After Tulip Syrah fell from grace lately, I was looking for alternatives to “Five Stones Nobility 215a Red”, which became our favorite go-to Israeli wine, something in the same price range.
Dalton Reserve Shiraz is not fabulous, but it also doesn’t make you feel sad and tired afterwards. So it’s a decent alternative.
Like Diablo 3, this is another example of a game that although originally released on PC, I would only play on Switch.
I’m surprised how much written dialogs are there in this game. And all of them are also brilliantly voice acted.
Managed to get up to Hades himself on my very next run. With full set of lives, no less. Used the tripple-hitting spear (Flurry Jab) with great success. Still got wiped out by his second phase, of course.
Then the most successful run I had was some 20 runs later, with a Rocket Bomb special. And by “most successful” I mean that I managed to beat Hades for the first time.
That’s not the end of the story, though. And I’m not sure if there is.
Finished first what was supposed to be the only season of White Lotus.
We are all slowly dying from the inside, old and young.
The series started with a closed casket. At first, it was obvious who’s in it. Then… not so much.
It’s beautifully filmed and structured. Each episode is a single day, starting in morning and ending with everyone going to sleep.
It turned out to be much more nuanced and less “in your face” than I expected. Like the commentary that you can’t “wear a hair shirt” because you are white all the time. The dialogues are beautifully written, in a very natural manner.
Going back to nuances, we are all used to dramatic changes. There are not many in White Lotus. And that’s a surprise. The unhappy newly wed wife stays with her husband. The black therapist doesn’t get her own practice. I’d say the biggest change is a boy that gets to row in a canoe for a while.
Finished listening to Spy Who Came in from the Cold. And I can’t say that I enjoyed it much. Actually, I can’t say I enjoyed this book at all. It’s narrated very well, but that’s part of the problem. The hero is always grumpy, so you listen to a grumpy British actor for some 6 hours, or however long that book takes.
By the last third, the book turns into a procedural. Not sure how accurate proceeding in DDR are, and don’t care much about them. And the finale is just lazy. But that’s nothing new for John Le Carre.
Half of the book the hero tries to convince East German Intelligence Service that their head is a British mole. He fails, they requite him. Then it turns out he is a mole after all.
The girl gets shot trying to climb over the Berlin Wall, and the spy can’t bear that and apparently gets shot too. The end 🤷♂️
What I adore about that game is how you can go between “damn, that mission is impossible” and “well, I beat it with S rating” in half an hour.
The interesting bit in the last mission of the first game is that you can choose two other commanders to assist you. And unlike some previous missions, you can control them directly.
Now I see why the two games were bundled together. It’s not just the same game storywise. Black Hole units are introduced on the 23rd mission out of 24. So even in the original game, they created all those gorgeous sprites not for the sake of two final missions, but because they probably knew they’ll be working on a second game right after.
Speaking of Sturm, the only CO of Black Hole present in the first game.
His skills are different to all other COs except Drake, because they don’t rely on boosting your units. Instead, Sturm just drops a meteor on them. And while it can’t kill any unit, it drops all units to 1-2HP, which is basically the same. The only CO that can wreck you badly even while loosing.
A very solid triple IPA, as expected from BBN. Sweet and fruty, gives a bit of lightheadyness, and no hard feelings whatsoever afterwards.
Completed Children of Zodiarcs.
The combat system is “meh”. There are options like burning through enemies cards or giving them cursed dice. But just killing them is usually the simplest option.
The part that is actually good is the characters. Not to be confused with the story. Story is just alright. A young band of thieves is tasked by the mob boss to steal a relic. The relic turns out to be a sentient golem that joins the band. For two chapters we carve our way in, then we carve our way out. Standard, if not to say boring.
But the characters actually make that story good. Each has their own motivation, and it’s well fleshed. There’s a girl that was kept by nobles like and exotic animal.
There’s a Noble son that was left by his father in the slums, and now seeks revenge. There’s a noble guard who fell from grace by our own hand, and now seeks to redeem himself. And there’s a boy that thinks that if only he kills the gang leader, the girl he loves will turn back to good. And the finale missions are surprisingly grim and dark: you get to kill all your friends one by one.
There’s a tradeoff between good story and sound gameplay sometimes. Last mission is played without your mage, which I relied heavily on all my game. Luckily, it is still not very difficult.
And the last surprise is a bit of an epilogue during the credits roll.
What attracted me to that game were obvious references to Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy IX.
You have the basic mechanics from FFT, such as picking the direction each character faces at the end of their turn. The visual style resembles FFIX. You also start as a band of charismatic thieves.
But, the creators added card mechanics on top of that.
So each character has their own hand of random skills that you need to manage. After picking a skill, you also need to roll some dice. You perform this action by shaking your mouse (at least that part can be disabled in game settings). So, when you only want to attack the next guard, you have to deal with two layers of randomness and turns that take forever.
Started listening and quickly understood that it’s a radionovel, or radiodrama, or whatever it’s called when instead of a book simply read to you, you have different actors, but just the dialogues.
When I switched to a proper audio book I quickly noticed that those that worked on dramatising it, had quite a few liberties with the original book. They added themes, such as the circus theme. In the original book, the Circus is what’s MI6 headquarters is called. But in the drama, Alec is also making a joke about “traveling with a circus and doing a bear act” or something like that, which refers to him spying on the Russians in East Berlin. Or the starting scene, when I spy tries to cross a checkpoint between East and West Berlin. In the drama, there’s a CIA agent that watches it through binoculars and describes everything to Alec. In the book, the CIA agent went to sleep, and Alec even makes a joke about how soft they are.
Today I tasted something so gross I feel I have to write about it: the pork floss Asian cake.
It’s a sponge cake with custard cream, but then it is coated in literally shredded pork meat 😬
It’s salty, and tasted like pork scratchings 🤢
Had to throw the second piece in the trash.
Found someone blogging about making it at home, and I agree with the assessment:
In the end, I didn’t find it very magical of a combination. It is a little strange, I’ll admit. I wouldn’t make it unless you have tried it in a bakery and know you like it.
I rarely write about my successes. But yesterday I managed to update Atmosphere to 1.5.3 and firmware to 16.0.3 without any issues.
Just had to copy the sigpatches again. Even saves are intact. I call it a success.
Turns out, I didn’t know some things about the Advance Wars:
Like the fact that a later cancelled version for Nintendo 64 was developed at one point.
Or that there were different designs for characters in the English and Japanese versions.
Completed BIOTA.
One unexpected feature from that kind of a game is that you can save on any screen, if there are no enemies or hazards on it. This especially helps in some platforming episodes.
There are episodes in mech and submarine. A homage to Metal Slug, maybe? Those aren’t very good, though. And the worst one is the pre-final episode, where you need to rappel down while shooting enemies. I was about to drop the game at that point, because of how random that piece is. Completed it only because I got lucky.
The final fight is Star Fox style. If I wanted to play Star Fox, I’d play Star Fox, not an arcade shooter, don’t you think?
So despite the attempts at retro-vibes and introducing a new mechanic in each zone (sliding, lasers, etc), I can’t say I enjoyed it much. If it wasn’t for the save feature, I would have dropped it somewhere in the middle.
Faithful 8bit metroidvania. With different biomes and all that. I’d say it’s even a bit too faithful, to the point of being boring.
It’s also very hard to figure out what’s going on due to the 8bit style. Is that a platform or the background? Will that projectile pass through the platform or not? Can I shoot down that projectile? The only way to know is to die trying.
The game uses progression system that I remember from some Zelda games: you need to buy a key item or character to progress. But first, you need to find a purse large enough to hold the money.
First boss is an acrobatic one. You can’t shoot it. Instead you need to jump avoiding its attacks and press button that drops a bomb in its mouth at the right moment. The following bosses are standard, though. You just shoot them until they die.
As much as I’m fan of Advance Wars, I never finished the first two on GBA. Fortunately, there’s a remake now for Switch. Delayed by a year due to war in Ukraine, but still.
Not sure if they just remade the graphics or also rewritten the dialogs, and it doesn’t matter much. The significance of dialogs and storyline in Advance Wars is equal to dialogs in porn or W40K. It’s just an excuse, and we all know that.
This game always reminds me of chess puzzles (not that I’m good at them). At least the missions where you can’t build additional units. Winning is not difficult. Getting an “S” score sometimes is. Although the score doesn’t impact anything except your ego, really.
One feature I don’t remember on GBA is the ability to rewind your last move. You can’t rewind enemie’s turn, but it’s still very useful, expecially if you misjudged artillery ranges.
Completed Forgive Me Father.
The third boss, Dagon, is a tricky one. It disappears underwater. And your “rockets” are extremely slow, so they are not effective at all against it. Better stick to hitscan weapons. In its second phase, it starts flooding the valley, and the character can’t swim. So you need to remember in which order the valley if flooded.
The mines are quite tiring, so I ended up running past most enemies, as I was also running out of ammo for everything by that time.
Following two immobile bosses and one partially mobile one, it made sense the introduce a mobile player-sized boss. The only problem with that approach is how the game renders enemies. If you rememeber even Wolfenstein 3D, you start your game facing Nazi soldier back: enemies were drawn from multiple perspectives. But there’s no such thing in Forgive Me Father. Enemies always face you. So, it’s very hard to figure if the boss tries to run away or run towards you. Still, it was one of the easier encounters, and I beat it on the first try.
I felt like they tried too hard to make the final episode too hard. The levels are long, there are so many enemies you run out of ammo all the time, and the final level has some annoying jumping puzzles, that you won’t find anywhere else in the game.
Feeling like I just bruteforced the final boss, Cthulhu. It’s a static boss, like the very first one, no need to aim much. And just like the first boss, it’s a bullet-hell one. Luckily at that point I had fully upgraded Necronomicon that gave me enough invincibility to bear the worst of its attacks.
Enemies are quite brutal. The melee ones are fast and hit hard. The projectile ones react quickly, and I suspect they keep shooting at you even when they can’t see you.
As this is my first (and only) playthrough, I want to try as many weapons as possible. It’s great that you get to use most of your arsenal. Mauser is almost like a battle rifle, fast and accurate. The Tommy Gun upgraded into a laser beam is super powerful.
The only disappointment is the grenade launcher. Indirect fire is often very beneficial, but it’s not very effective here.
Underwater level was a bit of a surprise. Not something I expected in an old-school shooter.
Interesting bit about weapon upgrades is that your choice is between upgrading the standard weapon or changing its ammo type to something more rare and more specialised. Basically, it’s a choice between getting a more powerful machinegun or an energy beam instead.
The first boss is basically a wall throwing mines at you. But I still enjoyed it.
The swamp level was tough. There are a few types of enemies that hide in the water, like in the first Hexen, and those are very hard to see. And with how long the camera is placed in this game, almost Turok-like, it’s hard to spot enemies shooting at you from the grass. But if you know in which direction to go first, it’s not that hard. Still, I died on that level as much as through the entire game before that.
The second boss is a pillar instead of a wall. It’s tricky: the boss shoots homing projectiles, mobs shoot homing projectiles, and during the second phase there’s a laser grinder you need to evade, that also changes direction 🤯
This is certainly not what I expected. It’s a Lovecraftian game in its setting alright. But its a old-school shooter, most similar to Project Warlock.
Monsters popping out of walls, weapons without reload, secrets and all that. Strict level structure. No free saves, but there are some checkpoints. Then there’s the infamous flashlight from Doom 3, though: the one you cannot use with a weapon.
There’s an experience system, and quite an extensive tree of weapon upgrades. And also skills, such as healing.
I decided to talk about how great Arcane is some more, with the example of Caitlyn and Vi.
We aren’t told that Vi is a lesbian. And it’s even suggested early that Caitlyn is attracted to at least one man.
Often it’s shown that when two lesbians meet, they just Fall in Love. Why? Because there are no other lesbians around, stupid!
That’s not how hetero stories usually work, though, right? There’s often a conflict, a tension, they even hate each other at the beginning, because they are different (one being man, and the other, being, forgive me, a woman).
So here’s a crazy idea. What if the same would be applied to a homosexual relationship?! I know, crazy, because those are two women, and all women are identical and have zero conflicts. But humor me.
And that exactly what makes Caitlyn and Vi relationship work. They have that conflict of being from different classes, and with Caitlyn being a policewoman, and Vi’s family killed by police during an uprising. But they struggle together, the complement each other. We see that evolution, and not just “well, that’s the first homosexual woman I’ve ever met, so it will have to do”.
