Yes, I had the game crash on me as well (again, as I had forgotten it does so every single time). But what needs to be turned DOWN, is not the difficulty (I find it very doable on nightmare), but turn down the graphic options just for this fight: Texture from High back to Medium, Anti-Aliasing Off and Graphics Detail to Low helped me to defeat the final boss without the game crashing.

Valiant Hearts is another nice and artful game in which Ubisoft shines. Will be back with an update on that game finished soon in this topic, I've nearly finished it and though some of the dexterity needing action parts of the game can be frustrating for it's difficulty in such a leisurely game, the story is absolute wonderful and endearing: friendship and compassion in the middle of a devastating war brought in a comic-book like art-style that's heart-rendering beautiful.

I turned everything down, nothing helped. Whatever though, it was years ago.
You'd think they'd QA the final boss though.

Unmechanical Extended DLC

I'm torn on this one. On the one hand it's pretty awesome that the developers added a short bonus story DLC for free (~ 30 min gamelength if you don't get stuck too long) and it was nice to have an excuse to revisit this game that I completed some years ago and liked very much at the time. On the other hand, the few puzzles in it were either no challenge at all or much too obscure for me. Part of the problem with the latter was that the solution for them was only to be found by backtracking into another room when I thought it was all about the room I was currently in, and then some things happened off-screen so that I didn't get a good overview. Or they relied on me understanding what a thing was, what it was for and how it worked just by looking at it instead of seeing it in action and grasping the whole picture, and that didn't work out for me. Well, there's always the possibility that I'm just a little dense or too impatient for these kind of puzzles right now.

But what's worse is that I couldn't get one of the two endings due to a bug that prevented what should have happened from happening, in my version, on my PC. I watched a Let's Play video of the ending instead, in which the player did exactyl what I did without running into the bug (but they seemed to be playing a console version, so no guarantees for the GOG one).

EDIT: Apparantly it was a known issue (spoilers!) in December and somehow I missed the update that's supposed to fix it. Oh well ... So if you're planning on giving it a try, make sure you've downloaded the most recent version first!

EDIT2: I can confirm now that the patch fixed the issue!

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is a Western-themed first-person shooter, the fourth in the Call of Juarez series, released for Steam, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.
The Good: Great visual and sound effects, with an interesting story, and fun to play gameplay.
The Bad: Quick time events, well, more specifically the ones where you have to dodge bullets. The other ones were fine, since you didn't have to load if you failed. The main problem here is that sometimes you don't get to see the bullet until it's very close to you, and you don't have time to react.
The Ugly: You can't get rid of the black border around the screen.
Overall the game is a lot of fun, the campaign is pretty short, but in completing it you unlock the new game+ mode, other than that there is arcade and duel mode.

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

Loom

This should have been way better than it was. It feels like a cut down shareware version of a full great game. To understand the story, audio cassettes were shipped with the game that provided backstory in the form of an audio drama. This feels like a weak way to contextualize what could have been a rich narritive ingame. As it is it felt like you were deliberatly left out of the story and that led to the idea that this was rushed out the door.

Being based around music and notes which you use to alter object around you, the game does a pretty good job with its puzzle design. The manual however provides very little in the way of knowing just how your drafts can be used outside the rudimentary implementation. It took a few looks in a walkthrough to see what the game would allow me to do.

This was an experiance that left me dissapointed in the worst way. There was so much potential here.

This is a game that begs to be remade.

Bastion - After hearing high praise about this game for the narrator, I wasn't initially impressed. However, it grew over time and I especially enjoyed the unique, quasi-western and fantasy setting. The story was interesting and had some surprising developments.

Her Story - A good example of a simple premise that can involve the player. Searching through the database of videos, and making notes gives the player an strong internal motivation to unravel the mystery. A nice change of pace, and something more akin to a novel that video games.

Alpha Protocol - Agent Michael Thornton, deadpan snarker and professional smart aleck. The conversations in this game are truly the highlight, with strong writing and fantastic dialogue. The pistol is extremely overpowered, but that makes the combat segments easier to get to more of the dialogue. And how can you dislike a game that allows you to play as a secret agent who looks like a bearded beat poet?

I just completed Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter. Better than the first game and I loved how it started off immediately after the first game ended.

I would definitely love to see the third game in the series get released on GOG.

Rayman Legends (Xbox One)

It's the only Rayman game i've played, so i can't say how it compares. But i can say it was a pretty decent platformer. Great graphics and artstyle, plenty (almost too much) content and a wide variety of levels from standard take your time puzzle levels, to timed races and my favorites: the "rhythm" levels that you get after defeating each boss- sort of a cross between a timed platform level and Guitar Hero. The difficulty ramps up well over the course of the game.

I did not rescue every single Teensie...there are 700 of them after all and only hardcore 100 percent completionists are going to bother with all 700. But i got most of them, completed every level, freed every princess, defeated every boss, completed all the story stuff and saw the credits, did all the rhythm levels and unlocked Origins levels. Also did quite a few daily and weekly Ubisoft challenge levels as well.

Not much negative stuff, towards the final levels a "wall running" mechanic is introduced and i personally found executing it a bit hit an miss sometimes- often it wouldn't work and i really couldn't see anything i did different from when it did work. That made the last two Princess saving levels frustrating since they mainly featured precise vertical wall running, plus the last one not having any checkpoints didn't help. But i prevailed in the end.

Overall a great game with loads of varied levels of varying challenge and it's available on pretty much every current console and PC (though obviously you'll need Uplay for PC) and has been given as part of GwG as well.

That's how my version of Thorton looked! I tried everywhere to find a Grouch Marx Spy Kit Disguise, and all I could come up with was that look.

Mine, too. I didn't like the default look for Thornton, so covering him up behind a huge beard and a hat seemed like the best way for me to tolerate him :)

Divekick

I played through the story with one character (Kenny) and that took enough time (half an hour) that I could decide I probably won't be playing this game any more than that. It's just a little bit too simple: it's a fighting game with just two actions, jump and a jump kick. There's also a few special moves but I didn't think they affected the game that drastically.

I guess the developers simply wanted to parody the fighting game genre, and while I guess they succeeded in that, it doesn't make the game any more fun. I'm trying to think what else to say, but there really isn't anything worth mentioning. This could have easily been a browser Flash game, the mechanics are so simple. The idea is interesting, but the novelty wears off in like five minutes. Then it just becomes boring.

Finished Layers of Fear, Downfall Redux and Runner 2.

Toren

Well, this is kind of an interactive story. It was interesting but also weird. If you want to spent a few hours following a story in a beautiful setting it is nice.

Condemned: Criminal Origins

Condemned: Criminal Origins is a first-person psychological survival horror, developed by Monolith Productions and published by Sega.
The gameplay places an emphasis on melee combat and puzzle solving. The game is pretty short, with 5-6h of gameplay for the main story and no other modes.
A few things that I personally enjoyed are :
- the gameplay, especially the combat, the game does have some gunplay, but it's mostly melee driven.
- the ability to save any time
- the atmosphere in most of the levels

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

Shovel Knight. This is a really good retro-style platformer. It's the lovechild of Duck Tales and Mega Man. It's a tough game but it has certain modern touches that allow you to control the challenge yourself. Graphics are really nice, controls handle well, and the whole game oozes charm.

The Plague Knight remix is a nice gesture, although I never quite felt comfortable controlling him, probably because his gameplay demands a lot of menu usage so you can switch out different bomb configurations depending on what's in front of you. Shovel Knight is more to my liking because with him it's more about keeping the action flowing.