COD 4: Modern Warfare Remastered PS4.

Man, FPS games on consoles are rough. I have to play on a difficulty lower than what I do on PC. The game is still good but I much prefer K&M in FPS. I still think COD1 is the best Call of Duty game but COD4 is the second best so I highly recommend this game - but get it on PC if you can.

Sniper Elite 4 (XB1X)

Decided to do this one whilst I still have Game Pass active. Only played V2 in the series before and thought that one was an average to decent shooter that I enjoyed but wouldn't play a second time. It seems that series has come a long way, as this one was really good.

The stand out aspect for me was the maps and how the game lets you lose into a huge open area with objectives to achieve, both compulsory and optional. The missions were great and quite varied- Italian country side, an Italian Village, docklands, a wilderness map etc. The story was nothing special, but it's the missions and the objectives that count.

Whilst V2 was a pretty linear shooter that made sure you needed to do a bit of sniping to get through, the series is now more what I'd describe as a stealth game where sniping is just one of the options to get the job done. You could conceivably do most of the missions primary using close in stealth kills if you wanted, or snipe from long range, move, snipe, move etc.
The game does a decent job of accounting for one of the main challenges of a sniper- namely the enemy zones in on where shots come from over time. Meaning you need to move to different cover. The AI pinpoints you locations from the shot if possible and will competently surround you if you are lazy.

It was a really well done game that I didn't expect to get caught up in as much as I did. There are 8 missions, which doesn't sound a lot, but most took me 2 hours using my slow and methodical map clearing technique. The shortest took 1.5 hours and the longest 3 hours. The wide difference in how you can go about your objectives means it could even be replayed. I better get the third game sometime as well.

Darksiders: Warmastered Edition! Yep, i replayed the entire game, just for that new Scythe and slightly better graphics, lol! Honestly, though, i didn't notice a soul gathering boost... Farming was as slow and painful as ever, so obviously, i gave up on fully unlocking/buying everything...

Party Hard (PS4)

This is an action game where your goal is to kill everyone else. Each level is a screen-sized map, with partiers, traps, and places to hide bodies. On a successful run, each level took me anywhere from a couple minutes up to around 15 minutes, depending on luck and play style. Victims can be killed at your own pace, it’s up to you how stealthy you want to be, quick reflexes & good timing are *not* required (thankfully)! Whenever you die or get caught by the police, the entire level resets.

There are quite a large number of random factors, such as which particular traps will appear, which particular random events will happen, and which particular tool you will receive when opening a package.

Although the randomness in theory makes the levels more replayable, in practice the game is fairly repetitive once you figure out how everything works, and personally I would have preferred the random factor to be toned down considerably.

Overall though, it’s pretty fun for a mindless arcade/action game, good for short bursts of play. I’d recommend it on sale.

Far Cry 5

My first Far Cry game ever, actually. I own them all, but I was quite turned off by Far Cry 1 back in the day. Caved in after seeing so many crazy moments on youtube, and didn't regret it.

Visually, it's stunning. Really. I really felt I was there and the landscape is absolutely beautiful and quite varied.

Storywise, it is what is it. I like it, but was somewhat irked with the mandatory "minibosses" sections, which could happen out of nowhere. I mean, you kill heaps of sect members, you're with your sidekicks and then, out of the blue, the mini boss kidnapp you... Whatever.

Is it crazy? Yes, but anything can happen anytime, and it doesn't make sense at all, like sect members and resistance members fight and then, out of the blue, a grizzly bear comes and mauls everyone! I understand it could be a huge turn-off for some people, but the whackyness was welcome for me, as it made the theme a bit lighter.

Not so many different weapons, but that wasn't a problem for me. Sidekicks were also varied and quite interesting, there's a lot of things to do apart from the missions, like hunting, fishing and seeking the collectibles.

So, yeah, a huge hit for me. And now, I want to play 3, 4, Primal and New dawn!! But I also have to try the DLCs of 5, like Vietnam, on Mars and Zombies. They seem to be quite short, so I'll likely go through them first to call Far Cry 5 over.

So far in 2019 : https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2019/post24

Don't forget Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. It's pretty good as well and is stand alone to FC3.

I know, I have, I even tried it back in the day, but was not convinced at all. I'll have to try it again one of these days :)

Dungeons 3
I got it from the community giveaway, donated by Doc0075, thanks a lot again!

This is the first Dungeons game I can easily recommend. The very first one has very weird mechanics: you can hire minions and build traps to hurt heroes a bit but you should always kill them yourself. The second one, while much better game, tends to be annoying because of amount of micromanagement involved.

So yeah, the third one in the series is much better polished. This time you get a decent tech-tree and upgrading is no painful anymore. Little snots (your workers = imps in Dungeon Keeper) finally have their ow population limit so higher workforce does not limit your army (it was very annoying in Dungeons 2). You can simultaneously hire creatures from all three previously known groups (Horde, Demons, Undeads) so there are more to choose from. There is no longer a hero which can disarm traps and that finally makes them useful (in Dungeons 2 there is almost no reason to bother). Of course there are some changes that I don’t like, for example lack of specialization. You can upgrade your creatures but you can’t choose a specialization for them which was a nice touch in Dungeons 2.

So what’s the game about? Basically you have to build a dungeon, fortify it with traps, hire creatures and crash your opponents that try to storm your dungeon. The trick is that down in the dungeon your creatures have their own priorities and do whatever they wish. You can pick them up and drop down somewhere else and in this way encourage them to do something else. But you can’t force them. If you want to attack the overworld, on the other hand, you simply drop them at the exit of your dungeon and they will crawl to the surface. Here you have a direct control over your minions just like in typical RTS. This concept works pretty well to my surprise (I mean the overworld part) and the overall experience is pleasant and entertaining. And thus I can wholeheartedly recommend the game. It’s not a Dungeon Keeper but a very good game on its own.


Full list

Manhunter: New York. I had beaten the DOS version back when it first came out. I decided to check out the Apple IIgs version this time around, which has identical graphics but superior music and sound effects.

It's a Sierra game (published and using their engine but not developed by them) but instead of their usual style, it's a first-person perspective. You move a cursor around to find things to examine or pick up. It's almost like an early precursor to stuff like Myst. The story is that these aliens called the Orbs (because they're basically big floating eyeballs) invaded and conquered Earth, and are oppressing the human survivors, making everyone wear drab robes like monks and no one is allowed to speak ever. Your character is a manhunter, a sort of detective who's supposed to hunt down uppity humans who are screwing with the Orbs' order. The game is divided into four days, each day starts with a new crime. You turn on this laptop that lets you track the movements of other people, watch where the suspects went, and then visit the scenes and figure out what they were doing. The story ends up involving a resistance movement and a human serial killer.

The primary mode of the game is fine, and when it's working well you do feel like you're involved in uncovering this mystery. A lot of the puzzles involve you finding items that you can use in certain places, exploring mazes, or solving riddles. Where things go awry is that the game also likes to inflict "arcade" sequences on you. In fact this game might be the patient zero for why action sequences in adventure games isn't a good idea. Although I didn't find too many of the action parts difficult, the reality is that they're too slow, simple, and unresponsive to appeal to arcade game fans and people who are there for the puzzles will only be irritated by the game forcing them to endure them. On the bright side, although saving often is advisable, if you get killed the game gives you a hint as to why you died and then sets you back in a safe spot so you can try again, which takes the sting out of some of the more difficult instant-kill parts, such as the journey through a mine-infested Central Park.

The story is okay, although it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger that leads into Manhunter: San Francisco. I remember when the game originally came out, there was a lot of chatter about how it was a bold Orwellian vision that was breaking new ground for PC gaming, and I guess that's sort of true, but it also still has a lot of the goofy humor old games usually had (e.g., if you fall from a great height, instead of dying your character goes flat like Wile E. Coyote for a moment before popping back to normal). It is pretty gory, though. I can't think of too many games before it that were as bloody, especially on the PC.

Add the DX11 version of Shadow Warrior 2013! But i couldn't locate the extra, added content, unique to the DX11 version... What the hell was it???

Never mind. Zilla fight. That's why it felt so pointless...

The First Tree

In this walking simulator you re-enact the dream a husband is telling his wife in bed at night, about a vixen searching for her three cubs in a vast mountain landscape. The gameplay consists of steering the fox through the five or six areas, hunting for little stars to collect and memories to dig out, which will lead to voice-over "logs" in which the husband reminisces about being a teenager in a seemingly desolate place in Alaska and about the relation to his father.

I can't really recommend the game. Graphics, sounds and music are nice enough, but there's not much to do considering how large the areas are. You can toggle between walking and running, but I I have no idea why anyone would ever want to walk - personally I'd have preferred the option to run even faster, since often that's all what you're doing for minutes. The stars to collect as well as the memories to dig out are rather sparse in comparison. There was also some confusion around three special stars to catch in order to progress in the third level. The three stars were far apart from each other but I couldn't see any way to activate them and thought I might have to come back later, when in truth you just have to press a specific button at a very specific time (even if you know that it doesn't always work, so I'm not surprised I didn't figure it out on my own). All in all, the gameplay was rather tedious and boring.

And frankly, I thought neither the voice-acting nor the writing and story very convincing. It's just the average everyday life, family, coping with death and regret story that I've come to expect from these "serious" walking simulator type indie games, no surprises, and not all that well done either. I've seen it described as a great emotional experience, but there wasn't much emotion in the voice-acting, which, it seems, was done by the dev and his wife themselves, not professional actors, and sadly it shows and diminishes the impact of the tale. Apart from that, I also thought there were a lot of truisms and trivialities presented as deep thoughts. I don't want to be mean, it's probably a very personal and heartfelt project, but I felt that it would have been more meaningful for me to spend the approximately two hours it takes to finish the game with talking to my own living family members instead. Well, I guess that's something to take away from this. ;)

If you want good storytelling and emotions, better play What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home, Firewatch etc. If you're looking for a walking simulator with some simple action, platforming and collectathon elements, I'd recommend Valley instead. If you just want to play as a wild animal, maybe try the Shelter games (although personally, I do find them a bit boring, too).

Finished Spec Ops: The Line. A good shooter but a bit difficult at times. Story is better than most of the shooters.

Full list here.

Warp Glider

Well, it's a score attack game, so by "finishing" it, I mean I got all the achievements. Which is only 6 of them, and all score based. And it only took me about an hour. Game needs more achievements. It's a pretty fun "single stick avoider" though.

Max Payne 3

Not as good as the first 2 games either action or style-wise, but the story is still good and I enjoyed it for that at least. I ended up playing it as a standard cover-shooter, but I'm told there's a way to play it without taking cover, so I might look at those youtube videos and try again with the New York Minute mode to see if I have more fun that way.

Unreal Gold: Return to Na Pali

Just finished this expansion up. Definitely not as good as the base game.
Kind of ended abruptly after what I thought was a mini-boss.
It's really more of the same, with some extra guns, one of which I used extensively.

My main gripe with the game was the added voiceover for the main protagonist. It wasn't in the base game, why add it now? Kind of ruined whatever idea I had about what kind of person I was playing as. It also retroactively made me think of how similar to Metroid Prime Unreal is. Some chick crashes onto some planet, gets a ton of guns and kills shit, all while saying not a single word. You even read logs to piece together what happened.

Time wise I think it took half as long as the base game. I missed one upgrade for the default gun.

All in all it was fun, but did not feel like a continuation of the base game, rather an addition.

Hopefully Quake will be on sale soon, or I can choose to boot up from my backlog.

Age of Empires 3
Played a lot more like Age of Mythology than an Age of Empires game but I really liked AoM so not really an issue there. The story was ok and the card system was kinda cool. Now onto the expansions!