killergege

Monthly Report - February 2018

I finally played ABZU !

As usual: first, new games :

  • Won on SG : Pillars of Eternity, Train Valley
  • From bundles/free/gifts/sales : Life is Strange - Complete Season, The Red Solstice, Owlboy, Infested Planet, Tacoma, Tesla Effect, Shadowrun: Dragonfall
  • The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

    125 hours playtime

    95 of 95 achievements

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - completed

I played this one a lot to finish it.
So my final thoughts are : nice game, maybe a little bit too linear (not enough replay value), this kind of game works great with random maps. I also think that there is an issue with skills balance : I shouldn’t have struggled that much on normal difficulty with a pretty bad build and barely feeling the difficulty increase on heroic with an optimised build. This is normal that it has impact, but it forces you to choose one style and you can’t switch (full respec costs a lot).
I also think that one class is not enough, you have to buy the extension to renew a bit the gameplay.
But I liked the music a lot :)

Achievements : After my “normal” playthrough I did another quick test run to test some builds and jumped into a heroic hardcore any-bug-is-a-threat playthrough. It wasn’t as hard as I expected (optimised build helps A LOT), but I still managed to be killed a few times, thanksfully this game has file saves :). I hate the idea of losing permanently.
So, I got these achievements (hardcore + difficulties), and a few I missed.
Sadly one of the achievement is just a DLC-check so I had to buy one (I got the arcane mechanic), but I don’t regret it, it is a fun class, and I got it on sale with cards money :).
The last one was the most annoying : kill 500K enemies. And I barely got 50K with 4 full playthoughs… Sorry the game has not enough replay value for that.
So I made a damage reflection build, and got somewhere weak enemies are spawning (almost) indefinitely, and left the game running. That’s why I have so much play time this month :).
I think I had to leave it running around 80h to complete the achievements…
So I cheated a little bit (but just a little ^^).
I hate this kind of achievement, especially if the game hasn’t enough content to make it interesting !


  • The Red Solstice

    5 hours playtime

    4 of 73 achievements

The Red Solstice - unfinished

Got it for free, I’m always interested in multiplayer co-op game to play with friends.
Sadly we started the game with the multiplayer : bad thing, very bad thing. The first missions of the campaign are the tutorials and are really important to understand how to play it.
So we sucked :). We couldn’t even complete a map after several tries. Not a fun experience.
But I played the campaign after that as it was obvious we missed something. And indeed, it’s much easier when you know how to play ;).
This game has a little “The Bureau: XCOM declassified” feeling : real-time game with pause and strategic elements. So far I think it’s interesting and fun.

Achievements : a lot of them seem to require a few playthroughs (and again… hardcore mode ^^), not sure I like the game enough, we’ll see.


  • ABZÛ

    4 hours playtime

    12 of 12 achievements

ABZÛ - completed

Finally ! It’s in my “next month” list since… Too long.
But, although I mostly liked it, I feel that it’s too slow. I like games where you explore and find things but here, several times I didn’t want to explore because you’re moving so slowly and exploring is not really rewarding (you rarely find interesting or amazing things, it’s a lot of emptyness). Especially because you have to keep the controller’s trigger pressed to move and spending a few hours with that finger pushing end up being painful. I’d like to constantly have the speed you have at the end :).
The controls are great and feel intuitive, except for the few times when the gameplay changes and it becomes cluncky and annoying (you probably know which moment if you played it), but that doesn’t last very long.
This is a beautiful game though and several times I just stopped to meditate and just watch, so good job.
I’m not sure I understood everything in the story, but it’s compelling and you want to know what happens next :).

Achievements : nothing really hard. I missed a few shells and imprisoned fish but got most of them on my first playthrough, thanksfully you can access each chapter individually so I got what I missed quickly after that.
As I never check the achievements before I play (to avoid spoilers and to be surprised when one of them pops up), I even probably did more achievements than exist, as I managed to play without setting off the mines and tried to ride every fish I could :).


Next Month - March

I just won Train Valley, so I’ll probably try that one.
And maybe Tacoma (seems to be short) or Tesla effect (looks like fun).

  • Train Valley

    0 minutes playtime

    0 of 39 achievements

  • Tacoma

    0 minutes playtime

    0 of 12 achievements

  • Tesla Effect

    0 minutes playtime

    no achievements

stef

You got a lot of good new games. Hope you enjoy them! I know what you mean with Abzu. I really enjoyed the game, but it did feel slow and clunky. I missed a lot of exploring achievements.