Daagar
3473
My complaint about the “bad month” posts is that sometimes it is hard to tell if that is because the games are trash, or because someone simply owns most of the stuff.
The former is obviously a big deal, because it means maybe it is worth pausing. Which is TOTALLY OPPOSITE of the latter - if someone already owns most of the games, they are probably good and the value of the month is actually much higher if someone doesn’t own them.
Same with rating a month ‘horrible’ based on comparison with gamepass.
I’d like to see a bigger focus on rating the games themselves. A lot of these bundles include things I’ve never heard of, and I trust user reviews here more than digging up steam reviews on everything.
stusser
3474
I had the exact same reaction. Absolutely not. What a pile of shit.
I’m not canceling my subscription, though! Many months the headline game is worth $12 all by itself, and it’s trivial to repause every month. I just tell Siri to remind me to pause on the proper day and it works out perfectly.
Sometimes it’s not even the headline game that’s worth $12, I’ve bought whole bundles just for one game on the third row from time to time. If it beats the historic low and it’s a game I want, why the hell not right?
stusser
3476
Games on the third row I typically wouldn’t pay $12 for individually, but if I want one and maybe some of the others it can be an attractive proposition. The classic plan is an amazing deal since you can pause it. Sucks that the past two months have been terrible, but it didn’t cost me a penny.
wavey
3477
Plus, if you pay for a year upfront, it can be more like $8/month (as in the recent black Friday sale).
In fairness in both instances I’m thinking of I think they gave me $4 off, so it was $8 for one game on the third row.
But yeah, the overall point here is that it’s a fantastic deal if there are even a couple of games in it you actually want to play.
Every time one of those comes up I have to ask myself if I’m confident there will be 12 more months I want before the program dies and, honestly, I can’t answer “yes” to that based on the past year and my expectations of the future. For all you annual folks I hope I’m wrong!
Daagar
3479
Okay, after my complaint above of ‘focus on rating the games’, I finally dragged myself over to look more closely at what the PC Gamepass offers.
I now see what Humble is really fighting. I like Humble Choice because I like to ‘own’ the games. But owning a bunch of anime games, vs. being able to play quite a number of AAA games … hmm. Now I’m conflicted (easy answer is “do both”, I know, but… miser).
Humble Bundle monthly decline started a few months after being bought by IGN, a bit before gamepass got popular. Although maybe the change was coming irrespectively of who is the owner, as maybe it wasn’t sustainable economically
I dunno, Humble Choice has been hitting much more consistently for me than the old Monthly. I grant there’s been less of the relatively new AAA headliner, but half the time those weren’t anything I especially wanted (e.g. Call of Duty multiplayer, big name sports game, etc). Another 40% of the time I would already have it. And often the downlist stuff would be far less interesting.
With Gamepass you can’t count on them being there for long, but it’s great for people who only want to rush through things once & done. I kept forgetting to play stuff and then it got removed. Now I just download them for 20 minutes and buy them if I like it. I’m still happy that way when they end up in bundles, like Darksiders & Yakuza last month. :)
GP also includes EA Access soon, so that coupon isn’t too useful for many of us.
Black Friday dudes, if your gift got redeemed you should also have this coupon:
LIMITED TIME: Free month of Humble Choice Premium!. Ends January 1, 2021
Coupons usually work on gift purchases if you want to skip this one.
Corridor is the extra. 30 minute comedy walking simulator.
These are the stand-outs for me:
- One Step from Eden
This was on a couple of Qt3’s Steam GOTY nominations.
- Frog Detectives
Seriously, these have great reviews, some people love them.
- Beast Inside
- Zwei stuff
Made by Falcon (Legend of Heroes, Ys), so it might be worth checking out.
- Path of Giants
Lovely, short, easy puzzles about swapping characters.
- Still There
A hard puzzler with a decent story & AI as a character.
I like a lot of the choices this time, but they would’ve been better off being mixed into the other bundles with more universal interest. Can’t see this month being a big seller for them.
The Overcooked games are wonderful games, and can lead to really memorable couch coop experiences. But they really are couch games to be played with other people. I doubt many people have their PCs setup with multiple controllers around which you can gather to play same screen coop games. I’m sure there are some, like the people who connect their PCs to their living room TVs, for instance, but I have a feeling those people are very rare.
I’m kind of surprised Overcooked games are even out on PC.
Daagar
3486
This is actually one reason I tend to stick with Humble. I don’t like the “pressure” of playing stuff before it disappears (even if that’s only in my head), and I actually play more of the smaller stuff over the AAA stuff anyway. Humble is a great way of filling in stuff I would otherwise never consider.
Games seem to stay on the service for months and they give you a heads up when they are leaving so it’s not like they just dissapear one day.
For me, games disappearing is a pleasant feature and not a bug. A backlog that clears itself with no attached guilt!
I’ve bowed out of my subscription altogether. I really can’t be bothered with collecting games for my backlog and my time is becoming even more limited. I’m not bothered by the purchases I made, but I haven’t played any game aside from Pathfinder in those months I bought, and I stopped that because it was unstable on my machine. It’s been a miss for me and there’s no point in forcing it just to keep hoping for some amazing month to come along.
I’ll go back to just watching for the Bundles, which I do still enjoy from time-to-time.
jsnell
3490
I’ll very happily, and in good faith, argue that it’s not fantastic value :) If I’d subscribed to it for a year, it would have cost 160 EUR and it’s basically certain I would not have played ten hours of all those games combined.
Hell, I got a free month of Humble Choice during what I thought was a stellar month for them (July, with 5 games that looked interesting). In the six months since that, I’ve managed to install one of those games, which I played for 90 minutes and really disliked.
The most fantastic value I’ve gotten for PC games has been buying individual games that I wanted to play immediately rather ones bought speculatively to maybe play sometime in the future.
The second best value have been the free games on Epic. I’ve redeemed maybe 20-25 interesting looking games this year. Ended up only playing one, but they were free and redeeming them took basically no effort.
Well yeah, i will clarify that the price for the game is still very cheap, it’s the context that it makes me say ‘bad month’. The context like having many unplayed steam games, EGS giving me free games, Gamepass too, the whole shebang.
I dunno why we need to do this dance every month, some people will find the monthly worth it, others won’t, rinse and repeat every single goddamn month depending on personal taste / games you already bought.
