The Original Strife: Veteran Edition

My first experience with this classic FPS outside of the demo. Not bad, but didn't like it as much as I thought I would. The remaster/port/whatever was done well though, and was able to run it in 4k. After beating the final boss I reloaded the game, and then went to get the secrets needed to unlock the secret level added in this version. That level isn't very well designed though, and I managed to get into one area without hitting the right switch first, leaving me stuck there. Ugh.

Space Mercenary Shooter : Episode 1

A short bare bones and not very good indie FPS shooter. Horribly optimized - framerate tanks depending on which door or wall you look at, probably based on what's behind it. The final fight is surviving against waves of enemies until an invisible timer runs down - and after dying to it once I respawned at the beginning of the level but the enemies did not. Tried quitting, reloading, dying again - nothing worked. So I just waited in that room all by my lonesome for several minutes until the timer ran down, and won the game.

Steins;Gate

This classic Visual Novel is as good as people say. Used a guide to run through it to get the True Ending (after getting all the others with less reliance on guides). Then binged the Steins;Gate 0 (inquel to the story) anime as I don't have that particular VN.

Rise & Shine

A decently fun twin-stick run&gunner with mild puzzle solving elements. Has a bunch of different mechanics, like . Neat story too, with a ton of references to other video games (the game takes place on "Gamearth"). Very short though - Steam has 5.2 hours for me in the game, but that's including how long it took to farm cards before I started playing it, as well as at least a half hour on pause while I did other stuff. So probably under 3 hours to beat. Not gonna do the Ironman run or go after all the secrets/collectibles/other achievements though.

Vampire Legends: The True Story of Kisilova (2015) (Linux)

Small casual HOPA adventure played between more serious games and finished partly by my daughters, who was quite enthusiastic about chasing a vampire ;) and solving puzzles exactly matching their level :P If you've ever played Artifex Mundi games, you know everything about this one (including most of schematic puzzles' solutions), if you haven't – I recommend trying at least one of them, because this kind of gameplay may be a good idea for the moments you don't want or can't play other genres.

List of all games completed in 2020.

January:
1 Butcher (but on easy, I still have to beat the last boss on Hard)

2 THOTH (and immediately went for a second run). Finishing the first time was a slow procedure of try and die, so a second and smoother run was very satisfying. For those who don't know, it's a game by the same creator of 140, but for some reason is not on GOG.

February:

3 Celeste (reached the top). Would love to play again with achievements and do chapter 8 it in the future but I consider it finished for now.

4 Conarium: weak and unrefined walking sim with a few boring puzzles, only good point the atmosphere and locations. Unreadable fonts, unskippable monologues, a clunky attempt at submarine exploration (guess what it's no Aquanox), awful inventory, not optimized graphics full of tearing, v-sync seems to do nothing, and most items are useless "throphies". Even the Necromonicon itself it's just a plain leather book with literally Necronomicon written on it, zero imagination and effort. As Celeste I got it for free on EGS so let's say it's been ok to explore the levels.

5 The Bridge: very cool Escher-inspired puzzle game, interesting difficulty, I enjoyed it much more than the gravity bits in Limbo - both games being black and white favours likening and confronting the two very different games. I consider it finished for now, but reaching the ending unlocks a "mirrored" mode that provides higher difficulty.
Another EGS freebie, this one is not on GOG as well but it comes for very cheap on Steam when on sale.

6 Florence: more an enhanced short comic book than a game, I went through it on my smartphone in good company and found it very enjoyable.

7 I have completed Cuphead on normal difficulty, finally. Years ago I was stuck at King Dice and didn't know how to progress, today I spent hours in and beat him and the devil, honestly I was surprised when I did it.

March:
8 I had been playing Horace, but got ill and when I got back to it I got fed up with it, and gave up at chapter 12. I have won and Played Beautiful Desolation instead, very nice adventure game, I wished it had a quest log and a way of remembering where the various characters are.

9 My other virus quarantine game I finish is the Darkness II on Steam, that I got in a giveway from the kind user bigdognz. I remember playing the demo of the first one in the PS3. The game is ok, fun enough for me to want to see more despite the cliched characters and some boring moment and unskippable sequence. There are some relics to be found in the game that help powering up the main character and give you an achievement if you take em all in one go, I missed one because I died and forgot to take it again. C'est la vie.

10 A short hike was all I needed, highly recommend, very relaxing and short frustration-free experience.
Another EGS gift. You can complete the main quest in a couple of hours, and might want to go back to it for the little mini quests and just walking and gliding around.

11 Bulb Boy very curious game indeed, got a steam key in a giveaway from cymepa. It's a very good shitty game. It's really full of shit. And farts. Literally. Well, not literally in real life, that depends on your diet and belly health. It's a good short weird adventure, with many timed action puzzles. I played it with my laptop trackpad. Despite having a PS4 release, the Windows one lacks controller support. It's also on Android. It might look childish but it could be too gross or disturbing for the little ones. Overall it's quite fun, the characters original and the sale price is convenient, so I would recomend this. The last battle was a dull minigame that could have been shorter. Some timed events are a little bit frustrating. There was a bug during a boss battle (the strawberry), said boss stopped attacking and I had to relaunch the game to progress.

12 I bought and played Bad Dream: Fever. It feels different from its predecessor but it adds up to the series with good writing. It breaks the fourth wall for a reason. If you have enjoyed Coma and are up for something different but close at the same time don't miss Fever! Also I found out that the Polish dev has released other 6 episodes that are free on GameJolt and I am excited to play those as well.

13 I'm really happy I finally got to play Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. This has been the game I wanted to play the most in these years. It was a slow, sometimes puzzling experience. With a few puzzles and some well placed good battle, an amazingly expressive main character and a lot more. Well researched, written and realized. I could not afford it but I have subscribed to Game Pass for one euro so I have a month of good games.

April:
14 I have finally completed A Plague Tale: Innocence on Game Pass. I had to start again from an advanced chapter because I didn't have enough of something in my inventory. A bug and glitch ridden experience teamed with frustrating checkpoints and having to hear and repeat the same menial tasks many times. Some of the ways the characters can be developed are useless and detrimental. The German dub is very good, the Italian subtitles poor, with people in 1348 saying "genetically modified" and a 5 years old using sophisticated words. Interaction could have been better. If you are not in a precise spot you can't interact with anything, and you will think that there is no way to proceed. What this game does good is in other compartments: the graphics, the atmosphere, the soundtrack. The beautiful environments, the epic boss battles towards the ending.

15 As a "snack" I played Old Man's Tale. It's plays like a mobile game where you make your character progress by moving the shape of the hills he can jump unto. Uninteresting story that is supposed to be moving, cute watercolor graphics, controls that didn't work much on my laptop pad and were a little irritating. It should have been more pleasant on a tablet. The music at least at the beginning was that generic stuff you hear in app commercials, I turned it off in favour of some quality music of my taste. There was an annoying pop sound every time you clicked on something so I had to silence all audio. I can't say I completely hated the experience but this is a 2,3 euros short mobile game, their asking price is ridiculous. I played it on Game Pass.

16 I have played Monument Valley 2 on my Android phone with great pleasure. Sadly it stops just when it starts getting more interesting. Nice sequel but nothing comparable to the great experience that playing the first was years ago!

May:
17 After a hyatus from gaming I have finished Assassins Creed II. Somewhat clunky and frustrating, the accents are cringe worthy, I had to play it in Italian and it was fun to hear the common people voices in my language - Japanese dub is also good but not available on Uplay for me.
It had some good moment for sure and I enjoyed walking around places I know and I have lived in, albeit of course changed by the centuries. So I would expext to find Riva degli Schiavoni after San Marco in Venice, but it didn't exist yet, and so on. The button-smashing combat and incoherent storytelling with awful dialog lines are both a downgrade from the first title but the story deepens and you get to know more about the background circumstances. While the appeareance of hystorical characters is fun but underdeveloped. I also have Brotherhood on UPlay so at some point I will try and go on with the Desmond/Ezio series.

18 Wow, so After not playing for a while, today I completed ACII - it only take me a little because I was already at the last mission, and after running 5 km I got back home to complete the short adventure Yesterday! Well, I don't like Dan Brown kinda topics, but it was a nicely made adventure. I was impressed by the intertwined narrative, that could surprise you with changes of charactes, space and time, creating diversity. THis and the shortness make you keep on. Typical problems of the genre are overcomes with an inner hint system. I would like to play Origins too at this point. Funny how there could be some similiarity and influence of Assassins Creed on Yesterday - storywise.

19 Franz Kafka Videogame A short puzzle game with a weird setting.

20 Traumatized by the impossible combats in Waxworks, I embraced the super cool indie game Pony Island. I found it very satisfting and creative, and was complelled to reach the end. The devs knew how to turn their limits in strong points. It offers many surprises. I wish I hadn't chosen to play the game in the Italian translation and not in English but other than that it was good. One day I have to play Hex, by the same small dev.

21 I "finally" played Prisoner of Ice. What a piece of junk! It's unbelievable that this came out after Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis and not several years earlier. Sometimes you just need a very ugly and bad point and click adventure from the past, don't you?

June:
22 I got bored of Figment for the time being and played the Journey Down instead. It could have been a much better adventure. It had too many problems, I might go into detail some other time. I'm glad I got all the parts on Steam from giveaways.

22, 23 I count together the small (less than 30 minutes) pixel art point and click stories by Octavi Navarro, the Supper and the Librarian. Navarro is one of the artist of Thimbleweed Park. Great graphics, stories too short but well told, simplistic puzzles but interesting and quick. They are free on Itch.io together with other two of his games, the Midnight Scenes series of two episodes. Great taste for art, I want more of these.

Apparently I have reached some text limit for this post. Continues here.

Wanted to say something about my first finished game of the year.
So I just finished GRIS... maybe it's just me, but I really wanted to love it and was left feeling neutral about it. Felt less of a game and more like an art installation. Quite abstract too, glad I read the description first. Left me feeling just melancholic. So that's my first game finished in 2020, what's interesting is my last game finished in 2019 was Gorogoa, also very abstract (in fact, I've no idea what the story was even meant to be, feel free to let me know lol). I'm not sure I'm such a fan of abstract games... Back to GRIS, I'm glad the devs got so much recognition for it as it was beautiful and made you feel the tone/theme of it, but I didn't have fun? Maybe that wasn't the point, but still difficult to really review. But I don't regret the purchase or having experienced it. It took me 4.5 hours from start to end.

Captain Toad (3DS). Amusing and nicely done. I didn't think a game from the Mario world would entertain me anymore, but I had a good feeling about this one.

XCOM Enemy Within: Even though I liked this game a lot, it took me 5 years to complete as at times I shelved it when I got tired of it than picking it up sometimes over a year later. It's the same game as Enemy Unknown but with a new enemy: there's a human organisation siding with the aliens. There's two new alien types as well, so the expansion makes for some interesting change when you've already played the basegame. However, I finished the fight against the human organisation that betrayed mankind long before I finished the questline to finish the alien threat, so the later missions where just like the old base game without any difference. Still I had fun with the game. I have absolutely no idea how this game compares to the original UFO/XCOM games as I haven't played any of them, though I already own some of them on GOG, neither do I have the comparison of XCOM 2 as I own that one on Steam but also still in my backlog. But on it's own merits, in my opinion XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a well-rounded game and being turn-based makes for a shooter experience that can be played in a relaxing pace with a drink in hand, even though coffee might turn cold from being too involved in the fighting.

Shufflepuck Cantina Deluxe

A really neat air hockey game - or it would be if not of the incredible amount of grind you have to do to farm enough in-game currency to progress through the story to the end. I dunno why I stuck with it, must be a masochistic streak or something.

Arrog

One of the latest Humble Originals, but not much of a game, more like an interactive animated short, where the interaction consists of trying to figure out where to click in order to advance the film, as well as some simplistic sliding and connecting puzzles. Kind of like a mixture of Plug & Play and Samorost or similar. I can't claim that I fully understood what it's all about. Something about tribes, journeys, stars, the cycle of life and capybaras. Took about 20-30 minutes to watch and click through. Neat animations, but it didn't do that much for me.

The Inner World, Jan 15 (GOG)-This started off badly but improved to an enjoyable but rather average adventure. At first I found Robert incredibly annoying. He reminded me of Sponge Bob but somehow worse. Once you start playing as Laura the game improves quite a bit and by the time you switch back to Robert he's grown on you a bit. I thought most of the puzzles were rather clever but on the easier side. There was a gamebreaking bug that prevented me from finishing about 10 minutes from the end. Somehow I lost Peck when trying things out and he never came back. And the game periodically saves over a single save file so I couldn't finish. Watched the last few minutes on Youtube and it was fine.

Full List

Finished two games lately:
- Rise of the Tomb Raider and its DLCs: I really dig those Tomb Raider games and the DLC were quite good too.
- Cthulhu Saves Christmas: The game was fun mostly thank to the story and the conversations. The game is very repetitive though...

Full list here.

Full list of games finished in 2020:

14/1: XCOM: Enemy Unknown
15/1: Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
25/1: Last Day of Spring
2/2: Last Day of June
2/2: Hero of the Kingdom III
3/2: Hero of the Kingdom
4/2: Hero of the Kingdom II
5/2: Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition (with a Shaman as main character for the first time)
9/2: Spring leaves no flowers
11/3: Blade Runner
15/3: What Remains of Edith Finch
24/4: Braveland
27/4 Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition (with a Feralan, Ranger kit from the Divine Remix mod)
5/5 (Liberation Day): Braveland Wizard
19/5: Gone Home
15/6: Hero of the Kingdom - The Lost Tales 1
25/6: Euro Truck SImulator Road to the Black Sea DLC (*)
4/7: (4th of July) Braveland Pirate
11/9: Syberia
8/10: SpecOps: The Line
11/10: Battlestrike: Shadow of Stalingrad
11/10: Syberia 2
9/12: Tukoni
31/12: Call of Duty: World at War

(*) due to a bug in the map, one small spot in Ruse, Bulgaria can't be visited and the map stays at 99,99% explored due to this

Alien Isolation (XB1X)

Second time I've played this, first time was on PS4- that disc is long since sold. So I played it again on xbox with Game Pass. This time I noticed the games annoyances a lot more. It is still a very tense atmospheric game even now, and it absolutely nails the world from the movies- that old style dirty, industrial space look. The Alien is terrifying and damn annoying at the same time.
The game is also tedious sometimes, especially when the randomness of the Alien kicks in- like doing everything right and opening the last door before freedom...just as the Alien chooses to drop down from a vent right in front of you- insta kill.
The games single biggest problem though was the late game introduction of those face huggers, quite possibly the most annoying enemy in video gaming.

Despite the flaws though, it is one of the most tense and stressful games ever. Not one for people with stress disorders looking for something to calm and relax them.

Game#20: School Ghost Stories (学校の怪談 (Gakkou no Kaidan)) (Jap) (Japan Media Programming) (1995) (SAT)

This is a Japanese live action FMV game for the Sega Saturn based on the movie of the same name. It combines point and click adventure scenes with QTE action. The QTE stuff is actually pretty forgiving as rather than failing the scene if you miss, you simply lose health and you can get health back in the adventure segments by finding things.

Since the FMV is from an actual theatrical film, it’s actually pretty well done with some decent practical effects for the monsters and stuff. The movie is geared more towards children though, so it’s fun, comedic horror more than scary horror.

Game#21: Tanggal (Isip Games) (2018) (WIN)

This game was made by Swedish university students for a school project that they based on the Philippine myth of the Tanggal (a.k.a Manananggal), which is somewhat similar to a vampire. It’s a short, rather mediocre adventure game.

Game#22: Unforgiving: A Northern Hymn (Angry Demon Studio) (2017) (WIN)

This is a game based on Swedish myths and folklore with the awesome bonus of being voiced in Swedish as well. Personally, I can’t stand when games (or movies) are dubbed in English which take place in locations where people don’t normally speak English. It ruins the immersion for me.

Anyway, the game is a typical survival horror game set in the wilderness where you simply have to run away from various creatures or sneak because you’re defenseless. I liked the ending a lot.

Game#23: Victorian Fear Chapter 1: The Arrival (PixelGaiden) (2016) (WIN)

This one is the first chapter in a side scrolling survival horror game that will probably never be finished seeing as it’s been years since this was released and there haven’t been any new chapters. It was okay I guess. I always have a hard time judging these super short games. They typically aren’t long enough to piss me off, so I can’t really dislike them unless something is just completely broken about them.

Game#24: Welcome Home (おかえり(Okaeri)) (Chilla's Art) (2019) (WIN)

This is one of those walking simulator games, albeit with one simple puzzle. The story was good I guess (I liked the end), but the game was deliberately made to look as terrible as possible with various VHS/chromatic aberration like effects and the walking speed was horrifically slow (Thank God for speedhacking!). I don’t recommend buying this game. It should have been freeware.

Game#25: X-Files, The: Deep State – Season 1 (Creative Mobile) (2018) (AND)

Words can’t even begin to express the unparalleled loathing I have for this game that I forced myself to play through because I needed a game starting with X. It shouldn’t take much to please me on this as I’m a huge X-Files fan. I’ve seen all the movies and TV episodes multiple times, read all the novels and comics, and played the previous 4 games (including the spoof). I don’t even have a dislike for hidden object games. They aren’t great, but they’re something to play when drunk or really tired.

That said, this game is complete shit. I don’t even know where to begin. It’s one of those horribly exploitive mobile games. The game will make you wait hours and hours for forensic tests in the game to complete if you don’t pay.

It’s a hidden object game where every scene is timed in some way, making you play them over and over until you memorize the whole thing because you lose energy every time you fail (only half of it if you don’t) and, of course, the only way to recover it is to wait several hours or pay money. Fortunately, I got around this by just moving the clock forward on my device. You also get subjected to windows popping up trying to get you to buy shit all the time in between scenes.

The game has a handful of puzzles, but they are used over and over and over again. It’s so mind-numbingly repetitive. To top things off, it is ridiculously long. It’s probably 12 hours or more to play all 7 episodes in the first season and you will easily do hundreds of hidden object scenes. The only thing that didn’t completely suck was the stories.

These developers (and Fox) are scum as far as I’m concerned. They’re a bunch of low-down, double-dealing, backstabbing, larcenous perverted worms. Hanging’s too good for them! Burning’s too good for them! They should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!

Game#26: YLD: Your Last Day (Alexandre Guillot) (2017) (WIN)
Game#27: Zombie Train Beyond Earth (Oddjumper) (2016) (WIN)
Game#28: Sanctuary (Connor Sherlock) (2013) (WIN)
Game#29: Marginalia (Remake) (Connor Sherlock) (2014, 2017) (WIN)

Not much to say about the above. YLD was the best game, Sanctuary the worst.

Game#30: Shiver 02: Poltergeist CE (Artogon Games) (2012) (WIN)

This is a HOPA (hidden object puzzle adventure). I was curious if that X-Files game had ruined me on the genre for life. It didn’t. There’s nothing special about this game, but at least it was completely casual. No nagging or time pressure.

Game #31: Wolfenstein 3D (Id Software) (1992) (DOS)

I actually never played this when it originally came out, so this is my first experience with it. First and foremost, I love how fast the movement speed is. It’s so much better than these slow ass modern games. I felt like a Nazi killing Usain Bolt. Personally, I think it holds up pretty well, although it would be nice if someone was able to get modern Left/Right strafing keys added to it somehow.

Game#32: BioShock 2 DLC: Minerva’s Den (2K Marin) (2010) (WIN)

I played the main game earlier in the year and was dumb enough to play the remastered version which crashed constantly. I was a save-scumming madman in that game. This time, I installed the original game and played the expansion in that and had zero problems. So, for anyone reading this, do NOT play the remastered version. Not only does it crash a lot, but it has horrible texture pop-in as well. It is truly worse than the original. That aside, I did like the expansion.

Game#33: Vampire Panic (ヴァンパイアパニック) (Jap) (Alfa System) (2004) (PS2)

This is a Japanese PlayStation 2 game in which you and 2 other warriors help rescue people from a vampire plague. One is a sword fighter for those who like hack and slash, another uses her fists for that beat-em up feel, and the third wields pistols. Once you have all three it is necessary to switch between them in order to progress in the game, as some “quests” require a specific character.

The majority of the gameplay consists of escorting people through hordes of wolves and vampires back to your sanctuary. This is also timed and if you take too long on each excursion, the main vampire appears and attacks you. If you can repel him it’s all good, otherwise he bites you and gives you vampirism which needs to be cured before you turn. If you don’t get the cure in time it’s game over. The entire game is actually timed as well, but I thought it gave you plenty of time. I had 3-4 hours left on the timer when I finished.

It’s pretty run of the mill stuff, but the best part by far is that after you defeat the main vampire at the end of the game, it unlocks a mode where you get to play as the vampire and your goal is to turn all the people you previously rescued and kill the three characters you played in the game. I really liked that part once you level up your vampire (he starts out rather pathetic), but sadly it doesn’t even last an hour. After beating that it unlocks a new boss and ending for the main game, but I’m not playing the whole game over just to see it.

Games Completed in 2020

Old Man's Journey (XB1X)

Short and easy puzzle game. Two hours long and only has one puzzle type, basically you have to manipulate the environment to open a traversable path for the old man as he goes along his way. The catch is you cannot manipulate the terrain he is standing on. It increases in complexity as you go, but never becomes difficult. The simple story is told with no dialogue, just a sequence of memories from his life that you unlock at certain points during the journey.

Prince of Persia (AND) - 8/10
Yes, it's an endless runner, but the platforming and animations are so smooth, it was a complete joy to play. Despite it being endless I consider it "finished" because I unlocked all the costumes and the game now has nothing more to offer me. I never played the original Prince of Persia back in the day and this was a great way to experience that classic remade. I think I got to around the 150th level-ish. There's supposedly more than 400, but you see the repeated segments by level 50 or so.