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Lol. Thanks :)

Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop

I guess this is a sim / resource management game? The "cutscenes" are really bad, and most of the puns ...are also really bad.

That said, the first half of the game is charming and enjoyable. It's just not deep enough to be quite as long as it is, and as you move to later worlds with 10 smiths, it becomes pretty heavily micro-managitis in terms of moving smiths around, plus as the number of heroes you are outfitting swells in each world, it becomes more annoying to identify the stats/weapon types you are making next.

Not challenging, mind you, so the increase in difficulty is really just time wasty annoyance. Assuming you don't make any major mistakes, your resources will rapidly outpace your expenses, so I'm not sure what it would take to actually "lose."

Still, on the whole I enjoyed the game enough to recommend it as a mostly charming appetizer, if perhaps probably not filling enough to replay the whole thing.

Back to the Future: The Game, Oct 26 (TTG)-I went into this expecting very little but it turns out I really enjoyed this game. The characters were familiar from the movies, the voice acting was great, and the story was excellent. The puzzles were a little too easy but the quality of the writing more than made up for it. I recommend it if you're a fan of the movies or TTGs more traditional adventure-focused games.

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Island Time VR (PSVR)

This a simple yet fun survival game set on a small island, very small, so small that you do not even move around because everything is within reach. The object of the game is to survive as long as you can, you will die continually and you must learn from your mistakes and try to survive longer the next time.

It’s quite a simple game and not very challenging, but it is fun to play in small doses.

Include me please.

Has been a busy year, only little time for gaming.

- Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death. I was surprised how much this game engaged me and the variety of bosses it had to offer. A pleasant experience, recommended.

- Overcooked. Fun local multiplayer experience where you have to prepare meals in a restaurant with various obstacles.

- Silver from 1999. A nice little RPG with a quite innovative combat control mechanism for its time.

- 4 Elements. Casual match three game on Steam with a few nice levels. Good way to pass time, but nothing special.

- Jazzpunk: Director's Cut. First person exploration and adventure game set in a bizarre world with a nice sense of humour, although short gameplay. If you are like me and enjoy weird games with a strange humour, give it a go.

- Octodad: Dadliest Catch. Again, a strange little game where you are impersonating a human as an octopus and have to carry out daily tasks without people getting suspicious. Great fun, nice design, amazing humour, innovative gameplay.

Guardian

A very enjoyable, if a bit short and buggy Metroidvania. On the easy side if you collect all the health & damage upgrades like I did. Some of the bugs can be game breaking and actually force you to start the game over, which is why I got into the habit of manually backing up the save data folder.

Train Valley

Game might look like a business simulation (kind of Railroad Tycoon), but instead it is a puzzle game. Maps are much to small for strategy and instead you have to think about how to build your tracks, so that the trains can still reach each station and not get into each others way.

There are 20 missions with three objectives each and four free-play missions in which you can just try to get the highest score possible. I'm still missing some stamps (you get them for reaching the objectives), but I think I saw everything the game has to offer.

All in all I enjoyed the game, it wasn't too hard and playing it was quite relaxing. I might buy the sequel when it gets a DRM-free release.

Complete list of finished games in 2018

Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4Pro)

Second play through because I picked up the expansion The Frozen Wilds. My cunning plan was to go back my main game completion, start NG+ and blast through the main story (which isn't very long really) and do the expansion content fully. The cunning plan didn't work because I lost my old saves. Hence a complete restart.

I still don't think it's a great RPG since there's pretty much no opportunity to ever role play or make choices. But it works great as an open world Assassins Creed with some RPG elements...basically before Ubi did the same thing with AC Origins.

I took my time a bit more this play through and really appreciated just some of the little refinements the game makes to other wise common mechanics. Like fast travel...I like how you have to hunt for the provisions or buy them to make long journeys using fast travel. So your provision packs are used up like a currency to travel.
I also like how you can learn a skill that allows you to break down scrap in your inventory for when it becomes full. So when you're deep into a quest with no vendor in sight, instead of just having to drop sellable items to manage your inventory you can break them down for half credits.

I was still a bit underwhelmed by the main quests though. The story is fine and well told, but it is quite short and pretty much every quest is the same thing...you go to place and look around using your magic Batman Vision/Assassins Vision until you find a trail- highlight and follow to the next location and repeat until you find the people you need to kill.

The voice acting is great, but too often the main character mumbles information about her thoughts on what to do right in the middle of a busy fight so you cannot hear.

I'd like to say the game gave me 80 hours of problem free running, but over the past couple of days I had a series of crashes when trying to save at the main Meridian bonfire. Not just crashes to the PS4 menu but total hardware crashes that shut down the PS4 and required unplugging and cold rebooting. Meridian is the busiest area of the game and I think the late game save bloat may have been causing problems at that save location.

And the Frozen Wilds expansion is a very solid add on with an entirely new area and densely packed with more to do, anyone buying the game now really should just buy the complete package.

Anyway, overall a well crafted and polished game that is must play for PS4 owners. In fact I believe this and Bloodborne are truly the only PS4 exclusives that fully live up to their hype and ratings- though I haven't played God of War or Spiderman, so maybe they will too.

The Adventure Pals

Got that one on Twitch Prime, since I'm an Amazon Prime subscriber.

Must say I've had a blast with that game! I'm generally not big on platformers, since I suck big time playing them, but that one was exactly the right amount of difficulty for me (which means that many might not find it challenging enough, maybe).

Plus, it's not too long, the visuals are cartoony and charming and the general tone is absurd and whacky, making it perfect for both kids and grown-ups, I think. I've not 100%ed it, I rarely do in games, but I've done most of it, I think.

So far in 2018, The Adventure Pals easily wins the "best totally unknown to me so far" game award! ^_^

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

Finished Homefront.

Not really an A class shooter. The game is stuttering on my Radeon RX460 graphics, far more so than the recent Battlefield games even though Battlefield 4 and 1 look far better than Homefront. The last game looks outdated but stutters like it's a game that pushes a lot of eye-candy while it doesn't. The good thing about it though, is the guns really do feel like 'packing a punch' as the English saying goes. They feel heavy, hit hard, gunshots make impressive booming sounds. Not very realistic (most unrealistic is how easy it is to pick of enemies in the distance very precisely with short bursts from a machine gun), but fun.

The story is quit short, with not very much development in it. The background of the story is a world in which North Korea conquered the United States in 2010, along with conquering lots of other lands. Not very believable, North Korea being quit small compared to the US even though North Korea has a disproportionally large military force. But it makes for a satisfyingly grim atmosphere. And the characters in the story, though one-dimensional, differ enough from each other as to not make them interchangeable.

Most of all I played it for a quick short and simple shooterfest and in that aspect, it delivered. I'd give the game a 7 minus on a score of 1-10.


The next day I finished one of my playthroughs of Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition with a fighter-mage.

full list

Finished Project Warlock, 100% achievements and also hardcore.

Darksiders 2 Deathinitive Edition, Oct 30 (GOG)-I think it was lacking compared to the original in just about every way. I had some stability issues (lots of stuttering, inability to run, and frequent crashes) but some of them may have been my computer and gamepad. I wasn't a huge fan of collecting all the loot nor the attempt to make it more like Prince of Persia. And towards the end as I was approaching 30 hours of gametime I half-assed the DLC and several optional areas. All that said it's still a pretty fun game whose puzzles and platforming sequences far outshine its combat and most boss fights. I'll be looking forward to Darksiders 3 and 4 eventually.

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Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
I got it from GOG community giveaway, donated by Fairfox

I didn’t have a chance to play this game when it was released so this mini review is without any nostalgia factor. First of all - I did enjoy the game a lot but it has some rough edges. Apparently the devs decided it’s time for Indy to reclaim what is rightfully his and outdo that pesky Lara. I can’t really judge whether they succeeded or not but the game is at least on a par with early Tomb Raider games. It’s more puzzle oriented and this part is indeed great. Sense of exploration is also much better: in each level, apart from the main objective you can find a lot of coins and ancient artifacts which you sell at the end of a level and thus get some money to spend on ammo and first aids. I also like the variety of locations although I miss location-appropriate soundtrack - the game has almost no music at all. The worst part of the game is fighting. It’s very clunky, much worse than in TR. In fact I have a feeling that the devs knew that this part was not optimized and thus threw a lot of health packs at you. It can get quite ridiculous: at the end of one level you are captured but you can still sell your artifacts and visit a shop before starting a new level. WTF?! But in the end you get a decent action game with significant portion of various puzzles so I can really recommend the game!


Full list

Games completed in 2018:

1. Back to Bed - May 29, 2018
2. Barclay: The Marrowdale Murder - May 30, 2018
3. There's Poop In My Soup - May 31, 2018
4. Machinarium Collector's Edition - Oct 31, 2018

Previous years:
Games finished in 2017
Games finished in 2016