October 2022 Update

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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.

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Story:

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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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June 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2021

Tyranny (Q4 2016) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 6 months

Story-rich Choice-matter cRPG
40h | 0 of 70 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Nice and interesting setting
- Story with plot that is not obvious from the beginning
- Varied and interesting companions
- Easy to read and detailed map
- Really nice voice acting
- Simple puzzle that are nicely combined with level exploration
- God bless fast mode where we run faster and combat is speed up. I may not complete this game otherwise
- There is no right or wrong way to play the game, we can obtain our goals both by being calm diplomat and asshole brute

The bad
- Combat is boring, our characters have problem with path finding
- Enemies are dumb
- Only one companion uses heavy armor and 80% gear drops are for heavy equipment
- Experience gain doesn't make sense. Game by default gives two weapon experience to a mage or illusion proficiency to tanks??
- Some basic things (like that you can stop companion from getting experience in the wrong category) aren't explained properly
- Dialogue options with unused choices are grayed out. I'm not going throught someone's dialogues again, as some minor reputation check option became active
- Travel animation is not used to load levels in the background
- Not possible to stop game after character creation, as game doesn't save when character is made. There is long prologue afterwards, and quitting would remove both choices made in the prologues and creator
- There is stupid mechanic where we need to rest before we can use some abilities. We can rest with camp kits and they are abundant - so it's possible to be always rested (and have abilities ready to use) but it's just waste of time. It feels like artificial blockade to add "more complexity to combat" where it's not needed

Conclusion:
I like the setting and plot but don't like game mechanics. At first combat was so boring I set it to easy to speed it up. Later on when we get more abilities (so it stopped to look like a cookie clicker) I bumped it to medium so enemies stopped to die immediately. There is no need for strategy during combat. Just click on an enemy to kill, and our characters will do the rest. I do in general dislike this combat type but at least in Dragon Age we could use detailed AI settings to program companions to fight in a specific way. Here everyone just go on auto pilot.

---

Story:

Hegemon, as a being of unlimited power, managed to conquer most of the world. There is only one bit of land left and we're send as Hegemon emissary to help in it's conquest. Two armies were originally sent to do the job. But as the their leaders hate each other - there was a lot of inside fights which stalled the conquest progress. Our job is to read the edict - magical formula given by the Hegemon. Surprisingly to all edict is actually aimed at the Hegemon armies - if they don't manage to capture enemy citadel within specific time frame both armies will be eradicated. Truly twisted way to show how unhappy someone is about their own armies in-house fights.
We do manage to fulfill the edict condition of capturing the citadel, which breaks the edict. Now our job is to understand why Hegemon armies are fighting and who's responsible for the troubles. We must gather evidence against the traitor and show them to Tunon - judge who makes sure that Hegemon law is followed on all the conquered land. Reason why armies fight is kind of predictable but nonetheless it's interesting to look for leads, learn some backstory of the land and decide with which fraction we should align - one of the two armies, or maybe the rebels.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Not tracked on Epic
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	I've been saving every couple minutes for 40h and did not run out of manual saves slots. So plentiful. There is also auto save on the level start, at objective completion etc.

🦚 Game customization options	Basic sound options, average graphical options. Ability how active pause works and how fast text is displayed. In general quite basic.
🌍 Map	Overworld map is nice and detailed. I don't understand why they have clock though as pretty much nothing (apart from short section in 1st chapter) is time sensitive. Levels are small but detailed. Not many things to do on them apart from killing few enemies and looting some boxes. There are random encounters while traveling on the overworld, which are sometimes more interesting than event on the destination point. Travel animations are too long on the overworld map, and I don't know why they did not use this time to load those small levels in the background. Instead there is lengthy animation of flag moving across overworld, and then loading screen to load the level.
🎮 Controls	It's isometric cRPG, so mouse + numerical keys during combat. Not possible to control characters more directly. Only thing characters can do is run around and do contextual actions in scripted locations or fight.
📇 Inventory	It's well organized into categories and we never have too many items to be overwhelmed. But also we pretty much always get duplicates of what we already have from drops, or items we don't need. Game also doesn't remember sorting option that we have chosen previously. There are many consumable items that would be only used on hard or really hard difficulty. Only item I used few times was small healing potion. And there are piles of buff / debuff / restore items. Quest objects are not sorted in any meaningful way, e.g. by type and then acquisition time which makes it hard to browse them. Gear comparison window between used / new items is easy to use.
🏹 Weapons	Really basic. We basically change into higher quality of the same weapon when we find something better. Because game is isometric and camera is quite high-up there is no much difference between them. They all look like sticks that are swing around. It's possible to upgrade weapons but it uses a lot of resources. One character is tied to their armor, which is quite under leveled at the end of the game. Unless we spend piles of resources to upgrade it. There are legendary weapons but high level general gear is often better than them.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Each character has 2 - 3 class-specific ability trees, except for main hero that can pick from any tree. Like tanking vs dps or bows vs daggers. In 40h I received enough ability points to max out one tree per character. Which would be nice if offensive abilities would not feel so pointless. It doesn't feel like they do much more damage in comparison to the basic attack. It's mostly that game doesn't look so boring visually when companions can use few custom attacks. Only exception is leveling up the mage healing tree, so he restores more health. Being able to heal someone 20% and 50% of total HP makes the difference.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Companions will cast / use whatever abilities are not on the cool down. There is no AI tuning to decide when to use which ability. They also have problem with path finding e.g. if healer is in front of a tank in narrow passage - it will not move to let tank to front, and instead keep getting hit. No. Stupid grandma will stand and attack enemies with the staff, while tank is running back and forth trying to find a way to reach enemies. It requires manual intervention each single time to move them. Enemies have it easier as they are pretty much always in the open space, so they don't get stuck. But only thing enemies can do is approach us and keep spamming their attacks. They literally feel like brain dead meal worms. They will not try to flank us, target someone else than tank or run for help.
🥊 Combat	If I could I would auto-skip whole combat. It's unpolished and uninteresting. We don't even have visible action queue. By default characters will do one action and go back to auto attacking. It's not possible to make queue without holding SHIFT key (which is only explained during tips on the loading screen). They also don't indicate which attack is next in their queue. At least with fast mode enabled encounters take only short while. While in combat we obviously see this annoying window that lists how much damage each character done. But unless we'd slow down the game text runs there so fast there is no way to follow it. It would be easier to just have floating numbers above characters head as a damage indication. Because our characters are brain dead ranged characters will not try to move away from melee attackers, same goes for the enemies.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Really basic. Portraits and maps are nicely hand drawn but textures are meh up close
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Voice acting is spot on. Music is also nice
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't really encounter any

Activated: 04/2022

Total War: WARHAMMER (Q2 2016) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

RTS Fantasy
3h | 0 of 185 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

Conclusion:
I grabbed this one on Epic to see gameplay of Total War games. And I see it's not for me. I like the overworld aspect of it but would prefer it to be more in HOMM V way, where there are short skirmishes per fraction. Instead of having huge map with 20 enemies that takes hours to complete. I also didn't really like the real life combat, and it is the main selling point of this series. I don't say it's a bad game, only that not for me.

Woooo. GPU prices are finally down. Thankfully my 2.5 year GPU is still strong but I will no longer sweat it may break and I’d need to pay horrendous money for replacement. Wonder if crypto will crash any more, miners are already selling their piles of “rarely used” cards on the market.

NFTs already crash. Developers threw themselves on this junk, smelling easy cash as lootboxes have more and more scrutiny. And it ended before it started. People invested millions in something that doesn’t have any value, and can be stolen with a phishing link. I like how Seth Green lost his NFTs and then threatened new owner with legal action. Like if idea of non-government asset or coin is good but the moment it’s “stolen” you run to police so they recover it. Problem is NFTs are shown as new IT miracle, and no one really explains what they are. Not many would invest in them if they would be explained they don’t own image or whatever is connected to token. That all they invest in is digital receipt that says they bought it.

I also hope all this metaverse junk will die as well, especially served by facebook & co. Can’t wait for new scandal where movement data from VR was used by meta to propose people new diets or exercise equipment via in-built ads. And idea of having metaverse as 2nd life is bizzare. Nothing like going home after 10h of work to go to another work to pretend on the internet you’re someone else.

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May 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2022

Sniper Elite 4 (Q1 2017) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 5 months

Action Co-Op
16,5 hours | 33 of 85 (38.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Fully playable in co-op without problems
- Voice acting is nice

The bad
- Had a bug where mission cut scenes did not play visual, just the sound
- Game is open-map and not really made for stealth approach
- Stealth is in general stiff and uninteresting. Character is too sticky to walls, can't move between covers, there are bare-bone alternative routes to our goal
- All weapons in the same category (snipers, ARs etc.) feel the same
- Animations are stiff and dialogues feel like they were written by a middle schooler - lazy and out of place
- If Co-Op partner disconnects game stops to track their progress in the mission, like they started from the middle or end
- Quite a lot of inventory items (land mines, string mines, flares, med kits) that feel useless as there is no reason to use them
- Piles of junk collectibles in order to fill otherwise empty maps
- Enemies are marked on the map before we mark them with a binoculars, making it look like we have 6th sense

Conclusion:
I think I enjoyed more earlier Sniper Games. Crawling throught rubble, looking out for snipers and kill them with nice head shot and images of bones being crushed. This game is more like FPS where we run from place to place and clear bundles of enemies to progress. Masking sounds are rare and we can have only up to 20 silent bullets (few more can be found on dead snipers). So it's not really possible to try and beat game without alerting enemies.

---

Story:

Germans again want to kill everyone in Europe and we're here to stop them. Plot is really simple and predictable. Nothing to explain or remember.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Some are really grindy as they require collecting all the collectibles (already owned aren't marked on the map), and maxing out all weapons (which means thousands of kills in specific way).
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	One automatic check point. It is often enough to not feel punishing and game don't have decisions where we'd need to change selected option.

🦚 Game customization options	Basic
🌍 Map	Map is detailed and easy to navigate. There is also handy mini map. One problem I had was that enemies are marked on the map automatically. Kind of beats the feeling of discovering enemies and planning ahead.
🎮 Controls	We can walk on pre-defined paths. It's not possible to jump, so small obstacles are not possible to move past (gives Pokemon feel). We can walk, crouch and crawl. Rally basic stuff. There are no QTEs or melee combat system.
📇 Inventory	Radial item selector acts as the "inventory" during the mission. We can chose weapons before the mission from few options. Some items can be unlocked with medals awarded for beating the missions but they are useless. Why spend medals to unlock land mine as a starting item, when they can be found everywhere on the level - both in containers and on fallen enemies.
🏹 Weapons	Base game has only 4 snipers, handguns, ARs etc. So selection is quite limited and they all feel the same to use. Only exception is Welrod as it's the only silenced hand gun. There are many more weapons sold as DLCs but they also feel copy-pasted. There is no sense of progression between guns. There is always tradeoff, if you pick weapon with more damage you will trade accuracy and magazine size for it.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	No abilities. Killing grants EXP and each 5th level unlocks passive bonus to pick from. But bonuses don't change much in the gameplay. E.g. being able to hold breath tiny bit longer, or getting less fall damage.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies are dumb. If someone is killed it's enough to wait a bit for them to forget about it. They don't stay in alarmed sate. When they hear shot they act like we have magnet in ass, and immediately go to our position. They will not try flank us, ask for back up. They only hide behind near obstacle and run around a bit.
🥊 Combat	It's boring. It is satisfying to kill some enemies by shooting specific body part, but as all weapons feel the same and enemies are stupid it doesn't feel like we're going anywhere. Or progress. It's as easy to play first level than the last one. It's really flat in this regard. It's possible to destroy tanks and trucks by shooting through visors. But angle may be at nearly 90 degrees and as long as we see few red pixels (that mark weak point) we will score head-shot. It would make more sense to have narrow angle in front of the visor that can kill operator inside the tank.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Decent but not amazing. Animations are stiff
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Voice acting is nice. But music is meh, weapon sounds are bit flat
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Why does it keep hanging on the initial animation and then I have black screen and can walk around the map but don't see where I'm going? Game need to be alt-tab in order to work normally

April 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2021

Generation Zero® (Q1 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 4 months

FPS Action
48 hours | 49 of 72 (68.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- nice combat
- steady progression
- game is from 2019 and still receives free updates above simple patches
- death is not punishing, we teleport to nearest save point without losing gear or items

The bad
- problem with textures that clip through objects. Unless grass can grow through concrete and branches clip through the walls
- assets are re-used way too much
- bad inventory sorting makes it hard to find relevant ammo or mods for weapon
- game keeps crashing in random moments
- enemies have really basic AI

Conclusion:
It is not a great game but it's also not terribly bad. I did enjoy my time with it. Developers did bring bigger gameplay overhaul mid-playthrought (better inventory sorting, weapon selection menu etc), and they keep upgrading game. I do like that Sweden from 80's was nicely re-created there but at the same time world is made from few assets that are copy-pasted over and over again. Houses, bunkers, locations all look the same and have the same layout. It's like those "randomly generated caves" in Skyrim where visiting one makes you know all of them.

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Story:

Sweden is attacked by robots. We're teenagers (!!) who survived and now scramble dead bodies and chests for ammo and weapons to kill bad robots. One DLC brings in some story with voiced NPCs but otherwise it's just running between different bunkers to unlock them and find notes scattered around. Really bare bone plot. We learn some back story about the attack but it's so general it's not even worth mentioning. If you have robots attacking civilians you can guess the reason without playing. Tip: people experiment with uploading mind to the internet.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Most are unlocked naturally but couple require gathering piles of collectibles
📊 Performance	Keeps crashing in random moments. Can't alt-tab without risking crash. Can't fast travel without risking crash. Ugh.	💾 Save system	There is only one automatic save.

🌍 Map	Quite big and detailed. It is easy to read but I'd like it to mark found collectibles. Or mark which settlements were already visited as not all are automatically marked on the map, especially the small ones.
🎮 Controls	Default weapon selection system was awful. But with recent update they moved into a selection wheel which is way better. We can run (stamina is really low though), jump, walk. It's not possible to swim so water bodies need to be circled around. No dodging in combat, no platforming sequences.
📇 Inventory	Awful. There are basic categories like weapons or ammo obviously, but why not organize items in some logical way? Like SMG / Assault rifle / shotgun / pistol / rocket ammo? Instead there is long list of ammo in random order. Ammo description is so long it doesn't fit into the text box. It's scrolling back and forth like on news info bar, and we need to wait for it to move past to see what ammo type we're looking at. There are ammo pictures but they are so small and differ only a bit in color... why can't it just be "AR 5,56mm armor piercing" or "SMG 9mm normal". Same with weapon mods that are grouped by rarity, not type. Just allow to filter by type quickly. E.g. all scopes look nearly identical but some are for sniper rifles, other for assault rifles or for pistols. Not possible to say just from looking which we need and which could be recycled. After we add modification to weapon it's possible to move it into the store box by accident as they are not removed from the view. Any other game "adds" mod to a weapon so it always stays with it. Weight limit of backpack and storage box is quite low. It's not possible to recycle only one item. We can recycle only bundles of items, so if we want to recover electrolyte from battery we need to waste space for 4 (which is 4kg) while looking for 5th battery of the same size. It's not possible to dismantle and make better aid kits so we just use whatever we found. There is simple crafting system but it requires so many blueprints I was never able to do anything useful.
🏹 Weapons	Quite basic. Melee weapons are useless as they don't deal much damage and robots can easily kill us heads on. Hand pistols are also useless. Best weapon would be assault rifle due to their high rate of fire and accuracy. I wanted to play with sniper rifle but it takes forever to kill anything more than basic robots with it. Shotguns require us to come quite close which is dangerous. And missile launchers don't do as much damage as expected and rockets weights a lot. Each weapon type have 2 or 3 variants (like AK-74, 5.56 or one more AR) but they all feel samey and weapon choice depends a lot which ammo type is available. Some items can be used in combat as distraction (fireworks, flares) or decoys to lure enemies into mines (radios, boomboxes etc.) but they aren't really effective and choosing them mid-combat is cumbersome.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Pretty much everything is passive. More health, stamina, explosion or gas resistance, more accuracy etc. But unlocking those don't feel like much improvement. Only active ability is being able to see enemy stats after upgrading binoculars, and I never used it to assess enemy power. It's easy enough to do by looking on enemy color scheme. Orange, green, black, radioactive from weakest to strongest.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	There are no companions unless we play with other players. Enemies are dumb. They will run around us and then stand in spot "taking aim" which gives us time to kill them. They don't try to look for cover or avoid getting shot at. Only way they are challenging in combat is that we have little health and they do a lot of damage. Especially toxic or radioactive damage that we don't have easy way to resist. Even with gas mask and perk to raise gas resistance ending in toxic cloud will kill us in few seconds. And there are robots that love to shell us with toxic artillery strikes... Some big enemies are put inside narrow corridors or inside caves which makes them unable to move around and attack. They are literally like sitting ducks there.
🥊 Combat	It's all right but not amazing. Enemies are dumb so it's easy to exploit their patterns to kill them. Some enemies are so bullet-spongy we may use thousands of bullets and not bring them down. And the most we can find on a fallen enemy or in boxes are few bullets per one. So it takes a lot of looting to find enough ammo to go into combat. It's possible to use EMP on robots but it deactivates them for 2 - 3s only. Which makes it utterly useless. Each robot have weak spots where we deal more damage with normal bullets. Rest of the robot should be shot with armor piercing rounds. Hitting weak spot gives some blue sparkles but sometimes even when there was clear hit in weak spot there is no reaction.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Mixed. Textures are re-used a lot and there are problems with level geometry. Rain looks really unnatural. But things like sun reflexes, mist or snow looks really nice
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Forgetful. No voice acting apart from one short DLC
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Nothing game breaking but game can crash for no reason sometimes

Activated: 12/2021

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (Q3 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 4 months

Action
30 hours | 67 of 99 (68.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Good graphic and voice acting
- Tons of customization options
- Easy to navigate map with good markers
- Manual save function with few slots which is not given in cross-console game

The bad
- Metroidvania elements cut a lot in comparison to previous game
- Less open to the point it feels like a corridor
- Enemies detect us immediately during sneaking and are dumb in general
- Combat is cut a lot and all enemies are per-scripped to show once in specific spots
- Abilities feel useless
- No sense of progression, items that were previously part of plot (bow with rope or fire, shotgun, zip winch) are just bought in shop
- Open map areas are big but only thing to do there are piles of collectibles
- Tombs are entirely focused on parkour and puzzle parts are really basic
- Some dialogues are so cheesy or out of place
- Animations can be stiff and not always fit to what Lara is doing, e.g. sarcophagus cover will move before Lara position herself to start to open it

Conclusion:
I read that they moved away from combat in this game, as people were complaining there was too much of it. I did like it thought, as it felt like encounters naturally progress the game. Like beating mini boss was unlocking shotgun that could be later used to unlock passages. Here we start with all necessary gear, and all extras are simply bought in shop... Lame. For me game felt like being full of nothing, just running back and forth between quest markers that are mostly fetch quests. There are more tombs here but they are quite simple and focus on parkour, not logic. Only once in the puzzle with sun I had to think for longer. Otherwise puzzles are degraded into 2 levers and some cart on the level.

---

Story:

We need to defeat trinity and stop end of the world! Trinity also killed our dad so it's personal. We have Jonah - bulky tank as a side kick as everyone else from our crew already died. He mostly talk through the ratio and don't do much. There are some flashback from Lara's story but not much. Generic history how someone rises to power to protect something, and then their methods get twisted as they are already on top. We beat character that is shown in first few minutes as a villain and restore the peace. The end. Side quests are usual fetch quests. Interactions between Lara and Jonah are stiff and cheesy. Same as a lot of dialogues. Feels like characters are shallow and are put in the game just to give hint where to go to push plot forward.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Most are easy to get but some are tedious and grindy collectible gathering.
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	Checkpoints and 8 manual saves. Game never pushes too much for dying.

🦚 Game customization options	Really nice. Detailed settings for graphic, music, difficulty - it's possible to chose different difficulty for combat, exploration and puzzles. With exploration set to hard there are no visible clues (pain marks) for the climb path. With puzzles on easy next object to interact with is highlighted in different color, on normal they are just highlighted and on hard they are not highlighter at all.
🌍 Map	Nice and detailed but quite empty if we don't want to grab collectibles. Locations are also quite small and corridor like in plot moments. No ability to set own markers, only to highlight already visible markers. Map controls were kind of wonky with K+M. Can't easily move around the map as map markers work like magnet for scrolling. So instead of being able to look freely around map jumps between markers if there are few of them in proximity.
🎮 Controls	I found it kind of wonky trying to run around and shot fast by stopping and aiming. It also sometimes feel like game was not responsive enough and I died because I stepped on wrong part of a ledge while jumping. We can run, jump, dodge. No crouching unless in stealth combat. It's also not possible to jump on anything we want, object that aren't designed to be interacted with act as invisible wall. Even when it's some small boulder.
📇 Inventory	Basically no inventory. It's possible to select weapons or clothes from small selection at camps.
🏹 Weapons	Bow, hand gun, AR and shotgun. Bow is slow and not really efficient in fights at hard difficulty. Most useful is AT or shotgun as it can quickly remove enemy helmet and score a head shot or kill via general damage. Guns are bought in shop, not unlocked through progression. Same as bows. There is no feel of progression between lame basic bow and fancy sport upgraded one. We have basic one (and few fancy ones if we bought DLCs) and then unlock some random bows via quest completions. They don't feel like an upgrade though, they just juggle stats - if one has more damage will have lower accuracy etc. So meh. I was excited finding materials and being able to make better bows before. Now it's just "whatever".
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	A lot of useless abilities. Exploration perks are unlocked via buying stuff in shop, so abilities focus on junk like being able to shot animal hears, doing stealth kills (that alert enemies anyway...), making flash round or being able to use focus or endurance herbs. It doesn't feel consistent as on easy most of abilities will not give anything (combat is easy and environmental clues are visible anyway while using focus), and on hard it kind of by definition removes those helps to make gameplay more challenging. But it's possible to enable them by spending experience points... Only reason I was spending ability points was to grab achievement for completing the skill tree, not that I needed any of them. Some abilities are unlocked by completing the tombs but they are also meh.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies are dumb. They will not try to flank us. Just walk straight on us and use cover if available. Throw grenade if we stay in one spot for few seconds. They behave like we have magnet in ass, facing our direction and always looking in area where we are. They also have sixth sense and know when enemy is silently killed. It's good if we can kill 1 or 2 enemies with stealth, as immediately after game turns into shooter. It's also really hard to get lost of enemies and go back to stealth mode. Unless not being able to play in stealth way is because of high difficulty, but then it's bad game design.
🥊 Combat	Basic shooting. We can hit barrels to kill enemies and kill them with firearms. Enemies are not far enough from each other to take them out silently with bow, and they tend to walk away from their previous patrol route if we try to hide in nearby bush to silently take them down. This is hardly game that can be played stealthy. It is mostly a gun blaze experience. Which would not be bad if enemies wouldn't be so dumb.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Nice and detailed. There are some problems with wonky animations thought
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Forgetful. Voice acting is nice but actual dialogues are lame
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't encourage any

It looks like COVID is gone in London, as everyone act as normal. No masks in closed spaces or in public transport.

Now everyone prepares for the queen jubilee which means pubs and restaurants gather reservations, half of central London will be closed due to terrorist risk and people will either go away from London or stay indoors and wait for it to pass. Unless you’re one of the people that want to go out to stand in crowd like sardines in a can. Risking getting COVID or tramped over. But we’re getting new underground line that will cut transport time from West to East London a lot so yay.

I’ve beat SotTR mostly to beat it. It is solid game but I didn’t like it all that much. And now I feel like not playing games much this or next month. So disappointed it’s no longer badass Lara with a bow scoring head shots that I so liked from 2013 reboot and then RotTR. Let’s hope next game in a series will be good, especially with this recent Crystal Dynamic acquisition.

March 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2021

Vampyr (Q2 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 3 months

RPG
32 hours | 0 of 28 (0.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- nice detailed graphic
- fluid controls
- good voice acting
- interesting characters

The bad
- no fast travel. I know map is small but having to go around through visited areas each time we need to reach other side is really repetitive
- enemies level up with player so it never feels like we make progress
- really cheesy ending
- some plot elements are just like "ugh"
- loading screens are wayyy too long for how simple the game is. Especially when it needs to re-load part of the game where we just died 2s ago, so it was already in the memory
- some of the dialogues have loading screen! It's like they needed to program dialogues as a separate mini game...
- pressing skip / continue button during dialogue doesn't skip only text visible on the screen, but next lines as well if they are one sentence. And it's not always easy to see if part of dialogue visible on screen ends with dot or comma

Conclusion:
Game looked way better at the beginning. And then went down to repetitive running back and forth between quests locaded on opposite parts of the city and sick people that need to be cured... Would I play it again? Maybe if we could fast travel between hideouts. Otherwise it feels like game just drags forever with little actual gameplay. Side quests can be of course ignored but they are only tangible way to get some experience, when you don't want to kill innocent NPCs.

---

Story:

Game takes place during the flu epidemic after world war. We play as Dr. Reed, specialist in blood transfusion that is turn into a vampire shortly after coming back from war. He needs to understand the rules of being a vampire as otherwise it will be impossible to help fighting the epidemic. Plot looks deeper at first but in the end it ends in lame "omg love story" junk. You're turned into a vampire and in a span of few weeks fell into undying love towards another vampire. Just ugh.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Epic doesn't register
📊 Performance	Game was crashing due to lack of VRAM on loading screens. It also doesn't have many graphical options to change. Lowering details to medium solved the issue. Must be problem with memory management as game on ultra, FHD and all effects high used around 2GB of VRAM. So no idea where game was taking this 4GB overhead to crash >_>	💾 Save system	One automatic save without ability to change reload. Which is kind of meh as options we chose are not always what I would expect from the short description during dialogue.

🌍 Map	Really simple but detailed and easy to navigate. Fact map is flat does help here. Only annoying thing is that there are unmarked gates blocking our path all the time. I know they are there to add a bit of metroidvania to the game (they block areas forcing us to visit places in specific order in this otherwise semi-open map) but still annoying.
🎮 Controls	Nice and fluid. But it's mostly walking simulator, it would be an achievement to mess up controls in game of this type.
📇 Inventory	It is messy. There are no sorting options and all clues, books and notes are just dumped there in order of discovery. It's also not possible to sort weapons by type. Although there are not many of them, like 4 - 5 types each in whole game.
🏹 Weapons	Either two handled weapon or main hand + side arm combo. They do differ visually but main difference is if it focuses on damage, blood steal or staggering enemies. There are two types of guns but ammo is scarce so I was using those only for bosses. All of the weapons basically feel the same. Not much variety. Weapons start at 1st level and can be upgraded with crafting materials up to 4th level. Materials are found in chests, on dead enemies and small amount can be bought in shops. Leveling up weapons do give visible advantage in combat, in contrast to leveling up abilities.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	There are three ways to get experience to evolve. Killing enemies, which gives pitiful amount, do fetch quests which gives moderate amount, and killing non-enemy NPC. NPCs are localized in safe zones, and we can talk to them. Chatting unlocks hints about their character, and the more hints we have the more experience is NPC worth. If our mesmerize level is equal or higher to the one from NPC - we can lead them to secluded place and kill to get pile of experience. So it basically treats NPCs as pigs to be harvested. But doing so will drop zone overall health level, and if it drops to critical level NPCs will disappear and area will be populated with enemies. Our mesmerize ability levels up with story progression. Problem is enemies are always higher level than us so meh. I didn't kill anyone. Experience is used to unlock combat abilities (close-range claw / long-range spear / middle-range shadow attack), passives (more health, stamina, blood capacity etc.) and ultimate ability (which may be ok for general enemies but still deals pitiful amount of damage to bosses). Abilities are tiered and it cost between 600 - 1000 exp to unlock low tiers and up to 2 - 4k per high tiers. And as guideline - killing enemy gives 5 - 10 exp, completing quest gives few hundred and harvesting an NPC gives 2 - 4k. So if anyone wants to max out abilities they are forced to kill NPC. But it will also make enemies stronger and diminish all "investment". Game says that there are some ability combos to use but I did not see any. Both claw and spear deals small amount of damage (plus many enemies are resistant to blood abilities) so I went with high health / stamina / blood shield + single handed sword build. Active attack abilities also uses blood to work, which forces us to keep stunning enemies and feeding on them. Or having melee weapon with blood steal. We can't jump or run. Only walk and blink (which is used in fight as dodge and in small number of places to move vertically on scripted spots). Seeing that combat yields pitiful amount of experience and makes moving between locations a hassle - the best use for blink is to just skip whole districts when we need to move across the map. It's not possible to outrun the enemies or sneak around them but they can't keep up with us blinking across. It requires investing a lot in stamina though. To level up we need to rest. Resting also passes time and moves us to next night. Problem is - when next night comes NPCs in districts get sick all over again, and we need to again run around and heal them. Like if we couldn't leave some healing items at district "boss" and let them take care of it.
🤖 Enemy AI	They are decent. But all they have to do is not bump into few objects around them when trying to get to us. Not many enemy types and their moves are limited to 2 - 3 per enemy type so not much variety. They also don't interact with each other in any way. They will just circle around us, trying to score a hit.
🥊 Combat	It's not great, really bare bone dodge + hit. Easy enemies can be locked in a hit-stun if we have stamina but it requires only one button mash. Stronger enemies are just immune to it (not a matter of timing or weapon strength) so we need to attack them 1 or 2 times and dodge away. It all makes it really repetitive and thankfully it's possible to avoid all but boss fights later on by blinking away. Still surprisingly this walking sim from walking sim devs has better combat than ELEX... speaks how little they care about combat at PB. Vampyr has fluid animations, dodge that feels responsive and enemies that don't move like they have stick up their ass.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I think graphic is strongest part of the game. It's detailed and atmosphere fills into despair of the big epidemic
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Voice acting is good. But music is forgettable. Environmental sounds are also really basic
Bugs - ⭐️☆☆ - Some graphic memory problem where game that uses 2GB of VRAM for textures have spikes that makes it crash on system with 6GB of VRAM

Activated: 12/2021

Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden (Q4 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 3 months

Turn based combat
15 hours | 0 of 54 (0.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- nice detailed graphic
- good tactical combat
- sneaking elements that are nicely woven into otherwise turn based combat
- ability to save anytime, including during combat

The bad
- plot is predictable and simple
- there are not many abilities and some look straight out useless
- weapons are really basic

Conclusion:
This game received a lot of praise and I do think it is solid. But I would not say it is extraordinary. I did play on normal as I did not like the idea of losing squad mates - they can die if they loose all health points and we don't manage to revive them mid-combat. On higher difficulty enemies simply have more health and hit harder which is lazy.

---

Story:

After nuclear apocalypse people found shelter in arks - dirty and obscure city-hubs high above ground level, which is contaminated by nuclear fallout. People that stayed on the ground mutated after being exposed to radiation and pollution, and are led by psychic leaders that seek to destroy arks. We play as mutants - some weird animal hybrids that were raised on the ark and are sent to the ground on scouting and recover resource missions. There is no big and deep plot. We simply destroy bad guys and learn truth about character past.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Epic doesn't register
📊 Performance	No problems.	💾 Save system	50 save anytime slots.

🌍 Map	There is only over-world map that is also used as fast travel. But location maps are so small and simple they don't require minimap. Simply go back and forth from left to right and you will visit whole location in few minutes. There are no hidden areas or secret passes.
🎮 Controls	It's isometric game where characters are controlled with mouse and few keyboard shortcuts. It would be really hard to mess up this kind of controls. Obstacles are easily visible and character movement is easy to plan. I did find it confusing thought to move vertically on the map. Even main hero triumph ability - going mid-air to snipe enemies from above is useless because of it. There are no good and easy to spot places to use it.
📇 Inventory	Extremely basic. We can chose from few items in each category - helmet, body armor, 1st and 2nd weapon + up to 3 throwable weapons. There are no sorting options which makes it messy in the throwables category. Inventory is also based on big icons in small menus so not much is visible at the same time.
🏹 Weapons	Each character starts with default weapon that can be later upgraded to something better. Plus we can find one futuristic handgun, heavy weapon and sniper rifle with highest damage and crit chance. Weapons can be upgraded to higher tier to deal more damage with weapon parts (which are quite scarce on the battlefield). There is not much variety. We basically equip each character with one silent weapon and one heavy punch gun from small selection. Also there are not enough weapons to equip all 5 playable characters with good weapons. And not enough weapon parts to upgrade weapons for more than 3 most used heroes.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Skill tree is really simple and there is no respec option. Unlocking ability is not enough to use it, it needs to be equipped in one of the available slots - one for combat active + one mobility active ability, and one for passive ability. We can also decide to upgrade character health. Because of this there is no point to try and unlock everything as we won't be able to use it anyway due to slot limit. Game heavily focus on use of critical hits, otherwise combats drags forever. Because of this passive ability focus on adding general crit chance, combat active ability focus on adding crit chance to attack, and mobility ability focus on stunning enemy (and we try to kill them with crit attacks when they lay on the ground). It really does feel like game rails players to playing in one proper way or they will have bad time.
🤖 Enemy AI	It's enough but enemies aren't smart. They will go behind cover and shot at us. They don't try to circle us around to catch us off-guard (unless they were already behind us when we started combat... but this doesn't count). They will try to kill target that is closest even when it's huge tank pig with tons of health and armor. Psy commanders will try to subdue characters wearing anti-subdue helmets etc. Not the smartest bunch. Enemies don't respawn.
🥊 Combat	It does feel like enemies get a lot of levels and health all the time. It does feel bit cheap that the moment we manage to level up and progress forward we just see the same enemies with 2x more health. As written in the weapons part above - game really focuses on critical chance and trying to play it other way would make combat dragging. Especially that we have 3 characters under our control, and there are often multiple enemies present with more health that we have. Game rails us into focusing on one enemy at a time and hoping to kill it in 1 - 2 turns with critical hits. Both we and enemies have armor and if armor rating is equal or higher than damage taken it will be nullified. Otherwise we will deal damage minus armor rating. Second part of the combat are stealth sections where we walk slowly on the map trying to find single targets that can be killed without alarming everyone in the location. Each enemy has awareness area and if we kill someone outside of everyone's awareness rating before they can alarm comrades we get bit easier fight later on. If we don't manage to kill singled out enemy with silent weapons (that deal less damage) in one turn they will raise alarm and enemies from half of the map will be on us. Which is bad. Here is where active mobility abilities come into play. If we can't kill someone in stealth mode in one turn we need to stun them and finish them off on the ground. It is satisfying to slowly clear camps from enemies that patrol the perimeter, but it does get repetitive. There are bots that can heal enemies (ofc we can't have one!) so eliminating those is always first priority. Otherwise enemies will just keep being resurrected. We need to use (really rarely found!) med kits on our characters, which restores only few hit points Not a percentage of total character health. So if we have downed character and use med kit on it - we can be sure they will be down again if the same enemy hits it again. I think med kits are more of "resurrect this hero and move it away from the fire so it doesn't permanently die" items. On hard difficulty health regenerates only half-way after combat (on normal it's full health). Outside of combat med kits regenerate whole health. Useful for hard difficulty.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Nice, colorful and atmospheric. But it's not possible to zoom in to see how many details there are
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Mostly background noises. Voice acting is good but there is no character animation as they talk.
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't encourage any

I play now Shadow of the Tomb Raider on Epic and damn, hope it’s only issue with this version. Game keeps crashing randomly without any kind of error. Turning off web browser and email client does help. But game should not crash because it’s not only app running. It would also not run in DX12 mode, even when my card supports it.

First Spring (very late Christmas) party after me. I had no idea what to expect as this kind of event is not happening in Poland. But it was all right. Kind of fancy dinner with more cutlery I ever saw at the same time on the table, and then some light chatting and some dancing. Sadly it aligned with start of Ramadan so not all people from work could join us at the dinner.

Recent release of the Elden Ring made me think about accessibility. So from next update I will separate section for accessibility and general tuning up game. Some game (like Vampyr) has bare bone (even sad) configuration options as they are console ports and we don’t need to be able to adjust graphic setting on PC. And then there are games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider with tons of graphic options (helps to find good mix of visuals and performance) and you can fine-tune how game works in exploration, combat and puzzle sequences. You feel it’s too easy to have all parkour areas marked with white paint (which is nowadays standard in games) - turn it off. Think puzzles where interactive elements are highlighted are too easy - turn it off. You think combat is too hard? Drop it a notch. I was kind of annoyed for hand-holding in previous games puzzles and parkour sequences so I set them to hard. Which means there are no helpers. Does fact someone can go on easy in combat, puzzles and exploration make my game worse? Well no.

Accessibility is not only about dropping enemies damage or giving player enormous amount of attack power. Give map to players that gets lost easily in games (and IRL as well…) which is turned off by default for “proper experience”. Give players with mobility problems parry window that is 1s longer. Include colorblind option in puzzle games.

February 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2021

Heavy Rain (Q2 2010) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Choices matter Walking simulator
11h hours | 31 of 56 (55.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good voice acting
- nice graphic
- game uses gamepad gyroscope for controls

The bad
- QTEs fest that is so absorbing it's hard to follow what is happening on the screen
- stiff animations and facial expressions
- shallow plot
- impossible to skip cut scenes and credits
- stiff walking controls
- bad camera work
- main character seems just pitiful and I couldn't really connect with him

Conclusion:
Fix camera work and controls and it could be really nice game. Instead I could not focus on the plot but felt like I constantly need to fight with the gameplay. It feels like game that may be better to watch on you tube than play, as that way you will be able to see what is happening. Instead of focusing on image to see where another annoying QTE will pop up. I did drop difficulty to easy and if that are "easy" QTEs then I'm out. I didn't know what kind of games Quantic Dreams are making. And now I think I may have bad time with Beyond: Two Souls >_> Overall I am disappointed in this one, and I had to drag myself to beat it.

---

Story:

Origami killer kidnaps kids and drowns them in a rain water. Story is shown from father, detective, FBI agent and one lady perspective. They are all going about their life, trying to find clues where the kid is and how to save him. There are a lot of choices to make, some of them don't seem that important but can be crucial to the game ending. Father have a box of clues from the killer and need to go through gruesome trials to get address where kid is kept. Detective mostly runs around and whack people and destroy stuff. FBI agent that visits crime scenes and try to piece together evidence to make psychological portrait of the killer to narrow down their location. And lady that helps the father. But there are no big revelations or plot twists. Killer is kind of predictable and father is just pitiful.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None, game is way too old to have them.	🏆 Achievements	Requires to beat game twice and memorize long boring QTE sequences for 100%
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	Automatic saves in random spots. Not possible to change decisions with game reloading.

🎮 Controls

Stiff and bad. We walk one way, camera decides to shift view and instead of walking up we walk down. Because pressing "W" was pointing up before and with camera shift it points down. Perfect. Characters are responsive like wood log and it takes them a while before they change walk direction, even when they walk slowly. There is never fixed bug where game expects controller sticks to move so far it's already "outside" of the stick range to move in any direction. It requires manual edit of controller dead zones in software.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - For game that old graphic is good. But no wonder, it's main game focus as it's like interactive movie
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Voice acting is really good. But environmental sounds are average
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - I sadly did not experience "shouting Shaun" bug. But game that has controller as base controls should not have problem with dead zone range

I’ve beaten Mutant: Year Zero but it was this week. So it will count for March update. Story may not be amazing but combat and voice acting is really good.
Started Vampyr and looks promising. I like to walk around and uncover people secrets. Didn’t know anything about this game and thought it’s some killing simulator. Looks better than that.

I saw first reviews of Elex II and oh boy. The same thing as in previous game. I wonder if they want to keep using the same stiff animations and combat for next 10 years. I know they are good at world building, fractions, monster design and challenge pacing but don’t think it’s enough when other parts of the game drags it down. Graphic can be upgraded with community patches, core game mechanics can’t.

Hope that you’re all save, especially if you’re from Ukraine or know someone who’s there. Thankfully I don’t have family there but there are some online friends that live there. We already have nearly 1mln immigrants in Poland… and they don’t have where to go back as Russia is mowing their houses, schools and work places to the ground. It will take them ages to rebuild infrastructure there.

January 2022 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2021

Trine 4: Melody Of Mystery (Q4 2020) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐

Beaten after: 1 month

Puzzle, Co-Op
6 hours | No achievements

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- closer to fairy tale atmosphere than the base game
- combat is less annoying
- DLC is nearly half size of the base game

The bad
- puzzles are still really easy
- there is still no use for this rubber bouncy ball?

Conclusion:
It was nice to go back to "proper" Trine game. I really do hope they will keep 2D fairy tale style in their next game. Not this confusing half-baked 2.5D from Trine 3.

---

Story:

DLC takes place after events from the base game. We may save the prince but like all teens he again gets into trouble. All his sleep under sleep curse and only our heroes can help them! Plot is not deep or with surprises but still nicely fit into base game theme and events.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	No achievements! And I wanted to hunt for those bottles for 100% :sadness:
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	Game saves on map transition and we're never punished for "dying"

🌍 Map	It's again kind of awkward to invite player to game. It's not possible to make lobby and invite from the over-world map, it needs to be done in-game, which means they miss on the cut scenes...
🎮 Controls	Fluid and responsive. No complains. Only weird quirk is that wizard conjures objects not where we move mouse but above his head. It was the same in the base game so not really a fault of DLC.
🏹 Weapons	Same as in the base game. Wizard is quite useless in combat. Thief can shot normal, fire or ice arrows. And knight have sword + shield that can be upgraded with electricity later on.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Same as in base game and in the series. Wizard makes boxes or planks to help solve puzzles, thief shot arrows to activate buttons, and knight can reflect bullets, glide on shield or stomp to give velocity to other objects. Only thing that is annoying is that thief "dash" is in fact roll that leaves trace of toxic spikes. They don't deal much damage and it makes dash useless to navigate the map. In this area fat knight is more agile than slim thief :hehe:
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies are quite dumb but it was never combat focused game. No bosses.
🥊 Combat	Combat is easier than in the base game which is a good thing. Combat area is clearly visible and enemies have somewhat predictable movie set. Only problem is that when there are a lot of enemies it's easy to lose track where our character is due to all the smoke and particle effects.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - gorgeous. More games like this please!
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - voice acting is good, background music adds a lot of the fairy tale feeling
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - didn't encourage any (that would not be beneficial to the player and make you laugh how weirdly puzzle was solved ;D)

Activated: 11/2021

Steamworld Dig 2 (Q3 2017) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Action
10,9 hours | 23 of 34 (68.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Fluid controls
- Mining is required to upgrade gear but it never feels grindy

The bad
- At the beginning it's hard to navigate underground if we make tunnels in wrong spots by mistake
- Plot is kind of meh

Conclusion:
I did enjoy it. I played previous game so long ago though that I did not understand many of the references to the previous game. But it's nice mix of action, light platforming and mining / resource collection. Not hard or stressful.

---

Story:

Previous game ended when we killed some robot. In this game we control side kick from the first game. She's looking for Rusty, guy that get lost after events from the original game. World is shaken by earthquakes and only we can find their source and save everyone. Game has rather easy to predict plot twist.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	No save system. When we die we return to the city and lose some of our resources. There are not checkpoints on the maps.

🌍 Map	No minimap. Menu map is nice and detailed, easy to navigate.
🎮 Controls	Just like in Trine 4. Nice and fluid. I did have some problem with wall jumping but mostly because I was used to different control scheme. So way wall jump works in this game feels bit counterproductive. But there are special moves that make it easier to move around. I never bothered to try and learn them, like ability to do higher jump up by carefully positioning ourselves under a platform and use grapple hook.
📇 Inventory	No real inventory. We have few slots where we keep resources that are mined. They file up quite fast so we need to upgrade slots in the base.
🏹 Weapons	Main weapon is a pick axe. Plus water gun that is normally used to demolish tiles far away from us. Game is not really combat focused so weapons are more like retrofitted mining equipment that can deal some damage.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	At the beginning we can jump and wall jump. There are upgrade stations scattered around the map where we can unlock new weapons that allow to destroy new tile type, use jet pack, sticky bombs etc. There is simple upgrade tree where we buy upgrades directly. Things like health, armor, more mineral slots, faster digging or more water capacity.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	No companions. And enemies are quite dumb. They have limited number of moves and mostly depend on fact that we're not a combat robot. So we're quite squeamish. But it's not combat game like Hollow Knight. So it is well balanced. Enemies could not have any more fancy moves when game is not focused on combat at all.
🥊 Combat	It's really straightforward. Water that powers up water gun is too scarce to use it often. Main weapon is a pix axe used normally for mining. Combat basically boils down to approaching enemies and hitting them with axe before they can reiterate. There is one enemy type that can teleport around the map and this one requires to be chased. But otherwise it's literally wait for enemy to be turned around and hit it when it can't see us.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - nice and detailed. Fits nicely into the style
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - there is no voice acting. And sounds are really basic
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any

Activated: 12/2021

We Were Here Too (Q1 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Escape Room
3,8 hours | 20 of 20 (100.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- There is good progress in puzzle complexity and graphic between 1st and 2nd game in the series

The bad
- Some puzzles can randomly bug out and we don't know if we're missing something or room just bugged

Conclusion:
I didn't know "Escape Room" category exist in games. But it may quickly get to be my favorite genre if I find more good quality games. This game is not bad. But it's also not great. I did enjoy it thought and I am surprised how much they improved game concept in just a year between game release. I do have We Were Here Together and I will surely play it when I have some time. Game can be bit confusing so not best for kids. But adults that like to play together could surely try it.

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Story:

We're stuck in a castle and need to run away. The end. There is background that tells tale of a king that had a wife and kids. Won't say anything else as it's kind of spoilerish.

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Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Easy but require to beat game twice. Once as observer and once as explorer.
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	Automatic save at the start of each room. Game is never really punishing for failing and dying.

🎮 Controls	They are better than in the first game. Feel more fluid and responsive. We can walk around, jump and interact with objects.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Companion AI depends on who you play with. So choose wisely :blobevil:

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - It is better than in previous game but nothing extraordinary
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - basic environmental sounds. Voice acting is all right
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - There are some random bugs where it's not possible to interact with object or completing sequence doesn't trigger progress into next part of the puzzle. Restarting game solves the issue

Activated: 12/2021

Death'S Door (Q3 2021) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Action, Metroidvania
12 hours | 13 of 24 (54.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- Interesting setting
- Plot that is not obvious from the start
- Nice visual style

The bad
- Metroidvania game without map. I wasted so much time running in circles...
- True ending hidden behind grind
- Weapons don't feel that different especially between swords and hammer
- Enemies keep re-spawning and it doesn't feel like we kill them much faster with progress we make

Conclusion:
I'm kind of disappointed in this one. Lack of map made it confusing. Combat is really basic. And not much in terms of puzzles. Story was also forgettable.

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Story:

Death is gone and it's up to smol crows to take souls of the dead on the other side. They are immortal normally but can age during their missions. On our first assignment soul we're after is stolen, and without it crow can't end the contract. Without fulfilling the contract crow will keep getting older and eventually die. So our task is to find stolen soul and harvest it. There is some backstory how death was "killed", how crows were created etc. It is cute story but I did not find it particularly interesting.

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Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Quite grindy as they require finding all collectibles in game where it's not marked on a map where we're missing something.
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	One autosave near the door leading to hub location. They aren't often so sometimes it's required to re-do longer part of the map few times if there is problematic point where we die.

🌍 Map	No map. Or minimap. This is stupid. I had to use maps online to be able to progress. Anyone with bad orientation will struggle in this game.
🎮 Controls	Responsive and fluid. Game is isometric and we can run around and climb. Not possible to jump. I found using bow (or magic / missiles) in general bit awkward with controller (have to press one button to aim and second to fire) and didn't use it much.
📇 Inventory	No inventory. Only thing we can change are the weapons but there is only 5 of them. Nothing is customizable.
🏹 Weapons	Kind of disappointing. We have 5 melee weapons (basic sword, daggers, hammer, bigger sword and fancy sword) + arrows, fire ball and bomb. Ranged weapons have low shot count (which is recharged when we attack enemies with a melee). And melee weapons don't really differ much. Sure, daggers will attack faster than hammer but it takes the same amount of hits to break a box with dagger or hammer (always two). Hammer attack animation is so slow we won't be able to hit enemy more than once in the enemy vulnerability window. While we can attack them 2 - 3 times with daggers and still have time to dodge. I just went with daggers as it's easier to dodge with them.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	No real abilities. We can use collected souls to buy multipliers to boost dodge speed or attack power but boosts are not big. So it doesn't feel like it's worth to grind for an update. As it's metroidvania parts of the map are locked behind unlockable ability - hook shot, flame arrows, bomb etc. Progression has good pace but as maps are small there aren't many places where they can branch and we'd need to use new ability.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies are dumb. They will come to us in straight line and attack. They also feel copy pasted. No interesting attacks or move sequences. Bosses are somewhat better but there are only 4 of them in the game. No companions.
🥊 Combat	Under-deliver? Simple "wait for enemy to end attack, run towards, hit once or twice, repeat". No combos or special abilities that matter. I kind of expected combat with more tactical approach. Parrying enemy attacks to make opening, mix attacks to have combos or something. But it's simple button press with dodging. Plus dodge window is tiny.

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Nice and detailed. Didn't see any blurry textures or graphical problems
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - There is no voice over. And music is kind of basic
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't encourage anything worth mentioning

Heavy Rain was first game from Quantic I played, and now I regret I grabbed Beyond: Two Souls on the last sale. Didn’t really like this QTE simulator… let’s hope that Beyond will have less stiff controls and better facial animations, as it’s a newer game.

I had problems to play in co-op games since I moved. I thought it’s problem with Wi-Fi connection between my MOBO and router, or some software on my PC. But nope, it’s actually either shitty Virgin Mobile broadband router or connection in general. I get random 2 - 3s timeouts when I keep console pinging any IP. I don’t really see it when using the internet but it’s impossible to play online. Tethering internet when I play online from my phone solves the issue…

Also because there was some wind in UK (didn’t really notice where I worked or at home) they cancelled all trains in London. Everything. Both long distance and local trains were down. I mean sure, suspend them when wind was strongest between 11am and 2pm. But cancelling everything, when metro works normally? Like if they can’t cancel connections if there is something wrong on specific track after the storm. Especially that they run normal connections in the morning and there was no info that trains may be cancelled in the afternoon. So much problem to go back home yesterday…

Amazing UK and cancelled trains when there are leaves on the track in all it’s glory!

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https://icons8.com/icons