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Humble Bundle: May 2019

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Wandersong was included this month, either a late reveal headliner or an early reveal part of the main package depending on your point of view. Humble has done these mid-month reveals before, but just not while I’ve been doing this write-up. I think going forward I’ll simply include them in the ‘revealed’ titles section.

The last few months (longer, really) I’ve been typically interested in the headliner title and then found the late reveals to be universally disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, for $12 / mo getting even one title you want is enough from a financial justification point of view. At least if it was something you could consider as something you would have otherwise bought anyway.

But that’s just looking at it from a perspective of value for money. There is also the more psychological aspect. The mini-Christmas effect of opening presents! It’s been a while since I’ve had that from a non-headliners.

In an otherwise rather innocuous news post on Wandersong about fixing achievements, I think the answer why this is the case was given. There is an impression amongst developers that being in the Monthly Humble Bundle results in more down-ratings on their games. The Wandersong dev was expressing surprise that this didn’t happen in their case.

I can kinda see why this might happen, too. People obtaining your game ‘normally’ have made a choice to buy it. They’ve seen something they like to drive the purchase. Compared to a Humble Bundle type situation where you simply will land in the hands of gamers with neither interest in anything your game offers nor your well being as a developer.

Personally I have enough to play already that I simply throw such games into a generic Steam category, never to be looked at again. I have no inclination in reviewing them one way or another. But for others who have a different motivation in being part of Humble Bundle, those who actually want to play everything they’re getting? … Then yeah, I can see this combined effect resulting in more ‘Not recommended’ votes.

I’m not sure if this is a problem with a solution, so I’m curious whether Humble is struggling to find ‘quality’ (I realise how subjective this is) titles willing to be anything but headliners now.

June Headline Title

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Battle Edition

The ‘Battle Edition’ seems to include most of the COD 4 experience. You get the core multiplayer mode and also Blackout — their take on Battle Royale.

You don’t however get access to their Zombie mode. For that you’d need to upgrade to a ‘full’ package.

I never would have bought COD 4 of my own accord, but I am at least mildly interested in dipping my toes in the water since it’ll be coming my way anywho. You can grab it now if so inclined, but I’ll just be waiting for my regular monthly bundle payment to process end of month.

Revealed Titles

Finding Paradise is sublime. It’s the sequel to equally beautiful To the Moon. They’re both more interactive narratives rather than true ‘games’, although there are some puzzle-light elements.

If I hadn’t played these already, this sort of title definitely would have given me that ‘Christmas’ feeling I was talking about before. If you’ve not yet played through, you owe it to yourself to do so.

Finding Paradise does tell a self-contained story, but I’d still highly recommend playing through To the Moon first. You play through as the same pair of Doctor’s and the ethics of what your corporation does are delved into a little more in the sequel.

The other reveals in this list all pale in comparison.


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Time to Loot Journal: April 2019

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April was a comparative breeze to last month. It seemed to go by so fast, too! Possibly helped somewhat by the extended break that Easter and ANZAC day allowed for by taking just a few extra annual leave days to bridge the gaps for a bit over a week off.

Blog this Month

I published 12 posts this month, settling into an average of 3 posts per week. This seems sustainable and will likely become the pattern I aim for. Looking back over April, there isn’t much regularity as to which 3 days I post, but I think that’s OK for now.

There are a grand total of 59 published posts (including this one), and at the current rate it’ll be another 4+ months before I hit 100 posts. However I have passed the 100 day mark. One of the very first milestones I knew I wanted to break through.

So Huzzah! 😀

Most Viewed Posts

  1. Heart of Rage: Tips for the Monitor
  2. The Practice of Review Bombing
  3. Anthem off the Games List
  4. Gaming Outside your Normal Genres
  5. The Division 2 Private Beta – The Dark Zone

Heart of Rage tips still drives a large portion of the site’s traffic, with roughly 6x the views of the second most viewed post this month. But the significant drop-off I expected for this article last month is starting now. The overall hits for April are around half that of March where this article was performing like a monster.

In more positive news though, ranks 2 through 4 were posts from this month!

Games this Month

RankGameHours% Gaming
Time		Change
1Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey54.856.0%New
2The Division 216.216.6% ↓1
3Tomb Raider7.87.9%New
4Transport Fever6.26.4%New
5Rise of the Tomb Raider4.74.8%New
6Northgard1.71.7%New
7Overwatch1.51.5%New
8Nioh1.31.3%New
9Far Cry: New Dawn1.21.2% ↓6
10Anno 18001.21.2%New
11Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice1.21.2% ↓6

‘New’ does not necessarily mean the game is new to me (although it may). I’m not quite sure yet how, or if, I want to represent a returning game that has skipped some time from the list.

That was a total of 97.7 gaming hours, up only 4.2 hours from last month. Given there was a week off, that does surprise me a little! Although I suppose I did catch up on a fair few shows.

Total active time on the computer was 262.8 hours, up 21.5 hours from last month. Gaming made up 37.2% of the active hours, down 1.5% from March.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

I’ve mentioned before, but this one coming in such a big way this month really took me by surprise.

It made a believer out of me for the inclusion of ‘Photo Mode’ in games. Something I’d been a little ‘meh’ on previously. Neither for nor against. I kind of want it in everything now. 😉

But most impressive of all, for me, is that it has carried me through to and even beyond the ‘end’. Since that post I’ve cleaned house of the Cult of Kosmos, got my way to the top of the Mercenary foodchain.1

I’ve made a bit of a start into the first DLC, with the rest to come. 🙂

The Division 2

The 16 odd hours I have on TD2 were fairly heavily front-loaded into the month. I’ve not really touched it in a few weeks.

I had expected to jump in with the release of the Raid, but that was delayed until next month. I’m happy with my gear setup with the context of what is currently possible already, so back to being ‘done’ until the raid arrives. Unfortunately Tidal Basin and the new gear tier from there didn’t provide much more play time for me. When next month the Raid is put into our hands on Live will determine how much time The Division 2 gets next month.

Tomb Raider (and Rise of the Tomb Raider)

The ‘planned’2 series for the month. I finished the first game of the rebooted series and made a start on the second entry.

Almost immediately I was taken by the degree of iteration and change that occurred between the entries even though they were barely 2 years apart. I still intend to finish these after I’m done with Odyssey, but we’ll see. I’ve also been on something of a Tycoon game kick lately, which leads into…

Transport Fever

Setup some basic inner city town village horse and carriage loops, with longer paths connecting the depot to another village entirely.

I’m not entirely sure what triggered it, but recently I started to get a real hankering to play a Tycoon-style game again. I went on a bit of a YouTube and Reddit Prowl and ultimately landed on Transport Fever.

It is rather aptly named I must say, I went in ‘just to take a screenshot’ for this post. Almost 3 hours later, I’m finally back. At least I remembered to get the screenshot!

Transport Fever has a number of quirks to it, and a rather arcane (at first) signalling system for trains. So I’ve been immersing myself in a lot of YT Let’s Plays and Tutorial videos as well. I have a much firmer grasp on things now, but still learning some things as I go — like what the AI people preferences are when provided with options.

Transport Fever 2 has been announced, and looks beautiful but I was really wanting something to play now so still went with the original. Didn’t hurt that it was 70% off on Steam when I was looking. To go along with scratching my Tycoon itch though, I also picked up Production Line, but haven’t yet given it a go.

The Others

Quite a few games with less than 2 hours played this month. Overwatch and Northgard I spent some time playing with my brother. Overwatch for one of the events that promoted playing of an arcade mode where the skill cooldowns were (basically) eliminated. Made for some quite intense rounds, I will say. And allowed me a Play of the Game! As Moira! xD

Northgard

Northgard as I gave him a spare copy from the last Humble Monthly Bundle. We both really enjoyed it until we came to the realisation, too late, that you cannot save game for multiplayer.

If you can’t finish in the single sitting you just have to abandon. I remember this being a thing in RTS’ of old, but I never expected to encounter it in a modern title.

Ah well.

Nioh: Midway through the first boss fight. Ultimate form incoming!

Nioh I loaded for the express purpose of checking whether it cloud saves or not. (It does, if you were wondering.) Ended up starting a new game and played through the entire tutorial area and a bit of the first mission to refresh myself on the game.

Playing Sekiro actually made me want to go back and play more Nioh instead. It probably isn’t a good sign for a game when it makes you want to play something else instead. Nonetheless, I haven’t quite given up on it yet. That may come soon, or I might surprise even myself and make some time for it. It’s been known to happen!

Far Cry New Dawn on the other hand I have removed. I acknowledged even in the March Review that I was starting to drift from it a little. In the extra hour or so I played, I simply beelined the main story and made some good progress against it as a result.

From what I understand the FCND storyline is not all that long, so just given that I may go back and finish. Will have to see.

Anno 1800 is one I’ll be back to. Although who knows when. It is a beautiful game at times, and the beginning masks a fairly deep and detailed game once you start stepping through the civilian classes, eras of technology and more. I picked it up on Steam before it left that storefront, and then just had to give it a go. 🙂

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Humble Monthly: April 2019

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In last month’s Humble post, I talked about how it serves as quite a good buffer against impulse buying. Clearly, it’s not infallible. Some titles I’m going to pick-up given enough of a sale or other incentive. The verdict from last month’s Humble Bundle Monthly was to continue the subscription, so here we are for another round.

May Headline Titles

The format of my original post worked well for starting the series where I needed to detail the headline titles of both the current bundle and the upcoming. As a continuing series though, I think the most important Headliners are those coming in the next bundle. They will generally be your decision point to subscribe, unsubscribe, or potentially even pay early for the month to unlock them immediately.

So without further ado, the newly revealed Headline Title, available now for early unlock is:

Assassin’s Creed: Origins

For $12, I could not recommend this more strongly if you don’t already own a copy.

It is the first in the modern iterations of Assassin’s Creed where the series started down more of an RPG track. Very lightly touched upon in Origins and then expanded further in Odyssey. A great place to get started into the series, too.

I do already own a copy, but I’m still excited for this to show up in the Monthly Bundle as an opportunity to give my eldest son a chance to go through it as well.

Revealed Titles

It’s another unfortunate month on the revealed titles (for me). None of these were on my radar or even in general awareness.

The most interesting of the bunch appears to be Steel Rats. It looks like a cross between an old-school side-scrolling brawler like Double Dragon and motorbike stunt game series, Trials.

Honestly though, they will probably all end up in my general dumping-ground category of, ‘Humble Monthly Obtained’. A graveyard of titles never to be looked at again absent external provocation to do so.

Humble Monthly Survives to May

It is unusual for there to be only one early access title. At least in recent history. Lucky for them, even though it is one I personally own, I still want it.

Otherwise a different decision might’ve reached this time around!

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Time to Loot Journal: March 2019

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March was a trying month, with the Christchurch terrorist attack claiming 50 lives in the end. I struggled for a short time in even knowing how to continue posting here afterward. Not to acknowledge it would by far have been the greater crime, but how does one follow that with another post on something so relatively trivial as ‘gaming’ right afterward?

The solution in my case was to acknowledge the struggle in making that cognitive and emotional leap between the two topics. To acknowledge that gaming had a place in decompressing and spending time with friends in a space where, at least for a moment, the constant flood of news could be put to one side.

In any case! To happier things. This journal format is inspired in large part by Wilhelm’s Month in Review series. I don’t have the historical backing to even look back even so far as a year as yet, but that — and longer — is certainly the aspiration. Kudos too, to Endgame Viable for starting (as I can tell) the use of ManicTime to track gaming-time over the course of the month.

Blog This Month

I made 15 posts this month, down from 22 last month. I did wonder whether the pace would be sustainable or not and honestly even now I’ve still not settled into anything recognisable as a set pattern per se.

There are a grand total of 47 published posts (including this one), so the first mini-milestone of 50 should come early on in April. 🙂

Most Viewed Posts:

  1. Heart of Rage: Tips for the Monitor
  2. The Division 2 Private Beta — The Dark Zone
  3. Scar Temple: Tips for Scelos
  4. Transition from Social to Solo
  5. Epic Store Claims Another Exclusive

Only #4 and 5 on this list were actually posted this month. The Heart of Rage tips — despite the significant nerfs to the difficulty of the fight and a declining player base — has a little more than 8x the views of #2!

Games This Month

GameHours% Gaming Time
The Division 246.950.2%
Final Fantasy XIV22.223.7%
Far Cry: New Dawn7.98.5%
Anthem5.55.9%
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice4.44.7%
Far Cry 53.63.8%
Fallout 761.81.9%
Devil May Cry 50.70.7%
Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem0.50.5%

For a total of 93.5 gaming hours, out of 241.3 total ‘active’ hours on the computer, or 38.7% of the active hours spent gaming.

The Division 2

No surprises with this one being my main game of the month.

I am a little surprised in retrospect at how relatively few hours I got out of it with the launch content relative to Anthem though. There is no doubt in my mind that The Division 2 is the more fleshed out and complete package of the two titles and has left me with the more positive impression overall. But it would appear that the gear stratification and knowing we have another tier releasing very soon has been very effective at putting me into a ‘hurry up and wait’ mindset.

I still haven’t reviewed or really even posted a detailed set of impressions on The Division 2 yet, but that is still something in the works.

Final Fantasy XIV

I jumped both feet back into FFXIV only earlier this month.

In part there was a gap until The Division 2, but mostly because I had worked myself into a bit of a frenzy for it after exposure to the Shadowbringers Trailer1.

While it wasn’t the plan to replace ESO, in retrospect it seems obvious there was no other outcome. Both are strongly story focused MMOs that serve a similar role in my gaming line-up.

That initial mad-rush and hyped feeling is gone. Heck, at the launch of Division 2 I almost regretted it because it meant less FFXIV time! But even with this, I still do want to dive into more and be ready — if I can — for Shadowbringer’s launch. Guess we’ll see how it fares this month. 🙂

Far Cry: New Dawn (and Far Cry 5)

I covered these only the other day in my admission of falling back into the impulse / ‘it’s on a sale’ purchasing habits. *cough*

Far Cry 5 would’ve likely rated a bit more time except I’m playing it exclusively in co-op and the friend I’m playing with was away from home over the weekend since we picked it up.

New Dawn on the other hand… I might be approaching the end of my time with. Maybe. I felt myself drifting from it a bit yesterday. But what I might do instead is break away from the more ‘completionist’ aspects of it and beeline the main story.

Anthem

*sigh* Moving on.

More seriously, I acknowledged putting Anthem on hold this month but I’d all but put it down by the end of February.

Each patch, including the last 1.0.4, I’ve dipped my toes back in against my better judgement ‘just to see’ which is why it has even broke the 5 hour mark.

I was looking at my review the other day in light of current feelings to see if I still stood by it. I do, for however I feel about it now I can’t deny the 90+ hours of joy it brought earlier.

Give this game another year and it could be something truly special.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I also talked about this one (very briefly) in my last post2.

I’d barely touched it at the time — you know, a whopping two days ago. Endgame Viable posted some spoiler free quick thoughts — so far I agree with all of this bullet points, but none more so than prior Dark Souls experience not necessarily being helpful.

Overriding previous muscle memory reactions with the completely different set that Sekiro requires is no easy task (so far). I haven’t tackled any of the ‘major’ bosses yet, but have 3 mini-bosses under my belt so far (not counting the ‘tutorial’ one). The first one took me the longest when I was least familiar with the controls.

Fallout 76

Wait, what?

This was something of an experiment. After the overwhelming degree of negativity surrounding Anthem I started to wonder. Did Fallout 76 deserve the hate it received? Had it been improved by its patches already? For $20 on sale at the beginning of the month, I was willing to find out.

…

Look, I probably didn’t give it an entirely fair shake. Would it have received more of a look-in if I wasn’t actively hankering to play FFXIV at the time? Possibly.

But I didn’t get on with it. I’d be reluctant to say it deserves the hate it gets now based on less than 2 hours, though. It looks to have a pretty good 2019 roadmap including a main quest-line, so perhaps I’ll give it more of a shot later on down the road.

Devil May Cry 5

The screenshot over to the right there is from before the main menu loads.

It’s about all I feel qualified to really write about the title so far. I held on buying this one for a while, thought I might even wait on a sale. I loved DMC 4 though, and ultimately the praise DMC 5 was getting was too much to say ‘no’ to.

When will I play it though? … That’s… That’s a great question.

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem

Despite the low played time this month, Wolcen likely deserves a full post of its own.

It’s an ARPG that has been on a very slow burn, development wise. I Kickstarted it (back when it was still going by ‘Umbra’) over 4 years ago. What I played was not the full release, oh no. That is probably coming sometime shortly before Star Citizen. What I played was the newly released ‘Gameplay Beta’ which is, to be fair, quite the extension over the technical betas they had running last year.

It is similar in concept to Diablo 3’s adventure mode. There is plenty to like about Wolcen, I think one day it is going to be an excellent title. But I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone yet.

Still though…
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Humble Monthly: March 2019

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For someone with such a huge game-backlog already, the Humble Monthly subscription might seem a bit counter-intuitive. If you’re not already familiar with it, essentially for $12/mo (reducing in cost if you commit to a longer subscription) you’ll get a bundle of games worth many times this — at least when considered against full RRP. There are typically 2-3 ‘headline’ titles that are revealed early and then a number of typically smaller titles released to subscribers when the month’s pack actually comes out.

It’s a service I’m constantly on the bubble of unsubscribing from though. The prime reason I keep it is that it actually helps curb impulse spending during Steam sales. It harkens back to why I subscribed in the first place. I was tired of picking something up on a sale and then within a couple of months seeing it pop up as an included item in the bundle.

When I’m looking at a title now, I can just tell myself, ‘It’ll be in the Humble Monthly bundle sooner or later’, and typically? That’ll end up proving true. It’s put me off snap-buying enough things that I’m confident I’ve saved myself more money than I’ve spent on the subscription.1

Still, in-line with my desire to set out a history, I’d like to layout what the Humble Bundle brings my way and what I think. 🙂

Headline Titles

  • Vermintide II (Collector’s Edition)
    • The AAA-title of the bundle (there is generally at least one), if I didn’t already own it I would have been fairly hyped for this being in the bundle. Nonetheless, the upgrade to Collector’s is nice.
  • Earth Defense Force 4.1 (+ a bunch of DLC)
    • Had never heard of the title before this bundle, but apparently people like it with an ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ rating on Steam since it’s release in 2016. Looks like you battle… uh… ants… but really big city-destroying ones! Has some MP options. Looks like something you could have fun with, but I’m unlikely to try it without some external nudging.
  • Cultist Simulator
    • Made by the same people as Sunless Skies and Sunless Seas, it’s an odd mix of card game and story game. There has been more than once since it came out (May 2018) that I’ve been on the cusp of buying it. But patience has saved the day and now it is mine! Of the three, this was the one I was most interested in.

Revealed Titles

Just looking over these to find the Steam links (I didn’t know what a single one of them was previously) it reminds me why I’m so frequently on the edge of cancelling the subscription.

If I bother to redeem the keys for these at all, not a one of them would make it out of the ‘Obtained from Humble Monthly’ dumping category I have in Steam.

Tower Unite looks like Second Life but if you focused it almost exclusively on mini-games. Late Shift is an old-school FMV story-game, and while it’s clearly low-budget the voice acting in the trailer didn’t put me in the mind of nails down a blackboard at least.

But I think the curators at Humble must’ve known this wasn’t the most compelling list because…

April Headline Titles

Subscribing now would get you these titles now plus the revealed titles in April. As a current subscriber I have the option of bringing forward the purchase and getting them now too — but given how much else I have on, I will wait… But nnngh. ;D

Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

Funcom published this one, and they call it a ‘Tactical Adventure’. It allows you to move about in real-time outside of combat, but jumps into an XCOM style turn-based combat system whenever you engage the enemy.

I hesitate to call it open-world due to all the baggage that carries these days, but it doesn’t seem to have quite the same load-in / load-out mission orientated setup of XCOM, but rather is continuous.

I’d kinda like to make some time for this one!

Absolver: Downfall

The fighter-game Absolver was one I watched at launch. I steered clear as I heard it was rife with server issues (for Oceanic players) which prevented the game from being any fun. At that point beyond a relatively short campaign that acted as a tutorial, the rest of the game was PvP.

Since then they’ve released a free PvE content expansion called ‘Downfall’. The reviews on Steam for this game are still Mixed (both overall and recent), but as an inclusion in the bundle? I’ll likely give it a shot.

Northgard

Whether intentional or not Northgard evokes recollections of the old BlueByte classic, Settlers, to me. Albeit with combat turned up to 11. I’ve fairly well burnt myself out on the RTS genre over the years though, so it isn’t a game I’ll likely spend a lot of time with.

Humble Monthly Survives to April

I’m not locked into any longer term pre-purchase deals, so I could (and have considered) jumping in and out as the headline offers appeal (or not). You get about a month’s notice of the future headline titles over which time you may decide.

But there is that distinct fear of, ‘Oh, but maybe one of the revealed titles will be something I want!’ and by the time those come along — it’s too late. That’s how they getcha. 😉

There have been months when I’ve been extremely pleased by the revealed titles as well, but it feels like it has been a while since that was the case.

With this logging now in place, a clearer picture should come (with time). 🙂

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