Gaming Diary

Status: Completed, platinum trophy
Playing time: 30 hours

Completed the main game but I'm still going to play the Missing Link DLC soon, so I'll comment after that is finished.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 7-8 hours

This game is so freaking difficult. The only thing you have to do is control a monkey, who for some peculiar reason is trapped inside a ball, and not fall of the stage while you make your way to the goal. Like how hard could it be?

The first couple of worlds are easy enough with a few more difficult levels, but afterwards the levels start to get pretty horrible, and a beginner player like me only makes it through with many tries and good luck. It would require a lot of skill and practice to be good at this game. For example it took me 20 minutes just to finish one level, and the whole 20 minutes was just constant resetting after every 10 seconds or so, trying to get one crucial jump to go the way I wanted it to. After finally getting it right I watched some guy speedrunning this game and completing the story mode in 40 minutes. Pretty annoying.

Even still, I strangely somehow find the game really addictive and might even play it for... f... fun sometimes when I'm staying at my parents'.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 50 hours, one playtrough

After Mass Effect 2 this was a really pleasant suprise. It was more in the spirit of the original gameplay-wise, so that you actually have couple of different skills to use and the combat isn't anymore that kind of generic shooter than in the second one. Also your team mates A.I. has improved so much that I was almost jumping from joy when they actually understood to stay in cover instead of running in the middle of the battlefield every time. So the gameplay is now again really enjoyable.

It has a great set of team mates as well and even NPCs like James Vega which seemed at first like complete clichés have been made interesting. Even though honestly speaking this sequel neither has a that good of a story, like instead of squad members you are now just gathering war assets. It is still in a much darker tone than its predecessors and because of the destruction and despair you see during missions, it really feels like the grande finale to the series, which makes it a really atmospheric and great experience. Also you get to see that the decisions you have made during the first two games actually have an effect on the story. Even though some of those are often just brief moments in dialogue or text messages in your e-mail, it creates a fantastic immersion.

The ending did leave a lot of questions unanswered and they could have handled it better instead of just giving you three different paths to walk. I still don't understand all the harsh criticism it has got, maybe because I got to see the director's cut -version. The synthesis ending just seemed like a perfect way to end a series that has been addressing themes of intolerance and synthetic life since the first game.

The multiplayer sucked ass. It is just stupid that the singleplayer campaign relies heavily on cover based shooting, and then in multiplayer they have totally removed the possibility of staying in cover and shooting, because enemies will flank you and spawn behind you every time. I played it for 6 hours to get the trophies, but that was enough for one lifetime and I won't touch it again.

Status: Completed, platinum trophy
Playing time: 100 hours, two playtroughs

I had played through this once earlier, but now I played it the second time with the Shepard from the first game.

Compared to other games of the trilogy Mass Effect 2 is a big letdown. It feels like they forgot what made the first one a great game. First of all the character development has been dumbened down so much, you only have like four of five different skills to develop. Usually couple of the skills are also just useless, so it doesn't feel like you get to build your character at all. They don't even have individual cooling times, so you get to use them less often. The side quests are just really uninteresting because you don't even have any idea what's happening in them. Also the freaking planet mining for resources is probably the most boring 'mini-game' ever and it's so retarded that you actually have to do it for hours to upgrade your equipment and ship.

There is not really a story to speak of either. All you have to do is just recruit new squad members and next do their loyalty missions, which gets really repetitive and boring. Also some of them are simply badly written horrible characters with no personality whatsoever, like Zaeed and Jack, whereas some are just completely dull and uninteresting like Jacob or Samara. Luckily you get some great NPC's back from the previous game and there are also awesome new characters like Mordin and Thane. Still they could have just removed half of the squad members and it would not have hurt the game at all, it might have even made it more enjoyable.

The redeeming thing of the game is that I nevertheless happen to like the gameplay, even though it has transformed more into a generic cover-based shooter and your NPCs' A.I. in this game is complete shit. It is still pretty amusing to play most of the time and your skills have some use too after you get to upgrade them. Also despite all my complaints about the story, it has its moments, especially when doing the loalty missions of the interesting characters or just talking to them aboard the Normandy.

Getting the platinum trophy for this was horrible, because it required to play the game through with insanity difficulty. In the beginning this meant staying in cover forever and spamming the one skill over and over again. When getting to the end it got easier and even started to feel enjoyable at times, which was a relief, but I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 40 hours, one playtrough

I played this game once when it came out on my friend's Xbox360, and loved it then. Now I bought the Mass Effect trilogy for PS3 and played through all three games with the same Shepard during three weeks or so.

The first game of the series has been praised so much that I can't really say anything new about it. It has a such great epic storyline and interesting characters. Much like when playing Dragon Age: Origins, I could spend hours just talking to my team and listening to their stories. So the playthrough was a really engrossing experience, which usually seems to be the case with BioWare when they get it right. Even though the actual main storyline is not that long, there are a lot of great side quests that add plenty of gaming content, so you can easily spend many hours playing.

The different character classes offer a lot of variety and I could see myself playing this again with a different class just for fun. Because you have so many different skills to use the game doesn't feel like your typical third person shooter. I played as an engineer and felt like a god every time there were synthetic enemies present. For example near the end of the game where you often face Geth Primes, I could just use A.I. hacking and watch enemies kill themselves. Every time this happened I just couldn't stop grinning. Because it is also possible to choose what skills your team mates use, you can really control the battlefield perfectly and that feeling is just simply awesome. It makes the gameplay so entertaining.

The downside is that the PS3 version has so many bugs and just feels like they haven't put on any finishing touches. It froze like ten times during gameplay and sometimes when walking I got stuck inside a table or something, and had to load an earlier save to get out. It doesn't help that the autosave function doesn't save your progress that often and manual saving takes like a couple minutes. So sometimes you just lose like 30 minutes of gameplay because of stupid glitches. Not that big of a deal, but it gets really annoying and completely ruins the flow you're having while playing.

Status: Almost completed
Playing time: 15 hours

For some reason I get the urge to play Advance Wars games like once every year. That happened this year too, and I played all four of them again, but I'll only add this latest addition of the series to the list, because I don't really have anything that different to say about each game. So I'll try to express my thoughts about the whole series here.

First of all they don't have really any story to speak of, except this latest one. That isn't really a big part of these game anyways. These games are though one of my favorite strategy games. Mind you, I'm not a hardcore fan of strategy games and couldn't really find the interest to play anything actually complicated strategy, like Civilization or Age of Empires. Simple Advance Wars games are enough for me, easy to learn but difficult to master. You can build either sea, air or land units and try to win a war against your opponent on different maps. Gameplay is really fun and I enjoy playing them a lot.

As I said earlier, I play through these games periodically. The way it usually goes is like this: I start a new campaign, because the best and most interesting maps are there. The first three quarters of the game are easy as pie and I only get S or occasional A ranks from each mission. There are a few tougher missions here and there, but mostly it's a walk in the park. When getting to the end game the missions get a bit more difficult and I don't get the best ranks anymore, but don't have any real hardships finishing the missions... Until the very final mission. The difficulty curve goes up like 9000%, seriously. Every single freaking time the final mission is just plainly unfair and it brutally rapes my tender anus. I am just not good enough player to pull it off and have never managed to complete the final mission for any Advance Wars game. So at the point when the it is about to start I usually just give up and don't even bother. That was the case this time as well.

The first game is really stripped-down version compared to the others and I wouldn't recommend to play it, but if you haven't played any Advance Wars before, it might be a good place to start. The second one is probably my favorite of the series, though I like the Dual Strike as well, even though it has way too many gimmicks and useless units for its own sake. Days of Ruin had a much darker tone than all the other games, which felt kind of out of place at the beginning, but was actually a welcome change after I got used to it. The game mechanics have also improved for this one, even though they have only made a few little changes.

Status: Never finished
Playing time: 25 hours

I never finished this and honestly don't know if I'll ever have the interest to do that. I have completed like one quarter of the game and had good fun doing so. Nevertheless I just lost all interest for it and stopped. Continuing through the rest of the game would not have been so much fun anymore.

First of all I could not have care less about the story. It's uninspired, predictable and clichéd. It just isn't interesting at all and because I didn't care about it one bit, I even started to skip some dialogue and cutscenes while playing, which is something I usually never do. On the bright side you don't really even have to focus on the main story and can just freely wander around and do sidequests. For some games this kind of freedom and exploring the world is fantastic, but not for this one. The whole fantasy world isn't really immersive, it doesn't have any charm in it and the sidequests are just as lame and uninteresting as the main storyline missions. The gameplay just got really repetitive and felt like a boring chore, didn't feel like I was accomplishing anything.

It had some good elements also. For example I liked the really bright and colorful graphics. Gameplay-wise the combat is simple and fun hack and slash, so the game was at its best when I was just aimlessly walking around and killing monsters. Also the flexible character development system where you can freely build your character by combining skills of the three basic warrior, rogue and mage classes is interesting. I still played purely as a rogue as always, which also gave me a good amount of amusement because I got to pickpocket stuff, break into buildings and assassinate people.

Guess I could say this game has/had much potential and I could understand someone liking it a lot, but it just wasn't my thing.

Status: Completed, platinum trophy
Playing time: 40 hours

I don't have much to say about InFamous. The game is quite amusing to complete one time because you can jump of buildings, shoot electricity, slide on power cables and cause big explosions, but after you've done all that hundreds of times it simply starts to get less fun and loses it's charm.

It doesn't help that besides all the fun superpower stuff, InFamous has very little else to offer. It's in good and in bad like every other modern open-world game ever made, where you can freely roam around, search for collectibles and do missions when you feel like it. My attitude is somewhat prejudiced though, because I've gotten real tired of those kind of games lately. I also have to criticize that compared to other open-world games I've played like The Saboteur or Assassin's Creed II, the world map of InFamous is really dull. Also the story is pretty silly and even though the game tries to emphasize how important the different karma decisions are, they actually have no importance whatsoever.

Because of all these reasons the subsequent playthroughs are completely uninteresting, but I nevertheless had to play it for the second time to get the platinum trophy. That was so boring it made me lower the rating to measly three stars.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 10 hours

Well I know that on many accounts when commenting about PS3 games on this list I have said that they have amazing graphics. That's nothing compared to how freaking fantastic Uncharted 3 looks. It has the most beautiful graphics I've ever seen in a game. There were many points during gameplay when I was so astonished that I simply had to stop and repeat to myself "wow, this looks so good, just wow. Wow". It is just simply incredible. Also the setpieces are even more epic and daw-dropping than in the second one.

Otherwise I pretty much could say the same things about this that I said of the second one. With the addition that everything is much more polished close perfection. The balance between the different aspects of the game is now ideal. The combat and controls are now really smooth and the game mechanics as a whole have gotten even better. It feels complete. Story is once again a great mixture of adventure, action and humor, and it has a great drive in it. So entertaining and fun that if it were a film, it would be the ultimate adventure movie, or the ultimate 'poikain seikkailu', as we say in Finland. All in all the game is just about perfect and I can't anymore really find anything bad to say about it. Might even give it a full five stars after second playthrough.

I've already praised it so much that you've probably guessed by now that it's the best game of the first three. I really, really, really would like to see another entry to this series on the PS4, but I can't even begin to imagine how Naughty Dog could posssibly top this. I would also like that they would add more stealth mechanics to the game, without removing the shooting aspects completely. Though that's just me and my preference for stealth games.

Status: Completed, platinum trophy
Playing time: 20 hours

As I previously said, this is so much better game than the first Uncharted. This time the game has better balance between shooting, puzzles and platforming, so it is much more enjoyable to play. Gameplay has also improved and it feels a lot smoother. I also don't understand at all what was wrong with listal user VierasTalo's game, because while playing this I didn't experience any glitches that made him fall through walls or something. Story has the same good adventurous spirit and such a great rhythym that I didn't even want to stop playing before beating the game. Additionally it has absolutely beautiful graphics and the famous impressive setpieces like the falling buildings in Nepal or the train sequence in the middle of the game are just fantastic. A very entertaining game.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 20 hours

I owned this game as child and played it for countless of hours with my friends. I have later lost the game disc and haven't found it even though I have turned my parents' house upside down looking for it. That is still one of the great tragedies of my life.

So this time we played the game on an emulator with my friend. I guess you could call it a somekind of goofy mixture of Bomberman and Worms, where you use crates to build more units, weapons and vehicles, and try to destroy the other teams before they wipe you out. It was still fun to play and it shines as a party game, tough like many other childhood games this was not as good now as it was then, because memories tend to grow sweeter with time. This time we also played through the single player mode, though it wasn't nearly as fun as playing the game on multiplayer.

Status: Completed, platinum trophy
Playing time: 150 hours or so.

I simply loved this game, played through it twice with different character classes doing everything possible including the DLCs. My rating is totally biased and you shouldn't take it that seriously. This game had like so many faults and shortcomings, but the story, characters and the whole fantasy world was simply so engrossing, that I managed to look past them. It doesn't even really bring anything new to the table as a RPG and some gameplay aspects of it are substandard, but the experience was still so immersive for me, that I can't rate the game lower than this. If you've had this kind of experience with some game you'll probably understand what I mean, and if so you also understand that I can't really properly explain liking my for it and therefore won't even try. Awesome game is awesome.

Status: Never finished
Playing time: 15 hours

I eventually gave up this game, though might pick it up again if I have time. The idea about an espionage themed RPG is something that really appeals to me, too bad that the execution of this one was not so great.

It had so many bugs and just seemed unfinished, like only a prototype of the actual game. Controls are really sticky and it seems like that the enemies have a sixth sense of something, because they can often see you through walls or hear you sneaking hundreds of meters away and so on. This combined to all the other terrible gameplay mechanics it throws at you just make it a real pain to play. The graphics are also pretty horrible and moving the camera around turns everything into an unidentifiable smudge that gave me a headache.

The RPG elements were good though, it felt like different choices you make actually have effect on the game and the story branches to really many directions. The character development was also nice and the missions gave you different paths you could take to complete the objectives. So it's a shame that the actual gaming was kind of shit. Such a shame.

Status: Completed, platinum trophy
Playing time: 50 hours

This was really played on a PS3 as part of MGS HD Collection, but I added this to list because this time I only played through the Peace Walker game.

It's a game made originally for a handheld console, so some things in it seemed kind of weird for me, who had previously only played other kinds of MGS games. It doesn't have long cutscenes or that kind of cinematic quality that the games of the series usually have, and instead the story progresses with comic book -like animations. It also consits of many short missions instead of being a one big continuous mission, and you can't even properly call people on codec while on missions for crying out loud! Although this is understandable for a handheld console game of course. And of yeah, there are quick-time events, which are complete and utter crap.

Nevertheless the story is interesting and it has good MGS spirit in it. Even the easter eggs and other humorous stuff is present. When it comes to those some of it makes you laugh, while others just make you think "Mr. Kojima please", maybe the best examples being Date with Kaz or Monster Hunter -missions. Too bad that the game sort of suffers from its stripped-down presentation story-wise, some of the interesting conversations are just dumped in extra briefing files that you aren't really motivated to listen and those cartoon-animated cutscenes just don't have that same charm in them. Luckily though the actual playing is fun and both stealth and combat mechanics are good. Even the episodic structure of the missions starts to work later on in the game, because it creates a good balance with all the small management things of the Mother Base.

Although the single player game is good too, the game turns into something really amazing when playing multiplayer co-op. I spent many hours playing online with Listal user Nosoki who also owns the HD collection. Everything is so much more entertaining when playing with a friend. In stealth missions co-op is brilliant and even the numerous vehicle boss fights manage to stay interesting. Simply fooling around is also hilarious. For example I thought I was going to die laughing one time when we were strutting around in a cardboard box tank and a cardboard box ambulance, and enemy soldies were thinking there was something fishy going on, but couldn't really point out what it was. So if you're going to play Peace Walker on the HD collection, make sure you have a friend to play it with.

Status: Completed, platinum trophy
Playing time: 15 hours

Compared to the sequels this is only an average game and if you have played them, I wouldn't really recommend this. It just isn't even on the same level as the next two. I for one completed this before playing the sequels so I still found it a nice adventure game.

It's not that long and it is a good thing for the story which is enjoyable treasure hunting in fine adventurous spirit. The gameplay balances between platforming sequences, puzzles and cover-based shooting, but has way too many generic shooting sections. The puzzles are fun but the game has so few of them and even then they are way too easy. Platforming sequences in the jungle and ancient cities are pretty impressive looking but then again, nothing compared to the amazing setpieces of the sequels. Even though there are some flaws in gameplay and the controls are a bit stiff, it's still good fun game.

Getting the platinum trophy was kind of difficult, because it requires you to play the game on crushing, which is the hardest difficulty setting. You cannot do this without using the 'wall glitch' for shooting and even then there are parts in the game that are just insanely tough. I got past them after many tries just simply having good luck.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 10 hours, one playtrough

I bought this from PS store because I wanted to play it once again before starting any MGS games from the HD collection. Still remembered almost everything about the game from my childhood so it was a quick and easy playthrough, even though I still suck at some boss fights like in the one against Revolver Ocelot.

I just love MGS games. They have an interesting plots and great stealth gameplay, and also finding the many very funny easter eggs is hilarious every time. The cinematic quality of the games is also fantastic, because it gives you a lot great cutscenes to enlighten the backgrounds of the characters and to progress the story, without still taking too much space from the actual gaming content. Though I have to say that after playing later MGS games the gameplay in this one felt really bad and clumsy. The inventory system is horrible and there are also some points in the game that are just plain annoying, like the backtracking to get the sniper rifle for the first fight against Sniper Wolf. By today's standards it wasn't that great of a game I recalled it to be, which was kind of depressing, but it was still such a nostalgic experience that I can't really decrease its rating that much.

Also this playthrough gave me so many laughs, because most of the time I was just fooling around and doing stupid shit. This included things like constantly calling Master Miller on codec, hearing stuff like "Snake, you can use an elevator to move between floors". Now you don't say Kaz? I had once again a lot of fun pretending to be Bomberman, placing C4's and claymore mines everywhere. Besides of that I beat Psycho Mantis with melee without changing the controller to port two, shot Sniper Wolf to death with Nikita missiles and things like that. These games are so fun for this kind of fooling around stuff also.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 5 hours

Then again this one of those NES games that were a big part of my childhood. Even then it was so difficult that I could never finish it, and couldn't do it now either if I was playing on a NES. Luckily emulators have save-states and I could actually save my progress, which is something you cannot do in the actual game.

It is a really fun 2D puzzle game, where you must make your way through different rooms by finding the 'Solomon's key' and making your way to the exit door. Pretty much the only 'weapon' you have is a rod which can create or destroy small blocks, by which you can try to trap or destroy enemies, or build bridges and stairs for yourself. Out of this simple scenario you get so many diverse and challenging levels that the game continues to stay interesting even after several playthroughs. I for example still have this on my computer and I often play it for a while when I want to pass some time.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 20 hours

I had this game on NES as a kid, but even then I didn't care too much for it. So I didn't have any nostalgic feels towards it and that said, the first Zelda game is probably the also the worst Zelda game. It was not a fun game to play and it won't get any additional points from me, even though it started one of the greatest game series and brought new ideas to gaming. It really has no story to speak of even by Zelda game standards, and it's not very player friendly either, because you never have any idea where you are supposed to go on the world map and you could just suddenly stumble to dungeon number six or something. The game is also ridiculously difficult because enemies do a lot of damage and appear in large groups, and you have very little means of defending yourself of disposing them. The gameplay is also really stiff which makes the experience even worse. The game just doesn't work anymore on today's standards.

Status: Completed both games
Playing time: 60 hours

A collection of the first two Final Fantasy games. I played this as a part of my project of playing through all the main games of the Final Fantasy canon.

The first one is simply a bad game. It doesn't have any story to speak of, it's main characters don't even have names and most of the time I had no idea whatsoever of what I was required to do next to advance in the game. The only thing I even remember about it is the constant grinding. In this game that is even mandatory if you want to survive even a moment, because the difficulty level and encounter rate are so high it's ridiculous. The most depressing thing is that the level grinding isn't even that rewarding because you have very little control of the development of your characters. I'm kind of glad that I played this on an emulator, cause therefore I had a speed-button and only had to spend like two hours grinding every once in a while instead of ten hours or something. Playing on normal speed this would have been even more tedious experience than it was now.

The second one is already a much better one. It has some kind of story and actual characters, so it's much more rewarding and pleasant to play because you feel that you are accomplishing something and the story is progressing. It also has a better character development system, where only those skills and attributes that you use frequently get better. It makes the game interesting, even though it requires some grinding and a few gimmicks to make it work. It still has some of the same problems than the first one and it gets somewhat repetitive after a while. I would nonetheless call it an "ok" game that is best played briefly on moments when you want to pass some time.

Final Fantasy I **
Final Fantasy II ***

Status: Completed, platinum trophy
Playing time: 33 hours

The second Assassin's Creed is just as entertaining and interesting as the first one. The world of Renaissance era Italy is finely made and the city landscapes are really beautiful to look at, thanks to excellent graphics. From the detailed historic buildings and the actual persons in the game you can see that they have actually researched the subject a lot. I'm also probably the only person in the universe who actually likes all the scifi-stuff they have added to the story.

There has been a lot of improvement from the first one as well. The progression of the story is much better, quests are more variable and they have also made the whole assassinating business more versatile. On the other hand they could also have changed the combat system a bit, now it felt like exactly the same as in the first one. Still the game is now much better to play and it feels smoother, with the exception of a couple of moments when my character jumped of a top building to his death when he was supposed to do something totally different.

Besides improving the game mechanics they have also added a lot of extra stuff in the game, and I can't really make up my mind whether it's a good or a bad thing. Side quests are a good thing of course because you get more gaming content, but I could have done without the whole renovating the Villa -bullshit. I don't think it fits in to the story at all and it takes up too much attention from the actual assassinating. The collectibles are also a pain in ass like always and because I'm a retarded completionist, of course I had to collect them all to get platinum trophy for this.

Status: Completed 100%
Playing time: 8 hours

This just didn't have the same charm anymore that it had when I played as a little kid. I remembered that of the first three Crash games this had just the right difficulty, but after playing through the first one it was just way too easy. Though levels are just completely retarded, most of the time this was still fun and simple platforming. Not one of the best platforming games that I recalled it to be, but a good game nevertheless.

Status: Completed 100%
Playing time: 7 hours

I grew up playing Crash games. I bought this from PS store one evening because I wanted to play something nostalgic and this kind of simple platforming game was just perfect for my current mood. I remembered that the game was hard but didn't remember just how hard. For a first couple of hours it was pretty easy and fun, but when the levels started getting more difficult collecting the gems started to get really tough. To get them you have to collect all boxes from the levels without dying. So even one small mistake is enough. Some levels were sadistically difficult and there were times when I had to stop playing, because I was about to throw my controller out of the window. At least sometime ago they have made games like this that didn't handicap players.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 6 hours

Hated it.

First of all the game mechanics are just horrible. Controlling your character feels like your trying to move an elephant stuck in a swamp and the camera doesn't want to show you the things you need to see. Even still there isn't really any gaming involved in this crap. You are just going linearly from one chapter to another, and the choices you make don't have any real impact on the story, the big plot twists and events are always the same. Besides that only gameplay it has is shitload of quick-time events. So basically the whole game is you not getting to do anything but try move your elephant around and press the buttons that flash briefly on the screen. Yay, so much fun.

One of the arguments of the people who defend the game claim that it's more an interactive movie than a game. Well I for one am not interested at all of "playing a movie". If I'd want to watch a movie I'd do that, when I'm playing a game I actually want to be able to do something. Also if you still would insist of me thinking this as an interactive movie, I'd say that this was the most retarded piece of crap I have seen in while. Without giving too much away, the game starts as a murder mystery but turns into a terrible supernatural nonsense. I still gave it one and half stars, because in the beginning the simple crime story was interesting. Too bad that everything else after that is just a massive brainfart. Stupid, awful and simply bad.

This is absolute shit and I can't understand all the good ratings it has got. If you like this you should probably have your head checked. Simply avoid playing this, it is not worth your time. I made the mistake and even had some expectations for this. Because it was such a big disappointment, I'm not really interested to play Heavy Rain at all.

Status: Completed, platinum trophy
Playing time: 50 hours

This was like a GTA game set in Nazi occupied Paris, and instead of rising the ranks in a criminal organization you are just trying liberate France by sabotaging stuff and killing like trillions of Nazis. Luckily the game doesn't take itself too seriously and it has a great sense of humor, often reminding me of good 'men on a mission' movies like Kelly's Heroes, which made it a really fun experience. Because the game couldn't possibly have a Frenchman as main character, you play as a hard drinking Irish guy who has a personal grudge against one Nazi colonel.

The game claims that the missions can be played either guns blazing or using stealth, but that is not entirely true. There are like a couple of missions you can complete without raising an alarm and starting to shoot everyone, but that is usually mandatory. Stealth mechanics aren't even that good, so I didn't really even care about it. In this game it was more fun to go over the top and just wreak havoc with guns and explosives. This was kind of a new experience for me, because usually I always prefer the stealthy way of playing games.

Nevertheless the missions have been made well and are really fun to play. It's such a shame that there feels to be so few of those actual story missions compared to the other gaming content. Instead of creating more missions they have made the game longer by adding to the map about 1500 Nazi constructions that you have to destroy. I of course had to destroy all of them to get the platinum trophy. About 750 would have been a good amount of them, but now destroying them just started to get really monotonous.

Besides that one of the downsides was that the game is way too easy, and even when playing on the hardest difficulty I only had problems on one mission. Even so it's a good and amusing open world game, and you can have fun only by fooling around in the city. Coming from me that means something, because I have somewhat gotten tired of open world games lately.

Visually it the game looks beautiful and I liked a lot about the idea that liberated areas have colours where as in occupied areas everything is black and white.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 35 hours

My first time playing this, but probably not the last. In my childhood my parents' PC was so slow that I couldn't play any PC games, so before I had only watched my friend playing this in his house. It looked truly amazing, and now that I have finally completed it, I can say that it is everything the great reviews claim it to be.

First of all the story is really engrossing and interesting. The choices you must make during the game actually do feel like they have an impact on the world and gameplay. There's a lot of exploring involved and finding the right way to approach each situation suitable to your character build and playing style makes the experience really unique. I can imagine this has a lot of replay value and each time you would find something new you couldn't see the last time.

Graphics are dated, but I installed a few mods that made the game look a bit better. Nevertheless you really shouldn't be turned away by the way it looks. Also to compensate for it the game has a fantastic soundtrack.

I really do not have anything bad to say about this. One of the best games I have ever played, maybe even the best.

Status: Completed
Playing time: 2 hours

I have played this like countless of times and still love every second of it. Perfect little puzzle game that doesn't try to be anything bigger than that, and works perfectly because of it. GLaDOS is probably my favorite villain ever and even though Portal-jokes have been overused because of the Internet, the black humor of the game is still freaking amazing and it makes me laugh every single time. One of the few five star games for me.