I bought literally nothing this sale. Not on Steam, not in other shops:

1) I saw that none of the games on sale have bigger discounts than during past Summer Sale. Or last Winter Sale. So there is no feeling of “oh nice discount, I need to have it”
2) I went through Steam, Epic, GOG etc. and checked how long it would take me to beat the games I have, with the amount of gaming I was doing recently. And calculator said I have enough games for at least 9 months :ok_hand:

So I will just list one game I get as a gift this sale, and games that I have on all the platforms as “to beat in 2021” guide. Add gameplay time from HLTB

• METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN
  

  Released: 09.2015

  70 h | Steam

• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
  

  Released: 10.2014

  30 h | Steam
• Disco Elysium
  

  Released:10.2019

  29 h | Steam
• Resident Evil 6
  

  Released: 10.2012

  28 h | Steam
• SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE
  

  Released: 07.2020

  11 h | Steam
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
  

  Released: 10.2017

  17 h | Steam

---

• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
  

  Released: 02.2017

  12 h | Epic
• Remnant: From the Ashes
  

  Released: 09.2019

  19 h | Epic
• Tyranny - Gold Edition
  

  Released: 02.2017

  33 h | Epic



---

• Banner Saga Trilogy
  

  Released: 01.2014

  30 h | GOG
• Shadow Warrior 2
  

  Released: 10.2016

  15 h | GOG
• Xenonauts
  

  Released: 06.2014

  48 h | GOG
• Ziggurat
  

  Released: 10.2014

  16 h | GOG

---

• Watch_Dogs
  

  Released: 05.2014

  33h | Uplay
• Watch_Dogs
  

  Released: 09.2013

  47h | Rockstar
</ul>

Activated: 11 / 2020

Degrees of Separation (Q1 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Co-op Puzzle
6,6 hours | 10 of 10 (100%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- easy puzzles to play in co-op
- good co-op implementation
- nice art style

The bad
- puzzles are sometimes designed in unintuitive way
- some slight collision problems on platforms
- narrator could be so cheesy I sometimes did not want to listen to next part of the story
- character animations can look stiff and wonky

Conclusion:
It's easy game to play in co-op. Nothing groundbreaking, but good enough to play with a kid or someone who's not hard-puzzle-lover.

---

Story:

Fire girl and ice boy are living in their respectable kingdoms, until they meet each other by accident. After that they start to travel to uncover fate of the previous king, and see if they can remove the barrier that divides them. There is really cringe love story in the background as well.

---

Gameplay:

Each map has bit different mechanic, but in general screen is separated in two parts - half is in the winter season, and other half is in the summer. There is clear line dividing both seasons, and most of the puzzles involve manipulation of the environment to reach scarves. Winter side will have frozen water that can be walked on, fire in lanterns die making platforms drop, objects can be rolled to make snowballs. Summer side will make it possible to walk under the water, light up lanterns that lift platforms. Some puzzles requires really careful character positioning, and it's not always easy due to rare problems with platform collision detection.

Some maps deviates from the basic concept - bridge can be created on the interface between winter and summer to reach higher places, characters can spawn prison-like-balls to use momentum and shot themselves further or higher. There is no tutorial here, so each new mechanic needs to be figured out on our own. Ropes needs to be pulled to move platforms that are away. Ability to change element from Winter to Summer and vice versa.

There are two possible endings, and one is gated behind collecting all the scarves around the maps. It doesn't change much, so it's more of the hoarding thing.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Really nice hand-drawn style
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Environmental sounds are nice, music is forgettable and narrator is annoying
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Some small collision problems on platforms, but nothing groundbreaking

1. Beaten 28 games:
   • 1 Uplay game
   • 1 Android game
   • 9 Xbox Game Pass games
   • 18 Steam games
2. Favorite game beaten in 2020: Ori and the Will of the Wisps
3. Worst game beaten in 2020: The Division
4. Longest game beaten: Pillars of Eternity - 59h
5. Shortest game beaten: What Remains of Edith Finch - 2h
6. In 2019 I’ve beaten 19 games - 9 less than in 2020
   • I bought PC in Jan 2020, which finally gave me ability to play games normally
   • working the afternoon shift leaves me with just a bit of time in the morning and in the late evening - which is not good for longer games

Methodology:

• games bought before Steam Winter sale 2019 count as added in December 2019
• games bought from start of Winter Sale 2019 to the end of January 2020 count as January 2020 additions

I do buy games during winter sale to beat them next year, so it makes most sense.

Green columns shows games beaten on Steam, blue on other platforms. They are stacked, so in March I’ve beaten 2 games on Steam, and 1 somewhere else.

I also made graph that shows my progress from the time I started to write down my percentages

Great purge is a time when I removed, in a span of 3 months, 59 games from my account (I was close to 500, so it was more than 10% of my library). It was also time when I really sorted my library and moved a lot from unfinished to won’t play. I removed few at the end of 2020 as well, so 3 years later I’m still barely above 500 games owned :D

I barely bought any games this year, and when I did summary of what I have still to play I also did not buy anything during Winter Sale, as I decided I have more than enough games to play till at least Summer Sale. If not longer.

Activated: 01 / 2020

Dishonored 2 (Q4 2016) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 10 months

Action Stealth
29 hours | 38 of 50 (76%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- possible to beat game in both lethal and non lethal way
- climatic soundtrack and environmental sounds

The bad
- enemies and NPCs have problem with collision detection, so they may get stuck in walking animation
- enemy AI makes them detect you when you are really far, and other times they don't see when you're in front
- maps are small
- no minimap
- there is no sense of progression, as abilities are not really interesting
- story is shallow and predictable

Conclusion:
Is it good stealth game? Yes. Apart from the times when enemy AI is lacking. Does it feel the same as Dishonored 1 or DotO? Yes. Like a carbon copy with different level layout and shallow story that drives the main character. So it is a solid game, but I would not say it's a masterpiece. I did play on normal difficulty.

---

Story:

We can play as Emily (the empress) or her dad. Story is the same in both cases. And it is rather uninteresting. Emily's auntie came and took the throne. And main character needs to take it back. There are no big revelations or hard choices. If there is choice that can affect the ending - it's clearly marked on the objective screen - basically either kill this character or find another way to dispose of them. It can vary from throwing them into some room and closing door shut, to messing up their brain so that they start to blabber like 2 y/o kid.

---

Gameplay:

Stealth game with ability to teleport around. It is kind of trademark of the series but blink (or it's variations) does make the game easy. You can chose to play without powers, but that would make the whole thing needlessly long for me. I remember how much I liked Dishonored 1. And then I get blink and everything started to be soo easy. There is a bit of collision detection problem though, and when you try to teleport when aiming close to some angle - game will often try to cast blink under the character feet instead of where the crossbar points.

We are equipped with variety of gadgets that are both lethal (crossbow bolts, pistol, mines, grenades) and non-lethal (sleeping darts, electric mines). Shortcut slots are per-assigned can can't be changed. On top of that we have good old sword and magical abilities. So game gives a lot of choice how we want to play. Combat is not complicated but fluid and well done. It's based on blocking enemy attack to stagger them, and attacking to finish. But it does not require precision of Senua Sacrifice. It is way more crude and forgiving. Stealth is also good, but enemy AI can go bonkers sometimes. And will detect me if I just walk floor above, but miss me when I dropped next to the enemy due to badly placed teleport. Enemies will not investigate if someone is missing, and their patrolling routes always have a glaring hole. So it's easy to pick them up one by one. Or alert them and drop shock mine in the corridor to take down few fast.

Along the way we collect junk that either regenerates health or gives money. Money is used to buy equipment in shops or upgrade our gear (faster reload, bigger consumables stacks, quiet sprinting etc.). Weird thing is that junk we collect is identical as in D1 and DotO DLC. So re-use of assets level hard. We can also collect paintings that act as collectibles. Maps are small and they again hide it by not giving minimap. There is always more than one way to reach the target, especially in a stealth way. There is in-game map but it does not show where we currently are. This kind of combination always makes me having problem to navigate around.

There is ability to craft bone charms but I did not find use for it, especially after all bone charms slots are unlocked. Maybe on hard difficulty there is use for it, especially when it can stack effect of the same charm. But on normal with a base of "faster sneaking" "faster stranding" "invisibility on teleportation" rest was just a fodder to fill the space.

Abilities are divided into magical and normal. Emily and her dad have different set of magical abilities, so there is replayability here. Especially if someone plans to play once in stealth and once in killing way. I didn't try the dad, but Emily surely has game-breaking ability - Domino. Allows to link up to 4 enemies and eliminate them at the same time - say with a sleeping dart. It does look fancy, but it makes game so easy it feels pointless to progress through the map. Like playing FPS with immortality and expect a challenge. So even when I unlocked magical abilities - I used mostly only teleportation and turning into ghost to move through the rat tunnels.

Missions are played in a succession, and started from the ship that act as a hub area. We reach our destination in a small boat, and are picked up at the end of the mission. So it feels like closed areas where we are teleported, not like one big game with connected areas.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - It is detailed but it's visible textures are blurry
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Really nice. Background sound, combat, sneaking, voice acting on high level
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - They are not game breaking, but they surely break immersion

I will go home for Christmas after all :D Well, we will have X-mas dinner early but it was the same last year. My manager told me it’s fine to make test before coming to work, and if it’s negative I don’t need to quarantine. They also dropped lockdown in the UK today ( the day I fly out), so no idea if there will be even requirement for quarantine when I will be back. They were writing something about after-coming testing to shorten it. But as always with British gov - everything takes forever. And they can’t even say what their plan will be in 2 weeks. Like with Brexit. We will see. But lack of clear communication is bad. Just like people in Poland learned 2 days before All Saint’s Day that graveyards will be closed this year. 10/10.

I did buy Wolfenstein 2 this autumn sale, mostly as I will have now time off. Not around January. But I will count it towards any games I will buy during winter sale.

I used icons from this page, to show gaming platform in my post:
https://icons8.com/icons

Activated: 07 / 2020

Heat Signature (Q3 2017) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 3 months

Action Rogue-lite Won on SteamGifts
20,7 hours | 46 of 70 (66%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good for short sessions
- random mission conditions which gives bigger challenge and more variety
- it's possible to turn off annoying perma death mechanic

The bad
- no plot or any story
- gets really repetitive after a while
- patches that changed balance and made some achievements unobtainable
- characters are designed to die fast, so it's not possible to make one strong character with good gear
- if we manage to make strong character - game "punishes" us for using it, by rewarding less liberation points at the end of the level

Conclusion:
Nice game for short sessions. But it gets really repetitive, especially after we understand the basics and how predictable enemies are.

---

Story:

There is no story. Game consists of short missions (they are shorter than 5 min most of the time) and main theme is "liberate the stations from our enemies".

---

Gameplay:

We pick up missions, fly to the enemy ship, board, do objective, leave ship, go for another quest. Ship interiors are randomly generated so each is a bit different, but game always follows the same logic. So they feel repetitive after a while. Missions are either to steal something, kill or kidnap someone, or hijack the ship. So not much variety here, and all are played the same way in the end - go from start to room x, backtrack to avoid enemies.

There are random conditions on top of the missions - like don't kill anyone, don't raise alarms, mission needs to be completed in under 2 min etc. But frankly I can chose if I want to play the game in a stealth way or a no-kill way. So it didn't change much from my perspective. Some parts of the ships are locked, and we are required to use terminals or picking the key from the guards to open them.

Weapons include melee weapons, pistols, shotguns. Both in normal and silenced versions. When we aim the weapon we enter slow-motion mode that allows a bit of planning. But as enemies most of the time travel in packs of 2 or 3 it's possible to kill or incapacitate them before they realize we are nearby or raise alarms.

Normal enemies can see us forward. There are no enemy vision cones displayed, so we need to decide on our own how far enemy can see us. There are more advanced enemies with ability to detect heat (they have red bubble around which shows detection area), shields (need crashbeam or inverter to take care of it), with explosives on them (explode when killed), armor (need armor-piercing weapon) and life link (doing something to one enemy alerts linked enemy, even when they are far away). It may sound complicated, but equip 2x high capacity crash beam with 2x armor-piercing long blade, and all enemies die in 2s.

There are gadgets that are used to play in a stealth way - stealth shield, various teleports, key cloner. While I was using key cloner, I found it easier to incapacitate enemies in a room than trying to go around them with other gadgets. Waiting for a good moment to use shield or teleported can take a while. And using fast forward to speed up waiting can make us "overshoot", and need to wait another "patrolling queue" for guards to stand in the right spots.

For completing the mission we receive liberation points - the more, the higher level mission we take. When we fill liberation bar we can liberate one the enemy stations, and it either gives us tiny boost to how much credits we have with a new character, or unlock gear in the shop. Some stations don't unlock anything, and should be left alone. Galaxy map acts like a skill tree - each enemy fraction is specialized in some technologies, so pursuing one fraction will give us access to advanced key cloners, and other fraction will give us silenced weapons or better teleports. We can also get better gear as a loot found on the ships. And I found it to be more efficient than trying to pursue specific unlocks on the galaxy map. When we unlock enough stations from certain fraction we get ability to hijack their main base.

When we liberate enough stations with new character (which most of the time is 2 - 3 stations) they get "famous", and because of this they gain less liberation points at the end of the mission. First time it's ~90% of the points, but it quickly goes to ~70%, ~50%, ~20% territory. So each character "lifespan" is literally ~8 / 10 missions sometimes. Later taking even high tier missions yields pitiful amount of the liberation points. So game is based on high turnover of characters, which is something that initially put me off.

When we are caught by the guards we are tossed out through the airlock, and need to remotely control our pod for rescue. Problem is that each character starts with x seconds they can spend in the vacuum before they die. And there is no way to reset this timer. So we can rescue ourselves only few times before character dies. It is possible to turn off perma death in the options, and send characters to retirement when they stop to yield normal amount of liberation points though. Like I did.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - very basic but clean and not giving any problems
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - really is repetitive, there is no voice acting, weapons sound are well made
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐- I saw a bug where enemy walks on someone's body without raising the alarm. But that's all

Activated: 09 / 2020

Strange Brigade (Q3 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Action Co-op
9,2 hours | 25 of 60 (42%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- well implemented co-op
- good for short sessions
- no microtranzactions or other cosmetic bullshit

The bad
- narrator that can be annoying, just like humor in Borderlands will not be liked by everyone
- traps are nice in theory, but not really needed in the gameplay. So this game is not similar to Orcs Must Die
- we may sometimes get overrun by the enemies
- enemies are not really varied

Conclusion:
It is well made co-op / multiplayer game. Although it's rather simple, without deep plot or big challenge. Still worth checking if you want simple co-op, and have nothing else on the list.

---

Story:

Evil Egyptian queen Seteki wants to take over the world! And our heroes need to stop her! She gathers souls in the soul cages, and our team travels between levels destroying those. And in the end defeating Seteki herself. So nothing deep or meaningful. Just a simple backstory to killing hordes of enemies.

---

Gameplay:

FPS with some veryyyy easy puzzles and co-op mechanism. There are 4 characters to chose from, they don't differ much how they play though. Loot is not shared, but there is enough to not make people compete for it. There are less enemies than in Left 4 Dead 2 or Vermindtide 2.

Puzzles are very easy, and include looking for symbols around the level to find sequence that opens the door, "flip pipes to create path for the water", and "shot the wall to flip the tiles and fill the board".

We can chose to use assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle or handgun to kill enemies, with one type of grenade as an extra accessory. Weapons don't feel all that different though. Sometimes it's easy to run out of the bullets if we miss a lot. Grenades are regenerating on the timer. Gold we find is used to buy better weapons; skill points to unlock medallions that give active ability (I played as scientist / mage guy, and his default ability was most useful I think). Some weapons can be modified with stones found in the chests - freeze enemies, health stealth, armor piercing, bigger head-shot damage etc. It's not possible to remove used stone, so they are one-time items. Inventory interface is clean and easy to navigate.

There are traps on the levels - rotating blades, fire traps, spikes, exploding barrels etc. They feel more like addition though, not something necessary to the kill enemies. So this game is not relying heavily on traps like Orcs Must Die is. We can also hunt for cats and green vases scattered on the levels - this is taken from the Sniper Elite series, where players can hunt for bottles. It is easy to spot the cats, as they "announce" where they are with loud meow. Vases are not announced in any way, and often hidden in weird places in the distance. There are also more traditional collectibles - journals or artifacts.

We can carry one healing potion with us. When we die and have it - we can revive ourselves. Otherwise we need to wait for another player to run to the coffin (resurrection point), knock on the door and release us. There is no gore or fountains of blood in this game, dead player simply drops on the ground and camera jumps to the coffin where character hits the lid from the inside, trying to get out.

There are around 10 missions in the game, they are corridor based with bigger areas for combat. There are short cinematic between the missions where lady over the radio tells us what is our next objective. Gear can be swapped or upgraded after the mission or in the main menu. Some levels are more open-looking when action takes place in caves or outside. And others are really closed inside the buildings. Game has no minimap, but it's not needed in such corridor game.

Game throws hordes of enemies on us, but even when each mission introduces new enemy type - they still feel like a copy-pasta. Some special enemies include mummies that send underground spikes at us, agile enemies that can spit fire or disappear, bulky enemies with long range spears or charging bulls. But majority are undead or skeletons that die from one head-shot.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - nice and detailed
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - ambient, voice acting is decent but was surely not focus of the game, weapon and combat sounds are well made
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any

And UK is in another lockdown. Till 2nd Dec, at least for now. With ban on travel I will not be able to see my family. Yay?

I will sit for 2 weeks in my room, playing games most probably :thinking: I may be able to beat my backlog finally.

Anyone else strangled away from family or friends for Christmas? I will need to listen to All I want for Christmas a lot to cheer myself up :eyes:

I used icons from this page, to show gaming platform in my post:
https://icons8.com/icons

Activated: 06 / 2020

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Q2 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 3 months

Metroidvania
18 hours | No achievements

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good level design
- enemies do not feel repetitive

The bad
- no checkpoints or manual save, you restart game from the place you last saved
- dismantling items requires alchemist ingredient, so needs a lot of grind
- bosses (especially the last two) don't have predictable movie set and focus more on luck than skill
- character can blend with the background, making it hard to see where we are during the boss fights
- villains are too predictable
- difficulty is not even, and there is moment with huge spike, where we move from killing everything in 1 hit, to being killed by even buffed-weakest-enemy in one hit

Conclusion:
It is good a metroidvania, but bosses fights made me want to drop the game few times. They aren't as polished as bosses in Hollow Knight, and more annoying to beat than skill-challenging.

---

Story:

We are the shardbinder - human that is able to fight with demons, as they have special shard(s) in their body that are able to bind to demon power and use it. We are sent to the demon castle, tasked with banishing it from the world. Along the way we learn the origin of the shardbinders, do some easy fetch quests. Setting is interesting, but plot is uninspiring and shallow.

---

Gameplay:

Metroidvania quite similar to the Hollow Knight. We jump around, kill enemies, use new powers to access previously locked parts of the map. Controls are responsive and the platforming part is good.

There are few weapons to chose from (swords, great swords, katanas, shoes (that are used to kick enemies...), whips). But I found all weapons apart from the swords to be too slow to be used effectively. There are fire arms, but I also never used those. Weapons can be found around the map or crafted. We can also customize our armor and shards that gives us passive bonuses - armor is found or crafted, while shards are randomly given to us when we kill certain enemy type.

Mana is used to activate shards - shooting arrows, summoning dragon that attacks enemies or paintings that act as (rather bad) shield, use elemental powers etc. Shards are upgraded by either finding another shard of the same type (they stack up), or upgrading the shard itself. Both requires a lot of grind, as chance to drop shard from enemy or ingredients is low.

Crafting system is quite robust, but requires enormous amount of grind if we'd want to unlock everything. Cooking recipes gives passive bonuses such as higher mana regeneration, higher damage or higher luck. Crafting best weapons and armors also requires a lot of crafting materials, and they are dropped with 5% or 10% chance from specific enemies. Enemies respawn when we make transition between the screens, but it still takes a lot of time to drop something we need.

Inventory is neatly organized, but it could remember sorting options we prefer.

There are some pointless fetch quests that are supposed to extend the gameplay - kill x monsters, bring grandma specific food to eat, bring specific piece of clothing. But it's not worth the effort that would need to be put into grind and then crafting.

Enemies are different enough to not be boring, and require bit different strategy when dealt with. At the end of the game everything dies in 1 - 2 hits, so at this point we just rush between different bosses. Although there is this nasty difficulty spike around end of the game, that makes it just annoying to progress as weak enemies gets enormous buff. Granted - enemies do not scale with our level, so different parts of the map have different difficulty. And only 1 - 2 small parts of the map have overpowered enemies.

There are no choices or moral dilemmas. Game does have normal and true ending which is neat, but in the end just resolves to "did you visit whole map? if yes - true ending".

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - Fitting to the atmosphere, but our character can blend with some backgrounds
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - I don't remember anything about the music, so it's neither good or bad. Voice acting is on good level though. Apart from fetch quests NPCs that literally say one line over and over gain
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any

Activated: 09 / 2020

The Division (Q1 2016) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Looter shooter
24 hours | 26 of 50 (52%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- game net code works well
- very nice graphic, visual effects and weapon sounds
- good environmental physic - a lot of objects can be moved, glass shatters etc.

The bad
- objects clip through the walls
- animation problems (when enemies were killed close to me, dying animation was rendered in like 30 FPS)
- quest can not register enemies were killed, and next scripts are not executed
- "They killed Alex!" - literally every enemy in the start part of the game is named Alex. Later "Alex" is swapped with another name, but still each zone has only enemies with one name
- loot drops are uninteresting
- cosmetics are uninteresting and not really noticeable
- problem with going into windowed mode on each game startup
- enemies are repetitive and uninteresting
- enemies are dumb

Conclusion:
It is fine game if you don't have anything else to play in co-op. Must be quite boring in SP. I did not touch PvP, so can't comment on that. But even in co-op there are only few missions with some essence, and everything else is copy-pasted fetch quests. Graphic and technical level are really good, but it's like blown egg on the Easter - pretty outside, empty inside.

---

Story:

Oh no, someone made a virus that killed half of the Manhattan, and we're sent to save the day! Kill evil people who terrorize citizens and find a cure for the virus! I mean.. yeah. Plot is shallow, uninteresting and predictable. Setting is also not interesting, as we're part of The Division - super secret military organization that is everywhere, and any citizen can be part of it. No one can know about Division existence though. When alarm rings we take a gun and run to save the day! If you want to play this game for plot don't be surprised to get disappointed.

---

Gameplay:

Looter shooter. So you run around, kill enemies, get marginally better gear and run to another encounter to get slightly better gear yet again. Weirdly there is no obvious progression here, as not single time I felt like I get weapon that is way better than my previous one. Feels like we get weapons just to keep up with higher level enemies, not to give player feeling they received something interesting.

Which brings us to the cosmetic microtranzactions. They are so utterly pointless, as game is stylized to be realistic. So everyone wears dark trousers, dark bullet-proof vest and a hat. If you equip jacket it makes your T-shirt not visible. Not to mention jacket is also barely visible, as 90% of upper body is hidden under the bullet vest. Manhattan is really well made, but fact it's realistic made game really dark (no electricity, shadows of the skyscrapers), which in turn makes it hard to even see your cosmetics. Why would you buy cosmetics that are hard to spot even for you? I did see many players in the hub areas, and not single time I thought "oh this looks nice, I'd want to have it!".

There are tons of useless junk to collect - phones, cam videos, laptops etc. that are supposed to give more depth to the world, but in the end it's just description of how the first days of apocalypse looked like. And we have 2020 now, so we're all well aware how apocalypse looks like. So it just rings hollow.

There is crafting system and shops, but both are useless when playing only PvE. Crafting requires running around to collect parts in specific areas (like electronic in electronic shop, pieces of fabric in clothing shop etc), and crafted weapons feels the same as the ones we find. Shops are terribly overpriced, and by the end of the game I would be able to buy only 2 weapons for my level. After hoarding cash for whole game, and selling all junk I was finding on the enemies. No idea if they are of use in PvP.

We can upgrade our base, but I did it only for the completion feeling. There is literally nothing that is gained by doing so - we can get chest that will drop a piece of fabric every 1 real-life hour or more fancy crafting station. Upgrading the base is requirement to unlock abilities upgrades but again - they are useless. Especially passive bonuses feels pointless. Like "you have chance to get some ammo when you kill enemy with a head-shot" - when you're swimming in ammo. Maybe useful in PvP. Dunno.

There is simple abilities system - healing, tech or security trees, and extra abilities (or abilities modifiers) are unlocked by upgrading said base. You want to have homing grenade? Get enough resources to upgrade base water purification system! I was just sticking to healing pack and scanner, as one was healing me and other makes enemies visible behind the cover. Majority of abilities feel like useless fodder, just to make the abilities screen have more icons. Why would you use mobile cover, when there is something to hide behind every 5m? Why would you use turret that dies after enemy hits it few times? Passive abilities are equally bad. All in all it does not feel you can customize your character in any meaningful way.

Map is divided into sub-areas with different level enemies. So we're forced to beat the map in certain order, as facing enemies with higher than our level will kill us in few shots. And we will not find weapons of higher level in previous or current area. It is always the same or 1 level above us.

Whole gameplay is: hide behind the cover (or you will die in 5s), pick some enemies, change cover, kill some more enemies. There is no planning or strategy, as enemies are copy-pasted with different clothes color, and are embarrassingly stupid. They will walk into grenade your threw, or stand behind the cover and allow you to head-shot them few times. The only difference are the cleaners - enemies with big gas bottle and flame throwers - you can shot the bottle to make them go boom. I think it was most enjoyable part of the game. Aim for the cleaners bottle to make them die in style. We sometimes encourage buffed enemies versions - their HP bar is either yellow or purple - they they are just bullet sponge versions of normal enemies.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - Graphic is really good, just like whole technical layer of the game
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - Music is "realistic" just like rest of the game. So nor much to say here, as most of the time it's just environmental sounds. Voice acting is decent. But not amazing. Also they get Alex!
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - Maybe not abundance, but fare bit of them. Nothing game breaking though.

The Division summary may be bit random, but I did not want to spend more than the minimum required time to write it. I did not even read it 2nd time, it’s not worth the effort :P Also looks like Uplay don’t have any place where they show in neat way number of achievements, just page where they show which ones are unlocked. So no screenshot this time.

I was bit disappointed in the Bloodstained, hoped it will be more like Hollow Knight. I did beat two Castlevania games before, but they felt more platform focused, not bosses focused.

I saw tear down of PS5… and this console is huge. I think I will really wait for them to release some slim version, as this console is the size of my 24’ monitor…

I used icons from this page, to show gaming platform in my post:
https://icons8.com/icons

Activated: 06 / 2020

Children of Morta (Q3 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Rogue-lite Dungeon crawler
? hours | 37 of 45 (82%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good backstory
- nice side quests that do not feel like fetch tasks, and make replaying levels interesting
- each family member has distinct playstyle
- idea of playing as a family, and unlocking abilities that help other family members
- enemies are not repetitive
- game is not grindy
- good for short sessions
- no microtransactions

The bad
- last boss is not well designed
- multiplayer only on local network or Remote Play
- one optional quest is bugged, and people may repeat the same map dozens of times without getting needed quest item

Conclusion:
It's really nice rogue-lite game, where we play as a family whose duty is to fight with the corruption. Game is generous in amount of gold we receive after the run. Each run takes ~30 min, so it's good when we don't have much time. It also has co-op mode, but it's coach only (or through Steam Remote Play). I played it on XboX Game Pass, so could not try how it works.

---

Story:

We play as the children of Morta - guardian family who's task is to defend world from the corruption that spreads from the mountain every x generations. At first we can play only as a dad and oldest daughter (melee / bow characters). Soon other members of the family join us, after they are shortly introduced to the story. When back home (hub area) family members interact with each other, which allows us to learn a bit of their backstory and motives. It does make game more personal, than usual "restart the game after each death with character of your choosing".

We need to free 3 spirits of Morta, which will allow us to go to the mountain and destroy the source of the corruption. Along the way we learn what started the corruption. There are no choices to be made in this game, but there are small optional quests that can be completed. And they unlock NPCs who can stay in our house as a guests, giving us some bonuses

---

Gameplay:

Upgrades bought in the hub area are permanent, so we start each run a bit stronger. It's not possible to change weapons, only do slights changes how they work with runes found on the maps. Experience points are earned per character, and unlock both new abilities for character and passive perks for the whole family.

There is easy to read mini map and bigger overview map of the dungeon. Each stage has 2 - 3 maps after which we fight sub-boss or main boss. Beating main boss unlocks next area. It is possible to repeat previous levels as many times as we like, if anyone is interested in some grind or achievements.

Enemies are of good variety - melee, ranged, sorcerers, special. Each family member plays a bit different which in combination with enemies makes each combination a bit different. Archer is good on long distance and can move around while shooting, but it drains energy. If energy drops to zero we can shot but not move around. Fire mage can't move when shooting, but there is ability to place decoys and main attack can push enemies away. Hammer user attack on short distance but also on big angle + it staggers enemies and adds them armor. So they can munch through waves of mobs easily.

Side missions are optional, and game does not punish players for ignoring those. They do add more depth to the story, so are well worth doing.

We keep all gold on death, which can be used to upgrade perks (attack power, defense, health, crit hits etc.) in the hub area. Gems are found as enemy drop or on corpses around the map, and used to open chests or buy items from vendors.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - detailed and fitting to the game atmosphere

Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - music is ambient and not really memorable

Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage anything big. Just this one quest that is more of achievement hunter problem

Activated: 06 / 2020

Darksiders III (Q4 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 2 months

Hack'n'slash Action Gamepad
17 hours | 41 of 64 (64%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good level design
- bosses fights are well done
- game is not grindy
- not microtransactions

The bad
- texture of one cargo container is not loading properly
- some platforming sections are clunky with controller
- game has no map at all. Which makes it confusing to navigate at the start
- countering mechanic feels bit off, and we are getting hit when it looks like we dodged attack at the right moment

Conclusion:
It's good hack&slash with bit of metroidvania. Not worth playing for the story, but good as easy slay-enemies position.

---

Story:

Fury, the third rider of the apocalypse, is sent to catch seven deadly sins that escaped their prison. Along the way she's able to understand her own shortcomings, and able to overcome her temper to do some greater good.

Story is set after Darksiders 1 where War is sent to recover Armageddon seals, and Darksiders 2 where Death is sent to fix War's mistakes. And acts as set-up for Darksiders 4, where we will play as the last rider - Strife. Story is not amazing, but fits into previous two game lore, and fills some gaps of what and why things are happening. Why Heaven is on war with Hell over the earth, and how forces that are supposed to keep balance between the three acts.

Just like in previous two games are accompanied by the Watcher - spirit that see if we don't break any "laws", and we meet Vulgrim that acts as a seller and fast travel network. They don't have much to say in this game, and Watcher is rather uninteresting.

---

Gameplay:

Similar to previous Darksiders games or DmC Devil May Cry. We slash through enemies with various weapons, get power ups to unlock new paths and progress the plot. Fury main weapon is whip which works well on close / medium distance + boomerang-thing for long distance. Later we unlock fire daggers, ice sword, power hammer and lighting lance. Each weapon can be used to solve simple environmental puzzles required to progress the game, and to unlock new paths - lightning power allows us to glide upwards in air currents, ice to walk on the water and do a wall jump, power hammer to hit switches and stick to crystal surfaces, and fire allows to burn spider webs blocking the path. All this makes it bit pointless to look around the map early on, as we are often blocked by obstacle we can't pass.

There is no map at all, so we are forced to fumble around levels, looking for right path to take. Enemies drop souls that are used to buy consumables or armors at Vulgrim. It is also possible to find soul crystals around the map. While we do keep crystals when we die, "free" souls stays where we were slayed. And require us to go back to the area and collect them. But we don't lose anything, so game does not punish players for dying

Element-specific weapons aren't more powerful than basic attack, so they are rarely used. Game relies heavily on dodging, but at the same time basic version is not forgiving. And we often get hit when we think dodge was timed well. It is alleviated with passive perk that rise dodge window by 25%, but it's annoying at the beginning. It is not required to use combos to get better results, and wrath and havoc attacks are not powerful. Especially havoc form attacks feels pitiful - we are transformed into big demon, that deals tiny amount of attack. Only perk is that we are invincible for few seconds.

Souls can be traded for skill points as well, and put into health, attack or arcane category. Attack bumps basic attack power, while arcane bumps havoc form and counter attack damage. There are no skill trees or other complex statistics. Shards can be put into a weapon (both basic and elemental), and give active bonus for weapon in use + passive bonus. And this is important, as buff to dodge window is obtained by putting specific shard into *any* weapon we own. So in general it's good idea to put all available shards into weapon, even those we never use. As only then they will give passive bonuses. Shards are upgraded by the Maker in the Forge, with use of angelic / demonic artifacts. After beating the game I had enough artifacts to fully upgrade 3 shards, out of 6 that can be equipped. Any more would require to grind for gold to buy them from Vulgrim.

Encounters are fluid, and there is good variety of enemies. Only problem is with already mentioned dodge window. Bosses are well-designed and not really frustrating. They all follow attack pattern that can be learnt, and don't act like last boss in the Bloodstained - too fast and too random.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - graphic is good. It is not striking or flawless, but it fits into the game style

Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - music is fitting, and sound effect are well made. Voice acting is also on good level. At lest in English version, polish (that I turned on by mistake) was more than bad

Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - nothing game breaking, just some badly loading textures or some clipping through textures

Activated: 06 / 2020

Halo: Master Chief Collection (Q4 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 2 months

FPS
19,5 hours | 88 of 378 (23%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

19,5h 88/378 The good
- it's possible to switch between old and remastered graphic in 1st and 2nd game
- multiplayer works without problem
- 3rd game gives opportunity to see conflict from both Earth and aliens perspective
- variety of weapons, and most of them feels interesting. They also vary how they work between games
- good variety of enemies
- remastered games get a lot graphical details and looks really good

The bad
- when player is killed in co-operative game camera turns into kill-cam mode, but it's not possible to move it around
- so many games, and the same copy-pasted enemies in all of them
- it's not possible to sprint...
- in first two games one fraction feels like zombie-brainless-fodder enemies
- plot is basic and average
- AI that accompany us is uninteresting
- driving mechanic and physics is on the Borderlands level. Which is not a compliment
- some missions are broken, and need to be played in one session. If we try to beat a mission, close the game and return to it later - game will crash
- setting feels like copy-pasted from Ringworld books
- some games have problem with sound mixing, and some sounds are silenced. It is very noticeable when switching between old and new graphic version, as it also changes version of the soundtrack

Conclusion:
Games available when I played: Reach, CE,2:Anniversary, 3. For achievements I added up those available in games I played in. In total whole collection has 700.

Seeing how many people wait for next Halo game I expected more. And get mediocre plot with uninteresting characters, killing the same enemies over and over again and no interesting game mechanics. So meh. It could be amazing when games were released, but now it's just mediocre.

---

Story:

Aliens wants to activate Halo - huge ring that will kill all life in the galaxy. And we need to stop them! Hurr hurr. Nothing interesting. It gets better in 3rd game, when we learn a bit of history from the alien race perspective. But otherwise - boring and predicable. Right after we stop one Halo from destroying life in the galaxy - it turns out that there is yet another one that needs to be destroyed.

---

Gameplay:

Pure FPS. There are no RPG or strategy elements here - no inventory, stats, planning etc. Game focus on running through corridor levels, and killing everything in front of us. We can occasionally use ground or flying vehicles to move faster in open areas. There are no decisions to make, and there is always only one path in front of us.

There are no special abilities, we can't even sprint in those games. In first and 3rd it's possible to grab devices that will give us temporary shield, turret, decoy etc., but I was often forgetting I even have those. There are grenades, but they are either overpowered or under-powered, depending on the game.

There are three fractions - humans, aliens and zombie-aliens. We play as human, that is heavily inspired by Warhammer 40K - bulky and with super strength, use standard human weapons shooting bullets. Aliens use plasma weapons, have cloaking devices and sometimes heavy melee attacks. Zombie-aliens take whatever is on the battlefield and use it to shot us. It is visible how weapons change through the series, like plasma pistol that shots pink needles goes from simply following target a bit, to needles that act as small homing missiles. Changes are not huge though. But enough to make each game weapons feel a bit different. It is possible to dual-wield smaller firearms, but not all games allow to reload both main and secondary weapon.

Cortana is AI that gives us tips or tell where to go. Though her design in uninteresting, and often feels more like bother than actual help on the way. Especially when she talk too much. We are occasionally accompanied by other soldiers, but they are dumb and die easily. Enemy AI is fine, but nothing amazing. I liked best most basic alien infantry units, that start to run around in panic when we shot them. Though they were sometimes "forgetting" we are there, and were just standing without doing anything.

Driving mechanic is truly awful, with either feeling that cars drive on the ice, or just lose connection to the ground without a reason. Flying mounts are not better, but they are used way less. So it's not as much noticeable.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - it is obvious first games are old, as graphic is ugly. But remastered versions look good. But when texture maps are more detailed - actual collisions maps are left unchanged. So it's possible for enemies clip through the wall, as they don't detect texture that is more bulky than original.

Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - weapon sounds are good, but overally music is average. And there are some problems with mixing in older titles.

Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - the serious one is not being able to progress with story, if game is closed and then resumed between specific missions. Some smaller are with fact game doesn't record correctly which levels we beaten along with gameplay time, so we may beat whole campaign and see "9 out of 11 completed".

And I need to leave this one here :D

Did I tell XboX app is bad? I think I did. They did move out of the beta, rise subscription fee. And it still takes few seconds to even load the app, same to load game page. But at least games now start immediately, there is no need to click double on the play button. It still does not follow achievements and other game statistics properly. Even in MS own game - Halo.

What I learned is that Microsoft decided that Xbox app and Xbox game bar are necessary parts of the Windows10. Which means it’s not possible to just remove them if you no longer need those. Charming. I did remove them with use of console and long commands, but really? Previously those two could be at least removed through Windows store, but now option is either greyed out or straight missing. 10/10.

But my subscription run over, so I’m back to playing on Steam. I started Heat Signature. Overally XBox offer was a good one, but their launcher app is bad. Even Origin or Uplay works better in my experience. They can start game properly, and don’t take so long to load anything.

I used icons from this page, to show gaming platform in my post:
https://icons8.com/icons

Activated: 06 / 2020

Dead Cells (Q3 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Rogue-lite
? hours (17 runs) | 26 of 53 (49%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- fluid combat
- good for short sessions
- good variety of enemies and playstyles

The bad
- too much grind to unlock bonuses
- can get boring after few hours

Conclusion:
Good, not really punishing rogue-lite game. But can get shortly really repetitive, if you dislike to repeat the same small levels over and over again. They are procedurarly generated, but share enough similarity between runs to not feel unique.

---

Story:

We start as a lump of cells that reanimate corpse. And only thing we can do is kill enemies, so we keep traversing maps and do it. There are some optional rooms where we learn background about the king and fate of the prisoners, but it's not much.

---

Gameplay:

There are ranged, meele and mixed weapons + turrets, traps, grenades. Along the way we can find scrolls that can upgrade our stats - health + rage / ranged / survival damage. Each weapon has one or two main traits - say bow with rage / ranged. It means that picking up rage scroll will upgrade both our HP and bow damage. But if we pick survival scroll - we will level up only HP, no change to the weapon damage. That's why it's often first good weapon we find that influence which scrolls we pick up, to get high DPS.

Weapons have tiers, and the higher the tier - the bigger base damage that is used to calculate DPS with number of scrolls we have.

We also collect coins (to buy weapons) and cells (that are used to level up permanent power ups, unlock weapons etc.). If we don't buy upgrade that keeps part of the coins after the death - all coins, scrolls and cells are lost if we die before we can spend them. Shop where we can spend coins is localized either on the maps or in hub area between maps. Cells can be spend only in the hub area between levels.

Health drops are rare and we need to rely on the limited number of potions we can carry to keep us alive. Health does not auto-regenerate, but there are abilities or weapons that restore 1 or 2% of health on the enemy kill. It is possible to replenish potion flask at the hub location.

General game design is: map => hub location where we can spend cells and fill health => map => hub => boss maybe => map.

Enemies hit hard, and early on it's possible to die in 2 - 3 hits if we're not cautious.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - it's good, but it's pixel art. So 2 stars :blobevil:
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - fitting, but not really memorable
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - didn't find any

Activated: 06 / 2020

The Outer Worlds (Q4 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 1 month

cRPG FPS
30 hours | 19 of 48 (40%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- our skills influence dialogues outcome
- good satire of society where corporations have unlimited power
- easy to manage inventory system
- good voice acting
- really nice artstyle, similar to this from No Man's Sky

The bad
- maps are tiny and limited to few locations
- broken game economy
- companion quests are rather shallow
- lazy approach to stealth
- there are not accessible worlds on the galaxy map. It is preparation for future DLC, but it's still weird and makes it look like game will be longer

Conclusion:
It's like low budget Fallout: New Vegas. Or how Fallout 4 should look like. cRPG focused on skills and dialogues. Not running around, shooting your way out.

---

Story:

Earth sent ships to colonize distant stars. But something goes wrong, and one of the ships, with 10k hibernated colonists on board, arrives in the system years after first one. Star government don't know what to do with them, so they leave them in the frozen state.

Crazy scientist comes on board and unfreezes one colonist - the player. And gives them mission to obtain more chemicals, which will allow to unfreeze remaining colonists.

Along the way player learns how the colony operates, need to decide on fate of some settlements, help companions and NPC in their quests. And decide if they want to support colony government, or rebels and scientist that unfroze them.

Plot is one big satire on how future ruled by the corporations may look like: - "Do not use this terminal without clearance. Doing so will result in reprimend. If you don't report you used this terminal illegaly you will be fined with reprimend"
- "We interrupt your daily dose of advertisement to broadcast important message"
- losing one's job is worse than being a criminal, and people are basically owned by the corporations

- people who aren't performing well enough do not get medicine, and they don't perform well enough as they are sick
Etc. But at the same time this humor is not heavy, deep or dark. Just satirical.

---

Gameplay:

cRPG similar to Fallout 3 or New Vegas. We can fight with ranged or meele weapons, althought meele is really crude and not really useful. Same as stealth. It is possible to hide in the grass and do some critical damage that way, but not enough to make game playable.

Strong part of this game is character creation, and fact that skill level influences dialogues or allows to move around the world easier. With high enough persuation we can talk over the guard, or it makes enemies confused or scared on hit. Hacking allows to obtain otherwise hidden information in PC, and it may unlock different solution to a side quest. High science skill will allow us to talk like true nerd, and do some repairs on our own, wihtout need to have specific companion in squad.

Sadly game economy is broken, and we are showered with med-kits, money, ammo, lockpicks etc. I ended with over 100 med-kits, lock picks and around 2k of each ammo type. Killing enemy may require us to shot 3 bullets from sniper rifle, and on the body we find 10 sniper ammo and 20 energy type. Like if game designers either thought people don't know how to aim. Or did not scale how much you can salvage from the bodies and containers with higher difficulty level.

We also get overpowered fast, to the point all enemy enconquers end after 5s. I did rise level to hard, but id helped only a bit.

Companions die fast and don't have much tactical value. I used them mostly for skill bonuses they provide and as target for enemies, so I can kill them without getting hit.

Stealth part is designed really lazily - instead of making maps where we'd need to avoid guards - we are equipped with hologram device that mask us for x time on the enemy territory. When "batteries" die guards will approach us and ask what are we doing here. But with high enough persuation or intimidation we can tell "nah, we're fine" and battery will refill. Works up to 3 times. If we fail on the check we need to shoot our way through rest of the map.

Levels are tiny, and it's possible to run to the opposite part of the map in few minutes.

There is VATS-like system where we can slow down time, and aim for head / limbs / torso to blind target, incapacitate or do critical hit. Without upgrades it deplets after 1 shot, so is not really useful. Fully upgraded allows to shot 4 - 5 times.

We earn fraction points that show how likable we are by different corporations and rebel groups. And it influences a bit last mission of the game. Most of the quests and side quest can be solved in two different ways (say stealing poster, paying for poster or helping person so they gives us the poster).

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - detailed and candy-like. But fitting to the game
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - music is nice, but forgetful. Voice acting is well done
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - didn't find any

Activated: 06 / 2020

Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Q3 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Action Co-op
14,5 hours | 27 of 60 (45%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good co-op implementation
- can be played in aggressive or sneaky way

The bad
- enemies are dumb
- last boss is just pain in the ass bulletsponge
- maps are tiny and require players to backtrack a lot
- microtranzactions that unlock experience boosters and skins

Conclusion:
It's average Wolfenstein game and it feels like it was made in a hurry. Still, a good option if someone wants to play in co-op brainless shooter.

---

Story:

Kill nazists and save Blazkowicz! (your dad). That's literally everything. There are some short fetch quests, but otheriwse story is straightforward. Sisters go to Germany to look for their father. Needed information is in Laboratory X, and they need to get keys from three generals to get there. Which is really convenient backstory to kill horses of nazists.

---

Gameplay:

Quite similar to other Wolfenstein games. Can be played in both stealth and shooting way. Killing enemies awards experience that is used to upgrade character. And killing enemies with certain weapon rises it's mastery (and adds bonus to it's damage). Unlockable abilities include double weapon wielding, better stealth, highlighting collectibles on the map, more health / armor etc.

There is easy to read and navigate journal and map, no inventory. Maps are really small game re-uses them a lot to extend the gameplay.

It is not always-online game, but is still focused on the online part. And developers added in-game currency that is used to buy health / experience boosters + unlock unique skins in the weapons. Most of the skins are unlocked with currenty found on the levels, but some require real-cash spending. Or a lot of grind. So it is there only to make people want to have skins owned by other players, and spend cash on them.

Stealth is perfectly viable approach, and when upgraded it allows to OHK even big enemies from behind. Boses still need to be killed with weapons though.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - fine. Some texture overlapping here and there, but nothing serious
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - nice, fast paced OST that fits the game and good voice acting
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I don't remember any

Activated: 02 / 2019

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 (Q1 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 17 months

Action Multiplayer
18,9 hours | 12 of 26 (46%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good variety of classes and abilities
- well suited for short sessions, esp with a good team
- inventory and crafting are well designed and easy to use

The bad
- too grindy
- bot AI is average, and they can get stuck in other part of the map or drop book to pick up healing potion
- no minimap

Conclusion:
It is good online multiplayer game to play with friends. Gameplay is optimized for cooperation, not competition. There is element of randomness, but it takes ages to level up gear. So it's not for people that dislike grind. Bit like L4D2 with rat-people instead of zombies.

---

Story:

I beat this game, and barely remember the plot apart from "chaos wants to beat us up, we need to defeat it!". So story is not strong part of this game, sorry Warhammer lovers :P

---

Gameplay:

Game for up to 4 players. Each picks class that has primary attack, ability to block, and one special ability (that is on a timer). I played as an archer elf, so my special ability was to shot few arrows that lock on targets. Other characters can knock out or sneak behind the enemies. It is possible to gather health items, potions and bomb scattered on the map to use them later. Combat is not complex and boils down to spamming LMB for attack.

Missions are not complex, and pretty much always require us to kill someone, something, or start some machine. It is possible to find books and grimuars that block one consumable slot, but gives better rewards at the end of the mission. Some elite enemies can drop dices that are also used to rise level of the mission reward.

Game spawn hordes of enemies with varied frequency, that floods players. They are typical meat fodder, and on easy + medium difficulty die in one hit. Only problem is their number. And most of the time it's just annoying to chop through them, not challenging or interesting. Special enemies also don't require any planning, unless they are chapter boss. Those are more intelligent, and have bigger variety of attack patterns.

If we survive the mission we receive one chest containing 3 items. Mission can be quite lengthy, so being able to get only 3 items for player makes it really grindy, if someone would want to hunt for specific gear or just to have items of certain rarity. But game at least remmebers level of the gear we get across all our characters, so if we start to play as new class we will not get 1 lvl gear, but on average the same gear we'd get with our 15 lvl hero.

Each class has few weapon types they can use, like my elf has short and log bow, heavy sword, two swords, two daggers, spear. It means though that you can keep getting weapon you don't like, which lefts you underpowered. As our power is not based on our level, but power level of equipped weaponse and amulets.

There are character passive abilities, but they don't have big impact on the gameplay. Like auto heal up to x% or small defense bonus for other players in proximity.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - detailed and fitting. But not jaw-dropping
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - fitting, but not memorable. All character voices are irish / scotish stylized which may be either upside or downside for people
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - didn't find any

Another month with pretty much only XboX game pass games beaten. And their launcher is as bad as it was month ago :hehe: Why even list stats of Dead Cells on the profile, when everything is “ - “.

There were 3 - 4 days of heatwave here, and we’re back at 20C and cloudy. Yay UK.

I am left with 1 month of GamePass. So I will skip Yakuza games for now. They are really long, and I don’t want to rush those.

I used icons from this page, to show gaming platform in my post:
https://icons8.com/icons

I forgot to post an update from this sale, as I did not buy anything :hehe_dogo:. It’s because I remembered that I have code for 3 months for Xbox Game Pass laying around, and activated it.

I may not have time to play everything from to-beat list, so I will need to prioritize something.

In general Xbox Game Pass is really good offer, but price in comparison to say EA Origin Access is high. I can have EA OA for 15 pounds per year, and one month of Xbox GP is 8 pounds. I may pay for one month if I really want to complete some game, but I will not pay 100 pounds to keep it for a year.

But their PC app is still in beta, and it’s shit:

• It does not show any profile data (playtime, achievements etc.)
• Achievement pop ups does not work for me
• It takes too long to open the app when it’s minimized in the tray (should not take solid few seconds to see green XboX logo on SSD drive)
• Starting the game is broken, and it may be needed to click to play game twice, as first try just minimized Xbox app without starting anything
• No offline mode if there is no internet connection
• Settings are limited to changing installation folder, and if it should start with windows
• Not possible to start game from the tray level, need to bring up whole application

I know, I know. BETA. But it can’t even do properly the things it was made for - starting the game without hassle. So I dunno. MS needs to work on this thing a long time, for it to be on pair with Steam or Origin.

Edit - someone told me that Metro: Exodus is no longer in the Game Pass. Imagine paying for a month to see game disappears shortly after xD They don’t even show exactly when game is removed, only says “soon”. Another minus for whole service. They should be more open about when game is removed from the service.

• Wolfenstein: Youngblood
  

  Released: 07.2019

  ? h | 27 of 60
• Dead Cells
  

  Released: 08.2018

  ? h | 26 of 53
• The Outer Worlds
  

  Released: 10.2019

  30 h | 19 of 48
• A Plague Tale: Innocence
  

  Released: 05.2019

  ? h | 26 of 35
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps
  

  Released: 03.2020

  16 h | 26 of 37

• Children of Morta
  

  Released: 09.2019

  - h | 3 of 45

• Halo: The Master Chief Collection
  

  Released: 12.2019

  - h | 0 of 700
• Darksiders III
  

  Released: 11.2018

  - h | 0 of 64
• Metro Exodus
  

  Released: 02.2019

  - h | 0 of 68
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War
  

  Released: 10.2017

  - h | 0 of 72
• Yakuza 0
  

  Released: 08.2018

  - h | 0 of 55
• Yakuza Kiwami 2
  

  Released:05.2019

  - h | 0 of 55
• RAGE 2
  

  Released: 05.2019

  - h | 0 of 65
• The Surge 2
  

  Released: 09.2019

  - h | 0 of 57

Activated: 11 / 2013

Lord of the Rings: War in the North (Q4 2011) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 79 months

Action Co-op
14,5 hours | 34 of 46 (74%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good co-op implementation
- small touches like when you break the head of the undead enemy, and they start to swing sword around randomly

The bad
- it's not really possible to play as a pure archer, as arrows are really limited
- enemies are repetitive
- companion bot AI is very basic
- dialogues do not require all players to be present, so it's possible to miss whole quest description

Conclusion:
Easy action game with proper co-op implementation. Don't expect deep plot or advanced combat mechanisms. But it's a fine pick if you want to play with someone a short campaign, and nothing else is available.

---

Story:

Game takes place at the end of the LotR books. We're tasked with defending land from the intruders, but quite early goal is changed - help Aragorn and hobbits to pass the mountains, by diverting enemy attention away. Rest of the game focus on defeating one of the Saruman servants, who tries to conquer whole north. We will help dwarfs to defend their home, talk with a dragon, help elfs to clear old ruins. Apart from that there are some rather not interesting side quests. It is also possible to meet characters from the books like Gandalf or Frodo.

---

Gameplay:

Third person action game. Main focus is on the sword fight with ability to use bow or crossbow. Game is designed for 3 players. If played solo or co-op rest of the players are controlled by the average-AI bots. So game would not be really fun as the single player.

We can do light and heavy attack + use special abilities that consume energy. Killing enemies awards experience (that is not shared between players) and skill points to unlock abilities and rise health / mana / dexterity stats. It is not possible to jump freely, and instead movement is focused on "cinematic" press key on prompt mechanic.

Loot can be found on the fallen enemies or in the treasure chests. There are bonuses for completing armor set, but there are so many sets it's impossible to do without grind. Otherwise 1 - 2 parts of the set will have really low level, which is worse than having high level parts from different sets.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - graphic is on similar to Skyrim level. Surely dated, but still fine
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - voice acting, music and sounds are fine
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - occasional enemy physic problems, killed enemy models may not disappear

Activated: 06 / 2020

Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Q1 2020) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐

Beaten after: 1 month

Action Metroidvania Gamepad
16 hours | 26 of 37 (70%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

14,5h The good
- whole artistic side - music, graphic, animations, story - are very well made
- it is bit easier, so also more accessible to players. Some may think it's negative though
- well designed levels that prompt exploration
- gameplay-helpers are optional, so we don't need to use "teleport from anywhere to the waypoint" or "stick to walls" if we want to have harder time
- whole gameplay layer is more complex, and draws heavily from Hollow Knight

The bad
- too short :sob:
Conclusion:
This game is so good. It's like eating your favorite ice creams - you're happy and at the same time a bit sad, as you know it will end soon. Very good platformer with good (albeit simple) story, brilliant art style and fitting music. It is a bit different from 1st game, as it's a bit more combat oriented, and platforming part feels easier. I played on Normal difficulty.

---

Story:

Game starts with showing how owl juvenile is raised by Ori and his (? I think Ori is a he) friends. When owl is finally able to fly we take a quick tour around... to be separated by a huge storm on an unknown land, that is ravaged by decay. We learn that light which was guarding the place died along old willow. We need to find all light wisps that were created when willow died. Strength, eyes, voice, memory and heart of the forest. Doing so will return light to the forest, and help us save our friend.

There are no big moral choices or complex plot twists. But devs still managed to show simple things like the fact that even "pure evil" characters could be forced to be like that by rejection and other live hardships, or that even "good" characters can fall under the right circumstances.

---

Gameplay:

Basic game mechanic is the same as in Ori and the Blind Forest. Metroidvania game with very good platforming part. We collect life and energy orbs to extent energy / health bars, and spirit light. But while some games change some minor things and release sequel, Ori changed in many ways, as it took heavy inspiration from the Hollow Knight.

Ori uses the light sword instead of auto-aiming projectiles to kill enemies as the main weapon. Abilities are divided into core (like double jump, dash, grapple hook) and additional (like triple jump, damage reduction, damage dealt bonus). Core abilities are always on, but additional ones need to be equipped into shard slots. Which works the same as charms in Hollow Knight. We start with 3 slots and can unlock 5 extra by beating simple combat shrines.

Spirit light is used to buy maps, optional abilities and upgrading abilities. Some optional abilities need to be unlocked by absorbing the light from the spirit trees.

Chase sequences are easier than they were in the 1st game, I think I died only once or twice on each. Instead of hard platforming sequences game has some easy bosses to fight. It may be needed to grind a bit and upgrade energy / health before facing them though.

It is possible to warp to any warp gate on the map, which saves a lot of time. Save points are also abundant, so risk of repeating big chunk of the map is minimal. If you want collectibles and don't want to roam blindly it's possible to buy collectibles maps. There is also NPC that shows various game stats - number of jumps, time underwater, killed enemies etc.

There are some fetch quests, but are entirely optional. Like we find a place where they make soup and get a portion. Then we need to find NPC in the cold area who would gladly eat warm soup, and we get a hat as a reward. This hat needs to be delivered to someone on the desert to guard them from the sun etc.

There are a lot of abilities unlocked with spirit trees, so we bump into one quite often at the beginning of the game. So it does not feel as special as it did in the 1st game.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - gorgeous, just like in it's predecessor. Vibrant and well contrasted colors, fluid animations, hand-drawn style (which means it will also look gorgeous in 10 years)
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - fitting to both what is happening on the screen and to the graphic style. Environmental sounds adds more depth. Even way NPCs talk to describe the story is cute and really fitting
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I encouraged literally one bug when I was able to get stuck in the wall, outside of the map. Otherwise game is bugless

Activated: 06 / 2020

A Plague Tale: Innocence (Q2 2019) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Stealth
? hours | 26 of 35 (74%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- enemy AI
- stealth gameplay
- likable characters

The bad
- auto-aim that can't be turned off
- story is average
- not possible to play in the pacifist way
- game looks like it has moral dilemmas, but they don't lead to anything

Conclusion:
I expected more of this game. While it is a good stealth game, story is kind of meh. Environmental puzzles with light are really barebone. And I don't like to take care of whiny kids ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

---

Story:

Raiders of the inquisition come to house of the french nobleman. They start to kill everyone, and only Amicia and her brother - Hugo - manages to escape. On their way to find save place to stay they meet other kids that are orphans - two thiefs and blacksmith son. At some point they decide they can't just hide, and need to kill the Grand Inquisitor to be able to live normally again.

Killing everyone inside Amicia's house turns out to be because of Hugo - he has connection to the plague, and that's the reason why Grand Inquisitor wants to kidnap him. Game shows how infected villages looked like, with markings on doors to show which household is infected etc. But game is not strongly tied to the historical events, connection between black death and rats is made more to justify simple puzzles where we need to make passages between rats hordes than having any educational or deep meaning.

---

Gameplay:

Third person stealth game, where it's not possible to move vertically (apart from pre-scripped action prompts), and not possible to turn off auto aim. Stealth part is good, not stressful or fast paced. But around middle of the game there are more and more situations that are hard to resolve in sneak way. And game endings forces us to kill enemies. So it's not possible to have truly pacifist run.

There is no "hiding in the closet" here, just hugging walls or low obstacles. We can carry one pot with us to distract guards, or shot rocks on piles of metal to get enemies attention. There are few other projectiles for the sling - lighting up torches or fireplaces, putting out the fire, make guards take down their helmet, create temporary light source, attract rats to certain area or sleep powder. Cost of crafting sleep powder is so high that it's not possible to use it regularly. Otherwise we will not be able to upgrade equipment.

Amicia gathers junk laying around - leather, string, alcohol, sulfur etc. to craft ammunition and upgrade gear. More space for materials, ability to carry more ammunition, quiet sling and walking around. Although they are not must-have, and game can be completed without upgrading much.

There are some easy light puzzle, where Amicia needs to make her way across rats. They are really basic - either light up something to chase rats away in a circular proximity, or move stationary lantern to create straight road across rats with a light beam. I think it can even be said those are just puzzle elements, not that this is puzzle game.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐⭐ - graphic is really nice, with detailed models and environments
Music - ⭐️⭐⭐ - very climatic with good voice acting
Bugs - ⭐️⭐⭐ - I didn't encourage any bugs here

Activated: 11 / 2019

Evil Genius (Q3 2004) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 7 months

Strategy
5,5 hours | No achievements

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

5h The good
- minion AI is good
- versatile room building options

The bad
- building aspect is annoying - it's not possible to buy 1-tile corridors, demolish only part of the room
- tourists AI is stupid, it they will not stick to staying in the hotel (even when game tutorial says hotel is a way to keep them off wandering around the island)
- no warning that enemy agents are on the strategic map

Conclusion:
I don't really like this game. It looks like solid strategy game, but some gameplay mechanisms are so primitive I'm not able to force myself to play it.

---

Story:

I didn't play long enough to know if there is a story. In general we are given the role of one of the evil genius, and need to conquer the world. Mission quests focus on things we need to build in order to progress our base. I think it's similar here to Plague inc - game focus simply on beating the scenario.

---

Gameplay:

Isometric real time strategy game, like dungeon keeper. We recruit minions that can't be controlled directly, and plan building the base. Minions will create new rooms / work in the command center / take some leisure time. There are henchmen that can be controlled manually but from what I saw they always wander away and it takes them forever to reach their objective. Sometimes general minions will kill enemy agents faster than henchmen that's designed to do it...

We earn money by sending minions to territory on the strategic map, and order them to steal. It is also possible to order them to "plot" which makes them uncover missions or hide. Last option should be used when agent of justice stays on the same territory as our minions. But there is no notification that agent appeared, so by the time I go back to strategy map all my minions are long dead. Useless.

Main map is also swarmed with agents of justice, that need to be killed by minions / henchmen or by traps. But fact it's nightmare to re-design base layout makes traps hard to implement, unless you know from the start how base needs to look like. And it's hard to know how to play when you just start. In theory it's possible to build hotel on the island to keep agents and tourists away, but their AI is broken and they will avoid hotel or straight out destroy it.

---

Technicalities:

Graphic - ⭐️⭐☆ - game looks dated, and art style is not interesting
Music - ⭐️⭐☆ - fitting, but very basic and monotonous
Bugs - ⭐️⭐☆ - I don't know if enemy AI is a result of bugs or bad design. So I will remove one star from the rating

Xbox Game Pass is neat offer on PC, especially that I get 3 months for free with my PC. But it is shit in some areas. It’s still in beta though, so hope it will get bet better as full release:

• sometimes it’s needed to click twice to start the game, first click just minimizes Xbox app and nothing happens
• requires Windows 10 to work
• achievements pop ups are tied to Windows notifications, I turned notifications off first thing after I installed OS and was puzzled why I don’t see achievement prompt on the screen
• client does not track gameplay time, so I have no idea how long I played Plague Tale or now Dead Cells
• achievements progress is shown as percentage of owned points, not number of achievements
• not possible to start a game without internet, even when it’s not a streaming service

But it has couple of games I wanted to play. So I will focus for the next 2 months on beating games here. I already beat Ori and Plague Tale, now try Dead Cells. Have 8 more in the queue, but will make separate “Steam Sale” post about those :P

I used icons from this page, to show gaming platform in my post:
https://icons8.com/icons

Activated: 10 / 2018

Age of Wonders III (Q1 2014) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 19 months

TBS
38 hours | 26 of 74 (35%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- bugless
- enemy AI is decent enough, but it's obvious it "cheats"
- game is similar enough to HOMM to understand gameplay basics fast

The bad
- unit design does not feel diverse between fractions, and city upgrades are identical for all fractions
- enemy AI starts overpowered in all campaign scenarios
- camera does not follow enemies that are visible on the map during their turn
- campaign is not really interesting
- no development tree, so it's hard to see which upgrade of spells / city is needed to progress in direction you want
- level up menu should be divided in sections of spells / hero upgrades / unit upgrades
- it's not possible to play MP without creating external account, and company changed policy to allow themselves to sell data they collect to anyone they want
- tier IV units are overpowered, and enemy AI will make hoards of them to attack

Conclusion:
I am SP player, so I only played SP campaign. Not MP part of the game. And I think SP part of HOMM V or Star Craft 2 is way more polished. This SP campaign feels more like "quickly created, with focus on rush mode" addition, than main part of the game. If you want strategic game that is worse than games I listed above this one is a fine pick. Otherwise skip it. I could also not force myself to beat main scenario to see different ending, or start DLC content. Maybe in a few months.

---

Story:

Humans started to expand their territory and enslave other races. Elves, goblins and draconians decided to join forces and oppose them. It's generic and not interesting. Characters are bland, and whole plot focuses on "conquer everything on map to win". There is no interesting lore to follow or backstory.

---

Gameplay:

Game is quite similar to Heroes of Might and Magic V. We have hero that moves around map, army we can command in battle tactical view (but units do not stack and are rather uninteresting), points of interest we need to take over to boost our economy (they also need to be within our city influence range to give gold or mana). Units are unlocked by upgrading city but weirdly all races share the same upgrades, with exception for one class-specific building. Units also share a lot of similarity between races. And their special abilities do not feel really useful.

There is no development tree, so at first I was forced to guess which upgrade I need to build to unlock something. Upgrades are described in game rule book, but I should not be forced to dig through dozens of pages to know something as basic as city development route.

I had bad problem with beating one scenario, and went to look on the internet what I do wrong. I read "Just make party from flying heroes and conquer enemies cities fast". And it was true... we often start without a city, while enemy AI has few cities under control. If we play slow AI will easily be able to send dozens of high leveled units on us, making it impossible to win. I like to play it save and slow, so it killed all the strategic and fun part of the game for me.

Heroes can be upgraded after they level up. Although level up window is messy, with long list of hero-specific, army-boosters, spells, offensive and defensive abilities all mixed together. Heroes can equip items, but there is no comparison window between current and new gear. So we need to hover over both objects and remember stats. When heroes are stacked there is no simple way to exchange objects. They need to be dropped on the ground and picked by another hero.

Enemy AI is tuned to go after small teams of weak units, so it's possible lead them away from party by spawning scouting bird. Mana limit is quite low, so it's not possible to cast many spells on the battlefield. And I loved to play as mage in HOMMV, throwing spells on enemies to weaken or kill them without risking my troops death.

The only interesting idea I saw in this game is that when armies are grouped next to each other on general map - they will attack and defend together. So if enemy has army inside a city and 2 armies in hexes next to the city, and I attack with 3 armies - it will be 3 vs 3 army battle. If I have 2 heroes with armies next to each other and something attacks me - both hero armies will take part in the battle.

---

Graphic, music, bugs:

Game is bugless. Graphic is simple, but still does not feel dated. And music is fitting, but not really memorable.

Activated: 11 / 2019

The Evil Within (Q4 2014) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 6 months

Stealth Horror
24 hours | 27 of 71 (39%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- bugless
- new game plus with chapter select
- some parts of the game can be played with sneak or shooting approach

The bad
- framerate problems without manual file edit
- there is problem to read text in game archive due to control problems
- enemies can stagger lock us easily

Conclusion:
Good stealth game with nice atmosphere and more of jump-scare focused horror. Story is not strong part of it, there are no moral dilemmas, and story as a whole it's really confusing.

---

Story:

Police detective Sebastian Castellanos arrives on the crime scene - mental hospital where whole personnel and patients were murdered. Our goal is to find out what exactly happened, and it quickly turns out that someone in the hospital was experimenting with human psyche. Sebastian is sometimes aided by two other detectives - Kidman and Joseph, while he moves through world created from scrambled memories of random people. Game antagonist is Ruvik - one of the people who performed experiments in the mental hospital, and only one that can somewhat control whole "simulation" other characters are trapped.

---

Gameplay:

Game is more like Prey than Alien: Isolation, so it does not focus on running away from immortal enemies and spending half of the time hiding in closets. There are only 2 short sequences where we need to hide. Otherwise it's more of sneak / slow shooter game. Ammunition is limited, so shooting approach needs steady aim and a lot of head shots. Otherwise Sebastian will shortly run out of ammo and die.

General enemies die easily from headshots. Semi-bosses need to be shot with few explosive bolts or close-range shotgun burst. Bosses can often regenerate, and thus it's not possible to kill them easily. So Sebastian needs to find a way to eliminate them in different way. Game does not have manual saves, but checkpoints are frequent enough that game is not punishing for dying (I died around 80 times during my playthrough).

New weapons are unlocked by finding them in-game. Enemies sometimes drop brain juice (green liquid), that can also be found in the bottles around the maps. It is used to upgrade abilities (health, sprint, ammunition stock etc.) and weapons (firepower, accuracy, reload speed etc.). General ammunition need to be found laying around, but crossbow bolts can either found or crafted from parts. Melee is not an efficient way to kill enemies, and manual weapons break after one kill.

Initial impression that game has Alien: Isolation mechanic is misguiding, as game starts with Sebastian hiding away from huge enemy with a chainsaw. Only later is it shown that enemies can be killed, and the better weapons Sebastian has (and more upgraded they are), the easiest it is to kill.

Sadly game has nasty tendency to stagger lock, so Sebastian can be hit by new enemy attack immediately after previous attack animation is over. Game never gives us a lot of health, so it's easy to be killed due to some small mistake.

It is not possible to freely jump, Sebastian can only do pre-programmed actions in certain places. Like climbing the ladder or jump above small obstacles. He can also open doors and crouch.

---

Graphic, music, bugs:

Game in general is bugless, but has problem with terrible framerate. It is necessary to manually edit game file to have stable 60 FPS in game. Although it leads to stutter problem during intro animation. Graphic is good, but feels a bit dated. As a "horror" game there is not much loud music. It focus on environmental sounds, zombies screams, and door squeaks when we open them. It is nice and slow, fitting mix.

So far I was using <p> </p> to divide text into easier to read chunks. Looks like you can get similar effect with simple line break <hr>. The more you know.

My number of not played and started games is so low that it does not even record change when I beat something. I always wanted to have less than 500 games (where doable), so I should think of removing some trash from account before the next sale.

Next sale is in 2 weeks. Do you have game that you want surely buy? For me it’s mostly “which game from my wish list hits -75%”. Well maybe top 4 I would be willing to buy with -66% :thinking:

I realized that with so many new people here, and my spare time I don’t even have time to come here. It would be easier for me to follow what’s going on if main page would be divided by days, instead of having infinite scroll. I could just quickly browse page at the end of each day, instead of thinking about infinite poll of new posts that will take me forever to browse. There is something I really dislike with infinite scroll option, don’t really know why. It’s the same on every news site I try to browse. I prefer to have page that starts and ends in certain point, not load content forever.