The Witcher: I think The Witcher is a perfect game as a game it is trying to be. The characters are all well drawn, the story is rich, almost all quests are interesting. I don't remember any other game which made me really feel like I am in one of the cities in Game of Thrones. The atmosphere in that sense is just perfect. To be honest, technically, it is a perfect game and does not deserve some of the criticisms it gets as being "overrated".
However, as a personal taste, I prever sandboxish RPGs over linear games. The game should at least give me a sense of freedom and I have found The Witcher way too linear. To express in other words, I felt like I am doing quests in Everquest 2 or World of Warcraft most of the time. I certainly recommend it for any RPG fan, it is however not one of the best RPGs ever made, in my opinion.
8.5/10

List of all games finished in the last years with best and worst games played in each year

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Great, though extremely linear, FPS. Great story, you can tell the writers had a lot of fun with it. I never did get the hang of the "dueling" mechanic though.

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Well, I killed Satan anyway, so that counts as beating it. Now to do it with every character, and the Cathedral as well >_<

I did finish Gone Home this weekend. Besides it crashing and losing all my progress about 10 minutes from the end.

I really liked the detail and effort put into the house. The ability to rotate every object one can pick up 360 degrees was pretty coot too (meaningless, but cool). The rest of the inventory mechanics were totally lacking, no backpack, if you pick something up, you have to drop it to pick something else up. Just felt like it was done halfway.

I also liked how the story was told in linear bits and pieces. Of course that same linearity leads to a total lack of game play. Basically the whole game is looking for notes in every room, when you find the correct one you may advance the story. The addition of playable music helped immensely in breaking up what would otherwise be a couple hours of tedious item hunting. The story was good in the sense many of the characters were fleshed out in an interesting way. It did feel odd that while "you" are supposed to be part of the family, when it came to emotional baggage, you seemingly had none.

Generally, I liked the story until the end, which I thought was very very weak. Not spoiling it, but if you've played it, think about this...

The ending reminded me of one of the worst movies ever Dungeons & Dragons the Movie (the 1st one, God knows why they thought sequels were a good idea). As an aside, I went to a convention once where two adjoining rooms had a themed room party. One room was Heaven and one room Hell. Both had props appropriate to their themes and I remember laughing my ass off. The Hell room had a Dungeons & Dragons poster and a sign that read "Playing now and for eternity".

But the part that reminded me of Gone Home. So you had good and evil fighting it all out, the kingdom just over from a state of war. The queen tells the people, "You are now all equal!" And I'm thinking, um...okay, that helps how? I mean the thieves and thieves guild are now equal with everyone else, they are now free to thieve? This fixes everything how? Discrimination and hatred of each other is now over by edict of the queen? And if you look at the ending of Gone Home and with what has transpired, consider the future ramifications, I can't see how it is such a happy ending. Seems more like a train wreck to me...

Overall, I thought the storytelling technique was quite good. The story had better than average depth. The attention to detail with the house is pretty amazing. And the soundtrack was a very nice touch. As a House Simulator, it's 5-stars, maybe 4 or 4.5 stars because of the buggy-ness of the video. As an adventure game, the lack of any real "game" combined with what seems like a "glorious ending" which falls flat, it's less than that, 3.5 stars maybe. It reminds me a a decent book or TV series, where the story is grooving along and it gets to the end, and you realize "That's it? That's the ending?" The Battlestar Galactica re-envision and Lost made me feel like that.

Here are the ones I've recently finished:

Popoitto Hebereke - This was a pretty cool Japanese puzzle game for the Saturn. It was kinda like Dr. Mario, except the viruses moved around.
Zone of the Enders - It took me over a decade to actually play this game, but I finally did. I thought it was fantastic and can't wait to get into the sequel!
Hexcells Plus - This one was every bit as good as the original, but it was a lot harder (which was good!)
Diablo: Hellfire - After all the time I sunk on the original Diablo, I never actually played the expansion. When I snagged a copy for a couple of bucks a while back, I knew I needed to replay it so I could try out the new dungeons. Overall, I'm not sure it was worth the wait, but I had a lot of fun revisiting the game.
Smash TV - Another game that I've had on my list for a long, long time that I finally got around to playing. I played on the Midway's Arcade Treasures pack, so I had unlimited continues...and it's a good thing! I was absolutely terrible at this game, but it was still fun.
Diablo - As I mentioned above, I've sunk a ton of time into this one over the years, but I figured I'd go ahead and finish it since I played through the expansion. I forgot how much of a slog it becomes if you're playing straight melee, but oh well.
Typer Shark! Deluxe - I love typing games and this one was pretty cheap during the Steam sale, so I picked it up. It was pretty simplistic, but I loved it.
Toybox Turbos - If I understand correctly, this is a continuation of the long-running Micro Machines series and if not, it was a blatant copy of those games :P Either way, it was a well-made and fun game. It's a little light on content as I rolled through the entire game by winning all events, unlocking all cars, and getting all achievements in a little over 3 hours. But hey, like I said, it was fun.
Blood - Ah, one of my favorite games of all time! I hadn't played through it in a few years, so I figured it was time to give it another go. I still need to actually play through those expansions...
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance - I hadn't planned on playing this game, but I picked up the sequel and I thought I'd roll through this one again. I had played through it twice before, so it was a pretty easy romp, but it's always a fun one.
New Play Control! Pikmin - And here's another one of my all-time favorite games! This game is working its way to becoming a "play once a year" kinda game. The only other game with that status is The Guardian Legend on NES. It's funny, over the years, I always knew I enjoyed this game, but in the past few years, I've really begun to realize just how much I enjoy it. And I enjoy it A LOT :D

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I'm glad you gave the game the consideration it deserves, which a lot of people seem unable to do. I absolutely loved it. You're right: in some ways the ending was not especially dramatic, though at the very end - probably about the time your game crashed, the first time, which SUCKS! - I was dashing up to the attic as fast as I could, hoping I would get there in time to intervene in what I thought I'd find up there. The final events of the plot felt satisfying, to me.

And of course it is a train wreck. But you've seen Sam's tracks, and you know how she is: bratty, impulsive, strong, eager, brave, uncertain. Rushing in where angels fear to tread, and all. What is a happy ending, really? Prince and Princess getting married to rule the kingdom? Liam Neeson rescuing his family, with not a scratch on him or them? Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway living together on a deserted planet, parents to a new branch of humanity?

Endings in real life, well, I think about some of the people I've known, and the choices they've made along those lines (trying not to spoil, here). Sometimes it works out, sometimes it was just dancing in the moonlight. A crazy, impetuous time. ... I'd say more, but everything I might say gives too much away; let's just say I think the ending fits the game's journey.

I was watching a bunch of Vocaloid videos on youtube yesterday, which made me want to play Project Diva. I played through the first one for PSP in about a day. I'd only played Project Diva F for PS3 before, but I always wanted to play the earlier PSP installments. This first game had a lot of issues preventing me from wanting to sink a ton of time into perfecting all the songs, but I'll just talk about the biggest ones here.

First is the simple matter of the playlist. To unlock new songs you have to beat the old ones, making the most natural way to play starting at the top and working your way down. This is normal for the series (judging by F and what I've played so far in 2nd), and would be completely fine - Except that the playlist is organized by artist AND the relatively limited selection of artists are pretty similar in style. It makes for a pretty homogeneous experience that gets old quickly.

Next is the rhythm gameplay. In this first game there are no notes requiring you hold hit multiple buttons simultaneously or hold down a button for a duration. It is simply hitting buttons in sequence and on time - less complex and less interesting to play. Not necessarily easier though. I feel like the game is stricter about what it accepts as on time (so notes are harder to hit, but I'm not 100% certain on this), and it definitely grades you more harshly. This games "Great" approximates a later game's "Excellent," "Standard" equates to "Great," and anything that a later game would grade as "Standard" gets a fail in this game.

So, this first game didn't impress me too much. I've started Project Diva 2nd, and that one fixes all the problems I had with this one. Basically the same formula I loved in Project Diva F.

The Samaritan Paradox

The main problem of this game is that it's too much point & clicky (in a bad way). Just the right items conveniently lying around ready to be assembled MacGyver-style, characters eager to tell you a cryptic clue so that you can combine it with another clue given by a different character/read somewhere and silly ways to trick people (the stupidest drone wouldn't fall for that!). It would be fine for a humorous game but the Samaritan Paradox is dead serious. So yeah, that part was pretty bad.

I loved the visuals though. The story was okayish most of the time and pretty damn good close to the end. But what's important - it was engaging right from the beginning so the aforementioned problems weren't strong enough to make me stop playing.

I can still recommend it for every adventure fan but I wish a serious game had serious puzzles.


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I'll say this. Without the video instability, that's a half-star to a star right there, I'm a bit of a stickler for technical issues, even some sort of auto-save would have lessened the impact. About the ending, how to say this without giving anything away...It could have easily been "better". Happier I could see, or an acknowledgement of troubles would have served me fine. As to both, all it needed was even a one-line explanation of how Lonnie dealt with her problem and a line about Sam having a plan (i.e. job or school or something, anything!) and I don't have a problem at all with the ending. Each could have been left intentionally vague, I just would have liked a little more closure in that regard. I do have to say, the game has its strong points and I'm much happier playing a 3.5 star game that has strong pluses to go with what I thought were avoidable minuses than a bland 3.5 star game. Pixeljunk Monsters felt that way to me. It wasn't bad, but it just didn't have anything I thought was very special either. Probably why that game is in my games unfinished pile and unlikely to move from there.

SOUTH PARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH

PROS:
+Captures the South Park atmosphere perfectly.
+Just like a long playable episode of the show.
+Fun exploration.
+Turn based combat that feels similar to classic Final Fantasy games.
+No random encounters, enemies don't respawn unless part of the scripting.
+Lots of things to do, including collectibles and backtracking with new abilities.
+Completely unapolegetic, and crazy - I can't believe the ESRB even allowed this through.

CONS:
-Combat gets repetitive very fast. It's not especially fun or interesting.
-Music in general seems lacking. Too many quiet/silent parts during exploration.
The combat music specifically is too subtle, making the combat seem even more dull.
-Pacing is strange. Seems too fast, you run into new weapons and items constantly making
finding things seem less rewarding.

Certain elements of the gameplay are overly complicated, such as selecting commands or fart types.
Some quick time events aren't explained well causing too much trial and error.
Buddy characters have special abilities but only seem to be used once or twice in the whole game.

OVERALL:
A fund and unique experience, if you're a fan of South Park get it for sure, if not, probably pass on it.

Just not a fan of their marketing tactics is all.I consider building hype for a game by artificial means(there was 2 delays for gta V on PC?)so people buy their game despite the invasive DRM to be unethical and demeaning to the PC player base.I can't say that i blame them,though.

Faery: Legends of Avalon

This is an RPG where you play as a fairy tasked with saving various fairy realms from being lost. Overall I thought it was pretty good. I love flying everywhere and having the character upgrades physically change your appearance, and many quests have both combat-heavy and combat-light ways to complete them. Playing as a character who is perhaps just 20 cm tall gives you a fresh and interesting perspective of the world. The turn-based battles are not really my thing, but they got the job done; however it would have been nice to have voice acting and more variety in the outfits, which were palette swaps of two basic designs to which the enhanced versions added a few flairs.

Castle crashers.Quite charming.Lots of visal humor inside,short story mode which was good since it's started to become bit repetitive and I found the last stage with the bosses somewhat annoying but overall it's a decent and funny brawler.I got it on sale so it was worth it.

When you criticize one of awalterj's favorite indie adventure games, he -will- surface from the depths to bite off your legs!

While it's valid criticism, the paragraph you wrote here applies to just about every p&c adventure game out there: Blackwell series, Gemini Rue, Resonance, even Primordia etc, just to name a few comparable high rated ones from recent years.
I don't understand why this should suddenly be pointed out as a bad thing, the whole "this would never work in RL" issue is a common thing with almost every adventure game. Even Gemini Rue which despite its sci-fi setting has very sensible and mostly non-moon-logic puzzles has moments where it's no less point & clicky than Samaritan Paradox. I enjoyed these point & clicky puzzles a lot and I think they were made for an audience who likes to get into that particular mode. And to be fair to the game, I felt it was one of the least obtuse ones I've played. It only had one moment where I questioned the logic of the game because I didn't recognize one of the icons from the gate puzzle for what it was and ended up brute forcing the combinations until the gate opened. Came back to it later and only with a very generous concept for visual interpretation realized what that one icon was actually depicting. But that wasn't illogical, just suboptimal graphic design. Can you name any illogical puzzles in this game, at all?
I'd like to point out again that I virtually always get stuck in adventure games, usually due to obtuse game design and mechanics but in The Samaritan Paradox I found a very healthy balance between just tricky enough but never aggravating (that one badly drawn icon excluded)

To be honest I was expecting your reaction ;) In fact I was a bit surprised that you didn't want to bite my legs off earlier ;P

But OK, here we go. I'm fully aware that my accusation of "too much point & clicky" is very subjective and even I can't make a clear distinction between what's good p&c and what's far-fetched. But the thing is that while playing The Samaritan Paradox I had really a lot of "WTF?! moments" that seemed to be so irrational that spoiled my fun. I don't remember anything like this while playing Resonance for example (which is also a very serious game). Sure, I may not remember everything so clearly but I'm sure about my general feeling.

SOME MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD

I'll try to mention a few WTF moments here. Please note that not even a single one comes from "book parts" because that's a fiction so anything may happen there.

- Putting a visitor to sleep so that you can use a saw when he's snoring?! WTF?!
- The whole mini-fan section was very MacGyverish and felt really far-fetched for me.
- Confession... my biggest WTF in this game. Seriously?! What's the IQ of that guy? -10? ;)
- The only passport Ord decided to take happened to be very important later on. What are the odds?
- A reading man that doesn't want to be disturbed. A coin conveniently hidden in a sofa. A rockmen conveniently standing next to a jukebox. Very convenient indeed :D

And that's just a few that immediately came to my mind while I was writing this post. If it was a humorous game everything would be fine. It just didn't fit here... I know that it's very subjective but I don't remember anything so unrealistic in e.g. Resonance but perhaps you can find something... What makes a difference is: when do I realize that something was very unrealistic? After finishing the game when I'm retroactively thinking about it or just when I'm playing it. In case of the Samaritan Paradox I was struck by several nonsensical situation immediately after encountering them. That left a bad taste in my mouth.

The whole point of horror attacks are that you don't know WHEN the strike comes!

iirc, Ord says clearly that he's worried about the gallery staff hearing the electrical saw so creating another sound to cancel out the noise makes sense. Some people really do snore this loudly. Back in the army boot camp, I had to share a room with 10 people and one of them snored so loudly we had to occasionally wake him up so we could sleep. And when I stay at youth hostels, there's always at least one person who snores so ridiculously loud that you could put this into an adventure game anytime. And a German friend of mine snores so absolutely insanely loud that I opted to sleep in the kitchen when she came to visit and occupied the floor of my apartment - she then offered to take the kitchen the next day as she was sort of aware of the snoring. So yes, not entirely unrealistic.

True, it is far fetched but iirc all the necessary stuff is there so no pointless backtracking, no dead ends. I found it very sensible in that the goal of the various steps was quite clear, I just had to figure out ok I put this into this first, then place it back into this, ah wait... I gotta do it the other way around...aha! Felt like comfortable brain-jogging without that early Sierra adventure nonsense where you really had to resort to brute forcing aka randomly try everything -which I consider a waste of time. And I was a big McGyver fan as a kid so no complaining from me in that regard.

Not unrealistic. At my middle school/high school, some teachers were priests and not all of them were incredibly smart, often falling for the simplest of pranks so this didn't seem otherworldly to me. Plus, a little silliness is part of the program for any p&c with a retro feel, even if the story is serious. It didn't break the forth wall for me. Simon the Sorcerer breaks it a lot more even though it's a silly game to begin with, at least that's how I feel.

I'll give you that one. Wasn't Sarah's brother's name known to Ord earlier, so Ord would have recognized the name and had a reason to take that passport? Sure, the game developer could have made the ship larger like the cruise missions in Terror from the Deep and made you search every cabin and put a passport into every coat hanging around and then lure you into a dead end once you get off the ship and can't get back in case you got the wrong one or none - Kyrandia style (when you fly to the castle and can't get back, that almost broke my game if I hadn't saved earlier). But Samaritan Paradox was largely made by one person and if 90% of Hollywood movies can't come up with a better script than that (and they can't imho) then it would be unfair to expect more from a low to no budget indie game designer.
Such little flaws in the script don't make the puzzles themselves illogical or detract from my experience, it's just plot holes and they aren't worse than elsewhere. It's been a while since I played Resonance and to be honest I can't remember any major plot holes in that game right now so I can only compare the games in terms of the point & clicky nature of the puzzles, not so much in terms of script details.

Yes yes, ok so the game doesn't make you backtrack much or carry around various red herrings that you'll never use, I'm actually glad for that. The coin in the sofa was a bit much, but the Blackwell series does this kinda stuff all the time and gets much higher ratings :'/
I like to play adventure games like that, they don't cause stress.

As mentioned above, I can't think of any plot holes from Resonance to destroy your argument, I mostly remember puzzles.

But I think I know what the problem is: You are simply too smart! You see, as much as I hate to admit this, my brain doesn't have any extra RAM when I play those kinda games so I can't pay attention to the puzzles -and- plot holes at the same time, if I do a replay I'll spot such things but not on a first playthrough where I'm too busy solving the tasks at hand and trying not to get stuck. I noticed that you cut through games like a knife through butter so maybe this game was too easy for you and you started overthinking things. I'm much more forgiving of such minor flaws if the atmosphere and other elements compensate for it.