Lumini

A rather mixed bag. I found the best thing about it is the soundtrack - it's beautiful, very soothing and relaxing. The sound design is quite nice as well, as are the colors, and there are some very pretty sceneries in between as well, that help to establish a mysterious setting of an alien world with strange creatures, buildings/ruins and weather effects. I also liked that hardly anything is explained, you have to figure out what little of story and gameplay there is all by yourself (well, with the exception of one wordless tutorial prompt on what buttons to press that would annoyingly repeat itself each time after I had taken a break and then continued the last savegame, and that would only vanish once I had pressed all the buttons I already knew about).

What Lumini is lacking in is gameplay and level design. It's really more of a walking - that is swimming/flying/gliding - simulator, with collectathon elements and only a few rare puzzles strewn in, plus occasional combat that is so primitive though that I think the game would have been better without it. You control a swarm of imaginary dragonfly-like creatures of four different colors that's gliding through a world of wonder and perils, with the aim of increasing your numbers and powers. You collect some kind of sparkly flower blossoms that will be processsed at the next checkpoint cube to increase the number of your dragonflies. Each color has its own powers, although you can actually get through the game by only ever using one of them (the combat power). And I never found out what the fourth power was about, since I lost the only purple guy I ever had before figuring it out, and I wasn't able to find another one. The puzzles mostly involve splitting your swarm in half and controlling each part with a different analogue stick of your gamepad.

Btw, I haven't tried to play with keyboard and mouse, the game recommends to play with a gamepad and that's working quite well most of the time, except for navigating the main menu which was awfully difficult with my Xbox360 controller. I found that rather odd for a game that recommends using a gamepad.

Anyway, the game is very easy, at no point I was in danger of losing my swarm, also because you're only ever offered one easy difficulty and have to unlock Hard by playing through the game first, which is another questionable design decision, since Lumini hardly has any replay value. It's linear, the gameplay is too simple, no worthy challenge, the stretches between puzzles and beautiful vistas are too long and repetitive. Partially, I liked what I saw, because at times it's really beautiful and relaxing and the setting a wonder to behold, and these parts could have worked even as a simple gliding simulator if there had been more of them with less filler content in between. But despite being only 2-3 hours long, I thought the game overstayed its welcome. The simplistic gameplay didn't offer enough fun and variation for me to enjoy the longer parts in which nothing new was happening.

I recently got Shantae and the Pirate's Curse from zeogold and bler144 and I've just finished it.

Overall it's a pretty solid metroidvania, though it reminds me more of Metroid Fusion, with its clearly separated/sequential levels. The power acquisition order felt a bit off, but that wasn't a problem. What was a problem was the weird difficulty spikes in the middle of the game. Mud Bog Island is way harder than all other levels and the platforming in the final area of the game is ridiculous to say the least.

Still, I look forward to playing the other games in the series as well. :)

The Mind of Marlo

Short and easy point'n'click adventure about a guy named Marlo and his unusual and extremely rare condition. He suffers from Spontaneous Silly Head Syndrome, so yep, his head randomnly transforms itself into that of a cat, a shark, a slug, or an ice cube. It's presented as a TV documentary and it works quite well, as in doing so it justifies one of the silliest tropes of adventure games (why does adventure protagonists have to speak out loud everything they see and do?) The joke is even carried out till the ending credits and beyond, when a possible sequel is suggested.

It's got blocky pixel graphics that do the job pretty well, and it's fully voice acted. Plus, it even features an original song: a rap sung in-game by Marlo himself, which alone justifies the already low price of the game.


My list of finished games in 2017

Redirection

Nice puzzle game with a very simple goal: get all the robots to their respective goals. There are red robots which always turn right when they encounter an obstacle, and blue robots which always turn left. They move all on their own, so your only chance of affecting them is by putting obstacles (traffic cones, 'wet floor' signs...) in their way. Each level grants you a limited number of them to use and, to make your life a little easier, you can time them so they appear at the exact moment you choose.

The difficulty curve isn't all that steep, and really tricky levels don't make an appearance until well into the game. And even then I beat some of them purely by chance, just trying the first thing that sprung to mind and turning out it was the right answer! If you get stuck in some level you can temporarily skip it and try any of the other unlocked ones, but you need to beat them all to access the next batch. If you are definitely stuck but refuse to check a walkthrough, you can always unwind a bit and rest your brain by playing any of the four simple arcade mini-games included in the main menu. However, considering the size of my backlog, I'd rather play any other (full) game instead...

It's got an underlying story, in which you're the commander of a spaceship that has received a mysterious encoded message, and you go around rescuing robots in order to help you with the task. Or something like that. I honestly didn't pay much attention to it, and you certainly can enjoy the game for its puzzles and gameplay alone, without the need for a background. And talking about gameplay, it's got in-built mod and custom level creation tools, so there's some potentially infinite playability here (though I didn't check online whether there's a big enough playbase for that).


My list of finished games in 2017

Finished Night in the Woods, what a strange game. The pacing is quite slow and this is definitely not for those who don't like talking-heaving games. The story and dialogs are great (but a bit cryptic), graphics too. And the music is splendid. The gameplay lacks a bit but I enjoyed the game.

Full list here.

Have you played Oxenfree? I wonder if it's comparable to that.

Sorry, it's on my todo-list but I have not played it yet. I heard Oxenfree is short. Night in the Woods in more 7-8 hours. Other than that, I can't say.

Hammerwatch (I played the Steam version)

This game is an aRPG which can be played solo (as I did) or coop. I’m normally not into these types of games, but this one is so good that I decided to play it again after completing it a few years ago. There’s an interesting variety of monsters, treasures (and skills to upgrade with your treasure), deadly traps, and large levels to explore with many secrets. There are also bosses (which I hate), but the rest of the game makes it worthwhile nevertheless (although I do play on Easy difficulty so that I can pass the bosses quickly and easily). Definitely recommended!

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The Last Time (Steam)

This is a very short game (~90min) about a retired police officer, actually it’s more like a narrative than a game. Overall it’s pretty mediocre and I’d probably not recommend it.

I spent about 6 hours with Oxenfree as well, but I'm usually above the playtime of the average gamer since I take my time, trying to explore everything there is to see. So maybe that just means Night in the Woods would last me even longer than 7-8 hours. Anyway, thanks for the reply!

I'm also usually above the average playtime and I think Night in the Woods took me about 15 hours. But it probably also depends on how much you play Demon Tower (a game within the game). Game also has good replaybility, because you can't see all possible events in your first playthrough.

Very helpful, thanks! :)

Indeed. I played the game for 7-8h and:
- I did not explore everything every day. A playthrough is split across a few days (10 ?) and you can visit all the areas you want to talk to people and see if something changed. I admit I did not do this everyday (at some point I decided to stop doing it).
- I played only once the game Demon Tower as I was not very interested in it.

Finished the next game in the Halo series, namely Halo: Reach. Not that much to say about this one. Curiously numerous changes that I thought had been introduced in ODST to reflect its heroes' more "human" physique and more primitive equipment were reused here, kinda making ODST's point as a departure from the earlier games' conventions moot.

Anyway, Reach differs in a number of ways from all earlier games, especially due to its more obvious multiplayer focus. Even starting the campaign in singleplayer feels a lot like setting up a coop session. However, the campaign itself feels so much like a classic Halo experience and the story is so focused on a single character, especially towards the end, that I have trouble even imagining how it works in coop. I'm intrigued to say the least.

As for the game itself: good stuff. In a lot of ways it's probably the best one in the series. Levels are quite diverse, combat appears to be more dynamic and challenging than in the earlier games and the world has some of that original magic again, with some pretty amazing exterior landscapes, especially in the early levels. Something that instantly struck me is that somehow Reach feels like a more traditional warshooter like Medal of Honor or Call of Duty in the Halo universe, with many of its up and downsides. For one, the battles are pretty massive. On both sides there's frequently tons of guys - not nearly as many as in a CoD game but more than in earlier Halo games. However, the story also feels a lot more like in a CoD game. It's harder to track, the stakes feel lower than in the original Halo trilogy, lots of "bla bla utter importance bla bla need to hold this position bla documents bla bla" going on. It also doesn't help that it's a prequel, particularly one of those prequels that weren't necessary in any way nor meaningfully extend the story, the setting is really just an excuse for more action against the enemies we've already butchered many times.

So, it's basically just a rehash of the classic Halo experience without any surprises, sadly minus the gravity of the early games. I was kinda expecting more, especially original content, from Bungie's swansong in the Halo series but I'm not really disappointed either.

Oh yeah, curiously Reach is the one big Halo game that was not included in the Masterchief collection so I had to play the Xbox 360 version on my Xbox One. As a result both its performance and visuals were ironically worse than in any other Halo game playable on that platform, even though it was originally the technologically most advanced entry in the series until Halo 4. However, I can't possibly complain about the quality of the emulation. I have no direct comparison to how it ran on the X360 but nothing about the emulation struck me as off. Besides the lower resolution which does look very pixelated by today's standards it looked good and performance was probably similar to how the game ran on the X360 and loading times are pretty great, presumably better than on the X360. I will gladly play more X360 titles in this manner. Actually I've already picked the next one I'm going to take on: Fable 2. Halo 4 is still waiting for me but I really need a break from the series for now.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne - Oct 14, 2017

I started Max Payne 2 the other night after I finished Max Payne. The game has greatly improved graphics, engine and enhanced gameplay mechanics and bullettime. The weapons work a bit more realistically with weapons that didn't seem to do barely anything before now acting more like you'd expect. The sawed off shotgun in the first game was completely useless, but it can take down 4 or more targets with a single well placed shot now. Overall I was quite pleased with the improvements.

Mona Sax... nom nom nom...

I can say that this is definitely a great classic game and just as good if not better than the original game. Anyone who enjoyed the first game is certainly likely to enjoy the second one.

Rating: 9/10

I completely forgot about this thread.. yeah there were some games I finished in that time. I will not post them but try to keep it updated as soon as I finish something