Acquisitions

• The Shrouded Isle
• Memoria

Challenge Me!

Challenge Post

• SIMULACRA
  

  15.9 hours playtime

  24 of 24 achievements

• LEGO Jurassic World
  

  47.9 hours playtime

  49 of 49 achievements

• Kona
  

  20.9 hours playtime

  34 of 35 achievements

SIMULACRA

Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Favorites FMV Good Reads Halloween and Horror Make Believe - Simulated Lives

This was such a bad month for me (no reason, just doing other stuff), that I'm only now writing about this game a month after I finished it. As a result, I don't remember it so specifically. I had fun "interacting" with the characters. I especially liked teaming up with a random guy on a dating app to help brainstorm how to find a missing person. Classic. The story stayed interesting to the end. FMVs, voice recordings, and some one-sided phone calls make the game a little more alive than being all text/phone-interface based. Going back for different outcomes and achievements was tedious even though conversations were sped up.

This was my first "lost phone" game, since that's of course a thing now, and I wasn't disappointed.

LEGO Jurassic World

"Archaeology" and Anthropology French Voice Acting Literary Ties Won on SteamGifts

SteamGifts win and medium Play or Pay game. It can get tiring playing Lego games near in time to each other, but I hadn't played one in a while and had a blast with this. The first Harry Potter one is still probably my favorite (with the recognizeable hub world). I don't remember the old games locking you into story characters when not in a level until you finish the story, but this and I think the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit ones do. On the other hand, sometimes I felt the Lego games got too long trying to cover so many films, but the length of this one felt okay to me.

Not to cop out on the idea of letting you play all the characters, you can unlock and play as the dinosaurs in this one. Hell, there's even a dinosaur creator, so you can make dinsoaurs that don't even exist, like a raptor with a T-Rex head (which transfers the T-Rex roar ability to the raptor) and a stegosaurus tail of any color, including metallic ones. You can even play as the giant Mosasaurus sea predator in its arena.

Kona

Achievement Clean Up Detectives! Mystery! Murder! Folklore & Mythology French Voice Acting O Canada Road Trips & Travelogues Won on SteamGifts

Bienvenue

This game takes place in Québec, which is the subject of a lot of my historical/genealogical research, and I went there this summer, so I was excited about that. I also watch a lot of stuff to learn French culture while learning French for years, so I was able to pick up on a lot of cultural stuff hidden around. I saw a cooler with cretons, the surnames, a book about La Corriveau (accused of killing multiple husbands and the subject of many tall tales), World's Fair 1967 Expo posters (took place in Montréal), and a Joe Dassin album on a TV. I also noticed how the game, since it takes place in 1970, has the old motto on license plates -- "La belle province" instead of the current "Je me souviens" (I remember). A couple of things I know I didn't get, like the song(s?) that played on the radios, but it was rewarding to understand other references.

Lulled to sleep by some French music and the cold for about 10 hours of playtime...

I initially started to play in French with the better main voice actor but then freaked out because I almost froze to death near the beginning and switched to English, but it didn't end up being that hard or with confusing gameplay mechanics. Ah, well. I'll do it when I replay for that last achievement, and I did play the Lego game in French, which seems absurd to say since those games used to have no voices/dialogue, let alone multi-language support. The hardest thing is not being able to look at where you are at on the map at the same time you're driving, and it can take a while to get places. You do have to kill or run from wolves sometimes, but they go down in two axe hits.