I’m back! Two months in a row starts to become a pattern, I guess?

As always, I appreciate people reading my in-depth reviews on Steam, so feel free to do so if any of the games I played this month catches your eye.

August 2024

The Citadel

The Citadel

5.7 hours

no achievements

I think I mentioned it before, but I always try to break down my playtime in a given month between SG Wins and backlog games. Well, The Citadel was my pick for SG Win in August, and it was … kind of a letdown. Graphically, the game is all I expected and stood up to the reason I entered the GAs in the first place. But when it comes to gameplay … it wasn’t that fun. I felt the game was really hard, with enemies all having perfect aim (although none use hitscan weapons, so you can compensate against the perfect aim with movement), half the guns being annoying to use (you have to reload bullet by bullet), and a high level of lethality combined with poor checkpoints making the game a chore. I still managed to beat it after learning to cheese some sections, but when you’re cheesing your way through a game just to beat it, you know it’s not a good feeling.

The experience was the opposite to Call of Juarez: Gunslinger and Bound in Blood (both also SG wins). In the CoJ games, I expected a cliché, generic shooter, and was greeted with fun, polished experiences that surprised me positively. In The Citadel, I expected a boomer shooter and was greeted with a slow, draggy tactical experience that frustrated me. High expectations were again frustrated. Oh well

My Review

Screenshots: I mostly forgot to take them as I played hahah so here are some from the end of the game

Red Dead Redemption 2

61.0 hours

7 of 51 achievements

Yup. It’s still going on. Last month I sank around 17 hours into the game, whereas this month I played close to 43 hours, give or take. A lot of the issues I first encountered with the game in terms of controls or obtuse systems are now gone. I feel RDR2 is super complex, both physically and mechanically, and you absolutely need some 20 hours at least to grow into the game, at which point, it becomes a drug. I have missed real life appointments because of the game, like the time I was on my way to camp to rest and save, but found some bison and decided to hunt them since I needed a perfect pelt for my satchel. But by the time I skinned them, bounty hunters showed up, forcing me to flee towards the woods, where I bumped into a Legendary Wolf trail, and also realized that area was the one shown on one of the treasure maps I had! After hunting the wolf, I noticed ravens gathering around it, and remembered this would be a good time to do the Weapons Expert challenge, where I needed to kill three bird of prey with a tomahawk, and once I did, of course I had to find the closest Trapper to buy new gun belts, and also the nearest Fence to craft new Trinkets with my Legendary Animal parts. Only then I realized it had been almost one hour since I said I was saving the game and turning it off, and yeah, I was late lol

Absolute banger of a game. I’m now in Chapter 3. Crazy lol

My Review: Still playing the game!

Screenshots:

New Games

If July was a lucky month for me on SG, August was more muted. No new wins, but this is good, since I just played one of my wins this month. I’ll aim to play one short and one medium wins next month, so maybe something around one hour in duration, and something else around the 6-8 hour playtime mark. I still managed to get a few free games on Discord that were on my wishlist, so that’s a win, and I bought a game I’ve been meaning to try for the longest time - freaking Titanfall 2! I also got Hades and Neon White on the Xbox store with a gift card I earned, so you won’t be seeing them here but they are both really high on my backlog!