Resident Evil 3 Remake, Jul 23 (Xbox Game Pass)-I think the general consensus is that this is a pale imitation of the original. I can't comment on that having not played the original. I can say this is not nearly as good as RE 2 Remake but its still a solid game. The levels are less mazelike, there are fewer and simpler puzzles, there aren't A and B runs, and everything feels streamlined compared to that game. Jill's sections were generally pretty easy and I was able to stockplie lots of resources. Carlos's sections were a lot harder for some reason. I felt like I was constantly getting swarmed as Carlos and incentivized to kill everything that moves. But I quickly ran low of ammo and struggled with some areas. But overall the game wasn't too difficult. And Nemesis not stalking you and only appearing in some scripted sections made the game quite a bit easier and less tense than the previous game. But I did like it and it still scratches that itch for a modern survival horror game.

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Kona II: Brume (XSX Game Pass)

The first game was just average. It had an intriguing story line but was held back by ridiculously exaggerated death from exposure mechanics.

The sequel is much better. The story does follow on directly from the ending of the first game- so it is recommended that you play that first, even if it is an inferior game. Otherwise, it will be like coming into a discussion with someone halfway through.

The gameplay is way better. Exploration really pays off with extra side story that gets entered into your journal. This time someone told the developers that well equipped, healthy people can survive out in freezing weather for longer than two minutes. The combat still isn't great, but there's not much of it anyway. The story really did pull me onwards to find out what really happened.

Lastly, the graphics this time are way better. The rough cartoon graphics of the first game are replaced by realistic and quite good-looking graphics. It also runs way better than the first game. I remember the first game seemed to have frame pacing issues on Xbox at least. This game is also twice as long as the first game too. Worth playing.

Huh, I beat Outcast: A New Beginning on PS5 two weeks ago or so. I was sure I had posted a review here but I guess I didn't. Well, I'll keep it short, then (by my standards).

I think it's good but not great. In some ways I was positively surprised, in others it was an utter let down. I expected a game that's lacking in production value and general quality but makes up for it with originality. I got pretty much the opposite. Sadly A New Beginning has dropped the original game's philosophy of organic design and its action adventure roots and instead follows most patterns of any modern sandbox game. There's a few settlements with quests givers and some lovable NPCs but outside of those the world feels utterly generic and empty as you will find practically nothing there except samey enemy camps, a small set of generic activities and a few collectables. And sadly the missions and activities are almost all of the "follow the marker and kill some enemies" variety. Anyone counting on some tomb raideresque riddles like in the original game will be disappointed.

That said, the game does have its merits. Something I appreciate personally is that it is very arcadey and has a fair amount of platforming elements. I said "follow the marker" but often that involves performing not just double but triple, quadruple and even quintuple jumps and gliding around like Batman. Actually a large number of the aforementioned activities are arbitrary platforming challenges based entirely on that. And the landscapes, while a bit generic, are quite gorgeous and you get to zip around them at huge speeds. And while the combat isn't anything ground-breaking and does get a bit repetitive due to a limited set of enemy types and meh level design, it is surprisingly satisfying and solid.

The game's saving grace are once again the atmosphere, the writing and the lore. Don't get me wrong, the story is as clichéd and predictable as it gets, though this time we get James Cameron's Avatar instead of Stargate. But I've found Cutter Slade's compulsive sarcasm and colloquialisms to be almost as charming as they were a quarter of a century ago, much of the dialogue has genuinely made me laugh and the cast of NPCs is diverse (in terms of personality - not ethnically as all of them are samey looking aliens) and I've found quite a few of them to be genuinely original and memorable characters - heck, it's been two weeks and I think I still remember every single one of them. And while the world again consists of generic biomes that we've seen a million times since NES games, it is satisfying to delve deeper into its bizarre and extensive lore.

For the first couple of hours I was genuinely mesmerized by the game, also because you get some of the more interesting quests and locations during that phase. It was a joy to dive into the world of Adelpha and meet the Talans again after a literal lifetime (a short one but still). Ten hours into this ~30 hour adventure (at the very latest) you will probably find that the game has already shown everything it has to offer and it starts to feel a bit like repetitive busywork but still: I never got entirely bored and had a decent time all the way through. Not every game has to be the next big thing that will change your life and I appreciate Outcast: A New Beginning as much as I appreciated the likes of Red Faction: Guerrilla, Dark Void and Fracture over a decade ago - as a perfectly welcome and sufficiently satisfying time filler.

Agony- Unrated (Steam)

I couldn't resist this for the couple of dollars it sells for on sales. It's such a good idea- basically a first-person hell simulator. I don't think the dev's really meant it to be like hell to play though. First of all, it's one of those games that have what I call sticky terrain. The floor and walls have countless little objects that your character gets hooked on momentarily instead of just automatically stepping over them. So, you find yourself constantly running along jumping all the time, as though you're a Kangaroo, just to get something close to fluid movement.

Also, the game is simply too hard for the type of game it is. You have to use constant trial and error to find the correct path through locations as you get chased by demons and fall to your death. Half the time I found my way through an area and genuinely had no idea how I actually achieved it. Basically, I just stumbled my way through the game until I passed.

Too bad, because the idea is a very good one as an adult game. Despite the issues with the game, I always wanted to get back to it and see it through. The complete opposite to STALKER last week- a critically acclaimed game that I couldn't wait to be done with. Anyway, I played to the regular story ending. Then I played it again in Succubus mode. Succubus mode gives you a protagonist that can actually kill most of the enemies quite easily, it unlocks after completing the main game and even has some different pathways and cutscenes. It's actually the much better way to play and was more like how I was expecting the game to be to begin with.

Anyway, it's a bad game, no doubt about it. Yet, I still got enough out of it that it was definitely worth the few dollars I paid for the experience.

Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered

or Fahrenheit: the Remastered is as trippy as you remember how the original was

I bought the original version in 2019, mainly for nostalgia purpose because I remember playing them back in 00s. My memory was this was a clusterfuck of a last act and that it was my first exposure to the so called QTE. Fast forward to 2023 and GOG gave the remastered version to the owner of the original. I have not replayed the o.g. but after finishing Lumo decided to spin the remastered.

The most irritating thing of the remastered is that when I choose to stop playing, the game supposed to bring me to the main game menu. But more often than not it stopped the game completely and it just quit. Straight to desktop. I also experienced twice the game crashed when a new cutscenes supposed to play.

Story-wise nothing changed but I appreciate the AI bit more now with how the hype around it currently. Gameplay wise compared to the time I played the original, I actually have no difficulty in tackling the QTEs. Even on the game store card, there are still people that complained about their difficulty. But while I indeed remembered playing them terribly back in the day, the remastered version's QTE is just easy for me. All-in-all I'm still have some fun completing the remastered, but mostly helped by the nostalgia factor.

The Case of the Golden Idol, Jul 27 (Xbox Game Pass)-It's a really good puzzle game with difficult logic puzzles. I liked how each case was tied to the next and part of a larger conspiracy. I felt there were a couple of weak plot points that weren't exactly unresolved but just resolved unsatisfactorily. I also felt like the game ended rather abruptly on the 11th case. I think it needed one final case to wrap some things up rather than the ignominious end we got. But still quite fun a a test of one's deduction skills.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (PC Game Pass)

I played the single player campaign only. The first CoD to come to Game Pass finally, since the Activision takeover. So, it looks like they're starting with the newest and working backwards- which makes sense since the microtransactions are still able to make more money over a wider audience. That's how I'd do it too.

First of all, the install process is the most ridiculous I've ever encountered. You download and install a generalized base game and MWIII. I assume CoDII would also run from this if I had it as well. On Xbox I can just download the campaign without all the extra stuff, on PC I couldn't see an option for this- so 200GB download size!

Despite all the above, the Campaign is very high quality and a lot of fun, as long as you are happy to turn your brain off and just want to enjoy being part of an action-packed OTT special ops movie. Lots of shooting people and blowing shit up. The characters and story are okay in that same sort of Hollywood style that the game is clearly aiming for. I'd even say that this is the most fun campaign I've played- but I've only played Ghosts, Black Op's III and MW1 (2019).

It's unlikely you will spend much more than 10 hours on the campaign, even if you're slow and want to kill every last enemy like me. That's the main problem really. Who the hell would pay over A$100 for this if you have no interest in the multiplayer side? I don't understand why they don't just sell the campaigns as a cheaper standalone DLC for those that only want it. For now, Game Pass is a good option and I look forward to playing the other campaigns as they become available, just the same as I did when all the Battlefield games hit Game Pass.

Simon the Sorcerer. A pretty good Lucasarts-like point and click adventure. You can't die, but I did lose a couple of hours of progress a couple of nights ago when the game decided to crash and I had foolishly neglected to save. Not sure if that's a game or SCUMMVM issue. Fortunately, the game isn't very long.

I found it mostly fair in its puzzle designs, although there were a couple of times I was bewildered by things (I've always associated mints with coolness, not heat? Maybe I'm the one who's wrong...). It's also a game where you spend the bulk of the game just exploring and picking up stuff, so by the time you start really solving puzzles you've got a pretty sizable inventory, and then the game proceeds quickly to its climax as you start knocking stuff off your to-do list.

The dialogue is quite funny and the graphics are gorgeous. I could have used more of Chippy the Dog in the game. I kept wondering where disappeared to as I played.

Lifeless Planet (Epic)

A free game on EGS from many years ago. It's like a walking simulator, but with far more platforming than usual. At least the platforming is relatively easy, but there is quite a lot of it. There is no combat and very little puzzle solving that mainly comes down to finding a nearby item and using it.

The story is the main thing here. It has that draw to it that pulls you on through the annoyingly long platforming segments, because you really need to find out what is going on and what happened. You are an astronaut, exploring what was meant to be a lush planet. Instead, it is barren with signs of previous habitation.

It was worth seeing through to the end. I agree with some people's complaints that the traversal was sometimes just needlessly long. For the very final area I was even beginning to suspect that the dev's were taking the piss. Why make the player run 1km through barren nothingness to the next point of interest, when they could have made it 100m instead? I think the very last run was deliberately long just to give time for the final mood music track to play out- sort of like the world's longest ladder in Metal Gear Solid 3...just so that they could play that Snake Eater song.

Overall, I did like it despite the feeling of it being padded by too much running.

Lost in Play

While I did enjoy the cartoon style, animations and gibberish sounds from the start, at first I was slighlty disappointed that it just seemed like a series of loosely connected, more or less absurd puzzles and mini-games without actual story. But that changed a bit over time and it became more engaging and funny to me, once I could recognize some sort of plot. In the end, it did feel like a well rounded experience, something akin to an Amanita adventure. The theme of imagination and children playing was sweet and also reminded me a bit of Lil Gator Game. Most puzzles were easy, some a bit trickier or harder to understand. Fortunately, there is an in-game hint system, even if it's rather simple and not always that helpful, but all in all the game is fair enough that it can be solved without having to look up a walkthrough. As a slow gamer, it took me about 5 hours to beat.

Senua's Saga Hellblade 2, Jul 29 (Xbox Game Pass)-Absolutely gorgeous with excellent voice acting, again I particularly love the Furies. I had a handful of stuttering but not often. The game felt shorter than the first but looking up the lengths I think its actually about the same. Somehow there seemed to be even less 'gameplay' than the first game. Most of what you do is walk from one stunning location to another. I think there were exactly 3 find the symbols in the environment type puzzles from the first game. Most of the puzzles were of the activate a series of water blobs (switches?) to unlock a path or reach an item. There was a decent amount of combat but you have the Mirror of Invincibility which trivializes it. Each individual encounter is one on one and punctuated by a little cutscene of you killing an enemy and the next coming up behind you so you're never fighting multiple enemies like in the first game. I still enjoyed the game quite a bit for what it was: a great looking and sounding game with a decent story and little to no gameplay. I don't think it was as good as the first game but still quite good. Interestingly, the imagery, especially in the Draugr camp, was scarier and more disturbing than anything in the Resident Evil or Dead Space remakes.

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Every Harvester Game in January. You can get them here on GOG.

The Cat Lady, it's beautiful, characters, atmosphere. I'm certain that it's going to be my Game of the Year (not released during 2024). The music and the colors transform the story, making it more appealing specially because it touchs some tough subjects.

Downfal, damn voice acting and characters are intriguing. The story is way better told than the Cat Lady, I only played a bit the first Downfall but I did not like dialogues, they felt a bit uncharacteristics.

Lorelai, this game is graphically beautiful, I like Lorelai as the main character but the story felt short and nothing amazing.

Burnhouse Lane, interesting setting and game mechanics but characters and main story are not as memorable like their first games.

I had so much fun, and some of them are replayable mostly because of the atmosphere, in case you like horror or psychological games.

Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition

That's an interesting reverse take on the inquisition, and the story is pretty convoluted. As for gameplay, it's standard ARPG and just keeps you going. Pretty small RPG element, but nice that by the end you can even have more points than you can possibly use, all four stats at S and points to spare. Not nice that you can just have a single element and need to choose it from the beginning, without knowing much about it at the time, and also that the only spells are the automatic ones cast by your focus. Also mildly unpleasant that keys can't be customized. And the save system is annoying, always making a new save, and the slots remaining used even if you delete a save, the files actually still there too, but they are overwritten (bar the screenshot, which is an unnecessary full size BMP) if you make a new save after that. So to be on the safe side, keep cleaning up save slots.
Otherwise, plenty of oddities in terms of what's passable and what isn't, and going through doorways is always quite weird. But the Dreamworld does offer tactical options in combat, or more exactly takes you away from most enemies. And for much of the game you may need the help, also considering the bad targeting. Could have used a way to lock on an enemy. Of course, by the end you'll be so overpowered any and all enemies including the end bosses are laughable, but before then.
Should note that there is an undocumented minimap function, just press M, but there's a reason it's undocumented, it's really rough, apparently generated from the actual map and sort of hacked together by the devs, often wrong even in terms of just displaying passable terrain, but at least it shows enemies and NPCs.
The attunements are an interesting idea for a while, but eventually it'll just be a matter of loading up on essence while wielding any gear with a new one that you can unlock. Some are particularly rare though, and for that matter there are a few particularly rare or even unique pieces of gear, a few of which also being quest items, but they can be sold like anything else, and when merchants clear inventory they may be gone.
I liked the limited respawns early on, a few enemies showing up if you go back to look, so there's something but not as if you never passed through, but later the respawns are worse than the original enemies, so it's really not nice anymore, and it's strange when that's also the case in the areas cleared for quests, after completing those quests, so after completing a quest to clear an area, killing a certain enemy that acts as the boss, you go back in the "cleared" area and can find groups of that "boss" enemy. Or you can go back, leaving that area before clearing it, and if it's a multi-part zone you may have that boss enemy show up as a respawn in the earlier portion, and killing that one will count as completing the quest... However, things change again as you approach the end, the snowy areas having no respawns whatsoever.
Otherwise, not that there are many in the game, but there's no way to detect or avoid or disarm traps, and they seem to have unlimited triggers. Also, immunities actually mean 1 damage and effects may still apply, or at least you still get frozen despite immunity to cold.
At least items are saved where they drop, and you can get a house with a chest so early on, and another later, though that one is rather out of the way in the city. But annoying that empty containers can't go in other containers, unless you're just picking one up from another container, which also means that, since merchants are treated as containers, you can't sell containers, except in that case of picking one up from another container and putting it in a container you're carrying, in which case it is sellable.
Also liked the healing system, all of four healing items, but all of them with unlimited uses, and whenever you use one you temporarily lose maximum HP, depending on the power of the healing item, max HP getting restored when you rest.
One notable bug is that if you swap to a weapon with a changed element it reverts to the original one, you must first remove the current weapon and then equip that one to keep the change. And it was weird that, at least as far as I could tell, nothing marks "completing" the Reliquary. I mean, when you kill "that" lich there's the death line, but that's it, you just clear out everything and then you have to go all the way back out, unless I missed something.
But I wasn't sure what the endings mean there. Or more specifically that "rating". So I was benevolent defender, which should be the result of my choices, but then the rank of adept, which seems to be 2/5... What was that based on? I mean, level 26, all available attunements unlocked (so bar those for other elements, I had water), all four attributes at S (from level 25, 26 just gave spare points), cleared out the Reliquary, and yet an apparently low rating?

Must note that, while the requirements say that Intel graphics are not supported, it worked just fine on my Pentium G3440's integrated graphics.

Master of Orion II

I've just won a game of Master of Orion II, the very first time this has happened to me, I won by council vote, there was no war, I was in perfect harmony with the other races.

It's a nice change from all the times I was eliminated by conquest.

Trüberbrook

or Trüberbrook: Does anybody want to go to vacation in 60's Germany?

Been a while since I last finishing any games so I want to tackle my backlog, one that was given for free last here here. It's a short point-and-click games and I finished it around 4 hours. No puzzle here area really hard and you get a hotspot indicator that made life easier. They also easier due to they choose not to implement manual item combination, if a puzzle need to be finished by a combination of 2 things or more the radial selector will combine them for you

The story started out interesting but tbh I kinda get bored after getting to the last part. Finishing the 2 endings just makes me "So that's it?" Not really want anyone feels more curious about 1960 Germany.