Monthly Report - August/September/October 2021

Didn’t play that much lately, so this will be a quarter report :)

Won : -
Free : Portal Reloaded
From bundles/gifts/sales : SpaceChem

Batman: Arkham Origins

61 hours playtime

33 of 60 achievements

Batman: Arkham Origins - beaten

I really liked the previous Batman I played (Arkham Asylum), so I was really interested in playing this one.
It was… interesting. Overall I liked it, but less than Arkham Asylum. So I’ll probably be a bit too over-critical here (my notes are only criticism ^^).

I’ll start with the bad and with some technical issues : first I noticed that the game is clearly designed to be played with a controller. This is not a problem, as long as you keep a good keyboard/mouse experience. And this is not the case here (for instance the map is really hard to use with a mouse, while it should be the easiest thing to do ! Or you cannot remap menu keys, so with an azerty keyboard you end up with a really weird mapping - while you can remap the “character control” keys !). Some annoying camera issues also.
Unskippable cutscenes (especially annoying on NG+) while some scene are… In my notes, I wrote twice that the checkpoint locations are bad… So they are really bad :). For instance you may have unskippable cutscenes just after them (yes unskippable cutscenes are also twice in my notes, I was very very annoyed by that ^^).

For the gameplay, at first I liked the open world aspect but the issue is that you quickly lose the focus on the main story. 2 months after that I barely remember it, while I still remember quite well Arkham Asylum’s story. So… I had a good time, but I mostly remember some specific fights & locations, some side quests, but not a lot of what I was REALLY doing there. But I really liked going around the city with the grappling hook, I liked that so much that I barely used the quick travel feature.
But… I felt quite overwhelmed by the combat mechanics. On paper this is good to have that many options and moves. But in practice, they are hard to keep track, there are a lot of keys / combinaison of keys to remember, so you end up using mostly the same ones. And when you decide to try something new, you usually break your combo and don’t try again :). This is one thing I noticed : with this game it is really hard to keep your combo. I think I’m handling well Batman’s freeflow combat (I completed the previous game few months ago, with all combat challenges), but this one is really harder : there’s more enemies that are unblockable (and they are less easy to spot), I feel that the game slows down less, there are more techniques to keep in mind, you can trigger the shock gloves which changes a few mechanics (which could also break your combo) and I feel that the “freeflow” part doesn’t work as good as Arkham Asylum. Several times Batman didn’t jump on a nearby enemy as I requested, and broke the combo.

I’m not saying all of this is bad… But it can make the experience a little bit frustrating. Especially that I felt that the game has faster combats but is less responsive than Arkham Asylum. A lot of times I was pretty sure that I’ve hit the counter button before being hit, but got hit anyway. Even with a lot of practice, I felt that I still couldn’t counter reliably (while I don’t remember it being an issue before).

And a last complain : the bosses. Except the issues mentioned above, the combat is okay, feels quite good, the missions are nice, predator sections were really good (and I loved all the new tools you have) - although maybe there’s not enough of them. But bosses fights are mostly annoying. It is not very clear what you are supposed to do, in hard mode this is VERY hard as the patterns are very specific and you cannot really practice (as you encountered them only once ^^), I don’t really like QTE, and this game maybe has too many of them, and most of those boss fights are just annoying and not fun.

So, after all that negativity… I finished it, and replayed it on hard, so I guess it’s not that bad :).
Seriously, this is a good game. A little less than Arkham Asylum, but still better that a lot of games, and really enjoyable.

Achievements : As usual, a lot of achievements related to the story. There are a few challenging achievements that you can easily miss (not being hit by some specific characters for instance). The “tracks” (a series of challenges that you need to do in order) can be hard, especially the Shadow one, as you don’t have a lot of opportunities to complete them (they often require a Predator section, and some specific setup / items on the map). I think I completed that one on NG+.
Sorry, some more negativity :) : this time I don’t think I will complete the game. First because, as I mentioned, I find the combat less reliable than the previous game, so I started to be annoyed by the combat challenges. I think I got 2 medals on most of them, but struggled to get that last medal. maybe I’ll try again later.

I don’t have a lot of “normal” achievements missing :

the last “shadow vigilante” challenge (as mentioned before, my problem is the 15 variations AND keeping a combo… I can do 15 variations, I can do 50+ combo, but not both, too many things to keep in mind, and you need to find the right enemy group : without complicated enemies to handle, but with enough crowd that you don’t eliminate them too fast… The best I got was 14 variations which was infuriating ^^)
The last medals on a few combat challenges
‘I am the night” mode (= you die, you die). Which I won’t even consider. I can handle all the “normal” fights without dying but I “died” too often due to missed/unclear QTE and I would hate having to restart for that. This, and the unskippable cutscenes (did I mention them ? ^^). Maybe later, I don’t know.

All the other achievements are multiplayer (which I’m not interested in), or DLC (which I read are not that good).
So I don’t think my achievement counter will change a lot :).

Transistor

22 hours playtime

33 of 33 achievements

Transistor - completed

I bought this game on sale in 2017 ! I had good memories of Bastion, and was very interested by the “turn” aspect of the game.
This game is surprising… Its style, its gameplay, its storytelling. This is… different.
But it didn’t really start well, I had a few technical issues (no cursor, I couldn’t find a fix, I had to play in windowed mode).
Once the issues worked around, I liked it. The story is very intriguing, and even after finishing it twice, it has several unanswered questions (I’ve read a few theories which were interesting). It keeps a few things to the players interpretation. So this is good, not as good as Bastion, but good. really good.
And the music is fantastic, as Bastion’s :).

As expected I liked the “turn”/planning system and especially liked the customizability: each power can be used by itself, as a booster for another power, or as a passive. This generates a huge amount of possibilities… And the game “forces” you to try, as you need to play with each power in each position to unlock all story elements.
Which showed the only real issue I had with the game. You can create a lot of great builds, it is very easy to change and test a build… But the UI is not great, it lacks information (the description of what does the power in each situation is often unclear, or very very inaccurate, I had to take notes - this may be intended, but a bit annoying), and when you found a great build, you cannot save it. A way to save a few builds would have been nice.
Especially since the game resets your build a few times during the story. So I had a folder with a few screenshots of my favorite builds :).

So… Good game !
Achievements : A few hard ones to get, for instance playing with all limiters enabled is VERY hard, and you have to choose your moment to try that ;), I usually played with ~5 carefully selected ones :). All the other achievements are not really hard, I suggest that you wait for the NG+ to really try to get them, as you’ll have more powers unlocked. I don’t think there is anything really missable. Just a few that you need to choose your moment.