shows direction and distance to the next piece of evidence - some pieces of evidence are found on guys with a warrant. It's really simple stuff but was a lot more fun than collecting intel and whatnot in war shooters, for one because you have a tool that helps finding it and also because it ties into the story and the police theme. That's great! Admittedly sometimes you have to collect evidence during chase sequences or something and then it just feels utterly out of place...

Of course it's not perfect. The game gets a lot worse once you get to play "the other side" later on. The gameplay doesn't actually change much then but the arrest mechanics begin feeling kinda out of place then. Then there's the thing that you have limited equipment slots and as a result I barely used potentially fun tools like the grappling hook. The levels didn't support this stuff that much and of course I never knew in advance when which tool would come in handy. That's stupid. The story also gets kinda crappy later on and the ending downright sucks - so, that's bad. And of course there's the traditional problem with Battlefield singleplayer campaigns: they just don't support what the game is best at. The maps are for the most part pretty small and linear and heavily scripted. You don't get as much tactical freedom as you should have, vehicles can only be used during very specific heavily scripted sequences (which generally suck) and destructibility boils down to bullets passing through all sorts of cover instead of allowing for extra tactical options. That sucks.

So, the first half of the game was pretty great in my opinion, the second one was rather meh. The game was much better than I thought it would be but all in all the singleplayer campaign is just okay.
I had been considering to get the game for a while and got close to buying it several times. I think after your post I'm actually gonna give it a shot if I find it anywhere at a reasonable price. Thanks!

As far as I'm aware it's not downloadable, and I wasn't able to find a physical copy in any shops so your best bet is probably online. The one tip I'll give if you is by repeatedly rolling then jumping you move a lot faster and makes dodging large attacks or avoiding enemies a lot easier.

Yeah, I've seen second-hand copies pop up online for years. It shouldn't be too hard to get it even now - I hope the prices haven't skyrocketed, though. There's a whole number of PS3 games that have sadly become ridiculously pricey over the years.

Thanks, will try to remember that.

Now play the expansions, but don't like them TOO MUCH, as they sadly aren't canon(iirc).

honestly I don't know, the last time I tried the extension I found it very boring: empty hallways, a feeling of boredom (not to use another term...) and I never found the same atmosphere, the anguish or the feeling of loneliness of the basic game. :(

not canon ? :(

It seems to me that I understood that the game was a direct continuation.

It(expansions for Fear 1) are pretty good once they get going, especially Perseus Mandate once you get to the company buildings.

Also yeah extraction point and perseus mandate are not canon iirc.

(Stuff in both is retconned in FEAR 2)

Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil

Can't say I really enjoyed it too much. Maybe my fault for playing on Veteran and quicksaving/quickloading so much. But at least I didn't quicksave in the middle of battles. Final boss killed me a whole bunch of times before I finally found the winning strategy on Gamefaqs.

An Assassin in Orlandes

Tin Man Games standalone version.

This is an electronic conversion of the old gamebook by the same name. Nice enough tech-wise (dice roller, character sheet, art/graphics/sound). My biggest issue is I have some bug that prevents me from setting bookmarkers (think save slots). This meant having to play through the whole adventure each time to try a different path, which padded the time and caused a couple of extra deaths.

Overall, the gamebook itself is solid, with a lot to recommend it, while the technical issues let it down.

Gorky 17, Aug 31 (GOG)-If you can get passed the game breaking bugs and cumbersome interface, there's actually a pretty good game here. The story is cliche and I still don't fully understand the final couple minutes of exposition (teleportation, doomsday genes?) but the chess like tactical nature of the combat is fun. It could have been a little better if units had boxes around them so you knew exactly which spaces they occupied and if the combat screens had a permanent grid. There were countless times I thought I had a shot lined up but the target was out of range because there was an extra square. Also is friendly fire really necessary for non AOE attacks? I mean did I really intend to attack my own unit with an axe? The difficulty is about right. It could me a couple of restarts at the beginning to realize that I needed to conserve ammo and focus on melee as much as possible. Oh I also didn't enjoy NPCs leaving suddenly with all the gear I'd given them. Overall, if you can get it working its pretty fun.

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Wheels of Aurelia

This is basically a visual novel wearing a driving game's skin. Story is of a young woman who decides to take off one night for France with another young woman. You can pick up hitch hikers or not and engage in conversations with them or with your passenger. Game is only 10-20 minutes long for a single play through, but you can make different choices (pick up hikers, which exits to take, which conversations to engage in) that have slight changes to the game. Not recommended to binge, but play between 1 and 3 runs together so that the repetition doesn't grate.

Art is simple but effective and consistent. Music is pretty good as these things go. Gameplay is split between picking dialogue options and driving, often at the same time, but never hard (also can ignore the driving and the game will drive itself).

Overall, this is a neat concept for a game, and I enjoyed some of the conversations and steering the conversation with my responses. It's solid but not remarkable, and a neat slice of life style. Unfortunately, it leans too hard into the ending hunting to pad out replay value for such a short duration.