As with Orion Conspiracy, I didn’t play The Dig when it released, only read some reviews. But I did try it maybe 10 years ago, and found it very difficult. Not so much now, for some reason. The trickiest part so far is the dialogs. You get a set of icons, but it’s not clear which are necessary to progress, and which are just flavour, so you end up listening to everything. And there is a lot of voiced dialog in this game, because besides Lucas Arts, which were at their peak, it has also Steven Spielberg and Orson Scott Card. And you can tell how bold the writing is. You have five astronauts sent on a mission to alter the course of an asteroid that’s about to collide with Earth. In half an hour, you lose contact with two of them. In another half an hour, you lose the third character.
The asteroid turns out to be an alien lift, that takes the astronauts that weren’t waiting in the shuttle to an alien planet. And that’s not the only civilization, there’s a wreck of at least other space ship that isn’t human.
There are a few mechanics that make this game difficult. First, not all objects are active. Early on you need to use an alien compass to discover a place to dig. Second, you can’t simply exhaust your options. There’s a puzzle where you need to program a probe to pick up a lense, then put it in its place. And it can take up to 50 instructions, although you need around 10. Third, you have doors with codes, but you have no idea which code fits which door, so you have to try them all out.
Category: Aleosha Blog
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Dig
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Orion Conspiracy
Completed Orion Conspiracy.
Head of Security discovers that his Deputy is an alien, and gets paranoid, pulling a grenade. Pilot wrestles him, and both get blown, and one of the scientists gets crushed, and her husband decides to stay with her as they get sucked into space. Pure comedy.
The blast also damaged the propulsion system. We can recover another one from the probe. There’s a lengthy animation that mirrors Danny’s death at the same probe, but this time his father managed to recover what he needs.
As we return, the rival corporation tries to take over the station, killing Head of Scientists. We fly out again, place one of the mines that killed Danny on top of their lab and blow them.
Turns out, they discovered shapeshifters slumbering in the asteroid, and colluded with them.
We hunt Security Deputy, which turned feral and ate his dog for some reason, then we bobbytrap selfdestruct before turning it on, and fly away with the black Mechanic and femail Captain.
I genuinely expected a final scare in the form that she’s also a shapeshifter, but no.
On one hand, the game is quite easy. I’m bad at point’n’click adventures, but I had to look in the guide just once. Also, you never need to go through your inventory, as if you have the item, the character will use it automatically, or hint that it can be used, but not in this order.
On the other hand, there’s a surprising number of red herrings: there are communication terminals and air conditioners in almost any room that you can interact with, but never have to, the entire game, not once. Also, there are two dogs running through the station, that serve zero purpose.
But as it’s mostly logical, and the story is genuinely good, I can forgive how much you have to walk back and forth.
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Orion Conspiracy
You discover that at the time of the incident, sensors detected an explosion. Two crew members had access to explosives: Captain and Chief of Security. But you can’t confront either. Instead, you need to perform first “leap of faith”, which I had to look up in the guide: suggest to Lazy Technician that he’s ill, to get the doctor out of her office, to check the medical records on Chief of Security, to discover that he was under anesthesia, so it’s the doctor who took the explosives! That’s a lot of logical leaps, to be fair.
We blackmail Second in Command with the knowledge she’s pregnant and get access to letters to Danny. Turns out he was gay (I remember reading that back in the day).
You confront his lover, and the next moment he’s killed and you need to break out of a cell. Then you discover that Gates, the black intern, is in fact Internal Security, she wrote the original letter to you. She suggests to meet at shuttle bay, so I thought I need to find some clues on the lover’s body. But no, you need to go straight there to discover the shuttle is not full of alien cacoons. Doctor appears, and turns out she’s a shapeshifter, and cacoons are replicas of other crew members. She kills Gates, and we burn her, blowing station’s fuel in the process.
Well, that escalated quickly.
Lazy scientist hears the explosions, panics and attempts to flee in the shuttle with the cacoons. With blow him from a turret, so the aliens don’t reach the Earth. Then Captain confronts us. I thought that Danny was killed to cover up something. Turns out, Captain blames McCormack for his wife’s death, and just wanted revenge. So McCormack was wrong to assume it’s Doctor that killed Danny, despite her being an evil alien. Mechanic intervenes, and Captain is killed during the struggle.
Funny bug there: you can talk to the Captain corpse, and the game will hang, since he can’t answer…
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Cyberpunk 2077
One sidequest that annoyed me was when a husband asks you to assassinate the killer of his wife who’s getting released early. Only the husband gets killed in the assassination attempt instead. Turns out the killer is participating in a reality show since he Found God. What annoyed me is not the theme or the characters, but the fact that the only way to progress is to follow the crew around. I’d rather shoot Joshua and just complete the contract, because that’s who my V is. I remember Witcher to be more nuanced, but maybe it’s just me.
I’m pretty sure the sex scene in the tank is a direct reference to Hardwired, the first cyberpunk I red without knowing what cyberpunk is.
Judy says that after I kicked Maiko, the Tiger Claws gang trashed the brothel, so she’s leaving town.
The serial killer quest is nice. And by that I mean unsettling, all the visions of cows with gas masks.
One thing that disappoints me slightly is weapon variety. On the surface, there are lots of weapons: regular firearms, smart autoaiming ones and tech that can be charged and shoot through walls. But enemies mostly drop the regular ones, and I have seen only one kind of LMG the entire game. Would be nice to have a smart LMG like in Aliens, I kind of expected that.
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Orion Conspiracy
Playing Mouthwashing reminded me of another game set in space I’ve read about as a kid, but never played: Orion Conspiracy. It’s a murder mistery point’n’click. You play as a veteran, who’s sun, Danny, was working as a technician on a space station and died in an accident.
Only after the funeral he receives an anonymous note that it wasn’t an accident.
You get access to all floors of the station at once, and no idea where to go. Moreover, they all look quite the same, there is no map, and the rooms don’t even have signs of them. So I had to write down my own map to navigate.
On the positive side, all 20 characters are voiced well. And it’s a very adult game: there’s racism, sexism, all the cool words from 2020, but in a game from ’95.
The station is home to two corporations. One supposed to investigate a black hole that appeared 12 years ago, and another explores the meteorite the station is attached to. Both were at war with each other some years ago.
Most of the game is walking, there are a lot of corridors that should be in the station, but don’t serve any purpose in a adventure game sense. Some characters also walk between locations, which I haven’t seen in any other adventure game I can remember. It did bit me badly, though, when I needed to bribe a scientist with a pie, only I couldn’t find him either in the lab or in his quarters, or in cafeteria.
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Substance
I haven’t seen so much tits since forever. Jokes aside though, I know Demi Moore is portrayed as “old and ugly”, but looking like that when you’re 60 is still impressive. If it’s not all as CGI as Margaret Qualley’s tits are.
Now, once I covered the topic of high culture, time to discuss how technically impressive the movie is. It’s not subtle, but I also don’t do subtle. So Elisabeth / Demi passing through the orange corridor with her posters ageing works for me. I also like symmetry, symmetry is great.
The obvious layer is “be careful what you wish for”, kind of like more recent Obsession. There’s even unsettling help line. Who isn’t afraid of terrible customer service after all? And the parallels with beauty surgery is clear. You want not just to preserve your looks, you want to look better than before. And for that, you’re cut open, then sewn back together. And maybe you even inject some suspicious substances in your leg, or maybe your face.
Also similar to Obsession, there’s a theme of making conscious choices to continue down this path. Elisabeth is offered to stop when only her finger is transformed, she’s offered to stop when she’s all shriveled, but she just can’t, because of the sunken costs.
I enjoyed the most the horror of the mundane. The close up shots of cooking and eating. As I get older, I do spend more and more time in the kitchen, so it hits home.
And there’s clearly a generational relationship, where Elisabeth blames Sue for partying, while Sue blames Elisabeth for gluttony and sloth. Speaking of which, I think it’s possible to find all 7 deadly sins in Elisabeth and Sue combined.
Speaking of combined, the 3rd and final act is designed to be grotesque. If it was less grotesque, I think it could be far more unsettling. Stephen King level of falling out teeth and nails was far more gruesome to me. But that way, you can just laugh it off.
There’s something to be said about asymmetry of the relationship as well. The borrowing works only in one direction. So while Sue can take something from Elisabeth, the only thing Elisabeth can take back from Sue is her life.
I didn’t expect the 3rd act to work out the way it did. I thought that Sue and Elisabeth will now join forces and show those Evil Men their place. Or maybe Elisabeth just goes back to herself after the second injection. But that would be sucking all the tragedy from the story.Detail that I missed: the story is inspired by Jane Fonda, a name I’ve heard, but wasn’t familiar with. One look at her picture tells a story. Jane Fonda’s Workout was the highest selling VHS ever.
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Mouthwashing
Completed Mouthwashing. It’s a short game, less than 3 hours total.
There are a couple of inventive episodes. One set in a nightmare warehouse, where you have to sneak from a giant blind horse head, only there is no sneak, you just have to stop when you hear static and keep walking when it stops. Another is in a graveyard, where you need to let Swansea get close, then shoot him a couple of times.Anya locks herself with Curly in Medical. Jimmy gives Swansea a boozy cocktail to knock him out, and sneaks into Utility with Daisuke, convincing him to get through airduct shaft into Medical and open the door from inside. Daisuke injures himself, and Swansea finishes him off with an axe. Anya overdoses on painkillers.
Swansea chases Jimmy with an axe, blaming him for Daisuke’s injury, and Jimmy shoots him with captain’s gun. Or maybe he just ties him and executes him in cold blood. Jimmy is not a trustworthy narrator after all. It was he who crashed the ship and not Curly, after all.
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Vibram Fivefingers Scramkey
After wearing Scramkeys just a couple of times, I decided to sell them. Would have returned them altogether, I already removed the tags. Maybe I should have gotten one size bigger than my usual, or maybe it’s just not a good model, but after spending the whole day in them, my thumbs became blood swollen as if I put them in heating jars. Two weeks later, they still haven’t fully recovered 😬
Spyridons are great so far, though. -
Samsung S24 Ultra
I used to take photos in 12 megapixels, because WhatsApp couldn’t send 50 megapixels photos anyway. But when I switched to 50Mb mode, I noticed that it also fixed the depth of field. My guess is that that phone actually uses one of the better lenses for that.
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Mouthwashing
Not very distant future, you’re a captain, Curly, of a freight ship with a crew of 5. And you decide to crash it into a meteorite for some reason.
It plays as a walking horror, akin to Layers of Fear. Prologue is endless corridors that become filled with more and more workplace safety posters, and mascot manequits of antropomorphic horse “chasing” you.
Two months later, the crew discusses what to do with the cargo. We play as Jimmy, copilot, one of the crew members who’s now the captain. Since there’s food left for 4 months, it’s time to break into the cargo hold and see what’s there. After the incident captain is a husk with one eye, no hands or feet.
Main gameplay mechanic is using a special scanner only captain has to reveal emergency codes, that are used to open everything.
The cargo hold is full of mouthwash. At least they have 14% ethanol. -
Cyberpunk 2077
Got my first Sandevistan from a inconspicuous sidequest regarding capturing a snuff movie director titled Monster Hunter. It’s a legendary cyberware featured heavily in the Edgerunners anime, and basically the best slomo in the game. There’s also a quest referencing Edgerunners, that awards you… a jacket.
Since meeting with Hanako is
From Panam’s quest line got a unique silenced sniper rifle. It’s a big deal, as usually you can’t put silencers on them.
Most of the quests are entertaining, but quite linear. Taking over Clouds brothel is as bit more nuanced. It’s run by Tiger Claws gang, and you sneak into mansion of its owner while two more of the gang leaders are present. Maiko, one of the prostitutes, has change of plan, and proposes to replace the leader with her. I don’t like change of plans, so Maiko went down. Killing her for good makes good-hearted Judy very upset, but I was lucky I kept a non-lethan revolver from my “replicant” hunt.
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Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
It’s a comically violet Western, about a violet teenager that vagabonds somewhere in Texas. He stumbles upon a preacher giving a ceremon. The preacher is interrupted by a judge, saying that he’s a fake priest and a child molester. the congregation wants to lynch the priest for that, so he runs away. The judge tells everyone that he made up the story, and everyone laughs.
He then gets into a fight with a drunk, gets knocked out by a passerby, and when he wakes up, he goes with the same passerby to beat some guy staying in the hotel, and they burn the hotel in the process.
He then goes to a Mexican town, with no money, asks for a drink for mopping their floors, mops the floor, gets no drink and proceeds to kill the barman with a bottle.
By this point Irregulars, which I guess are like bandits cosplaying as army, decide that this is exactly the qualities they need, and enlist him into their ranks. He also lies that he was robbed by a bunch of people, despite the fact it were the herders that gave him food for free.
Irregulars plan invasion into Mexico. Only they first get ambushed by Indians, then the rest are killed by bandits that cosplay as Mexican Army.
Kid is saved by meeting Toadvine, the guy he burned the hotel with, and Judge Holden, the guy who falsely accused the priest, who serves as a headhunter for Mexicans. -
Gulliver’s 47 whisky
17th whisky from the Advent Calendar. Bottled at a strange 47% ABV. The palest whisky I can remember, lightest white wine. Light smoke on the nose. Peach sweetness on the palate, then some more light smoke, like smoked bacon. Surprisingly long warm finish in the throat. I was never impressed by English whisky, and this isn’t different, and considering it’s almost 60GBP, I wouldn’t say it’s a good bargain.
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Cyberpunk 2077
Since I mostly focus on sniper rifles, Oda boss fight gave me a lot of trouble. Two things surprisingly helped, though: you can double jump above most of the attacks, and the double barrelled rifle I’ve got from Panam’s questline had a damage-over-time, so I could see where he’s hiding to regenerate, since he was still losing HP.
You get your revenge on Woodman for Evi pretty quickly. No dialog or anything, just a shot on the parking lot.
Fist fight questline is common: Witcher 3 had it, Kingdom Come had, probably other games I’ve forgot. But that is the first time I received a howitzer for my troubles 😅
Found Skippy Smart Pistol, which is a fun reference to Microsoft Office assistant, but as far as Smart Weapons go in Cyberpunk, they don’t kill enemies fast enough. It does give you a choice of targeting limbs or the head, and I hoped it will help me with capturing cyberpsychos, but it just shoots them in the limbs until dead 😬
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Aberlour A’Bunadh Alba Batch 5
Whisky enthusiast always chase the rare, the weird, Springbanks of the whisky world. But sometimes, happiness is under the palm. I had both Abunda and Abunda Alba, and I considered the later too sharp and not sweet enough to my liking. But nowadays, I find it perfectly pleasant in terms of taste and headfeel. Like pineapple syrup. Not a bargain, but also not a bad deal either.
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Devils, Joe Abercrombie
Like pox on a plague victim, the prostitutes are the symptom, not the sickness. They merely answer a desire. It is the scale of that desire, of that sickness, that concerns me. Especially here, in the Holy City
Finished listening to Devils, enjoyed it through and through, despite how Suicide Squad superhero it sometimes is.
One of the few examples where lesbian love story felt natural (the other is Arcane series). Because either Alex or Sunny don’t make identity out of their sexuality. Just two people that came to rely on each other. Switch gender of one of them, and it would still work.
Interestingly Abercrombie doesn’t conflate faith and religion. He’s very clear that in his universe God not only exists, but is also more powerful than the demons.
Cardinal Zizka by the end of the book reminded me of Angela Merkel or her dwarf twin, Nicola Sturgeon: a powerhungry woman that pretends to do good, while doing only evil, and feeling no remorse.‘I apologise. What else?’
I expected that the menace of the Elves will come to fruition by the end of the book, but it never happened. Considering the only elf we meet is Sunny, which is the nicest, it’s unclear if elves are cannibals (human-eaters more like, as they don’t eat other elves?) or if it’s just another myth.
The ending is Wizard of Oz in reverse: since no one wanted anything from the journey, no one got anything from the journey, even though Alex does become an Empress of Troy, which doesn’t bring her much joy. The only exception is Brother Diaz, who becomes Father Diaz, another example of character development, as his first chapters are full of thoughts how proud her mother would be that her son serves in the Not Vatican:
‘What will she think? When she hears you’re chaplain to an Empress?’
Brother Diaz thought about that for a moment, then raised his brows.
‘Do you know … I find I really don’t care.’ -
Cyberpunk 2077
The rogue limousines quests line is also fun. Here’s the thing. The goal can stay always the same: return a rogue AI car to the fold. But the story is always different. One bitches about how Father AI doesn’t love it. Another sets an ambush for you. Third engages in good old ramming. And they all have different personalities.
One aspect that the game doesn’t explain well, is that you can have either “spells” or slowmo, but not both. Or more precisely, controlled slomo, because there are also implants that trigger it at the start of combat or when your health drops dangerously low.
Once you get a sniper rifle, most of the encounters become much easier. You can also get a smart sniper rifle, and yes, it can headshot for you. The only downside is that it’s a single shot. Or even better, you can get a tech sniper rifle that shoots through walls.
Ev offs herself in a bathtub. As Johnie says, so much for saving her.
Cyberpsychos questline continues to deliver. So far there was a ninja revenge story from the 70s, a prepper that overdid it and blew his family with a misplaced mine, and a guy trapped in an exoskeleton against his will.
Out of the implants, the double jump really stands out, as you can get over most fences easily, or on a roof to get a respite from enemy fire.
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Cyberpunk 2077
Curious that the story repeats “Gladiator”: no-good son kills his Emperor father in a fit of rage, then puts the blame on the protagonist.
“Magic” is surprisingly effective, considering I’m not running a hacking build. As you don’t get slomo right away, bringing up magic menu is a good alternative to assess the situation, and you don’t need to aim precisely for the “spell” to hit.
Since it’s an ARPG, not a shooter, head shots aren’t guaranteed kill. But I did try to boost them with perks as much as possible.
As you try to locate Evelyn, there are morbid detail that’s easy to miss: the prostitute you were talking to earlier was taken to be disposed there too. Another reason not to spare anyone in the Power Plant.
Maybe I went to haitians too early, but in the Mall I managed to barely scratch the Sasquach miniboss. Luckily it’s possible to sneak past her, and then to make a deal with the agent, as I didn’t find a reason to kill him.
Annoying haitian hackers all get fried, and I dealt with Placide myself.
My favorite line of sidequests is catching cyberpsychos, a major theme in the Edgerunners series. Each has a little narrative, my favorite so far is “Smoke on the Water”, which is basically “Taken”, but with no happy ending. You’re supposed to only incapacitate them, which can prove difficult, and only later I joticed that rhe turret psycho did diez despite me finishing him off with fists. But it was too late to reload and the quest chain didn’t fail outright.
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Obsession
I rarely watch horror movies. But this one is so memed I had to.
The movie is impressive in its simplicity. Almost static camera, plain focus, plain pans. The story premise reminded me of King’s novels, especially Thinner: be careful what you wish for.
Ironic that the previous horror movie I watched, Midsommar, was also in part about toxic relationship, and with plenty of hidden cues.
One of my favorite parts is when Nikki reads a perverted version of Hansel and Grettel. Because that’s what most romantasies are, perverted versions of fairy tales. -
Cyberpunk 2077
There’s such a thing as “presence” in some games. Earlier Far Cry games had it, and Metro trilogy, and newer Resident Evil games. Cyberpunk has it too. It’s in the small details: how NPCs look at you, how your character places a hand over his eyes to shield them from a bright light, or puts one leg on the other when he sits.
Storywise, it’s also very convincing. You spend a few hours of real time doing jobs with Jackie before he’s killed. Compare that to Far Cry 6, where your “childhood friends” are killed 5 minutes in, and as a player you have absolutely no connection to them.
Or how V is not the chosen: when the jobs goes south, Jackie plugs the chip into his brain, and only because he was carrying the case, and just before his death you transfer the data to your brain.
The role system is interesting: you have attributes and perks, which you level as you gain experience, but you also have passive skills, that level up as you use them.
Weapons are strangely abundant. I’m used to not being able to pick anything but trash from dead enemies, but here, while sometimes they are broken, I assembled an entire arsenal just a few hours in.Even five years in, the game is far from perfect. It crashed on me once already, and I’ve only been playing it for 2 hours.
At one point, I got a side mission to “rescue Brick”, although I’m not sure who’s that, which I failed, because I couldn’t find where should I rescue him from. When I reloaded, I didn’t get that mission anymore.
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