Last night, almost 21 years after I've started the game, I've finally completed the final storyline mission of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
I think it makes it the longest time from start to finish I've had in any game so far. Previous records belonging to Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment and StarCraft: Brood War with 13 and 7 years respectively.

The final mission ("End of the line") is not very difficult in any aspect, just very long, with five distinct parts. Starts with a break-in into a mob stronghold, fighting armed gunmen along the way, then a "boss" fight, then a timed escape mission where you are fighting the same armed gunmen as well as raging fires, constantly switching between your machine gun and the fire extinguisher. Having escaped the building you are treated to a car chase with mobsters throwing Molotov cocktails at you (but they don't seem to actually hurt the car), and finally, what I believe is the most fun part - scripted target practice against mobsters and cops chasing you while someone else is driving the car.

For the last part I quickly realized that I have to temporarily switch from my preferred 'keyboard only' to 'mouse + keys' control, because super-accurate aim is required. Enemies are shooting at you all the time and if you don't dispatch them quickly, your car eventually accumulates damage and blows up. This is exactly what happened to me on my first attempt (in line with the "beginner's luck" principle I made it almost all the way to the end before failing). On my next couple of attempts I didn't get so far.

Then I've decided that it would be much easier and faster if I didn't have to worry about the fire in part 3, and I dedicated one evening to finally passing the required 12 levels of the Firefighter side mission to earn the "fireproof" status. I had meant to do this at some point, and it seemed dumb not to do so before the one mission where the skill would be the most useful. On the subsequent attempt, I finished the game. 😎

Well, "finished" is a flexible term in Grand Theft Auto, because the open-world nature explicitly gives you a nearly-infinite number of options even after completing the main plot. As it stands, I am just over 60% progress. There are probably a couple of side missions, all the competition races, girlfriend achievements, collectibles - which I have not done yet. I will probably be returning to the game every once in a while to make some more progress, but I am not aiming for 100% (I don't think I've gotten it in previous GTA games either).

Bravo!

I don't remember if I got through the storyline already on my PREVIOUS computer, but I got pretty far at that time, to the desert missions at least. This is the only part that I still haven't forgotten in all those years. Because, to be able to pass the mission where you have to catch the airplane with the motor bike, I had to overclock the poor GeForce4 MX 440 I had at the time. That thing was indestructible despite the abuse and the broken fan.

Anyway, due to glitchy frame-rate dependent physics, the plane always got away, it was impossible to catch it unless GPU was overclocked.

I got around doing some side-stuff, but never got the nerve to get through all of it.

BTW, have you seen the video where they managed to make the game skip to the final mission?

https://www.gtabase.com/articles/beating-gta- … -speedrun-guide

NieR: Automata
I completed the first game (NieR) back on the PS3 many years ago, and really liked it. It was an attempt at bringing bullet hell shooting to a 3D open-world action game that didn't really work (bullet hell doesn't really make sense outside of pure arcade shooters imo), but got by thanks to its bizarre story and amazing dynamic soundtrack. Still, it was a fine game and clearly made with passion. I'm not far enough into Automata to really be able to form an opinion of it, but I like it so far. Fighting feels a bit less clunky, but it might just be easier, and an easier game will always have less friction early on.

But it seems like a cool story so far. After a devastating war between humans and aliens, what's left of humanity escaped to the moon and has been living there for thousands of years. In the meantime, we'd developed true AI and since then have been sending androids back to Earth in an attempt to reclaim our homeland. You play the game as an android named 2B (obviously a reference to the famous soliloquy from Hamlet), and you find that the "dumb" worker robots that humans left on Earth have begun to develop a culture, intelligence, and even emotions.

It seems alright so far, but I want to praise the soundtrack. Not because it's excellent (it is), but because it's dynamic. It reminds me of the iMUSE system. Instruments fade in and out as you enter and exit combat, transforming a sad and contemplative theme when exploring the ruins of civilization into a hectic battle theme. It even goes beyond that; at one point, you stumble upon a settlement of robots holding some kind of celebration, and if you pay attention you'll realize that all the robots are moving in step with the music. It's impressive stuff.

Dungeon Keeper FX and playing through all the Delta Forces, currently on Delta Force 2....

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-08-01, 18:49:

NieR: Automata

This is one of those games that people almost universally praise, but I simply couldn't get into it. I have this on my PS4, and I gave it a shot sometime ago, but the gameplay just didn't click with me. Even so, I concur that the music was great, and the story was interesting.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the game, as I might retry it at some point in the future.

UCyborg wrote on 2026-08-01, 12:51:

BTW, have you seen the video where they managed to make the game skip to the final mission?

https://www.gtabase.com/articles/beating-gta- … -speedrun-guide

Wow, that's crazy! Both the discovery and the execution. Insane that you have to basically go through it half-blind, and hope that you got the correct timing at the beginning.
I wonder - if a timer value was found to skip straight into the middle of the final mission, is it possible to find a different value to skip straight to the end of the mission, like the final cutscene?

Anyhow, I have been toying a bit with the mission skip mod because I wanted a save just before Saint Mark's Bistro (so I can always explore 'Ghost Town') and I forgot to make one. My prior save was about 20 missions back and I didn't feel like passing them all again. Happy to say the mod works.

NieR Automata
I played this quite a bit over the weekend and have been enjoying it. Combat is not anything great, but it's serviceable. Side quests involve a lot of trekking back and forth. At first, I was trying to do all of these quests as I discovered them, but it became real annoying, real fast. So, I decided to just accept the quests and put them off until I have to revisit the other areas of the map as part of the main quest, and that works much better.

Although you do level up by killing enemies, you actually gain more power through your chip setup. You have a chip capacity, which you can increase by buying certain upgrades, and there's a huge variety of chips. Some add useful information to the HUD, but most improve your offense or defense abilities. You can even have the game automatically select a recommended layout (balanced, offense, or defense)... and since you can save three layouts, it makes sense to save one of each recommendation, so you can switch back and forth based on the situation.

The soundtrack is still amazing, and I find the graphics to be quite striking even today. One mistake I made early on with the graphics settings was to turn every setting on and set everything to high, without doing any research. This included enabling FidelityFX, which was a huge mistake... it artificially sharpens the image and makes the game look like garbage. I turned that off once I realized what it was doing. The other thing to note is that the game's implementation of MSAA is broken and causes visual glitches. You can get around it using the transparency AA setting in the Nvidia control panel, but it's better to just to use SMAA imo.

Final Vendetta
Quite an awesome beat'em up in the tradition of Final Fight and Bare Knuckle II. It's a very barebones game... no story mode, no character progression. It does have some great Neo Geo-like graphics, an awesome soundtrack, and it just feels great to play. It's a short game, but it also forces you to play without continues... so you just have to get good to beat it.

Having said that, I was able to clear the game on the "Casual" and "Easy" modes on my first try, and the only beat'em up I've ever completed was Bare Knuckle on the Mega Drive (using a continue or two). It's a pretty fair game, and the characters have a nice variety of moves.

Blaster Master Zero 2
I completed the first game a couple years ago and really liked it, and this one is even better. Instead of a single contiguous world, this one takes place across a bunch of planets and planetoids in several solar systems (no suns, though). The planets are the main levels, and are of decent size with plenty of items to find and usually a boss to kill. The planetoids are much smaller and contain one or two (optional?) items, sometimes a miniboss, and are fun challenges that require you to solve some minor puzzles and master various mechanics (movement in water, hovering, etc.). Great game so far, and it's also got an excellent soundtrack.

BioShock 2 Remastered
I would prefer to the play the original, but I couldn't get it to stop crashing no matter what, even after following all the advice on the PCGamingWiki page. Oh well, Remastered seems to work fine so far. There's even an extensive mod available to restore all the messed up graphics (yes, it actually looks worse than the original game!).

It's been a long time since I played the first game, and I barely remember it outside of its plot twist and how silly it was to run around picking up tape recorders to listen to the plot. That made sense in System Shock, since you were reading emails, but it's absolutely ridiculous that all these people were going around recording their intimate thoughts and secret plans on giant tape recorders, and then leaving them on their desks, etc. Anyway, the second game does the same thing, and it's just as dumb. At least there aren't any "Oh my god... the monsters are coming... they're at the door... ARGH" types of messages (so far). Luckily, it doesn't start playing them the minute you pick them up, so you can mostly ignore them (I don't remember if the first game did that).

Except for that, it's a fun game so far. It's a lot harder than the first game, which doesn't make a lot of sense since your controlling an armored Big Daddy in the game, rather than the guy in a shirt and pants in the first game. The world seems a lot smaller and more linear than that of the first game, though the first game might not have been as large and open as I remember.

I havent gotten into bioshock 2 remastered yet but I remember playing the original when it came to PC and I loved the multiplayer.

I'm generally either tinkering with old hardware (this weeks it's been repairing one of my Amstrad CPCs and resurrecting a BBC Micro) or writing hobbyist software apps. However Assassin's Creed Black Flag Re-synced has just come out. I loved the original but when I recently ran it up on my PS3 I have to say that it has not ahem aged well. Re-synced looks amazing though and I can see it's true to their claim that it's pretty much a complete rewrite. I don't remember the original story well enough to say how closely it matches but what I can say is it all feels eerily familiar.

Dame1701 wrote on 2026-08-04, 21:15:

I'm generally either tinkering with old hardware (this weeks it's been repairing one of my Amstrad CPCs and resurrecting a BBC Micro) or writing hobbyist software apps. However Assassin's Creed Black Flag Re-synced has just come out. I loved the original but when I recently ran it up on my PS3 I have to say that it has not ahem aged well. Re-synced looks amazing though and I can see it's true to their claim that it's pretty much a complete rewrite. I don't remember the original story well enough to say how closely it matches but what I can say is it all feels eerily familiar.

least you can still run it on your ps3. i wonder why they remake a 13 year old game. holy shit 13 years its been so long

It was one of the best Assassin's Creed game there's been so I think that's a good reason for a remake. Having played Ghost of Tsushima the one thing that still stands out is the old fashioned collision detection. It's still possible to get stuck in some fairly silly places when fighting which Tushima completely avoids by seamlessly nudging you out of those situations. Having said that, it's easy enough to adapt your fighting technique to avoid this as much as possible. It's still a really fun game and I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying it.

I only played Bioshock, is Bioshock 2 worth playing? I think I own it on 360 as well as on PC..

The Evil Within
This is an interesting one. It was designed by Shinji MIkami, the gaming legend who was responsible for a bunch of amazing games, like most of the (good) Biohazard games, Godhand, and Vanquish... and who also played major role in a bunch of other games.

Anyway, this game is bizarre. There's some tonal whiplash during the first hour. The game starts out as your typical survival horror game, pivots into a Hostel-esque torture-porn section for a few minutes, and then turns into some bizarre supernatural anime. However, once you get through that first hour, the game reveals itself as an interesting mix of action, survival horror, and stealth. So far, it's not a very complex example of any of those genres, but there are some interesting quirks. For example, you can use matches (a limited resource) to burn bodies, and the interesting thing about this is that it's a one-hit kill, and fire will actually spread from one body to the next. If you're facing a bunch of enemies, the most efficient thing is to knock them down and then light one of them on fire to instantly kill the whole group. You can also throw bottles found in the environment to distract enemies, which is pretty routine for stealth games... but you can also just throw a bottle at an enemy's face to blind it, allowing you to run behind it and then instantly stealth kill it!

The environments are very interesting. It's a linear game, but the areas are quite open. There's no in-game map... this annoyed me at first, but I appreciate it after playing the game for an hour or so. Even if you are pretty meticulous in your exploration of each area, you never have 100% awareness of the environment, and this helps sell the horror atmosphere.

So far, I really like it! I wasn't expecting to play a (simple) stealth game, but I'm having fun so far. The PC port is fine, but the game was designed to run at 30 fps. There's a 60-fps mode, which runs great (but requires an easy workaround if using a G-Sync/FreeSync monitor), but enabling apparently slightly messes up some of the damage calculations and can make one boss sequence impossible. I've just been running the game as 30 fps, but most people seem to run the game at 60 fps, and then just switch to 30 fps for that one boss battle.

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-08-05, 17:00:

The Evil Within This is an interesting one. It was designed by Shinji MIkami, the gaming legend who was responsible for a bunch […]
Show full quote

The Evil Within
This is an interesting one. It was designed by Shinji MIkami, the gaming legend who was responsible for a bunch of amazing games, like most of the (good) Biohazard games, Godhand, and Vanquish... and who also played major role in a bunch of other games.

Anyway, this game is bizarre. There's some tonal whiplash during the first hour. The game starts out as your typical survival horror game, pivots into a Hostel-esque torture-porn section for a few minutes, and then turns into some bizarre supernatural anime. However, once you get through that first hour, the game reveals itself as an interesting mix of action, survival horror, and stealth. So far, it's not a very complex example of any of those genres, but there are some interesting quirks. For example, you can use matches (a limited resource) to burn bodies, and the interesting thing about this is that it's a one-hit kill, and fire will actually spread from one body to the next. If you're facing a bunch of enemies, the most efficient thing is to knock them down and then light one of them on fire to instantly kill the whole group. You can also throw bottles found in the environment to distract enemies, which is pretty routine for stealth games... but you can also just throw a bottle at an enemy's face to blind it, allowing you to run behind it and then instantly stealth kill it!

The environments are very interesting. It's a linear game, but the areas are quite open. There's no in-game map... this annoyed me at first, but I appreciate it after playing the game for an hour or so. Even if you are pretty meticulous in your exploration of each area, you never have 100% awareness of the environment, and this helps sell the horror atmosphere.

So far, I really like it! I wasn't expecting to play a (simple) stealth game, but I'm having fun so far. The PC port is fine, but the game was designed to run at 30 fps. There's a 60-fps mode, which runs great (but requires an easy workaround if using a G-Sync/FreeSync monitor), but enabling apparently slightly messes up some of the damage calculations and can make one boss sequence impossible. I've just been running the game as 30 fps, but most people seem to run the game at 60 fps, and then just switch to 30 fps for that one boss battle.

uh didnt tango get shut down like a year ago?

I've not yet recovered from my RPG burnout, so I've been playing mostly action games lately.

Bioshock 2 Remastered
This was running fine, but started crashing a few hours in, just like the original version. It's a problem lots of people seem to be having, so I consider the game broken. I switched over to playing the PS3 version; not ideal, but at least it doesn't crash.

Blaster Master Zero 2
I finished this earlier today. Overall, I really liked it. It was a bit more difficult and involved than the first game in the new trilogy, and I like how the game was split up into a bunch of a individual maps instead of a single massive area. The story was terrible, and this was made worse by how wordy the game is. I guess the developers really loved their childish, dumb story.

Binary Domain
This is basically a Gears of War clone made in Japan. It's alright, but is a cringeworthy mess whenever you aren't shooting robots in the face. There are so many cinema scenes that seem to never end, and they are just awful.

The game does have some interesting things. If you explode an enemy robot's head (two headshots), it will go berserk and start shooting its own allies. Even more interesting, you get to select your squad before each level, with each character having their own unique stats and equipment. You can even upgrade their weapons at the shops you find throughout the missions.

It's goofy and dumb, but kind of fun.

Final burn neo (w/ artwork and icons) 'best set' using mayflash f500 modded with sanwa red actuator, red spring and snk MVS art, bat top and buttons. Scanlines look gorgeous on my Philips the one 43" 4k, easy to use and full on neo geo, cps, toaplan etc goodness

I just realized my Steam account is old enough to drink. In another 3 years so will my Vogons account. I feel like my Vogons account would throw it's drink in my Steam accounts face.

Still playing Slay the Spire 2.