Deus Ex (with the GMDX mod)

Overall it was quite a nice game, at least with the GMDX mod. I played the ending with the three different possibilities. I played it with the hardest difficulty that was available for the first playthrough (Realistic?).

I guess I will continue to Deus Ex: IW next. Does it have any worthy mods for ironing out bugs, or is it smooth sailing with the vanilla GOG version?

Alright, I will restart the game with the GMDX mod as I found it lacking unmodded myself. You have convinced me.

Fan patch here, fixes issues, gives proper widescreen support, etc: [url=https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Invisible_War]https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Invisible_War[/url]

Edit: did gog forum url posting break?

One Late Night

Freeware horror thing set in an office, like a cross between The Stanley Parable and a Slenderman game, a bit janky and unresponsive but gave me proper physiological responses - goose bumps, chills etc.
Got the bad ending, watched a play-though of the good ending - the only difference was fighting the big-bad about half-way though rather than running and there was absolutely no indication that this was the right or wrong thing to do or would affect the ending - all completely arbitrary really

Available here anyways:
http://www.onelatenight.com/

I see there's a commercial sequel called 'One Late Night: Deadline' which is getting bad reviews, I suspect that the dev hasn't realised that people expect more when they pay actual cash and / or his baby isn't perfect - oh well!

Full list

It's because of the colon I think.
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Invisible_War

Yep, replace it with the character code and works.

Streets of Rage 3 (Xbox One)

The second game improved on the first in all the important ways, this one doesn't. Well the third game does add multiple endings and hidden paths and they tried to make more of a story, but I don't like the way it plays as much as the first 2 games.
The pace feels faster and more twitchy and I feel the game often pulls cheap tricks like enemies charging in at you from off screen and giving you no fair way to react. And enemies knocking me off platforms and instantly losing a life. Plus you can't seem to build up as many spare lives through careful play like the other two games.

Anyway, I played on easy for this one. Only to find that the game has a special bad ending for playing that way that finishes at the end of level 5. Well it's still and ending I suppose, but I wasn't happy with it. But with a bit of research I found that there is a way to level jump to level 6 and continue on to the other ending from where the bad ending leaves off, so that's what I did- since I really didn't feel like playing this one again from the start.

Anyway, I'll be replaying the first 2 games as I really like them. But I don't feel the need to revisit the third game. Overall it's a good collection, it's actually the Xbox 360 SEGA Vintage collection- but of course it plays on Xbox One and was, in fact, one of this months GwG games. So the price was right.

You might want to check out Streets of Rage Remake, which combines all three games into one and makes various little changes to smooth over the inconsistencies. It's freely available online despite Sega's intentions otherwise :)

What was lacking? (just to get an idea whether GMDX fixes them)

Thanks, I didn't know about that one. I googled it, downloaded it and had a quick play and it seems really good, especially the remixed higher quality music. I'll come back to it later for sure.

I honestly cannot remember now but that there were several little things. Very busy now so no idea when I will have time to setup my computer and the game.

StingingVelvet might have an educated opinion of the differences between vanilla Deus Ex and GMDX. I recall seeing him comment on the differences a couple of weeks ago as he has recently played GMDX too.

Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition. I had played the original version (Gold) a while back and really enjoyed it, and I had an itch to replay it, so I went with this version, which I guess is considered the definitive one. I actually can't recall what the differences between the two versions are, but I think the water village map is new, and I don't recall the Gold version having the power-up you can get that allows you to fly in chicken form?

I still really like the game because I like its fighting system, which has a good balance between being complex enough for you to do long combos but is also simple enough that you can basically win the game just by suplexing and pile-driving everything you see. The stylish graphics and animation are pretty good, too. One of the better non-wrestling wrestling games out there in the sense that the hero is a luchador but it's not about in-ring matches (now that I think of it, someone should do a Santo game in which you and Blue Demon have to beat up vampires and werewolves all over the place...).

Earthworm Jim [DOS version]

Fun game but gets oh so frustrating at times even on Normal difficulty. Used a walkthrough on youtube a few times to figure out how to proceed. If it weren't for the passwords that allows you to start any level with 3 lives I would've quit out of frustration pretty early, like I had with Sonic the Hedgehog. If I hadn't been able to set up joystick controls through joy2key, would've quit as well, as using the joystick with the in-game support was ... not good. And my keyboard wasn't able to shoot diagonally up-left.

Beaten carmageddon max pack for the first time, somehow i just wanted to play this game and it's not bad for a first game in the series, original had some fun interesting tracks while in splat pack they didn't give me the splat track that many times since that one was the easiest to fill to rank 3 or 4 on normal, though it still has some interesting tracks some just outright annoyed me . Though since i am also used to missions i kinda preffered carmageddon tdr more but not only because of missions but the ending in carmageddon kinda felt like karma lol even though i don't believe in karma really and some interesting power ups in tdr, still need to replay carmageddon 2 to see if i like it more than tdr.

Stories: The Path of Destinies (Steam - free)

This game was free on Steam a week or so back as the devs wanted to draw attention to their upcoming game which they've described as the "spiritual successor" to this one.

I've gotta say, despite some fairly significant flaws, this game really won me over. In the style of classic films/shows (Run Lola Run, the X-files episode "Monday") here you play as a dashing fox named Reynaldo who is battling the evil toad emperor, and your first few runs will inevitably end in death as you learn the 4 main secrets that will help you navigate through successfully.

Both the story telling and narration are excellent. The RPG leveling system and the (minimal) crafting are okay.

The controls, esp in combat, however, are a pretty mixed bag. Not awful, but definitely not great. Early in the game it's mostly fine, but as the number and types of enemies grow, becomes increasingly a problem.

Intend to parry one enemy only to have the game decide that you really meant to attack the enemy adjacent to that enemy and let the attacker smack you in the face? Bound to happen. Attack the fire bomb dudes once and then try to run out only for the game to decide you smacked the fire bomb dude twice to make him explode in your face? Yeah, that will happen too.

Occasionally it will work in your favor - the game will decide to not attack the person you thought you were attacking to parry the enemy you didn't see coming. But most of the time the combination of a) single buttons controlling multiple functions, and b) imprecision in targeting will leave you frustrated when you get smacked by the thing you were 100% sure you had countered/avoided. The last fight in particular is prone to wackiness - including some sort of overhead object blocking the camera at a very inconvenient time, and too many mobs to visually track constantly or target effectively.

Controls
RMB: hold to move, click to grab enemy, (and aim and throw, if I recall)
LMB: attach, counter/parry, interact
Alt: Skyhook
Control: Dash

Just awkward.

The environment is also a bit of a mixed bag. Too many bugs, for one thing. Breakable items that can't be broken. Getting stuck on switches after using them. In one case one of the many flying platforms didn't line up with the hallway it was supposed to connect with, so I had to quit out and reload back to an earlier save point (the game autosaves, you can't control). One of the later scenarios, the ground was missing entirely and I was running around on the air not able to see where I was supposed to go.

A few of the landscapes are beautiful - others feel stale or undeveloped. It also crashed to desktop on me once.

But despite all these actual gameplay limitations, the way the game uses its story makes it well worth the playthrough, imo, and I'll at least keep an eye on the one they have coming out.