Finally managed to beat XCOM UFO Defense on veteran (1994 game). Have to say that a well trained psi squad is a bit overpowered. Now I need to fix my desktop so that I can start playing some new titles again, not that I have the time anymore :(

FTL: Advanced Edition (Easy Mode)

Here we go again...FTL is back and looking very fresh and fine. After about ten tries, I finally beat the Flagship (again), although I suppose it was a suicide mission since my ship and the Rebelship blew up at the exact same second: the game marked this as a victory though. It was quite nerve wrecking watching whether or not the last load of shots would land, I can tell you that. Either I'm very rusty or the game is more difficult even on Easy, since it took me this long. I used The Shrike, by the way: max shields, max weapons (two flak guns, one burst laser and a laser charger), max cloaking, and a strike team of two Lanius to disable the singular weapon rooms. Everything went much smoother when I didn't use Ion weapons at all: have they nerfed them, or did I just not know how to use them properly anymore? Oh well - with this expansion FTL is even better, and I like pretty much all the new additions. Except maybe hacking...it's super annoying when they remove all your shields in like 1.5 seconds. And mind control is pretty annoying too, unless you can counter it... Okay so I didn't like ALL the new additions, but I can tolerate the latter two because the rest is so good: new territories, a new race (which I actually like quite a bit), new weapons, and more! And the fact that they released the expansion for free, is just awesome. Really shows that the devs care about their product immensely.

DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon

Moves: 337.757
Kills: 34.674
Deaths: 1039
Time: 67:43:25
Secrets found: 13

I finally managed to beat DROD 1. I'm quite proud of myself even if I have to admit that some of the rooms were too hard for me and so I had to use a video walkthrough for four of them and needed a little hint for two more. But with about 350 rooms in the game this is still acceptable and a good quota in my eyes.

For me DROD is one of the best puzzle games ever made. More or less each room is a single puzzle that can be solved by pure logic (except for some rooms where a little trial and error is needed). So in theory in most rooms you could succeed on your first try if you just plan thoroughly enough. For real that won't happen and you will die many, many, many times. But that's not because the game is unfair or deceives you, but rather because you will do something wrong and just have to try harder and be more clever to beat the game.

I definitely recommend DROD to anyone who likes puzzle games. Need a little break though before I will start the second one.

Complete list of finished games in 2014

Just finished Lucius with liberal use of a walkthrough because some of those puzzles were just too obscure, well, not even the puzzles themselves sometimes because I knew what I had to do it was just doing it
Also had one of those 'timing puzzles I thought was a regular puzzle' moment plus once the game glitched out and a character didn't leave the room when he was supposed to and I was left trying to work out what else I had to do to get him to leave!
Damon from The Omen simulator is definitely a unique gameplay experience but it's going to be too murder-pormy for some
So an original game with some good moments marred by some rough edges, occasionally obscure puzzles and being 10 time more amoral than GTA, in fact its a good job this IS such a low profile indie because those politicians who bang on about and try to incite moral outrage at computer games would have a field day with this!
keeping it spooking on my Adventure slot as I move onto Dark Fall
Oh did both the 'action' ending and 'puzzle' ending - REALLY hit the walkthroughs for these parts though!
Full List
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2014/post64

BloodRayne 2 (5th April 10:00pm)

A very long and meh game. The combat is weak and there are too many challenge type things in the game.

Electronic Super Joy

Finally got around to finishing this one. A quality twitch/punishment platformer, though not really up to the standards of Super Meat Boy. I loved the music, could've done without the orgasmic sound effects... Beat World 3, but don't have the patience or skill to try to unlock World 4 by collecting all the stars.


Rise of the Triad

Finally got around to finishing this one as well. Fun old-school shooter, but could've used a lot more optimization and a lot fewer platforming sections. Also in the first half of the game it was extremely tough to spot many enemies shooting at you from the distance. I guess that's camo uniforms for you...

FTL: Advanced Edition (Normal Mode)

Did it with the Kestrel Ship. Two Laser Chargers and a Burst Laser Mark II -> 11 shots at once with fully loaded weapons. That meant trouble for any enemy ship, regardless of their shields. Good thing I got the other Charger online just before hitting sector 8, even though I had had it with me a lot longer. I was hanging by a thread for a long time in the earlier sectors, and even had to go the Flagship battle with only 50% hull, but luckily I managed to survive just long enough (and this time my ship actually survived the final battle, instead of exploding at the same time!) At the end I also had 48% evade from the engines at all times: with the cloak, the number actually went over 100% which was pretty awesome. It was just a matter of waiting for every weapon to reload, and occasionally cloaking whenever the Flagship would fire a huge load of blasts. Oh man... I'm still shaking a little though. Such an awesome game. I can't recommend this game enough: it's without a question the best roguelike I've ever played.

Just finished Aztaka.

I cannot remember the last time I played something with such wasted potential. The first ten levels gave promise of an intriguing RPG platformer, with gorgeous graphics and an awesome soundtrack, before pissing all the goodwill away in the second half of the game with obnoxiously poor design decisions, constant bugs and crashing, endless backtracking, misleading quest texts, dreadful combat mechanics and an underwhelming finale.

Oh right, finished Half-life 2: Episode One yesterday. Overall it was ok, I guess.

Continued straight to Episode Two. Too much dungeon crawling in that one so far. I hope to see the sunlight soon.

Samantha Swift and the Golden Touch

A very well designed hidden object game with an extremely weird story about King Midas. There were some puzzles and mini-games in it, but none of them was really hard. A Relaxing game when you don't want to use your brain too much.

Complete list of finished games in 2014

The Thing (2002)

A game based on a movie that does not suck.

*Takes a deep breath* NOTHING! I'm such a failure.

F.E.A.R.
Spelunky (newer one).
Lilly Looking Through.
Lil` Inferno.
Portal 1 & 2.
Bioshock Infinite.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat (again ;p).
The Darkness II,

Just finished Dangerous Dave in the Deserted Pirate's Hideout, which is an OK platformer for that time period. No saving your progress and no cheat codes, so you have to beat the whole thing in one sitting. Luckily, the game isn't that long (10-15 minutes) and you can zoom through it once you learn the path through the levels.

Ok, so far this year I've beaten:

Serious Sam: The First Encounter (PC)
Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)
Metal Gear Rising (Xbox 360)
Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron (Xbox 360)
Sonic Generations (Xbox 360)