Battlefield Bad Company 2, Jul 15 (Xbox Game Pass)-Kind of an average shooter. I had fun with it but it wasn't anything special. Cutscene graphics looked pretty good for a twelve year old game. in game graphics were ok. Nothing really very memorable about it except the final mission. Seems there is a bug in the very last section of the game on newer monitors. I spent 20+ minutes searching and trying solutions for a sequence that lasted less than 1 min. But other than that pretty ok.

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Road 96 (XSX Game Pass)

An interesting idea for a walking simulator or narrative based game. You're kid are on a road trip attempting to escape a repressive regime. Along the way you encounter various characters, the orders of encounters are mostly randomized. Eventually you escape through the wall. Then you start again with a new kid and encounter the same people again, at different times and places- but it all ties together into an overall story. For most choices you choose between one of the two factions- the regime or the ANTIFA like rebels, or you can choose an ambivalent option. I always went with the latter, as I just couldn't care less and people should just work things out for themselves- it's so refreshing for a game to give a "don't really care" option.

Get six different kids through the wall and you get an ending and can then play NG+. Best of all the game was just 8 hours long and knew when to end instead of outstaying its welcome, so I call it a success.

Man of Medan. I haven't played Until Dawn, which most people say is better than this one, but I thought this was fun. It's basically an interactive movie (co-written by Larry Fessenden, who also worked on Until Dawn) based on the urban legend of the Ourang Medan ghost ship. You explore the ship and occasionally get hit with quick-time events that determine how the story will play out, and the game is quite adaptable in terms of providing a reasonable story regardless of who's getting killed. I think it took about 3 or so hours to complete a playthrough and you're expected to replay it repeatedly to see what it has to offer.

If you're just playing to get the best ending, with everyone surviving, it's actually pretty easy, especially if you're familiar with popular horror movie cliches. My first run through the game ended with 4/5 protagonists surviving, and then I got all five out the second time. After that it was more about just making different choices to see what happened. At first, I was a bit surprised that the game didn't throw too many twists at the player in terms of, for instance, poking at things you probably shouldn't. I kept wandering places and interacting with stuff that I was sure would end up with my character getting killed or at least threatened, but the game is a bit more sedate than that, mostly sticking to occasional jumpscares. You'll know when something genuinely threatening is happening. There's some kind of system that tracks how the cast's traits and relationships develop throughout the story, but I couldn't discern what if any effect it had on gameplay. Like, I don't know if it's possible to get screwed over because you antagonized one of your friends too much. The effects didn't seem dramatic enough for anything like that to happen, but maybe I didn't push things hard enough.

The story itself is decent enough as a spooky horror experience, although it seems to be lacking in terms of major twists. If you're familiar with the original legend, the game sticks to it relatively faithfully. The cast are the usual attractive but irritating young people who do stupid stuff. I wouldn't mind seeing someone do a game like this but more in the classic Hammer style of stuffy yet reasonable British people fighting vampires or something. We could digitally resurrect Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee for a little while.

The graphics are quite nice, particularly in the faces. Funnily enough, the real Uncanny Valley effect is in their bodies. The arms and hands and the general frames the characters have sometimes look off, like they're moving in ways that aren't convincingly human. I'll definitely check out some of Supermassive's other games.

Eclipse (HL2/Source mod, 2005)

I installed this ages ago but didn't get into it, and only now I realized that it was still installed and taking up space on my harddisk, so I had another look at it and played through it in 20-30 minutes. It uses the Source engine for a short third person fantasy action adventure with a Celtic kind of setting. There is few background story, but apparently evil has breached into the protected grove of the heroine and she needs to reach the standing stones to teleport away. In order to defend herself from orc-like monsters and corrupted fairies she can magically lift up heavy objects and hurl them around. The 3D graphics look much more dated than Half-Life 2, more like something from 2000, but I liked them well enough. The atmosphere they created were the best part of the mod, along with the soundtrack. I'm just a sucker for these kind of settings, running through dark hills and ruins and feeling reminded of games like Drakan. The gameplay itself was very clunky though, and if it wasn't for that, it would have been extremely easy, too (still was, but if there was any difficulty to it, it all came from clunky controls, odd AI and physics, and some things being hard to spot or target). The level design also wasn't great, very linear but not very intuitive. In any case, I can finally uninstall it now, so that's something!

Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Wrath of the Druids (XSX)

The first DLC, pretty much just a smaller version of the base game. Except it's in Ireland, which mostly means that there always seems to be fog or rain and you always seem to be running through a bog. I've never been to Ireland, so I don't know how accurate the game is in that respect.

I played it after fully completing the main game earlier in the year, so I was probably way higher level than intended. Overall it was okay, more of the same if you're waiting for the next main game, but I'm glad I didn't try to play the DLC's immediately after finishing the main game- it would have been way too much.

Played through Ratchet Deadlocked. Out of the PS2 Ratchet (and Clank) games on the PS2 I thought this one was the most fun but at the same time feels like the least game. The game is even more mission/level based than Up your Arsenal was, and that game was leaning pretty heavily in that direction. This is not really such a bad thing as it means less backtracking in a given level or running back and forth between areas of a map or between planets. The game also feels like a third person shooting game with platforming rather than the other way around. The vehicles play a very important role in this one but still do not really feel all that good, certainly not good enough to potentially be a vehicular combat game. The mission objectives are a little all over the place. You have times where you race around the map ala Jak and Daxter as well as other ones where it feels more like a continuation of the flight stages from Spyro on the PS1. There are also the occasional MXC style platforming gauntlets and survival matches.

The humor and story were not bad at all in this game, and in fact it manages to be pretty funny. The plot feels horribly contrived and like it was not really meant to pad out an entire game, but it manages to be sufficient enough to keep the game moving. The best part of the game is that the weapons finally felt actually good, for the most part, and some of them are simply excellent to use (upgraded anti-matter rifle, the magma cannon).

The game's only real failing is that while fun for the time it lasts it feels like a very passing experience, like it is not meant to be a full attention grabber. That said, that is probably why I liked it as much as I did. It's just a fun game to play for a day or two.

Beat Mass Effect 1 from the Legendary Edition on PS5 yesterday.

This marks my third complete playthrough of the game. I originally beat it on PC back in the day and then on PS3 a few years ago. I had planned to beat the whole series on PS3 but stopped after Mass Effect 2 for some reason. Well, let's hope this will finally lead me to a full playthrough of the series. Oh yeah, and because I'm boring I did the exact same vanilla Shepard again with the same major choices and paragon morality - just once I want to do a full playthrough of the entire trilogy with this standard setup.

Anyway, while I pretty much loved the game during my first two playthroughs I didn't really enjoy it much this time. There are the obvious issues that the game has always suffered from, like the awful loot system and the immensely boring and repetitive "uncharted worlds" (which you will actually spend more time with than anything else in the game if you're a completionist). But at this point I feel like nothing except the narrative and lore is actually good about the game. The combat is very meh, decisions are for the most part trivial, the world feels kinda dead, the quests are uninspired and boring, character progression is bad, the economy's a joke... And even the game's biggest strengths, the story and the relationships with your squad mates, have lost a lot of their appeal because other games (including Mass Effect 2 and presumably 3) have done this stuff so much better.

I'm sure that I still would have enjoyed the game greatly if this had been my first playthrough during which I discover the Mass Effect universe and get to meet all the characters for the first time but well, that part of the game is kinda depleted for me at this point (though things would surely have looked better if I had gone for renegade this time - something I'm hopefully going to try at some point in the future).

As for the improvements of the Legendary Edition: I have very mixed feelings about those. The most obvious part, besides better graphics at 60 FPS as well as shorter elevator rides, is that they've gotten rid of all the motivators for doing several playthroughs. The game can now be platinum'd in a single playthrough and there don't seem to be any in-game rewards for completing achievements anymore. But there are also many other little changes that I don't like, some I noticed consciously while others I had to read up on after beating the game.

For instance, it seems to me that they adjusted the shooting mechanics, making guns behave like in the later games (and thus more like in a shooter). Sure, it feels better and less abstract and especially assault rifles aren't laughably imprecise anymore but the balancing doesn't seem to have been adjusted for this change at all and the game has gotten very easy as a result. And to me the weapon types just feel more samey now, with all of them except shotguns having become effective at medium to long range (also, sniper rifles don't have a sway anymore for whatever reason). And generally: for some reason the game is much easier than it used to be. I remember Mass Effect 1 as being quite difficult on normal difficulty if you don't spam squad abilities - this time I could easily just rush enemies and gun them down like a terminator without even using cover. If it weren't for the dumb achievements for using all the abilities 25 times each I barely would have remembered to even use those. Also, all classes can equip all weapon types now which has made managing gear for the entire squad even more tiresome than in the original game.

At the same time they didn't bother to fix many basic issues from the original game. AI behaviour is still a joke. Your mates sometimes just get stuck, doors are their biggest enemy and one time they just stopped following me around and I had to save and load the game in order to fix it. Enemy behaviour is also ridiculous, with many of them just rushing you and then then standing in front of you like an idiot. And especially audio is an area that pains me in this game. Mass Effect 1 has always had an awful mix with the loudness of things being all over the place. Supposedly they improved this in the Legendary Edition but the result is still the same overall state that I remember: your guns are far too loud, music is usually far too quiet, most sound sources (including environmental dialogue) become inaudible from just several feet away and then there are still numerous sounds that blow your ears away for no reason like one of the doors on the Normandy. It's bizarre.

So in summary I just have mixed feelings about the Legendary Edition version of Mass Effect 1. The visuals have been updated nicely, it is a more comfortable experience all in all but it's still missing a ton of things that should have been done and also changed a few things that are detrimental to the experience in my opinion. I honestly would have preferred to play the original version with only updated visuals and reduced loading times.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla: The Siege of Paris (XSX)

The second Valhalla DLC. This time you get a chunk of land around the Paris region. Much nicer to look at than Britain or Ireland and it's not always raining. This a shorter and tighter campaign, well suited to someone that doesn't want the full 100 hour (or more) Valhalla experience. Plus you get to massacre French people instead of Brits for a bit. I liked it better than Druids, but it does lack the grandeur and epic proportions of the main campaign.

Flashback. This is another one of those games I've started playing many times but never finished, but GOG giving away the remastered version convinced me to give it another try. After starting the updated version, I thought it was fine but soon switched over to the Amiga version, which is my favorite overall version in terms of how it sounds and feels to play.

I don't think I ever fully appreciated how much the game's story touches on so many of the big 1980s sci-fi movies. Obviously, the memory loss aspect is from Total Recall, the alien invasion/"they walk among us" story is from They Live, and the "survive a killer game show" part is The Running Man, the guns all sound like Robocop's machine-pistol, some of the enemies are basically Terminators, and even the ending is basically from Alien. I'm probably forgetting a couple more.

What I like about these types of games is the careful, measured approach to platforming. What I don't like as much is the combat because aside from Prince of Persia, they don't feel like games really built for high-speed action (and at least PoP seemed aware of its limitations, it's not like they asked you to fight 10 enemies of different types at once or something). At least this one gives you plenty of spots to recharge your shield and save mid-level, but there are still at least a couple of parts that are infuriatingly difficult (the mutant colony mission, the arrival on Earth, and the part just after you get the atom bomb) and I suspect these were specifically included to extend the game's lifespan because otherwise it would have been a bit on the easier side. I think even if I had stuck with the GOG version, I probably would have exhausted the rewing function. Despite this, I still like the game a lot overall and I'm glad I finally finished it. It has a great ambience.

Tales of Monkey Island - 3/5

It has its fair share of fun and clever moments, but it's still one of the weaker games in the series. I remember someone saying that this game feels like a fan-game - and, honestly, I think that's pretty apt; there's a lot of retreading old ground and rehashing familiar tropes.

The good news is: I'm all up to date and ready to play Return to Monkey Island - whenever that ends up coming out.

Now that I've played all the Monkey Island games (so far) - it's probably a good time to rank them:

1. Curse of Monkey Island
2. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
3. Secret of Monkey Island
4. Tales of Monkey Island
5. Escape from Monkey Island

And while I'm ranking things - I may as well rank each episode in ToMI:

3 > 5 > 1 > 2 > 4

Virtue's Last Reward, Jul 28 (Xbox Game Pass)- The sequel to 999. Its like that game but on steroids. The story is even wilder and stranger than the first game and the main reason I liked VLR more. Again, I liked slow reveal of the story depending on the choices you make at the branches. It was like gradually filling in a jigsaw puzzle. There were also a ton of branching paths to choose from, more so than I remember in 999. While the general flow and major plot points were the same a lot of the little details changed on different playthrus with different choices.

The puzzles themselves did get a lot harder in this game. Whereas almost all of the puzzles in 999 were trivially easy, here they required a lot of thought or just trial and error. Even replaying some of the rooms to get secret content took longer than expected due to the difficulty of some puzzles. I'm a little ambivalent about this as I wasn't really playing the game for the puzzles but it did pad the playtime quite a bit.

Voice acting was excellent again. Graphics felt like a step down but were acceptable. Humor was eye-rolling. Overall I think a great sequel that surpasses the first and nicely sets up the plot for a third game.

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Well, to start off with, I disliked the main conceit of the 4th episode. But, also, there were two moments where I encountered game-breaking bugs, which was very frustrating.

But, at least, you can look forward to the 5th episode, which I enjoyed :)

Watch Dogs (XSX)

A way better game than I was expecting. The Xbox One version is originally the worst version, but played on newer Series consoles it gets boosted to 60 fps and HDR and actually looks quite okay for its age.

I expected a very generic game, which is why I waited so long to start the series. It took a few hours to get into, but I came to enjoy the story and world and most of the game play. It's a good old fashioned revenge story from the point of view of a hacker vigilante. The hacking puzzles are okay once I got the hang of them and the third person combat is decent as well. The driving, unfortunately, is some of the worst I've come across in a game like this. It's hard to keep any car pointed the way you want, they go from sliding around at the back, to understeering with little in-between. This is made more annoying by how many chase and escape scenes there are that require driving. The police escape scenes are especially bad, I cheesed pretty much all of them by going straight to water and getting on a boat- the police don't have boats! Get on a boat and all you have to do is disable any chasing helicopter and get out of detection range.

Watch Dogs also has some great unscripted fun to be had as well. Hacking road blockers to pop up as people drive over them, or causing huge multiple car pile ups after hacking traffic lights just never gets old- the simple things in life give some of the best entertainment. Oh yeah and one that will upset a lot of people, when you profile random people it tells you their gender- my reputation was in the gutter almost the entire game for gunning down every transgender person I came across. Naughty!

Despite the driving issues, it was good fun and I'll play the sequel at some point.

Singularity

Another story-telling shooter with a time travel theme, three years after Time Shift, six years prior to Quantum Break. It's a decent action game, competently done, but I didn't find much new or memorable in it after all the similar games I've played already. It seems kind of typical for its time, very guided, based on checkpoints, a pointer telling you where to go, with powers, an upgrade system, readable memos and voiced recordings to find, health packs - no health generation - though it does allow you to buy the latter as an expensive upgrade if you want. Singularity borrows elements from BioShock and Half-Life, while never truly being as interesting. I found areas and enemies a bit drab mostly, but some of the gadget are worth a mention, like grenades or bullets you can steer to their target, time stop bubbles (before Quantum Break), or a break/repair time tool (before Red Faction Armaggeddon).

The story was alright, but kind of meh, IMO. It's just there as a frame, no real highlights, and most of it was conveyed by NPCs talking over comms, "you need to do this", "next do that", etc., and half the time I didn't even know why, I just did because that was the way forward. Truth be told, I didn't fully listen to it either, because I was distracted with the gameplay, plus the sound mixing was not great. The overall sound was not only much lower than your average desktop volume, the options also didn't allow fine-tuning. They only had volume sliders for music and SFX, not voices, and often voices were low and drowned a bit in other sounds. And by voices I mean both, actual characters talking and voiced recordings. The latter also got lower the further you moved away from them, but they hardly ever had anything interesting to tell anyway. I did not really enjoy them much. The voices of enemies were a bit lacking, too, in that they kept repeating the same phrases over and over again without pause. The game does offer a choice of three different endings, and while there is a chance players won't really like any of them, that was one of the more memorable aspects of the game. I liked that the last autosave allows you to explore all three. I did not like that you can't skip all the cutscenes preceding the choice though.

As is often the case with games like this, you can only carry two different weapons at the same time (sometimes three, but you'll drop the third, special weapon as soon as you switch to another). You can upgrade weapons and you'll often find loadout cabinets allowing you to pick your two weapons for the next part, out of all the ones you know. But I didn't really feel encouraged to switch often, unless I ran out of ammo. At some points, when a particular weapon was recommended or even necessary to progress, the game would provide that weapon and (sometimes refilling) ammo anyway. Also, Singularity keeps shutting doors behind you, often for no good in-game reason, so if you're interested in hunting all messages and upgrade points and such, be prepared to miss some, if you take the "right" turn too soon. There is no level select or similar either, so the only alternative you get to the autosave is another playthrough. One more design decision I did not like much is that the game uses the same key for picking up health, ammo and upgrade points as for reloading your weapon, so if you press it while not precisely targeting the pickup hotspot, you may accidentally waste your half-used weapon clip by reloading. Then again, you can also ignore the "R" prompt and use the "E" key instead which is used for telekinesis and will make the items float towards you rather than make your hand grab for them.

Playing on Normal was mostly very easy. I did have to consult a walkthrough 2 or 3 times because I overlooked something (the pointer on where to go hardly ever helped when I'd truly have needed it). All in all, it was a game that I had no trouble getting through in the short time of a couple of sessions. It wasn't all that gripping to me, but entertaining enough to keep on playing it on the side.