Smythe’s profile
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RoboCop: Rogue City
19 hours playtime
27 of 27 achievements
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A Space for the Unbound
11 hours playtime
25 of 25 achievements
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Minami Lane
5 hours playtime
20 of 20 achievements
January-March 2025
A three-month post of updates and not much to write, so this is going to be a short post.
I completed just 3 games and while I’ve been chipping away at a few more - Astral Ascent , Circuit Superstars, Pepper Grinder, I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival, Borderlands 3 - I’m not really close to finishing any of them. Maybe closest on I am Future, which I’ve been playing most recently. I’ll have to go back to the others soon.
I visited family and friends in the UK. Flights these days cost an absolute fortune and it doesn’t really feel like a holiday. Nice to see people, of course, but I also want to visit new places and relax on a beach. Guess I’ll have to start saving if I want to travel to somewhere more exotic later this year.
Got a new phone. I don’t bother with top of the line models anymore but as mine was 3-4 years old, I felt it was time for a change. Other than that, just chugging along!
Steam
RoboCop: Rogue City
This is from the same team that developed Terminator: Resistance and there are a lot of similarities. Both movies were based and the plot of the games is close to the movie plot (from what I remember!). The negative points are pretty similar too. Slightly out of date graphics, and just general sloppiness that make the game feel a bit low-budget, almost like a b-movie version of the blockbusters.
Decent game, the main plot was good enough to keep me playing. As with the Terminator game, there was a feeling that it could have been a really good game with a bit more of a budget or time spent on it. Achievements were pretty easy to get, with only a few that I needed to go back and collect. The auto-save system, while not labeled very clearly, does allow you to go back to key points in missions and clear these up.A Space for the Unbound
To be honest, I don't remember the game that well as it has been a couple of months since I played it. An adventure game about kids at school and the end of the world. Story driven and the story was ok, bit strange though. The magic / supernatural elements were really my thing and I wasn't really invested in the characters. That's all I've got to say, sorry!
Minami Lane
A simple management game about the shops and inhabitants of a street. It feels like it's a mobile game to be honest. Very simple and pretty short. It was fun in a, I don't really need to try very hard, kind of way. Not sure where I got it from, maybe a bundle. I'm glad I didn't pay any significant amount for it. Almost a 'clicker', basically a fun way to pass a few hours!
Backlog Additions
Three additions and I only bought one of them. From old bundles, I added Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition, The Darkness II, and Satisfactory. There was what looked like a price error with Green Hell, so I bought that on Steam. A bit of a gamble whether I’ll like it or not, but too good a deal to pass up.
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Owlboy
14 hours playtime
6 of 12 achievements
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MO:Astray
10 hours playtime
24 of 26 achievements
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Teslagrad Remastered
9 hours playtime
36 of 36 achievements
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Teslagrad
3 hours playtime
36 of 36 achievements
December 2024
December went by very quickly. I officially finished work on December 19th, but I had appointments and other work for a few days after that and even some work related training on Boxing Day.
A slightly earlier than usual post this time. I don’t want to forget to post my update and I doubt I’ll finish anything in the next 5 days.
This month’s gaming was dominated by Hades. Steamdeck on the way to work and on the way home, mostly.
In other news, I bought a new sofa. Exactly the same model as last time, but a different colour (；´∀｀)
I had the previous one for 9 years, so the fabric was faded and the stuffing in the pillows was in a sorry state. In a less ‘throw-away society’, I probably could’ve got it recovered and bought new stuffing at a reasonable price. The cost of doing that was similar to buyong a new sofa though. IKEA took the old one back so it’ll probably be reused, if I had to throw it out I would’ve felt guiltier. Interesting fact, the price was almost double what I paid 9 years ago. Still, if this one lasts as long it’s a god investment.
I also booked flights to visit the UK next year, so it’s been an expensive month!
Steam
Owlboy
A platformer that was released back in 2016 that I added to my library in 2018. I'd started it before and got to a point where I couldn't work out where to go next. Started again from scratch this time and managed to beat the game.
I feel my achievement statistics are a bit misleading for this game. I played the game on normal difficulty and finished it but only have 50% which seems a bit low. In fact, the number of achievements overall was very low and there was no achievement for beating the game, which seems a bit unusual. I should have probably tried to collect more items to get higher stats. There was one, maybe a couple, of achievements related to beating a mini-game that I gave up on. Long story short, I didn't enjoy the game enough to do it! Cute pixel graphics, good characters, decent story. I'm not sure why I didn't particularly enjoy it, to be honest. If you like platformers, you'll probably enjoy it. 'Beaten' for now, unlikely that I'll come back to it but you never know!MO:Astray
Another platformer. Released in 2019 and added to my library in May 2020. Started this in the past and not sure why I stopped. I don't think I didn't get stuck and I don't think I was far enough along in the game to decide whether I liked it or not. Guess I just wasn't in the mood for it.
I guess this was an 'action-platformer' game, a good mix of different elements that kept it interesting. The mechanics of the game - the main character's movement and skills - was unlike other games I've played. The story was good too, albeit a little difficult to follow without picking up all the collectibles. Even then there is an element of putting together the different parts and working out the chronology. The remaining achievements are for beating the game at a higher difficulty. Actually, the game allows you to get these by just beating the final boss at a higher difficulty via chapter select. A great addition, but it took me a long time to beat the final boss. I tried a few times at the next difficulty level but I don't think I'll be able to do it. Another one that I could come back to if I run out of games sometime. Unlikely, I know! A So, for now, a very respectable 92% of achievements and 'Beaten'.Teslagrad Remastered & Teslagrad
This is another game that I played up to a certain point and got stuck. I think it was more about where to go than a particularly difficult point in the game. Rather than persevere or check online, I just stopped playing! Released all the way back in 2013. I added the original to my library back in December 2016, then bought the remastered version in April 2023. So, quite a long time between me buying and finishing this old game!
In retrospect, it was probably not the best idea to buy the remastered version of a game that I had stopped playing. The idea was to push me to go back to play it again but, as with the two versions of Guacamelee! last month, this could have quite easily meant I needed to play through the game twice. Things worked out okay though. Luckily, the developers created a link between the games. I finished the remastered version and decided to jump straight into the original version while I was familiar with the levels and controls, when I opened it, all the achievements popped! Whoop! Two completed games! The game itself was pretty good. A fairly standard platformer. Most of the achievements weren't too difficult, mainly finding collectibles. There was one scroll that needed a bit of skill, a time limit to get through obstacles. I guess I got lucky though, it didn't take me too long. Two games to add to the 'Completed' category.Backlog Additions
I went a bit crazy this month. There was a Humble Choice that I actually wanted to redeem, the news that barter.vg was stopping trading, and I bought some myself. A total of 17 games! This is by far the most games I added in a month this year, and maybe since I started using this site. Not great for my backlog, but as the only place I have ever used for trades is not available anymore then I may not get as many games in future. So, here they are:
Robocop: Rogue City, BlazBlue Entropy Effect, Until Then, Detroit: Become Human, Mars First Logistics, Crime Boss: Rockay City, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Minami Lane, Moonstone Island, Pepper Grinder, SANABI: The Revenant, Anomaly Agent, Cursed to Golf, I Am Future, Circuit Superstars, Shadows of Doubt, A Space for the Unbound
Progress in 2024
I haven’t posted these stats in an update for a long time. While I update the numbers regularly in the ‘stats’ section of my profile, I last included them in a post at the end of 2021. I’ve chosen a bad year to come back to including here, mainly because of all the additions this month. I’ve done ok with beaten and completed but there are a lot of new unplayed games that make my stats look bad.
Beginning of 2024 - 407 games
Beginning of 2025 - 450 games
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Hades
93 hours playtime
47 of 49 achievements
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Guacamelee! Gold Edition
13 hours playtime
42 of 60 achievements
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Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition
12 hours playtime
20 of 30 achievements
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Mining Mechs
9 hours playtime
76 of 76 achievements
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Overloop
3 hours playtime
21 of 21 achievements
November 2024
A slightly earlier than usual post this time. I don’t want to forget to post my update and I doubt I’ll finish anything in the next 5 days.
This month’s gaming was dominated by Hades. Steamdeck on the way to work and on the way home, mostly.
In other news, I bought a new sofa. Exactly the same model as last time, but a different colour (；´∀｀)
I had the previous one for 9 years, so the fabric was faded and the stuffing in the pillows was in a sorry state. In a less ‘throw-away society’, I probably could’ve got it recovered and bought new stuffing at a reasonable price. The cost of doing that was similar to buyong a new sofa though. IKEA took the old one back so it’ll probably be reused, if I had to throw it out I would’ve felt guiltier. Interesting fact, the price was roughly double what I paid 9 years ago. Still, if this one lasts as long it’s a god investment.
I also booked flights to visit the UK next year, so it’s been an expensive month!
Steam
Hades
Everyone knows Hades, don't they?! Action roguelite set in the underworld with characters from Greek mythology.
Very more-ish roguelite where I actually felt I was making progress and stuck with it for a long time. Long enough to 'beat' the game multiple times and get most of the achievements. I only missed out on 2 and I spent a long time trying to get them. Both achievements are connected to beating the game with additional difficulty 'choices'. While part of me thinks I should probably try a bit longer, maybe the 100-hour mark, I didn't feel like I was getting any closer, so it's going into the 'Beaten' pile until I run out of other games to play and magically become a better player sometime in the future.Guacamelee! Gold Edition / Super Turbo Championship Edition
Why do I have two versions of the same game? Good question, and I don't know the answer. I got the Gold version in 2014 and the Super Turbo Championship Edition in 2023. The Super Turbo Championship Edition was given away for free, but not in 2023, so who knows! Maybe it was in a bundle, or maybe I forgot I had the other version of the game.
A reasonably difficult platformer-Metroidvania game. I started with the Super Turbo Championship Edition version (playing for the first time) and once I had beaten it, I jumped into the Gold version which I already had about 6 hours in. The remaining achievements are largely out of my reach, think speed trials, higher difficulty, etc. I'm pretty pleased I beat both versions of the game, so they will stay 'beaten'. A double assasination!Mining Mechs
A chill mining game where you mine for resources. Reviewers compare it to 'Motherload' but I never played that, so I don't know how similar it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I wouldn't say this is an idle game, particularly at the start, but it is very close to one after a while. You get a passive income and enough powerups to not need to think too much and what was already a not very challenging game becomes something where you just run through the motions. Not a bad game, by any means, but don't expect too much. A rare 100% and into the 'Completed' category.Overloop
Pixel graphics platformer-puzzle game. Short, very short!
Added this to my library last month, but I picked it much earlier in one of the many bundles it's been included in. A nice concept and the story is okay too. The puzzles are not challenging at all and the game is very short. Nice bit of fun if you got it in a bundle or for free, but I'd be disappointed if I paid the retail price of around $12 for a game that took be 3 hours to 100%. A bit of a shame because the game is pretty good and I'd like to play more, it just needed to be longer and have slightly more challenging puzzles. 'Completed'.Backlog Additions
No additions in November!
Who’s a good boy? Yes, I am!
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Bear and Breakfast
38 hours playtime
43 of 43 achievements
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Clawfish
60 minutes playtime
14 of 14 achievements
Aug-Oct 2024
A tri-monthly post, oh no!
Well, it won’t be regular. I’ll do better for the next one as it’s the end of the year and I need to do a yearly summary. This will be brief though…
Not a lot to report. only two assassinations. Aside from those, I’ve put a lot of time into Hades (around 60 hours at the moment) and quite a bit of time (around 30 hours) into Hardspace Shipbreaker. Hopefully, I’ll be able to include them in a post soon.
I finally hit 50% Average Game Completion Rate on Steam, which seems to have taken forever. I’d like to keep it above 50% but it’s gonna be a difficult task. I guess for any new game I start, I need to get over 50% of achievements. Playing old games and increasing the number of achievements I have will give me a bit of leeway too. Expect a disappointed post in a couple of months when it drops again!
Other than that, the usual. Work, side jobs, and not exercising as much as I should. Visited a beach area in September (not as cold as you’d imagine), and climbed a small mountain.
Steam
Bear and Breakfast
I played a demo of this ages back during one of the NextFest events and really enjoyed it. Instantly added to my wishlist.
Something seemed a little different when I played the actual game though. It's difficult to pinpoint as it was so long after the demo. I think it's related to the controls, maybe the additional features made me more aware of the fact that they weren't very intuitive. I still enjoyed the game, but there were a few little other niggly points in addition to the controls that meant it didn't live up to my expectations. One was that there was seemingly no flexibility in the dialogue/task procedure. For example, at a few points in the game, you find empty buildings and someone gives you the task of clearing out all the garbage in it. You can pick up garbage at any point (it's useful), so I did. This meant a few times I had already cleared out the garbage when I spoke to the character. They still give the same speech for the task though. So, you talk to them, they give you the task, then you immediately talk to them again to indicate you've finished the task. A tiny point, but I'd expect the character to replace that initial explanation and say something like 'looks like you've already cleaned up the building, so...'. A good bundle game. It's not gonna blow you away, but it's enjoyable. A relaxing management game. Completed.Clawfish
One of those very cheap, simple games that I wishlist and pick up on sale, only this time it was gifted to me.
First person game where you walk around a kind of fishing resort catching fish in claw machines or UFO catchers as they're called here in Japan! Fun, but very short. I beat in in about an hour and I wasn't rushing. Actualyl, I made a mistake and reset my progress at one point too, so it would have been even quicker! Not much else to say about this. No surprises, if you watch a video preview you'll know exactly what it's about. Fun for a while and completed.Backlog Additions
A lot this time. Not because I bought a lot of games but because I sorted through old keys and added ones that I intend to play but for some reason hadn’t activated yet. So, 4 games that I already had were added to my library Undungeon - actually I made a mistake activating this, I confused it was a different game :( , Overloop, Cookie Cutter, Citizen Sleeper), I received 3 gifts (Toree 3D, Clawfish, Mining Mechs), I bought 3 games (Jusant, Everafter Falls, Spirit Of The Island) and I had 1 win from SG (Astral Ascent).
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Loddlenaut
6 hours playtime
21 of 23 achievements
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DYSMANTLE
42 hours playtime
25 of 34 achievements
June-July 2024
Continuing with the bi-monthly posts. Busy for much of June and July but things have finally calmed down a bit now. I actually have a day holiday from work coming up so should be able to game a bit in that time. Hopefully my next post will have more assassinations!
Aside from work, I went on a short trip to Seoul and got sick, which I think was Covid even though my home test was negative. I had no sense of smell or taste for about 5 days, which was very strange.
Steam
Loddlenaut
Had my eye on this and when it was bundled recently, it seemed like a good time to pick it up.
Easy going, casual kind of game. Swim around cleaning the ocean. You can upgrade your cleaning gear and invent new things to help you. You also rescue creatures which then go on to procreate and evolve into different varieties. The two remaining achievements I didn't get in this game were filling all areas with the creates and finding all evolutions. I should probably go back and try it at some point, but there are quite a lot of evolutions (which involve feeding the creatures different foods) and I'm not motivated to do it. Pretty fun, glad I didn't pay full price for it though! Beaten.DYSMANTLE
Picked this up on the strength of reviews and because it looked different to any game I already have. Not quite what I expected, but I enjoyed it.
The intro video on Steam and the isometric view of the game somehow made me thing this was more of a crafting RPG that it actually was. It was more of an adventure game. There was crafting, but for the main mission it wasn't that much of a focus and I could get buy just picking things up most of the time and crafting a little. There were times that I needed to make X amount of a certain metal, but much less than I expected. The game map was absolutely huge and a big part of why I spent so much time on this game. For what I achieved, it wasn't really grindy. The remaining achievements require a lot of collecting and crafting though, which is why I'm not attempting them. Great game on the Steamdeck and I *may* come back to this at some point. Beaten for now though.Backlog Additions
Additions are Littlewood, Prodigal, and Pureya. I forgot I got Littlewood from a bundle and ended up trading for it, not a big loss but I should really keep better track of my games!
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Chants of Sennaar
8 hours playtime
25 of 25 achievements
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Nobody Saves the World
23 hours playtime
26 of 41 achievements
April-May 2024
Another 2-month post. Work was and still is very busy, so not much to report. I’m a bit burned out, to be honest. Lots of overtime and not much free time for anything, let alone gaming. So, my normally brief ‘reviews’ are even shorter and don’t have much detail, I’m afraid. This is more keeping up with routine and checking boxes so I don’t have multiple months to write up next time.
Steam
Chants of Sennar
I was semi-interested in this and then won/was gifted it. A language-based adventure/puzzle game, I guess.
It's different and kind of fun. I'm starting to think I shouldn't buy puzzle games though, they never really grab me. When I get stuck, I check guides too. With other game genres, I feel I avoid doing that and hold off as long as I can. However, with puzzle games, it feels like you either get it or don't and there isn't much of a 'process' of getting further. Maybe it's just the fact that I can check the answers so easily. There's no easy way in action games, FPS, etc. So, a personality thing I guess. Interesting, but I won't seek anything similar out and I wouldn't really recommend it to people. 100% and Completed.Nobody Saves the World
Pretty fun roleplaying-adventure game where you play shape-shifting wizard.
Decent story and not too much grinding to beat the main story. I got stuck on a few of the 'challenges' that are part of the game and wasn't really motivated to pursue a lot of the other remaining challenges or achievements. The difficult or grind puts me off. There are a few achievements that require DLC anyway, so no way to get 100%. Fun up to a point and I might come back at a later point for a few more achievements, but it'll be Beaten and 63% for now.Backlog Additions
Additions are Loddlenaut, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Hades.
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Starfield
121 hours playtime
41 of 50 achievements
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Disco Elysium
16 hours playtime
11 of 45 achievements
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The Case of the Golden Idol
6 hours playtime
11 of 17 achievements
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Froggy's Battle
2 hours playtime
8 of 15 achievements
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Eastward
28 hours playtime
17 of 30 achievements
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Cult of the Lamb
29 hours playtime
30 of 48 achievements
March 2024
I missed February, whoops!
Not so much that I wasn’t playing games, I just forgot. When I realized around the middle of March, I decided to just wait a couple of weeks and post a bigger update.
I played some big titles and got quite into them. While I didn’t finish many games, I enjoyed the two months of gaming. There were a couple of frustrations though, I’ll explain those as I write about the games themselves. The type of games and my experiences playing them over the last couple of months means I’ve written much more than normal, probably no more insightful than the stuff I usually write though!
Outside of gaming, I used up all my holidays at work that were going to expire so I had quite a few long weekends. I wasn’t very productive, just gaming and lazing around. There was still stuff to do at work, so the 3-4 days I was in the office each week were pretty busy. Hay fever season got into full swing and I’m walking around kind of squinting all the time even with medicine.
February included the NextFest event and so I played quite a few demos.
NextFest Demos
Helskate - Basically a Tony Hawk game with a sword and demons. Pretty fun but I think I enjoy pure skating games more.
Pepper Grinder - Traverse your way through levels by holding a massive drill that lets you dig through materials and collect gems. Easy to play, fun, wishlisted.
Creature Keeper - Monster-taming game. Basic demo with only combat, other elements may make it more appealing to some but didn’t really grab me. Also bleepy and annoying music.
Code Zodiac - Pixel graphics, boss rush game. It’s ok but looks like it might be a bit repetitive. I won’t be following this one but may try it if it pops up in a bundle.
Biomorph - Good graphics, dialogue not as good but not particularly important. A fairly standard metroidvania-platform game but you can morph into the creatures you kill and use their different skills. Something I’d probably play from a bundle, but I’m not sure I’d buy it.
Pacific Drive - I’m sure most people are aware of this already. Looks great, atmospheric music and it really draws you in from the start. Reminds me a little of Control - kind of spooky. I got stuck and didn’t go back to it (or something didn’t trigger based on a video of the demo I watched) but I enjoyed it up to that point! Interested and will be watching this one closely.
Crypt Custodian - Ghibli looking cat with a broom hits things in the afterlife. Adventure game, metroidvania kind of thing. Character is cute but a bit big and bit wooden looking when moving. That aside, it’s fun. Tight controls, nice music. A game I would try from a bundle, but I probably wouldn’t buy it otherwise.
Overmorrow - Your character looks like an asian origami girl with a tail. You have 30 in game days before the game resets itself. I think it’s 3 days in the demo. Billed as ‘a serene, nonviolent, exploration adventure game’. Graphics are so blocky it’s difficult to know what is what on the screen. Water, cliffs, sand, grass, trees, they’re all just blocks of colour. The only way you know which areas you can move through is by trying to walk over everything. I encountered crystals and was told to use magic by pressing buttons. No control over that magic or explanation of what it is. So, the demo involved trying every direction to make my way through to the next screen, pressing my ‘magic buttons’ to see if anything happened then moving onto the next screen. I did not feel serene playing it. Ignored.
Children of the Sun - Another game most people are probably already aware of. Shoot people from a distance and you get (teleported?) to where they were. So, you need to work out if you can see your next target from that position. Points for speed, distance, hitting a moving target, etc. Stylized graphics, violent, simple. A bit too simple, an alright game but it’s not for me.
Rusty’s Retirement - I feel like this should appear in my list of assassinations, but as the demo no longer appears on my Steam account it’s not. Initially looked interesting - idle game that takes up about 20-25% of the bottom of your screen so you can watch videos, surf the net, etc. and click occasionally. So, I saw it as an idle game to play between doing other things rather than something to focus on. Click to plant seeds and build things, the character waters, harvests and converts the crops into biofuel. You can then buy bots to help and other things. What I didn’t know was that the demo has achievements, so I triggered one then felt like I needed to get them all as it probably counts towards my Steam Steam average. This meant I spent about 10 hours on it. No longer interested, it got old fast! I’m back to ignoring all types of idle games.
Steam
Starfield
One of the most anticipated releases of 2023. Based on initial reviews, I planned to wait for a deep discount and bug fixes before buying it. I actually won a copy just as the bigger issues were solved. Played a little but it was only during the last month or two that I sunk any significant time into it
I like Bethesda RPGs which means I'm a bit more forgiving than with other publishers. Fallout New Vegas was a big hit for me and is one of the few games I played through more than once. I tried Fallout 3 soon after and it didn't quite hit the mark, no idea why. Maybe it was too similar (graphics, gameplay, story) to FONV and didn't have the same impact. I think I played through Fallout 4 a few times too. I held out on Skyrim for a while as the setting (fantasy, magic) was less appealing. When I finally played it, I enjoyed it but the setting was a major negative for me. Fallout 76 - tbh I haven't played enough. I'm not interested in interacting with other players, so it's basically more of the same isn't it? I should go back to that but the negative reviews have maybe soured my image of the game. I don't usually write much, so why am I banging on about Bethesda RPGs instead of Starfield itself? Well, basically because it's the same game. FO3, FONV, FO76 are set in the wasteland, Skyrim is more fantasy-based with magic and dragons and stuff, Starfield is futuristic with spaceships and intergalactic travel. Setting aside and a few gameplay elements (V.A.T.S stands out), I see them as the same game. The basic movement, combat, interaction with characters, quest system, etc. is basically the same in my opinion. I liked it in FONV and I like it in Starfield, but the problem is the games are too similar. Don't get me wrong, Starfield looks better than FONV, especially the scenery and cut scenes, but it's not a big enough improvement. There are 13 years between the games. Despite graphical improvements, the characters look flat and glassy-eyed and lifeless. The game is big, but I didn't feel invested in the story or the characters. The number of loading screens adds to this lack of involvement. I have no desire to explore all the 1,000 explorable planets in Starfield. They are too similar and the game offers no incentive to explore them. As I wrote earlier, I like Bethesda games and I like this because it's a slightly improved Fallout in space. I've spent 121 hours in this game, so of course I like it. There are some stand out missions too, like 'Entangled'. However, it is equally disappointing. if you compare it to a recent game like Cyberpunk 2077, despite the problems that game had on launch, it is a much more complete and polished game than I imagine Starfield can ever be even with patches. It looks modern and impressive. I think of this as a Fallout mod or a good old game that I somehow missed when it was released 6-7 years ago but it is not a good game by today's standards in terms of story, graphics, or (for much of the time) gameplay. This game is like an old pair of slippers. They're comfortable, I enjoy them, but I would not recommend them to other people, get excited about them or choose spend a lot of money on them. Beaten for now. The other achievements I need require grinding and dealing with the base building system which I have 0 interest in. Maybe I'll come back at some point.Disco Elysium
I was interested in this game after seeing a review on the ACG youtube channel. The amount of reading put me off a little though, I often click through long sections of reading in games to get to the gameplay and have very little interest in lore. It stayed on my wishlist though and was bumped up a lot when the Final Cut version was released with voice acting.
Wow, just... WOW! This was unlike any game I've played before. There is nothing technically groundbreaking about the game, but the writing, story development, voice acting, and just the way the world is revealed and the characters are developed as you play is unlike anything I know. I would need to replay it several times and make notes to learn everything about the world it is set in and the political theories that are explained as you play (which is more appealing than it sounds, even to a lazy, lore-avoiding person like me). Even the music is great. Reading about what happened to the creators and development team behind the game, it's sad to think that it's unlikely that there will be another game like this (unless somehow individuals can make it work) but perhaps that will add to the legacy in a way. A single masterpiece. Play this if you have even the slightest interest, I'm sure you won't regret it! I need to replay this a few times to get the other achievements. I might actually do that, but not now. There are other games that I want to play first.The Golden Idol
Another big title. Great reviews, very positive reception and award-winning. From one well-received innovative detective game to another, or so I thought....
I do not understand the hype behind this game. The story is revealed to you as you play through the chapters and is ok, but aside from that I don't see many positives here. It looks like a point-and-click adventure from the 80's and plays a lot like one too but is more limited in that you don't move and are limited to very few screens in each 'chapter' of the game. The puzzles that make up the main part of the game are more like mini-games that you would get in a more substantial title. You click on things around a scene then use the words that appear to complete gap-fill sentences or charts. I'm honestly not sure why this is seen as an innovative game. It feels like a combination of a HOG and a logic puzzle you get in a book ("A is older than B, C lies, C is younger than A, B always tells the truth" kind of thing). If you get stuck, you can brute-force most of the puzzles. Maybe I am just missing something or it isn't my kind of game but I did not enjoy this at all. Some of the achievements need the DLCs so this is gonna stay beaten.Froggy's Battle
I hadn't heard of this, just stumbled across it while checking Steam reviews. A simple game, cheap and fun.
You are a frog, on a skateboard, skating around a loop on the screen killing enemies that appear. As you progress, you get new skateboarding tricks, weapons, magical abilities, and hats that help you defeat your enemies. That's all there is to it. Watching a short video will reveal everything you need to know. Despite the simplicity of the game, there are skill and time based achievements that I doubt I'll get, so this will stay as beaten, I think.Eastward
Playing this game could be one of the most frustrating gaming experiences I have ever had, it is certainly the most frustrating achievement-related experience.
So, first off. It's a good game. A very good game. It looks great, the story is engaging, the characters are interesting and they have very distinct characters. It's not overly challenging, so you'll likely make steady progress and can beat any of the more difficult sections after a couple of tries. The music is good too. I can't think of many negatives. It is quite long and there are some very long cut scenes, but that's not really a negative. So, why was it frustrating? I mainly played this on my Steamdeck for about 20-30 minutes at a time over a couple of months while commuting to and from work. I didn't really think about it much at the time, but as I was playing offline, the achievements didn't pop. No biggie, they usually just pop when I connect at home. In the latter stages of the game, I started playing at home. The achievements for these chapters popped but the earlier ones didn't. Okay, so I have to replay those chapters. A bit annoying, but I found out a chapter selection option appears when you complete the main story. Some of those chapters were quite long but it's still doable. So, I go back and play those chapters and the achievements pop. However, none of the other achievements will and there is no way I can get them without starting a completely new game. It seems that with an achievement like 'collect all Xs' you need to be connected to the internet while you collect ALL of them. It's not a case of collecting the last one, there is no tally of the ones I collected offline at all. So, I can't load a chapter with my saved data up to that point and collect the last item, I have to collect all the items while I am connected to the internet. It's a very linear game and I spent over 30 hours on it, so it's gonna stay beaten for now and despite it being a great game, it's left a sour taste!Cult of the Lamb
One more big release. I had to look back in my BLAEO feed to see when I got this, I guess it was from a trade in December.
I'm sure you're already familiar with the game - a roguelike with elements of management/colony simulation. I much preferred the roguelike elements of the game to building my base and taking care of the followers. While it was interesting early on, later on the benefits of having resources and followers seemed to drop off to me. I tended to focus on one thing at a time, either pushing forward with the main part of the game and attempting stages and boss battles, or spending time on my followers and camp to get achievements. There are benefits you can take on each run from a well-developed base but most of the time the time spent on getting them outweighed the actual benefits (IMO). Maybe it was because I was playing the game on normal difficulty, the benefits may be more useful when playing at a higher difficulty. I started playing in March and at the moment, I consider it 'beaten' as I've beaten what I consider to be the main boss. There are still lots of achievements left though and additional bosses to defeat. I doubt I'll get to 100% of the achievements (time based and skill based achievements), but I will probably play for a little longer and hopefully get a few more. It will stay at beaten though, so I'll add it to that category now.Backlog Additions
Five additions. I didn’t actually buy any of them (trades, gifts, wins) but still additions to the backlog - Rakuen, Chants of Sennaar, Froggy’s Battle, Slime Rancher, BZZZT.
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Rollerdrome
12 hours playtime
15 of 21 achievements
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SLUDGE LIFE
7 hours playtime
14 of 14 achievements
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Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
23 hours playtime
38 of 68 achievements
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Will You Snail?
6 hours playtime
18 of 30 achievements
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Unpacking
4 hours playtime
25 of 25 achievements
January 2024
Happy New Year! Feels a little strange writing that now but this is my first post of the year here.
A decent start to the year, 5 assassinations. Aside from those assassinations, this month I’ve been playing Session, Disco Elysium, Eastward, and Basingstoke. I’m struggling with Basingstoke. I keep replaying the same level trying to make progress but I’m not getting very far! Session recently got achievements, which was a good excuse to go back and relearn the controls. The other two, I’m enjoying a lot but haven’t dedicated a lot of time to yet.
What news do I have…hmmm, not much. Work has quietened down a lot. There’ll be things to do for the next month or two but it won’t be crazy busy for a while (I hope!). I did about 25 hours of an online side job last week in addition to my regular work which drove me a bit crazy. An intense 5 days or so, but it’s done now and won’t come around again for a while.
Steam
Rollerdrome
Loved this one. A ‘sports’ setting, I guess, so not much of a story but there was enough to explain the situation. It looks good and plays well.
There’s a good difficult arc too. I’ve not mastered it enough to get the most difficult achievements, but getting through all the levels took time and it felt like I was improving. I came back to this after a long break and it took me an hour or so to get back into the rhythm of things and relearn the controls. A real ‘yesssss’ moment when I beat the final boss. Beaten, but I can definitely see myself coming back to this in the future (Once I either 1. beat the backlog or 2. Need a break from other games!). I’ll leave it installed with 71% of achievements for now. As it is, there are a lot of other games I want to play so onwards and upwards!Sludge Life
One of those games that I was half interested in based on positive reviews but never enough to buy it. It was recently given away for free (probably because the sequel was released) so I grabbed it.
Very strange but not unpleasant setting to the game. The good things - the music, the concept of graffiti tagging in the game, and the unusual NPCs you meet. The bad things - Not sure if it’s my setup but the screen movement was strange, creating almost a motion sickness feeling. It was better on the Steamdeck than a big screen but still noticeable and offputting. With the climbing mechanic, you can climb some surfaces but not others. The problem is there is no clear indication of what you can and can’t climb. Also, some kind of juvenile humour in there. I probably would’ve appreciated them in my early teens but not so much now. Overall, ok. It was short enough and I enjoyed it enough to complete it but I have no interest in getting the sequel.Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
I played Metro 2033 back in 2019 and didn’t really enjoy it. The dark setting and slight horror-jump-scare vibe didn’t do it for me. Based on that, I avoided the newer Metro games and had no plan to play anymore. That is until I got my keys mixed up and activated this one by mistake.
Fast forward to… now and I finally decided to take the plunge (I added the game to my 8 years of BLAEO challenge to push myself to play it). The setting and storyline of this game were better for me. A lot of the game is above ground and you don’t have to deal with lights, flares, lighters, etc. as much to find your way around. I’m still not sold, but it was better than I expected. Beaten and 55% of achievements. I should probably try and get a few more. The DLCs are cheap at the moment and I’ve toyed with the idea of getting those to push the percentage up a little more. There will always be some difficulty-related ones that I won’t get but that might be a way to push my average completion a little higher. An added annoyance is that the Enhanced Edition was an addition rather than a replacement for the vanilla version of the game and achievements gained in one don’t pop in the other. So… I still have the standard version of the game sitting at 0 hours and 0%!Will You Snail
Why do I continue to buy games that I am not good at? A precision platformer. There is nothing precise about my gaming and speedrunning is not something I could do at my peak, let alone when I’m over 40! Thankfully there are difficulty settings and I could adjust them to get past the more difficult levels without too much stress.
Pretty simple game, fun, with lots of secrets and extra things to go for once you beat the main story. I won’t be going for those though (not just yet, anyway). Beaten for now at 60% of achievements.Unpacking
I’m torn with this. I enjoyed parts of it but other parts were a little frustrating and didn’t really fit into the ‘casual’ and ‘relaxing’ vibe that I expected.
Moving home is supposedly one of the more stressful things you can do in your life. I’ve done it a lot (8 times in my 18 years in Japan, I think!). I quite like it actually, maybe it’s partly because I haven’t hoarded a lot of things. It’s nice finding a new place, planning the layout, deciding where things will live, and changing things around. Kind of a new, exciting start each time. I got this game thinking it would be similar. It is, to some extent, but there need to be more features in my opinion. You open boxes and put items in your home. The home starts as one room and expands to be a bigger house as you progress through your life. There are a couple of problems. Firstly, it’s not always clear exactly what the things you are unpacking are. They can be quite small and there is no way of identifying them. The game consoles and kitchen appliances in particular threw me. It was also difficult to tell the difference between books, CDs, DVDs, and console games (I’m just guessing that all these were in the game!) but this didn’t matter. Most items can be put pretty much anywhere, so for a lot of items I could just unpack them and just throw them on a shelf. Others have very limited locations that they can be 'correctly' placed in. If you put some items in the ‘wrong’ place, they glow when you try to finish the level as a prompt for you to put them elsewhere. Being able to clearly identify items would help you to put them in the right place first time. It would be good to have some kind of mechanic to make you more conscious of where things are placed. I’m not sure how, perhaps a ‘practicality’ meter or ‘Feng Shui’ indication of some kind, or a score at the end of the level. I felt like in a lot of levels I would just throw things anywhere and then ‘correct’ the items that the game told me were in the wrong place, which is a lot different to real life.Backlog Additions
Three additions, not great but as I assassinated 5 games I’m still making progress! Nobody Saves the World, Dinkum, and ICEY.
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DAVE THE DIVER
43 hours playtime
43 of 43 achievements
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Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number
22 hours playtime
19 of 29 achievements
December 2023
A pretty short post for the end of the year. I spent most of December playing Dave the Diver. At the end of the month, I finished that then noticed the current 8 years of BLAEO event and so chose 8 games from that period to work on. The games I chose should pop up in the next couple of posts and in the last few days I’ve started on Metro Exodus and Basingstoke.
I’m sure I’ve other snippets of news but my mind is blank right now and as it’s already January 1st, I want to get this post up! So, just a short update. Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year. Another year of assassinations is ahead. Hopefully, I can get my Steam average achievement to 50% this year.
Steam
Dave the Diver
Believe the hype, it's a great game! Mainly an adventure and management game. Explore the depths and catch fish before your air runs out. Capture different species of fish and other sealife, upgrade your equipment, then head back to the restaurant and make sushi.
Decent story, pretty relaxing, plenty to do, and generally an all-around fun game. My only minor complaint is some of the puzzles and mini-games weren't great, but these were a minor part of the game as a whole. Oh, and the free dlc that adds an extra element from Dredge wasn't great. If I knew what it added, I probably wouldn't have installed that. I preferred the vanilla game. The event that it triggers is only once a week or something like that, so not a big deal.Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number
I bought this in 2016 and can't remember the last time I played it, but went back to it as part of the current Eight Years of BLAEO event. If you've played the first game, it's more of the same. If you haven't, a difficult top-down shooter. Very violent.
I think I stopped playing this because it's difficult (for me at least). It's still difficult, but I was able to finish the main story and pick up a fair number of achievements. You get a grade for each level and I think I may have got one B-. The majority were C or D grades, so I suck at it! There's no way I'll get all the achievements, so it's just into the beaten pile rather than completed.Backlog Additions
Just two additions this month, despite the sales - Bear and Breakfast which I’d be interested in since I played a demo in the Steam Nextfest, and Tunguska: The Visitation which I was on the shelf about but won in the Steamgifts Winter event.
Progress in 2023
I missed this summary last year, maybe I’ll go back and add the figures. Since I started using BLAEO I’ve made progress, but not so much in this last year so the figure below isn’t very interesting. A little too much buying and not enough playing! The figures for every year are in my profile section of the site.
Beginning of 2023 - 365 games
Beginning of 2024 - 407 games
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Garden Story
13 hours playtime
19 of 21 achievements
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Darksiders Genesis
21 hours playtime
20 of 30 achievements
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Batman: Arkham Knight
52 hours playtime
76 of 113 achievements
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Doom & Destiny
13 hours playtime
44 of 44 achievements
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inbento
78 minutes playtime
15 of 15 achievements
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DREDGE
21 hours playtime
40 of 48 achievements
September-November
A long period with no posts again for the usual reason - work being busy. I want to do a separate end-of-year post and should have more time to game in December, so hopefully I can post at the end of this month and break the recent trend of 2-3 month long intervals.
I had a bit of a spending spree recently. A new laptop (no gaming, just everyday stuff away from the office/game room), new TV, new monitor (30% off in Black Friday sales) and some clothes. I’m normally pretty restrained, but felt like splurging a bit!
Not many games were beaten or completed in these 3 months and I got a lot of new ones (-.-;). On the bright side, I enjoyed lots of the games I played. So, time well spent!
Onto this month’s assassinations:
Steam
Garden Story
Darksiders Genesis
Batman Arkham Knight
Doom & Destiny
Inbento
Dredge
Backlog Additions
Oh dear, lots of additions. I won Starfield in a competition. Most of the others were from trades but I bought a couple and added Starbound from an old bundle that I forgot about.
Bear and Breakfast, inbento, The Case of the Golden Idol, DREDGE, A Story Beside, DAVE THE DIVER, Will You Snail?, Unpacking, Starbound, Cult of the Lamb, Starfield, Journey to the Savage Planet
| 456 | games |
| 13% | never played |
| 25% | unfinished |
| 43% | beaten |
| 18% | completed |
| 1% | won't play |