Long overdue update

So my last update was 2½ months ago.. Wow! Real life caught up with me! Did have some time to game, but not much time to sit down and write a post, but hey, it’s long overdue so here’s all the games I’ve beaten since my last update:

• Pandarama: The Lost Toys
  

  5 hours playtime

  9 of 9 achievements

• Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
  

  2 hours playtime

  12 of 12 achievements

• Year Walk
  

  2 hours playtime

  10 of 10 achievements

• SAMOLIOTIK
  

  3 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

• Grow Home
  

  5 hours playtime

  7 of 26 achievements

Couple of short games there.. Pandarama: The Lost Toys is a mobile port.. it’s not bad, but yeah, it’s a mobile port. Was a SG win though and had some casual fun with it, so all good! Really liked Brothers! My playtime’s off cause Steam was down when I played most of it, but still very nice story. Sometimes kind of awkward to play it alone on my keyboard but it worked out nice. Improved my coordination ;-) For Year Walk I only needed the final achievement to play it on New Year’s Eve, so I did just that. Interesting game, which I’d definitely recommend to play through once without guides. Was an interesting experience and not too scary (I hate scary games :-P). I played Samoliotik and Grow Home for one of the monthly themes. Samoliotik is a piece of trash really, but I got 100% achievement in 29 minutes (rest of time is card idling :-P). Grow Home I expected to like but I grew extremely frustrated with the controls I couldn’t force myself to go achievement hunting. Ah well, it happens sometimes :-)

Then for the bigger games..

This War of Mine

Medium games (10-30 hours) Overwhelmingly Positive
31 of 31 achievements (100%)

Oh yeah I loved This War of Mine! I originally played it in 2014, but during the Christmas sale I picked up the DLC and decided to go for 100% achievements. The addition of the children in the DLC is interesting, but once you get the hang of the game they’re pretty much just like another character (but can’t scavenge or guard). Had some pretty interesting runs. Especially my last one! I was lacking 3 achievements at that point (Miraculous Recovery, Back from the Brink and Street art) and decided I’d try to get them in the same run. One piece of advice: don’t try that!! :-P It was horrible! I tried to get one character sick to get Miraculous Recovery first, but of course everybody else got sick as well, and then Pavle was nearly shot to death when trying to get one of the graffiti for Street Art and everybody was depressed. At one point I had 3 characters who were so depressed they couldn’t do anything and poor Bruno was the only one still being able to move around slightly. Then the neighbours showed up and asked for help, and I thought, what the heck, I’ll just send Bruno.. Got nothing to lose there, and it turned out to be key. The same night terminally wounded Pavle decided to leave us. He took some supplies, but at least the other people didn’t have to worry about him anymore and they felt a little bit better because Bruno had helped someone in need, and slowly but steadily we got out of the deep hole and got all the achievements. A truly miraculous recovery it was, and was so happy when it worked out :-)

Batman: Arkham Knight

Long games (> 30 hours) Won on SteamGifts
84 of 113 achievements (74%)

I won Batman: Arkham Knight on steamgifts and I’ve got to say it’s my favourite batman game! It received a lot of bad reviews because of the horrible performance when it launched but it played pretty smoothly for me (though admitted I got a premium game pc). Had a lot of fun with the batmobile and all the side quests and DLC. Most DLC’s are pretty short, but got them for free so can’t complain there ;-) Only downside they really overdid the Riddler sidequests this time. I think about 20 hours of my playtime was running around finding and solving all the 200+ riddles.. Wayyyyy too much. Was very glad to have him locked up in the end and get the true ending as well. No 100% for me though, cause I’m not good enough at the combat and don’t want to rage quit the AR challenges for another 50 hours :-P

Bastion

Medium games (10-30 hours) Overwhelmingly Positive
24 of 24 achievements (100%)

I started Bastion about 3 year ago and somehow stopped playing before I finished it. I can’t remember why, but it was in the monthly theme so I decided to give it another go and boy am I glad I did! I absolutely loved it.. the music, the gameplay, the story.. I’m not a pro gamer or anything so pretty proud of my 100% here as well, cause some of those dreams with 10 idols active are pretty damn hard, but I did it! :-D Played through the game, played through new game+ to get the other ending, did all the dreams with 10 idols and finally score attack mode. Some people complain about the controls, but I didn’t have any issues here.

DmC Devil May Cry

Long games (> 30 hours) Monthly Theme Overwhelmingly Positive Won on SteamGifts
20 of 58 achievements (34%)

I was really excited to play Devil May Cry. It was one of my SG wins I meant to play for a couple of times already but somehow didn’t. But then it showed up in the Monthly Theme so I decided I’d devoted my small amount of playtime in February to this game. I really, really liked it in the beginning! The music, the visuals, the action were all great. But the further I got into the game, the more I started to dislike it. The game was obviously designed to play with a controller and with mouse/keyboard it got just frustrating. I can’t remember how many times I yelled “I DID PRESS THOSE KEYS!!!!”. It’s too bad, cause the game really lost its charm this way. I switched to easy difficulty and finished it nonetheless but didn’t feel like going after the missing achievements or buy the DLC.. Oh well.. I did try it and I did beat it, so that’s a partially success there I guess :-)

Faerie Solitaire

Long games (> 30 hours)
30 of 30 achievements (100%)

Final game in this update is my casual time killer friend Faerie Solitaire. Quite honesly, this game’s not much fun but it holds a special place in my heart because my wife and I played it together in the days before our wedding in 2013 while anxiously awaiting everything to come.. I saw it in my “Unfinished” list so I decided to finish it. The last two achievements are a pain in the butt. I was actually pretty lucky to get all eggs fairly fast but then I had to play through 2 more Adventure modes to hatch them all.. yawn.. but it’s all done now, time to find another casual time killer :-) Any suggestions?

On a final note, one of my favourite bands released their new album today so I’ve been listening to it non-stop today. Dutch band called Chef’Special. If you want you can check them out on Spotify :-) That’s it for now! I’ll try to make my next update faster, but I got a feeling real life’s going to keep me busy for a while ;-) Have fun slaying fellow assasins and I’ll join you again when I can! :-)

Short update

Don’t have a lot of time, but I wanted to share with you guys that I’m quite happy to have 100 perfect games now. Yay! :-D

List of games recently played:

• An Assassin in Orlandes
  

  5 hours playtime

  10 of 10 achievements

• Fairy Tale Mysteries 2: The Beanstalk
  

  4 hours playtime

  11 of 11 achievements

• Swordbreaker The Game
  

  4 hours playtime

  67 of 67 achievements

• The Uncertain: Episode 1 - The Last Quiet Day
  

  7 hours playtime

  32 of 32 achievements

• Puzzle Agent
  

  3 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Puzzle Agent 2
  

  3 hours playtime

  52 of 52 achievements

• Year Walk
  

  2 hours playtime

  9 of 10 achievements

• Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily
  

  5 hours playtime

  24 of 24 achievements

• Monster Puzzle
  

  3 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Her Majesty's SPIFFING
  

  5 hours playtime

  25 of 25 achievements

A few from last month’s theme, a few SG wins, a few from this month’s theme and my 100th perfect game was Her Majesty’s Spiffing, a game I helped kickstart and really enjoyed playing. You can read my review on Steam if you want :-) I really enjoyed playing Swordbreaker as well. Cool game!

So since it’s halfway december now and I’m probably quite busy the rest of the month, I’ll take the time now to wish you all happy holidays and hope you have a good time celebrating whatever you’re celebrating! And if you’re not celebrating anything, well then I still wish you a good time! See you in 2017!

Quick update

Joe Dever's Lone Wolf

Not much since my last update, but I had to let you guys know I 100%-ed Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf!

Took me 39 hours and the run on hard had some frustrating battles. Especially the first battle with Gunzar (with the Doomwolves) was a pain in the butt.. Had to do it many times and compared to that, the final battle was a walk in the park.. Overall the last few hours on hard weren’t very enjoyable and the random fights while moving on the map or meditating were just extremely frustrating, to the point where I’d just purposely lose them asap and reload to previous checkpoint (yeah you can’t just reload right off the bat, you have to wait till you’re dead), since fighting them usually meant I had to meditate again right after with the chance of another random fight, all the while breaking down your main weapon and arrrrrghhh.. frustrating!

Anyway, I’d definitely recommend this game, but I wouldn’t recommend going for 100% (since that requires 3 runs and the battles just aren’t much fun in the third run).. Play on normal (if you like a challenge) or easy (if you’re just going for the story). I’d recommend starting on Normal and if you grow too frustrated in the battles, switch to easy. Oh and pick the Sixth Sense power, cause you really don’t want to do those Shianti Cube puzzles yourself :-P They’re frustrating enough with the Sixth Sense power as it is ;-)

• Frankenstein: Master of Death
  

  3 hours playtime

  20 of 20 achievements

Frankenstein: Master of Death

Also played a quick HOG/Point & Click game on the side. Wasn’t very hard but I felt like there were too many locations/items so there’s lots of running around (“wait, where did I see the maple lock again?”). I actually resorted to using the Hints button to find the location where I could continue quite often, something which I almost never do in those games, but I just got annoyed by clicking through the entire map over and over. Not the greatest game in the genre, but it was a nice change of pace from Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf. Either way, another one for the monthly down.

Monthly theme progress

So with that, it’s 4 monthly games completed and since it’s the 28th already, I guess that’ll be it. Not the greatest result, but since Joe Dever took almost 40 hours and I also played Civ 6 for 70+ hours, I guess it isn’t too bad :-) Also, the live ranking for the monthly theme seems broken as it only notes 1 beaten/1 completed for me, even though I’ve 100%-ed 4 games.. Hope it can be fixed before the end of the month :-)

November menu update

Appetizers

• The Uncertain: Episode 1 - The Last Quiet Day
  

  6 hours playtime

  31 of 32 achievements

• The 39 Steps
  

  5 hours playtime

  20 of 20 achievements

• Dracula's Legacy
  

  4 hours playtime

  16 of 16 achievements

Time to update you on some of the games I’ve played! First a few short games as appetizers. The Uncertain was a SG win. Pretty good one as well! It’s a point & click game, but no hard puzzles. It’s mostly about the story and there’s tons of references to other games, movies etc. etc. in there. I thought it was a really nice game, so can’t wait for episode 2. It’s in completed because at the time of finishing the game I had 100% of the achievements but they decided to add a new one which you can’t get yet, so I’ll get it back to 100% soon-ish ;-)

Then two games for the monthly theme: The 39 Steps and Dracula’s Legacy (SG win). The 39 Steps was a pretty interesting read. I didn’t expect much from it, but I really enjoyed it. It’s pretty much just a novel you read through, but then on your screen, and the whole setting was done very well. I’d recommend “playing” this game if you like reading! Dracula’s Legacy was a pretty generic HOG/P&C game.. I played it less than 2 weeks ago and I can’t remember much of it.. that should say enough I think ;-)

Main course

Sid Meier's Civilization VI

Long games (> 30 hours)
80 of 100 achievements (80%)

Then for the main course: Civilization VI. At the time of my last update I was just into my first game so I couldn’t say much about it at the time but I promised you some more once I got the time to play some more. Well, as you can see from my playtime and number of achievements I did have time to play it some more ;-) TLDR: it does have its flaws, but I personally feel it’s better than Civ V, especially at launch!

The biggest downside at the beginning was the AI. It’s just stupid. Like small civilizations declaring war on you over and over, even though they have no chance of winning. Like a civ which you’re fighting a space race with but isn’t sabotaging your rocketry projects… Like Gandhi asking you for a joint war on Cleopatra and then denouncing you for being a warmonger the next turn… Yeah, those kind of things happened a lot ;-) Fortunately they put out a patch last week, which features a bunch of AI tweaks. I’ve only played half a game since then, but it does look a lot better!

Apart from the AI, I think the game is really polished at launch. The much feared “cartoony” graphics are not so bad after all, and they really work for the game. There are not many bugs and the game runs very smoothly (apart from a Windows Defender hiccup in the first week). They really put a lot of the game mechanics from the Civ V expansions in the base game, which is just awesome. No more waiting for expansions for religions, spies and/or tourism. The only thing to complain about in that regard is that there’s not really a point in using all these mechanics and it’s best to focus just on one to get a victory (going for a religious victory, then go full force for faith/religion, if not, well you can just ignore it).. So while they’re fun to play with, I guess most of the hardcore Civ players will just turn off everything but Domination Victory ;-) Oh and if you plan on going for Domination Victory make sure to actually turn off the Culture Victory, since I triggered that by mistake while conquering the other Civs

The main new things in Civ VI are districts and the way government/civics work. I really like the districts! Basically you can build a district at every X population in a city and you can only build specific buildings if you have a specific district in your city. So no more “just build everything in your cities”, you actually have to think! Wanna build a university? Tough luck if you don’t have a science district and your city isn’t growing… It really makes you think ahead which goals you have for your cities!

The civic/government system is also pretty nice. It’s basically another tech tree, but then for civics and you “research” with culture. The civics can be government types like monarchy, democracy etc. or policy cards. Every government type has room for a specific number of policy cards. So for instance in a merchant republic you have room for 3 economy policy cards. An economy policy card is for instance “+1 production in all cities” or “+50% production towards settlers”. As said, you earn these cards by “researching” them and get many more than you can actually use so another thing that makes you think! They’re not too overpowered but can still help you out a lot.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the game, but after 74 hours in also kind of burned out on it.. some of the achievements are a real pain in the butt and I’m not going to resort to save game cheating.. I guess I’m taking a little break to give 2k the time to patch it up a bit more and then go for the 100%! :-)

Dessert

Joe Dever's Lone Wolf HD Remastered

Long games (> 30 hours) Monthly Theme Won on SteamGifts
72 of 79 achievements (91%)

And for dessert we have Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf.. Usually dessert is sweet and easy to eat, but not Lone Wolf, no.. The game can be really hard, especially in the beginning when you have no clue what your’re doing… It looks like the combat is turn based but it only looks that way cause the enemies can just attack you in your “turn”! So my first game on normal was a real challenging experience. I understand now why the game has achievements for “not switching to easy” ;-) Fortunately, the story is really good. It’s like you’re reading a book, getting to make decisions yourself and then fight enemies, which is a nice combination (though the combat does get a bit repetitive).. your decisions actually do matter cause they can give you an advantage or disadvantage in the combat. Especially who gets the initiative can be super decisive in tough fights!

My first playthrough took me about 17 hours on normal and last evening I finished my second playthrough (on easy to experience some of the other decisions) in about 7 hours. Now for the remaining achievements I’m planning on doing a playthrough on hard, but that’ll probably see me rage quitting the game a few times because of RNG screwing me over in combat… we’ll see if I can do it ;-) It was a SG win for me and counts for the monthly so that’s very nice :-)

PS: Sorry for the wall of text.. I’m bad at screenshots, but perhaps I should add some to make it more readable next time :-P

October Update

So I wanted to write an update end of last month, but I just got caught up in life so didn’t get to it.. And since October is now almost over as well, I really need to write an update :-)

The Main Games

• The Walking Dead: Michonne
  

  4 hours playtime

  21 of 21 achievements

• Card of spirits
  

  21 hours playtime

  16 of 19 achievements

• Watch_Dogs
  

  42 hours playtime

  no achievements

• The Room
  

  3 hours playtime

  5 of 5 achievements

• The Park
  

  3 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

• SKYHILL
  

  14 hours playtime

  39 of 46 achievements

• Sid Meier's Civilization VI
  

  9 hours playtime

  7 of 100 achievements

So a bunch of SG wins down in the past couple of weeks. First off The Walking Dead: Michonne. I love those Telltale Games and this is a decent one as well. Yes, it’s short, but the story is alright and there’s plenty of action. Not the greatest game ever, but a nice appetizer for The Walking Dead Season 3 :-)

Then Card of Spirits.. I talked about this one in my previous update. I played it for a bit then and thought it’d be impossible to get some achievements but I wasn’t ready to give up yet and perhaps I’d find the trick to it later…. well I did find the trick! Was pretty cool to figure it out, so I really liked the game at that point, but then it turned out I can’t get the final 3 achievements due to a stupid bug of achievements not unlocking…. I tried talking to the dev but after a generic answer he just ignored me. Not being able to 100% a game due to a bug is just a big no-no in my book!

I also played a loooot of Watch_Dogs! I really enjoyed it and finished the story missions and most of the side missions. Didn’t go all the way of finishing all the side missions, cause some of them were pretty boring and I don’t get Steam Achievements for them anyway, so screw that.. really looking forward to Watch_Dogs 2 now though! Probably won’t play it at launch, but once everything settles down..

Then for some smaller games.. The Room and The Park! Both from my wishlist.. I won The Room on Steamgifts and got The Park from the Bundlestars bundle. Really enjoyed both! The Room was a lovely puzzle game.. pretty straight forward and lovely atmosphere. The same can be said about The Park but then the atmosphere being a lot darker ;-) I’m usually not a big fan of horror games, cause I hate jump-scares, but there weren’t many of those and I just loved the whole theme park setting. Played a lot of The Secret World MMO back in the day and the Theme Park was one of my favourite area’s there! If you don’t mind shorter games, you should definitely play both of those games!

Then my latest SG win: SKYHILL. Really promising game and quite fun the first few runs before it gets reaaaaaally repetitive and quite boring to be honest. I’ve completed the tower twice now, but not sure if I’ll go for 100% here.. Finishing on Hardcore mode will be pretty impossible for me I guess.. First you need to unlock Hardcore mode by finishing in Hard Mode.. well, that’s been impossible so far ;-) RNG can really screw you up.. Also there’s one achievement which is apparently bugged, so yeah… I think I’ll mop up what I can and then call it a night!

And for the main event for the coming weeks: Civilization VI! Been looking forward to this for a while, so great I can play it now.. Still in my first game, so can’t say much about it, but game looks really polished.. It’s like Civ V with all expansions right from the start, so that’s really nice.. Though on the other hand some of my friends are complaining that there’s so much you can do that doesn’t really amount too much.. Oh well, we’ll see in the next few weeks :-)

Random short games

Not too much to say about this.. just some short games I played to improve my completed ratio.. Only rage deinstalled KickHim two times due to it not unlocking one of the achievements for me for God knows why.. As said before, I really really hate that!

If anyone wants to know something about one of those games, let me know in the comments!

• Totally Unbalanced
  

  3 hours playtime

  10 of 10 achievements

• Moon Colonization Project
  

  3 hours playtime

  3 of 3 achievements

• The Magical Silence
  

  2 hours playtime

  1 of 1 achievements

• It's Spring Again
  

  2 hours playtime

  4 of 4 achievements

• Highschool Possession
  

  70 minutes playtime

  2 of 2 achievements

• Dear RED - Extended
  

  2 hours playtime

  11 of 11 achievements

• Blade Symphony
  

  7 hours playtime

  1 of 1 achievements

• Forgotten, Not Lost - A Kinetic Novel
  

  2 hours playtime

  4 of 4 achievements

• Echo Tokyo: Intro
  

  39 minutes playtime

  6 of 6 achievements

• Escape This
  

  2 hours playtime

  5 of 5 achievements

• Spakoyno: Back To USSR 2.0
  

  2 hours playtime

  11 of 11 achievements

• Space Codex
  

  4 hours playtime

  7 of 7 achievements

• CAFE 0 ~The Drowned Mermaid~
  

  5 hours playtime

  21 of 21 achievements

• KickHim
  

  3 hours playtime

  10 of 11 achievements

September Update

So since I’m going on a 2 week vacation to Crete tomorrow, here’s my September update already. I’ll probably have some time to play at the end of the month so I’ll do another update then! :-)

Monthly Theme Games

• Supreme League of Patriots Issue 1: A Patriot Is Born
  

  6 hours playtime

  35 of 35 achievements

• Supreme League of Patriots Issue 2: Patriot Frames
  

  5 hours playtime

  21 of 21 achievements

• Supreme League of Patriots Issue 3: Ice Cold in Ellis
  

  5 hours playtime

  22 of 22 achievements

So I played the Supreme League of Patriots season for the monthly theme.. It’s meh.. I mean, the idea is pretty cool, the story’s kind of fun, there’s plenty of humor and it’s a point and click! Sounds pretty good, but unfortunately it isn’t. Yes, the jokes made me smile every now and then, but there’s just too much conversation, too much trying to be funny so it gets annoying really fast.. It also doesn’t help that the gameplay makes you find that one line of conversation before you can solve the puzzle (even if you have a pretty good idea what to do without that line of conversation). There’s no indication whether a conversation topic is actually useful or it’s just humor.. To make it worse, if you accidentally click a topic again you have to click a bazillion times to skip every line or listen to the same jokes again.. Also, some of the puzzles don’t make a lot of sense and the inventory management is horrible…… If you’re going to play this, I’d advise finding a guide and see it more like an episode of a television show where you have to click every now and then ;-) Anyway, it’s a quick 100% for 3 games, so that’s nice!

The others

• The Talos Principle
  

  32 hours playtime

  40 of 40 achievements

• 1979 Revolution: Black Friday
  

  7 hours playtime

  39 of 39 achievements

• Card of spirits
  

  9 hours playtime

  7 of 19 achievements

I played The Talos Principle for the monthly theme last month, but I didn’t have the DLC and guess what? The DLC’s on sale so I bought it and played it! Really liked it! The puzzles are hard, but not impossible and I really like you only need 10 stars instead of all of them, so I just gave up on the stars that seemed too much work ;-) Was fun to make my brain work again and glad to have this game on my 100% completed list :-)

1979 Revolution: Black Friday is a SG win. It’s a very interesting game about the history of Iran. I was not familiar with it at all and the game gives some really nice insight into that. The game plays like a Telltale game. It’s not as good, but I thought it was fine. The game’s rather short (I guess you can finish your first playthrough in 2 hours or so) but it has replayability, especially if you want 100% achievements (impossible to get in 1 run). There’s a lot of collectables (called stories) which can be either an object you need to examine or a photo that needs to be taken. Some can be easily missed, so I used a guide for my second playthrough to mop up all I missed. All in all, I really enjoyed playing this game, so I’d definitely recommend it if you’re interested to learn about Iran.

The last game I played is another SG win called Card of Spirits, which is (surprise, surprise) a card game. The game’s pretty simple. There’s no tutorial or anything so you need some time to figure it out. Also, it’s a card game, nothing more, nothing less. You can only play against the AI and every round is the same.. I played almost 100 rounds so far, and though I won most, I still lost a lot as well, since you can be a bit unlucky. There’s also some impossible achievements to win number of games in a row (up to 100). My highest win streak so far is 6, so no way that’s achievable. Now that I understand how the game works I keep track of all the cards that have been played so I can make an educated guess which cards the AI has and I know how the AI plays mostly, but still you can just get unlucky and lose.. I’m not ready to give up on it yet though! Perhaps there’s some trick I can use to beat the AI every time, so I guess I’ll play it some more after my vacation ;-)

For now, I’m going to enjoy my vacation and see you guys in 2 weeks!

August Wrap-up

So it’s September 1st, which means August is done! I had a fairly productive month, killing a bunch of titles for the monthly. Here’s a list of games I finished after my last update:

• D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die
  

  17 hours playtime

  78 of 78 achievements

• Doctor Who: The Adventure Games
  

  12 hours playtime

  30 of 30 achievements

• Life Is Strange
  

  23 hours playtime

  60 of 60 achievements

• Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today
  

  6 hours playtime

  24 of 24 achievements

• The Secret Order 2: Masked Intent
  

  5 hours playtime

  24 of 24 achievements

• The Talos Principle
  

  24 hours playtime

  36 of 40 achievements

• BioShock Infinite
  

  38 hours playtime

  38 of 80 achievements

First three being SG Wins, so especially happy to knock those out of the park. D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die was an interesting game to say the least. Crazy characters, crazy gameplay.. but well I had fun! I even 100%-ed the game, which I didn’t expect, and only the last achievement (earn 100k credits) was a bit annoying, but the rest were pretty fun! Doctor Who: The Adventure Games wasn’t the best adventure game I’ve ever played. Puzzles were really easy and the stealth scenes a bit annoying. Though, if you like Doctor Who, it’s definitely worth playing. The first 4 episodes are a bit lacking gameplay wise, but the Gunpowder Plot I actually enjoyed a lot. Area’s are larger and the back story was pretty interesting.

Then Life is Strange… I went in with high expectations. Did it meet all of them? I don’t know.. It was an awesome experience.. the visuals and atmosphere are amazing. The characters were really memorable as well and the choices actually made me think (although like with all those “choice” games, they don’t have an extremely big impact). But I guess this whole high school setting is not really my thing, and while the game mechanics are intriguing in the beginning, it gets a bit repetitive. Overall really great game but not as super duper awesome as I expected ;-)

Then for the non SG wins: Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today and The Secret Order 2: Masked Intent. Both of these games were decent, but nothing special. Oh well, two games which can be 100%-ed in 5 hours while not getting annoyed is good in my book ;-)

The Talos Principle is a different thing. I played a lot of it in 2014 but got sever cases of motion sickness like I mentioned in my update. I tweaked a lot with the setting and finally got it so that I didn’t feel like throwing up after 15 minutes of playing.. I still felt a bit wobbly but it worked and I could finish the game with all endings last night! Yay! Loved the puzzles! The 4 achievements I’m missing are from the Road to Gehenna DLC, so I might have to pick that up if it’s on sale some time in the future!

I also played a bit of Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea and I’m probably going to finish that in September since I ran out of time in August. I’m on vacation for 2 weeks this month, so I probably don’t have much time to do the September Monthly, so I might as well finish some August games!

Then for my proudest achievement this month……..

• Renowned Explorers: International Society
  

  106 hours playtime

  148 of 148 achievements

Oh yeah I did it!!!!! I 100%-ed renowned explorers!!! It took me 106 hours but it was so worth it! I love this game to bits! I have some giveaways up for this game on steamgifts.com (ending today), so you might want to check those out:

Group Giveaway
Public Giveaway

And to top that, Abbey Games announced they’re going to make another DLC, so I’m really excited! The developers are from The Netherlands like me (their office is actually like 20 minutes from my home) and the game’s amazing, so you should really check it out if you haven’t!

That’s it for now..Talk to you guys later! :-)

AUGUST MONTHLY UPDATE 1

So the July Monthly was quite a success for me, helping me to complete 8 games! Now for the August monthly, I also have quite a nice backlog to pick from. I already played and completed Time Mysteries 2 and Time Mysteries 3, since I felt like playing some HOGs!

Apart from that I’ve started Life is Strange. I only play when I know I have at least 3 hours of undisturbed gaming time (basically meaning my wife isn’t home for at least 3 hours ;-)), so I’ve played and completed up to Episode 3 so far. Love it very much so far, so hoping I’ll have an opportunity to finish it soon! :-)

• Time Mysteries 2: The Ancient Spectres
  

  7 hours playtime

  11 of 11 achievements

• Time Mysteries 3: The Final Enigma
  

  4 hours playtime

  11 of 11 achievements

• Life Is Strange
  

  15 hours playtime

  36 of 60 achievements

WHAT’S NEXT?

Would love to have your help in selecting the other games to play this month! This is the list of games that are on my backlog that fit the monthly theme and which I want to pick from:

SG Wins:

• D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die (Looks like fun, but pretty hard to 100% I think?)
• Doctor Who: The Adventure Games

Others:

• Finish The Talos Principle (already played much of this 1½ years ago, but I got nauseous from playing, so I’ve yet to finish it)
• Bioshock Infinite DLC’s (absolutely loved the main game and bought the DLC’s a while ago but haven’t played it yet)
• Gemini: Heroes Reborn
• No Time To Explain Remastered
• Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today
• Edna & Harvey: The Breakout
• Costume Quest 2

If you guys have any strong opinions for or against some of these options, please let me know! :-)

And so after a rather depressing post-summersale update, I’ve started slaying my backlog again! I’ve come to accept that there’s probably no way I’ll be able to finish games faster than adding them due to the many bundles out there, but hey, I’ll go complete some games anyway!

The Monthly Theme was a great motivation this month! I had many of the games on the list, so I worked at them tirelessly and this is post is the result so far!

THE UNFINISHED BACKLOG

• LYNE
  

  23 hours playtime

  33 of 33 achievements

• Sparkle 2 Evo
  

  6 hours playtime

  22 of 22 achievements

• 12 Labours of Hercules
  

  21 hours playtime

  22 of 22 achievements

• 12 Labours of Hercules II: The Cretan Bull
  

  11 hours playtime

  22 of 22 achievements

A few of those came from my “Unfinished” backlog. I played Lyne for a while in 2014 or 2015 but never finished it and picked it up this month again and got it to 100%! Have to admit I used a guide for the last couple of levels, since I was drawing those lines in my dreams, but overall fun experience!

Sparkle 2 Evo was another one I finished. I actually played most of it in the past, but somehow never finished it. Well it’s done now! Not the most fun game, but it was alright I guess.

The Labours of Hercules games I played with my wife (she plays the levels first, and then I get them to gold star ;-)). We played the first one in the past, but she grew tired of it, so I finished it up, and then we played the second one (or well I played most of it :-P)).

THE BAD

• Three Digits
  

  6 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

Three Digits is a horrible game. In theory the game sounded like fun since I really like playing with numbers, but the gameplay just mindnumbingly boring. 300 levels that have the same “gameplay”. Yeah, way too much even if the gameplay was fun, which it isn’t. Sometimes there’s some strategies you can apply to find the solution, but most of the time it was just brute force guessing, which well.. is not much fun..

THE GOOD

• Hare In The Hat
  

  6 hours playtime

  34 of 34 achievements

• Zenge
  

  3 hours playtime

  1 of 1 achievements

Then there’s two really cool games I played, which I probably never would have played if it wasn’t for the theme!

Hare in the Hat is a casual puzzle game, with some kind-of hidden object clicking to find puzzles and then solving the actual puzzles. Most puzzles are rather easy but some were extremely frustrating (I’m looking at your Hungarian Rings!). The UI could use some work in pointing you in the right direction, but overall I really enjoyed the game. Even bought the DLC to get it to 100%!

The other game I really enjoyed (even wrote a Steam review for it!) is Zenge. Really nice atmosphere and casual puzzles. Made you think a little, but nothing really challenging, which made it perfect for this monthly theme! Nice little gem :-)

WHAT’S NEXT?

• 12 Labours of Hercules III: Girl Power
  

  2 hours playtime

  0 of 22 achievements

• Grow Home
  

  2 hours playtime

  0 of 26 achievements

• Morphopolis
  

  2 hours playtime

  0 of 13 achievements

• Grand Theft Auto V
  

  15 hours playtime

  5 of 69 achievements

• Renowned Explorers: International Society
  

  59 hours playtime

  120 of 148 achievements

Don’t really have much time to play this week, and I’m also still playing GTA V and Renowned Explorers (Completion ETA for those games: Never :-P), so perhaps I can do one more game for the Monthly Theme. Thinking either Labours of Hercules III, Grow Home or Morphopolis. If anyone has a strong opinion on one of these games, please let me know!

That’s all for now! Peace out!

Forgive me brothers and sisters, for I have sinned! The Steam summer sale… a horrible time for backlog slaying.. I bought DLC for Renowned Explorers, which means I put even more time into that instead of my backlog and a friend convinced me to buy GTA V cause he wants to play online heists with me… this is going to be quite a time sink… :-(

On the bright side: I did finish two SG wins: The Collider and My Name is Mayo, though I did use an autoclicker for the last one to mop up the achievements ;-) So yeah, I need to keep faith and continue working on my backlog.. If some of you can share some words of encouragment, it’d be appreciated!