Monthly Report - July/August 2018

Again, I have been quite slow on gaming so I played smaller games that I won on SteamGift but were still waiting for me to try them !
And grouped July & August. Hope to return to a monthly schedule soon.
Even SteamGifts & Humble bundle are not helping ! Hopefully I have some friends to give me games :).

So, new games those months :

Won : …
Free : …
From bundles/gifts/sales : Darkest Dungeon, Human Resource Machine

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided™

68 hours playtime

46 of 81 achievements

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided™ - beaten

I finished the game, and liked it a lot. I already said most of what I think of the game, but I liked the ending, I liked the missions in the last location (it seems that some people didn’t). Indeed when you know what you are doing all of this can be wrapped up pretty quickly, but when it’s your first time and trying to do the right thing (and not skipping most of the level by being invisible ^^), it’s a bit challenging and interesting.
I replayed it as a new game+ to get the achievements I missed, and the game becomes even more fun when you are that powerful (and easy but who cares ?), it feels great.
And I did a last playthrough on the hardest difficulty for the achievement. And there you see that when you don’t explore, when you know where to go and you skip side missions, the game is pretty short :). But even this one was interesting as you restart from the beginning, without most of your powers, you have only one life and I tried to get the “don’t set off alarms” achievement, adding a bit of difficulty, but quite doable (thanksfully, you can reload your save when you messed up !).
So very happy to have won this one ! And now I really want to play the Human Revolution, but I’ll wait a bit, I heard the gameplay doesn’t feel great when you play them one after the other.
Achievements : I did all the main game achievements, and this was difficult, I had to follow a guide because some missions require very specific actions in order to enable other missions later, some require save branching, etc… I got most of them on my first playthrough though, but some very specific ones I only got them on my third playthrough being really careful to not miss them :).
Now what remain are DLC achievements (but they are a bit expensive, I’ll wait for a sale), and the “breach mode” ones. I tried it a little, but didn’t really like it, it feels too much “micro-transactions” : the experience has not been designed to be fun, but to be frustrating, pushing you to buy packs… I may play it a bit because I’m interested to discover the levels, but will probably not bother to complete all the levels.
So I don’t expect to get 100% achievements on this game.

Darkest Dungeon®

6 hours playtime

15 of 104 achievements

Darkest Dungeon® - unfinished

A friend gave me this one. I didn’t play it a lot, but god this is hard ! I know it’s normal to have some characters die, but I feel that it’s quite hard to progress and stress management is difficult (the character stress, and my own) :).
What I played so far feels quite good, although I feel sometimes a bit lost in the classes & spells, and what’s interesting or not, like I still don’t really know what to do with the Abomination. I learned that opening curios is often not a good idea :).
Achievements : I didn’t care for them so far, so I don’t know. But I guess there are some pretty hard ones in there !

Train Valley

3 hours playtime

11 of 39 achievements

Train Valley - unfinished

To compensate for the stressful Darkest Dungeon I decided to play that game that I won months ago ! It’s a nice game, I progressed quite quickly although I kept failing missions because I wasn’t paying attention enough, but that’s not really the game’s fault :).
I like the basic idea, but I fear that it might be a little repetitive if it lasts too long. I finished the first “country” and will move to another one, I just hope some mechanics will be added.
Achievements : I checked them because there’s no story here so no risk of spoilers. I feel that a lot of them will naturally unlock as I play and nothing look like impossible so I might complete this one !

RIVE

3 hours playtime

5 of 44 achievements

RIVE - unfinished

In my “I play some games I won on SG” state of mind, I spent some time on RIVE. This is not really my kind of game, but I kinda liked what I played. The humor and self-awareness helped quite a bit. I played it on the lowest difficulty and I’m pretty bad at it, so I might finish it to see where the story goes but won’t try it on the harder difficulties, it would just be frustration :).
Achievements : I might take a look and try some but I know I won’t be able to succeed at that game on the other difficulties, so I don’t expect to complete this one. But maybe at least try to increase the percentage.

Human Resource Machine

5 hours playtime

11 of 16 achievements

Human Resource Machine- unfinished

This one has been in my wishlist for a very long time, and a friend gifted it to me. I like it. I’m a software programmer so this is my jam ! I like this kind of gaming+programming games. I played TIS which is similar but it was a bit too “dry”… This one has a very nice UI, the presentation is great, the characters are funny, the music is interesting and doesn’t become boring after a few loops, some new instructions are added regularly so it doesn’t feel that you do always the same things…
I’ll finish this one, and might look at the sequel.
The only downside is that in one afternoon I’ve already done most of the game. The upside is that there’s two way to complete a level and I still have some to go back to find a better solution !
Achievements : I got a lot of them with a normal (unfinished) playthrough, and at the middle of the game I took a look to see if there’s some I can do (and completed them). So now I mostly have to finish the game and find both solutions to a few levels I didn’t complete.