It’s at times like this when I have to wonder — not for the first time — if I might be something of a sucker. In my last Humble Choice post, which incidentally wasn’t for June, I was close to cancelling. Then, with a growing sense of dissatisfaction, I paused June and had decided that if July was also of little interest — then I’d say ‘Goodbye’ to the service.
Well… Here we are—the moment of truth.
Was… July… Good enough?
Damnit, Humble, yeah- yeah it was. Not necessarily in a blow my socks off kind of way. More of a… “C’s get Degrees” just-barely-good-enough kind of way.
Still, one of the indie titles in this bundle has been on my wishlist for quite some time and makes the entire bundle worth the price of admission almost on its own. So! Here we go. It’s another month of Classic and Premium subscribers getting all titles in the bundle again. So if you’re on those plans and make the call not to pause, there’s no choice necessary. For those on the lower tiers plans, I’ll attempt to rank the games in order of preference, starting with most preferred to and ending with least preferred. Where I own a game already, I will pretend for this list that I don’t.
My Picks for July 2021’s Humble Choice
Deck13 has been giving the Dark Souls formula a shot for a few games now, going back to 2014’s Lords of the Fallen, which received, at best, a luke-warm reception. Going back to the drawing board, they came out with The Surge in 2017, and this one did a lot better. While keeping many of the core concepts — loss of currently collected XP-analogue on death, a rest-point mechanic, interconnected areas with shortcuts, etc — it showed Deck13 moving into expanding out the formula with a new setting and new mechanics layered over the top.
But it had its share of faults too. Enter The Surge 2 — a further refinement of Deck13’s learnings in both the genre at large and the mechanics they wanted to do themselves.
Definitely my top pick out of the options provided this month!
| Rank | Game | Genre(s) / Notes |
| 1 | The Surge 2 | Souls-like, Action, RPG, Sci-Fi |
| 2 | ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery) | Rogue-like, Fantasy |
| 3 | Hammerting | Colony-Sim, Fantasy |
| 4 | Nimbatus | Space, Design, Action |
| 5 | Yakuza 3 Remastered | Action, Adventure, RPG |
| 6 | Deadly Days | Rogue-lite, Zombies |
| 7 | Dirt 5 | Racing, Arcade |
| 8 | Elderborn | Souls-like reimagined as a ’90s release |
| 9 | Kill It With Fire | Spider-genocide Simulator |
| 10 | Bee Simulator | Bee Simulator. It’s there in the name. |
| 11 | Paradise Killer | Adventure, Open-World, Investigation |
| 12 | S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster | RTS |
There’s my ranking for July’s offerings — but I do feel the need to note a few things this time around.
Yakuza 3, I could see potentially being higher, to the point of maybe topping the list even, except for the fact I still haven’t made my way through the preceding games. If you have, though, it’s pretty likely you’ll know where you want to rank this one already!
Dirt 5‘s change in direction away from a Rally game and into… *waves hands* …this… puts it less in the category of other Dirt or rally games. It puts it in a box alongside Forza Horizon, where, in my opinion, it pales in comparison. This is not a box Dirt 5 is going to escape from unscathed.
Paradise Killer was initially much higher up my list. I really enjoy the odd investigative / lawyer style game, which at first glance, Paradise Killer appeared to be a more fantastical take on. However, it turns out that isn’t so much the case. From what I gleaned in reviews (it did review very well, mind you!), it is more of a 3D platformer/collectable-item-hunt game. So, thank you, but no thank you.
On the plus side, nothing here made me roll my eyes so hard I had to italicise it!
I don’t think Paradise Killer is a platformer. Also Bee Simulator is so low down?! Are you mad? :P BEEEEEES. Lol.
In seriousness though… same. I’ve been pausing for a few months now but might let this one slide through. Mostly for PK and Yakuza.
‘Platformer’ is probably wrong, yeah. From a look at the gameplay though, it is a lot of jumping around to find the collectables. So it’d take a VERY strong story to save that for me. I don’t like going for collectables in games I otherwise enjoy, let alone making a whole game based around it. xD
Bee Simulator; I do think it looks somewhat pretty and a lot less low-effort than I was expecting purely on the basis of the name. Still, I don’t think it’d ever manage to buzz it’s way by neither wing nor prayer to the top of my backlog of things to play. ;)
Paradise Killer is… odd. The story is so far out there that I’m not even sure what ‘truth’ is. It’s not really a platformer, though there is some jumping only if you feel like doing it. It’s more of investigating by wandering around in a 3D space, looking for highlighted objects to interact with, in the hopes of discovering additional clues.
The distances between clues is big enough that bored people who don’t mind jumping on platforms (like me) will start platforming for lack of anything better to do and pick up bonus currency items, because it’s not like I was doing anything more productive while mulling on the surreal story and trying to figure out where to go next.
I picked up this bundle happily; wanted ADOM desperately and The Surge 2 is a great bonus. Plus I’ll probably get all the Yakuza series lined up via bundles before I get around to playing through them. The rest of the games are icing on the cake. Kill It With Fire is GREAT icing. Everyone should virtual pyromaniac for a day, just for funzies.
I quite enjoyed your write-up on Kill It With Fire. :)
re: Paradise Killer, do you think the story pulls through enough to make it worthwhile overall?
ADOM is definitely my personal favourite pick from this too (since I already own The Surge 2). It was technically slightly cheaper to buy it on its own, but there was enough else I was at least mildly interested in to make the bundle worth keeping for me.
It’s hard to say, as I haven’t finished the game yet. I think it’s one of those stories that will ellicit a highly controversial like/dislike subjective reaction from different people.
One kind of gets the sense that there is some logic and structure behind the bizarre world, and that if you investigate enough, you may find threads tying things together. There’s a hefty helping of interpretation – apparently you can declare anyone to be the killer and the story will accept that as an ending (whether that is satisfying, depends on your own interpretation).
For people who like complicated plot threads and piecing things together, I can see some enjoying Paradise Killer.
Me, I’m still struggling to get past the bizarro world – my most regular conversation partner is an insectile “demon”/“alien” who is apparently not of this world, my character is some kind of exile that has existed for 3 million days (8000 years?), the NPC suspects are flat anime cutouts living in some strange virtual? paradise island that ends with some regularity as another begins (and they apparently have eternal life and three word-descriptor names) – are they gods or god-waanabes? But there are statues of actual gods dotted around the island and they look like eldritch cthulhu monsters. There are also apparently human? Citizens without eternal life that get sacrificed to begin the next island…
…and that doesn’t even TOUCH on the circumstances and clues of the, yes, locked room murder. I don’t even-… I have no grounding for this.