Rusty Lake: Roots (2016) (Linux/Wine)

OK, Rusty Lake series are one of these games, which I'd never discover without GOG curation. I just ignore this kind of games. With backlog full of well known classics I'm just not interested in digging through hundreds of new indie titles in search of gems. In this case bringing Rusty Lake to GOG was a sign that perhaps these are something different and worth trying. And - indeed! Thanks, GOG!

I liked Rusty Lake Hotel and it was a matter of time to jump into the next game in the series. Roots are longer, offers deeper, less abstract and more consistent story. It's still a composition of small chapters (almost 40, including bonus content), being little puzzles to solve - and I love the formula. Can't wait to play Rusty Lake: Paradise.

List of all games completed in 2019.

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Great to hear all of that. I'm in kind of similar situation, as I finished the game a few years ago and had very similar impressions. What I can recommend is - do not stop on this one! There are more old crpgs giving the same, absolutely amazing level of immersion, providing experience you'll remember forever. Just to mention Fallout 1, Arcanum or Bloodlines, which are very different, but I believe are very close to perfection of Planescape.

I suppose it still can be developed someday, however I don't expect anything close to this experience. Too bad, indeed.

This is why mods are sometimes preferrable if one can make use of such(knows how to use them and is ok with them).

It reminds me of all the great and even decent games left hanging due to no sequels to finish the story.....like Anachronox/Toonstruck(the second half is complete but they shelved it)/Undying/Jericho/etc.

Congratulations, to both of you :)
In case of Morrowind for me, start and first drop in 2008, get back to it and drop again in 2012, and that was it. And played it on Vista those times, when I installed it again after installing 7 I saw that it was awfully choppy and didn't try to figure things out too much, and haven't tried again so far.
As for PS:T, finished it at the start of 2010. Still impressed by the writing.

Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith & the fight for sanctuary

Yes, it's the suprise free DLC to make the link between Borderlands 2 and the incoming Boderlands 3. On a marketing point of view, it's a great move, making the buzz again, after the realase of the HD packs for all three games.

But game-wise, is it good? It is! ^_^ Of course, it's not very long (3-6 hours depending if you're a completionist or not), but it is great as it is. The scenario is simple but nice, and full of the one-liners we all love from Tiny Tina, Brick and Mordecai (and others). Yeah, when you first encounter them, the new enemy faction is a bit of a bullet-spong hell, and it can be a bit underwhelming... But then, it forces you to try new ways to solve the problem, and you find new rarity-level weapons (rainbow?), the level that will be, as a matter of fact, introduced in Borderlands 3!

So yes, I think there's something in that DLC for everybody who loves Borderlands: more story, more loot, more enemis and... Butt Stallion of course!

Me, it hyped me for Boderlands again and I caved in to preorder Borderlands 3! September 13th is not far away and I know I'll have a blast playing it!

So far in 2019 (not very productive this year): https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2019/post24

Redeemer: Enhanced Edition

Had a blast with this isometric brawler&gunner, though it became a bit of a slog towards the end when a lot of the enemies had lots of HP.. Pretty short - only 6 hours to beat the story campaign + two arcade levels afterwards. But I only paid $1.50 for the game on sale so that's fine.

Rusty Lake Paradise (2018) (Linux/Wine)

This one was unpleasant surprise for me. After Hotel and Roots, which I really liked, this one was really disappointing. It appears to be closer (gameplay-wise) to clasical point&click adventures. There are more locations and generaly more space available at once. Unfortunately this makes the game very difficult and also makes the controls and navigation problems quite frustrating. The game is based on a bit disturbing story and weird puzzles (as both titles created before), but this time puzzles are really hard to solve, you'll probably need pen and paper to make some notes and some time to check a lot of combinations. Perhaps it makes the game more interesting for someone, but I didn't liked the new style of puzzle. I appreciate creativity, some of new puzzles (i.e. music-based) were interesting, but some were a real pain for me, sorry.

List of all games completed in 2019.

Finished a few ones since last time:
- Day of the Tentacle: It was the remaster which I liked even though the original is still good graphics wise for me. It was an excellent game and the remaster is an excellent one too :)
- Bone - Episode 1: An average game, not much to say about it.
- Darksiders: I did not see any difference between this remaster and the original one. I liked it but there are a few annoying moments (portal-like level and some bosses).

Full list here.

Bad Dream: Coma (2017) (Linux/Wine)

The game looked very promising for me, but this one turned out to be mistake. Not only graphics is sketchy here, the whole game is a little sketchy. I hate how navigation works here (directions are totally messed up and arrows have nothing to do with a place where you come from), I didn't liked puzzles, I wasn't catched by the atmosphere and, to be honest, the whole game looks like something created by teens. Even that sketchy graphics, which at first brought my attention, does not look so well in practice. OK, there are some interesting ideas, more then one ending (yes, you can loose here), some creative referrences to some meta-reality, but, sorry, the game is just bad both from story and gameplay perspective.

List of all games completed in 2019.

DuckTales Remastered

I've completed it on easy difficulty and overall I really enjoyed it. The level design was great and I also liked the remastered graphics and cutscenes. Some sections are super frustrating though (especially the last section in the volcano), because the controls aren't as tight as they should be and so you'll die or lose health quite often for no real reason. Because of that I'm not really sure that I want to replay the game on a higher difficulty with limited lifes.

Complete list of finished games in 2019

Yoku’s Island Express

Fun metroidvania/pinball hybrid. Pintroidvania, maybe? Whatever. No dying in this one, which is good because I suck at pinball. The story was cute, the "boss fights" were easy, and there are a bunch of optional quests and stuff remaining which I'll give a shot.

Edit: well went ahead and got all the achievements except "Perfectionist" because I'm not enough of one to search out the 40-something unmarked on map scarabs, even with a guide.

Quake II, or as I now like to call it: Brown Corridors - The Game

Yeah, the first one was a lot better. The graphic engine was top notch at the time, but everything is just brown, brown and then some more brown. I even liked Doom 3 (Dark Corridors: The Game) more.

Thief: Deadly Shadows
Played with the Sneaky Upgrade, it was really good. I loved the open-ish city to be able to sneak around before doing missions. The climbing gloves were kinda cool but I kept forgetting about them and only used them a handful of times but at the same time didn't really miss the rope arrows. Now on to the first two since it seems like I'm playing the series backwards :P

So much for me saying I won't be finishing another game this month, since I grabbed this as a freebie from itch and also submitted it on MobyGames and played it. Short, less than 2h including taking screenshots and going through the last act again for the other ending, but would count it as an actual game, with those puzzles.

The Müll Littoral

For a short game of this genre, it could have been a lot worse. The developer actually put a fair amount of effort into the writing and presentation, not trying to merely make a point or even just explore a certain issue, and also not placing the game in this “reality”, but managing to tell a story and place it in a fantasy world quite well, perhaps better than would usually be expected considering the constraints imposed by the game’s length and the chosen gameplay style. The art also complements this, the fact that it’s “gritty” perhaps making it even more suitable for the theme, and the music is good enough as well. Some puzzles were also reasonably interesting, and I liked the change of pace brought by the “meditation” one, which I “translated” into equations and then took the time to solve.
That said, I’m not fond of the way the regular puzzles play out, needing to be so fast and also pretty accurate, to click the right objects in the right order, and in some cases also at precisely the right moments, not even having a second to spare. In some ways it makes some sense, if you also consider the theme, but this is what makes up the actual gameplay and, as I said, I’m really not fond of it. On the other hand, while the option to skip straight to certain points in the game from the main menu is good, I guess it exists to make up for the fact that you can’t save, which can be annoying if you really need to leave at some point, and I would have preferred to also be able to skip straight to the final choice, to not have to go through the last two puzzles again to see both endings.
As for the way it deals with the issue it wants to explore, anxiety, it could again have been much worse… But also quite a lot better. The scenes depicted actually have meanings and it doesn’t push as hard as many would, reveals a fair amount of understanding, even makes points about those meaning to help needing to learn how, and to just offer comfort, including that moment when Glasswalker is told he tried to teach Juul to fly by pushing her off a cliff and telling her to flap, which tends to be what people do, starting from the “professionals”. However, it does in the end push the need to “fix” oneself, and that great harm will come out of not doing so, to the point that it’s unacceptable to not manage it, and quickly. Needing to accept that as the only path and, even then, to sacrifice much for what I guess is supposed to be the “comforting” ending bothered me to say the least. It’s supposedly not Juul’s fault, but only if she makes exactly the choices she “needs” to and “fixes” herself in time, eh? Otherwise, apparently it is her fault, and not an acceptable course of action.

Diablo 2 (base - SP)

Well...parts of it were very good. I'm going to be flamed for saying this unpopular opinion, but other parts, not so much.

All in all, I would say the experience is very uneven. Acts 1-2 are fairly flushed out and lengthy, and 3-4 are just kinda there and go by before you know it.

For example, I finished Act 2 at lvl 25. I finished Act 3 at 27, and Act 4 at 28. Combined it was probably four hours to get through the last two acts (you know, just defeating two major demons, NBD), and that long only because I managed to get insta-gibbed by a pack of super fast demons who decided to hang out on my corpse while I kited them off 1-2 at a time (and died repeatedly since I had no decent replacement gear because I hadn't died in forever, and drops were underwhelming). Gear-wise I ended the game wearing pretty much what I'd had way back in Act 2.

I hear LOD makes it waaay better, but...my guess is that's for people who want to farm gear for lols, or maybe for the multi-player. Neither of which really appeals to me. After Act 2, I didn't really enjoy this enough to toss another $10 into it and hope for the best in one more Act when there's plenty else to play, and the last two acts were completely underwhelming in really every regard (art, gear, enemies, level design, etc).

My second biggest beef was that the controls aren't very responsive. It wasn't unusual to be face to face in melee, frantically clicking away on the map to kite out to avoid an enemies major attack, only to watch your character continuing to attack enemies you are definitely not clicking on and not moving.

I think my other minor beef was that in a few zones it was hard to navigate without the mini-map up, but it was hard to actually see anything happening with it up. Oh, and the game amusingly decided that the altar I needed most in hell was frost resist. Um, thanks for that?

Also, just as a tip, the key to beating Duriel (act 2 boss) is stacking thawing potions. Without that, it's impossible, with it it's cake. Which...makes the whole experience not very interesting. Diablo himself (act 4) was basically just face tanking til you run out of health pots, then portal back to town to reload, port back, repeat. I'm sure there's a more interesting way to fight it with better gear, but his hit box seemed a bit odd when moving, I'd occasionally take damage from some unknown source unpredictably, so just sitting in and potting through it was both faster and ultimately safer.

I had owned (and beaten) the game on disc, and really enjoyed the ambiance/nostalgia of replaying Diablo 1 when it came to GoG (thanks to doc!), but D2 really didn't hold up to my memory and expectations, alas.

Edit: Minor addition- without LOD the storage chest is painfully small.Which is the main reason I didn't have any replacement gear when I died. The chest held the horadric cube (which itself was packed with stuff) and gems and Wirt's leg basically took up all the space. Things like set gear? Just vendor trash with no room to store it to actually build a set, and none of the pieces were all that hot by themselves.

GTA IV: The Lost and the Damned (PS3)

One of two DLC released for GTA IV, and as far as I know one of only two with a single player campaign. The Lost and the Damned see's you play as the vice president of a biker gang, whose president has recently come out of prison looking to restart old rivalry's and get back into the drugs business. As vice-president your job is to try keep the gang alive, cleaning up the presidents mess's and doing the dirty jobs to keep your clubs finances up. As a DLC it expects you to have completed the game and so the missions are fairly difficult, one notably difficult one involves getting away from the police in a bus, an incredibly difficult task given it's slow speed and terrible handling. One notable feature is the ability to call in back up for missions, which is incredibly useful and most of the time essential. It's slightly longer than your typical DLC, but still short, there is little variety to the missions, with the majority being 'Kill guys on bikes'. This is also one of the few protagonists in the series to appear in two games, as he also makes an appearance in GTA V. It's pretty good for a DLC but I'd only recommend it if you enjoyed GTA IV.

GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony (PS3)

TBoGT is quite a different experience to the above dlc and most other GTA stories. For once you are not a gangster, you are a club owner partnered with 'Gay Tony', a legend amongst the clubbing scene, but more recently a dying legend. With your empire crumbling around you as the mobsters who finance your business close in, you are forced to work for the mobsters to stop them 'dealing' with you whilst also finding a way to pay back your debts. It's easy to see this is the game immediately made before GTA V, missions have additional objectives and there are a lot more cinematic stunts during missions. It's a different experience and is more 'colourful' than the previous dlc. I'd say this one is the better of the two, both in the variety of missions and the weapons and vehicles added.