I finished a few HOGs over the weekend:

Robin's Quest
Nightmares from the Deep 2: The Siren`s Call
Nightmares from the Deep 3: Davy Jones
Tibetan Quest: Beyond the World's End
Eventide: Slavic Fable

Been a busy day.

Paper Mario

Super Mario RPG was a experiment that worked out really well, when it was decided to make a sequel it ended up going in 2 different directions. One was the Mario and Luigi series starting with superstar saga (Which I also completed this year) on the GBA, the other took a different route and art style, which was the Paper Mario series. Originally released on the N64, this game follows Mario once again attempting to rescue Princess Peach and stop Bowser who has stolen the mystical Star Rod from the 7 star spirits and captured each of the spirits as well. Mario can't do this on his own, but Luigi can't help because someone has to house sit. Instead he's replaced with 8 different companions, who aren't really that memorable, mainly because there combined dialogue consists of less than 100 lines (Or that's how it seemed). While it is a good game and I enjoyed it, there are several things with it I didn't like. There was a large amount of back tracking, once you beat the boss of an area, you had to walk all the way back to Toad Town, no warp pipes here. The Art style, while unique, was not really to my taste. Music was pretty good, a humourous script and it's also fairly easy. Overall this is a good game, but I'd recommend the Mario and Luigi series instead.



Alien Soldier

The standard format for a level in a side scroller is many many grunts to dispatch followed by a boss at the end. In the levels in Alien Soldier they either reduce the number of grunts to about 10 letting you get past them all in about 30 seconds, or they get rid of them completely. Alien Soldier is all about the bosses and fast paced shooting excitement. Set in the futuristic setting of 2015, the planet Sierra developed a great Genetic engineering program, so much so that many soldiers started turning themselves into Android-Animal hybrids capable of huge feats. You are one of them, Epsilon Eagle, a bird man with rockets for wings, formerly a member of a terrorist organisation intent on killing all humankind, you now must face them in battle. You have 6 different weapons to choose from and can carry up to 4 at any time, each weapon has good and bad points like the flamethrower has a short range but does high damage, it's up to you to know when to use each weapon. The boss fight's are truly epic and range from fighting a large robot Wolf man on top of a speeding train, to a giant robotic Eagle which shoots missiles from it's wings, to my favourite, a horse-man cowboy with a large gun for a hand riding a large robot horse chasing you along the outer rim of a space station. It is truly an exciting game, and it's available on Steam and many consoles. The only problem I had was that the default setting is Super Hard so I originally found it really difficult until I changed it, the other difficulty setting is Super Easy which is a huge understatement because this game can get quite difficult, especially at the 5 stage boss fight at level 20. I would highly recommend this game.

Bioshock 2
Someone else here has already done a review of this game so I won't go into much detail, though it is a big improvement from the last game. Also it baffles me how you're able to sneak in this game despite wearing a huge metal diving suit.

Finally played and finished Moebius - Empire Rising. It was actually quite good: interesting story, good puzzles (on the easy side), good music. Its main problem, which is a big one, is that character modeling and animations are awful (really !!).

Full list here.

Enigmatis 2: Mists of Ravenwood

While I am only about halfway through the bonus chapter, I will say that the main game is definitely the best HOG I've played in terms of story and presentation.

The whole time I was wondering if my actions were helping good or evil, and they did a good job teasing it a bit both ways.

The puzzles admittedly aren't the hardest ever, and I never even considered needing a cheat or a skip. But still, they made me think a little. But this game really is about story and presentation, and those two things it does really well.

The hidden object finds were not overly numerous (like the last game I played where it felt like I was doing one every 3 minutes [edit - actually I think that was Enigmatis #1]), and generally a good balance of challenge/fun. There is also a mix of types of object finds rather than the same thing over and over, and for those not inclined to do any finding at all, you can opt for a matching game instead (which I didn't try so can't comment on).

Navigation around the map was also convenient, and in general the order of environmental challenges made sense.

Bonus environmental object searches for 'illusion' objects, and for white moths. I think on both I was 28/30.

For a HOG, definitely a solid A. Well done and fun to play.

Thanks to genkicolleen for the recommendation. :)

Limbo (Xbox One)

Again. One of the few games that I have on multiple systems. I bought it originally when it came out on 360, immediately after playing the demo. Demos really do work. Later bought the boxed DRM free PC Special Edition with the artwork cards and 3D Glasses (plus a useless Steam key) as well- pretty much the only special or collectors edition I've ever bought for any game.

Then they gave it away free during E3 this year for Xbox One, as well as other platforms I believe. Good excuse to play it again. It was well worth it too since, despite finding all Easter eggs in previous plays, it was only this time that I found out there was a secret level. So it turned out that I never really completed it before after all. I've now rectified that, secret level done.

A Boy and his Blob

A cute platform game with coulourful graphics and a nice soundtrack. The difficulty isn't very high (with the exception of occasional difficulty spikes and one hard boss fight), so it might be suitable for younger kids as well.

Most of the levels were well designed. The different abilities of the Blob are interesting, but unfortunately there isn't much freedom and most the time there is just one solution to each puzzle.

In each level you can collect three treasure chests to unlock an additional challenge level. These challenge leves are a little harder, because you have to complete them without dying (normally when you die you go back to the latest checkpoint and hardly lose any progress).

Complete list of finished games in 2016

BROFORCE! Now I feel like getting some buds together to do local co-op and do it all again.

Ninth game finished this year. Europa Universalis 3 - Divine Wind. I had lot of fun playing it, and enjoyed almost whole 140 hours, which I have spent with it :D

More words about it, you can find here (games finished in 2016)

Unreal 2

Damn, did this game take its sweet time to start getting good. Easily the entire first half of the game is humdrum. The 2nd half is way, way better and has some really interesting levels that are fun to explore. Not that the 2nd half can be described as excellent as far as fps games go. At best it becomes a good fps in the 2nd half.

The original is definitely the superior of the two.

Ori and the blind forest

very nice game with gourgeous artwork and tremendously fun to play :)
I like that it's like one huge map where the whole game takes place (well apart from a few areas that are disconnected and reached via doors) and that, with your increasing skillset, you can find new stuff which were out of reach in hidden nooks in the parts you already cleared.
It has a nice difficulty curve apart from two areas that I found incredibly hard to do even after switching to easy difficulty.
I'll defenitly play it again someday (this time trying to stick to normal difficulty ;)

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

Here's a game I got in a Humble Bundle back in 2013, played it for a while... and left it halfway for no apparent reason. Yeah, I do that a lot... :\

And though I don't remember exactly why, I'm sure I didn't quit it because of a sudden difficulty spike or anything of the like, as this game's difficulty curve is pretty well crafted. If anything, it probably leans towards the easy side. Well, the normal mode certainly does, whereas the alternative mode is noticeably harder: the levels are very similar, but the small differences in them are enough to severely complicate your progress. After beating the regular mode (bonus level included, after I realized the sub-level selection screen told you in which ones were the secret stars hidden) I tried a couple of levels from the alternative mode... and I gave up, this time for real. I've got a huge backlog and I sincerely think I've already experienced everything this game has to offer, so I don't really want to know whether rage and frustration is also part of its menu.

To those who don't know it, I'll tell you NightSky is a simplistic but beautiful 2D platformer developed by Nicklas Nygren a.k.a. Nifflas (of Knytt fame). Beautiful because it's got some of the prettiest 2D graphics achievable with a monochromatic foreground over a bunch of slightly more colorful backgrounds, and simplistic because its controls are quite simple: left, right, and 2 ability buttons. It doesn't support gamepads (at least the Linux DRM-free version from Humble doesn't) but, in hindsight, playing it with the keyboard is probably the best option: sometimes, in order to pull some maneuvers off, you need to switch from moving right to moving left almost instantly, and that's way easier to do with a keyboard than with the analog stick of a pad.

Digressions about control methods aside, I quite enjoyed this game from beginning to end. I said it's a platformer, and I stand by it, even though the main character is a crystal ball that cannot jump, so you'll have to rely on slopes and ramps to reach higher places. But there's only so much you can do with slopes and see-saws, so thankfully you also get to drive a vehicle (or to pilot a makeshift aircraft) from time to time. Some of this "vehicle interludes" may feel a little far fetched or out of place, but overall I think they contribute positively to the level variety and my enjoyment of the game.


My list of finished games in 2016

Yep. I thought some parts of it were as bad as Chaser, and that's saying something.
It thankfully spared us from an underwater level, but that ending... *shiver*

Retro City Rampage DX

This is a fun 2D open-world game with various story missions to complete. The open-world portion reminded me of GTA2, and many of the story missions reminded me of classic video games (such as Paperboy, Tapper, Commando, Gauntlet, and Impossible Mission). There’s not a lot to do in the open world section otherwise, except to search for collectibles and visit shops to customise your character.

Overall it’s an easy game (I found some parts hard, but I’m not normally very good at these types of games and I managed to complete it, so it can’t be very hard!) with a lot of humour, and it’s a lot of fun. The game also fully supported my DS4 controller, which was awesome.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

3rd game in the splinter cell series, changes from the original include the ability to either subdue or kill a target, trying to complete the later levels without killing someone proves particularly difficult. You get a % score based on how many of the objectives you completed and how many times you were spotted or how many times you killed people, I got 87% overall but I got 100% on the last 3 missions. That stupid mechanic where your taken out of a mission if you get 3 alarms has been removed thankfully. There were several bugs, one annoying one that happened to me were 4 Korean soldiers just running back and forth shouting "What was that!?!" over and over again. Story is good, it's all about Encryption/Decryption and Korea. It's a great game and I'm looking forward to playing through Double Agent.

Finished The Walking Dead: Michonne - Episode 1. I haven't read enough of the comics to know Michonne so the game is a bit slow in the beginning but I really enjoyed the game in the end. A bit short maybe as I think it took less than 2 hours to finish it.

Full list here.