The Path. I really want to give The Path a nice long in depth review and I may write one later but for now I'll just say that it's one of my favorite games of all time, I absolutely adore everything about it.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

I just finished it today. I now hate Star Wars. Good job, Bioware.

Wait, no, I hate Bioware. Good job, Star Wars.

I don't think I've ever seen a RPG with worse writing than KOTOR. Apparently, Bioware's interpretation of Dark Side is "insufferable douchebag". Oh wow. Apparently I know tons of Sith. And they're all on the internetz.

The world design was also kindergarden level - oooh, one planet is water, one planet is forest, one planet is desert, such is ecological diversity. And so many corridors. Nearly everything is corridors. Nice, clean, simple, rectangular. The places that aren't are desolate.

Companions. Ah, how appropriate, it's the Chrono Trigger model. Take two while the rest levels up faithfully waiting for you at your base. Well, CT had a good reason for doing this - that many additional combinations to animate would have been a bit too much even for the Japanese work week. KOTOR, though? Nope. Oh, and all their personal quests are trash. It's an amazing new low. I actually don't remember that there was a previous low, so congrats.

Zero reactivity. Kill people, extort petty cash like some juvenile bully, talk to everyone like aforementioned insufferable douche -> nothing. Your companions berate you for a sec and then we continue inexorably towards the predestined points at which you can choose anything regardless of what you've done previously. Three dialogue options? All lead towards the same result. Hey, voice actors are expensive.

Crush Malak at the Leviathan like the pathetic bug he is? Nope, "he's too powerful for us". Riiight, because we still have a couple of planets you haven't seen, so you know, no humiliating the Big Bad, you're not even lvl 20, shit, you don't even have the finest equipment. Which is to say, this game is far too easy. It's ridiculous that Bendak Starkiller was more challenge than Jaws the Foolish Apprentice.

Except for the atrocious writing, the game does not punish you for your DS choices, which is an improvement over Baldur's Gate, which did everything it could to screw you over should you dare to Sith your way through the game. That's good. What isn't good is that instead of punishing the dark, they now punish the grey. High-end items exist for both LS and DS (of course, the LS ones are better, but hey), but the inbetweeners get screwed. Same for FP usage. Perhaps the lack of items could have been balanced by no penalties on LS and DS powers and a bonus for the universal ones. Not really, but it would have been something.

Oh, and the Star Wars (expanded?) universe makes zero sense. Of time lines and stagnation. Oh, and not a few of the alien designs are laughable. I mean, the greys, the little green men, etc. FFS.

That about covers the bad points. Now the not so bad points.

The combat is okay. Due to their 3D / camera choices, turn-based would have not made much sense, and Bioware already had done the pause-based thing well. Basing it on D&D was also a good choice, and the much reduced amount of options made it easy to balance.

There's literally only one skill check in dialogues, but at least they make use of it. Not sure if the feats are worth it, though. It gets ridiculous near the end of the game, I assume they got lazy or ran out of time, because there were plenty of Persuade options that can't fail, presumably to forward to plot. In that case, why make them look like they're skill checks?

I think it's possible to play through most of it avoiding combat. At least, the various bases (of course, at each location there's an enemy base, following the exact same scheme...eh) offer plenty of opportunity to take out your foes from afar. Not that anyone would, it's considerably less fun than Force Choke.

Pazaak and swoop racing. Well, swoop racing should probably be in the list above, as the implementation is terrible, but at least they tried. Pazaak, or Blackjack with a significant handicap for the player, though, I liked. Except for the ridiculous handicap part. And the fact that only the geezer on Yavin offers any significant amount of cash.

The aliens speak in their own language. They speak for far too long, and it's a nice way for Bioware to cut back on voice acting costs, but it's still preferable to everyone just knowing English (uhm, Basic).

That's everything I can think of currently. Perhaps Obsidian did a better job? Stay tuna.

I didn't notice any performance issues, but my rig is only one and a half years old, I have a GTX660.

just finished 4th play through of Dishonored. I think overall I still like Thief 4 a tad better, but there is some polish behind Dishonored that makes it feel smoother overall (but still had some bugs). Dishonored had a MUCH better story overall in comparing the two, but it was still fairly predictable and weak.

What stands out the most is the DLC. THIS is how DLC should be done (if it absolutely has to be done). Introducing a completely different perspective, new skills, different voicing and animated story telling, new locales and new plot focus. Plus, very lengthy in first play through. The 2 story based DLC's are easily worth their price, even if you simply play them once and never touch them again. But I love the encouraged second play-through given how drastically different the upgrades and playstyles can be between high and low chaos.

Pros:
Massive game with no real hub. Starting location for each mission isn't much of a hub and only changes in terms of items placed. Not enough items change to warrant a full exploration each visit. (especially after the first play through). The levels themselves, though, are significant in size with multiple paths to take... and are quite gorgeous.

Very fluid stealth system that is mostly focused on line of site, though shadow and noise have some affect.

Looting and searching and exploring are very rewarding.

lite RGP system in place is limited but allows for various character builds.

2 distinct endings with some mild adjustments throughout the game based on your violence level in the game.

Very intuitive mechanics and in game responses provide great feedback. (i.e. its not clunky in the controls). Your character also responds well to hits, pushes, etc. Very immersive.

Extremely re-playable.

Cons:
bugs registered kills and alerts when they did not happen. This affects rating as well as achievements. Respawning issues cause problems as well.

Not a true "choice" based game. many character deaths will end your game. (but the game will let you kill them)... save often, I guess.

Story is predictable. Many of the notes found are uninteresting.

No stats to track. (no KOs, kills, money, secrets, etc.) Only a couple of stats are shown at the end of each mission. There is no way to know mid-mission what your status is. (have you killed anyone, did your chaos level change)? Yes you actually need to know if you killed anyone since people can die after you leave their unconscious bodies lying around. Most of this is due to a bug (software bug) I believe, but in some cases incidental deaths can occur through no fault of your own.

Modifying the ini file to stop showing a billion intro movies at game launch has invalidated my game files so I can't participate in the leaderboards. I could care less about leaderboards, but its sloppy programming.

upgrades are decent. Skills are not so much. I've found 3 (maybe 4) skills to be worth maxing out no matter what style I prefer (stealth or combat) and the rest are pretty useless (or at least novelty in use).

Note: These were mostly mild frustrations. I played the game through 4 times consecutively, so I'm pretty happy with the final product, but still hope to see improvements on the sequel.

Small Town Terrors Pilgram's hook

Very, very, VERY boring HOG. I will be one of the first to claim that some HOGs are worth their time.. this is not one of them. booooooooooring.

Beasts & Bumpkins

I played it ~15 years ago and had great memories about it but now... well, let's just say I understand why this game was never popular. Don't get me wrong, I did have a lot of fun. The game is a very nice village builder with some combat elements. It could have been a great game but alas, it's rather clunky and in many different aspects. First of all, your villagers are capable of doing most of things on their own (milking cows, constructing buildings, harvest crops etc.) but you can still control them manually. The problem is the more you interfere with your followers the higher chance somebody will end up standing still and dying because he/she is unhappy/hungry. And from time to time you have to give them some manual orders because there are things that they can't do on their own (like domesticate wild cows)

And the biggest clunkyness of the game - reproduction. When a male and female peasant meet at night at one house they will get some fun and you'll have a little boy or girl in your village pretty soon. The problem is that first you have to expand your village and thus you have to build a few houses (they won't reproduce if there are not enough houses). Your population rises and you can afford training some male peasant in various guilds. Sometimes you have to get at least few of them to defend yourself from monsters and other disasters. Unfortunately joining a guild apparently means castration - your specialists cannot reproduce. And since you now have a few male peasants less and still a lot of houses there will be no reproduction because your followers choose houses to sleep in randomly. Before you know it all your villagers become elders and you are basically screwed... yeah, this whole mechanism is very clunky and thus the game can be very frustrating...

I would still like to see it here, because it's a very rough but still a hidden gem.


Full list

Finished Simon the Sorcerer. I had great visuals, humors and dialogues but lacked on the characters animations and the puzzles design. It was way too difficult so I had to play it with a walkthrough (too many locations, too many items, no clear directions).

Full list here.

Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut

Have you ever played a game which made you feel depressed for a whole week? I have been wondering why I feel so depressed lately without any significant problem in my life whatsoever, but the answer was there right in front of me. It was Silent Hill 2 I have been playing for about an hour everyday after work lately. It doesn't really fit to the definition of "scary", but the use of sound, symbolism, graphics makes you feel almost suicidal.

I really admire how some Japanese games can play with your emotions. Silent Hill 2 is a masterpiece.

PS: I am also a fan of the original game. But you don't need to play Silent Hill 1 to enjoy the second game. Completely separate story.

damien score: 10/10

List of all games finished in the last years with best and worst games played in each year

shadow warrior wanton destruction (4th march 12:15am)

I think these levels are better than the main level personally plus the final boss is better.

shadow warrior twin dragon (5th march 3:18pm)

worse then Wanton but there are some good levels

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2

This one is a downright refreshing change of pace after the eventual drag of Dark Crusade and the full-on torture slog of Soulstorm.

Relic definitely took quite a few of the mechanics from Company of Heroes, but given the small-scale team management rather than massive army building, it works for the most part.

I enjoyed having actual characters with actual personalities and abilities that I could customize as I saw fit.
Not to mention, holy frigging crap there's an actual story to follow.

Be still my charred, blackened heart.

The gameplay is generally good, aside from niggling annoyance at things like boss fights wherein certain enemies could take hundreds and hundreds of explosive rounds to the face before dying, and the fact that once you start putting Terminator armor on people, you might as well put it on everyone since the ones with heavy armor will straight-up destroy cover you want to use for more lightly armored characters by doing no more than walking through it.

However, on the flipside of that, by the end of the game, I was demolishing optional missions like they were nothing and my characters were so geared up that they really didn't need cover anymore.

Speaking of gear, there are pros and cons to that in this game. It feels like it was implemented in a certain way, but it wasn't tested to make sure that it would work for all configurations.
It's great that I can take my commander and turn them into a heavy weapons user rather than the melee character I was expected to be, but at the same time, when there are boatloads of items I cannot use because of it, I started to feel a bit shortchanged for my choice.

Also, it can be more than a little irritating to have weapons and armor drop largely based on random chance. I tried to make my Dreadnought into a long-range killing machine, but I had one fairly large problem - I couldn't get an assault cannon drop to save my life, and none were available until the very last section of the game.

The gear system in general is a bit odd. I ended up with tons and tons of melee based weapons, a lesser amount of medium and scout weapons, almost nothing Dreadnought-based, and a bunch of stuff for my leader that I couldn't use at all because they carried a heavy weapon.
The whole thing is largely based on the whims of the randomizer. If you're lucky, you'll get something good that fits your play style.
If you don't, you're shit out of luck.

Overall, this game is pretty good, and I largely enjoyed it, aside from when it started to get a samey-feeling slog vibe to it at the end.
Also, if you have your squad up to 20 by game's end, the last level is pretty much a joke.
The big bad gets their face blasted off in about twenty seconds flat.

Looking forward to Chaos Rising. Now I get to turn my squad into a bunch of corrupted lunatics. Good times. ;)

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders

Ever since I initially saw it, I always thought of Heretic as Doom's Fantasy brother. Now that I have completed it, I stand by my initial impression.

It using id Tech 1 certainly doesn't do it any favours, as movement, projectiles, environments, sound effects and even some of the weapons feel remarkably similar to those of Doom, but that's not to say that Heretic is just Doom: Fantasy Edition. For starters, all enemies in Heretic are using either melee attacks or projectiles; hitscan enemies are nowhere to be found, which means that all enemy attacks can be properly dodged without taking any cover. Heretic compensates for this by giving enemies projectiles that can cover a much wider area than that of Doom, making dodging more difficult in cramped places. The game is also making use of heightened elevation more effectively than Doom, thus you shouldn't be surprised when enemies are trying to kill you from above. In return, you are now able to look up and down and, thus, return them the favour. ;)

Another addition to Heretic is a simplistic inventory system, in the style of Duke Nukem 3D. Among the available items, there are rings that make you temporarily invincible, health potions, eggs that turn your opponents in chickens and the most interesting of them all, the tome of power. When used, the tome of power temporarily changes the way that each weapon acts. For instance, the Phoenix Rod (a weapon reminiscent of the typical rocket launcher) will be acting as a flamethrower, while using it with the Hellstaff (a weapon similar to Doom's Plasma Rifle) creates slower projectiles that also generate damaging red rain. Another interesting thing to note with the inventory system, is that when you progress to the next stage, you lose all your items except for one of each, so don't go hoarding those tomes of power if you desperately need some firepower; use them!

Other than those, though, Heretic feels very much like Doom. Face a variety of demonic (and not) enemies in suitably brooding (but not always) environments, find your way out of each level using the 3 keys and rinse and repeat. Great like Doom, albeit, without the awesome soundtrack or the interesting vistas in hell. Something else I didn't like is that your weapons' damage or your enemies HPs seem to be pretty random. At times, a direct hit with the crossbow might kill the weakest enemy in one hit, while in other times, it might take three (it also doesn't help that those annoying pests fly away when hit). Enemies in general (even the weakest ones) are significantly more resilient than those of Doom and without a weapon that can hit many of them together (the Phoenix Rod doesn't always cut it, in the same way that Doom's Rocket Launcher didn't always cut it), it just doesn't feel as satisfying as mowing down enemies in Doom. Oh sure, the visual and sound effects from the weapons are definitely there and the resulting gory mess from killng enemies is no doubt satisfying but, WHERE THE HELL IS MY BFG-9000?! Come on Raven, I can't believe you forgot to implement one of the most awesome parts of Doom! No, the upgraded Firemace doesn't count! It has pathetic range, pathetic radius and deals pitiful damage against the boss-type enemies.

In conclusion, Heretic is a worse game than Doom because it lacks the BFG-9000. Then again, this sort of heresy is fitting when you take the game's name into account.

Added to the full list.

C.O.U.N.T.E.R.Spy on PS Vita

Just got it for free as part of the PS+ membership... and just finished in Normal mode.

I'm finally very mixed about this game.

On the pro :
- stylish, spy action, with a visual and sound design and a tongue-in-cheek humor that isn't without bringing back some N.O.L.F memories. And that's a big plus for me. The setting is the Cold War and you're an agent of a mysterious third power called C.O.U.N.T.E.R. trying to play its cards between the Imperialists and the Socialists. So you'll be doing infiltration missions, retrieving intel, codes, etc...

- the level design is clever, since it changes in each game much like a Rogue-like. So don't bother to learn the place, just learn the game mechanics. Of course room patterns will repeat, still it's a nice touch and breaks monotony, I think. They are lots of hidden passages and alternative routes.

- skills and weapons, which you can unlock during your progression in the game, are useful and quite well-though, at least for those i could unlock: more stealth, weapons that can turn enemies and make them attack their own buddies, etc... Nice ! Plus, you don't have unlimited slots for the equipment or unlimited money, so you have to choose carfeully.

- the game actually rewards stealth since you can (in theory) achieve a level without ever being seen. It's up to you to use well your skills, weapons and environment. For example, don't pirate a computer if there's somebody around, they will hear you.

- Once you finished a difficulty level, you''l keep and the things you unlocked if you start a new game.

- there's a leaderboard, so more motivations for the players who like to be the best in the world ;)

The cons, now:

- waaaaaaaayyyyyyy too short: in normal mode at least, the game is nothing really difficult and I finished it in 14 gametime days, with a major miss in a level - that's maybe what, 3 hours at best? Of course, three difficulty levels make it three times longer, but it's artificial (unless there are plot developments in the harder difficulties, which I doubt since I started a game in hard mode and the narrated story was just not there anymore).

- the story: makes no sense because of the final mission. Won't say more here not to spoil people who will play it, but still, I was very very disappointed.

- the handling: once again, a gamepad is not what you want when you want to aim and shoot something. When you are not under enemy pressure, when you're hidden, you can take your time to aim and it works reasonably well. But if you're engaged in a gunfight, it's quite a pain in the ass...

- the security cameras: since it's a 2D platformer and the cameras work in 3D (they turn not only left-right but also 360) it's a little bit painful at first to really understand where they're aiming. So it's better to watch the camera's body that the camera's light. Plus some can be cheaply placed, just after a door or a secret passage, when you can't see it in advance.

So, yeah, I'm mixed. Despite the cons, it's still a very good game, but frankly I wish they had made it much much longer...

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

Hero of Many

An interesting, atmospheric "swimformer" that tells a touching story without words.

Shadowrun Returns:
Believe the hype; believe the FUD. Short, fun, and tightly scripted without any real ability to deviate from the plot. Even dialogue choices are largely meaningless, and exploration is mostly pointless (an item here or a slight tactical advantage there).

I found the setting and writing to be quite compelling. The tactical combat is fun despite a camera bug and some clunky UI & movement weirdness. Hardcore gamers that NEED to be challenged will be disappointed unless they ramp up the difficulty (I played on normal).

While I've not tried any yet, there are lots of fan made adventures for download. Unfortunately many have been abandoned and some were broken (and never fixed) after game updates. Still I'm sure there are some still worth playing.

I just finished Jagged Alliance 2.
On 46 day, my 13 mercs(me, Hitman, Barry, Buns, Ira, Dimitri, Steroid, Thor, Blood, Lynx, Sidney, Scope, Maddog) liberated Arulco!

This game was very difficult. especially late enemies(elite soldiers,snipers and Tanks!) were ridiculously strong.I had to reload many times.
Nevertheless I enjoyed this game a lot. This tactics battle system is quite deep and enjoyable. Maybe sometimes I'll play famous 1.13 mod too.

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