Posted 20th December 2024
Another year, another Steam Replay. Or is it Steam Year in Review? It seems they changed the name for the platform's third year. Time to look back on how the last year went.
- 59 games played
- 1766 achievements
- 69% played with keyboard + mouse, nice.
- Longest daily streak, 65 days
Virtual arena destruction in THE FINALS
THE FINALS released in December last year, so this was the first full year after release and I went full grind mode for a solid 9 months. I got the 50 million achievement and the 100% pretty early on, on April 1st. I grinded the game probably a bit too much that towards the end of the year I ended up getting a bit burnt out, wanting to play something else. 1031 hours is not too bad for the first year, I think!
It's definitely a game that stands out amongst all the other multiplayer FPS games out there because of how prevalent and important destruction is to the gameplay. Running around with a sledgehammer (with a giant spoon skin) charging through walls, bringing entire buildings down and bonking everyone that got in my way was so fun.
173 hours of stocking shelves in Supermarket Simulator
There are only 3 achievements in Supermarket Simulator at the moment but the purchasing all expandings achievement took 173 hours in the end. I picked this game up pretty early on, there have been many quality of life improvements in the game since. Ordering stock for the following day, manually putting them in my warehouse so my restockers could stock the shelves for 20 minutes was mind-numbing after the 100 hour mark.
I think it could be a fun game in the future to come back to but it needs a lot of improvements to make the game fun again for me after slogging it out in the trenches for so long.
Revisiting the Wild West in Red Dead Redemption 1+2
My third time playing through this game and it never gets old. This time I was going for the rest of the achievements that I hadn't got before, so naturally that was mainly the 100% game completion and some online achievements. The online is pretty dead on this game now, which is sad to see. Fortunately most of the online achievements that I had remaining since I played it back at launch were pretty simple to do.
Coming back to the single player though was amazing. It's one of those games I wish I could forget so I could experience it all over again. The story is incredible, from the heists the gang pull and the inevitable consequences that follow to one of the best character arcs in Arthur as he tries to make amends for his actions and find some sense of peace before the end, if you can call it that. You get so attached to the characters that by the time I closed the game for the last time, I found myself wanting to know how the few that survived ended up after the story concluded.
I picked the game back up because the first Red Dead Redemption finally ended up being ported to PC. I'd been wanting to play it again for so long. The last time I tried playing it was on Playstation Now, Sony's streaming service, but the game itself was very buggy; maybe an old version of the game. I was really excited when the PC port was announced, so naturally holiday was booked off work to experience the nostalgia of the wild west from the PS3 era. Undead Nightmare is still one of the most fun DLCs I've played.
Losing my mind with Batman: Arkham City challenges
I was woefully underprepared for what I was getting into when deciding to play this game. I had just played through Batman: Arkham Asylum, getting all achievements, and was still wanting more Batman so thought it would be a good idea to continue through the Arkham series. Big. Mistake. There are 440 collectibles in that game, in the form of riddler trophies, riddles, balloons and cameras. I suppose that in itself wasn't too bad. Follow a collectibles map, stick a film or three on, and autopilot them for a couple days.
The real grind was the combat and predator challenges. There's something like 30 challenge maps combing combat and predator (stealth) challenges, which again doesn't sound too bad until you realise you have to do it for Batman, Catwoman, Robin and Nightwing. Each challenge also has three requirements each as well. It took 80 hours overall to go through, but over the course of over a month just because it was so mind numbing and frustrating on some of them. I was planning on playing Batman: Arkham Knight after, maybe next year to give me time to recover.
Honourable mentions
- Death Stranding - finally got round to playing this game after being told to give it a go so many times. Really looking forward to the second game now that hopefully comes out on PC next year, but more likely a year after it launches on consoles. I think it's likely one of those games that gets some bad first impressions from people that haven't played it (that was me before), but I got hooked pretty early after sitting down to play it.
- Spiderman Remastered - picked this back up to get the rest of the achievements from launch, also played the Miles Morales game too. Looking forward to Spiderman 2 releasing on PC early next year.
- Star Wars Battlefront 2: Classic Collection - a controversial release that was pushed as a re-release to put the game into a better place for multiplayer. Looking at the numbers at the time of writing, only 28 people are currently playing so sounds like that didn't go to plan. Despite sitting at a Mostly Negative rating on Steam, I actually had a really good time replaying this game from my childhood. Galactic Conquest still remains as one of the best gamemodes, it's a shame that it was never put into the newer Star Wars Battlefront games.
- Human Fall Flat - a game I keep coming back to with every new level release. Always fun to boot this game back up every now and then with friends to try the new level out and get its achievements. Human Fall Flat 2 has been announced, and slated for release in 2026, so a little bit of a wait, but the devs are continuing to add new levels to the current game so that's great!
My Steam Replay is available here.