Tokyo School Life

A VN I got certainly on a Steam sale. And it was a lucky buy, I must say. Though it is on the short side (completed one road in 5 hours) and not very interactive (I maybe got 3 choices to make, tops), it was oddly charming.

The scenario in itself is nothing surprising: you're an exchange student arriving in Japan, your dream country, for 2 months and of course you'll meet female schoolmates. I think that, from here, you get the point.

Tokyo School Life does the bare minimum on many points: short, lack of interactivity, no secondary character is ever shown on screen, the scenario is something you'll have seen already dozens of times in other VNs or in anime...

Still, Tokyo School Life is charming and on certain points, very well made: the girls have "real" personalities, making them people you can relate to. Art is good, the girls are fully voiced (and in a good way, i've never found their voice annoying or artifical) and quite well animated, which is rarely seen in such VNs.

So, yes, despite the fact I'm further and further away from my high school life, I could perfectly relate to the characters (minus the fact that, for a fan of Japan, your character strangely doesn't know much about Japan) and eagerly want to know the rest of the story. So, that's waht qualifies a good game, in my book.

Last point: no boobs, no nudity here. If that's what you're looking for (and that's not a criticism), the Sakura series might be better. But otherwise, Tokyo School Life is one of the best VNs I've ever played.

So far in 2016: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2016/post46

Xeodrifter: Special Edition

You know, I didn't think of Mutant Mudds as a particularly special game, but at least it had some catchy music and pretty responsive controls. I can't say the same for Xeodrifter, whose music is unremarkable and its controls kind of suck. Movement feels loose and slippery, you have no way to control the height of your jump and even though you can now aim upwards, there will be quite a few moments that you wished you could aim diagonally.

Unfortunately, the controls aren't the only the problem with the game:

- Weak gun (both in power and feel) that has kinda useless upgrades and becomes obsolete by a charge gun later in the game.
- No way to rebind controls.
- Bad illusion of choice in regards to what planet you can visit, as you'll still need a specific item to be able to progress in a specific planet.
- Only one boss fought multiple times, just with a palette swap and some more moves.
- Too short. Yes, I know that Metroid-like and Metroidvania games are short. This one takes the cake.
- Quite a bit of backtracking which is made worse when you realize that you can only save your game back in the ship.

The overall tone that I got from the game is that it's unfinished. Oh well, maybe I should try to get my Metroidvania fix from Valdis Story.

Full list.

Yeah, Xeodrifter's pretty bad.

Portal of Evil: Stolen Runes CE (HOG - curiously I almost wrote Portland of Evil).

On the whole a good HOG.

Pros: Story/cutscenes were done well enough, voices were fine.
About half of the hidden object games involve placement of an object rather than, finding, per se, which is a nice variation and slightly more mentally engaging.


Cons/mixed:
Puzzles were pretty mixed. One I solved before I even figured out the rules/objective of the puzzle just by clicking 3 buttons.
On expert mode it was a bit pixel-hunty at times looking for active zones. Perhaps that's why I normally play on adventure mode.
Big, complex layout, and a map feature that allows for fast movement. The downside of this approach is that it becomes the default to move around via the map, rather than moving between scenes, both because you may not remember precisely where a room was, but because the game occasionally has you going to a spot 10+ screens away. The map also shares which zones currently have an active task, so it can become a bit spoiler-y.



On the whole, I'd give it a B/B+. Well worth playing if you like the genre, and a fine place to start for newbies.

Brütal Legend

Finally was able to play through it. When I first got it, I had a underpowered HP laptop. Apparently the tweaks I did to it to get it to somewhat run on my laptop stayed so I had to re-download the game... Never got around to it until recently and really glad I did :D

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX

Finally! After only 6 years and restarting it thrice. :/

Though it's a great Zelda game, Link's Awakening felt less epic than other installments; a bit like a side-chapter where Link goes on vacation instead of saving the world from evil. It's also hampered by the constant need to change items in order to progress through the dungeons and the uneven difficulty. I mean, seriously, what the fuck were they thinking when they made the first boss of the game harder than the rest? Or when they made a mini-boss harder than the boss? Or when the bosses are, for the most part, the easiest parts of the dungeons? I can't even...

Other than those (and perhaps a bit of backtracking), Link's Awakening still stands strong to this day.

Complete list.

Craft the World

Escape Goat, GOG

Another replay of a game I've already beaten. Did I like it? Enough to replay it, obviously! It was shorter than I remembered, either because I subconsciously remembered how to do things, or because I've simply improved as a gamer since I first played it. Or because I mis-remember how long it took the first time, I suppose. The only level I had significant difficulty with was a platforming level; no puzzles, just trying to frantically jump from one moving platform to another while trying to collect keys without being murdered by rotating buzz-saws. On the other hand, the extra levels that open up after beating the game are still inescapable murder factories; I think I'm just going to accept that my skill-level has limits and leave them be. I'm looking forward to playing the sequel.

Bastion, Vita

Now this was disappointing. I enjoyed it enough to play it to the end, but this game was so hyped when it first came out, and I was really looking for something special. Well the narrator (voiced by Logan Cunningham) really was good. People were right about that. And it was cute when the narrator explicitly commented about your actions, although those moments were so obvious and scripted that it didn't lend a whole lot to the experience. But the gameplay was dull. Poor enemy variety, incredibly repetitive combat, and a frustratingly bad lock-on system. Now this is partly the Vita's fault, maybe (for example: you change targets with the D-pad. Except that you're kind of using your thumb to run around, and the rest of your fingers to hold the Vita, so this is a lot more frustrating in practice than it may sound on paper. The X-box controller with multiple shoulder buttons, for example, would probably allow for less irritating key-binding), but I do think I'd have found the experience kind of dull regardless of system, and I think sitting in front of my monitor to play it for hours at a time would probably have offered, for me, a worse experience than the bite-sized pieces that playing on a portable system encouraged.

Now "disappointing" doesn't mean "terrible" or anything like it. The gameplay wasn't great, but the way the game is broken up into bite-sized chunks kind of ameliorates that, in the sense that you're not expected to put up with it for five straight hours or anything. The art is pretty, the narrator, as mentioned, was great. There were some interesting ideas, like letting the player activate or deactivate in-game items to dynamically control the difficulty. And the game does a great job of hammering home the atmosphere of total desolation--the world has ended, and it feels like it. Just ... not quite the Indie Messiah I'd been hoping for.

Full list here.

Not a Hero. This is a great example of an OKAY game, engaging enough to keep me playing to the end but never becoming something that I really looked forward to playing. I didn't get the best ending - that would have required going back and replaying a few levels to fulfill all the fiddly objectives and I don't feel motivated enough to do that.

It's a 2D cover-based shooting game. You run though buildings shooting guys, and your performance has a lot to do with the particular character you choose, and you unlock characters as you play and do all the goals on each level. I found some characters fun to use, some not. Most of the actions are mapped to two buttons - one is attack and the other is used for sliding from one bit of cover to the next and can be used to trip enemies, getting them in position for an instant execution. You have be careful, though, because some characters have long execution animations and there's no way to cancel. I died many times because in attempting to blitz the enemies, I would inadvertently start doing an execution (mapped to the same button as the shoot command) when I really wanted to keep attacking ahead and would be gunned down while my guy stood there hovering over an enemy like an idiot. There's also a third button used for special weapons, but I really would have preferred the option of mapping the executions to another button as well.

The graphics are inspired by 8-bit computers, as in early C64/Atari 800 style games. Very simple, although this does have the benefit of looking hilarious when stuff starts getting gory (I've always been easily amused by violence in pixel art). The tiny characters allow you to see more of the level and you can usually plan ahead for what you're going to do, but the major downside is that on the later levels, when stuff gets really hectic, it can be hard to keep track of who all is attacking you. I'm generally not a huge fan of games with such tiny characters.

I like the concept of the game, although the humor mostly tries too hard, and it's good fun when you've really got a groove on, but the control issues I had combined with the crude graphics often frustrated me. Another issue - I'm uncertain of the game's performance. Despite looking so basic, I found on the later levels that the game would occasionally hiccup here and there, and it nearly crashed completely on the final level one time, freezing for a good 20 seconds or so. This stuff was irritating at best and actually helped kill me at least a couple of times.

Hi! Just thought i'd join in on this too.

Glad to see someone shares the same opinion as me for fallout 4. Was really dissapointed and so were a few friends who were looking forward to it too. Played it for a few hours and gave up about probably halfway through the game, just had enough. IMO it fell flat and it was really dissapointing.

Anyway,
So far this year I have finished two games!


Magicka 2
Completed in roughly 6 hours.

+ More of the fun spell casting that was present in Magicka 1, still lots of combos and such.
+ Slightly more interesting environments than in Magicka 1.
+ Netcode was slightly improved from the first game (in that it was actually playable and didn't constantly disconnect)
+ A few customisation options still present to make things different.
+ still some fairly funny moments like the first game.

- Same as the first game, starts to get fairly tedious quickly and I spent the last half of the game wishing it was over.
- Completely forgettable story and characters (it didnt help that the friend I was playing with would be skipping over the cutscenes, but it was still quite dull)
- Random difficulty spikes early on
- Certain levels felt very badly designed in terms of balanced gameplay, there were several instances where the game got very frustrating because it would continuously spawn a huge amount of powerful enemies at a point where you had to destroy gates to progress, making it very frustrating to actually try and focus on the objective without constantly dying.
- The game doesn't do a good job of encouraging you to use other spells when most of the enemies are still weak to the same one or two spell types and the rest are quite useless most of the time.

Basically, Magicka 2 was more of the same gameplay as Magicka 1 without making enough changes and the parts that let Magicka 1 down hadn't been improved for Magicka 2.

Trine 3
Also completed in roughly 6 hours.

+ Beautiful aesthetics and scenery, in some places better than Trine 2.
+ Interesting design on features such as the UI - the game has a level select which is fashioned like an interactive board game which I felt was really interesting and different.
+ Certain levels were very fun and felt well designed in general
+ Challenge levels were a welcome addition to the formula and they were fun to play.
+ The collectables in the game ("Trineangles") were fun to find and collect and there wasn't really a time where it became frustrating because of collectables that were hidden in an awkward place or too frustrating to find.
+ The "Final Boss" was well designed and the fight was quite fun to play.

- The game was very short. Not great value for money since i purchased for around £9 and completed it in 5-6 hours.
- I think the developers ran out of funding midway through developing the game and it shows; the game ends abruptly on a cliffhanger and it feels like there's supposed to be more to the game but there's just not which is a shame as I was still enjoying the game.
- Certain levels like the "book-style" levels were unique at first but then became tedious and quite annoying, and the style seemed to get in the way of functionality sometimes.
- The removal of the skills seemed to dumb down the gameplay and made it so that the collectables didn't really have as much of a purpose as they did in the previous game (you would get collectables and use them to upgrade your characters in Trine 2)

I did enjoy Trine 3, I was just hoping for a bit more..

That's it so far, hoping to play more games this year when I get the time.

Darkest Dungeon.
Thea: The Awakening.
UnderRail.
Sorcerer King.

Mass Effect 1

Had tears in my eyes during the credits, only took me 53 hours to complete. what a game, my girls did well [Tali & Liara]
was so much fun , I'd shout 'PULL' liara would toss an enermy in the air, and i'd shoot at it with the shotgun [only weapon I maxed out]

I already completed Mass Effect 2 [got from humble IIRC] I'll have to play that over again [import ME1 save] also bought ME3 today {please pissoff Bioware points] Bioware/EA are shooting themselfs in the foot with this bioware DLC crap.

It's nice to complete a game, and feel so happy at the end, and the music for the credits was good as well.

All the best

I I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite website ^^

To be fair, before we really consider whether Tokyo Hosto is any good, we should probably define our terms: what do we mean by "game" and "good," for example, and how do these terms bear on a short, low-fi, silly crude piece of cheeky fluff?

To be even more fair, doing that would be thinking about this way too hard.

Tokyo Hosto is a brief, enjoyable, and certifiably terrible little trip into a skewed cartoon nightclub world in which all of the absurd flamboyant leads are essentially too sexy for their shirts.

In the intro, you stumble into a job working at a Tokyo hosting bar, where you are hired to be an easygoing, good-looking guy who sells drinks and conversation to pretty girls who can't get their itches scratched elsewhere. Like the sultry adult video star who wants to lure you into the bathroom so she can show you something, mm, private. BECAUSE THAT COULD HAPPEN. Sometimes you'll engage them directly, sometimes you can choose to trick them, or make race-car noises, or pretend to be a robot. Note that these latter choices may not always end well, which is about as close as the dating-sim aspect of the game comes to reality.

Actually the main thing you need to know about Tokyo Hosto is that it doesn't work. You'll install it through Steam, launch it, and nothing will happen. To actually run the game you'll need to launch the executable from within the game folder with administrator privileges, and then it will run outside of Steam-world, presumably so you can deny that you ever played it at all. The devs know about this, but it hasn't been changed. Just so we're clear about everyone's priorities.

The game is ridiculous, probably offensive, and crudely done in every way. It's also funny and it clearly doesn't take itself seriously in the least. At one point the narrator will tell you you're such a lame host that you are embarrassing him, which is the whole experience in a meta-microcosm. I spent about 30 minutes goggling at the screen, hitting enter, and saying "wha?" before the confounding conclusion came up, and when it was over I found that I never wanted to play Tokyo Hosto again. But it would have been a shame if I hadn't tried it at all.

<span class="bold">Deponia 2: Chaos on Deponia</span>

The sequel was awesome, again great visuals and a great soundtrack. Also, more awesome puzzles, although the secret knock puzzle was a bit too much. I think I've been going at it for at least 2h.
A little problem that I ran into, but it can be solved really easy.

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall (thanks to ElT!)
I enjoyed it just as much, or even more than Shadowrun Returns. It is pretty much "more of the same" as Returns, but is much longer. I noticed a couple of little improvements over Returns - the combat interface has more info (I think >__o ?) and the AI seemed to be a little more intelligent.
Other than that, it seemed like there are more choices in Dragonfall. In the middle-chunk of the game, you can choose the order of your missions, and even whether or not you want to do some of them. There are always multiple ways of doing things. I was really pleased to see that there were many more opportunities to use my decking skill in Dragonfall - whether entering the Matrix or just unlocking doors.
The atmosphere is great. Cool art style, nice music, interesting setting... The characters are awesome - I got attached to my team members, which was really cool :-) ... I love the dialogue in these games, especially the narration. It is really effective and sets the tone well. And the story wasn't too bad either - I liked it more than Returns' story.
My only criticism is that it started feeling a bit too long about 82% through the game, but I may have just been in a bad mood. So don't trust me too much :-p
It was really fun all around. I want to play it again sometime, but I'll move on to Hong Kong before replaying anything :-) ... Normally, I don't care much for RPGs, and especially turn-based combat, but somehow, the Shadowrun games just "work" for me. Luckily :-)

My full list.