Kane and Lynch: Dead Men (2007) (Linux/Wine)

OK, I've finished this one. Nothing special, but all in all it was fun. Good action shooter, good enough gameplay and mechanics, linear story and missions, but it leaves some space for your own invention. No stealth, so you only decide where to shoot first, but tactics quite matter in this game. I didn't like team members and a need to control them.

It works under Linux/Wine and performance is good, but for some reason the game crashed for me after every single chapter. It was saving my progress and I was able to launch the game once again and start a new chapter without any problem, but the issue may be a bit frustrating; I don't know the reason.

List of all games completed in 2022.

As Dusk Falls (XSX Game Pass)

Excellent narrative adventure along the lines of something like Heavy Rain. Actually the studio director was a lead designer on Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls at Quantic Dream. There is little game play other than making choices and QTE's. This one is done in an interactive comic book sort of art style, and would be classed as crime drama. The choices you make are quite important for a change and really result in a story that ends up feeling like yours alone. In the end the game gives you the summaries on all the major characters and I feel really happy that my choices resulted in ends that I like- people got what they deserved in my game. You could replay the game to get some imaginary "perfect" ending, but this is a game where i think people are just better off going with what they feel and leaving it at that.

Voice acting was good. It takes about 8 hours for a one play through, and like I said I'm happy with the results and feel no need to replay to improve anything. It's published by Xbox Game Studios, so unlikely to arrive on platforms other than Steam, Xbox or anywhere you can access Game Pass- at least for some time.

Just beat A Way Out with my wife on PS5. I'd say it's a good game, not fantastic, but the sheer fact that it's one of relatively few story-driven coop games out there (and one with a high production value at that) makes it a very noteworthy title and perhaps even a must buy for some.

The interesting thing about the game is that for the most part it's an "interactive movie" style game comparable to Heavy Rain or Until Dawn - the only other multiplayer title in the genre I can think of is Hidden Agenda (which I haven't played yet). It doesn't have any core mechanics per se, rather you can generally just walk around and interact with things or talk to characters and make dialogue choices. There are some recurring mechanics, like basic stealth gameplay where you can stick to cover but more notably it's one of those games which constantly throw new mechanics or even mini games at you. One moment you're punching people with controls similar to the Arkham series, the next you're climbing between two walls back to back, then there's vehicle sections and even some shooting. And at times the game is quite imaginative with coop mechanics. Another good thing about this format is that it's not very demanding and also a relatively inexperienced player should make a good enough coop partner.

Like with most games in the genre the gameplay isn't fantastic in itself and the story and its delivery is actually just okay by movie standards but the resulting experience is still something quite special and engaging. And in this case there's obviously the twist with the mandatory coop where almost the entire game must be played in split screen, sometimes even with a cutscene playing in one window while the other player is still busy with other stuff. The result is a bit hit or miss (like overlapping dialogue) but there are quite a few memorable and sometimes downright impressive moments. One sequence in particular just made my jaw drop with its brilliant combination of cinematic camera work and coop.

Something I also appreciate a lot about the game is that it comes with a realistic vintage setting, set somewhere in the 70s (I think), and takes its time to establish it with some slow and peaceful sequences. In video games this kind of thing is still exotic and fresh and sequences that would be utterly unimpressive in a full-on action game can get pretty intense here thanks to how grounded in reality and personal everything is. The game's beginning is maybe a bit too slow as a result (and we did abandon the game when we first tried it because my wife got bored very quickly and I wasn't too thrilled either) but after the first hour or so things become pretty good.

Sadly Josef Fares did have to pull a David Cage and throw in some utterly over-the-top action sequences that feel out of place to me. It doesn't get close to the insane shit that Cage pulled in Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy) but it does ruin the "grounded in reality" point quite a bit.

Anyway, even though I found no individual element of the game to be mind-blowing, the overall experience was very engaging. We did care deeply about the characters and even got quite emotional at times. And I don't just mean joy or anger because of epic fails in our cooperation. The story really isn't bad and not entirely predictable, its delivery is pretty great and this kind of thing told through a coop game is quite a novel idea that actually works great. So if you're looking for a coop game that's different from all the shooters out there or a one that can even be enjoyed with a person who isn't much of a gamer and cares more about story than gameplay, this may be a must-buy.

After almost 11 years, I decided to visit Atelier Totori again on my PS3, and start my second second playthrough of the game. I wanted to finish everything, what the game has to offer and achieve all prerequisites for the True Ending. I was able to get all the missing playthrough trophies, but unfortunately, I must have missed some character event, and as a result I was awarded with Rorona's Who's the Teacher? ending instead. It was a lot of busywork, especially getting 500,000 money, but thankfully, it is transferred together with the equipment to New Game+, so all subsequent playthroughs will be more easygoing :) .

I am little bit sad, due to the time spent on planning of all of the in-game events during last two weeks, which I spent with the game, but well, at least I was able to finish all tasks in my Adventurer's License and defeat all of the super-bosses :) Hopefully next time, I will have more luck :)

All other finished games this year can be found here.

For July 2022:

Resident Evil 0

Necromunda Hired Gun

Wolfenstein Youngblood

Mortal Kombat 11 ultimate

Potatoman Seeks the Troof. One of those very short, quirky games. Pixeljam is really good with this pseudo-Atari 2600 graphical style.

Alwa's Awakening. Yet another perfectly decent indie Metroidvania. This one has a bit more emphasis on puzzle-solving as you use different magical abilities to get past obstacles, then power up those abilities to get past even even more obstacles. Not too long a game, either.

Mother Russia Bleeds. I find the amount of gore and general sleaziness in this to be hilarious, and I always enjoy brawlers with good weapons and the ability to beat on people while they're helpless on the ground, but that said the gameplay is a bit monotonous, even for the genre. I never really felt like I needed to vary my tactics too much outside of the boss battles.

Witchaven. Early attempt at a melee-focused FPS. It has the common problems with that sub-genre in that the combat always feels lacking in impact, and it's kind of an ugly game with odd, sometimes sloppy quirks (situations that force you to use magic to get beyond them, soundtrack often bugging out, the fact that you can strafe faster than you can run forward/backward). But it's also an interesting game that did just enough to keep me playing through it. You can see what they were going for, it's just that the elements didn't all totally come together as well as they wanted.

Wouldn't being melee-focused make it a hack&slash?

Psychonauts 2

+ fantastic voice-acting, by many of the same voice-actors from 16 years before - I was feeling right at home again
(+ plus additional great voices by Elijah Wood, Jack Black and some new additions to the DF "family")
+ awesome soundtrack by the same composer from the first game, Peter McConnell (+ some vocals by Jack Black)
+ colourful, creative, quirky, pleasant (and pleasantly unpleasant) visuals
+ good story-telling and funny dialogue-writing
+ a lot of content, many different areas to explore with varied themes, as well as many story- and character-related conversations and cutscenes
+ I have to admit, my absolute favorite parts were the smaller "open world" areas in the real world, not the mind levels (but I also enjoyed the campsite in the first game a lot)

+/- the mind levels are crazy enough, but I feel not quite as wild as the first game in design (some of them I liked very much, others felt a bit too short or too long and repetitive)
+/- it can be very guided at times, cutscene - short gameplay sequence - next cutscene etc. - I didn't mind it that much because I really enjoyed the cutscenes and all as well, but I did occasionally wish the game would let me play and explore more on my own, without interrupting or holding my hand (it did so later on, mostly in the real world areas)
+/- it's much much easier than the first game, to the point that there's hardly any challenge at all
+/- most of the boss battles are not all that imaginative and fun, IMO (I'm generally not a fan of boss battles, but these ones kind of felt like they were designed by people who don't like them either; crazy themes, but gameplay-wise predictable, pretty much by the books, do this or that obvious thing three times, boss defeated). Then again, it also meant they did not really get in the way. There was one long boss battle where I died shortly before the end and had to repeat all three stages with cutscenes again (cutscenes can be skipped, but still), and that sucked, because it was more long than hard. There should have been a checkpoint in between. But at that point I didn't even realize yet that you can also heal yourself with consumables during boss battles, so with that knowledge, chances are very few players will actually die and experience that inconvenience anyway.
+/- some collectibles can only be reached after the end of the game, but on the other hand, the game has some post-game content, too, so there is still some incentive to hunt for these things while checking up on everybody one last time (two times in the game you are warned to finish any open business before moving on though and that really confused me because while it's nice to be warned, the messages didn't go into enough detail to know what this was about, and as it turned out, you can't even finish all unfinished business you have at that time, because, as mentioned, some of it is accessible only post-game - but there was no way for me to know)

- there was one single thing I truly disliked, and that is the fact that you can only ever have four powers equipped at the same time, but there are at least twice as much, and none of them is really optional, a matter of preference, you actually need all of them to get through the game at certain points, and often you can't even beat one single level with 4 powers only, so you constantly have to switch them around and that breaks immersion and interrupts the flow. Plus, some of these powers are actually a must-have most of the times (you'll always want to have the power to float during jumps and at least one attack power, preferably the ranged one), so you have even less slots for your choice of the others. I played with a gamepad, which has a limited number of buttons, of course, so I'm not sure if it's any better with keyboard and mouse. Still, I wish they'd have come up with some way to switch powers more quickly at least, without having to pause the game and go into a menu screen each time.
- a couple of times, I also managed to get myself stuck in corners I shouldn't have been able to get into, so I had to reload, but it wasn't a serious issue, I never really lost any progress due to that.

TL:DR
All in all I thought it was a worthy sequel and while it wasn't perfect in every single regard, it still came pretty close to a perfect game for me and I had tons of fun with it.

Oh, yeah, I suppose. I tend to think of those games as being overhead like Diablo, but you are certainly hacking and slashing at everything.

Into the Breach - 5/5

Been playing with the new content. Turns out, this game is still very good :)

Wrong thread?

Nope. Read SCPM's instructions in this thread's first post. :)

Beat the Legendary Edition version of Mass Effect 2 on PS5 last night. That marks my second playthrough of ME2 in total. Of course I'm continuing my vanilla paragon Shepard playthrough.

AFAIK the Legendary Edition doesn't change all that much about ME2 (especially compared to ME1) but there are a few cool things besides the obvious better frame rate, resolution and load times on console. Something I wouldn't have noticed are balancing changes, like more frequent ammo drops and more cover as well as supposedly more responsive controls when trying to get into cover.

What I did instantly notice are the changes to how the game handles DLC content. BioWare's DLC policy was literally why I never even played the PC version of the game even though I bought it almost day 1. Even when you finally had all the DLC there was still one super irritating thing: that you start the game with a crapload of DLC gear which just entirely ruins the item progression. In the Legendary Edition that stuff's been rather plausibly integrated into the economy and you find it in sensible places during missions or buy it at stores - the balancing of that stuff still feels off to me but oh well, it's an improvement. What wasn't (much?) improved is when DLC missions are activated and that you can play them in a bollocks order.

Also, like with ME1, achievements / trophies have been changed a bit so you can very easily platinum the game in a single playthrough even without continuing a profile from ME1. You don't even need to max out your level this time and a few highly missable trophies from the DLC missions have been scrapped.

As for the game itself: when I first beat ME2 I was admittedly put off by it quite a bit and liked ME1 more. Frankly I think I was hostile towards the game because of the many unexpected changes, some of which I found confusing at the time - at this point I'm far more critical of ME1 and must admit that ME2 is an improvement in probably every possible way. Truth be told, they got rid of everything that irritated me about the first game and seriously beefed up the quality of everything that's stil there. While in a completionist run of ME1 you will spend like half the time doing low-quality nonsense, here almost all the 60 hours that I just spent with the game felt like quality stuff.

Now, I still prefer the idea of ME1 over ME2, I guess. Where ME1 always felt like the definitive vanilla space opera to me, letting you assume the simple role of some galactic hero and his crew visiting planets and fighting evil almost like it's Star Trek, ME2 went for a more nuanced story with lots of supposed moral ambiguity, deals with the devil and whatnot. Now: I admit that the writing is more interesting in ME2 than it was in ME1. There is a much larger roster of far more interesting characters, there is a ton of much better dialogue, the world is more believable, you're sent to more interesting places and it's less predictable.

That said: I do feel that these attempts to go for darker themes and moral greyness are a bit laughable in a BioWare game which is ultimately still almost as colourful and naive as a Saturday morning cartoon and in a paragon playthrough many of Shepard's dialogue choices literally sound like those PSAs at the end of He-Man or G.I. Joe episodes - it's not as bad in ME2 as it was in ME1 but it does make me cringe often enough. I'm not saying that every game has to be goddamn Witcher or Bloodlines but come on, at least make it consistent. I think the perfect embodiment of this dissonance is that there's exactly one edgy character in this game who loves dropping F-bombs while nobody else would dare say anything worse than "darn it". I mean, imagine watching The Lion King but Pumbaa is constantly going "fuck y'all! I don't need this shit!". That's literally what the game feels like to me.

Then there's the thing that the stakes feel pretty low to me in this one and there's no sense of urgency as even in the narrative almost the whole game is basically optional preparation for one final mission and the repercussions of failing that mission aren't as immediately devastating as the stuff in ME1. Okay, so if I dilly dally a few more people are gonna disappear and eventually at some point in the future it might contribute to a probable end of all sapient life but maybe not, what do I know?

It doesn't help that almost nothing you do in the game feels at all related to the threat you're supposed to stop. In ME1 the main enemy were Saren and his army of Geth and the Geth were goddamn everywhere - even doing random stuff reminded me of the game's main villain that I need to stop. Here even most story missions feel like unnecessary random adventures where you usually fight random mercenaries that one couldn't care less about - almost everything you do in the game feels like an extremely unproductive distraction from what you're supposed to do and even the strategic reasons for following these endeavours sound like a very naive stretch. Your boss is this cold, pragmatic opportunist yet he literally sends you on a mission of making friends? Really?

They sometimes try to force a sense of urgency on you by just triggering a story mission out of nowhere, reminding you that there are these evil aliens which are super dangerous and evil (and who never appear outside of those), but that just feels like the tool to fake urgency which it literally is - well, unless you accidentally pass the point of no return which luckily never happened to me but is perfectly possible and has got to be one hell of a bummer.

However, none of this matters! I enjoyed almost every minute of it! The characters are (for the most part) great, the action is solid, it has an amazing atmosphere, there are some amazing places to visit and by the time the credits rolled I had goose bumps. It's great!

I think I read that the characters occasionally have to split up to complete objectives. Is there a noticeable difference between the two characters gameplay or storywise or are they functionally interchangeable?