query:

Read your shadowrun return post upon completion and you said you will play dragonfall. Did you?

Halo 2 Anniversary Edition (Legendary) - 11 Jan
Halo 3 (Legendary) - 12 Jan

A well done single player FPS games, such a rarity in our times. Halo 2 is a bit unbalanced and Master Chief's "new better armor" is worse in every way. Many players consider Gravemind the hardest level but for me The Armory was much harder, I even had to restart it because in one section the door is closing cutting the way back and I had only standard weapons on me and bunch of elites, and killing them without charged plasma pistol was *impossible* for me to do. Overall great game and pretty long.

Halo 3 is fantastic, well balanced, not super hard, a bit short. I had so much fun finishing it on latest difficulty. The only thing I didn't like is the continuation of Halo 2, previously Master Chief was sent to Earth but other key characters reached it much faster that he (at least that's what I gathered from reading some lore article), so what was the point in sending him if he could assist with the fight and then come along on a same spaceship? I think it's so stupid, or maybe I'm missing some data and it's a good move which I was not able to comprehend.

[post-edit]: The hardest level for Halo 2 in my opinion was Cairo Station, not the The Armory which just a short tutorial section.

Nope! Still on my "pile of shame"... :(

Dragonfall and Hong Kong are both quite good if you liked Shadowrun Returns.

Life Is Strange, Jan 12 (GOG)-I've got mixed feelings about this one. It's definitely a good game but I had some issues with it. I found the early game, in fact the entirety of the first three episodes really, to be very slow. Episode 4 was the highlight with the mystery getting into full gear. I really liked CSI Arcadia Bay.

The final episode was a bit of a come down from the fourth. The final episode caused some major whiplash thinking it was going to end in a certain way then jerking you back in for another hour or more. The time hopping in the final episode was also confusing, I'm pretty sure at least one of those timelines wouldn't have turned out like Max thought, and the part with Chloe telling Max everything didn't make any sense to me.

The final choices/endings didn't sit quite right with me either.


SPOILER WARNING


I feel like there should have been a choice for Max to sacrifice herself in the bathroom at the very beginning thereby saving both Chloe and the town. It seems like the most Max-like choice to me. Choosing to save Chloe seems too selfish for Max. Choosing to save the town takes away all the joy Max brought to Chloe's life over the course of the game despite Chloe saying it won't. I think if Max saved Chloe in the bathroom but died herself the rest of the events could have played out very similarly and with a little imagination we could think that the tragedy brings the Prices closer together as well. Chloe ultimately dying in the bathroom in the ending I chose almost seems to invalidate all of Max's goals throughout the rest of the game. And I don't think that was the intention of the developers.


END SPOILERS



I also wanted some backstory on why Max moved away and why she moved back. I think some comments or memories sprinkled throughout the game could have tied in nicely with my proposed ending above.

Some other miscellaneous criticisms. The rewind ability was rather glitchy/unstable causing at least one restart. The focus mechanic was necessary story-wise but I don't think it added anything gameplay-wise. Focus was very finnicky and broke the immersion. Lastly, the final episode felt not well tested. There was a scene in the diner with a close up of Max's face and her mouth didn't move at all. Also, there were several scenes that I would have expected either music or ambient noise (no dialogue) but there was just silence. Finally, I could not hear the radio in the car due to the loud soundtrack but that might have just been my settings.

All that said its still a good story and worth your time. It like a Telltale style game without QTEs and with the literal ability to redo any choices you didn't like.

Full List

Illusion of Gaia. Quintet's follow-up to Soul Blazer, similar in that the gameplay boils down to entering an area and then exterminating every single enemy in it before you can continue (and the enemies generally don't respawn). It's very satisfying in that way because you get a clear sense of progress throughout the game. You also gain options for transforming into different forms that have certain necessary abilities, which is cool but the downside is that you can only change at save points and sometimes it's a hassle to have to trudge all the way back to one to try something out.

It's got decent graphics and the music is very nice. Controls very well. The story isn't very well-translated in English. Some mumbo jumbo about a comet coming to wipe out life on Earth. What registered the most to me about the story was how it presented exploration as dangerous, in contrast to lots of games that take a light-hearted "just an adventure!" view of the topic. The characters in the game are mostly related to people that went out to map the world and perform archeology, and almost all of them ended up mentally or physically scarred by the experience, if not outright dead, and the trauma gets passed down to the kids who are living with missing or crippled parents. And before long some of the main cast come to very unpleasant ends. It's like Werner Herzog snuck into the game's writing team or something.

This was partly shown in the bonus episode "Farewell" for Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, but it seems it's only available in the Deluxe Edition. And that game has a different developer, it felt a bit more like fan fiction at times, not quite as special as LiS (though I enjoyed it, too).

1. Yakuza Kiwami 2 | ★★★★½ | PC Game Pass | 20h
2. Townscaper | ★★½ | PC Game Pass | 1h
3. Rubber Bandits | ★★★ | PC Game Pass | 2h
4. New Star Manager | ★★★½ | Steam | 17h
5. Kill It With Fire | ★★★★ | Steam | 11h
6. The Gunk | ★★★ | PC Game Pass | 7h
7. Blacksad: Under the Skin | ★★★★ | Steam | 13h
8. Mass Effect Legendary Edition | ★★★★½ | EA Play | 13h
9. Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition | ★★★★★ | EA Play | 33h
10. Vampire Survivors | ★★★★ | Steam | 13h

Good to know. I'll have to check it out as I apparently have the deluxe edition.

At least I think so. I don't remember how much of what you'd have wanted to know it actually explains, but you get to experience their last day together before Max went away and on which terms they parted.

Played both myself and they are really good. shame there are no more games in this universe. proper RPGs, much more advanced than Returns.

Do recommend it Ciemno!


and I myself just finished campaign for Battlefield 1.

Some frustrating elements but otherwise really good and fun!

Played a little in MP but really does not interest me. plus i suck at it!

Diablo + Hellfire. I beat the base game on Normal Difficulty and the Hellfire Expansion. I could keep playing, but I don't have any interest in trying NIghtmare , or Hell Difficulty., given that I don't care for what happens when you die in game and since I prefer ARPGs where you don't have to load your save file(and often start a boss fight from the very beginning) when this happens and can instead either go find your body and then get back into the fight with, usually, the boss that killed you, like in D2 or do something like in the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Final Cut, and pay to respawn at a checkpoint or respawn in your lair for free.

Deus Ex - Revision v1.7
a lot of stuff with balance out of the window.

Good: Shifter and Biomod are stable enough to finish, something that wasn't possible with standalone mods.
Bad: music is watered down to nothingless. Maybe 1-2 tracks are ok, but nothing else.

If you need any reason to play look no further.

Plenty of achievements but most of them are stupid and forced in concept.

oh and only 1 trophy for one ending (Helios merge) while you can get like 5? when you meet NSF commander

A lot of modifiers to fiddle with, picked Small Items (everything takes 1x1, no matter if that's GEP gun or soda can), combined with No Ammo Limits and running Biomod for my first (and only) Heavy Weapons playthrough. Never used one beside GEP Lockpick device...

Albion. What a game my friends, what a game! It deserves a remake.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla (XSX)

It's finally over. Almost four straight weeks playing just the one game. I don't want to look at the hours, I'm guessing at least 150. Valhalla is different, it feels different and has a shift in feel in some ways, some good and some bad. Overall though I liked Odyssey a lot better.

What is better than ever is how it runs- vast view distance and 60fps at dynamic 4K. The game ran flawlessly and the HDR lighting is amazing, and I did not have any crashes or performance issues in all the hours I played it. It still has the usual Assassin's Creed control issues though- namely the sluggish unresponsive controls. Much of that is inherent in all modern 3rd person games- the animations take a lot of frames and that slows down the response to your inputs whilst waiting for animations to finish- that is why first person games feels faster and more responsive, regardless of frame rate. It is what it is, but I hate having to hit the drop down button three times before the character acts, just because it has to finish the sideways shuffle animation.

The campaign was good for me. It's the type of open world campaign I like- basically take over the map. That's the main part of the story. Playing as a Viking (a Norse to be exact) is good fun, killing the weak and useless is all part of being a Viking and what they believed in- so just cut loose and enjoy yourself. It's good background to have watched the Vikings and The Last Kingdom TV series too- that way you will be familiar with many of the people of the times- the game is set after the death of the infamous Ragnar Lothbrok, but you do deal with a few of his sons (Especially Ivar). The other part of the campaign involves killing off a cult, who are basically the seeds of what will become the Templars- this being early Medieval period, the Crusades are yet to happen. The current day story line also finally gets quite a shocking plot twist for the first time in many games.

The world is not as interesting as ancient Greece or Egypt. But what do you expect, it's mostly set in England...it rains a lot, so they got that right. Not that I'm the best person to judge England, every time I've been there I've done some shopping and then got the hell out as fast as I could on the first train, plane or ferry- allowing for the usual train breaking down (no seriously, what is it with the English and not being able to make trains run without breaking?).

Where the game broke down for me were the side activities. Don't get me wrong, they are optional as always. No one makes you 100% complete the map. And if you have never bothered to do so before then this won't be much different for you. However I've always enjoyed playing an AC game each year and strive for 100% each game. For Valhalla this was painful. For some Godforsaken reason, every single chest or side objective is a puzzle now. It slows the pace down to a glacial crawl. What used to be just fun relaxing exploration, is now "find a way into the internally barred house" (how did they bar it from inside and get out?), and many other fun activities. What's worse it's just the same 4 or so puzzles repeated over and over- The Last of Us syndrome. Assassin's Creed has never been about puzzles much- except for the parkour types. Even the actual side activities were tedious...especially those stone stacking caen activities. It was so annoying that I was thinking with longing back to those old tailing and escort missions from the old days...and things are bad when I'm looking back at tailing missions with longing.

Anyway, I really did have a lot of fun with the games story and world- I love working around a huge map and taking control of it. The world and it's history is as good as usual from the franchise- I just lost my joy with the side activities this time. I was going to do the two main DLC expansions as well...but I'm saving those for later, burn out! I need a few short games.