Looking back 1,5 month

It’s been a few days I should have started to write March’s recap, so I’m gonna look back both March and half of April.
Like announced in my last post, I decided first to finish XCOM2 and then dove into Hollow Knight. On the way, I also moved forward in my ABC project with the Shrouded Isle and strolled in Dirt Rally.

• XCOM 2
  

  42 hours playtime

  28 of 80 achievements

• Hollow Knight
  

  45 hours playtime

  41 of 57 achievements

• The Shrouded Isle
  

  5 hours playtime

  7 of 16 achievements

• DiRT Rally
  

  7 hours playtime

  24 of 170 achievements

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XCOM2 : I loved XCOM-EU/EW, which was my first encounter with this venerable franchise but XCOM2 didn’t make my heart go wild as the previous episode had. I can’t explain much why : in fact, I didn’t see many differences between the 2 games apart from being the attacker in the sequel rather than defending Earth in the previous one. The campaign rhythm is still compelling, forcing you to always go forward eventhough you would prefer to fill your weaknesses and strengthen your team. The enemies are good and varied. The difficulty curve is still sharp : I had begun in Normal but ended in Easy because I didn’t want to start from scratch because of bad decisions taken while I didn’t know what to expect in my first run.
I read the WotC DLC is pretty good but I don’t think I want to go back at it for the moment.
Verdict on XCOM2: 6,5/10

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Hollow Knight : my oh my ! Orkestra had warned me in February that Life is Strange maybe wouldn’t stay my 2018 GOTY after I had begun HK : oh, how right he was ! HK is without any doubt a masterpiece, a Metroidvania gem and landed right on top of my 2018 podium.
What stands out for me is how the game manages to draw out the pleasure of always discovering new things, be it zones, enemies, power-ups, bosses, etc. This game is so deep : for hours, it seemed to me there was no bottom and every time I discovered a new zone I thought “That sure is the last zone that was to be unveiled” but I was wrong. Even after you’ve discovered all the map, the beginning stage you visited countless times gets transformed and becomes harder : what a brilliant idea !
Let’s speak about bosses. I usually hate bosses but in HK, where there are tens of them, I wasn’t reluctant to face them. I’ve seen HK compared to Dark souls (but what game hasn’t been compared to DS ? :) for how the inventory is lost but can be retrieved every time you die, and for the many bosses you meet. I never played any DS (I’m intimidated by the supposed difficulty) but HK’s not that hard and the punishment it inflicts you is always fair : once you master your character’s moves and powers, and you study well the bosses’ attacks and patterns (I confess having watched a lot of playthrough on YouTube in order to assimilate faster these patterns), it’s not so hard. Some are tough but with patience and the right charms (see further), you can beat them. That being said, I also confess in the end, I wasn’t patient enough, after almost 50 hours of play, to beat the Grimm troupe (I read the Dream version of Grimm is really a nightmare) and skipped this part.
This pops up the charms : this system is so innovative, so rewarding, so practical to adopt your fighting style. I loved chasing them and then trying them out to find out which ones suited me the best.
Congrats on the Cherry team for developing this game and still continuing to deepen (freely, without any charged DLCs for the time being !) the gameplay.
Verdict on Hollow Knight : 9/10

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the Shrouded Isle : this little management game was in my ABC project and I decided after Hollow Knight, it was a good time to play something lighter. Well, I’d rather say shorter because the atmosphere of tSI is very dark and oppressive.
It’s basically a story of sacrifice : every season, you have to kill someone among the 5 main families, in a sacrifice for the local God, without destroying the village’s cohesion.
Very quickly, I suffered the Crusader King 2’s syndrome where you don’t really care for the story or what the characters say or live anymore, but you only look at the events’ output and the influence on the parameters you monitor (5 categories and the 5 families mood, to maintain above a given level).
If you’re good at this, you can finish the game in less than 2 hours. It took me roughly 4 hours : it was moderately fun but I wonder how much I would have been ready to pay for this kind of very short game (actually, I got it through a Barter’s trade).
Verdict on the Shrouded Isle : 5/10

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Dirt Rally : I love car games but I still haven’t found any better than Forza Motorsport 4 (on XBOX 360) where the career mode is well balanced, not too long and incentive enough. DR isn’t the most generous game in terms of cars or stages proposed. The wrapping is also miles away from a Forza Horizon spirit, which is fine for me coz’ I hate being taken for a hipster teenager. What matters to me in a car game is above all the physics and they are pretty well rendered in DR (nothing surprising coming from Codemasters). I think I’m gonna play DR sporadically in the coming months, a few races here and there.