Just beat Star Wars: Dark Forces. Never got too far into this game but I decided to give it another try using the Force Engine.

So, for those who didn't get the memo: there's a source port of Dark Forces named The Force Engine that updates the game a ton. It obviously runs natively on Windows and comes with a buttload of quality of life improvements like WASD controls + mouse aiming, a map overlay and perhaps most importantly: mid-mission saving.

Armed with these improvements I decided to finally beat the game. How was it? Pretty great, actually!

The gunplay is pretty good for a game where the weapons are generally toy guns that go "pew pew" and I'd actually argue that it's better than in the later entries in the series. The sounds are pretty nice, the projectiles have a good spread and speed, they make nice splash effects when they hit and enemies go down in a satisfying manner after taking 2-4 hits. I must admit that the reaction time of enemies is a little bit too high for my taste but I suppose it's okay as it doesn't keep the game from feeling nice and the game is still a far cry away from being as insanely difficult as Blood or Shadow Warrior (excluding a few bizarre difficulty spikes).

Where the game stands apart from the other shooters of its time is probably in that it's heavily story-driven, with cutscenes and everything, and it's a decent entry in the Expanded Universe. The locations are actually supposed to resemble something (even though most of it is samey sci-fi interiors and exteriors) and you have objectives to complete. I must say, though, that the level / mission design of Dark Forces is both a blessing and a curse. Like in all titles in the series the levels are still pretty abstract and extremely and unnecessarily convoluted. Navigating these three-dimensional mazes is difficult enough but every so often the game also demands peculiar actions from you.

E.g. in one case the briefing suggests that you may want to use an alternate entrance into a jail but actually you have to make it all the way up to the main entrance to the jail, there you get a key, that one allows you to use a door that you passed early in the level (good riddance if you didn't notice that one), so now you have to backtrack through more than half the map to said door which grants access to a ventilation shaft which contains a hatch which reveals... a wall. If you're like me that's the moment where you look up a walkthrough and it turns out that that "wall" is actually the elevator that you've used several times already and you need to send it away by pressing the button in front of it, only then can you actually use this passage which will lead you to your goal.

Now, that example is probably the most extreme case in the entire game (and the only time I got so frustrated that I looked up a walkthrough) but it does illustrate the level designers' obsession with making the levels complicated and squeezing in "adventure gameplay". Besides that you also have a few puzzles involving gates or water levels, sometimes you have to find and enter a password etc.. On one hand some of it is pretty impressive stuff for the time, on the other... why? I just wanted to shoot stormtroopers, not play a "running in circles simulator". I would be okay if there better signposting, alas, that's just you made shooters in the mid-90s, baby. And some will probably find it frustrating that, at least on some levels, new enemies will regularly appear while you're running in circles. Luckily not many enemies and they do keep the backtracking from becoming too dull, but yeah.

Oh yeah, and some dick thought that it would be fun to randomly place mines on the levels, preferably in dark areas or inside of healing items. Jesus.

But in spite of all of that it's a pretty fun 2.5D shooter. The weapon selection is large and besides blasters you also get some more powerful and gimmicky weapons (some of which have alternate firing modes), the enemy variety also isn't too bad. There's several types of imperial enemies with blasters who (apparently) only differ in the amount of health but there's also floating drones, dudes throwing grenades, the melee-only gamorrean guards and those asshole trandoshans with concussion rifles which are like explosive sniper rifles and the source of most difficulty spikes in this game. They do drop an insane amount of energy cells, which allows you to spam powerful attacks yourself on levels where they appear, but nonetheless: screw those guys!

What REALLY impressed me, though, are the dark troopers which the plot is actually about. These dudes are super mobile tank enemies with a jetpack who fire barrages of powerful "plasma balls" or individual missiles. Fighting them almost feels like fighting bots in Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 and that's just badass in a shooter from 1995. And the final boss is an even tougher version of these dudes with an additional attack. Cool!

So, all in all I really liked the game. I probably wouldn't have ever found the patience to beat the whole thing without mid-mission saving but thanks to the Force Engine it's probably one of the best shooters from that era.

Alice: Madness Returns

I'm not really sure what to think about it.

I quite liked the visuals, the soundtrack, the game mechanics, some of the ideas for levels and opponents, and even the German localization and voice-overs, for the most part, since I played it with a friend watching (German localizations are not often up to my standards, but here apparently they actually invested in it and got pretty good actors). And it was comparatively easy, including the very few bosses there were, if there even were any true ones apart from the final boss. I already forgot, because I played the game on and off over a longer time. I beat the final boss at first try, and I'm not very good at beating bosses, they have stopped many a playthrough of mine, in other games. So that's a positive for me (but might be a negative for others).

I did not like the plot and story-telling very much - there was much talking but a lot of it was in one ear and out of the other to me, not really that engaging and a bit odd to have this much talking in a platformer - there were even short interludes in the real world that were more walking simulator than platformer. Plus themes in part got very dark in a disgusting way. I also did not like the drawn, sparsely animated cutscenes in between. And I did not like how long and drawn-out everything seemed to be. There were only, like, five different levels with their own visual ideas, but each of them went on forever, with variations of the same things you did before. There was also some variety in it so that it didn't get completely boring, but it didn't feel all that creative either, especially when compared to something like Psychonauts. And the same kind of opponents were re-used a lot, in all levels, in addition to some new ones, and they weren't even very cool or Wonderland-like opponents, just black blobs with porcelain doll faces. I seem to remember the first game having more different level and opponent ideas on the whole, but it's been a long time since I played it. In any case, it definitely wasn't this long (about 15+ hours for Madness Returns), and yet it had more levels and more varied ideas, I think. The actual ending in Madness Returns came pretty abrupt, too, after the game stalling for it that long. Some checkpoint placements were annoying, but thankfully I didn't die too often. Oh, and it crashed a lot at start, at least before I set PhysX to Low in the in-game options.

So ... yeah. I have no clue whether to judge this game good or bad. A bit of both, I guess.

Just beat Quake on PS5. That is, the base campaign with its original four episodes.

Took me about a quarter of a century to get there but now it's official: as a singleplayer game Quake just sucks in my opinion. And don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying that it has badly aged, I'm saying that it was a shitty singleplayer shooter the day it came out.

I do understand that once you know the levels and mechanics intimately and can comfortably rocket jump your way around the maps, Quake becomes this amazing adrenaline rush but here's the thing: I've played millions of shooters that were already great fun during that first more methodical and careful playthrough and I've also played many shooters that support frantic action so well that you get that experience during your first approach. That Quake can become a fast-paced emergent experience once you've memorized a lot about the levels and mastered the gameplay doesn't make it special, that is true for a crapload of games, including mediocre 6/10 shooters that will never make any "bestest games of ever" lists.

So, why don't I like Quake (again: as a singleplayer shooter)?

Incidentally it's not because aesthetically the game is about as vivid as a death mask. Actually the visual style and atmosphere are something that I have always appreciated about Quake. That said: everything about the game is so arbitrary and abstract that it's kinda just meaningless and utterly boring to me. I understand that abstract spaces designed entirely for gameplay + some eerie dressing is enough for many players but for me something is missing. There's no player fantasy here, no meaningful stakes and very little to analyze, interpret and make sense of - for the most part it's just room after room, level after level. Even in Doom there was much more meaning to everything.

But I suppose I could live with that if I found the gameplay itself fantastic but I simply don't.

To me Quake is a shooter where the basic act of shooting isn't satisfying at all. For the most part the game is just utterly devoid of energy. When I fire at enemies I don't feel like I'm unleashing destruction, I feel like I'm draining HP until eventually a death animation plays. The shots and explosions generally sound too muffled, guns lack juicy animations and muzzle flashes, there's no sense of impact and when enemies die they just fall over instead being blasted away. And it's actually even worse for enemy attacks. Whether you're being shot at or swords are swung at you, it feels more like an HP drain than being actually hit.

And it doesn't help that most enemies have a shitload of health. I do kinda enjoy shooting the grunts as well as the dogs but in every chapter these guys completely disappear just 1-2 levels in and you will usually find yourself fighting ogres, death knights or those goddamned fiends, all of whom can take a numerous hits from the double-barreled shotgun even at point blank range. For comparison: in Doom II you can kill a Cacodemon with just two blasts from the Super Shotgun. In Quake I only found the grenade launcher and the rocket launcher satisfying to use and even those could have been better. And heck, it feels like most of the game involves evading ogres' grenades or melee tank enemies. The enemy variety is seriously lacking.

And then there's the level design and I guess this might actually be where I commit true sacrilege. I didn't like it. Honestly, it all feels like some avantgarde exercise to me and rarely like actually good shooter level design. Sure, the levels are geometrically pretty sophisticated, there are many paths (though one might argue that they are actually too labyrinthine for a shooter), but I hate most spaces in the game as combat arenas.

Above all the game is making me feel uncomfortable. The levels are very claustrophobic, a lot of it is tunnels or tight platforms. Whenever I want to maneuver it feels like I'm inevitably gonna bump into a wall or fall off a ledge into water or lava. If I'm really lucky I'm gonna run into a trap that shoots nails or will just crush me. And I think I've wasted more health and ammo than in any other shooter because I accidentally ran into a pick-up mid-combat or because the only passage lead me straight through it (and even jumping over items doesn't work due to their large hitboxes).

And in terms of situational variety the level design is seriously unimaginative. Where Doom bombarded you with an endless stream of playful design and memorable rooms and combat scenarios, Quake just constantly repeats the same shit. Oh look, here's an ogre or death knight on a platform above you. Oh look, here's a fiend in a tunnel. And they utterly overuse monster closets or enemies teleporting in when you press a button or pick up a key. I can't count the number of times that Scrags (armless floating monsters) teleport in "unexpectedly".

There are some really cool and memorable moments, like getting locked in a room with a descending ceiling, but such strong moments are extremely rare. Make no mistake: This isn't the masterful craftsmanship we've seen in the Doom games, this is a bunch of dudes trying to figure out what to do with all of this new technology while desperately trying to meet tight deadlines. And I'm not just ranting mindlessly here: from what I've seen Machine Games' expansion levels (included with the remaster) do address practically everything that bothers me about base Quake's level design.

Oh yeah, and Quake has one of the shittiest enemies in the history of shooters: the Spawn.

Anyway, that's Quake. To me possibly the most overrated shooter (in singleplayer) ever.

Jagged Alliance (GOG)

Probably still my all-time favorite video game. Though it's really hard to compare different genres- is Jagged Alliance truly better than Dark Souls and Snowrunner which I'm playing now? It's impossible to really tell. JA is still a fine game though, that much is for sure. I played it as a side project whilst making dinner each night for the past 2 months. Taking a sector or so each night.

Whilst it's very hard to compare to my favorite games of other genres, it is easy to compare within its own- and for turn based squad level games Jagged alliance and its sequel are the kings still to this day. Why? Because no other games in the genre have such overall excellent campaigns. Many good games like Gears Tactics have great combat, but they are really just mission packs- a sequence of maps and scenarios you do one after the other. In Jagged alliance you start down at one corner of the map and take over the island, sector by sector and the enemy react.

The original holds up today still, despite the UI being a bit clumsy by modern standards- JA2 is the better game overall, but I still like the campaign of the original better. Now there's JA3, it better be good.

Metal Gear Mini

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

My rescued hostage unfortunately got their head blown off by a technical machine gun on my first mission. Snake never gives up though and racked up a considerable bodycount on the second attempt of this fantastic bite-sized Metal Gear game.

Time: 8hrs
Kills: 26
Retries: 1
Game Completed No. 111

Operation Flashpoint: Red River

Honestly, I wish all the Operation Flashpoint games were available here, but oh well.

The first game I've played since obsessively watching Ultraman all throughout July. How is it? It's good. Not brilliant, but pretty good. I enjoyed the salty talk from the marines. The game's realism level is somewhere between Call of Duty and Arma, but leans about three-quarters in the Arma direction. I can honestly understand why it upset some fans that Dragon Rising and Red River moved in a more actionized direction compared to the original vision of Operation Flashpoint, but I think these games are valuable experiences in their own way.

It was also nice that this was just a war game about marines fighting the enemy and accomplishing objectives. Too often, such as with Battlefield 3 or the Black Ops series, military shooters become Mission Impossible style globe trotting romps. That at least was the tendency since the release of the original Modern Warfare back in 2007. (Well, Medal of Honor 2010 was also just a standard military game, but its immediate follow up was not.)

The game was not without its frustrations: The last mission seemed not to agree with the AI in particular. There were quite a few instances when I told my squad to defend a building and they would go outside and stand in front of the doorways. Also, the way that it covers bullet spread seemed more like rapid coin flips as whether you would hit rather than any sort of calculation of accuracy. In particular, there was one time when I was firing a mounted machine gun at an enemy who was maybe fifteen meters away. The bullet pattern kept on making perfect circles all around him, no matter how slowly I fired at him (the sights were also pointed straight at him). Last complaint, the game both felt like there were not enough levels and that the levels were too long. (The last mission clocked in at over an hour long, not counting retries.)

I played the 360 version on Xbox One X. No X enhancements. The game looked okay.

I didn’t get a reply notification

CP77 done

Started in Feb. and now completed all 5 endings and few achievements before considering the game done. Will not get expansion this year. but man. what a ride. great game. not as much as TW3 but was worth playing and didnt want to drop it.

now off to BG3

Additionally I'm now a "S" Rank operative after completing Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes non-lethally, earning the Skilled achievement. Snake wasn't able to locate or recover "the prisoner to be executed" so that remains a mystery.

Time: 40min
Kills: 0
Score: 70075
Rank: S

Planet of Lana, Aug 27 (Xbox Game Pass)-Needed a bit of palate cleanser and this was a pretty good choice. I enjoyed this quite a bit more than the likes of similar titles Limbo, Inside, Little Nightmares, or Somerville. Maybe it was the vibrant colors in a lot of the levels compared to the blacks and grays and browns of those games. Maybe it was the adorable sidekick that added to the puzzle mechanics. Regardless I had a pretty good time across its short length. Its very similar to those other games so its an easy recommendation if you liked those as well.

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The Bookwalker Thief of Tales, Aug 28 (Xbox Gamepass)-I'm not sure what I played here. The game is very weird, kinda fun, really easy, and rather disjointed. The different books you jump into are all independent and feel a little bit the different sections of Hard West. As far as I can tell nothing you do in one area impacts anything anywhere else in the game with the exception of 1-2 lines of dialogue. The core game mechanics feel very much like a pared down PS1 era survival horror game. Except there is no horror, the combat is trivially easy, and the resources are abundant making survival itself practically guaranteed. The puzzles typically consisted of use the red key on the red door which you found one room away. The faith tasks in the spaceship and the light time travel in the mansion were high points. The different book settings were interesting with the exception of the second one which felt rushed and sloppy. A couple of times you're given some choices in game but I can't imagine they make much if any difference. The general concept and plot of jumping into books was rather interesting and felt like something out of Jasper Fforde. The back story was underdeveloped, the ending a little predictable, and the epilogue really cringey but dispite all that I still had fun with it. With more meaningful combat, more scarcity of resources, and more complex exploration and puzzle solving a follow up could be very good.

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One more game gone from backlog. GOG copy of Deep Sky Derelicts: Definitive Edition has been beaten after a little bit more than 40 hours. I had a decent amount of fun during the whole playthrough, but the last three Derelicts and Mothership have been more or less pain in the ass. The random nature of combat due to deckbuilding base of the game has shown some flaws and caused few Game Overs. Including the final bossfight, where I was completely obliterated during the first attempt, and had almost no issues fighting him on second one. I am just glad, that I was not playing on Hardcore, as I would be pretty pissed-off right now :D .

Full list of my finished games can be found HERE.

Finished two games since last time:
- Call of the Sea: A walking simulator but with a good story and there are puzzles which are mostly well designed. I really liked it.
- Guacamelee: It started very well with good graphics, humor, a story and good platforming/combat gameplay. However the last level was way too long with too many enemies and some frustating and very difficult platforming sections. And it ended with a boss way more difficult than the other bosses of the game. I had to use a trainer to finally beat him.

Full list here.

Bleak Sword DX. Interesting little hack and slash game. The graphics are the most striking part of it, with this sort of fake pixelated retro diorama look. Your swordsman is a little pixel stick figure who fights enemies who are often also stick figures. I feel the game could have been better graphically if they'd pushed a bit more detail into the style. Something closer to Eternal Castle. The most effective parts were the ones where they tried to get more ambitious with the animation - I loved the boss fight against this giant disembodied head that tries to crush you because the boss is one of the most well-animated things in the game.

The gameplay is pretty basic and betrays its origins as a mobile/touch-based game. You attack, dodge, or block. There are some combos possible but not too many and defeating enemies mostly comes down to learning some simple patterns. Each stage probably will take no more than a minute at the most to complete. You're meant to consume the game in little bites, which is fine but I found that playing through an entire level was about as much as I could handle in a session. It was a bit too bland otherwise.

Sea of Solitude, Aug 31 (Xbox Gamepass)-Its ok but not really my style. Some of the early game was rather tedious but once you understood the basic mechanic of stay out of the water it wasn't too bad. The camera was terrible though; very shaky and dizzying. Story was ok.

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