Highly recommended – Klardendum

O tempora: Half-Life 2 (20th Anniversary)

18/01/2025 18/01/2025

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

For how influential, important and beloved Half-Life 2 is, I always struggled replaying it. I’d start, go through several opening chapters in a blink of an eye, loving every second of it and then stop somewhere in the middle of Ravenholm or right after. I dunno, the original Half-Life, despite also having weaker segments, always felt more exciting to me overall… Not that I disliked HL2 – I still felt that it was a great game, just, not quite as good as the first one. Which is funny, because at the same time I did love Episode Two a lot and even though it had horrible grindy achievements, first game to add them back in the day, I did all of them.

Except, it’s been around 14 years since I’ve played them last time. And after revisiting the original Half-Life with its expansions and later the fan remake Black Mesa, I was meaning to revisit the sequel as well. What stopped me was the state of the game – HL2 has been somewhat broken for years, having lots of visual issues and some logic bugs too. In 2023 Valve has brought a fantastic update to the original Half-Life, which got me excited about the possibility of getting the same treatment for Half-Life 2. And now that the 20th Anniversary update is out, I’ve decided to finally revisit the game and both Episodes, as they are now part of the same package.

In love with: Slitterhead

02/01/2025 02/01/2025

Right from its initial announcement, Slitterhead was promising to be something special. The first title from a new studio formed by some of the key personnel who previously headed the original Silent Hill, the Siren series and Gravity Rush series had very little chance of being a “typical” game. I expected it to be at least a little bit jank and sometimes frustrating – and it is, – but I also expected to be amazed and excited. And I was. So while I can safely assume, Slitterhead might not “click” with a large amount of players, it is something to be experienced nonetheless.

Read more“In love with: Slitterhead”

In love with: Tactical Breach Wizards

13/12/2024 13/12/2024

Whenever I see “turn-based strategy” or “tactical RPG” it’s an almost certain marker that the game is not for me. I’ve never had much patience for turn-based anything in general and very few (in a grand scheme of things) games and game series approached the concept in a way that I found exciting. Due to that, my initial reaction to Tactical Breach Wizards was dismissive – no matter how good the game could be, it had a high chance of being not my cup of tea whatsoever. But after seeing highly positive reception that especially focused on the writing I decided to give it a chance. When I learned that Suspicious Developments, the developers of the game, were the team behind Gunpoint, I got even more curious as while that game was also totally not my thing, it was inventive, understood how to mix planning and exciting action and was quite funny from what little of it I have experienced.

And even so, Tactical Breach Wizards exceeded all my expectations and are one of the biggest highlights of 2024 for me.

O tempora: Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged

22/11/2024 22/11/2024

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

Guess, it was about time to replay Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars anyway… A classic from 1996, the original Broken Sword has often been considered one of the best point and click adventure titles. You had one good way of experiencing it (original release played via ScummVM) and one average way (Director’s Cut from 2010). But now there’s a perfect way of enjoying this title, with the new Reforged remastered release.

In love with: Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

12/09/2024 12/09/2024

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is not a game that I could call revolutionary or innovative. It is a very curious mix of hack and slash action game with a tower defense strategy and I haven’t seen it done quite like this before. But definitely not revolutionary. And yet, I can’t help but love this project and wish to see more huge development companies and corporations learn from it. No, not from the mix of genres, but rather from the approach this game takes. You see – this is very much a “AA game”, made by “AAA” standards, which is something you used to see all of the time back in the late 90s-early 00s, but which doesn’t really happen anymore. And playing this game reminded me of how much are we all missing out with the current gaming market trends.

In love with: Withering Rooms

21/08/2024 21/08/2024

Withering Rooms is the kind of game you don’t get every day. Back when the title was still in Early Access, one of the ways the developer described this game was somewhere along the lines of “If Clock Tower was an action RPG”. Which… fits and, even more surprisingly, works incredibly well. This game is so strange, yet so fascinating and inventive. Its influences are recognizable, yet its mood is immaculate… And while I didn’t enjoy every second of the game and do find faults with some of its aspects, it was also one of the most inspiring gaming experiences I’ve had in quite a while.

O tempora: FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage (Collector’s Edition)

20/05/2024 20/05/2024

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

Back in 2004 physics simulation of all kinds seemed like the coolest new thing in videogames. The biggest example, of course, was Half-Life 2, but near the end of the year a Finnish development studio Bugbear Entertainment released a racing game where the main gimmicks were extremely detailed physics and car deformation – FlatOut. Instead of going for extremely high speed street racing style how Burnout was doing at the time, the game went for the demolition derby aesthetic with most races taking place on dirt roads somewhere in forests in different weather conditions. It was really cool, but didn’t click with me personally due to feeling a bit more simulation heavy than I’d preferred.

Two years later, however, the studio followed the game up with a bigger badder sequel FlatOut 2 that added more types of cars and tracks a felt just the right amount of arcadey for me, so I played the crap out of it. This game then received an Xbox 360 port called FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage that enhanced and added a bunch of things and a bit later that same port was made available for PCs. With one huge catch – it was a Games For Windows Live title. No one liked GFWL even at the time, as despite a good concept Microsoft botched the execution of the service really hard and within several years the service was discontinued and isn’t even working properly on modern systems. So, for years FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage was very hard to get working correctly on PC. Until recently, when the “Collector’s Edition” patch updated the game to not just remove GFWL requirement, but to also update the title to work correctly on modern hardware. So I’ve decided to check if the game can suck me in once again, like it did years ago.

In love with: Chants of Sennaar

28/04/2024 28/04/2024

Something about the games where the “puzzle” involves translating languages fascinates me. Maybe it’s my own background as a Ukrainian interpreter, someone who had to juggle several languages in his mind since early childhood. Or maybe it’s the curiosity of how such a complex idea could get “gamified”. But it feels like something finally “clicked” for the developers when the fantastic Return of the Obra Dinn got released, as its central idea of assigning assumptions to concepts and then having the game confirm or refute those assumptions in bulk became the basis for now two language-focused puzzle adventure games: Heaven’s Vault and Chants of Sennaar. Games that are similar in many ways, but also extremely different in where their focus lies.

In love with: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake

16/04/2024 16/04/2024

Back in 2013 Starbreeze Studios was in a weird position. They had lost several key team members in the years prior and in 2012 released Syndicate, a game that wasn’t well received. Releasing a small downloadable only cinematic platformer title was not something people expected of them at the time, but Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was a success that made people trust the studio once again. Pitched and directed by Josef Fares, who has since worked on purely cooperative titles A Way Out and It Takes Two, it was a very curious attempt to create a “single-player coop” kind of game. That used its simple yet inventive controls to tell a wonderful fairy tale (in the classic dark but hopeful way) story that evoked emotions through basic interactions.

The game has been re-released and ported numerous times since then and now, over 10 years since release, it got an almost shot for shot remake of the game, similarly to Like a Dragon: Ishin! from last year. This remake aims to be a new definitive version of the game and while it doesn’t quite succeed to be that at the moment, the game at the core remains amazing.

In love with: Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition

10/02/2024 10/02/2024

So… I’ve never played a Dragon Quest game before this one. It’s a bit odd to think that, given how important for the development of Japanese-made RPGs the game was. Even if it itself originally drew inspiration from Wizardry and Ultima. But yeah, I’ve played almost every Final Fantasy game, but never Dragon Quest. So I’m glad that DQ XI became my introduction to the series as I do see why it’s often called one of the greatest examples of the genre.