• Emily is Away Too
  

  3 hours playtime

  21 of 21 achievements

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January

Good start to the year. Probably because I had time off work and spent a lot of it inside, out of the cold and gaming. I bought quite a few games in Dec and Jan.

I didn’t mention the Dec ones in my last post, so I forget when exactly I got the different games but my total number has risen a little since the last post. I think this month it was: Heat Signature - which came with Morphblade, The Long Dark, Basingstoke, and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Haven’t really put a lot of time into any of these yet as I was focusing on other and older games.

Emily is away too
Bit of a strange game. Interesting, but I don’t think I could have played it much longer than I did. The main issue I had was the typing method. Basically there’s a kind of internet messenger that you type messages in, but as the messages are set you can’t type what you want. Instead, whatever keys you press a pre-determined message appears. So if I type ‘asdjahsd;khalskfhal;shda;shd’ it might come up with ‘Hi Emily. What have you been up to’ and it’s one keystroke for every keystroke in the message that appears. Playing the game involves doing this a LOT and it gets old quickly. Aside from that there were some good references to the early days of the internet and popular culture which I could relate to.

Watchdogs 2
I spent a lot more time on this. 49 hours in total! Unfortunately it doesn’t count towards my statistics on BLAEO or Steam as it’s on the UPlay launcher. I got almost all the achievements, was just left with 4-5 achievements that you can only get by buying a DLC and 1-2 that are online (I’m not very good at the player vs player part!). Fun game. An open world (Just Cause, Far Cry, Saints Row kind of game. Big world and lots to do. It wasn’t too repetitive, but started to drag a little towards the end.l I’m not gonna get the DLC, so I don’t think I”m gonna get much further with this and have uninstalled it.

Mass Effect
Continuing my trend of using other clients this month, I went onto play Mass Effect on Origin. I’m very slow getting around to playing this. Released in 2007, I bought it in 2012, and last played it in 2015! To be honest, I didn’t remember that much of the story from the parts I’d already played but just continued from my last save. Total play time is 28 hours, but I guess only about 6-8 of that was this month.
There are no achievements, and I missed some of the best screenshot moments at the end of the game, only getting one of the ship heading into the distance and the credits. Not very exciting so I haven’t uploaded them. I focused on the main mission and didn’t bother with a lot of the side missions or travelling around the galaxy. I can cross this one off my list now, but I do have other games int he Mass Effect series to play, which leads me onto my next post!

Mass Effect 2
After Mass Effect, I went straight onto the second in the series. Another one I was slow to play. Released in 2010, I bought it in 2012, and hadn’t played it before this month.I enjoyed this a lot more than the original. Partly because the graphics were a lot better, but I felt a lot more involved in the story too. It might have been because I played through it all and so the story flowed better than the original. I liked all the characters too, aside from Miranda.
I think I completed all the major missions, got all the crew members and all but 3 of them were loyal to me. Managed to complete the final mission with the entire crew surviving. I couldn’t get any screenshots for this one, key combination I used last time wouldn’t work for some reason.

Real life news
In real life, I found that I have a cataract in one of my eyes. I posted about my eyes getting worse in an earlier post on this site (Jul-Aug), but the opticians I went to at that time didn’t see any problems. It’s very early, as I’m only 37. I thought only people in their 70’s and 80’s get them, but apparently they can start from around 40. Still a bit early. They can also be caused by accidents and blows to the head, which made me think whether 15 years of kickboxing might have had something to do with it (only a hobby so very few fights, but regular sparring). Everything I’ve read suggests it needs to be a pretty big impact though, like a car crash. So don’t think that’s part of it either. Not gonna do much about it just yet, other than get stronger glasses and get regular check ups. My left eye compensates a lot, so I guess that’s a good thing.
Just started getting back into the gym after the winter break and then got a cold :-( so that’s something I need to focus on in February before I get fatter!

Hope everyone else had a good January!