Monaco - 20/20 hours

I'm finally done with Monaco. I think the main thing holding me back from finishing this game was the fact that I didn't want to. For most of the last week, I've been playing Starbound instead.  It was primarily embarrassment at the thought of taking more than two weeks to finish a game that got me through it. Last night, I just sat down and did a seven hour marathon session.

Sort of. I actually just set the game on God Mode and ground for achievements. I feel a little bad about that, because I didn't actually earn things like the "Unscathed" achievement for finishing every mission without dying, and thus my Steam profile will seem deceptive to anyone who might take a look at it, but it gave me a goal and a direction. Without that, I'd have had to spend all that time sneaking around, and that's basically a non-starter.

I did play a couple of honest co-op games, and those were interesting. I could see how this game could be a lot of fun with four players, communicating over voice chat, and using their individual characters' unique abilities to execute a complex plan. However, that's not really the experience you get with random matches. All the times I tried it, I had only one teammate and we each did our separate thing in absolute silence. I'd rank that as slightly better than single-player stealth, but not by so much that I was willing to give up invisibility.

In the end, Monaco is another one of those games I respect rather than enjoy. It has a very simple presentation, but the intricate levels allowed for multiple approaches that could take advantage of a wide variety of character abilities, constrained be a tense fog-of-war mechanic that rewards observation, memory, and careful planning. It's impressive that so much of the game's complexity lies in the meta-game, and I think if I were an obsessive stealth game fan I would be able to get a lot of mileage out of it.

But I'm not, so I won't. Before cheating my way through and making it a sub-par shooter, I was mostly frustrated by its difficulty. And it wasn't the sort of uplifting frustration that made me want to excel. It was the sort dull frustration that edges me towards despair. I didn't care enough about the game's core challenge to want to develop the game's core skills. I'm fully willing to admit that it's a personal failing, and not something that's wrong with the game itself. But there you have it. Another game that wound up as an endurance test.

Although, I suppose the god thing about being so far down my list is that I surely have only a couple of those left . . .