Monthly Report - October 2019

Looks like I played a lot this month !

Won : -
Free : -
From bundles/gifts/sales : Sniper Elite V2 DLCs (St.Pierre, The Landwehr Canal, Fuel Dump), SteamWorld Heist - The outsider DLC

SteamWorld Heist

61 hours playtime

47 of 47 achievements

SteamWorld Heist - completed

Last month I played A LOT of SteamWorld Heist and this month I mostly tried to complete the hats achievements, and got the DLC.
The DLC is nice, and I liked the new character and the new mechanic added. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had the DLC from the beginning of my playthrough but I still enjoyed it.
Achievements : So, the game is awesome but the developers should go to hell for their rare hats achievements… First, I’ve not been smart and tried to get the hats achievements without the DLC, while some of them are waaay easier with the DLC, as it requires you to get 3 hats from a pool that often contain DLC hats (that are easy to get).
But I only got the DLC after getting most of them :).
The thing is, rare hats are VERY rare… I played the game fully twice without seeing most of them, and spent hours just loading a level, checking the first room and reloading to get the few rare hats I was missing. Very frustrating. I played 17 hours this month, around 4 or 5 for the DLC, the rest is just that, me watching a movie while constantly reloading the game… This is a bit much. I’m okay with random, but controlled random is better (ie. chances increases once you finished the game, things like that). But I’m a completionist so I had to have those :).
Another issue with those achievements : they are hidden… They are not related to the story and it’s almost impossible to have them by chance. So this is a bit stupid.

Guild of Dungeoneering

24 hours playtime

49 of 49 achievements

Guild of Dungeoneering - completed

Last time I played this game, it was exactly one year ago, and I played it around 3h. I liked the concept but found it very frustrating.
I decided to give another chance…
The game is still very frustrating. Even the best player even must fail, as you can be screwed by too many random elements of the game as every aspect of the game is random : movement (it is not random as it follows exact rules, but this most frustrating thing in the game, as it’s mostly based on the other elements that are random), loot, enemies, cards… Especially timed missions when you don’t have the right card to go to the objectives, or you die on your first fights just because you didn’t have the right cards in hand.
But I sticked with it, and once you unlock the cartomancer character, I felt that the game became almost easy as I finished the second zone without even failing once. When I did my second playthrough, I just discovered it was just luck :). I felt that there are difficulty spikes but I’m not sure if this is really deliberate or just a result of the random nature of the game.
So… once you reach the third level of unlocks, things become fun : the characters unlocked have interesting mechanics, the objects you get are interesting and powerful and you feel that you have more control over what happens, you can still be screwed by chance, but often my choices were the cause of the failure.
Meanwhile getting to that stage feels a lot like grinding or fighting against the odds.
Moreover the developers added a “battle scar” mechanism but it is often a negative effect, so this is even not interesting to keep alive a character. If it has a negative scar, you better kill it and get a new one. Not a great mechanism !
So interesting game, happy to have tried it again, but also happy to have completed it :).
Achievements : Most of them are unlocked by just playing, but a few of them are hard, and “There’s A Graveyard?” (it requires to finish the game without dying) is just crazy. Obviously I cheated and used backups, without that I wouldn’t even have tried it, too much randomness ! I was hesitant to replay it immediately but once you understand the game, and knows which loot to choose, it is not that hard and a playthrough is quite quick.

Sniper Elite V2

41 hours playtime

45 of 47 achievements

Sniper Elite V2 - beaten

I won’t talk a lot about it, I like this game a lot and I played it because I got the DLCs, a good occasion to play more Sniper Elite.
The DLCs are nice, even if I was a little disappointed / happy (yes, I’m not sure which feeling) to see that one of them is a level from the first Sniper Elite.
Achievements : This was also a good occasion to unlock a few achievements, I played it quite a lot as each DLCs has one “easy” achievement and one quite challenging.
The missions and levels are nice, and 2 of 3 have bombings/noises that allow you to almost exclusively snipe (but covering the sound of your shots) so they are great. I’m not a fan of sneaking in my sniper games :).

The only remaining achievements require multiplayer so I’ll have to call my friend for that :).

Infinifactory

17 hours playtime

10 of 22 achievements

Infinifactory - unfinished

I’m actively playing that one. Not a lot to say right now, but a very fun game, and I have a friend to compare solutions and discuss issues, so this is great so far.
It starts to be really challenging so not sure how it will go…
Achievements : There are a few “optimization” achievements that look a little bit hard (although I already got a few of them), but this is in the spirit of the game so they’ll probably be unlocked when I finish the game.

Sacred 3

23 hours playtime

22 of 45 achievements

Sacred 3 - beaten

Another game that I played a few hours and never went back until this month. I consider I’ve beaten it as I finished the story, and I’m just replaying it at a harder difficulty.
The game is okay. The gameplay is okay (not very complicated, and it feels not always as responsive as I’d like), but the humor sucks (it sometimes sounds like it is written by a 12 yo) and the story is forgettable (10 seconds after starting a mission you’ll already forget, but it is easy : kill everything until you get to the boss).
The game is very repetitive (there are not a lot of different enemies, and they often all have the same skills), even the bosses are often doing pretty much all the same things. The only levels / bosses that felt really different are the DLC ones.
It looks like a diablo game (and sounds like one, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they used / copied sounds from it), but not as fun and with pretty much NO replay value, as there is no loot, and skill unlocks don’t sound fun. I’m interested by the thoughts of people : does anyone enjoy levelling to 50 ? And once you’re there, any interesting thing to do ?
Achievements : I did the ones I could, but a lot of them are just grinding… Play the game again and again to level characters, but as it is not interesting to replay the game, this is quite boring. I tried a few different characters, but they don’t feel different enough to make things interesting (just smash the buttons and block/dodge).
Maybe I’ll play a few levels here and there.
The other issue is that a lot of other achievements require multiplayer, and there’s not a lot people playing. I’ve seen a few people sometimes, but never at my level.
So I doubt I’ll complete it one day.