• Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
  

  32 hours playtime

  no achievements

• PAYDAY: The Heist
  

  25 hours playtime

  8 of 56 achievements

• PAYDAY 2
  

  71 hours playtime

  229 of 1196 achievements

April

Working from home and most places are closed because of the pandemic, so I spent a lot of time gaming this month.

Steam

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
Following on from Assassin’s Creed 2 last month, I moved straight onto the next game, and the only other Assassin’s Creed that I have in my Steam collection. More of the same really. Not much difference in terms of graphics or controls. Enjoyed it. Got through the main story and got a few other Uplay achievements on the way. Far from 100% with those, but no Steam achievements, so I get to mark this as Completed. Another game bought in 2012 crossed off the list :)

Payday: The Heist
I actually quite like this game. Reminds me of LFD2, which I played a LOT for about 6 months straight a few years ago. I felt the only bad thing about this game, was the grinding for new perks and weapons. I guess it’s an incentive to keep playing. The online community isn’t very active either.
This was a SG win back in 2012! (shame on me for not beating this sooner). I think extra levels and maybe other things have been added since then. Maybe they were once DLC and became free after Payday 2 was released? There are a LOT of achievements in this game, and I’m not good enough at it or willing to play long enough to get them all. As I can’t ‘Complete it’ I’m classing it as ‘Beaten’ as I managed to clear all the levels. Might not sound like a difficult task, but it took me longer than you’d expect! The multiplayer was pretty dead, so I did a few levels single player but got stuck on 3 on the levels where the I teammates weren’t helping much. Luckily I found a couple of populated online games and got through them.

Payday 2

There was a lot of controversy over this game when it came out regarding microtransactions. I think there have been a lot of changes since then and the majority that remain are aesthetic. I got the game for free on Steam in 2017, but didn’t start playing until this month. I actually ended up buying a DLC pack that included some extra levels just because I was playing so much and had got the original game for free.
Quite a few differences to the original. There are a lot more levels and you can choose to play most levels stealthily or loudly. There are obviously more active players than the original. Some are obviously cheating (hovering around the level, teleporting to different spots etc.), but I don’t think this is really a big issue to most people because you’re not playing against each other. It looks a lot better than the original and there is a lot more replay value. It does feel a bit bloated at times, there are a lot of weapons and mods available for those weapons.
Even more achievements than the original (1196 at the moment!), so no chance of me getting them all! I classed ‘beating’ this game as becoming ‘infamous’ by reaching the reputation level of 100. I think this was the original max level of the game. These days, this isn’t the end of levelling up. There are 25 levels of infamy available at the moment! Anyway, I poured 70+ hours into this game over 2-3 weeks and feel like I’ve experienced pretty much everything available.

Backlog Additions

I bought Fibbage XL to play with friends and family during isolation, Gato Roboto which was on sale (should have waited as it’s free with Alienware as I write this), and Gris which I traded for.

Spring Cleaning

I had another cull. I looked through games I tried and just couldn’t get into or actively disliked. I’m a lot more careful about choosing games these days, so I don’t often get games I dislike any more but these are all games from bundles or ‘classics’ that I bought based on name alone without looking into them carefully.

Removed Games:
Morrowind - I installed this, got a couple of mods for bugs and graphics then booted it up. Gave up after about 20 minutes. Very dated graphics, and far too much reading for me! I’m sure it’s a great game and loved by those who got it when it came out, but 18 years is a long time in the gaming world and I think it’s dated too much for me to enjoy.
Space Pirates and Zombies - is a game I tried a while back, but had absolutely no interest in. In the past, I was going to remove it from my Steam library but as I got it with Humble Bundle 6 it was linked to other games and these would be deleted too (Rochard, Shatter, Torchlight, and Vessel). I’ve completed the only game that I was really interested in from that set (Rochard) and while it’s annoying I’ll lose the game from my library, I think it’s a relatively small price to pay for getting rid of the others!
Hitman 2 Silent assassin - another game that I’m sure I would have liked if I bought it 18 years ago, but today it just feels too clunky and looks bad.
Lead and Gold - Gangs of the Wild West – I think this was the first game I bought through the Steam store. I was a bit suspicious about the process and got what I thought was a cheap, low risk game to try it out. I have 23 hours in it and some of the rarest achievements I own (mainly because nobody plays it!). However, the servers are dead now and it’s a multiplayer only game. It was fun in its time, but now it’s time to say farewell, Lead and Gold.

Hidden Games:
Half Life Deathmatch and Half Life Deathmatch Source are linked to other games in the Orange Box, so I can’t delete them but I’m never going to play them. Hidden on Steam and categorized in ‘Won’t play’ on BLAEO.