• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
  

  17 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Half-Life 2: Episode One
  

  5 hours playtime

  8 of 13 achievements

• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
  

  8 hours playtime

  13 of 22 achievements

• Please Knock on My Door
  

  4 hours playtime

  12 of 12 achievements

• Metro 2033
  

  18 hours playtime

  20 of 48 achievements

• Katana ZERO
  

  6 hours playtime

  13 of 22 achievements

December

A good gaming month for me. 4 games beaten and 2 completed, some old and some new.

Half Life Lost Coast
Not much of a game, more of a demo of the game I guess. There were no achievements and it only took me 17 minutes to run through the story. A nice quick reduction of my backlog!

Half Life Episode 1 and Half Life Episode 2
I’m putting these together. I played them very close together, which makes the stories a little difficult to distinguish. Both good expansions of the core game and continue the story. I didn’t really play for the achievements, just the main story. Both very enjoyable and I can see why HL2 has such a following and is reviewed so highly. Perhaps the new Half Life: Alyx will be followed by another non-VR title. I’m not really interested in VR gaming, but it would be nice to see the series continued.

Please Knock on my Door
This is a game about depression and social anxiety. I’ve had friends who have suffered from depression, but I don’t consider myself to have. I think everyone has their low points though, and anyone who has felt this way and can be honest with themselves about that will connect in some way with this game.
It’s unusual. It doesn’t really feel like a game. I’d normally steer away from this kind of game, but I’ve been more interested in different genres in the last couple of years. It’s a heavy subject, but the game doesn’t force you to feel bad about yourself or the character. It kind of simulates the feelings, self-doubts, and worries that can go through someone’s head.
It didn’t feel like there would be an ‘end’ to the story, but there are three different ways that the game can stop. I managed to find them and all the other achievements. There were two that I needed a little help with, but I stumbled across the others. So long as you are aware of the topic of this game and are ready for the topic, it’s interesting to play. A rare 100% completion for me.

Metro 2033
Another pretty old game. I don’t think I really got into this when I first bought it because it’s kind of creepy (-.-;). Not all the way through, just in parts. Still, I guess it was enough to put me off the game.I persevered this time and managed to beat the main story. Nowhere near 100% and I doubt I’ll get near that.
I had the newer Metro game in my wishlist based on positive reviews, but removed it after playing this. I’m sure it’s a good game, but this didn’t really inspire me to play more. This one was pretty good, I liked the story. The graphics were a little dated because of the age of the game, but not too bad (I was playing the original, not the redux). I guess I just didn’t like the ‘feel’ of the game. It was a long way off ‘horror’ games, but there was enough there to make me think, ‘why am I playing a game in my free time that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable’…hehe…scaredy-cat!
Glad to get another older game off the backlog :)

Katana Zero
I traded a few games for Katana Zero this month and dived straight in. I don’t want to write anything about the story to avoid spoilers. The game is good. It’s pretty short. I completed it and then went back to get a few of the easier achievements and am on 5 hours of playtime. There are difficult points, but it feels like you can learn from mistakes and find a way to beat those difficult parts. Looks great, music is good, and it has a very nice visual style. I beat the main story and got what I think are the only two endings. There are a lot more achievements. I might try for a few of the easier ones but I’m not good enough at platformers to get the more difficult ones, like a speedrun achievement.

Adding to my backlog
I did some trading and cheap buying this month. I’ve already mentioned Katana Zero, but I also added SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising, Frostpunk, and Wuppo to my backlog. I should have probably resisted those and cleared a few more games, but too late now! I decided while writing this post that I’m going to treat myself to one more game…the skateboarding game Session looks good and is on sale while it’s still in development. It’s only available through Steam, so I doubt it will get significantly cheaper for a while.

Feels like a bit of a backward step adding more games that I beat, but even after buying Session I’m still slighty up this month (6 beaten and 5 added). I was tempted by a big discount on Wolfenstein 2, but as it’s included in XBox live I should just beat it there before my subscription runs out. All the other games on my wishlist can wait until I’ve cleared more games, I get a decent trade offer, or I win them on SG :)

Real World News

I don’t live in the same country as my family and I’m single, so Christmas isn’t really a special time for me. In fact, there are often fewer friends around as they fly home to see their family. Rather than spend Christmas Day at home, I decided to ignore Christmas and just travel a bit! I went to Ishigaki Island in Okinawa for 5 days. It’s normally pretty warm all year round, but I seemed to be lucky with the weather. A couple of showers on one day, but very clear aside from that and around 24-26 degrees.

Progress
I keep a tab of my statistics in my profile page on BLAEO, but I like to post it at the end of every year. I’m a little early with the ‘beginning of 2020’ statistics, but they won’t change much in the next few days. Still looking good and the backlog is slowly decreasing :)

Beginning of 2017 - 276 games

Beginning of 2018 - 249 games

Beginning of 2019 - 237 games

Beginning of 2020 - 261 games