Be Excellent To Each Other

I thought so, but I wasn't sure. And I had to get out of bed.

91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor
95. Framed
96. The Journey Back: a point and click sort of thing for Android where you explore and interact fully with the environment rather than just getting static screens to tap on. It's got a nice, if very basic, graphical style but the controls are annoying and the puzzles relatively basic. It's also got quite a lot of rooms and stuff that don't do shit so there's more time spent just tapping on unresponsive objects than you should really need to spend. Also my character got completely stuck on a bit of scenery at one point forcing me to restart the entire game and spend the next playthrough nervously manual saving all the time.

2) Fallout New Vegas (360)

...rushed to the ending as I realised I had this on the PC with all the DLC from a Steam sale last year.

Was it good?

Not as good as Fallout 2.

1. Proteus (Vita) - finished the game
2. Desert Golfing (iOS) - played 1,000 holes
3. Heavy Metal Thunder (iOS) - finished story
4. Driveclub (PS4) - finished Tour with 175/225 stars, finished free DLC trophies
5. Peggle Classic (iOS) - finished Adventure Mode with 18m points
6. OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood (PS4) - completed all stages on Amateur
7. Daytona Rush (iOS) - unlocked all tiers, top on friends leaderboards for all tiers
8. Super Mega Baseball (PS4) - won the League Championship
9. Please, Don't Touch Anything (Mac) - 17/21 endings
10. Rocket League (PS4) - platinum trophy & all DLC trophies, reached Pro (level 20), completed season on Amateur
11. The Way of Life (Mac) - completed the game
12. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (PS4) - completed the game
13. Score! Hero (iOS) - completed four seasons
14. Sound Shapes (PS4) - completed campaign
15. Score! World Goals (iOS) - completed all four decades challenges on Amateur, Professional and Bonus with at least 40 stars for each difficulty
16. Lara Croft: GO (iOS) - completed campaign, collected all gems and treasure, Game Center max
17. Lifeline (iOS) - completed game

In essence a text Choose Your Own Adventure-style game, but you play in real time in conversation with a stranded astronaut. Nice to play something a bit different, but I wouldn't say the story was at all gripping.

I was pretty gripped by it up until nearer the end where it kind of rushes through the denouement. I thought it did a pretty good job of building up tension and dropping hints of weird goings on for the majority but it just blew all that in a confused run for the finale.

It's now £3.99 on the App Store so it must have been a sale price. I'm not buying it for that, given that it's quite slight.

91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor
95. Framed
96. The Journey Back
97. Wolfenstein The New Order: gets a resounding 'meh' from me unfortunately. It started off pretty strong and I was really enjoying the mix of stealth and full on shooting but it doesn't do anything I haven't seen a million times before and the flaws in it's formula started to show pretty quickly. The pacing was all over the place as well and, while I realise it was often done to mix things up a bit, a lot of the time you were never sure if you were in a firefight because you were supposed to get spotted or just because you'd fucked up a stealth section. There was also too many times where you were chucked into an arena fight with shit guns (the space station level and the one just after had some truly teeth-grinding examples of this problem) which just made the entire section a grind. It's not a bad game per se but there's just something a bit wonky about it's design and frankly I was glad to see the end of it. Also, very unexpectedly, the visuals were really patchy. At first glance everything looks pretty nice but there was a lot of awful textures on display and some quirk of the anti-aliasing meant that whole chunks of floor or wall would have this weird strobing sort of 'glisten' to them which would sometimes disappear after you first pointed the camera at the offending area. Very odd!

1. Danganronpa (PSV)
2. Unfinished swan (PS4)
3. Everybodys gone to the rapture (PS4)
4. Bloodborne (PS4)

Took a long time to get round to playing this. Combination of preferring ruined medieval worlds to somewhat dilapidated Victorian worlds. And missing my shield in new areas. Combat did feel a bit more one paced and a bit small as compared Dark Souls. I would say best game of the year, but for the lack of disappointed bear noises.

I'm a slug.

I finished Super Time Force Ultra!

It was lots of fun. I hope someone does the same thing with a prettier FPS game.

1) Broken Sword 2 (iOS)
2) Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (iOS)
3) Machinarium (iOS)
4) SlitherLink (iOS)
5) Conceptis SlitherLink (iOS)
6) Assasin's Creed II (360)
7) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (iOS)
8) Plunder! HD (iOS) - All maps completed, all treasure collected, Kraken defeated and all ships upgraded to maximum class.

1. Crysis (PC)
2. Octodad (PC)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
5. The Evil Within (PC)
6. Torchlight (PC)
7. Mass Effect (PC)
8. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
9. Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
10. Monument Valley (Android)
11. Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
12. The Tender Cut (PC)
13. Far Cry 3 (PC)
14. LIMBO (PC)
15. Fallout 3 (PC)
16. Project Zero II (PlayStation 2)
17. 3D Out Run (Nintendo 3DS)
18. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance)

Another entry in a seemingly endless series of variations over Symphony of the Night (A game which I've played, but not finished. I should get around to that, really). But they always manage to be incredibly well made, fun and addictive. Some of them can also be slightly frustrating in places, but this one pretty much avoids that.

Now I made it to the credits, but the ending was fairly muted, the last boss a bit easy, and I haven't explored the entire castle, so there is obviously more to this. Something for a rainy day.

1. Crysis (PC)
2. Octodad (PC)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
5. The Evil Within (PC)
6. Torchlight (PC)
7. Mass Effect (PC)
8. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
9. Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
10. Monument Valley (Android)
11. Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
12. The Tender Cut (PC)
13. Far Cry 3 (PC)
14. LIMBO (PC)
15. Fallout 3 (PC)
16. Project Zero II (PlayStation 2)
17. 3D Out Run (Nintendo 3DS)
18. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance)
19. Trine (PC)

I had no idea what to expect here. I don't even remember when or how this appeared in my Steam library. It turned out to be a quite original and surprisingly pretty physics puzzle/action platformer. I played the original version over the bloomtastic "enchanted" edition, because I actually preferred the way that looked. And like I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't have much time for remakes.

I played it with mouse and keyboard, and I don't think I would have enjoyed playing it with a gamepad to be honest. It gets rather fiddly and a bit frustrating at the end, but not enough to prevent me from finishing and enjoying it.

1. Crysis (PC)
2. Octodad (PC)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
5. The Evil Within (PC)
6. Torchlight (PC)
7. Mass Effect (PC)
8. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
9. Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
10. Monument Valley (Android)
11. Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
12. The Tender Cut (PC)
13. Far Cry 3 (PC)
14. LIMBO (PC)
15. Fallout 3 (PC)
16. Project Zero II (PlayStation 2)
17. 3D Out Run (Nintendo 3DS)
18. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance)
19. Trine (PC)
20. The Talos Principle (PC)

I am listing this now because I've seen an ending and the credits. This actually happened a couple of months ago, but I was unsure if I wanted to list it, since there is a whole new slew of puzzles to complete to see the "real" ending as it were. However, they are ridiculously hard and involve a lot of exploration and a whole different way of thinking about the game*, and it's probably going to take me years of playing once in a while to get through them, if it will ever happen, so there you go.

All I can say is, if you have any love for Portal style puzzles you must play this game. It is amazing.

* Not that I mind this, I've solved some of them, and it is actually very interesting.

1) Broken Sword 2 (iOS)
2) Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (iOS)
3) Machinarium (iOS)
4) SlitherLink (iOS)
5) Conceptis SlitherLink (iOS)
6) Assasin's Creed II (360)
7) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (iOS)
Plunder! HD (iOS)
9) Final Cut True Escapade (iOS) - Hidden object nonsense. Good, but not worth full price.

Heh, I'm glad I'm not the only one that enjoys those as a guilty pleasure. Sorting the good from the bad is definitely a challenge though given that each publisher puts out stuff of wildly varying quality from different developers. On the Android side of the fence though every one of them's available as a free version which lets you see a good chunk of the game and then pay to unlock the rest so if it's shite you don't waste any cash.

Yeah same here. Played the free trial and then unlocked the rest afterwards. It was ok, just not uber awesome.

91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor
95. Framed
96. The Journey Back
97. Wolfenstein The New Order
98. Lara Croft GO: brilliant stuff. Not as long or as varied as Hitman GO but that just meant it didn't outstay it's welcome and I was perfectly happy with it as it was. Also, the 'metagame' of hunting for hidden treasure was more fun than Hitman's alternative level completion criteria. I didn't like the presentation quite as much as Hitman but that's not to say it's not lovely looking because it is; it's just that Hitman's faux-board game aesthetic looked brilliant and I really liked it.

1) Broken Sword 2 (iOS)
2) Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (iOS)
3) Machinarium (iOS)
4) SlitherLink (iOS)
5) Conceptis SlitherLink (iOS)
6) Assasin's Creed II (360)
7) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (iOS)
Plunder! HD (iOS)
9) Final Cut True Escapade (iOS)
10) Hidden Object Carnival (iOS) - Awful game, sub 5 minute completion, and three were spent avoiding adverts.

I thought I was doing really poorly compared to last year, but I'm on 16 v 13 on 6/10/14. I still need to double that to match last year's final total, though.

I'm sure if we try really hard, we can add destiny to that list...

*cough*

Yes, it's been a long hard trawl up to level 20.

91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor
95. Framed
96. The Journey Back
97. Wolfenstein The New Order
98. Lara Croft GO
99. Davey's Mystery 2: pretty much the same deal as the first one.

42. Eternal Darkness (Gamecube).

I remember liking it about 10 years ago and then I stopped playing it for some reason. Now I know why, the last levels are rubbish with some obtuse puzzles. I used a walkthrough to complete it and now I feel dirty.

43. Super Time Force Ultra (PS4).

The weird thing about this is it's really quite funny and could probably be quite entertaining but whereas I thought the writing was spot on the gameplay was just something, something, something. Why wasn't I having much fun? I mean, I played it through to completion so I got what was going on and I could do it but it was just a bit of a chore. I could barely force myself to pick up the controller and boot it up until I realised that there weren't many levels. "Oh, I could probably sledgehammer my way into enjoying it" I thought to myself, and whilst it kinda worked, I was still not really having a joyous time playing it.

I honestly can't put my finger on why I didn't really enjoy it. Well, apart from shooting at a diagonal was a FUCKING NIGHTMARE as you had to root yourself to the spot with the shoulder button. Maybe it was the controls then? It was alright, it was interesting, it was well written, it was funny but I'd struggle to recommend anyone pick it up and play it unless it was free. Which it was. Kinda.

Wait, you could do what?!

I had no idea.

91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor
95. Framed
96. The Journey Back
97. Wolfenstein The New Order
98. Lara Croft GO
99. Davey's Mystery 2
100. Lego Marvel Super Heroes: fun in very short bursts, but the core game is incredibly repetitive which undermines the charm of the whole thing for me. Also I can't believe modern Ubisoft games get slagged off for being collectathons when this kind of thing exists. You'd need to mental to even attempt to 100% it, especially as it means playing the whole thing through at least twice. Then spending countless hours doing fetch quests and nonsense all over the open world. Also, and this might be an issue because it's the first Lego game I've really played, but it does a fucking terrible, terrible job of explaining itself. I had to Google some of the icons on the map to find out what they meant, also how to buy stuff with the 'money' I had because although it flashes up in the pause menu that stuff was available it said fuck all about finding a single semi-secret room on the helicarrier before you could do anything. And I only by accident stumbled across the fact that you could switch your available characters around at any time without visiting one of the Shield selection point things. There's no real excuse for not telling someone all of that and it pissed me off even though I could Google up the answers pretty quickly.

I've 100%'d it. Along with Legos Pirates, Batman 1 & 2, Lord of the Rings and Movie.

I did them all co-op though. Wouldn't want to play them on my own. In fact I'd say Marvel was the most varied and interesting of them all, with it being open-world.

1. Danganronpa (PSV)
2. Unfinished swan (PS4)
3. Everybodys gone to the rapture (PS4)
4. Bloodborne (PS4)
5. Gone Home (PS4)

A bit shit. Your character controls like he's drunk and the physics engine the game is tied to is faulty. Almost like they decided to make Sumotori a platforming game. Also: No Disappointed bears.

I had the check a few times to confirm what game you were talking about because your comments make it sound like something else entirely. Not least as the protagonist is female.

He's talking about Grow Home, dontchaknow.

So he is, the tit.

Hahaha Dave!

Oh yeah, I didn't like that either.

1. Crysis (PC)
2. Octodad (PC)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
5. The Evil Within (PC)
6. Torchlight (PC)
7. Mass Effect (PC)
8. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
9. Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
10. Monument Valley (Android)
11. Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
12. The Tender Cut (PC)
13. Far Cry 3 (PC)
14. LIMBO (PC)
15. Fallout 3 (PC)
16. Project Zero II (PlayStation 2)
17. 3D Out Run (Nintendo 3DS)
18. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance)
19. Trine (PC)
20. The Talos Principle (PC)
21. God of War III (PS3)

I loved the first two games and had high hopes for this. It certainly brings the spectacle, and the combat is as solid as ever - because very little has changed. It's more of the same, really, but on the mighty PS3. It doesn't really feel that special, not like the previous games did compared to other PS2 games. Or maybe I've just had enough of God of War. And the artsy ending is a bit of a laugh, as if I was paying attention to the plot, let alone cared about the characters.

101. Renegade Ops: A twin stick shooter that was out on XBLA/PSN a couple of years back and has been languishing in my Steam library for quite some time. The variation on the theme here is that instead of controlling a guy you're driving a vehicle with a bloody great gun attached which means as well as concentrating on where you're firing you also need to actually drive the thing to stay out of trouble. There's a certain amount of patting-your-head-and-rubbing-your-stomach there which probably accounts for the generally high difficulty; well, that and the sheer fucking shitton of bullets, missiles and plumes of flame that are generally headed towards you at any given moment.

Anyway, it nails the basics of a good arcadey funtime and the meaty weight of your guns makes a joy of just driving around the place shooting the shit out of things, especially when you get it upgraded all the way. It's also incredibly nice looking and has this pulpy aesthetic that's as affectionate a homage to arcade games of times past as I've even seen.

There is, however, one major design misstep that's teeth-grindingly fucking idiotic and hangs over the whole affair. The levels are a bit more open than your standard shooter and you've always got a side mission going on that you can explore a bit to carry out in addition to the primary objective. The thing is--the fucking thing is--that the primary objectives are all on fucking timers. And silent timers at that. So if you spend some arbitrary amount of time either pursuiing a side mission or just taking your time to joyously explode the ever loving shit out of all the destructible stuff around you then suddenly a big red timer appears and shouts at you to get the fuck on with it. For no real reason either but just because the game's decided you're taking too long with your fun. And as you've literally no idea how far away the primary objective is you're now massively pressured to steam towards it as fast as you can which (a) isn't as much fun and (b) means you usually end up pushing ahead a bit too fast and getting surrounded then utterly pummelled. Even if there wasn't an open-ish design to the game it would be massively annoying to be constantly and needlessly hurried along but given that factor it's almost criminal to be so harangued and even when the timer hasn't yet appeared you're always just waiting for the fucking thing which has a constant flow-ruining effect on the whole thing.

So, at it's best it's brilliant, if very repetitive, fun just destroying shit in your little jeep thing and I doubt anyone wouldn't enjoy the game. But, sadly, the timer and a couple of other smaller design issues keep it from being as excellent as it could have been.

1. Portal 2 (PC). Yes! I finally finished it!

101. Renegade Ops
102. Mystery of the Ancients: Three Guardians: the usual hidden object adventure nonsense.

101. Renegade Ops
102. Mystery of the Ancients: Three Guardians
103. X-Men: Days of Future Past: action platformer for Android based on the X-Men comic arc of the same name. Starts of pretty well but gets very repetitive and, although there are loads of characters with upgradeable power and whatnot, it ends up being pointless because (a) levelling up Wolverine's moves will see you through the entire game without much challenge and (b) to level even most of the characters you'd need to grind each level loads of times so you're disincentivised from experimenting. The performance is also patchy on certain levels, although the graphics and cutscenes and whatnot are very nice in general.

101. Renegade Ops
102. Mystery of the Ancients: Three Guardians
103. X-Men: Days of Future Past
104. The Typing of the Dead: Overkill: Stupid, ludicrous, technically janky and a lot of fun. If you're a terrible typist like me it becomes incredibly tense when the game throws a few guys at you in a row and it always chucks in enough stupid phrases to keep you entertained as you type open zombie heads (e.g. "down with that sort of thing" and "careful now" make an appearance). Pro-tip though: don't activate the fucking sci-fi custom dictionary because it'll throw stuff like "M41A Pulse Rifle" at you and the number characters are a nightmare when you're in the thick of it. It does get repetitive of course but the constant tension from your fingers not doing exactly what you want them to do keeps things moving along.

You did it, well done!

Have a rest until next year.

It's been awhile. So here's the update of my finishing list:

21. The Walking Dead: Season 2 - It's OK. The last episode was excellent, but it was quite boring on some parts of the season

22. Path of Exile - Best Diablo clone ever. I'm sure that i'll play this for a long time. Everybody should play this, it's free.

23. Mass Effect - Took me 7 years to finish, which demonstrates how boring the whole ordeal was. The setting and graphics are nice, and so are the characters. But everything else is terrible, especially the level design and combat. How this series had to much success i have no idea. Maybe the sequels are much better.

24. Starship Traveller - Fighting Fantasy conversion. I loved this book, so i liked this, even though it doesn't feature the original artwork.

25. Diablo 3 - After the initial excitment of hearing the familiar soundtrack and being in tristam again, i got to the conclusion that the game is very poor. No reason to play thos over path of exile

26. Risen 2: Dark Waters - Sequel to one of the most underrated rpg's of all time. This one wasn't as good but still pretty fun. Piranha Bytes usually great level design is still here.

27. Memoria – Another amazing point and click adventure by Daedalic. Still, I didn’t love it as much as its predecessor, since it lacks that great “road trip” feel, and the pacing and puzzles aren’t as good. But the great graphics and plot make up for it. It’s still fantastic and a worthwhile successor to one of the most underrated adventures ever.

28. Life is Strange - AMAZING!!! LOVED!! JUST MADE ALL TELLTALE GAMES OBSOLETE.

There's level design in Mass Effect?

(The sequel is better, but may be not to your liking still. the third I tired of very quickly, so can't really comment)

I don't know if it can be called "level design" when it's all either about linear corridors or bases and planet surfaces that all look the same.

44. Unmechanical Extended (PS4)

A joyous little game about flying robots with slightly sinister undertones that was a perfect slice of afternoon fun that never outstayed its welcome. You'll be done with it in a couple of hours which was exactly what I looking for after the hateful experience I had with The Wonderful 101.

The extended/extra campaign was lovely too with a couple of new characters that get sucked into the underworld. It's only about half the size of the main campaign, maybe shorter than that, but it was so lovely and intriguing that I had to do it too. Very nice.

101. Renegade Ops
102. Mystery of the Ancients: Three Guardians
103. X-Men: Days of Future Past
104. The Typing of the Dead: Overkill
105. Tales from the Borderlands: I still haven't played any of the main Borderlands games so I was going into this completely fresh to the world and characters which made no difference at all. I thoroughly enjoyed this and it's by far the best of the Telltale games I've played so far (I've played The Wolf Among Us and S1 of Walking Dead); funny, well written and with some of the most engaging QTEs I've come across. Big thumbs up and roll on the next season. God knows they'd be better putting resources into that than grafting a fucking story onto stuff like bloody Minecraft.

Stahp.

Quite curious by that one. The Walking Dead bored in places (both seasons), but i'm throughly enjoying game of thrones. I see that Tales from the Borderlands is supposed to be the best, so it must be really good indeed. Besides, i found some characters from the BL2 hilarious, like Tiny Tina and that redneck mechanic which i forgot the name.

Apparently the humour in Tales is carried over from the main series so if you liked those then you'll find plenty to laugh at in Tales. And it is funny and well written in general I found so definitely worth a shot. The first episode is free on iOS and Android so if you have a tablet of some kind you could check it out there for free.

1. Crysis (PC)
2. Octodad (PC)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
5. The Evil Within (PC)
6. Torchlight (PC)
7. Mass Effect (PC)
8. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
9. Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
10. Monument Valley (Android)
11. Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
12. The Tender Cut (PC)
13. Far Cry 3 (PC)
14. LIMBO (PC)
15. Fallout 3 (PC)
16. Project Zero II (PlayStation 2)
17. 3D Out Run (Nintendo 3DS)
18. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance)
19. Trine (PC)
20. The Talos Principle (PC)
21. God of War III (PS3)
22. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PlayStation)

I bought this years ago on Xbox Live Arcade, but I do not like the block-o-vision of old games on LCD screens that they were never designed for, so I have been putting it off. I never bought it back in the day, because I also cannot stand the PAL squashing and slowness that the old-gen games suffer from, especially for this type of game.

I still have a 15" CRT TV around, however, and I recently reacquired an original first run model PlayStation, and it suddenly occurred to me that I should be able to download and burn the US version and play it using ye olde swap trick. Symphony of the Night as it was meant to be played at long last!

As for the actual game, suffice it to say its legendary status is well deserved. Just as enjoyable as and better looking than its many sequels on the Game Boy Advance, it shows off the underused 2D capabilities of the PlayStation, has great sound, and the music is just magnificent. It is also non-linear to a certain degree, but that works mostly great, as long as you are prepared to explore a little. Once you get to that point, the game does provide you with means to get around quickly.

It is not without its flaws, though. For example the item system is a bit useless, since you need to equip items in the menu, instead of say a shield, and then use them as an in-game action, and you only ever get very few of each of a rather large selection of items. But fortunately items can just be safely ignored, and so can the spells which are too hard to pull off. It does feel a bit like they threw everything at the wall to see what would stick, but the bits that do stick form a coherent and enjoyable game, and they were, unsurprisingly, the same that formed the basis for all the sequels.

I made it to the credits, but as was the case with Aria of Sorrow above, it obviously contains much more, and I do believe in this case I'll get right on that and see what I can discover.