April 2017 Monthly Challenge : Write Up

I really enjoyed the April monthly challenge, kindly provided to me by EvilBlackSheep.

SteamWorld Heist: SWH is effectively a single player team based, turn based 2D platformer. I really enjoyed SWH, so much so that I ended up leveling up all of the 9 characters to level 10 (the maximum level). My actual playtime (as reported by the game) was just over 30 hours and this was significantly more than I was expecting but was mainly due to the fact I liked the game so much and enjoyed experimenting with different team makeups to try and complete the levels. I liked the gentle humour and the Steampunk theme. The story line was entertaining, the abilities for each characters varied and interesting as were the weapons. If my backlog wasn't so huge I could easily have played through the game again on a slightly harder difficulty and both DLCs have gone onto my wish list. I only have one minor criticism (and it is nit picking) in that I found the actual difficulty of levels variable in that whilst you can set the difficulty level for each level the same difficulty for two levels could prove easy on one level and extremely difficult on another. I would heartily recommend this game to anyone who likes turn based tactical games.

Memoria: Memoria is a point & click adventure game. My first play of this didn't really grab me but I discovered (thanks to coments posted by BLEAO members) that it was the second game in a series, The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav being the first. I'd played tDECoS previously and got stuck so I decided to re-visit it and enlist my wife's help (as she plays a lot of P&C games). It was gratifying to find out she got stuck at the same place as I had but after leaving her to her own devices for half an hour she figured out the solution to the problem so I will continue with tDECoS and then play Memoria I think.

Hexcells Plus: HC+ is a hex based puzzle game based around logically figuring out whether to mark a hex as being a hex with information or no information about hexes around. I thought I was pretty good at logic games but around half a dozen levels in HC+ proved pretty challenging for me. I had to resort to the Steam forums twice for a hint on how to get past a point on two levels and I can recommend the forums as they are very helpful and people respond to any queries with a clue on which hex to look at so the complete solution is not spoiled. So my idea of using it like I did for Hexcells, i.e. just using it as a short time filler for 10-15 minutes to complete a level or two, fell apart as a few levels took me an hour or so to complete and because there is no save feature I often lost progress if real life intervened. The time of 23 hours includes some levels started half a dozen times and then abandoned if I got called away and I left it running over night once by mistake but I'd have thought I've put in between 10-12 hours actually playing it through. Having said all that it was a great game and for some of the month was my main game rather than the filler I had expected it to be. I highly recommend it if you like logic based puzzle games.

I didn't get chance to play any of Sniper Elite 3 or Sheltered this month, mainly because I enjoyed and played so much of SteamWorld Hesit!

Won On Steam Gifts

And a reminder about what my current status with SG wins is.

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So an increase of 6 wins & a reduction of 2 beaten games & 2 games I won’t play making an overall increase of 2 to my backlog.

TL;DR
I finished two of the fives games from the monthly challenge and played around an hour of the third. I’m more than happy with that :)

April 2017 Monthly Challenge : Progress

I needed to kick start some game completions so I thought I’d accept the monthly challenge and my thanks to EvilBlackSheep for Setting My Challenge

So after a week of the April challenge things are looking OK :)

SteamWorld Heist: Loving it the more I'm playing it. Quality game which I quite liked to start with but the more I play the more it sucks me in. Love the humour, graphics and audio. It's a game where the different classes & weapons really make a difference and where if I fail a level I can usually figure out why and replay the level successfully. If my local was Lola's bar I'd be a happy man :) This is the type of game if I'd have played it without the monthly challenge incentive I'd have probably moved onto something else as despite being a good game to start with it was a little slow to take off. But I am so glad I stuck with it as the longer I play the more I like it. The various weapon upgrades are nicely paced so completion of levels with sound tactics is usually possible either first or second go. I've upped the level of difficulty to Veteran (from casual, regular & experienced) recently and am enjoying it even more :)

Memoria: OK, I'll be honest. Point & click games I like are few and far between. In fact Jolly Rover, which I played & finished last year was the first P&C game I could really rave about. So far Memoria has not grabbed. But I'll persevere.

Hexcells Plus: A revelation. I liked & finished Hexcells earlier this year and thought it was a decent game. However, Hexcells Plus takes this type of game up an entire level. Ignore my play time, it's less than what Steam reports but only because I thought this would be like Hexcells where I could play and clear a level if I had 10-15 minutes free. Whilst there are the odd levels like this most are not.. I found most levels a serious challenge and two of them I had to look up hints in the forums to complete. Fortunately the Steam forums for Hexcells Plus are excellent and I quickly located posts which via a screenshot showed people were stuck at exactly the same point as me and the replies were extremely helpful, providing the bare minimum of a hint to continue. So quite often I started playing a level but then ended up leaving the game running, as I couldn't complete it, and came back to it hours later .. Suffice to say this is a game I've been completely sucked into and am loving it.

Won On Steam Gifts

And a reminder about what my current status with SG wins is.

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And yes; it is a new avatar. A real picture of me given the “photoshop” treatment :-)

April 2017 Monthly Challenge Accepted

I needed to kick start some game completions so I thought I’d accept the monthly challenge and my thanks to EvilBlackSheep for Setting My Challenge

The downloads are underway and I’ve started by completing the first few Hexcells Plus puzzles and unlocked the first achievement.

Keeping expectations realistic I’m hoping to finish the first two games, make a start on the 3rd, with progress on Hexcells Plus being mainly done just when I have 5-10 minutes spare to complete a level or two; so unsure how far I’ll get within the rest of the month. I’ll take any play on Sheltered as a bonus (or possibly using it as a replacement if I get stuck or find I don’t like Steamheist or Memoria)

Won On Steam Gifts

And a reminder about what my current status with SG wins is.

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2017 Generic Update Number 2

It’s been just over a month since my last generic update.

Won On Steam Gifts

A lot of progress on sorting my Steam Gifts wins. I now have at least cataloged all my SG wins

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30/36 out of the never played games have a dependency (usually this means they are part of a series and I still need to play a prior game in the series) and two have automatically been added to my backlog as I know from playing previous games in the series I will definitely like them. So that just leaves four wins, one of which is a film which I will watch shortly and another is a game I want to play with my wife so it’s just a matter of finding a time when we are both free and the other two were part of a 3 game pack which I only wanted to play one of the games.

So I now feel the first part of my plan to actually produce a definitive backlog list of my SG wins is complete and I can progress on to stage two - to start playing them in a more focused manner!

Backlog

All the games I definitely want to play are now in my Backlog List This currently stands at a daunting 256 games

Current Batch

My Current Batch

The main news here is that I’ve added Baldur’s Gate to my current batch. Now I have history with Baldur’s Gate as I originally bought it circa 2002 in a batch of games which unfortunately (for Baldur’s Gate) also included Diablo II & Dungeon Siege and although I really liked it I found I preferred the latter two. I finished both of those games but by then Morrowind (which became my second favourite game of all time) had come out and so once again Baldur’s Gate was put on hold. I then moved out to Sri Lanka & then Morocco and all gaming was put on hold and by the time I came back (to the UK) in 2006 MMOs were all the rage and I was “addicted” to EVE Online, WoW & then LOTRO .. Wind forward to 2015 and I built a new gaming PC and started to populate my Steam library. I once again picked up Baldur’s Gate (in a GoG sale as it happened) and started to play it but once again Baldur’s Gate lost out to the multitude of games dropping into my Steam & GoG libraries. However, playing (& beating) Sword Coast Legends last year ignited my passion for role playing games again which lead me to playing (& beating) Dragon Age Origins so it was only a matter of time before I got around to Baldur’s Gate. To kick start me playing Baldur’s Gate I have just bought Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear DLC as part of the Bundle Stars offer for Baldur’s Gate: The Complete Saga as an early 50th birthday present to give me the incentive to finally play the Baldur’s Gate series (I already have Baldur’s Gate II & Icewind Dale lined up too). So if ever there was a game I have wanted to complete it is Baldur’s Gate and my mission starts now ..

Completed Games Since Last Update

Hexcells I completed about half the puzzles without making a mistake and so redid the ones I’d made mistakes on to get the Perfectionist achievement. A rare 100% achievement game for me :) Hexcells is a decent game I’ve enjoyed very much. It’s a game I picked up and just played one level for 5-10 minutes. If you like these sort of games I’d recommend it.

Pixel Privateers My top wish listed game for the last 12 months was released the week before last and already beaten it, see my full post

Abandoned Games Since Last Update

Witcher I have to be honest and say that I’ve just got bored with it, at least for now. Stuck on chapter two and all the running about and the sudden increase in difficulty with the fights combined with the clunky controls has worn me down. Love the storyline but even a decent storyline can only take a game so far .. I will return to Witcher but I need a break

Outland My ability with an Xbox controller for the PC was simply not enough to get passed one particular point; full post

Pixel Privateers : Beaten

I’m counting Pixel Privateers as beaten as I’ve defeated the six main bosses and moved onto a new galaxy map. There is still some life left in the game for me though as I’ll play some more multiplayer and I’d like to open up all the tech tree as well as play through again with a new party now that I understand the mechanics and take my time.

This is a game I bought the day it was released as it had been top of my wish list for the almost 12 months, basically since the first time I found out about it. It’s from the same developer that produced Pixel Piracy and you can see that in Pixel Privateers. However, Pixel Privateers is a much more polished game; a big step up from Pixel Piracy (which incidentally I also enjoyed very much and beat too). I’ve really enjoyed playing Pixel Privateers to the extent that it’s probably one of my favourite dozen games of all time!

The best description I have seen of the game is that it’s a cross between Diablo and Borderlands 2. It’s basically a 2D side ways scroller, team based looting game. The graphics are some of the best pixel graphics I’ve seen. The action is frantic but in single player you have the option to pause and go into tactical mode where you can assign commands ready for un-pausing.

It’s just so easy to pick up and play and whilst the game play is repetitive the constant upgrading of gear and abilities and ability to change party members means that the team dynamics are constantly changing. Yes, there are a few glitches (for example rocket launchers are too overpowered) but they have already released one patch the for game and it only came out on the 21st Feb. Each planet (level) takes around 10-20 minutes to complete so ideal for a quick game or a more prolonged session. It’s definitely a “I’ll just do one more level” type of game.

I’d highly recommend the game and IMHO well worth the asking price

Outland - Abandoned

Really gutted about this but I’ve had to admit defeat for now. For the 22 hours play over almost 12 months I have mainly really enjoyed Outland and even made significant progress this week by completing the third boss. However, the issue I nearly always have with these types of games has occurred; I simply can’t get passed one section. It’s a fairly innocuous section of jumping that just requires a level of timing and control of the xBox controller I simply don’t have. But unfortunately it’s a game where there are no alternative routes :(

I remember I was similarly stumped with the second boss and taking a break for a few months and coming back to it resolved the issue so hopefully dropping Outland for a while and maybe trying again in the Spring with a fresh mind might resolve the issue.

I think for my next platformer I’ll pick a much shorter one - any suggestions for such a game on my Won on Steam Gifts list welcome :)

Won On Steam Gifts - 2017 Plan Of Attack

I don’t know how my never played games on my Won on Steam Gifts list got so large; it was a quite frankly ridiculous 75%+. I only enter for games I believe myself (or members of my family via family sharing) will play but somehow I ended up winning far more games than I played. Largely I think it’s because I played 3 epic RPGs (Sword Coast :Legends, Dragon Age Origins & Witcher 1) which took a lot of game playing time but also I had a habit of getting side tracked on other games. Having said that I did have some victories and marked 9 games I had won from SG as beaten last year. However, I intend to do much, much better this year.

So my New Year’s resolution for BLAEO was to target my games Won on Steam Gifts. To this end I set about categorising them and to aid me do this I created check list that I applied to each game.

1. Check if game has a dependency (usually a prior game in the series I want to play first) and place these games in my Dependency List. These games will await the dependency to be resolved and then I will continue with the game from point 2 but until then I do nothing with the game.
2. Install the game.
3. Perform a short play of the game. Take just enough time playing it to be able to categorise the game as one of following three
• If I like the game then it goes into my Backlog. These are games I am actively targeting to play. Additionally I will also add the game to one of my basic game category lists and order them so that once I have finished a game I can easily pull off the next game in the category.
• If I simply do not like the game I will mark it as Won't play. I know it's sad but I've got to be ruthless otherwise I'll never make meaningful inroads into my backlog.
• If I am on the fence about a game the game is marked as Unfinished and nothing more is done with it for now. I'll probably never get around to playing these games but if I ever clear my backlog these games are the next priority.
4. Uninstall the game.

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28/63 out of the never played games have a dependency so this leaves 35 games still left to perform a test play on

Progress

This means that in the last week I have reduced the unplayed category down from 33% to 20%

For The Future

The first aim is to get the unplayed category down to 0% and my intention is to do this by the end of February (and hopefully well before that). Once that has been achieved I will start to target games in my backlog list.

Summary

I’m hoping this method will help me focus even more on finishing off games or at least giving them a decent play through before I drop them. Hopefully this will also see my Steam Gifts beaten/completed games % rise and my unfinished games % drop.

Long Overdue Update

Well it’s been a while, around 4 months since my last update!

I completed Dear Esther in a single sitting the day I won it on Steam Gifts. I really enjoyed it. Stunning graphics & interesting story line. I really enjoy short games I can finish in one sitting. I'll probably revisit it again for another play through as I'm sure I probably missed some things along the way. Anyway highly recommended if you like "walking simulators"

After just over 6 months & 22 hours playtime I've decided to call Blockwick 2 beaten. I've completed the 9 Blockwick 2 "standard" chapters (total of 144 levels) but not the bonus chapter. I've only done 1 of the 9 basic chapters. I've really enjoyed it and can thoroughly recommend it if you like sliding block puzzle games. I might return to it at a later date to complete the basic levels and try and get illumination on all levels but for now I'm Blockwicked out ;) Some of the levels towards the end were taking up to 30 minutes to complete with multiple attempts required.

After playing a number of point and click games I didn't really enjoy (I mainly find them a bit restrictive & rather boring) I finally found one I liked and finished it. I think I mainly liked Jolly Rover for it's sense of humor and the excellent cookie hint system which meant if I got stuck I could quickly find out the answer and move on.

I’ve actually played “a fair bit” of Borderlands 2 since the last update, mainly because I had a gaming weekend with some old college friends and on the odd occasion both my wife and myself are in the mood for some gaming this our turn to game.

I also played a bit of Secret World as it’s a game I can easily play remotely with my old college friends. A good but not great game :)

However, the game I’ve played the most is Plants vs. Zombies GOTY Edition which is slightly bizarre because it’s a game I don’t own. It’s a game I bought my eldest son for Christmas 2015 but he didn’t really get into it until the Christmas just gone when both he, my youngest son, myself & my wife have all been “addicted” to it, playing in via family sharing. It’s a fantastic game and one of the few games (well OK actually the only game) I’m achievement hunting. I’d really recommend this as a great family game.

Current Batch

• The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
  

  26 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Outland
  

  12 hours playtime

  3 of 12 achievements

• Hexcells
  

  32 minutes playtime

  3 of 6 achievements

Continued progress with The Witcher. I'm just starting to find it a bit repetitive as I've been stuck in the main city for a while now and could do with a change of scenery, which hopefully the quest line will introduce soon. My main issue with the game has been a sudden steep increase in difficulty which meant I found myself unable to complete three quest lines. Investigation into the use of potions has helped although I find the potion system a bit cumbersome. Anyway I'm persevering for now in the hope I'll make a break through shortly.

Steady progress continues with Outland, a platform game I'm still really enjoying and still intent on finishing (one day!)

I've added Hexcells to my current batch as it's a game I can just fire up for just 2 minutes and clear a level. Very enjoyable casual puzzle game with nice incremental difficulty and enough added functionality to keep it interesting. This type of game has come a long way since minesweep!

For The Future

I've also spent quite a bit of time actually installing, performing a short test play of and then categorising my SG wins. This has proved pretty successful and currently I am down to less than 33% (down from over 75%) unplayed which I intend to continue to reduce as an ongoing task and report back with some more regular updates on this.

Weeklyish Roundup

I'm making a concerted effort to mark my games into the correct status categories so my unfinished category is increasing while my not played category diminishes. No game play has generally been involved in this it's simply correcting the status from prior game play

I also have a question for those of you who write reviews. I usually create a review in Steam either when I have completed a game or at a point when I think I am going to play the game for long enough for my opinion to be worth stating. I usually make it just visible to friends and put WIP (work in progress) in the header and then I add to review as I play the game. Then when the review is completed (usually when I actually finish the game) I remove the WIP and make it public. However, this has the downside of the review being added to my activity immediately when I create the review and when I make the review public the creation date remains the date I originally created the review. Ideally I'd like the review to only be visible to me whilst I'm compiling it (I don't mind people reading it but I'm not always sure they understand it is incomplete) and for the creation date to show as the date I make it public. Does anyone else have know how to do this? I don't really want to write the review outside of Steam and then copy an paste at the end as I'd more than likely not bother TBH.

I also tried playing the most what turned out to be possibly the most complicated game that I have ever tried playing as regards controls in From The Depths. I am going to need a lot more time to figure out the keyboard controls for this one .. Either that or wimp out and use the mouse controls, which apparently are a lot easier but don't open up the full potential of the game ..

Current Batch

• The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
  

  18 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Outland
  

  11 hours playtime

  3 of 12 achievements

• Blockwick 2
  

  18 hours playtime

  6 of 14 achievements

• Conflicks - Revolutionary Space Battles
  

  7 hours playtime

  2 of 44 achievements

• Jolly Rover
  

  60 minutes playtime

  0 of 16 achievements

• Light
  

  2 hours playtime

  2 of 13 achievements

• LEGO® Star Wars™: The Complete Saga
  

  0 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Space Engineers
  

  52 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Of Kings And Men
  

  11 hours playtime

  no achievements

More steady progress in the Witcher. The game keeps growing on me. The ambient noises in the crypt under Vizima is probably the best I have experienced in any game. They had me on edge the whole time I was in there. The story continues to intrigue. The other excellent thing I noticed about Witcher this week was the use of timed events, something that most RPGs seem to make only a cursory use of. In Witcher there are many quests that have events that only happen at a certain time so I am always keeping track of the in game time.

I completed another section in Outland and will try and keep progressing it each week now that I have cleared the second boss. Still highly recommended and the only game to date I have play exclusively on an xBox controller.

I think I'm approaching the point in Blockwick 2 where I may put it aside for a bit as I'm finding the puzzles really difficult now. I have the first four levels completed with illumination (basically completed with a bonus) and am about half way through level 8 but with many puzzles from level 5 onwards not completed with illumination. However, the temptation to try and get to the end of all 9 basic levels is high but thats another 24 puzzles ..

Light was a game I picked up at the back end of last year, played it liked it and then promptly forgot about it and it's name so when I remembered about it I couldn't find it in my library because I'd forgotten the name :( Luckily Thirteen13 posted on BLAEO a short while ago with Light as one of the games they were playing and I recognised it and so I've included it in my latest batch and started to re-play it :) It's a top down 2D action adventure scroller with stealth elements. I like the stylised graphics and smooth controls but I don't like what appears to be fairly random movement by the AI meaning it's impossible to predict where there are safe places to hide, which I generally thought was a fundamental part of stealth games? Consequently it's proving frustrating :(

Jolly Rover continues to entertain. I actually find the humour quite amusing - could this be the first point and click game I finish? My wife has also started playing this too, off my account via family gaming which means I'm getting a chance to evaluate some non-Steam games..

I haven't played Conflicks for several months now and it's likely to take me an hour or so just to re-cap where I was. I'm not sure what to do with this game as I really liked it. I'm not quite sure why I've not played it either; it just never seems to get to the top fo the play queue. I think I'll give it until the end of September and if I've not picked it up again I'll replace it with something else.

No play time for Space Engineers but only because I got side tracked on other games. I think there is room in my current batch for one open ended game that I can keep dipping in and out of until I've had enough of it. So expect occasional updates over the course of the rest of the year from this one.

I shall be dropping Of Kings And Men from my current batch. It's an open ended game that whilst very enjoyable is too much of a time sink. I'll keep revisiting it from time to time to see how the early access is progressing but it's not one for chalking off as completed or even beaten.

Weeklyish Roundup

Well it's gone a bit pear shaped this week but you can find out why in the details below .. However, I did find time to join the BLAEO Discord Channel as I've been using Discord for a while anyway. Originally I joined Discord for the weekly chats Quadro Delta have about their upcoming title Pixcel Privateers, which I am very interested in.

I finally downloaded and fired up Dwarf Fortress as I wanted to see what it was all about having heard the rumours over the years .. I fired up a basic guide, sat down to play and after about an hour I had to go and lie down in a darkened room. It's scope genuinely scared me. I suspect if I really got into it I might never leave my computer again. Suffice to say it's on hold for now.

Good job on the web site update mandrill - I think the new styling is an approvement and the new recently played list a useful addition

Current Batch

• The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
  

  14 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Outland
  

  11 hours playtime

  3 of 12 achievements

• Blockwick 2
  

  18 hours playtime

  6 of 14 achievements

• Conflicks - Revolutionary Space Battles
  

  7 hours playtime

  2 of 44 achievements

• Jolly Rover
  

  32 minutes playtime

  0 of 16 achievements

• Light
  

  13 minutes playtime

  2 of 13 achievements

• Star Sky - ブルームーン
  

  2 hours playtime

  13 of 18 achievements

• LEGO® Star Wars™: The Complete Saga
  

  0 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Space Engineers
  

  52 minutes playtime

  no achievements

• Of Kings And Men
  

  11 hours playtime

  no achievements

Witcher continues to be enjoyable. I've back tracked a bit and am still mopping up some side quests. Only a couple of hours played since the last update but the important thing is to keep this one ticking along

Blockwick 2 is getting pretty difficult but I aquired another achievement, solve every puzzle in chapter 7, although I had to look up how to do part of it as one puzzle had me stumped for weeks

I managed another couple of achievements for Star Sky although I'm not sure how I managed to get them - it seems a bit random to me .. However, I find it quite relaxing just playing a single play through when I have 5 mins to spare, usually just before I go to bed :)

Jolly Rover replaces Year Walk, which I enjoyed very much. One of my work colleagues has warned me Jolly Rover is one of the worst games he's ever played but I quite enjoyed the short test play I did and think my two boys may enjoy it too; we'll see ..

Space Engineers is a new addition to my current batch and was on my wish list for what seems like forever. I played it over the free Steam weekend a while back but found it just too involved to do it justice in such a short time frame. My hand has hovered over the buy button several times, particularly when GMG did the dual pack with Medieval Engineers but somehow I never pressed it. I tried to win it on SG without any luck. I finally bought it from the recent Humble Bundle, mainly because an old college friend of mine also bought it and said he was having great fun playing it with his son. I've made a start but the learning curve is vertical so I imagine this is a game I am going to slowly get into ..

Of Kings And Men is another new addition to my backlog. It was released on early access. I succumbed. It's awesome. I'm really rubbish at it and it's still awesome. Since getting it on Thursday the only other game I've played is Mount And Blade (the game OKAM came out from via the Warband cRPG mod) and only during OKAM server resets. The rest of my backlog has gone onto hold. I was up until 02:00 playing this game and I start work at 07:00. I've already written a review. I need some serious help peeps to get back onto my backlog .. I'm using an acronym, OKAM, for a game name that's only 13 characters long. HELP ME PLEASE!