Games 1-7:
#1
Torn
PC VR (Vive)
Completed: January 06, 2018
Playtime: 7h 43m (started in 2018)
A visually impressive VR adventure game which has you exploring an old mysterious mansion and solving lots of puzzles. I was kind of indifferent to the story for most of the game, right until the WTF ending which I feel could be handled better. The puzzles themselves aren't too hard and are pretty fun to figure out and assemble in VR. For the most part they involve finding objects with hidden shapes/keys in the environment and fitting them into predetermined positions in the room to unlock the next stage.
#2
Summer Funland
PC VR (Vive)
Completed: January 07, 2019
Playtime: 5h 10m
A collection of fun mini-games and attractions neatly compiled in an amusement park that you can explore in VR. Not unlike the free NVidia Funhouse I played earlier, but this game has much more to offer and lets you actually walk around the park to pick whatever activity your heart desires. To name a few of my favorites, climbing to the top of the lighthouse was awesome. The puzzle labyrinth was genuinely hard, think The Witness maze puzzles but here you must physically trace the lines with your hand/VR controller, sometimes requiring you to step around to get different angles/perspective while trying very carefully to keep your hands perfectly still and not let the beam touch the tunnel walls. The non-interactive attractions such as the rollercoaster ride, the Gotham bike ride and the underwater world submersible ride were also fun to experience. I ran into minor technical issues where for instance the lighthouse climb wouldn't record my attempts, but it all resolved itself after restart.
#3
Prey: Typhon Hunter - TranStar VR
PC VR (Vive)
Completed: January 08, 2018
Playtime: 1h 21m
I wasn't interested in the multiplayer part of the Typhon Hunter expansion, but I did want to play this VR add-on part of it. It consists of three separate stories/situations, where in each you need to solve puzzles to achieve a certain story goal. They all take place on board Talos I before the Typhon outbreak, and have you play as Morgan Yu, Dr.Calvino (dude who invented Looking Glass technology) and Abigail Foy. While there's no action or interesting exploration to be found here like in main Prey campaign, but revisiting this cool sci-fi universe in VR still felt awesome to me. The grabbing controls were a bit frustrating to work with though - press-and-hold side buttons on Vive wands isn't a very convenient control scheme for picking stuff up.
#4
Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight
PS4
Completed: January 18, 2019
Playtime: 22h 34m (started in 2018)
I love the P3 cast to death, but since hip-hop is really not my thing, the soundtrack for this one is probably my least favorite in the dancing series, there's a bit too much of that here for my taste. Still there's plenty amazing remixes here that I enjoyed listening to - songs like When The Moon's Reaching Out Stars, A Way of Life, Burn My Dread, Light the Fire Up in the Night, Want To Be Close and Heartful Cry. It also features Mitsuru and Yukari, so who cares about song selection, really. Also Elizabeth is the best velvet room assistant ever hands down, so there's that. I don't mind them replacing the campaign with social link-like meetings, since to be honest the P4D campaign was pretty boring to me, and in any case most of my playtime in these games is spent in free dance mode. My mediocre rhythm game skills were enough to achieve the King Crazy rating on Hard for about half of available songs. I could nail the rest of them too eventually, but I've started to get a bit tired of replaying them at this point, time to move on.
#5
Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight
PS4
Completed: January 18, 2019
Playtime: 22h 58m (started in 2018)
To continue my thoughts on the series, I do wish these game had more dancing songs per character. This is my main complaint with the persona dancing series really, as watching my favorite characters from the games dance to nice music is my main attraction here. 2 songs per character just doesn't feel enough for me, and I don't really care for all the animated videos and live concert videos they use to pad the song count. Meanwhile, the P5D game has excellent songs like Rivers in the Desert, Blooming Villain, Will Power, Beneath the Mask, Keeper of Lust, Wake Up Get Up Get Out There, With the Stars and Us, and Price going for it. It also features Makoto and Futaba, so who cares about song selection. Just like with its Moonlight counterpart, I managed King Crazy on some but not all songs on Hard difficulty for now. I may come back to these games again this year if they release more DLC, the gameplay is addicting as hell and I love the characters.
#6
Persona 4: Dancing All Night
PS4
Completed: January 18, 2019
Playtime: 12h 13m (started in 2018)
Replayed the PS4 version after beating the Vita one in 2018. A bit annoyed that I had to replay the story campaign again to unlock the final Margaret song and last level of difficulty. Even more annoyed that I have to rebuy the DLC I already own on Vita again for this PS4 release, this is kind of bullcrap. But after all said and done, the game is probably my choice for the #1 spot in the series, since both the P4 cast and P4 soundtrack are still my favorites, with great songs like: Your Affection, Now I Know, Signs of Love, Heartbreak Heartbreak, Time to Make History, Shadow World, Pursuing My True Self, Maze of Life, Snowflakes, and Electronica in the Velvet Room. It also features Chie, Yukiko and Rise, so who cares about song selection. Even though I'm already familiar with the songs, achieving King Crazy ratings felt harder in this one since it doesn't have the Auto-Scratch modifier, which helped me immensely in P3D and P5D.
#7
Vampyr
PC
Completed: January 19, 2019
Playtime: 38h 10m (started in 2018)
An action-RPG from creators of Life is Strange with cool gothic setting, great atmosphere, intriguing story and some interesting gameplay ideas involving choice, morality and roleplaying your character. Storywise, I loved the several final chapters the most, especially the ending I got was beautifully made. Unfortunately, the game also features a mediocre combat system and at the same time way too much combat for its own good. Seriously, I feel like this game would benefit greatly from having 2-3 times less enemies to fight, or from having an alternative to fighting them, like stealth or persuasion or some kind of vampire powers to use instead of killing everyone in your path. It's also jarring since the game's systems/narrative make a point of using the amount of citizens you "embrace" (feed on until they're dead) to indicate how beastly/evil a vampire your character is, but it never once comments on how many guards and people patrolling the streets you kill while running around the districts. Another thing the game is sorely missing is a fast-travel system - by the second half of the game it gets really tiresome to run from one end of the large city map to the other AGAIN just to cure a few patients there, or to turn in a side quest.
Currently playing:
Hitman 2 (PC)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch)
Divinity: Original Sin II (PC)
CLANNAD (PC)
Arcade Saga (Vive)
Elite: Dangerous (Vive)