TerinHD's 03/08/17 Update!
| 1,335 Achievements (+110) | 7 Perfect Games(+1) | 29% Avg. Completion Rate(+1) |
Another fun week and a bit more... I am a bit late on this, I got the flu and I slept 50-60 hours over the course of Wed-Fri. Feeling much better now, but it let me just focus on a game on Saturday when I started to feel better. I really just consumed it. So that was fun, been really looking at my format on here and I haven't been happy. It has been good, but I just feel like there was a more elegant way to show what I have been up to so I update my format here.
I found this guy 
as I was working through my newest format here, figure I could use him...
to show when I am really excited about something for some reason or another. He is from one of my most recent conquests, Steamworld Heist. He is a diver, and only speaks
in "blubs". I just was really drawn to his character as I am currently listening to Moby Dick on my way into the client site sometimes (into work - 1.5 drive). By the way
I use Libri Vox to listen to old public domain audio books, it is truly awesome so think about using it!
With the new format, my question(s) are how do you like the new format? What other information would you all like me to share on each game I come across?
I JUST WON THIS ON STEAMGIFTS THIS WEEK! I am so excited, I found it via NorthernLion the youtuber... like about a year ago and his video here:
I can't wait to get into this game, but I have decided to try to get through Nova-111 before I dig into it. Just so I can move my steamgift wins along in playing them.
SO Excited for this!!! Have more of this face:
So I recently started playing this as I just won it. The concept is pretty need, it essentially boils down to a pipe/water flow game where you have to create the path through the board in the quickest amount of time. This has some appeal to me, but I find it a bit clunky for what it is. I don't know, there is just something about it that is a tad bit off that I am not a fan of. I will figure it out at some point and verbalize it as I play the game more.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing
Extra Playthroughs Needed Won on SteamGifts62 of 95 achievements (65%)
So this is the game I just consumed on Saturday/Sunday. It took me about 16 hours to play through the entire game, I found it to be a decent ARPG. The story was very blah, simple. It had a ton of action though, and plenty of different ways I could have built my character. I decided to take a brawn approach with my character (side note... I have been doing that a lot recently... my most recent Skyrim character has been brute force kinda guy and my couple newest DnD characters have been Barbarians). This maybe where I struggled a bit, as I tried to max/min the character to a bit but still tried to get as many achievements as I could. This could have definitely tainted my experience with the game.
Overall, I think the game controlled great, never cheated me or anything of that nature, and definitely had a fluid nature. I absolutely adored the fact that I could send my ghost back to town and she would just sell all my crap loot without the need to stop play. I think that is something more ARPGs could handle better, is the amount of loot you attain. But with that being said, I never had that ah ha moment where I just felt like a badass that could slay anything in my path or that I really accomplished anything in general. That with its perceived that it had a shallow system of progression melee or range with a few different types of kickers with the perk system. That's why I would give it a 3/5 stars, but if you are looking for some loot grabbing, enemy smashing, you could go much worse than Van Helsing here.
Short little top down shooter here, much in the vain of Hotline Miami. It was very fun to go through at perfect this game. I completed it a Sunday 02/26, and spent about 5 hours with it.
The game controls just fine after you get through the awkward first phases of understanding the control scheme. At the start I really hated it, why did I have to just pull back the hammer of the pistol or pull the bolt on the rifle all the time. But after sometime with it I really enjoyed the controls as it really let you feel like the old west. I think that is really where it shines in my opinion is getting the player wrapped up in the setting. This is not without it's downfalls however, three main ones. The first is the art style, this comes as a double edged sword. I really loved the visuals of the game, the pen and paper feel is crisp and fresh. However, one of the huge downsides is the lack color as a descriptor for enemy/friendly. I think if the enemies were a different color and the pen and paper feel was simply a dual tone between the two it would help the gameplay out completely. The second and third major downfall are tied hand in hand, there was a lack of depth to the game and no difficulty progress. I usually felt myself dying just because I didn't see an enemy because he blended too well into the scenery, more than me dying simply because I made a stupid mistake. Bah, the art stuff with the enemies could play into my immersion the game brings...
I did find one game breaking bug along the way however, which further holds it back as well... The rifle would give me infinite ammo. This really jarred me out of the immersion that I had grown accustomed to. The bug came with a nasty visual sore that I got a screenshot of:
Overall, I really enjoyed the game. But it's flaws really hold it back from being a really great game. I think a few tweaks here and there and a sequel could be a true competitor to Hotline Miami series. With that, I would give it a 3/5 stars and I would recommend it if you are into the Hotline Miami type of gameplay with a bit of Red Dead thrown in for flavor.
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Wow, I really like your post format! (Maybe you can show the Steam Price too? Not that that’s always accurate.)
I should play The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing too, I won it on SG a pretty long time ago… :P
Well I could just have the image link to the steam store page or put a steam icon on there with the link to it. Not sure if I would want to just grab the price though, but it might be nice to be considered in the review portion.
It wasn’t a bad game, to me it fits that like 75% competency range. Some of the enemies just get repetitive at times. Anyways, that’s just my opinion. :D I hope you do play it and enjoy it!
Yeah maybe that’s better :) I think a link to the Steam page is always useful.
I’ll probably play Van Helsing for “April is “play a game you won on Steamgifts” month” (pretty sure there will be a thread like that every month :D), this month I have enough to do. Thanks!
Don’t we all have enough to do. You are most welcome!
That looks nice! Both the fact, that you have 25% in every played stadium, as well as the method to list your games/reviews. Aw, you know what I mean, right? (How do you do this dropdown menu? I think that is great, so everybody can choose, what they want to read and don’t have a huge text block :D)
Anyway: Glad you are feeling better and you had fun with Invisible! :)
No wait, I misunderstood you, right? You didn’t consume Invisble on saturday :D
But something else. So yay for that game! :D
Lol yeah! :D But I recently won Invisible which is fun!
If you are using Firefox, you can open one of my drop downs and select it all. Right click and view selection source. That will give you the html code I used to create them. Use them at your free will! :D
They are essentially the mixture of Bootstrap panels and collapse features.
Thank you very much. I use FF, so that should work :)
I tried to look into it, but it didn’t look as nicely as yours after I was done :D
I hope it’s alright if I ask a question about it.
I got it to work with one of my games (yay me!), but I can’t figure one part out. I’ll leave the brackets (hope it’s the right word here) out:
div class=”panel-heading” data-toggle=”collapse” data-target=”#post-al3jnj7-TerinHD_AVirusNamedTom030717” aria-expanded=”true”
Especially that part: “#post-al3jnj7-TerinHD_AVirusNamedTom030717” is a problem for me. I guess that’s what you named the post in itself, because it reappears later on. So can I just name it something like “TextforAdventuresofBla?”. Or something? The rest should probably stay the way, right?
So this is my second Edit :D
I guess I worked it out. I gave it some name with my name in it and the game name and the date. And first it didn’t work any longer. Then I noticed the # was just at the top and TADA! It’s working! So I guess, that’s the trick here :D
Woooo glad you got it working! I don’t have any problems helping you out with it.
I am pretty sure the post-al3jnj7 was added by the site, but I started naming mine with my name, game, and date because if you don’t then it might try to take you to an older post if you are looking at the post in the activity feed. So say I put TerinHD_AVirusNamedTom in there and I used it in two posts. Both would expand as they both key to the same element. Hopefully that makes sense. :D
It does indeed!
So it would be enough if I name it (example): “Ninglor03-Adventure-130317”? With and without # of course :]
And yes, I know. I’m doing the date differently (actually I don’t know why we in Germany do it that way and everybody else differently - or we differently? Ah, what ever :D).
It looks great in my opinion, maybe only thing missing is link to steam page like you said in on of the replies :)
And “12 is better than 6” is cool game, gonna give it a try :D
If you do end up playing it… I would be interested if you hit the same bug that I did with the Rifle. Yeah I totally agree about the steam link… the question is which direction do I go… add a steam icon or make the picture clickable like other parts of BLAEO do?
Started playing it today and got to Act 2 so far and no bug with rifle, yet. Breaking my backlog plan a little, but it all about fun in the end :D
I think clickable picture is more intuitive, since people are already used to it :)
I’ll be looking forward to reading your posts about Invisible, Inc.
What I’d like to see on tabs is playtime and achievement counts. You already have the achievement count but not anything indicating how long you played the game. I check these things from a completionist point of view so it gives me a good idea to check how long it takes to 100% a game or to get majority of the achievements.
That is some good feed back on the topic… but should I do total playtime or play time for a single play through (I am thinking like Knights of Pen and Paper… I went through it twice to perfect it…). Typically I only do a single play through before I post on the game so that should work… but it is not always that cut and dry.
I think I am going to put it right behind the achievements so it would look something like this:
| 46 of 46 achievements (100%) | 1.5 hour played |
Thoughts?
Definitely total playtime. Single playthrough hours may give us completionists the wrong impression that the game is a lot shorter than it actually is to get 100% on it especially if the review doesn’t come with a warning. Most people tend to mention playtime and say the game requires multiple playthroughs and how long it’d take to beat the campaign for those who don’t care about achievements. I find this particular information very helpful and I’m glad that the default thumbnails on BLAEO already has it.
And the code you linked me looks pretty good.
I liked Van Helsing up until the point when you had to defend your “base”. The game looks promising at the start but the more you progress the more boring the game becomes. That’s how I felt anyway. Looking forward to the Invisible, Inc. review as well!
I agree, I was like how are they going to use this mechanic… is it just going to spring enemies and transition into a more like tower defense type of game. It just felt almost out of place, like one of the developers was like DUDE THIS WILL JUST MAKE THE GAME! I think a lot of games get boring due to two reasons… lack of variety in the gameplay loop (click to kill… click to kill next enemy etc) and no difficulty ramping. As you play a game you get skills in it and without that ramp you just keep repeating the same thing over and over again (some games rely heavily on the repetition to drive your skill mastery, for example One Finger Death Punch, but then again it has a difficulty ramp in the game).
Hopefully you wanted to read all that… just kinda went on a rant. :P I hope Invisible, Inc is as good as I think it will be. :D
Oh, that’s nice. I kept scrolling down wondering where the review/progress was until I realized I had to click somewhere in the section. :D
While just a solid ARPG I really liked how Van Helsing had this very Slav vibe to it and didn’t feel like just another generic fantasy game. I also wish the final boss wasn’t so sudden and game didn’t end as abruptly, but hey. I imagine development realities kicked in for developers. Luckily they got to make two sequels.
I have always struggle with how to indicate that you need to click the selection to have it expand elegantly. Nothing ever seems intuitive to me, this in my opinion is the best attempt at it so far. How long was it before you realized you could click on it?
Oh I didn’t know they made sequels… were they any better or worse than the one I just played? I do agree the setting wasn’t just a generic ARPG setting like that of Torchlight or Diablo, which was nice but for me it didn’t seem to fill the depth… it might have been my approach to the game however and I am fully aware I probably need another play through to expand on some of the skill trees to see if the depth is in there.
Edit: I also added for later if I start just rolling through games that you can filter on the progress bar. :D Clicking a section will hide/show the various areas. Might be a bit over kill but… whatever.
I jest, it took only took me a couple of seconds because "See Review/Progress" isn't marked as a button like others are, but since the entire game card opens the assigned collapsible it's not a problem. Maybe changing text to something more obvious like CLICK TO SEE OPINION or to an image like you did with... errr, that sailor barrel dude with goggles of some kind, would help? I mean, if your idea is to convey there's more information tucked away behind clicking and not to make the object itself a link.
Making the progress bar clickable is great and really helps if, like you said, you have a lot of individual games. I never tried using the progress bar personally before so I had no idea it was segmented and figured it was a generated image or something. The more you know, I guess. :)
As far as sequels go I can't really say because I haven't played them, but they kept making them so they have to count for something. :D
Exactly… it is to convey there is more info, but I want to do it in the most elegant way. I see “CLICK TO SEE MORE” as almost intrusive and not elegant, but it does get straight to the point. Meh… if I just keep using it this way people will catch on anyways. :P
Absolutely, just throwing some comments out there. God knows I can’t stop fiddling my own updates. I’m just afraid I’ll go through a total overhaul like you did. :)
I have to admit I was up 2-3 hours later than I should have been messing around trying to get it just right… :( but I find it really fun to do that so… meh! :D