Next to play: Death Stranding

Game: Death Stranding
Release date: 2019
Platform: PS4

Conditions: Finish the story on normal difficulty

Just picked up Death Stranding. Avoided all reviews, gameplay videos and discussions. I wanna go into it as blind as possible and experience this "new genre" for myself. I'm ready for a huge letdown :D

Next to play: Life is Strange: Before te Storm

Game: Life is Strange: Before the Storm
Release Date: 2017
Platform: PC

Conditions: Finish all episodes















Going into the original Life is Strange I didn't think it would be the case but it turned out to be one of my favorite games of all time. You can read my review here.

What do I expect?

I'm quite worried about this prequel. First it's not developed by the original studio and second, they replaced the main actress. Ashly Burch couldn't reprise the role of Chloe due to voice acting strike but supposedly she was still somewhat involved in the game and helped write the character. It smells like a Square-Enix cash grab to me because if they really cared about making a good game, they would wait for the strike to end. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Next to play: Starcraft: Brood War

Game: Starcraft: Brood War
Release Date: 1998
Platform: PC

Conditions: Finish the campaign













The Starcraft story continues in the expansion set Brood War. Since I already have it installed and set up I decided to play the original Brood War, not remastered version. After I beat the single player I'm going to buy Remastered and play some multiplayer with new features such as ranked play.

What do I expect? 

I'm already familiar with Brood War multiplayer and new units so I just hope the story will be good.

Next to play: Pokémon GO

Game: Pokémon GO
Release Date: 2016
Platform: Android

Conditions:
- Get to level 20
- Defeat a Pokémon guarding a gym






I've been playing this game for some time now. The first 2 days I was playing I thought it was really cool but it got old quickly. There's just not much to do in the game and a lot of features are either done poorly or missing completely. I'll still play until I reach level 20 and then I'll decide if I'll keep playing or not based on state of the game in that time. There's a lot of potential in Pokémon GO and it can be improved in so many ways but honestly I don't have that much faith in Niantic. That's why I didn't set my conditions to catch all Pokémon available. I don't even know how many out of the original 151 are obtainable in the game at this moment.


Here are some of my stats:

Level: 8
Team: Instinct
Pokémon seen: 33
Unique Pokémon caught: 32
Distance walked: 22.9 km

Next to play: Penumbra: Overture

Game: Penumbra: Overture
Release Date: 2007
Platform: PC

Conditions: 
Finish the game








It's Halloween so it's only natural that I'm going to play a horror game. So I went through my Steam library and out of many horror games I picked Penumbra from Frictional Games.

What do I expect?

I haven't played Amnesia but I've seen how it plays so I would imagine Penumbra plays in a similar way but with more puzzles. I don't know anything about the game's story so or much else so I'm going into it pretty blind, as it should be for the best experience. Hope it's gonna scare me a little.

Next to play: Starcraft

Game: Starcraft
Release Date: 1998
Platform: PC

Conditions:
- Beat all 3 campaigns: Terran, Zerg and Protoss





Starcraft 2 is not only one of the best RTS games ever made but one of the best games ever made period. Legacy of the Void is just around the corner so I have to catch up with the story.

What do I expect?
I've played this game before. I remember beating terran campaign but I couldn't do it with zerg. But that was back when I played RTS with mouse only. After playing a little bit of SC2 I'm familiar with keyboard shortcuts so single player shouldn't give me any trouble.

Next to play: System Shock 2

Game: System Shock 2
Release Date: 1999
Platform: PC

Conditions:
- Beat the game on "impossible" difficulty
- Play it only in the dark and with headphones on






Even tho I've never finished Shock 2, it's still one of my favorite games of all time. I've beaten demo countless times. When I finally got the full version my hard disk crashed as I was about halfway through the game. Then life happened and I didn't quite get back to it even tho I love the game. Now finally after all these years I'm about to witness the game in it's full glory and I cannot wait.

What do I expect?
I expect the game will be good all the way through and won't let me down. Hoping for some horror and I hope the monkeys will still scare me as they did when I was a kid:)

Next to play: Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Game: Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
Release Date: 2014
Platform: PC

Conditions: Beat all solo adventures on all difficulties, get rank 5 or lower on ranked play





I have an internet connection at work and I need a simple game that doesn't require much concentration to play when I'm waiting for the customers. This seems perfect.


What do I expect?
I expect very simplicied version of Magic the Gathering. Something very easy to grasp but with enough depth that you can make interesting combos and decks. As a (former) Magic player, I'm not sure if I'm gonna like it but I'll certanly give it a try.
I might even try to enter some noob friendly tournament. Just hope the game is fun as free to play, would really suck if it's pay to win.

Next to play: Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series

Game: Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series
Release Date: 2014 (Episode 1)
Platform: PC

Conditions: Finish all episodes of the season









I need to fill a Game of Thrones gap after this TV season ended so I'm picking up the Telltale series. This is going to be my First Telltale game ever.

What do I expect?
I'm a little worried since I've played Life Is Strange before any Telltale game and I've heard LiS is much better in terms of choices that actually matter. So I don't think I'll be very impressed with Telltale formula. But I like story driven games, adventure games and Game of Thrones so I should like this series. The original HBO actors gave the voice to familiar characters so that's really cool.

Next to play: Life is Strange

Game: Life Is Strange
Release Date: 2015
Platform: PC

Conditions: Finish all episodes
                     Collect all photos







Life is Strange is an episodic adventure game by Dontnod Entertainment (known for Remember Me). There will be 5 episodes total.

What do I expect?
I have mixed feelings about this one. The game seems unlike any other yet at the same time everything seems so familiar to the point it screams cliche. It almost looks like the devs looked at the movies, asked themselves "what is indie?" and put it in the game. I imagine it will play in similar way as Dreamfall but with higher emphasis on choice and less on the puzzles. I'm hoping for a lot of interactive elements and choices that actually matter and affect the story. This will be the first non-retro game I'll play in a very long time.

 

Next to play: Heart of Darkness

Game: Heart of Darkness
Release Date: 1998
Platform: Playstation

Conditions: Finish the game on a medium difficulty









What do I expect?
I already know what to expect since I played the game for some 40 minutes after I bought it. And even before that I knew I should expect gruesome death animations and high difficulty. What I didn't expect is to lose my gun (shown on the cover) after the opening 5 minutes of the game. I thought I was done for when my only weapon was eaten by a giant monster after barely surviving an attack by a mob of shadowy creatures. Fortunately there wasn't any combat after that point and I had to evade the enemies through platforming. What really puzzles me is decision by the developer to make the first 2 minutes of the game way more difficult than anything that comes after. I could  almost see angry kids throwing controllers in rage and never progressing beyond that point. The only logical explanation I can think of is they wanted to have a shooting section in the beginning to draw the players in. I don't think it worked out well but let's start from the beginning.

Heart of Darkness is a cinematic platformer by Amazing Studios, supervised by Éric Chahi who is known for Another World. And just like Another World, Heart of Darkness has exceptionally good character animations and beautiful backgrounds. The game has that Oddworld visual style that doesn't age and looks just as good today as it did when it came out. It also reminds me a lot of Mighty Max cartoon. The game doesn't just look cinematic, it also sounds like it. It features a score by film and television composer Bruce Broughton. I'm really looking forward to hearing more of his music in this game since he did the theme for the movie Homeward Bound, which was one of my favorite childhood themes and I still love it. The high difficulty is balanced by unlimited tries. Sometimes it's worth to die just to experience the crazy death animations and the game won't punish you for it. It will just set you a single screen behind. For some reason Heart of Darkness didn't get the greatest critical reception when it came out (it received fairly good scores around 70%) nor it was very successful commercially. Time to delve into this cult classic to find out why.

Game facts

• The development began in 1992. The game was planned for PC, 3DO and later for Sega Saturn. It was finally released in 1998 but only for PC and Playstation
• Final FMV sequence of the game was done in 3D and the game came with a pair of blue/red 3D glasses
• PC version only supported 256 colour VGA graphics while Playstation had 16 million
• Game Boy Advance port was announced 2001 but never came out
• Over 30 minutes of FMVs
• Main character has a dog named Whiskey
• The game was rated E for everyone despite having gruesome death animations. Someone wasn't paying attention.

Next to play: Mortal Kombat II

Game: Mortal Kombat II
Release Date: 1994 (1993 original arcade)
Platform: PC (MS-DOS)

Konditions:  Finish the game with every character on medium difficulty with 4 credits available




What do I expect?

I've heard that Mortal Kombat II is widely regarded as the best installment in the series. I expect improvements in every field. Give me higher resolution, better animations, faster gameplay, better UI, more characters, more fatalities (and more stage fatalities) and deeper story. Unfortunately I've also heard the game is incredibly hard and AI is very unfair with it's inhumanly fast throws. I managed to get through Mortal Kombat 1, hopefully I can beat this one too...

It has begun!

Next to play: Mortal Kombat

Game: Mortal Kombat
Release Date: 1994 (1992 original arcade)
Platform: PC (MS-DOS)

Konditions: Beat the game with every single character on medium difficulty with 4 credits available. No character switching during the game. Beat Reptile at the bottom of the pit.




I actually already started playing this game a few months ago, really casually, one match every couple of days. When I chose this game I figured that I'd beat it with all the characters in about a week. I was very wrong. This game is kicking my ass! I still haven't beaten it with a single character and I only faced Shang Tsung once so far.

I've seen this screen at least a hundred times already

I chose Johnny Cage as my first character. I have mastered all of his moves but sometimes I have a problem that I accidentally do a leg sweep instead of shadow kick in a critical moment which ends up costing me the game. It happens because keyboard controls are not very precise and far from ideal for fighting game controls. I tried plugging in a controller and it surprisingly worked but for some reason the character would always crouch as if the down button was pressed all the time. I tested the controller with some other games and it worked just fine. My keyboard binds are probably not ideal (WASD for movement, J and K for punches, N and M for kicks) but I got used to this layout already so I'm not going to change it.

Let's dance

Placebo difficulty levels
This game is pretty hard. I know about back and forth jumping while kicking abuse method but it doesn't help every time. It happens often that I get flawless victory in the first round but in the second AI suddenly becomes godlike and perfectly blocks or counters my every move. There are 5 difficulty levels, ranging from "very easy" to "very hard". In frustration I tried to lower the difficulty to very easy once and I had some trouble in early stages. Then I put it back on medium and won with double flawless victory against the same opponents. It just feels so random. I think Johnny is one of the weaker fighters and I'm looking forward to playing other characters with much better special moves. The only character that I'm not looking forward to use is Sonya. She has some good throws but it's useless against AI which always throws faster than you.

He is not that hard actually, getting to him is the hard part

Right now I can consistently get to endurance stage 2. Since I started this blog, I will try to play more often and with a more focused mindset. I don't think this game will be a problem to beat after all and I hope my skill will transfer to sequels.