Report #34: August-September 2023

Beaten

• Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)
  

  15.6 hours playtime

  19 of 19 achievements

• XCOM: Chimera Squad
  

  50.3 hours playtime

  27 of 40 achievements

• Far Cry 3
  

  ? hours playtime

  22/50 achievements

Also Played

• Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
  

  4.6 hours playtime

  no achievements

• GOD EATER RESURRECTION
  

  13.1 hours playtime

  11 of 33 achievements

• Wolfenstein: The New Order
  

  1.4 hours playtime

  4 of 50 achievements

• Baba Is You
  

  6.4 hours playtime

  1 of 18 achievements

Added to Backlog

• Disco Elysium
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 45 achievements

• The Forgotten City
  

  0.1 hours playtime

  1 of 40 achievements

• Papers, Please
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 13 achievements

• Phantom Doctrine
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 47 achievements

Report #33: July 2023

Until this summer, Klei’s Don’t Starve had been glaring menacingly at me from my library for five years. I had been intimidated by the combination of crafting, procedurally generated worlds, and assured & permanent death, none of which are really up my alley. (Especially assured & permanent death - I’m not a fan.) But as with Mark of the Ninja, Klei has taken a concept that might sound only mildly appealing and perfected the gameplay to create a really rewarding experience. Your character wakes up in a strange land with nothing but the shirt on his back (figuratively, that is, since he is also wearing pants) and needs to start collecting food and resources to survive as many days as possible. The first craftable items are easy to make - an axe to cut down trees, for example, requires two easily found resource items: a stick and a piece of flint - whereas others requires more or rarer resources, so you start exploring to find them. You need to keep an eye on three wellness meters: hunger, health, and sanity, and not let them go too low. If this sounds a bit boring, I hear you. I’m not sure I can capture in words how fun it is to attempt to extend my last living days by one or two. Sorry, I had ChatGPT write this review three times, and it only got worse so I had to write it myself. It’s an enthusiastic recommendation from me, just be aware it will probably ruin other survival games for you.

“Beaten”, i.e., I was beaten enough

• Don't Starve
  

  32.8 hours playtime

  no achievements

Also Played

• XCOM: Chimera Squad
  

  4.3 hours playtime

  2 of 40 achievements

• ENDLESS™ Space 2
  

  12.9 hours playtime

  0 of 115 achievements

• GOD EATER RESURRECTION
  

  11.7 hours playtime

  10 of 33 achievements

Report #32: June 2023

Greetings Assassins,

Not a whole lot of meat to this report. As usual in the summer months gaming time goes way down for me, but I managed to finish one title.

In May, I spent quite a bit of time on Civilization: Beyond Earth, but wasn’t able to bring the campaign to a close until early June. As with most Civ games I’ve played, I have the most fun in the beginning of a game, as my colonists explore the virgin lands of the new planet. Little by little, it turns into a somewhat different game - less joyful discovery and more tedious administration. Or maybe I’m just projecting on the game my own journey through life… Of course, you can automatize a lot of actions - and end up largely watching your computer play against itself. After having won one game, close to 500 rounds, I have now uninstalled it and don’t know if I will play it again. It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, but it is a time-eater of a magnitude that doesn’t really work for me anymore.

Until next month…

Beaten

• Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth
  

  56.5 hours playtime

  14 of 90 achievements

Also Played

• Don't Starve
  

  22.5 hours playtime

  no achievements

• ENDLESS™ Space 2
  

  12.9 hours playtime

  0 of 115 achievements

• GOD EATER RESURRECTION
  

  9.6 hours playtime

  8 of 33 achievements

• XCOM: Chimera Squad
  

  1.0 hours playtime

  1 of 40 achievements

Report #31: May 2023

Greetings assassins,

The one game I finished in May was Snake Pass, which I had unsuccessfully tried to play with a keyboard and mouse in the past. It’s a series of obstacle courses where you guide your snake avatar to some magic well or whatever. The game doesn’t nominally require a controller, but in reality it kind of does, at least for those of who like to keep our (relative) sanity. Even so, Snake Pass is at times frustratingly difficult, which is more than a little incongruous with the toddler-friendly art and story. Of course, my prejudice is showing - I bet any five-year old today could finish this game between snack time and dinner. Some mixed feelings: I’m glad to have knocked it off my list since it was one of my oldest wins, but it probably shouldn’t have been on the list to begin with, since it doesn’t have any of the qualities that I look for in a game.

Beaten

• Snake Pass
  

  26.0 hours playtime

  15 of 33 achievements

Also Played

• Baba Is You
  

  5.7 hours playtime

  1 of 18 achievements

• Far Cry 3
  

  ? hours playtime

  3 achievements

• GOD EATER RESURRECTION
  

  6.5 hours playtime

  6 of 33 achievements

• Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth
  

  46.0 hours playtime

  6 of 90 achievements

I don’t know how these got added to my account 🙈

• Mass Effect™: Andromeda Deluxe Edition
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 55 achievements

• Titanfall® 2
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 50 achievements

• Unravel
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 26 achievements

• Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 150 achievements

Report #30: April 2023

Making decent progress on the backlog by finishing up two games this month. Fallout 4 is obviously the big one, ninety hours played since I started it in June of last year. (Ninety hours, holy cow!) While it’s impressive in scope, with hundreds each of missions, locations, and NPCs, it ends up feeling a bit like a Potemkin village. As you go deeper into the game, missions start feeling more and more alike - travel, fight, reach objective, fight some more, return - with variations in locales and enemies. Conversations and player choices have very little long-term impact on the campaign, except which faction one chooses to align with toward the end. Fallout 4 pretends to be a role-playing game but is really more a plodding looter shooter. I got to the point where I was ready to finish the game, and instead of letting it play out normally, I short-circuited the story progression by unprovoked shooting an NPC in the face, jumping to the end game. (Sorry, unarmed scientist guy!) Maybe I’ll go back and replay the ending differently one day. I said maybe, don’t hold me to it.

Pirate aficionados all love Monkey Island 2, right? Wrong. It has all the ingredients that killed point & click as a genre: inane object hunting, repetitive traveling, stupid inventory puzzles, pointless dialog choices. I’m sure devs had a great time making this game, but if I smiled a single time while playing, I don’t remember it. Watch a season of Black Sails instead.

A little disappointing, perhaps, but we’re on to Cincinnati…

Beaten

• Fallout 4
  

  91.3 hours playtime

  33 of 84 achievements

• Monkey Island 2: Special Edition
  

  10.2 hours playtime

  10 of 12 achievements

Also Played

• Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
  

  10.0 hours playtime

  4 of 129 achievements

• GOD EATER RESURRECTION
  

  5.0 hours playtime

  1 of 33 achievements

Added (Don’t look at me like that, it was free)

• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 26 achievements

Report #29: January-March 2023

Three months since my last report - I’m not a very good member of the assassin community… Since then, I managed to knock three titles off my list. I went semi-blind into The Wolf Among Us which was pretty cool - I knew that it was a Telltale game, but for some reason imagined it to have more like a gothic horror/mystery setting. Ultimately, the Telltale schtick with forced-stress choices gets a bit old, especially since it doesn’t have much of an impact on how the plot unfolds.

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak was the game I enjoyed the most of this posting period, a high-tech RTS on a Dune-like planet. It has a nice little story going in between missions, but nothing really revolutionary about the gameplay. Still, a fun game.

I had promised myself to take Beholder to the finish, even though I didn’t like it much. I took it to the finish, three cheers for the commitment! I can now move it to the Beaten category with a clear conscience.

See you in three months! (Potentially)

Beaten

• The Wolf Among Us
  

  12.2 hours playtime

  31 of 35 achievements

• Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
  

  23.0 hours playtime

  16 of 48 achievements

• Beholder
  

  26.8 hours playtime

  17 of 60 achievements

Also Played

• Fallout 4
  

  52.5 hours playtime

  22 of 84 achievements

• Don't Starve
  

  15.2 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Monkey Island 2: Special Edition
  

  2.1 hours playtime

  1 of 12 achievements

Added

• Strange Brigade
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 60 achievements

Report #28: July-December + 2022 Afterword

New Year’s Eve and my first post in six months. I haven’t had much free time and consequently haven’t played much. It’s alright, I don’t mind.

Metro Exodus which I finished in July was probably my favorite game played in 2022. I also enjoyed Yakuza 0, but at 76 hours to finish, it was way too long for my tastes. I expect 2023 to shape up similar to how 2022 ended, so I’ll try to focus on titles I really want to play. I’ll keep going with Fallout 4 and will start The Wolf Among Us. After that, who knows!

Wishing all you assassins an excellent new year. Stay frosty.

Beaten

• Metro Exodus
  

  41.8 hours playtime

  34 of 68 achievements

• Old Man's Journey
  

  3.6 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Supraland
  

  21.9 hours playtime

  41 of 98 achievements

Also Played

• Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
  

  2.6 hours playtime

  2 of 48 achievements

• Fallout 4
  

  21.5 hours playtime

  6 of 84 achievements

Added

• XCOM: Chimera Squad
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 40 achievements

• Wasteland 3
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 86 achievements

Favorite Gaming Moments 2022

• Metro Exodus
  

  41.8 hours playtime

  34 of 68 achievements

• Rise of the Tomb Raider
  

  25.4 hours playtime

  26 of 143 achievements

• The Painscreek Killings
  

  16.7 hours playtime

  33 of 33 achievements

Steam Library Snapshot

End of 2022

End of 2021

End of 2020

Report #27: June 2022

Summer is coming.

Beaten

• Yakuza 0
  

  75.8 hours playtime

  22 of 55 achievements

Also Played

• Metro Exodus
  

  33.5 hours playtime

  26 of 68 achievements

• Fallout 4
  

  10.0 hours playtime

  3 of 84 achievements

Report #26: May 2022

Happy to report I finished two titles plus made significant progress on another big game. Also, no new additions to my Steam library, so another net negative month for the backlog! Hope to squeeze a couple of more games before summer begins for real.

Beaten

• Blacksad
  

  16.3 hours playtime

  20 of 39 achievements

• Metro Last Light Redux
  

  16.3 hours playtime

  no achievements

Working on

• Yakuza 0
  

  58.9 hours playtime

  15 of 55 achievements

• Don't Starve
  

  12.5 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Metro Exodus
  

  2.2 hours playtime

  2 of 68 achievements

• F1 2018
  

  1.0 hours playtime

  3 of 50 achievements

Report #25: April 2022

I’m posting this monthly report a bit early, since I’ll be going out of town and don’t expect to play any more until next month. Unexpectedly got some extra free time this month and put some of it into the backlog. The result: five titles moved to the Beaten category, including two that had spent a lot of time as Unfinished. Whoop.

Heaven’s Vault is a an interesting, modern take on the point&click genre set in a decaying galaxy (which for some unknown reason is referred to as a nebula). You play a space-faring archaeologist tasked with investigating the disappearance of a colleague at the university. Solving linguistic puzzles, you little by little uncover what happened to your colleague as well as the truth behind the extinction of long-gone civilizations and how it all connects to a current threat to the galaxy. A slow burn, but I enjoyed learning the ancients’ language and history.

Keeping with the archaeology theme, I have to admit I really enjoy the last Tomb Raider reboot, including this month’s Rise of the Tomb Raider. I love running around spelunking in caves, climbing trees, hunting animals, collecting resources, and crafting better equipment - it’s a great balance between excitement and relaxation. The story is the typical hodgepodge of myth, magic, and power-hungry antagonists, but the pacing is pretty good as are the set pieces, and it contrasts nicely with the freer inter-mission moments.

I recently realized I’ve collected quite a few racers that I rarely play, so I’m making an effort to move some of them off the backlog. I picked Grid first as is it is one of the oldest games on my Steam account. As far as the racing experience goes, it’s a good game, but there’s a limited number of circuits, perhaps fifteen in total, so progressing through the game gets a bit old with the same tracks appearing over and over.

Full Throttle Remastered is vintage LucasArts and together with The Secret of Monkey Island probably the pinnacle of the golden age of point&click. It’s got a short, fun story around a murder framejob, great voice acting, a couple of action sequences, but most importantly… no $%&( inventory puzzles! Pretty dated, but still enjoyable for a couple of hours.

You may know that Full Throttle was designed by Tim Schafer, who later founded Double Fine, where he designed the humorous open-metal-world game Brütal Legend. I imagine that if anybody with a lower standing in the gaming industry had proposed a major release based on the music, imagery, and fandom of heavy metal, they would have been laughed out of the room, but Schafer got it done. The gameplay is a mix of hack&slash and RTT and is… fine, but what makes this a game to remember is the love for its music genre. The voice acting is top notch: Jack Black is great in the lead, and the cameos from people like Lemmy, Ozzy, and Rob Halford are pretty cool.

Next month I’ll try to tackle Metro Last Light and Blacksad, mixed with some Don’t Starve and Yakuza 0. Til then!

Beaten

• Heaven's Vault
  

  21.9 hours playtime

  26 of 44 achievements

• Rise of the Tomb Raider
  

  25.3 hours playtime

  26 of 143 achievements

• GRID
  

  23.9 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Brütal Legend
  

  28.7 hours playtime

  13 of 59 achievements

• Full Throttle Remastered
  

  5 hours playtime

  no achievements

Chipping Away

• Yakuza 0
  

  30.4 hours playtime

  8 of 55 achievements

• Don't Starve
  

  7.7 hours playtime

  no achievements

Added to Backlog

• Fallout 4
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 84 achievements

• realMyst: Masterpiece Edition
  

  0 hours playtime

  0 of 34 achievements