I didn't need 100 hours for Inquisitor by a long shot and I'm VERY thorough.

Hard to say, I've played Heretic Kingdoms in multiple 2-5 hour runs. I'd say I needed about 20-25 hours but would have been much faster if I would have understood the unusual skill system a bit quicker.

Comparison: For my first playthrough of Gothic 2 vanilla, I needed about 67 hours.

I've recently played Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition and I completed it in approximately 19 hours. I tend to play fairly slowly and methodically and I like to explore, so it certainly isn't a long game by rpg standards.

Pros:
- Good story (narrated by Tom Baker of Dr Who fame)
- The combination of the real world and the dreamworld is an interesting dynamic.
- The skills are refreshingly different, but you do need to properly grasp them or you could find some of the combat very difficult.
- Game ran faultlessly for me on a Windows 7 64-bit laptop with integrated Intel HD3000 graphics.

Cons:
- I found the combat difficulty to be very uneven (I suppose this could be seen as a positive) - it started off very hard, and by the end it became very easy.

Overall I really enjoyed it and would happily recommend it to anyone looking for an action-rpg with an interesting story.

Thanks for the feedback guys, if Heretic Kingdoms is in the 20 hour range then that's not too bad. I think I can handle that provided I'm enjoying it because these days patience is thin and I abandon a game quite early if I'm not having fun right off the bat.

From both of your descriptions it sounds like a little bit of metagaming is necessary in order to deal with the skill system, this is good to know beforehand because it might otherwise be one of those things where one gets annoyed with the game and drops it even if the game is decent in its other aspects.
I'm suffering from "action RPG fatigue" after playing way too much Diablo 2 so a game that promises more in terms of story is a welcome sight. Would have gone for Inquisitor but the presumed length scared me off, good to hear it's not actually 100 hours so maybe I'll get to it sometime in the far future, let's say after retirement. Nox and Darkstone were great fun in terms of gameplay but they don't have much story. Silver is in my backlog as I only had the demo of it back in the day. Keeping an eye out for Revenant but it's not high priority, waiting for that to drop in price by 50% or more.
I already tried Divine Divinity but unexpectedly didn't like it, seems like a very solid game but the amount of fun I had was zero and if a game isn't fun in the first 1-2 hours, chances are very slim that it would grow on me later, that rarely ever happens. Maybe in a complex strategy game but in an RPG, no way. Sacred Gold and Torchlight also failed to bring me any enjoyment whatsoever, sadly.

So Heretic, Kingdoms, here I come (well, after I finish some of the stuff I'm already playing).

MURI

MURI is what you get when you combine Duke Nukem 1 with the aesthetics of Metroid. Just like Duke Nukem, it is a side-scrolling shooter/platformer with only two buttons (one to jump and one to shoot), no music at all (only some blips and blops) and no way to aim in any direction other than horizontally (though you can crouch, at least). Despite sporting the choice of 6 different ammo types, 5 of them come in limited quantities and the game offers no way to change to a different ammo type till your strongest one is completely depleted (thus, you unfortunately can't switch to using weaker ammo against weaker opponents). Unlike Duke Nukem, the game offers no way to save your progress but, fortunately, none of the game's 4 episodes is too long and shouldn't take more than 20 minutes to complete one. Strangely enough, for a game that prides itself on being old-school, it is surprisingly easy. Just for the laughs, I decided to play the game on the hardest difficulty but the only significant differences is that you can't gain health or lives, which is a pretty unimpressive disadvantage, when you consider that you have 4 lives and can take from 4-8 hits before you lose one. Doesn't help the game's difficulty that your health is replenished at the end of each stage (each episode has 5 stages). Apparently, the highest difficulty sports superbosses or somesuch, but I can't say that I was particularly challenged by them.

In conclusion, if you have a hankering for the 90s Apogee/3D Realms platformers, you could do a lot worse than playing MURI. If, on the other hand, you don't think much of those games, then there is really no reason to bother with it.

Full list.

Not too much this year (in order):

- Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic II.
- Grim Fandango Remastered.
- Pillars of Eternity.
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
- Pillars of Eernity: The White March part I (expansion).

They're only a few games, but mostly are rpgs and they use to be really lenght. In addly, I've to say I enjoyed all of this.

KOTOR II is actually good, with deep dialogues and a more worked writting than KOTOR I. However, I found KOTOR I had assorted situations and places with a good plot too.

Grim Fandango Remastered is really cool. I'd never played the original and it's great. Funny dialogues, hard puzzles, a charismatic protagonist and interesting supporting role characters.

About PoE, I only can say it's actually a great game. To me it's the pinnacle of Obsidian. The plot and writting is excellent (in the deepest way of Planescape:Torment), the playgame very similar to the classic (Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series) like combat, but in my opinion it has a better balance between complex and accessibility. The art is amazing too, with beautiful enviroments and places. I think music is very conventional (in a fantasy setting I mean) whitout the memorable PT and BG II melodies but it works.

And Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is probably one of the best rpgs with PoE and the rest of the Witcher saga I've played last years. There's a lot of things to say about this game, mostly good:mature plot; characters; world; music: playability; all in this game is a ''top-notch''achievement. Maybe it has a few mistakes ( I don't like gain experience mechanics at all) and near of the final stage I felt the story was increased with little plots whitout real importance in the global story. But this mistakes are not really bad because at the end of the game I had very good sensations and the feelings that only really good games get to transmit.

Mind Snares:Alice's Journey

Very short HOG. Not bad, but not great. Recommend only as a bundle item.

Saints Row IV: Re-Elected (PS4):

This is a fun and funny open-world game. I played on Normal difficulty and found the game fairly easy for the most part, which is a good thing as I hate sudden difficulty-spikes which cause me frustration; even the boss fight (ugh!) at the end was not too difficult due to multiple autosave checkpoints throughout.

On the positive side, the plot and missions have a lot of humour (which I enjoy), and there are a large variety of different activities which helps keep the gameplay from getting stale. Some of the humour (but not all) comes from references to other games/movies/etc, a couple of true laugh out loud moments for me: a weapon called “GL G20”, and a mission which parodies the Metal Gear Solid games had me laughing throughout. Not having played the first three games in the series (they are not available for Mac or PS4) I’m sure I missed not a few in-joke references to the earlier games.

On the negative side, QTE (ugh!) are used not infrequently, there were a few activity types I did not enjoy (that’s the downside of having so many different types), and I think I would have preferred the game without the superpowers (I’m not a superhero fan) but I guess they felt that they’ve already covered that territory in the first three games and wanted to add something new.

But overall, it’s a good game which I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone who enjoys humourous and/or open world games.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

While I have played my fair share of Tomb Raider games, the only one I ever completed was Tomb Raider Legend. Now, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light isn't 100% like other Tomb Raider game, but it's an interesting isometric take on the series, nonetheless. During the game's 14 levels, you'll navigate platforms, shoot enemies, avoid traps, solve puzzles and even fight some bosses. You'll have a choice to do so, either on your own, or with a friend (either through local or online multiplayer), who will take control of the ancient warrior Totec, to help you with it.

To be honest, though, the game was kinda easy on normal, so playing with a friend could probably turn into a breeze. Having tried a bit on the hard mode, I didn't notice a lot of difference, aside from opponents being tougher to kill. I could say that the vast majority of my deaths were miscalculated jumps and bloody spike traps (oh, I really hate those instant-death spike traps!). In fact, I can't remember dying against enemies. Doesn't help that later you get even more powerful weapons, alongside relics and artifacts, which can increase the damage that you can deal or even grant you health regen.

Of course, one might say, that a normal playthrough won't really land you the really cool and powerful weapons/relics/artifacts, forcing you to rely on those provided by default from the game (I still think it's kinda easy). But why, you might ask? That's simple; because the game hands you a shopping list for each level and asks you to accomplish its tasks if you want to unlock the cool stuff. Personally, I would have preferred a system that I could spend all those diamonds I was collecting on purchasing new stuff instead of the current one, which has you doing stuff, like dragging a ball back to a healing spot, accomplishing a task within an allotted time limit (forcing you to at the very least quit the game and continue from checkpoint and at the very worst, restart the whole level) and having you to replay the stage again, only this time having you race against the clock. I found all this pretty tedious, as I have never been a fan of unlockables and I doubt I will ever be.

Otherwise, it was an entertaining game. Fully-updated list.

From what I've seen, co-op mode sometimes slightly changes the solution to levels, adding in a few co-op puzzles, so in certain spots it can be a bit more tricky than in single player at first.

Include me - I need a place to record my gaming.

Trying to recall what I played and finished... it's been inconsistent so far, due to a lot of RL interruptions, and my GPU going kaput in June and still unreplaced.

FINISHED:
Assassin's Creed
Hatoful Boyfriend
Long Live the Queen
Mass Effect 3
Race the Sun
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
XCOM: Enemy Unknown

NOW PLAYING:
Homeworld
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

ABANDONED for now (until I get a new GPU):
Assassin's Creed II
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Lemmings
A classic, and for good reason. I think it’s probably the best puzzle game I’ve ever played. I haven’t played it in over 20 years and it still stands up today. It’s hard (especially some of the later levels) but not too hard, and for the most part requires strategy and lateral thinking rather than timing and quick reflexes.

I see.

Gunpoint

Its a lot like Trilby The Art of Theft. Thats a good thing. It is short too. That is a bad thing.

Not very challenging but fun nonetheless.

Give it a go.

Low-mid of the road HOG. Was over quickly enough that I had to reinstall and let it run to finish collecting Steam Cards. Nothing fancy but not bad either. In other words, it was successful in killing 2 hours of my time.

Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now

Because if the first game had one pun in the title, then the second one has to got another pun in the subtitle. One of my biggest fears about replaying games that I haven't touched for a long time, is that they will not be up to much and I will have pointlessly destroyed my nostalgia about them. Thankfully, this wasn't the case for Carmageddon II. In fact, it was a glorious game!

The great stuff from the first game returns. Large and varied open stages, whether you want a city, an airport, a desert or even the dock of an aircraft carrier! Just like before, you have 3 ways to complete a stage; race around the checkpoints (BORING!!!), waste all your enemies or even run over all the pedestrians of the stage. To help you (or even hamper you) on this task, the game has placed power-ups around every stage. Those can affect either you, the enemy, or even the pedestrians and their effect can either be positive or negative. One power-up might increase your speed, another might make you much sturdier, another one could cause your car to jump around like crazy, another could make pedestrians suicidal and another could make the pedestrians immortal. There are a lot of power-ups to discover and a new addition to Carmageddon 2 are the user-activated power-ups. Those have various effects such as allowing you to zap multiple pedestrians with electricity at once, drive away enemies with springs, boost your car's speed, etc.

Aside the great returning stuff, the sequel has also made improvements over the first game. For starters, there are the enhanced graphics. While the environments looks nicer, what really looks much better are the vehicles. Specifically, there is now far more detailed vehicle damage and it makes the game even more satisfying, especially when you are not in the receiving end. As it gets damaged from the crashes, your car starts getting bent out of shape (literally!) and depending on how and where you were hit, you might end up seeing your car's lights broken, your doors waving a goodbye, your spoiler getting ripped off, or in worse cases, you might have your car separated in half, which means that you were probably wasted (but not always). Repairing your car undoes all the visual damage that it has received, restoring it to pristine condition (which I must say is a pretty funny, but satisfying visual and audio effect).

Another improvement comes from the removal of the ranking system. No longer do you have to grind for points in order to gain enough ranks to progress to the next stage. The only thing you'll have to do is complete the stages and you can just progress to the next one. In addition, rather than relying on the game's generosity to hand over one of the enemy cars, you can just buy it with the money you earn from the stages.

Having said all that, there are still parts where Carmageddon 2 could have improved. While the environments and car models have been improved, the same can't be said about the animals, the car drivers and the pedestrians, who all look so polygonal that you might as well be playing Lego Carmageddon. Maybe they should have remained sprites. The controls could also stand to be a bit better, because while they have been improved in comparison to the first game (you'll no longer see you car spinning out of control out of the nowhere), they still leave something to be desired as running at high speeds can make it difficult to take even some simple turns. You'll also want to be more careful here as, unlike the first game, it's much easier to destroy yourself from a collision with a wall or a traffic lights signal pole. Upgrading your armour will only be helpful against direct crashes with enemy vehicles and will do no good against wall collisions. In fact, it's easier to destroy yourself as you progress through the game, thanks to the upgrades you have done on your offensiveness and speed (on the positive side, you should have less trouble destroying enemies than the first game).

Now, while I did say above that I prefer the sequel's progression through the game, there are three things that I didn't like:

1) Missions: After the end of each group of stages, there will be a time-limited mission waiting for you. During these missions, you must achieve a specific objective, whether it is killing some specific civilians, racing through the whole stage multiple times or destroying radar dishes. Failing to accomplish this task on time, will force you to restart the mission. While not tough, they did force me to retry them quite a few times and I felt that they were a distraction from the game itself by forcing you to only play a specific way.

2) Upgrade System: The upgrade system in Carmageddon was pretty simple. Pay some cash and upgrade your vehicle. Here? First, you must find upgrade slots scattered through the stage and then, either find the upgrades through the stages or buy them. Whereas Carmageddon 2 simplified the acquisition of vehicles, it unnecessarily complicated the upgrade system.

3) Repeating the same stages: While less prevalent than the original, the sequel still likes to have you replay previous stages, with the only changes being the starting area, the checkpoints and the daytime.

So no, Carmageddon 2 isn't a perfect game. It is, however, a great game and better than the first one. Hell, it even has Iron Maiden! (Although, you mind end up hating them after listening to The Trooper for the bazillion time. :P)

Full List.