What do you mean by co-op mode? Apparently you can play it as local co-op and still enjoy it, but it's not actually meant to be a co-op game. You're supposed to control both brothers at the same time. The game isn't hard in the first place, but if everyone just controls one character, of course it gets even easier. And the mechanics of controlling both are somewhat tied to the emotional side of the game as well.

I'm not sure how you are supposed to play the game, so thanks for the clarification. But it doesn't really change anything for me because the main focus of the game is either "play it in co-op mode" or "control two characters at once". In both cases it's not enough to make it a great game. At least in my opinion (I've actually played 3/4 of the game alone and then started from the beginning with my wife so I got a decent experience of single player mode as well)

Alright, fair enough! I actually had a few gripes with it myself, although more with regards to the story.

I just finished Startopia's "campaign mode," which I last played back in '08 or '09. A lot of fun was had, but I really wish there were more missions to burn through before switching to sandbox mode. This certainly feels like one of the shortest PC games I've ever played. I was also reacquainted with the annoying busywork of bomb-hunting and promoting residents. Thankfully, I enjoy the game too much to be discouraged by a couple of drawbacks. After a short break, I'll probably give sandbox mode a spin.

Very nice :) This one is on my to do list definitely. I'll never forget ordering my first game from a magazine or something. All I had to go on was a game's name and one screenshot (possibly there was a short description in there as well) from a wide selection of titles, and based on that I narrowed it down to three options : Hocus Pocus, Bio Menace and Realms of Chaos. Realms of Chaos screenshot left the biggest impression on me - something like this - but I wound up going for Bio Menace instead. An excellent choice in retrospect though if you're ever in the mood again for a solid 90s platformer :) But no matter how much I loved Bio Menace, I always wondered what Realms of Chaos would've been like. Something I need to rectify one of these days.

Go for it! It's not even very long if you have some experience with action platformer games from 90s and I assume you have. It took me less then 3 hours to beat it. You are not punished hard for dying: you just have to replay the level (and as I said they are fairly short) no game over screen or anything.

Yeah, the campaign is wesk in this game. Most of the missions feel like an extended tutorial: if you are supposed to build a hospital you will get tons of sick aliens but nothing really more than that. If you are tasked to build a prison you will deal with criminals but other aspects will be almost non-existing. Finally, in a mission where you have to crush your enemies you barely see any sick or convicted aliens. So it's always one aspect which is blown out of proportions but the rest are very basic. Sure, some missions are challenging but a proper campaign should have more diversity

Assassin's Creed Origins (Xbox One)

It's done, after around 90 hours of play time. All quests done and all map activities completed 100%. Anyone that follows the series knows that this one is done by the same team as Black Flag and the world is even bigger this time. You should also know that this game departs a bit from the old AC formula in some ways. I played Horizon Zero Dawn a few months back and commented how that game felt like a mix between AC3 and Witcher 2. Well that's what Origins feels like as well. You level and develop light RPG elements that still play much like the old familiar AC abilities once developed.

The main difference in feel from earlier game comes in two areas. The first is the quest structuring more closely resembles an RPG rather than a GTA type system. The second is the combat has been revamped and no longer simply involves waiting fro the enemy to attack and countering. Now you have light and heavy attacks and block and parry and dodge. It's all about timing.
I liked the new combat system, but have mixed feeling about the quest/activity changes. There are so many quests to do that they start to feel very generic and by the numbers...some say grindy but I don't, I prefer to call it "filling the world with things to do". You don't have to do all the quests if you feel it's becoming a drag, they are not all needed to advance the story. Speaking of which the story obviously tells of the origins of the Creed and does the job, but could well be the games weakest point. And when you finish you should know where the next game is likely to be set.

Otherwise it's still the same AC feel and I really enjoyed it. If you love to hate on the series then not much will change, keep hating. But if you're like me and like to spend a week or two each year in the latest historical open world, then this is still something you probably want to play at some point.
The world is the best ever. It's the largest map in an AC game and represents a relatively accurate, though scaled down, reproduction of the Egyptian Nile regions. From the swampy delta areas to the arid deserts as you get away from the river. The game is visually stunning. It played mostly at 2160p, though drops the resolution when needed down to around 2000p to keep the fps smooth. And that view distance, I've never seen a game where you can see so far with so much detail and no fogging. Climb up a peak near the Southern parts of the map and you can still see the Alexandria Lighthouse and the Triremes around it, all the way across the map. It's no wonder the game has a "photo" mode built in, the views are postcard worthy. Even the loading times were quite decent considering the size of the world- half the time to load compared to AC Unity for example. The only flaw in the games presentation comes partly from the outstanding view distance...the game uses half rate simulation for objects once they get a long way from the viewer. But because you can actually see for km's away, you sometimes see a line of tiny Camel riders jerking across the horizon at 15fps and looking a bit out of place compared to the pristine presentation in every other way. But when you can see so far, I suppose the devs have to do something to ease the CPU load- that's why games use fogging after all.

About 90 hours and only one single glitch and it was a funny one. During a story mission fight the enemy somehow knocked me through the floor and I found myself falling through space looking up at the bottom of the simulation! I even managed to use the games photo mode to get a capture. Obviously just a glitch as I wasn't able to replicate it. Otherwise, it was perfectly stable and bug free.

So I really enjoyed my time with the game. It looks like it will have a direct sequel, just like the Ezio games did. I do hope that Ubi still keep another studio making traditional style AC games as well though.

Edit: Almost forgot, the game supports Dolby Atmos and this was my first real experience with it using headphones. So object based positional audio, and I'm very impressed with it. Probably not the equal of a full suround theater system...but for positional sound using just a standard stereo headset/phones it's quite remarkable and hopefully more games continue to use it.

Finished Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series. If you like other Telltale games, you'll probably like this one too like me. I expected more epic and less emotions/talks though.

Full list here.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP)

This has all the makings of a MGS, Stealth, Boss Fights against giant robots, long cutscenes and a hard to follow storyline. The story is fairly similar to other games in the series, bad guys have taken over a former soviet facility in Columbia and are planning to use a secret weapon to launch nukes and start WW3, the whole operation is run by a mysterious commander and his minions with unique abilities (ESP, Freeze Ray etc) and it's up to you to stop them. However for this version they added a new mechanic, which allows you to recruit enemies and let them go out to sneak around with you. While the idea of this is good, the fatal flaw is that Snake (protagonist) has about 4x the strength and stamina as the rest of the soldiers, which sort of makes the whole thing pointless as you'd just send Snake out for each mission. There are a few things done to rectify this, making medkits heal less and are fairly hard to find, meaning it'd be easier to leave people back at your base to rest up instead of always using them. The gameplay consists of missions located in a single area, most of the story ones are really just "Run to this point", in fact you don't even have to run back or worry about being stealthy, once you reach the point the mission ends. With the exception of about 2 or 3 points the missions are relatively easy, however the hardest points are the bossfights. While the bossfights are quite difficult, half of them involve just hiding behind a wall, waiting for the boss to walk round the corner, then shooting them and running to another wall. The other half are fairly difficult, especially when the buttons to control the camera are located on the same side of the console as the analog stick, it is incredibly awkward to fight this way. Story Wise... it's a metal gear game, you'll either love it or hate it. It's fairly short, and is probably my least favourite in the series. I'd recommend it but only if you've played the rest of the series first.

You took the words right out of my mouth about the missions being somewhat tutorial-like. It only started feeling like the main game in the latter five missions or so. Mucky Foot must've been on a strict timetable, because the Siren mission felt very anticlimactic.

The Suffering 1 & 2 GOG version, just joined my list! 100% too, with all different endings and archives unlocked!

Banished

Without any doubt one of the best city builder game ever! It’s hard to believe it was created by a single person! Wow, this guy is my hero! And this time, the game is all about taking care of your people. There are many city builders where your town can have a population of thousands but you don’t really see the inhabitants, just a few figures that represent some professions. In Banished you see all of your people and you have to take care of all of them - not of money like in many other games from the genre. And trust me, it’s not an easy task, especially early midgame when your populace grow but you still cannot provide enough diverse food, clothes and way to keep them happy. Things will get a bit easier after that but you will still have a lot to do and a little disaster can get you back to desperate fight for survival. It’s a bit of shame that the game doesn’t have any campaign/scenario mode, just a randomly generate landscape for a sandbox experience. I do like campaigns (even if they are a bit artificial) to keep things fresh. After building a few successful cities on hard difficulty mode I think I’m done with the game - for now because I’ll surely come back to Banished!


Full list

The Walking Dead : A New Frontier

The first game was not without flaws, but it was new and great (still is). The second game was not so good, principally because most of the characters didn't matter at all, but still told and interesting story. The third installment? You feel that scenarists don't have anything to tell anymore, maybe except in the first and the last episodes. Which is not a lot.

Frankly speaking, I don't know if it's because of the translation, but many choices I did lead me to dialogue lines I couldn't have fathomed ever, which is infuriating when the scenario is supposed to depend on your choices. Made me consider to give up altogether on that game, to be honest.

But, as it is only 7 hours long tops and there's no real difficulty during the gameplay moments, I hanged on and finally finished it. Am I glad I finished it? Yes, but not because it was a good game. Frankly speaking, if there's a 4th installment of that series, I'm not sure I'll ever consider buying it, even on a sale.

If only they could give us another installment of Tales of the Borderlands, instead... But I know it's wishful thinking.

So far in 2017: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2017/post15

Skylar & Plux: Adventure on Clover Island

It's was alright. Not great, but there are so few of these games on the PC that you have to be thankful for every halfway decent one, and that it was. If you've played one of these 3D collectathon platformers already, you know what to expect: jump, double jump, use jetpack, and some other special abilities, collect shards, fight a few minions (only three different types in the game), heal by collecting more shards, use shards to open cages and free captured creatures called loas (like in the Rayman series), free enough loas to get new hearts (health), clear three open temples on an island, teleport between them, once unlocked.

The controls feel solid and so the platforming is fun, but it's rather linear, with little room for real exploration. Contrary to other reviewers, I actually liked that there is no fall damage. You still lose health though if you fall into water, sand (for whatever reason), lava, from great heights in the mountain level (a bit inconsistent) etc., so there's still plenty of opportunities to lose health by clumsy platforming, but you can sometimes shortcut by jumping down to ground level without hurting yourself. The save system is so-so. I wasn't very fond of it, since checkpoints are not that frequent, and if you die, you lose all progress you've made and have to collect the same shards, free the same loas all over again, which is no challenge at all, for the most part, just a bit boring. Then again, I was usually able to catch up again in no time, and the game is not difficult, in fact it's so easy that when I died it was most probably because I let my guard down, thinking myself near invincible. So I guess the checkpoint system is acceptable, since it adds a little bit of tension, and the frustration of having to repeat things wasn't all that high in the end. It only ever happened to me once or twice anyway (the game gets easier and easier the longer you play, due to increased health, special abilities and increased familiarity with the opponents and controls).

The music is great for this kind of game, and I like it when the tracks merge seamlessly depending on the area you're in. The level design was quite nice, environments are colorful and interesting, and there was enough variety for the length of the game. It also featured a couple of different puzzles, which hardly required thinking but I liked them all the same. Speaking of length though, the game is only 2-4 hours long, depending on whether you rush through it or attempt to collect everything. I played it in three or four sessions and the savegame says it took me 4 hours. I skipped finding the last 10 loas I missed though, because the game offered no great help on where to look for them and I didn't feel like going through all the levels again just to search for them, also seeing that it would only have given me one more heart, and the boss battle at the end was so trivial I wouldn't have needed it anyway.

What little there is of story is very simple, more the means to an end. Similar to Jak and Daxter in The Precursor Legacy, the main character Skylar doesn't talk at all, while her sidekick Plux keeps commenting on events. Plux is a rather boring goody-two-shoes character and what he says is often pretty lame. Additionally, the main villain CRT repeatedly taunts and teases them via comm with wacky bravado, Handsome Jack style (a very obvious inspiration). Not very original, but I occasionally enjoyed his blathering, since he's such a doofus, and he was still more likable than Plux. Also, his voice actor wasn't too bad, definitely the best of the three speakers (he reminded me a bit of Abe Goldfarb from the Blackwell P&C series, but it wasn't him). In general, story and dialogues are secondary and not that special, and they seem to be targeted at a younger audience (at least I hope so).

Loading times can be a bit long, and sometimes when it was loading a cutscene, it froze for a second or two. Also, while the options menu allows you to toggle off subtitles, the cutscenes at the beginning and the end of the game will still display them.

TL:DR
It's an entertaining game for 2-4 hours, if you don't expect too much of it. Everything works quite well, it's solid platforming fun with nice environments, good music and some neat ideas, it's just that it's very short and easy, and there isn't that much room for exploration. Story, characters and dialogues are a bit unoriginal and cliché and probably more directed at younger kids; many adults might find them rather annoying or cringeworthy, but then again, a game like this doesn't really need a good story, IMO. By no means a must-play, and there are things to criticize about it; personally I still enjoyed my time with it, and at 60% off or so, I didn't regret the purchase.