+1 and thanks for the excellent review. I also backed the game on Kickstarter, but I haven't played it yet. Contemplating whether to replay the original Torment first or to leave it as a cherished memory.

Subject 13 (Linux Unity runtime)

This is the first non-Linux Unity game on GOG that I succeeded to play on Linux with a native Unity runtime (forum thread, GOGmix). I could play it from beginning to end with no trouble, so it's clear that if it doesn't offer a Linux version it's because the devs didn't want to.

As per the game itself, it's a point'n'click adventure with a strong emphasis on first-person physical puzzles. The story is purposely vague and confusing, and it really pays off to go a little out of your way in order to find as many optional audio logs as possible. In the end I enjoyed the story way more than the puzzles: some of the are extremely clichéd (mirror puzzles, anyone?) or too gratuitous (the very final puzzle is just friggin' Minesweeper).

Graphics and sound are OK I guess, though they won't win (or rather, surely haven't won) any prizes. After completing it I read that this game had been Kickstarted back in 2014, so my initial judgment was that it was rather OK for a debut title from an inexperienced developer.

Of course, then I learned that it was designed and directed by French legend Paul Cuisset and my opinion immediately dropped by a significant margin. I would definitely expect much more from the creator of Future Wars, Flashback, and Moto Racer, among others.


My list of finished games in 2017

Randal's Monday (Linux Unity runtime)

Another alleged non-Linux Unity game that I played on my Linux box without Wine or a virtual machine; I only had to find and use an appropriate native Unity runtime.

Randal's Monday is an excellent -and pretty long- point'n'click adventure. Despite its vectorial 'Flash-like' graphic style it reminded me of the good old graphical adventures of the 90s, with lots of inventory puzzles. It's really hard to summarize the plot in a few words, or even in a few sentences, so I'll just say it's a The Lord of the Rings meets Groundhog Day meets The Shawshank Redemption meets The Twilight Zone sort of thing.

It's plagued with dark humor, profanity and geek references, and I loved it for all that (though some of the references were perhaps a little too unsubtle). Many people complain about how unlikeable the main character is, but I cannot agree with them. Yes, he's an asshole and does some despicable things, but he eventually regrets all of it and really tries to mend his ways (unlike, e.g. Rufus from Deponia who's a dickhead through and through).

It being a game developed in Spain, I went for the Spanish voiceovers for my playthrough. After completing it I switched to the English ones for a while, but I liked it way better in Spanish: most of the voices of the main cast (particularly Randal's) were funnier and seemed to better fit the characters. Yeah, the English version features Jason Mewes himself, but on the other hand the Spanish one has the Spanish voices of Bruce Willis as Sgt. Kramer and Morgan Freeman as the narrator, which makes the jail chapter all the more special for it. The only thing I didn't like about the Spanish voice acting was that some actors seemed to be voicing too many characters, but the ending credits showed me I was in the wrong as they were not as ubiquitous as I thought.

All in all, a very good adventure with many memorable moments and a lineup full of unforgettable characters. Highly recommended.


My list of finished games in 2017

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES Classic)

I thought I'd start with Earthbound...but for some reason I ran with this one as my first SNES Classic game instead. So it's basically a JRPG by Square, so think FF but with characters from Marios world.

Overall it has all the benefits and tropes of every other JRPG from the same era. Fun enough turn based team combat, that eventually outstays it's welcome towards the end where you have to grind through waves of mobs to get to the final set of bosses...6 bosses in a row to finish the game, I kid you not.

It's okay as long as you go into to it already knowing and prepared for the usual JRPG traits. I had to break it up over several days with sessions of Forza 6 or else it just got too repetitive. But I did enjoy it overall, except for the one little part I truly loathed. Being true to the Mario games, the world does have some simple platforming. Unfortunately I found those parts a lot more tedious than they should have been due to the game being a sort of isometric view that uses 8 points of directional movement. I had trouble reliably making jumps on the diagonal axis using the + shaped pad. But I got through it all in the end.

Darkwood, all ending, all the difficulty settings...solid 7/10 kind of game.
The Suffering+ Ties that bind.ok games, nothing special.
Doom 3: BFG Edition still solid fun, missed having a sound card around this time, i should pick one up again.

finished Bastion

A game that plays easy with a wired XBOX 360 controller plugged into the PC. I had bought one second-hand and installed Bastion to make use of it (it was one of the games tagged as 'loves the XBOX 360 controller').

It's an action game playing 'The Kid' who at any time can make use of two weapons you choose from the Bastion's arsenal (that expands by finding more weapons while you play) and it's best played with one ranged and one melee weapon equipped at the same time. The game can be quite hard at times but I made use of the story mode, where you can continue playing from the spot where you died, instead of having to start the level all over.

Most noticable about the game is the narrator that tells the story of The Kid and The Bastion while you're playing. The narrator even reacts to your in-game actions. It's a fun invention, but as the story gets told while your in the middle of the fray, it's hard to pay attention to what the narrator is telling, especially if English isn't your native language. It makes me sad I missed a lot of nuances of the lore of the gameworld that way.

Another thing noticable about the game is the in-game music. The soundtrack is well-written, composed of soothing, atmospheric music. Yet to listen the soundtrack separately from the game, you can only buy it on Steam, where it's only playable as long as Bastion is installed. There's no soundtrack on GOG alas.

When finished, there's the option to start the New Game Plus mode where you play the story again, this time with all weapons unlocked (and the option to play at higher difficulty by activating 'idols' that give the enemy bonusses), but with a huge backlog waiting, I'll leave that option be.

All in all, I had fun with the game. A solid 7 out of 10.

Finished Call of Duty 2 by finishing the last mission, 'Crossing the Rhine', the same night that I finished Bastion.

Of all the Call of Duty games I've played, I like this one the most. Rather than play a modern story, I'd much rather play a soldier in the Second World War and Call of Duty 2 really gives you the feel like being in the middle of a battlefield, in the chaos of the fighting. And you're not some lone wolf in this one, like in some other games, but always part of a platoon doing the fighting, be you Russian, British or American. The fighting takes place on three fronts. The Eastern Front, starting the game with the defence of Moscow. Then onward to Africa and finally the fight for Western Europe, making for a nice change of environments. But I liked the opening parts taking place in Russia the most.

Played through a couple of really short games (>1h) recently:

Press X To Not Die
Explicitly campy FMV game - or rather short film - with Quick Time Events and some minor choices. It also makes fun of QTEs and first person games. One playthrough only takes about 25 minutes, but I did three to see all the different footage of choices and deaths and to test three different difficulty modes - there are four, but "Hard" already drove me nuts, so I passed on the fourth one. The checkpoints are very forgiving though, if you fail a QTE, you just get to watch the death scene and then try the exact same one again, so no real setbacks, those you beat already you don't have to repeat. I bought it at a discount for a dollar or two and I thought it was well worth that. It was entertaining enough and even funny at times, and I also liked it because it reminded me of the times when me and my friends created trashy B-movies like that just for fun (a bit less professional but with similar acting :D).

Chook and Sosig
A free Visual Novel that's not your typical anime type drama, instead it has a more cartoony style - or maybe even reminding of children's book illustrations -, and it features quirky characters in somewhat spooky situations. One playthrough only takes a few minutes, but a few choices lead to a couple of different short stories and it is encouraged to find all the different endings. I'm not a big fan of Visual Novels in general, but I really liked this one and thought it was a pretty enjoyable diversion for half an hour or so. It can be found on itch.io.

Chook and Sosig: Hit the Club
Another game by the same artist and with the same characters, but this time a short point-and-click adventure, one room only, maybe 10-15 minutes at max? Even though it was fun to spent more time with the author's creations and there was a bit more actual gameplay with puzzles now, I liked the Visual Novel better. It felt more complete, whereas this was more like a demo. Available here.

Finished Eye of the Beholder 2, Fallout 4, and Ultima 4 in the last few weeks. Didn't buy anything new either so I did shrink my backlog a bit.

Unreal 2 is now in the books.

Before comparing sequels, I try to look at a game's own merits as much as I can first. Overall, I thought it was a solid game. It was pretty short (completed in 6.5 hours), but I think that is partially because I increased my character's movement speed a bit through the console. The normal movement speed is too slow, IMO. The story was decent and I liked the characters. It's not anything mind-blowing, but it gets the job done. There is even some solid character development. It also made me very happy that Michael Mack voices the protagonist. The array of weapons is interesting and varied, although a couple of them I found little reason to use.

As for the comparison, I think the original is better by a wide margin, but not in everything.

What I think the original Unreal does better:
-Weapon variety is more interesting and I found there is much more utility to mixing up which ones you use
-The actual exploration of areas, and I like the design of the environments more
-Enemy variety
-The normal movement speed
-Combat is just more fun
-As vague and overused as this phrase is, there is a certain "it" factor that Unreal 2 doesn't quite have
-More content and levels are longer (although in some cases I thought levels were actually too long)

What I think Unreal 2 does better:
-There is more of a focus on the story, so that was a nice change
-Actual characters to get invested in, and decent character development
-A greater emphasis on the lore of the Unreal universe, going more in-depth with the factions and worlds that are a part of it

So overall, I thought Unreal 2 was a solid FPS, provided that you up the movement speed a bit. And the game should be given credit for its own merits. But it definitely doesn't touch the original Unreal, which is my second-favorite FPS (just behind Half-Life).

Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy (3DS)

The 8th game in one of Level 5's best selling series, this series saw a change in direction with the focus of a new cast (2 characters from previous games make their way into this game, though none of them were side characters) and a change from 1 long adventure split into 12 'cases'. For those who didn't know, the series centres around solving various puzzles, while the heroes try to solve a mystery or series of mysteries. Story wise, the game follows Katrielle Layton, the supposed daughter of professor Layton, with her love struck assistant Ernest Greeves and Sherl a talking dog who only they can understand. She has set up her own detective agency in London and sets about solving various cases in the city, making a name for herself.

Good Points: Lots of puzzles (key part of the game so you gotta have lots of them), the music, especially the opening theme, is pretty good retaining the style of the previous game. For a game made in Japan I was surprised the amount of british references there were including an Only Fools and Horses reference and a reference to 'page 3 girls'. The addition of a tracker to see how many puzzles are left to be found in each specific location is a godsend, compared with spending ages going across the entire map looking for the one puzzle you missed as I had done so in countless games before.

Then there's the bad points... I noticed this in a few reviews after playing it and I found myself agreeing, a lot of the puzzles are lacklustre, half of all puzzles with sums, the answer is 0 or 1. A few puzzles in particular were very poor, having really specific answers and ignoring other answers you could have used. 3 of the puzzles were glitched and impossible to complete (Thankfully this was fixed in an update). I wasn't a fan of the change from 1 long story to 12 small ones, the actual 'Millionaires Conspiracy' in the title is the final case and doesn't really have that big an effect for a finale. I'm pretty sure the only reason they went that was to sell new cases as DLC.

Then there's my biggest issue... the story. Having gotten used to the last 4 games in the series going into the past of each of the characters, the biggest questions would be about Katrielle and where she came from, or where the hell the talking dog came from, in fact the big question the game poses, is first posed during the final case, then answered with one of the series ridiculous twists. The cases themselves aren't that good, this may be spoilers, but half the time the culprit is whoever causes the investigation to start in the first place. My biggest complaint storywise are the characters: Katrielle is supposed to be one of the finest puzzle solvers in London, yet she doesn't believe in logic, she believes in 'gut instinct', during cases you sort of stumble into clues, instead of investigating the scene you'll instead head to a café because Katrielle is 'hungry' and suddenly she finds the important clue she was missing. The assistant Ernest was created as a love interest... but he doesn't really have anything else going for him, whereas Luke and Emmy had useful skills in the past games, Ernest is basically a lovestruck slave, who rarely offers anything of interest and is just used as a subject of constant put downs made by the rest of the cast, he has one moment to shine in the final case but because of the structure of the game it doesn't really work that well. It does feel like the game was given a new lick of paint to try appeal to a younger audience, which I think is a terrible idea, Professor Layton was one of the few games series I knew a lot of non gamers played, particularly older gamers, and it is the worst game in the series without a doubt, it is still a good game. Something I found out after buying it on 3DS is that you can get it for half the price on your phone, though it is still rather expensive for a mobile game. I would recommend the series, and every game in it, though I would only recommend this game if you've played the rest of the series.

Max Payne - Oct 10, 2017

Setup:
Played on PC Gaming Master Race(TM) with a Keyboard and Mouse Master Race(TM) on widescreen 16:10 Aspect Ratio Master Race(TM).

Review:
When the Max Payne games came out they raised some eyes and had some real cool factor. Sadly, my PC wasn't powerful enough to run them at the time so I never actually got around to playing any of them. A few years ago I picked up the trilogy for $10 on Amazon and they've sat in my backlog untouched until a few days ago.

I've been watching streaming a lot lately both on his own Twitch channel and on the [url=https://www.twitch.tv/gogcom]GOG.com channel, and last week he did a playthrough of Max Payne which I caught the first stream of, roughly about 1/3 of the game. This inspired me to install the game and give it a whirl.

As is the case with a number of older games, they just do not work on modern systems either very well, or at all, however some such as Max Payne 1&2 can be coaxed into working by jumping through various hoops found on PCGamingWiki. After installing 3 fan made patches and running a program to convert the sound effects, I got the game to run reasonably well and never had any major problems with it.

The game was a lot of fun, and totally has a Liam Neeson/Bruce Willis type 90s action feel to it. Predictable plot and outcomes, but that type of plot always makes for a good movie/game even if it is beaten to death. :)

The enemy AI is a bit too "always knows where you are and shoots at you in a nanosecond" hot which is annoying, but that's resolvable easily enough by doing massive save scumming which I'm a pro at (as is kilg0re). The game has a few other quirks and annoying bits, but then it has bullettime effects too which was a big part of it's appeal the time it came out, following on the tails of The Matrix.

In particular I liked the end climax of the game which played out very much like a Die Hard movie or similar, and it was deeply satisfying defeating the final enemies and putting an end to the bad guys at the end. I enjoyed the game a lot more than I thought I would for such an old game.

Putting it in the context of the time frame it came out, I give the game an overall rating of 8.5 out of 10 and a "recommended" rating for anyone who never got a chance to play it and has a penchant for 00s nostalgia.

Yoomp! is a freeware homebrew made for the Atari 800 in 2007 (http://yoomp.atari.pl/). It's sort of a tech demo that shows off the Atari's graphics and sound, but it happens to be fun and addictive to play, too. It's 21 levels in which you control a ball that bounces down a 3D tube (not unlike Tempest), avoiding various obstacles. The bounces keep with the beat of the music, so it's also a rhythm game in a sense.

It's very nice-looking, although some of the squares you bounce on confused me occasionally (I often found it hard to tell at a glimpse the difference between a teleporter and a pit), and the music is great, although having a couple more songs to bounce to would have been ideal since I got a bit tired of the one song after going trial-and-error on the later levels so many times.

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Starting to get into Halloween spirit, playing horror games:

Project Firestart is a C64 game made by Dynamix before Sierra bought them. You control a special agent dispatched to the spaceship Prometheus, which has mysteriously gone out of contact. Sure enough, as soon as you get on board the first major thing you see is a mutilated crewman who scrawled "DANGER" on the wall in his own blood. Everyone's dead and shortly you're fending off mutants with your crappy, underpowered laser gun while trying to find a way to escape.

The game is often cited as an early example of survival horror and a System Shock predecessor, but it's got a lot of Jordan Mechner's style to it, too. Like Prince of Persia, the game works on a clock and cut-scenes/events will be triggered regardless of what you've done, to sort of help prod you or give a sense of how far along you should be. The overall effect is to create the sense of playing a sci-fi/horror movie - you start out investigating, get ready to leave but you experience a set-back, then you learn there's maybe another survivor you might be able to rescue, etc. There's a real nail-biting plot that emerges. Accessing computers and the ship logs also fleshes out the story.

The graphics are pretty good for a C64 game and it generally handles pretty well. A big part of the experience is just exploring and mapping out the ship. Once you really know what you're doing, you can finish it quite quickly and even get the best ending before the game really starts messing with you with stuff like the blackout and the super-mutant chasing you.

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The Lurking Horror is Infocom's sole horror game. You're put in the shoes of a college student at GUE Tech (read: MIT) who trudged through a snowstorm to get to the campus computer lab to finish your term paper. If you solve the initial puzzle, you'll experience a disburbing vision and find out that somehow your computer files got deleted by something to do with the computers in the Alchemy Department, so you have to explore the campus and find the Alchemy section and maybe also learn something about mysterious disappearances going on, too.

It's not necessarily a cohesive story. More like a series of weird set-pieces you have to overcome that have a Lovecraftian atmosphere. For instance, in one section you climb a sticky rope only for it be revealed as the appendage of a one-eyed blob creature that jumps to the ground and disappears from sight. You never meet the creature again - it's basically just there to heighten the mood. Other encounters are deadlier and you should save often.

Like most Infocom games, the writing is simple, clear, and concise but still evocative. Everyone complains about how hard hard it is to visualize Lovecraftian stories, so a text adventure is ideal for getting the vibe right. The game is also special in that Infocom added (perhaps at Activision's urging?) sound effects for the first and only time in one of their text games. Some of the sounds are creepy and add to the mood, some are just monotonous, and a couple gave a good jump-scare and freaked out my cats.

The difficulty is mostly not bad and the puzzles rarely follow "moon logic" - maybe a couple do but they make sense because you're dealing with supernatural crap and the usual thought processes don't apply. I did have a couple of situations in which I had to consult a walkthrough and found that I was actually trying to do the right thing but I wasn't giving the game the EXACT verb it was looking for, always unfortunate in text games.

Finished a couple of Artifex Mundi games. They're always polished and easy to play.

Blades of Time which was pretty cool. Too frustrating for me difficulty wise so cheated my way through it. Still fun though.
Does that still count as a game completed?

Legitimately completed Dungeon Siege. Like it a lot. Decent RPG and would recommend. Dungeon Siege 2 was pretty good but became a chore so didn't complete that - I'm sure there's a thread somewhere for games ditched...

Finally, completed The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. I like a good hack 'n' slash and this one was about a 7/10.

Fallout Tactics (with the Redux 1.3 mod)

I finally finished this game today. I restarted the game from the scratch earlier even though I was near the end already, just because I wasn't happy of choices I had made on my first run.

The game was... ok. But just ok. Overall I like the game engine and turn-based combat, but as I played the game at the hardest difficulty, at many points it really was hard as nails, and frankly I think it would have been impossible to survive without savescumming. I didn't play the game in the "Tough Guy" mode where you can't save during missions, ie. if your main character dies, you have to replay the whole mission from the start. No thanks.

Some thoughts here and there (not sure if all these apply also to the vanilla version, or specifically to the modded version):

- Unarmed and Melee combat are completely useless in Tactics, I don't even understand why it is in the game. I recall they were somewhat useful in Fallout 1-2, but in Tactics you will just keep dying with them, so don't invest at all in them.

- Perception is the most important stat because it makes you more accurate at long ranges (sniper). There is a way to get your perception to 11 (normal max is 10 for any stat), and a Sharpshooter perk gives +2 on top of that, so basically you have a perception of 13 for sniping, which is great. I had two team members with that high perception (and others were pretty high too), which in many cases meant I could kill enemies from afar without getting hit myself, including gun turrets.

- Everything in combat feels watered down from Fallout 1-2, like critical hits are mostly meh ("Knocked Out" and "Blinded" status effects are great though), there are no powerful uber-weapons, even the Gauss rifle is seriously nerfed from the other Fallout games (I recall reading its extra penetration power was removed in Tactics, hence it isn't that much better than a generic MX14 sniper rifle) etc.

- Especially the Pulse Rifle was a letdown. I mean, there was a whole mission where you get a prototype of the Pulse Rifle so that they can be produced and you can buy one, but when you finally get hold of one... what is this? It makes maybe little more damage than a generic Plasma Rifle, and has less range too? What's the point? Meh.

- Similarly, getting an Advanced Power Armor does not make you a walking tank like it does in Fallout 1-2. You can still die from a couple of well-aimed laser shots from an enemy robot, or one rocket or a weapon burst of a Behemoth.

- Some people say that investing on high Health Points is not useful because you can still die from one critical hit... but I disagree. On my second play I invested early on on getting HP high, getting Gain Endurance and Lifegiver perks early on (they give extra HP on every level up)... and frankly it did make a difference when near the end game I had well over 300 HP instead of, say, 220 HP. Yes Behemoths could still kill me instantly, but I felt I could survive long enough in many battles where earlier I would have died in the first round.

- I invested a lot also on Sneaking, and I feel it really paid off. It is a double-edged sword because wearing power armors affects very negatively your sneak ability and most robots seem to detect you very easily even with a high sneak skill, but I just kept putting points to Sneak skill for all my team members, and quite often it was a life saver when I could sneak up on some hard enemies from behind.

- In the highest difficulty, the only way I could fight (destroy) Behemoths was this: sneak up on it, save your game, and shoot at its "eyes" (sensors) with either the Pulse Rifle or a Plasma Rifle. Retry this (savescum) as many times until you are able to knock the Behemoth out, after which keep shooting at it with your whole team using the best (energy) weapons you have. You may have to knock it down two or three times before you are able to destroy it.

I don't really see how else Behemoth could be destroyed. If it detects you and gets into range, it will kill your whole team in one round. Sniping it from afar doesn't work because sniper rilfes do either no damage, or only 1 damage, to it (it has well over 1000 HP I think). I think the best weapons to use at it are energy weapons and maybe rocket/grenade launchers.