Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Mass Effect to be remastered had been requested by fans for quite some time as I recall, although I think the wish was really more for just a re-release so that playing the game on newer consoles would be easier or even possible -- on PC that was never a problem. EA did eventually jump on the remaster bandwagon and BioWare got to put together Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

Batman: Arkham Knight

I remember how Batman: Arkham Knight's PC version was a near disaster at launch. Warner Bros. had to temporarily pause its sales while the game was being fixed by Rocksteady and Iron Galaxy Studios (who did the PC port). I can't say that I'm surprised things didn't work out as was meant after playing the game: it is really pushing Unreal Engine 3's capabilities with the sheer amount of stuff that needs to be displayed and streamed -- the map is five times the size of Arkham City's. I can't name any other UE3 game with as huge of a single map.

Batman: Arkham Origins

Batman: Arkham Origins is the only one of the four main Batman: Arkham games not developed by Rocksteady. My theory (and apparently the official story as well) is that Rocksteady needed more than two years to develop the new features of Arkham Knight but Warner Bros. wanted a new Batman game out sooner. Thus WB put their Montreal studio to make Origins which often times feels like a rehashed Arkham City.

Outlast

Outlast is one of the many similar horror games to come out after Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It is also one of the few that succeeded at becoming hugely popular -- for some reason. The game was given away for free last year, I think, and I decided to finally see what's the fuss about, because of October and Halloween, I guess.

Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition

Bulletstorm failed to meet the expectations of People Can Fly / Epic Games and EA. It did not even turn a profit when it was originally released in 2011. That's maybe not the kind of a game one would expect to see a remaster of, but Gearbox -- who had apparently acquired the rights to it -- decided to publish one anyway.

Q.U.B.E.: Director's Cut

Q.U.B.E.: Director's Cut is yet another Portal without portals. It had a free weekend on Steam, obviously to advertise the release of Q.U.B.E. 2 and knowing how the titles of the genre typically aren't all that long, I decided to quickly play through the game which was developed by Toxic Games and originally released in 2011.

Batman: Arkham City

Batman: Arkham City takes place half a year after the events of the first game. A whole city district has been repurposed into a massive prison. Bruce Wayne opposes the idea, and during a press conference he voices his opinion in, Hugo Strange's thugs capture and throw him in the said facility.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

It was time to finally beat the first two Batman: Arkham games hidden in my Steam library. I have a code for the third's DLC too but I doubt I will buy the actual game nor continue with the series.

Magrunner: Dark Pulse

Playing The Turing Test reminded me that GOG had at some point in the past given away for free a similar, Portal-like puzzle platformer, and that I had meant to maybe play it once I had run out of game backlog.

Life Is Strange

The reason I bought Life Is Strange was me being interested in how Dontnod Entertainment's second game had turned out. The overwhelmingly positive user review consensus on Steam suggested that Square Enix had done wisely for deciding to save Dontnod from bankruptcy. Not many titles have so positive a reception among players.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

I managed to beat my game backlog and got to search for something yet untouched in my steam library. The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, a third person shooter I got with the Humble 2K Bundle in 2014, is what I ended up on. It had actually been on my backlog list earlier but I had removed it because of its mixed reception.

Styx: Master of Shadows

I had been aware of Styx: Master of Shadows for quite some time before purchasing it. For some reason I had been put off by the protagonist's looks; I did not want to play an ugly goblin. But people do recommend it as a good stealth game. It is also a prequel to one of Cyanide Studio's previous titles, Of Orcs And Men, which seems to feature the very same creature as this one although the game is of different genre.

Singularity

Singularity is a first person shooter developed by Raven Software and published by Activision in 2010. It failed to find its audience for some reason, selling under 400k copies. I do not think that was because of its quality as I found the game to be a solid and enjoyable experience even if rather short at below 8 hours.

Solarix

It would seem that Solarix is the 20th Unreal Engine 3 game I have played. And for once -- maybe even for the first time -- I got to play an Unreal Engine game that was not ported to PC from a console version. Unfortunately it was made by a small Turkish-based developer called Pulsetense Games. The lack of resources shows and I would have refunded it within minutes if I had not bought the Steam key from Humble. (I think getting a refund from a third party provider is bit more complicated than from Valve.)

Hunted: The Demon's Forge

I suppose I bought Hunted: The Demon's Forge for the same reason as Blades of Time -- for fun third-person hack and slash. It did not turn out quite as fun as BoT, however -- melee combat seemed to involve being stagger-locked a lot. And so I played through the game using E'lara (an apostrophe because fantasy) who focuses on ranged combat. As the elf, the game is more of a third-person cover-based shooter.

Alpha Protocol

Alpha Protocol is the first non-sequel game by Obsidian Entertainment I have played thus far. It is interesting in that regard because it came out while Obsidian was still continuing to make sequels to existing franchises. I wonder if was the developer or the publisher, Sega, who was behind the idea to create the game.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

Making a sequel to a game as huge as Borderlands 2 can be difficult. It would need to have massive amounts of new stuff and innovation to justify its existence as an actual new game rather than a lazy recycle of old assets. Thus a third game in the series remains to be seen yet -- at least one with a 3 in its title.

Borderlands 2

Borderlands 2 succeeds at being what a game sequel should be. It retains the familiar gameplay but refines it to a better experience. Old features were improved and new ones were added. Maybe there could have been more additions, though, and maybe some features could have used more work -- like the skill trees not being again filled with somewhat dull passives. But overall BL2 is simply a better experience than the first one in every aspect.

Borderlands

The Borderlands series had never seemed too interesting in the past but I decided to buy the Humble Borderlands Bundle last summer regardless. I even paid for the full package because I like my games complete. The bundle did not include the third game, however -- only a coupon for it with a pretty short expiration date. I decided not to use it as The Pre-Sequel! will probably be on sale later on and I should play the two games first to see how much I even like them.

Thief (2014)

I remember seeing a bunch of different controversies before the fourth Thief game even saw its release. The first one was small (and bit silly) in how the title was stylized as THI4F, which to me reads as thiaf. They of course ditched that later on to call it simply Thief.