The Shivah Kusher Edition (3:15pm 1st December)

I played the original version earlier this year which was good but short. This is just looks a lot better and adds in a few easter eggs. If you played the original I wouldn't recommend this one unless you get it discounted (or you really like Wadjet Eye)

Finished Electronic Super Joy

An equally awesome and rage-inducing platformer. The soundtrack can be so good sometimes, other times it just adds to the rage. The four World 4 levels unlocked by getting every star in the first three worlds are downright insane, but also very creative. The game has some really great ideas and is full of humor.

Prey

It was not very good: bad graphics (almost always the same metal environments with organic doors), bad dialogs, bad story, dull gameplay...

Half-Life:before (4th dec 12:15)

Not much to say about this one. One level which is well made and a dull boss fight. I only played it since I saw it on the new releases on steam (and it was a free mod).

Games I finished this 2013...

The Trouble With Robots and Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae. I finished both of them just this December.

Finished:

The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1 - Thought it was a very well made and interesting start to the game. A little mystery thriller with interesting characters in a unique world. The gameplay style is similar to The Walking Dead game and I had a great time with the game. Recommend it to those that liked TWD and like a crime story!

Complete list: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2013/post132

Wow, have you been playing them since January? If not, what have you been doing this whole year - MMOs?

Poker Night at the Inventory.

Got all the item, deck and table unlocks and have now listened to everything they have to say multiple times. So I consider this completed. AI isn't fantastic which means the poker isn't fantastic but it was kind of cool hearing all the dialog especially as I liked most of the characters.

I actually tried Grand Chase before.

Anyway, I just got both games. I managed to finish them after a week or so. They're pretty much easy but they're fun to play with.

This list has all the games I've finished in December. For the November list, go here.

December 5th: The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures. As someone who's seen all the AVGN episodes, I was very curious to see what kind of game the game about him would be. And sure enough, there were lots and lots of preferences to his videos. As for the game itself, it's a very solid action platformer. The controls are very tight, and the music is really, really good. I guess the game could be described as "Mega Man meets Eryi's Action". And I really mean that: the game is really, really difficult. By the time I saw the end credits, I had died 406 times. On Normal! The final boss took quite a huge chunk of that number...finally I got a good run during the first three phases and faced the fourth phase with full health. Then I decided not to even try examine his patterns, and just brute forced him to death. While the game was really hard, it still managed to be very entertaining, but there was this one thing that almost managed to wreck a lot of the fun away: the instant death blocks. The game is literally littered with those goddamn things. But apart from that, I have no major complaints. If you're up for a similar challenge we faced as kids on our Nintendos, and have no problem with cursing (there's a lot of it!) and humor that's made in really bad taste (shitting birds and cock rockets are just the beginning of it), I don't see why you shouldn't give the game a go.

December 10th: Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now. In my opinion, there's one major thing preventing the game to be the best in the series, instead being only "as good as the first". It's the missions they implemented in the game, which I really disliked. Carmageddon may be a driving game, but it doesn't shine as a racing game. Carmageddon should be all about wrecking the other opponents and causing mayhem in general, not driving through checkpoints on a strict time limit. I stopped counting the times I had to try the mission "In Cold Blood", eventually finishing it with only three seconds to spare. The soundtrack is also much worse than in the original Carmageddon. Yeah, I said it. Carmageddon's a brutal game, so the soundtrack should be too. Iron Maiden just doesn't sound as good in the game as Fear Factory does in the original. Before I had even finished the second group of levels, I had grown so tired of those four Maiden songs, I just had to replace the music with the music from the first game. Lo and behold, the game instantly got 100% more awesome. The things that I really liked, were the improved physics (cars could be torn in half!) and the addition of new powerups, some of which were really fun and useful, such as the opponent repulsificator and the mines. The levels were also more fun than in the original. So, pros and cons counted together, the game's as good as the original, but because of the missions and a lamer soundtrack, it doesn't rise above it.

December 13th: Blood of the Werewolf. A pretty good, but flawed, action platformer. The one thing wrong with the game, was that the difficulty was all over the place. The game started out stupid easy, then all of a sudden took a huge difficulty spike. And then, throughout the game, it bounced all over the place. Some (well, most) levels were pretty hard, but then all the boss fights were really, really easy. Another thing I disliked, was the ending, which was just plain stupid. But things I liked, were the visual style (sort of like the horror movies from the 50's) and Selena's voice acting which at least to me was pretty convincing. This is a mother who will stop at nothing to get her baby back. Overall, definitely not the best platformer I've played, but not bad either. It's alright.

December 15th: Gunpoint. I really enjoyed this. The game's not particularly long, and it's quite easy, but still very fun. I liked the small bits of humor that were tossed in there (like the mission where you need to wipe footage of yourself wiping footage: how many detective stories have that?!) or how your absentminded self reveals his dirty work to a cop you're helping. The levels were tied into neat small packages and they were fun to solve. A pretty unique game overall: just wish it was longer. Maybe they'll make a sequel some day: I'd really like that.

December 18th: Elder Sign: Omens. Finished all the campaigns. Most of them didn't really give me too much trouble and I finished a lot of them on my first try, although I guess I got incredibly lucky on the Dark Pharaoh campaign since it was labelled "Very Hard". The Cthulhu campaign took several tries, but without question that hardest one was the last campaign, featuring Ithaqua and labelled "Insane". Insane is fucking right. It must have taken me like 50 tries to beat that furry ass. Sometimes I would get surrounded by wolves, unable to continue. Sometimes the dice just wouldn't roll in my favor (once, out of ~30 rolls, I failed to get a single Peril with Joe Diamond). Sometimes the horses would dive into a ravine right before the final stage, removing all my supplies which then means huge damage loss before every turn. Finally, on my victorious run, I had Luke and Vincent who both died, Joe who went insane, and finally Jenny, who took care of the beast (and I had only two clue items remaining after the battle). The whole final campaign was complete bullshit but I'm so happy I finally got through it. I'm pretty sure I will still play the game some more for fun, but I'm dead certain I will never try the Ithaqua campaign again as long as I live!

December 19th: The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. I didn't think it was quite as bad as people let out to be, but yeah, it's no secret that the game definitely has its fair share of problems. The combat was fun at times, but it was completely marred because of your bonehead teammates, whom you constantly had to babysit. These fellows have no quarrel with jumping head first out in the open in the middle of gunfire, if you don't tell them to stay the fuck down. And sometimes, even when you do, they will come looking for you if they get lonely, completely ignoring all cover or enemies. The locales looked nice and captured the 60's essence quite nicely, but then they would always change the environment midway through and make you fight in generic, metallic sci-fi corridors for the rest of the missions. The protagonist, Carter, was very unlikeable and cliched, and for a weak reason they made you shift into another character a little before the end. Although luckily, that meant I got to but a bullet in that stupid head of his; I hated that smug, tough bastard. And finally, they really dropped the ball regarding the storyline right off the bat. It's like no one even cares that much that the whole world is being invaded by aliens: to them it feels like a minor inconvenience. They introduced all these weird sci-fi plot elements which I really didn't care about at all: it all should have been much simpler. Aliens invade, holy shit, let's defend our planet. But no. It's ridiculous. The biggest laughing matter about the plot came right before the credits: they imply that they could completely cover up the whole invasion, and the civilians are none the wiser. Yeah, okay, I'll bite. Just one question: how are they gonna explain the millions of people who have suddenly gone missing, and that entire cities are completely ruined? Wouldn't someone start asking questions sooner or later, when they haven't heard word of their aunt and pet cat for a little while? Eugh...actually, let me rephrase my opening statement. This game isn't quite as bad as people let out to be, but it's still a pretty fucking shitty game. Every XCOM lover will feel betrayed, while the rest would've been better off just by playing Mass Effect, which The Bureau very blatantly copies in every turn. Really can't recommend the game.

December 31th: Tomb Raider: Legend. Wrapping up the year. At first, this one was a real bitch to get to run. It would only flicker a black screen and crash, only occasionally working. I managed to fix the issue eventually though, but it was still annoying: games should work right out of the box even in this day. Anyway, as for the game itself: it wasn't as good as I remembered (I first played it when it came out). Sometimes Lara just wouldn't grab some ledges (ropes were the worst); sometimes it's hard to tell what you can grab and what you can't, leading to many plunges to the death; and the combat was really lame. Press the button for 5 seconds until the enemy dies -> repeat. So boring. But some of the locales looked quite nice, even though the graphics have aged at this point a bit, and when the climbing worked, it was pretty fun. I'd definitely say Tomb Raider 2013 is a better game than this, but at least in this game Lara has balls and she wasn't constantly shouting "Sam, SAAAAAAAM" which was so goddamn annoying in TR 2013.

The First Person Extravaganza continues. This time we have:

1) Duke Nukem Forever

I really don't want to call this game Duke Nukem. It had the character, the enemies, the first person perspective... and yet it was not a Duke Nukem game. Ever since I began playing it, I hated it. The natural question is: Why the hell did I continue playing it? It's the same reason as a trainwreck: It's a horrible sight, but you can't get your eyes out of it. In the same way, I wanted to see this wretched thing to the end. If they had named the game anything other than Duke Nukem, I wouldn't be too harsh on it. But, a sequel is always compared to its predecessors. And this has little to do with them.

It's full of references instead of humour, feels like a parody of itself (which is strange, since Duke Nukem 3D IS a parody of action movies), has weak gunplay (to hell with this limited weapon slot bullshit), too slow, wastes your time with stupid NPCs, is too easy even on the Hard difficulty and generally feels like a typical modern fps rather than a worthy successor to Duke Nukem 3D.

2) Shadow Warrior Classic Complete

Being the 2nd out of the 4 "Big" Build Engine games, Shadow Warrior is a lot of fun. It's not perfect and it's not a better game than Duke Nukem 3D. Yes, it's fun hacking enemies apart while listening to Lo Wang gleefully shouting "Oh! Spritto Personarity!" Yes, the weapons feel particularly weighty, especially the explosive ones. And the game is very challenging, but because of its short stages, you don't feel like you are wasting your time if you die.

But, the level design is not as good or as memorable as Duke Nukem 3D, there is little enemy variety with many of the enemies carrying explosive weapons that can deal huge damage and the music, a strong component in Duke Nukem 3D, is pretty forgettable stuff. Still, it's a very entertaining game and if you liked Duke Nukem 3D, you'll enjoy this too.

And here is my list.

Hidden & Dangerous Deluxe. What can I say? It's a solid first person/third person tactical-type game set in World War II. It's fun, occasionally frustrating, and free. It's held a place in my list of games that evoke the most nostalgia, and this playthrough hasn't done anything to warrant my removing it. It isn't for everyone, but, I mean come on, it's free.

Spectraball

Nice game, fun mechanics. Checkpoints are frustratingly far apart in a couple places, but what really annoyed me was one bug I encountered, where if you die after pressing a switch in one area close to the end of the second to last level, you are stuck and have to start the level over.

An update:

In oktober I finished Battlefield 3. It's nothing like the former Battlefield series, no free-roaming the battlefield again and again on your favourite maps but a story that's much like a movie, full of cliffhangers and things that only become apparent later on (I don't do multiplayer, I'm not good enough a shooter), so that only at the closing scene you understand what it all was about. It's much like playing a movie. The final mission was disappointing. The game ends with a literally wrestle with the final boss instead of with a grandiose firefight. It's just a matter of hitting the right button and the right time and the game tells you what button to hit.

In november I finished Medal of Honor Warfighter. Despite some bad reviews about it being a mediocre game, I enjoyed the story, though I liked the gameplay less than its precursor Medal of Honor (2010). There's lots of driving in the game and the hardest part for me was not the gunfights, but a chase by car through a middle-eastern city. A ride of 9 minutes took me hours by each time getting to another checkpoint, than reloading when I lost the vehicle I was chasing again. The game tries to encompass different genres while it should just be a shooter. End battle was rewarding though, at least it ended with a real battle. And in between there was much diversity in the environments you encounter (fighting your way through a cargo ship was fun, for instance).

It's enjoyable my new HD 6670 Radeon card can handle games with graphics that are hardly indistinguishable from movies. I've hit the right average between affordability and being able to handle the modern AAA games.

Neighbours from Hell 1+2
The games are childish, silly and there is lots of infantile humour. I absolutely love them!

I liked the second one even better than the first one, because they removed the time limit and there was more variety in the pranks you play.