Yay, finally reached characters limit in the first post, here we go with part 2!
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33.
Wolfenstein II: The Freedom Chronicles - Episode 3 - 3 hours
This episode is little worse than previous one, but it's not terrible. It plays just as the main game, the story is good, and overall it's a good DLC if you enjoyed your time with Wolfenstein II and want more. Problems are the same as for other episodes - it's relatively short and doesn't add anything really new to the original formula. The episodic idea is not bad, but it suffered because of low budget, whole The Freedom Chronicles feels really cheap and unnecessary. You can easily skip whole season pass, but for good price, it may be worth giving it a shot. Just ignore the first episode, and you'll be fine.
34.
Men of Valor - 9 hours
Surprisingly hardcore FPS, especially comparing with modern games of this genre, on normal difficulty protagonist is weak and dying after few shots, and game saving your progress only on level load - and levels can be big and filled with thousands of traps and enemies, forcing you to be as careful as possible. I don't like hard games much, but in case of Men of Valor, it works and creating unique for genre atmosphere where you not feeling like a superhero and desperately trying to survive in the extremely hostile environment. This game shows like no other that Vietnam war was hell, I was never really interested in this topic, but Men of Valor stimulated my interest for this part of history, too bad wikipedia page on my languages are crap and not very informative. This game is not for everyone, but if you don't mind a challenge and lots of sudden, sometimes unfair deaths, then it's worth giving it a try for an amazing atmosphere.
35.
Rise of the Tomb Raider - Cold Darkness Awakened DLC - 3 hours
Eh, really shitty DLC with incredibly frustrating gameplay. New enemies feel out of place (zombies in Tomb Raider, really?) and they keep endlessly respawning, probably to distract and keep player annoyed every 5 minutes. Map is small and boring, puzzles serve no real purpose and story is non-existent. Seriously, what's the point of all this, only to fill season pass? If that so, then as much as I love the main game, but the season pass is simply not worth it, maybe Blood Ties can be considered as okay DLC, but everything else is just bloated garbage.
36.
Luxor 3 - 7 hours
Great casual game, basically Zuma clone in Ancient Egypt decorations, but I love this game more than original Zuma. Everything in it made really well, from level design to sounds and music, devs have all the rights to have "Premium Casual Games" slogan. It's good to see so good casual game from 2007 after playing a bunch of shitty HOGs from the same year, really shows that it's not the age problem, it all depends on how much effort devs are willing to put in their games. Luxor 3 still plays great even 10 years after release, I enjoyed it a lot.
37.
Season Match - 2 hours
Very basic match-3 game with balance issues on some specific stages, not terrible but not good either. Good thing it's possible to finish it in one go while waiting for trading cards drop, there is also the last achievement for arcade mode completion but I just can't play this game for another 2-3 hours, gameplay lack of depth and overall this game is meh, even for casual genre.
38.
Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey - 4 hours
Playable, but still really bad kids platform game. Have securom DRM on it, and that's why I couldn't even run it first - managed to fix it by switching game language on English and only then DRM window with serial key request appeared. And Steam for some reason didn't track my playtime properly, so I can't write a review on it because I didn't play enough. Very basic even for kids game, there is campaign and story, but once you've done there is nothing else to do, even though game allows you to revisit each princess world. Some scenes are creepy as fuck, even ending ripped straight from "The Shining" movie, like what the hell.
39.
Chromadrome 2 - 7 hours
Decent runner game, but it could have been better if not that psychedelic graphics, this game epilepsy nightmare. All those flashing lights and effects can give you a headache even if you don't have problems with your health, I'm not sure what the hell devs were thinking. But other than graphics, game is good, have around 100 arcade levels and several other modes, it might worth giving it a try if you're into runner genre.
40.
Elven Legacy - 5 hours
Standalone DLC for Fantasy Wars, a strategy game that basically Fantasy General clone. Really hard and challenging, but fun game if you're into the genre.
41.
RIP 3: The Last Hero - 2 hours
Last game in trilogy pack and that's the case when too many features is not a good thing. First RIP was very primitive and boring game, basically, Crimsonland meets Beach Head - you control a turret and shoot everything that moves. RIP 2 surprisingly improved original formula, it had more variety and overall better balanced. But in RIP 3 devs stepped over the line and most of the new changes made gameplay worse. New types of enemies are frustrating and not fun, like an instakill ghost with random movement patterns or railgun tanks that shoots in player immediately after appearing on the screen so it's impossible to dodge their first attack. New skill tree is nice, but for some reason, devs streamlined weapons selection, it's not random anymore and you usually forced to pick a new weapon, even if new weapon sucks and you don't want to use it. There is something wrong with balance too, on normal difficulty game become too easy, game gives you tons of powerups and it's possible to just strafe in circles and shoot everywhere to succeed. Enemies spawn is also feels really slow and broken, sometimes there are no enemies on screen for 5 seconds and they usually come from the same direction, so basically kill the first wave - wait five seconds - kill next wave that the same as previous one - repeat 10 times. From the positive side, devs tried to add proper story and some variety in locations, finally, there is not just wastelands and forests, some levels take place in cities and even space. Overall, it's still a good game, but RIP 2 remains best in this franchise, despite cheap look, it may worth trying to play those games if you want to kill time or just try something simple and fun.
42.
Agarest: Generations of War - 48 hours
Also know as Waifus Simulator. The concept is brilliant, it's JRPG missed with Visual Novel, you're saving the world while trying to romance girls from your party and marry them, in order to have descendants who will continue fight against evil in next generations. Story starts like your typical anime garbage about destiny and girls with big... eyes, but then you start to get used to characters, also the story is non-linear and choices really matter. But there is one monumental flaw - JRPG part is fucking terrible. I mean holy shit, I never imagined it's possible to make combat and crafting SO repetitive and devastating. If you don't want to spend dozens of hours on grind in order to progress story, then you need to outright break the game and pump up your party stats to 1000 values - and even that would not be enough, if you'll do my mistake and trigger so-called "True Ending", which is even more grind and literal definition of the word "slog". Game would have been MUCH better if all combat and grind were reduced for like 3-4 times, there is no fucking point in all these fights, it's just a goddamn waste of time and it ruins story pacing. BUT, despite absolutely hating JRPG part, I think it was worth it for the story - I love characters, loved their journey, and storywise ending was good. So, if don't mind fighting through terrible combat in order to see a good story
and collect some art of your favorite waifus, then I recommend this game. Just learn how to use cheatengine, and you'll be fine, worth it for the plot, so much good plot.
43.
Nancy Drew®: Legend of the Crystal Skull - 4 hours
So, this is my entry point into Nancy Drew franchise. Actually, I also tried to play previous Nancy Drew game called The White Wolf of Icicle Creek, but it aged terrible and was a painful experience, so I dropped it very soon and move to next one. And you know, Legend of the Crystal Skull is not that bad, it's a decent old-school adventure game with Myst-like controls, you doing regular detective work and trying to solve Mystery™. Some puzzles require some annoying backtracking, but the story is good, so I would recommend it for everyone who enjoys this kind of games.
44.
Platypus II - 1.5 hours
I can't say that original Platypus was something amazing, but it was a decent side-scroller with original clay graphics. But sequel feels like a bad copy of the first game, there is even exactly same volcano level. Somehow gameplay feels worse, music sounds worse, even graphics looks worse. Platypus II is more of the same but at the same time it's worse by all accounts, but at least it's short and easy to finish.
45.
Aquaria - 13 hours
Hard, but amazing underwater metroidvania with a unique world and beautiful soundtrack. Don't let you trick with colorful graphics and cute turtles on screenshots, this is a kind of exploration games that explains you bare minimum, and then suddenly throw you at water-pool with sharks and watching with curiosity how you desperately trying to survive. Well, it's the main problem of this game, it doesn't bother to explain to a player way too much, you need to find everything by yourself, and that's what can scare most modern players. Aquaria can be very unforgiving, almost everything in this game wants to kill you and save points are rare, so once you die you need to start all over since last save crystal, which in worst cases can mean 30-60 minutes of lost progress. But still, atmosphere and world in this game is outstanding, love the story and exploration aspect. If you're suffering from topographical disorientation, then, unfortunately, this game is not for you because map sucks hard and there are too many things that you need to always keep in mind. But for everyone else, it worth giving it a try.
46.
Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa - 3 hours
I'm a huge Sam & Max fan, but for some dumb reason (I trusted a reviewer who said that second season is not very good, now I see that was a huge pile of bullshit) I've played only first and third seasons. First episode proves that Sam & Max series is one of the best comedy games ever made, excited to play the rest episodes.
47.
Sam & Max 202: Moai Better Blues - 2 hours
Eh, maybe I was jumping to conclusions when I reviewed previous episode from this season. I didn't expect to see such massive drop in quality, everything in this episode is just bad. Puzzles, story, new characters, even humor and music, two things that didn't fail in previous episodes, is just meh at best. A massive disappointment by all accounts, I hope rest of episodes are better than this disaster.
48.
Sam & Max 203: Night of the Raving Dead - 2 hours
Thank goodness, this episode is miles better than previous one. Very satisfying and fun story, with some nice plot twists, also new characters and jokes are great. Best episode from the second season so far, I hope Telltale would keep it up and last 2 episodes would be as good as this one.
49.
Conflict: Denied Ops - 4 hours
Damn, this game is pure garbage, so many idiotic design problems. First of all, you never EVER make checkpoint system in the game when your character can die after few shots. Also, making FPS with terrible movement and shooting is a bad idea from the start. This game is ugly, clunky, outdated trash without any pros, avoid it like a plague.
50.
Sam & Max 204: Chariots of the Dog - 2 hours
That was amazing, easily one of the best Sam & Max episode ever! Great jokes and time traveling puzzles reminded me Day of the Tentacle a lot, Telltale would be hard to top that but I expect to see them finishing the second season on high note.
51.
The Wonderful End of the World - 2 hours
Indie Katamary Damacy clone from 2008, nothing really special, but it's good. Rather short though, less than 2 hours to complete all levels and get most of the achievements.
52.
XCOM: Enemy Within - 27 hours
Finally did a full playthrough of Enemy Within, played it on my Windows tablet and it was a damn nice to play such a great game during travels. DLC itself is a just improved version of original Enemy Unknown, which I loved already, and with all those new changes great game become even better. I guess I'm ready to go for XCOM2 now, too bad it definitely won't run on my tablet judging by what I've heard about it, hoping for decent performance on my PC.
53.
Sam & Max 205: What's New Beelzebub? - 3 hours
That was wild, not as amazing as the previous episode but still great finale. Some nice plot twist and hilarious jokes, though Telltale misstep with puzzles again, pixel hunt and tedious backtracking were not very good in second half of this episode. Overall, the whole second season was very good outside episode 2, I definitely recommend to play it (and first season too if you still for some reasons didn't play it yet) to everyone who enjoys good comedy stories.
54.
Watch_Dogs 2 - 40 hours
Okay, controversy time. Despite putting 40 hours in this game and finishing all main and side missions... I don't like Watch_Dogs 2. Like, at all - it's indeed beautiful looking, but inside bland and boring game. It's not about change in tone comparing it to original Watch_Dogs, this game has much bigger, fundamental problems that I just can't stand. Story and characters are a mess, it feels like the game is missing the first 1-2 hours, and the whole plot is just dumb nonsense. There are so many storylines that abruptly end with nothing, like Wrench girlfriend (?), congressman Truss and other characters that were shown only once during the whole story and forgotten once the mission ends. Another very big problem is sub-par missions design, 90% of quests work on the same "drive to the checkpoint, hack something, kill dudes with guns" pattern, sometimes it's JUST driving to the checkpoint and talk to NPC with literally nothing else. There are some memorable moments in the story, like a car with racist AI, but it's a rare exception in the line of boring, repetitive missions. Even characters themselves don't care about the story, at some point (and for some dumb reason) one of the main characters dies, but once the cutscene ends, Marcus and other gang members start to casually chat like nothing happened. And it's not the just main story, for some reasons Ubisoft butchered all awesome side activities from previous WD, like drinking game and augmented reality stuff, and the only thing that is left are boring races and taxi driving missions. Not just that, there is no point in doing those side activities, because balance in this game is completely broken and I had a shitload of money with nothing to spend on, most of the skills are useless as well and I got everything that I need in first 5-10 hours.
Another fundamental problem is how boring and not fun gameplay in this game. The protagonist is very weak and dies in a heartbeat, shooting is not fun, so if you decide to go aggressive way then game becomes a very boring cover-based shooter. Yes, this is not the main focus of this game, but the "hacking" part is not very deep or interesting either, there are not enough options for a stealthy approach and hacking puzzle minigame is overused and just tedious to play. They should've just gotten rid of the shooting part completely and fully focus on hacking, an aggressive path doesn't make sense in the story anyway, but instead of an interesting stealth game, we have not very impressive mix, where both parts lack depth and don't work well together.
To be fair, this game is not a complete disaster. It has some positive moments too, for example devs fixed car physics so now it's fun to just drive around, which is a very nice improvement after that terrible driving in WD1. Also, the city of Watch_Dogs 2 is an impressive achievement, despite the lack of meaningful activities, it's just fun to drive around and explore the world. Graphics are not perfect, but still great and can render some breathtaking vistas, it's also nicely scalable and can offer a decent trade-off between visuals and performance.
But the problem is, once I tried to remember what exactly I liked in Watch_Dogs 2, I realized that most of the time I had fun with this game when I was just driving around and taking screenshots, not when I was actually playing the game. And since graphics are somewhere at the bottom of the list of things I value in games, I simply can't recommend it to anyone. It's not terrible, it's just very disappointing, this game has so much wasted potential and half-baked ideas, like gang wars and world interactivity.
55.
Overclocked: A History of Violence - 6 hours
Another game that was looking interesting at first glance but turned out to be a clunky mess. The idea and premise are great, you're playing as psychiatrist who needs to talk with 5 patients who were found went crazy in different parts of New York under similar circumstances. Soon after your investigation starts, it becomes obvious that all those people went from the same place, and you discovering truth piece by piece in reverse order, from the moment they've escaped and to the day when all starts. To add more drama, the protagonist also has some uncontrollable rage issues and problems with his wife who live in different town and want to divorce.
This could have been a great noir-style thriller, but unfortunately, design flaws and numerous plot holes ruined whole experience to me. This game is such a mixed bag, it did some things right, like showing points of interest by pressing spacebar or almost instant loads between locations - but at the same time there's no journal or at least task list, and sometimes it's really hard to understand what exactly game wants from you. The main part of Overclocked gameplay is an interrogation of patients by playing audio clips from your talks with other patients, but the problem is the whole process is very linear and you always need to remember who was interrogated already and which audiolog, from specific cell, date and part of the day you need to play - and you'll have dozens of those clips just after the first day of investigation, hence all 5 days. With lack of hints, it's getting really frustrating to come back to the game and try to remember where exactly you stopped during your previous session, especially if you haven't played it for few days. Unless you'll use a walkthrough, Overclocked quickly turns to the boring guessing game.
It's not just that, there's plenty of weird design choices outside interrogations. Overclocked has a very weird logic, at the first day protagonist said he needs to call detective, but refuses to do it in the hospital because he wanted "privacy". So, I went to the last point where he was fine with making private calls - to his room in the hotel. But when I called detective, he didn't respond and I stuck, having no idea what I should do next. Turned out I should have called him not from my room, but at the hospital entrance - which is dumb because there was a guard nearby - and only then detective suddenly decided to answer on my calls. Also, protagonist LOVES to refuse to sleep at the end of the day, motivating this simply because "Not yet".
A good story could have saved this game even despite all problems and design flaws, but it has some major problems as well. My main gripe is about the whole personal drama that happens in the life of the protagonist, he looks and acts perfectly sane most of the time, but everyone around always yelling at him and proposing medical treatment, which obviously driving him nuts. When a drunk guy suddenly put the gun to his head, it's perfectly fine, but once protagonist disarmed him and aimed gun at that guy, everyone starts to yell at him and say that "he losing it". Characters (including the protagonist) sometimes doing really dumb shit for no reason, I mean what will you do when your bank account suddenly become frozen and you won't have a cash to pay for your room in the hotel? Of course, you would act like any sane person - you'll come to work like nothing happened and ignore the issue for few days... Wait, what? Seriously? Maybe that's how devs tried to show that protagonist is really "losing it", but it's not insanity, it's just lack of brains!
Well, to be fair there are some nice plot twists - but that's not enough to make a competent story. Once you starting to put all pieces of the puzzle together, the whole plot is falling apart. Overclocked didn't bother to explain a lot of important parts of the story, for example, why all patients went crazy after escape from the facility and forgot everything - during the first day of the investigation it was clear that all patients escaped in pretty much sane condition. Well, apparently evil dudes somehow found them, brainwashed them, and for some reasons let them out - and by doing that, they've brought attention to their work, which was supposed to be secret. Whatever...
After all, Overclocked is not COMPLETELY terrible. If you're hardcore adventure games fan, then I can see you having some fun with it, but everyone else? Nah, just forget about it
56.
Quantum Break - 28 hours
Well, I didn't expect to say this, but Quantum Break is... A great game? After all this criticism on the old forum and in reviews, I was expecting something atrocious, but I did 2 full walkthrough and... It's fine? I mean seriously, why exactly this game initially got so much hate? Because of TV stuff? I can't say it was somewhat explicitly bad either, yeah side-characters were not as good as the main cast, but it didn't bother me much. I think the gameplay is pretty solid, it may seem a little boring at the beginning when you don't have any powers, but it becomes really fun and good looking later with all those crazy time stutters effects. The story overall is very good and have great moments, but it requires read all the notes and don't skip TV show episodes, which was fine by me since I 100%'d this game.
Though there are a few problems I want to address. Worst and most annoying misstep that Remedy did in this game is terrible checkpoints placement. How many times it was discussed already that placing save points BEFORE cutscenes or even scripted sequence (like with that old canon on Monarch island) is never a good idea, I'm not sure what were devs thinking. Another major problem is their engine - the way it works and how much it requires system resources is ridiculous, I mean yeah game can render breathtaking scenes and looks good in combat, but it requires a lot tweaking if you to get stable performance and not blurry image quality. I think there is like 10 different blur filters that impossible to completely disable, which bothered me a lot because I love sharp and clear render. But if you're not as picky as me and not trying to target something crazy like 4K/60, then I guess engine won't be much problem, game looks good enough even with motion blur.
So, my final thoughts - I enjoyed Quantum Break a lot despite some issues it clearly has. I can't say it's a perfect game, but if you love story-heavy singleplayer games as much as I do, then you probably should give it a chance.
57.
The Club - 3 hours
Short, simple "arcade" TPS where you need to kill fast and always run forward to keep combo meter high and get better score than your opponents. Good idea, but it's clearly a game that was designed for gamepads, there's no aim assits at all if you're playing with KBM+Mouse, and you know it's kinda hard to aim when timer is running out and you can't stop even for a second. It's a good concept, but I can't say this game is worth it, yeah fun to play but there's not much singleplayer content and online is pretty much dead thanks to GFWL.
58.
Assassin's Creed™: Director's Cut Edition - 12 hours
Surprisingly, this game is much better than I remember it. Back then I really hated it because of its repetitive nature and overall clunkiness, but now I finished it and even liked after all (ending are still abrupt trash though). Yeah, it still feels like a prototype for a real game, but at least villains and the actual storyline was infinitely better and memorable than everything that came after it.
59.
Sherlock Holmes - Nemesis - 7 hours
Started as a good adventure game, but it went downhill after museum level, too many bullshit puzzles and the story becomes really dumb in a bad way. I'm not sure what devs were thinking with this one, at some point Holmes need to closely inspect food leftovers in the trash bin with a magnifying glass, and this is as disgusting as it sounds. Very frustrating and disappointing experience.
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