killergege

Monthly Report - March 2019

This is one of those rare months where I finish more games than I get :)

  • Won : -
  • Free : -
  • From bundles/gifts/sales : Tick Tock: A Tale for Two Supporter Pack
  • Tick Tock: A Tale for Two

    2 hours playtime

    no achievements

Tick Tock: A Tale for Two - completed

I bought a two-pack to play this with a friend. This is cheap and short asymmetrical puzzle game that don’t require any network connection, you just specify which player you are and solve puzzles together, each player seeing different information and contributing to finding the solution.
This is not a hard game and we completed it in less than 2 hours. But it still made us think and was the right amount of challenge to not frustrate us, not too easy, not too hard.
So a nice game, probably great for playing with your non-gamer partner :).
Achievements : There are no achievements.


  • Tacoma

    6 hours playtime

    12 of 12 achievements

Tacoma - completed

From the creators of Gone Home, another “Discover the story by exploring some place” but this time, it is in a space station.
Great game. Really great voice-over, a lot of attention to details. I spent most of my time just looking at objects, reading product labels and looking a things, trying to fill the spaces between the information provided by the conversations and items you find. Their use of Augmented Reality is really clever and well-done (it displays overlays on books that are in foreign languages for instance), everything is really well integrated. This is what AR glasses should be when they’ll work :).
The story is interesting. They succeeded into making us care for characters you never meet, and don’t even really see (as you just see recorded replays of what happened), and I really like how it ends.
I also replayed the game with the commentary tracks, and I really liked that feature. You get a lot of interesting information from the people that worked on the game and they might point out some things you missed or explain some references you didn’t get. A really good idea, and I hope more game developers would do that.
Achievements : Got probably half of them on my first playthrough and as I replayed with the commentaries I completed the other ones. A lot of them are “secret” achievements so I had to look them up. Some of them I just wouldn’t get them without searching as they are very specific :).
I highly recommend to check the commentaries (obviously the commentaries on the first playthrough is a bad idea as it is a bit spoilery), so 2 playthroughs are recommended, just what you need to get all achievements.


  • Sniper Elite V2

    28 hours playtime

    36 of 47 achievements

Sniper Elite V2 - beaten

I won that one on SteamGifts. It took me some time to beat it but I don’t regret it. This is my first Sniper Elite game and I liked it a lot. Sniping is very satisfying :).
The story is pretty forgettable but I don’t think I was expecting it to be awesome. Overall the game is great but there are a few things that frustrated me : the x-ray shots cut-scenes are fun the first 2-3 times and then I disabled it as it breaks the flow of the game, the AI is pretty stupid, even in hard mode (soldiers looking for you are often stuck in things, they run around for no reason except being perfect targets…), trying to complete a level stealthily sounds fun but in fact it is very frustrating, as sometimes soldiers see you when they shouldn’t be able to (behind walls…), they hear you walk while there are dozens of soldiers patrolling, talking, and there are bombings and shootings in background… If you want to make the game hard, try to play stealth :). Moreover it is pretty much impossible to do a full level silently as there are often scenario moments where you are firing some alarms. So the result is that it is always easier to just start a shooting and kill whoever shows up.
But all of this are just some minor issues. You don’t play a sniper game just to sneak past enemies and kill silently :). Talking about that, I loved the levels where there are some elements covering your shots (church bells, bombings…) so you can snipe without raising any alarm ! These are the best moments.
I played the game in normal difficulty (there is gravity on the bullet, but there is an help indicator of where the bullet will hit) and in hard (there is gravity, wind, and no help indicators). Strangely, the hard mode felt easier than the normal one. Of course hitting the enemies is harder (even if, by the end of the game, I was surprised at how accurate my shots were - at some points I was wondering if the game wasn’t cheating a little and making me hit when it shouldn’t, but it is very satisfying so I won’t complain), but it seems that there are way less enemies, making the game less difficult than the other mode.
This is not really an issue, but it felt a bit strange.
So overall, good game, it made me want to play the other ones.
Achievements : At first, I thought that I needed to play multiplayer to complete the game’s achievements but it seems that they are co-op achievements. Thanksfully I have a friend that has the game, so I may do those in the next weeks. Also, I’m waiting for a sale to buy the DLCs and complete the game.
A lot of the other achievements are mostly completed just by playing the game. Even some that sound hard, it often happens by itself. Finding the gold bars and the bottles was harder than expected as you really have to explore and look very carefully. So I got around half of them on my first playthrough and used a guide that gave me the locations during my second one in hard mode. Other than that, the other ones are not really hard to get.


vigor

Didn’t know you could disable X-ray there, I won the third and would disable it too xD. I started directly in the hardest difficulty and started failing all bullets until I saw I had to aim correctly. I always like to get over a level silently and more when there is a lack of heart bars or ammo. If you are going for the DLC’s consider buying whole sniper elite package since it could be even cheaper than the DLC’s or just a great deal. Good luck with the hunt!

I remember playing Tacoma long ago, what a strange game, also Gone Home, where you could speedrun the game in a minute or so. Also did it in two playthroughs.

killergege

Well, when I say “disable” I really mean “set it at minimum”. They are so in love with that feature that you can’t completely disable it. But in practice, with that settings (in V2 at least), it is pretty much disabled, X-ray only appear when shooting important characters/targets, so I’m okay with that.
I guess playing for the first time the game and starting in hard mode would feel pretty hard :). But after normal mode, I think you’re pretty used to the drop of the bullet.

tsupertsundere

I also love it when games have developers’ commentary! Getting that insight is really illuminating and special. I’m glad you liked Tacoma - it’s one of my favorites.