Looking back at February

• SteamWorld Heist
  

  16 hours playtime

  17 of 47 achievements

• The Deadly Tower of Monsters
  

  5 hours playtime

  7 of 25 achievements

• Life Is Strange
  

  15 hours playtime

  60 of 60 achievements

I postponed this post for a few days, more by idleness than by shame beacuse there’s no reason to be ashame this month. On the contrary, I can be proud of my February activity : 3 games beaten (among which 1 was on my ABC project), thanks to a private Challenge me event. In the meantime, contrary to what I thought in January, I almost didn’t touch to Terraria : I’m afraid this one is gone again in the depths of my backlog (sigh). My game cravings are so odd.
Anyway, let’s look back at this recent activity in chronological order.

Steamworld Heist : I was so hyped by the facts that 1) Evilblacksheep is so eagerly enthusiastic about this game, 2) I’m a huge fan of the XCOM franchise and 3) I had really loved Steamworld Dig and its robots world. But the higher the expectations, the harder it is for a game to reach such high standards. All in all, I liked the game but I expected to fall in love with it (sigh).
To sum it up in a mesclun mix : the music is great ; the story is average ; some perks are quite innovative ; I didn’t like some of the level design (sometimes hard for me to tell which platforms were bullet-proof and which could be shot through) ; the boss stages (especially the last one) were a pain in the a$$ :/ .
Verdict on Steamworld Heist: 6/10

The Deadly Tower of Monsters : now that I give a grade to my games on BLAEO, this one’s gonna be pretty hard to assess.
On the one hand, I absolutely loved the idea of making a pastiche of 60s low-budget sci-fi B-movies. The very idea of the director commenting the game like it’s a DVD version of its film is brilliant. The implementation of this idea also turns out to be hilarious, even though I regret not to be perfectly fluent in English (not my native language) since it was sometimes hard to listen to the commentaries (or read the subtitles) while I was playing some attention-requiring stages.
On the other hand, once you set aside the coating, the candy tasted pretty sour. I mean, the gameplay is lame (a badly scripted beat’em all), the camera terrible, the weapons always disappointingly unresponsive, the platform parts frustrating. OK, you can take it all for a tongue-in-cheek humor but the point is the gaming part of the game is not very fun : annoying for a game, huh ?
Verdict on The Deadly Tower of Monsters : 5/10 (+2 if you value more the container than the content)

Life is Strange : what a plat de resistance ! At first, I was a bit afraid of the game, having read mixed reviews where either people loved it, either hated it. Moreover, this kind of slow, narrative, contemplative game is really not a genre I’m usually into. But on the exact opposite of Steamworld Heist’s scheme, I had relatively low expectations and they were skyrocketed by the output : I was thrilled !
(I don’t want to spoil but don’t read this if you want to keep LiS charm intact.)
What can I say that hasn’t already be said ? I’m very aware of a few flaws : the animations are simplistic and occasionally disconnected from what’s going on, the story developments are sometimes predictable and some gameplay around the end is very tedious to say the less (those who finished the game will surely know what I’m talking about). And yet I loved the game, in spite of these flaws and I even wonder if I didn’t love it more because of such minor flaws, just like when you’re attracted by a person with an unsettling beauty, far from usual canons.
Listing all the things I loved will be long ;). First, from the very beginning, I liked the peaceful, natural atmosphere, the overall golden lighting and the setting in small town, somewhere in a US Northwestern state. I enjoyed how DONTNOD depicted those teenage years, not in a sensationalist way, without skimming off all the fck and sht in the dialogues : I think the core of the story is about friendship and that time when you become adult. But it’s also the first time I play a game broaching so many serious topics (suicide, harassment, depression, alcoholism, environmental issues, handicap, euthanasia, etc) in a clever, sensitive way, far from the usual cliches. I love the photographic background and how it’s used in the game to encourage you to rummage around the sceneries (on a side note, it also quite easily permits to 100% the game !). The voice actors are stupendous and play a big role in how you really grow attached to the characters : OK, I admit I wanted to slap Chloe and tell her to grow up from time to time, but that’s because she’s a well-written character, well embodied by her actress. The music was perfect (I obviously became addicted to the menu theme and to Obstacles). The graphic style fits fantastically well with the rest of the game : I witnessed the most beautiful sky I ever saw in a game.
This game is such an emotional roller-coaster : this must have been written countless times about the game but it’s so true. It’s proven all along the whole game but it’s epitomized by episode 5 : what a memorable finish ! Even if I said earlier some storyline could be anticipated, I was also struck a few times by some scenario U-turns.
It’s a bit strange to talk about GOTY that early in 2018 , but so far, LiS is clearly my GOTY !
Verdict on Life is Strange : 9/10

Looking forward to March, I decided it was about time to finally erase from my backlog some games started a long time ago, starting with XCOM2 that I’m about to beat. I also succumbed to Hollow Knight, a longtime top-of-my-wishlist dweller that was offered to me a few weeks ago.