Haven't posted here in a while, I was working in Slovenia for 3 months so gaming was not an option (Steam Deck would be so good for situations like this). I finished some games before my trip and some after return.
The Room series is one of the more famous from "Escape Room" genre and I really liked it, played 3 games back to back and wanted more after finishing them. Story is forgettable but it is not important at all for this kind of games. Presentation is excellent, puzzles not hard and interesting. Still missing The Room 4, maybe I'll grab it in the next sale. There is also The Room VR game and it has excellent reviews like the rest of the series. I ordered Quest 2 recently and it should arrive soon, so looking forward to try that.
Lightmatter is decent puzzle game from the first person perspective which is most reminiscent of The Talos Principle (puzzles) and Portal (narrator). Puzzles were good, they revolve around light and dark mechanic and I enjoyed solving them. Narrator on the other hand... He was boring, repetitive and generally unpleasant to listen to. They tried to imitate GLaDOS but failed miserably. Still I would recommend the game for puzzle lovers.
Aperture Desk Job is new Valve game which is meant to showcase Deck's controls and features. It is set in Portal universe and it is really short - you will finish it in half an hour. But it is completely free, so no complaints there. I was expecting more from it personally and was a little disappointed when it ended. Hopefully we will get Portal 3 someday; until then there is Portal Reloaded to fill the void. :)
Into the Breach is turn-based tactics game from developers of FTL and it mesmerized me completely, like Slay the Spire and Monster Train did previously. There are 8 teams to choose from and each consists of 3 mechs with unique abilities. There are 4 worlds in game, all with different biomes and enemies with 5 missions each, plus final battle. You can choose to do final mission after completing only 2 or 3 worlds, opting for shorter games if you so desire. You can also complete optional objectives and get currency to upgrade mech's weapon damage, movement range or add new ability to it. Each mech has a pilot with unique skill which can change how you play your turns. If your mech gets killed in battle it is out of commision for the rest of it, but you can use it normally in the next one, although without pilot and its perks.
Game has the best implementation of achievements that I have seen. In the beginning there is only 1 team available, but as you complete achievements you get coins which are used to unlock other teams gradually. It is more akin to puzzle games than others from this genre. You are always shown enemy intentions and in which order they plan to act, and it is your job to figure out how to do things in most efficient way. Game has excellent modpack - LemonymousMods which adds 5 totally new teams, new biome and enemies etc. but I was totally burned out from the game so I haven't tried it yet.
New Stanley Parable got released recently so I thought that I can try the original for the first time. Probably all of you know what this is - "meta" game with lots of commentary which follow player choices. There are a lot of endings and making different choices in other to see them was interesting, but starting to get a little stale toward the end. Narrator was extraordinarily voiced and well written. Humor was pretty good which makes or brakes a game like this.
The Sexy Brutale was on my radar far too long since I enjoy timeloop games (The Outer Wilds, Return of the Obra Dinn, The Forgotten City). It doesn't have highs like those games ofc, but it is pretty decent with interesting dialogue and colorful characters. You are saving guests from getting killed by manor staff in most devious ways.
Frog Detective 2 is a sequel to the first game with its own contained story. It is more of the same which is a good thing in this case - cute characters and silly humor.
My Friend Pedro is action-packed game where you can kill enemies in slow-mo on a skateboard jumping through the window with a ricochet from shooting in the frying pan. Yeah, it is one of those. It was pure fun, altough I was pretty bad at it. Constant need for reloading was in the way of non-stop action and interrupted flow of the game constantly. Last world was the best part when they introduced more platforming challenges.
A Bird Story is second game from Ken Gao, creator of To the Moon. It was short and heartwarming experience. There is no dialogue at all and you can finish it in less than 1.5 hours.
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For the library is vast and full of great games. Our backlogs will never be finished, not even close, but that doesn't mean we have to surrender without fight. What games have you been playing last couple of months? Which ones were great and justified expectations and which were disappointments, big or small. I'll share my list during last 3 months, with a couple of sentences for each game.
Candleman: The Complete Journey is a fun little adventure game with light puzzle elements. As a candle you can burn only 10 seconds per level so you need to save it when you need it the most. Some levels are great, some are average and story was barebones but overall it was good experience.
Biped is co-op game from NEXT Studios which are Chinese developers of Unheard, one of the most originally game that probably many haven't heard of. You can also play it solo, levels are a bit different to accompany that but I would definitely recommend co-op playthrough. Finished it with a friend in about 5 hours, it was good, but a little bit janky. There are Pro levels when you finish normal campaign and they are... challenging to say the least. I was hoping to finish them too but my friend was not having it, he got bored and frustrated with some of the mechanics. If you are still in a good relationship with your partner after finishing Overcooked games for example you can try this one. :D
Outer Wilds. Oh man, oh man, oh man, I was not ready for this. Not ready to be blown away completely. Got this game from a friend as a New Year's gift and went into it knowing only that it involves time loop from reviews. Sense of exploration, discovery of new story chunks with each planet visit and grand mystery that surrounds it all... just wow. It is certainly not for everyone, I read many recommendation threads where people just couldn't get into it and didn't like repeating aspect of it. But also there are people that tried it again and it just 'clicked' for them this time and game catapulted to their GOTY list. I only wish there is one save per time loop so that I don't have to repeat some things multiple times. Game is getting DLC which is great news for me and other fans, it was leaked via SteamDB database and game has added new achievements already.
Titanfall 2 had free weekend a while back so I decided to grab a chance and play campaign since I heard only great thing about that. And they were all true. It was not long, it took me about 7 hours but that's a good thing since there is no filler content at all. I'm not into classic (military) FPS anymore. I have tried CoD Black Ops and Battlefield 3 a couple years ago and couldn't play them for more than 2-3 hours. Maybe they are bad, maybe the problem is in me because I'm not interested in the genre anymore. I did enjoyed it a lot - finished both Medal of Honor games on my Playstation 1, Allied Assault, CoD 1 and 2 on PC, but this newer installments simply ain't doing it for me. With all that said, Titanfall 2 is a completely different beast and I enjoyed every minute of it. Every level introduces something new and keeps it fresh untill the end.
BioShock is highly acclaimed series, so it was the time to find out what't the fuss all about. Was not disappointed, first BioShock has one of the best (environmental) storytelling in games that I have ever played. Was completely drawn in the world of Rapture and its art deco artstyle which is the main 'culprit' that game has aged so well. One of the best openings ever, game twist was great as well and totally unexpected. Boss battle at the end is lackluster but it's not a big deal.
BioShock 2 although mechanically better (which is to be expected) lacks in the story department and the biggest contribution to that is Sofia Lamb. Dear Lord is she annoying... She never shuts up, and constantly babbles about some philosophical nonsense throughout the whole game. It almost completely destroyed the experience for me. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that was Minerva's Den, one of the best DLC content ever released. Dialogue is good again and twist at the end is on par with the original game, if not better. I was little tired of BioShock formula at the end, after all games were pretty similar to each other, so I decided to leave Infinite playthrough for later.
I love me some GTA and it turns out that Liberty City Stories has great fanmade PC port. It is 99% finished, the only thing that are not working are vigilante and 1 side mission. Game was ok, but it was too easy. The highest wanted level in missions was only 3, don't know why they decided to do it like that, there is no challenge at all in contrast to GTA 3 for example. Too bad Rockstar will probably not release it and Vice City Stories for modern systems.
Grand Theft Auto IV was next which I already completed a while back, but since I never played DLCs and this version has achievements now it was a good opportunity to play it all from the beginning. Getting used to car physics in 4 after LCS was quite a challenge, but not a big problem. I don't consider it better or worse from driving in previous games, it is just different. Quality of expansions surprised me, character dialogue was superb, especially in Ballad of Gay Tony and it is a sad reminder that we will not get anything similar for GTA 5...
Speaking of the devil, Grand Theft Auto V was next, I have never played it before, got it free on Epic, but decided to buy it on Steam and play it there. I mean there is not much to be said for this one - it is 10/10 AAA singleplayer experience with great variety of mission, big and interesting world and again great dialogue. Optimization is excellent, game looks gorgeous and I was running it at 2560x1440 on my ancient R9 380 with 2GB VRAM.
Genre 'rhytm violence' that developer Drool gave to their game Thumper is an appropiate one. This was a great experience, you will put your reflexes to the test, your nerves too if you go for S ranks on all levels like I did. Took me about 25 hours of suffering for that. As for chasing highscores on leaderboards - big no for me. Watched a couple YouTube videos and that is far beyond my reach. Visuals are astonishing, would love to try game in VR one day. Funny thing - I fucked up dpad on one of my controllers because of this game, more precisely 'left' input. It still works, but there is no decisive 'click' when I press it. Good thing is that no many games uses it that often nowadays, praise analog.
I tried Syberia: The World Before demo and got desire to play previous parts. I already finished 1 and 2 10-15 years ago but wanted to replay them. It was a small hassle at beginning, as first one didn't want to start at all, so I had to download some small program with .dll files to make it work. While they were good as I remembered, Syberia 3 was new for me and completely different story. From technical standpoint that game is 3/10, and that is probably generous of me. The only good part is that it hasn't crashed once. Camera controls and orientation in 3D is atrocious. Character gets stuck, mouse cursor fucking disappears all the time making you unable to do anything and makes you wait to reappear again. The 'solution' was to have connected gamepad as the game is obviously made for that control scheme in mind. Point&click game made for gamepad, let that sink in... Kate's animation was janky, it stuttered when she was running and especially at the end when she stops, like game is skipping some frames and finishes it abruptely. Lip sync was also terrible and voice acting apart from Kate and maybe 1 or 2 character was bad. Guy who was supposed to be 60 years old or so is voiced by 20yo guy, immersion gone momentarily right there. It was miserable experience overall, I knew it was going to be rough because I checked Steam reviews, but didn't know it was that bad, especially as they patched the game a couple of times since release. But I endured it all for the story and it was ok. Demo of the new one has optimization issues but none of the crap I mentioned above, so I'm cautiously optimistic about that one.
After 3 p&c games in a row I needed some change of pace and Katana Zero was the choice for that, and I bought it only a few days ago. It is as good as Steam reviews indicate (98% of over 33K). Superb action I expected, but story was the one that surprised me. It has interesting characters and funny dialogue and was great complement to high-octane katana slashing. Game will be getting free dlc (hopefully this year) that will further explain some stuff. There is a hard mode which I tried for 5 minutes and noped out of there. The only negative I have would be low variety of enemies, but since the game is only 5-6 hours long it ain't a big problem.
What is next in store? Another game with Zero in the name - Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma. I finished previous 2 games that are available as Zero Escape: The Nonary Games and can recommend it to all who love some murder mystery. Loved it as much as Danganronpa games, grabbed them all when they were at 80% discount almost 2 years ago. I'm hopeful that AI: The Somnium Files will get the same treatment as we are getting close to its sequel which is announced only yesterday.
After Zero Time Dillemma some of the candidates are Mark of the Ninja: Remastered, The Last Door and its sequel, BioShock Infinite, Furi, Hyper Light Drifter, 428: Shibuya Scramble, LISA, Transistor, Axiom Verge etc.
That is all from me for now, share your experiences below.
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