September 2021 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 06/2021

Tell Me Why (Q3 2020) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 3 months

Adventure
11,5h hours | 27 of 30 (90.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- nice story
- good pacing, nothing feels rushed out of the door
- no "in the previous episode" time wasters

The bad
- not possible to run and characters walk too slowly
- aiming at objects to interact with them is wonky
- not possible to skip dialogues or cut scenes
- love story that is thrown at us in really awkward way

Conclusion:
I had problem to rate this game. It has technical issues or just bad gameplay design that make you roll your eyes when you play. But story is nice and engaging. So I would say it's worth play even when gameplay layer is bit stiff.

---

Story:

Tyler is coming back to home town to meet with his sister Alyson to prepare their old house to be sold. When they were kids their mom tried to kill them and after that they were separated. Alyson stayed in the city with police officer as her guard and Tyler was sent to another city to school with boarding house. Tyler thinks that mother wanted to kill him due to him being transgender but truth is way more complicated than that. Game is supposedly to be focused on issues of transgender kids but I was mostly interested in twins mum story. I didn't find Tyler to be particularly likable. And I was rolling my eyes when some dude tried to hit on me, albeit me seeing and talking to him for the first time ever.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Easy to unlock, it's possible to replay chapters to grab collectibles
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	One automatic checkpoint but it's possible to re-visit chapters via chapter selection

🎮 Controls	Game switches between controlling Tyler and Alyson. Characters can walk only, there is no running, jumping, climbing etc. While walking controls are fine - aiming on object is not. Something may be right in front of us but we need to walk back and fort for game to target object we want to interact with. It is really frustrating.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Tyler and Alyson share bond that allows them to communicate telepathically, and to see memories of the past. Telepathy is used only in few dialogues. But sensing memories is used way more often. Just like in real life there are things that can trigger memories - song, view, smell etc. When memory is nearby image will start to distort a bit. Pressing space allows to look for source of the distortion, and then focusing on memory allows to see ghostly images of people from the past. Which is used to tell story of twins and their mum. There are moments when twins remember slightly different versions of the past and it's up to us to decide which one is correct.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	It's walking sim so there are no enemies. But we are pretty much always accompanied by our twin. And their AI is not best. They will just walk on pre-defined paths and then, sometimes awkwardly, take some spot by the wall to stay there. Animations in those moments can be awkward and it looks like a robot taking a position to lean on the wall. It's not possible to interact with twin unless it's in some scripted spots to talk.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Graphic is all right but not amazing
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Voice acting is good. But music is forgettable
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - I don't know if problem with aiming at objects is a bug or just bad design. But I did not see any other bugs

Activated: 10/2013

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken [Co-op] (Q4 2012) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: Re-visit

Action
3h hours | 23 of 29 (79.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- short

The bad
- laggy due to some server / net issues
- no story
- really repetitive

Conclusion:
This time I played game in co-op. And it was not good experience. SP is way better. Game was laggy, repetitive and extremely average. Not worth getting just for co-op.

---

Story:

General daughter is kidnapped and we're sent to rescue here. Sadly she's extremely dumb and each time we reach her she runs away without explanation. Story is literally non-existent.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Easy to get
📊 Performance	Game was lagging badly for me	💾 Save system	One automatic save at the map transition

🌍 Map	No map.
🎮 Controls	They felt hardly responsive due to the lag. We can walk and jump.
🏹 Weapons	Each character have one weapon. Assault rifle, minigun, shotgun etc. For some reason shotgun was more accurate than assault rifle on long distance which is ridiculous. So game is not balanced at all.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	There are no abilities.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies are average. They don't do anything well or bad. Just appear on the map and try to shot us.
🥊 Combat	Repetitive and unteresting. Literally just "shot this bullet sponge enemy till they poof and die".

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Average. It is good enough to know what is on the screen but it's blurry and not really detailed
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Mostly just shooting sounds and puffing when enemy dies. Characters speak in sims-like language
Bugs - ⭐️☆☆ - It was laggy and hard to control at times because of it

Activated: 08/2021

Void Bastards (Q2 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Rogue-like
2h hours | 0 of 24 (0.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- interesting art style
- quite a lot to discover
- good variety in enemies

The bad
- ammunition is scarce and doesn't regenerate between missions which made me drop this game
- enemies hit hard and there is no valid approach with melee

Conclusion:
It looked like nice game but it's not for me. I was never fan of short runs where you try to unlock 1 or 2 upgrades before something kills you. I know it's possible to unlock upgrades that allow to find more ammo but I could not be bothered to play that long. Ship and gear upgrades carry over to the next run but all inventory is lost. There are quite OP enemies early on that can't be killed with current gear so game focus on flying around when avoiding them. Each jump consumes fuel and character needs to eat to stay alive, so game is about planning a route between easier ships to assault them and scavenge for fuel, food and materials. At least at the beginning.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I really like this comic art style with enemies looking a bit like 2D sprites made from paper
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - There are not many sounds in game. Even "sound" of walking enemies is shown as comic text on the screen
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Didn't encourage any but also didn't play game for long

I started to play Jurassic World Evolution but lost interest after 1h. It does feel like Jurassic World game I played 20 years ago. I think it was Operation Genesis. I remember the bit I liked most was to go on the chopper and shot dinosaurs with tranquilizer darts from the distance. I was not huge fan of actually building the park. Just using chopper and extracting DNA.

I played TES:Online long time ago when it was available as free weekend and liked it. But never really went back to it. I get key now and it feels like single player game in MMO world. Players don’t interact much. Like say in SW:TOR. There is no voting or making decisions. Even when in group each player see their individual story. I thought it’s more co-operative. Which is both good and bad. I disliked it when I was outvoted in TOR but it can lead to situations where each person in group is on different part of the same quest.

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August 2021 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 06/2021

Control Ultimate Edition (Q3 2020) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐

Beaten after: 2 months

Action
22,5h hours | Not reported by Epic

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good graphic
- really nice environmental destruction
- nice balance between exploration and shooting
- nerdy jokes :blobevil:
- interesting setting

The bad
- textures can takes ages to load on boards or posters but not general environment
- enemies have average AI
- fact that nothing is really anchored to the floor makes even big object have funky physic when we're just walking next to them. Toilet that gets ripped out just because we walked into it? No problem!

Conclusion:
I really did enjoy it. It's not a masterpiece but it is a solid mix of combat and exploration that builds story from bits of audio logs and notes scattered around.

---

Story:

We start by entering the building of national agency in search of our missing brother. Quite fast we're "promoted" to be director of said office, and need to fight hordes of "daemons" that possessed big chunk of bureau staff. There are some staff that did not turn thanks to a resonance devices they carry. Our goal in the game is to find our brother, but also to clean the bureau from the force that possessed people - the hiss. Our job is not easy as building we're in was used to study paranormal activities and objects. PC floppy that has telekinetic powers, anchor that is spitting piles of clocks or fridge that kills people, if someone is not staring on it without blinking 24/7.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Not possible to check
📊 Performance	Wors very well. No frame drops or stuttering.	💾 Save system	One automatic save. But it's frequent enough to not make game annoying. Game is mostly linear with no choices so there is no need to reload previous save.

🌍 Map	Map can be confusing as they tried to show 3D structure as a plain map. There are no "map layers" we can change in order to see different floors in a multi-layer location. Everything is smashed on one layer which means we can randomly end in a dead end instead of staircase etc.
🎮 Controls	Controls are fluid and responsive. We can run, evade, jump, hover, shot and throw object at enemies.
📇 Inventory	Very basic. Game has 2 weapon slots and 5 weapons in total, so we need to decide which one we want to use. Upgrades in inventory can be easily sorted by name, type or rarity which makes it easy to find upgrade for a weapon. There is a limit to how much we can carry which requires us to destroy junk upgrades quite often.
🏹 Weapons	Our weapon is one of the paranormal objects belonging to the agency. Shapeshifting gun that can act as handgun, mini gun, sniper, shotgun and rocket launcher. At first only handgun is available and other forms are unlocked along the way. I was using sniper and handgun. Variety is not huge but each weapon operates bit differently and have their own specific upgrades. Weapon don't have ammo and instead operates on cool down, like guns in first Mass Effect.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	We start as normal human and unlock paranormal abilities along the way. Telekinetic, levitation, shield, mind control. Levitation helps reach higher spaces and some side objectives, mind control is good to use enemies as target shields to divert fire away from us. I never used shield apart from tutorial. Telekinetic throws are used in combat to throw pieces of concrete and environment to damage enemies. Pretty much nothing in this game is attached to the floor so we can even use toilet to attack enemies.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	There are no companions. And enemy AI has average enemy. Game relies on throwing piles of enemies on us, instead having them attack in smart way. They will not run around corner, they can't throw grenades, they will sometimes aim on the ground. The only thing they can do is try to position themselves towards us and take a shot. When we use mind control it's obvious they take a sec to re-configure their target priorities, as they will stare on us and then do sharp turn and start to walk in straight line to nearest enemy. They don't take cover effectively.
🥊 Combat	Combat is effective, flashy and dynamic. We need to constantly switch between using weapon and telekinetic throws as weapon ammo is pitiful and cool down is long. Enemies are bit on the dumb site and game "compensate" for it by making us really weak. At first we can die from taking few shots. We also need to be on the move constantly as enemies can spawn behind us. They are summoned from thin air by hiss so no place on the level during the fight is save. Not to mention invisible enemies that kill us in two hits.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Graphic is really nice and I don't understand why game has so much problem to load paintings on the wall and content of the white boards. All other textures load properly
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Voice acting is good, same as combat noises. Music is forgettable
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't encourage any

Activated: 06/2021

Frostpunk (Q2 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐

Beaten after: 2 months

RTS, City Builder
16,5h hours | Not reported by Epic

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- well balanced
- two different approaches in story to take
- nice setting
- works well on really old PCs

The bad
- feels like one trick pony - I lost interest after first scenario is beaten as everything is scripted and predictable
- ending could show more consequences of our actions

Conclusion:
Well made RTS game with a bit of Papers Please vibe. Game goal is to manage colony in the middle of the arctic, by having to make tough decisions of how to keep people alive. Sadly it looks like there is only one proper way to develop the technology, as some ways to extract resources are noticeably more efficient than others.

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Story:

Catastrophic event turned earth into big chunk of ice. Some survivors escape to the north in search of coal-fueled generators, which can keep surroundings warmer than -50C. Looks simple but I don't understand why would they build something like that in place that is already coldest place on Earth, and why use fossil fuels. After basic infrastructure is in place (houses, health service, harvesting materials) it's time to send people away to scout new areas in search for survivors, materials and bits of lore.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Not visible on Epic
📊 Performance	Really nice, worked well on 2 core Athlon CPU :D	💾 Save system	Unlimited number of manual slots + auto save

Game has nice system where we decide if we want to have "pacifist" or "pragmatic" approach (Papers Please vibe). We can decide to bury bodies to help in grief or allow to take organs from them to boost doctors performance. Send kids to do light work or keep them in shelter. Decisions are made by signing up laws (one per 18 in-game hours). It takes around 30 in-game days to complete basic scenario. Apart from book of laws game gives choice if we want to keep peace in a spiritual or authoritarian way. Which basically boils down into creation of religious state or another Nazi Germany. I always went with the order and avoided more drastic laws, as I think religion brainwash is even worse.

🌍 Map	Overworld map is nice and detailed. It's easy to find new locations, know how long it will take to reach some place etc.
🎮 Controls	Mostly with mouse. In spots with a lot of buildings it's easy to click on one (and open up context menu) instead of move camera around.
🕵️‍♀️ Upgrades	There is moderately complex technology tree where we use coal / wood / metal etc. to upgrade steam generator, resource gathering, housing, doctors, exploration etc. Upgrades are crucial as with time weather gets colder and colder and it's not possible to keep people alive without better infrastructure.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	People in the town have decent AI. They don't get stuck in objects, find their way to the workplace easily and have simple need system that works well and its not overly complicated. They need to be kept warm and fed. If they are cold (at workplace or home) they will get sick and need to see doctor. If they are unhappy distress will rise, and if it's not lowered then people will take over the power. There is also hope which shows how optimistic people are.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Nice and detailed, even on low settings
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - There is not much music, it's mostly ambient sounds of snow, blizzards, working machines etc. There is no voice acting
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any

Activated: 06/2021

The Journey Down: Chapter Three (Q3 2017) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Point & Click
3,7h hours | No achievements

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- story is explained and there are no loose ends

The bad
- game is sub par to previous in the series
- backgrounds are blurry
- animations are of average quality
- whole game feels rushed
- puzzles are really easy
- some graphical issues

Conclusion:
This is end of this trilogy, and it's not a good game. Bare bone puzzles, bad animations and not really interesting ending. Maybe play if you want to know end of the story but surely don't play as only game in this series.

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Story:

We crash in the Underworld and need to stop evil power company from destroying the world. There is not much more to it. We learn fate of main protagonists dad and background for power company actions.

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Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	N/A
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	One automatic save

There is really not much to say about this game, as it's so bare bone, short and simple. Honestly it was waste of 4h to spend on it.

🎮 Controls	Game is controlled with a mouse like all Point&Click games. Only problem is that characters don't really run fast when you double click somewhere and screen skipping by double clicking on the edge is not really fast.
📇 Inventory	Just a menu at the bottom of screen that shows object we hold. It's possible to combine objects but not really to dismantle them to extract specific parts.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	There are no enemies. And companions just stand in the distance without doing anything.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️☆☆ - Blurry and not detailed. Animations are weird. Face animations even worse
Music - ⭐️☆☆ - Just few basic sounds played on repeat
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - There are some graphical glitches but nothing game breaking

Activated: 06/2021

The Surge (Q2 2017) ⭐️☆☆☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Action
1h hours | 0 of 67 (0.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- visuals?

The bad
- awful optimization that made it unplayable

Conclusion:
Awful stuttering on low/medium settings. It would require more digging into modders-discovered optimizations than it's worth due to time limit of subscription I had. I literally couldn't get past tutorial due to how stuttery and lagging it was. "Spend more time to fix it!" is not an excuse for devs to release game in this state and keep selling without fixing it.

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Graphic is nice and detailed
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - ???
Bugs - ☆☆☆ - Sorry, but this game was unplayable on R5 3600 and RX 5600. And many people have worse PCs than this. First game that I tried that didn't want to even work with stable frame rate at low graphic settings

Activated: 06/2021

Hypnospace Outlaw (Q1 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Point & Click
?h hours | 0 of 14 (0.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good reproduction of the internet from 90s
- pizza song

The bad
- there is no proper tutorial and I had to use guides to see what I need to do next

Conclusion:
I expected this to be a bit like Orwell, but due to the setting it's not. Looks like there is some "entity vs system" going on but I didn't get past beginning of the game. But it does look interesting. Only that not for me. Game shows flashy surprise images which may be bad for people with epilepsy. Or just like me who is startled easily. We are tasked with moderating Hypnospace - it's like VR game where people can make their own websites, business etc. Gave me a feeling of teens strapped for whole days to VR, living their "better" lives in a virtual world. But monopoly don't like competition so we, as Hypnospace mods, need to look for people that use "unauthorized payment methods", "misuse intellectual properties", "harass others" etc. Obviously it's only harassment if corporation board decides so. Just like it was not a problem to have hate raids on Twitch until it started to be more public.

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - It's ugly. But again - fitting to the 90s internet
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Bare bone but I guess fitting to the era?
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Didn't see any

It’s boggling my mind how entitled people are here. Feels like we have entirely different work culture in Poland.

✔ Arguing that they came to work before 8pm, started to actually work at 8:20pm, but their overtime should count from 8pm
✔ Being late each 2nd / 3rd day and think that it’s all right
✔ Shouting on Supervisors / Production Managers when they pointed out error, and walk away with no consequences. Even have audacity to apply for Team Leader position
✔ Team Leader that is Union Representative and “Advice” their pals what to say to avoid consequences of their bad work

I mean… I knew public sector is not amazing but what I see here in Health Sector in UK is ridiculous. How can you have someone being late few times per week, not following breaks, doing 50% of average norm, complaining on everyone (while not following instructions on their own)? And this kind of parasites are defended by unions. It’s literally not possible to throw someone like that out. And they wonder why NHS is in such awful shape.

I’m against working conditions like in Amazon, so having unions that can oppose it is good thing. But NHS Unions are some freak-show degenerate I can’t even start to think about it without getting annoyed D:

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July 2021 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 06/2021

Spiritfarer (Q3 2020) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Exploration
26h hours | 26 of 39 (67.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- can be relaxing

The bad
- graphics is pixelized on close up camera shots
- too much of game is filled with doing nothing and waiting
- not possible to remove trees from orchard or kick sheep from the deck
- you don't grow potatoes from seeds...
- action animations are too long
- sometimes Stella runs faster than the camera, and she's off screen
- really repetitive gameplay
- stories of souls are really shallow and feels rushed towards the end
- even when spirit story is interesting it's extremely watered down by constant need to go-to-this-island-to-mine-ore, go-to-another-island-to-buy-seeds, trace-back-to-this-island-to-cut-down-some-tree. Huge meh

Conclusion:
If you like farming sims akin to Stardew Valley this will be up your alley. If you don't want repetitive gameplay and game filled with mostly nothing but upgrading your boat - stay away. Only that Stardew Valley is IMO way better game.

---

Story:

We are the Spiritfarer tasked with helping spirits to go on the other side. Problem is their stories are uninteresting and too short to get emotionally invested, not to mention later on they feel extremely rushed and empty. Like "story" where we literally only go to 3 places and beat well known mini-game with a high score. There is "plot twist" at the end which is predictable and lame. Nothing that would not be done in games 10x already. I think this game would be way better if they would focus on few spirits and their personalities, than on dozen snippets. There are some side quests with non-boat NPCs that are bit charming, but boils down to be simple fetch quests.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Some are grindy
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	Check points at the start of each day and during exploration

🌍 Map	There is navigation map on the ship that allows us to go between locations. It is easy to use and well detailed, lists all necessary details about locations. The only problem is it takes too long to start the map and then this delay between picking location and game actually allowing us to walk freely on the ship. It may be 1 - 2s for start / stop use the map but when game is about moving around - it makes it annoying. There is no minimap on the islands which is fine but it's annoying when we move around caves to mine for resources.
🎮 Controls	Standard platforming mix. Jump / double jump / dash / glide. There is ability to zip line on metal lines. There is no problem with collision and jumping parts are well designed. Only that dash ability sends us not straight forward but on the arch like cannonball. Which requires some getting used to.
📇 Inventory	Like in many other games - looks cute but screen is too small. With so many items inside it takes too long to scroll up and down to look for item we need. And this game is dream of OCD collectors. Fish, fruits, vegetables, meat, ores, timber, random junk etc. Cook book is way too long with no way to filter anything (by ingredients for example, even when it feels like basic feature to have in such long list).
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	There are no abilities per se in this game. But apart from moving around we can: 1) fishing 2) talk to spirits and NPCs 3) farm. Which is not a lot. Especially fishing and farming is extremely tedious as we don't unlock anything that would help us. No rod that would cut time of fishing, no watering stations to cut down on running around manually watering plants, no automation of crafting which forces us to repeat the same boring extra simple mini game over and over again. It's not possible to skip all this crafting as it's required to progress the story. Spirits will not leave the boat unless we max out their houses, as it triggers story events.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	No enemies. We have a cat (it can be playable character in co-op) but in SP it's dumb. Have problem with path finding (devs made a workaround of this so when cat gets stuck somewhere it "puffs up" like puff fish and fly back towards us...). But it is cute kitty that plays with yarn so kids would like it. I didn't as it doesn't bring anything to the game.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - It is well made but textures are of bad quality when camera zooms in
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - There is no voice acting, ghosts have only 2 or 3 sims-like lines that they repeat. Music is relaxing but forgettable
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - The only one I saw was when camera can't catch up with how fast we are moving

That’s late update :sweatsmile: But mostly because I was away for 2 weeks visiting my parents.

I played Warcraft III while being there and didn’t like it. Mostly because of unit awful path finding. My PC there has AMD Athlon CPU so running any game on it now is a miracle. That’s why I was impressed how well Frostpunk work on it - only when city is fully built game started to lag behind. But I could not make Unravel 2 work on it, must be some issue with CPU and media codecs.

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I bought only one game :hehe: I had some more in basket but I forgot to finalize it… and then sale was over.
XboX game pass will expire in September so I will focus on games from it for start. Xbox has a lot of Yakuza games but they are such huge time sink I don’t think I even want to start those…

• Unravel Two
  

  Released: 06.2018

  HLTB: 7 h
• Tell Me Why
  

  Released: 08.2020

  HLTB: 11 h

• Spiritfarer
  

  Released: 08.2020

  HLTB: 24h
• The Surge 2
  

  Released: 09.2019

  HLTB: 26h
• BATTLETECH
  

  Released: 04.2018

  HLTB: 52h
• Hypnospace Outlaw
  

  Released: 03.2019

  HLTB: 6h
• Sea of Solitude
  

  Released: 07.2019

  HLTB: 3h

• Control
  

  Released: 08.2020

  HLTB: 12-18h
• Frostpunk
  

  Released: 04.2018

  HLTB: 10-20h
• Rage 2
  

  Released: 05.2019

  HLTB: 10-18h

June 2021 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 06/2021

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order™ (Q4 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐

Beaten after: 1 month

Action
20,5h hours | 0 of 39 (0.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- really good mix of parkour and combat
- all cosmetics awarded via unlocks, not microtranzactions
- steady and rewarding progression
- killing storm troopers with their own blaster shots or by throwing them off the edge is always satisfying
- combat doesn't focus on QTE

The bad
- possible to die in narrow spaces combat due to camera movement
- enemies have clear field of movement and will not chase outside of the boundary
- parrying sometimes feel bit de-synchronized
- not really interesting story

Conclusion:
This game is bit like Force Unleashed. Action Jedi game with parkour, melee combat and really easy puzzles. Force Unleashed was like interactive movie. This one is more action oriented with free roam and light metroidvania elements. Star Wars franchise was in a limbo for so many years and it's really refreshing to see game that is actually good. Not some microtranzaction rigged massive multiplayer junk.

---

Story:

5 years after the purge Jedi padawan Cal is hiding on the planet Bracca scraping ships for the Empire. After short tutorial sequence inquisition founds him and only thanks to help of former Jedi knight Cere Cal manages to escape on a small ship. It is revealed that Cere is looking for holocron with names of force sensitive children, in an attempt to rebuild the Jedi order. Along the way we're helping wookies fight with the empire, defeat derailed Jedi master who turned to dark side on some desolate planet etc. Story is not amazing or deep but it is well written.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Not being recorder in EA Desktop or XboX game app...
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	Game saves only in meditation points, no manual or automatic saves. Similar to Dark Souls.

🌍 Map	Map is easy to read and use. But at the beginning looks over-complicated.
🎮 Controls	Fluid and responsive. Only problem was with dodges that felt bit stingy in timing. But I played on hard and it shrinks the window to perform an attack dodge. Thankfully game does not have many QTEs. Game was made by Respawn and controls does feel like playing Titanfall parkour sequences. Only that here they could add force-layer of like pulling rope towards Cal mid-jump, slowing down platforms to allow proper jump timing etc. All in all it's really rewarding.
📇 Inventory	No real inventory. We can change skins from the menu and customize lightsaber look on the work station.
🏹 Weapons	Powers and lightsabers. Both can be upgraded with skill points. Yes, it's not possible to swap lightsaber parts like in RPG, we can only change it's appearance. It's the skill tree that unlocks more damage to the lightsaber. We start with single handed lightsaber that is upgraded to dual lightsaber and then to two single lightsabers (hilt can be separated into two). Single blade is best for stronger opponents, dual for swarms of enemies and two singles are used as special finishing move.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Abilities are unlocked along the way. Some are used to reach certain areas (double jump, wall run, slicing doors etc.), and others are focused on combat (force throw, pull, slow time, lightsaber throw etc.). Force-based abilities are unlocked in flashback sequences where Cal remembers his training. Some exploration abilities are unlocked in the work stations where BD droid is upgraded with hacking / overcharging locks, hacking drones etc. No ability seems out of place and they all blend nicely into making it feel like we play Jedi knight.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Our main companion is BD - small droid that sits on our back and can help in various ways - it is a source of healing items, help traverse the environment, scan walls and enemies to get more lore information. But it's not combat help. The only thing it can do is hack specific drones after we already deplete most of their health. It is funny to hack 1 out of 2 robots on the corridor and observe how they smash each other from the distance. All BD actions are context oriented - when we're near location with action it will jump from our back and run towards area of interest, waiting for our prompt. Enemy AI is good as long as they are inside their "designated" map area (and if they are not storm troopers, storm troopers are purposely made as dumb as possible). They circulate between attacks, try to flank us. But if we manage to lure enemies outside of their boundary - they will stand IDLE. I had enemies that dropped by mistake on a floor outside their designated area just standing there, doing absolutely nothing, waiting to be killed.
🥊 Combat	Nice and fluid. Force allows to throw storm troopers from the edge, pull in enemies for finishing move with lightsaber, temporarily slowing down their movement, redirecting rockets and grenades back at enemy that threw them. It does make is feel like we're a Jedi :D Each enemy has bit different attack pattern that need to be memorized. Combat is fast and flashy, with sometimes a lot of things happening at the same time. Cal uses stamina to parry and it's depleted quite fast so it's not a game where we can stay on place and act like live shield. Force also has bar that depletes with use. Both health and force level can be upgraded by finding orbs hidden around levels. But at first we die from few hits and can't use force more than one time per combat. Force doesn't auto regenerate, it's recovered when we attack enemies with normal lightsaber attacks.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Really nice and detailed. First game in a long time where I did not see blurry textures when looking on stuff from up close!
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Good'ol Start Wars theme. Music is climatic and fitting to changing scenery and to what is happening on the screen
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't encourage anything more serious than enemies getting brain dead after leaving their area by mistake

Activated: 06/2021

Guacamelee! 2 (Q3 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐

Beaten after: 1 month

Action Metroidvania
10,5h hours | 26 of 49 (53.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- nice combat / metroidvania mix
- steady pace of getting new upgrades
- full co-op

The bad
- chicken sequences can be bit lengthy

Conclusion:
Really nice and responsive platformer. Combat is fluid, graphic is top-notch, enemies are well designed. Like Hollow Knight lite - no hard platforming or boss fights. Game is also more exploration focused than combat oriented.

---

Story:

Crazy luchador wants to get godlike-powerful, even when it means breaking the timeline and merging all realities into one! Our job is to stop him. Nothing deep.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	Unlockable skins and characters.	🏆 Achievements	Half are grindy.
📊 Performance	No issues.	💾 Save system	Automatic checkpoint at the start of each screen transition.

🌍 Map	Map is simple but adequate. Clearly marks missed collectibles, paths that we did not take and where we should go next. There is also simple fast travel system when we need to cover longer distance.
🎮 Controls	Fluid and responsive. Works well with both keyboard and controller.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	All are unlocked along game progression. Double jump, wall run, uppercut, headbutt, body slam, fist-dash area ll used to traverse the terrain. Last four are also special moves used during the combat.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemy are well scripted. Not a masterpiece but they pose decent challenge. There is option to play in local-cop but there is no extra player controlled by game when we play in SP.
🥊 Combat	Combat is quite simple. Special moves uses stamina but later in the game there is enough of it to spam them all the time. Some enemies have shields that can be broken up with specific attack - red with uppercut, green with body slam etc. But it's clearly visible as they have the same color as corresponding abilities.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Very nice hand drawn levels and characters
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Fitting and memorable. There is no voice acting
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any

I have question to you all: Does anyone own 14 / 15’’ 2 in 1 laptop?

I am thinking of grabbing one but I keep wondering if it’s something even I need. I wanted to buy graphic tablet at some point (like Wacom Intuos S / M) to edit some graphics from time to time. Nothing serious, more like scanning old parents / grandparents family photos and blurring tears that happened over the years to re-print later. Doing this with mouse was not ideal. With normal laptop I would still need to grab Wacom that is extra 50 pounds. And I would not be able to draw directly on the screen. Unless laptop does not work well as graphic tablet with GIMP or other free editing software.

But this is only use I can think of. I don’t use tablet, never had one and I think my 6’’ phone is perfectly fine on the go.

I don’t want to buy new one, just after lease stuff. Dell 7506 is like 600 pounds.

Are there any mayor disadvantages of 2 in 1 laptop vs normal laptop on the same price point? Considering they would have similar CPU.

I also started to play Moonlighter and it looks like such busywork…. same as Spiritfarer. I will beat Spiritfarer as it’s less tedious, but I will dump Moonlighter most probably. I tried Celeste but bounced back. Looks like Super Meat Boy.

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May 2021 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 06/2020

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (Q4 2014) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 11 months

FPS Co-Op
26h hours | 31 of 63 (49.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- less going back and forth than in previous games

The bad
- low gravity environment creates collision problems and car driving is even worse than in previous games
- enemies are brainless
- bosses are uninteresting bullet sponges
- Claptrap...
- there is literally nothing new in this game, feels like low effort asset reuse project to get few easy bucks

Conclusion:
The same stuff like in Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2. Only that this one is shorter which is a good thing.

---

Story:

Story shows events between B1 and B2, how Jack took over the Hyperion and stopped giant laser from destroying Pandora moon. Shallow and uninteresting setting.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Bit grindy.
📊 Performance	No issues.	💾 Save system	Automatic check points but game saves quite often. So dying is not a problem.

🌍 Map	Maps are smaller than in previous game but mostly because whole game is smaller. There is working minimap and it's detailed enough to not get lost.
🎮 Controls	Micro-gravity makes controlling cars even worse than in previous games. Walking controls are the same as in previous games except for addition of jet pack that makes jumps longer in low gravity areas. Like usual we can run, jump, crouch. There is no cover system. It's possible to slam the ground in low gravity areas by jumping high and pressing crouch button mid air.
📇 Inventory	The same basic stuff like in other games from the series. Menu made for consoles with limited number of inventory slots and basic stat comparison between gear.
🏹 Weapons	There is one new type of weapon - lasers - in game, and one extra elemental effect - ice. Apart from that it's the same weapons. Only thing is that game is really stingy with loot and it's rare to find something better. Finding something above blue quality is also extremely rare, not to mention I was able to find only one orange weapon in the whole game.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	There are 4 playable classes in base game. I played as Athena with a shield. Which is straightforward enough. Shield blocks all damage for a few seconds so basically acts as shield on top of the shield. Nothing exciting. Shield can also absorb incoming damage and release it when Athena throws it towards the enemy. It's not strong enough to kill even basic mob with full health though. I don't know how other characters are played but one has ability to have auto-aim with weapon boosts, 2nd summons drones that heal / deal damage, and 3rd is Claptrap.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Enemies are dumb. Fact they need to compensate for lower gravity when they jump up and down is not helping.
🥊 Combat	Go to objective area, kill everything, go further. There is no strategy here, enemies are bullet sponges and even bosses are brainless. Even last boss is not a challenge.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - The same as in previous games, it may look good with 1st Borderlands, but after so many games it feels dated and old
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Voice acting is good, music is forgettable, guns sound a bit cheap
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Collision problems that are introduced with low gravity environments

Activated: 12/2020

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Q3 2015) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 5 months

Action Stealth
58h hours | 21 of 42 (50.0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- nice stealth sections
- good variety of weapons

The bad
- shadows are really unnatural and look like few pre-rendered textures are loaded in random order or they "crawl" on the ground with huge leaps
- way too grindy if you want to focus on base development but they ofc sell "time savers"
- upgrading base and weapons take hours of real-time that flows only when game is played
- plot is hard to understand for someone who did not play previous games
- enemies wake up from being incapacitated way too early
- empty and uninteresting open world that makes player waste a lot of time by going back and forth between objectives
- even when we're not interested in multiplayer part game forces us to do it through mandatory tutorial and prompts
- not possible to start game in offline mode by default
- each time we take stronger hit Snake "jumps into crawling" to the ground which makes running away from enemies annoying
- middle-game fight-only boss is bullshit if we focused gameplay on developing stealth weapons and approach

Conclusion:
I had wrong expectations about this game. I thought it's stealth game. But it's action game with stealth elements. Like Far Cry. Missions start from chopper (not possible to just pick next mission on the open world and play...). Walk around or kill enemies, grab what / who we need and run away. That's the base game loop. Game is needlessly grindy to try and force people to spend money on time-saving microtransactions. I've beat like half of the game (game is divided into 2 chapters and I was done with 1st) and decided it's not worth any more of my time. I heard from people that 2nd chapter is unfinished, short and rushed (as Kojima was already on his way out from the studio) so don't think I miss much.

---

Story:

Guy who looks like it was bathing in acid wants to kill us. Or take over the world? It's hard to follow what is happening if you're new to the series. There is also burning guy that wants to kill us and levitating child that helps him? First part of the game ends with us destroying huge robot that was carrying nuclear weapons on it's back to terrorize the world. And ending plague of voice-eating parasite that was supposed to be used to carry out ethnic genocide (of English language...). There is so much pseudo-science language here it made me roll my eyes constantly. And plot surely is not something this game should be played for, as it's predictable, rambly and shallow.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	Time-savers to "solve" problem of grind created by developers	🏆 Achievements	Grindy
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	One automatic checkpoint which is not ideal for open world game with sneak elements...

🌍 Map	There is no minimap but main map is nice and detailed without unnecessary clutter. My only problem is that it can take 1 or 2 seconds to bring up iDroid menu to see the map. And it's not possible to quickly peak in to map and go back to game as there is some delay between pressing button to load iDroid. Members of base combat crew can be sent on deployment missions from iDroid, which are basically automatic way to get small number of building materials on stable rate.
🎮 Controls	This game is not so old to not allow for free exploration especially with it's open world. But! There is no jumping, our character will constantly trip / slide from small slopes, climbing is not contextual and require us to press "E" on prompt (or keep pressing "E" while in run to have "free flow movement"...), while crawling it's awkward to move character in other direction than forward as he doesn't move where mouse is pointed. If we're hit by stronger attack or explosion Snake "jumps" into crawl which prevents us from running away into safety fast. Horse controls are bad. Just meh.
📇 Inventory	Weapons and gear are changed before the mission, so there is no inventory in strict sense. But it means that to change inventory we need to call chopper and start new mission or move through clunky menus in iDroid supply drops. There is base crew management tab but all that is required from player is to press "V" to auto assign them to correct positions.
💶 Economy	To upgrade base, weapons and get more support from the units (air strikes, faster healing, faster research) we need a lot of resources that are gathered in open world. Fuel, metal, biological material, precious metal etc. can be found in boxes around the map. We can also find huge containers with raw materials that can be extracted and processed in base. But it takes ages to process those as they are on the timer which is influenced by real time, checkpoints, extractions etc. So without cough time savers cough enough determination it's not possible to freely upgrade base or research weapons. Game literally shows how many options we could have and then lock everything behind grind. And this game is not an MMO. So it's broken on purpose to lure people into spending few bucks to buy coins, that will allow immediately end long research or base upgrade. Like in shitty F2P mobile games where you can wait 12h to upgrade mill from level 2 to level 3 or spend in-game gems to skip waiting.
🏹 Weapons	There are a lot of weapons from each category and there is good feel to them. But it takes ages to develop anything due to research taking hours of real-time (when game is running!). After 60h I was not able to get silenced sleeping dart sniper and it's something I wanted to have from the beginning. Also research menu is bloated with tons of items and is poorly designed with huge tiles which makes it hard to see which weapons are worth to develop. Silencers degrade fast and we need to call supply drop to get new one.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Snake does not have any abilities, there is no character progression. Only progression is through grindy weapon / gadgets upgrade route. We can shoot, run around, scan enemies to uncover their position and abilities, extract enemies and object with fulton (it's like balloon that jets them into stratosphere where they are picked up by chopper.. yeah). All stun abilities are like mosquito farts, so unless we fulton all stunned enemies they will take up after 1 or 2 min and raise alarm. Snake has prosthetic arm that can be equipped with sonar, rocket hand or higher weapon precision but I never found those to be useful.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Companions mostly stay in distance and act as a support - dog is sniffing enemies, sniper can silently take out targets (fact it's hard to show which exactly target we want to kill is different matter), horse is used to move faster from point to point. I never used walking gear. Enemies are dumb, they will wait behind cover to get killed, don't throw grenades or try to flank us, it's enough to run away from our last known position for them to stop to pursue us.
🥊 Combat	Really basic shooting. Nothing good or bad. Trying to take down enemy with tranquilizer gun may take a bit as they don't fall immediately (unless they are hit in the head). Open fights are not a challenge as it's enough to head shot everyone and run away from heavy enemies. I think my playtime is 50% longer than it should be as I was trying to play sneaky and tactical. While going loud and killing everyone in few min would be way more optimal approach. Enemies will call for reinforcements only once. And no more than 2 - 3 enemies will come as a backup.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Graphic is really nice apart from those awful shadows
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Voice acting is goof but music is non-existent. We only have some ambient environment / fight sounds.
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Nothing game breaking but those shadows that look like they travel 10cm at a time (instead of having gradual change in time) is annoying. There were also some texture problems where half of the game had weird dotted mesh texture.

This is first post that was generated by script I wrote. It’s interesting to see how many tedious tasks can be done with script written in some language. I knew we have BLAEO generators but I wouldn’t think it would be possible to basically make custom one for myself. I need to write actual review on my own but game information for banners is automatically downloaded from Steam.

Sadly last month gaming was not amazing, I feel like I wasted whole month on average and uninteresting games. But I bought 3 months of XboX Game Pass Ultimate for 1 pound and started to play Jedi Fallen Order. And I already like it. Parkour, simple puzzles, killing troopers with their own blaster shots, simple metroidvania elements. Star Wars Force Unleashed has similar vibe - mix of using powers to move through environment and lightsaber combat. And I liked it even when it was bit like interactive movie.

XboX app is still shit. This time I can’t even install game from it directly as it throws errors on me. I need to install games through MS Store. Error was introduced in update 9 months ago and is still not fixed :blobevil:

Also I just realized that it’s first month when I have nothing in “unfinished” category. Meaning I beat everything I started on Steam :spacecat:. Now I have 3 games in “didn’t start” category but they will wait most probably as I will focus for now on games from Game Pass.

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April 2021 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12 / 2020

Remnant: From the Ashes (Q3 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 4 months

FPS Souls-like
16 hours | 22 of 50 (44%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- really nice graphic
- game is not needlessly long

The bad
- bad lip sync with dialogues
- last boss is uninteresting bullet sponge
- limited number of weapons and armors to chose from
- maps are small
- not much lore and shallow story
- game doesn't track map progress for co-op player
- majority of passive bonuses focus on melee, and not many are on firearms
- upgrading weapons and armors is really grindy

Conclusion:
It's nice game to play in co-op but not a must-have. Good shooting without any mayor bugs or issues. Story is average and not main spotlight of the game.

---

Story:

Some evil root-tree-like entities (that are called Root) attacked Earth and wiped out most of the humans! And we are last hope to save the day! In rather simple and short story we follow steps of Ford - lost leader of one of the wards that survived the apocalypse. We will travel through few distinct biomes (like swamp, desert - the usual). Each has different enemy types and tiny bit of story. There is not much lore apart from few journals or dialogue bits. And ending is really predictable.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None	🏆 Achievements	Some are grindy.
📊 Performance	No issues	💾 Save system	Game is saved when we visit crystals that work like fires in DarkSouls.

🌍 Map	Map is nice and detailed, minimap is easy to use. For some reason it doesn't stay uncovered by the co-op partner which can lead to confusion where to go next. I do think that fast travel system could be better implemented, as now it's in form of list with names. Game could use one big overmap of the word instead, that would zoom in on certain location.
🎮 Controls	We can run around and shoot. There is no cover system or jumping in this game. Sometimes dodging feels dodgy (heh!), as it looks like we did it in time and enemy hits us anyway.
📇 Inventory	Simple inventory made with consoles in mind. But no issues here. It's also hard to complain on it's organization or filters when there are literally only few weapons that can be used in the base game. We can pick up consumables that boosts certain stat for few a minutes but I never used those. Healing items that can remove toxic / bleeding / burning etc. effects.
💶 Economy	We can find quite a lot of cash, problem is that there are no ways to spend it. So it's just lying around with no purpose. Maybe on higher levels buying consumables has sense but otherwise... meh. There are no merchants with interesting gear to buy, it's not possible to spend cash on buying higher end raw materials for crafting. There are games where you rake in cash but they also have merchants (that mostly sell useless junk, but still!). This game has cash but no merchants. Which is weird. Weapons need to be crafted so it's not possible to save up for this shiny ice ass-kicking sword because merchants don't have this kind of gear. There are 2 - 3 NPCs on the maps that offer one armor set each but they are not really better than what I had before. So meh as well.
🔨 Crafting	There is simple crafting system in this game. Either bring object dropped from the boss to get new weapon or throw piles of raw materials to upgrade current weapon / armor. Raw materials are found as random enemy loot and inside the chests / around the map. Problem is that chests and items around the map do not respawn when we re-visit the map. So only way to get extra materials after the map 1st time is grind... and chance of enemies dropping materials is low. There are few grades of crafting materials and for some reason it's not possible to combine low level material into higher one. So we will constantly lack higher end materials while swimming in low end materials. That can't even be sold to merchants as there is nothing we can buy back from them. It's not possible to dismantle unused weapons to get back part of the invested materials.
🏹 Weapons	Any class can use any weapons which is a good thing. But apart from base weapon game offers only 1 or 2 upgrades. Which is not ideal. I changed my default weapon only at the very end of the game, as there was nothing of better quality. Pistols, assault rifles, snipers, shotguns, melee. There is simple crafting system in this game. Either bring object dropped from the boss to get new weapon or throw piles of raw materials to upgrade current weapon. Raw materials are found as random enemy loot and inside the chests / around the map. Problem is that chests and items around the map do not respawn when we re-visit the map. So only way to get materials above cleaning the map 1st time is grind... and chance of enemies dropping materials is low.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Each weapon can be equipped with one mod that gives it extra ability - seeing enemies thought walls, spawning pets, healing etc. To use them we need to kill enemies (which fills up mod bar). So abilities are not something heavily used in this game. We can have no more than 2 mods at a time. There is quite a lot of passive perks but most of them are useless. More like Borderlands bad ass ranks that boost cric chance by 1% on level up than something to rely on.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Bosses can be bit challenging but general enemies are like cannon fodder. Dumb mobs that will charge on you, and dash to avoid first shot and then get killed with few shots later on.
🥊 Combat	Apart from boss fights combat is quite repetitive. Run through the map (which is sometimes quite linear) and shoot till enemies die. There is no need to plan actions or learn enemies patterns. Only small fraction of all passive perks and gear focus on non-melee bonuses which makes it feel like game wants players to focus on melee combat, not firearms. But at the same time melee is really bare-bone with ability to do basic attack and dodge. And that would be all. There are two types for ammo: handgun ammo and long gun ammo. Handgun ammo is used in handguns - each character has one and it's purpose is to kill mobs. Long gun ammo is rare which limits use of "class-specific" weapon. Trying to kill all enemies with a shotgun or a sniper rifle will deplete ammo really fast. So this one is left for bosses and special enemies mostly. Also ammunition pick up is not shared, so when one person picks up long gun ammo other is left with no ammo in the weapon. Which is not ideal.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Graphic is really nice, textures are detailed, maps full of flora and art-style is really pleasant.
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Good voice acting, not really memorable music.
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - I didn't encourage any but co-op partner can get stuck with "waiting for rest of the players" message in the middle of the screen

I am playing Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain but it’s stupid checkpoint system makes it hard to play in short sessions. I may play longer section that won’t have a checkpoint, had to close game as I need to run to work. And then when I start game later I need to re-play this part, as I was not lucky enough to trigger a checkpoint… Ugh.

Because of this I was sitting more on Python than playing really. Hence only one beaten game. But really, checkpoints are bad enough in corridor games. Checkpoints in open world game without giving player ability to have even one manual save? This is ridiculous. Same as number of times Kojima wants to shove his name on the screen in this game :hehe: Game starts with credits, and then they want to roll mini credits on each mission start / end >_>

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March 2021 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 02 / 2021

Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince (Q4 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Puzzle Co-op
13,5 hours | 39 of 39 (100%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- graphic is simply charming
- physic is bit less wonky than in previous games, but for the price of less movement freedom
- devs gave up idea of this weird half-3D gameplay, and went back to what worked well before

The bad
- wizard summons always materialize above his head, not where the shape was drawn
- thief can attach rope only to the pre-defined spots, not to all wooden surfaces like previously
- boss fights can be bit annoying

Conclusion:
Puzzles feel easier than in previous games, although I played 1st Trine 6 years ago and it did give me time to learn some tricks. Game is well made, graphic is gorgeous, co-op works perfectly. This one is surely on the recommended list. It does feel that devs played on the save side after the disaster called "Trine 3". So I hope they will go more crazy / interesting in Trine 5 with more abilities / puzzles variety.

---

Story:

Young prince decided to study magic without proper supervision. Which obviously lead to disaster, as he summoned his own shadow and nightmares get ability to materialize in the real world. Our old pals Amadeus, Pontius and Zoya are asked to help him. Request is sent by the Astral Academy, as trine is lost after events from the 3rd game. In the end we save the day! So plot is pretty straight forward and not really surprising. Story is again told by the narrator, just like in previous games. And ending has a nice twist.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None!	🏆 Achievements	Possible to get everything in 1 run, and missed collectibles can be easily backtracked to.
📊 Performance	No issues, high FPS.	💾 Save system	Checkpoints on screen transition. Each map consist of few screens so not much progress is lost on death.

🌍 Map	Levels do not have in-game map but it's also not necessary. It's not metroidvania to look for secret passages. Overworld map is nicely detailed yet simple. And it's easy to see where we miss some collectibles. We can move freely between different screens of the level, and journey to the next location on the main map acts as both loading screen and time for narrator to say next bit of the story.
🎮 Controls	Controls are responsive, there are no problems on the edges with collision detection. Characters can jump and dash. Zoya can additionally use the rope to swing but rope can be attached only to pre-defined spots. No more jumping around like crazy by anchoring rope in any wooden surface. I found it to be easier to control wizard spawns with K+M, as gamepad don't have enough buttons to have everything at hand.
📇 Inventory	There is no real inventory. Only that Zoya can rotate between different arrow types and Amadeus between different objects to summon.
🏹 Weapons	Zoya has bow, Amadeus has... nothing, and Pontus has sword with shield. Simple!
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	They work well but feel like a step back from Trine 2. Zoya can use ice or fire arrows but puzzles can be often solved easily with only Amadeus abilities. She can also tie two objects together or make them weightless - which is used far more often. Amadeus can summon planks, boxes and balls (one ball variant is bouncy) but it's not possible to magnetize summons to create some monstrous towers to clear the screen in some weird way. He has this bouncy ball but I literally never saw a reason to use it. There are environmental spots that can magnetize nearby summons but it's all pre-scripped. Pontus can have lightning shield and sword that basically deal more damage to enemies. And dash ability to smash crystal walls (with a help of wizard balls or rocks).
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	There are no companions. And enemies have quite simple AI with predictable behaviors and not much variety.
🥊 Combat	Combat is limited to enclosed spots. Not like in previous games where enemies were spawning on the level. Here "dream cage" is created by a purple walls on the side of the screen (that not allow to leave the area before fight is over), and some purple platforms spawn along the enemies. So we need to jump around to reach enemies, hit them till they die and go to next platform. Some enemies have force shields and we need to destroy one enemy to be able to attack another. In general combat is straightforward but it sometimes feel like I died because there was too much happening on the screen and I missed enemy attack on the side. Not that I played in a bad way.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Like I wrote already - simply gorgeous. Vibrant, charming and detailed. I'm sure this game will still look good in a few years, when other games released in 2019 / 2020 will be already in "ugh this graphic is so ugly" category.

Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Music is atmospheric, voice acting is good. Narrator has fitting voice and just feel "right".

Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any.

Activated: 12 / 2020

Night in the Woods (Q1 2017) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 4 months

Adventure
15,5 hours | No achievements

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- unique art-style
- interesting characters

The bad
- walking is a bit too slow and there is no way to move faster which makes whole game dray for way too long
- ending is some sort of "big revelation" that is not interesting and leaves loose ends

Conclusion:
I feel like this game overstayed it's welcome. I did like it but there was too much empty running around. Game has a bit of Oxenfree feel but also feel inferior to it.

---

Story:

Player (Mae) is a dropout from the college. Whole game focus on walking around the town and hanging out with friends to re-built relationships. There are basically two choices here - Bea who is sad emo girl, and Greg who is hyperactive and a bit shady character. Mid-game Mae finds severed arm on the street which leads to a bit of the detective investigation. Only at the end of the game it's explained (in a really hazy way) why Mae dropped from the college and why she believes there is a ghost in the city.

---

Gameplay:

It's like walking simulator with not much object interaction. Mae is interacting pretty much exclusively with people, by either talking to them or listening to what they say. Most of the dialogues are pre-defined and player can reply "Yes" or "No". It doesn't change anything though, as there are no choices in this game or branching endings. Picking specific answer can unlock specific achievements.

Game has only checkpoint system with no ability to reload previous save. So story needs to be seen in one go, it's not possible to reload if wrong option was chosen or player is unhappy with the outcome. Two playthroughs would be required to get all achievements.

Structure of the game is quite simple: Mae wakes up, leaves the house, go to hang out with one of the friends (it's not possible to hang out with both each day, so only half of the story can be seen in one run), go to sleep, see the nightmare sequence. It is possible to explore the city in simple platforming, but city is small and going rounds to make sure random NPC on the rooftops was not missed gets boring and repetitive fast. There really should be an indicator (even as an option) to point if there is something interesting somewhere. At least Bea and Greg are always in the same spots so it's easy to find those.

There is guitar mini-game where Mae can play in rocksmith-way by pressing button to hit one of the 4 strings. But I get bored with it fast. And did only bits required to progress the story.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - 2D, simple. Looks bit like drawn in paint with it's basic shading and sharp edges.

Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - I don't remember the music... and characters speak in SIMs way by humming stuff.

Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any.

Activated: 02 / 2021

GTA V (Q3 2013) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Action
36,5 hours | ? of 77

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good voice acting
- NPCs, traffic AI is really nice
- graphic is good
- environment reacts to player destroying stuff - fences, concrete blocks, graveyard stones etc.
- heists mechanic is interesting and gives some choice in how missions will be done

The bad
- bad lag when in pause menu with V-sync turned on and when frame rate is high
- no visible stamina meter
- swimming mechanic is bad and it's not possible to stay underwater for more than few seconds
- possible to buy properties, but they generate pitiful amount of money
- money is scarce and there is no money cheat
- it takes long time to start police pursuit and then it's way too hard to escape - police chase into unrelated buildings like player has magnet in the ass, and see through the walls
- not possible to store more than one vehicle in the house garage. Or even swap default car with new one
- game has only one auto save and keep asking if we want to override it
- weird delay between accessing the map, closing it and then trying to jump back to it fast
- not possible to sell weapons so they would stop to clog the weapon selection menu
- characters are so fragile few shots kills them. Same as leaving a vehicle while driving means instant death
- story breaking bugs that has solution of "call taxi and go on place by skipping the journey"
- vehicles shadow problems where there is big rectangular shade under the whole thing

Conclusion:
I had problem to try and summary this game and I think this will be best: I'm glad I uninstalled it. It's not bad as full of bugs, bad story, awful mechanics etc. It's just so average... Yes storytelling is really nice. But what about it when it's telling average-hollywood-predictable story in a big city with bare number of side activities or anything to do apart from the main mission. Game has too much of "Read Dead Redemption 2" inside, and many tasks are too long or too tedious just for the sake of "reality". Also Trevor is simply repulsing. I played many games where I had to kill hundreds of people, played as psychopaths or whatnot. But I never before dreaded every minute I had to play with a character. I dunno, there is something in a way he is shown that would make me gladly skip all his sequences if possible. First time in past 20 years when I saw opening sequence and was like "Oh God, please, I don't want to play with this thing".

---

Story:

10 years ago heist went south. Michael ended up as a key witness, Trevor run away and hide, and 3rd dude get killed. In current time Franklin get job to "reposes" car from dude who was not paying "reasonable" installments. He broke into the house to get the car but failed. Michael decided to help him later on, and it lead to creation of working trio: Michael, Trevor and Franklin. Main story revolves around Michael problems with Investigation Agency, as they decided to use him to do their dirty work. Using his past as a leverage. Story is simple and predictable, without any of the characters being written exceptionally good or in a deep way. There are no big revelations, plot twists or player choices.

---

Gameplay:

💸 Microtranzactions	None.	🏆 Achievements	Don't know how to check really. I saw some popping up.
📊 Performance	Game runs smoothly apart from this years old unresolved bug when game menu is sluggish with V-sync turned on.	💾 Save system	One automatic checkpoint and 15 manual save slots. Problem with automatic save is that game asks each time if we want to overwrite previous save. It's not possible to save mid-missions as well but it's the same as in previous games. And manual save menu is weirdly located in our phone menu.

🌍 Map	Map is big and detailed but also doesn't remember our preferences. If I change view to un-cluttered I'd want to start it like that each time. There is also weird hard delay between closing in-game menu and opening it again to check the map. Press ESC - click on map to see it - close map - leave the menu. Pressing ESC shortly after closing the menu does nothing, there is 2 or 3s delay before menu can be accessible again. It drove me nuts as I often go in and out of the map when I play.
🎮 Controls	No real issues here. Cover system in combat is decent. Characters can't crouch for some reason, they can only enter stealth mode. But game is obviously not a stealth game, so this mode is entirely useless outside of the training mission. Characters can run but the stamina meter is hidden. And it's not possible to know how much of it is left unless we see it's already gone as health starts to get a hit. For some reason bikes don't sprint when player press SHIFT. It needs to be toggled with CAPS LOCK. Why devs assign any functions to it, I don't want to leave the game and then see I write in all caps in a message or in my google search... At least it's possible to change keys binding easily. Cars and motorbikes driving is flawless. Various cars types feel different to drive, they don't slide like on a soapy road and have nice weight to them. But good driving is in GTA for years, so it's also not revolutionary. Flying with helicopters and planes feel bit stiff but thankfully not much needs to be done.
📇 Inventory	There is no real inventory. Clothes can be changed in house or shops but game does not remember our selection. Or even ask if we have preference to keep. So it's pointless to go shopping as we will start playing missions with random clothes. Who would run down to the hideout each time save is loaded or mission change to get their favorite clothes? Game could at least start in the hideout to give easy access to clothes but noooo. While I can ignore that I run around only in slippers or ugly dad sweated I found weapons selection to be annoying. Characters will automatically pick any junk dropped by enemies and it's added to the weapon selection menu. And surprisingly our selection is also not remembered here. Game will simply equip 1st weapon in the selection menu which is ofc the weakest one. What was the point of buying and customizing this nice AR or buying nice machete when mission will start with default selection? "Just start mission by pre-selecting your weapons so you're not surprised mid-fight!" Is not a solution... It should be possible to select default weapon. Or just drop the junk we picked up... Also clothes selection is limited in comparison to what we had in San Andreas. No watches, chains, helmets for bike etc.
🏹 Weapons	Meele, pistols, micro rifle, assault rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, grenade / bombs, heavy weapons. So generic-realistic selection. Weapons feel different to use between types but really similar when we compare them inside the same category. I didn't feel difference between different snipers or ARs. So in general - meh.
🕵️‍♀️ Abilities	Each character has special ability - Franklin can make sharp turn while driving, Michael can slow down time in fight, and Trevor can go into rage mode where he gets less damage. But I literally never used those apart from the tutorial prompts. Esp Franklin and Michael abilities feel totally useless. And like a justification to make character squishy in combat - we will make you weak to force you to use abilities in combat approach. Apart from that there are various stats that grow as we use connected ability - driving, shooting, running, special ability, stealth etc. But I did not feel much of a difference between being level 0 and 100% in something. So again feels like empty module of the game that doesn't really matter and is there just "to be". Esp in case of swimming / diving as it's something we literally never need. Unless we'd decide to swim around just for the sake of it.
🤖 Companion and enemy AI	Pressing ALT on the keyboard allows us to switch between Michael, Trevor and Franklin on the fly. There are only short sequences where we can't switch between characters during or in between the missions. But only active character can really do some damage. Other two will mostly shot blindly and if one get swarmed with enemies - game will start to make noise to urge us to swap to them to clear the enemies in this spot. Enemy AI is decent but not amazing. They will stick to the corners and repeatedly lean to shot at us which gives plenty of time to headshot them. They also literally never use grenades. Police behaves like player has magnets in the ass as they will always follow in a straight line. No matter that we dropped car, run past some buildings and swim across the river. As long as they are within "search time" when stars are blinking they will chase us no problem. But at least they do not spawn like zombies in CyberBug...
🥊 Combat	Aiming is good and enemy / environmental hotboxes well made. So there is not problem of "I clearly shot his head, why this wall has so huge hit box!!". Problem is that our character is made from the toilet tissue and dies after 3 - 4 shots sometimes. Which is just annoying. It's possible to buy armor but it doesn't replenish. I will not run to the store before each mission to re-buy it. There should be some super expensive armor that would auto respawn on mission start.

There is one problem with the whole gameplay - game is empty. Only side activities are some generic encounters with some random characters, going to watch a movie or play tennis. "But it has 79 missions!" someone will say. Kind of? They count sprint race with one crazy woman as three missions, as each character can race her in different spot, and most of side activities are boring fetch quests. Heist planning looks really cool, but in the end there are only 5. When they could be used as a random smaller activities pieced together from pre-scripped bits. This would be interesting side activity.
Where is ability to drive bus, fire truck or ambulance to earn few bucks? Same as stealing cars to earn money. I remember how much fun I had to look for specific car in Vice City. Here we can't even swap the default car. No turf wars as it's not about creation of strong gang like in San Andreas. Game is like a story of caravan moving through a desert. Desert is really detailed and all, but there is nothing else to do than follow how camels travel through miles of sand.

There is literally no way to earn cash in-game. Even when we buy properties they give so pitiful return it would take hours to hoard money to re-invest. And properties are basically just the source of endless fetch quests. Main missions give couple dozen thousands at best, and hijacking cash transport can yield few thousands. That's it. Tuning some cars can swallow all in-game credits. There is stock market but this is not a stock simulator. I don't want to spend time looking for companies that predictably fluctuate, to buy cheap and sell tiny bit higher. There are assassination missions but if started early in game it's impossible to buy any businesses that cost >5 mln credits. It's possible to use other codes but the one for extra credits is not there.

So to be able to throw cash around player would need to literally read the guides before playing. To know to leave Assassination missions for the very end of the game (they allow to play the stock market to our favor). As we are showered with millions of credits after last mission. But why? Why game doesn't give any useful amount of credits along the way, lock code for money and then give millions after game is beaten? I don't need this money at this point. The only explanation I have is this way devs wanted to make game grindy and artificially extend it's playtime. In ghost city with no routines we can follow. Yay.

After last mission and leaving most of assassinations for end (I learned too late I need to wait with them...) I had like 60 mln credits. Enough to buy all properties (except from golf field for 150 mln), plane, helicopter, boat. But why, when game is in a state to be uninstalled? Also I was left with like 10 mln and weekly income of 0,5 mln. It would take 140 * 2 = 280 in-game weeks to get enough money to buy last property. It takes 5 "real" hours to skip 1 in-game week. 280 weeks... is not really reasonable is it? Or I could grind this time by repeatedly going to sleep with a character (it skips 8 - 12 in-game hours), but for what? I really don't get it esp that game does not have monetization, so there is no way to skip this useless grind with some dollars.

Ofc you may disagree with my opinion, but I don't want to have flame wars in the comments. You had a blast with a game - great. But this is not a GTA game that I wanted. I wanted to be a gangsta, get some dirty money, feel I make progress by upgrading my properties / guns / cars in a steady way, make some crazy things. And this game did not give me any of this.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - nice and detailed. Textures do not look smeary, lighting effects are good, weather effect are believable.

Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - I didn't really like any of the custom radio stations and was just listening to generic station with licensed songs. Weapons sound nice and voice acting is really good.

Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - some graphic glitches here and there or this problem in the menu. But nothing game breaking. From what I read online some missions are bugged when trying to beat after reloading the save and there is problem when main mission does not start when player arrives on place by foot or in a car.

I saw banner on Sharky post which turned out to be iterated from Lengray post. I tweaked it up a bit. I didn’t know that you can do this kind of thing with simple HTML before. BLAEO doesn’t support CSS so I never went into trying to make simple banner.

I started to learn Python so I’m surprised I managed to beat that much last month (I’m not super consistent with it though :hehe:). I made a list after Winter Sale with games I have and that it would take me most probably whole year to go through them. We’re just done with Q1 of the year and I already beaten 7 / 15. So looks like I may beat those by the half of the year. So I may buy something during the Summer Sale after all :D

Also I went ahead and incorporated more game dissection in this review. Night in the Woods doesn’t fit into it so it has “normal” review. But I like how it turned out to be. Some summary of points that repeat in nearly all my reviews and optional extra text under if some aspect doesn’t fit - like broken money economy in GTA V.

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

Activated: 11 / 2020

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Q4 2017) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 3 months

FPS
28,5 hours | 45 of 80 (56%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- story is well written
- killing enemies is satisfying
- it's not a stealth game, but sneak approach is valid in most of the missions

The bad
- game has 3 years and there are still problems with graphic that makes game unplayable for some, or bug that corrupts all save files
- grenades have physic of a ping-pong ball and are quite rare to obtain
- enemy AI is not the best
- collectibles are gated behind bit of grind to unlock map locations
- not possible to replay whole chapter, just separate maps with tougher enemies
- there are invisible walls left after elevator opens doors that need to be "jumped over"

Conclusion:
I really have problem with this game. It was barely playable for the first 8h, crashing every 10 - 15 min. I decided I will try to fix it or I'm dropping it - game get so corrupted I could not load any save. It worked after many tries of re-loading few auto-saves I had (never thought of making manual saves...) and since then game worked flawlessly. Without me doing anything, I just reloaded "proper" save file. Still it leaves sore aftertaste, as not everyone may be lucky enough to even make the game work past loading screen. But it is solid shooter with good story and nice graphic / mechanics.

---

Story:

After crazy doc from 1st game is killed we end in the submarine with half of our organs gone (result of the final fight). Player barely survives and goes back to killing Nazi straight away! Nazi beaten up US and bombed Manhattan (so little twist around US dropping bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). We move between different parts of the US, gathering resistance fighters and planning attack on the general Engel - woman who took place of crazy doc after the events of the 1st game. Story may not be deep or full of meaning, but it is well written, without glaring plot holes or other problems. Characters are interesting and likable.

---

Gameplay:

More of the same basically. FPS with some upgrades and optionally bit of stealth.

We can use standard single weapon / dual wield, or sneak approach. It's still FPS game so don't expect any advanced mechanics like in Thief or Dishonored. Just approach enemy from behind and click button to silently kill. Weapons are rather standard (pistols, rifles, shotguns, electric weapons), there are no supernatural powers in game. Some abilities are unlocked later in game - double jump (kind of), breaking walls and crawling thought really narrow spaces.

Traits are again upgraded by using them. So killing with grenades gives more grenades capacity, sneak kills make commanders rise alarm slower etc. Which is more involving than just getting exp for killing enemies. Sadly enemy AI was tuned to use grenades rarely and grenades are scare for player, so I had to grind a bit to max out ability to use them. There is no inventory, simple weapon upgrades with upgrade kits, collectible journals or newspapers to find in the world.

Difference between this and previous game is that it's not possible to re-play previous chapter after game is beaten from chapter selection menu. Player need to kill commanders, pick up their enigma cards and then use them to decode positions of the uber-commanders on the war map. More cards are needed to unlock everything than we can get through one playthrough, so it requires tiny bit of grind. When commander position is decrypted it's possible to use war table to teleport to certain map. It doesn't start the original mission though, instead it's map with tougher enemies and objective to "kill the commander". So it's really repetitive and uninteresting.

Enemies have really basic AI, and they will stand in each other way of fire while shouting "get out of the way!". They will run around having problem to find a cover, not use grenades to force player to move,or try to walk around us for ambush. I started to play on hard and was killed in few shots, so I did not see all of this. But switching to easy to grab some achievements later on shown how bad their behavior is.

There is also weird problem of elevator doors. Animation that they open is there, player can see what's inside the next room but it's not possible to just walk past. It will make character stuck in the "doors". I had to "jump over" open elevator doors each time I had to use it.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - graphic is nice and detailed, lip sync and animations are good
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - music is thematic and voice acting is good
Bugs - ⭐️☆☆ - I already described how buggy this game can be to the point of breaking the game save files

Activated: 11 / 2020

Resident Evil 6 (Q1 2013) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 3 months

Co-op FPS
27 hours | 40 of 70 (57%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- game shows the story from 4 different perspectives

The bad
- terrible UI made for gamepad and not adjusted for K+M
- biggest enemy of the chase sequences is truly awful camera
- one of the campaigns is long boss fight
- really grindy to get abilities
- awful QTEs
- graphic didn't age well
- weapons are not interesting
- zombie game where we fight hordes of regular soldiers 90% of time
- AI is so bad I'd be afraid to play with it in single player mode
- shallow story
- immortal enemies that keep chasing you around the map so you can't stand for 2s to think what to do next

Conclusion:
This game is playable in co-op but it's also truly awful. Bad PC port, bad mechanic, bad UI, bad enemy encounters. There is literally nothing appealing in this game. I was told that this game nearly killed the whole franchise. And now I know why.

---

Story:

Terrorists kill the president and release the zombie virus over the US city! So obviously our characters need to go for the rescue! Developers shown the story from 4 different perspectives that works well in showing "what other characters did to help when they were off-screen in the campaign". But this is only game gimmick. Otherwise story is shallow, predictable and boring. With boring characters and dumb antagonists.

---

Gameplay:

It even pains me to describe it. First of all game is bad console port. Obviously menus you use with a gamepad should work well with a keyboard? Wrong. There is no normal inventory and items rotate like on a dial, there are way too many pressings of the button to do anything, and then when player tries to remove something from the inventory - need to use the mouse, as it's not possible to move selection left - right with the keyboard to confirm you want to get rid of some junk. Yay!

Next is awful camera that killed me more times than the enemies. Why not rotate camera 180 degrees during a chase sequence, just to make it more like a movie?? Or make camera stuck in some weird position (that makes walking around awful) as devs wanted to focus view on something I may be entirely not interested in? When player crawls through narrow spaces camera is perfectly positioned to see my ass. Yes, that's what I want to see, not what is ahead of me.

Even moving around in this game is bad. Characters run barely faster than you walk, cover system is awful (character will not just stick to the wall and allow to aim. They need to stand next to the wall with RMB pressed, press space to hide behind the wall, and then ((still pressing RMB)) lean out with WSAD keys and aim). There are cinematic (and totally useless) slides over the obstacles which means player slides above the table instead of opening the drawer.

Enemies don't just give exp, they drop chess-like figures that need to be picked up. It requires enormous amount of exp to unlock anything. And then there are only 3 abilities you can have active at a time. Enemies are also so dumb they are light-years behind enemies from Half Life 2. Game released 8 years earlier. I'd understand making zombies dumb but in this game we mostly fight trained soldiers and mercenaries. They are mutated with the virus but they are supposed to keep their intelligence.

There are QTEs for everything, for enemy attacks, for counter, for mid-cutscene moments, for controlling the vehicles. And they are awful, they sometimes give 1s prompt that lead to immediate death on miss. Mash button to climb a rope, to climb a platform, to duck on a moving train cart (anyone has flashbacks from the Hugo games?? I do). I'm surprised they didn't add QTEs to climb ladders.

Weapons are unlocked when we progress through the campaign but are not interesting or feel like an improvement. If we decide we don't like certain weapon and stop to pick ammo to not use inventory space (which is limited) - game will start to shower us with this specific ammo as we don't have any. There is melee system but it's just bad, clunky and slow.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - It looks dated and don't have any interesting style. Animations are stiff and lip sync is bad.
Music - ⭐️☆☆ - I don't even remember this game having music which is not a good thing. Voice acting is also at best average
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any and it's best thing that can be told about this game

Activated: 07 / 2020

Super Hot: Mind Control Delete (Q3 2020) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 7 months

FPS Rogue-lite
7,5 hours | 12 of 14 (86%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- introduction of new weapons and powers

The bad
- really repetitive
- game feels needlessly long, as few levels need to be beaten in one session
- enemies that can't be killed
- game tries to be "deep"
- some enemies need to be hit in specific body part to be killed

Conclusion:
Feels a bit like tedious grind more than an entertainment. A bit like rogue-lite game. Levels are re-used infinitely and enemies re-spawn so there is no precise planning of the next step. Sad to say I gave up on the last 2 bundles of levels, as I could not be bothered to replay the same few levels over and over again. Also looks like you need to keep game in background for 2,5h to go through the ending. I'd ALT+F4 game after 5 min of waiting. In the v.1 version it was 8h of unskippable staring on the progress bar... Friggin hell

---

Story:

No real story here. Developers put a bit of backstory of some depressed guy who plays a game as an escape mechanisms, but it's shallow and uninteresting. And feels forced tbh.

---

Gameplay:

Mix of Super Hot principle with rogue-lite. Time flies only when we move (or do action like pick up weapon or reload weapon). Which in combination with hand-crafted levels made Super Hot to be weird mix of puzzle and action game.

Mind Control Delete throws it out of the window by introducing bundles of random levels. Changing the game into rogue-lite battle royale. Enemies spawn endlessly so it's not possible to clear the map. We need to constantly run around as enemy may spawn behind us with game over shot in the back. Instead of having being OHK by the enemies per level we are given 2 lives per bundle of levels. Which means that if we beat 6 levels and get hit twice on last one - sorry, you need to re-play the bundle again. Same if we'd decide to exit the game. It does make the game longer but doing it in a lazy way.

There are some upgrades that can be unlocked - one more life, charge on enemies etc. They stay with us through the bundle. In between the levels of the bundle we get random temporary abilities - like piercing projectiles, starting the level with a katana, ricocheting shots on headshots, ability to throw object with more force etc. Which means we can either be lucky and get abilities we like, or unlucky and have things we dislike.

People who like rogue-lite game will be happy. I was really disappointed in a way this game "evolved". I'm glad I get it for free as upgrade for owners of the original.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Nothing changed from the previous game. And models still have weird rag-doll effects.
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Music is really basic but environmental sounds work really well with what is happening on the screen, giving it certain pace. Nearly like in a music beat game.
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any.

Activated: 05 / 2020

Shadow Warrior 2 (Q4 2016) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 8 months

Hack & Slash
16,5 hours | 44 of 58 (76%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- clearly marked points of no return
- skill points are not drip-given and give feeling of progression
- good variety of enemies
- enjoyable hack and slash especially with basic upgrades already unlocked
- no enemy scaling

The bad
- main character dialogues feel cringe
- grindy if we want to unlock all weapons
- abundance of gems used to upgrade weapons makes it feel like a chore to move through piles of trash to find something better than we have already
- standard mini map is tiny and bigger version takes too much screen space to be used while playing
- NPCs animation are stiff and sometimes unnatural, lip sync with what is said is bad half of the time
- guns feel quite under powered in comparison to melee weapons

Conclusion:
Good slasher but without anything extraordinary or innovative.

---

Story:

Continuation from the previous game. Player needs to help restore body of a girl that was used in some demonic ritual. Nothing deep or really interesting. There are few simple and generic side quests, none of the characters are written well (just average) and nothing in the story surprises.

---

Gameplay:

We kill hordes of enemies with either melee or ranged weapons. Although ranged felt inferior. Some powers for crowd control (spikes that immobilize and chi blast that drop enemies on the ground). Enemies drop gems to upgrade weapons, med kits, chi crystals, ammo. Bosses can drop new weapons.

Leveling up weapons is tedious and grindy, as nothing simply highlights gems that are better than what we currently have. On the other hand leveling up the abilities is proper, there is no grind required to get skill points. They are given evenly just for playing the game. There are various upgrades from melee bonus, elemental bonus, better survivability or power upgrades.

At first I tried to "clean" the maps but I soon realized that levels are re-used over and over again, so there is no point in doing that. At the end of the game I was using vanish power to hide from the enemies and just rush between points of interest. Mini map has it's problems as it rotates with us and mini version feels too small. While big map is semi-transparent and takes nearly half of the screen, so hard to see enemies like that.

There is no inventory per se, as we have only couple of weapons to chose from (there may be more if we focus on looking for bosses and do side mission for weapon reward). But because we're showered with upgrade gems (and it's not possible to decide which rarity we want to auto pick-up) - upgrades menu is cluttered with junk. That can be either sold (but money can't be used to buy anything useful), or used for crafting (3 white upgrades gives 1 random blue, 3 blue to one gold etc.).

Game is fast paced and quite brainless. It uses checkpoint system, so not possible to save anytime. And sometimes we're thrown bit back in the story if we forgot that last checkpoint was at the start of the mission (we need to approach checkpoint statue to save the game). It means there is no going back to previous save if the one we use is somewhat broken.

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Graphic is detailed but characters have problem with animations and lip sync
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Fits to the game but nothing extraordinary. Voice acting is also at best average
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Didn't encourage any

Normally Wolfenstein II would be a 4 star game. But level of bugs and problems player can find in 3 year old game is not acceptable. I was able to get past them but from what I saw in the Steam discussions not everyone is.

I keep having problem with my completion percentages, as site shows I have 0% in unplayed. Looks like percentage is so low it’s just rounder to 0. I keep adding this 1% as I do have some games to beat, but then I need to remove 1% from other stat, as otherwise it would sum to 100%.

Also since start of the year I started to think that in my reviews I mostly dissect games. I take them and grade them in RPG-oriented way. I can’t just write 2 sentence review that “game was nice :D”. My mind is bombarded that “inventory was awful”, “minimap was hard to follow”, “physic is off in this part of the game”. Sometimes it feels like surgeon that would get fixated on some vein and not realize that patient is already half-dead from the blood loss. When I read other people reviews I do think they are nice. Still I would not be able to write like that. It’s too far off from my analytical-observatory character. So sorry for anyone who’d want to see general description and I focus whole paragraph why inventory on “Witcher 3 is shit IMO” :P

Also anyone else finds it weird that putting game on any lists automatically opens up it’s steam page? I already get reflex of having fingers of CTRL+W to automatically close it before it clutters my tabs in the background.

I used icons from this page for platforms: https://icons8.com/icons

Activated: 11 / 2020

Vikings - Wolves of Midgard (Q1 2017) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Co-op Hack&Slash
28,5 hours | 17 of 39 (43%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- it works?

The bad
- enemies have bare bone AI
- environmental threats mechanic can be annoying at the beginning
- performance issues in co-op
- no sense of progression, as enemies just get more and more buffed
- archers have problem to shot both uphill and downhill
- enemies move slowly next to the player, but run unnatural fast when they want to close the distance
- gear in shops is not sorted by level or even type, just displayed randomly
- really grindy, playing game with beating each map only once ends with really under-leveled character
- auto-lock while using bow is so aggressive it often hits closest mob enemy instead of boss

Conclusion:
I would not recommend this one even as the last resort, unless you like grind. Game is playable, but unbalanced and extremely repetitive

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Story:

Giant wants to start the Ragnarok, and our mission is to stop them! And avenge death of our comrades! As shallow as can be. Nothing of substance or interest. Devs use Norse mythology, but don't even try to make it interesting.

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Gameplay:

Diablo-like game. In theory we're supposed to slash enemies, get exp, find better gear etc. In fact game is totally unbalanced and it takes 2 arrows to kill basic mob on the 1st mission, and it takes 5 - 6 shots to kill the same mob in the last mission, with high level gear. I already moved difficulty to easy from normal, and was still not able to play with sense of any progress...

We can use single or two hand weapons; hammers, bows, swords, axes etc. But experience points are focused on specific god and tied to type of weapon, so if character uses bow (Skadi tree) and invest into Loki tree - they will waste ability points. It is also not possible to respec the character.

Loot we find is barely better from the one we currently have. Merchants have their own problem, as goods they provide are not sorted in anyway. First time ever I saw items to not be sorted by either level (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc) or type (light, medium, heavy). Player is forced to move cursor over the icons to see the price and extrapolate how "good" item is. There are item miniatures, but they are so small it's hard to see tier of the item. Player inventory is also not sorted in any way (apart from dividing it into things like armor, helmet, weapon, ring etc.). There are no sorting options that would allow to change way items appear on the screen.

Game is too much zoomed in, and it's not possible to zoom it out. So character is often hit by attack that was started off-screen. It's especially bad in boss battles where areas are tiny. Enemies are copy-pasted and dumb, more annoying than interesting. Bosses are mostly just bigger version of the regular enemies.

It is possible to upgrade smith / armor maker / shop / rune maker. And kind of mandatory as higher level gear is locked behind those upgrades. Which is fine. But kind of pointless when player has ability to upgrade building to max level but unlocked upgrades are unusable, as items are 5 levels above player current level. I did take my time to clean all maps from all enemies and do all side objectives, and was still 5 levels below the limit. You can replay levels (which I did in few cases), but it feels too grindy to be 25 - 30% under-leveled when playing the game normally.

There is no complex crafting, all player can do is buy weapon from vendor and hope stats will be better than what we already have. Bought weapon has random rarity and stats. Simple but sometimes (especially at the beginning) annoying mechanic of environmental hazard where player needs to go back to fireplace / cave / ice / whatever to not die in the open.

I played as DPS / archer and their tree focus on critical damage obviously. And on slight (but still present) chance to kill enemy outright with an attack. Plus some slowing down enemies with ice. None of this work on mini bosses or bosses. On mobs, sometimes. What is the point of having whole tree focused on abilities, and then making bosses immune to all of this, leaving player with only basic attack? Even if devs think that 10% chance to OHK enemy is too much - they should drop it to 5%. Or 1%. Not make tougher enemies immune to effect...

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - it's fine. But game should be more zoomed out to be able to see more of the screen

Music - ⭐️☆☆ - it's the same track over and over again with bare-bone voice acting

Bugs - ⭐️☆☆ - game was barely playable in co-op, enemies can stagger lock played and kill it, level geometry problems

Activated: 05 / 2020

Disco Elysium (Q4 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐

Beaten after: 8 months

RPG Detective
38 hours | 9 of 25 (36%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- options to role-play the character are staggering
- one of not many games that allows player to fail in order to progress and improve
- idea of focusing the narration on constant dialogue of different personality traits in the character head
- game shows different society concepts - liberalism, democracy, socialism, nationalism etc. without painting one as "the good one"
- interesting story and not so obvious ending
- full voice acting as a free update

The bad
- note we can re-try failed ability check remains in the journal even when it's no longer available
- game can randomly crash with "Unity engine" problem
- game can't sometimes keep up with loading textures on the edges of the map when camera is zoomed out

Conclusion:
This game is really good. I'd only wish they would avoid some of the issues I mentioned in the negatives. Want to play as smart detective on the case to solve the murder? No problem! Want to play as brutal narcotic addict that can't add 2 to 2? All right, you will just need to find another way to solve the problem.

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Story:

Player wakes up in the hostel room without memory of where or who they are. Turned out they drank so hard they lost memory, and don't even remember their name. Only thing they do remember is that they came to the city to solve the murder case. Player is quickly joined by detective Kim - bit of the sidekick that don't do much more than give advice from time to time and join talking to NPCs.

Obviously game would not be good if case would be as obvious as it seems. So there is quite a bit of running around, looking for clues and talking to the characters. There are couple medium-long side quests that are well written and don't feel like repetitive "go, kill, bring back the loot".

As much as it's story about the murder - it's also story about person who needs to recover their memories, and decide how their life will look like from now on.

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Gameplay:

Isometric RPG with leveling up character, tons of dialogues and some dressing up. 4 main abilities categories are: intellect, psyche, physique and motorics. Each category has 6 abilities. Like logic, encyclopedia, conceptualization for the intellect. There are few ways in which abilities are used: 1) they allow to pass specific checks during conversations to learn more or force NPC to do something, 2) they influence what character can see in the environment 3) it influences the way character thinks. Low ability level will make you miss a lot of opportunities connected to this area, but high ability level will skew your entire way of thinking. For example someone with low reaction skill will not be able to avoid being hit by the NPC, but character with high reaction skill will think it's a good idea to try charge on armored enemy, like they are like in a Matrix movie. Low encyclopedia will make player look like idiot, but high encyclopedia will clutter player thoughts with unimportant details.

I played as a high intellect, medium motorics and low psyche and physique. So my mind was cluttered with random facts from encyclopedia, I was able to see "material" clues in the environment, and could show flaws of NPCs reasoning. But if I'd go with high physique and psyche (which I plan in the future) I would be macho type that can find how to break doors (instead of looking for way around) and see "spiritual" clues. There is no wrong approach in this game, although being hyperly focused on only few traits may not be a good idea. Sorry minmaxers.

On top of investing points to level up abilities directly we can also unlock thoughts in the thoughts cabinet. They need to be "discovered" firstly. Picking often "boring responses" when talking to NPCs will cause player to have internal dialogue with themselves, and it will unlock "really boring cop" thought. We can then decide if we want to internalize it (making it part of our character) or leave it be. Internalizing thoughts can take couple in-game hours, and most of the time gives penalty to abilities. After all when you obsess over question of "am I really a boring cop?" you will not be able to focus properly on your motorics. Which is really elegant way of building up the character. Although player doesn't know what perks will be given before thought is internalized. It may be getting few cents each time new object on the map is clicked (useful), or +2 to strength -1 to encyclopedia if player don't wear any shirt (not useful IMO). It it's also possible to wear clothes to get +/- ability points.

Why would anyone gamble with thoughts and swapping clothes when you can just invest in the ability? Abilities have learning cap, that depends on how many skill points were invested in particular category on the creation page. So if I invested 4 points into intellect I won't be able to have logic of more than 5. I did not invest much into psyche, so my abilities were locked at level 2 or 3. And to circumvent this player can internalize thought that will rise all psyche learning cap by 1. Or use ugly pants that will give me +2 to strength.

Talking to NPCs doesn't have one "proper way". Player can be logical and serious or behave like fat drunk disco star. Both approaches will be valid, and will not lock player progression or make it hard. That's where this game shines - in fact you can create your character, and play it the way you like. Not like it's "supposed to be played". Some characters will not like player of course, like I was not really liked by one merchant that was really into "spiritual realm", as I said it's pile of crap.

Some actions require specific tool - like wire cutters, pry bar or plastic bag. Those need to be equipped in the tool slot. With flashlight and bag player can find objects in dark areas and collect bottles to earn some pocket change. If there is need to open doors - different tool need to be equipped. It's not really an issue thought.

There is not much action apart from walking between locations and NPCs, and there is a lot to read. Just like in VNs or Shadowrun. Pages on pages of dialogues. So if reading is not your thing - you will not like this game. Some lines are voice acted but mostly to give more depth to the NPC. Most of the time it will be just few opening lines. Developers announced full voice acting as a free update. Although don't think I'd have patience to wait for character to tell their whole dialogue, when even now I was skipping some long dialogues.

Only bad thing I can say about this game is that it does not fail or hide checks that are no longer available. I tried to brute force bin lid, but as I was weak - I failed. So I went to look for key instead. I opened the bin but later realized that check is still listed in the journal as "you can retake it". It is confusing as I sometimes did not even remember I saw an option to do the check in the first place. And now it's nowhere to be found. There are characters that disappear from game, but their ability checks do not. So it is obvious design flaw for me.

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Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - graphic is stylized to be aquarelle painting which is nice to look at, but for me it was lacking details
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - music is quite repetitive but voice acting is really good
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - only one I found is random crashing to desktop, which does not count as game-breaking but surely as annoying one. Game even managed to crashed during credits

At first I wanted to go right back to the Disco Elysium to play it in different way. But I was quite happy with the ending I get, and I would not like to see it in “bad cop” version. Plus I don’t want to spend next 30h replaying the game game straight away. So it will need to wait.. for later.

We have snow in UK. Like actual snow, not pitiful 3cm of snowfall that we had before. Which melted on the same day. Now it’s 3rd day with a snow outside. And it’s not a catastrophe, like some people were telling me before I came here. “Schools are closed when there is even a bit of snow”, “public transport shuts down”, “not possible to go to work” they said. Bullshit xD They surely have more problem inland in more rural areas, but London is perfectly fine.

Snow is surely less of an enemy to the trains than swans are, as when swan was on the track trains were cancelled for 2h. Normally you’d just kick swam in the butt and chase it off. But noooo. Royal Animal. So they can’t simply chase it off. Which means disaster on the whole line :hehe: Shows what happens when religion or stupid tradition is more important than rational thinking.