Yes, the difficulty spike was quite large, and lasts until the end. You basically have to be lucky enough to find the right equipment, as well as having high enough stats. Specials can help a lot, but the activatable ones take forever to recharge. I ended up carrying lots of +HP equipment in my inventory that I would swap on when I needed to regenerate between fights (since outside of combat just by waiting you can heal up to a certain percentage of max health.) Also swappable equipment for extra +Attack, and resistances that I could swap on depending on the enemies faced. Max Magic Resistance (85% cap) is extremely helpful against spell casters, even if it means lowering armor class and attack. Of course this doesn't work too well when you're up against mixed groups.... That's why for my last special before the last area I chose the passive +30 resistance to all, since that let me be more flexible with equipment.

But yes, chances are good that when hit against the difficulty spike wall, you have nothing left to do by grind levels and farm for better items. For reference, the game took me 19 hours in all to complete, about 3.5 of it once I unlocked the final area (Hell or whatever) in the final chapter (Chaos Realm I think.) I reached character level 29 just before heading to the final showdown (first attempt was at 27 or 28.)

HuniePop

This game is basically just a match-3 game, with the little twist of a lighthearted and funny dating sim thrown in. I’ve got to give the game developers a lot of credit, they have made a match-3 game which is actually fun to play :)! The gameplay did start to get a bit repetitive once I figured out how everything works and settled into a strategy, but somehow the game still managed to keep me motivated to the end. (I spent the night with all 12 girls and unlocked Alpha Mode (infinite mode), but didn't play that mode).

All 12 at once? You dog. :P

That's what makes him Alpha.

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (whew!) (Gamecube). As movie tie-ins go, this is pretty good. It's designed to be a very linear thrill ride based on the movie and it does a good job at that. Chucking flaming spears into dinosaurs' heads is good fun. The lack of an HUD reminds me a little bit of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, although this game isn't as complicated as that one.

Actually, this game might be better than the movie in that it emphasizes what was especially good in the movie - the pulpy Skull Island action - and it plays down what made the movie frustrating - the over-indulgent, slow-motion-happy filmmaking and the overly sappy "girl and her pet gorilla" stuff. I also don't have to look at Adrien Brody's face.

Finished Gods Will Be Watching and I am disappointed. The technical side of the game is good and I liked the graphics but gameplay-wise, there are lots of flaws:
- Even in easiest difficulty, there are some random events that lead to almost instant failure (like torturing someone with the russian roulette for example)
- Lots of text, too much as in case of death, there is no easy way to skip all of them (apart from clicking like a madman on the mouse button)
- Gameplay systems are not explained and it can lead to frustration due to unexplained failures

Full list here.

Muri

Nice little action platformer with CGA/EGA-like graphics and a story that I still don't quite get. Too bad about the lack of music, some nice chiptune OST would've been highly welcome. Beat the first 3 chapter on the hardest "Muri" difficulty, but had to dial the notch down to plain Hard for the final one (the difference being 3-4 extra life power-ups hidden in the chapter.) I could probably practice enough to be able to handle it without them, but ... nah.

Tiny Barbarian DX

And another retro platformer, this one more "advanced", with more colorful graphics, great music, the works. Gameplay's fun, but the checkpoint/savepoint system is very frustrating. There are 2 chapters and you can start from either one. Each chapter is divided into (lets call them "levels"), and each level is divided into (lets call them "stages"). The stages are relatively brief, and dying just sends you to the beginning of the stage, and there are infinite lives so no worries of game overs. So far so good. However the game only saves your progress at the beginning of a level, so if you need to quit, next time you launch the game you're going to have to repeat all the stages you've completed in the current level. And some of them have multiple hard boss and/or chase stages.

This is really frustrating when you have a limited of time to play, and you don't know whether or not getting to the next save point will take you 3+ hours due to lots of deaths...

Why couldn't the game just let you continue from the last stage instead of level? Beats me!

Also, there are supposed to be 4 chapters in the game, but 2 years after the game is released, the last two chapters are still "Coming Soon."

Beyond Good & Evil HD (360)

Eventually played on Xbox One. Been meaning to play this for some time, and intended to play the PC version as that's what i had. But it only took a few minutes to realize how bad the PC port is. From back in the old days i came to action gaming via flight sims. That's probably why i naturally felt more comfortable using "puppet" or "aircraft" controls in 1st and 3rd perspective action games...in other words push forward to look down, pull back to look up (like you have a stick attached to the head)- or in even simpler terms- i have to invert the look "Y-axis" in most 3D games. What does this have to do with BGaE? Simple, if you invert the mouse look Y-axis the game also inverts the X-axis for some unknown reason! This made the game unplayable for me, 20 years of habit is hard to break- or at least not worth the effort.

I was deciding if i could be bothered fixing the game using some program to reverse the Y-axis. When the HD console version came on sale for AU$2.40, plus it's backwards playable on Xbox One. Bought. So imagine how pissed i was to find it is a port of the PC port and has the same fucking control issue! Invert the Y and you also invert the X...WTF? Luckily, the new Xbox One controller app allows you to swap sticks, buttons and swap axis as you see fit. So i inverted the Y-axis only for the right stick and the game instantly transformed into playable.

Out of curiosity, i then did a comparison of both 720p (i assume) console version vs PC version at 1080 on the same monitor. The HD version has been tweaked obviously, it looks better and runs better. In particular the PC version screws up the widescreen POV (gives Jade a slightly fat ass), it's distorting it along the horizontal- the HD console version looks spot on. So the PC version truly is crap.

It was all worth it in the end. The game was a great example of action/adventure, in fact i rate it now only behind my favorites like Outcast, Omikron and Zelda Skyward Sword. I enjoyed the story, the puzzles, the stealth, the hover races...i think i'm the only person that even liked the final boss!

The only bad thing about the game was, yet again, the controls. Specifically, after getting used to them, why did the dev then change the Y-axis to the LEFT stick instead of the right for the Beluga craft? Cardinal design sin number 1: never change control config mid game!

So. ultimately i loved the game, but by God getting there was a frustrating journey.

Just finished The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Final Cut

I have to say, having played the I and II and having gotten the II a short while before they announce that Final Cut free for the owners of all chapters, I feel underwhelmed.

Yes, playing the full adventures from start to finsh was really pleasant. And the general experience was very good. BUT...

They changed a lot of mechanics of the game, basing everything on the third installment. Why not, after all, it's more coherent like that. But that harmonization came to a price: many features were actually cut from the game. Like for example the Chimaera. In the II, it was a nice find, you had to develop it and then you could bring her on the battlefield. In the Final Cut, nope, it's just a way to bring you more loot. Very disappointing.

And I don't know if it was a bug, but over the 30 hours of play I had in that playthrough, I never dropped anything less than violet. I've almost never cluttered my inventroy, even less Khaterina's. So, for this kind of game, it felt... empty.

Many quests also seem to have disappeared.

All in all, I've spent 16h hours on the I, 15 hours on the II... and 30 hours of the Final Cut. Feels wrong. Okay, I heard it was the real end-game content, I haven't touched the adventures mode yet... and I won't. If it's just for the loot, godlike items and fame points, nope, sorry, not interested. May be strange, given the type of game it is, but if you wanted me to get interested in that, you should better have integrated it in the main game.

So, finally, a very good game, but that left me a somewhat bitter aftertaste when I think about my experience on the I and II chapters...

So far in 2015 : http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2015/post2

Tea Party Simulator 2015 (Steam)

A “Surgeon Simulator 2013” type game, except instead of performing life saving operations you are attempting to have a tea party with your teddy bear. It’s a shorter game than Surgeon Simulator, there is a lot less variety and fewer types of interactions with the items in the environment. The difficulty levels are bit wonky too (the 2nd level was a lot harder than the 3rd). Overall it’s still funny and fun to play in short bursts, but it’s not nearly as good as Surgeon Simulator.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut

I had very low expectations for this game, given how much I respect the work on Deus Ex done at ION Storm. Somehow, this thing failed to meet even those expectations. Basically 35 hours of hell. I can't recommend it to anyone who liked either of the original games.

Light (Steam)

This is a minimalist fast-paced stealth game. I found it quite fun, although it is very short and not very hard. Would have been even better with controller support, but works OK with the keyboard+mouse. Recommended if you enjoy short games :).

Max Payne (CD Rom version) not Steam.

It was entertaining for its age. I will begin Max Payne 2 in the near future. Not sure I will move on to Max Payne 3 though.

I'm doing AC mostly trying to catchup to Syndicate.. Never played AC before.
Its a cool concept. But all the "follow this", "kill that" quest got old pretty quick.

1. Assassin's Creed
2. Assassin's Creed 2
3. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
4. Assassin's Creed Revelations
5. Assassin's Creed 3
6. Assassin's Creed Black Flag

Still trying to finish Rogue..

The Bard's Tale (Linux)

My first thought was "Looks, feels and controls like a PS2 game" and guess what: It is a PS2 game indeed that was ported to all kinds of platforms by now.
I've finished it in about 14,5 hours with all three endings although had to spend more time due to unacceptable bugs (see further below).

It's meant as a satire to all RPGs and falls flat in most regards.
Although some short passages are funny, it's too much impersonating what it's trying to mock in a quite repetitive way and is trying too hard to be funny in a mostly sarcastical and cynical way. It would need a bit deeper characters and more kinds of humour to work.
Questing is linear, grinding is not too bad although there often isn't much else besides grinding.
Gamepad support is there (not only XBox), but there is no button mapping and the Y- and X-axis of the right stick was mixed up on my pad.
The save system relies on checkpoints which was a particularly bad idea as seen below.

The Linux port has massive technical problems.
1. The old games simply won't start at all. If you choose them from the menu, you only get the "help" tab. You have to hack in the password protected and disguised archives in the games folder containing the games and then run them in an emulator if you want to play them.
2. There are a few bugs in the game where a script doesn't work and you have to try over and over again in order to be able to make the story go on.
3. There's a really mean lighting bug causing to randomly spread one color over a whole area, slowing down the game to about 0,5 - 2 frames per second and forcing you to reload from the last checkpoint. I had to do this over and over again in order to finish this game. After all those years of updates, I expected it to be at least free of the worst bugs...

I'll never touch this game again and wouldn't recommend it to most people, if you're in the mood for cheap satire and a hardcore fan of Brian Fargo, you could try it though.

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