Witcher 3

Hahaha. Just kidding. OMg. That game. Wow. Do they have some awesome weed in Poland or what?

Finished my second playthrough of Morrowind.
Orc, custom build. Warrior, with a little Mysticism, Alchemy and Enchanting. Worked out well, though I should've definitely included Speechcraft as a minor skill. Soo many bribes.
Setting it aside for now, but I definitely want to come back soon and begin the Tribunal expansion. May start a new character for it...

Shovel Knight... frickin' finally xD That game is hard. Still didn't play Plague of Shadows DLC but the controls so far are too damn hard, will keep trying for a while but may have to quit on this one.

The Wolf Among Us

A great visual novel (because face it, that's what it is) that drew me in somewhere in the middle of chapter 2. I'd consider replaying it to see just how different it can get with different choices made, but it would take too long considering that, unlike with standard VNs, you can't fast forward this one or even skip conversations or cutscenes. Come on now.

Pillars of Eternity (incl. The White March Pt. 1&2)

There's so much I could write about it that I don't know where to start and where to stop. Basically, I found that there's a bit of truth in almost everything I've read in other reviews, regardless of whether they praise or criticize the game. I think I can agree with both sides. Pillars has this reputation system where your words and deeds can gain you the sympathy and the antagonism of certain groups, and you can please and piss off these groups at the same time, those sympathy and antipathy points won't offset or cancel each other out, but just co-exist and result in a mixed reception. That's kind of how I feel about Pillars itself. It managed to please me, surprise me, engage me, annoy me, bore me, leave me indifferent and ultimately confused about what I think of it. It's both awesome and disappointing.

I really liked the engine and presentation, and I was surprised that the game managed to make me enjoy myself again in the very same way I enjoyed playing the Infinity Engine games back in the days, even after almost 20 years. I also loved the little improvements that made it a bit different from them, like the endurance before health system that removes some of the oldschool frustration, the new "per encounter" abilities and the cypher class that reduce the constant need to rest, the more flexible spellcasting, the option to increase or decrease the game speed, the unlimited inventory etc. etc. Making progress on the overland map, exploring the areas, and freely travelling between them at will, BG2 style, was a lot of fun as well, especially in the beginning when maps offer much variety and many surprises. Later on unfortunately there were a few lackluster maps as well that were stuffed with the same groups of tedious opponents (not that this is anything surprising for such a long RPG, but still disappointing compared to the better maps Pillars has to offer).

In certain situations there's also the introduction of a new, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type of game mechanic based on text displays, illustrations and decisions, to simulate the flexibility of pen and paper RPGs. I found it to be a cool and welcome addition in concept, but a bit hit or miss in execution. It was great when all worked out somehow, when even your failures resulted in a worthwhile adventure tale. But it was very frustrating when I had no option but to give up on it or when the outcome was devastating (e.g. costing the lives of NPCs, instead of just causing minor injuries and disadvantages to my party), just because my character and noone in my current party met the expected requirements (e.g. DEX 18). Sometimes the game has different options for all kinds of different character builds, which is great, but other times the options were restricted to e.g. "either you invested in Survival or you're screwed here". I did not like that very much.

With regard to story, setting and characters the game has its moments but on the whole I found all of that a bit underwhelming. Despite the impressive work they put in building a whole new world, for my taste it felt too close to D&D's Forgotten Realms and everything I've seen before. Whenever there was something seemingly new, I could at once identify it as something I already knew, just under a different name and with slight modification to appearance and lore. All the usual suspects of your average fantasy game, and lots of deja vu moments reminding me of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment and Neverwinter Nights 2 / MotB. Not in a good way though, I perceived that as lack of inspiration, playing it safe and trying to draw on past successes. The wordiness and imagery in the writing (especially of Chris Avellone) that had gripped me in Planescape made me wince, yawn and skim over the text here in Pillars. Too much of it just doesn't really fit together, is not enough on point, and all in all I thought the game was too long, and the story-telling is a bit disparate and confusing. That being said there were some pretty awesome scripted scenes and some good stories among all those countless words. A shorter game with better coordinated story-telling could have made them shine.

As a slow completionist, it took me over 120 hours to play through the game and its expansions, and while I was very enthusiastic in the beginning, I kind of lost interest nearing the finish line, and even switched to cheating with godmode or reducing difficulty to story mode in White March Pt. 2, in order to speed up the parts I did not enjoy. That's not good, but I have to give the devs credit for implementing these options, so that I was able to finish the game nevertheless (story mode is preferable to cheating, btw, since there is no kill button like in BG, so the combat will be just as tedious in godmode, you just can't die in it, while story mode not only makes everything easy but also over quickly). I would have preferred the game to be shorter, the story more original, the writing more on point and a better balance sometimes (the finale of WM2 was much harder than the finale of the main campaign, although you're supposed to play WM2 first), and less filler content at the end (although there are much worse offenders in the genre in this regard). There's still a lot of fun to be had with it if you don't expect it to be the next Planescape Torment or something equally original. Personally, I hope that this is Obsidian's Shadowrun Returns that promises a much better, Dragonfall-like game drawing on the strengths of its predecessor and improving what wasn't so great about it, in order to create a real classic.

TL:DR
At the same time awesome and disappointing. Many fun parts, some exciting scenes, some great new concepts, but still room for improvement. I'm hoping for another game like this, with the same engine, but a shorter gamelength and more originality in story and setting, and with less of the things I found frustrating or boring. Let's see whether Tyranny or a second PoE game will manage to pull that off.

Wow, your review is pretty much spot-on about how I felt about the game, even down to the tedium of the end so I also went for a god-mode cheat to get it over with and see the story through (this was before they added Story Mode)

Of note: I've not yet played the WM content, although I own it.

I always say the game was decidedly 'meh' for me, which seems to confuse some people, but you've captured the gist of how I feel admirably.

Interesting! Although I don't think I would say the game was 'meh' for me; I used the word "indifferent" in my review but that's not actually how I feel about it. It's really more of a love/hate relationship, I guess. I'm at the same time very passionate about some parts and pretty sour about others. Maybe the story was a bit 'meh' to me, but that actually annoyed me instead of leaving me indifferent. ;)

And part of the tedium resulted from me doing everything in the main game and in The White March, so that I reached the level cap several hours before it was over, which removed one aspect that still gave me the illusion of some sort of progression. I also cheated mostly in White March 2, the finale of the main campaign was a walk in the park with my lvl 16 party even on Normal with the High Level option, so I didn't need to further decrease the difficulty. The expansion has some of the most challenging, most tedious and most annoying content (but also some of the very best).

Stacking
Baby's first adventure game.
Its short and very easy to complete with the only real challenge being a 100% completion attempt.
The concept is imaginative and very unique but the execution of this concept is lacking in both quality and quantity. The dlc story doesn't add much gameplay either, just one level.
The story and characters are basic and two dimensional. The villain is a puppy strangling, orphanage torching, mustache twirling monster, all other characters are holier than Holy water.
Overall:
Great idea, great visuals, interesting mechanics and a lot of humor. But a cliche story filled with two dimensional characters, the lack of challenging puzzles, short length and a "collect them all" vibe left me uninterested.
6/10

Hohokum

A relaxing and cute exploration game, you control a colourful snake-like creature as it flies around and between a number of 2D worlds. It's a short game (I completed it in about 4.5 hours, but I didn't try to get all the collectibles). Each world has a small (mostly easy) puzzle, which you can solve simply by exploring the world at your own pace. On the negative side, you cannot access all the worlds from a single hub until you've found that world, I had difficulty to remembering exactly what world connects to which and which had portals to other worlds I hadn't been to yet, so I had some trouble finding all the worlds. Still recommended though if you enjoy this sort of thing.

Finished Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. Gameplay was pretty cool for a Prince of Persia fan, especially with the new gameplay elements (water and past wall/floor reveal). Story, dialogs and characters were pretty lame though...

Full list here.

Dragon Age 2 (360)

So I got DA Inquisition finally, but I had to play DA 2 first. Even though I know everyone says it's crap, I'm just bad like that. Well, it's no where near as bad as everyone says it is. In fact it does a lot of things quite well. The one single thing that annoyed me a lot all the way through was the way the encounters were handled..enemy waves that just appear out of thin air, sometimes right where you're standing. But that isn't exactly uncommon in games these days when devs are lazy.

Combat is much more like a close in Diablo type of thing, just hit attack and use your timer based abilities...so it's definitely more action based than the slightly more tactical Combat in Origins (especially the PC version). But it was fast paced and fun. It would have been better with more stronger enemies and less waves of cannon fodder though.

At least Bioware tried to do something a bit different with story. It's not a noob rises up and saves the entire world thing. It's a bit more grounded for a change, you're just a refugee from Ferelden running from the events of the first game. You arrive in Kirkwall and over a number of years slowly rise in society, notoriety and choose your political leanings. To bad the game was rushed and the idea obviously wasn't taken to it's full potential.
One really nice idea is the ability to import your Origins save file. I imported my 100 hour full game plus all DLC completionist save. Though it doesn't effect your character at all in DA2 it does reflect all the way through the story when you read books and hear what people say about the hero of Ferelden from the first game- it's actually the stuff you did and choices you made that people talk about. It seems like the events in DA2 lead directly to the situation in Inquisition as well.

Like any Bioware game it has romances. And like always I kept it simple and just went for the one with the biggest breasts. So, Isabela all the way.

So whilst the game had so much more potential had it got a longer development time like it deserved, I still found it enjoyable.

Alone in the Dark 2

It was... okay. I recall hearing mostly lukewarm and even negative remarks of it before, but it was okay. Maybe not as scary as the first one, but I overall enjoyed playing it. I admit I used a walkthrough quite a lot.

I recall some complaining there is too much fighting in AitD2 and it is quite hard, but I didn't find it so. 90% of enemies could be killed with melee fighting, and quite often you could trick them to e.g. follow you through a door and then keep hitting them with a sword or something while they constantly tried to come through the door, meaning no damage to you. Even the last fight against the boss was quite easy. Only those two karate guys which do somersaults etc. were quite hard. Shotgun guys early in the game can be easily killed by just running right to them (they keep missing you with their shots if you are very close to them), and then just keep headbutting them. Easy peasy.

It was also quite nice to play as Grace at some points, those funny fighting moves... :)

I guess I will try also AitD3 next.

All of these:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_video_gaming#Game_releases

Finished Sakura Angels: my first japanese visual novel... and probably my last. Gameplay consists of clicking to move on to the next dialogue and there are like 5-10 points in the "game" where we can choose what answer we'd like to say. A bit boring to say the least.

Full list here.

Contrast (360)

A short and sweet lightweight 3D adventure and 2D platform puzzle hybrid. You play as Dawn, the imaginary friend of a young girl called Didi. And Dawn is a much better name for an imaginary friend than Mr. Snuffleupagus that's for sure.
Dawn has the ability to switch into a shadow world where shadows become solid things that can be climbed- that's where the 2D platforming comes into the game.

It starts off very simple, both in terms of puzzles and story. But to it's credit, it does ramp up the gameplay a bit as it goes on. For example, the puzzles in Act 3 require you to set up objects in the 3D world using light and shadows, so that you can then use them to achieve your objectives in the 2D shadow platform world...in other words you have to set up your own platforms. I thought it was a pretty good idea. Nothing gets hair pulling frustratingly hard, but later puzzles require a bit of trial and error and finesse to set up.

What seemed a charming and simple story initially, transforms in the final minutes entirely as a few revelations come to light- like who Dawn really is. Some people may not like how much of the story is told through easy to find collectibles...but it's really no different than the audio logs in games like Bioshock. They're not hard to find.

It was well done. As a short 4.5 hour game to fill in between something bigger, I'm very happy with Contrast. About the only concern would be the short length of the game if you were to buy at full price...if in doubt get it on sale like on XBL right now- A$3.30, bargain.