Weeklyish Roundup

I'm making a concerted effort to mark my games into the correct status categories so my unfinished category is increasing while my not played category diminishes. No game play has generally been involved in this it's simply correcting the status from prior game play

I also have a question for those of you who write reviews. I usually create a review in Steam either when I have completed a game or at a point when I think I am going to play the game for long enough for my opinion to be worth stating. I usually make it just visible to friends and put WIP (work in progress) in the header and then I add to review as I play the game. Then when the review is completed (usually when I actually finish the game) I remove the WIP and make it public. However, this has the downside of the review being added to my activity immediately when I create the review and when I make the review public the creation date remains the date I originally created the review. Ideally I'd like the review to only be visible to me whilst I'm compiling it (I don't mind people reading it but I'm not always sure they understand it is incomplete) and for the creation date to show as the date I make it public. Does anyone else have know how to do this? I don't really want to write the review outside of Steam and then copy an paste at the end as I'd more than likely not bother TBH.

I also tried playing the most what turned out to be possibly the most complicated game that I have ever tried playing as regards controls in From The Depths. I am going to need a lot more time to figure out the keyboard controls for this one .. Either that or wimp out and use the mouse controls, which apparently are a lot easier but don't open up the full potential of the game ..

Current Batch

• The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
  

  18 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Outland
  

  11 hours playtime

  3 of 12 achievements

• Blockwick 2
  

  18 hours playtime

  6 of 14 achievements

• Conflicks - Revolutionary Space Battles
  

  7 hours playtime

  2 of 44 achievements

• Jolly Rover
  

  60 minutes playtime

  0 of 16 achievements

• Light
  

  2 hours playtime

  2 of 13 achievements

• LEGO® Star Wars™: The Complete Saga
  

  0 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Space Engineers
  

  52 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Of Kings And Men
  

  11 hours playtime

  no achievements

More steady progress in the Witcher. The game keeps growing on me. The ambient noises in the crypt under Vizima is probably the best I have experienced in any game. They had me on edge the whole time I was in there. The story continues to intrigue. The other excellent thing I noticed about Witcher this week was the use of timed events, something that most RPGs seem to make only a cursory use of. In Witcher there are many quests that have events that only happen at a certain time so I am always keeping track of the in game time.

I completed another section in Outland and will try and keep progressing it each week now that I have cleared the second boss. Still highly recommended and the only game to date I have play exclusively on an xBox controller.

I think I'm approaching the point in Blockwick 2 where I may put it aside for a bit as I'm finding the puzzles really difficult now. I have the first four levels completed with illumination (basically completed with a bonus) and am about half way through level 8 but with many puzzles from level 5 onwards not completed with illumination. However, the temptation to try and get to the end of all 9 basic levels is high but thats another 24 puzzles ..

Light was a game I picked up at the back end of last year, played it liked it and then promptly forgot about it and it's name so when I remembered about it I couldn't find it in my library because I'd forgotten the name :( Luckily Thirteen13 posted on BLAEO a short while ago with Light as one of the games they were playing and I recognised it and so I've included it in my latest batch and started to re-play it :) It's a top down 2D action adventure scroller with stealth elements. I like the stylised graphics and smooth controls but I don't like what appears to be fairly random movement by the AI meaning it's impossible to predict where there are safe places to hide, which I generally thought was a fundamental part of stealth games? Consequently it's proving frustrating :(

Jolly Rover continues to entertain. I actually find the humour quite amusing - could this be the first point and click game I finish? My wife has also started playing this too, off my account via family gaming which means I'm getting a chance to evaluate some non-Steam games..

I haven't played Conflicks for several months now and it's likely to take me an hour or so just to re-cap where I was. I'm not sure what to do with this game as I really liked it. I'm not quite sure why I've not played it either; it just never seems to get to the top fo the play queue. I think I'll give it until the end of September and if I've not picked it up again I'll replace it with something else.

No play time for Space Engineers but only because I got side tracked on other games. I think there is room in my current batch for one open ended game that I can keep dipping in and out of until I've had enough of it. So expect occasional updates over the course of the rest of the year from this one.

I shall be dropping Of Kings And Men from my current batch. It's an open ended game that whilst very enjoyable is too much of a time sink. I'll keep revisiting it from time to time to see how the early access is progressing but it's not one for chalking off as completed or even beaten.