Be Excellent To Each Other

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.

Good work. I love the idea of the game but whenever I play it I get stuck almost immediately.

There was one particular point where I consulted a FAQ (boo!). If I had taken the time to really go through the map and been just a bit more persistent, I don't think it would have been necessary.

I don't think I ever needed an FAQ or got stuck, you big losers. Well, except for the upside down world but once I was there I got stuck in and done the lot without any further help.

Really can't get into it, but I want to. I feel like I'm flailing at skeletons and dying and wandering around aimlessly. I think that's the problem, I don't know what I'm meant to be doing.

You are basically just trying to find the next save room, then the next and so on... Sometimes you reach a dead end with a mysterious obstacle, or spot a bit you can't seem to reach. Then you try another direction until you gain new abilities that let you proceed in a previously explored area. There are a few puzzles here and there, like switches and things that can be moved.

Also look for teh sekrits by punching walls here and there, because some of them can be knocked down.

45. Axiom Verge (PS4).

I really enjoyed this an awful lot. But I like Metroidvania games - the exploration, unlocking areas, spotting hidden places, opening the map. It's like an OCD sufferers dream.

It does everything right: it has its own story to tell (bit daft but games, init), it has its own art style (NESesesessy) and understands how to be a video game.

As to the latter, it recognises that each time you get a new something you want to try it out or try it on. It's the Nintendo way: pick up X in a room; shoot it about/play with it whatever, then the next room or two will give you an easy obstacle to get to grips with it without much fear of death and then bumps up the challenge thereafter. Same with enemies: introduce baddie on his own, let you tinker about with it in lots of space and then increase the challenge - more enemies, different spaces etc. It's so simple and so much like the Nintendo building blocks that you wonder why it's so flawless for just this one guy.

Plus it gets you involved in a fresh Metroidvania way by not allowing you too much free reign to start with. It's constantly pushing you down a linear path with little side roots for you to mentally note for your inevitable return journey when you're kited up. In fact, one area stops you backtracking altogether so you have to push onwards and it's so simple it's brilliant. It's a jump you can't make. That's it. Just gap that's too long for you to make and suddenly you know you're in the right place and that, rather than getting too lost, you definitely need to explore the area you're in. I think was at the 50% mark so you'll see most of the world immediately before you're let loose to explore. Then, after you've passed through all the main worlds you'll have enough weapons and upgrades for a pass or two in some new worlds or a good old backtrack through those areas you noticed earlier.

The entire game is brill (apart from the last boss which is cunty but that's a given in this day and age) from start to finish. Very enjoyable and, best of all, super fun times.

Final stats: 15 hours and 45 seconds.
Items: 64%
Map: 90%
Deaths: 28

If you didn't like SoTN, you probably won't like this though as it's the same thing. But if you don't like that then you better go play Viva Piñata or something you loon.

When I tried symphony of the night two years ago on the emulator I was truly enjoying it, but then I lost to a boss that was terribly far away from a save point and gave up. The ds games and aria of sorrow had usually check points before bosses.

46. Alto's Adventure (iOS).

Ok, so it's an uncompletable endless runner game but I've purchased the most expensive items with in-game currency (and not actual money), so I win and I consider that I've clocked it. It is absolutely beautiful. It sounds fantastic. It will have a permanent place on my phone and I can't say that about many other phone games and joins such illustrious company as Manic Miner, Super Hexagon and I Am Level.

47. Bug Princess (iOS).

This may also take up a permanent residence too. I've done the Original game on Hell difficulty (Hell is the hardest difficulty but also has the O.G. bullet numbers and patterns from the original game). It's a bullet hell shooter. If you don't like these games then I don't blame you as they take an ultra amount of concentration, but once you hit that stride and weave through tiny gaps and shit loads of things explode as you fire hundreds of bullets at tens of enemies that smash apart in a shower of numbers and upgrades that make more stuff shoot out of you while more stuff shoots back at you and, for some ungodly reason, you've stayed alive more than 30 seconds you feel like the greatest game player in the universe. There's something that it endlessly satisfying about bullet hell games that are done correctly. Most of these types of games tread a thin line between frustrating shit that only robots could complete and satisfying challenge, but Bug Princess on an iPhone 6S+ with the screen maxed out plays much, much better than it has any right to do. I imagine on a smaller phone it would be a blurry unplayable mess. Anyway, it was free so you have no excuse for not trying it out to see if it was up your street. Thanks LewieP for the tip off. It's staying on my phone until I crush the maniac mode but I've got to get by level 3 first...

You can do it, Sat!

104! 104! 104!

OBJECTION: there are 60 levels to 3-star.

What? I've never had a star rating. Have you been smoking the crack?

It's how you unlock the other characters. I'm stuck on level 50 I think.

Really? Cripes. I've been ignoring the challenges largely and I've only unlocked a single character.

Elsewhere, here's Bug Princess - this may be a sequel or a final boss in the last mode after maniac. Frankly, I don't think my phone or nerve could handle it.

Yay! That dude is called Paz!

Are you sure it's a dude? Paz is traditionally a Girls name.

Spanish for 'peace', too.

Only as a first name. And girls can be dudes too, dude.

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
106. And Yet It Moves: an indie PC (and iOS) platformer that's been around for years, I can't even remember when I first played it through. The USPs are a very pretty, if slightly sparse, 'torn paper' aesthetic and a control scheme that sees you not only controlling your character but also rotating the entire world around him in order to traverse the levels. Really good fun, if immensely frustrating in the odd part, and full of decent ideas.

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
106. And Yet It Moves
107. Spooky's House of Jumpscares: a weird little indie game that Jim Sterling showed the first part of which piqued my interest. It's ten levels divided into 100 rooms, most of which only take a couple of seconds to sprint through and which are procedurally generated, albeit from a very limited set of templates. And if you're thinking that would be incredibly repetitive you'd be right, which is sort of the hook because it means you notice instantly whenever something new is added. A little bit like PT actually now I come to think of it. Anyway, there are monsters and some stuff chucked in to keep you on your toes and although it starts out all cutesy it does get a bit darker as it goes. Level 700 onwards is where it actually starts adding stuff with real objectives and whatnot, albeit nothing very complex. Overall it's just a bit too repetitive to carry the idea and I ended up finishing it purely because I'd already ploughed time into it and wanted to see the end. It would be massively more effective if they made each level maybe 50 rather than 100 rooms, did away with the mostly pointless stamina meter for sprinting and start ramping up the actual game content much sooner as I imagine most people get bored and never see the meat of it. Also, the ending was an anti-climax. I think there's more going on there though because of certain objects you can interact with that aren't explained properly so I'm going to read up on it to see if there's some depth hidden in there I never noticed.

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
106. And Yet It Moves
107. Spooky's House of Jumpscares
108. Incredible Jack: the sort of generic cartoony 2D platformer that would've gone down a storm in the Amiga days but is a bit boring now. Nothing particularly wrong with it but nothing amazing either.

46. Wolfenstein: The New Order (PS4).

I fancied something dumb and shooty and since I can't be arsed to pick up BLOPS3 I thought I'd give this a punt.

And it's great! For about 4 hours, then it's boring.

I suppose I should have seen it coming really but it's an overly long CoD Campaign. Although admittedly it has some decent ideas going for it that makes it more fun than your average CoD Campaign. I must say for starters that it has a reet nice introduction and first few levels. Like, really nice. I absolutely loved the giant castle in the first level - it's a behemoth! You stand next to it and look up and goddamn near touches the sky, it's striking and fabulous and it follows some of the stupidest plane to plane jumps in the sky and even some storming the beach nonsense whilst mechanised dog chew at your fleshy balls. I was totally committed at this point and really enjoying myself when an early twist came and the scenery changes to a mental asylum. It doesn't stop there either as the Nazi's come in and start murdering folks. It's a little shocking (but not shocking, because, y'know, Nazis) but it all plays out rather well. I'm still enjoying myself. Then we do a mad dash across country and it's fab and then it's time to break out the prisoners and it's fab. I've been playing a few hours now and I'm thinking it's about done...

Pew, Pew, Pew ... hang on, what's this weird fog that make everything blurry when you look down a corridor ... pew, pew, pew ... how come light armoured guys with shotguns are such bullet sponges ... pew, pew, pew ... hang on, this isn't going to end is it? ... checks gamefaqs ... level 5, ok, out of 16 levels? Forking hell... pew, pew, pew ... pew ... pew ... *yawn*

And so on. I kinda wanted it to be a CoD campaign that doesn't outstay its welcome but it does. By several hours. It does have some high moments littered throughout but as the game goes on and gets harder you find that everything other than the standard enemy is a giant bullet sponge which you will get smashed to pieces if you stand in front of them. There's an old school PC mechanic whereby you can lean around corners and it's set on the left bumper so it's supposed to be used all the time. Peeking around corners spraying bullets, peeking over boxes spraying bullets, peeking up skirts and so on. Only problem with that though is if you want to look down the sights of your weapon and shoot you're holding three buttons all at the same time: L1 for peek, L2 for sights and R2 for shooting and then you're aiming with the right stick as well. That's four fucking simultaneous actions to just shoot your gun as intended. Shooting: The one and only thing that you do that has an impact in the game.

Oh, and another bug bear of mine at the moment is picking stuff up off the floor. JUST DO IT AUTOMATICALLY. Why should I have to loot bullets and armour from the floor, ceiling and tables and shit especially in the middle of a fucking firefight?Pressing the square button becomes a fucking chore an' all since there is literally tens of objects on the floor at any one time. You shoot a guy and he drops some armour and some bullets (maybe 9 bullets, maybe 2) or you shoot a robot and they drop bits of their armour to pick up (so there might be 5 piles of +10 armour littered on the floor). And it's not even as though it's doing an overly long animation of the Far Cry variety like skinning a badger, no, you look at the bullets on the floor and press square and they jump into your pocket. So why not just make them jump in anyway rather than make me smash the square button while I'm crouching behind a box peeking out to shoot with my hands gripping the joypad like my fingers have been trained in the style of the mantis by a fucking Drunken Master?

Anyhoo, another gripe I have (other than that weird blurry effect for anything that's more than 5 foot from you. I thought it was the sort-of focus blur that modern games do when you stare down a weapons sights. Well it ain't that because everything is blurry. It's ridiculous.) is when a game has one idea and they make you do it again and again like it's the worlds worse puzzle game. Here we have a weapon that becomes your standard/default weapon within about 2 levels which has an alternative fire button that allows you to cut chains, thin metal and so on. It's a mobile laser cutter. So cut chains you must BUT NOT WITH BULLETS OR THE STANDARD LASER THAT IT SHOOTS TOO, oh no, because a bullet would never spring this chain despite being really effective at stripping the giant robots of all their armour moments earlier. So every now and again you reach an area where you have to use it to progress. It's boring. It's repeated every. Single. Level. Even in the end boss fight.

And while I'm at it, how come the default weapon is so fucking boring to use. If you must insist that I use a rechargeable gun, rechargeable from every power point that is littered throughout the game every 5 fucking feet (oh god, that never got old fast did it? Hmmm), then make that gun fun to play with. There's something about shooting a laser gun that goes "whooong-g-g-g-g" that is infinitely less satisfying than an assault rifle that goes "DUGGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGGA". Actually the sound of the assault rifle is pretty shit and sounds like an SMG but it feels better than this silly piece of crap. UNLESS! The effect of the laser is satisfying perhaps! Yes, so what if the laser gun EXPLODES PEOPLE! Yeah, like fucking FEAR, man. When you enter slow down time and get in a guys face with a shotty and BLAMMO the entire body explodes in crimson!!! That was Da Bomb! No. Whilst the laser gun can explode people it would rather you didn't. It can't do headshots either whilst the pistol can. The bloody pistol can one shot a guy in the face but a giant laser can't. Wow. It's deeply unsatisfying to play with and no mater how much you try and play with the other weapons the game will make you play with this fucking laser gun because it's much strong than all the others combined against the big enemies.

Big enemies who endlessly shoot you in the open without stopping no matter where you are. Walking tirelessly towards you. Shooting. Always shooting. Even when you're peeking around a corner they will shoot you. Until someone dies in an unsatisfying manner.

Actually, I remember reading that the AI was buggered but I think that must have been patched because whilst everyone was dumber than a really dumb thing, it wasn't any worse than your average game of CoD. I didn't hit any bad glitches either. Not one that I remember at all. Seemed really solid to me.

Anyway, I'mma wrap this up with a summary:-

A) It's not a bad game.
B) It's on the wrong side of average.
C) There's some silly design flaws.
D) You'll have a blast.
E) Then you'll get bored.
F) You'll probably see it through to the end though, so it's doing something right.
G) It is very pretty when it wants to be.
H) I got it for a tenner, anything below that would be a steal I reckon.

If your game is about shooting you should ensure the following things:

1) The guns feel heavy, loud and fun.
2) The shooting is fun.
3) No one likes a bullet sponge.
4) Everyone likes precision shooting cause when we get it right we feel like bad asses.
5) Shooting people over and over and over can soon get boring. Don't outstay your welcome.
6) If your one thing is shooting then make the inputs for shooting as simple as pressing a button. Two at most.
7)) Shooting robots will never, NEVER, be as much fun as shooting people.

I'd pretty much agree with the entirety of that, especially the slide from 'this is excellent fun' to 'I'm bored with this shit'. And all the other little bugbears you picked out that I noticed but never bothered to write up. I think I even committed the cardinal sin of dropping it to easy later on in the game because I was bored and a couple of specific rooms frustrated the shit out of me. The whole experience was more than enough for me to unceremoniously dump the 'Old Blood' stand alone thing from my 'to get' list. It's such a shame because I adored the previous, and massively under-appreciated', Wolfenstein game and could've gone for just more of that shit.

Bonus bugbear: the main character was constantly fucking muttering to himself but it didn't seem to matter what he was saying and it was very rarely loud enough to actually hear which just made it seem like a glitch playing random sound files. A very odd design decision.

Now that was one of the things I kinda liked. I always think that people would mutter stuff to themselves if you spent the vast majority of the time by your lonesome. Did you ever sit in the car on, I think, the fourth level where he pretends to drive it and makes brum-brum noises? That was so jarringly stupid I couldn't help but laugh.

Additional bugbear: Sound files. They have no need to exist in this game but pop up during the latter half every 5 minutes for walking around a corridor. They don't automatically play themselves in-game and need to be accessed via the in game menu and if you leave the menu then they stop. So what's the point? No one in their right mind would want to play a bunch of sound files about some fictional character reading long lost letters in a shooting game outside of the game.

The utterly bizarre thing is though that they are so fabulously recorded that they probably deserved to be in the main game. They have this ace crackling oldie noise and the woman who voices them from the asylum is pretty great. Well, let's be fair they probably shouldn't even exist but they are so great they could have been used somewhere else than in a menu.

Oh, and talking of shit in the menu, did you play any of the records either from the many collectibles? Some are great, but WHY DO THEY EXIST EITHER!? it's just crackers.

As is the amount of stupid collectibles too. Fuck knows why they've in there except because, apparently, all gamers are OCD obsessed idiots that like nothing better than collecting pointless shit.

I don't mind the idea but you couldn't make out anything he ever said so it was just an annoyance as you strained to listen over all the other audio stuff that was happening.



Heh, yeah, I might even have got all of these and never listened to a single one as I didn't give a shit. It was just another pointless pop-up to ignore in the game.



Nope, never bothered with these either. I could listen to them all if I wanted as well because, bizarrely, my copy of the game came with an actual ye olde audio CD stuck to the front with the entire set of these alternative universe pop songs on it. Which is a whole lot of effort to go to only to do bugger all with them in game. I assumed before I played it that difference scenes would have a reason to play these songs in the background but nope; total waste.

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)
23. The Last of Us: Left Behind (PS3)

2.5-3 hours of awesome, if you do not mind that something like an hour of that is cut scenes. This must be some of the finest story telling ever in a video game, and the cut scenes are done with some of the best motion capture and facial expressions I can remember seeing. Game wise it is the the original game boiled down to its best parts.

I recommend reading The Last of Us: American Dreams before playing, because it is pretty good and sets up the story and atmosphere very well.

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)
23. The Last of Us: Left Behind (PS3)
24. LIMBO (Xbox 360)

Well, I had that old save game sitting there near the end, might as well finish it and get another one on the list, AMIRITE? Totally counts.

1. Danganronpa (PSV)
2. Unfinished swan (PS4)
3. Everybodys gone to the rapture (PS4)
4. Bloodborne (PS4)
5. GoneGrow Home (PS4)
6. Danganronpa 2 (PSV)
Like Danganronpa, but different. Bear makes disappointed noises less and/or fewer times, so I'm not accidentally making disappointed bear sounds this time. And the final chapter is absolute bobbins.