Monthly Report - September / October 2020

Won : Staxel
Free : -
From bundles/gifts/sales : Automachef

Thomas Was Alone

3 hours playtime

35 of 35 achievements

Thomas Was Alone - completed

Not a lot of gaming this last couple of months so I was looking for a nice short game. And here it was !
I heard a lot of good things about it, so not sure why I hadn’t already played it.
So, overall it is a nice game, the narrative is interesting and quite fun, although I didn’t find it as extraordinary as some comments sounded :).
This is a pleasing game, quite easy, but with enough different mechanics (way more than I expected !) that you are never bored and none of the level feel tedious.
I don’t have much more to say about it… Good game, play it :).

Achievements : If you pay attention, you get all of them in one playthrough. If not, you can replay the levels to grab the ones you missed. Easy !

Natural Selection 2

3 hours playtime

22 of 66 achievements

Natural Selection 2 - unfinished

So. I browsed through my games generating cards and decided that instead of idling to get the cards, I’ll give a chance to the games and play them at least until I get all the free cards. First one was this. This is a asymmetric competitive multiplayer-only game, with an alien team & a human team fighting to destroy to opponent.
Usually competitive multiplayer games are not my thing. And this game didn’t grab me either.
It started well, the tutorials seemed quite good and seemed detailed, and the idea of having FPS mixed with a kind of strategy game was appealing.
But it really lacks of a training mode. The game mechanics are not all easy, you have a lot of things to handle (especially when you take the “leader”/strategy role).
FPS as humans, ok no worries, it is pretty much like most games, but FPS as aliens is… confusing. You have a lot of options, most of them you don’t know what they do and, as you are a noob, you usually don’t have the time to see what each weapon/skill does, because you die before.
I didn’t even try the “leader” role. The tutorial seemed nice as a first entry, but you can only do the actions they want, you can’t experiment, try things, have the time to read the tooltips…
I feel that a practice mode, with at least a dumb A.I. would have been really useful.

Also, my first game wasn’t the best situation. I clicked on a button expecting the game to load a room or a server list, but got directly matched with an already ongoing game, with russian people, all yelling in russian… I wasn’t prepared for that :) (we lost, so more yelling).
Next game I’ve been more cautious and chose my server, one speaking english, and noob friendly. Yay ! We won, but as I said, it was really frustrating because I kept dying before being able to test the abilities, and felt that even when I hit, it didn’t do any damage, and constantly felt bad because choosing interesting / powerful evolutions meant consuming a lot of points, that I wasted by dying quickly. Again, I really wanted a practice mode, with dummies on which I could try the weapons (like any good RPG does)… This is why I don’t like multiplayer games with people I don’t know :).
So, I played a few games, won and lost and didn’t felt I was in control most of the time :). Could be a fun game, but really lacks a practice mode. Not for me.

Achievements : I was surprised that I got so many (1/3 !). Being a competitive multiplayer game I expected them to be mostly grinding. Looks like there is nothing too crazy, and playing quite a bit should be enough to complete them. I won’t, but good for them !

Sanctum 2

2 hours playtime

6 of 50 achievements

Sanctum 2 - unfinished

Second game in my “get the cards while giving it a chance”. This one is a tower defense combined with a FPS point of view. I wasn’t convinced at first, as tower defense is not my kind of games. But I think the FPS aspect helped a lot.
I played the first few maps, and liked it. I’m interested to see what options will be available and had a lot of fun so far.
So I’ll probably keep my review for later, as I’ll probably replay this one.
Moreover I see that it has online coop, so I’ll try to grab a friend !

Achievements : Hard to say. It feels that most of them will unlock just by playing. Right now, finishing a game with all feats of strength enabled is VERY hard, but I barely unlocked a few things, so it is probably not the right time to try that :).