Got it on my todo-list. How would you say, is the required workload of manual notekeeping and mapping? Because with job, family, kids those have become a real "do-not-play" criterion for me. While I used to love drawing my own maps and keeping extensive notes, I just don't have the time for this any more if I strive to actually finish the game. And also the kids are a real danger to any paper stuff lying on my desk. ;-)

Well, the actual requirements to finish the game are not that many. However, you can do several more things in the game, and I would recommend doing them because experience and money are limited in this game. The game has an automap feature which fills the current area as you explore it. Oh, and the best weapons and armor are obtained randomly.

Thanks for the input. Is it possible to play the game without taking notes (on paper)?
And a secondary question: Is it recommendable to play MM1+2?

Some puzzles require you to remember either a number or a word, but it isn't as necessary to take notes as it was in MM1 and MM2. In MM1 you have to make your own maps since there's no map feature. MM2 has a rudimentary map feature that helps a bit. The story of the first two games pretty light however it follows the same villain and he's the main antagonist until MM5.

Dreamscapes: Nightmare's Heir - Premium Edition (HOG)

Knocked it out in a few hours. Not an A+ HOG, but above average. B-?. The 'find the spies' mini-game seems a little undeveloped, esp. since you can get locked out of completion by finishing a zone before you find all the little bugs.

Still, more story/adventure/puzzle with only a handful or so of actual object searches. Story is ok, voice acting is mostly unremarkable, though the part where the woman asks you to kill her husband if you can't save him is amusingly droll - "PLEASE SAVE HIM! But you know, if you can't, go ahead and kill him."

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble

This was an interesting game. I'm not exactly sure how to classify it. I wouldn't call it a visual novel, even if you read most of the time and make several decisions. I also wouldn't call it a casual game even if you have to play the same simple mini-games over and over again. And it's also not a board game, a card game or an adventure game even if there are elements of these genres.

Most of the game is about the story which is pretty good and has several unexpected twists. The ending was a little disappointing though, but I guess there are also alternative endings that are better (or at least more positive). Won't play again to find them though. Game is quite lengthy (and some of the events are luck-based) and I don't feel like investing 30 hours again just for the vague hope to see another ending.

Complete list of finished games in 2015

Far Cry 4 on 360.

Kept what worked with 3 and did away with the alot of the awful hipster writing and hamfisted QTE boss sequences.

Story still sucked and the cutscenes were unskipable. Outside of Pagen Min, there is not one likeable or interesting character in the game.

The ending sequence is lackluster and there were quite a few bugs on the 360 version. Don't expect a consistant framerate or decent visuals.

The hunting and gathering bollox is back again. Trudging through it is the only quick way to get most of the weapons.

Kill x with y weapon is a shit formula.

Oh and all missions have a boundary. Take a longer or more advantageous path and you will fail the mission.
Open world my ass.

Still worth the 20 bucks I got it for. Though this is most likely the last Ubi game I will buy. Their formula is a running joke now.

Little update of sorts. Beat Faces of War and just a while ago beat Men of War's three campaigns. A while longer ago I beat Men of War Vietnam, but I debated for a while if I beat them since I didn't do the bonus missions for the Men of War games. I decided that I'll count them but they're in my master list on my computer because I don't remember exactly when I beat Vietnam.

Faces of War impressions:
What a joyous and awful thing this game is, it's frustration in a video game. It's fun and really good some moments but the sheer dumb fuffery of the AI and my squad is so incredible that to understate the immense stupidity of its actions is just downright impossible. Just absolutely moronic in so many baffling ways... But, I still enjoyed the game as a whole because outside of the longer, more frustrating missions there was some genuine fun to be had and I like WWII strategy/tactics games. It is frustrating and ultimately is a less good Men of War but it is different enough that it is worth buying, but I will stress: buy it on sale and with another game. It can be a Men of War game, Soldiers, Blitzkrieg, or what have you but get it with something else in case you don't love Men of War as much as I do because you may not just yell and scream at the monitor like I did but rather throw the cheating computer and its cheating butt out the window.

<span class="bold">Legend of Grimrock II</span>

That is how to make a sequel.
Legend of Grimrock 2 changes nothing of the original formula, remaining basically the same game in terms of mechanics and structure, yet it perfections the formula and adds many new small details that further enrich the experience.

The ship carrying your party of prisoners (why is it that in this kind of game the PCs are almost always prisoners?) will wreck on the shore of a mysterious island after being attracted there by some sort of magic, and once again you will have to guide the survivors to their freedom trough grid-based maps.
The game is no longer set in a single, giant dungeon that develops vertically but on the many different areas of the island, making the environment much more varied, interesting to navigate and pleasant to the the eyes, focusing on different areas disposed horizontally and developed on two or three levels; it is nice to notice that this time, unlike in LoG 1, moving vertically does not necessarily mean going up or down one more level. This adds a lot of depth to map design, allowing (and requiring) you to explore in all three dimensions.

For what concerns character developments, things have changed quite a bit. Gone are the three classes with six different skills each; now, you can choose between eight, each one with its own progression in hp/mp points and peculiar perks (like herbs multiplication for alchemists, improved armor weight and effectiveness for knights and +1 strength per level for barbarians), and regardless of the class you can take whatever among the 16 skills you prefer, massively opening your possibilities in character creation and allowing you to experiment with any kind of character you may like.
Also, the Ratling race joins the already present Human, Minotaur, Lizardman and Insectoid.

The game does everything the first Grimrock did, only much better: there are lots of new enemies, an insane amount of secrets, much more numerous and complex puzzles sometimes requiring gathering hints around the whole island and a rebalanced combat making things more logic (one example above all, this time dexterity always determines your accuracy and is not a dump stat for ranged fighters any more) and challenging, also introducing bosses in each area.
There are also two different endings: I'll just give you an hint and say “read the names of the magic runes”, if you want a few hints to be much clearer.
Also, to those who found problems in managing provisions in the first installment, I say that the problem has been solved: there is so many food you simply cannot starve unless you play irrationally, and even then some food producing enemies respawn.

Legend of Grimrock II might very well be the best in its genre, and it is such a solid game that I really cannot find any fault in it. Its five-star rating is more than justified, I have never seen such an amount of quality content in a single Gb of space on disk!
I can recommend it to everyone.

Thanks for the input :-)

Blood Dragon

The devs must have had a blast making this game. As a child of the late eighties and nineties I was right at home with its loving send up to all that was rediculous and fun about geek and sci fi from that era.

That being said I realy disliked the aesthetic of a blood red sky and sorta jungle environment. I think traditional level design with a liniear path would have suited the narrative alot better.

Still a lot of fun and was really refreshing to play a game that was having as much fun as you were.

Max Payne 3 (360)

Max is back, and this time they turned him into a cinematic cover shooter like Uncharted/Tomb Raider/The Order:1886. Except without the quieter exploring, platforming and light puzzle solving gameplay segments. To be fair though, MP 3 does have better combat than all of it's piers and it's harder as well- it's just that combat is all it has.

Though i enjoyed most of it, by the end it really was getting to be repetitive and i was starting to wish it would just end. I mean once you've seen the first 20 scenes where you shoot a few waves of bullet sponge Police in body armor...you've pretty much seen the next 20 as well. Some of the combat set pieces were really good examples of how to do this type of thing though, with really good tense and hard shootouts that you often just make it through with the smallest sliver of health, but it just felt like they artificially felt the need to pad the game out to a certain gameplay length.
Also one thing to note for those that love the "Bullet Time(tm)"...the cover mechanics have pretty much rendered it almost unnecessary - Cover > Bullet Time(tm) and Dodge Shoot(tm).

Story was pretty much what you expect form Max Payne, just in South America. And Max is still drinking and popping pills and feeling miserable.
Game had no bugs or issues at all and generally looks good.

Overall i enjoyed it, but glad i waited a few years and got it second hand- it was definitely worth $6. I actually enjoyed the more recent The Order: 1886 more than MP 3. Sorry about that Max. Don't come after me, it's just my opinion.

Shadow of Mordor

The most egregious example of "we couldn't be arsed to write anything decent or coherant so we'll just throw some shit together" in quite a while.

All you need to know is that this is Batman with swords and kind of Assasins Creed parkour with really awful load times.

Decent if you can get it for cheaps.

Sounds interesting. Got some link? Google seems to know only some Far Cry 3 DLC of that name.

Life Is Strange

Basically what you get when you put Donnie Darko, The Longest Journey and the rewind puzzle mechanics from Remember Me in a bag and shake. Stick to the Telltale formula, just leave out the QTEs, and spice it with beautiful graphics that look like paintings, a sweet indie music soundtrack, and maybe a bit overly pathethic Mass Effect 3 level drama. I enjoyed all the ingredients, I'm just not sure yet what to think of the whole dish. Kind of hard to judge after just finishing it. Was it really convincing and satisfying, in hindsight? Then again, which story about time travel ever is? (Well, ok, maybe Back to the Future.)

Anyway, I found it very entertaining, fascinating and moving, the story is interesting, but just like Remember Me it has a few plotholes, it's also a bit predictable on the whole, and some characters are a bit clichéd, too. I'm way beyond my teenage years and I've never been to the US, but the language they were speaking sounded more like it was mimicking, commenting on or referencing to internet slang instead of real life people (and I think I've had enough talk about geeks, nerds and hipsters for the rest of the year now - not to mention that the nerdy geeks all looked like cute hipster models. :P). It felt a big awkward at times because it's just too much, but if you could put up with April Ryan's diary and speech, you know more or less what to expect from Max Caulfield. ;) (Yep, they also stuffed it full of obvious references, from The Catcher in the Rye to Twin Peaks.) It didn't prevent me from caring about the characters though, so I guess they did a quite good job nonetheless (certainly also due to the character models, the animations and the cinematography, which helps the writing a lot).

As a completionist who doesn't like to replay games, I was happy that you're allowed to rewind dialogues in order to try all options and then go with the most satisfying outcome while still learning about everything at the same time. Sometimes this was also part of a puzzle. But it wasn't always consistent; at times, when you go with a certain option, it suddenly moves you forwards on a one-way street to the next checkpoint without a chance to rewind, so it's still possible to miss some exploration. In the last episode there was also an increase in timed action puzzles, which makes sense with regards to the suspense, but I didn't enjoy them as much, because while you're always able to rewind and look for different solutions, and most of the time you can also skip cutscenes, the rewinding and watching the same stuff happen again and again still got a little tedious and stressful, and when I couldn't figure out the solution on my own, it was almost always because it was too hard to spot and target things to interact with, at least with the controller.

Still, I very much enjoyed playing and watching it, and because I'm such a completionist, for me that enjoyment lasted almost as long as 25 hours (diary reading included), so it was definitely worth its price.