samwise84

Update 44: March 1st until 8th

Vacation time is over :(
So it’s back to working and my crazy workplace.

Half-Life 2

Mata Hari

6/10
8.4 hours
no achievements

Nice HOG/point'n'click, with start trouble. For some reason it crashed on start with a direct X error, that I was missing some direct X version (which I did not). So the first hour was spent trying to fix the game. I am using a Nvidia card in my PC.

What worked for me was the following:
Open up NVIDIA Control Panel. Under Manage 3D Settings, Program Settings, click Add and add Mata Hari into the list (you might need to look for the .exe which is located in the common folder of your Steam installation. Under option 2 choose "High-performance NVIDIA processor". This should fix the problem on start up.

Of course your drivers should be up to date :D

Now to the game:
You are Mata Hari a young aspiring dancer who is recruited into the spy game. From here on out you will be spying for all the different groups (German, French, etc.), trying to prevent WWI.
I was not the biggest fan of the dancing mini game and also the one with the rats and the travel minigame got tedious after a while. In the end I always used the fast travel option.

Half-Life 2

Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena

7/10
6.7 hours
no achievements

This is a nice HOG game. Basically it is pure HOS with a few puzzles mixed in between. Enjoyed it a lot.

Half-Life 2

Samantha Swift and the Golden Touch

7/10
3 hours
no achievements

Pretty much the same like it's predecessor. It is a nice HOG game. Basically it is pure HOS with a few puzzles mixed in between. Enjoyed it a lot.

Though with this one I had also start problems. When starting the game it started, but did not open, e.g. the process was open in the background, but the game did not come up on screen.

To fix this I had to add the steam.dll from the general steam folder to the game folder and also downloaded another exe file. Though I do not know if only copying the steam.dll did fix it already.

Half-Life 2

Puzzle Agent

6/10
5.1 hours
no achievements

This is a game consisting mostly of short puzzles. They are different enough to be entertaining and not so difficult that you cannot solve them on your own. Not so sure about the whole gnome story. Maybe the second one will clear that one up.

Half-Life 2

Strikey Sisters

7/10
17.2 hours
4 of 10 achievements

I liked this Arkanoid/Breakout game. It is different to the normal ones where you have a pad. Here you control a person with a "sword", with which you hit the ball back and or kill the monsters. You have to first empty the field of all the blocks while also avoinding the monsters and their attacks, then kill all the monsters. You can collect different traps and spells to help you. I tried it with kb+m and found the controlls nearly impossible, but with a controller the game played fine and I was able to finish it.

Some things that I did not like :

  • The ball is the same color and looks like some of the enemy attacks so therefore it is sometimes rather confusing which is which.
  • to collect all the coins you have to pretty much ignore everything else, because otherwise you cannot collect the coins and you need to collect them or the chest that you need for some extra stuff won't appear.
  • the odd card that drops from chests to catch them all, most of the time it is even too hard to get it, because of monsters in the way or your ball dropping and then you have to catch all different monsters in the game and there are a lot of them. It will take ages.


green = PoP thanks to aragon789 & BarbaricGenie for challenging me
red = Challenge Me thanks JaffaCaffa for challenging me
blue = PAGYWOSG
grey = BLAEO monthly theme
orange = completions/for fun games

Overall Backlog Progress:

9.66% (84/870)
9.54% (83/870)
5.98% (52/870)
72.41% (630/870)
2.41% (21/870)
Overall SG Wins Progress:

25.75% (43/167)
23.35% (39/167)
2.40% (4/167)
46.11% (77/167)
2.40% (4/167)


Here are the games I'm currently working on. Reviews will follow once I'm done with the games:
I've won 2 games in the last week and bought none and was gifted 1. And I've beaten/completed 5 games, so that makes a -2 for the last week and a total of -2 for March.

SG wins:

Gifts :

thanks Alvin04


Games I bought/activated this week :

bought/activated some DLC's: Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Upgrade, Go Go Nippon 2015, Go! Go! Nippon! 2016
    none
Games I want to play within the next few weeks:

Challenge Me: Not taking part in this month right now, since I have to do more from the previous one.

PA: none

PoP: thanks to aragon789 & BarbaricGenie for challenging me

BLAEO monthly:


PAGYWOSG:

Just for fun:
Vito

Vacation time is over :(
So it’s back to working and my crazy workplace.

Same here :( During my vacation one of our team member quit because they found a job more suiting for them…I’m really curious how that’ll turn out…Hope your workplace isn’t making you too crazy this week!

I can’t say much else. A lot of people seem to play 11-11 for the monthly theme, it’ll be interesting to see how the different reviews will turn out :)

samwise84

well they are thinking about sequestering my team to stay at work 24/7 due to the corona virus, since we are needed to actually run the place ( I work as a data center technician) and it is deemed a critical infrastructure of my country. All non essential personal is supposed to be send to work from home and a part of my team is supposed to move into work. We’ll see how that will turn out.

So far I really like 11-11

Vito

Sounds scary, to be honest. I would go crazy living at my workplace. And I have a lovely workplace (the team member that quit was from a different department), but still. Horrifying thought. Hope everything turns out well!

samwise84

Yeah honestly we are not looking forward to it :-/ Sleeping on field beds, no stoves to cook on, having to work 12h shifts on/off without a real day off and not being allowed to leave does not sound too appealing.