I have finished Platinum Demo: Final Fantasy XV on PS4 to unlock Carbuncle Summon for the full game. I did not expected much, and still ended up disappointed. Big empty Open World, and clumsy real-time combat. I am not looking forward to play the full game.

Full list.

Cuphead + The Delicious Last Course. It's Cuphead. It's still good but now there's even more of it. I really enjoyed playing through the expansion. The new bosses are just as inventive as the ones in the original game and carry on that Fleischer/Ub Iwerks 1930s style so well. It took me a little bit to get used to Ms. Chalice but after I got the hang of it I enjoyed controlling her and ended up finishing the final boss of the game with her as well.

I've just finished the 2nd play of Witcher 1. At first, I could not manage well with the unique rhythm battle system in the game, but eventually, I got used to it, and I think it is actually a better way to express Witcher's superhuman ability in the battles than the usual action battle system in 2 and 3.

A weak point of the game was a limitation of the game engine (I think it is the Aurora Engine, which was made by Bioware and used in NWN2 (EDIT: actually NWN1) ).In the game, Geralt can't jump or go down bumpy fields. There are a lot of areas which he can't go on.
Also, I think it is due to the Engine too, sometimes the game shut down itself without any error messages, so I need to save the game often to prevent frustration.

In the first play-through, I chose the knight order faction, so in this game, I take a side of Scoia'tael. I guess this decision will affect the play-through of 2 and 3 too.
I'll play the 2nd one eventually, but before that, I'll try 7 new adventure modules (I guess they are former mods) in the game.

My full list is here,

One of my peeves about 2 and 3 is that they're action games but they're still clinging too much to the series' RPG roots, so despite having relearned everything in game 1, Geralt still has to start out both games as a total level 1 wimp who could be one-shotted by a nekker if its level is too far above his.

Just to clarify: The engine is indeed a modified version of Bioware's Aurora engine, but the latter was used in the first NWN only, not Obsidian's NWN2.

I only played the first two chapters of The Witcher or so, but yeah, it was annoying how big parts of the areas were not walkable and constantly had to be circled around.

I've just finished playing Vagrant Story. I wished they had spanned it across multiple discs so that it would have had an expanded story (perhaps even outside Leá Monde). What a great game!

Little Inferno (2012) (Linux/Wine)
(thank you Seb7.9 for the game!)

Interesting game. Technically it's a kind of management game? incremental/clicker game? You buy things, burn them and get money to buy and burn more. Some of the things definitely should not be put into fire. As it's just a computer game, you can do this. It's a pyromaniac paradise (I'm one of them, but do not worry, I can control my weakness)! :D

The art-style, music, atmosphere, crazy idea and story – all remind me World of Goo. If you liked WoG, you'll probably like also this one, however it's much less puzzle-oriented.

Linux installer does not work as it requires some 32-bit libraries (which is doable in general, but for some reason does not work in this specific case). I've completed the game using Windows version (works perfect under Wine).

List of all games completed in 2022.

Incoming (1998) (Linux/Wine)

I think I remember when the game has been released or at least distributed in Poland as a freebie for one of gaming magazines. It has relatively simple mechanics and gameplay (you can use variety of tanks, fighters, helicopters, but all feel exactly the same) and offered stunning graphics. I still remember the main music theme and I think the game could be a satisfying and relaxing shooter. I loved how elements of environment can be destroyed. Difficulty level and controls may be an issue (it seems you cannot use mouse for aiming), which makes the game unbeatable for me. But, hey, I remember not only old games, but also ways to finish them using some magic methods :) so I've used some cheats to go through the story. The game is quite repetitive, but some missions (desert, night over sea) are worth playing.

List of all games completed in 2022.

Just beat Gravity Rush 2 on PS5 (but without any PS5 enhancements). I've been really looking forward to this one ever since I beat the original game on Vita a few years ago.

Like the first game, GR2 is a very wholesome cel-shaded Japanese sandbox game that pretty much tells a superhero story in a unique setting that blends sci-fi and fairy tale. Again the player assumes the role of Kat, a sweet and kind teenage pushover who happens to have the power to control gravity thanks to her companion, a mysterious cat called Dusty that has fur that looks like a galaxy. Are you vomiting rainbows yet? It plays much like any western sandbox game in that you approach markers in a (mostly) open world which then trigger missions. It's not at all like western sandbox games in that instead of stealing cars and shooting people you fly around floating cities, run or slide along walls, lift and hurl heavy stuff and do lots of kind things for lovable people (and even the dicks are cuddly by other games' standards).

Honestly, even though GR1 was (originally) a Vita game and GR2 is a PS4 game, GR2 barely differs from the original. It controls the same, it looks and sounds almost the same, you largely visit the same locations, you mostly smash the crap out of the same monsters using mostly the same powers. It also inherits the original's clunky controls and camera behaviour. It's really just "more of the same" with merely a few additions, which I found mildly disappointing, but honestly, Gravity Rush is such unique and beautiful thing that I'm perfectly okay with that and I just appreciate that I got to spend more time with Kat and many other familiar faces among many new ones. And Gravity Rush has a surprisingly convoluted and engaging story that goes from a teenager's cute personal tale to an utterly epic battle about the destiny of everything - just getting a continuation of and conclusion to Kat's story is more than enough for me.

And again I was surprised by the game's scale. They more than doubled the size of the game world and it's one of those games where you think that you've just reached the ending but then it turns out that you're not even close. For the love of all that is holy, keep playing after the credits have rolled. I almost wrote a post about the game several days ago, disgusted by an utterly anti-climactic ending, but ultimately I decided to do a clean-up first and do optional post-game content that I hoped would answer a few questions - I did that today and holy crap, I was rewarded with probably the best portion of the game and an amazing conclusion.

Beating all the missions took me about 40 hours and while the gameplay isn't ground-breaking and many missions tend to drag on and feel a bit tedious or even mediocre, I ultimately greatly enjoyed my time with this game - already the atmosphere and story made it a ride worth taking. The gameplay is admittedly quite repetitive, shallow and rarely challenging but it is still pretty enjoyable and you do get quite a few fun surprises along the way, similarly to what the substories in the Yakuza series provide. Sometimes you have to beat the crap out of someone or something, sometimes you have to deliver something but at other times you're sneaking around or taking pictures. It's not all quality content (especially some of the stealth sections were quite trial & error for me) but it keeps the game from getting boring and also gives you quite a few laughs.

Like in most sandbox games there are a few more things to do here than just the missions but frankly most of that stuff isn't particularly great. Perhaps the biggest disappointment was a "mining" activity where you can go harvesting additional crystals (which you use for upgrading Kat's powers) and which turned out to be an utterly dull chore with pathetic yields (you get crystals far more quickly just by exploring the cities and collecting crystals scattered throughout them). There's also some convoluted system where you can farm, equip and craft talismans that give you bonuses but it felt unnecessarily complicated and the game was easy enough without putting any effort into this stuff so I honestly barely did any of this. There's also more stuff like taking pictures of certain special NPCs or messages, you can also get additional costumes and gestures for use in the photo mode or furniture for Kat's home.

The sad part here is that you can't complete the collection of costumes, gestures and furniture anymore because you'd need the game's online component for that and the servers were shut down rather soon after release. That was a serious letdown to me when I started playing the game but honestly, it's not a problem at all. It's not like most players would 100% this game anyway and you get more than enough stuff anyway (though radical completionists will be in terrible pain).

Anyway, all in all I loved this game just as much as the first one - perhaps even more, though the first one had the advantage that I had no idea what to expect and I ended up being very positively surprised. It's not perfect but it's really unique and imaginative and surprisingly epic. And who doesn't need a wholesome fairy tale sometimes?

Apparently one that's still active and even keeps archives. Quite something.

I remember when the demo for 2 came out, they had a promo on Steam for this game and Batman Arkham Asylum together very cheap and people were complaining that they couldn't get just Batman for that cheap. XD

Anyway, I got it back then, because I had enjoyed the demo for 2 a lot, but it really is too janky. It's also funny how every interesting idea they had for 1 wasn't really fully developed until the second game, which is still the best in the series for me, despite 3 and 4 adding a few extra interesting stuff.

I'm currently playing 4, actually. :) It's fun, but it has its fair share of jankyness as well.

Signalis, Nov 6 (XBox Game Pass)-One of the best games I've played this year and a really good PS1/PS2 era survival horror type game. I think it takes some of the best parts of the early RE games and System Shock and mixes them together into a fun, tense experience. I still have no idea what was reality and what was memory or hallucination or dreams but I don't think it matters. But what I understood of the plot I liked. Really enjoyed the Sierpinski and Rotfront sections, Nowhere was a bit of a letdown and quite tedious. Only real complaint is the hit boxes for opening doors. Too frequently I'd flee an enemy and could not open a door because the icon flashed too quickly and disappeared. Puzzles were good although the moon mural at the end stumped me a bit. Combat was a little clunky which seems reasonable for a game where everything is stronger than you and you're better off running away than fighting. All the pieces really came together and I really enjoyed it.

Full List

Telltale Texas Hold'em (2005) (Linux/Wine)

Paradoxically, this game may show you a more human face of poker than playing online with real people. Here you can see the role of bluff, bet, and the style of play of individual players. It's also a fun way to learn the rules of the game. Sure, the dialogues become repetitive at some point, but for a few tournaments it really adds nice layer to the game, which you won't find in quick online plays; it helps you realize how cool this game may be in real life, sitting face to face with friends. For the price – it's worth trying. Unfortunately there's a game-breaking bug and from time to time the game just stops – it does not hang, but you cannot make any action to make a new deal; you can nothing but quit the game.

List of all games completed in 2022.


Yes. Currently, this magazine is a quarterly and does not add full versions of games anymore (on this it once built its dominant position on the Polish market).

I've just finished Slain: Back from Hell. It's a hard game to the point of being frequently unfair. On the other hand, each level has an immersive ambience that makes you feel like you're literally in hell and all that enhanced by the music. The game is good, but in my opinion it could've been more polished, especially the level design, the controls and the merciless AI.