Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition

Choosing "Adventure" difficulty, at first I was unsure whether the second highest difficulty of four would maybe be too challenging, but it was just right for me. I was mildly challenged but hardly ever died. I had lots of fun with the combat, no complaints (it seems they made animated attacks abortable at all times in the EE, due to criticism of the original release version, and it feels great). I even enjoyed the boss battles, as someone who usually hates them. The only exception were two versions of the same boss (skuggi) who I thought did not really fit in with how the rest of the game was designed and therefor presented a little difficulty spike. Although they are not necessarily all that difficult, but more tedious, requiring more patience, with less tolerance for mistakes. I temporarily had to lower the diffculty for those two to "Journey" in order to enjoy myself again. But it was cool that the game allowed switching difficulty like this at all times. And apart from this slight imbalance, "Adventure" felt quite generous, with a lot of fairly placed checkpoints and health shrines. I also appreciated that some boss fights with different phases had checkpoints for each phase. It even restored your full health and mana mid-battle if you died during a phase, which kind of felt like cheating, but made sure I never got stuck on a boss battle for long. I could see others disliking this, lamenting a lack of challenge, and also that often at the culmination of battle, a cutscene takes over, before you can kill the boss on your own. If you're a fan of Dark Souls, you probably won't enjoy Echoes of the End. But for me this was great.

What I probably liked most though was the alternation between combat, platforming and puzzles, all of which felt satisfying to me. Especially the puzzles were a nice touch. I was surprised by how many new mechanics the game introduced, keeping things varied and interesting despite the game's linearity. It does not really innovate with regard to the puzzle game mechanics, you'll have seen them in other games already, but it still felt fresh in such a game to see so many different ones. I was told it's a budget God of War - I didn't expect it to be half of a Portal as well.

The Icelandic inspiration in landscape and creature names was really cool. I also loved the credits song by lúpína. Otherwise the soundtrack was not very memorable, but not bad either; just fine as backdrop to set the atmosphere. The story was nothing groundbreaking - serviceable, not truly exciting and at the end somewhat predictable - but I still found it interesting enough for the genre and it never got in the way of the action. The sometimes a bit stiffly animated characters came to life through the top notch voiceacting. I also didn't mind what others complained about, that the main character often comes across as not all that sympathetic in how she treats her companions. I thought it was kind of fitting to her story.

The gamelength was close to just right for me, not too short at all. If anything, they might have cut or condensed one or two of the ten chapters - near the end there was stretch where things shortly seemed to become a bit repetitive, but the last level was sweet again, and overall I think the game was quite rich in variety and never boring. I'm glad I bought it - it doesn't happen that often that I play through a game this quickly and consistently (4-5 long evenings, within the same week), and so soon after buying it. Thumbs up!

That's also an interesting point re: the color scheme! I can certainly understand what you mean.

Midnight Train, Jul 31 (Itch)-Wow. This was a really well written game. It reminded me a lot of the Nonary Games with its general plot and themes. The size and scope of it felt like something you'd see on the DS. The game plays a bit like the non-combat parts of a Resident Evil with lots of light puzzle solving. There were a handful of action sequences that were rather janky and I would have been fine with cutting them. The ending/epilogue felt a little bit rushed and wrapped up a little too neatly but most everything else about this game really impressed me. Its easily one of the best games I've played this year.


Full List

Resident Evil 4 (XSX)

Not the new remake, the 2016 port for Xbox One and also PS4/PC. It plays the same and looks the same, just higher resolution than the Gamecube and Wii versions. I've actually played the Wii version before and it actually controls easier with its Wiimote aiming. But I got used to the Xbox controller quick enough.

Having played it before, this time I knew to make a serious effort to conserve all ammo by using the knife as often as possible to finish off downed enemies. Even so, the game has its difficulty spikes- especially that multi-part boss fights against "It" in the cages. Conversely the final boss was a cakewalk since I had over 40 Magnum rounds.

Now I can play the new remake to compare.

The Darkside Detective, Aug 1 (Epic Games)-A solid adventure game. It had me chuckling several times. The bite sized cases were quick but a little too easy. It's worth a playthru if you like games like Thimbleweed Park or Sam and Max.

Full List

Cars 2: The video Game (XSX)

Xbox 360 version played on XSX. This game is essentially Mario Kart done as a Disney Cars tie in. It has something of cult reputation, considered by some as the best game of its type. Maybe, as a multiplayer party type of game...maybe it is that good. But I played the single player campaign which isn't great. It suffers from the same issues as playing Mario Kart single player- it's boring and you soon find yourself thinking how you'd just rather be playing a real racing game.

Also, the game suffers from the same type of cheating rubber band AI that these sort of games always have. Every other opponent, in single player, are aiming to stop the player...not really win themselves. There's absolutely no point to doing well or trying to go faster, because the AI just cheats and goes faster and targets you. So, just like Mario Kart, if you're playing with friends then it may be great, but it's totally pointless and shit if you want a solo fun racer.

For anyone that does want it, the 360 version is still sold on Xbox and playable on anything from a 360 to a current XSX. The Steam version is a port of the Wii version...for some bizarre reason, and is generally considered inferior to the 360. Though, recently some modders made a mod for the Stream version that brings across assets from the Arcade version and possibly makes it the best option.

Disney Bolt (XSX)

Didn't know very much about this as a movie, and even less as a game adaptation. Looking it up shows its main claim to fame is Miley Cyrus voicing Penny (in the movie, not the game), and it wasn't one of Disney's most successful ventures. Anyway, you alternate play between Penny and her super powered dog Bolt.

The game runs well enough and looks fine. The game play has some annoying difficulty spikes, mainly during the hacking mini games- only made tolerable by the fact that the game at least spaces continue points through them rather than making you restart each level. Anyway, it mostly plays as a mix of beat-em-up and platforming for Bolt and stealth and platforming for Penny. No single play style is all that great, but not terrible...it just is. I suppose for someone that happens to love the movie then its value would be higher.

As seems to be a trend for these Disney games from the era...only the Xbox version is still being sold and still playable on a current console.

Iron Lung. An interesting minigame by David Szymanski in which you pilot a rickety submarine through an ocean of blood on an alien world, trying to investigate why most of the people in the universe suddenly vanished. You simply have to use a map, a simple sonar, and the turn+movement controls to navigate to marked spots and then photograph them. Before long it becomes clear that you're not alone in the ocean and something hostile is stalking you.

It took me about an hour to finish. It's an effective use of sound and other types of suggestion to create a tense mood. The game is probably about as long as it should be because stretching it out any more would have made it kind of exhausting. I think I'll check out the movie, which is over twice as long as the game...

After playing this, I remembered I have a few other of these little games Szymanski had made that were sitting in my other account, so I figured it would be a good time to finally check those out as well:


Fingerbones is one of his first games and is a small walking simulator. You control a man in a in a post-apocalyptic world who's locked in a bunker with an unseen daughter. Most of the gameplay involves you trying to figure out passwords to unlock doors that take you deeper into the bunker and you read notes that sketch out the story. It ends up being an unsettling piece of work because of its theme, so in that sense it showed Szymanski had a certain potential, although the requirement that you constantly walk (slowly) back and forth between the doors and the keyboard for inputting the passwords is a bit of a pain. This took me around 40 minutes, I think?


The Moon Sliver, another walking simulator, has you as someone stranded on an island in a strange world. There were four inhabitants (religious cultists, it seems) who have vanished that you have to learn about by once again reading scattered notes, figuring out codes, and exploring more and more of the area. This is more advanced than Fingerbones in the sense that you can now jump, you can run, and you can flip a flashlight off and on. You advance in the game by simply exploring new areas and reading more stuff and your progress is noted by the time of day going forward. It's still relatively simple but there's a good sense of texture to the game's storytelling. It's a tragic sort of horror. It takes about an hour or so to complete if you don't get stuck.


The Music Machine is...another walking simulator. In this one you technically control two people, a 13 year old girl named Haley who's possessed by a ghost named Quentin. Haley inadvertently got Quentin killed, so Quentin has taken her to a strange island in search of a way to kill her in a way that satisfies his thirst for vengeance, although things are slightly complicated because Quentin doesn't really seem like he's all that bad a guy and Haley doesn't seem to believe he's serious about his plans. They come across as friends of a sort and banter back and forth as they explore the island.

This is a bigger step forward compared to the previous two games. It has a strikingly stark graphical style that seems a bit gimmicky but there's an artistic reason for it that becomes clear by the end. The downside is that it's sometimes hard to tell what you're looking at. There are even brief "action sequences" that occur later in the game, however simple as they are.

Szymanski has said that his games are all based in the same world, although I'm not sure if these early pre-Dusk games count. That said, this game directly ties in with The Moon Sliver at the very least, not in a way that requires you to play the previous game, but just including references that you would catch if you'd played it, like names you'd recognize. You get teleported to strange worlds, one of which is a sort of industrialized hellscape with brutal looking factories and farms with pig-like creatures, which seems like it might be a foreshadowing of things you'll see in Dusk. Perhaps less of a continuity reference and more like an emerging motif for Szymanski. This one took me a little over an hour to finish.

A few games that on their own don't amount to much, but playing them one after another in a single afternoon is an interesting way to chart a notable developer's early progress.

Cyberpunk 2077. The big game that took a while to come out and had a controversial reception. I confess I didn't follow too much of that. Finally playing it for myself, it basically feels a lot like what you'd expect the company that made a zillion dollars on Witcher 3 to do next. Obviously it's a sci-fi concept in a more urban setting, first-person perspective, and you...sort of...create your own character, but with all that in mind it plays pretty similarly to W3.

You have various main story missions and a whole lot of side missions and "bandit camps" that you can bust up, plus you can enter races and take up boxing to become the champion of Night City. You don't play Gwent (which I never bother with anyway) but you can play simple arcade games. The runner game in which you control Roach the horse was my favorite. Also, much like W3, if you're meticulous about doing all the side missions like I was, you'll be so over-leveled by the time you circle back to the main story that you'll coast right through them. The last boss was kind of a pain but even then I don't think I was ever seriously in danger of him killing me. If I play this again - likely after I get the DLC - I think I'll have to kick the difficulty up, much as I found W3 to play much better on the higher difficulty levels.

I found the gameplay mostly came across as a sort of open world Deus Ex. A bit simplified but I think that's what they were going for. A lot of missions involve having to bust into some place crawling with enemies to take someone out or steal something and depending on how you've built your character you can either start blasting or be sneaky about it (or start out sneaking and then shoot everything). I found it consistently entertaining. I just like sneaking around a lot.

I enjoyed driving around the city and just looking at the scenery, although I wish the soundtrack/radio was more interesting. I guess a couple of the songs were alright. It all ran very well and I didn't have a single crash.

Much like the second and third Witcher games, I didn't really find the game very convincing as an RPG. It's for all intents and purposes an open world action game in which you just get to work your way through a skill tree, like a lot of other games, and your character is pretty heavily railroaded through the story. My version of V was the male version and I tried to make him as boring as I possibly could - no tattoos or piercings and a fairly conservative haircut - because I figured that in a world in which every single person looks like they were pulled out of a dumpster behind a cheap restaurant, a guy who seems like he's always heading to a serious job interview and never does drugs or drinks alcohol is the most counter-cultural thing you can possibly do.

I can't say I found the story terribly involving, which is about you having Keanu Reeves stuck in your head as his digitized personality is overwriting your own. I suppose a couple of the characters grew on me a little by the time it ended but it wasn't gripping me overall. I often found myself paying only half-attention to the cutscenes.

Star Wars Outlaws, Aug 6 (Xbox Game Pass)-It started off slow but eventually I grew to like this game. It reminded me a bit of an open world Uncharted. The problem was I kept thinking how I'd rather be playing Uncharted than this. But after I ignored most of the open world stuff and just focused on the main quest it wasn't so bad. The story wasn't bad. It had some predictable moments but a couple twists I wasn't expecting. And it generally looked and sounded great. There are worse things to be than slick looking but average Uncharted with a Star Wars skin.

Full List

Interactivity: The Interactive Experience, Aug 6 (Itch)-I guess its a game and I guess I beat it. I think there are probably better games with video gaming meta commentary. Maybe because I was using MKB I really struggled interacting with the levers and valves. The lighting and movement also gave me a bit of a headache. I much more enjoyed Dr Langeskov.

Full List

Rule of Rose (PS2/PCSX2)

A very infamous game which I've wanted to play for a long time. I initially began playing on my PS2 but decided to restart and change over to emulating using PCSX2 which worked like a charm, with the added benefit of being able to cheese those hideous boss fights using save states!

Many will be familiar with the real world drama behind the game. Initially previewed highly, an Italian magazine plagiarized an English per-release review but totally mistranslated and misrepresented most of it- implying children sexuality and brutality. As politicians do, especially in Roman Catholic Italy, they went on a rampage and banned the game without any of these people playing it. Soon other European countries followed- also without also playing it. At least all of this had nothing to do with Australia for a change. Eventually, Britain did the remarkably intelligent and novel thing...their ratings board actually assigned some people to play the game and find out for reals what it was about. They found that all of the accusations against the game were falsified and assigned it PEGI16+. But the game never recovered and the physicals discs are one of the most valuable in the gaming world.

Make no mistake, the game is very dark and explores themes that will make people uncomfortable. In fact it explores similar themes to the more recent Martha is Dead. But it plays like a very clunky survival horror. The graphics are incredible for a PS2 game, as is the music. Everything has a heavy film grain over it which works similar to the fog in Silent Hill, in this case it drives home the idea that much of this game is told through the memories of a very unreliable protagonist with mental issues- again...remarkably similar to Martha is Dead.

I'm really glad I played it, even though the combat segments are shite...and that's an understatement. I think a remake would be better off cutting down on the combat somewhat.

The Blackwell Legacy (GOG)

Short point and click adventure. About a spirit medium and her ghost companion. You mostly progress by combining topics in your notebook and then talking to people about them. The two main characters and the way they interact with each other is the best part of the game. The actual story though is not as good, though I guess this is the first part of a bigger overall story with 5 games- I suppose I'll find out as I play them.

Hades 2, Aug 9 (Xbox Game Pass)-It started off a little slow but by the end I liked it more than the original. It didn't have too many new ideas but it took everything the first game did and made it better. The frantic action gameplay is there. The drip feed of story beats is there. The slow progression for a myriad of unlocks are all there. You've got some old faces, some new faces, new animal familiars, and two different run paths to take offering what feels like twice as much content. I've still got some post game content to unlock and possibly some higher level challenges so I'm quite finished with the game yet. I enjoyed every moment of this game, even when losing a run I still had fun and wanted to immediately start a new one.

Full List

Include me.

1. Heartlight | post | Aug 2 - 10 | AMD software timer: 12h | review: HG or blog
2. Fetish Locator Week One | post | Aug 22 - 29 | time unknown | review: HG or blog

2025 list
2024 list
2023 list
2022 list
2021 list
2020 list
2019 list
2018 list
2017 list
2013-2016 list
2012 list

Incomplete 2011 list. Add Tropico 3 Gold Edition (finished: Dec 16, review on Honestgamers, blog and MobyGames) to it. Also played Forsaken World for a while earlier that year (review on Honestgamers, blog and MobyGames), and briefly poked at Perfect World International again after the Genesis expansion launched.