jah.

October 2023:

So yeah, this is basically my first “proper” month when I tried to fight my backlog (not just play like 1-2 new games). I managed to play 10 games and beat/complete 8 of them. Here are mine thoughts…

Best game this month:

Half-Life 2
Yeah, I like Isaac...

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

95%
1100+ hours
637 of 637 achievements

This is probably a little bit of cheating beacause I play TBoI for years but this month I actually completed it! Theoretically I did it for the second time because back in 2020 I had 100%. And then new update came and added like 200 more achievement and ton of content.
But yeah, this is probably one of my favourite games of all time… I know some people could be mad because they think the best games ever are like Dark Souls, The Legend of Zelda games or Genshin Impact, but for me this is the game I spent the most time with and it never bored me. With 34 playable characters, hundrets of items and procedural generated levels this game was always fun for me. And don't get me started on mods that make this game even more interesting and replayable than it already is…
Yeah, maybe this is not a game with an amazing story, breathtaking graphics and over the top production value, but it is simply fun. And for me it is one of the biggest factors in gaming…

Worst game this month:

Half-Life 2
If this game allowed you to run indoors, it would last for 30 min...

Whispering Willows

34%
2.2 hours
20 of 20 achievements

And from the most fun I had playing a game, to the game that was just boring and "not fun".
This game is mostly story driven, so I should be focusing more on a story than gameplay but either way this was just bad experience… This story was predictable and just not very interesting for me, puzzles was as simple as it could be and gameplay was frustrating… I mean, most of the time we just go from ghost to ghost and talk, from time to time we need to push some drawer or someting like that and then collect lots and lots of notes that tell us the story of the game. Maybe I'm just not a big fan of text games (because whole story was told in like 50-60 notes and diary pages) but encountering some new letter to read every 2-3 minutes and stopping everything that is happening to read it was just frustrating.
There are some clues that this game was supposed to be played on OUYA (if you even know what this little monster was)… If every game there was like this, I can see why it was such a failure…

Biggest positive suprise:

Half-Life 2
Simple idea, challenging puzzles. Would play "full" version of this

Blockicker

66%
3.3 hours
no achievements

This is the type of game that you probably could buy in bundle for like a 1,50$ and think that all of the games there are just bad and don't deserve any attention. And this one could be exeption…
I won this game in one of the SteamGifts giveaways. When I checked its Steam profile, I became a bit curious of it. And then I just decided to try it out. And I can say I am very sad that it is more like a 3h demo then a full game… Even though this game is really simple and was probably made really quickly (it kinda has a vibe of game jam production), it is still really cool concept. Most of the puzzles was very challenging, even sometimes too challenging for me… Design of the character and world is all right, music is also fine but it is just too short. Because there are only 40 levels it is maybe challenging but overall very short. Apart from this, you are put in some random dungeon and that is pretty much it… No story, no more characters, no replayability, easter eggs, nothing. Just play all of them and delete the game from your computer. Sad, because it has very big potential for a great puzzle game…

Biggest negative suprise:

Half-Life 2
This game really let me down because of a lot of bugs and errors

Prison Architect

61%
21.9 hours
16 of 18 achievements

I knew Prison Architect before. Never played it but being interested mostly in indie games, I always knew that this game existed. And this month was finally a time that I could try it myself and sadly, my experience was not that good…
This game is pretty well known so it don't need no introduction. It has good ratings and is probably one of the most well known of its kind. So when I started to play it I was pretty exited. Maybe it was not really my "go to" type of a game but years ago I loved to play Tycoon games and it seemed similar. But after more than 20h of playing this I'm pretty sad… I expected well made game about building and managing a prison and I got it but with lots of bugs and things I just had to guess or use guides. Don't get me wrong. This is not a bad game. But in my opinion, it is not great either. Having campaign that acts as a tutorial (and still failing at it) and AI that is often dumb or broken made me more frustrated than I enjoyed gameplay…

Summary:

  • The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

    1100+ hours playtime

    637 of 637 achievements

  • Whispering Willows

    2.2 hours playtime

    20 of 20 achievements

  • Journey of a Roach

    4.1 hours playtime

    18 of 18 achievements

  • Looking for Aliens

    6.4 hours playtime

    59 of 59 achievements

  • Pumped BMX +

    18.7 hours playtime

    22 of 22 achievements

  • The Inner World

    5.7 hours playtime

    23 of 23 achievements

  • Prison Architect

    5.7 hours playtime

    16 of 18 achievements

  • Blockicker

    3.3 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • House Flipper

    35+ hours playtime

    22 of 86 achievements

  • Vampire Survivors

    28+ hours playtime

    103 of 196 achievements

Cece09

Dang well done on beating Isaac that is very impressive

jah.

Thanks a lot! It was a pleasure to max out TBoI :D

Cece09

I know I had one of my friends going for 100% can’t imagine trying for it myself thats a whole lot of work

Zelrune

Congratulations on your assassinations! Woah, the binding of Issac 100%, rare. You did a great job!

jah.

Thank you <3

Amitte

Do you come up with these percentage ratings yourself? (And here I thought rating on a 10 point scale was hard…)

Also LOL @ the OUYA mention. Truly the console of all time.

jah.

Yeah, I did it simply because sometimes games are too good for, let’s say 7, but too good for 6. And sometimes two games are 7 for me, but still one of them is better than the other, so It is easier for me to do it on a 100% scale :D

Amitte

I’m seriously impressed. I mean it when I say it took me years to learn to fully utilize a 10 point scale. (also needed to discover some truly rubbish stuff that deserved ratings on the lower end of the scale, i guess lol)

jah.

Besides loving video games, I’m also big movie nerd, so thanks watching and scoring movies for last 10 years, I learned that 100-points scale is much better :D

Amitte

Movies are one type of media I’ve never scored despite having the ability to :D I’ve had a Letterboxd account for a few years now, but I dunno, never really thought to do it. I don’t think I understand the concepts of “good acting” or “good story” when it comes to movies, much less any of the more technical aspects.

jah.

For really long time I considered studying screenwriting at film school, so yeah, being so deep in that, I figured how to watch movies and simultaneously see every aspect from story, through acting, ending at movement of camera :D And this helps a bit with rating games, but I still have to play more titles to be as “professional” as I am with movies :D

Amitte

I figured how to watch movies and simultaneously see every aspect from story, through acting, ending at movement of camera

Now I’m seriously jealous! I find watching people who are in the know talk about movie-related intricacies fascinating.

I still have to play more titles to be as “professional” as I am with movies

If you hadn’t said that, I wouldn’t have known you played so few games! Don’t worry about it too much though, you’ve already completed some great games and it’s not like they’re gonna run away :D I’d know, I rarely ever play the “good” games xD