Red Faction (I played the game on my PS4, which is the PS2 version)

This game is an FPS and it has many things I normally hate in an FPS: linear, your path gets cut off behind you quite often, cutscenes, and boss battles. The game also ends with a stupid randomised mini-game which feels quite out of place.

However, I did enjoy the game quite a lot and I am wondering why? Maybe because it does NOT have checkpoint saves so you are completely in control of when to save and how many saves to keep, so if you want to go back to explore a different tunnel or door you can just load a previous save. Maybe because the cutscenes are pretty short. Maybe because there are only a few bosses (all of which are basically just bullet-sponges with no special strategy required, which is my least-hated type of boss battle).

I was also thinking it may just be nostalgia because I played this game a lot in the early 2000's on my PS2. But there are plenty of other games I used to enjoy which I do not anymore, so I don't think it's just that. The game does flow along quite well, with new enemies and new weapons being introduced as you move along, plus a few different vehicles, to keep it from getting stale. Plus I think the Mars setting is still quite cool.

Anyway, I did have fun and I think it still holds up. Recommended :).

South Park, The Fractured but Whole : Bring the Crunch

The last (for now) DLC. Another good DLC in that series of games. Short but packed with content: new zone, new costume, new powers, lots of collectibles, and the South Park humor is still there. That's the kind of DLC that makes me happy to cave in for a season pass, to be honest. Very good!

So far in 2018: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2018/post12

Dark Sector

A decently entertaining, but very linear corridor cover shooter with checkpoint saves only. Had a weird graphics glitch with my ancient 4850 (which is about as old as the game) - a lot of the smoke and similar effects were very pixellated. Final boss was annoying, but then that's always the case. Story was all right, except for MC's weird one-way relationship with the main villain's right-hand gal - wish they'd have cut that part out.

No difficulty options, which is sort of rare in the genre I think. You do unlock the "Brutal" difficulty after beating the game once, but I didn't feel the urge to try it.

Darkwood

Incredible game, 10/10. Can't remember the last time I was so engrossed in a game's story. There are tons of subtle hints and clues everywhere, both from dialogue and the environment itself. You really have to pay attention in this game to learn the backstory about the locations and characters you encounter. Most 'people', places and items you pick up are interconnected in some way.
For example, early on you'll find some burned houses with an unremarkable red see-saw in the yard. Much later in the game you'll find some drawings made by a child of her and a sibling playing on a red see-saw followed by a burning house, leading you to deduce that the burned house from much earlier was that child's home. The drawings then hint at what happened after the house burned down, connecting their story with yet another location. The game is absolutely filled to the brim with subtle story elements like this that connects people, places and things. And when viewed together it starts to paint a picture about what happened in the game world itself.
It's clear that the developers put a lot of thought into how to make most everything in the game coherent. And the mastery of it all is how gradually you can lift the veil on the mystery behind the darkwood by paying attention to the subtle details. It's as if a puzzle's pieces were strewn about the game world, and you can collect about 80% of it, giving you a pretty good picture of what happened, but leaving the remaining 20% open to interpretation.

Not that you have to pay careful attention to finish the game, save that is if you want to reach the 'true ending'. You can easily finish the game without picking up on all of these details, as I'm afraid to admit I mostly did. I only realized afterwards when reading the wiki how much it is that I missed, mostly I expect because I didn't realize the game's world had such a degree of depth to it. Incidentally, for the best experience I would advise against using the wiki, except perhaps to check if some items are safe to sell (ie whether or not needed for a later crafting recipe).

Mechanically the game is solid. Movement and looking around feels very natural, but combat is hampered compared to games of this type in an attempt to make it feel more authentic, which they managed to achieve imo.
Essentially you go out during the day to explore and attempt quests, and come back to one of your hideouts at night to bunker up, place traps and try to survive till morning. The nighttime can be anything from uneventful to a nightmarish struggle for survival, with a plethora of helpful, harmless and dangerous events that can occur.

Atmospherically it's right up there with the best of them. The music, sound effects and artstyle are incredibly effective. The game definitely tries to unsettle you, and it's got plenty of w.t.f moments, but interestingly for a game of the genre, I don't recall any jump-scares. Mostly it was just a sense of dread, and sometimes panic that only let up in the early mornings after you had survived another night.
The horror element itself is also pretty unique. Think evil woods, people being smothered by trees, that sort of thing. Kind of like the Mirkwood from LotR, only much, much worse. Elves would hightail it out of the darkwood in a heartbeat if they could! Not all that confident that they'd be able to though.

Difficulty wise you have 3 options. Normal, which is what I used, allows you to respawn at your hideout indefinitely when you die, leaving 1/2 of your non-hotbar items where you died. The two higher difficulties give you the option of limited lives, or only one life, making it a permadeath game. Strongly recommended not to pick either for a first playthrough.

Finally, replayablilty is very high. The game world is randomized first of all, but more importantly, you'll face several tough decisions / interactions in the game that can have significant gameplay implications. I've identified a couple of things I want to try differently for a second playthrough one day.

In summary, phenomenal world building, solid mechanics and an intoxicating atmosphere. Highly recommended!

X-COM: Apocalypse is evolution of original X-COM: Enemy Unknown (Defense). Although game is relatively different I like both approaches. I ran Medium difficulty and next time I must try it harder. Generally missions were always easy, but city part was much harder for me. Before I realize what to do correctly I lost chance to research first kind of UFO. All X-COM games are repetitive and from time to time I needed pause from the game. Later parts are very easy, but I guess it would be exactly same it real world too…

I would really like to see how game could be if developers had more time on it, probably it could be much longer, but still interesting.

Until I Have You

A fun noir-style story based platformer&gunner with a heavier emphasis on the platforming. Amazing what some people can do with the Adventure Game Studio engine...

Forward to the Sky

Short and cute indie action/adventure. 4 hours to 100% with no guides.

JYDGE

Another surprise hit by the devs of Crimsonland, and my experience with it was pretty similar: It doesn't look like much at first glance, but then it really gets you hooked and you keep on playing for just *one* more level, and then another, and so on.

Just like Crimsonland, this is a twin stick shooter, but this time it's not about trying to survive while getting swarmed by waves of enemies (although there are still one or two levels like that), but about storming or sneaking into criminals' hideouts, achieving specific goals (kill the crime lords, rescue civilians, defuse bombs etc.) and then getting back to your police car to drive off. It's like Judge Dredd meets Hotline Miami, only that you can take a few hits before dying and having to start over, and that you get a ton more unlocks, weapons, weapon mods, specials, cyberware enhancements etc. that you can choose from before each mission, so that there are lots of different approaches to each of them and you can knock yourself out experimenting until you find the most effective and enjoyable setup.

And just like in Hotline Miami the soundtrack really gets you into the action and makes this game so much fun. Apparantly it's composed by one Jay Man and they just took it from some Creative Commons website without even managing to get in contact with the author, so credit where credit is due, but still, these tunes go hand in hand with the gameplay, they're a pretty good fit. And they're randomly selected each time, which also adds to the replayability - redo a level with different loadout and different soundtrack.

I haven't completed the game 100%, but I got through the story, which requires unlocking and playing through most of three difficulty modes (which mix up things a bit, add new enemies and new objectives). A fourth difficulty mode is unlocked after completing the game, and maybe I'll get back to that occasionally, but for now I consider the game finished. It seems JYDGE also offers local co-op for two players (though I haven't tried that myself), and collectibles (of which I've found none, but if you're after them, you can get in-game hints on where to look for them).

TL:DR
A great little game with lots of options, to play in short sessions (~3-10 minutes) during a break, although addictive enough to turn those sessions into longer ones, and before you know it, you've spent like 11 hours on it, just having a blast. (Sadly, not on GOG. Vote for it!)

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!
I got it from GOG community giveaway, donated by Buttspikes

I’m still surprised that I like this type of games but well, apparently I do. I had a great time with CSD1 and now I had a blast with the sequel. Even though the whole game is still about preparing food as fast as you can (and still not as fast as you should) there are some major changes that makes it worthwhile. As it usually is some changes are great, like a holding station which allows to gather preliminary prepared products and/or side dishes which may increase your profit and patience of your customers. It really adds the depth to the game. I don’t like "Chef for hire" type of campaign - instead of building your own restaurant from scratches like in CSD1 you are switching from restaurant to restaurant to hunt some achievements which gets repetitive rather fast. The core gameplay is still here and is still great. So if you like games where speed and precision are most important do yourself a favor and buy both games.


Full list

Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!
I got it from GOG community giveaway, donated by DampSquib

A lighthearted game about... well, I guess it’s obvious - about being a potato and running a weapon shop. The game has its charm, numerous pop-culture references (Bulk Bogan, Laura Craft or Agent 46), nice visuals and humor, not bad crafting/exploring/buying system so it has a good potential to be a perfect casualish managerial game. Unfortunately a substantial portion of this potential is wasted by extreme linearity and holding your hand all the time. Basically, you always have an objective and fulfilling it will unlock new things and thus let you earn more. In theory you can do it your way: for example if you are asked to level up a particular hero you can ignore it and try to level up your smiths and other heroes. Unfortunately the salary of your workers will increase and most probably you are only capable of making a few basic items so rather sooner than later you will not earn enough to keep your smiths satisfied. So go ahead and level up this damn hero and so you’ll unlock new features that will allow you to earn more. Sadly, the game feels like a one giant tutorial - the only way to stay in business is to focus on your current objective. I felt treated like an idiot most of the time - it can really kill a lot of fun.

Don’t get me wrong though - the game is still cute and can be entertaining if you like more casual managerial games. It’s just sad that it could have been so much better.

Full list

Deponia 3: Goodbye Deponia

This game is very similar to the first two games. It is a funny game with very nice graphics and writing, but it gets bogged down sometimes in overlong dialogues and cutscenes.

I’d still recommend it if you enjoyed the first two games, this game is more of the same and won’t disappoint.

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Minimalistictic puzzle(?) game. You play as red square going through black and while moving through shifitng maze-like while listening to music of various volume. The maze sometimes tries to crush you, then there are red parts that kill on touch. It is nothing difficult and not really something one would have to solve. In fact it was quite easy and most of my "deaths" (it only returns you in from of current obstacles) were because I watched TV while playing it.
It was quite entertaining but nothing too special. I spent less than 2 hours with it and I had enough of it.

My list.

Sleeping Dogs Definitive edition.

neat game. too open worldy for my taste but you can ignore all the collect stuff and those "radiant missions" (wasn't that what they were called in fallout 4? here it's drug busts and races etc with no discernable story but just yet another side mission you don't need filler stuff.) and just do the main storyline and then it's a neat first person shooter/brawler with an ok story. I liked it.
(well not the brawling part. that I hated, I'm pretty bad at it I think and it took ages (and cheatengine) to get through the myriads of enemies you have to fight by hand.

Shadowrun Returns- Fun RPG turn based game that was given out by Humble Bundle.

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight - a fun Metroidvaniaish type. Played it on Normal after some warnings about Hard mode. Glad I did.

Another Perspective - Ironically the "Where are you stuck in your games" topic made me think of this neat little puzzle game with a psychological story. Booted it up to see where I was stuck 3 years ago, and ended up actually completing it (though did need to use a guide for one "Impossible Puzzle" the solution to which is basically figuring out and utilizing a glitch, and also for the way to get to the true ending.

Thomas Was Alone

A really good game! It's a puzzle platformer where each character has different abilities and they have to work together to get to the exit of each level. The characters are shapes, and there is a story going along that is pretty good. The narrator gives most of the details, but each character has their own way of moving around, and it is easy to get attached to "Chris moves like this" and then miss them when they are not present in a level.

Overall, really recommend. I missed it when it was fresh, but fellow goglian muntdefems was kind enough to share.