Finished two games lately:
- Republique: The three first chapters are very good and I liked them very much. However chapter 4 was a bit different and was a bit of a letdown. Unfortunately, I did not liked the final chapter a lot and was happy to see the end. Still mostly an enjoyable game.
- Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death: A nice beat'-em all with an over the top cheesy story and dialogs. I liked it.

Full list here.

One easy way to get different ending is to keep silent the whole playthrough.
Just don't say anything until all dialogue options expire.

Freespace 2

FS2 was the first game I ever bought on GOG, almost exactly ten years ago. Back then I had just learned about the FSOpen Project and wanted to try that out. I had played the demo of FS1 back in the day (in 1998!) and had often heard how great FS2 was. Anyway, I got the game, installed FSOpen and started, of course, with the FS1 port, still with the old graphics and a mouse. When I was done with that I decided that I needed a joystick and a better PC before I could continue. Several years later, I finally got both, and... played the FSPort again, to get the best experience out of it. After that, I moved to different games (there were a lot I wanted to play on my new system), before starting Silent Threat Reborn, the expanded remake of the FS1 expansion. It was pretty good, and after that (I think it was around 2015), I finally wanted to play the FS2 campaign. I got to around one third of the campaign, when I got frustrated by the very difficult bonus missions you can choose to play at that time. Maybe I didn't realize that it would get easier again after that. In between all that, I also played some of "The Babylon Project", a standalone total conversion in the Babylon 5 universe.

Anyway, I recently decided to get back to FS2 and finally finished it. And, yeah, it was good. Not amazing, but good. I mean, it's an excellent space sim, where you fly around and shoot things. A lot. And not much else. So, most missions are going to be like, fly there, shoot this, protect that. The story, well, it's alright, but I thought the last third of the campaign was a bit of a letdown overall. There are also some missions inside a nebula, where you don't see shit. I didn't like these very much. Also, for some reason you never see the main ship you are stationed on during a mission, except in two set in the nebula, so you don't really see it at all.

So, what now? There are countless mod campaigns, but I guess most involve mainly more flying and shooting... well, I'll probably check out the Battlestar Galactica TC. Other than that, I don't know how much more FS2 I really need.

Finished Super Nantucket World. Was a pretty good troll hack, but there are a few issues with it.

1. The unnecessary use of vulgar language and genitalia, which is enough to keep me from recommending the hack to many people. (There's a swear word on the title screen, for example.)

2. While I didn't encounter it, there is a bug in the final level that can lock up the game, forcing a restart. (Fortunately, the game does save your progress each level.)

Just finished Éric Chahi's latest brainchild, Paper Beast, on PlayStation VR. Briefly put: I loved it.

I did not exactly know what to expect. The only review I had read was quite vague, it focused on the game being some life simulation with god game elements and I intentionally avoided any more information than that so the game would surprise me as much as possible (and I recommend you stop reading right now if you're already sold on the game but haven't gotten around to playing it yet).

From the first moments on the game is very bizarre. It's one of those cases where your first thought is "did I install the wrong game?". But soon enough you find yourself in those Roger Dean-esque landscapes inhabited by the equally surreal creatures that you expected. The game still broke most of my expectations but about fifteen minutes in I understood what this game really is - an almost exact blend of two of Chahi's earlier games: From Dust and Another World. But with a hint of two other games: Darwinia and The Last Guardian.

Like Another World the game puts you in an absolutely unreal world that works in its own weird ways - you must observe and learn. Like From Dust it contains advanced physics simulations which you will utilise to overcome various challenges. I can't stress enough how similar Paper Beast feels to those two games. The game's main big feature, however, have got to be the titular paper beasts. These bizarre creatures may not quite look living beings but their behaviour could not be any more real - seeing them for the first time made me a bit uncomfortable, like those videos of military robots that just move far too organically for a machine. Their procedural animation and behaviour make them about as alive as anything I have ever seen in a video game. I think the only thing that comes close is The Last Guardian but that one did not have the benefit of being a VR game.

The big question was of course what the actual game is like. And yeah, it's Another World meets From Dust. Even though the game has all these simulations it's in fact a fairly linear experience - one might even say that it's story-driven. You move from area to area and you grab stuff and move it around, affecting the world and the beasts - it's ultimately really a puzzle game. That may sound disappointing but on the contrary! My worry was that it would be a sandbox game without any clear goals and I would quickly feel like I'm wasting my time. Instead I got a very engaging and often highly emotional journey. And it is amazing how seamlessly the simulations are integrated into this obviously scripted series of events.

The problem is that, again, like in From Dust, this journey is pretty short. I only started yesterday and already beat it - the main portion lasts maybe 4-5 hours. I guess given the complexity of this kind of game it's just hard to create much content for it. Ultimately you get rewarded with a sandbox mode where you get to play around with the simulations "without any restrictions" - the problem being that the map in this mode is in fact very small and it does indeed feel more like a sandbox than a god sim as a result. And you unlock elements for this mode by hunting for collectables in the story mode but I'm not sure I'm willing to go through such a linear experience again just to get a few more tools in an aimless sandbox mode. I feel like I've interacted enough with these creatures in the story mode - even though I have a feeling that the simulation only truly shows what it can do in the sandbox.

As for the story... I have honestly no idea what it's about. It's one of those very artistic games where - just as you think that you're about to get to the bottom of things - something so random and weird will happen that you can't make any sense of it at all. Maybe there's some specific plot that I did not quite get but I'm inclined to believe that the game is really meant to be one of those vague artistic pieces.

Anyway, I enjoyed the game a lot (even though the PS4 version only has snap turning and teleport movement - two things that I hate in VR games) and honestly wish there were more content. I would have gladly gone through a few more levels, met a few more creatures, solved a few more problems... and I gladly would have made more sense of everything. But still: I feel that it was worth every penny and hope that it won't take another full decade until Chahi's next game.

31 Finished Mark's Life. It's a linear interactive fiction for Android made with Unity. It's currently free if you want to grab it. The b/w low fi digitalized graphics are nice. There is a touch of colour used to draw attention on some things. Gameplay is almost non existent. At first it might seem really clunky, and it is, but once one gets used to the interface it gets better and I felt complelled to go to the end of the episode. The story is pretty depressing. The main character is a student who moved to a different city trying to escape from himslef, but his nightmares follow him. He will meet some other troubled people. There are many manial everyday tasks, like cooking and taking a shower, conveying the dullness of the protagonist life. The interface will always tell you what to do and where to go. I enjoyed playing it in Spanish so I could learn a little. People who have played it in English complain about the bad grammar, I can't tell if the Spanish text was well written or not. The same author has made other games that are very cheap. I might get them just as an excuse to learn some Spanish - sadly, Mark's Life had no German, I'm not sure about the others. It can get tedious but I was listening to some nice music, with the game sound turned off. I would avoid it if you are loking for any gameplay or choices or don't want to deal with negative situations and thoughts. Overall I had a nice experience with it as a language learning tool, but I can't recommend it to "gamers". Nonetheless it has favourable reviews, and it might be something you might enjoy on your phone. You can use a controller, but it seems overkill for this title, and move using your phone gyroscope, which made the long walks for the errands somewhat more endurable. I wish one could move faster but it adds up to some immersion in the suffocating life of Mark. The writing is ok and tries to be mature.
If you want to give it a try:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.THIRTEENDAYS.MarksLife&hl=en_US
And you really put that love in your words, your post made me more interested in it. Maybe one day I can play it too. It looks a beautiful and creative thing and I like short games. It must feel like being in a Dalì's painting.

Finished the little first chapter of Winterlore. It's a puzzle game about Romanian witchery. The most interesting thing is interacting with old traditional items. It's currently free on Google Play. I didn't mind the Android version at all. You can also get it on Itch.

-Chasm
-Hades (kind of). I completed my first run after 20 hours (with the fists... and god mode), on the debut of the game's exit from early access no less. I'll play some other stuff before I attempt another.

Haha, I never expect anyone to actually read my posts in this thread, especially considering how long they always are. Thanks for that! And yeah, I think the Dali comparison is actually pretty on point. :)

I presume you mean because it's VR-only? If so: you're in luck! Just one day after I beat it they announced a patch that will make the PC version work without VR. It's to be released on October 20th. Here's a link to the announcement on Chahi's Twitter profile.

I'm sure the game is more intense in VR but while playing it I honestly wondered why they made it a VR-exclusive - the gameplay should work just fine with mouse and keyboard and the game has a lot going for it either way.


Aaaanyway...

Next "game" down. This time I finished the Curse of the Pharaohs DLC for Assassin's Creed: Origins and thus I'm closing this chapter for good (although I'm seductively close to getting a platinum trophy here).

I never was a big fan of AC Origins and this DLC has reminded me why. The gameplay is very shallow and repetitive, Bayek is an utterly boring protagonist and the "quests" are just terrible and don't quite work with the wannabe-RPG open world in my opinion.

This DLC stands out in that it's very centred on mythology - the plot is actually about a curse plaguing Thebes that makes some mythical creatures appear out of nowhere and slaughter innocent people. Of course it's up to us to figure out what's actually going on and put an end to it - and of course there's a "perfectly reasonable" explanation which, to be honest, is executed very half-assedly as far as I'm concerned.

This DLC has one thing going for it and it's the fact that you can visit "the afterlife". I thought it would be just a part of the DLC's main map but nope: from there you can actually reach four mythical locations that have their own small map each. It's an interesting concept and two of those maps were genuinely impressive from an artistic standpoint. I presume they were directly based on what we know about ancient Egyptian beliefs and it's kinda beautiful to see those come to life. Sadly they get dragged down by terrible quest lines and following the exact same patterns as everything else in the game. I actually stumbled upon them before I should which only made things worse as Bayek did not even acknowledge that he just GOT INTO THE FRIGGIN' AFTERLIFE WITHOUT DYING (or much effort, as a matter of fact). Not that he gives much of a shit even when the story actually sends him there.

To be fair, it's actually quality DLC with an impressive amount of content - but it's still AC Origins. No more, no less.

So far, these are the games I completed in 2020:

1. Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition
2. Black Widow
3. Crystal Castles
4. Wishing Sarah
5. Bravely Default
6. Ever Oasis
7. Solatorobo
8. Celeste
9. Mary Skelter 2
10. Mary Skelter: Nightmares
11. Momodora
12. Momodora II
13. Momodora III
14. Momodora Reverie Under the Moonlight
15. Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
16. River City Girls
17. The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince
18. A2Be - A Science Fiction Narrative
19. Balconing Simulator 2020
20. Bunny Swordmaster Story
21. Dusk Child
22. Elephant in the Room
23. Etherborn
24. Final Fantasy VII
25. Grey-Box Testing
26. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R
27. Helltaker
28. Hitchhiker
29. Kawaii Deathu Desu
30. Kimmy
31. Knight Club
32. LiEat
33. Minoria
34. Phoenotopia (flash version)
35. Quiet City
36. Tanglewood
37. The Deed
38. THOR.N
39. Unparallel
40. Wake Up
41. Wonder Boy in Monster World
42. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
43. Final Fantasy II (PSP)

Life is Strange: Before the Storm - Deluxe Edition tries to be similar as possible to original game, but it is not the same experience. It has it's up and down, same as Max and Chloe's adventure, but this time story is much deeper, including bonus episode it makes sense and adds a lot of story background. To be honest story touched me more, but I must give only three stars, one less in comparison to original story. I decided that way, because all stories, main and all side stories are extremely sad. I understand, that authors had limits, since they create story about what happened 5 years before, but they did not try show anything happy in my point of view. Max and Chloe bonus episode make it even worse… I would like to see something what make me feel better.

Btw. it was better, that Chloe cannot return in time and you must be careful what you do, but at the end it did not change anything.

I actually enjoy reading your "walls of text" too, if I have the time. :-)

Keep'em coming!

Okay, probably not actually worth a "game finished" post but I DID end up doing a platinum trophy in Assassin's Origins - which is ironic since it's the biggest game where I ever got one and I don't even like the game much. It just so happened that rather little work was left to do after my main playthrough. However, three asshole trophies were left and lemme tell you their story.

One was a trophy for witnessing a rain of scarabs in the desert. It's a trivial trophy: just walk around the desert and you start seeing things (including a burning bush - I'm surprised Ubisoft didn't get lets of shit from Jews and Christians alike since it's implied that one of the most important biblical themes is just the result of the human mind playing tricks from overheating / dehydration). Anyway, the "fun" part of this trophy is that the visions you get in the desert are entirely random. I had already spent a significant amount of time in the desert during my playthrough but just never got this particular vision. I guess I spent another 30 minutes walking around the desert for this trophy before I said "screw it" and just put a remote on my controller so Bayek would just keep walking forward on his own while I drank some coffee and read the news on my phone. And sure enough, after 10-15 minutes of doing nothing I got the trophy.

The second one was for completing all locations on the map. ALL LOCATIONS ON THE MAP. That's a lot. But since I have a bit of OCD I had been clearing locations throughout the map as I go during my original playthrough. It seemed like only a single camp was left to do. Awesome! So I cleared it and... nothing. Well shit. I spent about 20 minutes staring at the map, scrolling around it and I just couldn't find anything. And there's NOT ONE TOOL in the game that would make this process easier, not even some counters per province or anything like that. So I began researching it online and did not find any good hints. I found a checklist, though, and started going through all locations in the game one by one, checking them on my phone. And eventually I found it. A golden question mark hiding in front of a golden background. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. So I finally went there, looted that last closed chest in all of Egypt and sure enough, I got the trophy.

Finally there was the trophy for killing 30 guys by putting them on fire via the red vases holding oil which are scattered throughout the game world. So somebody at Ubisoft thought "damn, we have this cool feature and nobody's using it - let's make a trophy so they will!". And not once, not three times - thirty friggin' times! I can't stress enough how unnatural it is to kill enemies this way in the game. For one, for a long time you won't even have a bow that can shoot burning arrows - the only way is to first put them on fire using a torch or something. Then enemies must happen to stand really close to the vases and then you must decide to shoot that vase and hope that it will kill that guy instead of just - oh, I don't know - shoot at the guy in his head and be done with it. And even if they catch fire there's often no guarantee that it will actually kill them. So it's just not something that will happen naturally and as it turns out it's a PITA even if you try to actively go for it. So I followed some advice from the internet and found a spot where during the night there's always four guards sleeping in a tent - and they respawn if you die. So what I did is I snuck into the camp every night, put those vases next to the sleeping guards and then let them wake up as they burn to their death - and then join them. I had to do this over and over until I got the 30 kills. I swear to you, I can still see their charred bodies and hear their screams in my sleep. Oh yeah, and it was perhaps the third time in the game that I used the "dusk and dawn" feature that allows you to quickly advance time.

Anyway, kids: that's the story of how not to make achievements / trophies.

Besides that I "finished" the Discovery Tour DLC, the game's educational mode that turns Origins into an interactive museum tour. I did all the tours required by the trophies and then some because it was very interesting indeed. I guess I'm equally impressed and disappointed. On one hand it's quite professional and indeed educational. All tours are marked on a map, you can just walk up to them like you would to a mission or fast travel to either one - and then you get an actual tour with a bunch of stations and professional narration and the option to view some photos. I have honestly great respect for Ubisoft doing this and hope that they will keep doing that kind of stuff.

I'm insofar disappointed, though, that I feel that Ubisoft did only a fraction of what they could. They did not really utilise the medium - it would have been so much more effective to give the player some basic tasks. E.g. don't just show the player farmers working the fields while some narration pays - let the player go through the process of actually working a field. I don't even mean like a full detailed simulation - but just, you know, let him work the procedure by going from object to object and pressing the use button which triggers the corresponding animation, stuff like that. I realise that it would have been a lot more expensive but it also would have made this mode so much more effective and fun as an educational tool. Still: I'm super glad they did this.

Anyway, now I'm indeed done with Origins for good unless I'm gonna have kids and they're gonna ask me what life was like in Ancient Egypt.

System Shock Enhanced Edition. I think the main things it adds to the original game are the mouselook (which was in the Portable version, IIRC), and support for widescreen and higher resolutions, along with neat touches like portraits from the Mac version. For the most part it works really well, although I did occasionally have framerate hitches of which I could never figure out the cause. At least it never got me killed, though. The mouselook works great. You just push a button to switch between it and classic controls, which takes most of the sting out of the much-lamented control scheme. I never really held the controls against the game too much, but they did have the effect of making you feel more like you were controlling a mech shaped like a human rather than a person. All in all, I would say this is a great example of taking a classic game and making it the best version of itself, which I much prefer to the remakes trend. (I've tried to get interested in the Night Dive remake but I'm just...not.)

The game itself holds up great. I would have to replay the second one to refresh my memory but I've generally thought the original was just a bit better. I think it has better pacing, it's more claustrophobic even in sections in which you'd think that wouldn't be true, and I think the design is more elegant than SS2's "RPG elements" concept. The first game is also an "RPG", but instead of XP or explicitly levelling up in a gamey way, your "level" is represented by you having superior stuff and greater knowledge of how to use it. In that sense, it's more like STALKER than most other games.

The level design hits the sweet spot in balancing a sense of Doom-like random complication with "hey, this is kind of like a real place with an actual purpose". Some areas are all tight, many-cornered hallways, but then you have stuff like the massively vertical level 8. Every level has a distinct personality and just as you might start getting bored with one, you get to the next one and taste a new flavor.

The biggest flaw IMO is that cyberspace still isn't very much fun, and although I can see the logic of making it the setting for the final battle, it still just feels like you're blundering into and shooting random stuff and hoping it quietly vanishes. You'd think SHODAN would at least be shit-talking you the whole time or something but it's still just blah. I like the abstract graphics but I never feel like I'm getting the rush that you should feel from cyberspace in a cyberpunk game (the Descent-like approach they just previewed for the remake doesn't quite get there, either...).