A Court of Chaos (Steam)

A short NSFW VN that I bought on a whim with credit from those useless Steam trading cards. It is about a court Goblin that takes revenge on the Queen who is always mean to him. It's short, too short, but slightly funny sometimes and served the purpose of taking a break from the two other games I'm playing that just don't seem to want to end.

Fantasy General (GOG)

Though I have fond memories of this entry in SSI's 5 Star General series, I now think it's the worst entry after replaying it. It does have a great upgrade and research system, but the campaign drags on way too long- it should have ended after the 4th continent. By the final continent your faced with a long campaign with no more upgrades, nothing much to buy and the enemy fields 4 and 5 star units that barely take damage. It just stops being fun in the end. The campaign must have taken at least 50 hours.

Like the entire series, it has great music, decent graphics for the time and an easy to use interface. Still worth playing, just not as good as the others (well, I haven't played Star General, so not sure about that one).

Vampire Survivors

Crawling out of the graveyard of videogaming comes Vampire Survivors. It's a spooky casual bullet hell game I found a hella' a lot of fun, that works well I think if you don't have a lot of free time to play. My builds mostly centred around pure damage output, I figured if the undead are dead then they can't harm you. My favourite weapons were knives, whips, axes & runetracer. Completed to the credits but I'm far from one hundred percent, I'll likely continue to play this further.

Time: 37hrs
Game Completed no. 116

Fallout New Vegas (GOG)

This time I got the No Gods No Masters ending, which I feel is the best ending. It took just a bit over 100 hours with all 4 DLC. My previous play though was on the Xbox 360 where I saved at the crucial decision point and played to both NCR and The House Always Wins endings. I did start a 360 play through on hardcore and the intention of getting the Legion ending...but never finished that. I could go back, start up my 360 and upload those saves to the cloud and continue on XSX at 4K60 which it now runs at on Xbox.

Anyway, this time I wanted to finally play the PC version. I did not install any game play mods, as I don't like them...if you're going to mod a game into a different game, then just play a different game. I did some research however and installed a package of 42 small mods that promised to leave the experience "vanilla" but able to use modern hardware. This worked like a dream. The standard GOG install worked fine but obviously un-optimal with the games inability to use more than 4G of RAM or multi processor cores properly. With the little fixes the game ran awesome- 4K resolution, locked to 120fps and only using around 30 percent of the GPU. And best of all, in over 100 hours, I experienced not a single crash or game breaking bug. It was flawless.

Still one of the great open RPG's ever. But I'm going to piss off many by saying I still like Fallout 3 better when it comes to modern Fallout. New Vegas feels too civilized for my liking- all of that faction stuff that everyone likes is exactly what I don't like. Fallout 3 feels more like being in a post apocalyptic wild wasteland just doing your thing. My biggest gripe though with both games is hitting the level cap way too early if you just like to wander and fully explore- combined with savage level scaling that actually punishes for leveling! I hit the level cap with around 1/3 of the main story and 2 DLC left to play.

Honest Hearts - Decent DLC that is pretty much stand alone.

Dead Money- Some love it. I despise it. Take pretty much every pet peeve of mine in video gaming, and this DLC has it! Bullet Sponge enemies that get back up if you don't dismember them. The other type of enemy is the cannot be killed avoid type. It takes away all of your equipment and gives you rubbish. It has poison gas zones that force a time limit and kill the joy of exploration. It is littered with traps in dark areas that you cannot see. The stealth system just doesn't seem to work. All of the above at the same time! I hate it. I locked that asshole Elijah in the vault like he deserved for making me play through this.

Old World Blues- Pretty good.

Lonesome Road- best of the DLC but not as good as Point Lookout in Fallout 3.

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 and Years 5-7

To say that these two games are buggy is an understatement as both have game breaking bugs in them. I'm going to begin by saying that the libraries in both games are buggy for some reason and best waited until late in the game to be completed in one go.


At least in Year 1-4, it was easy to get around the game breaking bugs. Besides backing up your save files, there were two things you should never do:
1. Don't exit out of story levels after you started them.
2. Don't exist out of the game after completing a school lesson. You need to keep playing until you hit a story mission that you complete then exit to the leaky cauldron (to exit the game) and don't continue.

There are two places specifically where if you exit the game, you can cause a game breaking bug. If you exit the game after completing the mandrake class lesson without continuing and doing the story mission after, your save can end up in this state where you have not completing the mandrake handling class so cannot deal with mandrakes, but you cannot go do the mandrake handling class either. I've seen it posted that if you exit out of the game during the Riddle Diary section, it will treated as completed but in such a way that you cannot free play it to collect things that you've missed.

Also once you build the sweeper in the Owl Emporium, you want to stick around and sweep the floor with it until you earn the gold brick.

Another thing with Year 1-4 is that if it starts to lag, just stop whatever you're doing and wait for the game. If you keep moving and doing stuff, the game may crash where it creates a situation where it almost always crashes in that area.


Year 5-7 is just an exercise in frustration. The game has a collision bug where objects go flying off, land somewhere, despawn, respawn, then start the whole process again. When this happens, you need to spam press the "K" button (if playing on PC with a keyboard) to catch then item.

However this bug will be game breaking IF your goal is to achieve 100% completion so that you can play the bonus level. The bonus level in 5-7 (located in Borgin and Burkes is a less fun version of the first Bonus level in 1-4.) The issue is that the Ravenclaw House Crest in the level "Sword and Locket" will be impacted by this bug and while you can spam K to catch a lot of things and use codes to unlock glitched red bricks, gold bricks and characters - none of that will work for the Ravenclaw crest in this level.

Perhaps related is that the Three Brothers section of the "Lovegood's Lunacy" level was also having severe glitches. The screen refused to scroll when controlling the ghost bride and since the thing you needed to have her activate was often off screen to start with, you'd need to move her off screen, then start pressing the K button while moving her to the right and stop moving her once you hear something activate. This is problematic for both people who are hearing impaired and people that need to play games with the sound off.

Overall, it was rather disappointing this time around as I didn't have nearly as many issues with Years 5-7 on my old laptop with integrated graphics.

The Thaumaturge, Jul 13 (Xbox Game Pass)-I had been interested in this game but didn't know much about it going in. Unfortunately the gameplay is rather boring. The combat was really bland, slow, and repetitive and the leveling didn't feel like you were actually getting stronger. The story could have been a highpoint but neither the main quest nor side quests really drew me in. Localization was ok, voice acting was bad with the exception of Wiktor and a couple other characters, but the game looked great. Really liked the graphics. It tries to skirt the horror genre a bit with the salutors and I think it should have leaned into that a little more. I'm glad I played it on Game Pass instead of buying it.

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Dishonored- Definitive Edition (Steam)

Got the urge to play it again, this time on PC after previously playing the Xbox 360 version, then the Xbox One version. This time I played another low intensity run. Previously I've also done no kill ghost runs as well. But this time I seem to have accidentally killed someone early on on anyway, so just went low intensity- sometimes you can leave an unconscious body somewhere they slip off platforms or into water and drown or get eaten by rats.

Anyway, still as good as always and still runs hassle free on current hardware.

Knife of Dunwall First DLC where you play as Daud. Quite good stand alone campaign.

Brigmore Witches Concludes the Daud story arc and has some great levels in its own right.

I didn't bother with the challenge levels as I never really enjoy that sort of DLC. Really, the only problem with Dishonored is that the sequel improved in pretty much every way- better engine, better mechanics and better levels that don't need to channel you through such obvious choke points. But a great series all the way.

Planet of Lana. This must have been a giveaway at some point because I was surprised to find it in my account. It's a cinematic/puzzle platformer in which you control a kid living on another planet and then these machines come down and kidnap everyone you know, so you team up with a cute animal to save them.

The game is fairly nice-looking and has solid animation. It controls nicely in the sense that it's not as fidgety as these types of games are known for being. The game has its moments of being challenging but I found it mostly pretty easy and it made for a nice, relaxing way of taking a break from other stuff for the weekend. I'm not sure if I want the sequel or not. I guess I do although it'll be a low priority/wait for big discount.

Rebel Fury (Steam)

A very literal computer version of the board wargame of the same name by GMT Games. It follows the board game rules to the letter, looks identical, just with the addition of AI to play against. It covers 6 American Civil War battles: Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, the Battle of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. All of that is using Divisions as the main unit of maneuver over half day turns. So it's an operational simulation rather than tactical level- hence the main thing is maneuvering for advantage before combat, so as to obtain strategic victories.

The game has three maps, as it doesn't need 6...any student of the real history will know why.

The game is designed by a veteran of the board wargame industry and the systems just feel right. It plays fast with simple rules and systems. I've now played all the campaigns several times for each side and have managed strategic victories except both sides at Chickamauga and the Union at Chancellorsville (almost impossible just like history)- I've only managed tactical victories at those.

The most enjoyable battles were The Wilderness and Spotsylvania where both sides have to maneuver frantically to attempt a flanking run with Grant and Lee finally going head to head. I've put in around 25 hours to feel pretty comfortable with all battles and will come back for more in the future. Well worth the low price and I'm looking forward to the PC adaptation of the sequel in the series- Army of the Potomac.

Dec 2024, via Amazon

The Procession to Calvary (Steam)

Short point and click adventure where all of the screens and characters are based off classic paintings, all to classical music. All the puzzles can be solved one of two ways, the easy way and the convoluted puzzle solving way. Oh yeah...you should definitely kill the cute little Lion. Definitely.

Nobody Wants to Die, July 17 (Epic Games)-This game started off so well but the gameplay is really shallow and worse than that the detective/investigation mechanics are boring and not fun. I would have preferred a straight walking simulator. The graphics would alternate been great and ok. The atmosphere felt like a mix between Bioshock and something like Close to the Sun. The plot ended up being a bit of a let down for me the longer I played. Overall, its not a bad game but I had much higher hopes when I started it and I was rather disappointed by the end.

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Lords of the Fallen 2014 (GOG)

Not to be confused with the 2023 game of the exact same name and by the exact same developer. You'd think they could have followed standard game design protocol and put a "2" on the end of the title for the newer game.

Anyway, the old game...I still don't see what so many people have against the game. It's one of the best looking games of the time it came out, it runs perfectly and I had no bugs at all. It's a much slower soulslike game than the From Software titles it took inspiration from- rolling/dodging is not as powerful and I felt it was better to build a heavier more defensive character than usual because of this. The game is far easier than Dark Souls in my opinion, and never feels as tense due to the ability to store XP at the save points. Still it's a fine game and Deck 13 have gone on to improve with each of their games since.

The GOG PC version was awesome, a far better experience than the Xbox version I played last time.

Really enjoyed my playthru of this a few years ago. Would look forward to another similar game even if it doesn't continue the current story.