Mafia Definitive Edition, Dec 14 (Xbox Game Pass)-It was a fun game. I liked the graphics and the voice acting was good. The plot was an interesting origin story. It was a little short at about 10-11 hours. The missions got a little repetitive and the driving and combat weren't great. But the narrative and presentation were good. I was looking forward to seeing how the developers were going to continue the story but now I see that each of the games are standalone even if they are in the same universe.

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The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf (2017) (Linux/Proton)

Not exactly finished – I've dropped just before flying mushrooms level ends. It's incredibly frustrating at some point. Perhaps it's a matter of controls (PC keyboard and mouse). I'm a child of the golden age of 2D platformers and it seems my brain never developed enough to handle 3D platformers. As the story is extremely shallow and gameplay is really dull, I don't see any reason to continue this fight, no reward expected.

List of all games completed in 2024.

Tron 2.0. I watched Tron recently, which reminded me that it would be cool to replay Tron 2.0. I know a lot of people like the Tron Legacy movie, but IMO this is still the real sequel. It just feels more like the original movie to me and the way it expands on the movie's setting feels truer to me than the movie sequel. I also just like the characters and overall story, involving corporate espionage and computer viruses, more.

This was made back when Monolith was still a very good developer - although it would be fantastic for GOG to get the No One Lives Forever games, this came out right around the same time and it's very similar in a lot of ways. It's just doing Tron on the Lithtech engine is all. You get a variety of weapons you can use, but aside from one or two spots where the LOL (sniper rifle) comes in handy, I just stick to the disc the whole way through. Blocking enemy throws and then head-shotting them with the disc never gets old. Unfortunately, I don't think the light cycles portions work especially well in this. Their inclusion feels obligatory and not much else.

Half-Life. I also had an itch to replay Half-Life for the first time in like 15 years. It's still a very good game, although I find it a bit uneven overall. The early portions are fantastic, with everything building smoothly and then keeping a great sense of tension and exploration in the aftermath of the accident, but then around the points where you start riding the rails and going underground, I found my attention lessening and the game never really gets back to that early feeling, starting to feel grindy as it goes along, and then of course you get to Xen with its loose platforming and the game ends on a squishy note. I had this initial idea that I might go ahead and replay the expansions and then continue into Half-Life 2, but around the point where you're riding the little handcar around the tunnels, contantly starting and then stopping to open gates and crap, I realized that Half-Life 2 expands on that concept in a really bad way with its vehicle sections and I was cured of any desire to replay it.

Nixy the Glade Sprite. One of those recent homebrew games made for the ZX Spectrum. You control a fairy named Nixy, whose apparently really hot based on the loading screen but is just a humble cartoon character in-game, and you have to run and jump around various screens collecting stuff to save the forest. First you have to have find the Gaia Stone and take it to the Moon Pool, then you're directed to collect 10 Moon Blossoms and take those to the pool, and then the game makes you take the Gaia Stone back to where you found it. Once you get the hang of the gameplay you can comfortably finish it in an afternoon, which is what I did.

I'm always very impressed by how adept modern programmers are at squeezing more graphics and sounds out of these old machines, each one having its own particular vibe, which is refreshing in this age where even consoles are basically just mini gaming PCs. The Spectrum in particular has this knack for moody exploration games like this one, with its deep solid colors on top of pure black backgrounds.

Thanks for advice, however I decided to move to another title. By the way, I don't know what was my exact expectations, but, after playing some Lego games, I hoped for something more intriguing and satisfying when I was starting Smurfs. I'm really disappointed here.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle-Jerk (PC Game Pass)

It turned out quite well in the end. As an alternative to uncharted or modern Tomb Raider games this is a really good compliment. It is similar to those other games in that you play as a well-known adventurer, but The Great Circle actually feels very different in play. For a start it is mostly in first person, this works well for the exploration and feels more immersive. You spend less time climbing as Indiana Jones than you do Lara or Nathan Drake- but when you do the game switches to third person when needed.

Overall, the game does the early movies justice. It uses the license almost as well as Alien Isolation or the South Park RPG's. It feels like a 4th movie more than the recent Indiana Jones movies do. Combat is not overdone- this game is far more about exploring the three major areas followed by cinematic high action sequences to join the major areas together. When combat is resorted to it is mostly the traditional Indie brawling. My favorite part of the game is that all enemies are on the map to be dealt with or avoided as you see fit. There are never waves of spawning grenade spamming enemies like in Uncharted.

Indie is voiced by Troy Baker. I'm one of the first to say that he is a bit overused in modern gaming- his voice has become too easy to identify. In this game he was the right choice though. Without side-by-side comparisons, it is hard to tell that is not a younger Harrison Ford doing the voice work.

The game runs awesome- it uses idTech and not Unreal 5! It uses ray traced global lighting, which cannot be turned off- so you must have an RT GPU or a modern console (PS5 gets the game in a few months). I ran the game in native 4K at Epic settings and it looks great overall- maybe just the clothing animations of NPC's that maybe let things down slightly, clothing looks really stiff on the models. The environments though, all look amazing- the Vatican being the standout and was a lot of fun to explore.

Definitely a game worth playing through. It took me 28 hours, that was the story, all side missions and mysteries. I did not collect all collectibles. If you only play the story missions, then I think it would take around 15 hours. Most of all I'm glad that Machine Games made it feel like Indiana Jones and not just a reskinned Uncharted or Tomb Raider with its game play.

Finished STALKER: SoC a few days ago. Will probably get around to at least finishing the main quest of DYSMANTLE in a day or so.

Now one game I specially did not finish was Space Marine.... IMO that game is shockingly over rated. I got given a copy of the sequel and already had a copy of the original on my steam account, think I got it from a give away or something. Decided to load up the copy of the first one... and I gotta save I have not been that board with a game in a while. I uninstalled that game and had the gift of the sequel refunded to the person that gave it to me. No reason for the person that gave me the gift to waste their money on a game I'll never play.

Apologies for the random rant there. But I'm just of perplexed why in the hell that series is so highly rated. And I already like plenty of over 40K games. Even the shooters. But those those space marine games are just kinda a*s.