Comparatively few people actually like the official campaign, the story is railroaded, boring and clichéd, there is too much meaningless hack and slash combat, and only the most hardcore fans would actually praise the combat. It's slow, and tactical options are limited since the AI isn't that smart and you can only control one character instead of a whole party. I think the latter is also the cause why you perceive the status effects as more punishing than in other D&D games, even though the rules are more or less the same in all D&D games; in D&D there are really mean spells and effects and you have to know how to protect yourself against them. Dragons are a frustrating slog to fight in the Infinity games like Baldur's Gate, too. But in NWN, once your character is incapacitated or dies, you can't do anything but wait or reload, instead of switching to another character like in the party-based games. And that sucks.

The reason why the game is well liked is none of the above, but because it's one of a kind with regard to modding and multiplayer. What other game gives players such powerful and flexible tools to create their own adventures and share them with others, to create your own persistent world and invite others to explore it, your very own MMORPG, to simulate pen and paper roleplay sessions online with a dungeon master (and that dungeon master could be you as well)? Personally, I always think playing NWN just for the official campaign (and not even Hordes of the Underdark or the newer premium modules like Darkness over Daggerford or Tyrants of the Moonsea) is a waste of time. It won't help you understand what others love about NWN, and there are so many better RPGs out there than NWN's official campaign, with more interesting combat systems, too.

I'm a huge NWN fan myself, but there's absolutely no doubt about it that BG2, PS:T and D:AO are immensely superior if you judge NWN solely on the merit of the official content and completely ignore the modding scene. You might say that the quality of mods and custom content has nothing to do with the official product, but in NWN that's not quite true, because contrary to most other games, NWN was explicitly made with the modding scene in mind, as a tool to create your own adventures with, and the official campaigns are just examples for what the toolset is capable of. I would actually dissuade anyone from playing NWN just for the official content, and I think it's a pity when people do, but to each their own. And I totally agree with you, Planescape Torment is still the best game of all (even though the combat is far from great as well). ;)

Transistor, Sep 26 (GOG)-I didn't get this game. I didn't get the plot and I didn't get the mechanics. It felt more like an arcade action game than an RPG. I didn't like it. I'm glad it was short and I'm glad its over.

Full List

Beat Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on Xbox One two days ago. I didn't enjoy the game when I played the original PC port back in the day, I'm still not enjoying it now.

First off: the quality of this remaster is questionable. It does not make the original Gears look like a current AAA game, it makes it look like an old AAA game with better textures and more colourful lighting. And the new lighting actually utterly broke the final boss fight. The whole scene is so lit up that it took me an hour of dying before I noticed the light sources that are actually relevant to defeating the boss. It's a far cry from the Halo remasters and many others we've had this generation.

Anyway, I figured it may be one of those games that are for some reason just more fun in their console version. It is not. My buddy recently beat the original X360 version and now I beat this one and we were both utterly bored by the game. I honestly can't put my finger on what's causing it exactly. The combat just feels super simplistic and shallow (at least in singleplayer) and remarkably unsatisfying. The game also fails to make me care about anything going on. I'm guessing it's mostly an issue of level design and exposition since I'm now several hours into the second game, which barely differs mechanically, and am having a blast.

Aaand now I've beaten Gears of War 2 on Xbox One and I enjoyed it a lot. It's crazy how much better it is even though it's so similar to the first one in so many ways.

Certainly the level design and scripting and writing have improved. In the first game I didn't really feel any drive. There was some reason I was heading somewhere and it was little more than an excuse to go through a series of basic arenas that just did very minor variations of stuff introduced in the very beginning of the game. Here almost every moment feels rather deliberate and carefully orchestrated, there are more distinct sequences and situations, many of which should prove very memorable - some of the heavily scripted sequences are still pretty spectacular by today's standards. It also helps that in this game we have a better idea of the state the world is in, get the first actual villain (the first game's boss was barely a character), one of the heroes has an important personal arc and so on, so everything we do has some context.

Funnily I also feel that GoW 2 looks and sounds better than even the Ultimate Edition of the first game. The textures and lighting may be worse but especially the environments are just visually far more interesting and organic. The first game feels very boxy and artificial by comparison. And importantly, weapon sounds have been notably improved and the music is much better here.

As for mechanics and balance I'm not sure how much has changed but the combat feels better to me here. I think you can take more hits which means that you can manoeuvre a bit more freely compared to the first game and either my skill has improved a lot or enemies go down more quickly here. Also, losing all HP doesn't necessarily mean game over anymore and allies can usually still revive you, which I appreciate. Oh yeah, and there's a bunch of new weapons and enemies and honestly, each one of those is a cool addition.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this campaign and am looking forward to playing Gears of War 3 as soon as I get it.

Nice. Gotta play that sometime when it comes out.

If you play the second one be prepared to have propaganda(anti nationalist-pro gloabalist) shoved in your face via the loading/death screen quotes and other means.

I never did beat the 360 version. I remember getting probably 90 percent of the way through it and then...I totally lost interest and quit. I guess I realized I was playing it because it had been hyped so much but I wasn't really enjoying it.

Hydrophobia(Xbox360) -

Game Summary: You play a female engineer(who is also afraid of drowning and water) aboard a very large city ship that hosts a company trying to solve the world's food shortage and overpopulation problems that gets attacked by terrorists who start killing people. Throughout the game you must pick up some notes and collectibles that add to the lore and explain some things while doing some "hacking" minigames and (later on) fighting bad people. You can also use a tool called a MAVI that you hold up and scroll around your view that allows you to remotely use cameras/open doors/etc.

The pros: This version has better graphics and redone areas like the starting apartment and some others, and does the game a bit better in the graphics/sound departments. The sound, plot, reveals, graphics are very decent as well.

The cons: The game is very short and likely unfinished(it ends on a cliffhanger after 3 chapters/acts), the hacking minigame is hard as hell on the 360 version(you need to swivel your two thumbsticks to match the frequency graphs on screen and hold them until they align, and the later puzzles need more alignments to proceed). It is also sometimes hard to look via MAVI and such while chaos is unfolding around you to find the hidden notes(portrayed as a man's head seen on some surfaces that you need to "scan" with the mavi), or to find hidden collectible in general.

The nitpicks: You'd think such a large ship would have easily obtainable rebreathers or diving suits if needed for various reasons. And also the fact that the game is unfinished and ends on such an interesting cliffhanger is also a letdown.

Conclusion: If you like adventures with a bit of gunplay and some puzzles here and there and have a few bucks to spare this is a worthwhile diversion, but be prepared for the cliffhanger that never gets resolved.

UnderRail expansion pack called Expedition, that was good stuff.
Funny, in bitter way, that you need to dig out something obscure like this to get fun that's hard to come by these days. Or I'm just getting old...

New locations, new perks, new guns and items. Increased level cap don't change much, you still get OP sooner or later.

Big twist - there is time limit. Finish the expansion before savages conquer your camp or unleash your revenge upon them.

Once again we find McGoofin and deal with otherworldian beings.
Get some sawed off from Ferryman and better jetski (that junk they gave you on the arrival is not worth your time and it test your patience too much).

did you gave up on "Look at all that juice" part? That was like Library for Halo in term of difficulty.

Wolfenstein: Spear of Destiny.

Hieroglyphika. One of the hardest game ever played. Very interesting figuring out the game mechanics, what items mean and how to play the game. No hand helding. So its very challenging and interesting.

Asura: Vengeance Expansion

Technically the name should be "Asura", but they renamed it after adding the free Vengeance Expansion. Fun if short roguelike ARPG. One interesting mechanic - after defeating enemies you decide whether to scavenge their corpses for loot or absorb them as XP. Can't do both, except to bosses which automatically provide both XP and loot. Beat it twice, the second time on the unlocked harder difficulty to get the true ending. Including all the failed attempts, this all took me about 6 hours. There's still stuff to see in the game though - more bosses/champions that got unlocked by my second playthrough, more skills & equipment to unlock, yet harder difficulty settings, an endless wave survival mode, etc. Not sure I'll do much of that though - backlog's calling.

Edit: Went ahead and beat it on the final two difficulties anyway - 5 more hours for that. Unfortunately no achievement for the hardest difficulty...

Edit 2: 18 hours later, unlocked the final achievement :) Somehow 2 items remain unfound despite my best efforts, but whatever.

I have heard rumors or think I did at one point that the main protag was going to get water based "powers" to fight back, and that it would have gotten more involved and interesting/less gun based over time, but I guess we will never know.

It was/is fun for the sale price, though, as it features some rarely used gameplay mechanics & a semi-decent plot & setting....though I wish it didn't end on a cliffhanger.

A Tangled Web Parts 1 & 2 (NWN)

Review on NW Vault

Ridiculously enough I managed to beat another game just in time before this month ends: Condemned: Criminal Origins. Specifically I beat the Xbox 360 version on Xbox One.

I had been interested in the game since I first saw gameplay footage. The graphics and especially animations just seemed amazing at the time and it was the first first-person game with such advanced melee combat (admittedly the trailer also made the game look a bit stupid, though). A few years later I got the PC version but was very disappointed and ragequit pretty soon. Last year I decided to revisit the series, again wasn't too thrilled, but finally decided to beat the first game a couple of days ago.

Condemned is kinda weird in that it was developed by Monolith in tandem with F.E.A.R. and they were released almost at the same time. From the first moment on you can feel, though, which of these games was the more important one. Condemned sadly has a very strong B-movie vibe to it. The character models, especially the hero's, look a bit weird, the cutscenes are badly directed and the voice acting, again especially the hero's, is kinda bad.

So Condemned is a psychological thriller that takes place in seedy urban environments and is heavily inspired by Silence of the Lambs and Seven. Everything is dark and dirty, there's lots of graphic violence and torture victims and so on. The writing sadly doesn't do the vision justice. It is filled with cliches, lots of stuff lacks sensible explanations, the action doesn't quite fit into the plot. The story is really about clearing your name by tracking down the psycho who actually murdered the cops and you do that by investigating further grisly murders committed by him. Sadly the murders at the centre of the story get trivialised by all the almost casual over-the-top violence and slaughter that the gameplay is about. In my opinion the story utterly fails to offer a convincing explanation for why the city is riddled with violent psychos, some of them bordering on monsters from a body horror flick.

However, even though the narrative falls flat I had a pretty good time with the game. It feels cheap and silly in many ways and also overuses random visions, just like F.E.A.R. (although they make even less sense here), and the melee combat is ultimately pretty shallow but there is a lot to like here. While the combat is basic it is pretty satisfying and the responses of characters to hits are impressive to this day. Hits make characters convincingly turn and stumble and as a result they will often hit other nearby enemies. It's pretty impressive. What I really love about the game is much more nuanced stuff, though.

What really impressed me is the tense atmosphere. Audio is very minimalistic but the monotonous drones create an intense feeling of dread. You never quite feel fully aware of your surroundings due to the limited light that your flashlight provides, claustrophobic level design and a somewhat uncannily small field of vision. To make it worse, enemies will often decide to just run away mid-combat and lay ambushes, waiting just around corners and so on. The game really induces paranoia and I loved it. And there are other cool details like enemies grabbing whatever they can find to use as a weapon (something you can do as well). Firearms are powerful but very rare and you can't replenish ammo for them. One time I decided to drop a shotgun that had only one shell left in favour of some random melee weapon. Later I kept moving backwards away from an enemy and that enemy suddenly dropped their weapon and grabbed that shotgun I had left on the ground. That got my adrenaline pumping and I blindly charged at the enemy before they could fire. Past that point I began emptying firearms that I didn't plan on using anymore. I can't think of a single other game that would make me engage in such behaviour.

However, as I said, it's not perfect and at times frustrating. I didn't quite get the hang of blocking till the final boss as the game just doesn't teach it's (still simple) melee combat well. In addition to your weapon you always also have a taser which has infinite ammo but a slow recharge rate. I abused the crap out of it as tasing enemies is safe and easy and you can do it several times in a row if you keep evading enemies - that really kept me from mastering the melee. There's also no sense of progression and the combat system does not offer the amount of tactical options that even basic shooters tend to offer. As a result the game feels pretty monotonous compared to most first-person shooters. Oh yeah, and enemies tend to move in perfect silence and you sometimes just suddenly get hit in the back by an enemy who did not have decency to announce himself in any way - that just felt wrong and cheap.

What is interesting about the game is that you spend a lot of time just walking around but always aware that a psychotic hobo could be waiting in every corner. Between the fighting and exploring you will sometimes encounter small investigation mini games which sound cool at first but boil down to just looking for some tiny detail with a UV light or laser and then taking a picture of it. What could have been a great addition to the game is usually just boring and in the worst cases frustrating. It's like Batman but bad.

Anyway, for all the games shortcomings and cheap overall feel I enjoyed it a lot. It certainly stands out to this day with its take on first-person melee combat and constant hobo slaughter. And if anything its atmosphere is amazing.