Just another hang around update

Yes, I’ve downgraded myself to hang around since I’m neither dedicated enough for nor very proficient at game assassination. I’d still like to hang around for the nice discussions though. It’s been 23 days since my last update and I’ve just managed to finish another game.

Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf HD Remastered

This game starts out pretty good but it gets slightly repetitive towards the later parts, even in a first playthrough. Sadly enough I let my obsessive compulsive tendencies get the better of me and I had to grind through the game several times to collect all the achievements and this put a bright shining light on the games weak points for me.

For starters, the game interface is slow and when you’re playing through the same stuff for the third or fourth time it tends to get a wee bit annoying having to wait for all the interface animations to finish. Then we have combat animations which, while they are quite nicely done, rather quickly get’s boring to watch over and over again. I really wish there was an option to disable them after you’ve watched the same threatening stance of a mob for the hundredth time.

Combat is some kind of hybrid between real time and turn based which works decently on the lower difficulties but becomes painfully unforgiving on the highest where your enemies are able to interrupt your “turn”. I generally dislike time limits for gaming related stuff and I consider this to be the worst flaw of this game which obviously could have been avoided completely had I just not decided that I wanted the achievement for completing the game on “hard”.

This brings us to another complaint and general pet peeve of mine, achievements. The way achievements are set up for this game requires you to play through the game at least two times, and probably more on average to get them all. On top of this many of the achievements are awarded for completely random and seemingly inconsequential stuff like visiting one place before another. You will also have to make decisions that go against your normal moral compass to get quite a few of the achievements which completely ruins the enjoyment of a story driven roleplaying game for me.

I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone that hasn’t played this game yet but while I wouldn’t say it’s brilliant in any way it’s quite serviceable with some story forks and “interactive” elements. I only really had a bit of a problem with how one of the main characters were portrayed, at least in the beginning of the story. I suspect fans of the Lone Wolf series would be able to enjoy the story more but then again this is really just speculation on my part.

To conclude. While it may seem like I might not have enjoyed this game at all judging from all my complaints, most of this comes down to my rather stupid decision to play the achievement meta game. Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf HD Remastered is really a quite nice game and although it’s easy to get the feeling that it drags on a bit I can wholeheartedly recommend a playthrough with one caveat, don’t play on the hard difficulty setting unless you really enjoy punishing gameplay and don’t succumb to the achievements meta game.

Other gaming activities

I found and bought myself a copy of Deus Ex™ GOTY Edition on GOG sale and started playing Deus Ex Revision for a while but as I never finished the original game and my memory of the parts that I’ve played are a bit hazy by now I decided to go for a closer to the original experience with a GMDX lightly modded setup on Steam, saving Revision for later. I’ve actually been playing both GMDX and vanilla Deus Ex to compare but I suspect I won’t have the patience to keep this up in the long run.

I’ve also been playing the removed Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition and managed to acquire a copy of Prey that I’ve just started out. I’m still a bit disappointed that I’m never going to see Prey 2 finished. Awesome trailer, second only to Cyberpunk 2077 that year.

Let’s see, I have spent a couple of hours cleaning up parts of the map in Mad Max and since I had to buy a copy of base Fallout 3, despite already owning Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, with Bethesda Softworks Classics Superbundle I got inspired to play some Fallout 3 and I’m now trying to decide if I should try to find my old saves or just start over. I may be one of the few people that really like Fallout 3 and VATS :)

I’ve played, and finished, Fighter of Evil, Shutter and Withering Kingdom: Flurry Of Arrows, the latter which hardly even passes for a game. I’ve also been grinding away at Intake which is insanely hard for me but quite enjoyable nonetheless. I suspect I’ll never be able to actually “finish” this game though, which brings me to a question I’ve been wanting to ask for a while.

Am I alone in feeling that the default categories are a bit lacking, or maybe rather a bit broad? Using Intake as an example I doubt that I’ll ever be able to categorize it as either finished or completed but I’ve spent a decent amount of time playing it, at least for a game of this type, so won’t play doesn’t fit and unfinished feels just like a placeholder category much like never played.

Also, should I buy Sword Coast Legends at GamersGate or rather show some more dedication to backlog slaying? It does look rather tasty and this is the best discount so far.