In the thirteen years since I opened my Steam account, (Thanks, Half-Life 2) I've collected an enormous collection of games through various Steam sales, and bundles for sale through sites like Humble Bundle, Indie Gala, and Fanatical (formerly Bundle Stars).
The thing is, I haven't played almost any of them, but the most 'popular' titles, and I've got no idea what is good, and what is bad. Steam does have a system of user reviews; but I like to experience things for myself, without context, and to suspend judgement from what others have written.
Steam Stats Sourced from Steamdb.info
So here we go, approaching my Steam Collection with alphabetical precision. I don't know what the frequency of these posts will be, but I can tell you that there may end up being a lot of them!
Assassin's Creed II
The second Assassin's Creed game is better than the first one. I gave the first game four out of ten. The second game adds some new mechanics, like looting the "corpses" of the enemies you best in battle, and you get a few coins out of it. Several hundred (or thousand coins later) you can buy slightly more robust cloth to protect your virtualised, projected body.
The story continues to fall off the rails as you explore the Italian setting of the game, flicking between the present day, and the past memories of Altair. As one of the "better" games in the series, it's about pure Assassin's Creedy as you can get.
This doesn't make it a good game, with lots of "fetch the items scattered around the map" activities, and the same, banal, easy combat as the first game. While I'm saying it is a better game, it doesn't make it a brilliant game, and even with the recent remaster released on consoles - it still remains unworthy of any significant time investment. Assassin's Creed is Ubisoft's Guitar Hero. One new game every year, no matter what, and the masses will buy it.
Its days are numbered, and back when this was released, they weren't.
5/10
Avadon: The Black Fortress
This title, released at the start of the decade, (2010-2012) is an isometric role-playing game in which you take on the role of a named character (you choose from four classes) and become a hand of Avadon, a black fortress. There, you clear out some dungeons, and start life as a hand of Redbeard, the ruler of the fortress. From there, its slow paced combat, with some tactics involved, some interestingly written dialogue and story, but it is a slow game.
Slow in the same way that pen and paper role playing games are slow. Slow in the way that every time the dungeon master's lips move to explain a situation or npc, event, or happening, that you wish for lightning to strike them down so you can get involved in some better, more challenging situation, and y'know; actually have fun.
That's one of the things missing in Avadon: The Black Fortress. Fun. There's not a lot of explanation throughout the game about the actual mechanics, and beyond tool tips; there's a sense of having a chess set but no grasp on its rules. As a result, without a thorough, and in depth pursuit of the game's lore, manuals, and skill trees in considerable depth - you won't enjoy the game.
The mere act of transferring items between characters in your own party is a challenging one that can involve dropping items on the ground, then picking them up with the other character; or; alternatively, googling for a suggestion as to the best way that this can be handled. In addition, you can open your inventory by pressing "I" on your keyboard, but then to close it again, you have to press escape. The game doesn't play well at high resolutions, but if I were stuck in hospital for weeks, with only a low spec laptop, this would help ease whatever physical suffering ailed me, because playing this game comes with a certain level of suffering itself.
I'm giving it 4/10, on the basis of about three hours gameplay. I'm sure it gets better with age, though.
Avencast
This game wouldn't work no matter what settings, menu options, or things I tried. After 30 minutes of attempting to get it to run, and using master google as an assistant, I gave up. RIP, whatever game you were.I'll be continuing on conquering my Steam library, and when I get to an interesting or notable game, will be streaming my pursuits!