Smythe
  • BioShock 2 Remastered

    18 hours playtime

    31 of 53 achievements

  • BioShock 2

    0 minutes playtime

    0 of 68 achievements

  • BioShock Infinite

    15 hours playtime

    26 of 80 achievements

  • Anomaly Warzone Earth

    12 hours playtime

    17 of 42 achievements

July

Short post this month. I’ve been playing quite a lot, but jumping between games a little so I haven’t finished many. Still working at home and it seems like restrictions may be reimposed in my area, so looks like this year may be a good one for backlog clearing if the pandemic continues!

Removed Games

Men of War

I tried to like this. Put 4 hours into the game, but didn’t get very far. Only managed a couple of levels. I could look beyond the slightly dated graphics and the bad voice acting, but the controls really threw me. Little things like not being able to move the screen around with keys like you can in most RTS games. The tutorial was pretty lacking too. I knew how to do all the basic moves by the end of it, but a lot was missed and nothing felt very intuitive when playing. This was a game I picked up in 2011, so probably partly my fault for not trying it earlier! I’ve lots of half finished RTS games that are a lot more enjoyable, so can’t justify spending any more time on this.

Steam

Bioshock 2/Bioshock 2 Remastered
After beating Bioshock in February, I thought I’d continue with the series. I have two versions of the game and both have achievements, but they don’t sync. I chose to play the remastered version despite reading about stability issues because there are no multiplayer achievements in that version. The game did crash quite a lot, but I just saved often.
Seemed slightly less creepy than the original and playing through it in one go meant I could follow the story more easily (picked up on a saved game years later with the original). I enjoyed it more than the original, but still not one of my favourites despite the cult following. Both marked as beaten and off the backlog.

Bioshock Inifite
By far my favourite in the series. I think the games improved as the series went on. The story was a lot more engaging and the feeling wasn’t as creepy (aside from the madhouse in the Comstock House stage). The auto save function was a little strange and it seems to make it impossible to dip back into different levels to get extra achievements. As far as I can tell, if I go back to the middle of the game I’ll have to play through from that point and later saves will be removed. I probably should have varied my weapons and attack style a little!
This is one of the few games that I would consider going back and playing through again. It was a lot easier than the previous 2 - I played on medium and although I died, it was never more than once in one part of the game, unlike the previous games. I’m not going to dive straight back in though, lots more to deal with in the backlog!

Anomoly Warzone Earth
Simple tower defence game that looks like it was made for smartphones. It was okay. I already had a few hours in the game, so picked up from there to finish the main story mode and the two additional challenges with waves of enemies to ‘beat’ the game.

Backlog Additions

Quite a few this month. Yuppie Psycho, Skater XL, The friends of Ringo Ishikawa, SteamWorld Dig 2, Yakuza Kiwami, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Baba Is You.
I actually bought one more game, Karma City Police, but it wasn’t what I expected. it had pretty good reviews and looked interesting from the screenshots but I probably should have read the reviews a bit more closely. It’s basically a demo at the moment. Early access with a limited area to play, a few small bugs, and a lot of spelling errors. What was functional wasn’t very enjoyable, so after finishing it in 40 mins I got my second ever (?) Steam refund.