Main Post part 2
I'll be damned, I already hit the characters limit in my second post, I guess this one would be a new part of my main post.
Main Post part 3
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60.
Frontlines: Fuel of War - 5 hours
Eh, it's not a terrible FPS game, but I can't say it was great either. Maybe it was something special in multiplayer, but it's dead now so I can judge only by singleplayer campaign. The story is a weird nonsense about the oil crisis when the modern world starts to collapse, riots everywhere... And western countries formed the alliance to fight with Russia/China alliance for oil fields in South Asia. Gameplay feels disconnected from the story, in briefings you see about the collapse of world economics, but during missions, you have the best gear and drive vehicles, like everything is fine. It also tells you about hard fights on Europe frontlines, but 90% of the time you spent on some brown deserts, and then you suddenly teleport to Moscow and that's it, you won the World War 3! Oh yeah, there's also a storyline about marines division that you fight for, but characters as bland as expected and this whole drama is offensive cliche parade with no creativity at all. Overall, the game is not bad and playable, but there's no real point in playing it now, it's just average outdated FPS with a bunch of interesting ideas that don't work as intended.
61.
Vampyr - 30 hours
It's an unpolished, but still a great "cinematic" game with the outstanding world and environmental design. Story and the atmosphere are really good, even though the map is not very big by modern standards, it feels like a handcrafted work of art, it's a pure joy to explore it. It has this sense of decay and danger everywhere outside small safe places, and this game is always pushing you to drink blood from innocents and bring more chaos to this dying world because if you'll try to do pacifist run, combat would become really hard and require to react quickly and never get hits, or you'll be dead in a second. I can't say this game worth paying full price for it, but with a good discount, it absolutely worth your time if you love story-heavy games with a unique atmosphere and world.
62.
Penumbra: Black Plague - 4 hours
Honestly, I expected more from this sequel to Penumbra: Overture. I don't mean this game is bad, but it doesn't feel like any significant progress to the previous game, more like several steps forward and backward, while remaining at the same spot in the end. First of all, I must admit this one was majorly improved in terms of storytelling, the story of Black Plague is interesting or more dynamic right from the start. The protagonist is still mostly silent, but there are more characters this time who would talk with you during your adventures. There are some good ideas and unexpected events as well that can catch you off guard. But at the same time, the gameplay itself didn't improve much and in some ways become even worse. I'm not sure why Frictional games are so obsessed with the concept of "immortal threat", but personally I found all those hide'n'seek moments very dull and not scary at all. For me, it's just an annoying obstacle on my way through the story, just sitting in dark corner and waiting while some disgusting abomination would decide to finally go away is not scary by any definition. And I also think that weapons removal actually hurt the narrative, there's the scene later in the game when you need to pull up the crate, lure mutant under it and then drop this crate on the mutant head. It's really clunky and feels forced overall, especially if you'll try to think about it when you know what exactly happened in this scene. Now imagine how much more impactful and impressive this scene could have been if you killed this mutant by your own hands and not in some out-of-place physics puzzle. Well, I heavily criticized this game now, but as I said, it's still a good game despite its flaws. The story is very good, the dark atmosphere is still in place, and there are plenty of undoubtfully great scenes like a fight with the giant worm (yep, this worm stole the show once again). It could have been better, but it was still worth playing it in my opinion, outside graphics it aged well enough and can give you a few hours of enjoyment.
63.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Vegas 2 - 7 hours
Jesus fucking Christ, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 is HOT GARBAGE if you playing it solo. Seriously, it was okay, junky but playable outdated console FPS, but then they suddenly to make it more "cinematic" in Act 6 and all went to shit quickly after this. I have a feeling this game was not QA tested for solo playthrough AT ALL, suddenly your crew is gone and you need to kill thousands of enemies that could easily kill you in few shots even if you equipped in best armor. And what most ridiculous is the fact that you simply CAN'T fully play it by stealth, because in some rooms once you enter enemies immediately spot you and run at you all at once. And just when I thought that they finally come to their sense in Act 7 and stopped doing this Rambo shit in the tactical game with almost instant kills, guess what happened in the final scene. Seriously, what can happen in modern military shooter made by Ubisoft? A FUCKING HELICOPTER BOSS FIGHT. SERIOUSLY?! YOU FUCKING IDIOTS, DID YOU EVEN PLAYED YOUR SHIT BEFORE SHIPPING IT TO MARKET LIKE THIS? I've heard this game is better when you playing it in the co-op, but I'm done with it, fuck it. AI is bad, level design is bad, the movement is bad, Rambo action moments like I've mentioned below is bad, story overall is bad, fucking hell I can't say what was actually good in this game. They've made it very easy to hate this game with passion and completely wipe out any positive impressions about this piece of junk.
64.
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - 58 hours
Deadfire is an outstanding sequel that fixed most of the weak parts of original PoE and currently one of the best games I've played this year. Developers resolved most of my personal complaints about the previous game, text and dialogues now feel more natural and much easier to read thanks to great voiceacting and hyperlinks under unknown words with short lore info. Fights are faster and less limiting in terms of tools and skills you can use to achieve victory. The new setting and world are amazing, instead of another boring "medieval" fantasy we got "colonial" RPG about pirates and exploring a new world. There is more freedom in your movement around the world map, it's not just the same narrowed path between different locations, you can actually move wherever you want and feel like a true explorer, it reminded me a lot about Fallout 1-2, too bad that not many isometric RPGs are using that system nowadays. Even achievements were fixed, so no more 10 different crazy difficulty achievements that require an insane amount of time and skill to get them.
It's a great game, but unfortunately, there are a few notable problems. Text ship combat is an interesting idea, but something went wrong and it's just extremely boring to play, so every naval battle I just skipped it and tried to board an enemy ship as fast as I can. Graphics are kinda mixed bag, most of the time it looks amazing, you would pick Xoti in your team only to see those amazing dynamic reflections and shadows it casts at the environment. But at the same time, backgrounds are unacceptably lowres for anything more than 1080p, loading times are way too long even on SSD, and summoning any creature makes a game to freeze for entire 5-10 seconds. My last gripe is about ending, it's not completely terrible, but honestly feels too abrupt and leave a nasty feeling that you couldn't change anything at the end.
Difference between factions ending is quite nice, but the last hour really feels like devs were planning something bigger and epic, but simply didn't have time to finish it. Yeah, the classy Obsidian game right here. At least there's no any critical bugs or balance issues this time, in current state game is playable from the start to finish. And even though this game is great as it is, I would still recommend to wait until Definitive Edition release with all DLCs before jumping on the ship, because all future expansions are not standalone and take place before ending of the main game. I would still play stem because I'm such a slow ass player that first DLC is already released, but if I would have finished it earlier, I doubt I bothered playing them, it's a great journey but I didn't feel like I want to jump back in right away.
65.
The Void - 26 hours
The Void is really a hard nut to crack, but it's totally worth it. Gameplay is honestly the weakest point of this game, but from an art perspective, it's a pure perfection. Yes, it's REALLY hard to get into it and basically requires reading a 100-page manual in order to progress any further, but it's kinda on point because this is the game about hell, suffering and struggling to survive in the world where everything is trying to kill you except a bunch of naked ladies. This is one of the weirdest and unique experiences I've ever encountered in videogames, it can be depressing, it can be erotic, it can be frightening and can scare the shit out of you, but all this surrealism remains perfectly logical (in its own way) and didn't turn out to be a convoluted mess. Listening to characters monologues and exploring the weird world of this game is a pure joy once you figure out how to properly manage resources and survive. And even if you won't figure it out, then cheats always exist so you can skip hard parts and appreciate the art without all those annoying obstacles. I can't recommend this game highly enough.
66.
Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath - 8 hours
While EA with impressive dedication continues to parading around a corpse of C&C franchise, I've decided to finally play C&C3, the only game in series that I've somehow missed. And while I can't say much about original C&C3, because I dropped it somewhere after first few missions of GDI campaign, Kane's Wrath is definitely worth checking out. I'm not sure why, maybe because this expansion is fully about Brotherhood of NOD, or maybe because everyone in GDI leadership is lifeless boring dickheads, or maybe both, but I enjoyed Kane's Wrath campaign a lot more than in original game. They fixed balance and issues of C&C3, so it's actually a very decent RTS now, some additions like epic units or sub-factions are a welcome change. Live action cutscenes are great too, even though they are clearly low-budget, but Kane is just too damn good.
67.
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak: Special Gigs - 23 hours
This game is such a huge wasted potential it's just sad to see. The whole concept of VN/RPG hybrid about ghosthunting in modern Tokyo was very intriguing, but the execution is really flawed, specifically RPG part.
First of all, the port quality is horrendous. I thought we are finally past the times when such lazy-ass PC ports were the thing, but I guess not yet. Keyboard controls are terrible and can't be rebind, the mouse is not supported at all, there are no graphical or controls settings either, button prompts are only for a gamepad, and you can exit the game only by pressing Ctrl+F4. The only way to know keyboard controls is by reading 1 page (!) manual, that highlights buttons that not used in the game and at the same time didn't mention half of the features that are in the game, like skipping cutscenes and battle animations by pressing Enter button.
Even if you play with a gamepad, that's only the beginning - this game has several weird systems, and it didn't bother to explain shit about them. For example, sometimes in dialogues you need to choose "senses" and "actions" to interact with people and objects, like combining Anger + Touch = punch, or Love + Mouth = kiss (or "you licked the wall lovingly", depends on situation). How does the game explain it? The answer is simple - it didn't. You just suddenly see 5 weird icons appear on the screen, then 5 other icons, and then you get the result that you've probably didn't intended to get. This game is just a confusing mess, I can see why most of the people would just drop it after the first try, I'm just too stubborn to give up that easily.
And honestly, at first getting through all this weirdness was worth it. VN is the best part of this game, story is great, characters are well animated, there's actual difference between choices (I can confirm that after several replays of the same story parts because of failed battles, but I'll talk about this crap in deep later) and even True End requirements are not that ridiculous and can be achieved without 100% perfect choices. You can interact with characters and even romance some of them, though it's kinda annoying that you can't clearly see how big their affection to you anywhere in the game. Storyline by its structure reminds your usual anime shows, every chapter has intro sequence, then investigation part, then battle happens and after that one of the characters says some deep thoughts and credits roll, onto the next chapter. It sounds good, but the battles part is where things get ugly.
Seriously, battles in this game are just utter disgrace. I'm not exactly sure how, but devs managed to create one of the most boring and repetitive tactical RPG I've ever experienced. The ghosthunthing part didn't bother me at first, it was weird and boring, but it didn't cause much trouble and could have been easily ignored during the first 7-8 chapters. But then ghosts become suddenly more powerful, and I had to learn the details that game didn't bother to tell me (again). And you know what? It's not just lack of proper explanation, combat in this game is simply uninspired trash. There are no depths, most of the time you trying to predict where the ghost will move next (and they usually moving completely random which makes them hard to catch, and with very strict turns limit the whole process become incredibly annoying very quick) and then "kill" them to gain loot and level up. You can set up traps, but in reality, 99% of traps in this game is pointless garbage that doesn't even work as it supposed to - charms didn't charm ghost, blocks didn't block shit. To make it even more frustrating, before every mission game set several traps on the map, but in most cases, this random layout is completely idiotic and you should replace all of them (don't forget terrible keyboard controls that makes the whole process even more "fun"). Moreover, the game is not allowing you to properly plan the battle, because it doesn't tell you which type of attack ghost have, and this can result in your whole team stuck under "Sleep" spell because you didn't equip items for "Sleep" immunity. And that also means that you need to reload the old save and redo story part before the combat from the scratch, it's not possible to change equipment or even quickly restart the battle during the combat.
The whole RPG part is fundamentally broken, whoever designed this shit should be banned from game development for the rest of his life. And did I mentioned that there can be unexpected series of battles in a row? Just imagine playing through 2 battles with several important dialogue choices, only to see in the third battle that boss is 30-40 levels stronger than you and have those "Sleep" attacks that you don't have immunity for? You can't save during the dialogues, so basically, an entire hour of your progress wasted by this FUCKING BASIC DESIGN MISTAKES STRAIGHT FROM THE 90s. Even though I liked the story and it had some really unexpected twists, I simply can't recommend this game to anyone who values his sanity and time, just thinking about how terrible and devastating combat was in this game makes me angry. Well done Arc Systems, you fucked it up!
68.
The Lost Crown - 14 hours
An interesting point'n'click adventure game about the ghosthunting. It's not a flawless experience, I believe there are not the old point'n'click games without "what the heck am I suppose to do next?" moments. This game is so inconsistent in this regard, it mostly streamlined and steadily opens new locations, sometimes even skipping unnecessary transitions between different parts of the map, but annoying pixel hunting and tedious backtracking, unfortunately, are still present here. But even though there are some disappointing gameplay parts, overall it's definitely worth playing it for unique dark atmosphere and story about towns lost in time and old curses. Yeah, voice acting is kinda cheap, but the story is full of memorable moments and, surprisingly for 15 hours adventure game, not overstaying its welcome and ends exactly when it supposed to. The game can be creepy, but honestly, it's more thriller than horror, there are few scary moments but mostly it's just intense (not that I complain about that though). So, yeah, if you missed this game and don't mind kinda slow pacing, then I recommend to try it out. Just don't mind using a walkthrough and remember that some of the achievements are bugged out.
69.
Grim Legends 2: Song of the Dark Swan - 4 hours
I really enjoyed the first game in Grim Legends series, and while the sequel is a good HOG, I can't say it was something special. It's just... Okay, it was worth to finish it once, but that's it. I really don't know what else to say about it, if you like this genre then play it, but I won't recommend it as entry point into HOGs or Artifex Mundi games in particular.
70.
Jack Keane - 9 hours
This game left me with such a crushing disappointment, it had the potential to become at least a decent adventure game, but the execution is really flawed. Previous games from this dev - Ankh 1 & 2 - were not perfect, but I couldn't say they were terrible either, they had nice moments and didn't feel like a complete waste of time. Unfortunately, Jack Keane DOES feel like a giant waste of time, every element of this game is below mediocre. The story quickly stop making any sense and turns to a bunch of badly connected episodes, jokes feel forced and based on stupid cliche about Britain and Indian culture, they simply not funny and didn't manage to make me smile even once. Graphics looks terrible, and it's not because of an outdated engine, but because the game is full of glitches and just lazy mistakes like constant objects clipping through each other or shadows going through the walls and floors. Cutscenes and dialogues direction feels uninspired as well, for some reason game is lacking close-ups and most of the time camera showing boring overall scenes somewhere from the high point. With lack of proper direction game simply falling apart quickly after the first few chapters.
Without a good story, it becomes obvious how badly devs fucked up with gameplay and puzzles design. It's just extremely tedious and frustrating, most of the time you simply don't know what to do next, mostly because you've missed some junk in the dark corner of the background - and no, there's no button to highlight active points on the screen, so you had always trying to figure out, which objects can be interacted with and which are just a static background detail. It's incredibly frustrating, and the game simply forces you to use a walkthrough to understand what exactly are you missing. And another major problem of Jack Keane is the fact it overstays its welcome for too long, I thought it would be a short game but it's just kept going on and on and on, I barely forced myself to finish it. Maybe devs take criticism of their previous games to close to their hearts because Ankh 1-2 were fairly short 3-4 hours games, but it's really wasn't a bad thing because they ended right when they were supposed to end. Jack Keane feels like it was artificially overblown to make it twice longer, and honestly, if I knew that it would be an 8-9 hour game even with the walkthrough, I just dropped it after first chapters and didn't bother finishing it. So I can't recommend this game to anyone, even if you are a huge adventure games fan.
71.
Art of Murder - FBI Confidential - 4 hours
Very mediocre point'n'click adventure game from 2008. It's... Fine to play it once if you're into the genre, I guess. I can't say I hated it, it was okay to play it to take a break from huge AAA titles, but I can't recommend it for everyone. Story is kinda dumb, sometimes it's not clear what player is supposed to do, the engine is an outdated piece of crap that supports only 1024x768 resolution and somehow manages to run like shit on modern hardware. At least there's an option to highlight all points of interest on the screen and the game is not overstaying its welcome. If you'll be able to get it dirt cheap and love this genre then you can give it a try if you really want, but honestly, it's easily skippable and you won't lose much.
72.
King's Bounty: The Legend - 35 hours
This is a great turn-based tactical game, it starts really strong but unfortunately overstays it's welcome. There are too many battles (around 300-400 at very least during for one walkthrough) and they become repetitive and boring at late stages of the story. There are no skirmish battles like in HoM&M, only story campaign, and while it's very good, it's just way too long, I feel like the game should have ended at Necromancers world but it's just kept going on and on. Another problem is lack of ability to quickly replenish your armies, on normal difficulty this game is really challenging and after each battle you will suffer major losses in your units if you won't be extremely careful, but in most cases, there is limited armies supply in castles and houses where you hire your troops. This concept actually forces you to use different units depending on which one available in your current region, but it also forces the player to constantly backtrack in order to replenish his armies, which becomes really frustrating at late stages. There are also the occasional difficulty spikes, which doesn't help in making the game more fun. But despite problems I mentioned above, I still can recommend this game if you love tactical games and looking for a challenge, execution is great, graphics and world are colorful and interesting, there is a lot of dialogue and lore, and main gameplay loop is highly addictive.
73.
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One - 5 hours
A very repetitive and linear RPG game with turn-based combat. Story and setting are interesting, some jokes were genuinely funny, but this game is so inconsistent I really can't recommend it to anyone. There's a lot of backtracking with constant "what the hell am I suppose to do next" moments, combat is kinda unique but gets boring really fast, and there are even shitty flash minigames that you need to complete few times each to progress the story. It's not worth full price, and since developers seemingly forgot about its existence then you shouldn't bother about it either. I'm still want to complete at least the second episode, but I'm not sure about the whole series.
74.
Yakuza 0 - 80 hours
After years of gaming experience and literally thousands games played, there are moments when I thought that nothing would really surprise anymore. But as long as games like Yakuza 0 keep releasing, I'll keep buying and playing them, because games like this are the reason why I enjoying gaming so much. Yakuza 0 is amazing on so many levels it really hard to describe it, this game is simply amazing and did almost everything right. Story is incredibly well written and dramatic, fights are slick and satisfying, openworld is very compact but at the same time full of different activities and pure joy to explore, music and sound are out of their league and mind-blowingly great. This game is living classic, a definition of fun, there is so much content it would be enough for 10 modern AAA sandboxes, it's amazing to see such beefy game with no bullshit attached in the current market. It's not 100% perfect though, I'd say 98-99% perfect - lack of autosaves and ability to save everywhere anytime is kinda baffling, but it easy to deal with it when there is so much good stuff in this game. Also, there are tons of mini-games, which is great, but if you are aiming for 100% completion that could be a problem because you probably won't like them all and it would be painful to complete everything. Regardless, Yakuza 0 is one of the rare games that absolutely worth even its full price, if still haven't played it you miss out one of the best games ever made.
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