I enjoy puzzle games, usually puzzle games that involve moving around in a 3D space. Portal was a nice surprise on the Orange Box, I was still in my teens and not really plugged into the games media at the time so I knew nothing about it when I started to play. The writing fell a little falt on my teenage ears but I enjoyed the puzzles. I played and enjoyed Portal 2 but then took a pretty big break from that type of game.

After watching the quick look of the Talos Principle I thought that it would be a good chance to test out my newly built gaming PC, I did not expect to love the game as much as I did. I loved the puzzles, I loved the sense of accomplishment and I adored the story that they told. If you haven't played the game and enjoy imagining the death of the human race then this is the game for you. It is sad but also hopeful. There was a sizable DLC expansion pack to the game that I will one day go too.

These experiences and a good helpful dose of Brad on the Bombcast had me looking forward to the release of The Witness. I had known of Jonathan Blow from Indie Game: The Movie but had never played Braid. When the game first came out it was all that I could think of for about six days but never finished it. ........................

The game is set on an Island, the Island is broken up into different areas I think that there are twelve in total, each area has a set of connected puzzles that lead to a final puzzle and each areas puzzles have a different set of rules for you to learn. If you can activate an areas final puzzle you unlock part of the door to what I am assuming is the final area. I say assuming as I still have not managed to open the door yet in three attempts in as many years but the third time will be the charm, I can fell it. To progress to the final area you only need to complete seven areas of the island.

As far as the final area goes I believe that you do not have to complete all of the Island

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance

Resident Evil 4 (PC)

Resident Evil 4 is the game that I have completed more than any other game, on my PS2 memory card I have at least 18 distinct saves of completed runs. I haven't played the game since the Wii version came out when I played the village section again. Even after all of this I still managed to forget some of the later sequences. The game is a masterpiece and still holds up. The only gripe is in the intervening years auto saving has come a long way and losing ten solid minutes of progress hurts a lot more than it used too.

Civilization 6

I have a strange relationship with Civ games, I buy each game and expansion as they come out but I usually wait until the mood takes me before I start to play. So after more than a year and a half, I finally played my first complete game, I lost. Mvemba a Nzinga of the Kongo kicked my ass, he even managed to captured my capital city of Rome for an hour. The game has added a Civics tree which functions just like the tech tree giving you new civics to work towards over the course of the game. The combat of the game has changed in some sligth and for me persoanlly less intrresting ways, you now can stack like militart units in groups of up to three. This means if after the game ends you want to invade the winning Civ you need to create an ''Army'' of groped tanks, as a single tank unit on its own will be ineffecive, in the end this bouiled down to waiting 27 turns for three tanks insted of 9 for one.

I was palying on the lower difficity (#2) so wne

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Fallout 4

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Eve Online

Dead Cells

As I embark on another summer of games I have had the bright idea of recording my thoughts and ideas as I play. This will be my first blog and I don't know exactly how to do it but I thought I would give it a try. First of all, I should explain my situation, I am a secondary (high) school teacher and my summer break is about to begin. That means 16 hour days of freedom for about 7 weeks. I also currently live in the desert so the whole ''go outside an play'' thing doesn't work in 50C (122f) + heat. Secondly, this is not a backlog list, I won't finish all the games but I have a general list that I would like to at least try, some are old some are new. I am also going to include a few games that I have finished in the past 3 or so weeks as work has been steadily winding down and I have had more free time. I'm also trying to improve my writing something that I have never been good at, so please forgive the errors.

1. Life is Strange Before the Storm

I adored the original Life is Strange, its a cliche to say that 'I never played a game like it before' but I hadn't. I loved the characters the world and especially the music. Before the Storm had a lot of marks against it before it came out it had different voice actors and was being made by a different studio. This is why it took me so long to get round to it. In short, I absolutely loved most of it. The story takes some interesting turns and it holds up without the time travel mechanic of the original. The game took me a leisurely 9 hours to complete and I recommend if you enjoyed the first game you should try this one and if you haven't tried the original you should.

2. Quantum Break

I bought myself an Xbox One back in December and a load of older exclusive titles on the cheap. I played through the first 3 chapter of QB back in January and got distracted by Yakuza 0, I wanted to finish it as I was still fascinated by the TV show concept that they were using. The gameplay for me was a let down the shooting is very swimmy and the enemies where repetitive bullet sponges and only my interest in the story kept me going, the over-reliance on text logs to fill in the background story was also unsatisfying. Even after all that I did love the time travel weirdness and I am sad that we probably won't get the rest of the story. As far as the TV show goes it was weird and wonderful and not very good but as a complete package with the game, it was a fun experience.

3. Far Cry 5

I waited a while to pick far cry up as I had some difficulty with Steam, this is a very edge case but the game was delayed in the middle east by about four weeks, seemingly due to the Arabic language pack not being ready. My account is Irish and in the last four years living abroad I haven't had this issue before but shit happens I suppose. After the first hour, I played the entire game with the GB E3 nite show on my second monitor, this is the best way to enjoy the game. I really like that hunting has taken a back seat but I wish money had been a little more plentiful as the guns and attachments are expensive, the challenges kept me interested between outpost but the game did feel a lot smaller than Far Cry 4 to me. Also, the ending is weird.

4. Divinity Original Sin 2

This is my first real foray into CRPGs apart from a few hours with Wasteland 2, which is also on my list now. I started playing Divinity about a month ago, steam says that I have 29 hours in game, I was enjoying the game quite a bit but I have run out of steam, I fully intend to go back to in the coming weeks, the story is fun, the combat gets a lot more manageable after a while but positioning can still be a problem when combat starts. Your party can be wildly out of formation which caused a lot of quicksaving and loading. My biggest gripe is probably for most CRPG players a plus. The game is very open, VERY. So much so that after beating my head against where I should go next for about 5 hours I succumbed and looked at a guide online, I found a very helpful map that had each area outlined by character level.

5. The Evil Within 2

I played the first hour of the original Evil Within at a friends house, I did not enjoy it. Ben seemed positive about it and I wanted to give it a go. I picked up cheap when I got my new Xbox and its taken me six months to get to. The game has a good first 10 minutes this is followed by 40 minutes of boredom. Once the open world starts up its get much better. Its a relatively slow game that involved a lot more stealth and a lot less shooting than I was expecting but was fun nonetheless. The story is stupid in a good way and by the end of the game I wanted my character to succeed, it also got a ''good'' slow version of Ordinary World song during the credits. It references back to the original game but you don't need to have played it. It took me just over 15 hours on normal to complete, its the type of game that I definitely would have replayed in the past but I picked up the original in the Steam Summer Sale so I am going to play that instead. I have also downloaded the PC version of RE4 again because for the first time in years I need a fix. This will be my 21st complete playthrough of RE4 and my first on PC. I was in love with that game for about two years in my teens.

6. Eve Online

I am a very bad MMO player, Eve is the only one I have stuck with longer than two months. I have been setting myself goals. I haven't played in over a month now but planning on getting suck in within the next few days. Goals for the summer 1. Reach 1 Billion isk, I am currently about 400 Million so is not too bad 2. Get 30 kills, so far I have 0 so this will be interesting, most of my time has been PvE and I would like to do some PvP.

That is all so far, considering that I am still at work its been a productive few weeks on the game playing front. I try to play one couch and one keyboard and mouse game at a time so I am going to focus on Metal Gear Rising and Prey: Mooncrash for the last few days of term or I might just play RE4 first.