Day of the Tentacle Remastered, Feb 4 (Xbox Gamepass)-This starts out pretty fun with some good puzzles and an interesting multi-character, multi-inventory, time traveling plot. But it gets worse as the game progresses and the puzzles get more and more bizarre. There were a couple puzzles I thought were downright terrible (Edna, cat toy, and crowbar). I was also fighting the interface the whole game and interacting with objects in the world or in inventory or with other characters was not consistent. Lastly, the voice acting was very bad and often times the characters mouths would move, there would be 1-2 seconds of silence, and then the audio would kick in. The game should probably get some extra points for what I assume is a full working version of Maniac Mansion that you can play in game although I didn't want to go even further back in user interface design.

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Resident Evil 2 (XSX)

I played as Leon for the first playthrough, then Claire for the second playthrough to get the true ending.

The remake version, one of the best modern Resident Evil games. I haven't played the original game that it's based on, but the remake is excellent. It runs and controls perfectly and looks great. Well, when I say controls perfectly, of course I mean for a Resi game- the characters still sprint as fast as an 80-year-old woman with two broken legs, but that's a Resi tradition and not due to poor programming. Capcoms RE Engine has to be one of the best modern optimized engines out there- up there with idTech anyway. Makes me think they should hire it out to third parties and compete with Unreal. Then again, such Engines are specialized for certain types of games and expanding them for general use would possibly lose their optimization.

Resi 2 retains all of the old Resi tropes like inventory and ammo management and light puzzle solving and exploration. Less desirable tropes remain as well, such as nothing seems to ever stay dead, and the protagonists are too stupid to check. I still like Resi 7 better, I prefer the first-person formula for this type of survival horror. This Resi 2 remake is definitely the next best Resi game though- I haven't played Village yet. If the recent Resi 4 remake is this good then I'm looking forward to it, as the original still had my favorite setting.

Playing this game also drove home the stark difference between Japanese remakes for "modern audiences" vs Western remakes for "modern audiences". The Japanese method means taking an original's setting and bringing into the current age via gameplay elements like better controls and interface and changing from fixed rendered screens to fully 3D.
The Western method of remaking for a modern audience means making all female characters uglier, making all the men feminine and making damn sure all the bad guys are white male. Long may the Japanese make games! Rest assured that Claires butt is as appealing as it's always been in Resident Evil 2.

Resident Evil 2 Remake, Feb 6 (Xbox Gamepass)-An excellent survival horror game. It looked and sounded pretty good but there were some clipping issues and sound issues occasionally. It had all the puzzles I liked from Code Veronica X and 7 and the familiar resource and inventory management. Being constantly chased by Mr X added both a degree of difficulty and annoyance to the game.

It has a some of the same issues I have with other Resident Evil games. Mainly that the beginning sequences are so goo. I loved exploring the maze that is the Police Station, finding equipment and puzzle items and unlocking shortcuts to get around. Those beginning hours have so much tension while you have no idea where to go and you have so few resources if you get cornered. Once I got out of the Police Station the maze was much smaller and I generally had the resources to tackle anything.

I did like the 2nd run playthru. It was a condensed, faster-paced playthru with items in enemies in slightly different locations. It was fun and terrifying to expect the safety of a room and get completely surprised by an enemy, especially Mr X when you thought you were done with him. But it was very similar to the first playthru with the exception of the Sherry vs Ada segments and the very end so it was as unique as I was hoping.

Overall its a really good game that gives that old school Resident Evil feel in a modern package.

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If anybody could explain what exactly happens in Marigold Garden (which I completed last month), I'd really appreciate it.

Scarface: The World Is Yours. After replaying GTA3, I was thinking about moving on to Vice City, and I might still do that soon, but I remembered the Scarface game has a cult following, so I decided to check it out. After trying out different options, I settled for playing the PC version with the Remastered mod, which makes the game much sharper-looking, runs more smoothly, has gamepad support, and includes some nice touches like fixing the portrait in Tony's mansion to include Michelle Pfeiffer again.

The game isn't bad. It's very post-GTA3 open world stuff, although I think Vice City's version of "Miami" is more interesting. The game begins at the end of the movie, allowing you to spin around and shoot the guy coming through your office with the shotgun, and then you fight your way across your mansion to safety. Months pass and Tony vows to get revenge on Sosa by rebuilding his empire. This opening is great fun - I especially liked seeing the tiger break loose from its chain and attack the hit squad. Then you start out in Little Havana and have go from making minor deals to acquiring front businesses, getting more money to make bigger deals and acquire even more businesses until you control the whole city. Whenever you have a lot of money, you need to find a bank so you can launder your money and save the game; if you get killed, all the money goes away.

The mission design is very mixed. The major setpieces are generally fine, but the usual progression of the game is basically: run a random side mission like beating up informants or assassinating gang members; this unlocks another side mission where you get in touch with a dealer and have to do something random to get a delivery to your storage facilities; then you make a run where you pick up cash from all your businesses while enemy gangs chase you and try to smash up your fronts; and then you finish at the bank where you can launder the money and bribe the cops and gangs to make their heat go away. Then you use whatever cash you have left to buy stuff that expands your empire and fills up your mansion with stuff. This is fine at first but it gets old fast, especially when you just want some money to buy something relatively simple. And midway through the game an extra step is added where you have to travel to "the islands" to get bigger shipments and take them by boat back to Miami. The game could have used some simpler method for generating a modest amount of cash. There also isn't much to do around the city besides running races or cleaning out enemy gangs. It's also really frustrating when you just made a lot of money and then get killed over something stupid, making all of it go away.

The controls are fine and the driving has the same arcadey feel as the old GTA games, which I like. Tonally, the game comes off like an affectionate parody of the movie. When you take Tony out of the tragic context of the movie and just have him as this sort of superhero who cusses out literally everyone in his path, it just seems ridiculously funny, like you're watching Scarface as imagined by a late night comedy sketch show. It's easy to imagine the game as maybe a fantasy Tony has as he's dying. The voice actor imitating Pacino's performance isn't bad, although most of his performance is just him shouting and ranting like a psycho, so there are no layers to it. The game does carry over the idea from the movie that Tony has a code against shooting women and children and you simply can't shoot innocent people - it's one of the few games where they could have genuinely included kids without having to worry about players slaughtering them.

In terms of how it represents the movie as a licensed game, it's...very mixed. Having Pacino's likeness and a decent actor imitating him is good, and important locations like the mansion, the Babylon Club, and the Sun Ray Hotel are faithfully recreated. However, the doesn't feel at all like it takes place in 1983 or even 84 or 85. It feels largely like a product of its early 2000s time, just with a few goofy 1980s outliers like Tony himself. Vice City is much better at creating an 80s atmosphere, and it has a vastly superior soundtrack. Scarface's soundtrack sucks outside of the songs from the movie and a few random 80s tunes like Caribbean Queen. Most of it is modern rap music that got included because of the movie's popularity among rappers (who mostly didn't even understand the movie's point). Overall, I would say it's not essential but it's a good game to play if you've already played the classic GTA games and want something similar but don't feel replaying Vice City again.

Include me too, OP :)
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Runaway: A Road Adventure

A somewhat clichéd yet fun little point and click about a man searching for treasure whilst on the
run from bad guys....while scattering an interesting side character and nice settings here and there.

Pros

Decent intro/theme song and outro
Some fun side characters(Oscar bros 4 lyfe)
Nice backgrounds

Cons

Some items cannot be used until Brian comes up with a plan for their use....which is usually
accomplished by exploring other areas and talking to NPCs/examining hotspots and other items/etc

Misc

The art style for the characters seems a bit "uncanny" at first, but over time it seems to grow on ya.

Opus Echo of Starsong Full Bloom Edition, Feb 8 (Xbox Gamepass)-This game reminded me a lot of Citizen Sleeper but with a much more focused story. And it was a pretty good story with a satisfying ending. The gameplay and puzzles were lackluster especially the starsong tuning bits but you're not playing this for the puzzles. The story alone was worth it for about 10 hours of gameplay.

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Underdark Overbright & Beyond Belief (Quake Enhanced Mission Packs)

Both very enjoyable Quake campaigns. The first for its creative level design; it felt the most special of the unofficial bonus add-ons and was probably one of the most interesting campaigns I've played, second only to Dimension of the Machine, perhaps. The second had short and crisp levels, and apparently it was one of the first (or even THE first) mission pack for Quake by a modder back then, and with that in mind, it was also very well designed. It even has a puzzle in one of the later levels the likes of which I have never seen in a Quake campaign before, although that also posed a problem for me, because I really wasn't prepared for that in a fast-paced FPS. I remembered now that I had already tried to play through Beyond Belief after finishing the main campaigns last year and got hopelessly stuck at the end. And now I ran into the same issue. But this time, I eventually figured the puzzle out. It's by no means a complex puzzle, it still fits an action game, but it was very unexpected, so I wasn't even sure it is a puzzle in the first place. Still, great mission pack.

I'm into online chess right now. To become better player I practice tactical puzzles to sharpen my tactical awareness and calculation skills. Also I found chess calculator that helps to develop my chess game. With its help it's easy to learn how to become much better chess player and slowly increase my game. It is the program for chess, which helps you to play on websites like chess.com, lichess.org, flyordie.com etc

Get well soon, by which I mean ween yourself off pocket-casinos, because they're exclusively played by dumb suckers who post about a never-ending game in a thread about finishing games.

hey it was my all time favorite but i think it should be something more to explore and more entertaining.

You never really beat that game... but I am like town hall 12 or 13...


Is it really a casino? there is no real gambling part
but it is never ending...

It's not directly gambling per-say, but players are encouraged to pay for resources that other players are encouraged to destroy. That kind of shit is "pocket-casino" enough for me.

Model Builder (Epic)

A job or hobby simulator for a topic that I actually have plenty of experience with in real life, for a change. I've been building model kits since I was about 6 and am still doing it. I'm a bit better at it now than when I was 6.

When this game came to Steam, I was curious about it, but not enough to make a purchase. Then along comes Epic and makes it one of their free weekly games.

First of all, the game has some really annoying issues. It never saves my settings on exit. So, every time I start the game I have to invert the y-axis and change the graphics from 4K low settings to 1080p medium (which is all my PC can handle whilst staying close to 60fps). I don't understand how a game that has been out this long can have this issue, and it's not just me- many users complain about the same thing. Some also report lots of crashes and bugs, but I had no issues there.

The game has a sandbox mode and a "career mode". I played the career, which basically begins with a tutorial and proceeds through doing jobs for clients or competitions. For the career mode you are expected to adhere to realism and the client's requests for how to finish the job. The game does actually cover many modern techniques for the hobby, but also misses a few- there are many things that I do in real life that are not in the game or are covered too broadly. Also, it feels like it forces too many things out of the order I would naturally do them.

It was fun for a bit, but soon became tedious for no real payoff. I'm not sure who it's for. Unlike things like driving trains other sims...anyone can just buy a model kit and do it for themselves. Maybe it's for someone that enjoyed the hobby as a kid and just wants some nostalgia, but for me I'd rather just spend time doing the real thing.