kubikill

January - July 2021 Progress Jump to next post

Finished games:

  • 140

    1.9 hours playtime

    5 of 8 achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • Anodyne

    4.6 hours playtime

    3 of 6 achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • A Plague Tale: Innocence

    ~16 hours playtime

    35 of 35 achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • BoxBoy!

    ~6 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • Call of the Sea

    3.9 hours playtime

    16 of 34 achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • Donut County

    ~2 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • Far from Noise

    4.7 hours playtime

    9 of 9 achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • Flashback

    0.7 hours playtime

    1 of 12 achievements

    ★☆☆☆☆☆

  • Forager

    23.1 hours playtime

    103 of 103 achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard

    1.2 hours playtime

    6 of 6 achievements

    ★★★☆☆☆

  • Halo: The Master Chief Collection

    ~2 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★☆☆☆☆☆

  • Ikachan

    ~1 hour playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★☆☆☆

  • Katana ZERO

    ~5 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • Loot Box Quest

    3.1 hours playtime

    15 of 15 achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • macdows 95

    1.6 hours playtime

    13 of 13 achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • Mafia III: Definitive Edition

    39.3 hours playtime

    67 of 85 achievements

    ★★★☆☆☆

  • Mass Effect 2 (2010)

    49.0 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • Mass Effect 3

    ~65 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★★★

  • OCTOPATH TRAVELER

    ~64 hours playtime

    65 of 88 achievements

    ★★★☆☆☆

  • Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition

    ~10 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★★★

  • Peggle Deluxe

    2.9 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt

    0.8 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • Rogue Legacy

    8.5 hours playtime

    18 of 29 achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • SHENZHEN I/O

    18.2 hours playtime

    6 of 6 achievements

    ★★★☆☆☆

  • Sparkle 2

    ~4 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • SteamWorld Heist

    11.5 hours playtime

    no achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • Tetris Effect: Connected

    5 hours playtime

    13 of 42 achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • The Outer Worlds

    37.1 hours playtime

    48 of 68 achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

    45.2 hours playtime

    44 of 52 achievements

    ★★★★☆☆

  • VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

    14.1 hours playtime

    33 of 33 achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • Wolfenstein: The New Order

    11.6 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Yakuza 3 Remastered

    84.3 hours playtime

    50 of 50 achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • Yakuza 4 Remastered

    68.2 hours playtime

    47 of 47 achievements

    ★★★★★☆

  • Yakuza 5 Remastered

    133.4 hours playtime

    56 of 56 achievements

    ★★★★★★

  • Yakuza 6: The Song of Life

    54.2 hours playtime

    59 of 59 achievements

    ★★★★★★

39.3 hours
★★★☆☆☆
Played on Steam

I've been looking forward to try this game out for myself after I played Mafia II and heard many different things about III. It's not exactly a bad game, but I definitely wouldn't call this a Mafia game.

The biggest issue is that the game is very repetitive. Most of the game is just taking over the districts and doing the wiretaps, which gets boring real fast. The story missions that are sprinkled between the district takeovers are actually pretty good, though, especially the intro.

The enemy AI is braindead when it comes to stealth. It's so easy to just whistle and pick enemies one-by-one while the rest don't stop to think why all of those poor sobs who went to check out that weird sound haven't returned yet.

I personally disliked how Mafia III departed from the realism and the details the OG Mafia and Mafia II had. Police no longer go after you for breaking traffic laws (except for crashing into a police car), you can see enemies through walls, have slow-mo shooting (which is ridiculously OP combined with silenced weapons) and slow-mo driving for some reason and the city feels shallow as you can't visit restaurants to eat anymore, buy clothes at clothing shops or refuel your car at gas stations since the fuel mechanic was also removed entirely.

The game still has bugs even after the release of so-called "definitive edition". The infamous mirror bug is still there (link to ss), cutscenes sometimes get stuck on the first frame while audio continues playing, and other fairly rare but still possible occurrences such as cars spawning clipped through the ground, enemies shooting through their own cover, infinite loading screens and the minimap getting stuck with extreme zoom. I tried playing this game using a Steam Controller since it has native support for it but often some buttons wouldn't respond until I paused and unpaused the game with kb+m. Eventually I got fed up with it and just switched to kb+m and had no problems with controls since. Also the performance could've been better for the graphics Mafia 3 has.

What I can praise, however, is the soundtrack, voice acting, overall atmosphere and the accurate portrayal of racism in 1960s USA. The story doesn't exactly fit the "Mafia" name but it's good. The DLCs have some cool missions that help break up the repetitiveness of the district takeovers.

I wasn't sure whether to give this game 2 or 3 stars, but I chose to go with 3, thanks to the DLC missions. If you can deal with the repetitiveness and go in not expecting a Mafia game then it may be worth getting this game on a good discount. Otherwise I'd just recommend watching it as a game movie on Youtube.


37.1 hours
★★★★☆☆
Played on Steam

A open-world FPS-RPG from the same studio that made Fallout New Vegas. I was excited to see what did they make with this game, and I enjoyed it.

The game has a lot of gameplay similarities with Fallout New Vegas, but it feels a bit simplified. Still, it didn't stop me from having fun. The story that didn't take itself completely seriously was pretty good, but nothing special. The worlds were cool. I liked the conversation system that gives you lots of dialogue choices, ways to respond and often gives you skill checks to let you take advantage of the skills you have.

The drawbacks of this game is that it isn't that big. The planets aren't particularly huge and the main story is fairly short. The guns could've used more variety and the humor could've used a bit more work - it got a couple "heh"s out of me but not a single laugh out loud.

This game might not be the next Fallout but it's certainly a game worth trying for those who are into similar games. I'd like to see what they'll do with the sequel. I haven't played the DLC yet but I definitely will once I get the expansion pass someday.


49.0 hours
None
★★★★★☆
Played on Steam

Note: This is a review of a modded version of the original, non-LE game, mostly with texture and fix mods.

It's been about a year since I played ME1 so I thought it'd be a good time to continue the trilogy with ME2. ME1 was very good so I was really looking forward to ME2, and I was not disappointed.

ME2 took a large leap forwards, but it also took a few steps back. It was definitely much more polished than ME1 was, and the clunkiness was gone. The story is on around the same level as ME1 so it was great, but I regret putting off ME2 for too long because I already forgot about some things that happened in ME1 and I missed quite a lot of callbacks to the choices I made earlier. Gameplay, however, got simplified. While the first Mass Effect was too much of an RPG than a shooter, ME2 flipped it the other way around - less skills, less weapons, weapon/armor modifiers being replaced with general upgrades and the whole "landing on a planet and driving around it in a Mako" thing got replaced with not-so exciting planet scanning (except for a few DLC missions where you get to drive a cooler vehicle). At least the gunplay was much better and I didn't have to waste time converting my junk into omnigel. ME2 also introduces a new set of companions to recruit. I especially liked Mordin and Thane, but I also liked Legion, Kasumi, Grunt and maybe Jack.
I liked the suicide mission the most as it was quite a spectacular finale. I thought I'd get someone in my squad killed but fortunately, everyone made it out just fine!
The DLCs were good as well, especially Lair of the Shadow Broker and Kasumi - Stolen Memory.

Overall I really liked ME2. I chose to play ME3 immediately after so I wouldn't make that mistake with the callbacks again.
Thanks Cece09 for the gift!


65 hours
None
★★★★★★
Played on Xbox

Note: This is a review of a heavily modded version of the original, non-LE game, with mods such as Expanded Galaxy Mod, The Orikon Collection, Project Variety, JohnP's Alternate MEHEM and more.

An epic conclusion to an equally epic trilogy. ME3 feels like the most ambitious game out of the three, bringing the best of its 2 predecessors. While the ending remains fairly controversial, it still manages to provide a satisfying culmination of all that has happened to this point.

As for the gameplay, Bioware finally got the RPG-shooter balance nailed down on their third attempt. ME3, compared to ME2 has expanded skills, much more weapon variety, gun mods and still no wasting time on inventory management. Controls felt a little bit different than in ME2 but I got used to them quickly. Also it seems like there were a lot less neutral dialogue options in ME3 compared to ME1 or 2. The final mission was my favorite. It was thrilling to see all the war assets, all the favors I pulled across the trilogy come into play at that one battle, and, under great pressure, I was doing my absolute best to get through as fast as I could before I'd hear about some of my allies getting destroyed over the radio.

The Mass Effect trilogy are some of my favorite games now. I've found myself attached to the universe, to the lore and all my squadmates on the Normandy. It was an absolute joy to go through all of it and I'd consider it a must play for anyone. Next up is Andromeda. I know it was panned when it first came out but now people say that this game actually isn't that bad so I'm willing to check it out.

Oh, and since I couldn't upload the screenshots on Steam, I'll show them here instead, in separate non-spoiler and spoiler categories. Some of them are too good to just let them rot on my PC forever.


Unfinished games:

  • One Finger Death Punch 2

    1.6 hours playtime

    9 of 63 achievements

  • The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

    54.9 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • PC Building Simulator

    3.2 hours playtime

    11 of 74 achievements

  • Blaster Master Zero

    3 hours playtime

    no achievements

Current progress

47.56% (283/595)
1.68% (10/595)
4.20% (25/595)
46.55% (277/595)

does not include games from the "won't play" list and non-Steam backlogs

Notes

Long time no see

It’s been a while, BLAEO! It’s been 7 months since last post. I didn’t want that delay to go for that long but I just couldn’t bring myself to write all those overdue reviews. This month, I made it clear to myself that I would make a post no matter what but unfortunately, I had to rush it and cut the reviews for Octopath Traveler and the 4 Yakuza games. Wish I could make reviews for them too but its so hard to come up with the proper words for me without sounding like a broken record :/

So many games, so little time

I’ve decided to get a Xbox Game Pass sub since there was a way to get it cheap and it has a large library of games I’m interested in. Combined with the 5€ HB Choice sub, I won’t have to spend any more money on games for now as Game Pass, Choice and game trading will give me a steady source of new games until 2023. That being said, after taking a look at the Game Pass library and my backlog, I’ve realized that I most likely won’t be able to play every game I want in my lifetime, so I started cutting down my backlogs and my wishlist for games that I most likely won’t enjoy and from now on, I’ll check games more closely before deciding if I want to play them. I’ll stop trying to 100% every game I can and only 100% those I really like or those that don’t take much time to do so. I also went through my backlog and marked games I definitely won’t be coming back to after beating them as completed.

All hands on Deck

So Valve announced Steam Deck, a handheld PC which seems like exactly what I need. I can play all those indie games I already own and were in my backlog since forever, I can play XGP games and Epic Store freebies on it, I can stream demanding games from my gaming PC and I can even put emulators on it. It seems like a good replacement of my good ol’ laptop powered with an Intel HD 4000 and the 3DS. I made a reservation for the 256GB model but I made sure to get the Q1 2022 batch instead of the December one so I can check the reviews before I commit to the purchase. I should also go and start working on the 3DS backlog so I can sell the console and make room for the Deck.

A BLAEO Generators update + possible userscript?

It’s been nearly a year since the last BLAEO Generators update and it sure could use a few tweaks, fixes or even additions. I plan to release an update for it sometime in August so if there are any things that are bugging you, things you’d like to see added or improved then let me know either in the Steam group thread or in the comments below. Some features/fixes include rounded corners for the Bar, being able to hide playtime/achievements in Boxes, fix for the image not updating when using an AppID for a game you don’t own and more.
If I find some spare time, I also would like to look into making a new userscript for BLAEO, to add some improvements not already included in revilheart’s Enhanced BLAEO. Few things I’d like to add include a better post editor, an improved post save system from my older post save script, making game boxes with just one click and more. If you’d be interested in something like this or have some additional things you’d like to suggest, let me know in the comments.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

Q09066930

I’ve realized that I most likely won’t be able to play every game I want in my lifetime, so I started cutting down my backlogs and my wishlist for games that I most likely won’t enjoy and from now on, I’ll check games more closely before deciding if I want to play them. I’ll stop trying to 100% every game I can and only 100% those I really like or those that don’t take much time to do so. I also went through my backlog and marked games I definitely won’t be coming back to after beating them as completed.

That is exactly what I thought 2-3 years ago, when I started playing again after a long pause. There is just so much interesting stuff around that it overwhelms and makes me play it/watch it/read it without any enjoyment, or even with a sense of guilt. Now, I focus on a fraction of interests that gives me pleasure or some new thoughts/feelings and that is enough. I still fight the urge to complete every game 100%, as it is mostly chore to me than accomplishment.

kubikill

Yes, exactly! There’s only so much time for entertainment, might as well only stick to what interests you the most at the moment.

Jaded

Wow - I missed the part where it said January-July and was like.. how is this possible??!?
Some great looking games!

Ahhh so jealous about the Steam Deck - I feel like a lot of us here could benefit with our backlogs! We are unable to order it in Australia.. The Valve Index is only getting released this month here, so uhh.. not looking promising for the Steam Deck.

Regarding BLAEO Generator.. maybe an option to remove the div from the [Box] that displays ‘0 hours playtime no achievements’.? It’s the only thing I can think of that I change constantly.

kubikill

Thanks! Yeah, I don’t understand why won’t they ship to Australia… if they can ship to a hole like Poland then what’s stopping them from shipping to Australia? Also wasn’t the Index released like, 2 years ago? Did it really take them that long to ship there?

maybe an option to remove the div from the [Box] that displays ‘0 hours playtime no achievements’
That’s exactly what I meant by being able to hide playtime/achievements in Boxes so yes, this will be an option in the next update.

Mskotor

Poland is so “bad” we created blackhole. So consoles and other junk is siphoned from other neighbor countries inside it.

kubikill

Heh… that would explain how Famiclones flooded our country back in the 90s/early 2000s. Good times, those things were fun!

Mskotor

:D

https://www.backlog-assassins.net/posts/al3dyo7

kubikill

That post just hit me with a huge wave of nostalgia. I miss playing all those games on my Famiclone… I had one that had a built-in keyboard. Too bad I don’t have it anymore… I’d love to plug it in and play some games on it, for old times’ sake. Playing them on an emulator just isn’t exactly the same. Oh and holy crap that 9999999 in 1 cartridge! I had the exact same one!!

Cece09

Oh thats a nice amount of games done there, also cant believe its been that long. Only feels like a couple of months ago I wrote a comment about the generator
Frankly my only issue is that some games don’t have hero images but we got given a handy link to find some other pictures. I actually kinda like seeing what types of hero images we could’ve ended up with

kubikill

Thanks! Yeah, it was quite a while… glad I finally got a post out so I can go back to releasing posts on a monthly basis.
And yes, that SteamGridDB link is very useful - they have hero images for games that aren’t even on PC!

Cece09

Hope the steam deck is good, I brought up in my comment that I thought it was good for pc players as they cant easily play on the go like I can with my laptop. I’d love one myself though as sure laptop is good and all but its still heavy for me to lug around, for my visual novels its perfect! I wouldn’t use it for the big games id be the one to read on it

kubikill

I wouldn’t use the Deck for demanding games either. I already have a powerful gaming PC for those… besides, we don’t know how good the thermals are in the Deck. I don’t think I would want it to run at 100% usage all the time, not to mention how quickly the battery would drain. Though I wonder how readable would text be on that 7-inch screen… PC games usually aren’t designed with such small screens in mind.

Cece09

Well I’ve read plenty of stuff on my phone so I don’t think it would be much worse

Vito

Welcome back! Nice to read from you again. That’s an impressive amount of really great games that you finished in the meantime. Mass Effect is probably my favourite game series of all time, glad you enjoyed it as well. It was so much fun to run around and speak to all the characters…man, I should get the Legendary Edition at some point and replay it.

Also I see Witcher 2 in there…I still haven’t finished the game myself, what a shame. It’s been in the unfinished games category forever.

Regarding the generator…I can’t think of anything right now, but I’ll let you know if something comes to my mind!

Good luck with your backlog, as far as I can see you are almost at 50% beaten/completed games in your progress bar :)

kubikill

Thank you very much! I’m surprised I managed to do that many games, especially with the Yakuza games taking up a lot of time.
Now I can see why Mass Effect is your favorite game series! It had a very memorable cast of characters and a massive amount of good lore. I’m gonna miss all the crew on the Normandy.

Consider coming back to Witcher 2 someday! It may be a fairly clunky game, even with a combat overhaul mod, but it’s still fun to play and the story is great, too.

I still have to go through my library and filter out games I won’t want to play… so that may end up pushing me past 50% :)

Vito

True, it’s definitely impressive progress. And so many great titles as well.

I’m adamant to play Witcher 2 at some point. I don’t know what’s stopping me. Maybe because I put it off for so long it becomes almost scary to start it? :D

Well, 50% is 50%, so good luck with sorting out those games!