Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition

Very enjoyable. My first build engine game. Played on Come Get Some difficulty, no idea what that translates to lol.
I definitely liked the last two episodes, with their wacky levels like Duke-Burger and Shop-N-Bag.
That's not to take away from the first two episodes though, they were more cohesive in level atmosphere. I just got tired of the bleak look of the space levels in the second one.
Unfortunately, I had to resort to using console commands to skip the Submarine stage. I think it was Derelict. Going though some doors visually glitched out the game until I backed out of the door. The visual glitch instantly gave me a headache and it kept happening. Which was too bad because I enjoyed the parts that I did play of that level, a ton of enemies too.

Interesting weapons as well. The shotgun was used the most, but the all the other ones were useful in certain situations, even the laser trip bomb. My favorite was the expander though, even though you never get much ammo for it. And the shrinker saved my ass so many times. All in all, very fun variety of useful weapons. It helps to experiment to see which guns work the best on which enemies.

I gotta say though, half of the bosses were kind of lame. The first bigass chaingun guy was pretty hard with his bigasas chaingun hitscanning me to smithereens. And the Alien Queen was interesting since I was underwater I guess. the other two were easy, just strafe and shoot.

Shadow Warrior Classic is free and I had my sights on Ion Maiden, but the probability of me getting motion sickness is high enough for me to take a super long break from Build Engine games. And I heard Blood is hard as hell, which means much longer staring at Build Engine, no bueno.

P.S.- Favorite easter egg, the drive thru sound bite from Duke-Burger, hands down.

Two Worlds 2 (main campaign)

A hard game to review. Some aspects of the game are fantastic and others...are not.

Pros:
Some of the dialogue is well done, even funny at times
Voice acting was generally strong
The story has its moments, and I (mostly) appreciate its willingness to defy expectations, even if the final villain was fairly obvious from early on.

Meh:
*Graphics are all over the place. Sometimes good, sometimes pretty choppy/sad.
*Compared to the first game, this is much less open world overall, as each chapter unfolds on a completely different continent, and several of the chapters are really linear in their own right.
*The magic system is very interesting, and allows for great customization. But the flaw imo is you only gain strength by gathering cards, and even the ability to buy cards you want/need from vendors is pretty RNG. Especially early on that's a significant constraint: putting attribute points into willpower does not help your ability to do damage, whereas str (melee) & dex (ranged) do.
*The created world is generally less interesting than TW1, both because of how it's fragmented, and whereas the first game really had both interesting vistas and dungeons, the dungeons here feel meh, and there are relatively few places where you can really cut loose and explore after the first main continent.
*I love the IDEA of the crafting system, but actually using it is pretty slow and ponderous.

Cons:
*Melee combat is not so good. Magic/ranged can be more fun, but not really viable at early levels or in certain fights. At level 10-15 I could steamroll things in melee that were pretty hard to kill by magic/ranged, so I just kinda gave in and shifted to melee even though all my early points are elsewhere.

*Some significantly wrong -if slightly amusing - closed captioning

*Some bugs. Not many crashes, but against the monsters near the end that can knock you down, on 2-3 occasions they literally knocked me into the landscape and I couldn't move/attack/get up.

*Chapter 2 really didn't work for me and it's where I lost steam and didn't play the game at all for a month or so. While it's necessary in terms of the overall story progress as I did one side quest after another interminably. Even as someone who just roamed randomly through the first chapter picking every herb in site and exploring every cave, Chap 2 was where it felt like the urgency of the main plot evaporated.
*Also, given that nearly every building/cave was story related and locked til you reached that point in the story, it really wasn't particularly fun to explore.

On the whole, I'd say this is a game that I really loved in Chapter 1, liked in Chapter 3 (however brief), and was let down in Chapters 2 (too linear) and Chapter 4 (I guess that was the end).

Did like it enough that I'll see at least how the "Flying Pirates" DLC plays...but maybe not tonight.

Klingon Honor Guard

Interesting - a game on Unreal Engine released before Unreal, with servicable AI where you play as a Klingon and yes, iconic blade is here and it's OP.

Is game any good?
Nah.
Way too long for it's own good. Boring and tedious exploring. Only 2-3 guns were useful. Hunting for keys and switches gets old fast.
AI can dodge and often do, like Unreal most guns are slow projectiles so you go closer and either shoot them in the face or stab with Klingon blade to pieces.
Maps and skyboxes were cool tho.

Clive Barker's Undying

A really unique game to say the least.

Overall the dark atmosphere of the game is a treat for every horror fans out there, it's so well made it's hard to not feel fully immerged in Patrick Galloway's journey. The storyline is really good and the mystery surrounding the Convenant familly makes you want to play the game more and more.

There are so many things to do, so many locations to explore, ennemies to fight, weapons to use, spells to learn, the game always have something new for you and it's great. Using a weapon with one hand and magic with the other is a great idea and the fact that you need to use some spells to reach new areas or found secrets is pretty clever.

This game is amazing and if you've never played it before just do it now, it's totally worth the price !

Half-life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Just finished EP2 and might as well group them all together as I just went straight through them all. About my 4th time completing HL2 and 2nd time completing the two episodes. Yep, still fantastic.

Majesty 2 Collection

Even though I knew the game is much worse than the original I decided to play the whole collection. Sadly, expansions do not make the game any better. I wouldn't say the whole thing is terrible, I did enjoy it but while there are some improvements and nice additions in general it's a huge step backwards. First of all heroes do not have a personality anymore. In the original you can really see that they behave differently, depending on their occupation. Here, not so much.

The second problem is that upgraded graphics crippled the gameplay – you can see clearly what's happening, who fighting who and who can use some healing. So in the end I did not really care about my heroes - I could resurrect them after all.

The third problem is the change of how temples work. In the original you can really plan your strategy, if you need a swarm of weak monsters (Krypta + Fervus), noble warriors with healing abilities (Agrela + Dauros). On top of that you can also pick Helia or Lunord which gives an extra flavor. Or, instead of all these gods you can choose Krolm and swarm the map with barbarians. It is great. Sadly, you don't see anything like that in Majesty 2 as you have to build temples on holy grounds and there are no limits which temples you may build. In theory it may sound ok but given that it's almost impossible to defend a temple far away from your home you can't really build more than one or two every mission. And I always pick Krolm as the Wrath spell works for every hero.

So yeah, the game is just average on its own and very bad if you compare it to the original. Even a little reskin with the last expansion cannot change that. I'm glad I'm done with the game and most probably will never play it again.


Full list

Just finished Assassin's Creed: Rogue Remastered on PS4. I liked it.

Rogue was released alongside Unity just so last gen console owners wouldn't end up empty-handed and is pretty much "just another Black Flag". While playing Unity I felt like that one was infinitely worse than Black Flag and indeed, even this presumably much cheaper rehash of Black Flag was much more enjoyable to me than Unity.

The basic gameplay is pretty much as tight as it gets in any AC games I've played thus far (which would be all of them before Syndicate) and while the naval stuff isn't even remotely as impressive anymore as it was when Black Flag was released it's still very enjoyable and sailing the seas just puts a smile on my face.

This one's protagonist, Shay Cormac, who betrays the assassins and becomes a Templar, is among the most reasonable and likeable ones in the series, as far as I'm concerned - contrary to what the game's marketing suggests Shay is not just a ruthless killer but switches sides for perfectly valid moral reasons. His story is generally pretty good by the series' standards, although it's a lot less spectacular, being almost entirely focused on his personal revenge against his former brothers. That premise is very interesting but barely exploited by the game. Even as a Templar the game plays pretty much the same as always, the only notable differences to earlier games are that now the world is riddled with assassins who can ambush you (which is meh and works mechanically like the natives in Black Flag, from what I recall) and that instead of doing assassination contracts you get to interrupt assassinations, which is a cool premise (you're on a timer and have to detect and kill assassins before they can kill their target) but falls flat in its execution. And there are almost no other noteworthy side activities in the game. Too bad.

My biggest gripe with the game, though, is that it seriously lacks scale. Black Flag's world felt massive and kept me sailing for weeks. By contrast, this one feels small and almost claustrophobic. It lacks really interesting big places or events and the six chapters are over surprisingly quickly. There's only one big location, New York, but even that one feels pretty small and uninteresting and is barely used by the main missions (I never even entered it's "higher level" districts). The ending is very anti-climactic, there's no truly challenging fights - the ending was a serious "what? that's it?" moment. I've visited maybe half the locations in the game, I have not even collected half the upgrades and I feel like I have literally no incentive to keep playing.

That said: I've enjoyed my time with the game a lot, in spite of all my complaints.

Half-Life: Blue Shift
It's basically more Half-Life! It's good but a little short.

DEEP SPACE WAIFU NEKOMIMI

Because yeah, titles are better in all caps!! :)

Fun as the other games of the series. Nothing deep (huehuehue!) but good clean (not so clean ^_^) fun with a shmup that you can even play in a one-handed mode!

Plus, games of this series are really unexpensive, can be played all in a go or in short sessions, can have or not full nude, so yeah, I like these games and the "women with cat ears" edition wasn't different!

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

Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc

I get the sense that Rayman 2 and 3 on PC are NOT meant to really be played with keyboards.

Rayman 2 I can only really get to the one area with a flying shell having to dodge lasers and can't get past that, except like over 10 years ago when I was having mental issues and couldn't concentrate on anything else; I beat the game circa 2009 but have never managed it since.

I consider Rayman 2 the better game by a good chunk, BUT I was actually able to beat Rayman 3's final boss more easily than Rayman 2's, which I was really surprised by and have to give props. (Granted I looked into a walkthrough to see what I was up against beforehand.)

I preferred Rayman 2's gibberish voices (at least in the version I had) and the less silly dialogue and cutscenes. It's probably appropriate that Rayman 3 HD was re-rated E10+ instead of just E as some of that dialogue was rather risque. Maybe they were aiming for a T-rating for some reason like Beyond Good And Evil, I dunno.

Controls and camera are the biggest issues I have with Rayman 3. Maybe it's easier with gamepad or controller but I don't own one nor am used to them. Trying to strafe while managing the camera on the same key was rough at times, then throw in trying to throw curved shots too. Pretty frustrating at times.

I also had some noticeable framerate chugging which was surprising, it wasn't terrible but I don't know why it was happening since I have a 2012 computer and I assume Rayman 3 doesn't have emulation using extra resources like DOSBox 3Dfx.

Anyway, I'm glad I at least finished Rayman 3 but it doesn't have Rayman 2's charm nor my biased nostalgia for Rayman 2, and I'd be more likely to revisit R2 than R3.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is an improvement on the first game in nearly every way. The 16-bit graphics are slick, there are gameplay additions like noisy floors you have to crawl on to avoid detection or use to detect enemies by sound, and the music is absolutely great. Puzzles are mostly fair to figure out and the radio is generally helpful if you need a hint or two on where to go.

There are a couple of parts in which I felt like the game was adding some needless padding; e.g., killing a late game boss only to have to trudge all the way back to the first area so you can obtain a key to open a closet next to his body and get an important item, thus triggering a cutscene in which the enemy you "just killed" can gasp out his final words...that's just really goofy. There were one or two puzzles I took a while to figure out because I tripped an alarm, which got crucial characters out of the positions they needed to be in for the solution to work.

I know these games have a reputation for being a bit pretentious now, but this one has a good sense of humor about itself. A character will advise you over the radio to "think like a Konami video game designer" to figure out puzzles, and the game generally just feels like Hideo Kojima was trying to cram as many references to his favorite movies into one game as he could. Character portraits are thinly disguised photos of actors like Mel Gibson, Sean Connery, or Dolph Lundgren, and one boss is named Running Man while another is named Predator. There's also a line of dialogue that ties the game in with Snatcher. It's all in good fun.

Ape Out - 4/5

I really dig the jazzy, Saul Bass-esque aesthetic.

The gameplay is simple, but fun (and often cathartic). Although, the difficulty can be a bit uneven - some levels I beat on my first try, while others took around thirty attempts. This is, at least partially, due to the game's procedurally generated design - sometimes you can just get a bad start to a level and die through no fault of your own.

Ultimately, I'd say it's a unique and stylish game that's definitely worth checking out.

Finished a bunch of games since last time:
- tiny & Tall: Gleipnir Part 1 -> A nice point'n click but part of a series and it ends with a cliffhanger.
- Warhammer 40.000 - Space Marine -> A really good orc-killing game :)
- Burly Men at Sea -> I played a few times but it was not really interesting.
- The Walking Dead Season 3 -> Second playthrough and I liked it more than season 2.
- Prisoner of Ice -> Not like Shadow of the Comet at all, I was very disappointed.
- Tengami -> Nice art but a few puzzles in the end were too difficult and it was not very interesting.
- The Walking Dead Season 4 -> I really liked it, good to see an ending to Clementine's story.

Full list here.

Indeed. When I got the Legacy Collection for PS3 a few years ago I actually went through the entire series starting with the MSX games. Especially Metal Gear 2 really blew me away. The game is just so complex and massive, it basically already includes everything from Metal Gear Solid, just presented in 2D pixel art and without voice overs. Heck, even the story of the two games is so similar that I felt like Metal Gear Solid is for the most part just a remake of Metal Gear 2.

Yeah, and the box art of Metal Gear 1 is based off a still from the first Terminator movie. And a lot of the music in Metal Gear 2 is very much "inspired by" melodies from the Terminator and Rambo films, probably also a few others. There was a lot more of that stuff, they really didn't care about copyright back then.

Fun fact: the PS2/PS3 port of Metal Gear 2 which is included with Metal Gear Solid 3 actually uses new portraits, presumably to avoid legal risks but they are also more in line with the character designs from later games. They didn't retouch the music, though.

Sleeping Dogs (XB1X)

Definitive Edition, so contains all the add on stuff and in 1080p instead of 720p like the original console versions. This game kept making me think of L.A.Noir, you play a cop and there is a big mismatch between the seriousness of the story and the GTA style antics of the open world stuff. The story was good though, feeling a lot like your typical gangster movie mixed with a kung fu movie.

But then you jump in a car, drive to the next mission and run over 15 pedestrians, cause 5 traffic accidents and steal a car with no consequences.

Some people like the combat, but I didn't. It really just ends up coming down to waiting for the enemy to attack and countering. That's it. There is more depth, like combo's and the like but you never get to effectively use them because you are always fighting large groups and the combo's take time and can be interrupted- usually before you even get them to start. So every time you try to use a combo someone moves in behind you and gets a free hit and breaks it. If there was more one on one it may have worked- but the few occasions where you fight what passes for bosses one on one, the combat becomes QTE, so again you don't use the deeper aspects of the system. Like I said it just ends up being patiently waiting for an enemy attack and countering until they are all down.

Then all the major story enemies run. I hate runners. Even worse is that the chases are largely scripted. You are not going to catch them until the game wants you to, no matter how well you chase- it's all fixed...just setting you up for scripted ambushes. This also reminds me of L.A.Noire.

The racing side missions were fun, but I always like driving and racing in my open world games. The other side stuff was only average. But overall the story was fun enough, and them main missions were good enough to make the game fun overall. Just not up there with the great open world games is all.