• Dungeon Defenders
  

  19 hours playtime

  8 of 118 achievements

• Saints Row: The Third
  

  39 hours playtime

  40 of 83 achievements

• Fallout: New Vegas
  

  39 hours playtime

  24 of 75 achievements

January

I played a lot this month and beat quite a few games, a lot of my time was on Xbox Live though so my stats aren’t going to improve much. I have about 4 weeks left of my cheap subscription (didn’t stack codes as much as I could have when they were available) and so I’m trying to play a few games that are on my wishlist. I don’t really replay games once I beat them (as you can probably tell from the tone of most of my posts!), so playing the game on Xbox Live is a way for me to remove the game from my steam wishlist, either by beating it or sometimes trying the game and deciding I don’t really like it.

Steam

Saints Row the Third
I haven’t actually played this game this month, but I realized it was categorized incorrectly. I finished the main story back in 2013 but it was on BLAEO as ‘won’t play’. So. I’ve changed it and instantly improved my statistics! :)

Dungeon Defenders
I had played about 6 hours in this game but didn’t have any achievements. I think it may not have had any Steam achievements when I first picked it up. It definitely didn’t have cards, as these started dropping as I was playing this month. It also took me a while to realize that achievements don’t trigger when you play offline! All that aside, I don’t really like this. It’s kind of a grindy tower defense game.

I played the main story on easy to ‘beat’ it and get an achievement and picked up a few other achievements on the way. I then started to work through on Medium difficulty to get a couple more achievements, but then I looked more closely at the achievements. There are a lot. 118 to be precise, and a lot of them are connected to DLC. Most of the others involve playing through the game on Hard or Insane difficulty or levelling up characters. I’m not going to spend that much time in a game I don’t enjoy, so this is going in the ‘beaten’ pile (despite the measly 7% of achievements) and I’ll move onto something I want to play! :)

Fallout New Vegas
This was the first Fallout game I played, I guess it was around the release date of 2010. This was back before I used Steam. Really enjoyed it and put 70+ hours into it and completed the game. I’m not sure which faction I chose for the final battle, I think I went with ‘Yes Man’. I’ve had the game on Steam since 2012, but had never played it before this month.

I don’t remember any bugs when I played it back in the day, I guess compatibility with newer hardware and Windows is one factor but maybe I was just lucky too. This time around there were quite a few random crashes even after installing mods to fix the bigger problems, which was a little frustrating at times. I felt like I could play the game faster that the first time, but initially went through a bit too quickly was hadn’t levelled up enough for the final battle. Another 10 hours or so and 10 levels and I completed it with Caesar.

Managed to pick up a few achievements along the way, but (as usualy for me!) there are a lot left to get. I haven’t dipped into the DLC either. However, 41 hours of play in a week is pretty heavy going for me (I was on holiday and blitzed it!) so I’m a bit New Vegas-ed out for now. I’ll mark it as beaten and plan to come back for more, hopefully not in another 8 years though (-.-;).

XBox Live

Halo: Reach
Actually, the game is Halo: Master Chief Collection but Reach is the only game in the collection available at the moment. I played the original Halo back in the day on a friend’s Xbox and focused on multiplayer, but didn’t really try the campaign and haven’t played any other games from the franchise. Reach was pretty good. The story was decent, the levels a nice length, and a level of difficulty that kept me interested but never got too frustrating (I played on normal difficulty). Graphically, it looked good, and the game ran smoothly for most of the time (in one or two of the larger, later levels there was a bit of slowdown). I beat the game in just under 8 hours. I didn’t try the multiplayer side of the game. I’m sure it’s great, but it’s not something I really want to get into. I have plenty of multiplayer only games. They’re fun, but a huge time-sink and can have a bit of toxic atmosphere. I usually play them a lot when I first get them, then move onto other games and they’re dead by the time I come back! Here’s a screenshot from the game ending sequence…

Creature in the Well
Another game on Windows Xbox Live. I had it on my Steam wishlist, but had the chance to play it for free :)
I really liked this. One of my favourite games of recent months. It looks good and the gameplay is kind of new and interesting. It was a little strange at first. You’re thrown straight into controlling the character from when the game starts in the menu system but there’s no indication of this. This feeling of not really knowing what was going on continued for a while, but it was more intriguing than frustrating. Some pretty difficult sections, but nothing too bad. Took me about 5 hours to get through it and I have 99% of achievements. Another plus in my book – the achievements don’t require a lot of grinding play. Here’s a screenshot from the game ending sequence…

Wolfenstein 2

Another game wishlisted on Steam that I played on Xbox. In terms of graphics, control and combat, it’s more of the same if you’ve played the earlier Wolfenstein games. The story was pretty bad in this one though. I’m not sure if I’m remembering the previous games incorrectly, but I thought they were better. There are some pretty ridiculous moments in this one. Decent game, but I rushed through it a little just to finish. No idea about the achievements and I’m not gonna check! :)
Here’s a screenshot from the closing sequence of the game.

Adding to my backlog
I bought Session an early development skateboarding game. After 5 hours of play I can finally do a few things without falling flat on my face! Very fun and looking forward to seeing how it improves in the future. Buying this put me close to enough points for a discount voucher during the Winter sale. I didn’t need any more games, but as these vouchers are few and far between I added enough to my Steam wallet to get the voucher and then picked up a couple of cheap games - Reventure and Super Blood Hockey. Reventure was on my wishlist, but Super Blood Hockey was more of an impulse buy to use the rest of the voucher.

I hope 2020 has started well for everyone :)