Blades of Time

Blades of Time begins a series of less-known games in my shortening backlog. It also got rather close to breaking my rule of not buying or playing Japanese games. While the developer, Gaijin Entertainment, is Russian, the game has a very Asian-inspired thing going on with its visuals. Which is the reason I almost skipped it. But it is not quite there.

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.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Retribution

I happened to notice an oddity in Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising's Steam global achievement stats as only 7% of people have the most unlocked one. I wonder if they were added later when Games For Windows Live got ditched because that is a really low percentage. Usually at least 40% of people have the first achievement of any given game on Steam from what I have seen.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising

It has been some time since I last played a Warhammer 40,000 game, and even longer since I played Dawn of War II. Thus I decided to replay the original campaign the standalone expansion Chaos Rising comes with as well. To remind myself how it was and also because you can import your save into CR's campaign and have maybe slightly better equipment at the beginning.

Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout: New Vegas is yet another case of Obsidian Entertainment being commissioned to make a sequel to a game. It is also bit special in that because several of Obsidian's founders had worked on the original Fallout games. And maybe because of that, New Vegas is a whole lot better than Bethesda-developed Fallout 3 -- at least in my opinion.

Games I Finished in 2015

Finally, with great difficulty, I managed to beat the post backlog I've struggled through the passing year. I spent a good portion of December writing all those posts. Maybe not having one again would be a good new year's resolution, eh?

Fallout 3

The setting of Fallout 3 is definitely not something that is to my liking -- a post-apocalypse nuclear wasteland does not sound particularly compelling. I have seen the game be praised on multiple occassions, however, and I ended up buying it myself -- about a year ago, it would seem. My previous and short-lived experience with the series was Fallout 2 where I got far enough to kill some scorpions (I think) before quiting because the game was not like Infinity Engine games I so love.

Divinity II: Developer's Cut

This one was another case of a sale bugging me many times until I finally decided to buy the Divinity bundle from GOG. What actually made the purchase decision was probably the chance to get some insight to the Divinity universe for Divinity: Original Sin that I will likely buy at some point.