Good bye January, 1984 and Mordor !

• Middle-earth™: Shadow of Mordor™
  

  21 hours playtime

  33 of 74 achievements

• Orwell
  

  4 hours playtime

  12 of 27 achievements

• Terraria
  

  74 hours playtime

  44 of 88 achievements

Since my last post, I’ve yet made some progress through my ABC project (currently 4/23) and beat Orwell lately.

But first, for the monthly challenge, I finally brought Middle-Earth : Shadow of Mordor to an end, along fellow BLAEO-er Jowy.
My opinion about ME:SoM is commonplace I think : the game is nice, well done, technically all set but it lacks something, call it personality or ambition. The sandbox is a strength to me, since it’s well implemented : you choose your target among Orcs leaders, analyze its weak side, track it, hunt it, get rid of the minions and finally slash it. The problem is the rest of the game equals totally more of the same : target, analyze, track, hunt, kill, rinse and repeat. The supposed core of the game, that is to say the storyline missions, is pretty forgettable, even more for someone like me with no particular affinity for the Lords of the Rings’ universe (I’ve seen Peter Jackson’s trilogy and that’s it). I happen to own ME:SoM’s GOTY version but I don’t feel like even glancing at the DLCs. My monthly challenge’s buddy Jowy told me he basically felt the same way about the game overall and the DLCs in particular.
BTW, fighting along Orcs and the backlog with Jowy was a good motivation to go through the game, even if it was hard to push forward at the same pace and to be able to find some time to exchange feedbacks. So, hooray for January monthly theme !
Verdict on Middle-Earth : Shadow of Mordor : 6,5/10

Orwell : while we were on a roll after ME:SoM, Jowy and I agreed to go on the monthly challenge and beat Orwell, (virtually) side by side. Once again, we succeeded but I was slightly disappointed…
First, with such a title, you can presume the game is about the concepts of privacy and social surveillance. Indeed, your character is part of some Big Brother project, in an imaginary country. Your new job is to monitor targeted people by spying their mails, phone calls, social media posts, etc : in concrete terms, it translates in the game in doing some sort of copy-paste of pre-chosen sentences. I found this dim gameplay to be boring but like Jowy said to me, you’re part of a blind and cold administration, so it’s normal to feel bored while doing these everyday chores. Jowy 1, RomTaka 0. ;)
What is supposed to be the heart of the game is the story, and while I write that, I realize the game is definitely closer to a VN than I would have thought at first : rather than the dialogs and answers you give like in a normal VN, it’s the pieces of “truth” you choose to pick, in order to paint a character honest or shady, insignificant or interesting, innocent or guilty, that direct Orwell’s story. This being said, the game is very rigid and guiding and would have been better if you could have chosen more freely the sentences and facts you want to retain. So, you could say that just like in a VN, your decisions can bend the story in a direction or another, but even with my single run, I feel like these changes of direction are very few. Moreover, even though the game is divided in acts, you have to start over the whole game in order to take different decisions and see how it affects the story : poor choice of game design. About the technical aspects, there’s almost no music or sound and very few animations (BTW, it’s really a shame you have to wait for the conversations to scroll down in real time and can’t fast forward) : once again, don’t expect Orwell to be fun. If you expect it to make you think, you could be more satisfied but myself, considering I’m already pretty sensitive to all the privacy protection subject, I don’t grant the game any particular enlightenment.
The good point is I beat one more game on my ABC project. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Verdict on Orwell : 5/10

Finally, it had been years that I hadn’t touched Terraria but a few months ago, I saw Steam achievements had been added to the game, so this month, I decided to give it a try again. I had already played some 35 hours in my previous run but I plunged back instantly : as of today, I added 38 hours to my playtime and 44 achievements !
What a delight to dig, loot, fight underground mobs, gear yourself, set your arena and return victorious from a boss fight ! As of now, I finally managed to beat the Wall of Flesh and subsequently enter the hardmode. What I like best in Terraria, it’s I can progress at my own pace (in spite of random events and although in hardmode the Corruption and Hallow now slowly but surely invades the map), which honestly means I can linger as much as I want : this way, I’m thoroughly preparing to face the Mechanical bosses and not ready to quit Terraria !

February will be a “Challenge me” month for me, so I should be busy next month beating at least 1 or 2 of my assigned games… and continuing Terraria.