October&November'22 overview

Still hoarding games, but at least I'm playing some of them at the same time...

Had some sort of vacation from online socialization and missed the October report. So will report two months at once :) Sometimes taking a brake from any sort of activity is really important ;) Also it turned out that when I’m not spending time on Discord/SG and other places - I have more time to play games :D

In May, when I came to BLAEO, I had 141 unplayed games. Now I have 144 unplayed games… Might look like I’m not progressing at all. But in May I had 255 games in my library and now I have 312. In May I had 33 beaten/completed games and now I have 75. I haven’t played that much since years! Even that I’m focusing mainly on lowering amount of my unplayed games - I’m managing to beat a lot of them. And I’m getting a lot of fun along the way!

In October there was a huge injection of new games to my library mainly because I got afraid of getting “gift ban” on Steam. Since June till October I bought ~70 games as gifts for others, while bought for myself around 7 games -_- So I decided to slightly increase the amount of games I purchased for my self so that Steam won’t think I’m doing business… This decision statistically destroyed my backlog progress. But, you know, better safe than sorry.

Games highlights of October&November:

• Batman: Arkham Knight
  

  57.5 hours playtime

  78 of 113 achievements

• Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition
  

  12.1 hours playtime

  27 of 47 achievements

• Call of Juarez Gunslinger
  

  6.2 hours playtime

  14 of 26 achievements

• My Friend Pedro
  

  5.0 hours playtime

  24 of 30 achievements

• Cats in Time
  

  6.4 hours playtime

  24 of 24 achievements

• XIII - Classic
  

  10.7 hours playtime

  no achievements

Batman: Arkham Knight: I have never paid attention to it this title as I thought it wasn’t my kind of the game. But I was lucky to win this game in July in public giveaway on SG (0.0048% chance of wining - sick!). Right after I won it I spent 9 hours in the game. It was interesting, but felt slow and too much mixed up (fighting, stealth, racing, running, flying, searching…) and I put it on top of pile of my unfinished games. Some months later I gave it a second try and, oh boy, it turned out to be epic. Once I unlocked more gadgets and figured out how to play “properly” (including the “force saving” of the progress, as my playing sessions can be as long as 15 minutes…) the game become more enjoyable. It is so cinematographic and story was told so good, there are so many details in everything… After spending 20 hours more in the game I bought Arkham Collection. By now I’ve finished all story related stuff and happy that fate brought me to this game. In total I’ve spent almost 58 hours in game (that is a lot for me for one offline game) and can see my self playing it for another 20 hours (new game+, finishing the riddles and challenges) :) Probably will do it after I will buy a Steam Deck :) 10/10 - it become one of my favorite games.

Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition: Since I have played Arkham Knight first - Asylum felt more like a big DLC :) If Asylum was the first game I played from this trilogy - probably I wouldn’t be interested to try City or Knight. It is not bad but everything felt slightly off. Not enough intrigue in the story, stealth and fighting are not distinguished enough by diversity, lurking between the locations felt more like a punishment rather than exploration… 6/10

Call of Juarez Gunslinger: The game is good. I really enjoyed how the shooting part is handled (very pleasant) and how the story was told. Not sure how to explain, but I will try :D Moments when you are going the wrong way and eventually dies and the MC tells something like “I knew that it was a suicide to go this way, so I choose another one” before restarting from the checkpoint. Or when, depending on your choices, the story is told slightly in a different way (“I saw them first before they saw me” vs “They saw me first, before I saw them”). And the way the map transforms when certain goals achieved (“After I disarmed the dynamite, I noticed a ladder that I hadn’t noticed before”)… Overall experience is very cinematographic. The plot itself is very simple, yet interesting. The way the whole story is told through small connected “novellas” is really good find for developers. The abrupt change of scenery made the game fun (no need to go to the same locations just to make the game last longer). BUM! - you are in the city, BUM! - you are in the forests, BUM! - you are in the caves, BUM! - you ride the train. Very dynamic. 8/10

My Friend Pedro: Saw this game here, on BLAEO, and it caught my interest and landed in my wishlist. Later won it on SG and got a pleasant time playing it. While there is nothing special in any part of this game: story, action, graphics - everything separately is pretty average… But all togather works really good and gives good experience. Defenetly worth one playthrough and couple of my evenings. 6/10

Cats in Time: Was playing it with my daughter, so game took 6 hours instead of 3 :) Game is pleasant, but definitly too simple and doesn’t worth the price they ask (unless you are playing with a kid). 5/10 get it only with 50%+ discount and only if you are really into this type of games.

XIII - Classic: Played it years ago (before even got my steam account, and it is 15 years old already) from a localized CD and should say: original text and voiceovers are way more better. Getting back to this game was a very pleasant journey to the almost forgotten feelings when life was much more easier :) Also was surprised that the game aged so well in terms of both, graphics and gameplay, it is not bad at all - while played it I’ve never thought to drop it (and such thoughts usually happens a lot while playing older games). 7/10