DARK

If anything, Dark (or DARK as it is stylized) sure has the most generic name of all time that also makes googling anything related to it incredibly hard as the results are from every game ever to have the word dark in their title. I bought Dark with Blood Knights as they were both on sale at the time (probably thanks to same publisher). By chance Dark also happens to have vampires, as well as the unfortunate merit of having received not-so-great reviews.

Blood Knights

I knew that I would not be getting the best game experience ever from Blood Knights. Its reception is mixed at best but I bought it anyway for few reasons. I like hack & slash and vampires are always cool. The developer, Deck13 Interactive, was also already familiar from Venetica. And lastly, the game was dirt cheap on sale at Humble store.

Alien: Isolation

In Alien: Isolation you step into the shoes of Amanda Ripley who is looking for traces of her mother, Ellen, 15 years after the events of the first Alien movie. Amanda's investigation leads her to a run-down space station called Sevastopol where the flight recorder of Nostromo has ended up. Since the second movie exists, we already know what is the result of her search. That does not mean there is a lack of excitement in this title, however.

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North

Evidently War in the North was not a commercial success for Warner Bros. Releasing it a week before Skyrim (and on the same day as Uncharted 3) probably did not help but the game itself also lacks in about every aspect to have even hoped to sell millions of copies. It is still an enjoyable little action RPG that has some added value from the well-established setting it used.

Darksiders II

Darksiders II's events take place concurrently with the first game. You play as Death who has taken as his task to redeem his brother horseman War by restoring the Third Kingdom (ie. humans). He does not know how exactly is he supposed to do that, though, and the quest takes him across many realms. Thus you are not stuck on the overgrown ruins of Earth like in the previous one.

Darksiders

Vigil Games sure did their best to put the least possible effort into the PC port of Darksiders, which is a third person hack and slash game released in 2010. One should probably go into it with a controller ready in hand and just start playing. Well, after changing the resolution. But that is all the customization graphics-wise you are going to get from this title. At least I did not experience any major bugs or stability issues.

Victor Vran

Victor Vran is an action RPG made by Haemimont Games. I think it would be safe to assume that Bastion was a big source of inspiration for the developers as the game shares a lot of features with it. The game mechanics are largely similar but do make an attempt to have bit more depth and variation.

Diablo 3 Season 5 & 6 Musings

In my last year's Diablo III post I mentioned that I might continue playing the game when season 2 hits. I did -- as crusader of course. I did not look up any guides or builds better players had made, and just rolled with my own. I had some success but hit the impassable wall quite soon. I continued playing in season 3 -- as crusader again -- but ended up only leveling to 70 for the transmogs and then quitting. During season 4 I did not touch the game at all and missed the introduction of the Kanai's Cube, which is bit like the Horadric Cube in D2.

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.