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8.) Bioshock 2 Not sure how to feel about this game overall. It felt partly unnecessary, but had some really solid additions to the story, and some great scenes here and there. Liked the gameplay less overall (except the hacking which was a nice change, and some of the new passive abilities were cool as hell). The combat and the system for gathering ADAM were clunky and annoying though a lot of the time. Was expecting worse overall so was pleasantly surprised in the end. Not going for the platinum for this one. Definitely don't have the patience to do it again.

5.) Steins; Gate Elite Barely a game, even as far as visual novels go, but still incredibly good. Best time travel story I think I've ever seen and doesn't shy away from trying to explain the (theoretical)science behind it. This particular version of the game basically just took the anime they did and turned that into the game so it was a lot more impressive looking than this style of game usually is. Probably spoiled by it now and will have trouble with the genre going forward. XD Working on getting the different endings/platinum now. One more to go. Hoping it explains the couple little story gripes I have with this one since it will be the "true" ending.

Part of it is I was never a fan of the direction the MGS games started heading in the first place. The first is by far my favorite, and I've been slowly losing interest since 3. I played 4 for the sheer spectacle of it, and had completely lost interest after playing Portable Ops and seeing Peace Walker and didn't have much interest in Ground Zeroes in the first place. Everything I saw about what they were doing with 5 put me off even before Konami went full retard and catapulted Kojima. Ultimately there's a lot of little things that rubbed me the wrong way for long enough that I eventually became unable to reconcile it and gave up.

MGS games are well into the realm of "Fuckin' NOPE." for me when it comes to trophy/platinum hunting.

I've been considering skipping 2 and going straight to Infinite. Haven't heard anything terribly impressive about it (not that I've heard anything particularly bad either) and I know it wasn't made by the same people that did the first one and Infinite.

22.) The Talos Principle Fun puzzle game. The "main" stuff was relatively straight forward, but the extra stuff for the "real" ending and bonus stuff for the extra ending got pretty hard in a few places. Nice balance overall it felt like. Relatively interesting premise as far as this sort of game goes though exceptionally typical for the genre as well (crank the "mystery" and philosophical themes up to 20 and let it ride). I still enjoyed it though and sought out the collectibles to find out more about the world. Finished the last ending earlier tonight and am playing through the DLC now since it came with it. MUCH harder puzzles and a lot stronger in the story/world building department so far. Still enjoying it, but I am starting to feel that edge of "That's about enough of this, thanks" so the DLC might have been a tad unnecessary overall.

15.) Persona 5 Royal Jesus I think that was longer than P4 Golden. 225 hours. Got the platinum in one play through though so that was nice. Not nearly as grindy as Golden was (or the original P5 for that matter from what I've seen of its list). Great game though. Combat mechanics were stellar. Overall, I think I liked it better than 4 though it felt like some of the more intricate story elements got flubbed a little (mostly with the added stuff for Royal). All around enjoyable experience. Also did end up playing through Last of Us: Left Behind. Solid little DLC story. Easier than the main game overall, and it feels like it ended in an awkward place but it was a nice distraction while waiting for Last of Us 2.

7.) Bioshock Was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be overall. I bought this back on PS3 for like $15 but never got more than an hour or two into it. I'm not a fan of the "old" style of FPS games and at that time I hadn't played any FPS for like 5+ years so I couldn't get into it. Since I'm more used to the genre at this point with some stuff I played and with the collection being free on PS+ I decided to give it another go since I don't have anything specific to play until the end of March. Pretty much felt 'whatever' about it until near the end. Some good story twists that I wasn't expecting (surprisingly never had it spoiled over the years) and a solid ending increased my opinion of it quite a bit (not that there was anything wrong with it really). May actually play through again to see the other ending and clean up trophies since I got most of them in the one play through.

6.) She Remembered Caterpillars Puzzle game with cryptic, semi-depressing story. AKA 75% of indie titles I'm coming to realize. This one is relatively throw away. Decent puzzles, short, but story is peripheral at best, text only and so broken up between the stages it's even harder to keep track of than it needs to be. By the end I was more annoyed with it than anything and couldn't be bothered to care about what was or wasn't going on at that point. This style and tone of game was done much better by other titles such as 'Thomas Was Alone'.

16.) The Last of Us Part 2 Well that was certainly something. Gameplay improved upon in almost every way (except character skill upgrades) over the first, it has the most amazing Accessibility features I've EVER seen in a game, and I can honestly say (ironically enough) if THIS one had an online multiplayer mode, I might actually consider it (assuming they didn't drown half the trophy list in ridiculous BS for it). The story was a bit... much? It was like 5-10 hours too long at least (think my original playthrough of 1 was like 20 hours? This one was 40). Not that I don't love long games, but the story REALLY lost focus by the end and should have ended before the last 'section' of the game (which seems to be the general consensus), and it felt even longer because it was a mostly miserable experience emotionally. The only saving grace were pretty much all of the flashback scenes in that regard. Not to say that I didn't like it, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Visually the game was beautiful, but it was SO hyper violent that there was a lot of tactless and tasteless stuff going on. If I headshot a dude, I REALLY don't need the ability to find his corpse and see exactly where and how big of a hole I made in his head with ridiculous detail (to name the least of it). Considering some of the controversy Naughty Dog has been having to deal with, this level of detail is beyond unnecessary imo. There was a particular fight scene where I can only imagine the expression on my face as I went through it. It went from fun to obnoxiously unpleasant pretty damn quick in places.

18.) Marvel's Avengers Finally finished. Technically I finished a while ago, as the campaign wasn't overly long, but after the main campaign they had a bunch of side objectives that actually continue the story a bit so I waited until I finished that stuff. Last mission thing was actually pretty hard which was nice, but most of the post campaign stuff was a grind fest so it too a while. This game needs a LOT of work. They did some stuff right, but a lot of it is just uninspired. I can't help but think that two completely different teams worked on the game. One for the campaign and one for the "live service" multi-player shit because they are two entirely different levels of quality. Campaign was really solid if a bit short and had a lot of good stuff in it. The lore collectibles add a lot to it too. You can tell the people that worked on it cared a lot about the comics. There are even a number of individual SHIELD agents that have names and are actually established characters from the comics that appear a handful of times. They laid a lot of ground work for where they can take it next too which I liked and I'm actually interested in seeing what they do with it. The other half though is a ridiculous grind fest and what you're grinding for isn't even overly interesting. There's a few good character skins but most of them are ridiculously uninspired which is utterly mind boggling considering they have up to 60 years of comics to pull from for some of these characters. I get that Ms. Marvel has only been around for like 6 years, but making all of her "Legendary" skins be her in different super hero t-shirts is kind of a cop out. A lot of the others too are just one or two decent skins for their Legendary one that is then pallet swapped 4 or 5 times. FUCKING WHY? Granted, I haven't seen all of them yet, but I've seen enough to be annoyed. Thor seems like the one with the best options. At this point, I spend most of the currency I earn on the fucking nameplates because at least those have a lot of variance and stand out. Emotes are pointless since you can only equip one and probably the best thing, the takedowns, are only in the "hard currency" store (outside of ONE you can earn on the challenge card thing) and cost the equivalent of $12 so fuuuuuuuuck that. Once you hit max level too, the gear grind is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen in a game like this. It would be decently balanced if you could focus on one character, but to do the hardest thing in the game, you literally need to max out everyone or you're going to have a bad time because if you get downed by something during it, you have to swap characters and can't if they're not a high enough power level. I also find it kind of ridiculous that the current end game content is something you HAVE to do by yourself. So much for the multiplayer I guess? Not that I mind not having to play with people, but they seem to have their wires crossed with what they want from this game.

New year, new topic time. Hit 30 games for 2019. Think it was fewer overall than 2018, but I was playing a lot more "continuous play" style games this last year as well as beefier games content-wise for a lot of it so I was expecting that. Time to start it over. 1.) Vampire the Masquerade: Coteries of New York Was interested in seeing how this would turn out since it seemed like there wasn't a whole lot of time between it's announcement and it's release. Mostly it's pretty much a visual novel with some light game mechanics here and there. Not the best game but it was an interesting story. Choices didn't feel like they meant much and it was probably too short even considering replayability. There are a bunch of side quests you can participate in but not NEARLY enough time to do even half of what is available it seems like. Plan on playing through more, but not expecting too much. Lot's of grammatical errors too. English was definitely not the language the game was made in. Or at least not the first language of the people that made it. Think this was their first game though so I can forgive a lot of what felt off. Liked it enough that I'm interested in seeing them expand the game with more clans and more story but this was basically just filler while waiting for Bloodlines 2. If you're super into VtM I'd say it's worth a play. Maybe not worth full price though. Solid sale item if you have an interest. Probably not worth it otherwise.

12.) Final Fantasy VII Remake Completely forgot to post in here when I first beat it since I was actively talking about it in the other topic. Got the Platinum last night and cleaned up the Play Log for full 100% completion earlier today. Think my final time at Plat was around 101.5 hours. Closer to 103 when I finished everything else. Really looking forward to seeing what they do with future entries. Not looking forward to how long it will probably take. XD

11.) Control: The Foundation First expansion came out for Control and I'm counting it because it had a pretty decent length and good amount of extra content and it did not disappoint. Some interesting hidden things too. Probably the most ridiculous being you can find these 8 hidden lucky cat statues throughout the expansion the require some puzzle solving to hunt down in a few cases, and as you find them they gather around another cat statue and unlock these massive stone slab doors that lead to a room: You get a pair of cat ears as a reward. XD The couple patches they've put out since I stopped playing seem to have really helped the performance too. The only stuttering I get now is coming out of the pause menu. The regular menus and map don't cause it anymore. Still some framerate loss when action gets really heavy, but not near as bad as it was at launch and better than I would expect it to for all the effects the game throws around. This is probably the first game I had played where I actually wish I had a PS4 Pro or an even better PC. Apparently the ray tracing and DLSS 2.0 support make it crazy good looking.

10.) Baldur's Gate Interesting game. Not entire sure I "liked" it. D&D stuff usually doesn't do much for me. Something about the setting has always managed to put me off a little, but the game had some cool bits to it and in terms of depth there is SO much to it that many other RPGs should have taken note of, both in the past and now. Story eventually got me interested, but I never quite managed to enjoy the game play. One part of the story NEARLY elevated it for me too, but it was more of a psych-out moment that ended up not being nearly as crazy as I thought it was at first. Managed to get nearly 90% of the trophies in one go, but one of the ones I have left is beating it on the absolute highest difficulty and considering how much trouble I had with the game on Easy in places, I'm going to nope the fuck out of that right now.

9.) Pony Island Man this got trippy. Was pretty interesting though. Went into it kind of knowing what to expect (Stanley Parable-esque mind-fuck game), but still got surprised a couple times. Mostly that 3rd "core" encounter is what got me a few times. That was some inspired shit right there. XD Don't even remember how I ended up with this game, but am considering checking out some of this guys other games at some point because this was an all around interesting experience.

4.) Alan Wake's American Nightmare This felt like more DLC (not sure if it technically was or not) but it's a standalone release so I'm putting it separate. Saw a lot of bitching about the story in this, but I really enjoyed it. It is a fair departure from the original game tone wise (more pulpy, action-horror/dark comedy instead of isolationist, psychological thriller), and still doesn't exactly "finish" the story, but it provides a theoretical conclusion that gives a nice sense of closure if they never are able to do more with it without "finishing" the story. The villain was a lot of fun too and it gave the actor that plays Alan Wake a chance to really go wild and have fun with the role (the villain, called 'Mr. Scratch' is basically an evil Doppelganger of Alan himself). Thought it was a fun premise as well as the character is actually mentioned in the main game a couple times, but you never see him which means they probably had some sort of plan for this from the beginning. Combat was a lot cleaner but also a LOT easier since there is guns and ammo EVERYWHERE. I imagine it's more meaningful in the 'Arcade' portion of the game, but I have no interest in something like that as I just wanted the story. Overall this is probably a relatively weak title, especially as a standalone experience, but I had a lot of fun with the story and it added some interesting depth to the overall narrative from the original game. Really hope they can do something more with it in the long run. Control had quite a few references to the events from the series and built on some of the story for it so I'm hoping that means they still have plans going forward. Also learned that the song written for this game actually has a reference to Control in it which is some pretty crazy breadcrumb shit. XD

It was fine for a once through. There were some legitimately cool scenes in the game, and a couple decent story bits. Most of the rest of it was throw away though. I don't regret playing it, but would definitely not play it again. Might be a while on Bioshock Infinite though. The massive quantity of RPG releases this year is about to start, and I made the mistake of starting Baldur's Gate in the dead space I have left.

21.) Werewolf the Apocalypse: Heart of the Forest This is more of what I was looking for from the above game. REALLY felt like playing a TTRPG. Some really cool art too here and there. A bit more abstract than this kind of game usually has, but it was nice and really fit the tone of the game. Also made use of music and sound effects really nicely. Choices felt like they mattered and you had a character sheet that was constantly being updated based on your choices which was interesting. Never been super into WtA, but I've always been interested in learning more about the other World of Darkness stuff outside of VtM so this was a nice introduction. There's a full on Werewolf the Apocalypse game coming out early next year so this was a nice primer. Only complaint is that it was pretty short. Got through it in like 4 hours, though there seems to be a pretty solid amount of replay value and I got it for like $10 since I owned the Vampire games that have come out recently so it still felt relatively worthwhile.

20.) Vampire the Masquerade: Night Road Basically a full on 'chose your own adventure' novel with stats that influence choices/success of choices. Straight up text with very few images. I enjoyed it well enough, but it was kind of hard to play sitting at my computer. Would have been better going with a mobile format I think. Had to put on background music from a different game to stay engaged too. Not sure this is quite my kind of thing. I can do visual novels since they tend to have regular images and music and what not. Mechanically, the game was pretty solid. Was basically like playing a TTRPG with limited choices with the way it worked. Seems like solid replayability too compared to similar games. Just hard for me to stay into it. Something with this writing quality/depth with more of the visual novel type of feel would probably be pretty good but this was definitely too bare bones for my tastes.

19.) Untitled Goose Game This was a fun little distraction. Good for a laugh. They just added a 2-player co-op mode so decided to grab it on sale and played it with the wife. Had a lot of fun though it was pretty short (beat it in a couple 2-hour (at most) sessions). Looks like there's more to do after you "beat" it which is nice since it seemed like there was a lot more you could do to fuck around in the game so will probably play it some more when we both have time to see what else there is to it.

17.) Vampire the Masquerade: Shadows of New York This is a standalone expansion for Vampire the Masquerade: Coteries of New York. Basically a visual novel style of game with some slightly stronger gameplay elements than some have. I actually enjoyed it more than the first game. This picks up a few months after the original, from a different characters perspective and there's a set character you play as instead of picking one of 3. It's a Vampire from clan Lasombra which is one of the ones I find more interesting. It still had some of the same issues the first game had, but felt like it had a stronger ending that didn't jump at you out of nowhere. I apparently got the 'bad' ending though I thought it was a solid way to end it. Might actually play through again to see what the 'good' ending is supposed to be since it wasn't terribly long.

24.) Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory This was actually kind of impressive. IS basically one of the 3DS Theaterhythm: Final Fantasy games (which were excellent)but turned into a full console thing. It functions as a summary of all the KH games via the music from them, though it kind of starts phoning it in by KH3 which was a bit disappointing, but overall it was a fun distraction with some cool new stuff thrown on at the end (thus continuing the tradition of literally EVERY KH release, no matter how trivial or unimportant seeming, being used to advance the story. XD ). Some of the music was really fun for a rhythm game setting to and had a small sampling of actual Disney songs here and there too. Might actually be able to get the Platinum on this even but we'll see. Depends on how many songs I can do flawlessly on the highest difficulty. Think I'm about halfway and if I can manage that one the rest is a cakewalk (if a bit time consuming).

I tried playing it a few months ago and after about 30 min. I got mad and deleted the fucking thing. I was having absolutely no fun playing it at all and it just felt too different from what I remember enjoying from an MGS game that I couldn't get into it at all. Have no intention of playing 5 at this point either because of it.

23.) (PS5) Miles Morales: Spider-man This was tons of fun. Story was a little weaker than the first game, but it had its moments and wasn't entirely unexpected since it was a decent amount shorter. Combat was interesting with the addition of Miles' powers and though it felt harder than the original at first, I'm going through on New Game+ now to clean up trophies and being used to the new abilities is letting me absolutely tear through everything. Length wise, at a guess I'd say it a LITTLE longer than the length of the 3 DLC chapters but WITH all the side quests and collectible content of the original game which gives it a pretty decent length if you do everything. Probably could have benefited from a lengthier story ultimately, but I don't felt that it suffered much as is. Some of the costume options you can unlock were really cool too. Villain spoiler stuff: