Prince of Persia - Warrior Within

Damn it this is such a frustrating game.

First of all the installation. The GOG version didn't support widescreen oob, so I have to download a patch and modified an .ini file from pcgamingwiki. And while controller is supported the mapping is all over the place and not making any sense at all to me. I try mapping it manually but gave up after my generic 360 controller is not 100% recognized. Maybe I was meant to play it with m+k like the other 3 PoP games that I've finished, the Original, Sands of Time and 2008 PoP. Oh and let's not forget the normal view setting here are inverted and "inverted" in the settings are indeed the normal one. I really confused playing the first part.

And the Prince, now fully emo and edgy like an angsty teen. With tribal tattoo and stupid one-liners. No more playful prince charming. The only other 2 characters are scantily clad woman because gamers are horny duh. The enemies are just basically guards, dogs, giants and 1 boss character. They're like puzzles, only 1 optimal way to kill them. Worst of all are ninja girls. They talk with innuendos that amusing at first and aggravating the more we hear them and it took me a while to figure how the hell to beat them as normal combo do nothing to them.

The environment are dark and dull, which make it difficult for me to see where that landing spot is or where the path that i have to take.I have to admit i lost more often and not while also having no idea where I supposed to go or do. It full of backtracking and if you happen use a wrong door the maze will make you take a roundabout that will take a long time. I resort to use an old gamefaqs as a guide. I never felt so lost like this playing other modern PoP games.

Music are boring guitar riff from hip metal genre, the same chords played again and again. Some music from 2000s should stay in that era. Alas. Camera is terrible and on combat it could go from one view point to another. The final boss fight suffer from this.Oh and speaking of the final boss fight it took me god knows how many times to finished the bad ending boss. Somehow it was easier to beat the "true ending" than the bad one.

But the platformer parts when I actually know what to do and where to go are actually great and the time limited chase sequence are fun. And other than 1 random crash and a bit of cutscenes that have no audio it ran fine on my playtime. Also the video gallery that contain a segment about the history of the series are well appreciated.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition

Toem, Jul 7 (Xbox Game Pass)-This plays like a mix of Hidden Folks and Chicory and it falls right in between the two. Doesn't have the story to back it up like Chicory but doesn't overstay its welcome like Hidden Folks.

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Tengai Makyou: Ziria (aka Far East of Eden). The recent English translation made me check this out, a game I've been curious about for a long time. It's a fairly typical Dragon Quest clone of its era, but its claim to fame was being the first CD-based RPG, so there's a fair amount of voice work and a few simple cinematic sequences.

The story is the usual business about a dark lord rising and your heroes being destined to stop him and his followers. The specifics are that the dark lord has a cult of followers lead by 13 major demons, so to beat the game you have to defeat all 13 of them, plus a handful of mini-boss types, and I don't think it's much of a spoiler to reveal that you're going to have to deal with the dark lord himself before it's over.

A notable bit of backstory to the game is that it claims to have been based on a book by a westerner about Japanese history, allowing the creators to satirize alleged western stereotypes of Japan (the game's manual features a photo of the author and it's just a picture of Karl Marx). In practice, it mostly just comes as a typically light-hearted JRPG, with some goofy concepts like making you fight medieval mechs and stuff. It's got a bit in common with the Ganbare Goemon series. There's one western character, a missionary, who helps you throughout the game and the big joke with him is that he looks funny and speaks Japanese very badly.

By RPG standards, it's quite linear. Each province of the country is gated off from the others, and to open the gates you have clear out the major demon cultists of the region, then you move on and repeat until you get to Edo. The linear structure would probably be considered a negative by many but I actually kind of appreciated it. With the random encounter rate of the game, I appreciated that I was usually exploring a fairly small area and rarely lost my sense of direction because of the distraction of the battling.

Grinding is mixed. For the most part, I didn't have to grind too much...until the final area of the game, when the game suddenly demanded that I grind a lot. I think when I entered Edo, I was around level 49 or 50, and I finished the game at level 62. I've read that 65 is considered the minimum for challenging the final bosses; maybe I got lucky, but I'm glad I didn't have to grind that far. Fortunately, getting killed in the game isn't much of an inconvenience. The game just sends you back to the last save point, fully recharges you, and takes half your money, but money isn't hard to accumulate in the game and eventually stops mattering entirely, so you can just keep running back at whatever's killing you until you break through.

Combat is typical DQ attack/defend/magic style. Each character has a unique ability but I didn't see much use for them outside of the main character's steal ability, which is required to defeat one boss. The main hero also gets special attack powers but you can't control them. The game just unleashes them at highly random times, sometimes like a couple of hours apart, so you can't rely on them in combat. Using special items is also sometimes mandatory against particular enemies.

The translation seems pretty good to my non-Japanese-speaking self. I felt like the story and tone were communicated clearly and dialogues that were supposed to point you toward puzzle solutions were easy to comprehend.

It's not necessarily a game that will change your life, but I found it charming and relaxing to spend time with. I hope the other games in the series that have yet to be translated get done, especially since the second is supposed to be the best one, according to what I've read.

Bound In Blood has such a good story. I also recommend Gunslinger. You will find yourself taking time out to look at the beautiful vistas.

Luckily for me I already got Gunslinger as it was given for free by Techland a few years on Steam. I'll play it after finishing Broken Age, just taking a break from FPS for a moment

Death Rally -1996, Windows version

I've just finished the tournament, too bad they didn't keep the victory cinematique.

You'll love it, it's an atonement story.

CODENAME: STEAM

The party I used in 16-2 was Dorothy, Fox, Califia, and Queequeg. I tried a variety of other strategies, but the only one that worked was having Dorothy be the bait and keeping the rest near their starting positions and blasting the boss at range. The game was good, and it's a shame that it has a pretty negative reputation. I certainly thought it was no worse than Valkyria Chronicles II for instance.

Beer! (2018) (Linux)
(thank you, solseb, for the game!)

I like beer and I really wanted to like this one, but, well, perhaps it's a nice way to spend a quarter or two, but I'm not sure it should be a part of GOG as it rather looks like some kind of free online clicker than a full-scale game.

List of all games completed in 2024.

Gotham Knights, Jul 15 (Xbox Game Pass)-This game was very janky and buggy. I tried half a dozen times to watch the opening cutscene and the game crashed halfway thru every single time. I was forced to skip it and watch it on youtube just to get to the opening menu. I had to turn the graphics way down for fear of crashes during gameplay and even then I couldn't play more than an hour without it crashing again. And yet I had a really good time with it. The combat did get repetitive but the boss fights were varied and fun. The main quest missions were interesting but the side quests were also pretty repetitive. There were a bunch of collectibles that you can safely ignore and the open world is pretty small. The story was good as well as the voice acting. One minor complaint is that when you are in fight and you use a stealth attack on an enemy any other enemies can deal damage while you are stuck in an unskippable amination. One major complaint is the is the jankiness of the platforming. Assassin's Creed or Mirror's Edge this is not. Also, if you are running towards an objective you need to interact with, you must be lined up directly head on or you won't get the button prompt. And if you get and press the prompt before you stop running you will lose the prompt and have to move back into the exact position before you can try again. I guess that's two major complaints. Overall it felt like a solid effort that I had fun with despite some annoying gameplay faults and stability issues.

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Lords of the Fallen 2023 (PC Game Pass)

I'm not sure why they called this Lords of the Fallen, it has nothing to do with the first game other than being broadly the same genre. Anyway, it has been received poorly overall- mainly due to poor performance. Well, my performance was fine, the game had no crashes, and the only bug was one occasion of where I got stuck on some terrain. Visually the game can be stunning at times. The levels are really well designed, though a bit dull in the usual apocalyptic way. It has that sort of level design where after playing for 4 days you will find yourself looking down and recognizing the place where you were all of them days ago- and then opening a shortcut back to it. The UI is also really well done.

Game play is a bit mixed. It is a "Souls like", it has some good ideas that refresh things, but also some that annoy me. I like the Vestige system- the bonfire equivalent. There are fixed vestiges like usual to rest at. You can also level at them without having to rest and reset enemies- a nice convenience if you are happy to run back and dump a load of XP without resetting enemies just before a boss fight. As well as fixed vestiges, you also find and earn a consumable item that can also be used to grow portable vestiges at very common locations. You can only have one set at a time, but they are very handy if you are having trouble in an area- especially right before a boss arena.

The weapon and character levelling systems are fine. I played as an agility character to begin with, to use spears as my main melee weapon, then over time I evolved into a radiance character for heavy spell casting- something like a battle cleric in the end. Different than my usual lightly armored casters that I normally play in Dark Souls games.

There's two parts of the game that I didn't like and keep this from being an S or A tier game like its competition. First is that the bosses are terrible overall. Pretty much all bosses have some annoying gimmick to them that needs to be overcome. The final boss fight in particular (for the radiance ending). I just want tough bosses that I can fight fairly, not running around an arena looking for some hidden parasite that I need to cleanse just to make the boss touchable. The only thing that makes the bosses bearable is the fact that they are still relatively easy. Though, the final radiance ending boss could be the worst boss I've ever encountered in a video game.

The other part that I did not like were the umbral segments. Basically, the game has dual planes that you need to switch between to solve progression puzzles and find many secrets. It's not a bad idea, it's just the execution that I don't like. You can only exit the umbral plane at set locations. Whilst in umbral, you are on a timer. Enemies just keep spawning and get stronger. The aspect that I love about Souls type games is that they reward slow, careful, measured game play- I actually find these games to be relaxing! The umbral mechanic throws all of that away and makes everything feel rushed and stressed- and destroys the very thing I like so much about these types of game. Some people may love this, but I don't.

So, if you have the machine to play this game without its documented performance issues, rest assured it's a decent game with some really good ideas and great level design. But, for me the boss design and the rushed and stress inducing umbral areas relegate this one to tier B- still a good game, but with flaws. Steelrising, which I played earlier this year was a much better game.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

I managed to get 100% achievement for it. I'm not really an achievement hunter but when I really like the game and the achievements are reasonable then I could bear the grind. And I do like this game that much.

I finished my fist walk in Hard mode in around 7 hours and the second on the True West difficulty. Got into some early difficulty on tackling the Duel mode, but after reading some guide, turning the "Dueling Sensitivity" setting really helped. The arcade 3 stars "Legend Among Legends" are where the fast and fun began. The hardest for me is Iron Springs where it was hard at first to know the enemy placement pattern and Missouri Swamps where the shielded gunner really messed up the combo.

I love the story and the "unreliable storyteller" method the game uses. On the second time playing, the minor exchanges that seems trivial get a deeper meaning. And as I am familiar with some of the Wild West legends and outlaws (thanks to Hollywood movies and Lucky Luke comics) it made the game an even better experience.

Ultimate Ski Jumping 2020 (2020) (Linux/Proton)

This game corresponds to the legendary hot-seats game very popular in Poland long years ago. I've completed the campaign and did not find the same atmosphere, perhaps because of using single player mode.

An hour or so of gameplay, if you want to complete the campaign mode.
Gameplay is just click to start, click to jump, click to land. That's all, the rest is timing.
Works out of the box on Linux, I've played with Heroic Games Launcher.

List of all games completed in 2024.