A Plague Tale: Innocence (XB1X)

A new Game Pass edition last month. I went into this not expecting to really like it since it's described as being quite cinematic and is compared to Hellblade or The Last of Us- not my favourite games. Actually I ended up liking it better than those games, but I'd put it more as an average 3.5-4 star game maybe- about the same as my favourite story driven cinematic games like Quantum Break, Alan Wake and Until Dawn (yes I liked that one for some reason).

It is cinematic, but at least it mostly keeps it's cutscenes and interruptions at the start and end of chapters and only occasionally messes with you during actual gameplay. It is quite a technical achievement though, awesome visuals- especially the texture work and lighting, maybe not as strong with character animations. But impressive for a smallish studio. It ran perfectly as well and had no bugs at all.

What mainly dragged the game down a notch was the overall story, which basically sets the type of gameplay. It's an escort quest where you escort the worlds most annoying whiny kid. Who, despite being in almost continuous life threatening situations, still finds plenty of time to whine and run ahead and just make me want to thrash him. The other characters were a bit better. I see a lot of reviews criticise the gameplay as being too repetitive, but it's not an overly long game and I thought it introduced just enough new facets to it's formula at regular points to prevent total boredom. Put it this way, it's got far more variety than Hellblade did.

I was not convinced about the story though. To be honest not much of it ended up making any real sense. I still don't really know what was wrong with the kid (apart from being annoying I mean) or why. I don't know how the Inquisition even knew about him to begin with, or what the bad guy was truly trying to achieve other than just being an asshat.

Like always these days, people that love it rate it 5 stars and those that didn't rate it 1 star. No one ever rates game in between anymore, yet that's exactly where I think this sits. Worth playing through if you're after something short and story driven- I just hope you like the story better than I did. Odd bit of trivia, the other game being developed by Asobo Studios is Microsoft Flight Simulator, and I wouldn't be surprised if MS buys the studio sometime this year.

04/02 - Wasteland 2 Director's Cut
21/03 - Peggle
26/04 - DmC: Devil May Cry

Previous years:

Games finished in 2009
Games finished in 2010
Games finished in 2012. Incomplete
Games finished in 2013
Games finished in 2014
Games finished in 2015
Games finished in 2016
Games finished in 2017
Games finished in 2018
Games finished in 2019

In matter of fact, I used offline installer - I am not a galaxy user, but Galaxy dlls are inserted into offline installers as well...

I am, unsurprisingly, a bit burnt out on gaming at the moment so I haven’t been playing as much lately. Just a few short and easy games.

Game #56: Dreadful Tales 01: The Space Between CE (Eipix Entertainment) (2019) (WIN)

This is a casual adventure game about a couple who move into an old house that is, unbeknownst to them, already occupied by a monstrous tenant who wants to evict them permanently. There’s nothing innovative here, just the same formula as all the other games of this type.

Game #57: Stop (止まれ (Tomare)) (Jap) (Capsule+) (2019) (AND)

This is a short freeware visual novel for Android that might change how you feel about road trips. There is really only one path through the game and every wrong choice leads to a bad ending. I think I saw 20 of the 30 or so endings.

Game #58: Dark Arms: Beast Buster 1999 (ビーストバスター 〜闇の生体兵器〜 (Beast Buster: Yami no Seitai Heiki)) (Noise Factory) (1999) (NGPC)

This game is an offshoot of the arcade shooter Beast Busters made for the SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color. You wander around killing monsters and gathering their souls in order to power up your weapons. There are quite a few different weapon combinations you can create and up until the final dungeon, it’s actually a pretty easy game.

Game #59: Became Kappa (俺はこうして河童になった (Ore wa Koushite Kappa ni Natta)) (Jap) (Capsule+) (2015) (AND)

This game was really disappointing. It’s like those Evolution games I played previously where you feed your “pet” until they turn into something different, only in this case you are growing and feeding cucumbers to a man until he turns into a Kappa, which is a mythological beast that lives in lakes and drowns people. As legend has it, they like to eat cucumbers, hence the connection.

The problem is that he mutates too slowly. It takes about 40 levels before he actually starts to visibly change. Prior to that, it’s just picture after picture of a guy sitting in bed looking miserable in various ways. It was an interesting and weird idea, but I think they stretched it too far.

Fortunately, the game barely even requires that you look at the screen while playing and I spent the whole time actively listening to some of my favorite bands so I barely even noticed how lame it was until it was over.

Game #60: Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (Rebellion Developments) (2007) (PSP)

If I counted correctly, this is the 33rd Alien game I’ve played (including expansions and DLC). You could say I’m a fan. Unlike other games with the specific Aliens vs. Predator moniker though, you only play the predator and it’s based off the movie of the same name.

The game was kind of annoying at first as the process of getting honor kills is tedious and I thought doing so was important, though in actuality it’s completely unnecessary as you will accrue enough points to get all the weapon upgrades regardless and the only weapon I liked was the spear anyway.

Once I stopped trying to do that stupid game mechanic, the game simply became ridiculously easy. It’s almost impossible to die. Being as burnt out as I am at the moment I actually didn’t mind this. Objectively speaking though, this is not a good game at all. Unless you’re a die hard fan who wants to play them all like me, you should avoid this one.

Games Completed in 2020

List of games finished in 2015 - 6 games - 3 GOG games and 3 PS3 games
List of games finished in 2016 - 16 games - 2 GOG games, 11 PS3 games and 3 PS4 games
List of games finished in 2017 - 15 games - 6 PS3 games and 9 PS4 games.
List of games finished in 2018 - 10 games - 4 GOG games, 1 PS2 game, and 5 PS3 games.
List of games finished in 2019 - 11 games - 8 GOG games, 1 PS3 game and 2 PS4 games

List of games finished in 2020 below (5 GOG games, 3 PS3 game and 6 PS4 games so far):

1 - February 2, 21:00 – The first game of 2020 which I've finished is Pillars of Eternity: The White March – Part I expansion from GOG. Although me being kickstarter backer, I have never finished the base game, so I started to play vanilla game again from the beginning. I entered the expansion as level 8, so the content was pretty challenging, and I've enjoyed it a lot because of that. I was wiped clean few times, so I went for few hours back to vanilla to get little bit of relaxing content, and then back again, until I finished The White Forge as level 12. I still need to kill one dragon though :P

2 - April 6, 23:00 – My second finished game is Pillars of Eternity: The White March – Part II expansion from GOG. I had to quest until hitting level 16 in vanilla parts of the game to be able to finish it. I have turned on the scaling for the second expansion, so some of the fights were really crazy hard. Anyway, I was able to give back the memory to Abydon, but I was not able to temper him during the conversation with the Eyeless. We'll see what impact it will have on the final ending of the game. I think I liked this part little bit more than the first one. Well with the exception of monk fights in some of the encounters.

3 - April 11, 19:00 – The third one this year is the base game of Pillars of Eternity from GOG. I decided to go to the Burial Isle only after finishing every single quest I had in a journal. It took few hours and after that, I've descended into the Breith Eaman and Sun in Shadow areas and upscaled the encounters for final act. After few encounters with soul of Iovara, I've step in front of Thaos and after a lengthy dialogue, the fight have started. Well my party and thier builds were not optimal, so I spent a lot bitching about how some of them dropped down few times during the fight :P . In the end, the biggest help for me was the summon of Concelhaut, which was hitting Thaos from distance, while Aloth and Devil of Caroc kept knocked out repeatedly :P . Before his final breath, he managed dow to knock out also Edér, but in the end, it was not enough for him to defeat the rest of my party. After the fight, I’ve released his soul back to the cycle, while keeping his memories, as an adequate punishment for his deeds. In the last step, I’ve returned back the souls to all of the Hollowborn children, as promised to Hylea. The endings I’ve got were mostly positive, with the exception of Sagani, which got lost in the blizzard, and Devil of Caroc, which got torn to pieces by angry villagers. All in all one of the best RPGs, I’ve played in the last few years.

4 - May 5, 20:45 – Next on my 2020 list is Vaporum from GOG. Steampunk dungeon-crawler RPG made in Slovakia. After I've found out, that this game was made in my home country, I purchased it immediately, and started to play few days later. I was not satisfied that much about game purchase in very long time. All what I have expected from the game was delivered and some things have been surmounted. AI on normal difficulty was satisfying, enemies challenging and puzzles were doable with little bit of thinking. The only one, which outmatched me, was the teleport puzzle in The Office level, where I was not able to find out any visual hooks to teleport in correct order to the final switch. Also the game was balanced pretty good for older people, with slower reflexes :) . Few timed puzzles were on the edge, but they added time stop feature to help you out. Although I haven't used it, I see that feature as a big plus for elderly gamers. The biggest negatives for me was little bit to dark levels for my linking, few of the hidden buttons were impossible to be found without map guides :( and me being to rusty for this type of games :D .

5 - May 16, 1:45 – After 2 and half year long break, I went back to Final Fantasy Type-0 on my PS4. I quit the game somewhere in the middle, because I got tired of the gameplay system, and it got to me very fast again. Some of the quests were mildly of annoying, some of them very nice, but for me, the mildly annoying were more common. Despite that, I found enough fun in the later half of the game to finish it, and grind little bit for all the trophies the game had to offer. The game was made for multiple playthroughs, but for now, I do not think, that I will get back to it anytime soon.

6 - July 19, 19:30 – After 960 deaths, I was finally able to defeat Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin in Dark Souls II on my PS3, and finished the game for the first time ever. Most of the bosses, with the exception of Ancient Dragon were for my Sorcerer pretty easy to learn, but on some of them, my old bones were to slow to react, so I had to spent longer time wiping the floor there :P . Then there were areas like Shrine of Amana and Dragon shrine, where the enemy placement was so ridiculous, that it raised my death counter to sky high levels :D . Shrine of Amana has become for me officialy the worst Souls level ever, beating by a long margin even the Blighttown and 5-1 area of Valley of Defilement. I still need to get into NG++ to be able to get all of the trophies for the game, but I need small pause to relax on a less demanding game :) .

7 - August 1, 15:00 – Today, I've finally started Journey on my PS4, after many recommendations from my friends. And I have to say, I am much more than impressed by this game. Took me just little bit over 2 hours to finish it solo, but this game easily blown away most of the games I've seen and played last few years. This game is artistic masterpiece and it is unbelievably relaxing to play after more than a month of Dark Souls 2 :D .

8 - August 9, 17:00 – Another session of Journey finished on my PS4. Took me around 2 hours again, but this time with a companion, who was helping me travelling around and has shown me how to get some trophies. It was a lot of fun, but this took away little bit of the feeling from the exploration of the world.

9 - August 10, 0:00 – One more trophy run of Journey finished on my PS4. This time, I've met 4 new companions.

10 - August 12, 23:15 – Last and final trophy run of Journey on my PS4 is behind me. Last trophy popped up after 2 hours of matchmaking :P . In the final session I've met 3 more companions.

11 - September 7, 22:45 – I've finished my second playthrough on New Game+ in Dark Souls II on my PS3. This time, because I knew most of the traps and also the bossfights, it took me only 292 deaths :P . The biggest issue to finishing the game was to my surprise Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin. The randomness of the fight, me being tired and triggerhappy meant, I needed for him 13 attempts. Not even Ancient Dragon made me so much trouble this time :'( .

12 - October 17, 23:30 – After almost 10 hour long Saturday marathon of Dark Souls II New Game 2+ on my PS3, I've finaly achieved Platinum Trophy. This time, I have gone only for the mandatory bosses and left Lost Sinner as a last one. Up until her, it went very smooth and I had to my surprise inly 3 or 4 deaths. Then she decided to whip my ass with her big sword, and I went few time really angry. Especially when one of my controllers started to malfunction once in a while, which caused me at least 4 deaths. My DeathCounter stopped at 1474 :D, with only 36 deaths in this NG2+ run. In total, I spent little bit over 210 hours on this game, and enjoyed every single second of it, with the exception of Shrine of Amana, which sucked walrus balls!

13 - December 23, 00:15 – I have finally finished the main campaign of Shadowrun Hong Kong - Extended Edition Deluxe, the third installment in the series. The game is as good as two previous entries, with the exception of some of the extremely text heavy intermezzos in Heoi, which were in my opinion little bit bloated. This does not change the fact, that I had a lot of fun with the rest of the game. In the end, I was able to shut down The Fortune Machine, unfortunately with Raymond having to sacrifice himself :( .

14 - December 31, 03:30 – After two years break, I have decided to go back to my PS4 copy of Tales of Zestiria. After full clear of Hexen Isle, I went for second playthrough of Tales of Zestiria – The Strength of a Knight DLC, with the goal of getting 100% of Trophies. After getting to the Malevolent Crucible: Naraka, I've spent some time fusing the equipment and slowly started to learn to optimize the way how to approach the encounter, so I could defeat the boss in less than 2 minutes. After the first try, I was 15 seconds to slow. Not bad. In total, I have spent more than 2 hours to execute the fight properly with no mistakes, and missed the mark twice with less than 1 second behind the target time. In the end the Speedy Duo Trophy was mine, exactly at 3:30 in the morning, after the famous words One Last Try :D. The final time was 1:52.29.

Just beat the The Hidden Ones DLC for Assassin's Creed: Origins on PS4. It's at the same time impressive and underwhelming.

First off, you get a lot more content out of it than almost any DLC in earlier AC games. It comes with an entire new map with three provinces (compared to 20+ in the base game) and a bunch of new quests. It took me a few evenings to complete this new area.

The DLC basically shows the beginnings of the Assassin order which is established in the very end of the base game, although they still call themselves "the Hidden Ones" at this point. Bayek and fellow proto-assassins even already walk around in white robes with patches of red like in most AC games, have a bureau reminiscent of the ones in the first game and so on. Story-wise it is utterly uninteresting, though. It's just a very generic chronicle from the history of the assassin order: some cell encounters problems which are solved by assassinating a few important baddies - no surprises there. In the end we're rewarded with a cutscene that was probably intended to be an important moment in assassin history but ultimately contributes literally nothing to the lore.

The DLC does not seem to add anything genuinely new gameplay-wise either, it's just more content in the same vein as in the base game. It felt a bit better paced to me, as content seems a bit more condensed on the new map than in the base game. The big camps also seem slightly better designed. The DLC sadly also highlights the main issues I have with Origins: since The Hidden Ones is in concept quite similar to past AC games it is easier to draw comparisons to them and that only pronounces that Origins is in most regards simply inferior to its predecessors. Navigation is boring, the stealth mechanics are more limited and primitive than in many other AC games, camps aren't designed around specific challenges and so on - and the bow kinda breaks the game as it allows to easily clear out big parts of the camps without any actual effort.

Oh well, one more DLC to go and then I can finally abandon this game, lol.

Opus Magnum

A fun little puzzle game where you provide instructions to a series of machines in order to produce an automated system that can create molecules from atoms. There's no limit to the maximum number of machines or how many instructions you can give it, so it's able to be completed with little trouble, however a histogram gives you the average results of all users, so you want to try aim for that or better. Annoyingly I originally didn't know you could add more than 40 instructions to a single machine (The tutorial is great at explaining what the machines do, but is pretty lax on explaining the UI), which meant I had to use some crafty solutions for some puzzles. I'd recommend this game.

The Blackwell Legacy

It's actually just part 1/5 of the "full Blackwell game". It took me around 4 hrs to finish.

- Graphics: Great pixel art! But I wouldn't be sad if it stayed in 1993. I played it windowed 320x200 x4. A few locations used big black bars on top and bottom... which is a shame, the window is small enough as is (on 1440P).
It looks better (more consistent) with "smooth scaled sprites" turned off.
- Sound: I thought the voice actors were pretty good (for a game anyway). I liked the music overall, but it didn't always fit what happened on screen. When nothing's happening - it could've used some atmospheric background in stead of electronic dance style music.
- Gameplay: not to hard, not too easy. No crazy 'illogical puzzles'. I would've liked more object based puzzles.
- Story: I'll reserve judgement until I've played the full game. The characters are what really make this game stand out!

What else? Maybe some a few cinematic cut scenes? Everything is done using the in-game engine.

I would say it actually is a full game, just part of a series that also has an overarcing plot apart from the concluded story (like e.g. Mass Effect - even though that might seem like a weird comparison). I know what you mean, but it's not quite like Telltale episodes.

No, Mass Effect is actually a good comparison to make your point. I can't think of many 'technical' arguments' to back it up, but this game feels a lot more like an introduction than ME1 did. If Mass Effect ended after the first game, what would you have thought? "cancelled series" or "open ended" or "waste of potential"?

edit: And maybe it's because I don't play that many Indie games (adventures)? I'm used to these kind of games being a lot longer. I don't expect (any) game to be as good as a Lucasarts (or Sierra) classic - but they're still my point of reference.

edit2: I just thought of something... how about the first episode of any tv series (or just mini series) vs. the first Star Wars movie (A New Hope). What if they never made the other Star Wars movies?
--- episode = Blackwell --- Star Wars = Mass Effect

Well, Monkey Island wasn't that long either, just more walking. ;) But yeah, it's definitely a mini-adventure, and more linear, not as focused on inventory puzzles. The later games in the series will be a bit longer. I hope you have fun playing the whole series. :)

It still feels like an introduction. Much more than e.g. Cayne (also a mini adventure).

And... Thanks! (I actually interrupted Mass Effect 3 to play this)
I'm playing Unbound right now. It's definitely harder than the first one.

Glad you liked it. I actually liked Unbound best, with cynical chain-smoking Lauren... but I enjoyed all the other parts too.

In case you didn't know, while unconnected story-wise Unavowed takes place in the same universe, and is really a very good game too.

Did you play Bestowers of Eternity? Is it worth playing or is Legacy just the (better?) remake?

And a much longer one!

Good question. I don't remember whether I played that one or not but looking at the screenshots, it looks like Legacy is more or less a remake of it. You could play it out of historical interest, but I think you won't miss much by skipping it.