Cibele(0.7 hours): Story game that uses cheap in game game and video shorts to tell a internet love story. Dialogue is pretty cringy, your local news reporting on a facebook story about someone chatting up women in a video game cringy. Remember kids online only relationships aren't real until they are.
DOOM(9.1 hours): "They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you. You will be worse. Rip and tear, until it is done." Can't believe they pulled this off after the horrible showing from the multiplayer. You don't need to buy this game today but you need to buy it by the end of the year. I know everyone has nostalgia issues but slowly the gaming industry is turning around and it is incredible. Wolfenstein, Tomb Raider, and now DOOM; these games without a doubt show there are groups still creating some of the best core games around(Yeah Witcher/Elder Scrolls/Fallout you know what I mean).
Everything kicks off like a normal day. Wake up chained to a stone tomb and something wanting to eat your face. But you don't have time for that because you need to mail a letter by 4:30, so grab a pistol and start shooting fuckers in the face TOOTTOOT. Everything in the game screams classic shooter. Arena styled rooms that are straight up slugfests between you and 50 demons. You get road blocked by a Blue door better find a blue key....or just pick up the dudes torso with the key still on it since the key is so oily. There is no health regen despite kind of having a regen system. Glory kills are introduced from the start because when you glory kill an enemy they drop health which you need throughout the game. This helps keep you from turtling during large fights and builds urgency for killing demons. Plus ripping a demon's butt off and bitch slapping it in the face just feels right.
Loved the story in this game. There were some twist they could have used but didn't. I need another DOOM game for more story. This DOOM reboot gives a new backstory for doomguy by telling you he isn't a space marine face stomping Satan because he hasn't gotten his coffee this morning. When the sequel is announced I will need a new pair of pants.
Played on medium and died a good amount. There was a weird few levels in the middle that felt too easy.....-_-. You really need to rip and tear through the horde to stay alive as they all want a piece of your sexy ass. Everything has an upgrade system and the game rewards you for exploring some but primarily for killing demons. It is nice until you hit about 75% in the campaign as I had already maxed my upgrade paths; kills the desire to explore more. A solely platform 10 minute level would have been hilarious in the middle.
Really. I think it isn't a good review. DOOM is so hard to put into words because of how it feels without doing real spoilers. Its not a Portal but it is a few notches above the new Wolfenstein. Didn't want to lace the review with a bunch of profanity despite cussing a lot while playing; "oh you fucker get off me. FINE I AM SHOVING THIS BFG UP YOUR ASS A-HOLE!" I don't know how it is going to hold up in 5 years but the mechanics are what you want while being supported by more modern ideas.
To me this is the first time that I want to say id and Bethesda are back. They need to sell the little DOOM figures so I can buy them all.
Rise of the Tomb Raider(11.2 hours): Where were my QTE so I could endlessly watch Lara die? Feels like they took a bunch of grit out of this game. They use 2 weeks ago flashbacks a couple times and I feel that is a horrible story element because you could just start there and jump forward if your connections were good, if they aren't should that scene really be in the game.
970 SLI seemed to struggle a few times at 2k with this game when DOOM ran smooth as hell on high at 2k. The game effectively picks up where Tomb Raider leaves off, they even have newspapers laying around in cut scenes to remind you. After getting home you pick up your father's work that left your family discredited. This means tracking down something that "The Prophet" carried with him and left some where. They don't want to say Jesus despite saying "The Prophet" died and rose again but the adversarial entity in this game considers him to be false and must die again(maybe he won't come back to life this time YOLO??). So basically you run around trying to track down this thing that you really aren't sure what it is and learn about who these people are really.
This one missed a little on why Tomb Raider was so good. Several times you are stuck in areas that have secrets or challenges that you can't complete because you are missing a piece of equipment you get several hours later. There aren't very many times when you go back through the same area and when you do it is really about skirting through the edge of that section instead of just jumping directly to your destination. Challenges feel tacked on just for people that want to spend more time in game where I would think a New Game+ is better suited for this. Feels like they expected you to be nagged so much by preventing you from doing things that you would seek them out later. Finished the game with 66%. There is a huge amount of back story and that is what should drive your desire to collect and explore but at 8 hours I got tired of listening to the same soldier of fortune story line to explain things.
There are all the fun climbing things like ice walls, rock walls, rotten wood walls, grapple hook points, rope swings, etc. You have tech builds on weapons and a 3 branched character skill set. Hunting animals.......just why as it doesn't add anything past the first 2 missions.
Now the most important things. Lara's clothing. Who ever spent time modeling should get promoted to best worker in the game industry. Spent a bunch of time just looking at Lara because I care about shadows and model mapping. What I realized is that her clothing isn't just wrapped around a skeleton mesh but it is built to look like real women's clothing. The way her leather jacket tapers and the shoulders stick out a little extra at the lapels is perfect. Her pants have flat pockets. She isn't wearing men's clothing for damn sure. That is freaking immersion. Spent so much time just looking at her clothing.
Combat is super duper easy 95% of the time. Enemies like to expose themselves and wait almost a full second so you can stick an arrow between their eyes before they even think of firing their weapon. Stuff slows down as armor is introduced but it feels rather cheap since as it receives more damage it eventually just falls off the person instead of being penetrated. Feels especially lame when a dude is just wearing a helmet and no other armor....really guys we get it enemies are "harder" now. Enemy mechanics never change only their weapons and armor are altered.
Story is pretty basic with find guy, find thing, save the world. It doesn't need to be very deep to be fun but the turn they placed into the plot feels cheap as though it was phoned in instead of spending 30 minutes to flush it out. Up until that point it was going good and actually had me guessing. Some things were revealed that made me go "what?!" while others felt like a relief because the answer was perfect.
If you played Tomb Raider you most likely want to play this but I would wait a bit for the price to drop, $40 is right on the edge for acceptable on this game while DOOM at full price is fine if you can't wait. There will be a 3rd installation so I want to see if they follow this game or go back to wading through blood for Lara.
Did they change her face or is just added depth/shadow on her model:
Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider
lulz that death face is horrible
Looks at all the fucks I give Jacob
Lara we need to talk about your obsession with Tombs
What is going on with that shadow?
Her facial expressions outside of cut scenes.......yeah
Now kiss!
Don't have a shot but her butt is swimming, I will be in my bunk
Really glad to see these games revamped as I didn't get into them growing up, but loving them now. I think they could make the platforming harder but they should really work on detection angles because they are "you were 1 pixel off" level of frustration some times. A new generation will have hundreds of hours playing Tomb Raider with never getting past the first chapter
Bulb Boy(105 minutes): This game was done by a small 2-4 man team; 2 people who run the company that made it and 2 guys they brought on to create the game. It is a creepy point and click game where you play a bulb boy who is trying to save his bee dog and his bulb grandfather in their bulb home. The game itself is littered with references to other games and child hood things.
One could argue that it is kind of an ode to someone's non-nuclear family and how as a child they had to fight to keep it together.
However, it comes off like a The Voices situation as the character is laughing a lot despite the messed up or depraved things that take place. Puzzles aren't very hard and usually they give you some major hint or walk you through an alternate scene prior that explains the solution. Music in this game plays a huge parts as it seems very normal and basic until you realize all the registers are off a half step or more in the wrong direction.....everything has a super creepy tone to it.
There was a huge amount done with the atmosphere within the game to set you off just enough you might not notice until 20 minutes of just feeling weird despite making progress without major road blocks.
You fight something with a big vagina for a mouth....
Also you can pull your bulb head off your body and stick it in things like dead fish or spiders
12 Labours of Hercules IV: Mother Nature(7.1 hours): These games are like the Teddy Floppy ear games......I can't stop won't stop. Didn't realize they had pumped out more of the 12 Labours games so I have some catching up. Appears that the assets and engine are still all the same so they pretty much just need to build cut scenes, create levels, build scripts, and map menu for all new games. Currently the most expensive game in the series is $4.99 while everything else is $2.99; cheap games that give you 5+ hours of game time.
Just another installment of time management. Pretty much they are just mashing stuff together and creating new stories so they can sell another game. Really think they have their price range set correctly if they truly are reusing as many assets as possible. Graphics and gameplay haven't changed a bit from the previous games(go check my other reviews). On normal things aren't hard at all and I manage gold time every map without any fretting.
Plot for this game is that nature has been destroyed and you travel around with your wife to clean everything up. That is of course after the gods try to kill Hercules but we all know that will never work.
After the murder plot fails and the gods aren't sure what to do they sort of come up with a trick. Using some special mirror they create an anti-Hercules. This adds a new element that is not explained and shows they are doing fixed time table with no slip. Whenever anti-Hercules shows up you just need to click on him and the real Hercules boots him but they never tell you that and there is no indication he is even clickable. While he is sitting on the map he scares away all your servants, slaves, and prevents them from accessing that part of the map. Very simple to deal with but it slows you down a tad late game on a map when it becomes busy. Warps were introduced except executed poorly as well as tunnels. Once I realized what that stuff on the map was I started ignoring foot paths and just watching for circles around items to appear to indicate they were now reachable.
Humor is still there.
The story really only goes through 4 stages and would have been fine just to kill it there but they tacked on a lame 5th chapter that felt like management said we always have 5 we have to have 5. Guys you are making a cheap installment series where instead of calling it DLC you are releasing new maps at $5 a pop as a new game.
There was one interesting bonus map that used servants on the bottom and Hercules on the top so you have two parties in different sections of the map until you clear it. Presented as a nice concept after the standard maze like maps from mid game forward.
A Story About My Uncle(2.2 hours): I think I got this in a humblebundle but almost bought it during a steam sale, at which point I realized I already own...yup. Why is there voice acting? This game shouldn't have had any voice acting. Everything opens with having to listen to a man talk to his child in a strangely gated string of english about his uncle. One of the few times I would have preferred massive walls of text so I could build my own idea of who the characters are. That honestly ruined the game for me.
Coming into the game you know its a platformer where you just do things because the level directs you certain places. See some light way down range, ok that is where I need to be some how. Mario doesn't need any explaining besides go rescue the princess. People know what to do in a platform game. The only thing that you have to learn besides jump to those rocks is that your weird science grapple has a limited number of charges, you can fall and survive any distance, and you can charge jump(there is something else).
Several strange story mechanics are used. You gain the ability to increase the number of charges on your grapple but that happens in all of 30 minutes instead of across an hour and several levels. Forced dialogue sequences happen but they don't lock the player so you can just walk away and everything still plays out?? There is a distinctive written language that a character translates for you twice despite it being all over the place in two levels. A lot of choices in the game are just weird.
None the less as you travel through the levels everything gives a great feel, regarding the environment. Several unique areas have been created that you play through. One thing does stay consistent, you fall you die. Several times I wished for an invisible floor so you can hit it and die faster. The way levels are designed you can fall and catch on model edges but to low to get back up. Unreal engine at its best. Some times you die because you fall into water. They bothered to explain away why falling into water kills a video game character.
They attempt to create more depth for the game but it is still so shallow it feels slapped on. If you are going to put in the HL crowbar Gordon Freeman the crap out of your character. No talking so the player becomes the character through their personal experience of your game.
One boss fight. On steam it said this game is a successor to The Ball. The Ball had several boss fights and this game has one
Icrontic just ate my draft as I was typing it; not retyping paragraphs. The Runner sections are awesome. Should be a free game mode so you have unlimited grapples. Small team. Trailer is a great marketing piece as its just the good stuff.
Transmissions: Element 120(0.7 hours): A free to play game that is a short story in the Half-Life 2 universe. Built on the same assets and the source engine it has all the trimmings of a Valve game. With only 4 acts in the entire game, and they short, there isn't much content but given its short length a dozen achievements it is something I feel most of us would replay at least once to ensure 100%.
You awake on a train after listening to some strange transmission. The only oddity about this game is that Gordon can't jump worth beans any more. Feels like you can maybe get 6 inches off the ground by hitting space bar. This is very intentional since within the first act you come across the crowbar, pistol, and modded gravity gun. The new gravity is kind of the center piece of the game since you can use it to rocket jump and shoot people or objects with it. This iteration isn't really a shooter, much more of the platformer/puzzle from HL1. All of the standard HL2 elements are there but the developers did throw in some fun things. In the dark the zombies and headcrabs don't see you so you can just walk around them but this also works another way. There are glow in the dark messages left for you to give you information or show the correct path when you have several choices.
One silly thing in the game was QR codes that had messages for you. WHY???? There is an achievement for viewing them all. I found them all but couldn't automatically view them because the decode system is wack, and it feels intentional. Only gripe about the entire thing is the QR codes. You can collect most of the old arsenal after puzzling your way into their room, usually a door in the corner or a chair blocking you from the other side. Have all the weapons doesn't matter much since the gravity gun is super OP.
There is a battle at the end which isn't hard but is the only real fight in the game. You can brute force it or be clever and cake walk most of it. This HL2 "episode" has a Lost Coast feel without any real story being added to the universe, just something fun that is also new. Sit down and play it.
Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball(2 hours): Just think about that name for a minute. Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball. This game is about something. It is about robots in a disco who happen to be playing in a dodgeball tournament that include roller-derby rules.
This is a game I have seen on the humblebundle several times but only 6 people on my friends list own. $8 normal price, comes with a fantastic in game soundtrack, supports online/local/co-op(I think). The scale of this game seems they wanted it to take hold more than it did but wow there is a lot of great content for such an indie seeming game. In 2 hours I played a half dozen game modes, maybe a dozen maps, and didn't get sick of the music. Everything in this game has a great mix, except the lag correction OMG. But seriously sit down and listen to this OST. 8-bit, electro, and a dash of generic to make it come off fantasticly. When the online players talk smack by saying "Did you wake up and listen to the soundtrack on the bus to school this morning" it has to be good. Between this OST and DOOM OST I am set for generic awesomeness to stream at work.
Graphics aren't fantastic but they aren't trying to pretend. You get transported back to the original TRON on crack with the neon flashes. The overall goofy nature of this game lets asset overlay be part of the motif. Some much of the game feels like over stimulating your visual senses. I could see this as an arcade game back in a dark corner alone flashing crazy neon lights and pumping wild beats with some spindly kid having his face almost pressed against the glass as his hands dance across a roller ball and fingers constantly tapping the only button.
Controls in the game are actually really good. You have full twitch movement from the mouse and directional movement is spot on despite having an inability to stop and momentum. Jumping plain sucks because it has a charge function that causes a cool down, but you can't jump worth squat so jumping while engaged with someone is silly except...... . Lag correction and players being the host cause the only real downside. You have balls jumping around and players teleporting on you but overall it seems fine. This doesn't stop you from absolutely blasting their back side with your oversized ball. Any of us that game and play some kind of FPS should be able to pick this up and feel like they know how to play in 30 minutes.
Everything comes down to gameplay. With a single weapon, your ball, you have to play mind games. Do some dash dancing, fake lunge, turn like you want to run. Like playing Quake or UT with only rockets. Everyone can dodge what they see coming so you have to make them think they got your attack figured out and then BAM right in their stupid robot face. You get a standard array of power ups that can help you out some but better strats will always carry you.
Absolute Drift(3.0 hours): This game about one thing Tofu; yes.
You are drifting your Tofu to drifters nirvana, only the best for the Buddha of the mountain pass right. The game actually starts out with a Buddha statue telling you to drift. Unlocking tracks and game modes is done through a free play map where you pass "missions" to unlock more. The missions are used to help you work on your skills without doing it on a track for points, though I wish there was a none counted points feature for free play so you learn faster how to wrack up a huge score.
This isn't all about drifting your AE86 through the passes at night. Some times you have to take your tofu mobile on some sweet jumps. The features are a little limited but you don't need much for what the game is doing You can change your paint scheme, car type, and current song. The cars go from the 86 to like a supra knock off or something and end up with a micro bus(its a boss for realz). There are two things to do in the game. 1 is to get the highest score possible on a track, drifting, which amounts to figuring out how to chain all your drifts without crashing or just one massive drift. 2 is just jet around the free roam while the tunes chill you out.
A simple color palette and the isometric view point helps keep you in a grooved out zone. This is another game with a stellar soundtrack. As a "simple" game it is a great stand out and would be awesome if more people picked it up and played. The missions and points can get wonky/frustrating but this game honestly shines because you can reach that point of zen on a map where you feel untouchable or just zoom around through warehouses watching the world pass.
12 Labours of Hercules V: Kids of Hellas(7.3 hours): The last game I finished was back in August, wow. Slightly ashamed I get so excited when a new one of these releases but I always buy the newest version for 50 cents. 4 and 5 have been 7 hours, literally have 28 hours in for the entire series. By the end of each release I hate the game simply because I cram them so I am done. I think I did this one in about 36 hours. These games are all the same. Beat a level and move forward. Find a puzzle piece and do a bonus level. Click click click. Kind of strange reading steam reviews of this game because people complain about it but if you are playing this then most likely you have played the others and they are cookie cutter. What did you expect Progress Quest 3D???
The story involves Hercules playing with his shiny balls to unzombie kids Ares took over because he is a butt hurt prick. This iteration follows 4 plot development which means the story only covers 4 chapters and the 5th is there because they always have 5. The developers crammed in levels just for their standard achievements. Portals continue to show up which is the one element to the game which I honestly hate because blue portals go to all blue portals and it gets confusing after mid game where paths intermingl. The game is still Defense Grid level of can't stop playing.
Viscera Cleanup Detail(3.2 hours): Rage quit this. Honestly this game feels like utter bullshit. The easy levels are par 2 hours, it is 2 hours. You find yourself having to pick up a single shotgun shell at at time or 5 pieces of intestine from one body but lets repeat that 20 times over. Everything in the game seems designed just to take more time. There is a lot of depth to the game but it is something where you have to invest 20+ hours(feels like).
Everything is done in a map scenario. You are a sanitation worker that has to clean up everyone else's mess. Usually that means some science went horribly wrong and most everyone is dead so have fun handling dead bodies. Pretty sure they are not following OSHA regulations. Since there are dead bodies every where there must be blood every where and blood can be smeared. So if you step in the blood you track it around for X steps depending on how big the puddle was. Also as pools of blood, or whatever, get bigger they take longer to clean up with your mop. Now this is where it gets feeling futile. Every 6 or so pushes with your mop you have to go clean it in a bucket. After the water in the bucket gets dirty you have to incinerate the bucket and get a new bucket. But every bucket you procure from the clean bucket machine has a chance of being a bloody limb which you then have to dispose of and clean up the mess it just made. Now repeat this with every type of machine in the game. Some times you have to use a lift but the lift will jerk and jam so while the lift is moving you have to hold the bucket or risk the machine spilling your dirty water every where. Add to this the awkward physics so sometimes items get bumped or don't behave correctly so a mess is made. You spend such a huge time cleaning shit up so you can clean shit up. No idea how people find this fun. BTW there is a scoring system on each level but if you want to know how that works you need to go look stuff up on community boards. While cleaning you will find notes about what happened and flash drives and other random stuff but the little extras just don't feel like enough to make feel like I should have never bought this game.
The achievements on the special maps mean you have to play the game for hours and hours to clear them. I think anyone that 100%s this game is insane. @FettBacon how do you have 4 hours in this game?
INSIDE(3.4 hours): What the hell INSIDE. The company that made INSIDE also created LIMBO. They are the same games but hugely different. Control scheme is very basic since you just use the arrow keys and right control button, they don't tell you this but simply start the game. A platform puzzler that is just story and atmosphere; plus a bathoshphere. The game is compelling with detail so starting the game and finishing in one sitting feels natural. This is a beautiful game where you spend a lot of time watching a small child die. Explore every where in the map and follow the color cues. Go enjoy this wonderful experience.
Montaro(2.7 hours): I spent over an hour just collecting Japanese school girl's panties as a Shiba Inu while ignoring dogecoin. This is a mobile port of a fun little runner that I never really got the hang of. You have a few costumes to unlock by collecting dogecoin but once you have done that there is little reason to continue play without any stats or incentive; only one true costume exist solidedoge. Strangely there is a health meter but you don't die when it gets to zero panties because then you just become banana dazed for a few seconds, everything kills you in one hit but only certain things when hit from a certain direction. This is a game where you have to learn the rules for some enemies by trial and error but then after certain deaths you just feel cheated. The cards for the games steam badge are 25-30 cents?????? Is the Russian mob laundering money with these cards??? Wait it isn't the rarest of my badges even at lvl 2, not even in the top 6???? So many questions.
Project Cars 2 (32 hours): I love Burnout2. GRiD and DiRT were inspirational. Real sims I have never truly enjoyed. The entire reason I own this game is for IC Race Nights. Racing once a week with people I have known for a decade has been incredibly joyful. The game I could take it or leave it but I need to keep the fun with friends.
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier (6.5 hours): Now this is a good game. The art style and engine work well finally after many games. Oh my gosh the story sucked me in almost immediately. The game actually let me murder some people, awhile ago I switched my play style for TWD games to be more evil as the story choices seemed to shift towards neutral/good. Several points in the story I literally gasped in surprise and shock. There isn't to much game to the game but the choices you got to make during the long movie segments were big enough to wash over the lack of control the game would physically give you. 100% must play even out of order.
Metro Exodus (15.7 hours): This is the end my friend, it was a good ride. The premise of the game is you finally leave the Metro behind and travel out into the world, given the previous events that seems a logical direction for the story to have progression while pushing to some kind of good wholesome conclusion. Metro Exodus gives you a conclusion where you can rest and just be done.
The game is much more open world than what I felt worked well with the story. You can meander around a lot looking at the environment and seeing what it has to offer but the density of your finds in the open world were too low a lot of the time to make that effort beneficial. I would burn through ammo and health packs checking out a ship or wandering around in the woods but would never find more resources than what I burned. The game itself pushed you to explore and do things but it was counter productive to your survival through the story line, main story events provided you so many resources that I could easily max weapons and keep my munitions fully stocked. Only in one chapter did I find myself having to be careful about which gun I used to ensure I still had bullets of some kind.
When you leave the Metro you do so on a train. Makes sense, you live in the Russian Metro so why not take a train to leave. How the train was used in the game makes the choice feel like it was the easiest way to create chapters of the game and move the characters into disjointed environments. Metro -> Swamp -> Desert -> Forest -> City. You show up some where, run around, kill some things, do somethings, get on the train and jump some where else. In the grand scheme of the game it didn't matter but after 6 hours it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Torchlight 2 (28 hours): Never finished the first torchlight despite how many times I have said I will go back and run it. Completed this game with @Massalinie. Never played Diablo or the like. We had a lot of good laughs and frustration. One minute our builds would be rock solid then the next one of us would get wrecked by mobs constantly, almost impossible to figure out why there was such a massive shift in the dmg type or how to anticipate it besides dieing a lot. We started a Game+ with my high hopes then that lasted about one night.
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 (22 hours): @Massalinie got me to play this game. One of her friends plays it and she was interested. I very much dig 4 player co-op games as it allows for simple repetition grinding which is very comforting to me. Just playing the low level difficulty most anyone who has played other wave based 4 player games can walk through. There is exploring for extra points or increasing difficulty. Big issue is the game is class and weapon based but poor balance. The ranged elf will absolutely slaughter everything in her path and the dual wielding pistol gentleman is right behind her. A game based on Warhammer where the hack and slahers are second tier doesn't feel good after 10+ hours. I stopped with plenty of grind left because it wasn't more than simply grinding, how PayDay2 felt after they kept introducing more and more stuff or freaking Overwatch drops where you play to check a box.
Warframe (17 hours): Coworker got me into this before Destiny 2 was given out to everyone as a please don't be mad at us. Space gun-fu 3rd person shooter that is F2P. Had fun for about 10 hours but after that were unlocking or manufacturing takes a while or has some complexity I was out. There are several gravity exploits for movement speed which means spamming the keyboard as you run down halls looting. Worth a few hours to see what the game is about. More mobs than Destiny 2 and feels a lot tighter but less polish of course.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (15.2 hours): To much gofor stuff. They placed a lot of things to collect, places to go, and extra actions to do but it overwhelmed me. Even with putting in a high effort level I at best completed 75% of one area, it broke me.
The premise of the game is Croft just murdered a bunch of innocent people because she can't stop won't stop the tomb raiding. Her journey through the game is learning to leave things and just look instead of this obsessive compulsive hoarding at all cost, including human. Her journey feels false in the end despite saving the world and a 'lost' culture that she had no idea existed despite its almost constant contact in some form with the outside world. The last act with its insane siege battles and magic could have lasted a bit longer. You got these super awesome powers then it is over very quickly.
Hopefully this is the last game for a while until they figure out how to reboot the series, everything was planned out at the conclusion. The journey in this series is worth the time but the magic has faded enough to just leave it for a while. I got to pet a llama.
The Walking Dead: The Final Season (9.2 hours): From a story telling view the final season feels like a small step back as they returned to making the player manually talk to whomever they want and find collectibles. This didn't seem to add any special side stories that you could 'find' but simply cause certain scenes to take longer to play out. The game is closing down the Telltale Walking Dead series as the studio shut down shop permanently but the story is trying to figure how to raise a child in the after The Walking Dead universe.
The episodes were a bit long, maybe because only 4. Normally I am used to them being sub 1 hour and slowly getting longer. These episodes started at almost 2 hours, except for the last one. I tried to play this one a little nicer since what I did affected my child but half the time it felt like that bit in my butt later.......they had the perfect ending shot but then they had to ruin it by putting 30 more minutes of game in. In that last 30 minutes they put in a cool team credits scene which could have been just a cut scene but they also put in a freakin' blade runner speech out of left field.
DiRT 3 Complete Edition (14.0 hours): Some how my original progress was lost but it was not on the complete edition. Ok game but I do not enjoy the non-rally stuff very much
Games Completed: 143
Time: 6 weeks 145.07 hours
The Walking Dead: Michonne (3.6 hours): Was an ok filler story.
Games Completed: 144
Time: 6 weeks 148.67 hours
Borderlands 2 (49 hours): @Massalinie Double teamed this game and the DnD DLC. Sponges every where
Games Completed: 145
Time: 7 weeks 29.67 hours
Paladins (31 hours): @Massalinie followed me onto this game after I became so frustrated with grinding overwatch. More MOBA and it felt like there was much less risk from instant kills so you could react. Honestly fun times when the games had people who knew how to play.
Games Completed: 146
Time: 7 weeks 60.67 hours
Minecraft StoryMode (12.1 hours): Man what did they do to the story of this. They couldn't figure it out so things ended up so disjointed and dumb after the chopped off the first story arc.
Sniper Elite v2 (5.4 hours): That game that lets you shoot Nazis and Russians in the dick right after you shoot 3 bottles of wine. Textures are for sure dated at this point but the sneak level needed for the game play holds up. Some levels are barrels that make you fight while others provide a surprising level of freedom to slip around. Bullet drop still feels inconsistent at times, experience from Ghost Warrior, where 80 meters is dead on but 110 is almost on the first full mill line. For a .30 rifle and ranged for combat I would be expecting POA/POI be at 150+, min 200 realistically given what the m1s/k31s were doing at 300 meters.
Games Completed: 148
Time: 7 weeks 78.07 hours
Sniper Ghost Warrior 2 (5.8 hours): I dropped this game for years because of a bug in the first full mission where enemies became invisible and it pissed me off enough that I rage quit a game I had just paid for. Ghost Warrior is a more modern Sniper Elite but turned the insane parts of the game up a bit. You get a lot more guided scenarios for clearing enemies instead of point X. The game was fine but between Sniper Elite and Ghost Warrior I think that is it for me unless people want to go around with the Zombie Army versions, don't think we ever finished number dos.
FYI I am throwing in games I finished awhile ago but never included if you didn't pick that up.
Fall Guys (10.8 hours): Battle Royal co-op platformer party game. Great fun for about 5 hours by yourself and a lot better when you play with a few friends because you can cheer each other on. Not sure how much more I am going to play since it is actually pretty grindy once you figure out how to play all of the mini-games. All of the mini games are really simple but it becomes very complicated when dealing with 56 randoms on the internet and your character can't stand up if the wind blows lightly from the side.
Comments
Cibele(0.7 hours): Story game that uses cheap in game game and video shorts to tell a internet love story. Dialogue is pretty cringy, your local news reporting on a facebook story about someone chatting up women in a video game cringy. Remember kids online only relationships aren't real until they are.
Games Completed: 122
Time: 5 weeks 96.81 hours
DOOM(9.1 hours): "They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you. You will be worse. Rip and tear, until it is done." Can't believe they pulled this off after the horrible showing from the multiplayer. You don't need to buy this game today but you need to buy it by the end of the year. I know everyone has nostalgia issues but slowly the gaming industry is turning around and it is incredible. Wolfenstein, Tomb Raider, and now DOOM; these games without a doubt show there are groups still creating some of the best core games around(Yeah Witcher/Elder Scrolls/Fallout you know what I mean).
Everything kicks off like a normal day. Wake up chained to a stone tomb and something wanting to eat your face. But you don't have time for that because you need to mail a letter by 4:30, so grab a pistol and start shooting fuckers in the face TOOT TOOT. Everything in the game screams classic shooter. Arena styled rooms that are straight up slugfests between you and 50 demons. You get road blocked by a Blue door better find a blue key....or just pick up the dudes torso with the key still on it since the key is so oily. There is no health regen despite kind of having a regen system. Glory kills are introduced from the start because when you glory kill an enemy they drop health which you need throughout the game. This helps keep you from turtling during large fights and builds urgency for killing demons. Plus ripping a demon's butt off and bitch slapping it in the face just feels right.
Loved the story in this game. There were some twist they could have used but didn't. I need another DOOM game for more story. This DOOM reboot gives a new backstory for doomguy by telling you he isn't a space marine face stomping Satan because he hasn't gotten his coffee this morning. When the sequel is announced I will need a new pair of pants.
Played on medium and died a good amount. There was a weird few levels in the middle that felt too easy.....-_-. You really need to rip and tear through the horde to stay alive as they all want a piece of your sexy ass. Everything has an upgrade system and the game rewards you for exploring some but primarily for killing demons. It is nice until you hit about 75% in the campaign as I had already maxed my upgrade paths; kills the desire to explore more. A solely platform 10 minute level would have been hilarious in the middle.
You think you scare me? Eat this you butt wipe.
Games Completed: 123
Time: 5 weeks 107.91 hours
Man you sold me. I was not at all interested in Doom until I read this.
Really. I think it isn't a good review. DOOM is so hard to put into words because of how it feels without doing real spoilers. Its not a Portal but it is a few notches above the new Wolfenstein. Didn't want to lace the review with a bunch of profanity despite cussing a lot while playing; "oh you fucker get off me. FINE I AM SHOVING THIS BFG UP YOUR ASS A-HOLE!" I don't know how it is going to hold up in 5 years but the mechanics are what you want while being supported by more modern ideas.
To me this is the first time that I want to say id and Bethesda are back. They need to sell the little DOOM figures so I can buy them all.
This game is like HL2-EP2.
The DOOM OST just makes you want to say fuck yeah......just like playing the game.......why aren't you playing the game. Rip and tear my friends.
So you're saying some people may have over reacted based on a Multiplayer only BETA?
Yes.
Rise of the Tomb Raider(11.2 hours): Where were my QTE so I could endlessly watch Lara die? Feels like they took a bunch of grit out of this game. They use 2 weeks ago flashbacks a couple times and I feel that is a horrible story element because you could just start there and jump forward if your connections were good, if they aren't should that scene really be in the game.
970 SLI seemed to struggle a few times at 2k with this game when DOOM ran smooth as hell on high at 2k. The game effectively picks up where Tomb Raider leaves off, they even have newspapers laying around in cut scenes to remind you. After getting home you pick up your father's work that left your family discredited. This means tracking down something that "The Prophet" carried with him and left some where. They don't want to say Jesus despite saying "The Prophet" died and rose again but the adversarial entity in this game considers him to be false and must die again(maybe he won't come back to life this time YOLO??). So basically you run around trying to track down this thing that you really aren't sure what it is and learn about who these people are really.
This one missed a little on why Tomb Raider was so good. Several times you are stuck in areas that have secrets or challenges that you can't complete because you are missing a piece of equipment you get several hours later. There aren't very many times when you go back through the same area and when you do it is really about skirting through the edge of that section instead of just jumping directly to your destination. Challenges feel tacked on just for people that want to spend more time in game where I would think a New Game+ is better suited for this. Feels like they expected you to be nagged so much by preventing you from doing things that you would seek them out later. Finished the game with 66%. There is a huge amount of back story and that is what should drive your desire to collect and explore but at 8 hours I got tired of listening to the same soldier of fortune story line to explain things.
There are all the fun climbing things like ice walls, rock walls, rotten wood walls, grapple hook points, rope swings, etc. You have tech builds on weapons and a 3 branched character skill set. Hunting animals.......just why as it doesn't add anything past the first 2 missions.
Now the most important things. Lara's clothing. Who ever spent time modeling should get promoted to best worker in the game industry. Spent a bunch of time just looking at Lara because I care about shadows and model mapping. What I realized is that her clothing isn't just wrapped around a skeleton mesh but it is built to look like real women's clothing. The way her leather jacket tapers and the shoulders stick out a little extra at the lapels is perfect. Her pants have flat pockets. She isn't wearing men's clothing for damn sure. That is freaking immersion. Spent so much time just looking at her clothing.
Combat is super duper easy 95% of the time. Enemies like to expose themselves and wait almost a full second so you can stick an arrow between their eyes before they even think of firing their weapon. Stuff slows down as armor is introduced but it feels rather cheap since as it receives more damage it eventually just falls off the person instead of being penetrated. Feels especially lame when a dude is just wearing a helmet and no other armor....really guys we get it enemies are "harder" now. Enemy mechanics never change only their weapons and armor are altered.
Story is pretty basic with find guy, find thing, save the world. It doesn't need to be very deep to be fun but the turn they placed into the plot feels cheap as though it was phoned in instead of spending 30 minutes to flush it out. Up until that point it was going good and actually had me guessing. Some things were revealed that made me go "what?!" while others felt like a relief because the answer was perfect.
If you played Tomb Raider you most likely want to play this but I would wait a bit for the price to drop, $40 is right on the edge for acceptable on this game while DOOM at full price is fine if you can't wait. There will be a 3rd installation so I want to see if they follow this game or go back to wading through blood for Lara.
Did they change her face or is just added depth/shadow on her model:
Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider
lulz that death face is horrible
Looks at all the fucks I give Jacob
Lara we need to talk about your obsession with Tombs
What is going on with that shadow?
Her facial expressions outside of cut scenes.......yeah
Now kiss!
Don't have a shot but her butt is swimming, I will be in my bunk
Really glad to see these games revamped as I didn't get into them growing up, but loving them now. I think they could make the platforming harder but they should really work on detection angles because they are "you were 1 pixel off" level of frustration some times. A new generation will have hundreds of hours playing Tomb Raider with never getting past the first chapter
Games Completed: 124
Time: 5 weeks 119.11 hours
Bulb Boy(105 minutes): This game was done by a small 2-4 man team; 2 people who run the company that made it and 2 guys they brought on to create the game. It is a creepy point and click game where you play a bulb boy who is trying to save his bee dog and his bulb grandfather in their bulb home. The game itself is littered with references to other games and child hood things.
One could argue that it is kind of an ode to someone's non-nuclear family and how as a child they had to fight to keep it together.
However, it comes off like a The Voices situation as the character is laughing a lot despite the messed up or depraved things that take place. Puzzles aren't very hard and usually they give you some major hint or walk you through an alternate scene prior that explains the solution. Music in this game plays a huge parts as it seems very normal and basic until you realize all the registers are off a half step or more in the wrong direction.....everything has a super creepy tone to it.
There was a huge amount done with the atmosphere within the game to set you off just enough you might not notice until 20 minutes of just feeling weird despite making progress without major road blocks.
You fight something with a big vagina for a mouth....
Also you can pull your bulb head off your body and stick it in things like dead fish or spiders
Games Completed: 125
Time: 5 weeks 120.86 hours
12 Labours of Hercules IV: Mother Nature(7.1 hours): These games are like the Teddy Floppy ear games......I can't stop won't stop. Didn't realize they had pumped out more of the 12 Labours games so I have some catching up. Appears that the assets and engine are still all the same so they pretty much just need to build cut scenes, create levels, build scripts, and map menu for all new games. Currently the most expensive game in the series is $4.99 while everything else is $2.99; cheap games that give you 5+ hours of game time.
Just another installment of time management. Pretty much they are just mashing stuff together and creating new stories so they can sell another game. Really think they have their price range set correctly if they truly are reusing as many assets as possible. Graphics and gameplay haven't changed a bit from the previous games(go check my other reviews). On normal things aren't hard at all and I manage gold time every map without any fretting.
Plot for this game is that nature has been destroyed and you travel around with your wife to clean everything up. That is of course after the gods try to kill Hercules but we all know that will never work.
After the murder plot fails and the gods aren't sure what to do they sort of come up with a trick. Using some special mirror they create an anti-Hercules. This adds a new element that is not explained and shows they are doing fixed time table with no slip. Whenever anti-Hercules shows up you just need to click on him and the real Hercules boots him but they never tell you that and there is no indication he is even clickable. While he is sitting on the map he scares away all your servants, slaves, and prevents them from accessing that part of the map. Very simple to deal with but it slows you down a tad late game on a map when it becomes busy. Warps were introduced except executed poorly as well as tunnels. Once I realized what that stuff on the map was I started ignoring foot paths and just watching for circles around items to appear to indicate they were now reachable.
Humor is still there.
The story really only goes through 4 stages and would have been fine just to kill it there but they tacked on a lame 5th chapter that felt like management said we always have 5 we have to have 5. Guys you are making a cheap installment series where instead of calling it DLC you are releasing new maps at $5 a pop as a new game.
There was one interesting bonus map that used servants on the bottom and Hercules on the top so you have two parties in different sections of the map until you clear it. Presented as a nice concept after the standard maze like maps from mid game forward.
My super duper complete gold time temple thing.
Games Completed: 126
Time: 5 weeks 127.96 hours
A Story About My Uncle(2.2 hours): I think I got this in a humblebundle but almost bought it during a steam sale, at which point I realized I already own...yup. Why is there voice acting? This game shouldn't have had any voice acting. Everything opens with having to listen to a man talk to his child in a strangely gated string of english about his uncle. One of the few times I would have preferred massive walls of text so I could build my own idea of who the characters are. That honestly ruined the game for me.
Coming into the game you know its a platformer where you just do things because the level directs you certain places. See some light way down range, ok that is where I need to be some how. Mario doesn't need any explaining besides go rescue the princess. People know what to do in a platform game. The only thing that you have to learn besides jump to those rocks is that your weird science grapple has a limited number of charges, you can fall and survive any distance, and you can charge jump(there is something else).
Several strange story mechanics are used. You gain the ability to increase the number of charges on your grapple but that happens in all of 30 minutes instead of across an hour and several levels. Forced dialogue sequences happen but they don't lock the player so you can just walk away and everything still plays out?? There is a distinctive written language that a character translates for you twice despite it being all over the place in two levels. A lot of choices in the game are just weird.
None the less as you travel through the levels everything gives a great feel, regarding the environment. Several unique areas have been created that you play through. One thing does stay consistent, you fall you die. Several times I wished for an invisible floor so you can hit it and die faster. The way levels are designed you can fall and catch on model edges but to low to get back up. Unreal engine at its best. Some times you die because you fall into water. They bothered to explain away why falling into water kills a video game character.
They attempt to create more depth for the game but it is still so shallow it feels slapped on. If you are going to put in the HL crowbar Gordon Freeman the crap out of your character. No talking so the player becomes the character through their personal experience of your game.
One boss fight. On steam it said this game is a successor to The Ball. The Ball had several boss fights and this game has one
Icrontic just ate my draft as I was typing it; not retyping paragraphs. The Runner sections are awesome. Should be a free game mode so you have unlimited grapples. Small team. Trailer is a great marketing piece as its just the good stuff.
Games Completed: 127
Time: 5 weeks 130.16 hours
Transmissions: Element 120(0.7 hours): A free to play game that is a short story in the Half-Life 2 universe. Built on the same assets and the source engine it has all the trimmings of a Valve game. With only 4 acts in the entire game, and they short, there isn't much content but given its short length a dozen achievements it is something I feel most of us would replay at least once to ensure 100%.
You awake on a train after listening to some strange transmission. The only oddity about this game is that Gordon can't jump worth beans any more. Feels like you can maybe get 6 inches off the ground by hitting space bar. This is very intentional since within the first act you come across the crowbar, pistol, and modded gravity gun. The new gravity is kind of the center piece of the game since you can use it to rocket jump and shoot people or objects with it. This iteration isn't really a shooter, much more of the platformer/puzzle from HL1. All of the standard HL2 elements are there but the developers did throw in some fun things. In the dark the zombies and headcrabs don't see you so you can just walk around them but this also works another way. There are glow in the dark messages left for you to give you information or show the correct path when you have several choices.
One silly thing in the game was QR codes that had messages for you. WHY???? There is an achievement for viewing them all. I found them all but couldn't automatically view them because the decode system is wack, and it feels intentional. Only gripe about the entire thing is the QR codes. You can collect most of the old arsenal after puzzling your way into their room, usually a door in the corner or a chair blocking you from the other side. Have all the weapons doesn't matter much since the gravity gun is super OP.
There is a battle at the end which isn't hard but is the only real fight in the game. You can brute force it or be clever and cake walk most of it. This HL2 "episode" has a Lost Coast feel without any real story being added to the universe, just something fun that is also new. Sit down and play it.
Games Completed: 128
Time: 5 weeks 130.86 hours
Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball(2 hours): Just think about that name for a minute. Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball. This game is about something. It is about robots in a disco who happen to be playing in a dodgeball tournament that include roller-derby rules.
This is a game I have seen on the humblebundle several times but only 6 people on my friends list own. $8 normal price, comes with a fantastic in game soundtrack, supports online/local/co-op(I think). The scale of this game seems they wanted it to take hold more than it did but wow there is a lot of great content for such an indie seeming game. In 2 hours I played a half dozen game modes, maybe a dozen maps, and didn't get sick of the music. Everything in this game has a great mix, except the lag correction OMG. But seriously sit down and listen to this OST. 8-bit, electro, and a dash of generic to make it come off fantasticly. When the online players talk smack by saying "Did you wake up and listen to the soundtrack on the bus to school this morning" it has to be good. Between this OST and DOOM OST I am set for generic awesomeness to stream at work.
Graphics aren't fantastic but they aren't trying to pretend. You get transported back to the original TRON on crack with the neon flashes. The overall goofy nature of this game lets asset overlay be part of the motif. Some much of the game feels like over stimulating your visual senses. I could see this as an arcade game back in a dark corner alone flashing crazy neon lights and pumping wild beats with some spindly kid having his face almost pressed against the glass as his hands dance across a roller ball and fingers constantly tapping the only button.
Controls in the game are actually really good. You have full twitch movement from the mouse and directional movement is spot on despite having an inability to stop and momentum. Jumping plain sucks because it has a charge function that causes a cool down, but you can't jump worth squat so jumping while engaged with someone is silly except......
. Lag correction and players being the host cause the only real downside. You have balls jumping around and players teleporting on you but overall it seems fine. This doesn't stop you from absolutely blasting their back side with your oversized ball. Any of us that game and play some kind of FPS should be able to pick this up and feel like they know how to play in 30 minutes.
Everything comes down to gameplay. With a single weapon, your ball, you have to play mind games. Do some dash dancing, fake lunge, turn like you want to run. Like playing Quake or UT with only rockets. Everyone can dodge what they see coming so you have to make them think they got your attack figured out and then BAM right in their stupid robot face. You get a standard array of power ups that can help you out some but better strats will always carry you.
This game took a strange concept and got it right. This is how you do gaming. There is a demo on steam go check it out.
Games Completed: 129
Time: 5 weeks 132.86 hours
Absolute Drift(3.0 hours): This game about one thing Tofu; yes.
You are drifting your Tofu to drifters nirvana, only the best for the Buddha of the mountain pass right. The game actually starts out with a Buddha statue telling you to drift. Unlocking tracks and game modes is done through a free play map where you pass "missions" to unlock more. The missions are used to help you work on your skills without doing it on a track for points, though I wish there was a none counted points feature for free play so you learn faster how to wrack up a huge score.
This isn't all about drifting your AE86 through the passes at night. Some times you have to take your tofu mobile on some sweet jumps. The features are a little limited but you don't need much for what the game is doing You can change your paint scheme, car type, and current song. The cars go from the 86 to like a supra knock off or something and end up with a micro bus(its a boss for realz). There are two things to do in the game. 1 is to get the highest score possible on a track, drifting, which amounts to figuring out how to chain all your drifts without crashing or just one massive drift. 2 is just jet around the free roam while the tunes chill you out.
A simple color palette and the isometric view point helps keep you in a grooved out zone. This is another game with a stellar soundtrack. As a "simple" game it is a great stand out and would be awesome if more people picked it up and played. The missions and points can get wonky/frustrating but this game honestly shines because you can reach that point of zen on a map where you feel untouchable or just zoom around through warehouses watching the world pass.
Games Completed: 130
Time: 5 weeks 135.86 hours
12 Labours of Hercules V: Kids of Hellas(7.3 hours): The last game I finished was back in August, wow. Slightly ashamed I get so excited when a new one of these releases but I always buy the newest version for 50 cents. 4 and 5 have been 7 hours, literally have 28 hours in for the entire series. By the end of each release I hate the game simply because I cram them so I am done. I think I did this one in about 36 hours. These games are all the same. Beat a level and move forward. Find a puzzle piece and do a bonus level. Click click click. Kind of strange reading steam reviews of this game because people complain about it but if you are playing this then most likely you have played the others and they are cookie cutter. What did you expect Progress Quest 3D???
The story involves Hercules playing with his shiny balls to unzombie kids Ares took over because he is a butt hurt prick. This iteration follows 4 plot development which means the story only covers 4 chapters and the 5th is there because they always have 5. The developers crammed in levels just for their standard achievements. Portals continue to show up which is the one element to the game which I honestly hate because blue portals go to all blue portals and it gets confusing after mid game where paths intermingl. The game is still Defense Grid level of can't stop playing.
Games Completed: 131
TIme: 5 weeks 143.16 hours
Viscera Cleanup Detail(3.2 hours): Rage quit this. Honestly this game feels like utter bullshit. The easy levels are par 2 hours, it is 2 hours. You find yourself having to pick up a single shotgun shell at at time or 5 pieces of intestine from one body but lets repeat that 20 times over. Everything in the game seems designed just to take more time. There is a lot of depth to the game but it is something where you have to invest 20+ hours(feels like).
Everything is done in a map scenario. You are a sanitation worker that has to clean up everyone else's mess. Usually that means some science went horribly wrong and most everyone is dead so have fun handling dead bodies. Pretty sure they are not following OSHA regulations. Since there are dead bodies every where there must be blood every where and blood can be smeared. So if you step in the blood you track it around for X steps depending on how big the puddle was. Also as pools of blood, or whatever, get bigger they take longer to clean up with your mop. Now this is where it gets feeling futile. Every 6 or so pushes with your mop you have to go clean it in a bucket. After the water in the bucket gets dirty you have to incinerate the bucket and get a new bucket. But every bucket you procure from the clean bucket machine has a chance of being a bloody limb which you then have to dispose of and clean up the mess it just made. Now repeat this with every type of machine in the game. Some times you have to use a lift but the lift will jerk and jam so while the lift is moving you have to hold the bucket or risk the machine spilling your dirty water every where. Add to this the awkward physics so sometimes items get bumped or don't behave correctly so a mess is made. You spend such a huge time cleaning shit up so you can clean shit up. No idea how people find this fun. BTW there is a scoring system on each level but if you want to know how that works you need to go look stuff up on community boards. While cleaning you will find notes about what happened and flash drives and other random stuff but the little extras just don't feel like enough to make feel like I should have never bought this game.
The achievements on the special maps mean you have to play the game for hours and hours to clear them. I think anyone that 100%s this game is insane. @FettBacon how do you have 4 hours in this game?
Games Completed: 132
Time: 5 weeks 146.36 hours
INSIDE(3.4 hours): What the hell INSIDE. The company that made INSIDE also created LIMBO. They are the same games but hugely different. Control scheme is very basic since you just use the arrow keys and right control button, they don't tell you this but simply start the game. A platform puzzler that is just story and atmosphere; plus a bathoshphere. The game is compelling with detail so starting the game and finishing in one sitting feels natural. This is a beautiful game where you spend a lot of time watching a small child die. Explore every where in the map and follow the color cues. Go enjoy this wonderful experience.
Games Completed: 133
Time: 5 weeks 149.76 hours
Montaro(2.7 hours): I spent over an hour just collecting Japanese school girl's panties as a Shiba Inu while ignoring dogecoin. This is a mobile port of a fun little runner that I never really got the hang of. You have a few costumes to unlock by collecting dogecoin but once you have done that there is little reason to continue play without any stats or incentive; only one true costume exist solidedoge. Strangely there is a health meter but you don't die when it gets to zero panties because then you just become banana dazed for a few seconds, everything kills you in one hit but only certain things when hit from a certain direction. This is a game where you have to learn the rules for some enemies by trial and error but then after certain deaths you just feel cheated. The cards for the games steam badge are 25-30 cents?????? Is the Russian mob laundering money with these cards??? Wait it isn't the rarest of my badges even at lvl 2, not even in the top 6???? So many questions.
Games Completed: 134
Time: 5 weeks 153.46 hours
Project Cars 2 (32 hours): I love Burnout2. GRiD and DiRT were inspirational. Real sims I have never truly enjoyed. The entire reason I own this game is for IC Race Nights. Racing once a week with people I have known for a decade has been incredibly joyful. The game I could take it or leave it but I need to keep the fun with friends.
Games Completed: 135
Time: 6 weeks 17.46 hours
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier (6.5 hours): Now this is a good game. The art style and engine work well finally after many games. Oh my gosh the story sucked me in almost immediately. The game actually let me murder some people, awhile ago I switched my play style for TWD games to be more evil as the story choices seemed to shift towards neutral/good. Several points in the story I literally gasped in surprise and shock. There isn't to much game to the game but the choices you got to make during the long movie segments were big enough to wash over the lack of control the game would physically give you. 100% must play even out of order.
Games Completed: 136
Time: 6 weeks 23.96 hours
Metro Exodus (15.7 hours): This is the end my friend, it was a good ride. The premise of the game is you finally leave the Metro behind and travel out into the world, given the previous events that seems a logical direction for the story to have progression while pushing to some kind of good wholesome conclusion. Metro Exodus gives you a conclusion where you can rest and just be done.
The game is much more open world than what I felt worked well with the story. You can meander around a lot looking at the environment and seeing what it has to offer but the density of your finds in the open world were too low a lot of the time to make that effort beneficial. I would burn through ammo and health packs checking out a ship or wandering around in the woods but would never find more resources than what I burned. The game itself pushed you to explore and do things but it was counter productive to your survival through the story line, main story events provided you so many resources that I could easily max weapons and keep my munitions fully stocked. Only in one chapter did I find myself having to be careful about which gun I used to ensure I still had bullets of some kind.
When you leave the Metro you do so on a train. Makes sense, you live in the Russian Metro so why not take a train to leave. How the train was used in the game makes the choice feel like it was the easiest way to create chapters of the game and move the characters into disjointed environments. Metro -> Swamp -> Desert -> Forest -> City. You show up some where, run around, kill some things, do somethings, get on the train and jump some where else. In the grand scheme of the game it didn't matter but after 6 hours it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Games Completed: 137
Time: 6 weeks 39.66 hours
Torchlight 2 (28 hours): Never finished the first torchlight despite how many times I have said I will go back and run it. Completed this game with @Massalinie. Never played Diablo or the like. We had a lot of good laughs and frustration. One minute our builds would be rock solid then the next one of us would get wrecked by mobs constantly, almost impossible to figure out why there was such a massive shift in the dmg type or how to anticipate it besides dieing a lot. We started a Game+ with my high hopes then that lasted about one night.
Games Completed: 138
Time: 6 weeks 67.66 hours
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 (22 hours): @Massalinie got me to play this game. One of her friends plays it and she was interested. I very much dig 4 player co-op games as it allows for simple repetition grinding which is very comforting to me. Just playing the low level difficulty most anyone who has played other wave based 4 player games can walk through. There is exploring for extra points or increasing difficulty. Big issue is the game is class and weapon based but poor balance. The ranged elf will absolutely slaughter everything in her path and the dual wielding pistol gentleman is right behind her. A game based on Warhammer where the hack and slahers are second tier doesn't feel good after 10+ hours. I stopped with plenty of grind left because it wasn't more than simply grinding, how PayDay2 felt after they kept introducing more and more stuff or freaking Overwatch drops where you play to check a box.
Games Completed: 139
Time: 6 weeks 89.66 hours
Warframe (17 hours): Coworker got me into this before Destiny 2 was given out to everyone as a please don't be mad at us. Space gun-fu 3rd person shooter that is F2P. Had fun for about 10 hours but after that were unlocking or manufacturing takes a while or has some complexity I was out. There are several gravity exploits for movement speed which means spamming the keyboard as you run down halls looting. Worth a few hours to see what the game is about. More mobs than Destiny 2 and feels a lot tighter but less polish of course.
Games Completed: 140
Time: 6 weeks 106.66 hours
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (15.2 hours): To much gofor stuff. They placed a lot of things to collect, places to go, and extra actions to do but it overwhelmed me. Even with putting in a high effort level I at best completed 75% of one area, it broke me.
The premise of the game is Croft just murdered a bunch of innocent people because she can't stop won't stop the tomb raiding. Her journey through the game is learning to leave things and just look instead of this obsessive compulsive hoarding at all cost, including human. Her journey feels false in the end despite saving the world and a 'lost' culture that she had no idea existed despite its almost constant contact in some form with the outside world. The last act with its insane siege battles and magic could have lasted a bit longer. You got these super awesome powers then it is over very quickly.
Hopefully this is the last game for a while until they figure out how to reboot the series, everything was planned out at the conclusion. The journey in this series is worth the time but the magic has faded enough to just leave it for a while. I got to pet a llama.
Games Completed: 141
Time: 6 weeks 121.87 hours
The Walking Dead: The Final Season (9.2 hours): From a story telling view the final season feels like a small step back as they returned to making the player manually talk to whomever they want and find collectibles. This didn't seem to add any special side stories that you could 'find' but simply cause certain scenes to take longer to play out. The game is closing down the Telltale Walking Dead series as the studio shut down shop permanently but the story is trying to figure how to raise a child in the after The Walking Dead universe.
The episodes were a bit long, maybe because only 4. Normally I am used to them being sub 1 hour and slowly getting longer. These episodes started at almost 2 hours, except for the last one. I tried to play this one a little nicer since what I did affected my child but half the time it felt like that bit in my butt later.......they had the perfect ending shot but then they had to ruin it by putting 30 more minutes of game in. In that last 30 minutes they put in a cool team credits scene which could have been just a cut scene but they also put in a freakin' blade runner speech out of left field.
Games Completed: 142
Time: 6 weeks 131.07 hours
DiRT 3 Complete Edition (14.0 hours): Some how my original progress was lost but it was not on the complete edition. Ok game but I do not enjoy the non-rally stuff very much
Games Completed: 143
Time: 6 weeks 145.07 hours
The Walking Dead: Michonne (3.6 hours): Was an ok filler story.
Games Completed: 144
Time: 6 weeks 148.67 hours
Borderlands 2 (49 hours): @Massalinie Double teamed this game and the DnD DLC. Sponges every where
Games Completed: 145
Time: 7 weeks 29.67 hours
Paladins (31 hours): @Massalinie followed me onto this game after I became so frustrated with grinding overwatch. More MOBA and it felt like there was much less risk from instant kills so you could react. Honestly fun times when the games had people who knew how to play.
Games Completed: 146
Time: 7 weeks 60.67 hours
Minecraft StoryMode (12.1 hours): Man what did they do to the story of this. They couldn't figure it out so things ended up so disjointed and dumb after the chopped off the first story arc.
Games Completed: 147
Time: 7 weeks 72.67 hours
Thanks for keeping up with this. This is great
Sniper Elite v2 (5.4 hours): That game that lets you shoot Nazis and Russians in the dick right after you shoot 3 bottles of wine. Textures are for sure dated at this point but the sneak level needed for the game play holds up. Some levels are barrels that make you fight while others provide a surprising level of freedom to slip around. Bullet drop still feels inconsistent at times, experience from Ghost Warrior, where 80 meters is dead on but 110 is almost on the first full mill line. For a .30 rifle and ranged for combat I would be expecting POA/POI be at 150+, min 200 realistically given what the m1s/k31s were doing at 300 meters.
Games Completed: 148
Time: 7 weeks 78.07 hours
Sniper Ghost Warrior 2 (5.8 hours): I dropped this game for years because of a bug in the first full mission where enemies became invisible and it pissed me off enough that I rage quit a game I had just paid for. Ghost Warrior is a more modern Sniper Elite but turned the insane parts of the game up a bit. You get a lot more guided scenarios for clearing enemies instead of point X. The game was fine but between Sniper Elite and Ghost Warrior I think that is it for me unless people want to go around with the Zombie Army versions, don't think we ever finished number dos.
FYI I am throwing in games I finished awhile ago but never included if you didn't pick that up.
Games Completed: 149
Time: 7 weeks 83.87 hours
Fall Guys (10.8 hours): Battle Royal co-op platformer party game. Great fun for about 5 hours by yourself and a lot better when you play with a few friends because you can cheer each other on. Not sure how much more I am going to play since it is actually pretty grindy once you figure out how to play all of the mini-games. All of the mini games are really simple but it becomes very complicated when dealing with 56 randoms on the internet and your character can't stand up if the wind blows lightly from the side.
Games Completed: 150
Time: 7 weeks 94.67 hours