Just recently finished Chasm: The Rift for the second time, a not so good game of 1997 from Ukraine but techonologically impressive as its an FPS game stuck between two different eras with some quite interesting details about itself.

Also finished A Lies: Colonial Marines for a video review, god is that game more pathetic than dumb with its weak attempts of gameplay.

The Last Of Us Remastered, Apr 30 (PS5)-Finally got a chance to play this and its quite good. It reminds me of the first couple of seasons of The Walking Dead turned into a survival horror game rather than a Telltale style adventure game. I love having to conserve resources in these types of games and that was present here as I was constantly low on ammo and forced to melee or stealth my way out of jams. Plot was good if a little predictable, voice acting was excellent. My only issue with the game was the companion AI. Ellie and the other characters would physically block my path every chance they got. And right after they told me about staying quiet around clickers they proceeded to dash from cover to cover right in front of a clicker sometimes even colliding with one. Thankfully the game only responded when the enemies see or hear you but it did look rather ridiculous.

Full List

One Finger Death Punch 2. I really liked the first one and this is more of the same. I think they've refined it slightly, and added a few extra wrinkles like having to fight while invisible, but it's basically the same. I suppose this one is a little bit easier since I actually finished it, whereas I never did beat the final level in the first one.

It's about as simple as can be. You control a stick figure at the center of the screen and mobs of enemies rush you from the left or right. Pushing left attacks the left and pushing right attacks the right (I think it's assumed you're clicking a mouse but I prefer the arrow keys on the keyboard). Enemies that take more than one hit will require you to use combinations (e.g., LLRL). There are also power-ups like skills that unlock periodically, like screen-clearing attacks, and various weapons you pick up. Somehow all this comes together to capture more of the sense of classic martial arts movies than far more elaborate games with much fancier graphics. And the levels are just short enough that the "just one more" factor gets very strong.

Regency Solitaire. I'm not much for card games but solitaire is one that I like, so I gave this a shot. It's not traditional solitaire but a variant in which you can take a card off the board if it's one higher or lower than what's been drawn. If you play right and get lucky, you can clear a large number of cards at once for combos, and you have some power-ups to help you. The game also does some creative layouts for the cards, although this is also a bit of a downside because I found it occasionally hard to read the cards when they're turned sideways.

The reason it's called Regency Solitaire is because there's a story that homages 19th century novels of manners, such as from Jane Austen. The heroine, Bella, wants to marry this nice guy, but an evil, craggy-looking man is manipulating things to keep her family in debt and force her to marry him. There's a big ball at the end. I can't speak to whether the story is really good because I'm not a fan of those types of stories, but at least it's inoffensive. If you need a good casual game and you like solitaire, you could do a lot worse than this. They did a sort of follow-up called Shadowhand, which adds more swashbuckling RPG elements, and I've already got that and will probably install it before long.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted for PS3

I love it, but could anybody explain the logic behind the cut-scenes for Police Pursuit races? Cops will connect together into a giant wheel, or stick to walls and ceilings, or just appear out of thin air. This never reflects on how they race, that's all standard cop tactics adjusted for a racing game. I also can't work out how to begin a Police Campaign now that I finished Criminal.

Thank you for sharing some games, I have experienced it and it's really stimulating, stable transmission, sound configuration is very good quality. Like Tainted Grail: Conquest I'm still conquering it

Neighbourhood Cat - free on itch
This is a short adventure game made with RPG Maker. All the humans are stuck staying at home, but you as the cat are allowed to leave your house and visit with everyone. (Although I do think cats should be kept inside only, this is a cute game.)

https://imgur.com/cmMzz6T.jpg


Rescue Frenzy
Time management game about cleaning up after disasters. Some levels have people or animals to rescue, including the occasional cat. I got this on a bundle disc that had a bunch of games.

https://imgur.com/itmS9sL.jpg


Happy Cat Tavern - free on itch
This is a typing game where you are scored based on how fast you can type plus accuracy. If you ever felt the need to work on building up your typing speed, this game can be either played online or downloaded for free.

https://imgur.com/7bPQSCu.jpg

My third run of Blasphemous, this time with the final (free, btw) DLC installed for the canon ending.

Provided you like the peculiar setting, it's just fantastic. The pixel art, the iconography (directly inspired by the renaissance and baroque eras), the music, the underlying lore, the combat... everything about it is great, and I cannot wait for 2 coming up later this year.
One of the very best metroidvanias you can find, easy 5 out of 5.
The voice acting is also spectacular, although without diminishing the work of the English actors I found the Spanish dubs superior, perfectly conveying the message.

A warning though, it takes a deep dive into religious themes, and despite never quoting anything directly the references to Christianity and Catholicism above all are undeniable. None of them are positive, being them about the church, dogmas, saints and at times even the very idea of the divine.
If you grew up in a very religious area, in a very religious family (like I did) you'll feel dreadfully familiar with most of it.

Ghostwire: Tokyo (XSX Game Pass)

Really fun game in the superpowered traversal, open world style of game- like Crackdown or Sunset Overdrive. Graphics and combat have great style, the music was good as was the Japanese voice acting. It also ended at the right time, right as I hit the level cap and ran out of meaningful upgrades. It took me 41 hours to all side missions and story.

It ran really well in its uncapped mode for freesync TV's. The only negative would be that the story was mostly told in the final hour of linear gameplay, but story is my lowest measuring stick for games- so that doesn't bother me much when I enjoy the gameplay.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma, May 9 (Xbox Game Pass)-Phew that was painful. This game is really hard and in my opinion really, really bad. Yes its very challenging but not in service of any worthwhile gameplay. The combat was really tough and the only way I could get through the game was by being a ninja dog and even then it was still difficult sometimes. But the things that really bothered me were the terrible platforming and camera controls for a game from 2007, I guess technically its a port from 2004 but still. The game really wanted to be like classic Resident Evil game which I fully support but with such a focus on frenetic combat it doesn't really work. That said the classic RE aspects are what I actually liked about the game ie collecting a ton of keys and statues and things to use in really simple puzzles, backtracking all over the place, forgettable plot. It all just would have been better in a game less focused on action. That and the game was far too long with far too many boss fights especially at the end where bosses showed up every few minutes and were frequently retreads of foes you already beat earlier in the game. Lastly voice acting was terrible across the board with the sole exception of Gamov. I think I've seen enough of this franchise and I won't need to play any of the others.

Full List

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers – 20th Anniversary Edition

I’m a fan of the original. This remake, or reimagining is fine for newcomers to this classic, but I’ll gladly stick to the original.

It felt oddly slow and clunky at times (yes, you could speed up the original, but still).
They changed the location of some items, whole puzzles and sequences, but the newly added puzzles felt unimaginative and rather pointless; except for one, which I’m not naming because of spoilers.
The voice actors have also changed which I didn’t mind much, but you can’t beat the original ones.
The dialogue was, from a technical standpoint, inconsistent and/or bugged: some lines couldn’t be skipped, some could and often the skipping would skip the text and speech, but not the talking itself. It was weird.
The atmosphere was also a downgrade, in my humble opinion.

As a whole, not a bad game, and I do recommend it to people who can’t stand the retro graphics of the original; get it, play it, it’s good. The story is just as great as the original, the characters are likeable and the villains memorable.

Hedon Bloodrite

With a little help from the cheat console at the very end. I enjoyed it just as much as the first part - it's still the same cool mix of Doom-like shooter with fantasy theme and atmospheric exploration à la Arx Fatalis and many secrets to uncover. But I also loved the changes, mainly the two sections that make the bulk of the game in which you have open worlds of sprawling interconnected areas, instead of a linear succession of levels, plus all the RPG-like side quests that you can do in them. The downside is that it wasn't always easy to stay on top of things, remember how to quickly get from A to B and not get lost in the huge maps. But there was so much to do and discover all the time, that getting stuck wasn't much of a problem. Weapons were nice again and enemy variety great, with a few new additions.

There were also some more linear chapters in between, and I did not enjoy all of them as much as the open world exploration. Some parts, usually those with a lot of platforming and instadeath falls involved, could even get downright annoying (imagine tightrope acrobatics with impaired vision while wearing rollerskates), but thankfully you can savescum your way through them with the help of the quicksave button. There were some pretty cool levels, too, surprisingly even right at the end, where things often get more stressful than fun, but the last two levels before the endboss looked great and were a joy to play. And even if not all parts were equally fantastic, at least everything was pretty varied and creative.

Unfortunately, the game overstayed its welcome a bit, because the boss battle section at the end threw so much bullshit at me that I got fed up and resorted to using God Mode to speed things up and get to the end already, and even with God Mode it still felt like a chore. But then again, I'm pretty biased against boss battles in general, because they're rarely ever enjoyable to me. So it's a good thing that apart from this last one, there were no annoying boss fights in the game, only fights with bigger hordes or more powerful opponents, but no scripted arena bosses with phases. I had tried Elderborn, Dread Templar and PowerSlave Exhumed before and got stuck in all of them at some point due to shitty boss battles, and Hedon Bloodrite put no such spokes in my wheel until the very end.

I do wish though the item inventory would have been a little more convenient. I'm kind of a packrat in the first place, but the way the inventory was handled didn't exactly encourage using consumables either. Having to scroll through a long row of items with forth and back keys only is bad enough, but even more so considering that the game is not paused when you do, so it can be tricky to find the right item in the midst of combat.

Still, all in all a very nice game.



Also, Siege of Shadowdale EE (NWN EE)

I've played the original before and it was okay. The Enhanced version adds an overland map, better looking tilesets and new quests, and all of that raised my verdic from the originally okay to the now pretty good.

Carrion - Platinum

how nice... here's one hoping to ever finish Baldurs Gate too. This post helps alot!! EE sadly did not improve on the system