To the Moon minisodes

sebarnolds' post reminded me that I've been meaning to play these free interludes for some time now, so I finally did, and I enjoyed them. I don't like it when games offer no option to save, but in this case it wasn't much of an issue since they only lasted 20-30 minutes and I was motivated to play through them in one sitting, as they kept me entertained. There isn't much action or plot in them and just like To The Moon and A Bird's Story, they're more like Visual Novels, except that they allow you to move around freely sometimes. But they expand a bit on the characters of Dr. Rosalene and Dr. Watts and their team, and I found their interactions quite amusing and mostly well done. These minisodes served perfectly as an appetizer for the sequel in the works, Finding Paradise.


Haunt the House: Terrortown

Not so much a game as a playground. Four different levels of varying size, setting and objects, but otherwise no real difference in gameplay. You steer a floating ghost that can possess objects and make them rattle or use them in other ways to spook people. The more you scare people, the more frightening the atmosphere gets, the more options you get to use these objects (max. 3 per object), and the more powerful the spooks. And it seems most effective to use the powerful spooks at spots where many people are gathered. But that's about it. The level is won when all people in the area have run away or jumped out of windows, which they will do eventually while you freely haunt the house (or town or train). So in the end it amounts to the player just fooling around with the various objects until everyone has left. It's very casual and can even get a bit boring, especially if the last people left in the house just won't leave for whatever reason, even though they already seem scared out of their wits. I guess one could compare the gameplay to Scribblenauts, but without the puzzles and room for creativity. That being said, it's a funny, family-friendly distraction for a while, and all in all it just takes about an hour to play through the game; the graphic are neat, done in a similar style to the devs' other game, Detective Grimoire, and the soundtrack by composer Raphael Benjamin Meyer (which was included in my purchase from Humble Store) is great, especially the Burtonesque "North Pole" song.

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening

This is a really good expansion-pack for Origins. It has a good amount of content, and you play a new world map with new locations. It's truly a high-level campaign. I imported my character from Origins, and the shops were full of hardcore gear that I could finally spend my hundreds of sovereigns on :P I also leveled up once or twice per hour, xp was given out like candy :D Compared to Origins it's pretty easy. I slashed my way through everything with no problems, and the only time my entire party was killed was in the final showdown. That being said though, the low difficulty didn't bother me. The many bosses and fights were great fun. Of course, the story and characters are again excellent, and I did often laugh at Anders's dialogue. So there are some genuinely funny stuff in there, as well as serious dialogue, of course.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3)

So I finally got my hands on a US version of this game. In case you didn't know: All European versions are cencored, thanks to Germany, once again. It's also worth mentioning that Sigma is a 2007 released enhanced edition of Ninja Gaiden, which has been originally released in early 2004 for the first Xbox.

As the title says, it's a Ninja-themed 3D slasher with a Metroidvania-style level design and rather challenging in terms of difficulty. For a game that old (12 years by now!) most of its mechanics are still appealing today, at least if you're into this genre. Besides the occasional camera problems, most of my complaints are not related to important aspects of the actual gameplay. Complaints like: those ridiculously over-animated boobs; and why the heck do I have to read the manual in order to find out that the only way to exit a running game to the menu screen is to press Start and Select at the same time?

There aren't too many games that put you in the shoes of a highly skilled Ninja. Ninja Gaiden Sigma is one of 'em, and it gets the job done well. If that's your cup of tea, you won't be disappointed.

-my 2016 list-

Life is Strange _ I very recommend this game, It have a very good story and time traveling is cooool :P

Brilliant game. Was lucky enough to play Sigma as well. Apart from the chick segments, they didn't seem to add anything worthwhile. Were they in the original Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black? Anyway.

One of my favorite series, before it all went to hell.

Ended up playing Fez again (32 cube ending). I love the soundtrack and the overall look of it, but overall I thought the game was average. Eh...I still had some fun with it, so there's that.

Nope, you can only play as Ryu in the original Ninja Gaiden and the updated Black version.

It's so relaxing to play Fez, though I can't be bothered with most of the puzzles.

<span class="bold">Dyscourse</span>

I picked up this game that I got in a recent Humble Weekly, hoping to play it through in a single evening. Boy, how wrong I was! You see, the game is advertised as a "choice-based narrative adventure", i.e. a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-type videogame, and it certainly looks like it has as much replayability value as those old books had "re-readability potential". A single playthrough can last something between one and two hours, depending on how carefully you read all the dialogues, but you would be making a big mistake if you left this game after you've beaten it once, since you'd be missing a lot of its content. For once, the usual marketing ploy about how "choices have consequences" is absolutely true, and the story will unfold in vastly different ways depending on every decision you make, however small and inconsequential it may seem at first. So here I am, several days after I started playing this game and with 10+ playthroughs under my belt, considering this one done for good.

The premise of the game and the main events that take place in it are as typical as they can get when you've got a group of survivors from a plane accident, stranded on a deserted island (and yes, there are some references to Lost): scarcity of food and fresh water, a hostile nature (be it in the form of bad weather or aggressive wildlife), tensions between members of the group... you name it. To me the characters were far more interesting than the plot itself, even though I would probably have preferred them not as unidimensional as they are: there's a paranoid conspirationist, a geeky man boy, an apathetic corporate worker, and a middle-aged couple currently going through a marriage crysis. And in the middle of it all there's your character Rita, a young single woman who will become the de facto leader of the group, and whose decisions will determine the outcome of the story: basically how many people survives until a rescue party arrives.

That's right, contrary to what the colourful and cartoonish art style may lead you to expect, this is a quite dark and grim game and people die in it. And they can die quite easily, I might add. Much like an extreme exemplification of Murphy's Law, anything that can possibly go wrong will certainly do so. Fortunately once you've beaten the game once you'll have the day-rewind mechanic at your disposal, which enables you to go back in time at the beginning of a particular day in your adventure, and continue from there. Thus, you can quite easily correct any silly mistake you make without having to re-play everything up to that point (and it becomes very handy when you just want to explore all the possibilities the narrative tree has to offer). I don't think it's possible to keep everybody alive till the end, as sooner or later you end up in a situation where you cannot possibly save everyone. The better I managed to do was saving everybody except one (including a pet that can sometimes join your group), and I think I've seen all of the locations in the island and experienced most of the situations, so I'm gonna mark it as done...

...but not before talking about the Indie Island bonus story! In a nice gesture by the devs, they included free of charge an extra short story. Set in the same island, and sharing some of the same locations with the main game, the story begins almost identically: Emily, a videogame programmer/designer/artist (you decide it), is one of the few survivors of a plane crash when she was on her way to the GDC. Not entirely surprisingly all of the other survivors are some of the most famous indie game developers: Robin Hunicke (Journey), Phil Tibitoski (Octodad), Ed McMillen (Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac) or the one and only Tim Schafer. This bonus chapter is full of references to the life and works of all the characters that appear in it, and to the gaming community in general (kudos for the repeated references to Schafer's ability to manage a budget and to release a game in time), and overall it's significantly more over the top than the main story. Here people die for silly reasons (or are directly murdered by others) and you just don't care as much as you did in the main game when you lost a member of your group. But in the end it all boils down to who ends up surviving and getting to the GDC in time. Heck, in all of my playthroughs I ended up confronting Tim Schafer and killing him, something that I'm positive will make this game worth purchasing for a lot of people. :P



My list of finished games in 2016

Commander Keen: Keen Dreams

A very short spinoff of the series, Keen Dreams is another early 90s platformer with no music. In this one, our hero is going through D̶r̶e̶a̶m̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ the Dream World in order to save other children from the hands of the evil king Boobus Tuber.

In comparison to the prevalent space/sci-fi theme of the previous game, Keen Dreams is instead fantasy-themed with locations reminiscent of fairy tales and enemies based on vegetables. You no longer have the raygun or the pogo stick and you'll instead have to get by with the flower power balls, which will temporarily stun your opponents instead of permanently disabling them. On the bright side, you only need one of those for each enemy. On the negative side, it goes in an arc and doesn't have a particularly good range.

As far as frustration goes, Keen Dreams still has some, but nowhere near the amount of the previous game. Your jumping no longer takes half-a-second till it commences, you can actually crouch this time around (though I ended up never using it), you no longer have to press two buttons to attack (though that's the case because you don't have a pogo stick in this game) and while certain stages can be a bit long and require a fair amount of trial and error (you still die in one hit) and you can save anywhere thus negating the need to restart the level whenever you die. Of course, the game still features leaps of faith, since there is no way to know what waits for you below, so that's frustration that you'll have to tolerate from time to time.

All in all, it was less frustrating to play than the previous game, but it wasn't something particularly special. Onwards to Goodbye, Galaxy!

Full list.

Deus Ex Invisible War (PC CDROM)

First of all, I was never a big fan of the first game. Seriously, it really was just an average shooter to me. You could do things in different ways...but i never saw the point, the easiest way was to just kill everything and then work out what to do in my own sweet time. Stealth? Why bother when the enemies were so easy to kill anyway? I do not suffer from pacifism obviously. If the easiest and best solution to a problem is to kill everything, then just kill everything i say.

Invisible War was pretty much the same. I read that lots of people don't like the reduction in skills etc etc...but since i never used them much in the first game then i never missed them not being here either! IW is just a shooter again for me. Overall i liked IW about the same as the first game. Since i consider it and played it as a shooter, i don't care that the skills were removed or simplified. The story tied together well and you have to make some real decisions as to which faction you go with in the end...or do it like me and kill them all. Renegade ending all the way! The human race needs a good culling from time to time to keep balance anyway.

It's an ugly game...even for it's time i think. I applied the Unified Texture Pack to improve the graphics. I'm not sure if the texture pack was responsible to some extent, but the load times were terrible, maybe the worst i've ever seen in game- surprising considering how old it is and how small the levels are. Load times were bad enough that it impacted adversely on my enjoyment of the game. Many love to blame the Xbox for many of this games problems but i don't buy into that. There were other games across both platforms that had large areas and did not have the loading issues and small levels like IW does on PC, other devs found ways- I think Ion Storm just maybe weren't all that good.

But i did enjoy the game over all, yes as much as the first game. It took me about 13 hours, not including about 3 hours, all up, watching the loading screens. It crashed to desktop a few times, but nothing that impacted on the experience too badly...i would have gladly doubled the crashes in exchange for halving the load times if i could!

So onto Human Revolution then.

Sea Legends: Phantasmal Light Collector's Edition

I was a little tired and not in the mood to play Might and Magic III yesterday and so I played this HOG instead. It was ok I think. The story didn't make much sense, but it had a nice variety of puzzles. The hidden object sections were the weakest part of the game, because every section had to be done twice and the objects (and you sometimes searched for the same ones) were exactly at the same place both times.
Another thing that was annoying was the constant forth and back tracking to find new sections (or the same ones) every time you solved a puzzle.
The extras you can unlock (a bonus chapter that explains what happened to another character, concepts arts, music, screen savers and wallpapers) were nice though.

Complete list of finished games in 2016

Dust: an Elysian tail

This game's creator is a professional animator which explains why the game looks so good. The background art and animations are superb. Easily one of the best looking indie games I’ve played. The sound design and music are also top notch.
The game has an anime inspired art style with wide eyed humanoid furries.
The gameplay is a fast paced hack and slash with platforming sections for good measure and a few roleplaying mechanics to round everything out. I think the gameplay is a bit too loose and lacks precision, it feels especially loose and imprecise while you are in the air. When you dodge an attack the game automatically turns your character, which I heard people say is a good thing, but according to my experience with the game is just annoying (especially in the last area of the game).
And speaking of the last area: it is the single most overcrowded level I have played in years. I can't see what I'm doing, who is attacking who, and the enemies are a bit too eager to dodge and block.
The story is nice, but a bit too cliche at times. And as soon as the Game played the amnesia card, the magical sword that knows the main character but won't tell him and the evil general looking for his friend, my Shyamalan sense started to tingle like crazy.(to be fair, that's not the only twist.)
Yeah, I found the story to be,for the most part, predictable.
Most characters are two dimensional and serve as quest givers while others have a bit more personality.
The quests are for the most part boring MMO styled fetch this, bring items, help npc, etc ...
A lot of people love the Fidget character(the orange bat thing) but I just found her irritating.
The item forging mechanic is unnecessary in my opinion and just ads one extra step to obtaining items.
Overall: good game, but the hype for it was more than it delivered.
7/10

Styx: Master of Shadows (PS4)

A good stealth game, marred by two unfortunate flaws: load times, and platforming.

I quit this game last year because of the long load times, but the stealth gameplay drew me back and I finally finished it (after almost quitting a second time due to the load times). I especially enjoyed that the maps feel very large and offer multiple paths on different vertical levels. I played on the hardest difficulty, so there was no combat except for a couple of story-related ones which were unavoidable :(.

I measured the load time, it’s a full 30 seconds, which is significant when you’re reloading every minute or two as I often do in some areas while trying to find my way past some tricky guards. Secondly, platforming is required to leap from ledge-to-ledge or to scale walls from jump-point to jump-point. I generally suck at platforming, I’ve typically got about a 50% chance of making each jump, and often you’ll need to make 3-4 or more jumps in a row. Luckily the game can be saved at any time, which helped me greatly to accomplish these tasks by saving after each individual jump. But when I need to reload after missing a jump then I have the load time annoyance again.

Overall it is a very good stealth game though, and I would tentatively recommend it to anyone who enjoys the genre, if you’re patient enough to deal with the slow load times.

Link to all my games finished in 2016

I have just finished NG++ of Demon's Souls on PS3. To my surprise, False King Allant was down just after 4 attempts! Looks like I learned how to play this game better in last 7 days :P

Anyway, the biggest challenge for me this time was Black Phantom Satsuki. But in the end I was able to put him down after few attempts. Right after that, the Spider Demon, because it was my second boss in NG++ and I was still very rusty with controls and completely forgot most of the game mechanics. Lost a lot of souls there, but in the end, the game became after that little bit more relaxing :) I decided to get all the game drops, and was successfull with it. I was missing some vendor weapons and armors and the very rare Gargoyle Crossbow. But after hour or two, I have successfully acquired it :)

Now onto my last NG(3+). For Platinum Trophy, I will need to kill 8 bosses and not 7 as I thought, I will need to rescue Saint Urbain in 4-2 as well. So I will probably go for Adjudicator as my second boss this time.

Cheers \o/

Hard West

Very fun tactical shooter in a horror like wild west setting.It's made of small campaign where you can unlock different items in shops and play different mini stories in a choose your advanture map.It's gets the mechanics right and has
luck mechanic which is very cool way to balance bad rng.

It would have been brilliant with a large arching x-com like mode with more strategy elements or multiplayer.
Also putting in more magical elements would also been lovely in addition to the guns.

The art direction,style and narration are great for the game.If there will be an expansion or sequel I will get it,very fun game.