Late Report
Sorry for months of silence (though I doubt anyone missed me), I’m back again with a report of games I have finished eliminating from my backlog.
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Rakuen
11 hours playtime
13 of 15 achievements
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Doki Doki Literature Club
8 hours playtime
no achievements
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Demon Hunter 2: New Chapter
6 hours playtime
12 of 15 achievements
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Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders
9 hours playtime
43 of 50 achievements
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Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut
60 hours playtime
41 of 59 achievements
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Deus Ex: Mankind Divided™
92 hours playtime
30 of 81 achievements
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Chaos on Deponia
14 hours playtime
18 of 34 achievements
Rakuen
I love RPGMaker games and I wasn’t dissapointed with this one, it was one of the best written games I’ve played. I knew going in it would be sad, with the setting in a hospital and a sick kid, but I’m so glad for the joy and happiness it brought too. It’s beautiful and colorful, the music is great and I teared up many times playing it. My favourite part was when it wasn’t made clear whether everything was real or just pretend, I like that a lot more than making everything a dream or just hopeful fantasy. Some parts can get tedious especially if you want collect all the toys, but overall it’s a wonderful game that I urge everyone to try out especially if you like story heavy games.
Doki Doki Literature Club
I have seen this before; the meme, the internet’s adoration, the sudden twist in the middle with serious change in the tone, the tragic ending. It’s Puella Magi Madoka Magica, just with stereo typical visual novel girls intead of magical girls (one can make an argument about Monika however) .The difference is that PMMM is a good anime with pretty solid writing and a proper story while DDLC has barely anything. There is threads of interesting elements hanging there, with stereotypical characters that can be interesting with proper development and storylines that I can see myself getting invested in. But instead of that there is cheap shock horror, exploding eyeballs and my dissapointment.
Demon Hunter 2: New Chapter (SG Win)
I think I’m burning out on HOGs. It’s a decent casual gerne, I enjoyed it a lot in the past. However I’m getting tired of the similar plots, similar characters and minimal gameplay. Maybe I’ll crave it again when I’m done playing through a portion of my backlog, as it is I’m done with the gerne for now.
The game itself is good, a typical HOG game with good quality. The part where I’m framed and then attacked in the hospital was nice, intense and with some good puzzles. If you enjoy HOG then definitely pick this one up.
Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders (SG Win)
The only book of Agatha Christie I have read is And Then There Were None which I enjoyed a lot. If the game is closely adapted from the book then I’m glad I never read her Poirot series because I hate the style. I hated how condescending Poirot sounded and how the poilice force seemed to agree to his every whim despite him stealing crucial pieces of evidence. Hasting needs to find a better friend. The story is good, the mystery is compelling and well written. The gameplay is simple, you click and hover on points of interests and makes conclusions based on clues you collected. Overall I quite enjoyed it, I just hated Poirot.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director’s Cut
It’s official, Deus Ex is one of my favourite game series alongside Final Fantasy and Wolfenstein. I loved the first game despite its age and I adored this game, along with Mankind Divided. Like the first game this one have a choose-your-own-style gameplay and I really liked it, and I love how they made the hacking game a lot more interesting than just clicking and waiting. The story is good, but what I love the most is the characters. I love Adam Jensen and his relationship with other characters like Sarif, Pritchard, Malik and Megan. The boss battles can be pretty tedious and I wish they have included some non-lethal options as I was doing a pacifist run (which I ruined anyway by killing everyone in a certain part to save Malik because fuck it I’m not letting her die). Another part the game fails is how the guys you knocked out basically became ragdolls, which is hilarious when you want to make a pyramid of unconcious guys with exactly the same position but annoying when they got a leg stuck in the wall when they fell down and your stealth failed because you can’t move them.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided™
I loved this a lot more than Human Revolution, which I understand is not a popular opinion. MD’s main story feels like it was cut short, there is only a few level aside from Prague, it’s not very well optimized and is just not as polished as HR. But I love how Adam feels a lot more human than in HR (he got more comfortable with his body and he got a new team to interact with), the gameplay is better especially the hacking game (though some software I feel is unnecessary, I basically only used Nuke, Stop Worm and Reveal in my playthrough) and the side missions are great. I loved how big Prague felt, I spent hours exploring it and broke in any place I can. However aside from it there is a lack in variety with other levels, they all feel pretty similar and not as much places to explore compared to HR and original DX. The ragdoll physics I mentioned in HR is still there, the game in general is just not well optimized especially for lower end computers like mine. Still I managed to complete a playthrough and enjoyed it very much. The story DLCs are great too, definitely worth getting from the Season Pass if you enjoyed the main game.
Chaos on Deponia
I quite enjoyed the first game, it was a charming point and click game and playing with someone else is nice so I looked forward to this one. To be honest, I am pretty dissapointed. The first part was fine then it got to spilt personalities and platypuses, it was such a drag I left it unfinished for moths until recently. I am personally not a fan of split personalities trope in fiction, it can be used to explore a character’s personality fine but most of the time it’s just cliched and badly done. In this game it’s not too bad, I can still grasp what the story is trying to tell but it’s so clunkily written it took me to near the end of the game to understand it. I’m still very confused about how personality implants work in this world and many plot elements, hopefully the rest fo the series will explore them.
Right now I’m devoting all my game time to playing my Steamgifts wins so I won’t do the theme of the month challenge, October is my birthday month so hopefully I can play games more but realistically I have responsibities so probably not ;_;. Happy October to everyone, I hope you all have a wonderful spooky month!
I just noticed your post on Deponia. I also wasn’t as into the story in this one. I think we talked a little about accusations of animal abuse in Daedelic games, and reading this made me realize that Goal was basically the animal in this game. Instead of forcing her body in different shapes to solve puzzles à la Whispered World/Silence, you change her implant. The human lightning rod part particularly shows that, I think… (possible spoilers: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1528275890)
Edit: I also recently read the ABC Murders and then played the game. In the book I felt like Poirot seemed more weird/goofy than condescending. The book actually had a professional police inspector who was skeptical of Poirot, so some of the other characters helped to portray him as more of a strange old man who unexpectedly turned out to be brilliant. His condescension comes off more like a stubborn old grandpa in the book because of his concern with seemingly random things, weird questions, and borderline offensive statements (“our killer is very generous”). The whole underdog subplot was missing from the game. I feel like all of the characters were a weak spot in this game.
The way Goal is treated really bothered me, especially baby Goal with how innocent and childlike she is. Your comparison of her to the animals used throghout the game is pretty appropriate, it felt like she is a plot device rather than a major character.
I haven’t read the books but I saw the Orient Express movie recently and really liked Poirot in there, he felt more human than the game character and closer to your description. If the movie is a more faithful adaptation than the game then I may actually read the books, the mysteries are really good and I liked Agatha Christie’s style from And Then There Were None.