Kingdom Come Deliverance:
I'm a bit surprised I haven't found anybody talking about this game.
I found it incredible, despite all it's initial bugs and some of the criticism about its creator, Daneil Vavra.
Ok, for those who are unfamiliar with the game, let's get into it.
It's an RPG game set in medieval Europe. Bohemia(Chech Republic).
It's play is very similar to RDR, only with swords.
When it first came out in February, it was infested with bugs.
But they've since cleaned up the problems with multiple patches.
The social aspect of the criticism of the game, along with Vavra, was that it's somehow racist because it do have any minorities.
Warhorse studios, the game producers, argue that there were no minorities in 1400's Bohemia. Of course, that's not entirely true.
There were Jews and Gypsies, which they neglected, but I mostly agree with them.
Otherwise, it was a great game experience and I would highly recommend it.

Finally played and finished Bioshock: Infinite after having bashed it for years. One of the main reasons I wanted to play was to hear the anachronistic versions of songs, but elements like that were a lot less than I expected.

Game isn't good. The levels in BS1 (and 2 especially) were like reasonably well-designed mini open-worlds. Infinite is much more on rails and opens up just the tiniest bit at the end. Gameplay is whatever, sliding on rails isn't much fun and the Bioshock magical power thingies have grown tiresome.

Story throws a lot of stuff at the wall and may have been seen as decent 6+ years ago, especially for younger gamers. There's some attempts at "saying something" about class and race but it's mostly window dressing except something along the lines of "actually, a slave uprising would be Just As Bad as the enslavers".

It tries to do the meta "oh but what really is a game and who is the player and what is the line between game and reality" stuff that all games of that generation did.

It has a "twist ending" that would embarrass M. Night Shyamalan (and if you're into twists you're much better off just watching MNS's filmography).

Will still play the DLC episodes since I have them, and one person who agrees with me on most of this told me that episode 2 is good.

I also did not like Infinite but I did really enjoy Episode 2 of the DLC. It’s sort of a one-trick pony but the trick is decent and not so long that it gets tiresome.

4.5 years after I first went through BL1, I found myself getting sad about being "almost finished" with the BL2 DLC. So I decided to go back and try out the BL1 DLC.

I wound up starting a "playthrough 2", and I wound up doing it alone rather than with randos as I enjoyed 5 years ago. I learned to love the shotgun.

So far I've only played through The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, and it is excellent. Possibly my favorite BL experience overall. A really well-themed world.

Super Mario Odyssey - Nintendo Switch, 2017

Let me preface by saying Super Mario 64 is up there in my holy grail of gaming experiences, and while I am definitely a PC gamer first, hard to think of anything that I'd put ahead of Nintendo for second.

Odyssey is a great game. As usual with a console landmark Mario game they really make it fresh, take a fun concept and do lots of inventive things with it. Loved the controls, the different kingdoms, all the features and creatures you could control with your hat. It kept it engaging until the end.

That being said... it did still feel a bit diluted. Hard for me not to compare it to SM64. It made it more meaningful to find stars in 64. There were only 120 of them and some were easy but others weren't, others required pinpoint accuracy, or specifically timed jumps, or some deft skill. In Odyssey there are kingdoms that have more than half that, in a single kingdom! Some of the moons are so trivially pointless, it just made it more of a chore and less of a challenge to find them, to the point where near the end I mostly wanted to acquire just enough to continue progressing at times. So the experience felt a bit diluted. I thought they could have reduced the amount of moons and made them more meaningful, and I wouldn't have minded a shorter but tighter game. Normally this would be a game I'd make a point to 100%, finding every moon and purple coin and Easter egg possible... But it didn't make me want to do that.

Still, a great game. Nintendo always does Mario right.

9/10

SUBNAUTICA. It was enjoyable blind but I enjoyed my second playthrough even more. I watched a YouTuber play it and when he won I was almost overcome with emotions which prompted my second play through.

Should've just left 2p2 with a post count of 420 imo.

I beat Xcom2 with war of the chosen.

This is the first xcom game I've ever beat. I have 174 hours played of xcom 2. This game has made me rage quit/uninstall more than any other game probably.

I save scummed like a mother****er and finally beat it. The end was anticlimactic and disappointing.

9/10 would buy again.

Just beat Celeste and all the A B and C sides

Game really picks up starting in the 4th "world"

10/10 would buy again for sure - if you like platformers you'd be stupid not to get it. Way better than super meat boy.

Yep. Perfect level of frustrating difficulty for me without ever feeling poorly designed or unfair.

I dunno the stupid long jump on C side core almost made me not finish it. Everything else was super fair and had a great level of progression

Apparently a new (free) chapter is coming out shortly

Bloodborne I was only put of by how hard people said souls games were. I found it was like a rpg once you level up you can easy become op and breeze though boss. Only hard I found in the game was finding out we're to go and falling of cliffs

They are in my top 10 best games I have played (only played ds1 and Bloodborne) the combat is repetitive but still enjoying it after hours into games. Have not finished either game yet as when you first play without any knowledge of souls game it is easy to mess your game up by making not understand the leveling system and and up with weak character when you think it's good idea put stats into stuff that does nothing and big like a wet paper bag and have reset to the beginning.

Once you know the basics it just like any rpg grind and become op and two hit kill all enemies and boss's become first time wins with ease. Only hard thing about souls games is knowing the basics.

Like the games a lot but find them two easy. Lots cheap deaths still if you get enemies who come in packs as it is not possible to dodge multiple hits so it just becomes hit one and thin them out.

Sound negative about games but they only games I have enjoyed for long time , games like spider man rdr2 uncharted , last of us I can't make myself play as they are all storytelling and once done one mission the rest of game is just rinse and repeat. Bloodborne 8 dark souls 1 9. Out of ten.

The Way: Remastered - Nintendo Switch, 2018(?)

2D platformer where you play a scientist searching for some hidden ancient city as a way to bring his dead wife back.

Charming little indie, nothing super noteworthy. Overall pretty simple puzzles and the action portions were well done, albeit fairly easy. Worst part was probably the clunkyness of the movement.

Picked it up for cheap on Switch sale for $4. I'd probably not pay more than a fiver for it though.

2.5/5

Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)

Everyone has heard of this game but not everyone has played it. I am still playing GTA Online, and have always been a fan of all Rockstar titles. I like the large sandbox map with many things to discover in it.

RDR2 sold 17mil copies in just week 1. The true great thing about the game is this size of the map. Rockstar really went out and built one large detailed map. The creeks flow into the rivers, the mountains flow into the valleys and all the wildlife in the different geography places in the map make it immersive. The weather of fog, rain, lighting, blizzards and all the other elements make it a more interactive environment. The lighting affects in this game should be commended for how well they sometimes look on a 4k display. The acting in the cut scenes seems to capture a good western mood. The year is 1895, basically a decade before the origins that RDR1 took place. You are Arthur Morgan, part of the Van de Linde gang. The game is built into 7 chapters with a long detailed story surrounded by the events of Arthur. You can be good, you can be bad, however the story line will progress in the game with you and your gang will keep getting intro trouble. I just enjoy some of the actors in this game. The guy that plays Dutch is smart, cunning, and manipulative.

Now I bought this game day 1. I noticed sometimes I would be working on challenges and achievements, and not even progressing through the story. Now Im used to playing Rockstar games, so many of the controls seem natural to me. I did find during the end of the game as I had so many powerups, I cared less about taking damage because I had so many health items to keep going. I do like the character customization. I gave Arthur extremely long hair but I made his beard more narrow cut. The game story led to an interesting ending. The movie cut scenes leading through out the game just were executed so well.

Now I did complete the game at 100% which took a long long time. The game I think sometimes just put the challenges in here to upset people. It took a lot of reading on the net to look for all these locations. The map is so extensively huge, it would be pretty damn near impossible to locate everything to complete 100%. Sometimes I was right in the correct spot on the map location and it still took a bit to locate the item.

The online is meh. Its ok to play, but it is nothing like GTA Online. It just doesnt have the same addiction to play online, but the single player makes up easily for that.

Overall, if you appreciate a extremely great graphical game, RDR2 should be at the top of your list. If you did play RDR1, then you are going to love this game. It really is a great prequel game to RDR1 and gives a good history event. This game took a long time to get released but you can tell all the great things you uncover really all work.

Outer Wilds

This game is awesome. Go play it.

It's an open world space exploration sim (but with really arcade-y controls and kinda indie-style graphics) in a small-scale solar system. You (an alien) wake up on your home planet, ready to make your first launch to space as part of the Outer Wilds Ventures program, to go where like 5 of your fellow Hearthians have gone before: to space! But, bad luck for you, you happen to wake up 22 minutes before your solar system's sun explodes in a supernova, destroying everything. Only, then you wake up again, and you don't know why or how.

So, it's up to you to explore the solar system in 22 minute increments (given the aforementioned arcade-y stuff, you can get to any stellar object you want in like 1 minute, so that's more time than it sounds like for a space game), exploring the several planets (all of which are super unique and interesting) and the ruins left behind by an ancient civilization who came before you, and uncovering the mystery of what's happening to your solar system.

10/10 would wipe my memory and play again.

God of War (PS4)

I'm glad wonderwes posted RDR2 because it made me think it was OK to post a super-popular game. I just finished the main campaign this weekend, and this game blew me away. I've owned the game for a long time, but never got around to playing it. I was a big fan of GOW 1-3 on PS2/PS3: the action was always fluid and satisfying, the graphics and story were always well done, I always played through to the end and really enjoyed the experience. But after 3 games I felt like I knew what I was getting, and never made a priority to try the new one, and only started on it because a friend raved to me.

Well, I was wrong, I had no idea what I was in-store for. GOW 4 is a complete overhaul of the series, with a new setting/lore (Norse gods instead of Greek), but more importantly the series feels completely different. The combat is much more heavy, for lack of a better term - while you and enemies both still move fast, button mashing will get you killed quickly here. You need to learn the attack pattern of your enemies, know which ones you can attack directly vs. those you need to block/counter vs. those you need to attack indirectly or with range. Instead of the fast and wide-AOE of the blades of chaos from the first game, this time your main weapon is an axe that hits harder but generally doesn't have the wide, sweeping attacks that hit 3+ enemies at a time. The camera is over the shoulder and much tighter to Kratos this time as well - the combat feels closer to Dark Souls than to the original GOW games. The change in combat made the game much more challenging for me: I played at the 3-out-of-4 difficulty level, and died many many times, but was always able to figure out a tough fight and progress, usually after 1 or 2 tries, occasionally after 4 or 5 but that was rare and never more than that (although I haven't beaten the most of the toughest optional side-bosses yet).

From an immersion perspective, it's easily the best looking console game I've ever played. The graphics, cut scenes, and voice acting and story were all great.

Also, while the game was a departure/evolution from the original GOW titles, having played the originals enhanced my enjoyment of this game, both from a story/evolution of a character perspective, but also having the contrast in gameplay with some overarching similarities.

Couple of plot-spoiler points:



I do think they could have had more, and more varied bosses. There are two or three "very strong enemy" templates that get deployed throughout the game, with them gaining new attacks or companions in later versions. Also for two strong-enemy types in particular you kill several of them throughout the game, I wish they had invested in varying kill animations. Kratos's boss kills were legendary in earlier GOW games, and while the ones you get are great here, they get repetitive.

Overall I loved it. It's one of the very few games I wish I could plop down $20-$30 more for for DLC, but alas they have none and no plans for it. Will just have to wait for the sequel. If you liked previous GOW games, or just generally had thought about checking it out but haven't got around to it, I highly recommend. It was epic. 10/10.

Game is phenomenal but combat is way too slow and sluggish for vanilla enemies. I don't need to spend that long on 3 ghouls or whatever in a non important part.

Smash hit phone game. shoot balls at things, simple game that is relaxing to play.

cost around $1.50 to unlock everything in the game. good price and even without the unlock it does not give you ads every level. you need the unlock for the game to be able to save your game, you can also just play and see how far you get without purchase as is fun way to play. google play

I played RDR2 and beat the game.

7/10, the graphics are great. There are a lot of things I don't like about the game. Horse travel is long and slow. I would usually use the auto riding feature and play on my phone. Although it's a wide open world, it is still a pretty linear game (which other reviewers have complain about). Go into the cabin and get the dynamite - place the dynamite behind the trees - go back to the group

I also, hated the combat system. There are a lot of things in this game that feel like a chore.

The Outer Worlds - 8.5/10 Fallout meets Mass Effect. Great RPG with loads of funny dialogue and characters. Downsides - loading screens and I wanted it to be longer as it was the funnest game I've played in a while.

Did you kill everyone?

Kill everyone? for the endings? I helped the old man

I like the joke ending, worth looking up if you've not seen it

Continued on to play The Secret Armory of General Knoxx (I dabbled in the Mad Moxxi DLC but it's not story-focused and is basically just very long/tedious arena fights. It seemed ok though, I'd consider it if I could get a group together.) Also very good, though not as good as Dr. Ned.

Since BL1 was more recently released on current gen, I definitely recommend going back to these DLC if you skipped them the first time around and have been looking for more BL.

2064: Read Only Memories (PS3) - this was free on PS+ a while back. It's a cyberpunky visual novel/adventure game that looks a lot like the old Hideo Kojima "Snatcher" which I haven't played.

Not really a fan, it does a lot of bad things I complain about adventure games doing. Mainly, there's way too much text/talking. Nearly every single possible interaction you can make in the game world tends to have at least 3 long written responses that you have to get through if you want to be a completionist. Of course you can simply opt to not do that, but you always have that feeling that you're missing something.

I'd prefer a shorter, tighter game.

What kept me in it was the retro feel (16-bit graphics and chiptunes), and it taking place in SF. Eventually I did start ignoring extra descriptions of things and just barreled through.

Doom: Knee Deep in the Dead (Episode 1) (1993, PS4) - I played this in the '90s, but I don't think I ever played the other episodes (I will soon). It definitely seems suboptimal to be playing on a controller vs. keyboard/mouse, but I got used to it. Played on default difficulty which wound up being too easy (to my surprise), so I'll bump it for E2.

Level design is a big departure from any (?) modern game, sprawling non-linear levels that you have to get a handle on. There is an automap, and there are hidden pickups that will fill in the entire map for you with secrets, so that's fun.

Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom (NES, played on Wii Virtual Console) - An old adventure game, not dissimilar to 2064. It may be charming to watch a let's play or play it with a walkthrough, or mess around for a couple of chapters. But playing the whole game is a grind. "Puzzles" are not particularly logical, it's just "go talk to everyone and look at everything, something will trigger to open up something elsewhere, then when you investigate that it will trigger something else" etc. There are some traditional adventure gamey puzzles, but it's largely the tedium of making sure you've looked/talked to things enough to trigger something.

Dragon Quest 8 Journey of the Cursed King ps2

Its a very traditional JRPG. A linear story, random encounters between dungeons and towns to buy weapons and supplies in.
The story's a simple, like a fairy-tale you play a palace guard. The king has been transformed into a goblin like monster his daughter into a horse and and his castle over run by magical thorns. You journey together to hunt down the jester who stole his magical staff and used it to curse him.
The story is very linear. There are almost no side quests and your party is selected by the game not you. This does allow it to be fully voice acted and the acting is great.

The combat is also simple you attack heal or buff/debuff but there's no team moves and little strategy. Combats all turn based so it quickly becomes spaming your best attacks and healing when necessary. Random encounters are so frequent exploration is a grind and the rewards aren't worth the effort.
Only in the dungeons where you have to conserve your healing and face an end boss is there any tension.

The Alchemy pot attempts to add another layer of game play. By combining up to three items you can create rare items. The problem is you only get given a few recipes and are expected to find the other's by trial and error.
There is no way to work out whats going to make what and its totally possible to make a common item out of a rare ingredient.
Because the pot is buried behind a couple of menus and there is an unskipable animation every time you place items in the pot its an annoying feature to use and i quickly gave up on it until i got stuck late on and had to google recipes to get my weapons and armour up to beat a boss.

Overall its a very shallow game but set in a beautiful cell shaded world with great voice acting and a good script.

Unavowed - An old-school point-and-click adventure game with some innovative twists. The chief one is that you have several party members. You choose two to accompany you on each case, which results in different solutions to puzzles depending on who's in your party. NPCs banter among themselves in Bioware themselves.

The story is quite an enjoyable supernatural adventure, with plenty of well-written, well-acted dialogue and difficult ethical choices. The puzzles are all very easy. I always end up consulting a walkthrough in adventure games because I suck, but I didn't have to at all with Unavowed. In that respect it's reminiscent of The Walking Dead games, although Unavowed's puzzles are a bit more involved. It's not an interactive comic like TWD, but the puzzles are not going to sprain your brain either.