Monthly Report - April/May 2021
- Won : -
- Free : Little Nightmares, Samorost, Quiplash
- From bundles/gifts/sales : Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!, Metro Exodus, Darksiders Genesis, Fury Unleashed, Relicta
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Victor Vran
40 hours playtime
38 of 90 achievements
Victor Vran - beaten
Won this one on SteamGifts years ago. I played a lot of Diablo 3 so I might compare this game with it a lot. Because it looks like it and a lot of enemy skills and mechanics are similar. So what’s interesting is what is different. There are good ideas: there are no classes, your character depend only on the outfit, weapon and demon powers you choose. And I like that, it allows you to switch whenever you want.
I also like the destiny card system, which also allows you to really customize according to your gameplay or immediate needs.
So… The game is ok, but it has a lot of annoying flaws. The big one is the enemy difficulty system. The enemies level/difficulty increase as you level, but your items power don’t usually follow (yes there are weapons that level with you, but not with the same curve), which mean that you feel weaker and weaker as you progress…
At some point, without changing the difficulty, levels that I could do easily before became almost impossible. Ok, it could be interesting as a challenge, but it’s not always fun. Sometimes you just want to feel powerful and kill enemies by hundreds, not fight enemy sponges.
Also, but this is probably me, I feel that ranged weapons are the only viable option. Each time I tried to use melee weapons (even the sword which is supposed to be the best), even with a defensive build (heal on hit, …) I don’t survive very long, almost all enemies do heavy damages in melee or have AoE damages. So I use the shotgun and grenade launcher a lot, any attempt to use something else means that I die A LOT. Not fun. But again, probably my fault.
Let’s be honest, the crafting / upgrading system sucks. I dont like to have to flip through pages of a (virtual) book to know what components I need to upgrade an item. Just let me select what I want in a list and tell me ! Also, I know that the inventory is unlimited (a blessing and a curse !) but please, automatically take components required from the storage, I’m tired of doing the round trip.
So. I had fun to play the game, I completed a lot of challenges and finished the story, reached max level, I’m currently progressing on hard, but farming doesn’t feel very fun. In Diablo, if you want fun farming, you play in a lower Torment difficulty. Yes items will be less interesting, but you can have a few fun runs and feel powerful.
In Victor Vran, even on hard with loot bonuses, I never find weapons that are better, so I don’t feel any progress… The endgame feels boring and everything is tedious, as you never feel powerful and all enemies take way too much time to kill. And the bounty & treasure hunts are boring (and not that well rewarded), having to look for codes on the Internet is not a great idea.
I may try a few build guides to see if I missed something or if I could improve my character, but I’m not sure I’ll continue to play it.
Achievements : Surprisingly for this kind of game, there are not so many “farming” achievements, and it looks like I’m not far from unlocking all “normal” achievement so I might play a little more to finish that.
But a bunch of them are related to DLCs and reviews says that one of them is not great (although, as a metalhead, I might buy the Motorhead one…), so I doubt I’ll complete the game.
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Metro 2033 Redux
27 hours playtime
49 of 49 achievements
Metro 2033 Redux - completed
As I liked a lot Metro Last Light, I bought this one when it was on sale. Yes I played them out of order, but I don’t feel that this is a issue.
Obviously, I knew where the story was going, as Metro Last Light is a direct sequel, but the journey is important :). And I think that you find it equally cool to see how some level evolved between the two games (in Last Light, you go back to a few levels that you visited in 2033, but… different).
I don’t have much to say though. This is pretty much the same as Last Light.
What surprised me is that there is also a “moral” mechanic, but it doesn’t seem to have any impact. In Last Light, the ending depends on it, but in 2033 it seems that you can still have both endings, whatever your behavior during the game. So it is a bit strange to have it there.
As Last Light, the game is not really hard, and I never had any resources issues even in survival mode (even filters).
So the gameplay feels good, the story is nice, this one is maybe playing a little less on the sound design to set a creepy mood, Last Light improved a bit on that side. But it is still very good. Check my Last Light review, I would probably repeat myself here !
Achievements : Most of them are pretty straightforward, you can replay levels so most achievements can be done after finishing the game, the only real annoying one is “Weaponsmith” (kill with every weapon in the game), or achievements “Kill X enemies with Y weapon”. Those are not easy to keep track of :).
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Starbound
57 hours playtime
24 of 51 achievements
Starbound - beaten
Looking for a game to play in co-op with my friends, we went back to Starbound. I played it when it was first released (in early access I think) and it really feels like a different game ! Now there is a tutorial, hub area, quests… !
I don’t have much to say, but I liked the improvements they made. I marked the game as beaten as we completed the storyline, but this is not really the kind of game that you finish :). There are always things to explore, base to build, resources to collect…
Although a good game, a few improvements would still be welcome. For instance, building is a bit tedious, being able to quickly select an elements by clicking on existing one (you want a specific kind of wall ? Search through dozens of similar looking small icons to find the right one…), I really liked that feature in Satisfactory (middleclick on anything, it will select it and you can now build it), all sandbox/building games should have that.
Achievements : Besides the ones you get by following the story, a lot of them are very very VERY grindy. I won’t even try :). But there are a few that I can still unlock easily, I’ll work on that. I don’t know why they made all of them hidden, not many spoilers there…
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LEGO® Star Wars™: The Complete Saga
6 hours playtime
no achievements
LEGO® Star Wars™: The Complete Saga - unfinished
This will be quick : it’s a Lego game. But the camera really sucks in this one. Usually it’s not great but still ok. Here it just sucks. The graphics look very old, so I guess this is one of the firsts (checking Wikipedia… Yes, this is one of the first using this formula).
I played that on co-op with Remote Play (which didn’t work very well, several playing session started with 10 minutes of trying to make it work).
There are better Lego games ;).
Achievements : No achievements.
I was confused about the endings in Metro 2033 as well, so you’re not alone. Lenor pointed out the reason for this. Also good job on getting all the achievements, I was too lazy for that. I didn’t enjoy the game as much as you though.
Starbound is definitely a lovely game, I never finished it. Good to hear that they added a lot of improvements!
Metro 2033 requires a lot of morally good choices to get the good ending. If you play normally without caring about these choices you won’t have the option to unlock the non-canon good ending.
However, if you did enough to get the good ending you can also choose to get the bad ending instead maybe this is what made you think you can have both endings regardless of your moral choices. So basically you can only pick between endings when you are already qualified to get the good one. If you didn’t qualify to get the good ending, you can’t pick between the two, you’ll simply get the bad one.
Oh ! Thanks for the information, I indeed got the choice of my ending.
What Lenor said is correct if you have too many bad moral points, you will automatically shoot (instead of getting the choice to shoot or not), which affects which ending you get.