Job Simulator (PSVR)

This is a very humorous game which gives you an opportunity to work in four different jobs (office, kitchen, convenience store, garage). The tasks you’re given to complete are very simple and open ended. The environments are very interactable so much of the fun of the game involves goofing off and just doing whatever you want. Justin Roiland (Rick & Morty) voices a couple of the talk radio stations in the garage.

Highly recommended!

DOOM

First time I played a fps on pc without a mouse, the lack of mouse requires the use of a key to distinguish between strafing and turning, which took a while to get used to but resulted in much faster gameplay than I achieve with a mouse. Story was there, but largely unimportant, if you paid any attention to it you'd come across many plotholes (Such as if demons fight with fireballs, why are there so many guns in hell), however the greatness of the game comes from the gameplay, and the kickass soundtrack. Great game, great soundtrack, fairly short (Even though apparently I was very slow according to the par time for each level) and I would highly recommend it.

Anna's Quest (Linux)

First: The Linux port is pretty much flawless. No stuttering videos, stable, all is well.
I really liked the game, it is a good adventure with a nice story, a protagonist promoting non-violence (although sadly being pretty "Mary Sue"ish, which makes it easy for her) and interesting characters overall.
It's hard to talk about the core of the game without spoilers and I'd recommend the game so I'll keep this short.
The end is typically Deadalic. It could have been totally different and the build-up in the storyline was for a different (better) end than actually happened but that's what they tend to do. The last chapter was quite different than the others and I actually liked it even more, it just ends very abrupt afterwards and there'd need to be some small interaction afterwards for many of the messages to be consistent though. With a game so strongly built upon not judging people by some standards and trying to see their perspective as well to give some understanding towards troubled minds, it keeps it quite shallow at the end which is a shame, it seems to lack a few hours since it's pretty short.
Oddly enough, although being a German game playing in a fantasy medieval German-like world with lots of German words, the audio is English only (also on Steam) and other languages including the one of the makers (which happens to be my own) is only available via subtitles which is quite strange but I guess has financial reasons.
Still definitely one of the better adventures I have played in recent years and far better than anything from Telltale.
Many thanks to mrkgnao for giving me the opportunity to enjoy this one, I will most likely play it again at some point.

7/10

Interesting... Daedalic is cited everywhere (including GOG and Steam) as the developer, but in fact the game was made by Krams Design, an Australian studio. This probably explains the lack of German localization.

Q.U.B.E.

bring on #2 :D

I've always played Doom with a mouse, the only difficulty in the original game is that mouse movement is left-right->turning, forward-back->moving (set convenient strafing/using keys via setup). This can be challenging in the beginning, but very soon you learn to "cleanly" turn, without moving forward and backwards.

With today's ports like ZDoom you can of course disable y-axis-movement (feels awkward in the beginning to have only one axis) or exchange it for a limited mouselook (a la DN3D).

Fixed on MobyGames at least, thanks to this post :) Added alongside Daedalic, not replaced, but it's there at least. (And Metacritic is listing Krams Design as developer I see.)

On to the games finished this year topic... This is embarrassing to mention, and count, but just replaced my venerable Alcatel 512 with a Nokia 230 and while poking around on it I decided to try one of the preinstalled casual games too, Block Breaker 3 Unlimited (what I guess is its Series 30+ version). And finished it today, so counting it as played between Jan 5 and 11. At 6 stages of 7 levels each plus a "boss level" at the very end and a timer of 3 minutes / level after which you start getting explosion powerups down the middle to help you finish, and with most levels finished within the 3 min, some way faster, though also some, especially earlier on, later, a few maybe even in 5-6 min, it took me, what? At 3*43, considering those on either side as canceling each other out, it'd be 2h9m. So let's say somewhere roughly around 2h total.

Now I'm feeling rather... soiled.

D'oh, it never occurred to me to check neither MobyGames nor Metacritic... Thanks for taking action and give that poor Aussie studio the credit it deserves!


For playing a mobile game? Nah man, it's OK.

On the other hand, if you say it for owning a Microsoft phone... then yeah, you should feel ashamed. :P

Include Me

Last Year (2017)

Current Play List
2D Action - Overhead/Isometric: Monaco
2D Action - Side: Gateways
3D Action Adventure: Prince of Persia - Sands of Time
Adventure: CUPID - A free to play Visual Novel
Fighting: Super ComboMan: Smash Edition
FPS: Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders - Episode One: City of the Damned
FPSRPG: Deus Ex: The Nameless Mod
Open World: Bully: Scholarship Edition
Puzzle: Hanono Puzzle
Racing: Grand Prix Legends - Sportscars Legends of 1967 Mod (Novice)
RPG - 3D: The Witcher
RPG - Isometric: IceWind Dale
RPG - Japanese: Soul Blazer (SNES)
RPG - Turn Based: Geneforge
RPG - Other: The Eye of the Beholder
Sports: Shufflepuck Cantina Deluxe
Strategy - Grand Strat: Zeus (Citybuilder)
Strategy - RTS: Age of Empires
Strategy - TBS: Admiral Sea Battles
Vehicle Combat: Steel Storm: Burning Retribution

Completed this year

2018-01-10 Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut
2018-02-04 Eternal Senia
2018-02-08 Speedball 2
2018-02-28 Something Something Soup Something
2018-03-16 Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (Malkavian, Anarch ending)
2018-05-13 Venetica
2018-05-13 Yesterday
2018-05-16 One Late Night
2018-07-04 XCOM: UFO Defence (beginner difficulty)
2018-09-24 darkSector

7th Legion

I read a lot of bad reviews about this game, so I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed it. Have to say that I'm a pretty bad RTS player though and so a lot of stuff that good players in the genre obviously dislike was good for me: Bad AI of the enemy's' troops, small maps, cards that could turn around battles within a second and ressources that were handed out automatically. All of that made the game easier and helped me to succeed. There were just two missions that were quite hard, but in both of them I was lucky in the end and got the rare Armageddon card that destroys all units and buildings of both factions except for the base. Played it when I had a lot of credits, build some units as fast as possible and took down the enemy's base without any problem.

I also liked the missions within the bases in which you just control three soldiers and have to do sabotage or kill all opponents. even if they were very easy, they added some variety to the gameplay.

Additional things that were great are the soundtrack and the funny cutscenes between the missions. The only thing that was really bad for me was the pathfinding of the units, which was really horrible at times.

Complete list of finished games in 2018

Released while they owned Nokia, so designed by them, but technically produced by HMD now.
And meh, been mulling over that replacement for years, said if I get it to 15 years I'll "retire" it, and it got to 15 on Christmas. And it seemed the least bad option from all I was aware of. Hardly ever use a phone anyway, that Alcatel was basically a clock, very rarely used for the odd SMS, as for talking, mainly just to confirm some on-line order on a store that insists on calling (needed to be home and quick to plug it in for that, as after the first few years battery seemed to "forget" its charge level after 20-60 seconds of talking and turn off if not plugged in first, though if call was shorter than that it'd list the correct charge level again after a few minutes and keep going). This will probably also be used for music and I may end up listening to radio again while out. Plus the odd quick shot of something I spot, camera should be passable enough for that. Long lasting battery was definitely one of the criteria, as was being available in white, silver and/or non-dark blue, and definitely without black (this already rules out the large majority) or dark or, quite the contrary, too flashy (yellow, orange, hot pink, lime green...) colors. And the new 3310, which might have otherwise also fit and was made after MS no longer owned the brand, seemed too much of a marketing gimmick to consider.
But yeah, feel bad enough about it either way. Just for getting a new one really, even regardless of other stuff, just because I won't have much use for it.

Deadly Premonition: Director's Cut

Yep, it's as crazy as everyone says - Twin Peaks: The Game only Japanese and the gameplay is mix of classic Resident Evil and GTA
Yes there's still technical issues - there where infrequent stability issues and a really annoying aiming bug that limited how far vertically you can aim, the hardest parts of the game were finding work-arounds for this but the whole thing IS finishable even with it
Strong plot that kept me guessing until the end
Strange characterisation - Morgan remains whimsically chipper in the face of harrowing loss and eldritch horrors but, in a way that adds to the dream-like Twin Peakesque atmosphere
A unique gaming experience that I'm glad I had
There a still a few side-mission parts I could go back for but I saw the credits roll Yesterday so I'm calling it anyway...


Full List

Dead Rising 2 (XB1X)

Replay for the third time and it's still great. Though I was happy with the 360 version, a recent sale had the trilogy (with Off The Record) for ultra cheap so I got it. The resolution is bumped up from 720p to 1080 of course, but the real enhancement over 360/PS3 is 60fps instead of 30.

For anyone that hasn't played these games, think of a game set in a huge open shopping mall/casino complex with game play themed to the movie Zombieland. In DR2 you have been framed for the latest Zombie outbreak and you have to solve a set of cases and survive for three days in the process. It IS timed and you can miss the story cases entirely which result in failing the story. In between those story cases, you can do whatever you feel like. But mostly you will be rescuing survivors and eliminating pyschos- which are the games boss battles.

It's awesome fun, but not for stress heads that can't have fun within a time limit. With CAPCOM having brought Dragon's Dogma to GOG, I'd say that these are the next most likely CAPCOM games to arrive...assuming they are interested in further releases here. If it happens, get the first 2 games as they are unique and a lot of fun.

Ruiner

Just finished it. I really like the cyberpunk futuristic thing it had going for it, but the soundtrack was what really sold me. It's a goddamn good soundtrack. The music perfectly matches the grittiness of the levels, but also gives a sense of calm when you're hanging out in Rengkok. (The black screen where it just said "HELL" in red letters and there was a boom of music were just super cool!)

I enjoyed it, right up until the end. Kind of felt the ending was a bit anticlimatic. Was expecting some crazy bossfight but the game just...ended?

I wish I could have gotten just a little more closure, especially with HER. I really liked HER as a character and would have loved to see where she ended up.

Still, it was a very enjoyable game. I'll probably replay it a couple times just to enjoy the soundtrack and environments.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

A beautiful game with an interesting story. Unfortunately it's very short, so it's a little hard t fully relate to the protagonists and thus the emotional climx at the end doesn't work as good as it could.

When it comes to gameplay it's mostly about exploring the environment and solving rather easy puzzles. But there is one twist: You have to control both characters at the same time. That isn't always easy (even with a controller) and makes the puzzle-solving much more interesting.

Soundtrack and graphics are great. Technically there was a bug that inverted "up" and "down" control on my gamepad for the older brother, but there was a solution for that on GOG's game forum and so it wasn't a big problem.

Complete list of finished games in 2018