Today i finished Baldur's Gate with a female party (me, Viconia, Alora, Imoen, Dynaheir, Shar-Teel).
I think I will never get tired of this beautiful game.

The Banner Saga, Jan 19 (GOG)-I liked this game. I really did. But it had a lot of flaws. The tactical combat was good and the story was good. But everything else was pretty bad and doesn't make me look forward to playing the other games. And for a game praised for its writing there were a disappointing number of typos.

I enjoyed the story but the storytelling was so bad. I never got invested in any of the characters. I never got a chance They came and went so quickly and they all seemed interchangeable. I think the lack of voice acting hurt a lot here as that would have distinguished them a bit. All of the characters seemed to have pre-existing relationships that I had no idea about and I never knew who any of them were nor their history or the history of the game world.

The roleplaying and choices in the game were also really lacking. It reminded me a bit of TWD (the show not the games) or what I imagine Frostpunk to be like. I get that this is a harsh world and there are difficult choices to be made but it felt like a choose your own adventure book. None of the choices or roleplaying mattered because the consequences were so arbitrary. And when one of your faceless heroes died due to a random text encounter (not in combat mind you) they were immediately replaced with another one who you'd never get to know.

The combat though was pretty good. I wish someone would take the combat out of this game and put it into another better game. Or if the developers completely reworked everything but the combat for the sequel. But I'm not holding my breath.

Also waiting for Juno shouldn't have resulted in me losing all my supplies. At that point it didn't matter since the game was about 90% over and all my followers were meaningless. Still I think there should have been some kind of prompt to prevent this.

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Spy Fox 2, the venus fly-trap path with extended ending

Escape from Tethys

A pretty barebones but still fun Metroidvania - once you get used to the movement controls anyway....

Those controls - it's as if every surface slippery, so even after you try to stop moving you still slide a fair bit. Also need to get used to jumping before reaching the very edge of a platform or you'll fall. Finally, the "up" and "down" direction on analog sticks is way too strict in the game - you pretty much have to press exactly up or exactly down for it to register - any slight diagonal ruins it. I had to use joy2key and bind up/down arrows to my left analog stick so that they'd register the way I wanted them to.

The metroidvania aspects are all here - large maze-like map with interconnected areas, weapon upgrades, health/ammo upgrades, traversal items allowing you to reach previously out-of-reach places, secrets, save points, teleport points, the works. If you get all or most of the upgrades, the final boss is a cakewalk, so be mindful of that.

There's no story to speak of. Some data logs speak of the facility being attacked, but that has nothing to do with you - you're just trying to get out of the place (and if whatever attacked it stands in your way, so be it.)

Took me about 8 hours to beat, much of that time exploring, trying to make it alive to the next save point, looking for secrets and being lost. None of the bosses took more than a few tries to beat, some, including the final boss, only took one. There's a 45 minute speedrun achievement - I'm not going for that.

The game did freeze a few times. Twice was shortly after a save or teleport point so no biggy. Once was right after beating a boss, which was annoying.

Game#37: Hunt the Wumpus (Remake) (Gregory Yob) (1972, 1981) (TI99)

I had previously played the original parser based text version a long time ago, but this remake for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A is purely graphical. You could even play it with a joystick. Some say it’s one of the first survival horror games. I played about 20 games or so. There’s definitely a luck factor involved due to the randomness of the map and the difficulty of narrowing down the Wumpus’ location to better than two rooms, often making it a coin toss whether you win or lose.

Game:38: Jumping Ghost (Ralph Rudzki) (1992) (AST)

Despite the release date, this game is every bit as primitive as Hunt the Wumpus. It doesn’t look much better than an Atari 2600 game, which is odd as it was made for the Atari ST platform which was capable of much more.

You control a ghost that looks like an extra from Pac-Man and all you do is try to jump up to the top of the level. This is complicated by the platforms moving and changing size. It’s ridiculously simple in design, but can be fiendishly difficult. I found myself getting addicted. I was planning to stop after 10 levels but kept going until level 30. I don’t know if this game has an end or not, and in such cases I simply play until I feel I’ve seen everything the game has to offer and call it “done”.

Game#39: Brain Dead 13 (ReadySoft) (1995) (DOS)

This game is basically a Dragon’s Lair rip-off by the company that did the porting of it. Unfortunately, I would say they didn’t really get how to design such a game. In Dragon’s Lair, the animation was drawn to clue the player in to what to do. The floor crumbles to the left, you move right. Dirk reaches his hand towards his scabbard and you push the button to draw the sword. You’re surrounded by an electrified floor that cuts off all avenues of escape except one and you move in that direction. And so on. The game wasn’t perfect, but you hardly ever had to wonder what you were supposed to do, though figuring out the right timing was sometimes rather tricky. I played the game a lot when it came out in the arcades and could finish it with a single quarter without losing a single life.

This game, on the other hand, quite often gives you no visual clues at all. You basically have to just randomly try shit until you discover the right answer. It’s obvious the developer realized this fault as they give you infinite lives and you don’t lose any real progress in the game when you die. The game also beeps when you make a move to let you know if you are guessing right or wrong.

Fortunately, the animation itself is rather good, and there are lots of humorous ways to die. I wasted a lot of time playing this game as I originally played the 3DO version in an emulator and eventually discovered that the game couldn’t be beaten. No matter what you do the final game area never opens up. Whether it’s the emulator’s fault or something with my PC, I don’t know. As a result, I had to switch to the DOS version which worked perfectly.

Game#40: Scary School Rumors: Here Comes Hanako!! (学校のコワイうわさ 花子さんがきた!! (Gakkou no Kowai Uwasa: Hanako-san ga Kita!!)) (Jap) (Amuse) (1995) (3DO)

This is yet another school horror game for kids which is based on an animated series. It’s an adventure game in which you explore the school, find items to use and solve puzzles in order to defeat the various spirits, etc. Some of the puzzles were actually a lot more difficult than I expected for a kids game, like one where you have to repeat a sequence that is something like 20 stages long! There are also a bunch of timed slider puzzles as well that were tough to beat in time near the end of the game.

It has a ridiculously catchy theme song. The type of thing that just gets in your head and won’t stop, even if you hate it. In order to reinforce it, there is actually a puzzle where you have to reconstruct it. I actually woke up in the middle of the night the other day and sure enough: “Kowa kowa kowa kowa Hanako-san!!” just pops into my head. I had a hard time getting back to sleep…

Game#41: Killing Time (Studio 3DO) (1995) (3DO)

I had actually played both the 3DO and Windows versions of this game in the past and gave up on both but decided to give it one more try and succeeded this time. I thought for sure I was going to miss one of the essential items and have to spend hours searching through those seemingly endless mazes for whatever I missed, but I guess I was thorough enough and made it to the end. This game was kind of a chore to play at times and playing an FPS with a controller absolutely sucks, but it was an interesting early experience in the genre and the integrated FMV was rather unique.

Game#42: Demon Resurrection (魔界復活 (Makai Fukkatsu)) (Jap) (Soft Studio Wing) (1987) (X1)

This is an adventure game for the Sharp X1 computer. I actually thought it would be a pure visual novel, but there are items to carry, characters to switch between and puzzles to solve. You spend most of the game exploring Japanese shrines and eventually killing demons. It has a great game over screen which depicts your severed hand twitching and your decapitated head’s eyes falling out of the skull. Quality gore always gets a game bonus points with me.

Games 43&44:

Evolution Japan Doll of Grudge (日本人形 育成 (Nihon Ningyou: Ikusei)) (Jap) (ESC-APE) (2015) (AND)
Evolution Straw Doll of Grudge (呪いの藁人形 (Noroi no Wara Ningyou)) (Jap) (ESC-APE) (2015) (AND)

I’m grouping these two Android games together as they are basically the same game, although they aren’t games in the normal sense, but more like horror-themed virtual pets. In both of them you control a doll which you use to kill various types of vermin such as bugs, rats, moles, and snakes. When you have squashed, eaten and splatted enough of them, your doll will level up and mutate in increasingly bizarre and grotesque ways. Wondering what they will turn into next is basically the entire reason to play.

You wouldn’t actually sit down and play these for any length of time. You play them for a minute or two at a time and come back to them when enough vermin have re-spawned. It’s the thing you do when you are waiting in line somewhere or something. Due to the way they are played I actually played both at the same time. It probably only takes about 2 hours to beat each one.

Game#45: Araya (MAD Virtual Reality Studio) (2016) (WIN)

This is a survival horror game developed and set in Thailand. You can actually opt for Thai language and english subtitles for added authenticity which I personally love. I wish all games did this.

You actually play a bunch of different characters in the game allowing you to see the story from a bunch of different perspectives and the gameplay splits between chase sequences and investigation. Overall, it’s kind of amateurish and utilizes a lot of tired horror clichés. It’s definitely not as good as the Steam reviews would have you believe. I'm a horror whore though, so I still managed to get some enjoyment out of it.

Games Completed in 2020

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

I had more fun playing it than I expected, after hearing from others how repetitive it is. I actually didn't think it was more repetitive than most other open world games of this kind. And as an open world game it is quite solid, nothing spectacularly new and original, but competently done and refined. I'm not the first to notice that it very obviously combines Assassin's Creed parkour and tower climbing with Batman/Arkham series combat as well as Far Cry 3+ style hunting and taming of beasts, invading of outposts, liberating prisoners etc. And all these elements work together very well in this game, and IMO make it better than the sum of its parts. I'm not a huge fan of AC, but I like the parkour in it; I'm not a huge fan of the Arkham series, but the combat in it is alright; and I liked the systems in Far Cry Primal a lot, and Shadow of Mordor felt quite similar to it. Shadow of Mordor also keeps adding new mechanics to play around with during its course, to keep things interesting. And the one original thing about it, the nemesis system, is pretty nice, too, once you get the hang of it.

From what I can tell, story and setting don't really have a lot to do with Tolkien's work, it feels more like fan fiction for the movies, but it's not as bad as The Hobbit 'trilogy', and that's a plus. Ultimately, the plot is rather forgettable, but then again, it is mainly a system driven open world game after all, so who cares. Frankly, if this was a random fantasy setting and didn't really have a story, I think it wouldn't actually change all that much, it would work just as well. The actual world design though, the layout, the graphics, the sounds, the atmosphere are all very good. I particularly liked the orc chants when a warchief entered the scene and his random name was called out repeatedly, giving him an aura of importance and threat. The whole nemesis system managed to be intimidating and exciting at the same time, and I say that as someone who usually hates bosses, but these bosses were well integrated into the regular gameplay, no scripted battles, no QTEs, no spacial restriction within arenas, just tougher opponents in the open world.

Although I very much enjoyed the gameplay, I do have a few minor points of criticism regarding some design decisions. The artifact collectibles you can hunt down are connected to short fragments of audio dialogues, but in order to listen to them you have to play a pointless minigame of "rotate the 3D object until you find the glowing spot" first. And then, all you can do while listening to the audio snippet is stare at the page with the transcript. Why even have these dialogues voiced, if you can't do anything but read in the meantime anyway? Voiceovers are good for feeding you information while you do other stuff, like running from one place to another or so; they are distracting and slow if they interrupt the gameplay, and you could just read the text, and faster, but the voices made it harder for me to concentrate on it. Of course, you can just as well skip reading and listening to all this stuff, it's completely optional and not all that interesting anyway. Also, on loading screens there were voiced dialogues as well, which is a neat idea, but I thought their volume was too low to understand them, compared to the volume of the rest of the game. If I had turned the volume up for them, everything else would have been too loud.

And three slightly bigger issues: 1. You only learn what a side mission is actually about, what you're expected to achieve in it, whether there's a time limit or not, after you started it, although each of them has a (nondescript) pop up description on the map. Probably easier for the devs to insert all kinds of quests that way, but from a player's perspective rather inconvenient. 2. If you fail a side mission, you can retry it, but not right away as in other games - instead you have to backtrack to the point where you started the mission first. So let's say you start a mission outside of an orc fortress, you need to sneak inside and do some tasks without being seen, but you're caught, so the mission is failed, but there's no screen asking you if you want to try again, the game just continues, you have to fight the orcs or run away, all the way to the point outside of the fortress where you began your mission, in order to restart it. In a way, it's cool that missions and open world gameplay blend into each other so seamlessly, but all the backtracking can get really tedious and annoying, especially if you're already miffed about having to repeat everything, due to one little misstep. And 3. *MINOR SPOILER*, in the second half of the game when you are able to turn orcs so that they fight on your side, you can still attack and hurt them, even accidentally, and it can happen rather easily in the midst of a hectic combo fight. I wouldn't expect the orc slaughtering main character to suddenly take pity and care about them just because he made them his temporary allies, but doesn't it defeat the purpose of allies if you quickly decimate them by way of friendly 'fire' again? *END SPOILER*

That being said, and with the caveat that it's a bit like the videogame equivalent of fast food, rather forgettable in terms of story, I had tons of fun playing through the game and nearly 100%-ed it; I skipped hunting for herbs and such, because that felt like busywork, not fun, and the prisoner rescue mission started to get old halfway through as well, but I did everything else, and also willingly wasted a bit of time to play around with the nemesis system. In the end, it kept me busy for about 35 hours. I do have the DLCs as well, but I think I've had enough for now. Maybe another time.

Game#46: Ghostscape (Psionic Games) (2008) (Linux)

This is a point and click adventure game where you are trapped in a haunted house and have to figure out how to escape while simultaneously documenting the paranormal events that happen within by taking pictures of the various phenomena you encounter. It’s a simple freeware game that’s not even a half hour long.

Game#47: Ghostscape 2: The Cabin (Psionic Games) (2009) (Linux)

I figured I’d go ahead and play the sequel. It has the same type of gameplay, but this time you’re out in the woods and need to help out a mysterious old man while unveiling the secrets behind a series of disappearances in the area. This is also freeware and slightly longer than the first.

Games Completed in 2020

Entry 3: Haunted Legends 7 - The Secret of Life Collector's Edition (PC-Win10)

This is the furthest entry of this series i have completed**. It is a decent entry in the series and the first to have multiple(albeit similar in many aspects) endings based on choices made(mostly in the form of dialog boxes).

Pros

A nice new "mutiple choice" system, based on text choices every so often, which either contribute to change some aspects of the ending or some of the things you have to do in-game to progress.

Some nice new secrets(in the form of "morphing objects" in some backgrounds, which get added to a sort of "witch's hut area/page"), some nice achievements(in the from of watches with game info/character pictures usually based close to the achievement somehow), and even some cats to find(in the hidden object scenes that are so indicated) which(when all found) unlock an extra game in the extras.

Some of the items one collects in the other first 6 games are found/referenced here...mainly in the CE extra level/areas, but a bit also in the main game as well.

Cons

One needs to replay to see the other choices(main ending changes, advancement changes), and the game is a bit short.

Overall

I'd give it a 7.2/10, and will be moving onto the other games as soon as I can.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 (PS4)

First off, if you want to get this game, get it on PC! This type of game works so much better with a mouse, only get it on console if you have a rubbish PC that can't run it (like me). Anyway, the game is pretty well known so I won't go into too much detail. D:OS2 is a turn based RPG, that is very difficult and very story rich. The combat was challenging and it was fun getting to grips with it, the difficulty curve is pretty good, and it always keeps you on your toes. There's plenty to do, many side quests, a very good story, and some great characters. There were a few issues: Loading times seemed to take forever (Fortunately loading screens only appear when loading a save) and there were a few moments in the game where two companion's questlines would contradict each other, but this doesn't affect the game that badly.

Now I'm going to rant about the final area of the game, which is the hardest (and rightly so) however it's hard because of certain battles that just seem unfair. If you kill a certain npc in a different area, high level concealed enemies will attack you from out of nowhere, and I see little justification for them being as strong as they were. My final rant is about the last battle, which is absurdly difficult. It is also broken: NPC's will continue to talk after being killed, one of my companions wouldn't stop moving (even when it wasn't their turn) and one of the mechanics of the fights shouldn't have been possible story-wise. In the end I used a cheesy strategy, which I assume is what almost everyone else doing this fight has to do. Well except for that final battle, it was a blast, and I might do another playthrough in the future.

Fable II (XB1X)

The first Fable was a pretty good game overall, but not outstanding in any way. This one improves slightly in every way, yet retains the same gameplay style at the same time. I enjoyed it way more. It looks and runs excellent. It renders at 4K with an Xbox One X (plus perfectly locked frame rate and better texture filtering) and the world is detailed and colourful, some of the best graphics from the 360. It's good that the game does run on Xbox One consoles since it's never been released on PC, unlike the first game and Fable III.

The game works like the first game. It's not open world, it is made up of discreet areas that you can, and sometimes must return to. It makes the game focused and less meandering compared to open world RPG's, though there are lots of secrets and side quests for exploring each area extensively.
The story is like western fairy tales, in that it is whimsical yet also very dark at its core.
As expected from a Fable game there are plenty of optional side content that is fun to do. Get married (multiple times if you want), have kids, own property, collect rent, visit brothels, hunt for treasures. I have the GOTY version that has some side quests to new areas.
My favourite part of the Fable games is the character progression- not just how your character evolves in looks to reflect how you play (somehow my character finished up looking like Elvis, complete with white jumpsuit, big gut, slicked back hair, and guitar on his back), but also the way you build. Do you prefer selecting how to build your character or advance with use systems like Elder Scrolls? Well Fable games use both at the same time. Everything you kill rewards universal XP plus XP based upon method. Keep using melee for example and you will get lots of melee XP as well as universal XP. You can still build up the universal XP to advance ranged or magic combat if you want.

Great game. So much so that I plan to play Fable III real soon as well, I don't own that one but the entire series is on Game Pass anyway. Looking forward to the expected announcement of Fable IV at E3 this year.

Faerie Solitaire Remastered

It's a puzzle-type game, where you have to do suits of cards one number higher or lower than the card on your discard. Of course, the longer you can combo the cards, the more points you receive.

It also has a scenario, but to be honest, while the art is charming and the voice over quite good, the story is totally forgettable. You have eggs to find during the game, then you have to hatch them plus make them evolve. You also can have buildings which will enable you to have some advantages in game, like knowing how many cards are still in your decks, finding more resources for your pets, and so on.

The nice thing is that the eggs part is totally optional and you don't need them to finish the game. But for completists and people who like achievements, it's an interesting optional goal.

This game is perfect for short or very short stints, when you want to relax but have only 30 minutes or the like.

So far in 2020: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2020/post29

Karateka (2012)

The remake of the 1984 game by Jordan Mechner. Same "story", pleasant 3D graphics, great soundtrack. I've never played the original, but from what I've seen of it on YouTube, the gameplay of the remake seems to be a bit different in that it gives you acoustic clues on when to block (for all all enemies but the major bosses), and it's basically all about blocking the attack of your opponents which is then rewarded by the opportunity for a series of risk-free strikes on your part. How many free kicks and punches you get depends on how many attacks you were able to block, and you definitely need to block the last incoming strike or else you get no retribution, no matter how many you strikes you've blocked before. Every couple of fights you get the chance to heal completely again.

Another difference to the original is that in the remake you have three different characters trying to rescue Mariko. If your first character, her true love, fails, you can still continue the rescue with the second character, a monk, and at the same spot where the first one was defeated, without having to start from scratch, and if he fails too, you still have the third character, the brute. Additionally, if the last character is defeated, you can sacrifice 3k of your score to continue and retry the last battle, as long as your score is high enough to allow this subtraction. And if you get a Game Over screen, you can still "Resume" the game from the main menu, also at the last checkpoint. So there's nothing forcing you to restart if you fail, which also happens to be the reason why I was able to finish it. One playthrough is just 20-30 minutes, but I wouldn't have had the ambition to replay the game from scratch, so I'm quite happy that the game went with the times and didn't just cater to nostalgic hardcore gamers instead. There are incentives to replay the game though, if you're more ambitious than me: For one, there are three endings, and the one with the last character is the worst, while the one with the first is the best, so if you want the best ending, you'd need to play through the game without failing a single battle. And secondly, there is a leaderboard and a direct comparison with your friends on Steam which showed me that I really sucked compared to them. :D

Thankfully, I'm not very competitive, so I just watched the other two endings on YouTube and decided I'm done with the game. But that one playthrough was quite fun. The only point of criticism I could think of is the model of femininity in the remake, which is worse than in the 1984 original. Sure, it's a damsel in distress story in feudal Japan, but did they have to portray Mariko this doe-eyed on top of it? And the brute ending is really creepy. Apart from that, Karateka (2012) is an enjoyable little distraction.

Game #48: Dracula Island (Phillip A. Gibbs) (1983) (ELEC)

This is a really old text adventure for the Acorn Electron computer. The story, what little of it there is, is that you are trapped on Dracula’s island and if you can’t figure out how to destroy him by sunset he will kill you. The game is timed, with so many minutes passing for each move you make.

It has all the annoyances of such old text games, like a terrible parser, sparse environment descriptions, inventory item limits, and so on. I played it a bit last year and abandoned it after getting stuck, so I decided to just break down and use a walkthrough to help me finish the thing. I think I might be done with text adventures for good now. I just don’t have the patience to deal with them anymore.

Game #49: Dracula Castle Escape (脱出ドラキュラ城 (Dasshutsu Dracula Jou)) (Jap) (ESC-APE) (2015) (AND)

This is a short adventure game for Android from the same company that made those Evolution games I mentioned before. Like most escape games, it has some pixel hunting, but overall it wasn’t too bad. In addition to standard inventory puzzles, there’s a dialog puzzle with a succubus and some light action scenes. It has multiple endings, of which I saw three.

Game #50: Ghost Manor Escape (妖怪屋敷 -からの脱出- (Youkai Yashiki: Kara no Dasshutsu)) (Jap) (ESC-APE) (2014) (AND)

This is another Android game like the previous entry, this time in a haunted manor. Your character has paranormal powers and you need to use them to find ghosts and solve puzzles in order to defeat them or get things you need from them in order to escape. It also has multiple endings. I enjoyed it for what it was.

Game #51: Shadows of the Damned (シャドウ オブ ザ ダムド) (Grasshopper Manufacture) (2011) (PS3)

For some reason I just never got around to playing this PS3 game until now. Like a lot of Suda51’s games, it is crazy weird and awesome in so many ways. I definitely enjoyed this one, though the gameplay was a bit stressful for me at times with all those timed sequences. I think it took me about 10 hours to play through. They need to make a remaster to celebrate its 10th anniversary next year and release it on PC.

Games Completed in 2020

Tibetan Quest: Beyond the World's End (2016) (Linux)

Not sure if completed by me or rather by my daughters, however I still consider it as beaten ;) I liked this one, but I also think there are a lot of better HOPAs published by Artifex Mundi, even available here, on GOG. This one was rather meh. However if you're new in the genre and you like this kind of gameplay, it may be really nice casual entertainment for lazy few hours.

List of all games completed in 2020.

Finished the Itch.io game Last Day of Spring. It's a Japanese game about friendship and about what it's like to be transgender in Japan. It's saddening to experience how rough transgenders have it to just be themselves, with emphasis on legal issues in Japan, but it's also heart-warming and the game leaves a rosy feeling because of the value of friendship it portrays, how worthy it is to get to know even one or two people who truly accept you for what you are.

Apparently there's multiple possible endings to the game, but as the game has lots of dialogue to read with only once every know and then a choice option, I don't feel like going through it again to try for a different ending, as it will probably involve rereading much of the same and it wouldn't be a fresh experience another time around. And also it's nice to tick something off the backlog. And there's a third game in the trilogy to experience!

The trilogy is:
one night, hot springs (Free-to-Play on Steam and thus alas doesn't stay in my library once deinstalled)
last day of spring (that I finished just now)
spring leaves no flowers (that I'll play next)

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