My first of the year.

1. else Heart.Break() - Bought it here on release, but didn't really get into it. A year+ later, I decided to completely dive into it. It was intimidating at first, and I still haven't fully gotten the hang of it... but it's got some cool stuff that is more helpful if you're more programmer-oriented.

Just finished Sonic R for the PS2 (part of the Sonic Gems Collection).

I've had this game for years for the PC but it doesn't work on modern hardware. It doesn't like OSs after Windows 98 or CPUs with clock speeds measured in GHz or more than one core. It also doesn't like too much memory.

I'm actually quite surprised I didn't finish this one when I had the chance years ago because I've just blasted through the entire thing - all chaos emeralds found, all unlockable characters found, hidden track unlocked and credits viewed on every difficulty level (including hard) in less than three hours (actually more like two). I don't think I've ever played a major title that was this easy. The only difficulty hiccup I encountered was with the Reactive Factory race on Hard, where I couldn't figure out why I was constantly being overtaken by the AI racers, until I remained behind them for one race and figured out that the AI was exploiting a track glitch on one of the ramps.

A shame really, because it has a lot of appeal. It's not like your traditional racer. It plays like a platformer, and once you get into the flow of a track, it's rather satisfying. Also, the cheesy pop music that plays during the races is really infectious.

Oxenfree

I enjoyed it, actually enough to play through it in one go (took me 5-6 hours, as a slow completionist). Gameplay is simplistic, overall plot is alright, but art style, sound design and storytelling through voiced character dialogues with choices really managed to draw me in and keep me entertained.

Technically, it wasn't all handled perfectly all the the time; for instance, it happened to me once or twice that I couldn't read the speech bubbles I was supposed to click on for choices because the camera was off and the bubbles cut off by the borders off the screen. And I also had a few minor quibbles, like: It was a bit inconvenient that the frequency of your radio resets every time you enter a new area, so if you're tuned into a specific channel, you always have to readjust the frequency after leaving the screen. The map is called by pressing the middle mouse button but can't be closed the same way, you have to press Esc instead. The player character runs in some areas and walks in others, and walking can be a bit slow if you just pass through an area or search for clues (no quick traveling, no free choice between running and walking).

And it took a bit to get accustomed to how the dialogues work, because you don't have much time to read your options and make a choice when the speech bubbles pop up over the player character's head, and if you're not quick enough, you miss the chance to say anything, but if you click too early, you interrupt the speech of the other characters and miss part of what they were saying. You can also cancel some dialogues and choice options accidentally by moving away too fast or examining something at the same time a dialogue occurs.

But all of that couldn't really ruin the fun for me; it's just easier to list flaws than to describe what's good about a game. I guess what I liked about it apart from the atmosphere is that it made me feel involved, that despite of the story being set, I could define at any moment how the main character reacted to the others; who she was nice to, who she kept at a distance etc. A bit like the Telltale games but without those tedious QTEs. I guess the game also has a certain replay value if you want to try to behave a bit differently next time, although I doubt it will matter much in the grand scheme of things and the game is still too linear for me to feel the urge to play it another time. But that one time was quite satisfying already.

Oh, and I played the Steam version and without wanting to spoil anything, I noticed that the game made certain use of the client's online community functions in-game, which I suppose you'd miss if you play the GOG version offline (not sure if it works with Galaxy). But it's nothing big and important, just a little gimmick, so don't worry about it.

Broken Age

Just finished and didn't like it. I'm not sure what's wrong with this game - it has nice graphics, quite interesting plot with some twists and surprises, gameplay creatively splitted into two different characters, nice sense of humour. It looks great, doesn't it? But it just goes wrong from the very beginning - starting from Shay first scenes (showing us how bored he is and accidentaly making us bored too) to the grande finale (which need to be repeated many times, until you found out all the correlations and learn to avoid all mistakes).

List of 2017 games.

Shadowrun Hong Kong: Extended Edition

Enjoyed it fairly bit but at times the amount of text was troublesome. Still fun game.

the thing i didn't get at the end which to be honest was a bit rushed in my opinion. What was Raymond's purpose there? he didn't do shit.


edit:
ok. found out other endings and I managed to get the best ending hence why he was not needed.

Deja Vu

Picked it up in a sale, supposedly one of the first point and click games and it shows. You play a man who lost his memory, having woken up in the mens room of a disused bar. There are many frustrating things about this game, though I don't mind deaths in point and clicks, some of them are extremely frustrating, especially if you don't save often. Going down the street in one direction too often causes you to enter a construction site and immediately die falling down a pit, you also start the game poisoned, which basically puts you on a time limit. My other frustration is the fact you can make the game unwinnable, by running out of money. Overall I'm just glad these games have improved a lot since then.

Age of Empires: Mythologies (DS)

First time ever playing an AOE game, I enjoyed it but the missions in the campaign take way too long to complete and I found it got dull and repetitive quickly. Most of the mission involve your enemy starting with a huge citadel whilst you start with 1 building, and upgrading the city to a point where I could actually go on the offensive takes about 1 - 1½ hours. Great game though, with good strategy.

Sam and Max: The Devils Playhouse

Enjoyed the Telltale Monkey Island game, so thought I'd give this a go. It was pretty good, though I realised too late that this was actually the 3rd game in a series. I don't think it was as good as monkey island, though I think that might be down to taste. Also the fact subtitles aren't on automatically did slightly annoy me. Overall it was a great game though.

Sheesh, after 20 years I've finally finished Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, specifically the remaster by Nightdive.

Well, that was something. Incidentally I was doing a playthrough of the N64 version but was about to give up when the remaster went on sale on GOG. I had trouble really enjoying the N64 version with its clunky controls and cursed some of the weird design decisions, most notably of course the respawning enemies versus limited ammo and health packs. And I was really frustrated by how hard some of the keys were to find. The stuff that drove me nuts in the original version didn't really matter to me in the PC version, though. The better controls and increased draw distance in the remaster certainly took a lot of the game's pressure off me and ultimately I actually really had a blast. Admittedly I resorted to a guide (but text only) to make sure that I wouldn't miss any keys but still, with the increased draw distance most of them were very easy to find.

Anyway, as I said, I really enjoyed the game, much more than ever before. The gunplay is actually surprisingly good and even the level design turns out to be quite strong when you're not aimlessly walking through a dense blue cloud. I must even admit that the game was a lot more fun to me than most other early full 3D shooters like Quake, Blood 2 or Unreal. And surprisingly some parts of the game actually reminded me of Unreal, particularly the later somewhat alien and mysterious worlds.

I really feel like playing the sequel now but I'll gladly wait for the upcoming remaster. Really, really looking forward to that one now (and will gladly finally play its multiplayer which will apparently be powered by Steamworks and presumably Galaxy).

I wholeheartedly agree, the remaster finally made this game truly enjoyable and I don't regret having sold my (strongly censored German) N64 cartridge without ever finishing it. What irks me is that there's no reason for the lack of a Linux port though. :/
Quite ironic that shortly after the remaster was finished, the actual source code of Turok showed up:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/turok/turok-source-code-found

Moto Racer 1 & 2

It's been years since I revisited these classic games and I'm glad that I did so. I wanted to play something quick, something fast and these first Moto Racer games deliver the fact-paced racing experience. I enjoyed the first game more and quite surprised that I totally forgot the additional 2 tracks and the unlockable pocket racing. I never played the third game before so it'll be the next game I'll play!

Resident evil 7
Resident evil remake
xcom 2

Tomba. Interesting game, sort of a Metroidish platformer with some RPG aspects. Tomba is a sort of feral kid who's fighting a gang of evil pig wizards (once again, pigs are vilified despite being such good-natured and intelligent creatures...ah well). Like a lot of Metroid-like games, especially the old-school ones that don't tell you where to go, there's a sense early on of being aimless and not sure where to go, but if you keep scraping at it you eventually hit a tipping point and you make really fast progress after that to the end.

Some of the subquests can seem a bit cryptic but generally they're pretty easy to figure out. The hardest thing about the game is probably just finding the hiding spots of the wizards because you'll have to go back over everywhere you've been to see if anything has changed.

The gameplay is a bit weird - your main attack is to hop on an enemy's back and bite their head, and then finish them off with this sort of judo throw. You get used to it, I guess.

Graphics are very nice. Characters are sprites in front of a mix of 3D and pre-rendered backgrounds. I wish the Playstation had had more games like this instead of Sony's usual "3D or GTFO" demands.

Shadow Complex Remastered

I went into this without knowing anything about the game; I think it was part of a Humble Bundle last autumn. Apparently it's an Xbox port, and the story, as I learned from the credits, is based on a novel by Orson Scott Card. Well, to tell the truth, there isn't much of a story here and it's rather lame, nothing to write home about. But the gameplay was surprisingly fun. I can't judge how the port plays with mouse and keyboard controls, but with a gamepad the controls were spot on.

The game turned out to be a Metroidvania-like platformer/shooter mix set in a huge underground complex of some secret terrorist organization, in which you acquire parts of a special armor that give you new abilities, which in turn open up new areas to explore and search for collectibles. As in most Metroidvania games, that means a lot of backtracking is involved, especially if you want to discover and collect everything. I stopped at 88% items and 94% map or so, but I took my sweet time with the game (about 10 hours, the average player will finish it much faster, I guess). There are also minor RPG elements, but only as far as (optional and unnecessary) grinding for levels.

All in all, I found Normal difficulty pleasantly easy, it was more about exploration than challenging your skills. The collectibles upgrade your shield, health and your storage for explosives but after a certain point it doesn't really matter whether you can carry 30 or 50 grenades or so, so if you only find a third of the upgrades you should be more than fine already. And you can stock up on explosives at any checkpoint room, which are spread across the complex quite fairly (regular ammunition is unlimited, the guns just need to be reloaded when the magazines are empty). There were a few boss battles, but the bosses could easily be defeated with normal weapons or exploits, and by the end of the game I was so overpowered that I could ignore most enemies and just let them shoot at me without much risk of dying. Finding all the collectibles on the other hand, was a bit more tricky sometimes. Your map reveals in what rooms they're in, provided you've been there before, but not the exact hidden location.

So the main selling point here is the great level design, just forget about the story and have fun exploring.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
A gift from trentonlf, thanks a lot again

I really enjoyed it but its age showed. Sometimes it was a bit clunky, sometimes a bit unfair and knowing the movie helped a lot. Luckily I knew that in p&c adventures from that era it's wise to save often and using different slots because it might turn out you did something wrong that would make the rest of the game at least extremely difficult if not impossible (preserving your health and getting a lot of cash in a castle come to mind). Anyway, it's a true classic and I highly recommend it.

Full list

Max Payne 1 & 2

Just finished one of my all time favourite PC games for the Nth time. A true hallmark of excellence, Max Payne features one of the best stories ever told in a videogame, great characters, superb writing, amazing gameplay, it is still great-looking (it doesn't seem to age), honestly I think it's a game no action fan should pass.

Although currently not being sold on GOG, retail copies are abundant on eBay and although it has some problems on newer operating systems, pcgamingwiki.com has all fixes.

..:: 2017 list ::..

Just completed my 4th playthrough of the original Mount & Blade. I never got hooked on Warband and went back to this fairly soon. This particular play I have been 'working' on for four years, I think, there about anyway. Took me 915 in-game days to beat it; the last 2½ weeks were just running around looking for the last enemy lords. Cheating and making all units visible on map is tempting at that point.