Batman The Enemy Within, Oct 6 (GOG)-I always like the Telltale games and this one was no different. I enjoyed the Joker origin story and often it felt like there were weightier choices with no good options compared to other Telltale games. It did feel like the game was a little rushed though, some of the animations would stutter or flicker and many of the news articles and reports you could read on the Batcomputer had a lot of typos. If you've stuck with Telltale games this long you'll probably like this one too, otherwise you probably left awhile ago.

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The Quarry PC version on Steam - MY REVIEW.

INTRO.
Took about 15 hours and all, but I finished up The Quarry, which is in current $12 Humble Choice for this October. Really enjoyed it.

If you're not a fan of cinematic-style adventure games like anything from David Cage and Quantic Dream (Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human, etc), Telltale's games (Telltale's The Walking Dead games, Telltale's Batman games, The Wolf Among Us, etc.) and likely anything else from SuperMassive (Dark Pictures Anthology of games & Until Dawn) - I don't think this is going to convert anyone over to this genre of adventure games.

If you like and want a very-well voice-acted & very well-written B-movie inspired horror-movie type of cinematic-game - which I think is obviously purposely hammy, campy & funny b/c this is a game with an 80's to 90's Jason film (i.e. the Friday The 13th movies) - you will probably like this. The story is down-right bonkers, loaded with twists, turns, revelations, and whatnot in the story - and if you care about story & character development more anything, this is going to be for you. If you like movies and/or TV shows - absolutely, this is for you, as most of the time you'll be chilling and watching the story unfold...after you've likely interacted to make decisions & shape the story.

GAMEPLAY.
For gameplay - yes, when it happens - most of this game you'll be doing certain things here, like you'd normally do in this type of game. You will be interacting w/ the game-world & finding things like in most adventure games (or taking items like Lore, Tarot Cards, objects, etc.). You will be taking on QTE's (Quick-Time Events) where you need to slam certain buttons, keys, directions, or whatever on your game-pad or keyboard-mouse during intense cut-scenes & action sequences. I should note here, that I mostly played with a PC gamepad here - either my USB-based and wired Logitech F310 or Xbox 360 Gamepad. More so than anything here, you'll be making decisions that'll be shaping this entire journey of this 10-15 hour story here and its final permutations.

STORY.
So, what's the story here? A bunch of people are at a Summer Camp (Jason/Friday The 13th vibes here!) and all kinds of stuff is hitting the fan basically. This isn't even the half of it here, as there's a Family that has a history to this place & land, monster movie type of stuff here, and more. You, the player, will be bouncing between numerous characters in this big ensemble piece of a story, as you'll be trying to hopefully save as many important characters in this story, so that they'll be alive by the end. You have police man, a fortune teller/tarot card reader, some camp counselors, and more here - whose fates are all intertwined here in, in this horror flick of a video game. I don't want to give too much away here, as there's a ton of stuff going on here. And likely, most players won't be having the same outcome & could be replaying this game a crazy amount of times, as even IGN has said there's around at least 180+ variations here! And also when you talk with other players, there's going to be a good chance your playthrough is going to differ from the next person's playthrough.

GRAPHICS & PERFORMANCE.
The character models and their animations look fantastic. In terms of voice-actors here - likely motion-captured, I'd bet - to look this much like their real-life selves in game, is absolutely uncanny. Absolutely outstanding on this stuff. These are some of the best-looking character models that I've ever seen in a game, for them to look like their real-life counterparts. Ariel Winter, Lance Henrikson, Brenda Song, and Halston Sage look so much like their real-selves here...and it's astonishing how good this game got them down.

The game performed best on my desktop loaded with a 10700KF, 16gb RAM, multiple SSD's & HDD's, and 8gb RTX 3070, with most stuff cranked-up on High settings w/ a few tweaks and changes to the setting to customize it for myself. On my laptop with R5 5600H, 16gb RAM, 1 TB SSD, and 6gb RTX 3060 - well, I had it at mostly Medium settings with some other stuff customized a bit up to suit me. I aim for 1080p60fps, but it wasn't always at 60fps. Sometimes, got performance hits and drops - more so on the laptop than desktop. Regardless, I did have area transition stutters here & there - yes, more so on laptop than desktop. Regardless, the game looked great to me and also so did the environments & lighting here, which so fit the monster movie vibe & Summer Camp vibe here - but the characters models here, more so than anything, took the cake here with their graphics quality on the technical side of things.

OUTRO.
Regardless, I finished-up The Quarry and as a fan of 1980's and 90's horror movies especially & actually these type of cinematic-adventure games (like Quantic Dream's games & Telltale's games), I can add SuperMassive to this list of games of this type that I'll have to play. This game was a blast and given how replay-able this game is, with it's well known that this game has numerous different journeys and conclusions/permutations, I know I'm going to have to give this one another run-through. After my 15 hours or so with this, I can say: this "game" was a total blast and I really enjoyed this one. Yes, I enjoyed it A LOT.

P.S.
Added Quarry to my finished list, of course - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2023/post17

Resident Evil 7, Oct 8 (PS Plus)-I've wanted to play this for a while and I had a lot of fun with it. I always like the resource management and light puzzle aspect of the early RE games and this one supplied that in first person. The haunted house setting was really good. The ship section was a little underdeveloped but probably could have been its own game or a full expansion with a little work. The final boss fight was a huge disappointment but they usually are in these games. The free DLC was also pretty disappointing. The setting was good and the mechanics of gaining new equipment to proceed to certain areas was enjoyable but it moved the game into more pure action when I wanted a continuation of the limited resources/survival horror. But overall the was what I look for in these types which is a tense, slightly scary but ultimately fun experience.

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Desperados 3, just finished it. Very well-made game, but I liked it quite a bit less than its predecessor Shadow tactics (which imo is superb, probably the best Commandos-like game ever made). It felt a bit derivative at times, since many of the missions are very similar in their basic theme to missions in Shadow tactics...e.g. both have a mission where there's a party at a huge mansion and you have to kidnap the lord/business tycoon owning the place. But somehow I also felt the mission design wasn't quite as good as in Shadow tactics. Hard to put a finger to it, but Shadow tactics had something like that really cool mission where you have to kill a samurai lord and can do it by shooting him with your sniper from a distance, by poisoning him, or by attacking him in a standard way. You've also got some choices in Desperados 3, but mostly it's just which route you take. The missions are still very good (and on hard difficulty very challenging), but it didn't really feel like they were an improvement on the previous game, rather a slight regression.
The gameplay and the abilities of most of the characters are also mostly the same as in Shadow tactics, mostly just a slight reskin and remixing. There's some innovation though. One of your team members (introduced roughly at the mid-point of the game) is Isabelle, a voodoo priestess who has super-natural abilities. She can mind control enemies (which only has some very limited uses per mission though, so isn't used often), and also "connect" two enemies, so if one is affected (e.g. killed or knocked out) by an action, the same thing happens to the other one as well. This opens up a whole new arsenal of tactical possibilities. I was skeptical at first, since I didn't like the idea of such super-natural abilities in a Wild West setting, but I have to admit Isabelle is a lot of fun to play (if somewhat overpowered), so definitely a welcome addition. There are also some other minor additions, e.g. there are now female guards ("gunwomen") which isn't just pc pandering, but actually has an effect on gameplay, since those can't be distracted by your "seductress" character Kate (who functions like the spy from Commandos or Aiko from Shadow Tactics). So there's an additional factor you have to consider which renders scenarios a bit more challenging. Apart from that the gameplay is very similar to Shadow tactics though, felt a bit too much like the devs were playing it safe (but on the other hand, their experiments with new gameplay features in their latest - and last - game Shadow Gambit don't seem to have turned out all that well).
Story was pretty meh imo, incoherent and pretty silly. There's some cartoonishly evil railroad company as antagonist and a classic revenge story, but none of it gripped me. Also have to say I found the characters in your team pretty unlikeable. Essentially they come across like amoral killers who enjoy killing. Now this was already a bit of an issue for me in Shadow Tactics, but there it didn't bother me quite as much, because the game's story was set during a war and the alien setting (16th century Japan) created a bit of a distance. The story in Shadow Tactics also had a certain poignancy to it, which is lacking in Desperados 3, where it's mostly cheerful killing from start to finish.
So to sum up, a pretty good game, but imo it's mostly so similar in its essentials to Shadow tactics (and imo in some ways inferior) that I would only recommend it, if you absolutely love that type of game and can't enough of it. But if you're only going to play one of the games, pick Shadow tactics.
Rating: 4/5.

Metal: Hellsinger (PC)

I had a lot of fun with it. The gameplay is as smooth and fluid as a fast shooter should be, and the soundtrack kicks ass. It features lead singers from some of my favorite bands, like Lamb of God and System of a Down. Each level features its own song, and you have to time your shots with the beat of the song to do the most damage. Other actions like fast reloading and dodging are also tied to the beat. When you really get in the groove here and know the song, it's really something.

You progress the levels by killing everything in a closed off area, then moving on. Think of it like Painkiller with beat matching. Each level takes maybe 20 minutes to do, and the whole game can be done in about 6 hours if you crank the difficulty a bit. But there is some replayability by replaying on higher difficulties and doing extra challenges (which unlocks other perks and powers in-game). If there is one thing that is slightly disappointing, it's that almost every boss showdown is more or less the same boss, with the same boss music. Other than that.. this is stellar. Maybe you won't enjoy it as much if you're not into metal music, but who knows? You can also buy the DLC which features Gorillaz and Paramore!

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (PC)

I think this is my third playthrough. It holds up surprisingly well, but last level is just Rambo on steroids. Also maps are significantly smaller than I remember them.
As potato-laptop got upgraded to tower of (severely limited) power, I may actually have a chance to play some more PC games, with actual graphics! :D

Instead of usual short review of the game, I'll have a short-ish rant about DRM being shit.



I like having games on physical media. For me, there’s something really satisfying in putting a disc in a drive and starting the game up. Lately, I’ve been buying older PC games on the flea markets for pennies. Some great titles, some less so, but 10-15 (older, obviously) games overall. I have a potato running Vista for nostalgia sake I’m gaming on. Results? Some games are failing to install, and what installed doesn’t want to run. With SafeDisc and SecuROM patched out of Windows for being unsafe and Starforce being hit and miss with fully patched systems, I ended up sailing the high seas for NOCD patches for the games I legally own. On the version of the OS they’re designed to run originally. What’s the point of owning original physical media if the damn thing doesn’t even want to run and

I beat Yakuza 0 tonight.

Overall, it was a very good game IMO.

Originally I had planned to do a 100% Completion of it, but eventually I came to realize that doing that would take massive amounts of tedium and grinding, which would be sheer agony, and on top of that, some of the minigames are way too ludicrously overly difficult and therefore would probably be impossible for me to get all the completion tasks done for them.

I still did massive amounts of tedium and grinding anyway even with how far I did get towards finishing all the completion tasks, but eventually I gave up when I realized that to try and go further would require endless frustration and zero fun.

After I watched the closing credits, I received the Achievement for reaching 50% of my completion list, and even doing that much was a major pain in a lot of ways, but I still had fun for the most part.

I also don't like how that game doesn't let you start on the Legend difficulty before you have completed the story once first. And when you start over on the Legend difficulty, it erases all of your completion task progress, and to redo all of that again would be a nightmare.

No doubt that's one of the reasons why the Achievement for beating the story on Legend difficulty only has a 0.5% success rate of achievement for GOG. I could get that Achievement myself with relatively little actual difficulty involved in doing that, but the re-grinding of all the same stuff I already spent eons doing, that would make it too agonizing to bother doing.

That was really bad design that they don't let you choose Legend right from the start, before you've beaten the story. I would have done that if they let me. No doubt many other player also would have.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I enjoyed this one. I'm very much in favor of more games, especially RPGs, that go for settings that aren't fantasy or sci-fi. I'm not sure many people outside certain parts of Europe were crying out for an RPG in which you take control of a medieval Bohemian knight, but they made one anyway and it turned out alright.

Although it's very much a story in which Henry has to do specific things, you have a reasonable amount of freedom to define Henry as a character. I played him as a smooth talking goodie two-shoes, but you could make him more of a thief or possibly even a total psychopath if you want.

Some of the mechanics work better than others. The lockpicking is a disaster on a gamepad, which is how I played most of it, but when you use the keyboard it flips around to being a joke, so whenever I had to pick a lock I just put the controller down and used the keyboard for a few seconds. The combat generally works well in the sense that even at your best you won't feel like a superman who can chop through hordes of enemies. Three or four will give a good challenge. The problem is that the story occasionally requires you to take part in huge battles and the game engine really isn't up to handling that kind of thing, so the battles can suffer from lesser framerates and there's no sense of armies clashing, just a dozen or so guys bumping into each other. I found it best in those cases to run behind the enemy line (no one's going to stop you) and stab guys in the back while my friends kept them occupied in front. I did at first have trouble getting to grips with the fighting, but a huge help was the fact that you get a dog pal relatively early on and if you can get him trained up enough to sic enemies, it provides a huge help in terms of evening the odds while you get the hang of things. Apparently there are master strikes that make the combat really easy when you're fully trained, but I never felt the need to get that far. Just fought defensively, beating guys with counters. Also, the game does have some immersive sim aspects in that if something seems difficult when approached in one way, it's a good idea to try a different way because it'll probably be much easier. For instance, I quickly learned that the best way to handle enemy camps is to find a safe place, wait until the middle of the night, and then sneak in and knife the guard and then dispatch everyone else as they slept. Or you might sneak in and poison their food. That can help, too.

The story is fine. I liked Henry as a protagonist and the general plot is interesting and well-developed. Between this and the first two Mafia games, Daniel Vavra seems to have a certain target he goes for, which is basically broad, mainstream Hollywood-like sensibilities, but Hollywood when it doesn't totally suck. Being based in the medieval period, there's a lot of room for laziness and making the usual cynical jokes and stereotypes about unhygienic, disease-ridden peasants and snooty aristocrats but the game doesn't go for this and treats the subject seriously, so the characters generally come across as regular people with a range of characteristics. E.g., some of the nobles seem like jerks but most of them come across as people who take their responsibilities seriously (although there are still some people who are covered in mud and have disease and such - it's not romanticizing the setting, either). I do appreciate stories in which characters have two and possibly even three dimensions instead of just one.

The game does have some pacing issues to me. There's a section mid-game where I had to go undercover at a monastery and although it was interesting at first, the monk schedule the game tries to foist on you got to be incredibly tedious really fast. I know that's kind of the idea, but it was still a bit too much monk simulator in my knight simulator. And the game feels like it approaches a climax only to drag on for a good while longer and it foists a bunch of fetch quests on you at that point, too. As well-made as a lot of the game is, it does sometimes force you to ride from end of the map to another to do or get something, take it back across the map, then do it yet again for something else.

The monastery part ended up getting so tedious for me that I lost patience and simply murdered all the Monks in their sleep. It worked! I got what I was after, no one saw me do it, so I got away with it all. I even heard the villagers talking about it later, how someone murdered all the Monks up at the Monastery and how no one knows who-dunnit. The fact that the game let me solve the quest this way is a credit to the game designers and why I liked the game so much- the game had a linear story, but pretty much let you get things done how you wanted for the most part.

I used a controller all the way through, even for lock picking. It was impossible at first, but at some point it just clicked with me and became easy- like much of the game really. A modern classic in my opinion.

NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... (PS5 PS Plus)

Finished it to all 5 endings, which is actually the only way you can really call the game finished. Most people know this is a remaster of the cult classic prequel to NieR: Automata. Not everyone knows that there was more than one version. Originally a Japanese exclusive - the PS3 and Xbox 360 each got their own separate version in Japan, Replicant for PS3 and Gestalt for Xbox. Yes, the 360 really did have Japanese exclusives. The 360 version had an older protagonist that is protecting his daughter rather than a younger one, looking after his sister. Then the international version "NieR" released on both PS3 and 360, based on the Xbox game. Finally, the Replicant version of the game made it out of Japan in this remaster- with an added ending that ties closer to Automata.

This game is painfully slow to get going, the first 6 hours or so are actually boring and consist of nothing but fetch questing. But, when it got going, it really got going. Like so many Japanese games the lead character is a boring do-gooder dullard. Funnily enough, the support characters even make fun of him about it, so the game is quite self-aware of this. The three support characters make up for everything. They are a weird, tortured bunch- like something you expect in Planescape Torment as companions.

There is nothing groundbreaking or mind blowing about the combat, character progression or the world. There are really only a few types of enemies. The only real thing you need to think about is whether you prefer one handed swords, two handed swords, or spears to fight with. However, the story and characters combine to make an awesome game. Yoko Taro is one of the few Japanese RPG designers who makes games where the stories don't end up feeling like childish fairy tale material. Of course, there is also the music which is just as good as Automata.

As is the way of Yoko Taro, you play to the first ending and then start again. That sounds really bad, but it isn't really since the second play through begins in the second half where the differences manifest. This leads to revelations and hints as to the motives of the shades you fight. Then you start again and get a new ending. Then again to get the real ending that erases your saves files. Then you start an entirely new game...and something happens. The something is the new material for this ver.1.22474487139 remaster. It's quite journey in the end...and gives some idea as to how the world ended up like it is thousands of years later in Automata.

It's actually an exceptional game as far as I'm concerned. Maybe not quite as good as Automata, but still a fine game.

INTRO:
Recently played through & finished House of Ashes from the Dark Anthology Pictures Anthology (Steam for PC).

I don't think this one's going to re-write the book & formula on making these cinematic-adventure games, as it's similar in style to the Telltale ones (Telltale's Batman games, Telltale's The Walking Dead games, etc). You will make decisions that shape the journey and its story, as you have different survivors that you'll be trying to have survive by the end of the game and hope that you can also get them a good ending, if possible. Besides lots of decisions-making there are of course the usual assortment of finding things (like Lore) in the game-world & collectibles, QTE's, and sequences where you can do shooter-game type stuff, but there isn't much of the latter - and I wish there was at least a bit more, given this game's focus on the military.

THIS CINEMATIC GAME.
Though, it's still quite good. While I did play The Quarry first and this might've made a bigger impact b/c I did play that one (The Quarry) first and b/c of its 80's and 90's Summer Camp/Friday The 13th & Jason vibes. I enjoyed House of Ashes, despite noticing SuperMassive having formula w/ thee cinematic-adventure/horror games having a bunch of survivors, a narrator (the curator here, for this DPA game...and probably the rest of them), and whatnot - but, it didn't hit me like The Quarry did.

The writing, voice-acting, and story was still good & is very 80's horror here, often feeling purposely hammy & campy with its direction & writing. It's feeling like it pays homage & also has their takes on films like The Predator, monster movies, and some of the war films over the years. In this cinematic-game, once you get past the openings Tutorial/Prologue which is interesting (don't want to give too much away there), you will guide a bunch of survivors who are with their respective militaries, both U.S. and Iraqi. You will make decisions on what to do w/ each other in situations, other situations at hand, backgrounds & info on their stories, relationships with each other, and whatnot - as the US Soldiers are looking for WMD's....and get a lot more than they bargained for, searching over in a certain old location and finding something else.

Regardless, after around the 10-15 hours so or more hours it took me, I enjoyed it. The graphics are fantastic and so is the lighting, if you throw Ray-Tracing on. It certainly performed a lot better than The Quarry did on my PC (R5 5600H, 16GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 6gb RTX 3060m, Windows 11 x64) and the character models themselves looked really good - but, not as great as The Quarry. Regardless, if you played The Quarry - and likely any of the other SuperMassive's games - you'll probably at the very least like this. Whether you love it, that might depend on what was your first SuperMassive game, the setting (does it appeal to you?), and if their formula is running tiresome for you yet & might need a bit of tweaking.

OUTRO:
Regardless, if you like this stuff - you'll probably like it, at least. It's still worth playing for sure and quite good, if you're a fan of this kind of stuff. What kind of stuff to I mean? I mean this: SuperMassive's game, military movies (and its take on the military), Monster Movies, and/or cinematic games of this sort. If all of that sounds good to you, check it out. And with it being in the October Humble Choice for $12 along w/ The Quarry (and even other titles), can't really go wrong; no better time than now, TBH here.

Chained Echoes, Oct 13 (Xbox Game Pass)-It was a very fun classic JRPG type game in the mold of FF6 or Chrono Trigger. For whatever reason I enjoyed it a lot more than Chrono Trigger. There were a lot of things to like: the plot was fun with some unexpected twists, the writing and characters were good, the overdrive and sky armor combat mechanics added some challenge. There were some annoying or low points as well: travel especially fast travel and map usage was bit of a pain, crystals and crafting and weapon upgrades in general were tedious, skill management was a bit much as well, a couple of eye rolling plot points, the game lasted a little bit too long with 6-8 hours to go after the characters said we're at the final battle, some of the boss fights were a little ridiculous especially with act twice and act thrice. But those are all pretty minor compared to the enjoyment I had.

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Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight: a very well-made Brazilian indie metroidvania. Although it's an easy and short experience, fans of the genre won't be disappointed.

Gris, Oct 15 (GOG)-A relaxing, very pretty game. Unfortunately the general mechanics and gameplay are of a type I don't really like. And man is it easy to get lost in some areas because it all looks the same. Not really my style.

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I'd by lying if I said I wasn't tempted to do that, too. I did end up mugging the abbot and one or two of the monks because I needed some stuff and didn't like pickpocketing.