great soundtrack – Page 10

In love with: Mass Effect Legendary Edition

19/07/2021 29/06/2023

When I sat down to play all three original Mass Effect trilogy games 3 years ago, I did not expect EA to join on the idea of remasters, especially for such a complex series made on Unreal Engine 3, at the tail end of the previous console generation. They seemed perfectly content with selling original releases and all of the DLCs separately for a juicy price, without even attempting to fix any serious issues that plagued the PC releases for years. So the announcement of Mass Effect Legendary Edition came as a complete surprise to me.

After having spent another 90 hours, playing through the trilogy with a fresh new Shepard, I’m happy to say that while it’s not exactly perfect and definitely not as thorough as some might’ve wanted, Legendary Edition is the best way to play the original Mass Effect trilogy. And play it you must.

Thoughts on: Strangeland

14/07/2021 19/07/2021

When I’ve played Primordia a few years ago, quite late for the game originally from 2012, I liked it quite a lot, yet it remained a title that I was hesitant to outright recommend. Check out, pay attention to, maybe get it if you’re in the mood, sure. But not drop everything and get it. With Strangeland I was hoping to have a more definite “heck yeah, get it” recommendation. Yet, while I did have a more enjoyable experience with the title overall, and did really like it, I still didn’t like it quite enough.

Disapprove: Papetura

25/06/2021 25/06/2021

Sometimes you stumble upon projects that you can’t help but respect the dedication and effort put by their creators into it. Yet understand that the end result of all that dedication and effort is, while impressive, not very good. Papetura is one such example. Reminiscent of the impressive fluid clay animations of The Neverhood, except with paper. And except not exciting and not fun to play.

Happy about: Fable Anniversary

07/06/2021 07/06/2021

Many many years ago, in 2005 to be precise, I’ve played Fable: The Lost Chapters on PC and enjoyed it quite a bit. It didn’t exactly wow me, because of how intentionally primitive the storytelling was, but it was full of curious ideas. And from what I’ve seen and heard, all those ideas were developed and expanded upon in the highly praised sequel that still remains exclusive to Xbox 360 and thus, I’ve never given it a proper playthrough. I’ve not checked Fable III either, since the PC port of that game wasn’t particularly great and was tied into the terrible GFWL service, which was apparently the main reason the game was pulled from sales pretty soon after and remains not available for PC since then.

In 2014 an Unreal Engine 3 driven remake/remaster was released, called Fable Anniversary, which was basically exactly the same game as The Lost Chapters, but with many little tweaks and changes and with better support for modern hardware. And for the longest time I’ve not planned to ever play it. I thought that I will find Fable too simplistic and boring and not worth revisiting. Yet a discussion with friends prompted me to reconsider and give this game a go. I’m glad I did that.

Thoughts on: Yakuza 3 Remastered

01/06/2021 01/06/2021

Every since finally starting my journey through the Yakuza series with 0 three years ago, it’s been very interesting to see series evolve… yet also see that in an “incorrect” way. I mean, sure now I’m fully familiar with Y1 and 2 first hand, but those were the recent Kiwami remakes, not the originals. And even 0 itself was one of the newest developed entries in the series. In fact, Yakuza 3, even in its remastered format, is now the oldest made game in the series I’ve played. This age shows not in the most flattering way.

In love with: Cyberpunk 2077

15/05/2021 15/05/2021

Years after its announcement and months since its release I’ve decided to give Cyberpunk 2077 a go. Despite owning the game, I didn’t play it not for the obvious reasons of it being horribly buggy at the moment, but out of my usual principle of not playing story-driven games that have DLCs announced for it until said DLCs are out. I don’t like playing story-driven games until they’re “done” and I was willing to wait a year or more, just like I did with The Witcher 3 and it’s DLCs and expansions or recently with The Outer Worlds. But after almost half a year of CDPR spending all of their efforts on patches instead of additional content, I figured that the wait might be a bit too long for my liking and played the game in its 1.21 patch version. What an experience it has been.

Read more“In love with: Cyberpunk 2077”

O tempora: Tomb Raider: Anniversary

03/05/2021 20/11/2023

O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.

I’ve already revisited Tomb Raider: Anniversary several times before. In fact, it’s been one of my favorite entries in the series, up there with The Last Revelation. But it’s been a while and the game has never been perfect in the first place. I was somewhat worried that it has aged more poorly than I’d expect.

Nah, it’s still great.

Revisiting Tomb Raider: Legend

28/04/2021 20/11/2023

After several years of writing about Tomb Raider games that are disappointing, I decided that it’s time to finally revisit mainline games from the franchise that I’ve liked. And started with Tomb Raider: Legend which I originally disliked. Oh boy.

But you know what? What if 15 years later I can enjoy Legend much more than I did when it launched? It surprised even me.

O tempora: Batman: Arkham Asylum

12/04/2021 23/08/2024

O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve revisited Batman: Arkham Asylum. A really curious mix of a beat ’em up and stealthy action adventuring inside a metroidvania-ish map it instantly became one of my favorite games and even though I’ve admired the later entries in the series as well, none of them came close to being as fun as this first one. I’m happy to say that almost 12 years later it remains wonderful.

Few notes on: Videogame music 2020

07/03/2021 22/02/2022

I had relatively high hopes for the music in games of last year, but it ended up being a bit disappointing. Which, I suppose, is par for the course for 2020. But some remasters and re-releases have sweetened the deal, while the rest of the games that I have played since the last time I did this sort of post have improved the situation even further. As a result, I did get to enjoy some nice memorable videogame tunes during this past year.