Mass Effect
I became somewhat addicted to this, did all the side missions I had available, progressed the story, and also did the "Bring Down the Sky" DLC (but not the Pinnacle Station DLC, which is just some kind of arena mode). I think I'm basically at the end of the game, as I'm at the point where I've mostly maxed out all the skills that seem useful for the characters I'm using.

It's a cool game with an awesome atmosphere, but the game really suffers outside of the story missions. If you spend some time doing the side content you quickly realize that is really only a handful of environments in the game; it's crazy how many times you run through the same couple of labs.

Having said that, it's pretty cool building up your party, and you do feel more and more powerful as the game goes on even though the enemies sort of scale up with you (since the main story is so linear).

Anyway, I intended to play the game as 100% renegade, but the renegade choices are weird. I'm fine with threatening someone to get some more credits from them, calling out the Council on its bullshit, shooting some asshole in the head in the head in the middle of a conversation, or even getting involved in some shady scheme... but some of the renegade options are nuts, like being mean to a grieving spouse or whatever. In this game, what makes you a paragon or a renegade doesn't really make much sense to me.

Final Fantasy VII is one of my all time favorite games and I've played it through many times over the years on PlayStation and PC. Well, I finally got around to buying FF7 Remake Intergrade, and, it's awesome!

Yes, they've split the game up, added content, and change some story elements. However, I don't mind any of that. The game feels like you're playing the prelude to Advent Children, also a favorite of mine, and all the core story elements of the orignal game are there, just with some tweaks to add depth.

I'm having fun. 😀

I'm not all that far in, just blew up the reactor and made it back to the train to 7th Heaven, and I'm already happy I decided to pick up the game. Kinda wish I had done it sooner now that the second installment is available.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-03-15, 17:32:

Anyway, I intended to play the game as 100% renegade, but the renegade choices are weird.

Yeah, the morality system is really a bit underdeveloped. You are either a selfish asshole who loves to see others' suffering or space Jesus (which you literally are "Shepherd!"). Because of that I never had a pure renegade or paragon playthrough.

RandomStranger wrote on 2025-03-09, 08:35:

RandomStranger wrote on 2025-02-09, 10:11:

RandomStranger wrote on 2025-01-10, 21:13:

The first Witcher is not overly long. My first playthrough was less than 60 hours. But The Withcer 2 was less than 40.

Last week I started Morrowind GOTY. It'll last me all month. Maybe the next month too.

A month later, I'm still in Morrowind 67 hours in and still haven't touched the expansions and barely progressed with the main quests. Yesterday I made time to play as much as possible to make some progress. Moved from the fighter's guild into Dura's house in Balmora to better organize my stuff, joined House Talvani, reached level 30 cleared out 3 or 4 side quests from my quest log and the Dark Brotherhood assassins really start to get annoying.

Another month later. Now just a couple of minutes below 90 hours. Finished the Fighter's Guild quest line (decided to beat Sjoring to death bare handed to assert dominance), no progress with the main quests, cleared some more side quests, basically became the fourth (fifth?) living god after picking up skill fortification spells in the Tribunal expansion (I only went there for this). I'll probably continue with the guilds for now.

And I progressed a lot with them. Close to finish the Tribunal Temple quests, same with the Morag Thong and just became the master of the Mages Guild. Also finished some or most of the Twin Lamps quests.

Mass Effect
Finished! I went away with mixed feelings on this one. I had already completed the sequels before playing this, and it was nice to see that this game feels a bit more like an RPG taking place in a massive galaxy (even though must of this is smoke and mirrors) rather than the cover shooter approach the sequels took. I also liked the classic 70's sci-fi mood of ME1.

I had read that the game is still quite buggy, but it was pretty solid for me. I had one crash in an elevator, and one instance where my character got caught on geometry and I had to reload.

I have read that people absolutely hated the Mako vehicle in this, but I liked it quite a bit. It's quirky to control, but once you get used to it it's a lot of fun driving from location to location. It also makes it feel a bit more like you're actually exploring the universe, rather than just selecting locations from a map like in the sequels.

Although I did enjoy the game, it has a lot of issues. There is a severe lack of environment variety, with non-story missions basically taking place in the same couple of labs. The interface is a giant mess, clearly developed for play on the living room TV with a controller in hand. Combat gets really boring and easy really quickly, though lifting and throwing enemies around with space magic never got dull. I like that there's loot to find in the shooting segments, but there really aren't any interesting decisions to make; the new gun you pick up is either going to be clearly better or clearly worse than what you're using.

Finally, the ending was a bit of a disappointment. There are some interesting sci-fi concepts handled throughout the game, so it was a shame to see the game ending with you basically shooting a big monster to death.

Avowed

Has some Morrowind vibes.
Seems very much Action RPG like DA: Veilguard.
Only have two companions and haven't run into any romance idiocy yet and nothing seems to be scoring if your comparions agree with your decisions or not.
Coming from Stalker 2 the world is definetly not as interactive or open and it's much easier. Way too colorful but gotta keep the graphics whores happy.
Inventory not as much of a chore as those games since it uses lists instead of blocks and you can easily put items into your camp store.

I wish these games would allow you to mark a map, unknown why this isn't a thing.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-03-16, 12:54:

There is a severe lack of environment variety, with non-story missions basically taking place in the same couple of labs.

That's something Bioware fixed in ME2 really well, there is a lot of variation with the maps and missions and I appreciated it greatly. And then they immediately went back to Ctrl+V design with ME3 and especially Dragon Age 2, though it's not like those games don't have plenty of other issues too.

Speaking of Dragon Age I keep a spreadsheet of all the games I own and keep track of games/content I've never completed with the intention of completing all the ones I like and selling or getting rid of the ones I don't. And for years now I've been dreading all the DLC content the GOG version of Dragon Age: Origins comes with which have been sinisterly laughing at me on that list ever since I bought it. Thankfully there was only three campaigns I haven't played before, but I really haven't been in the mood to play them or the game in general.

During the weekend I decided those three damn DLC campaigns have been mocking me long enough and went and played them through. I did not think very highly of them, in fact I think they kinda sucked. Though the darkspawn one let you kill Alistair, so that's a plus. I've now completed all the content the GOG version of DA comes with and can finally cross it over from my list. Damn digital games, with physical games you can sell or toss out the ones you don't want to keep but you're stuck with digital releases, which can be bit annoying if you are on an unhinged crusade to finish all the games you have.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-03-17, 07:40:

During the weekend I decided those three damn DLC campaigns have been mocking me long enough and went and played them through. I did not think very highly of them, in fact I think they kinda sucked. Though the darkspawn one let you kill Alistair, so that's a plus. I've now completed all the content the GOG version of DA comes with and can finally cross it over from my list. Damn digital games, with physical games you can sell or toss out the ones you don't want to keep but you're stuck with digital releases, which can be bit annoying if you are on an unhinged crusade to finish all the games you have.

DA2 was such a disappointment (ME3 too, though to much less of an extent). I'm actually looking forward to revisiting ME2 and ME3 (Legendary Edition on PS4, since they don't have any online DRM), but I will never again play DA2 or DA3... as far as I'm concerned, the series begins and ends with Origins!

It certainly does feel nice to complete something that been sitting there unplayed/unfinished for many years. I used to try to play through all the DLC, etc. the first time I go through a game, but like you've mentioned above, I've found a lot of DLC actually is kind of a waste of time. I really liked DA: Origins, but going through all the DLC felt like it was just extending an already long game.

It always feels great to finish a game that's been on your radar for years, because that means it's time to play a bunch of games and decide what to play next. Here's what I played:

Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition
I have some very fond memories of this game from back in the day (well, the original version). I went through a short shareware phase back then, where I ended up registering a bunch of games from Apogee and Epic Megagames, and ROTT was one of them. I remember this game getting a lot of criticism back then for being a bit of a step back from Doom, but I appreciated it for what it was, which was a crazy action game with some really intricate and mazelike levels.
I generally prefer playing DOS games on my dedicated DOS machine, but ROTT is honestly somewhat annoying to play on my original hardware due to how slow mouse turning is.
This new Ludicrous Edition is a port of the game to a modern engine, and it works quite nicely imo. You can set the frame rate to the original 35 fps or unlock it, you can use either original or updated lighting, and there are some other optional tweaks to balance the game. You can select from multiple soundtracks (including OPL and Sound Canvas), and of course it has all the content of the original game, including the shareware episode, the registered game, the Extreme ROTT expansion, and a new episode.
I played the first couple of levels on the default difficulty, and was pleasantly surprised. It's pretty tough, and the level design is actually very interesting, considering it was basically running on an expanded Wolf 3D engine.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
I've had this in my library forever, but never really got into it. I played the original game back in the day, but never got very far into it, and I suppose on some level I wanted to play the "series" in order. However, when you think about it, this game really has very little to do with the original game besides the fact that it's a tactical alien shooting game. So with that in mind, I decided to give this a shot.
I must admit that my first impression was not positive. The creepy atmosphere of the original has been replaced by military guys in tactical sweaters talking straight at you like some kind of 1990s FMV game on the Sega CD. The chilling soundtrack from the original has been replaced by boring military garbage that sounds like you're watching a Hollywood blockbuster.
Having said all that, once you get a few missions in, the tutorial is over and the game just leaves you alone. The cover mechanic is neat, but makes every battle feel mostly the same. I dunno, it's alright so far.

XCOM: Enemy Within is the same game but better, I'd play that instead. The campagn is basically the same, but extended, and with more depth, more options, more maps, more situations, more enemies, and more tension. I highly recommend it.

Otherwise, you'll have to do the "same" campaign twice if you want to experience both, and that's a shame since Enemy Within replaces the 2012 original in every way.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2025-03-17, 17:32:

XCOM: Enemy Within is the same game but better, I'd play that instead. The campagn is basically the same, but extended, and with more depth, more options, more maps, more situations, more enemies, and more tension. I highly recommend it.

Otherwise, you'll have to do the "same" campaign twice if you want to experience both, and that's a shame since Enemy Within replaces the 2012 original in every way.

I actually prefer to play the original versions of games first, because I want to play the game as it was originally released. I do replay games from time to time, so if I end up liking this enough to complete it, I can look forward to replaying it with that.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-03-17, 17:20:

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Not to be a back seat driver, but I strongly recommend getting satellites quickly. I didn't know that on my first try and ended up having to start a new game. I did beat the game once, but I felt it got so repetitive I only barely managed to reach the end and haven't had any interest to go back. But it's not really my genre anyway. I agree with you on the soundtrack by the way, it's boring. Put on the main theme of John Carpenter's The Thing in the background to get in the right mood!

In a funny turn of events I guess I'm now playing Dragon Age: Origins. For years I occasionally gave it a try after finishing some other game to see would I be in the mood for it with the intention of playing the main game and then the DLC I hadn't played before, but what ended up happening was after I forced myself play those DLC campaigns first I suddenly then got in the mood to play the main game. Didn't see that coming, but okay.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-03-18, 10:26:

Not to be a back seat driver, but I strongly recommend getting satellites quickly.

Thanks for the tip, and enjoy Origins. 😀 I'd like to replay that one this year, I think.

Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
I (finally) completed Neverwinter Nights a year or two ago, and while it was a mostly boring slog, it seemed like a good engine stuck with a bad game, and so I was looking forward to trying out the two official expansions.

Shadows is a whole new story seemingly unrelated to the original game. You can import your winning character if you want, but you are really supposed to just start over with a new character. I tried both. Importing my character (barbarian) made the game unbelievably easy, so I restarted with a new character (paladin). I had played through the original game using a mod that let me take two henchmen along with me, and I considered doing that for Shadows too, but I decided in the end to just stick with the single henchman.

So far, it's not anything amazing, but it's an improvement over NWN. The first game suffered from massive areas chock full of locked and trapped chests (usually containing just a single gold piece, but sometimes something you actually need to proceed), making it a chore just to get anywhere. Shadows is very linear so far, but the areas are much smaller and more interesting to explore. You get a fun elf crypt early on with several quests all with alternate solutions, and if you are playing as a paladin the game rewards you with some nice gear at the end.

You also have a bit more control over your henchman, including access to their inventories so you can upgrade their equipment as you find better stuff.

It's decent, but I could see myself getting bored with it quickly, so I'll probably just be playing it here and there when I want to take a break from something more substantial (Underrail probably).

Got the original Mirror's Edge on the GOG spring sale. I tried it on my i5 3570K + GTX 970 rig, and the GOG installer ran just fine under WinXP. The game immediately detected my Xbox 360 controller and set it up flawlessly, including rumble support. Additionally, hardware OpenAL was automatically enabled on my X-Fi Titanium, and I could also turn on PhysX without any issues. I'm running it on my large TV at 1080p, with 4xSGSSAA forced on top via Nvidia Profile Inspector, while limiting the FPS to 30 to avoid motion sickness. That way, the frame rate stays consistent, while GPU load doesn't exceed 50%.

Anyway, with all that set up, the game looks really beautiful. Its unique art style holds up nicely, and I actually find it more appealing than some modern games. Gameplay wise, it hasn't exactly been a smooth ride for me, at least so far. During the tutorial, the game shows you about 20 different parkour moves, and then expects you to memorize them perfectly, and execute them with 100% accuracy and flawless timing in every subsequent mission. Honestly, this feels a bit too twitchy for my taste, but I'm still hanging on.

The PhysX implementation is pretty interesting, especially for that time. The sequences where Faith is being targeted by helicopters with glass shattering all around her still look spectacular to me. There was also a scene where she closes the elevator doors just before bullets make a bunch of dents in the metal. One of the reasons why I got this game (aside from it being on sale) was because I wanted to experience its take on PhysX first hand, after watching that in a recent Gamers Nexus video. Money well spent I'd say.

Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
I finished up the first chapter, and am now in the "interlude" before the second chapter. It's still quite an improvement over the original campaign, but it still pales in comparison to Baldur's Gate.

Playing this for the first time now in 2025, I feel like this kind of tight adventure probably should have been the campaign that shipped with the game in the first place. It does a better job than the actual NWN at showing what the engine is capable of, and does so without throwing a million boring dungeons at you filled with traps and locks you need to tediously wait to unlock one after another. Of course, they probably wanted to include a massive and lengthy campaign with the game, since it would be compared with Baldur's Gate, so I suppose that's why they did what they did. In hindsight I guess it was the right call; the tiny maps and small scale of SoU seem pretty quaint in comparison.

Having said all that, there are definitely some issues with SoU so far. Like I mentioned before, just like NWN itself, it is a major step down from Baldur's Gate in pretty much every way. Sticking you with a single henchman for both NWN and SoU was a major mistake, because it really limits your options (and of course, with that in mind, the developers had to design very simple challenges). You end up have to either make a jack-of-all-trades character, or are forced to take the rogue henchman along; that's your only choice, really. Simply allowing you to take one more henchman (never mind full party creation) would have gone a long way toward making these games much better.

I beat Doom Eternal today. It was OK I guess. Almost every change from Doom 2016 was a thing I turned my nose up to at first. The jumping puzzle sequences, the reliance on the flamebelch, chainsaw and glory kills to manage your resources, even the 1up system I came to view as cheapening the experience. The jumping puzzles I grew to tolerate. The resources management I also eventually grew to tolerate. The power scaling gets completely out of control by the end though. They give you a McGuffin that one shots any enemy with fairly restrictive ammo, and then they start throwing big bosses at you like they are cannon fodder. They get a lot more liberal with the BFG ammo too. It all just got way out of control for me, and the last 2 levels saw me chewing through about a dozen of the 20 extra lives I'd amassed through the campaign. But I get to cross it off now, 5 years after I bought it.

Well, I guess I'll give the Ancient Gods DLC a spin while I'm at it.

Still prefer Doom 2016 over this one.

Some more progress in Mirror's Edge. The difficulty level keeps increasing, but I somehow made it to Chapter 4, though just barely. It might be getting a bit too intense for my aging reflexes. 😅 That said, the game does have some quieter segments, where you're just figuring out where you need to go, and doing cool parkour stuff in the process. These are few and far in between though, and escaping firefights seems to be the main gameplay focus.

Speaking of combat, for me, that's definitively the least enjoyable part of this game. It basically boils down to disarming one opponent, picking up his weapon, and then taking out other opponents with it until you run out of ammo. Rinse and repeat. I usually don't even bother with that and just run past all enemies, unless they are physically blocking my path through the level. I should also mention that this game uses a checkpoint system, which can be annoying since you sometimes have to replay a section if you make even the slightest misstep. Fortunately, checkpoint saves are usually pretty frequent, but I did encounter a couple of instances where failing would take me back quite a bit.

Lastly, the PhysX implementation in Mirror's Edge keeps impressing me. I just finished a mission where Faith is being chased by (yet another) helicopter and needs to reach two large cranes to escape. On the way there, she moves across a building that's under construction and therefore has a lot of areas covered by tarps and plastic foil. All of those can be destroyed spectacularly during the shootout, showing realistic tears and location based damage. Same goes for banners and drapes, which were present earlier in that level. Sadly, games rarely bother with that kind of detail nowadays. If anyone's curious, you can see some of that stuff being show in this video.

Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
Finished! Well, this was a pleasant surprise. It's a massive improvement over the campaign that shipped with NWN, and if the game had shipped with this instead of that, it might have been looked more fondly upon as a single-player game.

NWN suffered from maps that were too large and boring, way too many traps and locked chests (mostly full of trash) all over the place, and a repetitive structure that had you getting magic doodads in the cardinal compass directions branching off from a hub area, act after act. Combat was also mostly braindead, with you fighting the same couple of enemies over and over on every map. Even worse, because of all the traps and locked chests/doors, you either needed to take some rogue levels or take the rogue henchman along, which severely limits your options.

SoU solves most of this, with maps that are smaller but also full of more stuff to find/do, and far fewer trapped/locked areas. There are fewer battles to fight, but the encounters tend to be a bit more thoughtful with some really challenging fights sprinkled throughout. In fact, the game has managed to save NWN for me, and I'm actually really looking forward to playing the Hordes of the Underdark expansion, as it is meant to be a direct follow-up to SoU. As with NWN and SoD, I'll be using regular old Diamond Edition, which still works just fine on Windows 10.

I'm actually now interested in the two premium modules they put out for the Enhanced Edition, so I might check those out after HotU.

Pirates Doom

I mentionned it a few times, but I'm having a real blast with it. The difficulty is really the same as regular Doom (not insane, like Blood), which is what I'm after. Not too easy, not too hard. Just laid back. Goold ol' regular Doom.

Well, except the layout and levels are way more imaginative than the old Doom episodes. Imp with pirate hats and pinkies with eye patches, steampunk arachnotrons, all of this is very cute. You almost feel bad killing all of them. They are cussin' around and don't want you on their turf. Nothing personnal, unlike regular deaemons from Hell.

The "Doom cute" (that is, life-like aeshtetics made with Doom assets) is mainly what makes me laugh. But the infighting between cursin' pirate sailors and cute pinkies with eyepatches make me stop sometime to admire the overall absurdity, reinforced by the heavily Monkey Island-esque soundtrack.

One can tell that a lot of effort went into this. level design, textures, sprites, light effects, intermission screens, traps, puzzles, balancing, animations, sound effects, artistic direction, gzdoom scripts, ... And this is massive: 32 levels. Not couting secret levels.

I was playing Pirates Doom II a while ago but had to check the first one. And it's just as good.

It makes me smile a lot while I play, and each time I finish a level I pause a little bit. Let the new level sink in.

No wonder over on moddb someone (not the original author) fixed Pirates Doom to make it work with modern GZDoom. It would be a shame to let this be abandonned.

Anyway, yeah I'm amazed by the Doom community every day.

Fallout 4
After completing Fallout 3 and putting some serious hours into New Vegas, I decided to put NV aside for a rainy day (I really like it, and would prefer to save it for last as sort of the "true Fallout 3") and instead resume my year+ old save in Fallout 4. However, I was actually stunned to find that this game is pretty fun. The story is perhaps even worse than Fallout 3 (the dialog definitely is worse), but as an exploration looter shooter it's far superior. The world is a lot of fun to explore, and all of the little "dungeons" and what have you feel a bit more memorable and unique than the many copy-and-paste areas of Fallout 3.

Having said all that, this game also kind of sucks.

The new dialog interface is unbelievably bad, with your response choices so terse that it's often impossible to figure out what you are trying to say. You also run into a lot of situations where every response is basically the same thing just said differently, and it's extremely annoying how skipping dialog forces you to hear your main character say "uh huh" "yep" "okay". Finally, giving the main character a voice was a huge mistake, and it's made even worse by the fact that the voice actor is horrible.

Quests are so dumb now that you are basically just following a quest marker for most of the game. They didn't even bother to write the quests so that they make sense. During one quest you have to find out who's been stealing supplies, and at one point your next step is to "find evidence." You have no leads, aren't given any information, and have an entire open world to search... but luckily your PIP BOY points you right at the footlocker containing the evidence you need. My problem is not so much with the quest marker (it's just how games are made now), but at least write the quest so that you're given enough information to find it on your own, with the quest marker serving just as a reminder or something. All it would take is for the guy giving you the mission to ask you to chat with people to get some leads, then have the first person you talk to say, "Oh I saw Lucia acting suspicious and putting something in her footlocker last night." It's a tiny thing, but it would go a long way toward making the game feel a bit more like you're solving a game and less like you're an Amazon driver delivering packages.

The game really wants you to get into the crafting and base building, which to me feels like Bethesda just jumping on a bandwagon, but it's fine because you can completely ignore it all. It's only annoying because 99% of what you find in containers is crafting trash, which makes exploration feel a bit useless.

That's a lot of complaining up there, but much like Skyrim, something about Fallout 4 just works, and you can (usually) overlook all the dumb stuff and enjoy looting and shooting in the open world.