The Incompletionist

Completed: Code Vein – A good Game.

With – a bit of pride – I finally completed Code Vein in 43h (with 76% achievements). I am not saying I have – beaten – the game. Simply, because it was surprisingly easy to get through, and beside some choke points, with a lot of dirty cursing on my side, it was a quite pleasant ride. Mainly, because you are not alone on this journey and you can have a partner with you. Seemingly, this made a big difference.

With – a bit of pride – I finally completed Code Vein in 43h (with 76% achievements). I am not saying I have – beaten – the game. Simply, because it was surprisingly easy to get through, and beside some choke points, with a lot of dirty cursing on my side, it was a quite pleasant ride. Mainly, because you are not alone on this journey and you can have a partner with you. Seemingly, this made a big difference.

In addition, this has also been my first ‘Souls-like’ game. I never had the ‘guts’ to invest time in any Souls-game, because I was never sure if I can bring up the concentration and most of all the patience to try and try and try. As my main playtime in the day is almost entirely in the evening/night, this was not my imagination of how I would like to enjoy my free time after a full day of work.

As of writing this, I am not planning on exploring the end-level content or another New Game+. I am actually a bit tired of it and am not motivated to re-run the whole game again.

Overview

So in brief, what is Code Vein.

You are a memory-lost Vampire sort of Revenant who is in a city-area encapsulated with Red Mist that makes it impossible to escape. The city has been ravaged after a battle against the Queen and these Vampires have been created from humans via a parasite to fight the Queen (and the Lost, Revenants who succumb to frenzy) as they now conveniently always ‘resurrect’ and do not die, at the cost of their memories. You soon meet Louis, who looks like an Anime interpretation of Louis right out of Interview with a the Vampire, and his harem of she-vampires and his best bro Yakumo. Later you add even more she-vampires and another bro and move forward in the story and across biomes & places, arriving some-when at the final battle wondering how you got there, what the heck is actually going on here and why it’s already over.

Still interested? Well, this sums up a crazy story of a lot of JRPGs, but as every connoisseur knows what they are in for when it comes to the story-telling (Huh?), tropes (there is an Onzen(!) in the main hub) and framing in this genre – this is great. And well me … enjoyed the ride a lot. Out of many reasons mentioned above and below.

Spoiler: The combat mechanics only play a minor part in it.

Story

The story as outlined above and the connected game mechanics are terribly confusing at first. There are Blood Codes (classes), Blood Veils (shrouds to wear that look like rugs), Vestiges (spiked things containing Blood Codes), and Gifts (skills) embedded in the overall background story, that were awfully hard to grasp and understand. Also there is the Queen (who?) and Silva (important guy you never meet) and Blood Beads (for everybody to survive) and Mistles (to resurrect and save) that are all relevant to understand the setting and overall framing of the story. This took me quite a while to separate and grasp what is what and what this all is about and the heck these people are talking about…!

The moment you learned the vocabulary and better understand the who is who and what is what, the more the game opens up to you and the better you can enjoy the variety, how the game delivers its’ story. And there is one really awesome part of unlocking new Blood Codes and this is done by restoring Vestiges (and? did you check above?).

This unlock is done via a very cool remote dream-like scene, in which you relive the lost memories of their owners. You can walk around in a gloomy, often destroyed, corridor drifting in darkness mid-air and observing the scenes played out for you. You can never really see the characters in detail, they all look like figures burned to ash, similar to mummies from Pompey. And as in memories; you know what has happened, but cannot remember the exact details.

Exploring the memories was one of the highlights for me.

For me, this was the best part of the game, because the developers took a lot of effort to deliver the emotions, drama, violence, decisions and anxiety of all protagonists. I always play JRPGs with Japanese voice on and here the voice actors were doing an awesome job. It makes you to want to know more about this characters’ story line and it always concludes and leaves you with unanswered questions in your head. To get more information, you have to talk with the others about what is going on, and only then, slowly, the full story becomes more and more complete.

The cut-scenes are also mostly great and rarely cringy, me as the silent hero standing around gloomily; clearly sayin’: “Let others do the talkin’. I am here for the looks. And the fightin’ afterwards!” But there is action, there is drama, there is love and there is atonement. Great.

Cut-scenes full of love and cheesy quotes. Perfect.

So why do you complain about the story then?
Well, as so often in JRPGs, the path is awesome, the goal is disappointing. There is some story kind of twist around three quarters in, but I felt rather ok’ish with that and it did not play out well in the end. There were many promises made at the beginning, that did culminate well towards the final boss fight and ending. I expected disappointment out of experience with other Japanese games, but I was still… quite disappointed in the end. Mainly because of the great story details in the memories and the cut-scenes.

The combat

There is not much to say about combat other than that it just works. You will need some time to adjust and learn the tricks, dodges and damage windows of bosses, but it just works. There is some quirkiness once in a while when it becomes hectic, I cannot place my finger on, but overall it’s all fine. Again, this is my first souls-like game – so I am happy and will not complain.

What is also great are the different weapons and animations. I mainly played with the Two-handed Sword (for life!) and a halberd later for more damage and speed, and both play distinctively different, but somehow same’ish. Fine for me. Also, admittedly, I did not care much for the stats at all. Dexterity D+? Strength B+? I had no clue what this is for and I never had any nerve to learn more about it. I made my way to Fextralifes’ Wiki, searched for some builds and said: “Great. Thank you very much!“

Completionism

What I really enjoyed in Code Vein was, that there was hardly any extra-crap to collect. There is some exploring to be done (but not too much), some hidden stuff to be found (but not too much), some boxes to open (but not too many), some extra dungeons to be cleared (but not too difficult) and some gear to be exchanged from the NPCs with materials that drop anyway. What a pleasant relief! What an experience, when developers are not wasting my time and artificially extend my playtime for nothing.

I still did some extras here and there and checked for some achievements to be done while I am around. But there was nothing that made me collect hundreds of flags or whatever garbage someone left behind and me coming along and treating it as treasure. What. A. Relief.

This was also one of the reasons I did not tire out too much during playing Code Vein. The areas are large and complex, but again: not too much. Each area can easily be done in around 1 – 2.5 hours, depending on how much you want to explore and listen to others talk. Great packaging and pacing, and this helped me a lot to smoothly complete the game.

I do. I really do have… very sharp eyes.

I am done with the game for some days now, but already my thoughts were circling around doing some more stuff here and there and maybe even do a New Game+. I uninstalled the game though, so I am not really sure if I will go back anytime soon. But, I guess, this is anyway already the perfect post-game experience.

Code Vein is doing so much right and leaves not much to complain about, if you know what you are up to. Even until completion, it leaves this lingering taste of: Yes I would yearn to play some more again, but I know this ‘more’ is probably too much.
Like Vampire Louis, who enjoyed a nice drink of blood, after reading a poem to his victim.
Perfect.
The Incompletionist

My Pile of Games – March 2020

The first post on surveying my pile of games can be found here. I will try to track changes – e.g. additions, completions, stalls, delays – and also update play times to keep my process a bit more transparent.

I also try to track playtimes a bit on various titles.

Update – 30.03.2020

Completed Code Vein (43h, 76%) – 29.03.2020
Stalled Division 2 – 03.03.2020
Stalled Monster Hunter World – Iceborne – 28.02.2020

Update – 07.03.2020

Started Code Vein (2,5h, 4%) – 03.03.2020
Started Division 2 – 18.02.2020
Started Monster Hunter World – Iceborne – 07.02.2020
Completed Darksiders: Warmastered Edition – 27.01.2020
Completed Middle-Earth: Shadow of War – 28.12.2019
Incompleted Destiny 2 – 10.12.2019

Steam

As I own an account there since 2004, the most relevant (and trackable) platform is of course Steam; so I pulled up some data from Steamdb.info to get a first overview:

Worth (w/o sales): 4.711€ | 4.002€
Games owned: 279 | 252
Games played: 91 (32%) | 81 (32%)
Hours on record: 3.490,7h | 2.762,5h
Time to finish everything: 2.666h or 111 days, 2 hours, 34 minutes
(before: 2.665h or 111 days, 1 hour, 40 minutes)
(courtesy of Steamleft.com)

Noteworthy new games added:

Crosscode
Frostpunk
Okami HD
Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Completed games from these 91 above mentioned are (hours of play and % unlocked achievements added) – new additions are marked bold:

Aliens: Colonial Marines (6h, 38%)
Battletech (61h, 37%)
Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons (4h, 100%)
Code Vein (43h, 76%)
Darksiders: Warmastered Edition (26h, 69%)
Dragon Age Origins: Ultimate Edition (105h)
Final Fantasy XIII (62h, 40%)
Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition (124h, 71%)
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (8h, 92%)
Mass Effect (32h)
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (33h, 61%)
Middle Earth: Shadow of War (71h, 65%)
Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (54h, 49%)
NieR: Automata (44h, 57%)
Ori and the Blind Forest (16h, 80%)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (29h, 27%)
Shadowrun Returns (17h)
Tales from the Borderlands (8h, 100%)
Tom Clancy’s The Division (131h) – service game, but completed
Tomb Raider (20h, 48%)
Tyranny (54h, 44%)
Wolf among us (9h, 85%)

Active games that I still play and want to either finish or pursue:

Stalled games I lost interest, but want to return to some day:

Aarklash Legacy (95min, 7%)
Bayonetta (50min, 4%)
Destiny 2 (95h, 69%) – just the Steam version
Divinity: Original Sin (50h, 31%)
Division 2
Elex (4h, 12%)
Final Fantasy XIV (1761,9h | 1381h)
Kingdoms of Amalur (3h, 2%)
Life is Strange (11h, 27%)
Monster Hunter World – Iceborne (192h, 48%)
Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director’s Cut (5h, 10%)
Tales of Berseria (14h, 8%)
Tower of Time (7h, 19%)

Really want to play games in the upcoming future:

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age
Edge of Eternity

Of course there are so much more games in this library that I want to play, and many that I will never play. There is quite an amount of gifted games in there, so not all these games have been bought.

Good old Games (GoG)

My account on GoG was created 2014 and I use this account not only to collect some romanticized games from my teenage years, but also to support GoG & CD Project Red with their own games, like Witcher and Gwent. My activity with GoG games mainly falls into the ‘Really want to play’ category, but somehow I never take this leap of faith.

Briefly some stats on my library and what has been played so far.

Games owned: 38
Games played: 3
Hours on record: 246h

Completed games include the following:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Game of the Year Edition (175h, 61%)
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (43h, 84%)

Active games that I currently play occasionally:

Gwent: The Witcher Card Game (28h, 54%)

Incompleted games:

Gwent: The Witcher Card Game (28h, 54%)

Really want to play games in the upcoming future:

Baldur’s Gate I & II
Battle Isle
Icewind Dale I & II
Neverwinter Nights I & II
Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition

Battle.net

Yes, I am a big Blizzard fan and I think their games always have (or more had) a very special attention to detail and an awesome gameplay loop. Their skills in delivering such experiences have dramatically waned of late, so I am not playing their games that much anymore.

Below an overview and an estimation of my playtimes. Maybe I will update this list, when I log into one of the games or subscribe later again.

Destiny 2 (approx. 100-160h)
Diablo 3 (approx. 1.200h)
Hearthstone (approx. 20h, mainly on iPad)
Heroes of the Storm (approx. 15-20h)
Overwatch (approx. 30-40h)
Starcraft 2 (approx. 120h, the only game I still play once in a while)
World of Warcraft (played from 2006 – 2010 as my main game; should be several thousand hours… holy sh**!)

Origin & Uplay

I hardly own games exclusively available on these two platforms. Still noteworthy are the following games:

Division 2
Dragon Age 2 (2h, still want to finish one day)
Dragon Age 3 (not started, want to play it, but so many people say I should not bother…)
Star Wars – The Old Republic (around 500-800h)

Completed: Middle-Earth: The Shadow (of an endless) War

This is another difficult one. Difficult, because I loved the first game (Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor) and I tried to love this one too. But, it simply did not work out for us this time. And I think this game explains in its overall experience, what is wrong with monetarization and ‘open-world’ish’ game design in general.

This is another difficult one. Difficult, because I loved the first game (Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor) and I tried to love this one too. But, it simply did not work out for us this time. And I think this game explains in its overall experience, what is wrong with monetarization and ‘open-world’ish’ game design in general.

Overview

I have played for 71h, with 65% achievements; I completed the main story and the Blade of Galadriel DLC; I started the Desolation of Mordor DLC, but stalled early after approx. 2h, because I was just too burned out from all of this.

Also, I played this game after the big update that removed the loot boxes and currency (deployed on July 17th, 2018), so I won’t comment at all on this. The mechanics are anyway still in the game and give a rough overview on how this should have played out.

Gameplay

The game itself has several Acts, that separate the game, also mechanic-wise. After the very story-driven introduction and the fall of Minas Ithil (Act 1), the game opens up and you are tasked with conquering different regions in Mordor (Act 2), in order to challenge the Dark Lord (Act 3). After the big confrontation, the game continues and follows a more jRPG’ish style of endgame, where you can grind further and increase your might and engage in various increasingly difficult challenges to ‘keep the region under control’ until Frodo comes along.

In retrospect I enjoyed Act 1 the most. There was good story progress, and the sense of dread and pressure, that will befall Minas Ithil, Tolkien afficionados (like me) know anyway that the city will fall and called Minas Morgul later, is interesting and Monolith really tried to fit a nice story into these events. But then comes Act 2 and … oh my… the game looses focus and most of all … all the fun that was Act 1 and even my good memories of the first game passed into a depressing reminiscent fog of ‘But… but… why?!‘.

So you capture these regions, you do your main story quest, side quest, and collect a lot of crap that needs to be found. More or less the same as Rise of the Tomb Raider did, and how they turned the game into an orientation less scavenger hunt.

So in the end my circle of grind went like this:

Track down Orcs on your map.
Ambush and turn these orc captains into your army.
Collect garbage.
Upgrade your weapons with stupid tasks.
Ambush and turn more orc captains into your army.
Oh! There is some shiny garbage, let’s collect this quickly!
Move to Online Vendettas and kill more orcs, and get this stupid currency to ‘buy’ more orcs.
Train your orcs.
Let them challenge the fortress captains to weaken the fortress.
Rinse & repeat the above 4-5 times, depending on the fortress.
Damn, there is still some garbage out there to collect.
Attack the fortress.
Do that again for the four other regions.
Oh hey look: a fifth region! What? Celebrimbor notes, this region is not necessary to capture? What does he know! (Yes I captured even the fifth one… not sure why I did that…)

I don’t know. I was so bored after completing the second region and when I went to the next, I almost quit the game. I really had to force myself through to the end of Act 2. I wanted to see the end of the story so.. so much, hence I endured – a lot!

Grinding at the walls of these fortresses.

Who in his or her sane mind, would rely so much on their gameplay to sustain this long boringly repeating grind – four times!!?? The reason why I liked the first game so much was its snappiness: two regions and a nicely told and very straightforward main & side stories with limited amounts of what to collect and upgrade for. Perfect: First game 33h, second 72h.

So what happened is, that I turned into a berserk and just killed everyone and everything along. I charged right into groups on my Graug, all weapons and skills blazing, hacked the orc captain down and turned him. Oh, they sounded the alarm? All right… let’s take it on! Then on to the next, and next and next. And still it took me so … so … so(!) much time!

But, when I reached the end of Act 2 and returned to Minas Mogul to start the grand finale, the game – finally – got better due to much more stay focus and guidance. Only to then again stall in a quick end boss battle (bit like in the first game) and strange finale of a story (which is not the end of course). Actually similar to myself, loosing my breath along the grind, the game lost its breath to the end and came up with this strangely unfinished – and not really Tolkien-lore fitting (surprise!) – end story twist. But that was neither expected by me nor dreaded. It was fine, for what it was. And, still a tiny bit of cool!

Cast of Characters

Like in the first, there is a set of characters following you along. Below a quick overview on the main & side story characters:

Talion is still a great main character. Good story and reasoning. And I love Troy Baker’s voice.
Idril comes across as strangely artificial and I felt very detached from her motivations and sorrow. Too much idealism for the world she was growing up in. This just did not fit.
Shelob is so much out of lore, that I really had trouble to actually accept her. Somehow a Yennefer’ish character with a strange and inconclusive agenda. Very poorly delivered with some fan-service along those … legs.
I never could connect to Baranor. Maybe also a reason, why I did not finish his DLC, because I could not care less about him. He is just there and most of his scenes are just annoying. Another idealist, which makes not much sense, considering his story background (explained in the DLC).
Elthariel is very well delivered, also out of lore, but for her I can get over it. The DLC featuring her is actually really awesome. And Laura Bailey is a great voice actress. I did not like her cape / hood which seemed difficult to place on the character model. It felt off most of the time. Also her alternate skins are just not good enough to select.
The Orcs are all awesome. The variety of them is really fun and they all have their mostly unique lines. The Fate system is pretty decent. Lots of chuckling done and lots of hateful emotions felt on my side.
Ratbag and Brûz are really funny too. I enjoyed all of their ‘screen time’.

Overall though, I did not care much about these characters, compared to the first game. In the first, all of them were actually really nicely placed and introduced. Even Gollum. Not much worked out in the second part with these characters. Not even Gollum. Shallow, no depth, too much misplaced idealism, and just not much convincing(!) reason for being there and doing things or doing stuff for them.

Elthariel and her story DLC showed the more powerful aspects of the game.

So, what remains is the feeling, that I just invested too much time into this. Neither the story finale nor the DLCs would convince me to actively recommend this game to anybody. The online sieges and vendettas are uninteresting and, as artifacts of the removed loot box mechanics, useless to do.

If they would just shortened Act 2 by one region, stayed a bit more to the main and side stories and removed half of the – often uninteresting – lore objects, Mordor would be a way better place to spend time. And honestly I am quite sad, that another game (after Rise of the Tomb Raider) was over-ambitiously ruined for the wrong reasons. If something is not fun, even high production values obviously won’t change that.

And the endgame grind to the top? One quick thought spent, I really thought: Yes let’s go! Then, another thought spent … ok, but what for!? I do not see much fun anymore in yet another round of fortress captures and orc-captain turning. I had plenty of them already; thank you very much.

A lot of wasted potential and a complete useless mid-game grind, ruined this game for me. Only with exceptional high-strains of – do not give up – I made it through, because I just wanted to see the finale.
And OK, I now have seen it.
I can confidently report, that even for a big fiery eye on a tower, there is nothing interesting to see. Move on. Please … just move on.
The Incompletionist

My Destiny with Destiny 2

There are games, that you just find interesting and follow along because of their art style, their world or story premise, weapon or armor design, the game play loop or simply because you have a friend who is a huge fan of this game. My story with Destiny is long and intertwined with passive and active times of play, so please bear with me on this one.

When Destiny was released for consoles in 2014, there were several aspects that teased and interested me. The world looked fantastic, the avatars looked fantastic, and the story’s told surrounding this game were fantastic to follow (e.g. loot cave). Nevertheless, playing a first-person shooter with a controller was not my cup of tea at all back then, but still I tried to play on my Playstation 4, but very quickly became hopelessly frustrated, stalled, and just forget about it. Still, I followed the later released expansions and stories told on Kotaku and by talking with my friend.

When Destiny 2 was released in October 2017, I played the demo on PC and got instantly sold on the game. I started on day one, but rather quickly stalled (again!), as I felt quite lonely within the game and had no clue what to do and what to work for. Around eight months later, some friends picked up the game in a Humble Bundle and we started to play together, and then suddendly all of Destiny’s magic came together and I played a lot(!) of Destiny 2, especially when the expansion Forsaken dropped; the game and the expansion were just awesome. The gunplay was awesome, the pacing of events and exploration was awesome, the loot, jumping puzzles, and exotic quests were also awesome. A really awesome state for a game.

Of course, looter shooters are fun and work as long as the next „big thing“ feels like just around the corner, but Destiny’s year 2 with the expansion and additional seasonal release rhythm transformed all of it into a bloody chore. Not, that it has not been like that before, but these seasons placed a sort of limitedness & pressure to everything, which consequently turned out to become rather nasty in effect, especially for me and my service-game-completionist-issues.

So, it became more and more difficult to complete the content within each consecutive season and I felt increasingly dismotivated to log in and do dailies and weeklies and grind the Armory or whatever needed doing. Until I ultimately stalled somewhere in May 2019 with a good amount of aversion and frustration.

But another expansion was coming up – Shadowkeep, returning to the moon with new seasons and new armor 2.0 stuff attached, new challenges and a refresh in how those seasons should play out. And I was hyped again to return and play together with my friends and grind the hell out of everything.

The beauty and greatness of Final Fantasy XIV’s Shadowbringers expansion, together with a lot of work on my job, did delay my start from October to November, but when I started in November with full speed, I quickly accumulated 94 hours until December and at least enjoyed the first weeks tremendously. But soon the new mechanics started to show and I quit the game after completing the season path around December 9th.

So what did turn me off so badly? (in no particular order)

A hell of a grind.
The grind in Destiny 2 is real. And I mean really real. There is so much you would have to do every day, and every week. Fill this bar, and that bar. Increase your level to continue the season path, your triumphs to get the season title, your power level and artifact to play more difficult challenges, and so on and so forth.
Don’t get me wrong! – I am a big fan of making grind worth it; meaning if I put in an exotic, a title, or whatever, people should go and grind for that. It should not be given away to easy! But flooding my questlog with quantity and not quality is maybe not good design. Abundance is not always a good decision to motivate people. I just enjoyed the balance of Forsaken way better than Shadowkeep set it up.
Too many drops – less satisfaction.
Later in the season I more and more lost interest in all the items and stats and what not. I just dismantled everything. Every item I got. I did not care anymore. Of course I did upgrade my power level on items and checked for a good build, mods, and weapon perks, but all these item stats / points on each items: I did not feel that caring for them would change or impact anything. Actually, the longer I played I felt it did not matter at all anymore to tweak around. A bit like in Diablo 3 with their rain of legendaries – you just start destroying everything for mats sooner or later …
Too many progress bars.
I want to touch on this again. Logging in required me to make decisions on where to continue to grind my bars. I would have to strategically plan ahead for every evening and go to NPCs and pick up these bounties, quests, upgrades, and missions. Go to the tower first – decide; then decide a planet…. etc. Overall, there was just too much stuff to do. And me having completionist tendecies I want to complete my bars, I really do! But looking at so many each and every day… I felt like I will achieve nothing any more. It became so depressing, especially after logging out: What did I achieve in these hours? What’s the value of all this? Was it worth to play this game? What is my goal in all these activities?
This was one of the major reasons that made me stop playing.
Obfuscated mobile game mechanics at work.
I paid for the season pass and paid for the additional loot and got a season time limit to complete everything. And yes, I know the game is in its basic version free-2-play, so such mechanics should be in order… well.. or not.
But, the combination of all those progress bars, time limits and a season path feels like you have to log in every day and do at least something. If you do not, you got a crawling bad feeling about your absence, as your progress towards the deadline will be less. A strong sense of Fear-of-missing-out. At the beginning I felt fine, but the longer I played, the worse it started to nag that I should not not play Destiny 2.
The story is just a collection of epic bullshit bingo words.
The story tells me it is epic, but I don’t experience any epicness. The story tells me that it’s cool, but I do not know how and where to find this coolness. Maybe in these Triumph story reports? But they make no sense. They are collected in a random non-sensical order and when you finally read them in their order, they still make no sense. I have never seen so much lost potential on a very interesting world premise. Then, when I go to an NPC and hand in a story quest, I have a short text to read for my quest and listen to the babbling of the NPC at the same time. I cannot focus on either. I tried so hard, but still cannot concentrate on reading anything of Destiny’s story. Because I do not understand – what the hell – they talk about! I watched video summaries for more than an hour, and they were really well done and narrate a very good storyline, but I cannot find anything of that in the game. Nothing is explained. No expansion story arc or even thread has been followed up later. Nothing is concluded. Why Bungie, why?
Little information from Bungie on everything.
Interestingly, with all these time limits in place, it was until the end of the season not clear, which quests will end and which will still be achieveable. Anyway, Bungie’s information policy is a topic for itself, so i won’t touch too much on this.

Ultimately I feel quite sad.
I played a lot with a friend of mine and he is an awesome player. One of those guys who knows the game inside out, because he played since the release of Destiny. He helped me so much and ran together with me through everything, that he had done hundreds of times already. So now, I feel like I left him behind and have a really bad conscience about it.

Again: the game is cool! Destiny is a great game at its core. But the way Bungie did re-imagine what players have to do, what is relevant and what optional, the mess of everything is so difficult to unravel and often just not rewarding. All you do feels like a trivial check on a very – very – long list of things to do.

Destiny 2 is a monster.
It will stun you with its awesome gunplay and loop systems. It will entangle you with its many tentacles and progress bars. It will slash its teeth into you and its dailies will suck you dry. And even when facing eye-to-maw with the monster, you will find your devouring experience … very enjoyable!
I had to incomplete for the sake of my mental stability and preserving my will to continue to play other games. With tears in my eyes.

A very … very difficult decision.
The Incompletionist

So I made a Spreadsheet…

Considering my previous resolution, I would I say I did not that bad.

Still, a new year seems to call for a new resultion, and as such I did what probably everybody who is considering new years’ resolutions is doing: I reflected on my last months and how to move forward.

Good things accomplished

From August to December I actually completed a whooping amount of three(!) games:

The Wolf among us (9 hours, 85% achievements)
The first Telltale-Formula game by … uhm Telltale. Quite a good game with a good story, but some drag in the middle. Loved the atmosphere though.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (8 hours, 92% achievements)
Visually expceptional with a mind-bending story, but with ridiculous combat mechanics.
Middle-Earth – Shadow of War (71 hours, 65% achievements)
More of the same from the first part Shadow of Mordor. But, as with all open world sequels, more of everything does not make a better game experience, which turned this game into a tedious grindfest instead.

All three games were very nice on various levels, considering the different types of their genres. Especially Shadow of War was long overdue on my list, as I liked the first one and wanted to finish the series for quite a while.

Additionally, I also played a lot of Final Fantasy XIV (300 hours since end of June) and Destiny 2 (94 hours since October), but with both being service games, this somehow does not count, although a lot has been accomplished in both of them.

Bad things burned out

I had to skip Dragon Quest XI, which i really wanted to play, but could not find any motivation for. In addition, neither did I re-start Life is Strange nor Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and I fear these two have to wait a bit longer.

What became very intense again was me entering my viscious cycle around mid of December. Especially Destiny 2‘s season grind was very aweful. It felt like so much work to do every day and so much to achieve in various game modes every day, that I had no motivation to play at all anymore and really needed some change again. My burn-out from service games is so strong currently, that I do not even want to go back to Final Fantasy XIV anymore… and this really is something!

A new re-established Resolution

Considering these last months I at least had the feeling, that my chosen games were probably too ambitious. I felt something was amiss. So, when I had a talk with my brother last week, he casually mentioned during a talk about what we played recently, that “it would be best to just start with all games from the letter ‘A’ and then move down. Just do not decide.”

And then, somewhere – somehow – something, inside me, like a bell, started resonating.

“This is IT!” I cried. “This is how I will proceed with my pile of shame and finally get started. I just get handle the choice variable better!”* And so I pondered on and thought about, how to finally re-start great again, how to finally get control back and not side-step around and get nothing done.

After a short while it was already clear, that it would not be helpful to start with the first game in the alphabet, simply because this would take forever to come down to e.g. the Witcher games. Or, even worse, I would have to play through all Assassin’s Creed games in a row!

No, something needed doing, and here – big reveal – is the result of my pondering:

All games on Steam were categorized as followed:
- Games I really want to play (to-play),
- Games I completed (complete),
- Games I probably will start (maybe),
- Games I will start somewhen/never (somewhen), and
- Games I do not care/ignore (don’t want to play)
Then I transferred all these games alphabetically into a spreadsheet.
I also added all other games from GOG, Origin, Uplay, and PSN.
This resulted in a list of 106 games across all platforms. Keep in mind, these are all games I really would like to play!
Then I divided this list into quarters, resulting in three columns with 27 and one column with 25 games. You can find my list of games below.

1st Quarter	2nd Quarter	3rd Quarter	4th Quarter
Aarklash: Legacy	Darksiders 1	Last of Us	Soul Calibur VI
Assassin’s Creed	Darksiders 2	Legend of Grimrock	Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1
Assassin’s Creed II	Deus Ex – Human Revolution	The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky	Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood	Deus Ex Mankind Divided	Life is Strange	Steins:Gate
Assassin’s Creed Revelations	Devil May Cry 5	Lightning Returns	The Surge
Assassin’s Creed III	Divinity Original Sin	Mass Effect 2	Sword Art Online Fatal Bullet
Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag	DmC Devil May Cry (4)	Mass Effect 3	Sword Art Online Hollow Realization
Assassin’s Creed Liberation	Dragon Age 2	Mass Effect Andromeda	Sword Art Online Lost Song
Assassin’s Creed Origins	Dragon Age 3	Metal Gear Rising	Tales of Berseria
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey	Dragon Quest XI	Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zero	Tales of Symphonia
Assassin’s Creed Rogue	The Dwarves	Metal Gear Solid The Phantom Protocol	Tales of Zestiria
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles China	Earth Defense Force 4.1	Mirror’s Edge	To the Moon
Baldur’s Gate 1	Edge of Eternity	Neverwinter Nights	Tower of Time
Baldur’s Gate 2	Elex	A New Beginning	Transistor
Bastion	Final Fantasy IV	Nex Machina	Trine 2
Bayonetta	Final Fantasy VI	Phantom Doctrine	Valkyria Chronicles
Blackguards	Final Fantasy IX	Pillars of Eternity	Warhammer 40000 Mechanicus
Blackguards 2	Final Fantasy XIII-2	Pillars of Eternity 2	The Witcher 1
Blashphemeous	Hitman	Planescape Torment	The Witcher 2
The Bureau – XCOM Declassified	Hollow Knight	Quantum Break	X-Morph Defense
Child of Light	Horizon Zero Dawn	Ruiner	XCOM enemy Unknown
Code Vein	Hyperdimensional Neptunia re:Birth	Satellite Reign	Yakuza 0
Crosscode	Icewind Dale 1	Seven	Yakuza Kiwami
The Dark Eye – Chains of Satinav	Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth	Shadow of the Tomb Raider	Ys Origin
Darks Souls	Kingdom Come Deliverance	Shadow Run Dragonfall	Ys The Oath in Felghana
Dark Souls 2	Kingdoms of Amalur	Shadowrun Hong Kong
Dark Souls 3	Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light	Sleeping Dogs

Ok. So what’s deal now:
In order to find the – next game – I will play, I will start with the first row and am now comfortably provided with a selection of four games from my to-play category. From these four games I will then simply choose one, as chances are high that some games are selected, which I had forgotten a long time ago.

So from my first set of games (first row) – Aarklash: Legacy, Darksiders 1, Last of Us, and Soul Calibur VI – I chose Darksiders 1, and already started playing. And it’s really a lot of fun – I wanted to play this for such a long time anyway.

But of course some considerations still need to be made:

When a game from a series is chosen, no matter which part, I will always start with the first part of the series.
When a game is completed, it will be removed from the table and therefor the order within the table will change.
In order to choose the next game, I consider two variants:
1. Always stay in the first row, and complete games within this row only. Games will change anyway with the elimination of the completed game from the list. Only the first row will only change, unless I finally re-start playing Aarklash: Legacy. This gives me some breathing time until the first Assassin’s Creed comes up …
2. I will not always start from the first row. I could consider another variable e.g. the current date for the selection of the row (even though I do not have enough rows for each day).

So far, this should be my modus operandi for this year and I will make adjustments as I see fit along the way. But with enjoying Darksiders 1 so much right now, I feel rather confident (and a bit proud!), that this mode will be more helpful in my endeavor – Recapturing my Pile of Shame.

*The dialogue with my brother has been re-framed for dramatic purposes.

Game selection process.

Update: 09. February 2020

Deleted Aarklash: Legacy (moved to maybe list)
Added Darksiders 3 (found on PS4)
Added Shadow Tactics
Added Frostpunk
Added Okami HD
Added Pathfinder Kingmaker

How to select my next game

In order to find the next game I decided for the following process for my selection. My libraries have been pooled and categorized in the following scheme:

All games on Steam were categorized as followed:
- Games I really want to play (to-play),
- Games I completed (complete),
- Games I probably will start (maybe),
- Games I will start somewhen/never (somewhen), and
- Games I do not care/ignore (don’t want to play)
Then I transferred all these games alphabetically into a spreadsheet.
I also added all other games from GOG, Origin, Uplay, and PSN.
This resulted in a list of 106 games across all platforms. Keep in mind, these are all games I really would like to play!
Then I divided this list into quarters, resulting in three columns with 27 and one column with 25 games. You can find my list of games below.

In order to find the – next game – I will play, I will start with the first row and am now comfortably provided with a selection of four games from my to-play category. From these four games I will then simply choose one, as chances are high that some games are selected, which I had forgotten a long time ago.

1st Quarter	2nd Quarter	3rd Quarter	4th Quarter
Assassin’s Creed	Deus Ex – Human Revolution	The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky	Soul Calibur VI
Assassin’s Creed II	Deus Ex Mankind Divided	Life is Strange	Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood	Devil May Cry 5	Lightning Returns	Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2
Assassin’s Creed Revelations	Divinity Original Sin	Mass Effect 2	Steins:Gate
Assassin’s Creed III	DmC Devil May Cry (4)	Mass Effect 3	The Surge
Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag	Dragon Age 2	Mass Effect Andromeda	Sword Art Online Fatal Bullet
Assassin’s Creed Liberation	Dragon Age 3	Metal Gear Rising	Sword Art Online Hollow Realization
Assassin’s Creed Origins	Dragon Quest XI	Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zero	Sword Art Online Lost Song
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey	The Dwarves	Metal Gear Solid The Phantom Protocol	Tales of Berseria
Assassin’s Creed Rogue	Earth Defense Force 4.1	Mirror’s Edge	Tales of Symphonia
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles China	Edge of Eternity	Neverwinter Nights	Tales of Zestiria
Baldur’s Gate 1	Elex	A New Beginning	To the Moon
Baldur’s Gate 2	Final Fantasy IV	Nex Machina	Tower of Time
Bastion	Final Fantasy VI	Okami HD	Transistor
Bayonetta	Final Fantasy IX	Pathfinder Kingmaker	Trine 2
Blackguards	Final Fantasy XIII-2	Phantom Doctrine	Valkyria Chronicles
Blackguards 2	Frostpunk	Pillars of Eternity	Warhammer 40000 Mechanicus
Blashphemeous	Hitman	Pillars of Eternity 2	The Witcher 1
The Bureau – XCOM Declassified	Hollow Knight	Planescape Torment	The Witcher 2
Child of Light	Horizon Zero Dawn	Quantum Break	X-Morph Defense
Code Vein	Hyperdimensional Neptunia re:Birth	Ruiner	XCOM enemy Unknown
Crosscode	Icewind Dale 1	Satellite Reign	Yakuza 0
The Dark Eye – Chains of Satinav	Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth	Seven	Yakuza Kiwami
Darks Souls	Kingdom Come Deliverance	Shadow of the Tomb Raider	Ys Origin
Dark Souls 2	Kingdoms of Amalur	Shadowrun: Dragonfall	Ys The Oath in Felghana
Dark Souls 3	Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light	Shadowrun: Hong Kong
Darksiders 2	Last of Us	Shadow Tactics
Darksiders 3	Legend of Grimrock	Sleeping Dogs

But of course some considerations still need to be made:

When a game from a series is chosen, no matter which part, I will always start with the first part of the series.
When a game is completed, it will be removed from the table and therefor the order within the table will change.
In order to choose the next game, I consider two variants:
1. Always stay in the first row, and complete games within this row only. Games will change anyway with the elimination of the completed game from the list. Only the first row will only change, unless I finally re-start playing Aarklash: Legacy. This gives me some breathing time until the first Assassin’s Creed comes up …
2. I will not always start from the first row. I could consider another variable e.g. the current date for the selection of the row (even though I do not have enough rows for each day).

(In)Completed Battletech

When Battletech was announced via Kickstarter, and released in April 2018, I was rather hyped and (of course) pre-ordered the game in its Deluxe Edition; Harebrained Schemes should get all the money they deserve!

When starting the game on release day, I thought – damn, I cannot remember anything! Yes, there were these five houses, but who were they? What about the Battlemechs and their different weaponry? What was that with heat management? I felt so disconnected to the world of Battletech, and so… I immediatly stopped playing.

But why should I actually remember anything about Battletech; how comes?

Well, when I was young, like teenage-young, I bought the Battletech books, when they were released by Heyne end of 80′ and beginning of 90′. I also bought the board game then, which was rather tricky to play, and my brother and I never really managed to get into it, despite our already intense roleplaying. I thought I still remeber the lore and world pretty well after all these decades, but of course nothing remained.

So, obviously, I forgot about the Battletech (computer) game again and put it on my pile, but it passively bothered me so much for a year, that I thought: Ok. In order to get back into the game lore, I will start reading the books again, so I can connect better with the whole story and get a better feel for the combat and systematics, characters and overall drama in the Battletech universe.

And damn, did that pay off!

I have already read five books, and am currently in the sixth, and really enjoy them so much! They are rough, full of cheap adjectives, plastered with tropes from the 80′ and very much targeted at male teenagers. Nevertheless, the time-travel back into my teenage days with these books is still so awesome, that I do not bother much at all. Almost thirty years later, 180 books have been published in the Battletech universe, but I will for sure not read them all and better stick to the glorious beginnings.

Back to the game. So, after I have read the first three books (Gray Death Trilogy) the game made so much fun again and my kids also started to become very interested and engaged in backseat playing together with me, discussing loadouts, and reading together through the games’ story. We breezed through the game in around 60 hours.

In all honesty: I am normally not that super-hyped on round based strategy games, but after playing Shadowrun Returns (also by Harebrained Schemes), I at least knew what to expect from their turn-based system. Battletech is expanding on this rather rough combat system, and delivers a very enjoyable, 20 minutes bite-sized experience, of missions, which are sometimes really difficult to complete, without your pilots waking up in hospital (or dying). I played on standard settings, and often even did not modify my Mechs that much, simply because I did not care and it was not necessary. The standard tour, so to say. And again in all honesty: The game is out-of-the-box not really motivating me to continue after the main story ended (main story is rather nice btw!). After the credits rolled, you have your heavy mechs with upgraded weapons and blast through almost all opponents without thinking too much about strategy.

After purchasing the season pass, flashpoints were added in their first DLC (Paradox-style), and they increased and updated lots of mechanics and further added nice lore-based additions. For example we played a Flashpoint circling around Liao’s new Raven-class mech (also mentioned in the books), which was greatly delivered and told, also limiting my mech lance to max 55 tons and challenging us a lot – really nice and motivating!

Up to today, my kids are still asking me to play Battletech again, and I still have to admit, that I almost always respond: “Sure, let’s play a mission!” We have tons of fun playing together, especially when my boys can identify all Battlemechs and know all about their weaponry way better than I do!

Thinking back at my own teenage days and my involvement with the Battletech universe, I will definatly continue to play – especially and only – together with my kids – hopefully passing the torch of Battletech excitement to them.

And that … would be really awesome.

Completed the main story, but started to enjoy the game only after re-entering the lore and reading the books. This makes the game so much better – you may even trust me on this!
Incompleted in a way, that I will continue to play the game with my kids, and we look forward to the last DLC this fall.
The Incompletionist

Intentions vs achievments over this summer

Oh well… so much for my proclamations and what I wanted to achieve game-wise over the summer.
So boasted to recapture my pile of shame, and as result I did nothing of what I boldly proclaimed.
Although, not true! I DID start Hellblade and I did start Wolf among us. I just did not finish both. And there is only one game to blame:

Final Fantasy XIV – Shadowbringers

What an awesome expansion, what an awesome MMO. I got so hooked and added 330h from start of July until the writing of this sentence. Unbelievable. I am shocked.

Good thing is though, that I reached my first main goals and will take easier strides now, as it feels more like walking downhill now. Which is a good thing … I guess.

So what is up in the next weeks to come?

I will probably branch out into Destiny 2 – Shadowkeep with two friends of mine and enjoy time there, next to FFXIV. I will also try to finish Hellblade (not that much time left) and Wolf among us (stuck in Act II) and see how far I can proceed. I will not start Dragon Quest XI this year – this feels impossible.

For the blog itself I will unburden myself a bit and try to comprise one month into a recap, which will probably be easier on the writing, as work will only increase in the next months.

So let’s look … and see.

Call for Recapture

Today I announced – sponeanously and without considering the consequences – that I will not buy any more games for the whole rest of this year.

So this is what may happen to you during an inconspicious coffee break.

Funny enough – during my proclamation – I really believed in the achievement of this recapture, so let’s see how I can make this reality.

#KingofmyPileOfShame

My second sentence after this optimistic proclamation above was, that ‘I have so many awesome games in my library, that there is no need to buy any new games‘. So let’s see, what is in there and what could be a feasable(!) list for the next months.

Dragon Quest XI – Echoes of an Elusive Age
The Wolf among us
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

From my list of stalled games, these are highly overdue:

Life is Strange
Shadowrun: Dragonfall

Next to all this I will restart Final Fantasy XIV with the new Shadowbringers extension, which will definately keep gnawing on my free play time.

So it is set! Better a resolution in mid-year, than at the New Year! What could possible go wrong? I wonder…

Incompleting Monster Hunter World

Oh wait… but can you actually – complete – Monster Hunter World? Of course not… but I reached a certain point of completeness, and this point was reached surprisingly sooner than expected. Funny enough, …

Oh wait… but can you actually – complete – Monster Hunter World? Of course not… but I did reach a certain point of completeness, and this point was reached surprisingly sooner than I had anticipated. Funny enough, some days before reaching this point, I was very enthusiastic about this game, even commented while playing “This is such an awesome game! Hunting is so much fun!” or “I hardly feel the grind, and I am still very motivated!”
Well… obviously, something happened. But what? And what did trigger this sudden realization?

My early story so far

I purchased the game on August 8^th, 2018 via Steam closely to when it released, which was just one day later (snatched ‘dem pre-order goodies!). At the beginning, I played leisurely at my own pace, struggling with the controls and the massive overflow of not well explained information and learning to wield some big weapons. Mostly I played with my kids in the backseat, so they decided which Monster to hunt and how to proceed, which was a lot of fun! We really enjoyed the time of around 40h, stretched over several months, until I stalled around December 2018. I was never really “good” at the game and I did not care much, as my Hunter Rank (HR5) until then showed.

Still, I was not really satisfied with my gaming experience, as I knew that the game offers way more challenging encounters and way more mechanics I wanted to explore further. In addition, not being a big fan of anonymous multiplayer experiences, no one else in my immediate surrounding was interested in joining the game, so there was not much reason to play along anymore.

A second wind

This changed, when my working colleague proudly announced during a coffee break that he bought the game in the last sale (in May) and planned to play this game enthusiastically (compensating for and recovering from his World of Warcraft depression). So together, we started playing again and it was so(!) much fun together, that I also committed a lot of time into it, investing almost 100h in the last 5 weeks or so. Even another colleague joined us, setting a rather robust group of three. Now I am HR50, completed the strange story (wait… story?) of the game and unlocked the next equipment gamma tier with Kulve Taroth and the whole Tempered Monster experience.

What struck me most until this point was the amazing gameplay loop of Monster Hunter. This was my first MH game and I never really understood the fan culture surrounding the franchise, but then… then I finally got it.

The pacing of progression is phenomenal. Every upgrade is not too far away from your grasp at this rather early stage of the game. The Monsters always yield the exact right amount of materials to upgrade your weapons and armor in order to keep you going. There is just some amount of such’n’such bones missing? – let’s just go hunt an Anjanath! I am missing this’n’that tooth? – let’s hunt a Diabolos!

Monster fights are FIGHTS. The game communicates very openly, that you are prepared to take the challenge, or you are not. Monsters are unforgiving, that you can maybe escape one-shot mechanics, but are not efficient in a way, that you deal enough damage to finally overcome the Monster in the later fighting phases (especially Elder Dragons). Learning to read the Monsters and to foresee their pattern (without being able to always predict it) keeps you on your toes and makes you realize that your jaw feels sore after the fight, simply of being so tense and into it.

Repetition is not a big deal. Of course, you will grind and – of course – you will do the same bounties and missions over and over and over and over and over again. However, Monsters are not always acting in the same way and the environment has its tiny interplay and interaction in every hunt you engage. This will let you have challenging fights and individual experiences when hunting.

The detailled environment is just amazing. I am not talking about graphics quality, but the detailed environment that supports the immersion and contributes to fighting in a huge arena, with various tricks at your disposal. Not always did we remember all the traps and bolders around us, but when we did, it was always very rewarding to make use of them.

Multiplayer, but not multiplayer, and voice. The game got so much better, when playing together. I am used to play alone in online games, simply because of my limited play-time in the evening and my often abrupt end of play-sessions. In MH though, the game made so much more “sense” when playing together via voice. Arena fights were so much fun, unrelated to the type of Monster, but simply the shared experience of trapping, luring, and cursing over the Monster’s ass**** behavior, finalized by bold claims of victory.

Ultimately, I was transfixed on getting the next weapon or armor upgrade, on throwing more time on whichever Monster comes or whatever event happens, on completing the Witcher event and farming Ciri’s armor, because … Ciri!? Witcher?! Megaman?!

Incompletement

It did not come to pass and a sudden urge to stop playing manifested, which may be best described as some sort of inceptive hunch, that whispered in my ear: Shhht! Hey, you! You actually completed the game, didn’t you?

Followed by rather obvious questions of reason:

Why would you like to and need to grind more? And for what really? Isn’t that all a big waste of time? There is so much other stuff to do with your time! I mean: check your game library?
Look on how many materials you need for the next upgrade; besides: what is the next upgrade anyway? What is the best upgrade? Let’s look for a reddit guide or a video…
Kulve Taroth raid, really? With 16 other hunters? Oh, we know how this will end: You will faint cart your group out of the game and then you will have to rely on the rest of the hunters to somehow finish this… Good times! What an experience… oh, it only last until June 6^th?

Sometimes I wonder, if too much content is a good thing. Sometimes I wonder, if you can spin games forever, and they are still enjoyably fun for me.

Monster Hunter World does an excellent job in progressing and leading you to the ultimate grind – and I did not even get this far! But still, the grind is not the issue. The story is so absurd in this game, that I do not even dare to think too much about the ‘What?‘, ‘Why?!‘ and ‘WTFs!!!?‘ in it, and I wonder if there lies some reason for my sudden loss of motivation. That not the grind is the problem, but the undirected-meaningless grind. Meaningless does not only mean story-induced, but also goal-bound meaninglessness.

What is the next goal and where can I find it?
Does a game with self set goals give me a rewarding experience?
Is the mechanic enough to keep me going?

My friends still love the game and they will probably continue to progress further and have lots of fun (one reached HR70+ already); for me, well, it lost the appeal completely with this awkward combination of lack of story and lack of comprehensible / reasonable goals. I envy my friends for it, because somehow, I still want to go forward and progress further, but I do not see any reason why I should do that and even sink another hour into it…

Ultimately, the Monster, that is Monster Hunter World, became too big too hunt for me; and there is no way of a capture in the end.

Stalled, because of a noticable absence of story and no clear goals for continuing the grind after the core game experience.
The Incompletionist