So, is this just a convenient way to raise the prices for the monthly subscription? Existing subscriptions get converted to Humble Classic, so the price and the number of games that you get probably remains the same as long as you remain a subscriber, but the deal gets worse for those people who only subscribe for the interesting games every now and then. I wasn't planning on cancelling my subscription any time soon, but I'm not sure if I like this change.Originally Posted by WingedKagouti
Then again, since you get to choose 10 games with the Classic subscription each month (3 with the basic subscription and 9 with premium), I assume that they'll actually be offering more games than they are right now. Of course most of them might be some obscure indie titles, but it's nice that we get to choose which obscure indie titles we get to play.
The rest of November's montly games have been unlocked:
Synthetic
Evergarden
Shenmue 1 & 2
11-11 Memories Retold
Humble Original: Operator
If anyone's played any of these, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I've only played Shenmue 2. I hear Shenmue 1 lets you drive a forklift truck, which sounds - and I can not stress this enough - very appealing.
I played 11-11 Memories Retold as a part of my mystery game challenge thing not too long ago, and even wrote a little review of it, but it seems that I forgot to post it in here. I remember liking it quite a bit, the gameplay is very simple and it's almost a walking simulator, but the story is quite memorable. It's a very unique game in many ways and I think you should give it a try.Here's what I wrote about it a few months ago:
11-11 Memories Retold is a World War 1 game, but thankfully not just another one where you shoot evil Germans and try to win the war on your own. In fact, it's not a very typical war game at all. 11-11 tells the story of a young Canadian photographer and an older German engineer who end up on the front line for their own reasons. The Canadian wants to impress a local girl, and the German fellow leaves his family and joins the army in a desperate attempt to find his lost son. I think it's a fantastic story with some exciting twists and genuinely sad and touching moments. You'll soon learn that the war isn't about heroes and glory, it really is mindless and just totally shit from an ordinary guy's point of view.
11-11's biggest standout feature is of course its visual look. The whole game looks like an oil painting! It felt like a bit of a gimmick at first, and it does take a while to get used to it, but I learned to love it. You don't get to see all the little details so you'll have to use your imagination to fill the blanks. I think it looks fantastic.
At its core 11-11 is an adventure game where you solve some easy puzzles and walk around a lot to find the right people and places, but there are some interesting gameplay mechanisms as well. There are a couple of very simple and short "action" parts, but apart from that it's quite a unique take on a war game. The Canadian guy for example has to take photos of key moments and important places on the front, and even after finishing the game, I still haven't figured out how things really work in the game. Does it even matter what kind of photos I take? I'm pretty sure that it does, at least a bit, but I don't know how. It's the same with some other little choices that you make in the game - do they affect the story somehow or is the outcome always the same? I might replay 11-11 one day, but the story progresses so slowly (but steadily) and it's quite heavy, so I think it's not going to be any time soon.
I haven't heard of those other games in the bundle, apart from Shenmue that is apparently some sort of a console classic. The remastered games here are pretty good according to a couple of reviews that I found, especially Shenmue 2, but I got the impression that all these reviews were like a nostalgia trip to 20 years ago. So I still wonder if the games are any good if you never played the originals.
Synthetik is an action roguelike that looks so much like Crusader: No Remorse that I'm gonna have to check it out. Evergarden is apparently "a charming casual puzzle-game about gardening", and that doesn't sound very tempting when you read it, but it does look nice and I usually don't care about puzzle games unless they're casual enough.Operator looks like a game where you're some hacker and you write stuff on the command line to access people's emails or to look at security cams and just generally make things happen. I'm fairly sure that there's more to it, so anyone who likes to pretend to be a hacker should probably give it a try.
No one's mentioned December's monthly games yet, so...
Soul Calibur VI: I haven't played a fighting game like this since the first Tekken game a quarter of a century ago, so it's not something that I'm particularly looking forward to, but I'll definitely give it a go. I wonder if it's even worth playing in single-player though?
Yakuza Kiwami: What's with all the Japanese games lately? I've never played a Yakuza game before, so I had to try Yakuza Zero (it was a monthly game earlier this year) at last when I saw that there's another Yakuza game here. And hey, even though I thought it was terrible for the first half an hour or so, it's not actually too bad! So I might play Kiwami one day too, unless I'm all Yakuza'd out after I'm done with Zero. I'm looking forward to some even more imaginative mini-games and extremely cheesy storylines.
My Time at Portia: Normally I might be a little put off by an overly cutesy RPG adventure like this, but to me this one's the most interesting game of the current crop. There seems to be a lot of exploration, some light RPG-like character development and interaction, and some crafting, and most of all it looks quite fun.
By the way, this is the last month before Humble Monthly changes into this new Humble Choice thing. So if you're interested in the Humble Classic plan (you get to choose 10 games each month for about the same price as the new Basic subscription that only has 3 games), you'll only have a couple more days to subscribe! Speaking of the different "plans", I think that being able to choose three games each month is still more than enough, as the other games on offer will probably be ones that you're not interested anyway. On the other hand you might miss out on some cool surprises though, so I think I'll stay subscribed for now...
The single-player campaign "Libra of Souls" is 30+ hours (100+ if you go for all the optional stuff) and gives you both some hard challenges if you go look for them but there are also various ingame tools to make the main story easier (without messing with difficulty modes). I was able to button mash my way through a lot of the early game, with a few encounters taking more than one try.
And beyond that campaign there's Arcade, Survival, Character stories and other things to do for single player gaming.
The monthly Humble Choice thing is here at last, and the games for January are:
And just in case the image above doesn't work:
Shadow of the Tomb Raider / Blasphemous / Ancestors Legacy / Phantom Doctrine / Dead in Vinland / Horizon Chase Turbo / Dark Future: Blood Red States / Desert Child / Aegis Defenders / X-Morph Defense
So that's ten games, and you get to choose 3-10 of them, depending on which subscription plan you have. I've got the Humble Classic plan so apparently I get all ten games, which kind of takes some of the fun away from all this. At a quick glance at this bunch of games, I think three games (that's what the Basic subscription gets you) would have been enough, but then again it's often the ones that you've never heard of before that turn out to be the most positive surprises.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the obvious choice, I guess, even though I haven't played a Tomb Raider game for more than 20 years. I've heard mostly positive things about it, and I've got Rise of the Tomb Raider in my collection too, so I'm looking forward to get reacquainted with Lara after all these years.
As for the rest? Nothing that interests me right now, but I'm open for suggestions!
Hmm... tempted to skip this one. Blasphemous and Dark Future look interesting, though. I'm always up for some weird and disturbing soulslike action and I don't think I've seen an RTS done from the point of vehicular road combat before. Looks very Mad Max.
As for Tomb Raider, I didn't much care for the first instalment of the newest reboot and it doesn't look like the sequels do anything substantially different. I liked the series when it was more about about exploration and raiding tombs and less about stealth-action and shooting dudes in the face. Not that I have anything particularly against it, it just seems a bit... meh.
Rise is a lot more about exploring tombs than the previous game and from what I hear Shadow is even more of that. While Rise does have some Clown Car Shooting Galleries, it didn't feel as prominent as in the first of the reboot to me.
Are these tombs short linear side areas where you try to solve a puzzle to get a prize while Lara tells you what you need to do, like it was in the 2013 reboot, or do you explore ancient ruins as whole levels while navigating traps and searching for pickups and secrets, like it was in the original game?
I do have Rise, there's just so many more games I want to play first when I get the time.
Don't remember Rise, but Shadow had some pretty good tombs, as main courses as well as optional side tombs. If you set the Puzzle Difficulty to Hard you don't get any extra hints. Some of them were kinda tricky!
Realtime with pause. Convoy did basically this previously. I'm always interested in these kinds of things tho, so thanks for pointing it out!
Oh yeah, forgot about that. I thought it was more of a roguelike like FTL where you travel on an overhead map and resolve combat encounters on a static screen but looks like it was more dynamic than that.
About Phantom Doctrine, I picked it up for Switch recently. Seems like it would be my thing, turn based stealth/tactics, with a minimum of random dice rolls determining combat outcomes, but it's not really grabbing me.
January Humble Choice games are here, this time there are 12 games to choose from:
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War / Graveyard Keeper / Two Point Hospital / Dirt Rally 2 / Street Fighter V / Bad North: Jotunn Edition /
Trailmakers / Unrailed! / Whispers of a Machine / Them's Fightin' Herds / Mages of Mystralia / Grip
Some interesting games here. Dirt Rally 2 alone is worth the monthly fee, I almost bought it during the Christmas sales and I'm so glad now that I didn't. Shadow of War... hmm. I didn't find Shadow of Mordor particularly great - the story was nonsense, the locations rather uninspiring and ugly, and the nemesis system was hardly as revolutionary as I thought it would be - so, is SoW just more of the same or is it more than just Assassin's Creed Uglyland now? Graveyard Keeper is a game that has caught my interest earlier too, a lite RPG with some resource management thing going on. Two Point Hospital could be the spiritual successor of Theme Hospital or something, and it seems that some former Bullfrog people have been working on it - definitely worth checking out! Mages of Mystralia looks like a rather generic fantasy adventure, but there's something quite charming about it that makes me want to try it. Bad North looks cool but I think it was a freebie on Epic not too long ago?
The rest don't seem bad either, but will have to go further down on my ever-growing to-play list. Whispers of a Machine looks really good for a point & click adventure with its nordic noir sci-fi theme, but it's a point & click adventure and I don't usually like those. I never cared about pure beat-em-up kinda games so I doubt that Street Fighter V is my thing either, especially when I got some Soul Calibur game last month that's probably pretty much the same. Them's Fightin' Herds is another beat-em-up game but with characters that could be from My Little Pony - I think I'll pass. You get to build all sorts of vehicles in Trailmakers which sounds fun enough, but there doesn't seem to be much else going on judging by the gameplay video that I watched. Unrailed! looks like a cute railway building game but it's apparently multiplayer only. Grip is an old-fashioned action racing game that could be fun if the physics feel right - I guess I'll give it a try anyway.
RE: Mages of Mystralia, it's apparently fairly creative in terms of spell-slinging, from what I've heard. I really should play it someday. Also of note is it has an absolutely lovely orchestral soundtrack.
Shadow of War is essentially SoM, but turned up to 11. There's more everything, with incremental improvements to combat etc., but no real attempt to address the weaknesses of the previous game. It's still a power base grind, it's still painfully repetitive, and yes, the story is even more ridiculous. That might be a good thing, though, for fans of the original.
February 2020 games:
Frostpunk / Pathfinder: Kingmaker / Book of Demons / Cryofall / Okami HD / Eliza /
Shenzen I/O / Project Warlock / The Hex / Warstone TD / Underhero / Night Call
Kind of an underwhelming bunch of games this month really. Frostpunk is a game that I've been eyeing for a while with mild interest, and I'll probably try out Pathfinder: Kingmaker too when I hit that RPG mood again, but apart from that I don't see anything particularly interesting on the list. I didn't care about Okami around ten years ago on the Wii, but I'll give the HD version a chance. Book of Demons looks somewhat interesting; it seems to bring something new to the ARPG genre, but I don't like the art style. Project Warlock has potential to be fun, it looks ugly even for a retro FPS though, but if the level design isn't too retro, it could be worth my time.
Well yeah, that's about it for this month.
- Frostpunk is great, a real fun small city builder with a strong theme. Haven't had as much fun since Caesar 3/Pharaoh/Zeus.
- Okami is more of an acquired taste. It's not difficult in the slightest and runs a bit long, but on the other hand, gorgeous art and fun relaxing gameplay.
- Pathfinder: Kingmaker seems like a throwback to Baldur's Gate, including all the frustrating aspects of it. Way down in my list, currently.
- Shenzhen I/O is a Zachtronics game. Nobody does open-ended engineering puzzle games quite like they do. Very distinct, very brainy. Quite liked SpaceChem, but most of their other games seem like I'd be liable to get quite frustrated with my inefficient solutions.
- Eliza is a visual novel that's also from Zachtronics, curiously enough. I'm not much into visual novels generally, but for someone who has worked in tech, this one seems intriguing, especially as the very first I heard of it was through Steam recommending it to me as a game similar to Papers, Please.
- Project Warlock made some small waves a year ago or so as a very retro FPS. Seems interesting enough for a try at least, but so far playing Doom wads or replaying those old FPS games has been quite enough for me to sate that particular appetite.
Don't know anything about the other games.
I've played some of Eliza. It's a visual novel with choice options basically every couple of sentences, and the story looks like it sometimes cares what option you pick, so it plays more like a game, although it's playing with the idea that "freedom" is an illusion in interactive fiction/life generally to begin with, in both the game and the story. The story itself is kind of interesting; it's about AI-human interaction. I like it anyway. But I'm a sucker for cyberpunk settings and stories. It's nice to see the genre playing out of its stereotype.
Some new bundles available:
Digital Tabletop Bundle 2
€1+
- Gremlins, Inc.
- Reigns
- Reigns: Her Majesty
BTA (€5.90)
- Terraforming Mars
- Armello
- For The King
€9+
- Slay the Spire
Some potentially interesting games there. Reigns looks fun, and so do Armello and For The King. With games such as these it's hard to say though. Slay the Spire I've played before; I loved it for the first couple of hours, managed to get through the story with all three characters, but after that it felt like I've seen everything that the game has to offer, and I haven't felt like playing it again.
Humble VR Bundle
€1+
- Cosmic Trip
- Smashbox Arena
BTA (€13.19)
- GORN
- Budget Cuts
- Space Pirate Trainer
€13.50+
- SUPERHOT VR
- Moss
I'm still stuck in the past and have no experience in VR games, but Moss looks like a lot of fun! Superhot too, I guess. If you're interested in any of the games in the middle tier, I think it's worth investing those 31 extra cents to get the last two games... The VR bundle is only available for less than a week now.
P.S. I apologise in advance if the formatting of this post looks terrible - I tried the WYSIWYG mode and noticed that it kinda sucks
Oh, and there's also Humble Train Simulator Bundle featuring Train Simulator 2020 and tons of DLC, starting from €1 as usual.I wonder if that game is meant for hardcore train enthusiasts only - I mean, I'm sure that operating a train engine takes some skill, but it just doesn't sound all that fun... I'm tempted to find out what it's all about.
IMO a quite fun game about immortal corrupt little bastards trying to be on the top of the social/economic ladder. The game manages to both reward and punish risky plays (often as a single event) as well as keep a balance between the cards that screw over other players and those that don't cause trouble for others.
The devs are quite active and constantly updating the game with new cards and balance changes, they've been releasing 2 new cards every calendar season so far. The community is also fairly active and helpful and from what I've seen the tournaments and ranked play are well populated. Something to note about ranked play is that the game has two servers, Amsterdam is for FFA ranked while Singapore is for 1v1 ranked.
All DLC is purely cosmetic and the base game comes with every gameplay feature. You also get an offline singleplayer version called Gremlins vs Automatons for free.
I've been pleasantly surprised with a couple of titles from the current Board Game bundle, most notably Splendor and Scythe.
Splendor is about renaissance merchants vying for recognition from various nobles through gem trade. While my initial impression of the game from just viewing it being set up was negative (3 decks with 4 revealed cards each and a bunch of tokens), the actual gameplay is quite good and massing resources to buy things (so you can buy more things and eventually get enough recognition) is a great fit for the theme. You can unfortunately not even attempt to use the various expansions together at this point in time.
Scythe is about prospering in a European post-WW1 wasteland, with mechs. The board and the playing pieces are all nice, while the mechanics leave room for a lot of different tactics and strategies. With 5 different factions and 5 different foci (rules for what moves you can combine and what they cost/give) you can get a lot of variation in approaches. The scoring system is my main issue, as it feels like you need a spreadsheet to figure out what the score would be if any given player gets their final star and how your potential actions would impact that. Other than that gripe it's good.
As far as the rest of the games go, Carcassonne is Carcassonne and a lot of the expansions are included (with the various Bundle tiers). Potion Explosion is a Match 3 (err 2) game that doesn't want you to blindly match 2, but rather go for the colors you need at the moment. King and Assassins could be an interesting diversion for 2 players, but it didn't feel too good against the AI. Love Letter does a lot with not very much, but the theme doesn't grab me. The main menu of Small World 2 made me put it on hold until I have the patience for that mess. Mysterium feels like it really needs multiple human players to work well. Patchwork fell through on the theme, and I haven't even installed it yet. I initially declined to install The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game due to install size compared to the rest, but I'll probably check it out soonish.
So, if I'm not interested in Tropico 6, is there anything else interesting in this month's Humble Choice or is it safe to skip this one:
I quite enjoyed Sunless Seas, but it's a very idiosyncratic game.
Ah, looks like I already have that one on GOG. I vaguely remember trying it out, but apparently something didn't quite mesh with me.
Yeah, this month seems like the worst one in Humble Choice so far. Sunless Seas + Skies bundle is the only one here that really interests me, and I suppose I should give Tropico a try some time, because I've never played any of those games.
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