February 2023 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2022

Mad Experiments: Escape Room (Q2 2020) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Escape Room
2h | 5 of 13 (38%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- It works?

The bad 👎
- Really basic puzzles on small maps
- There are 3 short levels, and one of them focus on mathematical calculations instead of something interesting
- Object manipulation is stiff and awkward

Conclusion:

It is playable but feels like an extremely basic single person-made game. It even has an option to report bugs in a prominent spot in the main menu... We Were Here Together also costs around 15 USD and is way better than this one.

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Details

📘 Story ☑ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs What can I say. We solve 3 extremely short rooms and learn that mad scientist (look on the title!) transferred consciousness of Hildegarde into PC? There is a loose connection between this "story" and rooms theme. But nothing interesting.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☑ Boring ☐ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☐ Repetitive We start the room by picking a mask (this is the only thing that distinguish players, there are no bodies). Then we walk around, pick random objects trying to find clues and solve simple and not really interesting puzzles.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting Slow walk, picking and rotating objects. Jumping (that is useless and never used).
🎮 Controls ☑ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing Even the highest mouse sensitivity feels sluggish. There is forced "snap" on interactive objects, which means that if we hover over one by mistake, mouse movements are stalled.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Extremely simple. Literally just open game and pick level. There is no inventory, we can carry one item at a time. Which is annoying.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☑ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☑ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Activated: 12/2022

Anthem (Q1 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Action
23,5h | 16 of 77 (21%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Flying mechanic that could be used by more games

The bad 👎
- Plot is shallow and not interesting
- NPC animations are stiff
- Combat is simplified version of ME3 mechanics
- Majority of quests are simple fetch quests

Conclusion:

I bought this one for like 4 pounds so don't really feel like money wasted. But I do feel like time was wasted on this one. Flying is nice gimmick but there is nothing more to this game. Small hub where quests are taken from 4-5 people. Go to x, kill everything, move to y, kill everything. Repeat. Loot is scarce and hardly an actual upgrade over what we already have. World map is small and mostly deserted, apart from filler time trials and random encounters.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs I don't even know the proper background, as nothing is well explained. Game starts with us (Freelancer) going to the Heart of Rage - magic storm created by misuse of some artifact. Our task is to silence it. But we stumble on a titan and whole squad is killed. Few survivors are scattered in disgrace. Turns out world is filled with artifacts left by some magic beings, and only thing that those artifacts are visually doing is going haywire, opening rifts and releasing enemy creatures. In theory artifacts can control Anthem of Creation (which is magic force that allows creation from nothing) but no one knows how they work. Majority of game focus on going to some bandit or enemy camp, find artifacts and silence them. To do so we need to find random artifact bits that are scattered around and then artifacts disappear. Yay. Not. Rest of game is loosely connected plot where we find our old companions (that went with us to previous failed expedition into Heart of Rage), learn how to safely enter storm and silence the artifact that's there. There are some rather bland NPCs along the way, some typical betrayal-redemption theme, and anticlimactic end. Obviously they thought that game will be best seller, and people will run for DLCs that were already planned before game was released.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☑ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive Go on mission, end mission, go back to fort. It's not possible to start mission from the map. When mission is complete (even when it was simple fetch quest) we always end up teleported to the hub area, and on mission summary page we can decide if we want to pick another mission or actually load the hub area. It makes whole gameplay feel chopped and on rails.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☑ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☑ Crafting Game gimmick is flying and it's done really well. It's what saved the game from being scrapped by EA execs in the first place after all. Everything else is meh. Combat is copy-pasted from ME3 and have even more limits. Each class have one throwable item and one ultimate ability, that charges with enemy kills. I played as Storm which is Biotic equivalent from ME. Abilities work either as primer or detonator, but as we have only 2 abilities we're forced to use the same simple combo over and over again. On top of flying we can swim, hover mid-air to attack from above. Crafting is meh. We need to look for generic crafting materials sources in the wild and gather them. Afterwards we can go and craft weapons that are not stronger than our actual level. Which means it's never possible to craft something really good. Item tiers (green, glue, yellow etc.) are also gated. Common gear has not extra perks, uncommon has 2 passive bonuses, rare has 4 bonuses etc. The more we use specific gear the more points it gets, and unlocks higher tier blueprints of this particular gear. Which in theory sounds cool, but means that we can't swap from using assault rifle into shotgun, without finding one in the field. We did not use this weapon type before, so all we can craft are common level items. Which puts us on disadvantage of missing passive bonuses. There is no actual skill tree, everything is gear based.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☑ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing Controls themselves are good. No weird animations, no unprecise input.
📇 Inventory and menus ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Over complicated	☑ Made for gamepads ☑ Hard to navigate Menus are abysmal. Total focus on "form over function". Layered tabs that take half of the screen, and leave not much space for actual content. Big buttons that are put in unintuitive places. Huge list positions that need to be scrolled to check inventory. Plus someone thought it's modern to put menu lists diagonally, so all lists are tilted.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons Copy of ME3 combat. And ME3 was already simplified over ME2. There are basic weapons like handgun, assault rifle, sniper, shotgun etc. They all feel samey and uninteresting. Plus there is strong auto weak point aim for snipers. Abilities are on long countdown, and ultimate is good to kill swarms of mobs. But not good enough to take down even semi-bosses. It is flashy but also feel like grindy bullet sponge.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☐ Really basic ☑ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies are okay. They will try to walk behind us but can also run towards us through near choke point like idiots. Some enemies have extra abilities, but majority are simple meat fodder. Bosses are also simple and can be taken down quite fast. There are no companions.

💸 Microtransactions ☐ None ☑ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☑ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☑ Adjustable HUD ☑ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Activated: 12/2022

Costume Quest 2 (Q4 2014) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Adventure
2,5h | 0 of 18 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Cute game for kids

The bad 👎
- Repetitive "collect costume" simulator
- Combat is really simple and tedious

Conclusion:

Too repetitive and tedious for adult. But works as something simple to give kid to play, without worry they will empty bank account with microtranzaction purchases.

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Details

📘 Story ☑ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs Evil dentist wants to destroy Halloween, as it makes kids eat too many candies. We travel back in time to prevent future where candies are banned and evil doctor rules the world.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☑ Boring ☐ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive We walk around, solve some extremely easy puzzles and gather costumes. We sometimes run into simple turn based combat. It's impossible to avoid damage in combat or heal fully during, so there is need for long useless trips to healing stations.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting Walk on map with WSAD and use one button to interact and other to use costume special ability (if it has one). Like pterodactyl can "wind away" piles of leaves and clown can wake up characters. In combat we have basic attack and special ability.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Menus are good enough. Inventory has form of journal that list all costume parts we gathered so far.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☑ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons Turn based against generic enemies. We spam basic attack until we charge up special ability. This one can heal us, do damage to more than one enemy etc. But it's not OP ability. If we time attacks right we deal minimally bigger damage. Attacks animations are too long and waste of time, plus they are unskippable. It's possible to find special cards that give some in-combat perks but they are destroyed upon few uses.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies patrol router on pre-determined paths. In battle they always try to kill tank first and then deal damage to rest of squad.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☑ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☑ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Activated: 12/2022

DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT (Q4 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Walking Simulator
6h | 10 of 63 (16%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

☑ The good 👍
- Crafting and "walking" are well made
The bad 👎
- Plot is all over the place
- Whole game is basically one long fetch quest
- Menu navigation is so clunky and annoying
- So much time is wasted on unnecessary animations
- Why monster drink is so pushed on people in this sterile post-apocalypse word? It feels so out of touch

Conclusion:

I played it for around 6h and all I did was deliver few boxes between 4 locations. I read in reviews that it gets better in late game... I'm not going to sit through another 20 or 30h to see that game is better in the end. I did beat Fallout 4 that way as it at least had ok story and more involving gameplay. But I will not spend so much time walking around with boxes. Watching on slippery river banks, sneaking past some creepy floating invisible enemies and fighting with terrain where mother nature had problem with plains, so everything is some form of hard to reach hill. I see how this slow basically walking sim can be relaxing for some, but for me it would be just wasted time.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs World went through some apocalypse, and now when you die you explode within few days, so all bodies must be burned. One of our first jobs is to move corpse to incinerator. Which goes bad as we're attacked by ghost-levitating enemies and it causes half of state, including the capital, to evaporate in huge explosion. We are fine though, as we're immortal. Lol. Then we talk with some NPCs that want to reconnect the America through hiral network, and it's supposed to solve all problems. We are not explained what this network is. Just told that we are extremely important, as there are no roads or delivery systems, so whole country must depend on amazon delivery guys, who haul ridiculous amount of cargo between "Settlements" which are basically just piece of concrete sticking from the ground. Because we don't see or interact with any humans. Just settlers holograms. NPCs we can talk in person have just cringe unnatural dialogues and our character is not likable as well. I wonder how they want to "make America great again" while relying on people carrying hundreds of kilograms on their back to support economy 👍

🔄 Gameplay loop ☑ Boring ☐ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive It's so boring and repetitive. 6h of walking through slippery terrain and watching really long weird cut scenes. Get some dialogue from NPC, go to accept order, arrange gear so weight is balanced. And then walk from start to end hopefully not dropping cargo. Sneaking through huge patches of enemies that just make whole delivery part unnecessary long. Put ladder or even a bridge to speed up passing rough terrain, just to realize game also has corrosive rain, that ages anything it touches, so everything we build will crumble sooner than later. Also look on all those boxes that need to be carried on the other side of map, randomly dropped by devs in dangerous spots to add even more padding to the gameplay. If you like really slow gameplay where not much happens then fine. But not otherwise.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting Hyper realistic walking. You can trip and fall and damage cargo. If you start to trip over grab opposite backpack strap to stabilize. And maybe put ladder here and there to make walking easier.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing Over complicated walking sim. Don't run too fast down the hill or cargo will get damaged and no bonus for you. Don't walk too fast on river bank or you will slip. Don't try to walk across river or you will slip. Best is to press both LMB and RMB to keep balance and slowly walk around. Maybe there are some upgrades that make it less tedious but having to play another hours to get to this point would be too much for me.
📇 Inventory and menus ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Over complicated	☑ Made for gamepads ☑ Hard to navigate Menus are so bad in this game. Menu inside menu inside menu, and then you need to confirm that you really want to optimize load on back, and then press "accept" in another part of screen as otherwise changes will not be saved. Default key bindings that are weird on keyboard, and some counterintuitive ones can't be changed. Game is also obviously made for gamepads, as even navigating map with a mouse is counter intuitive.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons I've read there is combat later on, but only part I saw was brainlessly spam "V" to attack enemies equipped with spears to win, and spam the same button while being pulled in by the ghost enemies to shake them out.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☑ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☐ Basic ☑ Detailed ☑ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Disappointing month. I tried Costume Quest 2 and Death Stranding as they were free on Epic. And I’m really happy how DS turned out. I thought I may not like this game, but now I see I would feel like I wasted money if I’d go after hype and buy it. That’s why demos were nice. And why devs don’t give demos anymore. Make hype, persuade people into buying pre-orders, allow reviews to be released only on or after game release (best if they can show only dev-supplied footage to cover bugs and crashes). And know that average person will spend in game only few hours, so why bother about them. Fans will go and praise game anyway.

I did beat Mad Experiments and Anthem but those were at least “playable till end”. I would not want to pay more than few eur for Anthem though.

I’m playing Encased and damn, this feels like trash bin lurker simulator. At least I found it’s possible to enable cheats, so with 2x game speed it’s easier to forgive time wasted on long animations and slow walking.

I used icons from this page, to show gaming platform in my post:
https://icons8.com/icons

January 2023 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 11/2022

STAR WARS: Squadrons (Q4 2020) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 2 months

SpaceBattle Multiplayer VR
12,5h | 0 of 47 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Well made space combat
- Works with VR

The bad 👎
- Story is meh
- Cutscene animations are stiff

Conclusion:

It is a good game in a not often seen genre. The single player campaign is okayish, with basic plot and not so well written characters. It works as a longer tutorial to PvP battles, where Empire and Republic compete for dominance. The problem is that there are not so many active players left, and the game fills their place with average AI.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs ☐ Choices matter Usual theme. Bad guy decides to betray the Empire and help Republic soldiers fight for freedom. In order to win, they cannibalize star destroyers and make a huge ship that can shoot even bigger laser. Previous bad guy protégée feels hurt and does everything to hunt him down. It's as simple and predictable as it can get. The game is linear and there are no choices. The only interesting bit is that we play missions as both Empire and Republic. Gaps in story on Empire end are filled with missions played as Republic.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☐ Average ☑ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive Each mission starts with a short briefing of what the mission is about. They are not really detailed or interesting. Then we jump into a specific ship (which acts as tutorial to each ship type available in game) and follow simple objectives. Destroy this base, escort this ship, follow someone. We are accompanied by 3-4 NPCs ship that can drop us repair pack or kill some easy targets. The mission ends with us "doing light jump" and we're back at the hangar. Here we can have short conversations with wing mate NPCs to learn a bit about their background and start the next mission by going to the briefing room.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Combos There are no real abilities. It's all about flying the ship.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☑ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing That's the main part of the game and it is good. Controls are not as simple as "point and shot" but also not complex like Flight Simulator. There is delay between us moving mouse / joystick and ship turning. We need to control throttle and redirect power between engines, weapons and shields as needed. There is no 3rd person view, everything is seen from the cockpit. Which means that HUD and field of vision is different in each ship. We also can't see what is behind or sideways, which makes the game more challenging. (I love snug corners in 3rd person games to see if there are enemies :D). Some ships are fast and fragile, while others are slow and heavily armored. Input is responsive and smooth.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Menus are easy to navigate. There is no real inventory, instead we can customize ship components. Armor, lasers, rockets, shields, anti-rocket measurements etc. They need to be unlocked first with in-game credits. Components do not work as upgrades, there is always a trade-off. Lasers that shot faster but give less punch, engine that has higher top speed but less maneuverability. So it's more like tailoring ship to our game style than making it overall better. There are also ship and pilot skins that can be unlocked, but they cost a lot. And we can't even see them except for when we're in hangar.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons It's good. In SP there is balance between how simple AI is and how many ships we need to destroy. Thanks to controls, it's fluid and enjoyable. It lacks a bit in MP though, as being stacked against long-term players made me feel like a sitting duck. And other times we're stacked against complete newbies (or bots when the game could not find enough players) which makes it too easy.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☐ Really basic ☑ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	It's not great. It does feel like enemy ships are there for us to kill without giving much challenge. Interaction with wingman NPCs is limited to "follow x along" or "press x to get repair kit". It's possible to order them to attack a specific ship, but I never personally used it. It's not a strategy game that requires planning. Also, why some newbie that just joined the team would give orders to pilots with years of practice?

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☑ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☑ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☑ Adjustable HUD ☑ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Minimap ☐ Hard to read	Details: Cutscene and face animations are stiff

Activated: 12/2022

Underhero (Q3 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

RPG Platformer
13,8h | 35 of 44 (80%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Combat is good with exception to range attacks

The bad 👎
- It's possible to re-bind controls, but it is something leads to unexpected results in combat

Conclusion:

I was bit disappointed. It looks like there is "undnertale" approach to combat vs pacifist, but it did not matter in the end. Enemies have things to say but it's not interesting and get repetitive fast.

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Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs Hero comes to (yet again) defeat the evil king and restore happiness to the kingdom. But this time one minion shows a spark of self thought and drops a chandelier on our hero, which does kill them. The surprised evil king sends minion (us) on a quest to do his evil deeds. There is "revelation" at the end which explains king behavior, but it's not unexpected. Main quest focus on going to three bosses that normally stand in the way of hero to return amulets, so that next hero will be able to defeat bosses, get amulets and defeat evil king.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☑ Average ☐ Good	☐ Grindy ☐ Repetitive Simple platformer without metroidvania elements. We make a few jumps around to reach the next location, and either fight with enemies or jump over them to avoid combat. We can also bribe enemies with enough coins, which makes them neutral. Levels are small and there is not much exploration. Surprisingly, there are no secrets behind walls at all. Game is saved on safe stations.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting We are a minion, not a hero. Walking and jumping is everything we can do outside of combat. During combat, we can attack or dodge. It's really simple.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☑ Sometimes confusing As basic as it can get. Thought there was some problem to re-bind them. The game also does not work well with DualShock. And using ropes to traverse the level is really awkward. In normal game you jump from one rope to another and the character grabs it. Here we need to press the button for both leaving and grabbing rope. Which can end up with us making another jump instead of staying stationary. The game also has two bad QTE sequences which really feel out of place. Why would there be QTE mini-game in a platformer?
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate The Whole UI is really simple. There is inventory, but it acts more like preview of upgrades we have. It's not possible to equip anything.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons We have one weapon - magic hilt that can either act as sword or really slow hammer. On top of that, we can dodge or block attacks. Combat is turn based and limited by endurance. We need x points of stamina to attack, stamina recovers really slowly, so in general we can swing the sword once during our turn and then prepare to dodge the enemy. We can find stamina and health upgrades in chests. Enemies have easy to read attacks that need to be dodged by either jump or crouch. It's possible to use shield, but it has limited uses, and it's hard to time block well. I would say combat is good if it stops on that. We need to learn enemies patterns to know if we need to jump or crouch to avoid damage. Problem is with flying enemies. We have slingshot to fight those and oh boy. Who thought it's good idea to control sling direction with left-right arrows. Not up-down arrows. Or simply mouse. No, it's counterintuitive pressing left or right directional keys.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies have 2 or 3 attacks each that are repeated in random order. They patrol maps on fixed routes. It's as basic as it can get.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: Game is saved on save stations and few check points No voices, all characters blabber Map is accessible from stationary poles on levels

Activated: 10/2022

Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus (Q4 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 3 months

Strategy
26h | 0 of 34 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Nice combat

The bad 👎
- Animations are too slow. Most of the mission time is wasted looking on characters walking around, 1-2s delays before they start attack or end attack. Same problem as in XCOM
- Game has good difficulty at start, but later it gets really easy

Conclusion:

I did enjoy this game but had to use cheat engine with speed bumped up 3-4x, otherwise I would not have patience to waste my time on animation. If I can end a mission in 15-20 min with faster animations, why would I spend 40 min on the same mission. Just because devs did not add slider to speed up filler animations. Apart from wasting player time it is a good tactical game with ability to pick missions we can to play, specialize tech-priests how we want, and interesting enemies.

---

Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs It is not a story-driven game. Adeptus Mechanics ship ends on some planet, and it turns out necros are there. The ship captain decides to stay and kill necros general before he can fully awaken and threaten other worlds. There is not much lore backstory for people not familiar with 40k universe, and mission goals are really simple.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☐ Average ☑ Good	☐ Grindy ☑ Repetitive Ship bridge works as our hub. We can open priest menu to upgrade them, check unlocked tech, change equipment and select mission. There are few mission-giving characters. Beating the current mission can unlock 1-2 further missions from quest-giver. Unlocked missions can be beaten in any order, and they don't get blocked if we end the mission from the other character or wait too long. In total, there are around 50 missions to choose from. Each mission works as a dungeon in isometric view, made from few connected rooms. A room can have mission objective, event (1-2 story sentences of what happened in this room) or glyph (changes to action points, enemy initiative, our health, loot). There is a doom clock that shows how close the last boss is to awakening. Each new combat turn and traversal between rooms add 1 or 2 bars to the awakening meter, and each 6 points rises the awakening level by one. There are some ways to lower the meter during the mission, but in general the more time we take to explore and fight enemies, the faster we're getting to the end of the game. Thought it does not feel like the game is too stingy with time we have, and don't force us to speed run through levels.
🪄 Abilities ☐ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☑ Advanced combat	☑ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting There are 6 skill linear skill trees that can be summarized as melee scout / ranged / boost troops / healing / generate action points. We can mix trees together, so we can have scout with some action points generation. There are too many abilities to describe, but they are unlocked in sequence, together with armor for priests. Priests don't get experience points, instead we need to pay to boost their level, and each level gives one ability point to invest into the tree. There are no ability combinations.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing It's an isometric game so like I write each time - it would be hard to break controls. We move around with direction keys or mouse, and give order with mouse.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Menus are basic but easy to read. There is a problem with inventory though. During missions, we can unlock gear (there is no research) and it gets listed in inventory in order it was unlocked. Which means that often higher level gear is mixed with junk. It's not possible to filter or sort it. Which makes it annoying to swap gear around. There is also no comparison tool that would show stats of current and new gear.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Great	☑ Well designed weapons Depending on unlocked skills our priests can have different initiative, movement points, ranged attack reach etc. At first it does feel we're under leveled, but not much later it's possible to do hard missions. At a point where we have action points generation abilities, a lot of movement points and higher gear it's possible to run across the map in one turn and kill harder enemies in 1-2 turns. Which feels a bit OP. Most of the attacks or abilities use action points, which are obtained by scanning AP pillars or killing enemies. So often combat turn consist of "use ranged weapon, walk to enemy and use melee, if you manage to down it you get action point". Unless the enemy is hit again by attack when they are downed / reanimated they will resurrect with half of original hit points. Enemy can have a shield that blocks melee or range attack. Enemy stats are not visible unless they are scanned with servo skull (one use per 2-3 turns) or with a specific ability. Servo skulls are also used to get action points from far away pillars. If a priest is killed during mission, it will be gone for good. Thankfully, the game has manual saves. There is only one melee weapon, but many ranged weapons to chose from.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☐ Really basic ☐ Average ☑ Smart and responsive	Enemies will react to our actions, try to flank us or pick easier target (which was pretty much always my healer). Combat is pretty challenging at the start when we don't have much gear and no abilities. But then quite easy later on. There are couple enemy types with both ranged and melee attacks and abilities, have their own attack patterns and things to watch out for.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☑ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: There was a weird delay when choosing servo skull to scan that disappeared with cheat engine speed hack.

Activated: 12/2022

Cat Quest II (Q3 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Adventure
9h | 7 of 9 (78%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Good game for kids and casuals
- Game has campaign co-op
The bad 👎
- There are so many puns it stops to be funny
- Basically fetch quest simulator. Go-kill-bring back is the only type of quest in game

Conclusion:

It's nice cute game to play with a kid, or safely leave a kid with. But I would not play as an adult, expecting high quality gameplay or story.

---

Details

📘 Story ☑ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs Continuation from 1st game and I don't remember what was in 1st game. Cat and dog are teleported into a world where cat and dog kingdoms fight each other. We need to find the legendary sword and end the conflict. There are a lot of puns that may look funny at first, but later when everything is forced into a pun they made me roll my eyes. Dialogues aren't really interesting.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☑ Average ☐ Good	☑ Grindy ☑ Repetitive There are two characters - cat and dog. Only one can be controlled at a time and in SP 2nd character is controlled by AI (it's also immortal). In co-op 2nd character is controlled by another player. The story is linear, and we are sent between different NPCs and dungeons to retrieve some objects, or beat a specific enemy. Which makes basic loop really repetitive. Enemies have non-scaling levels, and we can't kill an enemy that is way above our level. Which means there is some side tracking required to get "missing" experience.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☑ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting Really basic. Mana regenerates when we hit an enemy with melee weapon, and magic is secondary to melee. There are no stats, and our damage and defense depends on weapons and armor we randomly find in chests. Both enemies and us use the same abilities, they trigger and look the same.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing There is no problem though the only thing that we can do is move around, press one button to attack and another to interact with NPCs or chests.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Inventory have tabs for armor, helmets, melee and wands. It's not possible to sort it or throw away junk to ease the clutter. And there are dozens of useless outfits and weapons. I know it's appealing to kids to have a cat that looks like Robin Hood, Cook or Dragon, but they are generally low level armors. Menus are easy to navigate, though it's one of those annoying ones where we need to go to main screen to exit.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☑ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons It feels like the higher level difference between us and enemies, the more damage we deal. There is no parrying or blocking, we need to hit-and-run. Which means combat goes back and forth between "enemies attack, so we run around" and "enemy ended attack, so we jump in to hit it a few times". I know it's a mobile game, but it does not excuse it when it's released on PC as a "full" game. Weapons are generic and there is not much difference between them. Swords bash and wands shot short range projectiles.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies can only detect us when we're inside their detection circle, and charge at us while randomly using 1 or 2 abilities they have. They will not respond to us or coordinate their attacks. It's painfully obvious in case of the blue jelly-like enemy that can use lightning spell and shield, but lacks melee attack. It will charge lightning and shield, try to attack us with lightning and then just bounce to us while shield is on. But as it doesn't have melee it will just bounce around, so we can wait for shield to drop and kill it. It will not try to bounce away, to recharge lightning and try again.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☑ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☑ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☑ Fast travel	Details:

1. Beaten 22 games:
   • 7 on Epic
   • 15 on Steam
2. Favorite game beaten: Tyranny
3. Worst game beaten: Second Extinction
4. Longest game beaten: Generation Zero - 48h (may go back to it, as they keep adding more content)
5. Shortest game beaten: We Were Here Too - 3,8h
6. I’ve beaten 6 games less than in 2021

No graphs this year, as my progress was changing by 0,1% here and there, and it would generate a flat line graph. I found Steam replay stats to be interesting. Did not know Steam track all games progress month by month. Shows nicely that I was focusing on one game at a time. The only downside is it shows playtime as % of total time, instead of a flat number.

https://store.steampowered.com/replay/76561198087006978/2022

Unlocked 357 achievements (Steam average 21)
Played 16 games (Steam average 5)

0% percentage of games played, released during 2022 (Steam avg 17%)
94% percentage of games played, released in the last 1-7 years (Steam avg 64%)
6% percentage of games played, released >8 years ago (Steam avg 19%)

Looks like the majority of people on Steam play the same old games, judging by low number of unlocked achievements and low number of played games. Must be a lot of people who just use Steam for DOTA or CS:GO, far less than “true gamerz” who play for hours in different genres. People who play games for 100% are also a minority. Even when image we get from SG / BLAEO may be quite different.

Click here to jump to the next update

1. Games I get as gifts.

• Mad Experiments: Escape Room
  

  Released: 04.2020

  HLTB: 2 h
• Shift Happens
  

  Released: 02.2017

  HLTB: 10 h

2. Steam additions

• Orcs Must Die! 3
  

  Released: 07.2021

  16 h
• Underhero
  

  Released: 03-2019

  13,8 h
• Spirit of the North
  

  Released: 05.2020

  6 h
• Cat Quest II
  

  Released: 06-2017

  HLTB: 8 h

2. Epic / Origin additions

• Anthem
  

  Released: 02.2019

  HLTB: 27 h
• Costume Quest 2
  

  Released: 10.2014

  HLTB: 7,5 h
• Encased
  

  Released: 09.2021

  HLTB: 39 h
• DEATH STRANDING
  

  Released: 07.2019

  HLTB: 60 h

Last year I added way more games in December.

I said I will not buy Death Stranding, but it was free. So I can try it. I started Anthem and I like gun play. But it does look repetitive. It was like 2 pounds, so won’t really complain. I’ve beaten Underhero today and it will be in January update.

I saw only one game from my wishlist that had bigger discount than during this whole year. Disappointed. It does feel like sales are less and less relevant, and it’s easier to just buy game during regular promotions. Waiting for Summer or Winter sale will not provide any benefits.

December 2023 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2022

Spirit of the North (Q2 2020) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Adventure
6.3h | 19 of 24 (79%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Looks cute?

The bad
- Invisible walls and bad colission detection
- Controls are stiff and not fluid
- Textures are low quality and objects can clip through them
- There is no camera panning when we're close to a wall. When we move camera will "move in" the wall. Normally camera would "bounce off" the wall and stay withing the level geometry
- Later levels suffer from being more open which makes it confusing where to go
- Some time trial sections that doesn't work well with stiff controls
- No support for cloud save. I thought it's so easy to implement any game that is not shovelware should have it
- Impossible to change key binding

Conclusion:
I thought it will be cute casual game about spirit fox. And while it is clearly aimed to be cute, it is also weird mix of platforming and really easy and weird puzzles. I would not recommend. Too easy and clunky for adult, too clunky to be played by a kid.

---

Story:

We start as fox in the middle of antarctica. See another fox as a spirit and start to follow wisp that popped out of it. Right after 1st level snow is gone, exchanged for rocks and rivers made from crude oil. It's one of the games that try to tell deeper story with random images on walls, that are open to interpretation. Nothing is explained more directly.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Most tied to progression but some require finding all collectibles (murals and magic staffs). There is chapter selection but it shows missing staffs.
📊 Performance	Uses too many resources for how simple the graphic is. Another "enough optimized" game that makes GPU howl like it's Metro Exodus with RT.	💾 Save system	One automatic check point.

🦚 Game customization options	Extremely basic. Can change basic graphic options. Not possible to change key bindings.
🌍 Map	No map. First levels are corridors so it's not an issue, but last two levels are open and makes me thing kids may have problem to navigate, without any explanation where they should go.
🎮 Controls	Awful. Feels unresponsive and delayed. So many times I had to run around to try and make the same jump. Repeating timed sequences. Colission detection is meh and we can bounce off edge even when it looks like we should make the jump. And at the same time we can hover mid-air if we move fox in tiny bits towards the edge, as long as a piece of tail is "on the edge". We can also stand vertically on a wall like a spider sometimes. Fox walking animation looks like it's floating above ground, not like it's actually taking steps. We use LMB to both pick up staff, and bark on wisp to activate stuff. So if we carry staff and need to activate monolith we need to drop staff, walk to monolith, bark, pick up staff again. 2 or 3 times staff clipped thorugh the ground where I put it, and I was not able to see nor pick it up again. Some staffs are required to progress in game, so not sure if progress can be blocked if staff clips through the ground for no reason. Game is so intrusive in showing us what happens after we activate monolith it will pan camera to have cinematic "view", making us unable to move for few seconds. Even when monolith is activated right next to us and we don't need this "focus" to see that doors 1m away from us are activated.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	We can bark to activate monoliths or tell wisp to "charge" flowers. As normal fox we can run, jump and bark. When we walk over "charged" flower we enter spirit mode where we can activate monoliths and story-piece pictures, walk shortly though obstacles, dash and destroy corruption pods. We can hold only one charge, so a lot of game spins around charging, doing one action, chargin again, doing another spirit action. Flowers grow in patches here and there. While using charges to activate monoliths and solving puzzles is fine, walking in spirit form is way too short. Usually we have enough time to make it to monolyth and press button to activate before we run out of time, and return to physical form. It means some sections are pointlesly long and need to be repeat few times before we find optimal path to run towards something to activate it.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	There are no enemies in this game. Only companion is wisp that floats around us and activate objects that are nearby. It does feel like wisp should also guide player when they are lost and spend too much time in a section? It would make it more kids friendly. Now it may briefly show general path towards the goal, but after that it will hover around us without doing anything.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Really basic textures. There are some geometry level problems, patches of grass that grow mid-air etc.
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - I think it's actually the best part of the game. Without different sound themes it would be hard to understand if developers felt that this level is more "inspired" "sad" "uplifting" etc.
Bugs - ⭐️☆☆ - It's not unplayable, but for a game that short it really should not have that many control problems, invisible walls and staff clipping problem.

Activated: 12/2022

Orcs Must Die! 3 (Q3 2021) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Co-Op Tower Defense
16h (with 2 DLCs beaten) | 19 of 38 (50%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Nice tower defense game
- Good variety of enemies
- New traps are interesting

The bad
- A lot of maps have enemy paths that don't diverge, and it feels less strategic when we need to focus on making one simple choking point per path, instead of trying to funnel enemies and kill in bigger kill box
- There are not many waves per scenario. Most end when we gathered enough funds to have nice trap set up, and it feels there should be one or two extra waves just to enjoy how orks are killed
- Banter between main characters feel less interesting than in previous part

Conclusion:
It is nice tower defense game, and works really well in co-op. Match making and inviting friends works flawlesly. Gameplay is good and my only complain is that each map should have more waves, to allow making nicer kill boxes and enjoy seeing our trap plan works nicely. There is new map type where we need to defend castle and have really big traps at disposal (like balista that shots exploding barrels with big AoD or archers legion that has around 15 of them as a one unit). But those big "outside the castle" traps are not enough to keep enemies away, so it also ends in killing orks inside the castle in choke points.

---

Story:

Main hero from previous game disappeared so it's on new students to defeat evil orks. There is some friendly banner between characters and bit of background but nothing complicated or deep. End of game is anticlimatic with story ending abruptly.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Most are for beating the game but some require a lot of grind to get good scores on hard mode.
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	There are no saves. Map must be beaten in one sitting.

🦚 Game customization options	Basic graphic and display settings. Not many accesibility options.
🌍 Map	There is minimap with dungeon overview which works well. Clearly shows where are enemy paths, where enemies are localized and where are most dangerous orks.
🎮 Controls	There were rare ocassions where I could not shot weapon immediately after running. But otherwise controls are fluid and responsive. We can run and jump to move around the map.
📇 Inventory	Bottom bar works as mission trap inventory. There are way more traps than 9 available slots, so we need to chose which ones we want to use. Trap upgrade windows is easy to read and navigate.
🏹 Weapons	Starting weapons are bow + shotgun, and can be used trought the whole game. There are at least 10 different weapons like swords or magic staff but I never had need to change basic weapon. All weapons and traps have 3 levels of basic upgrades (that either boost damage or reduce cool down for trap activation) and two special upgrades after enough enemies are killed with specific weapon or trap. Like dealing magic damage, stunning for longer or piercing enemies. Each weapon or trap can have only one special upgrade active at a time. All points used for upgrades and unlocking traps are fully refundable. I do feel like there is too many traps, some of them I bought only for the achievement and never used. There are not enough scenarios to test them, I would need to swap traps each 2 or 3 maps to be able to find combos that work well. So I ended up using small selection of mostly starting traps. Tar, lava traps, baricades and wall darts work well in all situations. There is one trap - wine floor - that was added in last DLC and is quite OP. It grows the more damage it deals, which means when it's big enough it will kill all small enemies. Leaving medium orks with half health and big orks and trolls only for us to finish Traps from new castle-maps look nice and powerful but feel like a filler. Those levels can be easily completed with use of standard traps, and at the same time it would not be possible to defend the rift using only big traps.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	No real abilities. We can place traps on floor, walls and ceiling. Apart from that we have a weapon of our chosing and can equip trinkets that give us small passive boost plus magic attack, like freezing or burning enemies.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies are brainless. Will run to the rift with closest possible path unless interrupted by barricade. If we're around they will try to kill us instead. There are special enemy types that target us directly or go after barricades but otherwise their "thinking" is straightforward. There are no companions if we play solo. In solo play we get all funds normally given to two people and defend rift ourselves.
🥊 Combat	We place traps to kill majority of the enemies, and finish enemies that managed to walk past kill boxes. It is satisfying to see how orks are killed by our traps, but there is not much more to write here. Each weapon has basic attack and secondary more powerfull attack that uses mana. All traps have cooldown, except for tar. It would be good if traps cooldown would be written on the trap card but it's not. So it's hard to judge which trap to use based on effectiveness and how often it activates.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Same style as in previous games. Textures are simple and not really detailed
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - I think a lot of sounds are re-used from previous game. Battle background music is the same in all missions
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't encourage any

Activated: 12/2021

Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition (Q2 2017) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 12 months

cRPG
56h | 30 of 50 (60%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Really detailed character builder and stats that influence gameplay
- Interesting story and lore
- Complex quests which can be solved in a few different ways

The bad
- Characters have problem with path finding
- Enemies are just dumb
- Combat is bad
- Inventory that lacks item stats comparison
- Even in the Enchanced Edition graphic is really dated
- Enemies drop piles of useless junk and there are no merchants with good loot. There is literally one upgrade above starting gear for each character

Conclusion:
Gameplay wise this game is so dated... Many people used to modern games will bounce off after an hour or two, which is understandable. I stayed for story, lore and characters. But I already know I will not start another game from that decade. If you're interested in getting familiar with interesting story it's worth trying. If you need games with good mechanics and modern quality of life features - not so much.

---

Story:

We wake up as nameless hero in basically morgue, and are told by flying skull that we're immortal. This sets us on a quest to understand why we are immortal and what need to be done to recover lost mortality. World has interesting setting where reality is created from planes, connected with each other via portals. Majority of game takes place in Sigil - city where many portals to other planes exist, and various fraction battle for influence. We don't spend much time in other planes but I liked how big world looks like, and how much explanation there is. But if you dislike never ending dialogues and descriptions then you won't like this game.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Require multiple playthroughs due to alignment / class requirements to unlock
📊 Performance	This game would literally run on the potato: Dual Core Processor + 1 GB RAM as requirement.	💾 Save system	I think infinite number of manual saves

🦚 Game customization options	Really bare bone. Basic graphic settings and some quality of life improvements in Enchanced Edition. Unless you're die hard fan of original I don't see how "always run" or "full heal after rest by default" would not be used and count as "option".
🌍 Map	It works but is ugly. Areas are so small and simple it's hard to get lost. Possible to leave custom notes on map, which is not available in modern RPGs.
🎮 Controls	Isometric game, so not much that could be messed up here. Default key bindings are counter intuitive. "C" doesn't open character card but locks camera with player as a center. Or default for run is "Shift + click" instead of double clicking the ground.
📇 Inventory	There is both space and weight limit. Items don't have stats comparison on hover. There is no personal chest so extra items must be left in some general chest of barrel on the level. At least all those thugs that try to kill me each 5min won't steal from this open barrel where I keep all my gold rings!
🏹 Weapons	Really small variety. Each class can use one weapon type, and in my 50h of gameplay I managed to find only one better weapon for each character. 99% of items dropped by enemies and in shop are junk. Character models are so blurry it's even hard to see what they carry. Armor has "Armor Class" where lower number is better, which is leftover from underlying D&D mechanics. So it's better to have armor class of -2 than 8. There is "THAC0" stat that is not explained in game, and google search shows it's "To Hit Armor Class 0". There is only one default attack animation. There is no feel to weapons - textures are blurry and combat sounds are really generic.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	There are no actual abilities? Some characters have passive buffs and mages can use spells. There are no abilities as in "Dakon learns how to do heavy attack". All attacks are the same and RNG decides on the damage dealt. Spells are not on cooldown or use mana, instead they are single use and reset after rest. Rest can be done only in safe location which limits spells use to hard fights. Quite a bit of dialogues depend on our stats, and wisdom is especially useful as it allows us to have memory flashbacks. That explain better nameless story.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Both are dumb. Enemies just charge to attack. And companions won't attack unless they are attacked first. This is this kind of game where devs wanted active pause to be turned on each 5s, and we should micromanage our team in everything. Not possible to easily move characters around on the character bar. To swap characters around we need to kick them out from the party via character screen, and then re-add them in order we want. But removed character does not go to some hub location, it will stay where it was left. If we leave character in area that is no longer accessible they are gone forever. Companions can also permanently die if they fall in battle and we'd move to another location without resurrecting them.
🥊 Combat	Look above. Characters only have basic attack, need to be micromanaged in everything. Like someone with weak stats and all healing spells will go and try hit enemies with bare hands. Not helpful. I do agree with many other people that combat is the weakest part of this game. It's there as a filler, not main focus. If I'd play this game again I would straight drop difficulty to 1 (there is 5 point scale) to spend only absolute minimum fighting.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️☆☆ - I will leave it at two stars. I would expect upgrade from 2017 to have way better graphic. But it is what it is Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Don't think it was remastered for the game. It is decent. Game is partly with voice acted but majority of dialogues are silent. Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't encourage any apparent ones

With this post I oficially beaten my Steam backlog. There is 0.5% in not started and unfinished on the bar graph, but only because otherwise it was not generated properly.

I was finally able to beat Planescape Torment after going back home for Christmas. Took wayyy longer than anticipated, I thought I have 2 or 3 hours left. And it was close to 12h.

I spent around 6h going through my wishlist and observed games, and removed stuff that was added “as looks nice”. I will try to do more research before I add games, to not stumble on another Spirit of the North or Vampyr. Not unplayable games, but games where I see credits and think I could spend this time so much better than playing this.

So many games that still keep high base price, or don’t have 66% / 75% discount. Wonder how recent price spike will influence discounts. Was near buying Doom Eternal, and then saw DLCs cost more than base game, and there is no GOTY 1,5 year after last DLC release. Want to play full game and don’t want to pay for short DLCs more than for the base game. I may end up getting former PS exclusives before I play this one :hehe:

November 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2021

Second Extinction (Q4 2020) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 11 months

FPS Co-op
5h | 0 of 29 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Bugless?

The bad
- Really repetitive and all there is are fetch quests
- Map is claustrophobic
- Dinosaurs are predictable and dumb
- Weapon upgrade system is weird

Conclusion:
It's a nice game, for 2 or 3 hours. It already gets repetitive after this point. Get dropped from the ship, listen what needs to be retrieved or killed, and go to kill the dinosaurs. Mob dinosaurs have simple AI that will cheat and do magic jumps to get to the player and are of no real thread. There are bigger dinosaurs, but they just have more HP, keep charging at us and need to be hit in a weak point. There are general weapons and as always the game has a sniper rifle that is unusable. This is not a stealth game. Dinosaurs pop on the screen when we get close enough, so can't snipe them from afar. Bleh. Each character has 2 abilities that were barely used by me. Plus, devs keep delaying updates and release date. Just skip it, go and play a game that has some actual content and map that can't be run across in a few minutes.

Activated: 01/2022

DAEMON X MACHINA (Q1 2020) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 10 months

Action Mechs
3h | 0 of 61 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- A lot of customization options
- Nice combat

The bad
- Dialogues and cutscenes are stiff and not interesting
- Story looks bad
- Looks quite grindy

Conclusion:
If you like big mech fights, then this game will be nice. But otherwise it's just average. Beat all enemy robots in a small arena map, loot enemies to get some RNG loot, upgrade your mech (if you're lucky and actually find something useful), listen to some absurd anime dialogues, repeat. I can see how I could sink a lot of time to it due to "oh I must upgrade all the stuff!" mentality, but I also know I can spend my time better somewhere else.

Going home later this month, so will finally beat Planescape: Torment. I will walk into 2023 without backlog.

If people are not aware, Valve will give away Steam Deck 512GB to people who watch this year game awards. Suck for the people in the Europe though, as stream will start at 2am.

October 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2021

Serious Sam's Bogus Detour (Q2 2017) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 10 months

Co-op Action Twin-stick shooter
8.2h | 12 of 37 (32%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Nice Serious Sam vibe of older games, same music and sound effects
- Enjoyable enemies mowing without being too punishing
- Simple skill tree system

The bad
- No minimap
- It always feel like we're swimming in ammo

Conclusion:
Simple but enjoyable carnage game. Like other Serious Sam games it doesn't have really a story, but it doesn't have to have. It did feel like a nice come back to a game I played as a teen, with the bonus of playing it in co-op.

---

Story:

Aliens invaded earth and we must stop them. The end.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtransactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Some are obtained through progression, and some are grindy or require beating the game on harder difficulty.
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	One automatic checkpoint per map. They are often enough to no feel punished for dying.

🦚 Game customization options	It's pixel graphic came, so not many. Basic sound and graphic options.
🌍 Map	No map! I really dislike when games do that. Getting stars to upgrade skills require going through a hidden passage, and it's hard to try to think of the way though without a minimap.
🎮 Controls	Standard "move with one stick and aim with the other" approach. Weapons are selected via weapon radial menu. We can dash and interact with some objects. So nothing much. Controls are at least fluid and responsive.
📇 Inventory	No real inventory. Weapons occupy their respectable slots, and we can't change any equipment apart from that.
🏹 Weapons	The same as in main line SS games. Pistols, laser guns, ball cannon, minigun, shotgun. So everyone can find their favorite gun. They have good balance of damage vs shooting speed and are all useful.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	No real abilities. We can level up HP / armor / speed / weapon damage. And some extra things like picking more health or dropping flash grenade when we roll. But abilities are not the main focus of the gameplay, they mostly just give passive bonuses.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies are dumb, just like in original games. They will either charge or try to shot us with a lot of bullets. Only bosses and humanoid sentries (with guns that hit really hard) are of a challenge and require some strategy.
🥊 Combat	Nice and brainless. Pick a weapon and mow through the enemies. I mean, if you played any of Serious Sam games you know the gameplay. Only that here it's seen from the top. It does not make it easier though, as maps are designed to always have corners from which kamikaze or skeleton can jump on us.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - It does feel like a Hammerwatch, but it means that graphic is nice and detailed
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Fitting. Good that developers get permission to use original sounds, otherwise SS game would feel weird
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - No problems that I found

With this one, I only have 2 unfinished games on Steam. One will be beaten over the Christmas when I have my Planescape: Torment save file. Other is Unravel 2 that I will play this month I think.

I started Second Extinction, DAEMON X MACHINA and Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus on EPIC. Second Extinction is meh, I wonder why they will release it after 2 years with so little content. Few simple fetch missions and really small map… DAEMON looks better, but also too grindy for me to stick for longer. Mechanicus is nice, I will beat it this month or next one, depending on my time.

September 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 07/2022

Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos (Q1 2021) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Rogue-lite
17,6 | 30 of 39 (77%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Combat is simple and easy to learn
- Even when pixel style graphic is nice
- Works well as co-op

The bad
- No minimap
- Classes are useless
- Enemies and dungeons are copy-pasted a lot
- Generic story
- Unintuitive menus and navigation

Conclusion:
Is it playable? Yes. Is it good? No. The closest comparison to another game is Hammerwatch, and Hammerwatch is so much better. Rogue Heroes have combat that is simple, but also get repetitive fast. Classes that are useless and there is no difference between them. Uninteresting enemies and dungeons that are not randomly generated. There are some basic environmental puzzles, but they are not "saving point" for the gameplay.

---

Story:

Nothing interesting. We must defeat 4 guardians that wait in dungeons, to reach the final boss and save the world. There are some not really interesting fetch quests on top of that.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Most are earned through progression, but some require brainless grind for enemies or money.
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	Automatic check point. Death in the dungeon sends us back to the city.

🦚 Game customization options	Basic graphic and sound options.
🌍 Map	There is no mini map in the overworld which makes navigation annoying. There is no shortcut for the map in the menu. The menu is brought up with space, and we need to navigate to the map. Map also doesn't remember last position and starts maximally zoomed out, which is annoying. All in all, not the best experience.
🎮 Controls	WSAD for walking, shift for dash and mouse for aiming the weapon. They are responsive but item selection could be done on a selection wheel instead of mouse scroll / numerical assignment. Menu navigation is bad. It's not intuitive, e.g. pressing ESC generally does not close the menu. It pops up leave-game-screen which pauses the game for everyone. At the same time, sometimes we need to use ESC to exit some specific menu, there is no stability here. Playing with K+M gives controller button prompts. Some menu options are weirdly hidden, and I learned items can be dropped for someone else by accident. It's not possible to re-bind controls which is annoying.
📇 Inventory	Inventory itself is not bad, as icons are clear and it's well organized. Inventory navigation is a different matter. Trying to use the mouse to select items makes the character attack in the background, as clicks are not contained in the menu. Same for trying to navigate menu with WSAD - it makes our character walk around. First time I see devs did not prevent character to respond to key input while in the inventory / game menu. It's like I would bring up a menu in Witcher to change weapon, and Geralt would keep walking around and swing sword as I click around the menu. It is also not explained well how to use the inventory, how to assign items to quick slots, how to change spells etc.
🏹 Weapons	The only useful weapon is the sword. There is no weapon progression, we use the same sword model for the whole game. We can only upgrade it's stats (damage, cric chance, speed etc.) at smith in the city. In theory there are other weapons like magic wand or bow, but they are slow and projectile-limited. Don't remember another game with such limited options. Even Cat Quest had few sword models that had better stats than our previous gear.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	There are few in-game classes which feels entirely pointless as the only way to play the game is to buff sword damage and health, as other weapons are so limited in use. Classes give some passive bonuses to damage or critical chance. Plus can have different dash animation. And that would be it. Just like with weapons, it's extremely limited. Say there is a druid class that can be unlocked near the end of the game, and it can't do anything useful. Or ranger has so limited amount of arrows (and they are hard to find) it's always way faster to just kill enemy with default sword than to use class abilities or weapons.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies have a basic attack pattern. They don't show any complex behavior, try to flank us or to cooperate etc. Just charge at us if we're within their range.
🥊 Combat	Because classes are so limited and not really gameplay changing, and weapons are so meh the whole combat is average. Just go to the enemy and spam LMB to kill it. There are only 2 or 3 enemy types that require more strategy but mostly because they are immune to hits from a specific angle.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - It is a nice pixel graphic, but nothing amazing or charming
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - There is no voice over. Basic environmental and combat sounds
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any

I removed the bar for “Never Played” this month, as I at least started all games in my library. This update is really late though, so by the time it’s posted I have basically beaten my backlog. But it will be in the October update. I made my first post in October 2016, so took me only 6 years. And I rarely add games to my account for like 2 years now.

Makes people who say they will surely play hundreds of their SG wins “later” silly, as “they don’t have time / powerful PC / (put any other excuse here), and for now just farm cards”. Sure. Thing with time is that it only goes forward, never gives us a break. If we don’t do something now we will never do it. As next week / month / year we will have other problems / tasks / responsibilities. Remember when my cousin was downloading piles of movies and burning them on CDs “for later to watch”. Unsuprisingly he never watched those drawers filled with movies. He went to UK where he settled and have kids. And all his CDs went bad after years and had to be thrown to the bin. Yay.

August 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 02/2015

STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy (Q3 2003) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 7,5 years

Action
9,5 | No achievements

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Storm trooper banter dialogues (if we decide to wait around the corner instead of killing them) are funny

The bad
- Character walks like they slide on soap which makes platforming really annoying
- I bought game because people praised it for lightsaber combat... well it's bad. It may be revolutionary 20 years ago but now it's just bad. Just click to swing and hope you will kill enemy before they kill you
- Not possible to un-equip power, so if we unlock something we don't want to use it stays on the bar occupying space
- Animations are really stiff, during cutscenes characters hover over ground and move legs, without sync to walking speed
- Some cutscenes are buggy and only thing happening are NPCs standing and looking around
- Plot is shallow and not interesting
- Whole game feels like side quest crawler: pick mission from the selection screen and kill all enemies on the map
- Enemies are so dumb. They just stand in distance and activate when you walk into invisible "activation circle". I would say it's like 10 - 15m away from our character. Sometimes they do call us but otherwise don't do anything as we were not "inside" the activate zone yet

Conclusion:
People were praising this one as the best lightsaber combat ever. It was a reason why I bought it years ago and then never really go around to actually play it. And damn, this game aged so poorly. KOTOR 1 was released the same year and is light years ahead of it in each category. Watch some yt videos "lightsaber combat explanation" before thinking about grabbing this one. If combat focused on "press LMB and then move mouse around to control where sword hits during frantic combat where enemies run around you" does not sound nice - steer clear of this game.

---

Story:

Shallow and extremely predictable. New padawans arrive to the academy, we're trained with one more students under the same Jedi Master. Some bad Siths travel across galaxy and steal dark side power from places of power. We're tasked to find out why they do it and prevent them from achieving their goal.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None.	🏆 Achievements	No achievements.
📊 Performance	No issues.	💾 Save system	Automatic saves and by the looks of it unlimited number of manual / quick saves.

🦚 Game customization options	Game is so old it requires tinkering with setting files to get FHD resolution. Otherwise extremely limited customization.
🌍 Map	Level map is a static image in the data pad that's hard to read. But levels are also narrow corridors so it would be hard to get lost. I realized there is map more than half into the game as there is no need to use it.
🎮 Controls	It feels like we slide on soap. It's really hard to do any platforming sections as controls are slow and delayed. We can walk, force-jump, attack with LMB/RMB. There are invisible walls everywhere but game was made for so old hardware I can't really complain on technical limitations.
📇 Inventory	No inventory. Just simple weapon selection menu with mouse scroll or under 1-9 keys.
🏹 Weapons	There are few types of blasters but this is Jedi game so we use lightsabers, right? Blasters are useless against Sith anyway and we would get hit too many times by storm troopers without lightsaber laser reflection. We can change lightsaber color and tilt type but it's just for cosmetic. Around 2/3 into the game we can choose if we want to keep using single lightsaber, or switch to 2x1 or double lightsaber. There is no explanation about combat differences between different lightsabers, but we can always change lightsaber type in the menu.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Force speed, push, pull, sense are available from the start, and upgraded at fixed points in the game. Heal, damage shield, power shield, mind trick are available for light side. Dark side has lightning, force steal, choke and one more. No restrictions for power selection, we can learn and upgrade any light/dark power. Power points are limiting factor in the power use, and there is no way to boost their number. It takes all 100 points to heal 50% HP, 50 to use force speed or shield. Points also don't regenerate when power is active. If we have 70 points and use speed we won't be able to use shield unless we deactivate speed. Push and pull are used only for puzzles as they can't even push or pull weak enemies. They just drop them on the ground. I was so disappointed I can't throw storm troopers from the edges. In general abilities don't seem powerful but they are necessary to beat enemy Siths. Without power shield they will just choke or electrocute us to death, without damage shield they will kill us with sword in 2 hits, and without speed it's really hard to deal damage to them. So each encounter ends in boring combo of wait-heal-wait-heal (not enough force points to get healed with one force use) - wait for force to replenish - save - find next enemies - cast buffs - hope to kill enemies in 5s before they chop me to pieces.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies are brain dead. Storm troopers and officers will stand and shot us while Siths will charge on us and attack with melee / force.
🥊 Combat	I rally didn't like it. Feels half of the time it's luck that allows us to get past enemies. I may be able to kill some Sith knights in a row and then get killed by Sith apprentice as I forgot to cast a buff. Or they just jumped down from around the corner and surprise us (their favorite strategy, just drop from the ceiling behind us when we walk through door). I either see new players that complain how bad combat is, or people who played it 20 years ago with "git gud" approach. Meh. This game is too old and too many games with good combat mechanic were released in past 20 years to torment yourself with "git gud" in game that aged really badly.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️☆☆ - Ugly and basic. Animations are awful
Music - ⭐️☆☆ - Generic star wars theme. Voice acting is bad
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't really encounter any

Activated: 12/2021

Beyond: Two Souls (Q4 2013) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 9 months

Choices Matter Walking Simulator
17h (13h base game + 4h easy achievements) | 34 of 45 (76%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- I liked fact we follow one person life vs few people from Heavy Rain way more
- QTEs are wayyyy less extreme than in Heavy Rain
- Controlling Aiden and flying around gives nice sense of freedom
- Playing in original format (so where scenes are jumping back and forth in timeline) did not feel as confusing as I thought they would be
- Possible to play in chronological order if we want to
- Firstly seeing later parts of life did made me wonder what I will see in chronologically-previous chapters
- Exploration is not really time sensitive, so there is no anxiety bad scene will be shown if we spend too much time walking around
- A lot of choices but they sadly end in being telltale-type ones. Except for few bigger ones that change story in other chapters

The bad
- Some of the choices can be skipped by mistake due to visual clues merging with bright background
- Camera still has problem but way less than in Heavy Rain
- No option to skip cut-scenes, dialogues or credits. If we want achievement for seeing all endings we need to watch whole credits 10x!! Ridiculous
- Game keeps reset language to my native option
- Checkpoints are quite spread out, so turning out game may end up re-playing longer parts of game
- Not possible to replay chapter from specific point for achievements

Conclusion:
I firstly beat Heavy Rain and was so disappointed. It was mix of punishing QTEs, bad controls, ugly graphic and history of unhinged dad trying to rescue kid I saw for 5 min in-game. Not best way to make me emotionally invested. I learned Beyond: Two Souls is the same genre and lost all interest in playing it. I didn't need more of Heavy Rain. And now it was one of the last games I had still to play. And it's so much better than it's predecessor. More fluid controls, no screaming kids, freedom of flying around with Aiden and focus on one character that allowed me to actually emotionally invest. It's not revolutionary game and still have annoying things like inability to skip dialogues or scenes we don't want to re-watch. I also know many people dislike story in not chronological order but I did not mind. It's also possible to play it in chronological order in remaster.

---

Story:

Game starts when we're on the police station, where police officer tries to figure our who we are. They found Jodie (main character) on the roadside only in a hospital clothes. some time later armed SWAT unit arrives to apprehend us, just to be torn to shreds. So obviously we have some power and don't want to get caught. But why? That's what we learn along the way so I will not write anything else to spoil things. It's supernatural story with open end. It's not deep or with big revelations but it's solid.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Tied to making specific choices, which means 100% requires at least two game plays + replaying chapters numerous times.
📊 Performance	No problems.	💾 Save system	One automatic checkpoint that IMO is too rare.

🦚 Game customization options	Basic graphic and sound options. For some reason game keeps resetting to Steam account language. And there are only two difficulty levels - hand holding and "this QTE looked like I must press another button".
🌍 Map	There is no overworld map, no level map, no mini map. Game is divided into chapters played in specific order and levels are corridor-like so it's not possible to get lost.
🎮 Controls	We can walk and interact with environment in specific points. I played with controller and left stick is to walk, right to look around (in limited way). There are some QTEs which are way more forgiving than the ones from Heavy Rain and difficulty can be dropped in options. As Aiden we can fly around, go through walls etc., only limitation is that we can't go too far away from Jodie. Controls are nice and responsive while flying. Only complain I have is that developers simplified whole interface to seeing a white dot on the screen for interaction spots, for movie-feeeeeel. Which makes it easy to miss in bright background. And setting difficulty to easy changes how Aiden controls work - we can jump only between fixed positions (marked as orange blobs mid-air) which is extremely limiting. I would prefer to have separate difficulty setting for Aiden and Jodie, as having Aiden on easy actually feels like game is harder to play.
📇 Inventory	No inventory. We can't carry any objects or chose anything.
🏹 Weapons	No weapons or combat.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	No real abilities. If we press triangle on controlled we can fly around as Aiden while Jodie stays in place.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	No companions and all enemy encounters are scripted QTEs.
🥊 Combat	No combat.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Textures are bit old and simple but animation is nice, same as facial expressions
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Voice acting is nice and believable. Music also really nicely fits into scenes
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Game kept resetting my sound options which I kept forgetting about till I heard bad polish dubbing. Lol.

I have 4 games left to beat on Steam \o/. One is Planescape Torment which is on hold as 30h save did not sync when I was home, and I’m not starting from scratch now. And some simple games, Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos and Unravel 2 may be beaten this / early next month. So I may finally be able to beat my backlog at the end of next month. Exactly after 6 years of posting on BLAEO. After that it would no longer be possible to call it backlog, as games will be added and played on manageable rate :thinking:

Plan for now is to replay KOTOR 2 to get those last pesky achievements. And then grab some nice games on Winter Sale. I played through so much junk when beating my library now I want to focus on games I think I will enjoy. Instead of adding stuff that just look nice. Like Final Fantasy XIII :sweatsmile:

July 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2021

XCOM 2 (Q1 2016) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 7 months

Strategy
37h | 47 of 88 (53%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Nice strategic combat
- Each soldier has specific role on the battlefield
- There are actual codes that are entered into the console. No "pay to save grind or heal your soldiers" bullshit

The bad
- Game wastes so much player time on long useless animations. Enemy spotting us, soldier running somewhere, soldier taking cover, new enemy on the field. Ugh
- Janky frame rate where loading transitions drop to 20FPS
- Having soldier suffer even 1 point of damage can send them to hospital for a month
- Loosing internet during game ends in game not responding to key input
- Game keeps asking for permission to gather data, even after we already pick "don't agree"
- Majority of missions are fetch quests that re-use the same maps
- Cut-scene animations are stiff and unnatural
- Bug where camera hangs on the ship exterior (pointing to the ground), and it's not possible to continue without reloading earlier save
- During battle absence of window with number of actions soldiers are left with. Have to keep pressing TAB to find soldier we want to use, or find them manually on map
- Central (mission "help" guy) keeps spamming useless stuff like "we are loosing civilians!" on civilian rescue mission. Enormous waste of time
- I had two missions "hanging" even when: 1) I completed requirements (research an object) and 2) mission was not available anywhere on the mission map
- Not possible to put all soldiers in over watch or evacuate them together. Each single soldier need to be clicked on, then clicked the evac button, and then confirm that we really want to evac

Conclusion:
I did want to like this game but it feels it wasted so much of my time. Like c'mon. Half of animations are utterly pointless. I would not try another run if I'd have to choose now. There are not many actual missions that push plot forward, majority are fetch quests that get repetitive fast. Game was not clear enough that DLC actually changes base game, instead of taking place afterwards. So I paid extra for DLC I did not use, as I realized 15h into the game, when I googled for mods to cut /skip animations. And saw "DLC" is basically a patch that changes tons of things in the base game. I know, "my bad". But there should be screen at the start of the game that explains it, instead of showing "X-com 2" and "X-com 2: War of the Chosen" like separate positions. I don't need to go through "best way to play game" guides before I start a game.

---

Story:

Game takes place couple years after events from the first game (I don't remember what happened in first game xD So was really confused). Aliens wants to go step forward and do something bad. And we must prevent it. To do so we send soldiers on random missions that destroy alien facilities or rescue random civilians. It's really basic and not interesting. There is no well written antagonist, no big revelations. Some NPCs on board can be interacted with but they are really simple without much backstory.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Like half can be obtained during one normal play through Rest are connected to beating missions in specific way e.g. beating late missions that require soldiers with high level and good gear with level 0 squad.
📊 Performance	Constant stutter on loading screens and low frame rate. I don't see anything on screen that would justify having constant 40 FPS as graphic is average and there are not many visual effects.	💾 Save system	One automatic checkpoint and 15 manual save slots. Game can be saved any time and saves-magic is prevented by having all probabilities for actions set before we start our move. So it's not possible to keep re-loading game in hope of better outcome if we try to follow the same sequence of actions. If game rolled that we will miss 90% shot in first turn with this soldiers we will always miss no matter how many times we try to re-load.

🦚 Game customization options	Basic settings.
🌍 Map	Earth act as a map and main hub. It's simplified version with only few regions and clearly marked missions. There is no purpose to it apart from waiting and seeing too long animation of our mother-ship flying between USA and Australia to pick a mission there.
🎮 Controls	Isometric game where soldiers are controlled with mouse. There is weird bug where game will stop to respond to input. It's not even possible to evac on empty map as it requires moving soldiers to the evac zone and clicking on evac button. Requires killing game in task manager as it's not even possible to exit it with a keyboard. Happened like 3 or 4 times in 40h.
📇 Inventory	We can change soldier load out. Usually 2 or 3 different guns per solder type, armor and some single use grenades. What is bizarre is that it's not possible to strip "unused" soldier from all gear (aka switching everything to default) and quickly give it to another soldier of the same class. If our main sniper is wounded we need to go to their character screen, click on each item, change it to default, then go to secondary sniper, click on each item and equip better gear. Again huge waste of time. There is button to un-equip consumables I think on squad selection screen but it does not strip armor and weapons. Inventory window is small and console-like but because there are so few items to choose from it does work well.
🏹 Weapons	We basically just upgrade the same weapon into higher tier. Tiers are unlocked by research and then manufactured by engineers. But at least unlock is game-wise, not soldier-wise. So if we manage to unlock plasma shotgun it will be available to all soldiers using shotguns. Firing animations changes but not how weapon works. So all sniper rifles feel the same. And because enemies get more health with time it never feels like we do huge progress. Some shooting animations can look off, e.g. when small enemy is right in front of us, and soldier fires shotgun above enemy head. Instead of using some animation of pointing down. Weapons are bound to soldier class - sniper, grenadier, engineer, ranger.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Few abilities per soldier on a cool down. Unlocked on level up. Most unlocks are passive bonuses so each soldier ends up with 2 - 3 extra abilities. It's nice to have and execute few enemies with soldiers in one turn by 1) electrocuting enemies, 2) shot everyone in sight 3) use ranger reaper ability to run between weakened enemies and fishing them off. But because some abilities are on quite long cool down there is always question of "will I need it later". Which lead to under-use abilities. It's also really hard to keep soldiers in mission-ready state (small hit can lead to days in hospital) so abilities are unlocked slowly and we often end up using second choice soldiers with low level. Losing few soldiers from main squad late game would be progress breaking, as we would not be able to train new recruits to compete with really buffed late game enemies.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	No companions. And enemies are average. They will do some basic flanking but their behavior is extremely predictable. If we kill some meat fodder enemy and have sectoid on the map it will always try to raise meat fodder as a zombie instead of shooting or use mind control on us. Which means we can ignore zombie and kill sectoid next turn (together with zombie that will die automatically). One flying enemy will often shot rockets but it's enough to move a step to side to avoid it. When too many enemies spawn on the last map they were just keep hiding instead of moving or attacking, so I never had to deal with too many of them. Combat is challenging but mostly because enemies have more health and numbers than us.
🥊 Combat	Turn based. We pick soldiers, decide if they should move, fire or use abilities. There are half and full covers that lower enemy chance of hitting us, and over watch that will allow soldier to shot moving enemy in line of sight during enemy turn. Enemies sometime send reinforcements by marking ground with a flare. They drop in bundles of 3 and even if we put our every soldier in over watch, with clear line of sight for the enemy landing zone, it will be impossible for us to kill all 3 enemies straight away. Even when it's just drop of basic meat fodder enemy. We can heal soldiers on the battlefield but it only "keeps them alive". If they lose only 1 HP, or are fully healed before extraction they will still suffer random wound that can send them for days or longer into the hospital. So getting hit should be avoided at all cost but it's not easy when enemy always have numbers on their side. I really don't like this system. If I manage to fully heal someone during mission they should not get grave wounds on the summary screen. Sure, send them for a day rest but don't strike them out for 2 or 3 missions. This is kind of "realism" I don't like. Hitting chance and damage is improved with better weapons. And we get more health and protection with better armor. It's not soldier-ability dependent.There are 3 boss enemies in game with ridiculous amount of health and ability to move even during our turn. Which leads to nearly wiping out our team on encounters.

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Really basic and crude. Looks really like it's predecessor and use a lot of PC resources to be generated
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - While the voice over is fine accompanying animations are still and unnatural. Combat sounds good but general music or sounds are really generic.
Bugs - ⭐️☆☆ - I dunno. It's not completely unplayable but there are so many reported bugs that were never taken care of. Some of them are still in game "inherited" from the previous game.

Activated: 12/2021

Nine Parchments (Q4 2017) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 7 months

Action, Co-op
7,2h | 30 of 54 (56%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Nice fairystyle graphic
- No connection problems
- No microtransactions to "skip the grind for busy"

The bad
- Impossible to change character after game run is started
- Game started as rogue-lite and idea was changed half way through which lead to weird game mechanics
- 6h for one "run" is wayyy too long
- New spells unlocked slowly and randomly, not possible to pick which spell we'd like to use
- Not possible to go re-play selected levels
- Game is clearly Magicka-inspired but elements combining is really limited and spells never feel "on point"
- Really easy to kill another player by mistake or drop off the map edge
- Monsters have associated elements, and spells from opposite element deal extra damage (like ice vs fire). Enemies can also have elemental shield. Games likes to give fire enemy ice shield, ice enemy lightning shield etc. too often which makes them mostly resistant for our attacks
- Characters unlock passive bonuses on level up but they are really small and it takes ages to gain a level
- Game drops hats worth 1 cent. Good luck selling it to clear Steam inventory. At best they will sit forever in the market queue

Conclusion:
Game starts nicely but then disappoints. New spells and elements are drip fed. Graphic is really nice Trine-like but makes it hard to follow what is happening in the isometric combat. Not possible to change character or spells between maps to better fit into the team. Unlocking new characters requires using specific spells in specific way which is impossible when playing with strangers. Just meh. It is playable but I do think Magicka is way better. Even when it has steeper learning curve.

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Story:

Academy loses parchments and we go to recover them. Woo. Parchments are held by boss-monsters so we complete couple levels, kill boss, get one new spell from parchment and move further. I wouldn't even call it a proper story.

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Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Tied to killing enemies in specific way or using spells in specific way which is either "just" tedious or impossible if you play with random strangers.
📊 Performance	No problems	💾 Save system	One automatic check point per game mode (single / multi). To change character mid-run we need to leave match, delete our save, re-join the game that we left. Game will then ask us which character we want to use. Which is bizarre and really bad game design. If runs are 6h long we should be able to change character at least after each boss fight.

Game is isometric. WSAD is used to move around and mouse to aim + use spells. Few sections require us to make few jumps, but it's nowhere close to be a platformer. Spells are chosen by cycling with keys or mouse scroll. Controls are responsive but it does sometime feel like game did not register our dash away from enemy. What is also annoying is that we dash in the direction we're walking. Not where we we point our mouse. In the middle of frantic fight it's all too easy to walk away from the enemy, see something charging at us, move mouse away to avoid and then end up dashing into enemy that attacked us.

🦚 Game customization options	Basic graphic, music etc. controls.
🌍 Map	There is no map like in other Trine games. Or chapter selection. We need to start and end 32 levels in one go. So "map" is more of a loading screen. Good luck getting all collectibles if one was missed in the middle or end of game.
🎮 Controls
📇 Inventory	We can pick hat (which is pure cosmetic) and staff (which give specific passive bonuses) for our character. There is no inventory apart from those two.
🏹 Weapons	Only weapons are staffs. When enemy is hit with melee staff attack it will always deal the same amount of damage. Game is so zoom away it's even hard to see how staffs look like.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	I don't understand how spell-use-game can be so limited in spells. We start with random 3 spells, and recovering each parchment gives us one extra spell (from 3 available). We may play whole run and never see spell we really want to use, even when we already unlocked it. I had run where I did not get single healing spell. We have a "spell book" but it's just a list of already unlocked spells. It's not possible to select which spells we want to use directly form the book. Leveling character up gives some passive bonuses (better defense, more mana or damage) but they are so small it does not feel like we are much stronger even with maxed character.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	There are no companions. And enemies AI is really basic. Charging enemies charge, rest enemies go to us in straight line and attack if we're within reach.
🥊 Combat	Basic and not interesting. Enemies are dumb, will not try to flank us or combine their own spells. It's too easy to die by accident when dash ended up where we did not want; when another player decides to attack next enemy and we end up on their spell path; when we drop from the map, as rest of the players moved to the opposite part of arena and camera then focuses on bigger group of people. It takes ages to resurrect someone, even when they died by mistake on the map edge. I understand it could be exploited ("accidental deaths when running away from enemy) but just remove some HP in this situation and let person continue to play. Boss fights are as common as it can get. Nothing interesting or innovative. Avoiding few attacks in simple pattern when trying to hit weak point with our attack.

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I think it's only strong part of the game
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Themes are bit remixed but otherwise re-used from other Trine games
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't see any but not sure if some things (like not seeing your character when other players move away) is intentional or bug or bad design choice

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