One of my favourite games of all time that I've been playing for years. There's no other like it out there.

It's a PvP shooter, but it starts as a survival horror shooter, with maps teeming with monsters, and one or two dangerous boss monsters we try to hunt, with other players trying to kill us over the bounty the boss drops. That amazing horror period of being afraid of anything and everything in the game lasted about 500 hours for me. After that, I became braver and more aggressive in my approach - I started looking forward to hunting - and fighting - other players. I have joined the monster compendium of the Bayou. The action, the adrenaline, the thrill, the victory - that's what it was all about.

However, the game is a live service by Crytek. And such games change, that is their nature. For me, the changes were for the worse. First came the limitation of the drops of premium currency from playing and achieving feats in the game (killing players, hunting bosses, actually getting out alive with the bounty). The prize for playing the game as intended was gone, and with that, so was the motivation. I'm not the only one affected. Over the years after that change, I noticed many players straight up ignoring the boss and the bounty and concentrating on fighting the other players instead. It was the only truly rewarding thing left in the game. And while it was amazing, with old cowboy guns, amazing sound design that added new dimension to fights, tactics and resource management, the old style of fighting by hunting also started being phased out to make the game faster and tighter.

In the end, the game ceased to be what I fell in love with.

Then came other things. Game was ported to newer CryEngine version. The new graphics were so dense in detail that they kind of made my head hurt. I didn't know where to look. UI got changed into staple console UI, with big tiles and generally being shit. That has since been kind of fixed, but I never truly got used to it.
The TV series we were promised never came to be. The single player mode everybody craved never made a beep on developers' radar. The new actual content (monsters, bosses, maps) took years to be released, while developers are content to release the inconsequential stuff to monetise (weapon skins, time-limited events that play the same).

With things I disliked accumulating, things I liked disappearing, and nothing new & good to look forward to, eventually I came to realise I have no more reason to play.
It was my favourite. Now it's no more, replaced by something else.
Still, it was great to play it, and I can't ever say I regret it. GG

Another multiplayer first person shooter I put over 1000 hours into. Man, when they are good, I sure do love them.

This one is also one of my favourite games ever.

Purely multiplayer PvP, this game has multiple play modes and incredible variety of playstyles. Three different classes, each with multiple specializations (being either unique gadgets nearly equaling superpowers, or actual superpowers), weapons and gadgets practically make it a "make your own hero" hero shooter.

Most of the modes are base attack/defense in disguise, making it way better than typical mindless team deathmatch.
All in all: tight gameplay and movement, incredible variety of playstyles, tactics and strategy, good gunplay, destructible environment, big maps to learn. Just awesome.

Alas, not all is perfect in this paradise. Game is seasonal, and that kind of forces me to grind some seasonal progression points from time to time. Dailies (which in essence are annoying practice in gaming) are simply not enough. Basically, the time investment the game requires is too big for me to keep up with if I ever want to make a dent in my backlog. The other issues of simply having played all the playstyles I wanted in the game already, the matches becoming very annoying recently with bad teams on my side being very common, and people ragequitting without game refilling the empty spots causing the match to essentially end minutes before the clock runs out and wasting everyone's time all add up.

So enough is enough. I've had my fill. Game was great, time for new stuff.
Side note: some achievements were so hard to obtain (partly due to rng) that I practically jumped in my seat when I got them. ^_^
I'm really proud to have 100%ed this one.

Another PvP multiplayer game!
A bit like Super Smash Bros, but third person. Hit people so they fall from the arena, but the less health they have, the farther they fly upon getting hit. Basically, a happy, chaotic brawl with various arenas and characters inspired by various myths.

Played it just before servers shut down, but it was very nice.

Have it on Epic Games Store, so crossing it out of there as well.

Another PvP multiplayer FPS game! Also one of recent games it was popular to criticise on the internet.

It was actually very easy to start playing it. Low bar of entry was a plus. There were plenty of cool elements in it, but I also saw plenty of rough edges.
I also started playing it after the big gameplay update, and I can imagine how much duller and repetitive it was before. So criticisms were kind of fair, I have to admit that.

Still, I had my fun with it. Hunting for achievements just before servers closed was a bit stressful, but plenty of people were willing to help out one another, sometimes even with no communication available between opposing teams.

In the end, servers shut down, and that's about it with this game.

Multiplayer PvP dungeon raiding and extraction game. A mighty rival to Dark and Darker, swooping into the scene as Dark and Darker was having legal issues. In the end, it failed, and servers shut down. Whoopsie.

I only played its demo a long while back, and even then it had some glaring issues, chief issue being a crawling level walking speed
Literally only grabbed the game because it was F2P. Maybe it's for the best I never played it again.

Multiplayer PvP game. Something akin to Dead by Daylight in gameplay, with SCP vibes.
Played through tutorial, but playerbase wasn't there to start a public match.
F2P on Steam, so kind of easy come, easy go.
Servers shut down, so can't play even if I wanted to.

Multiplayer PvP hide and seek game.
Got it as a key drop from someone who didn't want it (so counting it as a gift), but never got around to playing it, even though I meant to.
Found out servers shut down long after they did, so that's that.

Multiplayer PvP FPS game.
Played probably around 2012 for a match or three to check it out. Seemed very similar to Call of Duty to me back then, but plenty of reviews I've seen recently mentioned that it was ahead of its time. Well, in the end it didn't matter, as the game decided to start becoming worse and worse, enough so that they shut it down and released a new version.

A short free game I stumbled upon soon after its release. Not anything special to write home about by any means, but when a jigsaw puzzle game has 3 different ways of helping the player find connections between pieces, that is indeed very nice. And I respect that.

As I wrote in my review, thanks to that the game is really about as challenging as you want it to be, so nobody can claim it's too hard or too easy.

This was an SG win I played last minute to finish September's Pagywosg event ^_^;

While my review is positive, looking back on the game after a month, it's not that memorable, and the comic book presentation got old fast. But then again, the meat of the game, the adventure and humor were there, and they were good, so all is good in the end.

All in all, I enjoyed it for what it was, and there's no need to come back. It's that sort of game.

Another free game. And damn, I forgot how much I like adventure games set in modern times (sort of 1985-2020). It something about these B-class adventure stories that gets me, be it Mummy (arguably set before WW2), Jurassic Park, The Thing or even 1998 Godzilla. Something that scratches that Humanity Fuck Yeah itch, where indomitable spirit, creativity and simple bravery of ordinary man can overcome great dangers and bad odds.

Ekhm, yes, the game. As I said in my review, it's solid and plays like it should. Enough so, that I wishlisted 3 paid chapters of the series on Steam, and keep an eye out for the new series the devs are making with yet another free chapter :o

Suffice to say, I really liked it :3

And what do you know? Another free game :o

A Tower Full of Cats really spoiled me. Or rather, it was so good that it perhaps made me enjoy a genre I usually wouldn't.
This game is not as good, and while I won't say it's completely bad, it's bad enough to be unpleasant/boring to play.

It has GREAT help button though. It doesn't solve the puzzle for you - just (literally) points you in the right direction. Simple, efficient, and for some reason, very innovative. I hated that Tower Full of Cats was finding cats for me when I only wanted to ask for some help ;_;
This should literally become the standard in the genre.

Got this from an Internet friend a long time ago - now it's a 4th gift out of a whopping 180…

So this turned out to be nearly unbearable snoozefest. Gameplay is about watching a character move from point A to point B very slowly. I once had an uninterrupted 45 seconds of not doing anything but watching…

I'm not really happy about that. But oh well, it's done now, so there's that.
Here's a review in case you want to read some more complaining.

Finished, but no achievements = beaten

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. An ultra cheap game I got from another internet friend (so, another gift) that turned out to be unexpectedly good. At least better than its price would indicate, that's for sure.

An RTS with 55 (!!!) levels, a level editor and level design of either satisfying tug of war based on outproducing your opponent and timing attacks correctly or puzzle levels where you need to find a sequence of correct moves to guarantee your survival & victory. It was a bit heavy on the wrist though. More in my review if you are curious.

Some achievements required more controllers connected than I had at hand, so I simply decided to drop the issue for some time - next ? years to be exact. :P

Finished, but no 100% achievements = beaten

A gift from Zelrune <3
And my review.

Initially, I played this with my niece - meaning, my niece hoarded the computer, and I helped her out as the spotter. That playthrough pretty much revealed all the surprises the game had in store, so when after a week later abstaining from playing in order to forget the details I started playing from scratch on my own, initial stages were pretty boring and tedious. After all, I've seen this before.

Fortunately, the game design has shined through and ultimately I ended up having fun in scouring the levels for cats and other items while using very little hints. I overdid it and lost some time and nerves stuck looking for 2 last cats in 2 levels for which I did use help, but I'm happy to say that for now, my patience and eyes are still going strong. And even happier to admit that I ended up having fun with the game despite opposing conditions.

Finished and 100% achievements = completed

And yet another gift from yet another friend

Call of the Sea was a mixed bag for me (review). Not a good game as a whole, but definitely an interesting enough experience with unearthly vibes for me to not regret playing it.

I finished the game twice - once without a guide, and once with it to find the remaining stuff I missed. It made me realise how annoying some developers can be with hidden stuff - like putting something on the other side of a big map when your character walks and runs slowly and the thing appears only when you do final objective on that map and 99.9% of people will just leave for next level without a guide.

It makes me feel like a loser for playing a game without a guide :|

Finished and 100% achievements = completed

I played Deathgarden shortly after it went F2P in November of 2019. Game was made by creators of Dead by Daylight, but I haven't played that game even until today, so I can't make any good comparisons.

Still, we have a multiplayer only game about 5 survivors facing a hunter in an arena. Survivors were sneaking around while trying to activate the exits, while hunter was doing as his name would suggest - hunting.

Gameplay was obviously deeper than that with parkour, detection, hiding, running, counters to certain plays, various gadgets and skills and a GLORIOUS 2v10 mode that for some reason was always fun to play despite being chaotic opposite to the usual stealthy and nervous 1v5 hide and seek.
All in all, game had that something that made it fun.

Unfortunately, devs decided to go back and focus on their cash cow - Dead by Daylight, and this game started steadily losing population. Even though I have almost 120 hours of gametime in it, in later months the chief part of gameplay was waiting for enough people to start a match at all, sometimes just 10 minutes, sometimes even 30.

Still, the game was one of my favourites and I miss it.

Oh man, what an experience. I had been eyeing this game for a while, but it was news of the servers shutting down that prompted me to give it a shot while I still could. And so I did, starting on January 4th, 2023, with only a week until the game's shutdown on January 11th.

I was fresh after moving, so with my desk still unassembled I played the game on a giant cardboard box for 63 hours in about 5 days all for that sweet, sweet 100%. Surely you understand, 12 hours of gaming a day leaves little time to assemble a working desk…
So worth it, and yet, it was an exhausting sprint marathon of gaming.

Still, this mad dash left me with very jumbled memories of the game. I remember so little, 6 classes, multiple elements and their special skills, and rest of it being mostly run of the mill Fortnite-like Battle Royale formula.

Oh well, at least I had fun with it. Probly wouldn't play much more of it though, even if I could. I had my fill and then some.

Winning Putt was a simple golfing game me and my friend used to hop in on every Friday to talk over. Gameplay was so mindless that it did not cause any trouble with thinking about other stuff and talking in a way that made sense.

Pick a stick (range), direction of shot, power and try to hit the sweet spot of accuracy.

It was however a F2P MMO-ish game, and once Bandai Namco realised it wasn't bringing in the cash, they cut off the servers.

It has this silly grindy achievement that I'm sure I would have never managed to complete without some sort of autoclicker, since it would take me around 600 days of gametime to finish according to my current gametime to cheevo progress ratio. Still, I'm sure I'd have completed the rest of the content if it was possible, but since it's not, see ya my first golf game. I'll miss you. o/

Servers shut down = won't play

Not much to say here. An MMO game I got from a bundle in 2022 - and game shut down in 2023. I was busy with other stuff back then, so there was no chance for me to play it. I don't really regret it, it feels like a grindfest and I saw some other complaints about it in the reviews.

Servers shut down = won't play

1st failed F2P multiplayer YAGER game of this post.

A long time ago (August 7th, 2019), I tried out this game. Premise was nice - controlling giant starships of differing types in 5v5 battles. Execution was mediocre, and progression wasn't great either, with tiers and number boosts. I think it could have been a really nice game, but hey, let's take a nice concept, and make it a niche multiplayer title with dying player population, am I right?

Of all elements of this game, graphics and ship aesthetics were probably the best, which says a lot, I think.

Someone came up with an idea to shut down the servers in 2023. Then someone else came up with an idea to add achievements, which I knew would take a massive grind to complete, so I didn't even bother to start up this game one more time before it died.

Servers dead -> Won't play

A PvPvE extraction shooter. Very mixed feelings about this one (see my review). 2nd failed F2P multiplayer YAGER game of this post.

It's a game I rushed to play because its servers were due to close at the end of September of 2023. I managed to get 32 hours of game time, a very incomplete chain quest story lines, a lot of exploration for 1 out of 3 maps, and overall a decent progress into what the game offered.

I really, really, REALLY like a certain extraction shooter called Hunt: Showdown. This game is also an extraction shooter, so I picked it up to check out if I like Hunt, or if I like extraction shooters in general. Turns out, that it's Hunt.

Cycle was a decent game to play, but there were too many things about it that I didn't like, of which first and foremost were the extraction shooter elements. I once died to an enemy player, and got so fed up with it, that I stopped playing for a week. Basically, other players will bother you during gaming, and it can be really such a bullshit. Especially since they can be end-game players with super weapons and armor, while you run around with practically trash level equipment in comparison, still stuck in early game.

Servers were closed before I finished the game -> won't play category. Not much of a loss really. Imho it would be a great base for a single player game, but hey, everybody wants a multiplayer only live service game with microtransactions. Look at where it got them :|

An SG win. Not really recommended as it's a bland, short game focused on couple basic mechanics.

Nothing to write home about, but hey, at least it's a completed SG win! \o/

My 2nd ever SG win - now 100% complete! \o/
Also my 1st finished game out of 60 I plan to do in 2024.

A fantastic game in my humble opinion. Read the review if you want.
Played through it in one sitting in around 5 hours, and I am reminded again, that the adventure genre of games really can make you feel like you are on an adventure. :3

Wholeheartedly recommended and added to favourites <3

This game is free to play FPS. But it's not just that. Destructible voxel-based environment combined with ability to place your own structures or blocks made it more complex than I could have predicted before trying it out. Supposedly, the idea isn't new, having predecessors such as Block N Load and Ace of Spades - of which I've never heard before, showing me that checking out new things once in a while is a good thing. Which hopefully excuses my first impression of it being "FPS Fortnite".

Anyway, game feels good to play when treated simply as FPS. However, tactical thinking, clever structure placement or environmental destruction followed by dedicated offensive action will most definitely change the flow of a match. Teamwork also helps greatly, because numbers advantage is very effective in this game. Sneaking around enemy position only to break the wall and get the element of surprise is one of the tactics I enjoyed using, even if it wasn't always successful. I admit to be a bit lacking both in tactics and shooting skill department when compared to some amazing players that I was playing against, but I usually carried my weight and then some.

All in all, it's pure joy to play for action oriented players, and even despite 100%ing the game, the fact that it's still being developed, updated, patched and reworked will make me come back to it in the future, even if only to check out new maps and gamemodes.

Evil. Pure evil.

Back when I was still in middle/high school, I remember cookie clicker being all the rage on mobile phones for a day or three. I laughed at people who played it, as it was just stupid. Turns out, I'm probably more stupid. Tempted by prospect of "easy 100%" I played this game, and now, a bit more than 5 months later I am free. And maybe equally as important, I am slightly wiser.

Idle games take a lot of time just to grind resources, I knew about it. But this game was initially released on mobile phones, so the fact that regularly engaging with it in short intervals brings extra in-game progress, (now obvious in hindsight) caught me off guard. And as student of university in online learning, I have a lot of time to burn, even during my classes. The result was that this game got more and more of my attention, all excused by my thinking that I'll be able to finish it sooner thanks to all my "work". True, I did, but the time cost was tremendous.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I did enjoy some aspects of optimizing my gameplay habits, increasing my efficiency purely by power of thought. There is a depth to this game, because it's a combination of tower defense, and idler. But when new progression gamemode was made available around April, it was one that required not couple seconds of attention, but almost 20 minutes wih merely 2 breaks to be most effective. When I tried it out, I realised the horrible truth - when actually played, this game is horrible. Gameplay is mostly sitting around waiting for perfect circumstances, so that player can spring the trap of powerups combination with proper tower placement and gain the greatest gain, in order to progress slightly faster, and slightly farther. And it's the same gameplay as normal gamemode, offering merely slight differences and new resource as a reward. At that moment, I realised I should have never started this game in the first place, for reasons of it being a time sink, and me not enjoying the type of gameplay. I can enjoy tower defense games, but not when they last months with so little to gain.

Anyway, I'm done with it now. The upside to this whole debacle, is that now I'll be more careful of what type of games I'll be playing in the future, being especially wary or idle games.
I know I have one more idler to finish (Idle Champions of Forgotten Realms), but it's not nearly as (actively) time consuming as this diabolical game, so when I play it by not playing it, I lose little.