Last post of 2019 !

I got this Picross game 100%ed in September. The UI could have been better especially on bigger puzzles where you can't see the whole picture. I cheated a lot with Steam guides to finish these last levels and to get some tricky achievements too. Playing this game made by a single (French BTW) dev was a nice ride anyway.
Verdict on Pictopix : 6/10

Aaaaahh, how nice it feels to stroll along a game in easy mode, to play without the pressure of result or the need to 'git gud' (that is to say no need to play again the same level over and over). I'm definitely not one of those hardcore gamers eager to beat uber-harsh bosses in order to prove how elite they are. Yes, I confess I chose to play Chroma Squad in the easiest difficulty level and this way, I really enjoyed the story with all the cultural winks and 2nd degree comments introduced by the devs. The tactical gameplay is my stuff (even without cover system) as can be seen in some other games I played after this one.
Oh and it's another game beaten in my (old) ABC list.
Verdict on Chroma Squad : 7,5/10

One more universally acclaimed game, by the famous Lucas Pope, out of my backlog. What can I say that hasn't already said about it ? Nothing probably. 2 good points for me : the game is short, with replay value. To make comparison with other serious-topic games, I would put it with Orwell rather than with This War of Mine because it makes you think about political stuff but remains a game, fun to play, while I found TWoM too gloomy and depressive. Maybe is it because like in Orwell, you're just a cogwheel in a big system and even if your decisions can kill pepole in the end, you don't have to get your hands dirty like in TWoM. That the game manages to transcribe this feeling of being just a piece of a (totalitarist) system is simply brilliant, what's more just with this austere gameplay loop of stamping and controlling documents ! I also watched the short film published on Steam and found it good too.
Verdict on Papers, Please: 9/10

After beating two games out of my ABC list, I focused on a third one in a row. But I didn't expect Flinthook to be a rogue-lite : I knew it was a grappling game but I thought it was rather a platformer or a metroidvania. I'm usually at loss in rogue-like/lite because I tend to suck at hard games and usually can't stand well the increasing pressure of when I'm in a good run (for example, I only managed to beat once Dead Cells, on 0-cell and in more than 30 hours, and it was already a big achievement for me). Back to the topic, I really liked Flinthook universe, the design, the gameplay but after I managed to beat the first boss in 3 or 4 hours, I realized I would very probably struggle a lot to reach the endgame. The grapple gameplay is good but still hard : you have to use one stick to move the character, the other stick to point your shooting weapon or the grapple and finally also use a trigger to activate bullet-time. I read reviews that reassured my fear, describing how punitive the game could be further on, through spiky traps and swarms of foes.
So, one more dropped game in my ABC list…
Verdict on Flinthook : 5/10

The 3 Jedi Knight games were slumbering in my backlog since 2015 when I bought a Star Wars Humble bundle. I remember when some Jedi game (maybe Dark Forces 2) was published in the late 1990s and one of my friend praised it but I couldn't get my hands on it back then as a kid. So finally, I decided it was time to try them in 2019. And once again I got disappointed with old games I hadn't played in their glory days.
First, they are FPS and I have a personal history of hard time with FPS (mainly dizziness after a while), even though you can also play them in TP view, which is a rare feature I haven't seen used in a lot of games since. But be it in FP or TP, the moving is equally clunky, with a huge latency that destroys any sense of precision in jumps and moves ; it's really a pain to get through the platforming parts. Moreover, in spite of using mods to polish the graphics, I found them really obsolete : Kyle Katarn is plain ugly, worst than the first Lara Croft. It's harder for me to play old 3D games than old 2D games : the ugliness of these big sharp polygons is so aggressive for the eyes whereas 2D pixel-art didn't age that bad.
About the gameplay, the same scene infuriated me when at the beginning of DF2 and Outcast, you have storm troopers coming at you in zigzags while you are desperately trying to shoot them with a goddamn laser rifle : it's a freaking Jedi game, you look forward to use a lightsaber, not a rifle !
In the end, I spent 1 hour on DF2, 3 hours on Outcast and 1 hour on Academy : I reckon they must have been revolutionary in their time, that a lot of players have fond memories of playing them at that time and a big nostalgia when playing them today but it is hard to discover them 20 years after they were released.
Verdict on Jedi Knight trilogy : 0/nostalgia

This game is so well executed, everything is so well thought and efficient : the tutorial is perfect, the progression is steady and you have this savvy incentive to try new things and get out of your comfort zone. I really enjoyed unlocking achievements and the way these are set in-game is the best way to do so.
It's more a puzzle game than anything else, and the closer thing I would compare it is chess, because you always have to calculate one, two or three strokes ahead.
My only concern was about the time it takes to finish one run (between 30 minutes and one hour if I recall well), a little too long for these times when I just play for short sessions.
Verdict on Into the breach : 9/10

This one is interesting : for a couple weeks, I couldn't play anything else and sunk 54 hours in it. And then, all of sudden, the urge vanished : I quit and haven't played it since mid-November. This happens a lot to me ; I don't know if it's my backlog's appeal (or pressure) but I often drop games suddenly, even if I loved them.
Back to BB, I love the team management and the tactical but (it's a huge but) the game is way too long, repetitive and grinding. To my liking, they should have cut the campaign by half : I think I played 2 campaigns, my first where I learnt the basics until my company got erased and a second one, longer, but I didn't even make it to the end in 30 or 40 hours !
If you look at objectively my game time, you could say I liked it much more than Into the breach but when I look back, I think I found the latter more fun than the former, mainly because there are many approaches in ITB while you are always doing the same thing in BB.
Verdict on Battle Brothers : 8,5/10

I finally finished this one on UPlay, beating the main quest and the main side quests (if I may say) like the Cult, become No.1 mercenary, the Arena, defeating the Beasts etc.
I liked the game but after some time, I started to feel being full and near overdose of Greek stuff or (among other things) the same animations during talks. I still regret most of the quests are not story-driven but rather too often "got get this and bring it back to me". And still happy they left away most of the usual AC bullshit (conspiracy, etc) and present time flash forward.
Anyway, in the end, I'll keep good memories of this time spent with Kassandra.
Verdict on AC Odyssey : 8/10

One of my ABC list games. Nothing memorable : with these graphics, it could have been released in the 1990s. I read the gameplay was deeper than it looked but after playing one hour, I really don't feel grinding the arenas to reach the Colosseum.
Verdict on Qvadriga : one lap/10