I haven't added my XIV time because there is a lot of idling in it and its not representative. I only time the individual patches/expansions where I can control the correct time spent on the main scenario.

For me it's fairly accurate, because I don't really idle in-game unless I'm waiting for a long queue. Otherwise there's always something to do, so there's rarely a need to idle. Of course, when an expansion launches, I do idle to take a quick break to eat or something, because I also don't want to wait for 10 000 people login queues just for that.

Also, I always use the playtime command to track time, because I have a non-steam version of the game. So stuff like login queues won't bloat the numbers.

Final Fantasy XIV by far. I'm currently taking a break from the game, so I can't check the exact time, but it's probably around 5200-5300 hours (since Jan/2018).

I probably have a few hundred hours in some games that I've played through dozens and dozens of times over the years, but since I haven't kept active track on all of those times, I guess the second most hours I have in a video game is Monster Hunter World at 327 hours.

Also, as a fun fact: So far I've submitted 535 times here on HLTB over the course of 9 years and the total hours for that come to 9934. Now, of course that includes several hundred hours of FF14 as well, but it's kinda wild that the total gameplay hours of a single game come up to more than half of 9 years worth of other games.

November:
01 - Metro: Last Light Redux (XB1)
09 - Resident Evil 4 (NSW)
10 - Cult of the Lamb (XSS)
17 - Resident Evil VII: Biohazard (XSS)
22 - Resident Evil 5 (XB1)
28 - Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet (DOS)
29 - Resident Evil 2 Remake (XSS)
30 - Grim Dawn: Ashes of Malmouth (XB1)

Tough choice this time around, as RE4, RE7 and Cult of the Lamb were all very good games. Going to give my recommendation this month to Resident Evil 7 however, since I really wasn't expecting to actually like it. I was more curious than anything else. It didn't really have a RE feel as such, and I personally didn't care about any of the characters, but gameplay and atmosphere are both solid. Turns out Resident Evil works well in first person.

October:
14 - AD&D: Pool of Radiance (DOS)
17 - Beat Cop (NSW)
21 - Metal Gear (FC)
30 - Grounded (XSS)

While Grounded was very good, my recommendation has to go to Beat Cop. I had no idea what I was getting into, but man was it good. The style sorta reminds me of Papers Please, in that you progress the game one day at a time, and the game always takes place in the same area, which in the case of Beat Cop is a single street you patrol back and forth. You also need money to keep going and have to make decisions on how to obtain it. You can be a good cop and play by the book, or you can get your hands into more questionable income, such as doing oddjobs for gangs or taking bribes from civilians. All of this is topped off with pleasing pixel art, funny writing, great music and multiple ways to finish the game.

Oooh Silent Hill, I just played it for the first time a few months ago and I absolutely loved it. GL with the game and I'm interested in seeing where this blog goes.

Thank you! I am not quite sure what I will do with the blog just yet. Probably post weekly updates like a lot of others. For now I am just going to try and "borrow" some ideas from other blogs and see where it goes from there :)

Enjoy Silent Hill! I actually just finished this for the first time a few days ago. I'm very bad with horror and it took me a long time to get through it, because I ended up quitting the game a few times because it honestly made me feel stressed. But I'm glad I made through it, I can definitely see why it's considered a cult classic.

Also, I'm very happy to see you intend to play Dragon Quest, as it's my all-time favorite RPG series. It's gonna be a long project to get through them, but most of the games are very good. Personal favorite of the series to me is DQ5, that's what made me truly fall in love with the series.

I'm not quite sure how good I am with horror games myself yet haha. The game is pretty creepy but it will probably get creepier. Yeah, Dragon Quest is a series I want to get into someday along with Final Fantasy! I have heard good things about DQ5 too so maybe I will start from there? I'm not very sure if I should start from the first one or play the fifth one first. As far as I know, the stories aren't really connected so it probably doesn't matter anyway. But I am definitely not playing any right now lol.

When my sister played this she did run into that a lot. By the time she was through her map had many crossed out doors. She’s not sure if it’s different for you since you’re emulating it, but one of the things she will always remember is how the lock was jammed. 😂 You’re just starting so it’s possible that you just haven’t encountered this yet.

Personally I haven’t played this yet, but what I remember is the scream you hear if you lose at one of the boss battles. I don’t want to hear that again and I hope I’m not going to. 😶

Ah okay. I have getting those crosses whenever I encounter a dead end haha. I think I have 4 crosses in my map already. Also the scream if you lose at the boss battles is creeping me out a bit. Haven't heard it yet but I will try my best to not lose any of them haha.

It's up to you where you start of course, but keep in mind that Dragon Quest 1 is where it all started (obviously) and it's very constricted compared to the later games. The basic building blocks are in place, but every other game expanded the formula and world so much, that DQ1 ends up being very different and quite difficult too. The remakes try to alleviate this with various means, but they can't hide or fix the fact that every battle in DQ1 is 1v1, which makes battles a damage race more than anything else. By the way, this is not to say I don't like DQ1, because I really do. Just a friendly bit of advice, I suppose.

Even Dragon Quest 2 expanded and improved everything so much that I'd say that's where the "true" Dragon Quest games begun. But that's also a very tough as nails game and I wouldn't recommend playing it in its original form.

I'd say the best games to hop into the world of DQ would be either DQ4, DQ5 (my favorite, as I mentioned) or DQ8. DQ8 was actually the very first Dragon Quest I ever played, but I admit that back then I didn't like it (I do now). But even still, I think that it's a good place to start. Second Dragon Quest for me was DQ6, which I also didn't like and it's still one of the only games in the series I don't like and can't recommend. But as they say, third time's the charm and that third time was DQ5, which was simply amazing. My favorite version is the Super Famicom one, although the PS2 remake is great too. Haven't played it on DS or on mobile.

Alone in the Dark (1992, DOS) - 4h 7min to finish

Quite possibly one of the "grandfathers" of modern survival horror games. I bet games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill have drawn inspiration from it (and yes, I do know Sweet Home is a thing). If you've played said games, you probably recognise some things Alone in the Dark had too, like tank controls, fixed camera angles, key hunting and lots of, dare I say, non-sensical puzzles.

You also have your creepy monsters that the player is supposed to avoid, rather than fight, but the character you play as, Edward Carnby (or the Hartwood lady whose name I forgot), is also quite a capable fighter. While you do have guns to safely take out monsters, swords and knives, or just your fists alone are surprisingly effective way to do combat. Curiously enough, the monsters aren't really your biggest threat, and instead it's all the deadly traps you have to take care of. There are so many surprise traps that kill you instantly, that Alone in the Dark actually reminds me of old Sierra Point 'n Click adventures. Thankfully there doesn't really seem to be a way to get yourself into an unwinnable situation because you forgot something. I can only think of one thing that would make you reload or start all over, but luckily I managed to stumble into the solution myself. Which is to remove the chock holding the wine barrels in the cellar. This seems to be the only route back in the end.

The game is also quite good at giving you clues to solve most puzzles, that is if you just bother to read through all the books and notes (or listen to the hilariously hammy voice acting). Not everything needs solving either. There seems to be at least couple things that aren't mandatory for beating the game, since the various rooms of the mansion sometimes have multiple entrances.

Graphically the game is very charming to me. It has a super low polygon characters and objects combined with more traditional 2D backgrounds, which I imagine would have been amazing to behold in the early 90s. Now it's just a little silly looking, but it sure did help me personally in dealing with the horror aspects, seeing as I am not very good with that stuff.

The controls work well for what they are, although I never got used to the running controls. You're supposed to double tap forward movement key to activate running, but the timing on that activation is just a complete mystery. Otherwise I didn't mind that you had to iniate different actions like search or fighting through a separate menu.

Overall, Alone in the Dark 1 is an excellent game and I would highly recommend it to just about anyone. I had never played it before, but it instantly became one of my all time favorites and I'm very excited to play more. Well, at least AitD 2 and 3, since I own them and have never played them. I have played AitD 4 before, but I don't fully remember how it was, so I might just replay it, since I own it too.

Enjoy Silent Hill! I actually just finished this for the first time a few days ago. I'm very bad with horror and it took me a long time to get through it, because I ended up quitting the game a few times because it honestly made me feel stressed. But I'm glad I made through it, I can definitely see why it's considered a cult classic.

Also, I'm very happy to see you intend to play Dragon Quest, as it's my all-time favorite RPG series. It's gonna be a long project to get through them, but most of the games are very good. Personal favorite of the series to me is DQ5, that's what made me truly fall in love with the series.

Saw this annoucement through Game Pass app earlier today and was quite surprised to see it. Congrats on this! Very cool feature!

Goblin Sword (NSW)
A fun action platformer which reminds me of 90s Amiga games and especially Super Frog. The idea is to navigate through levels looking for treasure that's usually hidden inside fake walls and corridors. There's rarely any indication where these secrets are, but after a while you get a feel for it and I was pleasantly surprised how often I was either correct or on the right track. Usually in these types of games I have a tendency to overthink or simply guess wrong, but most of the secrets in Goblin Sword were in places I would have placed them.

Every so often you get a boss to fight, which provides some challenge to otherwise relaxed gameplay. Only real challenge comes from collecting all the treasures and unlocking challenge levels for each area. In these areas the difficulty is more on par with platformers of old where you have loads of enemies and spikes to deal with.

For a random game I spotted on Nintendo's store during sales, this was a pleasant surprise and I highly recommend it.

Paris Dakar Rally Special (FC)
Apparently this game has a status as a crappy game, but I've played far worse. While I doubt I'll ever go back to it, it was an okay game, just in desperate need of polishing. But mainly the game is just bizarre. It feels like the devs couldn't really decide what to put in it, so they crammed it full of just plain odd stuff. I thought it was a racing game (like you'd think from the title), but not really. First of all you get this sort of adventure game type of deal where you have to look for a sponsor, get a car and prepare for the upcoming races. First level is also very race like, reminding me of Spy Hunter or a crappy Outrun. You have to basically reach the goal in one piece while avoiding traffic, cars that try to ram you and static and moving barrels. And that's pretty much all of the "normal" racing you're doing. The rest of the game is all over the place; you have to navigate a city maze, do platforming on foot to activate switches, dodge all kinds of projectiles and also do some shooting of your own, both in horizontally and vertically scrolling levels.

Hi no Tori Hououhen: Gaou no Bouken (FC)
Apparently based on a similarly named manga series. Anyway, it's a pretty good action platformer that has a bit of an early Ganbare Goemon feel to it. You navigate through levels fighting enemies and collecting what I think are picture fragments to restore a painting or something. The game seems easy and fairly linear until you realise that you can't access about half of the levels without hidden warps. The difficulty comes from finding the correct warp doors, which teleport you around to different time zones and different stage loops. Otherwise you'll just end up playing the same levels over and over and getting confused.

Finding the warps isn't difficult save for the last one. What is difficult is understanding how the controls work. All of the warps are behind walls you need to destory and you need to completely clear the wall that's blocking the entrance. What isn't clear is that you can't shoot your projectiles (chisels I heard they were) while crouching, cause down + B places a box next to Gaou. To dig lower down, you have to do three crouch jumps to get rid of one destroyable block beneath you. Maybe this was explained in the manual I don't have, but I would have never guessed it myself.

Been a while since I've posted anything to these. March was a good month completion-wise, although not everything I completed was good.

March:
05 - Project Warlock (PC)
15 - MediEvil 2019 (PS4)
21 - Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds (PC)
26 - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (PC)
27 - Final Fantasy XV (PC)
30 - Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work (PC)

Recommendation goes to Project Warlock. It's heavily inspired by classic FPS games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. It captures the look and feel of said games well, while giving you some more modern twists, like skill and weapon upgrading. Overall, it's just pure fun to play and has an excellent soundtrack.

November:
- Absolutely nothing

Well, this is new for me. Usually I play through at least something, but for once I didn't, because life happened. I have been playing a lot still, but it's mostly been Final Fantasy XIV, which is still going strong. Recently passed 2000 hour mark (~1300h after Shadowbringers launched), which I'm actually happy about, cause I've never played a single game this long.

Currently playing Borderlands 3 on the side, so hopefully for December, I'll at least have that on the list.

FF14 is still taking the majority of my time and will continue to do so throughout the rest of the year. I think I have something like 1070-ish hours played since Shadowbringers launched. So the list will be quite short again.

October:
10 - Goonies 2 (FC)
18 - Megaman 11 (PS4)

And that's it. Also working on Wild Arms: Alter Code F and GreedFall, but both are far from finished. At this rate I might not get them done for this month's listing either.

No recommendations this month, because I'm pretty sure I've recommended both games on the list before.

Is it one of the Chzo Mythos games? 7 Days a Skeptic?

Finally got around to play something else besides just FF14.

Wild Arms Alter Code: F (PS2)




The colors are a bit terrible due to having to point my cellphone's camera at my TV and snap photos that way.

I've got about ten hours behind me and I'm still in the early stages of the game. Just got to the point where the game actually begins. Could have gotten here much faster, but I took my time talking to people and reading is slow thanks to huge amounts of text the game has. Thankfully the game uses furigana, which helps immensely in trying to keep up with the story.

To those that don't know, furigana is kinda like a help text, which tells you how the writers want you to read the kanjis. This game actually uses it in a pretty interesting way, cause often they want to use english words for certain terms in order to make something sound more exotic, yet you still get the Japanese meaning in the form of kanjis. So you basically get both the term the writers want you to use and the translation for it in the same package. For example, the mages in the game are called monshou mahoutsukai, but the writers want you to call them crest sorcerers.

Anyway, the game itself has been very promising so far. Of course I already know that Wild Arms 1 is an excellent game, but the remake seems to be doing a good job in trying to capture the original feel, while updating just about everything and anything. You've got lots more dialogue and just about every puzzle has been re-designed thanks to some new mechanics you couldn't do in the original.

It's a shame they decided to drastically change the equipment system though. No longer can you buy or find new weapons and armor, and instead you have to rely on upgrading your starting gear by various means. In fact, armor seems to have been removed entirely, probably because that wasn't a thing in WA3 and Alter Code F uses 3's engine. I haven't gotten that far yet, but I'm guessing you get equippable traits like you got in WA3, which in turn boost your defense and whatnot. So far the only thing I've been able to do is to upgrade Rudy's weapon stats with money (no fossil skulls here) and bind new spells into crests for Cecilia (much like you did in the original game). Nothing for Jack yet.

You also have new playable characters, but so far the only one I've gotten to use was absolutely terrible. She has some interesting ideas on paper, but in practice I didn't get any of them to work, whether due to poor stats and low level or just bad RNG, I managed to miss with every single of her attacks, so I quickly changed her out of the party.

The music has been redone also and it seems to be pretty good too. A lot of it seems to be fairly close to their original counterparts, but sometimes they give the tunes a bit of a new spin. Like how they did with the town theme.

Original version:


Remake:

Oh, I've seen that one being played. One of the few people I follow on Twitch (Sinatar) really hated that game when he tried it. It's called Legend, or The Four Crystals of Trazere

Correct. I have no strong opinions of the game, other than I didn't really get what you're supposed to do in it. I've only briefly tried it on Amiga once.

Hint #1: The game in question is known by two very different names. The US name is something you might expect to see on a cover of a fantasy RPG, while the European name is more generic and consists of only a single word.

Next:

King's Field: The Ancient City on PS2?

Final Fantasy XIV has once again been the major focus of my month, but I've also been busy with life stuff too. That being said, I managed to actually complete some games this time around.

September:
19 - Legend of Zelda (FC)
26 - Snake's Revenge (NES)
27 - Bomberman (FC)

I'm pretty sure I've recommended Zelda in the past, so this month's recommendation goes to Bomberman instead. I was really surprised how fun it was and how close to more modern Bomberman games it already is. Sure, it's lacking the battle mode and there isn't any real variety between levels, but otherwise most of the stuff is already in place, power ups included.

A completely random guess, but is it Swag and Sorcery?

Bomberman (FC)


First impressions are positive. It's surprisingly similar to more modern Bomberman games, only with just one type of level. During the hour or so I tested this, I reached to 16th stage and all of them seem to be similar in size and appearance. Pretty much the only things that change are the location of enemies, power ups, blocks and the exit.

I was also surprised that this already has almost all of the power ups you'd expect from a Bomberman game. I was certainly not expecting power ups for walking through walls and your own bombs. Time bombs are also already a thing and make the game so much easier... until you inevitably make a stupid mistake, which causes you to lose a life and also some of your precious power ups. Nothing like placing a bomb and then moving to the wrong side and ending up stuck between a wall and your own bomb.

Only downsides I can think of right now are the terrible music (which I muted immediately) and the fact that you have to game over in order to gain a password. Clearing a stage always gives you an extra life, so if you simply want to continue the game at another time, be prepared to waste half a dozen lives or even more.

And here's the last batch of games I've recently bought.



From top to bottom, we've got:
Goonies 2: Fratelli Saigo no Chousen
Jajamaru no Daibouken
Romancia
Faria: Fuuin no Tsurugi
Bomberman
Wild Arms: Alter Code F

Out of these games I've only played Goonies 2 and Wild Arms, both of which I know are very good games.

Jajamaru no Daibouken, Faria and Bomberman I've heard of thanks to some friends, but haven't played them myself. Well, aside from giving Bomberman a quick try years ago. Romancia was a completely new thing for me and I bumped into it by complete accident. I know it's a Falcom game and that was enough reason to buy it, cause I've been wanting to look into other Falcom games besides Ys.

I think I may be pretty much set gaming-wise for the rest of the year. I say that and instantly remember all of the Steam and GOG sales that are still coming up...

That's Parasite Eve! From the opening movie. Now that's a game that needs a FF7R-style remake.

Yes, yes and yes. You're correct on all three accounts. The game is indeed Parasite Eve 1 on PS1.

I've only really played TR4 out of the classic Tomb Raider games (which I absolutely hated), but since that didn't look familiar and Lara's model is definitely more detailed than TR1, so TR3 felt like the correct choice.

Next:

Just moving it along folks... I was actually close to posting a Pac Man screenshot but I talked myself out of it.

Tomb Raider obviously. TR3?