I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Finished Ori and the Blind Forest. It was a great game:
- Great graphics
- Wonderful music
- Top notch gameplay even though there are a few very difficult sequences
- Great story

Full list here.

Resident Evil (PS1)

There are 2 things I knew about this game before playing was that many people say it started the entire survivor horror genre the other being it has the Guinness World Record for worst voice acting in a video game. The story starts off with a series of gruesome murders in the woods, so 2 teams of Specials Ops knowns as STARS are sent in to investigate. Upon landing they are attacked and the survivors flee into a nearby mansion, you must search the mansion fighting off zombies and solving puzzles in order to escape and find out where these zombies came from. The game has two difficulty levels based on which character you pick: Jill Valentine (Easier) or Chris Redfield (Harder). The game also marks the debut of other series characters such as Rebecca, Wesker and Barry (Jill Sandwich guy). As far as I know there are 9 different endings based on which character you start as and which of your teammates survive.

Now STARS must have some financing issues as your character is severely lacking in equipment, in Chris's mode you don't even start with a gun. The Camera whilst iconic, can get annoying, especially at some parts. The puzzles aren't really that difficult compared with other games in the series, the boss fights with possibly the exception of the last one are also easy compared with the other games. The world record is justified, the voice acting is full of long pauses and little emotion. One thing is that this game has actually aged quite well, it was still enjoyable. If your looking for Jump Scares don't bother with this game, there's about 2 in the entire game, but you are always on edge whilst playing it. I would highly recommend this game as it's a piece of gaming history, and if you don't like the way the series has gone, then you might actually enjoy this one.

Rebel Galaxy (PS4)

One of this months PSN Plus games, but available from GOG as well with very low system requirements. I admit, during the first day of playing I was on the verge of quitting this one several times, it initially seemed a bit shallow and the 2D space style felt a bit strange...it's more like playing a real time naval combat game- not totally unlike the combat in AC Black Flag or Battlestations Pacific. But I'm glad I kept at it, as I came to really enjoy it.

I liked the combat, there are a few types of ship you can buy and different ways to outfit them to suit your play style. I came to favor a build that concentrated on heavy pulse weapons for broadsides and beam weapons for the turrets. Throw up the deflectors and charge the enemy capital ships using engine boost, crash side on and let them have it at point blank. I've read online most people seem to prefer beam weapon broadsides and long range combat...so it seems you have genuine options.

The trade system did not interest me as much, it was useful early on...but the returns didn't seem to increase at the same rate that bounties and performing mercenary contracts did. And mining seems to be a complete waste of time!
The world is open and pretty much ungated, you can easily find yourself in over your head if you wander into the wrong places too early...plus the story pretty much requires you to run the gauntlet through some high level areas.
Speaking of the story, i liked it- it served well enough for what is really an open sandbox space game. And the music and voice acting really gives the game a frontier "American West in Space" feel to it that I liked.

I finished the story campaign at around 22 hours or so, but that was with plenty of side missions to earn money for ship upgrades. I finished up with a Destroyer class ship with Mk 6 defensive systems and broadsides and Mk 5 for most everything else. Obviously you can still play on as a sandbox game after finishing up the story, and aim to eventually get the biggest Dreadnaught with full Mk 6 equipment. But here comes the games weakness. By the end you've seen everything the game offers really, it's just grinding away doing the same types of missions to get some bigger numbers. The game runs out of steam, there's no really enticing endgame content. Having said that, this isn't a $79 AAA game, it's a $20 game...and I think the game has more than fair content for it's price range. I think I'll come back to it for a few hours here and there, between bigger games and eventually get that Dreadnaught. Definitely worth the price and worth trying out for anyone with PSN Plus.

King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown

King's Quest was a series I have gotten familiar with very late. The first and only King's Quest game I have played was King's Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity, which I really enjoyed but was generally considered a bad game. Curiosity won and I decided to go back to the roots of the series.

The game consists of dozens of squares and the player tries to find out how to interact with the objects by typing commands. This is a very old school mechanic that I still enjoy as it makes me feel more in control of things. The problem with Quest for the Crown is the puzzles. There are quite a few puzzles that simply don't make sense. There is an infamous one which basically is almost impossible to figure out (backwards spelling) without a guide. Another problem with the game that I cannot tolerate is that if you do some stuff early, or do something you are not supposed to do, you will be stuck with no option to progress. As far as I know, these were common problems with the early Sierra games. As much as they have historical value and charm, unfortunately some of them did not age well.

This is one of the grandfathers of graphical adventure, so it deserves some respect. It is a charming game and enjoyable if you play it with some help from a walkthrough. But by today's standards, it is hard to consider it as a good game. I would recommend it to adventure games curious to see how adventure genre has evolved.

NOTE: It is a pity that SCI remake was not included as part of the GOG bundle. It is a visually enhanced version released by Sierra in 1990. Raise your voice and vote for it here

damien score: 6/10

List of all games finished in the last years with best and worst games played in each year

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

I was gifted this game about 48 hours ago and it looked fun, like an old-school Alien Swarm type game, so I decided to check it out and kind of got hooked. Played it for about 4 hours yesterday and got close to half way through it. Today I completed the game and clocked 10:36 total game time.

Mini-review:

Shadowgrounds is a linear mission based shooter game that has the feel of a first person shooter but is an overhead view shooter. It shares similarities genre-wise with Valve's free-to-play Alien Swarm which is a fun game, and the Alien Breed trilogy which is also a fun diversion.

The game has a truckload of weapons of which you can gain upgrade points by killing enemy aliens then later cash them in on upgrades for your weapons. There are 10 weapons altogether each with up to 3 upgrades so there is quite a diverse arsenal. Overall the story is a fairly traditional sci-fi theme, but with a bit of a surprise twist at the end. The voice acting is medium quality but that actually adds a bit of old-school character to the game as well.

The gameplay is pretty fun and the plethora of weapons let you vary things up quite a bit. Even the default infinite-ammo pistol remains quite useful even deep into the game if you shoot it fast enough, which lets you conserve ammo of the more powerful weapons for when you really need them, while simultaneously adding to the challenge I played the game on the default difficulty level which I think was easy. The game was fairly easy going overall on this difficulty although there were a good handful of challenging areas nonetheless. I enjoyed it at this difficulty as it allowed me to progress the story along without excessive challenge. Also the game is checkpointed so you start your current session at the beginning of the latest mission you've unlocked, and if you die you respawn a short distance back from where you last were, with 5 total respawns available. Normally I don't like checkpointing, but it was fine in this game. I only died twice in my playthrough.

For gamers that like a little more intensity and action it might be recommended to bump the difficulty up a notch or two for an increased challenge, and I might do another playthrough some time in the future on a harder difficulty.

Overall it was a quite enjoyable game, I'd recommend it to anyone who likes overhead view shooter games such as the ones I mentioned above.

List of games I've completed in 2016:
* Redshirt [Steam] (unsure of date)
* Despair [Steam] (Feb 4, 2016)
* Half-life: Opposing Force [Steam] (Feb 16, 2016)
* Half-life: Blue Shift [Steam] (Feb 18, 2016)
* Space Trader: Merchant Marine [Steam] (Jun 5, 2016)
* Aztaka [Steam] (Jun 13, 2016)
* Life is Strange Episode 1 [Steam] (Jul 21, 2016)
* Blackwell Unbound [GOG] (Jul 23, 2016)
* Blackwell Convergence [GOG] (Jul 24, 2016)
* <span class="bold">Shadowgrounds</span> [GOG] (Aug 11, 2016)

Resident Evil 2

The sequel to Resident Evil brings zombies to Racoon City. You play as either Leon Kennedy, the rookie cop, or Claire Redfield, Sister to Chris from the last game. Now compared with the last game they've done some changes. Voice acting for one is a lot better, they use animated cutscenes instead of those FMV ones. Also the first thing you will notice is there are more zombies, the first time you see one there will be 7 chasing after you. There are more Jumpscares meaning just because you cleared out a corridor doesn't mean it will be safe next time you return (Even if you only just left). Bosses will chase you across levels (well 2 of them do). Also there is a lot less backtracking as well.

Though there are some changes I didn't like. There are only really 4 enemy types in the entire game and none of them really pose much of a threat (They got rid of hunters from the last game). It's also quite short, even though you have to play the game through twice to really complete it, it is still shorter than the last game, half the game is spent in that police station at the beginning. Those were my only 2 problems with it, I still enjoyed it better than the first one, though I still say my favourite one is Code Veronica. I'd recommend this game.

140 is one of those stylish indie platformers that feels like a cross between Thomas Was Alone and Electronic Super Joy. Geometric shapes hopping around in rhythm to a thumping soundtrack. It's agreeable enough while it lasts. Like many games today, it's extremely generous with checkpoints so you can die many times without worrying about losing progress or a game over. And it's short - I downloaded it less than a couple of hours ago and I'm already done with it. Basically, if you got in a bundle like I did, it's not bad but I wouldn't go out of your way to track it down unless you're really really into this kind of game.

Beyond Divinity

Finished 1st chapter (Cyreal) in Div OS gave me kick to deal with weaker brother of Divinity saga.
We know that most RPGs have some useless spells or skills. But in BeyDiv almost 3/5 of skills is useless, weak or pointless while magic is pure garbage, with huge mana costs for no reason. In DivDiv most powerful spell cost almost same amount of mana as weakest spell in BeyDiv.
Game got random crashes somewhere in act3 for no reasons. And they couldn't afford unique portrait for final boss (Damian) neither any voice acting.
Constant stutterings, playing on old laptop with HDD speed 5400 does not justify it when other older or newer games have no problem with it.
Engine finally support alt+tab. But still not windowed mode....
People complained that BeyDiv voiceacting is awful. I disagree, it's really amateurish (Deus Ex lever or worse) but still not as bad as voices in Divinity OS.

Viking: Battle for Asgard

Blood and Thunder! Victory at Sea!

This is some bad PC port thing. Max 30FPS and can't put anything above LOW details because it's stuttering like mad (i5, 8GB RAM and GF750 2GB). Same deal with Lost Planet 1 and DX11 version. Both are old games from previous generation of consoles.
Chopping is fun but it's not hectic, except random dashing. Hate that crap in modern games with melee combat. Same with rolling.
It does have open world map but there is no side activity whatsoever. You need to clear map to proceed with main questline. Can you imagine other openworld games, where you need to clear all side activity and find every item to proceed? That would be glorious. In evil way.
Still played on KB+M because I'm like that. Bored with WSAD control and else.

Complete list of games finished in 2016

Posting it little bit later, because I am enjoying summer much more than gaming now :P

July 24, 22:15 - I have finished my second playthrough of Fairy Fencer F on PS3, and thankfully it took away all the disappointment from my last Lightning Returns playthorough. The second ending I was aiming for was Normal ending, and it took me another 50 hours, with finishing few grinding achievements, like S Rank quest level and doing all subquests for Lola, to have her join my party. For me this is the best Idea Factory game, but unfortunately, it still has some issues, which I do not like, like to many lengthy cutscenes playing one after another. But Hypedimension Neptunia Victory is much worse in this regard :P

After that I have played few hours of Tales of Xillia 2, but doing just some Battle Title and Recipe grinds. Not planning to finish the game anytime soon again. That's planned at some later time. Thinking a lot about buying Konung 1 and 2 bundle, because of the Slavic mythology, but not sure about it yet.

Killzone: Shadow Fall (PS4)

This game is FPS with very nice graphics and environments. The unique thing about this game is that you have a drone (named OWL) which can assist you in combat by shielding you, or attacking or stunning enemies.

Most of the levels are quite linear though, and I found it a bit jarring every time when I get near my “goal” for a level and suddenly the game switches to a cutscene with maybe a QTE or two, then moves along to the next level. I’d prefer to have been more involved in the important scenes of the game. There are also only checkpoint saves.

I played on “Hard” and although the game started out quite easy the difficulty increased slowly as I progressed through the game without resorting to boss battles or locked-room battles (unfortunately both of those occurred near the end though). The fights do often require some thought and strategy because you can die after just a couple of hits, sometimes you’ll need to sneak around to find a better point to engage the enemy.

Overall I found it quite fun, and I’d unhesitatingly recommend it for anyone who enjoys FPSs (and has a PS4 ;)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

I've managed to beat the game.
At first, I must confess that I didn't liked it very much (I started it last year and played 20 minutes or so) but after 1-2 hours I started to like it more and more. I felt it was like a combination betwen Metro 2033(atmosphere) and Fallout (weapons, armor, the dialogue).

I would give this game a 9/10 (there were some bugs)

<span class="bold">Binary Domain</span>

Binary Domain is a third-person shooter developed and published by Sega.
The story starts soon after an android attacked Bergen's headquarters, previously having no idea that he was a robot himself. Believing that robotics genius and founder of Amada corporation, Yoji Amada, created the robot, the International Robotics Technology Association (IRTA) sent one of their Rust Crews to Japan to find Amada and bring him in for questioning under orders from the UN Security Council.
The gameplay is really fun to play. The player can issue commands to squad mates by pressing certain buttons or voice, via a headset. You can turn off the voice commands.
The game features a consequence system, which decides how the squad views and trusts the player. Their opinion of the player is based on how the player performs and treats team members. This affects both the story and the gameplay, where the characters behave differently depending on trust levels. Conversations between the player and the squad members can also affect trust levels. The end of the game will change, depending on the level of trust the team members have in the player.
Stats of both the player and the squad members can be augmented with nanomachines, as well as weapon upgrades, that can usually be bought at shops that the player can find throughout the game.
The enemy AIs adjust themselves on how to fight back against the player's advance, depending on the situation. On the other hand, the squad AIs is pretty bad sometimes, walking in front of the player while firing.
This is an overlooked title, I highly encourage anyone to at least try the demo.

Complete list of games finished in 2016.

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner HD

Fast paced Space robot fighting action. Set in the year 2147, you play as Dingo Egret a former soldier who controls an Orbital Frame,Jehuty, a type of giant robotic armour, though it's built more like a Dragoon than a traditional mech. He must help save Mars from the group BAHRAM, an army that mostly consists of drones, lead by Colonel Nohmann and his Orbital Frame, Anubis. The sequel to Zone of the Enders, that game that came with the MGS 2 demo, this game is similar to other fast paced action games except for the lack of gravity. The controls are fiddly which makes this game hell for the first hour or so, but gets easier as you go along. The story is by Kojima, and expectedly there are quite a few long cut scenes. There are quite a few epic boss fights, though some have some annoying quirks like fighting in an almost pitch black room or trying to defeat an enemy without damaging it.

There are some annoying things, particularly the lock on system which has the tendency to lock on to targets far away from the action, or your own friendly units (Friendly fire is on in this game, which makes the protection missions hell). It's fairly short, it has a levelling system which is basically pointless as there's no way to grind before hard boss fights and only serves to make the first missions in the game really difficult. The game is also fairly short.

Overall if you want to get this game, it is quite fiddly, so if your prone to ragequitting it isn't for you, however it's a good story, the boss fights are the best part. It's on offer a lot of the time on PSN. When I finished it I felt like it was a good game, thought my fingers ache.

+PC:
Eversion (Linux via Wine)
I won't talk about this game much, because you need to play it to figure out its deal yourself. Unless you're willing to head to YouTube or have it spoiled. Anyways, that's the original version of the game and not the one you can buy on Steam (or the one you can buy on Humble Bundle which many people don't seem to know of). The original version is free.

I met a quirk with it. The game crashed every few times due to what I presume is a memory allocation issue. While it crashed that often, it still didn't hinder me from completing all of it.

Original version (Free, Windows and Wine only (yes, it mentions Wine as a platform), DRM-free):
http://zarat.us/tra/eversion/

Humble Bundle version ($5, all platforms, DRM-free only):
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/eversion

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