Sniper Elite: Resistance (PC Game Pass)

I think this is my favorite modern shooter series at the moment. It leaves out all the modern cinematic BS for the most part and just lets you loose in a largeish open map with your objectives to achieve any way you like. The maps are the best in the genre. Plenty of approaches to your objectives, lots to find if you explore. Best of all the developers don't go overboard trying to make the game contain every modern graphical technique- so it runs flawlessly for me at 4K/120 at ultra settings. It still looks decent- this is exactly where I want games to sit with graphics versus performance.

The only tangential question I have is why is the leader of the French Resistance a "strong modern black woman (tm)". It just feels like every game now has to have a "strong modern black woman (tm)" in a leadership position for some reason. What's wrong with an ordinary French woman as leader of the French Resistance? It shouldn't annoy me, but it does.

I'm late this year but please include me. Thanks! :)


Games Finished in 2024
Games Finished in 2023
Games Finished in 2022
Games Finished in 2021
Games Finished in 2020
Games Finished in 2019
Games Finished in 2018

Condemned: Criminal Origins. I had played this years ago on the Xbox 360, but my disc copy of the game was bugged and the game would crash right as the final boss fight was about to start. But having played FEAR recently, I thought maybe it was time to go back to this and see if I could finish it, especially since it's not a particularly long game.

Much like FEAR, the specifics of the story are kind of a hodge-podge of elements swiped from movies the creators liked, in this case stuff like Se7en. You control an FBI agent who investigates serial killers, but you're jumped at a crime scene and the killer uses your gun to shoot two cops, which means you're on the run and you end up tracking that guy, who happens to be a serial killer who preys on other serial killers. At the same time, there's a mysterious bird-borne disease that is apparently driving the city's homeless population crazy, so as you move through the city without your gun, you end up having countless battles against the homeless with improvised weapons. Eventually you reach the end and are crowned king of the bums. Some guys who look like Cenobites are also involved and apparently the sequel explains a bit more about that.

There's some other stuff about your guy being some kind of science experiment and the government is really interested in you, which I guess is to explain why your guy is able to kick the crap out of so many crazy bums, although it doesn't really go anywhere and almost feels like a vestige from an earlier form of the game, like maybe they were thinking of making him related to the Point Man from FEAR or something.

The important thing is that the game's take on first-person melee combat is pretty solid and after you get used to it, you can easily get the rhythm of how to block and attack and deal with multiple foes at once. If I have anything to complain about, it's that your character moves pretty slowly. He's a chunky Borgnine-esque figure and holding the sprint button down is no good because he's in pathetic condition for a law enforcement officer and gets totally winded after he takes like four steps, and he isn't even that fast before he runs out of gas. Also, the inclusion of CSI-like bits in which you "investigate" for clues end up feeling like interactive cutscenes because the game largely holds your hand through it and even automatically selects the correct tools for the moment. But the game still looks and sounds very nice and the campaign ends at a good time, before tedium starts to set in.

Dark Siren (Steam)

This game was a proof of concept for the later and much better Vampire Mansion. Basically, you spend your time avoiding capture by an evil Siren with very unlikely body proportions until you piece together the story through notes and escape. Then you do it again on harder difficulty, all the while unlocking ever more costumes to barely dress up the Siren with. It's okay, but Vampire Mansion is so much better that you may as well just get it instead. The only advantage this one has is that it is cheaper- it is around $1.50 on sale whilst Vampire Mansion is around $3.50 on sale...it's worth paying double in this case.

The Plucky Squire. A cute action-adventure game in which you control the hero of a children's book who gets kicked out of the book and into the real world. The way it plays out is that you spend most of your time in the book, but occasionally you'll encounter portals allowing travel outside the book, at which point you start running around the desk of the little boy who owns the book. Eventually enemies also start appearing there and you have to do stuff that will allow you to overcome obstacles. A big puzzle-solving mechanic is that you can flip pages of the book to backtrack to get stuff you need, or you can tilt the book to move stuff on the pages around (e.g., sliding block puzzles). The graphics when you move outside the book are very nice.

The concept is clever but I don't know that the game fully exploits it as it always feels like you're playing a fairly basic Zelda-like that just switches up the graphics sometimes. The game also likes to have you do mini-games for boss fights instead of building on the basic action gameplay, like a Punch-Out style fight for one guy or a rhythm game or Puzzle Bobble ripoff for your sidekicks.

The game isn't very hard and it seems like it's mostly meant for younger players, especially with how story-driven it is and frequently takes control away from you for cutscenes. I can't say I've read a storybook since I was a kid myself, so I won't pass judgement on the quality of the story. It's cute, the good guys are best friends and try to save the kingdom/book. The puzzles are mostly pretty simple and often encourage literal "outside the box" thinking.

Ace Combat 7- Skies Unkown (Steam)

Played and finished it on Xbox back around 2019 when it was in Game Pass. Always planned to buy it when it became cheap enough. It now goes on sale under $10- that's cheap enough. These days there are so few arcade flight shoot-em-up games which makes this series almost unique. Wing Commander and all of its relatives are long gone, but that is what Ace Combat plays like- arcade flight game with real world aircraft likenesses set in a bizarre fictional world, all with a story that feels like it was written by Kojima.

As long as you don't expect any actual realism beyond the look of the planes, then it's a lot of fun. If you're a controller thrower though, then avoid the series, as some missions are frustrating and difficult. On PC this is your only non-emulation option. It's good, but not as good as Ace Combat 6- the Xbox 360 exclusive.

Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 1 returned to original idea with some life improvements and a lot of backtracking to loot everything what is necessary. Basically average game, the best is still second part of original trilogy in my opinion.

Z

Yes, that's the name of the game. It's an old RTS from the 90s. Played it as a kid but never got far, then I discovered there's an open-souirce remake called Zod Engine which gives some quality of life features, including widescreen.

Overall it's a simpler, streamlined RTS. There's no basebuilding - instead you capture territories. Some of them have factories that produces robots or vehicles, others have radars and repair facilites. The more territories you control, the faster your buildings produce new units for you. This snowball effect means the losing side very rarely will manage a comeback. On the other hand, matches will be decided in 10-15 minutes instead of an hour-long conflict you never had a chance.

Overall it's a fun game but doesn't have the lasting appeal of something like Starcraft. Zod Engine features not only the 20 original campaign missions but also the expansion and several multiplayer maps. But the campaign was enough for me, don't think I'll touch the game ever again.

From last time:
- Friday the 13th: Interesting game with puzzles that increase in difficulty over time/levels. It was well done and quite interesting.
- Life is Strange 2 The pacing is a bit slow but the story is very interesting. I liked it.
- The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit: This is a prologue episode for episode 2 of Life is Strange 2. I liked it too.
- Huniepop: An interesting match-3 game with girls (with clothes... or not). The match-3 part was enjoyable.
- SteamWorld Dig: An addictive game. The gameplay is quite simple but evolves a bit over time. The story was a bit lame but it's not the most interesting part.
- Teacup : A pretty point'n click with quite simple puzzles. The story is enjoyable, quite short (2h) and the dialogues and mini games were good. i liked it.

Full list here

Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 2 is basically more of the same, although each game tries to be slightly different. It is short, with lot of backtracking and grinding. There is no way how you could die. Simple linear adventure for time, when you need calmness.

Dark Souls 3 (Steam)

I finished NG++ to get the final ending that I didn't have- The Usurpation of Fire. It's meant to be the best ending, but I prefer The End of Fire ending personally. Though the third ending introduced the best NPC and her armor (which I now use)- this playthrough I upgraded my load carrying to move up to medium armors instead of light. So that's now 5 times I've finished the game, including twice on Xbox before getting the PC version. This time I actually only meant to download the game to see how it looked on my current PC...but I got carried away and forgot to stop. You know it goes.

It is one of the best video games of all time, though I narrowly give the award to the first Dark Souls simply because the maps are better. My From soft tier list is Dark Souls (finished 5 times), Dark Souls 3 (5 times), Bloodborne (2 times), Elden Ring (2 times), Demon's Souls (4 times) and Sekiro (2 times) brings up the rear. They are all excellent games- Sekiro is the hardest because the lack of any real personalized character development means the player has to adapt to the games playstyle rather than being able to adapt their character to their preferred playstyle. Dark Souls 2 isn't in the tier list because it was made by Bandai Namco's internal team (with consultancy from From Software), so it's not a true From Software game.

In general, you can use DGVoodoo2 to force re-render of resolutions and in-game UI:

1. In-game, use a resolution that the game supports properly w/ the UI - i.e. 800x600 or something.
2. Download and Install the DGVoodoo2 files properly into game-folder where the EXE file is that runs the game.
-> https://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2/
3. In DGVoodoo2 (DGV2), force the re-rendered output resolution to re-render at what you want to output it to - i.e. 1080p, as you mentioned.
4. OPTIONAL - Also in DGV2, if you got a good GPU: go and also force MSAA; MSAA the crap out of it to get rid of any blur from the up-rezzing of the resolution and UI.

DGVoodoo2 can be quite useful for this stuff - but there is overhead. If you get any stutters or anything or performance hits - turn down MSAA a bit or straight-up turn it off, from the up-rez. MSAA is taxing.

I use it for Hitman 2: SA to Hitman Blood Money; DS1 and 2; and other games that are old w/ crap UI support at modern widescreen-rez's, if there isn't any official support or mods to fix this stuff.

Turbo Overkill. I would say this is definitely one of the best of this new wave of traditional FPSs. You control a cyborg named Johnny Turbo and his gimmick is that he's got a chainsaw hidden in his right leg, which he can use to chop up enemies by sliding across surfaces. The story is a bunch of cyberpunk cliches that openly pay tribute to popular movies like Robocop, Army of Darkness, Blade Runner, Total Recall, etc. There's literally an entire level that is a tribute to the Judge Dredd movie as you have to fight your way up a whole mega-block.

What the game nails first is that simply moving around is a lot of fun. Your guy runs fast and you can do double and eventually triple jumps combined with being able to dash twice in mid-air, so you can cover enormous distances before you have to touch the ground again, and when you do hit the ground you can either come down blasting or hit the chainsaw button to start sliding through enemies. You also eventually get abilities to wall-slide certain places and to grapple. You can also accumulate upgrades that allow your saw attacks to give you health and armor, so you have even more incentive to play aggressively. The weapons are a fun bunch and each has an alt-fire mode that really comes in handy depending on situations, even your default pistol.

Beyond all that, it just seems like a game that's very comfortable being a game and wanting to make sure you're having as much fun as possible. It doesn't feel like it's holding back at all but as if the designers were putting as much cool stuff in it as they could think up. I would be curious to know what if anything got left out because it was too much for the game engine or something.

The graphics are similar to Amid Evil in that they're quite smooth and full of effects (the designers do love their rain and colored lighting), but stuff is pixelated up close.

Stuff that doesn't work so well: The sound design seems oddly undercooked. A lot of weapons come across as soft or lacking impact, and for a game that relies on you knowing your environment so well, it's often hard to gauge what's right behind you. I got killed by stuff blindsiding me more often than anything. I would just be trucking along blasting stuff and then suddenly I get one-shotted and have no idea what even got me.

Somewhat related to this is that the game likes to disable quick-saving (the only kind of saving in the game, aside from auto-saves) during major encounters like boss fights. There are few things in video games more irritating than repeatedly getting killed on a part and then being forced to replay everything you've mastered over and over just to have another try at whatever's been killing you, only to get killed again and be forced to replay even more. This gets more dramatic as the game goes along because the last few levels really strain for EPIC~! boss fights with numerous phases and it just gets ridiculous really fast, and not in the intended way. I also didn't care for most of the boss fights, especially the early ones in which you go up against rival bounty hunters - these are basically just bot fights and I've never liked those going back to Unreal.

Mystery House. Sierra's very first adventure game, so primitive it predates graphics creation utilities for the Apple II, which is why the graphics we do get are of the basic stick figure style. You walk into a mansion and the door locks behind you. Now you can't leave until you figure out who's murdering all the other guests.

It's really not that hard a game once you get on its wavelength, but that can be hard to do because it's so technologically crude. The graphics, which were a big deal at the time, are so basic that it's sometimes hard to discern what you're looking at, and the parser is one of the old, very basic two-word types with a limited vocabulary. For instance, you must PRESS BUTTON in one place, but you absolutely can't PUSH BUTTON. Only a drooling moron would ever try to PUSH BUTTON!

It is amusing in how deranged it can seem, introducing you to all these other people who exist only so their corpses can be discovered later, until you work up to the killer. Roberta Williams had this impish, bloodthirsty side you only really got to see in this, Colonel's Bequest, and Phantasmagoria, but it was fun when you did.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector (XSX Game Pass)

Sequel to one of my favorite indie games of recent years. If you liked everything about the first game, then this is pretty much just like it. It plays like an 80's Game Book, complete with lots of reading and dice. The story is excellent as long as you're prepared to take the time to actually read it.

Compared to the first game, it is longer and gives you more options during the play time- though I slightly prefer the shorter, melancholier story of the first game. Also, I liked how the first game had various endings that reflected what you personally wanted to get out of the story- like boarding a ship and just leaving midway through the game and leaving the station to its fate. Citizen Sleeper 2 only appears to have the one ending as far as I can tell- so the only difference between your journey and mine would just seem to be in the details of getting there.

The original went onto my curated "played on Game Pass, buy later on deep sale" list. I bought the first game recently on sale too, so now this one goes onto the list for later.