Just finished Eschalon. Started in 2017, played for a month and a bit, stopped when I was uncertain about something, very briefly tried to get back a month later, advanced there but was still uncertain so stopped again after just minutes of play time, then only got back to it at the end of January. Actually first finished it last evening, but wanted one more level just to have the best character I can, so used that golden statue for quite a bit of goblin grinding to get to 17 (specialist) and then the eggs to get to 18 (master). Just for the heck of it. 39h listed in game as play time at the end, but spent at least 2 just running around to get that best build and gear and spells there at the end.

Won't be reviewing this one, with this 2 year break and being close to the end when I got back to it now, my current impressions are just about the endgame, would be hard to write properly about the whole thing.
Do want to point out the annoying skill increase model, which requires you to read a guide and know what's available before playing, since there are trainers that train certain skills up to 5 and books that either give you the first level if you have none (normal skill point cost = 3) or give +2 (normal skill point cost = 2) if you do. So need to know all the skills that have trainers and put no skill points and read no books for them until you get them to 5 that way, and need to know all the skills that have books but no trainers and look for the books first to get them to level 1 before putting any points.
Another annoyance would be the limited container space, only 8 items / container, so need to spread out item storage, had my stuff in 3 chests and 2 cabinets in Aridell. But that's a small thing, and otherwise I quite liked it. Not something to write home about, as they say, but a pretty nice game and a nice enough... feel to it.

Call of Duty Black Ops on the PC.

I played this game some time ago on the PS3 and I liked it, but always found it too expensive on PC (for the PS3 you can take advantage of second hand prices). But when a friend gave me Steam credit for my birthday, I bought Black Ops on PC. At first it was a frustrating experience for the game was a stuttering mess until I found out you had to go into the config file to change seta r_multiGpu to "0" and seta r_multithreaded_device to "1", when it was originally the other way around (probably for the multi gpu single cpu threaded Cell processor of the PS3). Disappointing that this wasn't picked out in Quality Assesment before this game got released for PC (and I just now saw the end titles: lots of people working on it and they couldn't take out this error?).

However, the story was intriguing again though you see it with different eyes once you know the clue. This is a game that can be experienced in it's virgin state only once. Just like Baldur's Gate for instance, you'll view the whole story differently once you know the mystery that's revealed in the end. So I won't tell anything about that for anyone who hasn't played the game yet. Only bothersome thing is, just like all Call of Duty and Battlefield games, it's a lot of propaganda for the US of American way to view the world. But I like shooting games with a thought out story and take the propaganda factor with a pinch of salt.

full list

I don't know about that... it's been 20 years ago!

So far I finished:
My Brother Rabbit
& second time Ghost of a Tale
Trine 2
Thea 2 the Shattering
Minoria
Minoria NG+, all achievements

You can freely include me.

That's kind of funny because as I recall the original idea behind Call of Duty was to give a more international perspective on war compared to the Medal of Honor series :)

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (XB1X)

Me and Star Wars games don't always get on well, with 3 of my all time worst games being from the IP. But Jedi Academy is a good one, probably now my favorite Star Wars game. I played the OG Xbox version since it was a GwG title this month and it runs well, controls well and is 4K widescreen out of the box without stretching. I did install my GOG version as well, but it ran as installed at lower resolution 4:3 and didn't feel as good with controls. I could have fixed the resolution and widescreen through editing the config file, but I didn't feel like it when the other version ran fine and needed no tinkering.

It's mostly a very solid shooter of it's time. You run through linear tunnels and shoot all the usual Star Wars bad things to suitable Star Wars music. It all feels right. Pushing people off ledges with force power is fun, but so is shooting people and, near the end, I learnt the value of mind control on those big armoured dudes. I really liked the mission structure where you select missions that are offered in any order. That then leads to a set of compulsory story missions after which your core powers increase when you get promoted.

Unfortunately it did suffer towards the end with a common fault of older shooters- the final levels degenerated into a string of dull levels where evil cultist Jedi jump out from behind things. Over and over, losing all variety. The red cultist guys were annoying, I learnt how to deal with them easily enough but they slowed the game down and after being jumped approximately 50 gazillion times (felt like it) by then in the final few levels I was over them. Lots of shooters (like Unreal) suffered the same way, the devs get to the end, decide it needs to be longer and pad it out. Enemy AI was pretty dumb as well.
And the final boss was and an anticlimax. Possibly one of the easiest bosses ever, I just ran around the edge of the room recharging my force and stopping to zap her with lightning to end both phases. It didn't even take long and I didn't take any damage at all! Cheap tactic sure...but hit and run is also a perfectly legitimate tactic as well.

Despite the final areas not holding up the standard, it was still a great Star Wars shooter overall.

Kathy Rain

It was okay. I liked the graphics, music, sound design and story-telling, despite the plot turning out to be a bit meh in the end. It wasn't published by WadjetEye Games but it's closely related to the style of Dave Gilbert's point-and-click adventures, and apparently he also directed the voice-acting for Kathy Rain regardless, although I must say I wasn't particularly fond of the voice-acting in this game; there was nothing actually wrong with it, it had a certain level of quality, but it wasn't outstandingly good either and probably made me like the main character even less than I would have liked her without a voice.

I was ready to say that the few puzzles in the game (beyond scrutinizing places and following conversations) were quite easy, that I always had a good idea of what to do and didn't need to consult a walkthrough to complete it, also because you could often find small hints if you needed them, but the last part suddenly broke with that. There was one very obscure, abstract three part riddle that I would never have solved on my own, and then I guess I also got a bit impatient revisiting the same locations over and over again to see what I had missed, and the design of the last chapter was a bit different than the rest; I felt there was a bit more pixel-hunting involved, and less logic, and a labyrinth ...

Kathy Rain not only felt reminiscent of the Blackwell series, but also of Gabriel Knight, Gray Matter and Twin Peaks. I suppose this was planned as the first installment of a series (see the subheading "A Detective Is Born"), but it's unclear whether there will ever be a sequel. Right now, the devs are still working on a different point-and-click adventure, Whispers of a Machine. Not that a sequel is really needed, the story of Kathy Rain is self-contained and concluded. Took me 6-7 hours to complete.

Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time

For some reason I kind of ignored the whole Future series until recently. They're fantastic and the controls are great (A complaint of mine when I first tried them, but must have gotten used to it?)
Again another one that I'm likely going to try to get the Platinum for and most everything seems pretty do-able, except that mini game one :P

Plague Inc.: Evolved

I feel terrible this weekend, so I picked up Plague Inc and propped myself on the couch and gave it a whirl. Overall, I think I got my money's worth.

It is a mobile port, so don't expect anything expansive. The goal is to design a germ that can wipe out humanity. You have to consider infection transmission, being adapted to different climates, being lethal, and of course humanity fights back and you have some stall options.

Different kinds of germs offer variations on the gameplay, virus being hands down the best in my book. There are multiple strategies that can be followed, the easiest and least exciting being to infect the whole world before developing symptoms. Which country you start in can also change the gameplay a bit - starting in a large pop country vs small pop, a country with air, land, and sea boarders or just land, cold or hot, rich or poor, etc. It's not a huge change, but it does alter things a bit.
There are custom scenarios to build/try that can expand the gameplay some, but I have not tried any of that yet, just unlocking all of the official scenarios.

All in all, there is not a huge wealth of strategy to fall into, but it is a nice diversion that can give you a dozen or so hours (if you unlock everything and try different strategies) of enjoyment. It's an easy game to mellow out with or to weather the flu.

It's been awhile since I finished some single-player games, but:

Dungeon Keeper 2

It took a long time because at first I didn't feel like playing it, so I might play it a bit, forget about the game for two weeks, play a bit more etc.

But the more I played it, the more I liked it as I learned more ins and outs about the gameplay. what affects what and how you can speed up things etc. Also, I felt that in the earlier levels the game quite often forced you to play in a certain way, but towards the end the levels became more generic where you can do your own stuff, which I like.

Overall I enjoyed the game, and now I got an urge to replay Dungeon Keeper Gold as well.

I seem to recall this game used to be technically problematic earlier, having crashing issues or graphics card problems or something? At least now the GOG version worked perfectly for me, was stable and I didn't really see any technical (or other) issues. I played on Windows 7 though, not sure if that helped or if it works just as well on Windows 10. I guess I could easily try it on my Windows 10 laptop...

Oh, and this game is yet another good example where you don't have different difficulty settings, yet. for some reason, I didn't feel the game is either too easy, or too hard. In most levels you can compensate for your "lack of skills" by playing more carefully, taking your time etc.

This is what I like about many Bullfrog games, same as Magic Carpet. Very good game design on that part. If some other studio had created this game, they would have probably changed something about the core gameplay and introduced several difficulty levels where in harder difficulties all enemies are twice more powerful and do twice as much damage to you, and you get half the gold and mana than normally. Or something stupid like that when common studios design games with difficulty options.

That reminds me, aren't there a couple of Dungeon Keeper wannabe games on GOG too? How are they, and how much do they really feel like playing genuine (modern) Dungeon Keeper? I've seen so many games that try to be like their original model but fail to recreate what really made the original such a great game.

Still holds up very well I discovered a few years ago. Ever try out Startopia? I dare say it's even better than DK, and it also doesn't have difficulty levels for you to punish yourself with ;)

Thanks for reminding me about that, it is one of those "I must remember to play it" for years already... Maybe you now nudged me to install it then. :)

Then again, I also have Deus Ex Invisible War installed which I've meant to finish some day, but it has the same problem that I had with DK2 earlier: I just don't feel like playing it for some reason, can't really tell why either (maybe I stress out too much that I make some "bad" choices in the game, or don't remember to finish some subquest or something...). So I guess it can wait...

BTW so do you mean to say Startopia somehow feels like Dungeon Keeper games? Are you aware if there are other DK-type games on GOG, and how are they? Dungeons 3? War for the Overworld?

EDIT: Oh, some of the original DK developers were involved with War for the Overworld? That's promising...

Perhaps it because time just feels too limited :) Too many good game too little time :P

Startopia definitely has a strong DK feel yes - you build and rebuild (also by dragging out room dimensions) part of a massive space station in each level (with 1 or more other opposing overseers trying to the same) and try to entice various aliens to come to your station, with different species taking on different roles in your station.
Here it is a lot more business management sim like compared to DK with a far lesser focus on combat though - a lot of level objectives are economy based for instance and there is a big space trading economy. Space traders dock all the time that you trade with, mostly by selling things that you grow in your biodeck. The biodeck is a surprisingly intricate part of the game, with you creating various mini climate zones to grow different plants and to keep the different alien types happy.
Still, the combat is there and it works very similar to DK and do form the basis for some level's objectives.

The only other one I'm familiar with is Evil Genius which, though excellent, is definitely a diamond in the rough. You kind of have to mod it (easy at least) to increase the pop cap by 50, and the holiday resort part of the game doesn't appear to function properly. And your own minions are kinda stupid as well. Still, to me at least it doesn't detract enough from the game to be a problem. It also has its own spin on the game concept, with being the 'bad guy', dragging out different room types, and having different kinds of minions being the only similarities.

Haven't tried out War for the Overworld or Dungeons 3 yet, but the latter does look very tasty :)

Trine 2 - only missing two xp in last level - does it still count as finished?
EDIT: all xp collected.

Finished a bunch of games lately:
- Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions: an ok beat-them-all but too repetitive and story is very disappointing.
- Dishonored DLCs: as good as the base game.
- Ken Follet's The Pillars of Earth: a good story-driven game like Telltale games.
- The Last Door Season 2: disappointed by this point'n click as I really liked the first season (story and puzzles were not very good imho).
- What Remains of Edith Finch: an excellent walking simulator with lots of emotions. Short but very good.

Full list here.