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Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

14.4 hours, 23 of 36 achievements

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Here is something I never thought I would get to see. A game based on the Mutant universe, that's not based on the dreadful Mutant Chronciles!
Mutant is a venerable pen & paper RPG series, that's been around from 1984, although it's undergone some major changes over time, going from being a post apocalyptic game with a few scattered settlements, to being basically post-ap in a 18-19th century setting, but with advanced technology scattered around, to cyberpunk to a weird and not very good Warhammer 40k knockoff and then back to 18th century, and now finally we're in a "shortly after the apocalypse" kind of setting. I would personally strongly recommend against the 40k knockoff era, and the cyberpunk era of this setting, they're just not particularly good (and not really connected to the rest).

Anyway, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a party based tactical RPG, playing a bit like a mix between Xcom & Wasteland 2. You've got a small party of characters, and most of the game is you fighting your way through a hostile southern Sweden. Each character of course has their own strengths and weaknesses, and the game really encourages you to switch around, using the best character & the best equipment for the fight ahead. There are no random encounters or anything of that nature in this game, and an important strategy (at least on hard and onwards) is to try and take out isolated enemies in a silent way, as running in, guns blazing, will just get you overwhelmed. Doing this makes the game somewhat easy, but it gets easy because of smart play, which I'm perfectly fine with.

I had a lot of fun with Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, and after beating it, I felt like I wanted more. That's generally a good sign.


12 Labours of Hercules V: Kids of Hellas

6 hours, 15 of 23 achievements

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Everything I said here is still true. This game changes very little from the previous ones. Still, I find these games kind of nice to play when I'm a bit stressed.


ABZÛ

1.6 hours, 7 of 12 achievements

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ABZÛ is basically an underwater walking sim. It's a short game where you, as a diver, need to traverse an underwater landscape, full of different sea creatures, that you have some very limited interaction with, while soothing music is being played. Really, that's about it. There are a few "puzzles" that basically boil down to "go to super obvious location, hit switch". Still, I did enjoy this game. The combinations of the visuals & music created a nice, relaxing experience


Warhammer: Vermintide 2

12.7 hours, 9 of 26 achievements

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Ever played a game like Left 4 Dead? Then you know roughly what Vermintide is about. You're fighting your way through a level with your friends, batting hordes of smaller enemies, and some larger ones.
In the grand pantheon of 4 player co-op games, Vermintide 2 holds up really well. Varied enemies, a solid melee system (very much improved over Vermintide 1) and characters that both feel different from each other, and can be made to play quite differently due to different specializations and equipment. It also has a functional story, that won't set your world on fire, but it does a good job contextualizing your actions. Yeah, I really liked this one!


Gunspell

1.4 hours, no achievements

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A bad match three game with some nice art, and very inconsistent difficulty (something tells me that the Free to Play version is incredibly pay to win…). Skip.


Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

1.4 hours, no achievements

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I know this one is considered a classic, but in my opinion it does not hold up particularly well. The controls, while much improved over GTA 3, still feel a bit off, and it's weirdly inconsistent in its minigames. You've got one minigame where you need to bounce a low rider, and here you use the numpad to do the bouncing, with up & down being inverted, and then you've got a dancing minigame which uses the exact same GUI elements, yet you use the arrow keys and here up & down are not inverted. The port feels rushed to say the least, and there was not enough good in here to keep me hooked, and make me overlook the flaws.


Bloodgate

0 hours, 0 of 22 achievements

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Continuing the trend of finding games where the servers are down, Bloodgate is a puzzle game that's reliant on online servers, for some reason. The devs did not even properly release the game, it never left early access, and yet they decided to take down the servers. At least the game is no longer being sold.


Trent

I think ABZU is one of the few games where the collectibles actually really help the game…The game can be completed pretty quickly as you say, but finding all of the shells, fish types, etc., gives you a reason an excuse to keep swimming around enjoying the scenery, without it being a burden.

Ugh, can’t stand games with discontinued servers that make the game unplayable…like The Collider. :(

Fnord

And The Collider is still being sold, despite this…

EvilBlackSheep

Thanks for the nice feedback on Mutant Year Zero (even tho now I want to throw my money at humble even more), it sounds right up my alley.

As for bloodgate, this was a whole mess. The game itself was not bad (I found out they were shutting down the server just a week or two before it happened, by total casuality as I was checking if the games in my EA list had left said EA for me to play them, and managed to play it all before they shut it down). That being said, the devs were really scummy on that one as the game DIDN’T need to have an always online check as it was solo, and they could have just released a last patch to unactivate the always online check. More even, they kept selling the game on steam weeks (or maybe months, i stopped checking after a while) after the server was shut down, hence selling an unplayable product.

Fnord

It’s worth throwing money at them for it. Even if Mutant Year Zero was the only game in the bundle worth getting, I would have been happy with my purchase.