F.E.A.R. 3

One of the worst games I have played in a long time. If this wasn't a FEAR game, I would have quit this after the first chapter or so. Whatever you like about the first game, this has nothing of it. The atmosphere is shit, the gunplay is shit, the art design is shit, the story is shit. Terrible game. If you have to play this game for some completionist thing, just pretend it is just a random mediocre FPS, otherwise stay away.
The game only lasted 6 hours, but it took me 5 or 6 sessions to finish it and it felt like 8-10 hours.

Well, next game on the chopping block will be Alan Wake the 2 DLC chapters and American Nightmare. At least these games won't suck.

Metroid: Fusion (GBA)

The 4th game in the Metroid series, and the sequel to Super Metroid. Metroid Fusion see's you once again as Samus, this time having been injected with alien DNA, facing off against a new threat, the 'X'. Gameplay is more linear than a standard Metroidvania, a computer literally tells you where to go, however the way to get there is difficult to find. Enemies have two forms, a normal form and an 'X' form, when the normal form dies it becomes an 'X', a floating bacteria-like thing, which must be absorbed by Samus, otherwise it will return to its normal form or worse, join with another enemy to make it more powerful. The gameworld is fairly compact, consisting of 6 sectors surrounding a main hub, meaning it doesn't take long to get from one place to another. The boss fights are pretty good but can be pretty difficult, especially the 2nd to last one. I plan on playing Zero Mission next, and I would recommend this game.

I didn't know that. Next time I will try to get everything without exceptions then. :)

IDK, I just bought it here and downloaded it. I guess it's original.

No worries.....as long as you enjoy it that is what should matter most, I think. :)

So, after beating Metro 2033 I instantly moved on to Metro: Last Light which I just beat (also on PS4).

I again picked survivor mode but this time in hardcore difficulty. It was definitely the right choice. On normal these games are a walk in the park and you can easily just go in guns blazing and will easily survive any encounter without even having to use any medkits. On hardcore the difficulty seems just right: you die a lot more quickly and health regeneration is so slow that you will need to use medkits regularly - it also means that you have to play the games a lot more tactically.

Anyway, the game is basically more of the same with new levels, a few new guns and a few new enemies - it almost feels more like a standalone expansion than an actual sequel (although that may partially be a result of both games having received the Redux makeover). Admittedly it does have more polish. The scripted sequences are generally more spectacular and more carefully designed, the level design is better and many locations feel far more adjusted for stealth gameplay - so much so that I utilised stealth pretty much as often as I could and it actually played pretty well with very few exceptions. I guess the amount of stealth I've been using is also the reason why this game apparently lasted significantly longer in my case than the first one (even though both games are supposed to be equally long).

What's also a lot more pronounced in this game is the karmic system which I wasn't even aware of in case of the first game until a buddy told me about it after I had finished that one. Here it's quite instantly clear that many actions, often heroic acts, have some positive effect - it's another reason why I stuck with a lot of stealth this time because many of these good acts require stealth. And ultimately I was rewarded with the good ending, apparently. One problem: you also get karmic points for just listening to NPCs - like before I was playing with Russian voice acting for the atmosphere and like before not all NPC conversations are subtitled, so sometimes I would listen to Russian conversations, picking up only individual words, and then the screen would flash up indicating good karmic points, heh.

Anyway, I was still very entertained by this one but I prefer the first one. Metro 2033 was this amazing unbelievable and surprisingly often heartwarming journey where you discover many interesting new locations and learn a lot about the world itself - and struggles between humans felt like barely significant side effects of mankind's fight for survival. Last Light is very much focused on the politics of the different factions and their plans - my actions didn't feel remotely as significant as in the first game to me. As a result there's also a lot more combat against humans here - too much, for my taste. There were some beautiful locations, especially the outdoor areas are a lot more impressive than in the first game, but none of them were particularly fresh or interesting after the stuff I've seen in the first game.

This time I didn't run into any glitches with the weapons but two times I ended up with corrupted save files which forced me to restart the respective chapter. One time the game saved just after I had died, the other time loading would just crash the game. Luckily the chapters aren't too long and I didn't have to replay too long areas.

Anyway, it's still a great game and has overall better design as far as I'm concerned but it's far less interesting in terms of content to me. There are some DLC missions which I haven't tried yet but I think I'm giving the game a rest for now.

Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)

Annoyingly this game is old, and the cartridge has a battery to power the save function, a battery that has since become obsolete, which I found out when I turned the game off after an hour and then found the data missing. Aside from that, Metroid: Zero Mission is a remake of the original Metroid for the NES. Like the rest of the series, it's set in a labyrinth of tunnels, blocked by areas that require upgrades to reach, and with the occasional boss popping up. The game is fairly short, a game time of over 3 hours is generally considered 'slow'. The remake also add's an additional level at the end, which introduces a unique stealth section requiring you to sneak past enemies. It was a pretty good game, though unless you have a Wii-U you'll have to get a physical copy.

Great review, thanks. I have to say, I started Metro (2033) countless times and always died off. I love the atmosphere of the game, and I also love the original books (all three of them). And I love first person shooters and stealth games. But somehow this games doesn't click, I really can't say why this is. It has all the ingredients that should make me love it (except for a bit of open world maybe), but somehow the magic doesn't happen.

Doom Shareware (1st episode, only 300 bullets with backpack)
Doom (2nd & 3rd episodes, now with 400 bullets with backpack)
Doom II: Hell on Earth
The Ultimate Doom (4th episode, the Medikit now gives 25 health points like in Doom II)

...
Started Master Levels for Doom II and Maximum Doom.
The latter is a pain: some wads are for deathmatch only, some misses the level exit (even designed for single-player), at least 1 wad has to be run with textures from heretic.wad combined together with doom.wad (warpwad), a few wads are for Heretic game, at least 1 wad claims it's for Heretic can be run only under doom.wad, at least 1 full 9-level episode lacking a keycard at keypoint which prevents the level from finishing (I checked the whole map thoroughly in cheat mode), many wads are just way too primitive or stupid, but a few ones are nicely done.

Next stop after that will be Final Doom, still thinking about D!Zone compilations, The Lost Episodes of Doom and other commercial yet unofficial add-ons for Doom.

P.S. Playing in GZDoom in software renderer (pixelated textures) with all special effects turned off and in 1280*720 resolution. It's like playing classic Doom but in HD and with normal mouse (no forward/backward moving). However at least 1 wad can't be finished without a noclip cheat code due to incorrect height in one area, it's too low for my doom marine to squeeze, some of the wads have distorted textures and I checked they looked fine in DOSBox emulation. I tried to change my resolution back to original 4:3 VGA mode but it didn't help. Unfortunately GZDoom is not very accurate for some wad files. However there were absolutely no issues with official maps by id Software.

Makes me wonder if you liked the Stalker games. I feel that these games have a lot in common (besides the obvious stuff like similar setting and atmosphere - and allegedly also parts of the tech).
Wow, that's quite a hardcore way to go through the series. What difficulty level did you play on?

Of course I play the games on Ultra-Violence, it's a standard difficulty for Doom.

As for the order I prefer to complete the game series according to release dates:
01. Doom Shareware (1993)
02. Doom (1993)
03. Doom II: Hell of Earth (1994)
04. The Ultimate Doom (1995)
05. Master Levels for Doom II + Maximum Doom (1995)
06. Final Doon: TNT Evilution (1996)
07. Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment (1996)
08. Doom 64 (1997)
09. Doom 3 (2004)
10. Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil (2005)
11. Doom RPG (2005)
12. Doom Resurrection (2009)
13. Doom II RPG (2009)
14. Doom II: No Rest for the Living (2010 / 2012)
15. Doom 3: BFG Edition + Resurrection of Evil + Lost Mission (2012)
16. Doom (2016)
17. Doom Pinball (2016)
18. Doom VFR (2017)
19. Doom SIGIL (2019)
20. Doom Eternal (2020)

Dungeons of Kremlin: Remastered

A fun short (2.5h for me) wolf3d style fantasy FPS with some major problems ,chief of which is a way too low mouse sensitivity that you can't change and which doesn't respond even to windows mouse settings (gaming mouse sensitivity presets work though, at least worked for me.)

Psi Project

An unfun short (1h for me) pre-wolf3d style FPS with some major problems, chief of which is a too high mouse sinsitivity that you can't change and which doesn't respond even to windows mouse settings (I got used to it though without resorting to the mouse presets.) Oh and it uses stolen assets.

Merger 3D

Why do I do this to myself? Another unfun pre-wolf3d style FPS, many of the same problems as Psi Project as it was created with the same raycaster fps maker thingy. AFAIK this one doesn't use stolen assets tho, so that's something.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance (XB1X)

Another 90 hour marathon done this year. I got this on the Humble Bundle a while back. So naturally I played it on Xbox Game Pass instead. My PC could play it at 1080/60...sort of. But it always has an annoying and noticeable stutter when trying to hold 60fps. The Xbox version is slower but at least consistent. Plus the Xbox is hooked up to a 55inch TV with surround sound and a bed, and it runs the game at 1440p.

My understanding is that Warhorse are made up of a lot of the people from 2K Czech...the ones that made the first two Mafia games. I mention this because, despite being different styles of game, Kingdom Come shares a similar "linear story in an open world" delivery. It's something I like. It makes you feel like you're living in this world, a part of it rather than just visiting a zoo or joined together levels. The game still has lots of side stuff, lots of it interesting too, but the story is linear. The story reflects the games entire philosophy of realism and being grounded. It's one of the best in gaming, especially for an open world game- right up there with the first two Mafia games and Red Dead Redemption. You play as Henry who is nobody, just a blacksmiths son. He is useless to begin with. You cannot do anything.

Most of the game is about learning and training. Nothing is free. I broke 10 lockpicks before I managed to open my first lock, and that was the easiest lock. I couldn't hit anything with my sword, I had to train. I mean for real training. Training for hours with an actual weapons master learning with wooden swords whilst he beat the crap out of me. All that training built up my strength and endurance. In the end I was a killing machine wearing armour, that in the beginning I wasn't even strong enough to carry.
Want to save anytime? You even have to earn that. You either buy the "saviour alcohol" or learn to make it yourself. Basically the game tries it's hardest to be the medieval world simulator.

The world the characters and the history are top notch. I love historical worlds, it's why I'm still playing Assassin's Creed games after all these years. KCD is set in Bohemia with real places and mostly based upon real people and events.

To say I liked this would be an understatement. I loved the game, it would be my all time favourite RPG if not for one thing. The combat system. At first I thought I didn't like the combat system because I sucked at it. But I stuck with it and learnt to fight through practice and mastered it. But I still cannot say I liked the combat system. Even when I maxed out my combat and strength for my chosen weapon and got pretty much the best sword...the enemy still miraculously dodge and block pretty much any attack. Nothing works well except just mashing the attack button and overpowering the enemy with brute force. Which is exactly what the developers said they were trying to avoid. So in the end I was defeating any enemy not because of finesse, but because I was so strong that when I did hit them they fell over in just 2 or 3 hits. Add to that very poor feedback on whether you're really making effective hits vs just glancing off armour or even missing...it just feels really rough and unresponsive. Luckily, combat is not a huge part of the game. There is only one fight that would be classed as a boss fight for example. Despite having a poor system the game miraculously gets away with it. Especially if you git gud with a bow early on.

The other little issues are just minor nit picks that reflect the small size and budget (relative to AA studios) of Warhorse Studios. Things like how often the handful of character models get repeated for example. The big battle scenes come off a bit underwhelming and even comical at times. Those things could have used more time, budget and polish. But hey, a small studio has to call something finished at some point, just to get it out there and make money. It took over 5 years as it is. They did a fine job with what they have.

Absolutely recommended game, provided your not after quick easy thrills. This is a slow burn game that has to be worked away at. It's not over either, it's clearly only the first part of a series, hopefully. There is more to come for Henry. I just hope that Warhorse keep to this grounded historical type of RPG and stay in business, after they're done with medieval Bohemia I'd love to see them move to another time- something like Kubricks "Barry Lyndon" as an RPG would be awesome someday. Despite the game having a reputation for being glitchy at release, I encountered not a single game crash on Xbox and only a few graphical glitches from time to time- like two bath maid wenches standing inside each other so they look like siamese twins...but even that stuff wasn't common.

Just beat Batman: The Telltale Series on PS4. I can summarise my experience as: "Well, at least I got another platinum trophy out of this." The only "modern" Telltale game that I had played before was the first season of The Walking Dead which I didn't like, even though I was a fan of the show at the time. I figured Batman might be more to my liking, even though Telltale had already turned into a bit of an industry joke at the time. Well, it is not.

First off: in terms of production value and technical execution the game is pretty much shit, especially considering that Telltale should have been the gold standard in the "interactive movie" genre at that point. It already drove me nuts that TWD Season 1 suffered from performance issues on PS3 but Batman suffering from regular stutters on a PS4 is a friggin' joke. And the game feels cheap overall: the animations are wooden beyond belief, the music isn't synchronised even with perfectly linear sequences, there's loading screens during dramatic action sequences, they managed to mess up the controls in a game with only the most basic interactions... it's just friggin' unbelievable. Oh yeah, on top of that: I got the disc version but apparently the disc contains virtually no data, I think even the first episode is actually downloaded rather then installed from disc and further episodes need to be manually downloaded from the PlayStation Store - and playing during the same session during which you've installed episodes leads to further performance breakdowns and in my case even to a crash.

Then there's the Borderlands-inspired graphical style, which I loathe. In Telltale's case it's not stylised enough, it just feels like a measure to reduce production costs. And whether we're talking about characters or environments, the style and quality are utterly inconsistent. Nothing looks quite realistic but also nothing looks like carefully designed comic book characters or skilfully drawn backgrounds to me.

Then there's the writing... briefly put: I didn't like it. I know that my idea of Batman is almost entirely based on The Animated Series series as well as the movies and Arkham games and some of my expectations that were broken by Telltale's Batman universe have probably also been broken in the comics over and over but still: out of all the Batman interpretations I've seen this is the least interesting one and the production values and format of the game didn't help with selling me this one. Even if you pick "going as Batman" whenever you can the game is extremely centered on Bruce Wayne - as a matter of fact Bruce Wayne is so active here that the whole Batman persona loses a lot of its sense. If Bruce Wayne can just walk around beating people up without anybody asking any questions there isn't much need for Batman, is there? Also the villains just suck here, with the exception of Two-Face, I guess, but even that one isn't great. Whether it's Penguin, Joker or the main "Scarecrow but not really" villain: they are almost as bland and boring as Troy Baker's performance as Batman. I guess the main plot isn't entirely shit but it certainly also isn't original and at times it's just dumb and implausible. And for the most part it feels like a soap opera rather than a superhero story.

Then there's Telltale's interactive movie format. First off: I was expecting at least some interactivity and interesting puzzles here. I mean, for frigg's sake: Batman is an investigator, among others, and there's still some adventure elements here so I figured there would be some fun investigations but the ones that are there are just crappy and utterly unsatisfying - and some of them don't make any sense because you already know what you have to know and reconstructing the exact sequence of events does not yield any new information. And funnily there are so few sequences here where you can walk around manually that they shouldn't have bothered with them at all. But even the core of the game, namely dialogue choices and QTEs are messed up beyond believe. It feels like more often than not the game doesn't care if you pull off a QTE - sometimes you fail and Batman will still manage to land a hit or dodge but the more common case is that you do everything perfectly but he still gets his face smashed in a dozen times in a row. Telltale didn't even manage to consistently maintain the illusion that the QTEs matter. As for the choices: I obviously would have to replay the game in order to tell how much they affect but the "character X will remember this" seems almost like acknowledgement that the choices actually don't do anything besides showing that prompt. And even in this one playthrough there were some nasty surprises, like characters referring to stuff that didn't happen in my playthrough (the most notable case was giving up a character's identity which I explicitly avoided).

Anyway, I know, I've torn the game to pieces here but it wasn't all bad. Some of the dialogue was genuinely good, as were some of the dilemmas and I did feel the urge to make it all the way till the end because I was curious how things would unfold. The bottom line is, though: whatever expectations I had, the game did not deliver.

And only just now has it occurred to me that there actually was a second season of this game and now I really want to see how the story unfolds there. God damn it.

Bandits - Phoenix Rising

Played on VMware Player, 3D acceleration is pretty good. I'm impressed.

Despite being old and cranky I still appreciate the soundtrack, pretty funky, all songs. Full set is on the YT.
Only autosaves between missions. Most missions are short (up to 10min) but 2 of them drag on for way too long - getting the book from the commander and second to last mission when aforementioned Phoenix is assembled.
There was this infamous mission with train escort, lot of people back then got problem with it.
Solution? Get the fastest car and run straight to the destination point.
AI will ignore the train when you're not around him.

Lots of humor (good old one). Most cases of characters with stereotypical british accent, at least for me, is bland but not that one - Rendalf delivers solid lines :]

And best ending is a little tricky - you have to ignore orders with quest markers and chase that gold convoy.
Modern gamers would not get good ending :]

I absolutely loved SoC. Clear Sky I gave up because it kept randomly crashing on me, sometimes every few minutes. I have yet to play CoP.