Some freakish Giger thing like unreleased Scorn game, with horror elements and stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5iRmZPQ3VA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlXtvymTdV0

The released game is more like a philosophical drama in deep underwater.

Wolfenstein The New Order

I was looking forward to this game from the moment it was announced. Actually, I had to have seen the trailer quite a few times. I enjoy Wolf 3D a good bit and play it every here and again. RTCW is just one of my favorite FPSs not to mention games in general. That having been said, I hated this game. Hate may seem like a strong word but only having sporadic fun with it and enjoying no level clear through I think that a severe dislike if nothing else is appropriate. I'm just gonna whine about what I did not like a little bit and the only thing I have to say about the setting, story, plot, etc. is that it felt kind of immature and it made me feel silly when it obviously wanted me to consider the seriousness of the situation. I'll blame execution for this because the whole directional style to the briefings rubbed me the wrong way for whatever reason.

Main thing I did not like was that the game did not play like a good old school shooter nor like a more retro revival kind of action romp. Starters, your guns get taken away from you constantly or swapped out for something else. I did not like the gun play in this one either, the feedback and power to them reminded me of the lousy guns you come across in Far Cry 2 and 3. They don't have a nice bassy sound to them (playing on some pretty good speakers) not one of them felt good to shoot. With all the freaking bullet sponge baddies you come across I think they were suffering more injuries from the harsh language I was tossing at the screen than the guns in this game. Speaking of bullet sponges, I may well be playing the game incorrectly but I felt like many of the enemies took several magazines to kill. I get that if you were not using the stupid electric gun that your results against some enemies would be less than ideal but you don't get the rocket launcher until pretty late in the game either so your options for dealing with anything tougher than the runty mooks are kinda limited. Level design did not impress me at any point and none of the levels felt very special (the moon sucked, so I suppose that one was). The best I can say about the levels is that the first one reminded me of the first Resistance game. Actually, generally what I liked about the game was when I was reminded about better games. The weapon wheel felt dumb (four of your freaking slots are akimbo slots of weapons you otherwise have and the only times I used them on purpose was when one of those bullet sponges came up) and is the worst weapon wheel I have ever used barring Far Cry 3 (better handled ones are Shadow Warrior 2, Resistance, Resistance 3). BJ also does not hold all that much ammo for the assault rifles, which feel terrible akimbo but are still more useful than the shotgun generally was. Nothing felt much stupider than using two marksman rifles at a time, except maybe realizing just how not that many weapons there were in this game. The weapon upgrades were sporadic and not uniformly notable, only a few of the guns seeming to get them. The most useful gun is that electric gun which, surprise surprise, it was also one of the worst feeling; likewise it gets the most upgrades. Lastly, the levels were not particularly well balanced. You either feel like the enemies are mobbing you or they are too few to have a satisfying fire fight. Another issue with the levels were the forced stealth-ish levels and the monotonous crap ones (go grab this, bring me that, let's take all of your guns away and rescue X). And, when stealth is not forced on you it feels lame (I traditionally do not take stealth routes if they are optional), the only times I did this straight was when I found the mobbing too bad in certain segments where I just skipped them via stealth.

I'll stop talking now, I had almost no fun with this game and it is pretty disappointing.

Edit: I forgot, when I looked at the reviews of this game it baffled me to see so many people give the game bad scores on here because of tech issues. I had no crashes, never felt the loading screens lasted especially long, and this is the version I bought first day it was available on GOG without any updates that I would have done (I don't do Galaxy). System used has an i3-9100F, 16GB of RAM, Gigabyte GTX 1070, and a 1TB black WD HDD on Windows 10. My only issue was the general look of the game was kinda bad and it had asset streaming issues (or something, it's kinda hard for me to articulate). So, take my one star rating as I did not this game at all but it was technically solid.

I have only briefly played the game but I was instantly off-put by its console nature. OK, Wolf 3D came out in 1992 so one can't expect similar gameplay from a game released relatively recently, but The New Order plays just like any other streamlined console shooter that I have tried with the same game standard ingredients. Also, perhaps it's due to running the game in linux, but the mouse movement seems awkward and a bit sluggish - like actually holding a heavy gun in hands. I prefer more fast-paced action to be honest, so perhaps I'll just revisit one of the shooters from the 90ies.

I don't like 90s FPS games. I enjoyed TNO, unexpectedly.

Final Fantasy XV (XB1X)

The Royal Edition was added to Game Pass this month. The only other FF I've ever played is the very first one on the NES. So I've played the first and the most recent FF games now, a lot has changed. I actually didn't expect to like this game, I just expected it to be over linear and full of cinematics with no gameplay. Well, despite the game having some annoyances, I really liked it from very first minutes.

First of all it's just so refreshing to play a fantasy game that is not set in a medieval styled Tolkien inspired world, nor a post apocalyptic wasteland for a change. A modern fantasy world where you get places by driving a car and have a phone. The world for this game is awesome, both visually and the way you traverse it.
You embark on what feels like a real journey with your closest friends, a road trip.
Combat and other mechanics are serviceable, but nothing ground breaking, feeling closest to a Xenoblade game but without as much depth to the systems. There are lot of side quests to optionally do, some have really great rewards like modifying your car into something different or tie ins to other FF games.
The game is full of little details that make a difference. Like how one of the characters takes photos of the journey and you review and select which ones to keep each time you camp or stay at a hotel. Then, after finishing the game, instead of using developer art during the credits- the game backdrops the credits with your own photos. The game is full of little things like that and small fan service moments- lots of which probably went over my head when they referred to other FF games.
I liked how it all went together to make the whole, but there were a few issues...

The game had just a few minor annoyances. Like how your party members soon run out of banter and then just repeat the same lines over and over, by the mid point of the game it's getting a bit grating. That's hardly game breaking though, and classic games like Baldurs Gate had the same issue, many party based games suffer the same thing.
The biggest problem was the pacing of the game took a dive in chapter 13, right near the end. Most of the game up until then was open world exploration with optional questing, combined with linear story sections, and party bonding moments- it balanced out well. But chapter 13 became a boring dungeon slog that just never seemed to want to end. It wasn't challenging, it wasn't interesting and ended going on for like 3 hours- 3 hours of flipping switches and upgrading key cards. By far the games lowest point.

Despite a few little problems, the game was awesome overall. Looking forward to the other FF games coming to Game Pass through the year (VII- XV, minus the 2 MMO's are all coming).

Mass Effect 3

IMO, the best one of the trilogy.
Now, should I give Andromeda a chance, or play pick something else? Maybe Jade Empire?

Madness and Magic (NWN module)

Review at the Vault

Wolfenstein Youngblood (XB1X)

A game with a terrible reputation that, in reality, not many have played. I found it a really fun spin off from the main series. It ran really well, except for some slight stuttering in a few cutscenes near the end. I think it looked better than Wolfenstein 2 New Colossus as well. I played it all solo. You select either of the Blazkowicz twin daughters- Jess or Soph, whilst the other provides AI support. I liked the characters, especially the banter between them and how they act like what they are- typical young adolescent girls. Too bad they run out of dialogue and start repeating banter just a bit much.

What I liked best is the gunplay, it is very fast paced and you have a few tools that are surprisingly powerful if you learn to use the. The throwing weapon if upgraded is deadly. The cloaking ability is effective if upgraded. Most people don't like the level design, but I did. The game had a lot of input from Arkane and it shows. The levels have many ways to bypass strong enemy positions and open shortcuts, as long as you look for them. The game is mission based, not level based, which seems to get many peoples noses out of joint as well. But I like it. The game had plentiful checkpointing, plus an extra life system as well.

Only thing that really annoyed me towards the end was the amount of the big heavy bullet sponge enemies. However you can usually just cloak past them or even just run past them if you want to avoid them entirely- they are only usually compulsory as story bosses, and they are tough to bring down.

Anyway, it was much better than expected and it's not very long. It's on Game Pass and was definitely worth the nothing I paid.

Blackwell Deception

I liked it better than convergence. It's a bit longer than the previous games, and that's a good thing. What I don't like: hiding content behind credits!

Side note: it's double the resolution compared to the previous instalments, but the configuration program doesn't reflect that.
edit: same thing for Epiphany.

Good, now go back and do all the other choice paths(I don't mean the endings). ;)

If you play andromeda be prepared for weird facial animations(on some characters), meh voices(on some like Director Tann), and some other things.

Also damned unlivable zones(need to make them livable) on some planets make a comeback. From what i've played it is fun enough, though. :)

Lol...also congrats for achieving the impossible. ;)

Shadow Tower Ordeal (NWN module)

Review at the Vault

Just beat Prototype on PS4. I first bought the game in 2009 or 2010 for PC but by the time I tried to play it, the installer would always fail. I then gave the PS3 version a try after beating Infamous 2 and longing for something similar but was very disappointed. I heard that Prototype 2 is a much better game, though, so I bought both Prototype games in a bundle for PS4 recently and really wanted to beat the first one before playing the supposedly better sequel.

So, it's a sandbox game where you play a superpowered guy named Alex Mercer who has more in common with The Thing than Superman. Due to a viral outbreak his body is transformed, Manhattan is put in lock down, the government wants to kill him and to cover everything up - and on top of that a zombie outbreak happens. Something I wasn't even aware of when I first played the game: it was released just a month or two after Infamous, which has a very similar premise and is just a much better game in every possible way, as far as I'm concerned.

The thing is: Prototype feels pretty darn cheap in almost all regards. It wasn't pretty even when it was released but generally, it feels like the underlying tech wasn't meant for this kind of gameplay. Controls and collisions just lack precision and the scale is kinda off - like when you zoom in all the way in an RTS game and it obviously just doesn't look like an action game. You can climb and glide freely around the city but it's nothing like the parkour stuff introduced by Assassin's Creed two years earlier - here you can just run around walls of skyscrapers which are generally perfectly flat without any geometric detail which often makes the game look like a PS2 game. Then there's issues like the game lacking stuff like invincibility frames (you often suffer a lot of damage during long animations), the lock-on being utterly wonky, the character being generally unresponsive and many of the mechanics being extremely abstract and gamey (e.g. being able to stealthily "consume" a human in plain sight just because you managed to press the button in that split second that nobody had line of sight to you).

HOWEVER, Prototype is also game that is bigger than the sum of its parts. Each individual part may be crude but the overall experience is pretty fun and unique. The game totally succeeds at making you feel like that elusive and utterly dangerous monster that the government is making you out to be. Alex is a pretty terrifying cold fella driven by revenge and his powers are quite destructive and visually disgusting. You will quickly develop a total disregard for the lives of the common folk as you massacre the military and monsters with giant claws or tentacles and whatnot and it's quite amazing how you can seamlessly switch between total devastation and evasion by running up skyscrapers and assuming the form of military personnel or the most generic pedestrian. Despite all the botched jumps, chaotic difficulty curve and optional missions that make no sense whatsoever I actually enjoyed the game a lot. There's just something ridiculously cool about grabbing a helicopter with a tentacle, pulling yourself up, slaughtering the pilot and then destroying a military base with a barrage of rockets.

Also: while the story isn't too original and the cutscenes feel kinda cheap and rushed (mostly due to really weird editing), I actually did care about the content. I really wanted to get to the bottom of the big conspiracy and see how things will unfold. You also get a lot of background information by "consuming" people and accessing their memories, which appear in the form of brief flashy montages of still pictures, and - curiously - unlike the audiologs and whatnot in many other games I actually did pay attention to this stuff. The thing is that each of these flashbacks provides one interesting fact that establishes something meaningful about the world or fills gaps in the main story. However, I feel that the Alex that you play as is not at all the character they made him out to be in the cutscenes. Even though they show that his own sister is terrified of what he has become, the cutscenes give him some fairly noble motivation even though it's a game where it's literally impossible to slash your way through a zombie horde or commandeer a tank without killing thousands of civilians. Not to mention that Alex recovers health by consuming people and random pedestrians are a very convenient food source. So things don't quite add up but I still enjoyed the story and world a lot and felt quite satisfied by the time the credits rolled.

I should also mention: the PS4 port is pretty lazy. It appears that they only increased the resolution, the game now runs at a higher and perfectly stable framerate and all the military radio communication plays through the Dualshock 4's speaker. That's pretty bad for a game that wasn't pretty to begin with.

Also: the game is pretty short. I really didn't rush through it, did a lot of optional challenges and generally took my time and I still beat it in like eleven hours. I had no idea I was this close to the ending when I approached the game the first time. However, after heaving finished too many far too long games over the last couple of months I'm perfectly satisfied with this length.

Anyway, all in all I enjoyed the game but now I've played Prototype 2 for a few hours and holy shit, what an improvement!

- The Last Of Us
- Yomawari
- Journey