I just noticed that the 2017 Cacowards have been anounced, and Shadows of the Nightmare Realm by YukiRaven (who made Temple of Azathoth is number 2 in the top ten (screenshot.

I'm not much of a Doom player, but some of these maps look pretty good, judging by the screenshots. YukiRaven's map requires GZDoom, which I can't get to work on my system, so I haven't played it, but I played Brigandine by Viggles (number 5), and it's really, really nice (screenshot). I quickly get bored of Doom partly because I miss the true 3d of Quake and partly because the gameplay of most custom maps I've played feels like busywork (mindless button pressing without knowing what the buttons do, too many monsters and maze-like layouts), but this map has actual pacing and a manageable scope, and it's just fun to explore. It feels very 3d despite being made in 2.5d engine. 

I didn't expect the Cacowards of this year to be announced so soon. 

Assassin's Creed IV
https://free.ubisoft.com/promotions/assassins-creed-black-flag/16/pc/login

Company of Heroes 2
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/company-of-heroes-2 

Layers of Fear

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/layers-of-fear-and-soundtrack?hmb_source=layersoffear_deluxe_freegame&hmb_medium=banner 

Oxenfree:
https://www.gog.com/game/oxenfree

"Watchdogs", "World in Conflict", and "Assassin's Creed IV":
https://free.ubisoft.com 

Just deciding whether it's safer to download uplay and get Watchdogs or just get a pirate/torrent version. Probably torrent would be safer than uplay.

I've only played a few games this year, nothing since July, until right before xmas, now I've got a bit of free time so getting through the queue.

Bound By Flame - 56% (metacrtic) / 6.5 (me)
Started out pretty decent, good rpg, but really started to go downhill by the mid point with horrible linear maze levels. Combat was fun, although dual-wield with light magic appears to be the only way to go so not much replayability. Supposed to be a fairly hard game but I think I cracked build perfectly. It was very linear overall though, unlike most modern RPGs.

Thief - 70% / 7/10
Reminded me of Dishonest but with more straightforward gameplay. I quite enjoyed it although certainly not on the level of Thief 3 with story.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - 82% / 6.5/10
Shit some of these story-games are quite overated aren't they? By the time I realised there's actual objectives here and I started doing them, the story was a little difficult to piece together, and then I couldn't be bothered going back to the beginning. I got it in the end though, decent story. Nice looking game. But come on it's a 1 hour walking game. I see the developer second game is a dark fantasy FPS oh fuck yes!
Am really looking forward to this one http://www.theastronauts.com/2017/12/new-game-witchfire/

Child of Light - 77% / 7/10
I played on the lower difficult which is supposed to be really easy, but I still found it too hard and needed cheats to finish it haha. Fuck I feel pathetic sometimes. Nice dark watercolour style art, it's a flying platformer with turn based combat, which was okay. Turn-based is normally not my thing but I was playing it for the art anyway. A bit long though. 

With a score like 91%, with the next highest action game of 2014 way down on 85%, I was thinking they must got it right this time. More frequent and not hidden checkpoints, tick. Less maze-layouts and huge backtracking, tick. Respawning every enemy in the game each time you save at checkpoint, even when you haven't died, ffs. By the time I got through Forest of the Fallen Giants I'd had e-fucking-nough. I look at videos of walkthroughs and yeah sure they're darting and rolling around like rabbits, landing 1 hit every 2 minutes. I'm not playing like that. Screw that. I can't spend 50-100 hours on a game with frantic keyboard pounding wearing my poor wrist out. I'm way too impatient to replay the same set of enemies 30 times over because they keep respawning. I think only hardcore gamers with a lot of time on their hands could truely love this game, which makes me wonder about all the great reviews. Most gamers are casual and this is a slap in the face to casual gamers. Sure that's the way it was intended, but why so much love when it's only designed for a certain audience? If a game was too easy, it would certainly be reflected in the reviews. Anyway I did actually finish the game with cheats and I did enjoy it still. Lots of great locations. I must admit though, the engine is getting a bit dated and maybe 20% of the level design does look pretty bad. Like 4 brush corridors design. I'd love to love DS but not when it requires this much work and time, when I've got 5 other long fantasy RPGs from 2014 alone still to play. With a quicksave I'd love DSII, it would be like Stalker and that's not shit right? Stalker is still a tough game even with quicksave.

Shambler I'm surprised you quit, you loved DS1 right? You know all the keys are remappable, if used with glovepie. You should unmap them all in game, sent them to normal keys you wouldn't normally use, then reset them in glovepie. I was switching between wasd and mouse for movement. 

This is how an Aliens game should be made. Proper dark, surivival horror with an alien you can't kill. It's funny (ironic) that I'd even enjoy this sort of game when I just got off slagging DSII for their distant checkpoints and requiring patience. But it's a different kind. I can plod along slowly in the shadows, not repeating shit over and over, and not jackhammering my keyboard just to kill a small bird. The checkpoints weren't too far apart anyway, and it actually becomes a big part of the intensity of the game trying to survive long enough to get to the checkpoint. All up I only had to repeat a few sections more than 3 times and no more than a few minutes each time. I also played on the lowest difficulty setting, which probably helped. I see a lot of people complaining online about the alien being more luck than skill if you survive and it's too hard bla bla bla JUST PUT THE FUCKING DIFFICULTY DOWN.

It's not perfect though, the game goes on a bit long. The ending was a bit anticlimatic, there was no difficulty spike, just a long walk and a few face huggers. The Average Joe's really get on my tits after a while, enough of these annoying cunts that always seem to grab me from 10 metres away. All the backtracking over previous areas gets annoying. A little bit more wow factor in design would have been nice - more like some of the DSII scenes. But still, the best Aliens game I've played and one of the best survivals.

Unfortunately the developer returned to only spewing out turn based crap after this game, apparently it only broke even so not worth doing a sequel. 

And Alien Isolation had even more broken savepoints, i.e. well before lengthy sequences / cutscenes and not after, and the randomised alien was pure bullshit EVEN WITH THE DIFFICULTY DOWN. 

http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=23795&start=10122 

1. Dark Souls 3 Ringed City DLC
2. Deus Ex 4 Criminal Past DLC
3. Divinity Original Sin 2 Early Access
4. Battletech Backer's Beta Early Access
5. Forgotten Sepulcher Quake AD Map

I am quite proud that none of mine are actual games ;) 

First of all, you are a true masochist if you are playing this with a keyboard. This game series is one of those PC games that is much MUCH better with a gamepad. Yes, on a PC.

Second: do you realize you don't actually have to kill regular enemies? You only really need to kill them if you want to farm for some items or when exploring an area for the first time. If you already know where you are going, you can just run past almost every single mob. 

100% wrong about mouse and keyboard, the challenge in the game comes from a lot of factors but choosing to use a comfortable accurate control mechanism I.E. M+KB is not one of those factors.

Post more GOTYs, bitches. 

uh... RiME, I guess. Not that it's a particularly great game (it is pretty and has some cool puzzle concepts) but 2017 was a rather lackluster gaming year for me. Good year for consoles (Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, Super Mario Odyssey, etc). Too bad I don't own any :(

I still intend to check out PREY when it drops to $5. Fortnite looks fun, I just don't have to time to get wrapped up in a MP game atm. 

By the way, in case some of you are not informed, The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild is available on PC...unofficially :D

It has been entirely emulated, a little community project. Apparently it is even moddable on PC, but suffice to say it runs great and with higher gfx than on the Switch.

So if you don't wanna get a switch but would like to see what the fuss is about, there you go.

To be found in the usual places..

If you feel guilty, just buy a boxed copy and put it in you cupboard before playing it on PC


I have a Switch, holding on to it on low firmware for homebrew which should be soon incoming, but if not I'll probably sell it and get a more emulator flexible handheld gaming device. 

 

The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild on pc... thank fuck for that. It would be a total waste such an apparently fantastic game on some thing called a Switch.

Sniper Elite III - 7/10
Most gamers would probably rate it 5-6/10 but I do like my shooters.

Ether One - 5.5/10
What a boring game. Nice idea behind it, but dull puzzles, fetch quest and it doesn't even look very good tbh, compared to other recent indie story based games.

Mass Effect 3 - 9.5/10
Oh lovely. Looks great for 2012. Combat finally at it's best in the trilogy. Great characters and story. There's not much more needed in this game apart from the ending, and I don't mean the story, there was nothing wrong with that. But just the way the previous work throughout the game building your army meant sfa in the end. I just got the option of a slightly different ending but mostly the same cinematics. Note I played the full DLC included version, the 3 main DLC's are a must play. Apparently at a certain point in development half the team got put on finishing the game, while the other half were put on creating the DLC's. Well it certainly shows. They should have been in the game and add about 10-13 hours of mostly action. One of modern gamings best games, or even games series, along with Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, The Witcher.

Just playing through Watch Dogs now. Lame console sandbox gameplay but I'll persevere. Looks fucking nice on my new 31" curved 1440p 144hz monitor :D 

That Jago character tricked me into giving Elder Scrolls Online a try, but he didn't mention it's 87 GB and by the time the download finishes, I'll probably have lost interest again! 

That’s weird, the installed game is 60,1gb. 

The bigger the better I reckon... more high quality textures. Report back on if it's any good, I plan to play it soon as well but I've never played an mmo before. 

Launcher or website said 87 GB required, though it is 60 indeed. Took ages to download nevertheless.

I played for a few hours, but I'm not not sold. The world is very nice visually. Gameplay seems lame, though? Lots of "Find three NPCs" type of quests and respawning enemies - respawning right next to you after a couple of seconds, that is. And every action seems inconsequential so far, nothing to get invested in the story or NPCs or factions. Big assault on your town, but you just go to quest marker A and B and then things are back to normal and you move on to the next quest without looking back.
I suppose this is how MMO games work, certainly reminds me of the WoW trial I once played. Just doesn't grab me. Plus I'm not interested in interacting with other players, which I realize pretty much defies the purpose or playing a MMO.

Not sure if I'll continue playing. 

A lot of the quests are indeed standard MMO fodder (only if often nicely disguised), but every zone has several larger story-based deeper quests that are often interesting (and sometimes outright hilarious), but I guess it's pretty hard to write entire zones worth of those.

As for player interactions, I am in a guild mostly for the chat. Out of roughly 120 hours I have put into the game so far, I've spent maybe 4-5 playing with other people. 

By the way on Watch Dogs, I ended up quite enjoying it. Graphics with the mod some dude made to make the game look like it was supposed at the E3 launch made it look pretty awesome. The whole hackery thing is all fun and quite different to any other game I've played. How often does a game bring something new to the table? Let alone Ubisoft. Only those fucking timed minigames got on my tits.

Main character is a dullard (looks like they dropped him for WD2) and a bit of a shit ending but otherwise story is okay.

The problem with the game is it can be a right frustrating cunt at times. Trying to outrun the enemy is a rinse and repeat until you get lucky, because often the enemies cars are faster than you and somehow on rails always missing the obstacles. You can't just outdrive them, it's sometimes impossible they just keep catching up, so you've got to jump out and try to run, then jump back in a car and hide/get lucky.

Once the po po get on your dick late in the game it's horrible, they just keep coming endlessly. There's a couple of combat missions that are quite difficult too. If anyone here does play it, purchase the best assault rifle as soon as possible. Without it the gunplay is wonky as fuck with hopeless aim/recoil.

8/10

On to the next Ass Creed (Unity) now, shit this looks nice on 1440p maxed out. Actually this might be my first next-gen only title.