killergege

Monthly Report - April 2018

I’ve been very lucky recently on SteamGifts and won another AAA game !
But as I won them through the Playing Appreciated group I have to play them quick. So April was for Mafia III, May will be Deus Ex ;).

So, new games this month :

  • Won on SG : Mafia III: Sign of the Times, Action Henk, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Warhammer: End Times - Schluesselschloss
  • Free : -
  • From bundles/gifts/sales : The Flame in the Flood
  • Mafia III

    60 hours playtime

    61 of 85 achievements

Mafia III - beaten

This is THE game for this month. I won it on SteamGifts just at the end of March and had a month to play it significantly.
And indeed, I’ve beaten it just a few days ago, spending 60 hours (!) on it. I liked the game a lot and I think overall the game is good.
BUT, I agree with most of the reviews I’ve seen, that game would have been much better if it was half as long as it is. It’s really too repetitive, always the same. Individually the missions are not really bad (although not really extraordinary) but doing the same ones again and again makes it boring.
I’m quite a completionist so when I first started I was trying to do everything, I didn’t go to the next district until I did all the activities ! It lasted 2 districts. After that I was swimming in money and was bored by the activities, and started to do the minimum required to continue the story. Same with collectibles. This game has nude girls as collectibles and I got bored to get them !! How can you fuck up a nude girls collection ? And as there is no achievement linked to the collectibles I stopped bothering too.
I started to play stealthy, trying to get rid of everyone silently. But it is a slower process (although stealth mechanics are working pretty well in this game), so as I was progressing I started to play more agressively to complete the missions faster.
I liked the previous Mafia games a lot, and I see that they tried to reproduce what was great with it, but I think they missed the point and is globally nice but riddled but annoyances : the repetitive missions, the controls are good and responsive except hand combat that sucked, driving the cars is mostly fun, except that the GPS sucks and always tell you too late when you should turn, so either you don’t drive as fast as you could or you keep you eyes on the minimap to know you’ll turn soon….
Cops in this game are just annoyances : they are too powerful and too many too quickly to be fun. Except if you already are in a great car and don’t fuck up you have a chance, but most of the times you are too easily outnumbered. So you start to use the “disable cops” powerup each time they’re somewhere, it feels a bit like cheating….
This is bad, I’d have prefered less powerful cops, but more aware (you can drive through red lights in front of them, or speeding without issue), so you “fight” them more, but you have a chance to win the fight.
The enemies are often dumb : just whistle and they might come one by one… On the last mission, I got rid of an ENTIRE floor (maybe 10-12 enemies) without moving, they just came sometimes from really far, one by one… Thanksfully, if they know where you are, sometimes they try to surround you and, as you die pretty quickly, it makes things a little harder.
You constantly earn money but you don’t have much to do with it. You can only carry 2 weapons and you don’t know what is coming in the next mission so there is no point to buy that many weapons. I stuck with the silenced guns and the sniper (great if you want to quickly finish an assassination mission : kill from far away and run ^^).
The races are also nice because it allows you to do other things although they are probably too easy (the opponents are waiting for you if you crash…), and with a fully upgraded car, it’s pretty easy to beat the time record, by several seconds (even with hitting a few things on the way) !
Last point : the game is pretty buggy. I got stuck several times in the terrain, or because a NPC got stuck or didn’t start a script.

With this game I also got the Sign of the Times DLC. It has good reviews on Steam, but I think it is not that good. Yes it changes a bit, and the tone is different but the few new mechanics added (investigation) are barely used and not really useful. Most of the missions are in a near complete dark which I hate, even more because they give you a light that you can use only when THEY want you to use it. So the story was nice, but mostly because it is (slightly) different from the main “I have to kill everybody” mission. I played it in the middle of my playthrough so it was a nice moment of fresh air.
The rebuilding of Sammy’s is nice, but useless and without any consequences (except finally having a reason to spend your money).

Overall, as I said, I liked it but there are too many annoyances to really recommend it, too many issues.
Achievements : I did all I could do in one playthrough. This is another bad point : to get all achievements you need to play at least 2 playthroughs ! For a game that long and that repetitive, that’s obviously annoying. I’m not sure I’ll do that. Not right now at least. But I’d like to complete it.
I’ll probably get the other DLCs when they are on sale (they are way too expensive !) and after playing a few other games :).


  • Divinity: Original Sin 2

    23 hours playtime

    18 of 97 achievements

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - unfinished

I bought this one full price to play with friends.
As I didn’t finish it and wrote a lot about Mafia, I’ll keep my review for next month ;)


Next Month - May

I won Deux Ex: Makind Divided with Playing Appreciated so I’ll have to play that one. I never played any Deus Ex so I’m not sure what to expect but it should be interesting after Mafia :).

  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided™

    0 hours playtime

    0 of 81 achievements