You got the most important part of my little review there anyway, lol.

I thought Infinite was awful. Anti-white racist, story made no sense, sickeningly, stomach-churningly pro-amercian at the expense of everyone else, and a pathetic console-newbie save system. No wonder it never had a sequel!

Just finished Tales Of Monkey Island. It would have been a fantastic conclusion to the series if there wasn't that cliffhanger scene after the credits.

Recoil

Old school shooter beat in old school way - with unlimited lives code.
Shooting while mobile was borked and most shots miss the target, whenever mobile or stationary, and you had to move or get blasted.
Six missions overall. There is minimap that shows next objectives to do. Most of the time you don't need it and then you get final mission where you need it but it's not available. Ironic.
Story is
Also - devs are still alive despite being part of EA, that's quite achievements (*silently sobbing at rest of cult classic developers chopped by EA overlords*).

Game works fine, all you need is nGlide and you're ready to go. Unless you want to mess with resolutions and get it in windowed mode or something more than 1024x768...
I didn't, game was too short anyway.

Hey Chummers!

Guess what? Got a call of a dead mate, who got dragged down by the shadows. Ya know life down 'ere isn't for evryone to cope with. So ka? So better stay where your footing is safe, chummer. Wanna be a wizkid? Can get the drek flying at ya.
So back to ole dead man. Had a switch to call me when he'd hit the dumps. Knew someone hat a red dot on his forehead, ya know? So it seems the wetwork went through. Poor guy. Promised me a big one for my personal retired Runners fund, so ka? Had me flying to Seatle to do some straight investigation, grab my credstick raise and back agan.. So I thougt. It is never a straight run, chummer... Never. Got me knee-deep into some stuff... Ya know? Well, I'll tell you more next time. 'eard part's made to move with that Mercurial lady. 'haps you wanna watch that then... Or pay me one more soycaf, to hear the story, or tell me when to return here... We all return, just as Shadowrun Returns

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So, that was my dip to the shadows. Gave me some nostalgia and reminded me of old P&P sessions in my youth. Man, those were times. ;) It's a bit straight forward with little side tracking, but it hit the atmosphere. I'm curious how the other parts improve on the system, or if they are all the same.

Yakuza 0 (XB1X)

I have to admit this wasn't the sort of game I was expecting it to be. I just assumed that this series was more like Japanese GTA...with icons on the map to clear, story being second to the side activities. But it turns out this game is more open world in the same way as the Shenmue games. Two smallish open areas are the entire playground where the story happens. But what a great story. Not sure why mafia style stories always seem to agree with me in games so much...but I also love the Mafia series for their stories as well.

Early on, in the first 3 or 4 chapters I was trying to completionist everything like a GTA game- doing all side stuff and trying to do all the activities. But I found I was losing interest in some activities very fast and some were just near impossible for me- like the dancing and the karaoke. Some of the little side stories were hilarious though. From about chapter 6 onwards I basically followed the story straight through and enjoyed the game far more from then on.
The combat is pretty decent, though really easy on the normal difficulty. Healing is cheap and plentiful. Lots of big cutscenes, but they didn't bother me in the way they do in some games because they mostly came at the start and end of chapters or at story milestones and rarely intruded on gameplay.

This is the first of the Yakuza series to come to Xbox, with Kiwami and Kiwami 2 coming through the year- all onto Game Pass the day they arrive. The Xbox port is really well done. I had no issues at all and it ran locked to 60fps all the way, even cutscenes (which are often 30fps in many games to allow higher settings). I'm looking forward to the others games in the series as they arrive.

XIII

A nice little fps done in a unique comic book style with a great spy story to boot. The gameplay is great, everytime you perform a headshot a frame of the unfortunate victim flashes up and it feels amazing if you can do several in quick succession. The music is fantastic and is perfectly in time with the action. A few annoying stealth sections were the biggest drag, but you can still do them by running around like a maniac smashing chairs over peoples heads. Also it ended on a cliffhanger, which I hate, but perhaps the upcoming remake may drum up some interest.

Secret Files: Sam Peters

A very short point and click game, probably the same length as Samorost. It took me an hour to complete and none of the puzzles are very difficult, but what the content that is there is pretty decent quality. The protagonist isn't the most likeable, she actually starts the game explaining how she doesn't believe in modesty and then proceeds to decide that she won't save the friend stranded in a lava field and proceeds to escape by herself. It's a quick point and click though if you have an hour to kill but don't expect it to take too long.

The Blackwell Epiphany, March 24 (GOG)-The conclusion of the Blackwell series. It ties up the series nicely. Not too difficult, not too long. Its not the greatest adventure game I've played but taken as a whole the series is pretty good. If you liked the previous, you'll probably like this too.

Full List

Kona (XB1X)

Walking simulator with a bit of driving around and light survival. Set in a blizzard. The gameplay mostly consists of driving back and forth across the open map to find the items you need to progress. But it's not like puzzle solving in a point and click game, the game always tells you exactly what you need- and what you need will usually be found over the other side of the map. Mostly though you will find what you need if you explore very diligently. It's just a lot of it is very artificial, like at one pint I need to get through a fence. I have a bloody great axe, but the game doesn't let me smash the fence and insists on a bloody great crowbar instead. No other option was allowed, only the crowbar. Of course I missed the crowbar earlier and had to go way back across the map until I found one. Towards the end this is made worse by the inventory limits becoming a pain in the ass as well.

The story wasn't great in the end, but not terrible either, though these sorts of walking simulators really need a story hook and in this case I don't feel it was strong enough. The world also reuses assets to a very noticeable degree as well. Apparently almost everyone in that part of Canada live in identical houses with identical furnishings. Okay, it's not a huge budget AAA game so in that respect it's not too bad, just average. I played it on Game Pass and it took around 5 hours.

Dead Space

It's an OK game. Very good presentation. What it lacks in originality it more than makes up for in style and polish. The gameplay is good most of the time. Unfortunately some segments are just trash, like the asteroid shooting gallery. PC port has a lot of minor bugs (I played the Origin version, I don't know if the GOG version is different). To achieve 60 fps, disable the in-game Vsync - which defaults to 30 fps - and set it on the GPU control panel.

Cosmic Star Heroine

Another game from one of my favourite indy RPG developers, Zeboyd games. Set in the distant future, this is a sci-fi rpg where you play as Alysses, a spy who finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy to control the minds of all life in the universe. The game features a unique turn based combat situation with 2 attributes that affect damage, Style (which goes up over time) and Hyper (Doubles damage after a certain amount of turns), by combining this with various buffs, this makes combat more about creating the right combination of abilities to create a few hugely damaging attacks. My best effort allowed me to deal 240k damage in one attack, this can 1 shot any enemy in the game (except 2 'invincible' enemies near the end). While this makes the combat seem easy, it should be noted that the ability to heal is severely limited compared with other games in the genre and enemies gets stronger over time. In the Super-Hard optional dungeon, enemy attacks can 1 shot any party member (It is exactly as unfair as it sounds), creating the ultimate challenge which is mainly reliant on abusing certain cheesy strategy's and hoping the RNG doesn't screw you.

The story is fairly good, the way some characters join the party feels a bit rushed and out of place. The music is pretty great too and it's fairly bug free. One objection I have is the dungeon balancing isn't the best, a lot of optional dungeons become accessible with enemies who are vastly overlevelled or vastly underlevelled, one story dungeon forces use to use a party that is pretty terrible. One redeeming feature is you shouldn't have to grind unless you've been actively avoiding as many enemy encounters as possible. It's probably one of my favourite games played this year, and one of the few games I saw on sale on GOG at a cheaper price than it was in a steam sale.No Achievements on the GOG version though (BOO!)

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (XB1X)

A very well timed new addition to Xbox Game Pass, since I just finished Ace Combat 6 last month. And I felt like a bit of mission based arcade flight combat again, since no one else makes games like this anymore.

Surprisingly this new game drops many features from the much older number 6 in the series. Gone are the multiple operations and objectives that enabled you to tackle each mission in different ways in AC 6. Also missing are the wingman commands and the ability to call in help from spare allies after clearing operations within missions. So I felt that number 6 had the better missions overall and deeper gameplay with more options. I think I liked it better.

Of course Ace Combat 7 has other advantages over number 6. It's technically much more impressive as it should be, using Unreal 4. The campaign is longer and I'd say harder at some points. The story was better, though still just as silly in an almost Kojima sort of way. Actually if someone asked me to describe the Ace Combat series I'd say Wing Commander meets Final Fantasy with input from Kojima.

The aircraft progression and modification system is also improved this time, resembling an RPG skill tree...so you spend your earned currency and follow the tree down one of several paths to unlock the best aircraft. The game is clearly designed with replaying at harder difficulties to unlock everything in mind. I also gave the multiplayer (battle royal mode) a try as it's a very quick and easy way to earn currency for buying aircraft and upgrades. It's not as hard as I expected, even using some of the weaker aircraft I could still win many battles.

Really good fun overall, plus this version is the first on PC. So anyone missing the old Wing Commander type of games should try it out when the price falls within your budget.

As a Bioshock fan boy, I highly recommend you try Bioshock 2 as its gameplay is the most refined and polished out of the 3. Yes the story takes a dip, but the gameplay more than makes up for it.

Plus its DLC - Minerva's Den is often regarded as one of the best DLCs ever made.

I just finished Guns, Gore & Cannoli 2 (GOG) - 4/5

It's a solid 2D platformer/shooter with great graphics and a ridiculous storyline. It has 1 main advantage over the 1st one, which is that it now has 360 degree shooting which vastly improves the gameplay.

The only reason that it isn't a 5/5 is because the game has various difficulty spikes that almost made me rage-quit. All around solid game worth your time.

Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds

This was a quick one. After taking ages to beat the first Wizardry and then taking a break from the series with other games, I went back for some dungeon crawling Llylgamyn-style and was surprised at how quickly I completed the game. Still, it's was a fun time.