I don't see why you'd have to be defensive about it, seems like a perfectly relatable reaction to the game.
Anyway, if you're a snob for that, I was one too. ;)

I guess I've had to defend my opinion on certain games so much that now I'm always in defensive mode when I criticise a highly popular game - I've actually just had a heated discussion about the game with a friend. Guess I should have expected that I'd find opinions more similar to mine on GOG, lol.

Also: I've now also beaten the Left Behind DLC and I have no serious complaints there. As a matter of fact the DLC automatically avoids many of the issues I have with the main game just by being short and focused and frankly I feel that the level design - while not mind-blowing - is better than in most areas in the main game.

Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis, Nov 6 (GOG)-If I thought Secret Files 1 was an average game, then sequel is a bit below average. Voice acting continues to be pretty bad and I think they replaced Nina's VA (for the worse too). Puzzles were pretty easy until the end. At that point I'm not sure if they actually got harder or I got bored and just wanted the game to end. The plot and locations felt really disjointed. Why were there cult members on a cruise ship? Were they just chasing the priest and if so why was he on a cruise ship? Why was Max conveniently in Indonesia with the cult? Why did the big bad feel the need to point out these weird plot holes at the end? So many questions with so few answers. The end sequence was also quite bad. Hmm maybe I'm convincing myself this game is actually well below average.

Full List

Ironically I played and finished the original Spyro just before the Reignited trilogy was announced and I do actually believe that it's one of the best games of its time even though I never got to play Spyro back in the day. :D

I'm not saying it was a bad game at all, I got the original disc and played it to end, but nothing much more than running around for jewels and I remember only a level that pose a serious challenge, the one with the mine cart. It was cute and casual and so accessible, but it's more "iconic" and popular than else. I mean that many that celebrate it nostalgically didn't really play more than the most popular games, and the general consensus on how it was one of the best games is conditioned by that. Why not Legacy of Kain? Why not Tenchu? :) Of course Spyro can be one of your favourite PSX games, but I think its popularity is exaggerated by people who haven't really played many PSX games. Many millennials who will say, ah the PSX, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Silent Hill! And it's always those few famous games. Like people saying that Harry Potter is THE BEST fantasy saga ever when it's the only one they have ever read. By the way I hated Silent Hill because of the loading times but I should try it again with an emulator now.

Well, I've been too lazy to actually post about the games I've beaten this year (other than updating the list in my first post here), but Hades deserves better than that. So yeah, I beat Hades which I bought during EGS halloween sale with a $10 off coupon. Fun game, fantastic writing and voice acting. By "beat it" I mean that I got to what feels like the end of the main plot, though there's still the plotlines of various NPCs that need to be resolved.

Eastshade (XB1X Game Pass)

Never heard of this game until it appeared this week on Game Pass. I'm glad I did learn of it, I was hooked immediately. The best indie/small studio game I've played this year easily. It's an open world, but not gigantic world, all about peaceful exploration and learning about people and their stories on the island you find yourself on. There is no combat and no animals trying to maul you, you cannot die as far as I know. You just explore a stunning world and do quests which are mostly based around painting, since that's what you are- you're an artist.
Whilst it's not technically an RPG (by most peoples definition), the game does have organic progression that helps you get around the island faster and get places you can't reach at first. So it's like a very light weight Zelda without fighting.

It's sounds boring, but it wasn't. It took me about 12 hours to fully do everything (except collect all the candles) and at the end I was wishing it kept going. The world looks great is fun to explore, the music is awesome, the acting is pretty good. The best part was how it ended, after you get home. A game that finishes and gives pretty much full disclosure. Try and get it on GOG, vote here:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/eastshade

And I just finished another Yakuza game: Yakuza 5. That makes it the sixth Yakuza game I've beaten in two years, I think.

I recently read up about it and curiously this one had a longer development cycle than earlier Yakuza games and was supposed to be "the next generation" of Yakuza games - it had a "new engine" and all sorts of other things. And... I just don't see it. It honestly felt like a pretty small step from Yakuza 4 for me. And I started playing it pretty soon after beating Yakuza 3 and 4 so I think I would have noticed if there had been some big sudden leap in tech or gameplay. And I think Yakuza 0 was also a much bigger improvement over Yakuza 5 than 5 was over 4.

Anyway, it follows the formula of Yakuza 4 quite precisely: you again have several playable characters whom you play in order. You start out as series protagonist Kiryu and then move on to other familiar characters as well as a new one - the structure is the same and also the skill system works the same (and I still think it's one of the worst in the series - plus it has a cap that you can easily reach and keeps you from unlocking everything in one playthrough which frankly pisses me off).

What's striking about this one is the number of locations here. While most entries in the series have Kamurocho (Tokyo) - which barely changes between games - plus one other location like Sotenbori (Osaka), in Yakuza 5 each character has an entire city to visit and one of them also has a bunch of other minor locations. However, the new cities feel pretty simple and small compared to the main locations of any other game I've played in the series.

What's interesting is that this time each character has a "sidestory": an optional story arc tied to a mini game or two - a pattern that those who have played Yakuza 0 or Kiwami 1 or 2 probably recognise from the club management and real estate mini games. And honestly, the scale of most of them is quite impressive. There's a taxi career that has you do highway racing, safely drive passengers around the city or just talk to them. There's a whole dance career thing including a custom battle system. And most impressively there's a hunting career where you crawl around a mountain hunting animals. Oh yeah, and baseball. Especially the hunting game overwhelmed me with its scale a bit and I maxed out each of these careers - which is why I spent almost 90 hours playing this game. The only other Yakuza game I played this much was 0. But in the end neither one of these games is all that impressive and I feel that the stuff in 0 and the Kiwami games was more polished.

Besides that it's same old. Walk around a city, get attacked, punch people's faces in. Talk to people, they send you on fetch quests, punch more faces. And frankly I don't feel that the fighting or the quests are all that great in this one. It's also once again a very easy game on normal difficulty and even the final boss can be defeated by spamming one attack + consuming an energy drink if you get low on health for some reason. If it weren't for the sidestories I would have been very bored by this one, I think.

Finally there's the story. It follows roughly the same pattern as any other entry in the series and I'd be lying if I said that I can still get totally excited about a Yakuza story. The aforementioned careers have made the story feel a bit different here but it's a similar kind of intrigue again with the same kinds of plot twists - some scenes feel copied and pasted over from earlier games. I sometimes feel like they only switch the names and faces of the bad guys between games. So, that sucks a bit. Plus the way the story is distributed not only over different characters but entirely different places, causes some serious pacing issues and that's why I took a long break from the game when I reached the final character. At that point it just really dragged and on. I'd really love to return to a more focused Yakuza game with a single protagonist or at least one where the stories are more elegantly intertwined (see Yakuza 0).

So... I guess I'm kinda tired of the series at this point but at the same time I feel this urge to just keep going as I still love the overall formula and the characters. I need help!

Oh yeah, and my main complaint is probably the same one I had about Yakuza 4: NOT ENOUGH MAJIMA! Even my wife, who couldn't care less about these games (or video games in general) loves that guy!

Borderlands 3: Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck (XSX)

The fourth story expansion. A shorter one, though it was a lot longer than the 3 hours that all the reviews on Steam are saying. To do everything took me more like 8 hours. It has a bad reputation, but I really enjoyed it. It more focused story wise. Similar to Claptastic Voyage, except this time you venture into the warped mind of Krieg and deal with both sides of his split personality- Sane Krieg and Batshit Crazy Krieg. You also learn how he got that way and basically the origins of the Pyscho's overall. So shorter and more focused on the story and less filler. My save is now over 120 hours, still on a single character and first play through. So buying the ultimate edition on 50% sale has turned out to be pretty good value for me.

Well, it sounds like you're down to just one more game, and then you can try the new one that just came out, which got really crazy and switched to a turn-based RPG style (and which seems to have irritated a number of fans, so they'll probably switch back to tradition really quick).

I had a run through Bruce Lee on the C64 for the first time in a while. It's an interesting game because it's so beloved even though it was very janky even in its own time. The running jump doesn't always work, you get hung up on random bits of the floor and walls, you can pass through certain walls...and on top of that, it's a game starring a famous martial artist in which the fighting is almost completely optional. I didn't beat down my enemies a single time during this run (although they did kill themselves on the traps a few times). Despite that, it's still something that's simple and compelling enough that you can pick it up and play it any time and have fun. I think it helps that it's pretty fast-moving - when you decide to just run across the screen, you really sprint full blast and your enemies chase you at the same speed. It's like a Road Runner cartoon.

Too many to mention here :P

PS4
Days Gone
Horizon Zero Dawn
The Order 1886
Call of duty Black Ops 3
Red Dead Redemption 2
The Last of Us Remastered
The Last of Us 2

Psvita
Persona 4 Golden

PC
Metro Exodus
Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition
Clive Barker's Undying
The Suffering
Gears of War 5
Vampyr

Thief 3: Deadly Shadows is despite bad reputation good game. Game itself is different in comparison with its predecessors. Story is interesting, game is most time quite enjoyable, graphics still looks good, …. best surprise for me was how good it sounds with EAX Advanced enabled. For a long time I did not have this opportunity. Apart from that, level environment is changing a lot, so it does not start to became boring.
On the other hand, game is extremely buggy, it is not easy to make it running, sometimes game control stuck, so I had to quick save and then immediately quick load… What leads me to another complain, game has very small city section and it is loading again and again another part of the city, so at the end it was enough stand and run, since guards cannot move from one city part to another…
I played it with Sneaky Upgrade and if there would be more fixes available, I could recommend this game.

The Quest: a great game that feels like the good old Might and Magic series. Hard to quit playing once you get into it. I finished the main quest and I just purchased the expansion.

Silent Hill 4: The Room
I loved the mystery, the atmosphere, the exploring, the creepy-yet-silly Japanese-style plot.
Basically the horror part in this survival-horror game. As usual, I'm not a fan of the "survival" part. It basically means: get better at it by repeating some parts over and over again. The game even saves over your last save game so you'd need to load an older one, repeat the part since then... if you want to see a different ending. Lame trick! I'll just watch the alternative endings on Youtube!

In general, I'm glad I played it!