Ultima 1 also allows you to gain HP in the same manner.

Ultima 1 is odd in that the usual rule about what to do first doesn't apply. You would typically expect, in an RPG of that type, that you want to lo;; enemies on the overworld to level up before going into a dungeon, but that's not the case in Ultima 1.

Going back to Akalabeth, if you want to learn how to manipulate the random number generator of a game, Akalabeth is a good choice. The random seed is chosen by the player (it's the lucky number), and the RNG only advances when you do something.

By the way, have you noticed there's no healing in the usual sense, as there's no maximum HP stat?

Still need to try out that game (it's already in my library).

Honestly, it feels more like food or gold to me. Experience doe not (usually) decrease during normal gameplay, while HP in early Ultima does.

(In fact, XP draining that isn't level draining is quite rare; I only remember seeing this in Zelda 2 (non-JP).)

I don't know which games are finished in 2022. Because I'm a player of endless games. Endless experiences appeal to us because they represent our capacity as humans for infinite growth. Whether on a strictly skill-based level or holding a digital representation of this growth, endless games add another element to gaming that we value so much – that of progress. That is why I like to play games like cooking games. These games help me build my culinary skills as well as time management skills.

Finished a few one lately:
- 06/18 - The Dream Machine: Chapter 4: An ok point'n click with a few odd puzzles but great graphics and story.
- 06/21 - Freddy Pharkas: A good point'n click but it aged. Puzzles are mostly difficult because objects are difficult to see but the story is good, the graphics too (for its time) and the intro is excellent.
- 06/21 - Interactivity - The Interactive Experience: Not much to say about this one. First person view, you visit some kind of museum and explore a bit. Short but not very interesting. Got it from an itch.io bundle.
- 06/27 - Supreme League of Patriots - Episode 1: A Patriot is Born: An average point'n click with lots of humor but average puzzles, clunky user interface and dated animation. It's ok though.
- 07/08 - Supreme League of Patriots - Episode 2: Patriot Frames: Same as episode 1.
- 07/09 - Heavy Rain: A very good narrative game with QTEs. Story and characters are very good except for a slow start. There were a few cameras issues as well as problems with my XBOX controller so I had to play with keyboard and mouse which is a bit less practical. A very good Quantic Dream, better that Fahrenheit.


Full list here.

God of War 4 is easily my best of this year, Im so mad I almost forgot it. Best debut, Deathloop.

Quantum Break

This is a bit of an odd beast ... I'd compare it to Remember Me, in that both are bold and stylish titles full of original concepts but also rather flawed in execution and therefor missing the mark of truly great games. You want to love them and yet can't really look past their failings and frustrations.

What I liked about Quantum Break was the cinematic presentation, that it featured actors like Aidan Gillen (one of my favorites in GoT), Lance Reddick, Shawn Ashmore and Dominic Monaghan, who lent the game characters their faces and voices in addition to playing them in the accompanying TV show episodes, which I quite liked as well. I thought it was pretty awesome how they mixed videogame and real live action in a way that felt completely natural - there were no great discrepancies between the two, it all fit, what you saw in the show mirrored what you saw in the game and vice versa. The whole setting, locations, costumes and décor, was quite memorable and perfectly modeled in game and show. Special effects were cool, too, and while the TV show used them sparingly, to remain credible and not look cheap, the game version could go nuts with them, and since both versions were so close to each other, the realism of the live action caused the in-game results to be all the more impressive and immersive.

The story itself was nice enough; it did not really wow me anymore since I've already consumed so many time travel stories by now and also rather recently, including games like Time Shift (which predates QB) and TV series like Twelve Monkeys (contemporary) and DARK (which came after QB). But it still brought some unique ideas to the table. Like with all time travel stories you really have to suspend your disbelief to make sense of it, but I guess in its own logic it still worked well enough. I wasn't truly captivated by it, but entertained nevertheless.

The action gameplay was your average cover shooter with superpowers. It was a bit simple and limited in that you could only ever carry three weapons, your pistol slot always had unlimited ammunition and in shootouts there was always a backpack with ammo lying around somewhere that allowed you to refill your other weapons unlimited times. No healthbar, just screen effects on getting hurt and then autohealing after a short while of not getting hit or when using your Time Shield. And there were only few different types of enemies and most of them posed no real challenge. Which meant that combat was pretty easy on Normal, I felt almost invincible. Not that I'd complain - I actually played it with a gamepad and still didn't have much trouble lining headshots (not surprising, seeing that it was made with Microsoft's Xbox One in mind), and even when I was a bad shot and just fired indiscriminately, it didn't really put me in danger much.

I did die several times during my playthrough though, and that was often due to bullshit moves by the game, like stuttering environmental hazards when they first appeared or when I thought I had halted them with my time powers and yet they collapsed on me regardless. There is also one more dangerous type of opponent that you can only kill by getting behind him and you first have to figure that out and then execute it, which wasn't quite as easy and a bit tedious. And last but not least, the boss fight at the end was quite terrible as well, even considering that I dislike boss fights in general. It consisted of two waves of normal enemies - easy enough - but each time after their defeat the boss would drop a bomb on you that you could only survive by standing in the opposite corner farthest away from him, which changed every time, and I found it really hard to judge which corner that would be or get there in time, so it felt pretty random and unfair, and after a while I was bored repeating the fights with the waves over and over again just to die an instant death for being at the wrong place at the wrong time when I had almost made it. So I just watched the ending on Youtube and I don't regret it.

(to be continued in the next post)

(Quantum Break review part 2)

That being said, I felt the combat was not really the main focus of the game, just some short, locally confined arena action scenes strewn in as a diversion from all the heavy storytelling, and I would have been fine with that if all the storytelling would have been cinematic and well paced. I was even fine with the very unusual and risky idea that you have to watch whole TV show episodes (up to 25 minutes?) between the different acts of the game instead of it just letting you play - I think many other gamers would (and did) hate it, and I actually enjoyed it. However, my biggest criticism of the game regards the parts when you are not playing an average easy cover shooter and not watching cutscenes or TV show episodes relating to the main story. In these parts you just have to move, find a way from point a to point B, maybe do some light platforming and puzzle solving on the way, which is all fine, but there is also this element of hunting for collectibles, and narrative collectibles on top of it, as well as ability upgrade collectibles, so both not something that you would be inclined to ignore. Your time vision allows you to spot if any are near and where they are, and that's how you find them, by constantly pressing the time vision button to highlight interactive objects in the environment, which I already found pretty distracting in itself.

But worse, most of the narrative collectibles are long e-mail exchanges or other background lore to read through, real walls of text that are not voiced, so you have the choice to either leave them unread, at the risk of missing out on some important parts of the story, or interrupt the gameplay, stand still and read for a few minutes. Other interactive objects are radios and TV screens, Remedy's specialty, and they also force you to stay put in front of them if you want to watch or listen the whole thing. In hindsight, none of them, except maybe one trailer in the beginning, were really as entertaining as the show in Max Payne though. This hunting for narrative (and a few upgrade points) collectibles really ruined the pace of game and main story for me. It's a common gameplay mechanic in similar titles, sadly, but I don't really understand the decision to put something like that in any linear story-driven game where the plot suggests that time is of the essence, yet the players are encouraged to take their time and explore the environment for otherwise missable collectibles instead. IMO collectibles are really more suited for open world and exploration games and they disrupt the flow of games like QB, especially if important story details are hidden in them or your ability uogrades depend on them, so that you're made to feel like you're missing out if you don't go after them.

And there are often characters accompanying you, who will keep telling you to follow them and not waste time, all the while waiting patiently for you to finish your collectible hunting. Sometimes they will continue to talk to you or others, regardless if you're close to them or not, so when you go off exploring, you might also miss parts of their dialogue unless you return to them and listen patiently until it's over, as the sound of their voice fades when you move too far away from them, just like the sound of TV and radio intermissions. One more thing to interrupt the gameplay and keep you standing in place. Apart from that, you can actually miss minor parts of the main story and the game will act as if you didn't. Maybe it was just at that one spot, but while I had a clear task to go to search someone at their office, I went off exploring, approached a door and the main character said aloud something along the lines of "I can't leave here before I'm done", so I thought, ok, they game won't let me go anywhere I'm not supposed to go anyway, so no harm in at least trying this door before I go where it wants me to be. But no, it let me go through the door, activated a new chapter and saved the game at this checkpoint, with no way for me to go back and finish my objective from the last chapter, apart from restarting the whole level. It just acted as if I had already done what I was supposed to do.

The checkpoint system is another of my gripes, btw. Most of the times I had no issues with it, because the game was easy enough, but on the few occasions when I died, it could get a bit frustrating because either intentionally or due to the game not saving correctly, I was transported to a checkpoint quite a bit before the spot where I died and had to repeat tedious stuff to get back to where I was before. Repeating cutscenes every time after dying was no fun either, but thankfully they had a skip button.

All in all, I really can't say whether I liked QB or not. I applaud Remedy for their courage to do something different and special, with the actors and TV show episodes, and also, what I didn't talk about yet, the interludes between the acts where you get to make choices from the point of view of the main character's opponent. That was an original idea as well. I liked the setting and even the story would be decent with a better pacing, if so much of the storytelling wouldn't rely on players reading through walls of text on the side. I think there was potential for a really good game in there. But I felt the gameplay was kind of flawed to a point where I caught myself thinking whether in the end this wouldn't have been better as a movie or series in the first place, instead of trying to be a game as well. Maybe an interactive movie/series where you get to make choices. Of course, you couldn't have had the synergy between game world and TV show world then, they couldn't have done a lot of things they do in the game or it would have been more difficult to do it with real live action at least. But for this to be a great game as well, not just a creative media experiment, they should have paid more attention to the pacing, put more thought into making it flow and using the actual strengths of the medium, which are not found in basic cover shooter gameplay, frustrating checkpoint placements and instant death mechanics, nor in forced collectible hunting, making players passively watch or stand in place while reading or listening all the time. There is one more element to the game that allows you to go back, make different choices and replay sections of the game, but with my overall experience of the game, I don't really feel like doing that anymore. Not sure if I'm missing out on much because of that or not.

Just beat The Last Guardian and I'm so glad I finally did.

The game has Fumito Ueda written all over it and similarities to Shadow of the Colossus and especially Ico are instantly obvious. Surreal grey ruinous environments, a general atmosphere of melancholy with emotionally intense moments, a slow pace and heavy unresponsive movement, a simple story told in a cryptic manner... and obviously it's again about the bond between two characters.

The player assumes the role of a boy who awakens trapped in a cave next to a massive legendary beast known as a trico. These creatures are said to devour children and it is indeed pretty terrifying at first. It is hardly a spoiler that the boy nurtures the beast and an ever-growing bond develops between them and they soon find themselves working together to escape this place (it's even made clear by the game's box art). That escape turns out to be a really long journey and an adventure of epic proportions with many challenges to overcome and mysteries to uncover. That's about all I am willing to say about the story.

There are obvious parallels to Ico and a few other "escort" games like Sands of Time in that it's a 3D platformer where you're travelling with an AI-controlled companion, with both characters depending on each other. Yeah, there's jumping and climbing and pushing and carrying stuff and the biggest challenges are environmental puzzles. Where The Last Guardian differs from all those games (or any game I've ever played, for that matter) is that it feels less "mechanical" than either one of those. You're not travelling with a simple puppet who just follows you around and is scripted to instantly do certain things when you've figured out your part. Yeah, you're smarter than the trico and (most of the time) it's up to you to figure things out but the developers did everything they could to make the trico appear like a living, thinking and feeling creature.

When I first played the game back in 2017 or so it was the game that made me feel like I'm playing something "next gen", something I had never seen and may not have been possible before. It looks like a PS3 game and it controls like a PS2 game (especially the camera controls are awful) but holy crap, up to that point I had never experienced that something in a video game feels this alive and evokes so much empathy. The trico makes you feel like you're dealing with a virtual cat stuck in a griffin's body. It's not just because of what it looks and moves like (and yeah, the trico's movements are - as long as they don't glitch out - very natural and believable) - it's in particular its behaviour. It has a relatively short attention span and is easily distracted, at other times it seems to get stuck on a single thought and seriously contemplates how to reach something and it constantly desperately tries to communicate with you - small things can evidently make the trico agitated or sad and you hear it in the noises it makes and its very detailed body language.

All of this is the game's biggest strength but probably also why it will never be all that popular (compared Shadow of the Colossus at least). It makes for a pretty unique and highly emotional experience but it's not quite a "fun" game. You're constantly dependent on the trico doing its part but even when you learn to give it instructions, it still has a mind of its own and a puzzle that could be solved in seconds may take several minutes to complete because the trico frustratingly isn't doing what it's "supposed to". Especially early on I found that quite frustrating and I guess it's why I ragequit pretty soon when I first played it. It's not a game you play in order to overcome challenges, you play it for an adventure that you go on with a "living" creature. You need to be patient here. Sadly, in addition to the trico being slow and unpredictable, also some of the puzzles aren't particularly well-designed and I got stuck a few times because they game didn't communicate well what has to be done and I got ahead just by trying random stuff (and sometimes it felt like the trico figured things out before me and just did something on its own). Funnily I can't quite complain about the combat in this game because there isn't quite any. There is a fair amount of fighting but the trico does it for you (and very competently, I might add). You can and occasionally have to help it in some ways (some of which I didn't actually discover throughout my entire playthrough) but your main job as a defenseless child is to just stay alive. Maybe taking the backseat isn't all that exciting or empowering but it certainly is refreshing.

Anyway, if I were to classify the game somehow it would actually be as a cinematic platformer - it's perhaps the closest thing we've gotten to a 3D Another World or Heart of Darkness as far as I'm concerned. It's not like your typical puzzle platformer where the game's like "here are the rules and tools and here's a few challenges". There are very few tools at your disposal, actually, but the game constantly throws new unique sights and dramatic situations at you and in that regard it is very "cinematic" indeed - there are many things that happen or you do just a single time because that's what the director wanted to happen at that point in the story. It walks a fine line between being systemic at its core due to the trico and being one long very tightly scripted sequence and frankly The Last Guardian is probably the most impressive work in this "cinematic" genre of games to day. And I can see how it took them nine years to develop this thing. Looking at the game this way might actually give you a bit more patience and tolerance for a lot of its jankiness and appreciate all the things it does.

In summary: There are moments of frustration, sometimes boredom, but if you go in open-minded and receptive to all the little nuances and kinda with the mindset of a child wishing to go on an adventure rather than as an overly experienced and bitter old gamer just looking for "another game" (which I usually am) this game has the potential to give you one of the most beautiful and impressive adventures a game can give you.

Oh yeah, sidenote: the game is known to have terrible performance on the PS4 and meh performance also on the PS4 Pro. On PS5 you get stable 30 FPS (and even more if you play the unpatched disc version).

Doom 64 is good action game. Although I prefer Heretic, Doom 64 has many smaller levels (approx. 10 minutes each) which I consider as a great relax for working man. Glad, it finally came here.

I'm playing it right now and yes, kind of surprises me how short most of the levels are. Also, I started it on the default difficulty level and I'm regretting that, it's being too easy, there are very few monster and no challenge at all. Since I'm already on it I'll get to the end, but then I plan on doing another run on max difficulty.

Terminator: Resistance. If you like the first two Terminator movies (i.e., the only ones that matter), this does a really good job of getting the flavor right. You're controlling a soldier in the future in John Connor's army, fighting Skynet and stuff.

This is one of those examples of licensed games that aren't necessarily the most amazing games but are fantastic uses of their licenses, sort of like KOTOR or the South Park RPGs. In terms of gameplay, it's a fairly standard narrative FPS with RPG and crafting elements. Levels are mostly somewhat open and usually give you the option of taking the frontal assault option, or stealthing around, sneaking around wreckage and hacking turrets and stuff. There are optional side objectives you should probably do whenever they come up. The important thing is that the game doesn't do very much that's wrong. (Actually, come to think of it, the enemy AI is pretty dense...)

It looks exactly the future war scenes in the movies, with blue-tinged lighting, crumbling cities, and fires constantly peppering the landscape. The weapons look and sound just like the movies. Once I got the plasma weapons, I didn't really want to use any of the old firearms anymore. The terminators are very spongey enemies and feel appropriately unstoppable, although you can wreck them pretty well once you're all leveled up and have the best upgraded weapons. You can't hurt them at all with shotguns and pistols. If they close on you and touch you, you're dead.

Between levels, you have to run around your base and talk to people, where your relationships are affected and can affect if you get a good or bad ending. This stuff is kind of tedious, and the placid Bethesda game faces everyone has don't help.

The Annihilation Line DLC is also important to get, especially since the main campaign isn't particularly long. It's an extra short campaign that smooths over some of the continuity glitches the main campaign had, like introducing the early rubber-skinned terminators. You team up with Kyle Reese, which is okay but unfortunately they didn't have the rights to Michael Biehn's likeness (or Arnold's). You do get to see a recreation of the Reese's nightmare from the first movie. I'm not sure if it's necessarily even the best Terminator game (have to replay Future Shock/Skynet sometime soon...) but it's just a cool game if you like the good Terminator stuff.

SteamWorld Dig (2013) (Linux)

After almost 7 hours of play (stretched for 6 months or more) I've finally completed the game. I needed some simple and escapist game and this one played the role well. And now I also realized I also own SWD2, thanks to GOG giveaway! Yay!

By the way – if you played Steamworld Heist and disliked – still try this one. I've unfortunately started with Heist and quickly dropped that game; fortunately I've been informed they are totally different gameplay-wise and SWD is worth to try. And it is, indeed. Unique graphics' style, interesting gameplay idea, nicely balanced (rather casual) difficulty level, not much grinding, frustration and backtracking (as for this kind of game). Also a Linux version and often a very good price when discounted.

List of all games completed in 2022.

Supraland Crash (DLC)

It's actually more of a standalone campaign with several new areas and lots of new puzzles. At the very least 10 hours of content, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out I spent twice as much time with it, and while it seemed expensive for a DLC at first, in hindsight I can say, for the curent sale price it was totally worth it. The reason why it is not officially a standalone campaign but integrated into the main game as DLC (to be started as option from the main menu), is that it partially relies on the players' knowledge of the main game mechanics and does not explain your gear in detail anymore.

That was also the main reason for any frustration I encountered with it, unfortunately, as I played this DLC years after finishing Supraland and did not fully remember everything anymore. Whenever I got stuck on a puzzle, in the end it turned out that this was because I overlooked something about my gear's abilities. So while it sucked that I had to check a walkthrough several times, on most occasions I did not feel like I would still have been able to figure it out on my own, because I lacked important information. I'm not sure if it was a good decision to base the DLC that heavily on previous knowledge from the maingame and passing on fully re-introducing the mechanics as you regain them, as for me, returning to the game after years, that decision dampened the fun occasionally.

Apart from that though, it was a very entertaining experience again, and particularly enjoyable in the end when the world was more open and I finally had access to all the gear again.

Edge of Eternity (XSX Game Pass)

A French turn based JRPG. This one started out really well, the small dev team made a game that invokes the look, feel and sound of Xenoblade Chronicles- but turn based combat and no annoying furry team members like Nopon's.
Unfortunately, as the game went on I liked it less. By the time I got to the final boss, I was not liking it at all. Oh yeah, that final boss is one of the worst I can ever remember- it's multiple phases, bucket loads of health and full of gimmicks or you die in a single attack. After just two attempts I immediately saw that I was not going to get any satisfaction from beating this final boss, so just dropped the combat difficulty to minimum...and it still sucked, in fact I hardly noticed what the difficulty even changed. The other problem towards the end was that the game saved all of its story telling for the final few hours in the linear final dungeons- every few steps it felt like you would be stopped for a new lore dump and plot twists, by which time I was no longer interested and just wanted it to finish.

The game looks really good for a such a small team and it ran perfectly and without any bugs or performance issues. But in the end I did not find it all that much fun. Unfortunately it was one of those games that tricked me into thinking it was really good until I already had over 30 hours invested- so felt obliged to make the time worth it and finish the game.