Been dreaming about those for years. After the initial fiasco, a month and a half later, I find them quite comfortable.
Certainly need to get used to the weight, and also not to strain tendons too much. But feet feel warm and dry, which I certainly like.
High boots are certainly not as easy to slip in. And I wish there were mid waterproof option available.
Completed Inmost.
It’s a relatively short and purposefully easy game. Even if you get killed, you usually respawn nearby. There isn’t much backtracking, and puzzles don’t have many options.
Something between metroidvania and limboid. Cold dark palette. Heavily story-driven, switching between at least 3 different characters that play differently. With the middle-aged man it’s about solving enviromental puzzles, or luring enemies into traps.
With a knight, it’s more about hitting everything with a sword and rolling, but he can’t jump – only use grappling hook in specific areas.
With the girl, it’s also about puzzle solving, but there are no enemies.
Some of the cool action sequences are just that: scenes. Not even QTE.
A parody on noir movies. Though I feel like I’m not educated enough to appreciate it. Or maybe I simply didn’t watch enough Hitchock?
There’s a dog killer everybody talks about. And a millionaire went missing. And a dude, that is a total dickhead, meets a girl, Sarah, that disappears the next day.
So he goes looking for her. In woman’s restroom, at one point.
He’s a total dickhead, as I said. I found the protagonist to be repelling (I guess this is on purpose, everybody mentions how he smells like a skunk).
The millionaire turns dead, burned in his car with a woman, and the dickhead suspects it’s the same girl he met. He starts obsessing over secret messages, that eventually lead him to an empty atomic bomb shelter and to a cult leader. Turns out the millionaire is not dead, not yet. You see, millionaires use those atomic bomb shelters as tombs. They bury themselves alive in those with their wives to eventually “ascend”. And Sarah is happy with her fate. Is that a commentary on how young girls in LA “sell” themselves to millionaires? Not sure.
Completed Mortal Shell.
The game is relatively short compared to Dark Souls: about one third of number of areas, bosses and overall length. Completed it in about 10 hours.
Seat of Infinity is the most tiring temple of the three. Even with the skill that gives you another respawn once you kill enough enemies, it’s a trial of endurance. I ended up running past most of the enemies to get to the boss.
The boss turned out to be the easiest out of the three for me. Maybe because my shell had a long reach and could shrug off some of the damage. Or I was well prepared, and not greedy. Or maybe I just got lucky. But I beat the “siamese twins” on my first attempt, and never looked back. Literally, I just ran all the way out of this cursed temple, not engaging a single enemy.
Final boss proved to be a real challenge for me. Mostly because he summons a lot of quick minions – true bane for my greatsword.
Managed to beat it on my last breath:
There are some interesting ideas in this game after all. As I mentioned, the amount of healing items is pretty limited. But one of the characters is able to heal from poison. He also has the lowest health of all of them, though.
Also, there’s no magic outright. But you can find two unlocks for each of the weapons, which are powered by your “rage meter”. Some of those abilities are ranged attacks, while others allow you to imbue the current weapon with one of the elements. Two-handed Martyr’s Blade is especially useful in that regard. It’s cold imbue allows to freeze even some minibosses. At least it worked on Enslaved Grisha.
This miniseries has a very Kingy feel, although Stephen King wasn’t very lucky with most of his movie adaptations.
A convict comes to his home island after spending 4 years in prison for killing a woman in a crash while driving drunk. The community is very pious, or to be precise, doesn’t have much to do except going to church. But he doesn’t believe in anything anymore, remaining a stranger.
The detail that really struck me is his room from back when he was a teenager: with posters of Seven, X-Files and Scream. Something that both sets the time and the athmosphere.
A funny thing happened. I guess it came with one of the sneaky updates.
Now I have two keyboard layouts in my Windows 10, US and UK.
What’s so funny about it? That I cannot see UK layout installed anywhere.
But that means that I need to switch between two layouts, and UK layout has “@” in a weird place.
Managed to solve it only after proactively installing UK layout, and then uninstalling it.
Decided to watch this due to some interesting actors: Ruby Rose (John Wick 2), Tom Hopper (Umbrella Academy), Andy Serkis
The storyline is “back to 90’s”, and very similar to Die Hard or Under Siege: bunch of mercenaries capture a train that runs between London and Paris, that just happens to have a well trained SAS operative heading to his honeymoon onboard.
Female (sorry, genderfluid) villain is surprising nowadays, when the only evil comes from white men. Can a good guy kill a woman, even if she’s a terrorist?
The only interesting idea is that even the good guys in movies are sociopaths. Otherwise, you can’t kill 20 people in a day and just walk away as if nothing happened.
Brilliantly drawn, but storywise, the author doesn’t know how to stop. There are characters upon characters and entire chapters just for the shock content. Girls from an orphanage being killed by soldiers in a false-flag op. A child abused by her parents until she schemes to dispose of them.
Martian Chronicles is both a sequel to Last Order and a prequel to the original Gunnm. It suffers from the same problem as many other prequels, like Star Wars Episode 1, which is call The Messiah Complex.
You seen, in Star Wars 4-6 Darth Vader was a formidable enemy and a very interesting character. But in Episode 1 Lucas made him the result of a prophecy and The Most Powerful Jedi of All.
In the original manga, Alita was a talented warrior, with strong spirit, secret techniques and all. But here we immediately told that even as a kid she’s the result of some Prophecy that would Change the World. I think that approach completely takes agency from the character. Instead of a story of personal growth, we get a story of simply following your destiny all along.
Since all of events happen on Mars and Mars is a German colony in Gunnm (Venus is French, by the way), there’s a lot of germanophilia going on. A lot of german words, soldiers dressed as 3rd Reich, there’s a terrorist organization called “New 3rd Reich” (why not 4th?)
Decided to watch it after stumbling upon some fan made music video and thinking “the fights are actually aren’t half that bad!”
I’m genuinely impressed how much of the original manga they managed to squeeze in.
Grewishka, Zappan, Hugo, and the motorball. Even a bit of Mars. It seems that they’ve altered the sequence of events quite a bit, but I read the manga some 20 years ago, so I might be mistaken.
Fight sequences are absolutely amazing. Especially the second fight with Grewishka.
The face capture is seriously impressive as well:
Surprised they left a lot of brutality intact. Zappan splitting a street urchin in two, Grewishka’s eye poked out, Alita’s first body literally diced. Characters being cyborgs is what made that brutality possible in the first place, and back then, it was grounbreaking, someone fighting without legs.
Dialogues are sharp, which is refreshing, after so many movies narrating everything. Here a lot is left unsaid, or at least said only once.
Funny how they use Razer Orbweaver to reconstruct Alita:
Almost direct Dark Souls clone. Visual style, stamina based combat, “leaving a bloodstain” and all that.
There are no classes, though. Instead, we have “shells”, dead bodies of different heroes that we inhabit and reanimate.
There are no direct stats or levels: instead we pick perks.
Seems there are no shields: instead we have “hardening”, which can block some attacks completely, but has a cooldown instead of being dependent on stamina.
A bit annoying that there’s no fast travel. Either give me a fast travel or a map, but I’m not going to remember how to get from place to place.
One element I liked in Dark Souls, is that your estus flasks replenish after you die. Here you have a consumable system instead. And those also don’t heal you immediately, which make them pretty useless.
Managed to beat the first boss, ogre funnily called Grisha. Guides say he’s easy. He isn’t. Managed to beat him only with counters, Bloodborne-style.
Absolutely fascinating. Watched in one go. Although certainly not what I expected. I expected more scares.
There is no one evil mastermind. Instead there is a web of lies that also evolves over time.
It’s easy to look at everything with a modern cynical eye. But it’s important to remember those people honestly believed in things like Hell and Purgatory.
There’s a lot of subtelty in the dialogs, without them being vague. Like: “He went to school, and I didn’t”. In 1860, 40% of women in the UK were illeterate.
Poor box is an interesting detail. The local church may be monetarily benefiting from a local Saint or miracle, but not the family. The family gets the house at best.
Another interesting detail: chickens in the main room. Although I guess the family could be considered a lower-middleclass: they have chickens, and a maid!
Completed Beast Inside.
For a game I didn’t have any expectations from, I enjoyed it way too much. More than Soma or Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
It’s rough around the edges for sure. Sometimes your character gets stuck in geometry (not permanently, but you still feel it). And physics is a bit wonky. But it gets a lot things right, like giving you clues for puzzles if you struggle with them for more than a few minutes, or always guiding your eyes with light / color for the next objective. Candles, white boards or rusted sheets of iron are like signposts. Not as subtle as some other games, but still I rarely felt stuck for more than a couple of minutes.
The game is full of references. I already mentioned the chapter names are all nods to Lovecraft’s novels and the portraits. At one point we learn that Hyde changed his family name to Stevenson.
But not only horror: there’s a some of “Red Sparrow” being thrown around too. And I think to the Firewatch game as well.
Contrary to Master of Magic Classic, which I enjoyed as a kid, but found hard to play nowadays, I considered Panzer General impossible as a kid.
Now, after completing a few Advance Wars games, I completed the first mission ahead of time.
It’s more of a puzzle than a strategy, though, since you can learn where all the enemy units are after a couple of attempts.
I didn’t know the game had a global campaign. Not only if you complete your objective ahead of the deadline you’ll receive more credits in the next mission, but all your untis from the first mission are transferred to the second one as well.
Interesting, if rather weird mechanic. Artillery is not very efficient against infantry, and not efficient at all against tanks (there’s a special anti-tank artillery for that). But it can counterattack unlimited number of times when any of the adjacent units are attacked. Making it very powerful when put behind a unit defending a city.
PC:
– Blacksad: Under the Skin
– Darksiders 3
– Dusk
– Prodeus
– Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
– Rise of the Tomb Raider
Switch:
– Return of Obra Dinn
The gameplay is surprisingly varied. There’s a boss fight that reminds me of Alan Wake. There’s chasing of a spy.
Although the game is all-over the place. There are ghosts, which scare you, but otherwise harmless, and there are zombies, which can kill you, but can be blocked by doors. Most of the zombies are invincible. Sometimes you need to outrun them, sometimes to sneak past, sometimes beat them in QTE.
Name of Chapter 8, “In the Mouth of Darkness” would make any Lovecraft fan smile, not just me. Other chapters are also references, but this was one of the most direct ones.
Another Amnesia?
Controls a little weird: to open a door, you need to “drag” it with your mouse. And the developers really went “all in” on that idea. Sometimes you need to drag open multiple drawers to find an item you’re looking for.
Love how they have photos of Alan Poe and Lovecraft hanging around the house.
Finally bought a Philips S9000 shaver I was thinking about for a few months now. And it’s is probably the last expensive shaver I’ll buy.
For some reason, they went with three angled petals instead of round ones. And angles means scratches.
The shave itself isn’t any better than S8000 I had for many years. The benefits are in the ergonomics, mostly: there’s a standing charge station, which is nice. And there’s a pressure indication light, similar to the electrical toothbrushes. Also, the shaving unit is now attached with a spring to the shaving head.
Funnily enough it also comes with a cleaning station, something I never really wanted, due to its bulk and limited use.
Funny enough, I did manage to enjoy the original Master of Magic. But only after playing Master of Magic 2022, as it explains a lot of mechanics.
There is “continue move” in the original, just somewhat hidden. And there’s also auto-build, called “Grand Visier”. But you cannot turn it for a specific city. Everything or nothing.
Slightly annoying that heroes sometimes lose artifacts when they die. Although I guess this has to do with the artifact being owned by “neutral” faction. Save often.
Completed my first game with elves, and they are awesome, just as I expected. Decimated everything with my longbowmen. Also randomly found a Ring of Invulnerability, which is quite literally makes a hero invulnerable to most types of attacks 😬 That sure helped a lot.
There are some issues with the generated maps being mostly islands. AI is quite good at managing naval raids. But for me, it was very cumbersome to put my heroes on ships.
I also slightly understand some players razing most of the cities. CPU is very good at finding underdefended towns, and recapturing them. No town – no problem.
One design choice that I find questionable is that the dungeon drops are not prerolled. That means every time you load a save file, you can get completely different set of outcomes from the same dungeon.
All units in the game have to-hit. But the weird thing is that the default to-hit is 30%. Which means that units miss a lot.
The is surprising amount of attention to counter magic. In addition to both combat and global map dispells, there is also an entire mechanic to fail enemy spells before they are being cast.
It is somewhat of a problem how slow the game is. It takes a lot of turns to get started and hire at least one hero. Then it took me about 200 turns to best 3 of my opponents. And I didn’t even get to research yhr Spell of Mastery, which is the alternative way to end the game. Not even mentioning casting it, which probably would have taken even longer.
Part of the fun, I guess, is also to create things that are intentionally broken. You can summon heroes like Torin, essentially an avatar, already extremely powerful, then craft artifacts that grant him invincibility against most types of harm. All you need is enough time.