newtmonkey wrote on Yesterday, 15:21:

I'm looking forward to reading your posts as you play through the series!

Cheers! And yeah, I'm definitively playing through the entire trilogy. Guess I've become invested enough in the story and the characters, despite not liking some of the gameplay changes.

Not sure if I should go for Andromeda after that. I do have it as a physical disc for my PS4. Maybe I'll try the unpatched version 1.0 just for the memes. "My face is tired" and all that jazz. 😁

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Yesterday, 17:35:

Not sure if I should go for Andromeda after that. I do have it as a physical disc for my PS4. Maybe I'll try the unpatched version 1.0 just for the memes. "My face is tired" and all that jazz. 😁

I've got Andromeda on PS4 also; it's actually got a cool space/planet exploration feel, but it has nothing to do with the previous games, so I quickly lost interest... maybe some day. I remember it having a weird auto-save system where you cannot save whenever you want, and the first couple of hours of the game were very linear and annoying.

I prefer Andromeda to all the other games. I think I've said this before. The first game should have been called "Space Station Conversation Simulator". The next two were much better, but Andromeda is my favorite. I actually bounced off of the first Mass Effect twice before finally being able to push through it. Was awful.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-08-01, 07:31:

Very odd choice to monetize the game in a manner which affects the plot to some degree.

Yeah, it's unfortunate. Comparing at the runtime with or without any DLC (I played both) it really feels like I got half a game at first, then the full game 1.5 years later, when all the DLC were released. Especially without Lair of the Shadow Broker, which is amazing.

ME3 was even worse in that department, with day-one DLC for a character very tied to the core lore... 😒

Finished Deus Ex Lady in PCem

DracoNihil wrote on 2025-07-31, 07:33:

Just finished replaying "Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri", who knew giving everybody including yourself double M-B Accelerators is the key to winning.

I hate how you get this weapon literally at the END OF THE GAME and no sooner. So you only have one campaign mission to enjoy such a ludicrous weapon. Oh well atleast the limited skirmish option lets you equip the weapon to try it out in more varied environments.

One of the top 5ive 90s games for me. Had so much fun with TN. I emailed Looking Glass about how much I liked the game and they sent me a Terra Nova t-shirt. Like an idiot, I lost it over the years (probably in a move). Fun fact: the two demos that were released for this game had missions that were not in the final release.

Started Full Throttle but noped out pretty soon. I just don't like the game all that much. Wasn't a big fan back in the day either, looks like time hasn't changed that. When I reached the craptastic motorcycle combat thing with awful controls I started to actively dislike the game, so it was time to move on.

To Grim Fandango Remastered. The remastered version as it adds mouse controls, the original only had keyboard controls that aren't great. But turns out the new mouse controls aren't perfect either, you have to use a janky combination of keyboard and mouse which I never got comfortable with.

As for the game itself I have to say I really love the setting and the stylized noir look of the game. The characters are all great and the voice acting is top notch. But the gameplay leaves a lot to desire for. At least being able to scan the screen with the mouse helps a lot, in the original you had to sniff every corner using tank controls with incredibly slow turning speed.

Inventory is straight up crap. You see one item at a time. ONE. You have to cycle between them one by one. Maybe it was intended to be easily portable to the consoles of the era, which of course never happened. Goes straight into my list of top pain in the ass inventories of all time.

Another problem of the game is how large some areas are, or maybe more like how slowly you traverse in these areas. There's no double clicking a door or a pathway to instantly teleport there like in Full Throttle, so you have to run all the way to the area transition manually. You can run, but it isn't fast enough for these kind of distances. Thanks to that especially year 2 of the game gets extremely tedious. Full Throttle had a instant transition function in 1995 but they didn't think that would be a good addition to a game that would have benefitted from it far more in a 2015 remaster? Great job guys.

Pretty mixed feelings about the puzzles too, they can be pretty obscure at times. I ended up just trying everything in hopes it does something all too often. Especially one puzzle that requires timing was bewildering, I didn't even realize there WAS a puzzle there until I gave up and looked up a hint. Part of it comes down to the engine and being constantly hampered by the previously mentioned gameplay issues, also the low resolution prerendered backgrounds made it difficult to notice hotspots a few times. Maybe most of the puzzles were perfectly fine, but in my opinion their previous game Curse of Monkey Island had much more logical puzzle design overall, not to mention far more enjoyable gameplay.

Thankfully the setting and the story does some heavy lifting. The setting is genuinely great, it's very original and unique. The characters are to my liking too. It was fun to explore the land of the dead and see what happens next. These are the things that kept me playing and tolerating the obvious flaws of the game.

A flawed gem? I don't know, I'm a bit conflicted. Just too many gameplay issues. Had this been designed as a classic 2d adventure with more compact areas I might feel differently. The setting and the characters carried the game for me and it did leave a smile on my face at the end, in fact the entire last year was quite enjoyable. Worth playing once but I won't be in a big hurry to revisit it.