Smythe
  • Sniper Elite

    24 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • 异常 | Exception

    7 hours playtime

    16 of 20 achievements

  • Assassin's Creed II

    38 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Why Am I Dead At Sea

    6 hours playtime

    25 of 27 achievements

March

Steam

Sniper Elite
Got this at the end of 2011. I’ve played it a couple of times before but never got very far. I think in the past I didn’t really pay much attention to the mission instructions and just practised shooting people from afar. As a result, I got stuck a couple of missions in and stopped playing. Years later, I came back and played a bit more carefully. Pretty fun overall. The graphics are dated and I’m sure the 4 or so sequels have improved on the initial idea. Glad to be able to cross this one off my backlog. It’s always nice to get rid of an older game and, as a bonus, as there were no achievements I get to mark it as complete :)

异常 | Exception
Fairly new, for me. Through playing this game I realised I will never be able to program!
I’ve messed around with javascript for projects at work but that was mainly stealing sections of code and adapting them. I don’t think I have the patience or interest to learn something like coding.
It’s a pretty interesting game and at the start I could get through the levels without too much of a problem. The difficulty came when I had an idea of how to beat a level and couldn’t get it to work through the coding. I didn’t have the patience to sit and work out how to get my idea to work and I wasn’t invested enough in the outcome to stick at it. I guess if it was a labour of love, like a program I’d been working on and was committed to making I would work harder. Similarly, if I felt like making the code work would give me something back, like money or creating something that improved my life, I’d work harder. As it was, I just got frustrated and searched for solutions. Most of these were not the way I planned on beating the level, so even checking the answer didn’t help with my own initial coding attempt.
Sooo….probably a pretty good game for anyone who is interested in coding, can think logically or is patient and likes to work at puzzles.

Assassin’s Creed 2
Another old game to knock off the backlog. I got this in 2012. I have another in the series on Steam and possibly a couple more on the Ubisoft platform. As with other games, I felt like I shouldn’t try the newer ones until I beat this. I think the last time I played was 2015. I’d made a fair bit of progress but had either got tired or stuck. Picked it up again and played a lot in one weekend to finish it.
I had a few problems mapping my Xbox controller (didn’t have these in the past, so not sure why it suddenly happened) but once I’d fixed these and re-learned the controls it was pretty smooth sailing. Good game and the graphics still look pretty good. I’m sure everyone is already familiar with it. No Steam achievements, so I can mark this as complete even though I didn’t get all the collectables :)

Why Am I Dead At Sea
Picked this up this month. Looked interesting and was 80% off, matching a record low. I dived straight in and beat it :). Reminded me a bit of Emily is Away Too, Undertale, The Hex, Silent Age - short-ish games, story driven and a bit unusual. Beat it without any help, then checked a guide to get a few more achievements. I should really be able to 100% this, but I’m struggling a bit with the different endings so gonna leave it at 97% complete for now.

Adding to my backlog

Aside from Why Am I Dead At Sea, which I instantly knocked off. The only other game I got was Tomb Raider. There were lots of other freebies around, but I wasn’t really interested in them.

Other news
I went to Chiang Mai for a week. Not the greatest timing, as the Coronavirus really picked up as I left. Unfortunately, I couldn’t cancel without losing everything I paid for the flight and hotel, so I risked it. Thailand had a lower number of infections than Japan, so I guess there was less risk to my health (statistically), but it was the threat of getting stuck in another country that worried me more than getting sick. In the end, I could get there and get back (just in time, couldn’t do it now!) but it was pretty nerve racking seeing so many countries close their borders and airlines stop flying as I was away. A day or two before my flight, Thailand cancelled all sporting events and closed bars and massage places. The day before my flight there was a confusing notice about visas and entry to Japan too, which worried me a little.
Aside from that worry lurking in the back of my mind, it was a very nice trip. There were far fewer tourists than normal, so fewer crowds. I got an upgrade to a nicer room in my hotel and I got to eat a lot of very cheap delicious food. I probably could’ve spent a day or two less there, but it wasn’t a big deal and I found things to do for the full trip. I’m not very good at editing images or setting them out neatly, so won’t try and upload a lot of photos.