South Park: The Stick of Truth.
That was simply awesome. Fun, true to the source material, clever and overall very enjoyable to play. If I had to complain about something, the game seems a bit short (or rather is so good it feels short) - I did 100% run (all action figures, all friends, all 20 subquests) and Steam says I played for 29 hours. I'd love to see a sequel or a story expansion DLC.

Include me

7/1 Ittle Dew
9/1 Muri
9/2 Darkest Dungeon
9/3 Tales of Maj'eyal
7/5 Card city nights
14/5 Shadowrun dragonfall
31/5 KIngdom rush
6/6 Bleed
29/6 Torchlight 2
8/7 Bionic dues
21/7 Tomb of tyrants
7/11 Spec ops:The line
10/12 Borderlands
15/12 Stanley's Parable
19/12:Letter's quest
23/12 Crypt of the necrodancer Caddence run
28/12 Transistor
30/12 Saints Row IV

Games finished in 2015:

Valiant Hearts: The Great War review
The Swapper review
Zombie: The Containment Puzzler
ENSLAVED: Odyssey to the West review
Lost Chronicles of Zerzura review
Hero of the Kingdom review
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav (again -- original review HERE)
Max: The Curse of Brotherhood review
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Stick it to the Man!
Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries
Secrets of Rætikon
Batman: Arkham City
Tormentum: Dark Sorrow review
Detective Grimoire
Batman: Arkham Origins
Tormentum: Dark Sorrow review
Hero of the Kingdom II
Ori and the Blind Forest review
Delicious: Emily's New Beginning
Delicious: Emily's Home Sweet Home
Delicious: Emily's Hopes and Fears
Tales from the Borderlands review

There are others I finished this year, just didn't remember to post about them!

Year Walk.
Enjoyable surreal horror adventure with some hidden \ unlockable content (including very well written creepypasta \ shortstory). Great art style, fun puzzle, short but enjoyable experience.

The first game I finished in this year was Icewind Dare.
My adventurers were Paladin, Dwarf Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Sorcerer, Conjurer.
Because this game is heavily battle oriented, pure-thief was useless. I should have made him a fighter/thief multi-class. Also 2 sorcerers was a bit useless (especially Conjurer can't use Fireball and Magic Missile), More fighter-class is needed.

I enjoyed this game nevertheless.

My List.

I just finished Anodyne. If this is what Zedla games are like I might have to play more (I've heard Ittle Dew is good). The game has it's problems. The platforming is annoying the final puzzle makes no sense and I don't think I really understood the story. But none of that matters too much because the experience was really worthwhile. I've noticed odd things that aren't mentioned in the walkthrough. Like the giant Deer that turned up once in green forest then disappeared forever. And how sometimes the puzzle blocks would turn into space blocks with falling stars is I put them out side the puzzle arena. I have to wonder if that was intentional or just a beautiful glitch?

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

The game is by Ubisoft, so you'll have to have a Uplay account in order to play the game. A bit of a pain, but worth it if you love a good story!

The screen resolution is adjustable anywhere from 640x480 through 1980x1020, and you can play Windowed if you wish. We have separate sliders for sound effects, music, and brightness, and if you want subtitles, they are NOT the default. Luckily you can adjust the settings at any time. If you're using the keyboard you can rebind the keys to whatever you wish, but the controller buttons are not adjustable. Speaking of which, we have full-controller support on this title.

The game is rich in history, though dosed out in segments small enough to keep one from getting overwhelmed (or bored ^_~ ) if not a history buff. These tidbits are easily accessible, and while it's not required reading, it surely enriches the story! In addition to the facts that are unlocked as you play, there are 100 collectibles, and each has its own story to tell. We also have a diary with separate entries, which I didn't realize until later on in the game. The diary, like the hints, is accessible through the game menu (hit Esc.)

Speaking of hints, there are multiple modes of play -- regular and veteran. I believe you have to complete regular mode before you can access veteran mode, however. Hints, if you wish to use them, are tiered, and give you a picture of one of the steps you'll need to take to progress in the game.

We play as multiple characters, giving us varied views of the war and its toll. These characters' stories are beautifully weaved together in a touching story. The gameplay is a combination of point-and-click, puzzles, light platforming, and arcade-like action scenes. Anyone looking for a thrilling ride, rife with action and glory might want to look elsewhere, as the compelling story is the driving force behind this game, and it's the story that will keep bringing you back to the game.

The narrator will explain things as we transition, and his voice works beautifully with the story. Our characters' voices, on the other hand, are intentionally garbled -- you don't actually need to understand what they're saying. It may sound strange, but it really does work well. Any person you see who has ' . . . ' over their heads means you need to "talk" to them. You will see what they want or need via images in speech bubbles. It's not terribly hard to figure out what you're supposed to be doing -- most of the time when I was stuck it was because I had missed seeing an exit or some such. :p

I highly highly recommend this game to anyone who loves a good story, with one caveat: Some of the action scenes need to have quick reactions, and I know that some of my friends have issues with this kind of thing. Let me give you an example. This will not be a spoiler as long as you don't watch the whole video -- Just watch the first ten seconds or so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saKbYGB7JwA

had to redo the above-referenced kind of scene more than once, but that is not the part of the game I'm worried about. There are sequences where you have to press buttons quickly in succession, switching around between buttons, and sometimes hitting more than once button at a time. I don't know how well I would have done if I'd been on the keyboard instead of a controller! I can't give you a visual of what I'm talking about without potentially spoiling some of the story, just be warned!

I finished the game in somewhere between four and five hours -- not really certain since I got interrupted a few times. Remember those collectibles I mentioned at the beginning of the review? It turns out that you can replay any part of the game you wish in order to gather all of the collectibles! Go to the Chapters & Collection section of the main menu, and you will be able to see how many items you gathered, and how many you missed for each section. Personally I think it would be better to go back to get some of these rather than grab them as you play, as sometimes they're sitting out in the open during a time when you could easily get killed! It interrupts the flow of the story a bit to stop and examine these things during the action sequences.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a moving journey that kept me guessing 'til the end, and had me happily learning about the first World War (history is NOT my forte). I really did love playing this game, and recommend checking it out if the above review appeals to you.

Vote to get the game on GOG HERE. (I know it's not likely, but I had to give the shout-out!) ;D

Genki's reviews list

include me

01. The Lion King (SNES)
02. Aladdin (SNES)
03. The Longest Journey (WinXP)
04. Lume (WinXP)
05. Dust: An Elysian Tail (WinXP)
06. Bit.Trip Presents Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (Linux)
07. Super Mario World (SNES)
08. Devious Dungeon (Android)
09. The Ball (WinXP)
10. Tiny & Big - Grandpas Leftovers (WinXP)
11. Nihilumbra (WinXP)
12. Far Cry (WinXP)
13. Hotline Miami (Linux)
14. To the Moon (Linux)
15. Star Wars: Dark Forces (Alias: Jedi Knight 0) (Linux)
16. Another World - 20th Anniversary Edition (Linux)
17. Teslagrad (WinXP)
18. Shadowgate Remake (Linux)
19. World of Goo (Linux) - 2nd playthrough
20. MouseCraft (Linux)
21. Jack Lumber (Android)
22. A Bird Story (Linux)
23. PixelJunk Shooter (Linux)
24. Vertiginous Golf (Linux)
25. Shadow Warrior 2013 (Linux)
26. Hotline Miami 2 (Linux)
27. Legend of Zelda - Wind Waker (Linux - Dolphin)
28. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (Linux)
29. Ziggurat (Linux)
30. Legend of Grimrock (Linux)
31. Limbo (Linux)
32. Apotheon (Linux)
33. Transistor (Linux)
34. Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition (WinXP)
35. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey 2 (via PlayOnLinux)
36. Rochard + Hard Times (Linux)
37. Monument Valley + Ida's Dream (Android)
38. Tiny Bang Story (Android)
39. Trine 2 - Complete Story (Linux)
40. Awesomenauts (Linux)
41. Amelia and Terror of the Night (Android)
42. Pajama Sam - Thunder and Lightning (Android)
43. <span class="bold">Blocks That Matter (Linux)</span>
44. Grim Legends (Android)
45. Pajama Sam In: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside (Android)
46. Grim Legends 2 (Android)
47. Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds (Android)
48. Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink (Android)
49. Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse (Android)
50. Demon Hunter: Chronicles from Beyond (Android)
51. SPAZ - Space Pirates and Zombies (Linux)
52. Tetrobot and Co. (Linux)
53. Type:Rider (Android)
54. Broken Sword 2 - Remastered (Linux)
55. To The Moon - Holiday Special Minisodes 1+2 (Linux)
56. Odd Bot Out (Android)
57. Wacky Wheels (Linux)
58. Time Mysteries 1 - Inheritance (Android)
59. Costume Quest + Grubbins on Ice (Linux)
60. HuniePop (Linux)
61. Freddi Fish 3: The Case of the Stolen Conch Shell (Android)
62. Unmechanical - Extended DLC (Linux)
63. Diablo 1 HD - Belzebub (WinXP)
64. The Bard's Tale (Linux)
65. Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards - VGA (Linux)
66. Broken Sword 3 - The Sleeping Dragon (WinXP)
67. Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin (NDS on 3DS-XL)

GOG

Blackwell Deception - 9:24pm on 7 Jan 2015
Jazzpunk - 9:11am on 19 April 2015
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy - 12 May 2015
Metro 2033 Redux - 8:49pm on 22 November 2015
Metro Last Light Redux - 11:56am on 26 November 2015

Nintendo 3DS

Pokemon Y - 12:20pm on 4 Jan 2015

Steam

State of Decay: Life Line - 7:21pm on 6 Jan 2015
Medal of Honour: Airborne - 6:01pm on 15 June 2015 (Beat in less than 4 hours)
Bioshock - 12:10pm on 2 July 2015 (approximately 13 hours)

Xbox 360

Mass Effect 2 - 1:15pm on 5 April 2015
Mass Effect 3 - 10:24am on 13 April 2015

I finished a game with heather graham last week. I like to call it peanut-butter banana sandwich.

Are you playing on the actual console? Or using emulator?

I've just sold my console and actually prefer emulators.
This way I can use savestates, transfer my saves, play on the go etc...
I wasn't at home anyway but in another city for the last days, taking my SNES with me wouldn't have been possible.

Yesterday evening I finished my second game of this year Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Premium Edition.

The main game took around nine hours to complete and was a great adventure. The game has good characters and beautiful graphics. The only negativ thing about this action-adventure is the very low difficulty level. I never died during combat and even outside of it death was very rare.

Included in the PC version is the DLC "Pigsy's Perfect 10".
This little adventure took three hours to complete and was much harder than the main game. Here you controll Pigsy who is pretty much helpless in melee combat and thus the game was more or less an 3rd-person-shooter.
At least the Pigsy character is not your typical hero. (See attached picture.)


Here's my list.

Drox Operative

Summary: This is a very solid, well designed, cold and efficient but ultimately dull and repetitive action RPG with virtually no atmosphere, character or quirks and nothing to inspire you beyond artificial challenges. A dream come true sandbox for bored purists, OCD level-uppers, gearheads and Social Darwinists or anyone who would like to be Littlefinger in a sci-fi setting.

This review is for the base game only (I decided not to buy the expansion), also this is my first game from Soldak so I won’t be comparing it to any of its predecessors. Nor am I going to claim seniority of opinion due to having played the game for 50-100 hours or more. I only played the game for 25 hours total but it’s more than enough to have experienced all of the game’s aspects several times over.

I was a bit disappointed by Drox Operative in part but not only due to making the mistake of having the wrong expectations. Since I had no prior experience with any Soldak games, all I had to go by were a couple screenshots which looked pretty cool. I thought I’d found yet another substitute drug for my Diablo 2 affection – which has lead me to all kinds of disappointments including Torchlight and Space Hack (even worse than Torchlight) and even to pure action games like Crimsonland. At first sight, Drox looked like a mix between Diablo, Wing Commander Privateer and Star Control, maybe even with a teeny bit of Master of Orion’s strategic complexity thrown in. Needless to say, you shouldn’t expect that many things from a small indie game company.

Let me say clearly that Drox isn’t a bad game at all, in fact it’s very well designed and solid with hardly any glitches. And for $10 (50% off), I got my money’s worth in terms of hours played, quantity wise. For $20, I would have seriously regretted the purchase though so before you buy Drox at full price, you should try the free demo first because this is a “love it” or “meh…this is boring” experience. If you don’t like the game from the get-go, you probably won’t start magically liking it later on because it is very much a what you see is what you get kinda deal. If you do however like the game for the first 3-4 hours, there still is no guarantee that you will enjoy it beyond the initial 3-4 hours phase because you’ll have already seen almost everything the game has to offer and it’s rinse and repeat from there on ad infinitum, just on a higher level. Better equipments and stronger enemies but same old, especially when it comes to the randomly generated FedEx quests. You can upgrade your ship into a bigger and stronger type of ship as you gain levels but apart from that, you’re going to run into the same randomly recycled content all the time.

Unlike many action RPGs where you go through a series of acts with changing scenery, you only get completely random and generic looking sectors which are made of a handful smaller star systems. Once you beat a sector, it’s back to the main menu. Your spaceship and inventory are saved but everything else gets generated freshly every time you finish a sector.
You can choose the size of the sector and adjust the monster difficulty in relation to your own ship’s level. If you choose a monster level that’s too low, you’ll not level up in a million years and if you choose a monster level that’s too high, you’ll get your ass kicked too much unless you have “1337 gear” – which you only find when you set the difficulty high enough but the stuff you find then is often too high level for your ship and then you can’t use it anyway…so as you see, it’s best to choose a monster difficulty that’s pretty much exactly the same as your ship’s own level, making the difficulty choices a slight bit redundant.
Every game I started felt the same, sure there are different factions and you can’t always know which ones are going to die first to factors other than your own doing and which ones are going to be prosper and be the strongest without your help. There is quite a variety of things you can do to influence the rise and fall of any faction, including making and breaking diplomatic alliances, sabotage, bribery, espionage, starting rumors to make factions like or hate each other and yourself and so on. If you want, you can even fly up to a planet and do a little Alderaan style drive-by shooting, annihilating the entire planet with your little spaceship’s lasers if you wish so. Or you can be sly and start a rebellion on a planet and secretly damage the faction while at the same time doing business with them. Whether you decide to play the hero or be a mass murderer, you can’t sit back and be idle or the Drox Operative will pull you from the job. All this sounds a lot more exciting than it is in actual gameplay. Despite the game’s initially surprising depth and wide range of options, equipment and ways to win, the gameplay feels awkwardly stale, even after you figure out quicker, nastier and more efficient ways to win. On the bright side, the controls are easy to use and well designed, nowhere near as awkward as trying to maneuver a spaceship in SPAZ.

Your spaceship can initially only hold very limited amount of weapons and other components so you have to choose carefully. You can’t tune your ship into an all around excellent “egg-laying wool-milk pig” as we say in German – you have to compromise between firepower, shields, armor, hull structure, energy, speed etc. Most components use power so if you just throw all the most power hungry components into your ship, it will end up being underpowered and and you might have to find a better power core before you can use that fancy high level laser.

You don’t have to grind levels in Drox to overcome plateaus but the whole game feels like one big grind with way too much flying around in a way too slow spaceship. Even if your ship’s power supply is plenty and you have good boost-increasing components installed and use extra “boost potions” to fly faster, it still feels sluggish and painfully slow to get from A to B, even in the tiniest galaxy. There are gateways that teleport you from one star system to the next but within these subsectors, you still have to fly more than you'll ever want to.
And the backhanded quicker methods to win without fighting mostly require a lot of money so even if you can e.g. quickly buy a peace agreement or even an alliance without having to slowly earn brownie point until your relation with a faction is good enough, you still have to grind to get enough money in the first place so you can fund all those expensive shenanigans. There are more and less efficient ways to make money but ultimately none are particularly exciting.

After 2-3 failed attempts where I didn’t understand the mechanics yet I won my first sector after a couple hours of experimentation and then after 10-15 hours I had had finally figured out how to play the game properly and orchestrate a win without failing. Sadly, a rather underwhelming experience. After about 20 hours, I had managed to get all the 5 types of winning conditions at least once or several times and decided to call the game finished as there isn’t much to achieve beyond that other than keep leveling up your ship, trying out a different ship to start with but aside from goals that you set yourself, the game gives you no reason to keep playing. I played a couple more sectors until I reached level 34 but decided to call it quits now as there really is no point to continue.

There’s no story, no intro, no campaign, not even a basic timeline like UFO where you have stretch goals in terms of research until eventually a clear final goal is revealed to the player. In Drox, you can decide between playing a sector where you decide yourself how big the galaxy will be and how many factions are going to take part - or you can choose to play a “challenge” where the game sets up a fixed sector for you. I tried that mode as well but things weren’t any more interesting than in sandbox mode. There isn’t really any difference except that it’s the computer that sets the parameters instead of you, so you might get “punished” with a large sized galaxy in which case things get really annoying and tedious. You’re going to spend most of your time just flying around doing FedEx quests or search & destroy missions, the variety is limited and incredibly generic. I didn’t encounter a single interesting quest, it’s all just a framework/simulation for getting new equipment and testing that out in the wild. This is a great game for people who like to figure out and master game mechanics, not so much for people who like an enchanting experience.

(continued below)

(Drox Operative Review Part 2)

Other action RPGs try to give you at least some basic excuse for a plot so you could say Drox is just more straightforward and honest in that they don’t even pretend to try and instead cut the crap in favor of streamlined gameplay. My gripe isn’t just the complete the lack of story but the lack of atmosphere and “mojo”. It’s a bit hard to describe what I mean by “mojo”, but it’s that special something that a game like Drox does -not- have, in any way shape or form. Even if it’s a very slick and solid game. Just compare the funny alien species from Star Control to the run-of-the-mill species in Drox and you’ll know what I mean. Originality and coolness isn’t a matter of budget so I won’t excuse Drox for not having more spunk. I kinda liked the Dryad faction because they almost made me feel sympathy for them with their poetic treehugger/oceanhugger way of speaking but then you realize that they don’t really function much differently from any of the other factions. Feels like the exact same AI aside from a few minor parameters and stats. A lot of potential was wasted here because the whole factions deal is what really sets Drox apart from regular action RPGs where the only diplomacy is “who do I kill first”. Drox is dynamic but its world does not feel alive.
A cool soundtrack would have helped a lot to provide more atmosphere and mask some of the more boring aspects of the game. Unfortunately, there isn’t any memorable music to be found here. It’s understandable that not every indie game has catchy tunes like FTL but it would have been most beneficial here.

I can understand why they decided to keep things streamlined and stick with one perspective and that you can’t enter the bar at the space station to chat and exchange gossip with people but I would have greatly appreciated if there was at least a ship screen where you could look at your baby in its full glory.
Spaceship components are only represented by a drab little icon, Windows 3.11 style.
As a result, finding loot, shopping and playing around with stuff in your inventory is rather abstract and minimalist and not much fun. Basic close up illustrations of the weapons and other components would have made a huge difference, not just cosmetically but in terms of conveying the purpose of items. Shopping at Harold’s Death Emporium was my favorite part of playing Raptor Call of the Shadows, it’s just simple bitmaps which don’t have more pixels than the icons in Drox but the function of everything in Raptor could easily be identified.

I think the creators of Drox spent all their effort in skilfully making an impressive finely balanced near bug-free game but they forgot about making their game fun. That is of course a subjective statement but one can’t deny that the content of the game too quickly reaches a point of pointless repetition. Some players will be perfectly satisfied by this very well crafted and far from brainless but ultimately soulless game and its well oiled mechanics while others will be left wanting.


And here's a little screenshot to illustrate just how antisocial you can behave in Drox Operative. You must leave at least one faction alive until you achieve one of the 5 victory types but after that you can keep playing and get rid of the last one. The you have the entire galaxy for yourself and your little ship: