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Finding Paradise ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

RPG maker
8,9 hours playtime, 1 of 1 achievements (100%)

Pros:
- humor between main characters
- longer than To the moon

Cons:
- gameplay feels re-used - the same actions, puzzles and so like
- no "wow" feeling like after beating To the Moon
- didn't make me really involved into story

Conclusion:

Hm... I wanted to check if I played any other game from this developer... and I did - The Bird Story... I checked it's Steam page and it looks like scenes from Finding Paradise. I played into pre-quel and don't remember it at all. Looks like I didn't like it's story as well...

Anyway this game feels like To the Moon with different story. Worse in my opinion, but it may be "Telltale curse". I really liked 1st game (TWD 1), and all other games in the series feel like re-used concept with different plot (TWD 2, Wolf Among Us, Tales from Borderlands - though last is great due to humor, not plot). So I could like it way more if I'd skip playing To the Moon firstly.

Apart from gameplay that feels to be re-used and ok-but-not-good story behind our patient this time I really liked humor and interactions between doctors.

AER Memories of Old ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Exploration Puzzle
5,3 hours playtime, 20 of 20 achievements (100%)

Pros:
- simple exploration / puzzle game that doesn't require much involvement
- flying - mostly because I like birds :D

Cons:
- no journal
- no way to mark already visited places on the map
- only 1 save slot
- no explanation what AER is
- open ending, without explaining anything

Conclusion:

AER is this kind of short game where you run around, solve easy puzzles and uncover some story. But like in many other games of this type developers just show some facts or give questions, and in the end don't explain anything. And I'm not big fan of this kind of games. I find those semi-open "make your own interpretation" endings to be annoying.

But apart from that it's nice game. And when I picked up it for like 0,5€ after monthly I can't say bad word "I paid for it and it turned out to be lame".

Dreamfall Chapters ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Adventure
36 hours playtime, 59 of 59 achievements (100%)

Pros:
- nice ending to the story of April
- no "in previous episode" flashbacks like in TellTale games, albeit game was also released in episodic way
- not much is left from 1st game P&C mechanic, but at least it's all logical and doesn't require walking for half an hour as we missed some detail
- Crow character is still spot-on
- there is only one ending, but few decisions give a bit different gameplay in few places (like completely different robot missions). So it wasn't boring to beat it 2 times for all achievements
- nice retrospects that did bring up memories of 1st game

Cons:
- another Unity game that looks normally, use 100% GPU and cause it to heat up like crazy. Ugh
- there are literally only 2 bigger areas in whole game and 3 or 4 smaller ones
- Zoey runs soooo slow. Damn girl, eat more!
- bits of space magic in last chapters, but it's happening between Stark and Arcania, so it's fine? :thinking:
- moment where we need to know exactly plot of 1st game to progress further. Thankfully brute force method work easily

Conclusion:

This game is surely not a masterpiece. But it ends story of April, Zoe and Apostle nicely. It's not really worth playing on it's own, but surely yes as culmination of story from The Longest Journey. We learn here who the "bad guy" is, how are characters lives connected and what's Azadi empire doing up north and how it affects Stark.

Stories: The Path of Destinies ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Action Gamepad
8,6 hours playtime, 34 of 37 achievements (91%)

Pros:
- good, smooth combat system
- interesting way in which story is presented
- after "beating" game 3 times tips are unlocked, so game doesn't force us to find right solution

Cons:
- I found it impossible to beat with K+M controls as it's not possible to change key bindings. And use WSAD + ctrl + shift + alt in combat is not the best solution
- it gets quite repetitive after few tries

Conclusion:

Why am I writing about beating game few times? Because it's like short story that repeats itself. Main hero can make certain decisions that most of the time leads to his death. And main goal of this game is to find route that will work and will leave our fox alive. Sadly we keep repeating the same few levels over and over gain so it gets repetitive.

Apart from that combat is really nice, enemies are diverse, graphic and music are nice. And considering this game was given away for free I do recommend it. I would recommend it either way, but "for free" is like huge recommendation. You won't feel like you're playing in some lazy asset flip made to farm cards. And you need to pay for those asset flips!

RUINER ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Cyberpunk Violent Action
7,9 hours playtime, 20 of 33 achievements (61%)

Pros:
- nice, responsive controls with K+M
- enjoyable slaughter
- wide range of weapons
- abilities allow to follow different gamestyles, and it's possible to re-spec on spot. So it's easy to find style that best suits us

Cons:
- controls with controller are bit off. But I think it's true with all twin-stick games
- it's simple game, so story is not excited or deep. Just enough of it to have background for killing
- there are recurring pop-up screens that may startle you (they surely did startle me few times xD). And their flashy look may be not best for epileptic people

Conclusion:

Someone hacked our brain wanting us to kill the Boss. Thankfully other hacker hacked us away and returned our free will, but Boss took our brother. So we must go and kill hundreds of enemies to rescue him! That'd be summary of the plot. Apart from those flashing screens I don't have any big cons here.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Puzzle Co-op
6,4 hours playtime, 25 of 40 achievements (62%)

Pros:
- good co-op game
- more characters than in Lara Croft and Guardian of Light
- story is also more complex, albeit is not a masterpiece

Cons:
- way in which camera works makes it easy to kill 2nd player without intention to do so :blobevil:
- bugs. Maybe not game-breaking ones (well Fnord's game kept crashing in random moments, mine never died), but bugs that kill player without reason are present
- controls are bit wonky, felt better in previous game
- inability to sell or hide not needed equipment. So we're stuck with having list full of junk when we want to change weapon or equipment
- puzzles felt easier than in previous game... but may be because I played with someone that knows how to play in puzzle games, not like with my friend I played before (she also had terrible problems with jumping in right direction xD)

Conclusion:

Seth took over and we must gather pieces of Osiris to resurrect him to help us fight with his evil brother! Muahaha. So plot is not spot-on, but works well for simple puzzle game. And on top of that it's co-op puzzle game that's not terrible. So for puzzle game to play in co-op then it's ok choice. But buying it to play it solo is not recommended. Sadly there are not many co-op puzzle games, only one I can think of is Portal or maybe Trine.

Snake Pass - it’s way better with controller and I manged to progress further into the story. Still it’s not game for me so won’t play in it just to beat it, when I clearly don’t enjoy it. In short we control snake and have to move through complicated levels. Game is physic based, and it’s harder to steer with time as snake grows in length. So we need to consider it’s mass and position in more detail. We can decide in which direction snake head is pointing and if it’s gonna keep it up. Rest is just pressing button for it to move forward or “hug” stuff it’s entwined in more firmly.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - I bought and dropped it few months ago, as I really didn’t like K+M controls. It may be time to pick it up and try with controller.

Finding Paradise and AER were beaten last month, but I didn’t want to spend more time then writing their reviews.

I bought my first controller ever (Dualshock 4, there was promotion connected with Sony Days of Play before E3). And it works really good. Steam has native support for it, so in many games it works without Xbox emulation (SnakePass, Aer, Dreamfall, Stories: Path of Destinies, Bit Trip Runner 2). I had problem with Final Fantasy, but it’s broken console port and I have to play with DS4Windows. And it works well with DS4WIndows on Origin, it’s more satisfying to play in NFS and feel vibration when we change road from asphalt to gravel. I will just look for Bluetooth adapter to not play constantly on cable and use built-in accumulator.

Next on my list is Dying Light (co-op with Ford, then maybe some achievement hunting with kitty), FireWatch, Metal Gear, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. I am playing Final Fantasy XIII now and list of cons starts to flow out of my monitor screen… ugh looks like I’m real anty-fan of grindy jRPGs.