December Play Log & 2018 Summary

I thoroughly enjoyed this. If you enjoyed Diablo III you'll probably like this.

Pros:

• Decent graphics
• Good voice acting
• You don't have to use both melee and ranged weapons, but if you do want to you can switch seamlessly
• Katarina adds some funny commentary
• Never feels grindy

Cons:

• If you want to use both melee and ranged, you won't get enough levels to level them both up terribly well
• In fact, I did every side quest (I think) and didn't get enough levels to unlock the later spells/abilities/etc, though I levelled up the main ones all the way. You can unlevel earlier ones by paying but I never really saw a reason to switch and try the others.
• One of the achievements is to not kill a certain type of creature, but there's no way to tell if you have or not so if you kill the first one you come across without realizing it you're left to tiptoe through the areas where they are even though you may as well just kill them.
• If you use a controller you can't compare a ring against the off-hand ring

Verdict: 7.5/10

Overall a decent little point and click. There were a few points where I consulted a guide but for the most part I did it without help. Worth getting on sale if you enjoy the genre, especially if you have an interest in history.

Pros:

• the main character develops throughout the story (which is good because he's obnoxious at the beginning)
• puzzles aren't overly difficult for the most part

Cons:

• There are some glitches where the game will sort of freeze you from moving/interacting temporarily. They seem to be worse when skipping dialogue/teleporting but they occur without that as well. This can be a problem near the end where timing is relevant. Luckily restarting the game seems to solve them.

Verdict: 7/10

A truly amazing game. There's a lot of depth to the story which I'm not terribly good at deciphering (I'm too literal), so I had to look at an explanation after, but it makes sense. I hope there's a sequel, but at the same time from the point of view of the story I'm not sure if there should be. Maybe a sequel that's a different story (i.e. not a continuation of Senua), or a prequel, would work (yes I'm thinking of LiS). I'll definitely be looking into the developer's other games though.

Pros:

• the story is amazing
• the combat difficulty is dynamic, it adjusts to you as you play so it's never too hard or too easy
• good graphics
• I enjoyed the lorestones' stories and how they were often relevant to what Senua was doing at the time
• the combination of puzzle and combat is good and well balanced
• superb voice acting (I know I recognize Druth's voice from somewhere…)
• great soundtrack

Cons:

• Sometimes when opening doors if you are not in the exactly right spot Senua glides to the right spot instead of moving naturally
• At certain points Senua is supposed to be (and does sound) emotional, but if you actually look at her face her expression is often blank.
• The game is divided into sections, as are the lorestones. It turns out though that the rune on the lorestones isn't fixed, it just takes the next rune for the section. I thought I could use the rune to tell if I'd missed one within a section. I didn't realize this until the second last chapter that wasn't the case, and ended up missing a single lorestone. If the runes on teh stones were fixed it would make it easier to tell if you had missed one and could (often) go back and get it.

Verdict: 10/10

As a fan of the movie I thoroughly enjoyed this game. If you're a fan it's well worth purchasing if you can find a copy.

Pros:

• Christopher Lloyd is back as Doc Brown
• Marty's voice acting sounds extremely similar to Michael J. Fox
• Most (though not all) of the other voice actors are good, with voicing fitting for the characters they play (Jennifer was probably the only bad one)
• Quite funny, especially at the end
• Good hint system means you can get progressively more obvious hints and likely won't need to consult a walkthrough

Cons:

• I'm not a fan of the episodic format for this game, it feels very episodic, like it's several separate adventures instead of one. In a way it kind of is.
• The controls aren't great, I constantly got confused and ended up going in the wrong direction

Verdict: 8/10