That's what I meant by it possibly being too streamlined for traditional point and click adventure fans who reacted negative to it. I didn't expect to like it due to negative reviews, but IMO they were exaggerated. Of course, it's a matter of preference, but I actually like it when the pace of the story-telling doesn't constantly slow to a crawl because I get stuck due to issues like you pointed out in The Whispered World, moon logic, pixel-hunting etc. I guess Silence has more cinematic story-telling and generally simpler puzzles, but that was actually part of what made it more enjoyable to me. Yet I wouldn't call it an interactive movie. It's not like a Telltale game, it does have point and click gameplay, just not overly complicated one. Maybe more like Amanita games or so. But I can't judge how you would react to it, and waiting for a better price seems reasonable. After all, I got it for free, as a gift, heh. :D

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (XSX)

Xbox 360 version played via back compatibility. Just like the first game except completely linear and a different save and healing method this time traditional check pointing where you have to repeat sections fully after deaths. I think the open maps on the first game made tactics feel way better. But this game flows a bit better and has tighter check on the story as a result. Of course it still has bad guys that seem to own shares in RPG manufacturing. On a side note, I wonder if anyone is ever going tell game developers that most RPG's use a shaped hollow charge warhead intended for armored vehicles...making them not very useful against infantry because the explosive force is focused on a very narrow area to burn a hole through armor plating and spray the molten metal inside the vehicle. Of course games use the Hollywood version of RPG's.

Fun game though, but not as good as Hardline or BF4.

Yuppie Psycho - Executive Edition

I bought here it on a whim, and it was an absolute treat. I did my first run of the game blind and I managed to get locked into the new content ending path and get the "Goodbye" ending I believe. I remember a few time having heard the argument that retro-inspired games (namely pixel art gamed) were falsely claiming to be as such, since real retro games didn't look that way. That never bothered me. Even if they were inspired by them, they don't have to look like them exactly. And I loved the contrast of the minimalist in-game character sprites, to the animated pixel-art cut-scenes, which were gorgeous (I especially loved the bathtub cut-scene in the 'executive' route).

The setting of being a complete novice trying to get into the workforce for your first job, only to end up being thrust into literal and metaphorical corporate madness, was so interesting. It was fun to watch Brian fumble his way around the office with his humorous and horrific interactions with his coworkers and those under the sway of the witch.

The bosses were interesting. They weren't slug-fests but rather puzzles, and you had to be quick on your feet, and think fast. Right now I'm on my second play-through, and I'm aiming for the regular endings. There's still quite a bit I haven't seen, and I'm looking forward to it.

Powerslave (DOS) - 3/5

The main thing that stands out to me about the game is the extreme degree to which it seems to follow John Romero's 7th design rule:
"Make the level flow so the player will revisit areas several times so they will better understand the 3D space of the level"
Almost all the levels require you to traverse the same areas multiple times from different elevations in clever and convoluted ways.

This would probably have been better off if it ended a level earlier. The final level involves bunch of targets you need to shoot throughout the level - many of which are missable. So, you can get to the end of the level only to find you're stuck in an unwinnable state. And that's not even mentioning the time limit in the level.

Also, curiously, this is a rare example of an FPS that doesn't include any kind of shotgun. Um, but there is a homing explosive snake launcher though...

Overall, it's an enjoyable enough 2.5D shooter. I'd be interested to see how it compares to the other (console) versions.

Two Worlds 2 HD

I have this game for years but could not play it for long, always dropped after tutorial.
Terrible and weird control scheme, steep difficulty and some stuff not explained did not help.

It's basic RPG rule - from zero to hero, but you go from wet rag to world destroyer in a span of few levels. then keeps your powerful status until you meet final boss and maybe 2-3 enemies in the whole game, who can hurt you. Add some points into phys resist passive, get decent gear and you won.

Combat with some fencing influence. LMB to attack while character moves forward and Space to attack while moving backward. This is important since there is no rolling and blocking costs you health, even though there is stamina but it's for running.
For melee build it's priority to raise DefensiveStance for less HP cost.

Like Gothic and Risen there is nothing to do in the lategame, with little to no sidequests, on top of that you will be send to almost empty islands in Chapter 2 and 3 (finaf 4 is pretty short, like 1-2h if you want to clear the map).
Chapter I is full of content that let me reach 30lvl, finished the game on 40th level, most of them from quests. Oh and you better clear locations in Chapter II and III, otherwise enemies vanish after certain point.

HD version changes nothing in graphic, at all.
If you have this game on GOG then you can downgrade it to version supported by Worldmerge mod, "HD" version does not work and mod creator is long gone so he won't fix it.

Dungeons are boring and almost devoid of decent loot. You only collect garbage to dissolve into crafting materials.
Enemy AI is basic and spam blocking nonstop, which makes BlockBreaker skill necessary tool in combat, not something to use from time to time.

Nice campy fantasy RPG, if only they got better VO for main character...

Now time for Pirates of the Flying Fortress but I need to take a breath.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I've heard a lot about this series over the years, and I was always curious why most of the praise the series received started with Uncharted 2. Well, now I know. This first entry in the series isn't bad, exactly, but it stumbles in so many areas that it pales in comparison to its sequel.

First of all, the good: the story and music are great. While I wouldn't consider either to be groundbreaking, they are done well. In fact, the story is really what kept me playing through the game's second half. It's pretty standard fare if you've watched an Indiana Jones film, which is fitting considering the game was apparently inspired by Indiana Jones and National Treasure. It wears its inspirations on its sleeve, but that isn't a bad thing. It's a fun romp (plot-wise, anyway,), and the visuals and music do a wonderful job of reinforcing that.

Where the game stumbles is the gameplay itself, which I'll separate into exploration and combat. The exploration works, for the most part. It serves its purpose and the game is at its best when allowing you to explore its beautiful levels. Platforming almost feels automatic and none of the puzzles are particularly difficult, but they work. Mostly. The problem with the exploration is that its never quite as satisfying as it could be. I noticed a lack of refinement to the movement that made some sections far more annoying than they should have been. Since the platforming is otherwise pretty straightforward, it's all the more annoying when it just doesn't work properly. In some ways, it is almost more frustrating that it resides in that place of "almost working." At least if it was bad it would be easier to just drop the game and move on. Mediocrity with the potential for being so much better just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

And then there's combat. Holy crap, the combat. Like exploration, the combat isn't bad. It does what it should, and it does it well enough that I was able to soldier through the game. Again, though, it felt like it could be so much better. Aiming never felt quite tight enough. Getting in and out of cover never worked quite smoothly enough. None of these things would be quite as bad if it weren't for the fact that there is so. Much. Combat. I'm not even just talking about the frequency of the combat encounters, though they occur very often. The number of enemies in some of the larger encounters is simply absurd. Heck, I remember one encounter only a couple hours in to the game in which I though the game had bugged out and just kept sending enemies at me. I though maybe something behind the scenes hadn't triggered properly or something. Nope. Turns out there just really were that many enemies. And to top it all off, many of the combat arenas are just terribly designed. I suppose the developers were trying to make the arenas feel like actual places rather than inentionally designed combat arenas, but the result doesn't work. By the time I was three quarters of the way through, I just wanted the game to end. Considering the game only took me around eight hours to finish, that's not a good sign.

All things considered, I wouldn't consider Uncharted: Drake's Fortune to be a bad game. It just fails to do anything well enough to be a good game, engaging plot notwithstanding. I don't regret playing it, but I doubt I'll ever replay it.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. If you ever need an example of a sequel improving on a game in every way possible, you'd be hard pressed to find a more perfect example than Uncharted 2. Everything Uncharted does wrong, Uncharted 2 does right. Everything Uncharted stumbled on, Uncharted 2 does with beautiful grace. Everything Uncharted did well, Uncharted 2 does even better. Engaging, satisfying gameplay? Check. Fun, well-paced, globe-trotting plot? Check. Interesting characters with depth? Check. Incredible script delivered by talented actors? Check. Magnificent set-pieces that get the adrenaline pumping? Check.

I can't sing this game's praises high enough, especially in comparison to its mediocre predecessor. Don't get me wrong; Uncharted 2 isn't perfect, and it still stumbles a bit in one particular area. But it does almost everything it tries to do so well and with such refinement that I cannot help but recommend it. From beginning to end, I was engaged with the plot, and the gameplay didn't let me down.

One thing this game does even better than the first is the characters. The characters in Uncharted felt more like archetypes. Everyone filled a role expected in this kind of story, but that was about it. Sure, Drake is charming and affable, but that's just his role. In Uncharted 2, we get to see a little more depth to him. Still nothing groundbreaking, but it's nice to get to see him as an actual character with emotional highs and lows.

Exploration in this game is a real treat. While it mostly plays just like the first game in that regard, everything has been refined to the point of actually being enjoyable. I still accidentally threw myself into oblivion from time to time, but those moments felt less like the game was actively fighting my attempts to control Drake and more like I just botched movement up by rushing things a bit. This is good, too, because the game features several heart pounding set pieces that would have been more frustrating than fun if Drake controlled just as he does in the first game.

Combat has been refined, too, but this is the one area the game still stumbles a bit. For the most part it is actually enjoyable this time around, but it still occurs a little too frequently and enemies are still a little too abundant. Drake's fragility in relation to the number and difficulty of enemies he faces, especially later in the game, made several of the game's combat encounters a chore, and the final boss battle was an exercise in frustration. That said, he does have a few more tricks up his sleeve, and several areas allow for use of a decent stealth system. Hand-to-hand combat has been greatly improved as well. Outside of the first couple missions, most attempts at hand-to-hand in the first game just didn't work. Here the system mostly remains the same, but it actually works.

All in all, Uncharted 2 is a vast improvement over the first game. It's more refined in all the right ways, and I found myself look forward to every play session. If you ever get the opportunity to play it, go for it. It's worth at least one playthrough.

Hard Reset Redux, Nov 30 (GOG)-Bad robot. This is fun game when all you want to do is shoot a bunch of murderous robots. All the robotic mayhem and environmental destruction was very satisfying. There are graphic novel type cutscenes between levels setting up the next mission and plot. What am I talking about? What plot? I couldn't really follow it. Each level was just another excuse to shoot more and more robots. I think this is what Painkiller was trying to be. My only complaint is that its really short.

Full List

Before I Forget

I don't know, maybe I've just played too many of these indie walking simulators with serious theme already, but I wasn't impressed, rather bored most of the time. Nothing really surprised me, and I thought the voice actress sounded much too young for the actual age of the main character, but I guess you can make a case for that fitting the context of the narrative, if you see it as the young voice reflecting the characters' tendency to live in the past. Still felt a bit weird though. I don't want to be too mean towards a sympathethic project, but I fear I won't remember this game for long. :( Took maybe 30-40 minutes to play through, I guess.

Battlefield 3 (XSX)

Xbox 360 version played via back compatibility. Looks good and ran flawlessly with added HDR. This time the short campaign felt a bit different. The enemies weren't bullet sponges and felt like they went down far more inline with real world weapon ballistics. AI also felt a bit more believable and not possessing super human reflexes and marksmanship. I still wouldn't rate the campaign quite up there with number 4 or Hardline though because it lacks the more memorable characters. It had some fun levels though, most memorable being the one where you play part of the story from the point of view of the weapons officer in an F-18- it was a good diversion.

I'm all out of Battlefield games now, series done in single player terms. My personal order for people interested in single player experiences from best to worst: Hardline, BF4, Bad Company, Bad Company 2, BF3, BF 1, BF V. I don't think the earlier games like BF 1943 have any single player other than bot matches, which I'll pass on.

Personally I have had a lot of fun with the bots in Battlefield 2, the only Battlefield game I own.

I agree with you

Finished Dragon Age: Origins. Took me 54 hours on normal difficulty; didn't do the dlc content, since I was impatient to finish it. My female mage romanced Alistair who in the end sacrificed himself and slew the archdemon.

Have mixed feelings about the game, but on the whole am tending rather more towards the negative (unlike with Arcanum, where I also had mixed feelings, but thought aspects of the game were brilliant).

What I liked:
- The setting is fairly interesting, with a lot of thought given to world-building. I even enjoyed reading the Codex entries you uncover, the integration of some of those background stories (e.g. about the prophet Andraste) with the game world increased immersion quite a bit. The Dragon age setting could be a great background for a really good rpg.
- Much of the dialogue with your companions is cringeworthy, but I still enjoyed it. That stupid elf Zevran betrayed me, because I didn't care about getting his approval rating higher...was a nice touch imo. Voice-acting in general was also really good.
- The combat system is quite decent (even if I never got good at it), has some interesting elements like spell combinations for special effect. Some of the set pieces like the fights in Denerim leading up to the final battle were quite enjoyable.

What I didn't like:
- There are some interesting choices in the main quest line, but on the whole there isn't enough choice and consequences imo. Most of the sidequests are really lame and unimaginative, mostly just basic fetch or kill quests. The worst were those Chantry board, mage collective and mercenary quests which felt like something out of a game like World of Warcraft...just boring stuff like "go to four different places and mark some buildings", "go there and kill someone", "go deliver letters to four people" etc. The typical Bioware flaws in quest design are also prominent. Apart from "persuasion" - which is a superpower and allows you to bend people to your will in implausible ways - I can remember only a single quest where some skill was checked in dialogue. Just not enough variety.
- Related to this: The game is too combat-centric. There's tons of combat in this game, and while some of it is enjoyable, it eventually gets tedious to trudge through giant dungeons and fight endless groups of enemies. There's some variety in the dungeons with occasional puzzles and riddles, but it's not nearly enough to break up the tedium and make exploration interesting.

imo Dragon age: Origins really misses the mark for being a great rpg, the flaws already present in Baldur's Gate 2 (arguably Bioware's only really good game) are magnified and left me rather ambivalent about my experience with it. The bloated size of the game and the time investment necessary to beat it don't help either. As I understand it, later Bioware titles are even worse, so even if they came to Gog, I'd probably skip them.
My rating: 3/5 (somewhat unfair to Arcanum though, which I also rated as 3/5, if I had to choose, I'd definitely recommend Arcanum over DA:O, it's got more charm and better quests).

finished : way too many but not enough

Just "beat" Genesis Alpha One on PS4. I say "beat" because it's a roguelike and reaching the end just once hardly means that I've achieved everything there is to achieve in the game. However, I had already delayed triggering the ending a lot and have probably seen almost everything the game has to offer so I figured that's a good moment to end my first campaign.

So, it's a "space roguelike" that I found dirt cheap boxed for PS4. I looked it up and user reviews were promising so I just grabbed it - only to discover later that I already own it on Steam, presumably from Humble Monthly. Anyway, it's a really nice game that I fell in love with almost instantly. The premise is that you're in charge of a human crew that must find and colonise a suitable planet. You control the game in first person through the eyes of a captain. You build your ship yourself and gradually extend it as you gain more technology and resources, you clone crew members and give them jobs, you harvest resources from space debris using a tractor beam or by exploring the surfaces of different planets. Funnily it's almost exactly how I imagined my "perfect game" when I was in my teens and early twenties. I'm glad to see that my idea wasn't stupid and a game like this is genuinely a joy to play!

Now, admittedly the game's a bit low budget. There's no dialogue whatsoever (besides a few announcements and reactions), your crew members are samey clones, planets barely differ and here and there it's a bit lacking in content. In particular the rather small amount of enemy types and how samey they are is a bit jarring. At the same time I think that all in all the game looks and sounds really great and especially the atmospheric effects on some planets looked quite amazing.

Anyway, while I can't say that a single aspect of the game is particularly great I got sucked right in. I mean, it's basically a first-person Sid Meier's Pirates with a progression system much like in XCOM. Just exploring space and improving your ship and gear in order to explore even further is a very addictive loop and here it comes with the benefit of you being able to walk in first-person around a massive space ship you've designed yourself. I really love that stuff. And the roguelike nature means that once in a while you will encounter a crisis and develop a strategy to protect yourself against this stuff in the future.

And here's frankly the first big problem I have with the game: the systems are a bit too banal. I quickly lost my first campaign due to an infestation and it was perfectly okay, it's a roguelike after all - during my second playthrough I protected myself against this stuff from the beginning and proceeded very carefully so I won't suddenly many hours of progress - and over a few dozen hours the game failed to produce another serious crisis. There were a few exciting moments when my ship was being boarded but my elite crew and I quickly made an example of the intruders. There's also some sickness mechanic but sickness never escalated and always resolved itself in my case.

The second problem is that there really isn't that much content. As I mentioned there aren't many enemy types but also planet surfaces are these very basic small areas without any interesting features. Boarding enemy ships is a particularly crappy corridor shooter in samey environments. There are no characters or e.g. quests or anything like that, so the truth is that the game quickly becomes quite dull as you only do the same things over and over (perhaps unless you really suck at the game, I guess). Likewise, the things that you research - in particular different genes for your crew and weapons - are quite lacking. I quickly discovered most of these and from then on I only had a chance to improve their stats. And e.g. even though there's seemingly a ton of hybrid species for your crew, it soon turns out that not only are many of the differences negligible, there's a distinct pattern that e.g. for each kind of atmosphere you can build there are the same archetypes: weak genius, average guy, dumb brute, super strong moron. That quite frankly sucks a bit.

That said, even though I quickly recognised the game's limited patterns I still enjoyed almost every minute of it and didn't get bored as much I've gotten playing many handcrafted sandbox games with tons of quests and whatnot. I'm almost sure that I will keep playing it at least sporadically since even when the game isn't exciting it's at least relaxing and satisfying. And given that the developers added a ton of features many months after release (like boarding other ships) I hope that there's gonna be some more cool additions that will add variety.

Thanks for the detailed review. I actually have the game wishlisted here on GOG.
Does some stuff/progression carry over when you lose? Because if not, that'd be a major downside for me. I'm not a fan of rogue-likes in the first place, but I can manage if I gain at least something from each attempt (like ie. in Everspace).