June backlog tally

June had some long week-end due to covid. And crappy weather. So Backlog cleaning was in order.

Games I enjoyed

• SUPERHOT
  

  4 hours playtime

  15 of 26 achievements

• The Darkness II
  

  7 hours playtime

  25 of 50 achievements

• Rock of Ages 2
  

  5 hours playtime

  7 of 21 achievements

• Beholder
  

  7 hours playtime

  20 of 60 achievements

• Magicka 2
  

  6 hours playtime

  19 of 47 achievements

• Minit
  

  2 hours playtime

  20 of 27 achievements

Two of them are sequels to games I already played Magicka 2 and Rock of Ages 2. As I expected it was more of the same with little change in it. So magicka for the crazy self casting where you spend half the time killing yourself/your friends and laugh about it. And rock of age 2 for the silly history explanation and crashing gates with big boulders.
SUPERHOT Not usually a big fan of FPS, but that take on the genre was really good. The idea that opponents/bullets move ever so slowly except if you move as well was pretty damn good and well executed. And the story/aesthetics of the game were also a solid plus.
The Darkness II A more classic take on the FPS genre. The story was close enough to the source material to keep me in (I love The Darkness as comic books) and the powers/enemy variation were good enough for the length of the game.
Beholder A bit of a reminiscence of Orwell/Paper please with this dystopian world. You monitor your neighbors while trying to help your family. Started to get a bit boring/repetitive toward the end, but the start of the game was really nice and the overall story was really influenced by your choices, so it made up for it.
Minit Starts of like a Zelda clone. And then you realize that 60 seconds have passed and you have to start a new (while keeping your stuff). It was quite the challenge to figure out how to do some of the stuff in the game in those 60 seconds, but it was fun. Gotta love this kind of graphic, because it’s not for everyone I’d say.

Meh games

• Shelter 2
  

  2 hours playtime

  3 of 26 achievements

• Pathway
  
  
  

  Beaten on EGS

Shelter 2 was … weird. Like you start of in a tutorial that learns you everything. And then you’re set and need to survive for the next few hours. But there is no specific goal to guide you outside of keeping your children alive. So while the game looks nice and it’s really cute to play a Lynx, I found it quite boring after a while. Like why would you go explore if you risk losing your cubs because there is no food in this new region.
Pathway was a freeby on EGS. And it fails short of being a good game. It’s FTL meet XCom in a pixel Indiana Jones settings. The animation/design are quite good. But the gameplay loop is a bit lacking. It’s a roguelike that would have been better by not being a roguelike.
You have 5 adventure to do. You unlock stuff by playing (either equipment that you can use instantly or money/characters to change between adventures) and gain some experience to improve your current characters. That progression feels lacking. Better weapons are just the same weapon with better stats. All the stuff that you can unlock at your base camp is almost useless (the only useful one was a new inventory page) and you don’t feel the need to change characters because you’ll lose out on all the progress made by your current characters. And after the 3rd adventure, events/battles you get outside of the fixed ones start to feel like déjà-vu.

Never again games

• Two Worlds II Castle Defense
  

  3 hours playtime

  no achievements

• The Hex
  

  5 hours playtime

  11 of 28 achievements

Two worlds II Castle Defense Not much to be said, it’s a tower defense with nothing for him. It’s not pretty, the gameplay is not really interesting, it’s really short (but that’s a good point) and the controls aren’t really clear (I only found at like the 3rd map that you could move the screen out of your starting position)
The Hex was rather disappointing. Some called it a masterpiece so I was expecting something good. It’s a meta story/game but nothing close to a masterpiece. The story starts well but twists become obvious and the progression is always the same (do stuff in the tavern, get into a game for the character you have, change character). The idea to have multiples genre in the game could be good, but as a result, none of those gameplay is refined enough to be good. There is one or two good parts here and there but that’s it. Like at one point the game tell you that what you’re doing is starting to get boring. And the answer is yes. Yet it keeps giving you the same kind of stuff. The fact that it told me it was boring does not make it less boring…