Alice Madness Returns
Hades
HunterX

Prey

33h according to the game

Was really fun. got a good ending but yeah. it was rushed.


Great game tough. so much fun.

Distraint: Deluxe Edition (2015) (Linux/Wine)

It says it's "2D psychological horror adventure", but I'd rather say it's a game focused on psychology and some social problems. It's naive, does not provide any deep story, tries to be melancholic and moralizing. Nothing really interesting. Some aspect of gameplay may be a bit frustrating (one time-based puzzle and quite a lot of walking), but the game is short, so it's not a big problem.

Works almost fine under Wine. It crashed once, but run well after restart and never caused any problems again.

List of all games completed in 2022.

Third playthrough of Journey on my PS3 is behind me. The plan was to find as much companions as possible and to get last symbol for the golden trophy. Well, I found 4 companions, but clumsy me missed the symbol again :D At least, I was able to finish the game with one of these companions, and got at least one trophy for that :)

List of all my finished games can be found HERE.

12 Minutes, Jun 13 (Xbox Game Pass)-I thought this was a really good game. Slowly unraveling the plot details was fun and the general mechanics of dialogue trees and restarting after a few minutes worked well. I never really felt stuck or lost until several playthrus in when I tried getting all the endings. I think a couple of the endings are really obscure and probably require a walkthru for most people. I also thought that those endings weren't very satisfying. The earlier endings with some of the details still hidden felt better. It doesn't all quite hang together once you peak behind the curtain. But the first couple of playthrus while you're still learning everything are quite good.

Full List

Dying Light.

The Force Unleashed.

Star Wars Battlefront II (2005).

Night of the Valkyrie. It's a vertically scrolling shooter that was designed for the C64 using the Shoot-Em-Up Construction Kit. It's sort of a horror-themed take on Commando - Sgt. Harker is wounded by the Germans in a cemetery and while bleeding on a tombstone, he accidentally resurrects a female vampire. So you control the vampire as she runs up the screen, killing German soldiers.

It's got the usual SEUCK game limitations, like being constrained to only three levels, some slowdown/flickering, and being generally basic in design, but it's a worthwhile entry in the sub-genre. The graphics have a cool black-and-white-and-red color scheme, and there's a twist in that to meet the final boss you need to withhold from shooting enemies in favor of running into them to drink enough of their blood that you can survive the sun coming up at the end of level 3.

Triangle Strategy (Switch)

A new (as in it released this year) strategy RPG, which is a bit of a wide genre- but also one that the Switch is making itself notable for. Be prepared for a VERY dialogue heavy game. We're talking Metal Gear Solid 4 type levels of sitting there just watching people talk- it's all voiced, and you can skip or fast forward if you really need to. The story is very political and grounded, rather than the more common Japanese silliness. Despite not really being a huge fan of so much story in between battles, I have to admit it's a decent enough story with a large cast of characters. As the name implies you have to navigate your own small Duchy through the politics and war between three major powers. You do have choices to make, and it's not just up to you as your team gets a vote on major decisions, so you have to convince members to your side to ensure you take the path you want. Underneath all of this is a hidden system that decides who can join you and when, I admit that even after finishing one of the endings I'm not sure how this system really works or how deep it runs. Apparently NG+ makes this hidden system transparent so that you can always see the effects of your choices and what you need to do to have characters offer their services.

It seems that there are three endings that tie to an obvious late game choice, plus a golden ending that looks to require more specific game choices throughout. I just played through making my choices however I felt, based mostly upon how they seemed to align with my preferred team members. Sometime I'll get to playing NG+ and play to achieve the best ending with some research.

The battles are good, but definitely not the standard for the genre. Strategy feels a bit weak due to there being very little way to impede enemy movement. There is not really any sort of overwatch or reaction attacks to stop enemy units from just walking right past 5 of your melee defenders and just hitting your healer behind. So I found strategy became trying to entice and lure single enemies out into range of my casters and bow units and then just hope we smash them before they get their chance to move deeper into the lines. I really enjoyed the battles still, I'm just saying there are much better systems out there. What I did like was the devs refraining from dirty tricks like time limits or scripted ambushes. In this game you almost always have the space to set up to maneuver and and prepare before first contact.

If you have a Switch and you like these turn based strategy RPG's then you should think about this one, it's a quality game that looks and runs well- with the same graphics style as the excellent Octopath Traveler. However, the Switch has a lot of these types of games and it's especially hard not to make comparisons to Fire Emblem: Three Houses in particular. If you prioritize story, characters and dialogue, then Triangle Strategy is your game. But if you play these for the tactical battles first and foremost, like me, then I think Fire Emblem is the better game. Three Houses has much better combat on larger and more varied maps, plus the "Persona like" character interactions and development in between the battles. I really like both though, but if limited to one it would be Fire Emblem for the reasons given.

Gears of War Ultimate Edition, Jun 14 (Xbox Game Pass)-This was the first Gears of War game I've played and it was a pretty enjoyable experience. Parts of the gameplay felt a little clunky and the AI for both companions and enemies was rather poor. The graphics looked really good for the remaster. There were a ton of cut scenes which looked good and probably accounted for most of that 50+ GB install since the game was so short. Plot was whatever, but you're just here to shoot things which was a lot of fun. It kinda reminded me of Starcraft the FPS. Can we get that, please? That would be awesome.

Full List

Finished a few ones:
- Old Man's Journey : A short puzzle game with an interesting story and good looking screens. The puzzles are quite simple and the gameplay never really changes. It was ok.
- Sunlight : Some sort of walking simulator in the forest where we must pick up flowers. It was short and really not interesting at all.
- Minit Fun Racer : A simple side scrolling racer where we have limited time to get to the end of the lap. To help get there you must pickup boosters as well as money to buy powerups. It was fun.
- Max Payne 3 : Max Payne but in a sunny environment :) It was really brutal and I enjoyed it. The many custscenes did not bother me at all.

Full list here.

For a bunch of reasons I finally decided to grab Jets'n'Guns Gold as well as its relatively new sequel on Steam yesterday and already beat the former.

I was a massive fan of the original Jets'n'Guns back in the day, beating it dozens of times (until the difficulty stopped increasing, I think). It instantly replaced Tyrian as my favourite RPGish shoot 'em up game back then which the developer actually cited as one of the main inspirations and it shows. I loved the gameplay, the graphics, the humor and of course the absolutely awesome soundtrack by Machinae Supremacy.

Then I tried the supposedly improved Gold version a few years later and I just couldn't enjoy it and didn't get all that far. I didn't like the changes and also the new levels felt kinda off to me. The Gold version also seemed much more difficult than I remembered the original version. But chances are that the game also simply hadn't aged all that well. Now I've finally beaten the whole thing and I still feel like I preferred the original version (which you sadly can't get anywhere digitally but luckily I still have it lying around somewhere).

Anyway, JnG is an absolutely bonkers retro shoot 'em up game. Like Tyrian it's heavily driven by ship customization and it actually puts Tyrian to shame in terms of options. There's a plethora of upgradeable weapons for different slots alongside over a dozen of other upgrades like armor and speed but also other stuff like a device that allows hacking certain enemies or a "rotary cage" that allows aiming your guns. And I think the Gold version introduced different ships.

So, the thing is that JnG is a pretty great RPGish game where you can create a crapload of different builds and that's the main joy here: experimenting with the different possible ship configurations and finding the ones that kick ass the most or will at least make a particular level easier. On one hand that's pretty awesome and it can be super satisfying to find a build that makes an almost unbeatable level a walk in the park. The problem is that JnG isn't really a great shoot 'em up game. The levels and many enemies aren't designed that well, especially some of the bosses are just infuriating, and also the balancing feels all over the place. Generally the thing about the game is that it doesn't really support precision and strategy in its core shmup gameplay all that much. The builds feel far more significant.

Much like Tyrian it's one of those shmups where you can generally take a ton of punishment. There's usually tons of projectiles on the screen but you generally only really need to worry about the big ones or colliding with enemies and walls. The problem is that I feel that the game is very inconsistent in this stuff and there's a crapload of noise that makes it difficult to react to the significant things because of all the lesser crap. The game absolutely loves particles, especially from your own guns, and they tend to drown out a lot of the important stuff that you need to look out for. I didn't remember having this problem quite as much in the past, maybe because younger me had better eyesight or something, and also this time I did manage to get used to it after a while but still, it's a bit of a mess.

Also, back in the day I found the game to be gorgeous, the best-looking shmup even. It has these 90s style pre-rendered graphics and the artist must have put an insane amount of effort into them. There's a ton of unique enemy designs, environmental elements and also purely decorative objects. And the amount of detail on them is mind-blowing BUT the art style certainly contributes to the game's "noise" problem. I appreciated all the detail in the past but now I find the game to look a bit cheap overall and especially have a problem with how difficult it makes it to recognise stuff.

All that said: I still kinda love the game. You can feel that it was an absolute passion project for its developers through and through, with so many crazy ideas everywhere, most of them not contributing much the game as such but adding to its charme. And it does have a badass feel and is all in all very satisfying. But in retrospect it is very janky so if you're considering to play the game: be prepared for that. Oh yeah, and it doesn't take itself seriously at all, a bit too little for my taste (especially the Gold version) and some of the humor is a bit controversial to say the least.

And playthrough number 4 of Journey on my PS3 is behind me. Again, I was trying to meet some more companions for the Wonder trophy today, while getting the last glyph. This time, I was lucky with the glyph, but unlucky with the companions. Only two of them met today. Two online trophies to go.

All my games finished this year ==>> HERE

Chorus (XSX Game Pass)

Arcade space flight combat games games don't grow on trees these days. Chorus is not like the old days of Wing Commander either. It always seemed funny to me how many space combat "sims" have you flying around in circles trying to get onto the tail of the baddies like an arcade flight sim game. It's funny to me because without atmosphere it wouldn't really be like that. In Chorus you soon re-unite with a sentient space fighter, this is added to your "Rites" (which is what you call Force Powers without litigation from Disney) gives you a range of moves apart from flying around in circles. The most useful being to keep your current momentum and direction whilst pivoting your ship around it's axis to fire behind, or any direction- you need to keep good spacial awareness. When combined with thrusters and other abilities you will soon never fly in a circle ever again.

You have three weapons classes to switch between- Gatling for hulls, Lasers for shields and Missiles for armor. That makes a rock paper scissors sort of strategy to deal with enemies. Well it does until you get a Force Power ( I mean Rite) that brings down shields for a time, making the lasers instantly obsolete. Anyway the flying, controls and combat are as good as anything I've ever played in the genre. You soon find your self pulling off moves and making trick shots that Wing Commanders wouldn't dream of.

It's great that the combat is so good, because everything else is a bit average. Well the visuals are pretty good and the open maps. The story goes a bit too mystical religious la la land for my liking. But it can be ignored because the game play is so good. Well, except for the late game bosses. They suck ass severely. The type of gimmick boss where you have to target vulnerable spots that are constantly rotating whilst a gazillion spawning enemies assault you. It is hard to even see the spots you need to hit because the screen is so saturated with trash enemies that also show up on a scan. The final boss is as much fun as having your teeth pulled by your dad (who is not a dentist). Just drop the final boss to easy difficulty and finish the game. It's too bad they end bosses went the way they did, because it's otherwise a great game.

I finishoed my replay of Saviors of Sapphire Wings, now working on the postgame.

TMNT Shredder's Revenge (XSX Game Pass)

Fine example of how to bring back an old type of game to the modern era. It has everything that the old side scrolling brawlers have, but in a more modern package that can be enjoyed by anyone- anyone can play the story on easy and people that like the old games can play on the harder settings. Most people will probably settle for the middle ground. It only takes a little over two hours to complete, so I blasted through it on easy first and then medium- which wasn't quite as big a step as I expected given that I had prior knowledge and muscle memory.
This game really highlighted just how much the player gets into the feel of a game- I got to the second last stage and was carving my way through enemies without much issue, then I stopped for an hour and a half for dinner and to watch a couple of youtube videos. When I got back to the game I sucked again, I had to spend a few minutes relearning the timing for even just the basic attacks again.

Excellent game, whether you just a have a passing interest in the genre, like me, and just want to play the story- or if you're hardcore and want to chase scores and the hardest settings, or play up to 6 person multiplayer. It joins Streets of Rage 4 and Battletoads as good modern rebooted games, though my favorite is the underrated Battletoads because of the variety of stages.