Categories
PC Gaming

Mortal Shell

Almost direct Dark Souls clone. Visual style, stamina based combat, “leaving a bloodstain” and all that.

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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.

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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.

Categories
*.AVI

Wonder

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!

Categories
PC Gaming

Beast Inside

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.

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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.

Categories
PC Gaming

Panzer General

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.

Categories
Nintendo PC Gaming Switch

Completed

PC:
– Blacksad: Under the Skin
– Darksiders 3
– Dusk
– Prodeus
– Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
– Rise of the Tomb Raider

Switch:
– Return of Obra Dinn

Categories
PC Gaming

Beast Inside

The gameplay is surprisingly varied. There’s a boss fight that reminds me of Alan Wake. There’s chasing of a spy.

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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.

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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.

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Categories
PC Gaming

Beast Inside

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.

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Love how they have photos of Alan Poe and Lovecraft hanging around the house.

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Categories
*.BAK

Philips S9000 shaver

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.

Categories
PC Gaming

Master of Magic Classic

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.

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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.

Categories
PC Gaming

Master of Magic

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.

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

Categories
PC Gaming

Master of Magic

Master of Magic was one of the favorite games of my childhood. Since apparently there’s now a remake, the original one was rename to Master of Magic Classic.

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I don’t understand how did I manage to play it as a kid, without any manual and not understanding much English. Because as an adult 25 years later, I got wiped out on my first turns, and couldn’t figure out how to build more soldiers.

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The remake feels like an improvement in all areas. There are now battle outcome predictions. And build queues for cities. And you can also let AI manage city development. And you have “continue move”, so you don’t need to remember where your army was heading.

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The game mechanics are a bit weird. It’s mostly based around special scout units, spirits. Only they can capture mana nodes for some reasons. Mana nodes are the main sources of mana. And since the game is called Master of Magic, mana is very important. With enough mana, you can summon phantom units during battle. Meaning that it’s enough to have just a single flying spirit and enough mana to wreak havoc and capture some villages.

Categories
PC Gaming

Ultimate ADOM Caverns of Chaos

Played the ASCII version of the original ADOM some 25 years ago. Never managed to get into it, though.
As far as I understand, this is a sequel to the original game. There’s also a remake of the original game with 2D graphics.
This version has a rather friendly UI. But the dungeons it generates aren’t particularly interesting. You get secret walls that don’t lead anywhere, chests that don’t contain anything useful.


While the original had a staring village, here you start right in the dungeon.
There’s a tutorial, which is nice. But the tutorial suggests to butcher an orc, then to graft his arm into yours, without ever explaining why 🤦‍♂️

Managed to create a troll warrior and get to the 4th level of the dungeon. But didn’t enjoy the process much, to be honest.

Categories
PC Gaming

Dusk

Completed Dusk.
Riveter is great against bosses. It’s like a combination of a rocket launcher and a machine gun, and simply shreds most of them to pieces in seconds.

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But my favorite weapon is the Hunting Rifle. Works just like a railgun. There’s also the Crossbow that even pierces walls, but it was harder to find until Episode 3, and it has that weird recoil that bounces you back.
The Sword is available since Episode 1, albeit it’s usually found in secrets. But it’s still strange they don’t explain how to use it properly until Episode 3. You can charge attack with it, but only with full health. And you can block attacks for chip damage, but only until you have two thirds health left.

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Tornado destroying a church is super impressive.

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Changing gravity in “Homecoming” is interesting, but was a bit too much, so I tried to finish this level as quickly as possible. Prefinal arena throws everything at you, including some former bosses. Then the final level has two bosses, which is great. One is basically a player, with the same move speed and arsenal of weapons. And the second one is a huge Ancient One.

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Categories
Hardware

Music to my ears

For years I’ve beet trying to hear the difference between lossy and lossless audio using one of the ABX tests.
I thought that I can’t tell the difference because even the SoundBlaster AE-9 is not “professional” enough.
So I got USBPre 2 for a time. And guess what? I still don’t hear the difference 🤷‍♂️

Categories
Nintendo Switch

Return of Obra Dinn

Completed Return of Obra Dinn.
I’m surprised how much I got into that game.
First part is gathering the clues, which is pretty standard for walking sims.
Second part, that starts with the storm, is much more involved, as it requires a lot of crossreferencing. Officers of same rank wear similar clothes. Each officer has a mate that is often seen with them. People of same origin tend to stick together. Things like that. The funny part is that I had the most trouble identifying four Chinese guys. Because, you know, they all look the same.

Categories
*.BAK

What’s in the barrel

Found this to be fascinating, what difference the barrel makes.

Same alcohol, same age, just a different barrel.

Categories
Hardware

Fan noise

For two weeks I was bothered by my RTX 2070 fans starting and stopping.
At first I was blaming driver updates.
But then I ended up opening the case and noticing that just one of the three fans does that.
A little vacuuming helped. And I also bought a bottle of air duster though, just in case.

Categories
*.AVI

Midsommar

Midsommar does all the usual horror movie things: plenty of gore, cult village you cannot leave alive, bunch of outsiders (different clothing, speak English instead of Swedish) that get picked off one by one. Not much screamers, but they do have corpses that open their eyes. But it does a lot of things also differently.


Most things happen during daytime. Or, to be more precise, it’s hard to distinguish between day and night. I learned that there’s even a name for that: “daylight horror”.
Turns out that we watched the regular version, which is already 2:30 hours long. But I can’t complain: watched it in one go, and the amount of detail and characters do make up for the length.
There’s also a Director’s Cut, which is almost three hours.
Sharp transitions. Danni walks into a bathroom in Christians apartment, and she’s in the bathroom of the airplane. Josh is sitting at the table during day, then he’s sitting on his bed at night, thinking of sneaking into the temple.


Reflections. Danni sees a scary reflection after taking the mushroom tea. Josh sees the reflection of what he thinks is Mark. The table they use for celebrations is reflective.


Bear. There’s the bear poster, a live bear in the cage, bear in the Matron’s house, and of course the bear ending.

Distortions. When heroes take hallucionogenic mushrooms, viewers experience this as well, from a 3rd person view.


That goes with the 4th wall stares: different characters have that long stare into the camera, when there’s nothing for them to look at.

Things I didn’t get at all: Scissors under the pillow and inbread oracle.
Although maybe oracle supposted to be vague: can the Elders really interpret his drawings? Or are they just using him as an excuse to promote their own plans?

One thing that Director’s Cut explains, though, is why the British girl is shown drowned and in some kind of a fishnet with pictures in the last scenes of the movie.
There’s another scene, when a ritual of sacrifice to the river happens. And one of the boys is offered, wearing a fishnet (he is sacrificed to the water) and probably the most precious things (pictures of his relatives and child toys, I assume). Then the ritual is interrupted. Guess that’s because they found a replacement.

Categories
Nintendo Switch

Return of Obra Dinn

Stylish black&white walking sim. We play as insurance investigator from the 19th century, that is tasked with figuring out what happened to a vessel, now barren besides a few skeletons.

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You have a magic clock, that given a corpses, shows how a person died. Now if in that memory someone else dies, magic clock will make their corpse reappear too. And you can do multiple time jumps that way.
The story broken into chapters, and each chapter has a page dedicated to each corpse. Some of the crew didn’t leave corpses behind, so you also need to figure out what happened to them (in the middle of the sea, dugh!). Each page is a 3D slice of a ship, sometimes spanning multiple decks. You can move around, trying to figure out who’s who.
There are about 40 different ways a person could die in this game. I didn’t expect anyone to be electrocuted. I was wrong.
Pretty quickly we discover that the ship was attacked by no less that a kraken. And before that, by a couple of murderous crab riding merman. And this is all a result of a curse. The game leans into the mystical heavier than what I expected. But there are also a couple good old murders to solve as well. A baton is a far deadlier weapon that one would assume.

Categories
PC Gaming

Dusk

I like that there are three bosses just in the first episode. Even though the second boss is just a pair of regular cultist enemies that got enlarged. Entire Prodeus had just a single boss in it.
One of my complaints is that weapons are hard to distinguish from each other. Mortar looks just like Riveter, local version of the Rocket Launcher.
Enemies that are invisible until shot, but that leave blood trails are quite fun. Also, the mechanic of breaking your flashlight a couple of times during the game, and spending time in darkness is interesting for a Quake-like.

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Other suprises: powerup that lets you climb walls, like in Alien vs Predator games. It’s awkward, but still interesting.
While the first episode was more Blood/Redneck Rampage in terms of level design, the second episode has more of a industrial Quake or even Quake 2 feel. Which I like slightly less.