Darksiders

A very good action game that I really enjoyed. The story was better than I expected (I don't expect much from action games storywise) and there were some puzzles (which weren't very hard, but also not too easy), but the main focus is clearly on the action. You can perform a lot of different moves during battles, which works extremely well, because the controls work very good (but I highly recommend a controller for this game) and the game lets you choose your own fighting style. I played on normal difficulty and things never got too hard. Even the boss fights were quite easy, there was only one that I felt tedious and frustrating.

The graphics of the game still look great (and probably still will in ten years), because of the awesome and timeless design of Joe Madureira. The music was also great and so there's not really anything I can complain about.

Complete list of finished games in 2015

Final Fantasy 8

I was holding on to it for a rainy day, it was raining.

It was kind of good and bad in equal measure. I had to finally finish one Final Fantasy, it looks totally good on my curriculum vitae.

Unmechanical - Extended DLC (Linux)

No native gamepad support aside from M$-gamepads anymore. -.-
I don't know if I can call it finished, because a severe bug prevented me from getting the good ending which would have been the first one I've tried. I though that it was somehow my fault, but it wasn't.
Nobody seems to have tested the PC port of the dlc prior to release on any operating system (the bug exists in every port) although it is so short and this is really disappointing.
Apart from this, it was a nice little extension although again extremely short (which would have made testing so easy!).

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Diablo 1 HD - Belzebub (WinXP)

It works via WINE but lacks the music, so I booted up my old WinXP again for it since I love Diablo's soundtrack.
I've just slashed Diablo with my warrior on "normal" difficulty (which definitely wasn't easy).

Negative points first:
- Although a few (two?) enemy types of Hellfire are integrated, it completely lacks the monk, the nest, the crypts and the related quests. The walking speed can be increased in town though.
- The warrior is a bit underpowered in some situations especcially at the end with Doomlord Ga'mar, but it's possible to beat it with him, just more complicated.
- The crafting has the problem, that you often get good gems while you need flawed ones for the recipes and although it's possible to upgrade 3 to a better one, the opposite isn't possible.

Positive things:
- The resolution of course, in addition to the great graphics and overview you get, it's possible to zoom in with the mouth wheel if things get too tiny. This way you have the advantage of lower and higher resolutions at the same time.
- The inferface was upgraded to one more similar to Diablo 2, so you get a proper belt for drinks and only need to use the keys 1-5 for those instead of the whole bar. Unlike in D2, potions still regenerate you instantaniously though.
Mouse buttons can be mapped just like in D2.
- The classes have skills, including the warrior and you really have to use them in order to stand a chance, the balancing heavily depends on those. You don't get a skill tree though, the few skills are automatically added by leveling up and their effect depends on your character stats.
- Crafting is mostly better than in D2, because instead of spreading gems and jewels with the loot, you only get those by salvaging them from magical items you have to destroy on the anvil of fury (remember this one? ;) first.
The crafted items are pretty good and better than many but not all unique ones.
- Some quests have been changed and others added but all for the better in my humble opinion. The enhancement of the butcher's quest is pretty clever too and all the quests seem to be canon with the storyline of the series which may be the reason why Hellfire is excluded, since it wasn't officially canon.
- The traders have proper inventories and not those horrible shopping lists anymore (!)
- There's a button for "repair everything" at Griswold's and "recharge everything" at Adria's

Conclusion:
At first I was one of the guys demanding a standard Diablo 1 with HD option, but after finishing it, I changed my mind. The original game didn't age too well in some aspects and the alterations are all improvements and a lot of thought went into those. It still completely feels like the old Diablo but without all the dust it has gathered.
I think, that when the multiplayer mode arrives for this one, it may gather quite a community and hopefully it will live longer than Fallout Online.
I've been playing Diablo 1 a lot of times and it has a big nostalgia factor for me, but after playing Beelzebub, I couldn't play the old version anymore, it's just inferior.

I don't recommend beginning with the warrior though, Doomlord Gam'ar is really tough in melee.

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Waiting for the moment when anybode will finish Dota 2)

Shadowrun: Dragonfall (Director's Cut)

I was eagerly expecting Shadowrun Returns, in my opinion one of the most promising games around and with -finally- a fresh and interesting setting. When I finally completed it, I wasn't completely satisfied: the game was good and very enjoyable (even if a bit too easy), there is no denying that, yet it wasn't as great as I felt it could have been.
Shadowrun: Dragonfall has surpassed its predecessor and given me precisely what I was looking for in Returns.

In Dragonfall, you ran the shadows with Monika Shafer's team; with your incomes, you are managing both to live decently yourselves and to sustain the Kreuzbazar, the Berlin Kiez you live in and one of the most prominent examples of the experimental “anarchist” Flux-State.
Alas, due to your employer's deliberate silence on certain information, in the beginning one of your runs goes tremendously bad and you end up being chased by a very dangerous organization you inadvertently crossed. Trying to solve this problem, you will soon start to discover that whatever is happening in Berlin is much bigger than you thought.
The narrative department is way more than solid: not only the thrilling plot is relatively complex and with several brilliant twists, but this time the choice and consequence aspect matters a lot, making for huge differences especially during the last half of the game; also, unlike in Returns this time you have a full team of characters with well-developed personalities, so your companions will have a major role both inside and outside combat (paid mercenaries are still there though, in case you need to cover a particular role or you simply don't like the other characters).

Under the gameplay side, everything you saw in returns is back, only much more refined.
The combat is based on static turns, with the characters moving on a grid and covering behind objects for different degrees of protection, like in the Original X-COM.
Your characters can cover every field as you see fit (choosing freely among combat, magic and technological skills) their effectiveness is determined by how they spend Karma points, needed to upgrade the six main attributes (Body, Quickness, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma) and their derivative abilities.
Each time you want to raise your level in one of them, you need to spend the same amount of Karma points as the level you want to reach; to be able to to increase an ability, you also need its ruling attribute to be equal or higher than the level you want to move on (for example: I have all my melee attributes at 7, and I want to have 8 in Melee Weapons: first of all, I will need to spend 8 points in Strength, to increase my hit chances and unlock the specific disciplines, then I will need to spend another 8 in Close Combat, to increase my power, and then I'll proceed to spend 8 more to Melee Weapons, to increase my critical chances).
The choices are many, yet the limited (around 200) Karma points you can gather during the game strongly encourage you to create a specialist character. To compensate this, you can also decide to use augmentations, in form of cyberware or biotech. Both of them can hugely increase your character's power, yet they come with a price: not only they cost a lot, but they also drain “Essence”, the parameter controlling magic effectiveness that can only decrease, leading you to have less spell slots and massively increased spell cooldown, making them a bad choice for spellcasters.
Unlike in returns, now all classes are more or less equally useful (deckers -still almost useless in combat but essential due to the increased use of the Matrix, a separate virtual reality you can use to hack systems, adding another layer of gameplay- have been especially reevaluated), and if they seem weaker in the beginning they will catch up after a bit of experience (like my Ork Physical Adept, not very good at the start but overpowered in the end, he could cover the entire map in a turn, kill two or more enemies in a round and paralyze the rest). Also, attributes, skills and etiquettes (unlockable via charisma) are wisely used in dialogues, often allowing to have multiple choice with similar of different consequences based on your approach. For example, in the same situation you could talk your way out a problem with Charisma or intimadate someone with Strength, draw your weapons faster with Quickness and gain a bonus turn, resist mind control with Wisdom or recognize if someone is telling you nonsenses with an high scientific knowledge.
The map design and the enemy tactics have also been hugely overhauled, making the whole combat system a much better experience when compared to Returns, showing the progress of the developer team over the years.

Graphically, there is no difference between this and Returns -nothing strange, since Dragonfall was an expansion pack before gaining the right to be a standalone title. It would be enough to say that if you are looking for a cyberpunk vibe, you should look no further; though simple, the graphic department masterfully executes its job, a simple glance to the image gallery on the store page is enough to see it.

Summarizing, Dragonfall is definitely one of the best games I have played this year and one of those I have enjoyed more, definitely worth its price and deserving of the praise it gets.
I rarely award five stars and seals of approvals, but Shadowrun: Dragonfall rightfully gets them both.
I cannot recommend it more, and even if coming from a low-budget campaign (another reason to admire the result) it could easily qualify as RPG of the year 2014. Play it, you won't be disappointed.


EDIT: IMPORTANT!
In one mission, namely the APEX one (don't go around searching what "APEX" means or there will be heavy spoilers, just save this information in your memory for when you reach that point), after a very long battle your main character might freeze in place, refusing to follow your orders.
Many thought this is a game-breaking bug, but in truth it is not: when you issue an order, your charcater will execute it if you open and close the character stat sheet with "c". i have no idea why, but it works for me. If you happen to be in that situation, just click the exit door and then "c". Your PC should then exit the room, and everything should go back to normal.
That was my only issue with an otherwise perfect game -still, that bug has been around for months and Harebrained Schemes should definitely fix it.

HuniePop (Linux)

Now you won't see something like this in my list too often, that's for sure.
I didn't expect too much, just a solid match 3 game connected to a completely unrelated dating game and was pleasantly surprised. I have to admit, that I was one of those that mostly wanted to know what the controvercy is all about and if it's justified.
Even without all the controversy that was a big argument for trying it at all, it's actually a good game. I may have to add, that I absolutely HATE dating games and normally wouldn't touch them. I love puzzle games though and wanted to see if the connection actually works.
One negative points is, that starting the game in fullscreen mode doesn't work properly in the Linux port, you have to either play int windowed or changed to fullscreen ingame, which isn't possible with ALT+Enter and has to be made via menu. Another problem if you are one of the perfectionists that want to have 100% everywhere is, that in order to unlock all the outfits, you seem to have to date every girl at every location and one of those is rarely available (very mild spoiler: which is also a problem when trying to get to one of the two hidden characters).
I guess, the reason why most of the girls have such big cup sizes is part of the humour. I prefer smaller cups myself, but whatever. ;)
The uncensoring file works without any problem and is actually a pretty effective solution to get the censor happy crowd and the officials out of your way while still not really having to censor the game, since it's just a hidden setting and no content was removed. I'd prefer this treatment to the usual one to be honest. If devs would have done this with violent games in Germany in the last decades, we wouldn't have had so much trouble with bloodpatches, we'd just had to edit some configuration file or make one.

I've made the game way more hard than it was by not understanding the passion meter. I thought, it has something to do with the higher difficulty or with the "night dates" and completely missed, that it's a multiplicator. As soon as I got this, I had a chance at the later stages too and finished all 12 girls.
I had to look up how to get to the two hidden ones, although I managed to get the weird device and guessed right which location it is tied to. Even after knowing where and how to use it, I had a hard time getting the right location at the right time.
The connection between the puzzle and dating part is very clever and refreshingly metaphorical for such a game.
Including a quiz element in the dating made sense too. It certainly can't be easy for such a "player" to remember so many facts about so many girls. xD
Various of the girls personified some of my ex-gfs, some clichés are quite present in reality and it didn't seem so absurd as I'd have expected. The "over the top" stuff was hilarious. I actually laughed a lot, especcially about Audrey and Kyu.

I'd actually recommend it to people who like puzzle and quiz games with a real-life related humour, as long as they are not afraid of the massive amount of nudity. Compared to all the extremely violent stuff around it's actually not really controversial if you're not very prudent.
In general I had the feeling, that a lot of thought has been put into the game and I was genuinely surprised, that it seems to be much more professional than what I've seen from the real Japanese games which this one is mocking.
I'd never have thought, that I would play such a game ever, but life is full of surprises and it definitely was something completely different then what I'm usually playing.

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PS: When it comes to match puzzle games, I seriously hope, that GoG will sell "4 Elements" some day, this one was really great and without any controversial content.

I've been meaning to tell both of you for some time - your reviews here are very helpful, and I appreciate them very much. Thanks!

Thank you for the kind wods! I'm glad to hear this, it means my mini-reviews reached their goal! :)

By the way, that reminds me I need to add my "homemade almost-game-breaking-bug solution" to the Dragonfall one.

Thanks man, I may continue with my gibberish if this is the case. ^^

Fallout 4

Never thought I would say this, but I have mixed feelings about the game. I played it for 72 hours, so I definitely got my money's worth, but there are a lot of things that didn't resonate with me.

I'll start by criticizing the main quest. It starts off very strong, but falls really, really flat the further you progress. I lost nearly all interest after I had first set foot in the Institute and looked around the place a bit. In the end, I sided with the Brotherhood, but that is only because the other two options seemed really...wrong to me. And yet, when the final mission was nearly over, I still felt like the game was scolding me for choosing what I chose.

Then there are the settlements. You know, the base-building. Now I know some people love the idea, but personally I didn't find it that fascinating. Luckily the game doesn't really force you to build anything, except at the very beginning and even then just a little. You can choose to ignore it without any real crippling penalties, I think. But, if you do choose to take care of the settlements, making sure everyone has the means for a decent well-being, expect really heavy micro-managing because you'll be doing a lot of running between the bases. Either they are being attacked, they don't have enough food or beds, or they are unhappy. All. The. Time. Now you can see why I chose to say "Fuck it". If the settlers can't do even the smallest task without me ordering them to do it, they deserve to live miserably.

And then, the biggest problem that's plagued the new-generation Fallouts since Fallout 3 (in my opinion!): they just don't have the same atmosphere Fallouts 1 and 2 have. It's like they take place in an entirely different universe. I'm constantly trying to imagine how 1 and especially 2 would look like if they were made in 3D, then compare the image to the Bethesda Fallouts. They just don't look the same to me, and this has always been the thing that bugs me the most. Fallout died with Black Isle Studios: today, we have a clone that has the same name, but not the same personality.

Would I still recommend the game, even with its flaws? Yes, I would. As far as open-world games go, it's still a good game. There's a lot of ground to explore, and the side quests are pretty interesting. I played the game for 72 hours, and I'm positive the amount could have been doubled if I had continued exploring, trying to find everything there is to find. But, in order to being great, or perfect even, instead of just being "good", they would really need to start addressing the issues I've mentioned here by the next installment. Unfortunately, I don't think it's something Bethesda, as a studio, is capable of doing. They have their unique look, but it clashes with the genuine Fallout look.

I had mixed feelings about the game as well, and I ended up dropping the game after 6 or 7 hours. It never clicked with me, and I just don't find it as enjoyable as New Vegas or even 3.

NBA 2K15

Introduction: I was a Small Forward, occasionally playing Shooting Guard and Power Forward positions as well. I first began in the NBA playing for the Raptors on a 10-day deal. I blew it, though, so they sent me to the Bucks. After the pretty lackluster season, I went to the Clippers team, which is surprisingly where I got my first title, even though we barely managed to get to playoffs. After that, I spent three years playing for the Bulls, winning three more titles. Finally, I transferred to the Lakers, thinking I wouldn't have to play anymore playoffs if I went there, because since post-season stats didn't contribute to the HoF milestones for some reason, I had grew tired of them. I thought wrong though, and my guy carried us to the playoffs both times. I won one more title whilst there. After the six seasons, I retired since I had accumulated 10 out of 10 milestones needed in order to get into the HoF.

Review: I'm not an expert, but I would say this feels and looks like a pretty accurate presentation of basketball. There's tons of tricks and moves you can do, and the AI play style is natural and believable. As far as sports games go, this felt the most like actually being in on the game myself.

However, I have a few issues. First, the learning curve is incredibly steep. The game has practically no tutorial, so you're left to learn everything by yourself. And I'm not just talking about learning how to release shots on time: I'm also talking about basketball terms. Example: the coach wants us to improve our pick 'n roll game on the scrimmage...okay, I will try, but first, would you mind explaining what the hell is a pick 'n roll...no? Okay, fine. Afterwards, the coach loses their shit because we performed so poorly and didn't do what was asked. You know what, I'm putting the blame on you in this one, coach.

Second issue. The career mode. Now, don't get me wrong, it's very robust and almost RPG-like compared to many other games, like EA's NHL. It definitely feels like "living the life", especially on the first couple of seasons. But, then the cutscenes begin to repeat themselves, and eventually - as with every other sports game - the actual game, too. After all, it is still just a game of basketball after another, and since there's 82 games in one season alone... yeah, player careers usually don't see the end of the tunnel. Hell, after my second season, I started simming the matches so much that I only played approximately one match in one virtual month. Also, another thing about the career... damn, this is going to be difficult to say without sounding racist. But the thing is, the player character is definitely black. Oh crap, I mean... you can make him look white, but... oh fuck. Ahem: what I'm trying to say, is that no matter what color the character is, he's going to be talking like he's from the poorest of ghettos. I tried to make my character to look like my actual self, a regular Caucasian Scandinavian guy. But the way he looks is in awful contrast with how he speaks. This is literally the worst wigger (a white nigger) ever. And there is nothing that can be done about that. This almost destroys the immersion and quite frankly, makes the whole thing look comical.

But those are pretty much the only problems in my opinion. In short, this is a great basketball sim, that's plagued by the lack of tutorials and a career mode that's bound to get repetitive eventually (even if that's the case with every sports game, not just this). I'm pretty sure that by playing the game, I now know more about the actual sport - not just about the game rules, but how the game actually should be played in real life.

Shadow Warrior: Twin Dragon (Steam)

This is another add-on for Shadow Warrior Classic Redux, containing new levels but no change in gameplay. Which is a good thing if you enjoy the original game (which I do) :)! However, I did not enjoy the levels as much as the other add-on (Wanton Destruction).

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Populous: The Beginning (GOG)

I owned & enjoyed this game on my PS1 and had not played it in a very long time. In gameplay it’s essentially an RTS game. For the most part your followers can take care of themselves so thankfully there is not much micro-management, your main role is just controlling your shaman and casting spells. It took me a little while to get into the groove again (and relearn the controls), but after that it was quite fun.

Pajama Sam: No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside

I picture tfishell speaking in Pajama Sam's voice now. This was very cute. I have loved kids stuff (more than I like kids) since I took a Children's Lit class at the University of Texas. I ran through it a couple times to experience some different random configurations. Looking forward to playing through the rest of the series, though I doubt I'll rush it unless the rest of Humongous shows up soon.

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Ha, oh man, what an embarrassing oversight. Surely it couldn't have been that hard to hire a couple of other voice actors? :)

I guess I should try another NBA2K game soon. I think the last I tried was in 2009 or so. The problem I've always had with the franchise is that as realistic as it is in some respects, I could never get the sliders quite right for it to deliver a truly realistic NBA simulation. It would always get close in many ways but then you'd regularly see games in which each team has like 25 blocks and steals, or some point guard who averages 13 PPG goes for 50 points and hardly ever passes while the main superstar only takes 3 shots, or whatever. As crazy as it sounds, the most realistic NBA game I ever played was the Inside Drive series on the original Xbox - the presentation was crude even for the era but I was able to get it to work in such a way that all the stats and team strategies were right out of the real life NBA at the time.

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Sly Spy - an arcade game from Data East that is a VERY thinly veiled James Bond ripoff. Like, it's close enough that I'm surprised lawyers didn't get involved (or maybe they did and I just didn't notice). The game directly swipes the poster art for The Living Daylights and the villains are all classic Bond enemies with mild visual adjustments. One guy is Jaws, another is Odd Job, the scuba-diving stages have a boss in a heavy diving suit like the guy who went after Bond in For Your Eyes Only, etc.

The game looks and feels like the work of the Bad Dudes team and in many ways comes across like it could be a sequel, but with a strong influence from Rolling Thunder, too. Instead of punching and kicking you have a gun, unless you run out of ammo, in which case your guy starts punching and kicking like a Bad Dude. You can gather pick-ups that will eventually allow you to use the Golden Gun, which is a really powerful rifle.

Most of the game is pretty easy and fair, but in the later stages it starts pulling dirty tricks on you, like platforming sections in which you can't see below you, so you're likely to land on top of enemies and lose a couple of points of life, and the enemies get thick enough that it's hard to imagine being able to take them all out without needing to feed the game credits. Still, it has a lot of charm and I like the super spy theme.