Monthly Report - October 2017

Pretty bad month for assassination. Yes, I played a bit and won only 1 game on SteamGifts (and Borderlands DLCs) but I redeemed a lot of bundle keys that were waiting in my stash !

So new games :

• Won on SG : Dungetris
• From bundles/free : Vermintide, Hand of Fate, ABZU, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Guild of Dungeoneering, Borderlands GOTY, Civilization III, Orwell.

• Dungetris
  

  10 hours playtime

  32 of 32 achievements

Dungetris - completed

I won this game on SteamGifts. I found the base idea quite interesting and potentially fun.
But within a few minutes I posted a “not recommended” review on Steam. For a stupid but really annoying reason : you can’t rebind the keys, and it’s bound with a WASD pattern that don’t match my keyboard. One might say that there are tools to rebind or that you can change your keyboard to another one. But you shouldn’t have to do that. With EVERY game, the first thing I do is go to the settings and change key bindings to what I like. You might have the best game in the world, if I can’t rebind, I can’t enjoy it.
Fortunately, during the levels you can use the arrow keys (if I couldn’t I just wouldn’t have played it) but to navigate between levels the arrow keys don’t work and it’s a real PITA to move.
Anyway, the game is a rogue-lite where you build the dungeon with tetris-like pieces where you can find enemies and items that allows you to be more powerful. For each level you have a different objective (kill X enemy of a specific type, build a dungeon with X pieces…).
Overall the game mechanics are quite interesting but maybe too simple. The combat is very basic (hit with your weapon, use a card to get life, money, or cast a spell… Some bonus might apply but there’s not much more than that). The tetris-like building is fun, but is a bit too random. You can’t rotate the pieces like in Tetris so you very (too) often end with pieces that don’t match what you need but a simple rotation would have helped. I know this is probably intended, but this is frustrating and sometimes you feel the game is AGAINST you and enjoys giving you the piece with the right shape you need, but with walls exactly where it’s blocking you.
But as most rogue-lite, it’s fun to feel that the situation is desperate but suddenly you find the right item or a bunch of life that saves you. I feel that this one is better in this aspect as it’s very rare to screw up right at the beginning. You can recover from most situation if you’re smart and a bit lucky, and that’s good !
The problem is that, as I said, the mechanisms are too simple, there’s not much more than that. It becomes quickly repetitive and boring. Moreover there is no story.
The balancing is wrong : I don’t know if the objectives are random but it’s sometimes hard, sometimes easy (they can ask you to kill 25 elite enemies - which are strong and rare - and then to kill 20 normal enemies), the bosses of the first zone are much harder to beat than in the last one - and you gain nothing to kill them so most of the time you just dodge or ignore them.
While I was playing I felt that I was missing something. Maybe a mechanic I haven’t found, but even on the forums I didn’t find anything.
So, fun idea, but too simple and not enough interesting content. This is a short game so that’s okay. You can play with 2 other characters, but I just didn’t bother as you seem to play again the same content and the playstyle doesn’t seem to change much..
Achievements : Most of them were pretty easy, you get them as you play. For the other, a few specific actions allow you to get them. The “hardest” to get is the one where you have to build 4000 blocks… At the end of the game, I still needed to build ~700 blocks so I did a few rounds where I only put as many block I could…

• Borderlands 2
  

  59 hours playtime

  29 of 69 achievements

Borderlands 2 - unfinished

More Borderlands ? YES !
I won a few DLCs but not enough, so I bought the Humble Bundle and now I have all the additional characters and a higher level cap (I still think this is a rip off to sell DLCs just to increase the level cap…). The game is still fun, alone or with friends and there’s so much content ! And I’m still frustrated by the inventory that is very annoying to manage.
Achievements : 8 achievements (wow ! 8 ? nice) since the last time, I need to play more ! More! Mooore !

• Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide
  

  7 hours playtime

  23 of 104 achievements

Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide - unfinished

We were looking for a good co-op game to play with my friends, to rotate with Borderlands (it seems that some don’t enjoy it as much as I do) and this one appeared in a bundle a few months ago. It looks A LOT like Left 4 Dead 2 (that we played some time ago) but with a fresh twist and loot ! That makes it a little bit more interesting and so far less repetitive. Most of us liked it so we’ll play it a bit more I think.
Achievements : There are a lot of achievements and a lot of them require you to be good as you have to play the hard modes (or maybe the items make you much more powerful ?). So I don’t know how far I’ll be able to go. We’ll see, but I probably won’t complete it.

• Hand of Fate
  

  2 hours playtime

  1 of 53 achievements

Hand of Fate - unfinished

I tried to win it on SteamGifts with no success so I bought the bundle. This is a really interesting game, there are a few annoying things but I like it.
I’m already not really far from the end (or I’m I ? I feel that there is more content after what I see ! And there’s still the endless mode).
Again, it’s a rogue-lite, combined with a deck builder. You explore a dungeon which is made of cards that represent encounters, the encounters are often conversations that can end with new items for you, or enemies to fight, or just curses… You need a bit of memory (the answers always give the same result) and a lot of chance (everything is a card pulled from your / your opponent’s decks). A twist is that the game turn into a real-time third person view when you start a combat.
The random nature of the game can screw you, but that’s a fun game !
So I liked it, and I’m having fun so far. Right now I’m a bit stuck due to bad luck and random events that weakened me too much to finish, but the runs are different enough, and you can change your deck to make things interesting.
What I dislike is there are a lot of things that should be sped up : transitions between dungeon crawling view and real-time is sooo slow. Sometimes you even skip the shops because the animation is annoying (why the shops are in real-time view ? There is no need for that, it just displays cards).
Rogue-lites are based on dying and restarting a lot, so it’s also annoying that the death screen or the initial cards dealing are too long. I hope they are disguised loading screens, this would be the only good reason to do that. And I’d love to see health bars on enemies because sometimes I feel that I’ve been hitting the monsters for too long without visible effect. They probably won’t change it as Hand of Fate 2 will be released this month, I hope they fixed those in the new game.
Achievements : Most of the achievements are not that easy to get, and I need to play much more ! But the game is losing some points because some achievements require to buy DLCs and I don’t like that ! Let’s see if I enjoy the game enough to buy them.

• Castle Crashers
  

  21 hours playtime

  8 of 12 achievements

Castle Crashers - beaten

Hey Castle Crashers is back! I played that a long time ago and noticed that I still have a few achievements to get (it was already beaten, I try to complete it). So I reinstalled it and played a bit.
Achievements : I’m not sure I’ll be able to get them all. I have 4 missing. One I need more money, so it’s just time (collect all the animal orbs), one need a bit of coordination with some friends (in a 4 player game, resuscitate each of your fallen comrades at least once), one need some luck (survive until 2:30 in a Back Off Barbarian match… I can do 2:10 so far) and one need skill (win 40 Arena Online Matches).

Next Month - November

No idea…I’ll improvise. Probably more Hand of Fate, Borderlands and Vermintide… We planned to play the new Diablo 3 season too. So less time for assassination !
If you have any suggestion of a short game from my backlog, feel free !

• Borderlands 2
  

  59 hours playtime

  29 of 69 achievements

• Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide
  

  7 hours playtime

  23 of 104 achievements

• Styx: Master of Shadows
  

  0 minutes playtime

  0 of 33 achievements

• Hand of Fate
  

  2 hours playtime

  1 of 53 achievements

• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition
  

  31 hours playtime

  15 of 52 achievements

Borderlands 2 : I still enjoy it, so probably a lot of playing this month again ! Maybe finish my first playthrough ?
Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide : Our multiplayer game right now, so we’ll probably play more.
Styx: Master of Shadows (won on SteamGifts) : I still don’t want to wait too long to play it as I won it so I should really at least start it !
Hand of Fate : I’ll try to beat it in November.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition : let’s be optimistic ! In my busy schedule, I might find a few hours to continue it, right ? (No ^^)