I do think the combat is better in the 2nd - magic is still underpowered early, but it's at least no longer reliant on camping out by mana stones. The quest lines are also much tighter, and the lockpick minigame I actually quite like.

But for sure it's different - they stripped out what was so creative about horseback in the first game (though apparently a lot of people hated that the horse had its own mind, I actually really loved it), it's significantly more linear, and the world does seem smaller.

So yeah, the sense of sheer exploration is significantly reduced.

About magic in TW1, two words: Poison cloud. Buff it as much as you can too of course, but basically it kills anything and won't let it get to you, since the enemies will keep jerking while in the cloud, can't attack. Sure, also had healing, mainly for swarms of ranged attackers, and a few other things, but basically full magic build, lots of MP and that spell. Cast and run around and wait for everything to die. Even those things doing upwards of 10k damage in one hit, would be one hit kills if they did touch me, but none did.

The Last of Us + Left Behind DLC (played on PC via PS Now streaming)

It's a bit hard to judge it fairly now when first played in 2019. Its production and release more or less coincided with The Walking Dead Season One, and Life Is Strange came two years after it, but now that I've played both of these before TLoU, the story-telling wasn't all that special and spectacular to me anymore, and many turns a bit predictable, also because it relies on quite a few well known tropes. There were still some powerful scenes in it; I was especially impressed with the beginning, with how it introduced characters and setting to the players, and some parts later in the game, and a few of my predictions actually turned out wrong in ways that managed to surprise me a little.

I also felt the game was rather long though and at times spread its (often episodic) story-telling content a bit thin, filling the time with decent but not all too exciting stealth / cover shooter gameplay and a distracting hunt for resources and collectibles which felt a bit out of place in such a linear game with a story that's trying to convey urgency. The non-playable companions would always run ahead to the next autosave checkpoint or so, and then wait for me while I took my time to search every nook and cranny of the areas, in fear of overlooking and missing out on important upgrades and items. And during the stealth sections, I would hardly notice the actual environment, because I spent so much time in listening mode so I could see the position of the moving enemies, and for some game-y reason listening mode turns the whole world black and white and muffles dialogue a bit, which isn't that much fun. All in all, I thought the gameplay was serviceable, it could be fun at times, but a bit lacklustre at other times, at least if you've already played lots of similar games, not that much variety in it, considering its length (I think it took me about 20 hours plus 2 for the DLC), limited amount of different opponents, not too smart AI.

But like I said, it might be a bit unfair to judge it this way, given that it's already six years old and released on console only, and I guess at that time it felt a bit more original and impressive. It's also not a bad game at all, I actually liked it, I just couldn't quite relate to all the hype that's surrounding it. But skimming the review quotes now, I see that a lot of the praise was also relative to the vague mass of other titles, like "most significant title of this console generation", compared to "most blockbuster videogames" etc. I feel like nowadays, and on PC, there are quite a few games that can rival it.

It's still good though, the music is nice, the voice actors are great, the cinematics too, (graphics I guess so, but they probably looked a bit better on the PS3 than streamed with 720p on PC? Seemed a bit grainy.), and story and gameplay have their moments. It's just far from being this best game ever, that I might have imagined it to be just because I never got the chance to play it and everyone was talking about it so enthusiastically back then.

Left Behind was fine, more of the same, with a bit more character interactions, felt pretty much like fan service and reminded me of Life Is Strange: BtS in that regard, but I admit I also liked getting a bit more time for playing Ellie instead of Joel.

One Finger Death Punch

I...I love this game. Kung Fu fighting with the left and right mouse buttons. Different kinds of stages, medals to collect, different kinds of enemies that force slight change ups to chase combo counts. Yeah, it is exactly the right game to chill out with.

Bloodrayne 2, Feb 12 (GOG)-Not much to say about this one. The responsiveness and platforming were bad and the endless enemies in most areas were very annoying. Also, directing enemies into objects with the harpoon was nearly impossible. Overall it was very difficult and I sucked at it so I turned on god mode and actually had some fun with it.

Full List

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (XB1X)

Surprise Game Pass addition last week, still a very new game. This time set mostly in the Peruvian jungles. And what jungles they are. The engine has seen some upgrades it seems, as this is the best and most natural looking foliage I've seen. Like Rise, there were more than one graphics option. In Rise I went with 4K resolution at 30fps because it felt really smooth and the sharpness was noticeable. But this time I played with 1080/60 with freesync for any small drops. Whatever Eidos Montreal did with their TAA technology worked, as it's the best 1080 presentation I've seen...no shimmering or aliasing visible and amazing view distance and LODs. 1080 was so good at 60fps that, this time I could not justify the extra sharpness of 4K, best looking game I've seen...even though a few months back I was saying that about AC Odyssey.

Game play wise, this is also my favorite of the trilogy. Not everyone agrees, but I like that this game emphasises the exploration and puzzle tombs/crypts more than combat and scripted on rails action scenes. It meant that, for the length of the game I never tired of any one aspect of the gameplay. Not only was combat reduced, stealth is more important against human enemies, since once you blow your stealth they are aggressive and do not just sit behind cover popping up and down- they actually assault you in teams.

Story is like the other games, very far fetched history/archaeology mixed with a supernatural angle. Never was the strongest point of the series. It does have it's moments though, like the part where Lara rises up out of the muddy water and becomes "very angry Lara" for a while- and goes the full Johnny Rambo for a time.

Overall I really enjoyed it's balance of game play the most. One minute you're flying through an Uncharted style scripted action sequence and then the game opens up into one of it's open hub areas to explore where you can do some side missions, solve the tombs and crypts before doing a story combat mission. It helps that it looks so good when doing everything. Best of the series for me and way better than any Uncharted game.

The Darkside Detective

I'm a bit torn whether I should consider this finished because I completed the six main cases, or abandoned because I can't bring myself to finish the three unlocked bonus cases as well. Maybe I will another day, maybe I won't.

I didn't expect much from this game, and indeed the beginning didn't impress me. The pixel art is very low res and simplistic, as you can see in the screenshots, characters don't even move, and the gameplay is mostly about reading object descriptions and dialogues (no voiceovers), followed by some easy puzzles with a limited amount of items. So since graphics are minimal and reading is the main thing here, you would expect that at least the writing is good. But it's a mixed bag. The humour is hit or miss, and more miss than hit for me, The plots are realtively simple as well.

But then the unexpected happened and I actually played through all six cases in one evening regardless. And as silly and rather unfunny as the characters are, somehow they grew on me a bit, like a TV series that gets better the more you watch of it. And then I learnt to appreciate the good things about The Darkside Detective. The cases aren't just easy but also short, bite-sized, and they offered enough variety to keep things entertaining. Despite the rather lame jokes the story-telling actually began to work, and it was fun to see the same characters in new environements and circumstances. I had a similar experience with Strongbad's Cool Game For Attractive People, or - even more obscure - with the freeware AGS series Reality-On-The-Norm, where the single episodes weren't particularly good or funny in itself but interesting in the context of the whole series, once you get a bit attached to characters and setting. In the end I was ready to say that I'd play a second season of The Darkside Detective (and I think it's already in the making).

Unfortunately, the three bonus cases unlocked after the main game curbed this mild enthusiasm again. The first case was too trivial, short and boring, the other two are too long and boring, even though they're not really longer than the main cases. But what I've noticed about them, is that they take too long to get going. You can already inspect a lot of the rooms before you even learn what the case is, and a lot of the things you inspect can be picked up or used only once you know what they're needed for, and this is seldom obvious. And going through all the rooms a second time to see what you can interact with now, is really boring. To be honest though, it's also possible that I just happened to be in the mood for this game that one evening and that the moment has passed and I'm not into it anymore, but I like to believe there's more to it than that and the bonus adventures are just not that well constructed and interesting.

Anyway, what's really quite good about this game is the soundtrack; everything else is a bit so-so. There are definitely a lot of better point-and-click-adventures to play, and from a customer's point of view, the price of this one is not really competitive, considering what other games you could buy for this money. But if it's on sale or you have enough money to show support to indie developers just out of the goodness of your heart, and you're in the mood for a couple of short, casual, at times mildly amusing and surprising episodic adventure games, you could do worse than to buy and play this.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (via PS Now)

It was okay-ish, but nowhere near as good as the ratings suggest, so I guess this is another case of a game of historical relevance that didn't really stand the test of time. The story was somewhat entertaining, but lacked depth and originality, I guess the popularity has more to do with the characters than the plot. From today's perspective, the cinematics and voiceovers are still good, and the landscape and buildings are still quite nice to look at, but the gameplay is very repetitive and average at best, if not below it. It consists of linear climbing (which is only challenging at times because of the camera angles), a few easy puzzles, and lots of shooting.

There are definitely way too many lacklustre firefights with the same old enemies over and over again. Especially since there is no real depth to the combat. Enemies are bad shots, you can take several hits and then you just wait a few seconds behind cover to be automatically healed again. Cover mechanics, by the way, are just as problematic as they usually are, as the game utilizes the same button also for other purposes and it can easily happen that you're suddenly glued to a wall without meaning to take cover there, or you think something should provide suffcient cover but the game doesn't let you duck behind it. There are no special moves or skills, no upgrades, no stealth mechanics. You can only carry two weapons at the same time, and if you run out of ammo, you have to find and pick up a different weapon or new ammo lying around.

And it all feels very game-y, since covers and ammo are conveniently placed everywhere, human enemies spawn regardless of story logic (e.g. Nathan Drake goes to great lengths to acquire an old key to an area that's supposed to be a secret and only someone with his treasure map should have access to, and somehow the enemies are still waiting behind these locked doors, in old tombs, whereever, just so that the player has more targets to shoot at). And although the enemies are just supposed to be goons from some crime syndicate, their numbers are more like an actual army. In between, some sections are meant to switch up the gameplay a bit, but they are just your average car turret sequences or a boat ride where (surprise, surprise) enemies constantly shoot at you.

Basically, Uncharted in a nutshell goes like this: You can see very clearly how Tomb Raider 2013 took 'inspiration' from the series (some good, some bad), and how a game like The Last of Us evolved from this. In terms of fun, both of those games significantly surpass their predecessor though. It was interesting enough to learn that by first-hand experience, but other than for this historical perspective, I don't think I would recommend anyone to play it in 2019. It's still working alright, but there are so many better games out there to spend your time with now.

(Technically, I didn't quite complete the game myself; I lost server connection during the showdown and hadn't really enjoyed that so far anyway, so I just watched the last five minutes on YouTube. In doing so, I think I didn't really miss out on anything apart from a sense of closure; it's just more of the same shooting in three stages, topped off with some cutscene QTEs. Yawn.)

WRC 7 (PS4)

This is a pure rally driving game, covering the whole WRC season. It’s not really a full sim racer, but nor is an arcade racer, it fits somewhere in between. I only played the single player campaign, so I cannot comment on the multiplayer component of the game.

The graphics are really nice, a big improvement over the previous game in the series. There is a large variety of cars, ranging from Junior WRC to WRC 2 to WRC, although only the current vehicles are present and not old/legacy models, and for the most part the cars within each category don't feel that different. The different road surfaces didn’t really feel very different to me either other than the bumpiness (eg all the different gravels just felt the same). The surfaces mostly felt way too grippy and not slippery enough in my opinion.

There are 13 different rallies, but each rally only has 4 different stages: of these 4 stages one is an SSS (an arena stage, *yawn*) and one is an “epic stage” which is an extra-long stage mainly composed of the remaining two stages stuck together, so essentially there are only two different stages per rally (excluding arena stages)! So when you’re driving in a rally event, which is usually around 6 stages per rally, there is a lot of repetition of the stages!

Furthermore, I think I was spoiled by DiRT Rally VR, after playing a rally game in VR it’s hard to go back to flat, the thrills are just not as strong.

Overall though it’s a competent rally driving game, not bad but not great either. I’d still recommend it to fans of the genre.

God of War HD (PS3)

A standard action-adventure game similar to Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, however its age does show. While the combat is good for a game of its time, and its still a good game. On normal difficulty, the combat isn't difficult, in fact I only died in one combat encounter that was exclusively combat. However about halfway through there is a large amount of timed puzzles, all of which results in instant death if failed, the puzzles, climbing and backtracking slows the pace of the game right down towards the end. One point in the game requires so much backtracking and is so obscure, I had to check a guide, and at the beginning of the guide it specifically mentioned the moment I was stuck, showing just how many people get stuck on it. My biggest complaint is the lack of boss fights (3 in total), and considering there is a bossfight 10 minutes in, it does seem like there is a false promise that there should be more. The shear amount of blocking enemies do is also incredibly annoying, there is no apparent way to break an enemies block, not even the strongest combos break it. It was still a good game, it just hasn't aged that well.

God of War 2 HD (PS3)

Same as above, however it is more refined. There are less instakill puzzles, there are much more bosses, less climbing/platforming and enemies block less. However there are still quite a few annoying puzzles and the game ends on a cliff hanger which is slightly annoying, but other than that, it is a much improved experience.

I hate blocking enemies, it's why I hated the combat in Jade Empire so much. Only thing worse than blocking enemies are the ones that try to run away.

Endless Fables: Minotaur's Curse (HOG, non-GoG GA)

The initial reveal in act 1 is interesting, but from there it descends into a pretty typical run-of-the-mill hidden object adventure.

I will say, the "hidden object" aspect of this game is relatively minimal, skewing towards story mode and object construction mini-games. On the whole it's more adventure-lite, and really not much pixel-hunting outside of the optional achievements for finding 8 types of this butterfly, 10 of that flower, etc. But these are not required to win the game.

The mini-games generally weren't hard. There's really nothing particularly objectionable here (other than some confusing voice acting by the protagonist), if perhaps not overwhelmingly great either. It's relatively short (<4 hours including the bonus chapter), reasonably competent, fairly polished.

A reasonably pleasant aperatif, if perhaps not quite living up to the initial suggestion of creativity.

I declare this game to be just fine.

_________________

Unrelated, I did actually go back and finish <a> game of Civ VI during the free play event on steam. I turned off all animations, set it to 'settler' difficulty on the "duel" map, and blew through a game in 5 hours. From playing and reading reviews, the AI seems competent in some ways, but apparently incompetent in others.

For example, I was creaming it in military strength, culture, and economy, (on the easiest difficulty) and the AI was seemingly smart enough to go full-bore on trying for a religious victory, where I wasn't really dedicating effort. Not quite enough to win, certainly, but it was enough to create pressure, and ultimately with bedtime upon me the final night of the free play, I built a few artillery and went and wiped out their capital.

I didn't have any oil whatsoever despite owning most of the map, nor an easy route to acquire any.

On the whole I really liked a few of the new features (civics/governments, envoys), and that 'one more turn' bug certainly got me a bit, but a few of the other features I wasn't sure I was as fond of in practice (district requirements). It also seemed disappointing the only options for animations were 'on' or 'off.' On was way too slow, but off felt like it lacked a bit of life.

add: and the smallest map was still surprisingly large - only 3 city-states, but plenty of room that the 2 civs could have fit a dozen or more cities - each, even with water taking up a good 1/4-1/3 of the map.

Sudeki (GOG)

I felt like a simple action RPG whilst waiting for Crackdown 3. After reading about this one in CRPG Book Project (which is now my official Bible) I decided to give this one a try. It tries to be a Western JRPG, it gets some of the visual aspects right- like the poor dress sense and a furry character, but it really feels more like a western ARPG in every other way.

It's a 15 year old port of an Xbox game- still using all the original Xbox assets. I've been playing games like Crimson Skies and Panzer Dragoon Orta at near 4K and they look outstanding, so does Sudeki at 4K. It's amazing how much some of these Xbox games were actually being held back by their blurry composite video outputs, in the original form. It's a colourful sharp looking game on PC with a look and style somewhere between World of Warcraft and Fable. That's the games strongest point.

Next is it's game play, like most simple ARPG's it gets dull as the game goes on. Of the 4 characters, 2 are melee and 2 are ranged. The melee combat was par for course- a simple 3 button combo system that I lost interest in soon enough. But the ranged combat characters were really fun to play, since it works like a first person shooter. You are soon circle strafing around the battle area picking off targets. When you have all 4 characters you can choose to control the one you want, or switch anytime. I preferred the ranged character that had healing. It was fun, the biggest problem being that the game, as part of the story, keeps forcing you to play all the characters and some were not fun.

So it was fun until about half way. Then some annoyances reared. First are the amount of enemies that go into an annoying block stance- it wouldn't be so bad if your teams AI was clever enough to come from behind and hit them, but they don't, they just stand there and wait like morons. It just makes combat draw out far too long breaking their blocking. Then towards the end the developers showed their sliding block puzzle fetish. I hate those too. Not as much as blocking enemies though.

Still, it was good enough to keep me going. Unfortunately Sudeki holds back its worst until the very end. You spend the entre game developing a balanced party. Then for the final boss fight, it makes you use just one character solo- and you don't get to choose which one. It was the character I hated playing the most. Then the boss fight is one of those cheap asses that can break any of your chains, regenerate and has a cutscene every minute or so. It sucked badly, no other way to put it. Then if you persevere you are rewarded with the ending "Well Done, You Won". That's pretty much it.

So it started interesting and a lot of fun, became just good in the middle and finished up terrible leaving a lingering bad feeling. Overall experience just slightly above average I suppose.

runaway 3 a twist of fate (17th of feb)

The first thing I need to point out that I played the first 2 a decade ago and the runaway has been on my wishlist for about a decade.

My main issue is that the game is short, good but short. Brian got no real personally apart from the average point d click personally ( aka put things together and is kind of funny). The plot is about finding Brian innocent and is broken up into 6 chapters.

the first 2 chapters are the best/hardest (mainly because there is more stuff to do), 3 and 4 are ok/good but 5 and 6 feel rushed or put together at the last moment (reuses stuff from 1 and 2).

It is a good game

Ps just looked at hidden runaway, the sequel(?) er I am going to give it a pass (if it is still on the app store)

Just finished Brood War in StarCraft: Remastered. Frankly it was pretty tiresome and by the end I just wanted to get it over with. Unlike the base game I had never finished the expansion until today.

So, I have mixed feelings about this one. I had already mentioned after finishing the base campaign that StarCraft hasn't aged that well (e.g. bad unit behaviour, outdated UI etc.) and that especially the singleplayer campaign is in retrospect surprisingly meh. Now, the good news is that Brood War is a lot better in some regards.

In Brood War there were the first hints of Blizzard's later philosophy to single player campaigns: some of the missions are far more thematic in terms of gameplay and they are generally better thought-out. There's missions with all sorts of specific conditions: there's a mission where you have to kill cerebrates to stop certain Zerg "super powers", by the end there's missions where you have only 30 minutes to destroy a Protoss base or one where the enemy has a base which can't be directly attacked due to the lack of air units etc.. Gameplay-wise the missions were far more diverse and generally more interesting than in the base game. Also the hero missions, which revolved a lot around trial and error in the base game, now often have some puzzle aspect to them. Great!

Mechanically there's not that many additions but pretty notable ones, in particular the Dark Archon who can wololo enemies and the medic that allows Terrans to heal infantry units. To me these new units always felt either forced or underwhelming in terms of originality and I'm still not a very big fan of them. I never played the game enough in multiplayer to form a strong opinion on them but in singleplayer they were just decent additions, not mindblowing ones as far as I am concerned. Also, it's kinda weird that all three new air units can only target other air units (although one of them is also a more universal spellcaster unit) - Terrans and Protoss already had pretty powerful anti-air flyers, I would have expected rather the opposite for them, like bombers or something (although I can see how those might have messed up the balancing). Oh yeah, and I really appreciate the new tilesets (snow and desert) although they sadly have no effect on the gameplay.

My biggest gripe with Brood War is probably the story. After an amazing intro, which I consider the best cutscene in StarCraft to this day, things kinda go downhill. I never liked Zerg Kerrigan much: she's a ridiculously shallow and uninteresting character to me and sadly here the story began revolving around her. And her schemes don't seem like brilliant plans on her part but rather make all the other characters look like idiots, including the oh-so-wise Zeratul. She feels more like she belongs in a Disney cartoon than a sci-fi universe. It honestly sucks. There's a few interesting new characters but the way they are implemented into Kerrigan's story just wastes most of the potential they had. Also, Kerrigan's minion Duran is possibly the shittiest character in all of StarCraft. If he weren't the only black character in the game I wouldn't even have remembered him.

Finally: Brood War seriously overstays its welcome as far as I'm concerned. I thought I'd be quickly done with it, there's (so it seems at first) only eight missions per faction (instead of the 10 in the base game). But then the game goes "surprise, motherf..." and gives you two additional missions in the final campaign. And on average the missions are far bigger and longer than in the base game, I think it took me three or four times as long to finish Brood War as it took me to finish the base game.

Oh yeah, and difficulty-wise the campaign is generally a big step up from the base game but actually still surprisingly easy. Most missions can still be finished by spamming a combo of two unit types which are too much for the AI to handle and in the end even the supposedly super challenging missions were rather easy compared to many other RTS campaigns. I honestly felt like the campaign was more tiresome than challenging.