• Geometry Dash
  

  6 hours playtime

  22 of 120 achievements

• Stealth Bastard Deluxe
  

  17 hours playtime

  14 of 27 achievements

• Out There Somewhere
  

  3 hours playtime

  13 of 36 achievements

• Risk of Rain
  

  17 hours playtime

  5 of 15 achievements

• Hitman
  

  15 hours playtime

  28 of 69 achievements

• Tomb Raider
  

  24 hours playtime

  28 of 50 achievements

May

A fair few games beaten this month, although I use that word a little loosely. I don’t think any of the real achievement hunters out there would consider any of these games beaten, particularly the first in the list….

Steam

Geometry Dash
Technically, this isn’t ‘beaten’ but I have beaten each of the levels in one way, and I’m sure I will never be able to beat this game in the other mode. I’m probably mostly to do with the type of game (difficult, rhythm platformer) but I think it’s also partly my age! I just don’t have the reactions and rhythm to beat this game.
There are basically two game modes. Practice and regular. Practice is like having unlimited lives and save points throughout the level, and normal is like having one life with no save points. Two extremes. I managed to beat the first level on normal mode, but could only complete the others on practice mode. Even on practice mode, I died 200+ times on these levels! So, technically this should probably be a ‘won’t play’ after putting in my 5 hours of hell, or I should remove it from my account, but at the moment I’m interpreting ‘beaten’ a little loosely and the ‘practice mode’ as equivalent to ‘easy’ in other game types. :)

Stealth Bastard Deluxe

Enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. Bought this in 2013, I’d put a few hours into it back then, but guess I somehow deleted my progress as I started from scratch this time. I made decent progress through this. There were a few points when I needed a bit of help online, but most of the time it was trial and error. I think that’s where the enjoyment came from. It was difficult enough to be a challenge, but not so difficult that I got stuck. I beat all the levels. I think most other achievements are for collecting equipment through multiple playthroughs. Leaving it as a simple beaten game for now.

Out There Somewhere

I guess I was pretty far along in this game, despite the short play time. I think I stopped playing as I was stuck. Think I only had one achievement too, but with just an hour or two extra play time I beat the game and got to 13 achievements. More of a puzzle game than anything. It’s alright, but I’m not that big a fan so gonna stop at this point, despite the fact I’ve only got 3.5 hours on record.

Risk of Rain
I remembered this being very difficult. I think I had only played it on standard difficulty using the keyboard. Switched to an Xbox controller this month and was a bit more persistent. Still pretty difficult in the later levels and I could only really get anywhere with the Commando character. Eventually managed to beat the game on easy mode. There doesn’t seem to be an achievement for beating the game and the screenshot function didn’t work (maybe because I was in windowed mode?). Anyway, completing the game unlocked a Sniper character so I know I did actually do it and it wasn’t all a dream!

Hitman
Picked this up this month and dove straight into it. A lot shorter than I anticipated in terms of the number of levels. It’s basically half a game and Hitman 2 continues the story. I’m not very good at the stealth element of the missions, so often I’d start stealthily and end up shooting loudly and running away by the end of the mission. I have a decent number of achievements at 40%, but none of the really difficult ones or higher difficulty level completions. Lots more potential playtime here, but I’m doing my usual trick of marking it as beaten and moving on!

Tomb Raider
Picked this up in March when it was given away for free. Great game, I really enjoyed it. A friend recommended it to me a few years ago actually, but I was put off by the 1996 original and more generally the 3rd person perspective. As a teenager, I didn’t like the original at all and found that the camera angle made manoeuvring, lining up jumps, and combat all very difficult. I’m not sure what’s different with this one, I guess the cross-hairs were a big help with combat and maybe the camera angle was better? Anyway, no major annoyances with gameplay in general. It felt pretty tense at times, the small swimming areas made me feel claustrophobic and something about the game made it very immersive, it might have been the sounds. The only criticism I have is the timed button pressing. Granted, it wasn’t throughout the game (like Dragon’s Lair, a game I hated as a kid!) but I thought it would have been better missed completely. Got most of the single player achievements but a long way from 100% on Steam.

Backlog Additions

There weren’t enough games i was interested in to pick up the Humble Choice May bundle (I’ve skipped every month so far!) but MO:Astray was on my wishlist, so I traded for that. I also picked up the aforementioned Hitman. One more game I added is Project Genesis. I got an early access key, which may carry over to the full game. Not sure about it even before playing, but it interests me enough to get the key while it was free. I’ll just keep it in the library for now and decide whether to give it a shot or not at a later date.