Hello, all. This is my second “monthly report.” Please see my profile for more info.

All of the games I’ve played this month are listed here. I’d like to highlight some of them below:

Completed/Beaten games

• CAT Interstellar
  

  2 hours playtime

  no achievements

• LEGO® Star Wars™: The Complete Saga
  

  39 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition
  

  45 hours playtime

  52 of 57 achievements

• The Dream Machine
  

  25 hours playtime

  no achievements

• The Path
  

  12 hours playtime

  no achievements

• STASIS
  

  19 hours playtime

  27 of 27 achievements

• Firewatch
  

  16 hours playtime

  10 of 10 achievements

Other notable progress

None! Just a bunch of card farming, and I started a VN on New Year’s Eve then decided to do something else.

Thoughts on this month's games

• I was pretty much able to achieve what I set out to do this month. I set out to finish Ori, The Dream Machine, Firewatch and The Path. I didn’t complete (or even play) Black Sails, but I finished Star Wars and STASIS, and CAT Interstellar.
• 4/7 of the games I played this month were Steamgifts wins. The exceptions were The Path, Chaos on Deponia, and Lego Star Wars Complete.
• Once again, I played most of these games with (e.g., with an audience of) my 5-year-old twins except for Firewatch, CAT Interstellar, and– you’ll be happy to hear– STASIS.
• As I suspected, Ori and the Blind Forest ended up being the hardest game I’ve ever finished, surpassing A Story About My Uncle. Some of those escape sequences (Ginso Tree, lava escape) just kicked my @ss. But what can I say about it that hasn’t already been said? It’s beautiful aesthetically, has fantastic gameplay, tight controls, a variety of skills and situations, just a fantastic game. I was happy to achieve everything I set out to– everything except One-Life mode, don’t die, play on Hard, speedrun, and don’t use a skill point. I’ll leave those achievements for the pros.
• I won Firewatch from the Actually Playing Games group, and this is the perfect game for it. It’s enjoyable, not too long, pretty, and a wishlist game. I almost enjoyed it enough to replay the game with the commentary on. But my backlog is too big to replay games.
• I played STASIS this past weekend when my wife took the kids to see her parents up North, and I got to stay home, partly because my parents were still in town. It was nice to have long, uninterrupted play sessions to immerse myself into the game. I consulted a guide 2-3 times (and for a few of the achievements), but I liked how everything was pretty much logical and fair. No point-and-click shenanigans.
• The Path predates me joining Steamgifts. I actually played this with my kids when they were only three– which if you know anything about this game, was a questionable parenting decision. But whenever anything looked a little creepy/scary, I’d just laugh and call it funny, and they pretty much followed my lead. I really enjoyed this game…creepy and weird, but with lots of neat discoveries.
• My son really loved Lego Star Wars. I mostly enjoyed it, but there were some sequences that were just not designed for solo play, IMO. For instance, you need to do an operation (Jedi telekinesis) for a long period of time, but any time you get hit, it gets interrupted. The co-op AI is NO HELP in keeping the bad guys off you, so it took me forever to get it done. Overall, I just didn’t like it nearly as much as Lego Hobbit and Lego Harry Potter, the other two Lego games I’ve played. Also, I didn’t enjoy reliving Episodes I-III, the first two of which I actively loathe. And as for Episodes IV-VI, well, I didn’t want to spoil the plot for when we get to watch the movies together. The wife thinks 5 is too young. I wasn’t 6 yet when I saw it, though. So we completed the game, but I’m not inclined to go back and do Free Play and work toward 100%.
• I won The Dream Machine chapter 1-3 on SG, and finished those a few months ago. For some reason, chapters 4 and 5 are MUCH longer. Anyway, I’ve been playing the game with my kids, but I really wanted to finish it this month, so I polished off the last few sections while the kids were away. It also gets pretty grisly…not terribly kid-friendly in places. Oops.

Plan for January

See my Attack Plan.
I expect not to have as much playing time this month because of the NFL Playoffs. :) But I’ll finish Black Sails and 1 or 2 VNs, I’ll play and maybe complete a game or two with the kids (haven’t decided which yet). But I’m guessing a pretty quiet month.