17th bottle from the Advent Calendar. I thought that I tried another Balvenie already, and I was right. It was the Balvenie 12 Year Old Double Cask. This one is what I’d call “supermarket grade whiskey”. It’s rather smooth for a Scotch, with plenty of sweetness and some warmth. A decent whiskey for sure. But for 63GBP, there are much better options, in my opinion.
I didn’t play Star Wars Outlaws, and I’m not sure I will. But can we talk about how boring and basic the designs are?
The pistol is M1911 with a bulb light on top. The jacket is 80’s, the haircut is 90’s, the createure is a mix of axolotl and that Disney dragon with fur.
On the left with have futuristic Tibet, and the right a Blade Runner.
Yeah, I know that the original Star Wars were scrapped from “samurai easterns” and World War 2. But this, this is simply uninspired. And not inspiring at all.
Completed Diablo 4.
Legendary items aren’t the rarest type of item, that’s why their names are so generic. That’s the bit I didn’t understand, or maybe forgot. Finally got my first Unique item. From a Treasure Goblin again, I think.
I know I complained that story bosses are useless. Well, Duriel dropped two unique items. Yes, there’s Duriel again.
The battle cinematic reminded me of those times when we were playing a game just to see the next cutscene. It’s that good.
It’s strange writing that both Donan’s (the fat guy) death and Neryelle loosing her hand are so… Offhand. Neryelle gets bitten by a random zombie, and Lorath has to chop her arm off, and Donan gets poked by a zombie column. Remembering how they offed Decard Cain in Diablo 3 like he wasn’t the cult character in the first two games, that’s nothing.
What I do have trouble with is… consistency. I know this is a story about angels and demons (and divorced parenthood). But why Mephisto is in some kind of a bubble?
Is Diablo and Baal also in bubbles somewhere? Lilith says that this is an eternal battle, because things like hatred won’t just disappear. But then her dying is suddenly a big thing? I mean, can’t she just reappear in a bubble like Mephisto?
After all, we killed Andariel and Duriel at least twice already.
I usually don’t bother with DLCs, by the time I get to them, I’m to tired of the game. But Outer Worlds gets the balance just right: not too difficult to become tiring or feel like grind, not too easy to become boring.
So, I went for “Murder on Eridanos” (clear reference to “Murder on the Nile”). Except Puerott didn’t carry a heavy machinegun with him everywhere. But at least many NPCs make jokes about that.
The new mechanic in the DLC is an investigation scope, which is a bit like Batman: Asylum series, but a scope.
The investigation takes place in a megahotel, which is full of people infested with make-happy parasites. Reminds very much of “We Happy Few”, up to the screams of “Laugh louder” when they try to club you to death.
You get ridiculous amounts of XP, but the enemies also become ridiculously tough, surviving 3 headshots from fully upgraded sniper rifle 🤪
16th bottle from the Advent Calendar.
I love Sherry Casks. But at first I was warry of this one, because the smell was very sharp and alcoholic, despite just 45%. Must admit though, the taste is very sweet, and it makes your head light as if it was all 60%. For 45GBP, it’s a no-brainer, and probably one of the best whiskeys from the calendar yet.
Getting a triple boss in a dungeon for the first time is fun. Getting the same triplets for the third time… not so much.
Speaking of fun, the story bosses drop junk, but the Treasure Goblin dropped an actually useful bow that randomly creates a pool of poison, and while you’re standing in that pool, your poison attacks are free. Finally a mechanic that is not just about shooting monsters in their faces.
Elias is supposed to be some kind of a villain, and he certainly gets a lot of people killed, but for a good reason, it seems? He’s cullying humanity, because invasion is inevitable. So only the strong will survive to fight the demons. Makes sense to me.
By September maximized my relationship with Yosuke, which has double benefits: the character gets their ultimate persona to use in battle, and you get one of the ultimate personas to fuse.
The best storyline so far is by Yumi, a girl that tries to reconcile with her dying father whomlwft her family for another woman:
On a schooltrip we meet Chihiro from Persona 3, who’s now in her final year. Which means that the game is set a year or two after the events of Persona 3. I haven’t thought before that those games even happen in the same universe.
I was completely blown by the fact that they have special portraits for when the party gets drunk in a nightclub.
I love Imperial Stouts. So naturally, when I was in Trader Joe’s in the US and saw an the Dragon’s Milk Imperial Stout, I decided to try it out. Of course, because it’s the US, they were only sold in packs of 4.
Was it worth shipping it across half the world? Absolutely. I know there’s a misconception that Americans don’t understanding anything about food, but that’s all it is, a misconception. It’s everything you expect from Imperial Stout and more. Glad that I still have 3 more bottles left, should keep me until the end of the year, I hope. And if you’d thought that 11% is their limit: they’re also producing a 18% one.
Still impressed by the fact that upgrades change how every weapon looks. A lot of games don’t bother with that at all.
Obsidian sure knows their scifi. Quests here are named “Canid’s Cradle”, “Slaughterhouse Clive”, “Flowers for Sebastian” and “Stainless Steel Rat”
The good thing about loot autoleveling with you: you always find something useful down the path. The bad thing: you don’t have much reason to explore, because… you always find something better later on.
Funny how the locals on Monarch are like “who do we think we are, cannibals? That’s just corporate lies!”, and then there are literally at least two quests dedicated to… cannibals.
15th taster from the Advent Calendar. All I can say, it’s a whiskey. It’s not particularly good or bad, in my opinion, maybe has a bit longer aftertaste and warmth than most, but nothing that would amaze me.
To distinguish itself from brown and green Fallout, I guess, Outer Worlds is all pink and orange.
The local version of VATS is slow-mo, not time-freeze, but it works fine as well.
Flaws system is interesting, since instead of being chosen at the start of the game, like Traits in Fallout, you get those as you go. Something like “Robophobia, -1 Dexterity when near robots, but +1 perk”.
Surprised that I did quests in the wrong order in the “toothpaste research” area, and the scientist I was about to rescue got eaten by raptors before I could do so. Forgot that timed quests existed.
There’s a quest chain to aquire unique prototype “science” weapons. The first one I’ve got is a hammer that switches between its elements with every strike. Then there’s also a shrinking pistol, which is a love-letter (or is it a love-pistol?) to the 50s sci-fi:
I figured out that I like low profile keyboards by now, so I decided to give Deathstalker Pro a try.
The good: red switches are quiet, comparable to Keychron brown switches, maybe even quieter. It also has a 2.4 dongle built in, just like Deathadder V2 mouse.
But it wobbles. Like the rubber feet are misaligned slightly or something. An also the keys feel more “mushy” than on Keychron. Although this might have to do with red switches.
What’s more, it doesn’t play nice with Macs at all. Keychron has a Mac switch, and comes with Mac keycaps for Command/Option. I had to use Keychron caps on Deathstalker, and a custom script to properly map those keys. And Razer Synapse 3 is not supported anymore on OSX, and Synapse 2 doesn’t support any of the new hardware 🤷♂️
Finished listening to Babylon Berlin, and despite not expecting much from the book initially, I must say it ended up being somewhat of a disappointment. Too much in the story is just left to chance: someone shot, missed, but hit something else – Deus ex Machina at its finest. Or worst.
Maybe I’d give TV series a try, but certainly not the next book in the series.
I can’t decide if it’s more of a New Vegas, Skyrim or Mass Effect. But it’s rather enjoyable nevertheless. Despite “moral choices” can be confusing at times, just like in New Vegas.
Compared to Borderlands, that has a very similar Wild West aesthetics and shooter mechanics, it has two advantages in my eyes. First, I don’t run out of ammunition nearly as often as in Borderlands. And second, the weapons aren’t a generated mess. Yes, you do have some better drops here and there, but overall, the arsenal is much more predictable, if a bit boring. You get your usual pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, and a LMG, much earlier than expected, I must admit.
I’m also glad that this is less of a “seamless world” and more of a set of well defined and contained areas. Again, more of an Mass Effect than New Vegas.
Nintendo has an entire Mario spinoff series dedicated to 2D characters in a 3D world. Link in this game has a similar concept: he can turn into a chalk image, which technically works as if he clings to a wall. Yeah, like Solid Snake. Solid Link, maybe?
Believe it or not, they added some Souls elements in this game. You can invade other worlds, which I can’t try because the game is so old now, and I never cared about invading anyway. And you loose some of your items when you die, then you need to buy them back.
Speaking of items, unlike most other games in the series, where you get an item, complete a dungeon with it, get another item, complete another dungeon, here you get a lot of items right away.
Just after two dungeons Link gets the Master Sword, faces Yuga, the local villain, and traverses to the world of Lorule (obvious pun on Hyrule), that is ruled by Princess Hilda. The world is a darker version of Hyrule, and irony which is not lost on me, since Hyrule was always so chirpy. The enemies hit twice as hard, and are much, much harder to kill.
From this point, the game is a bit less linear, the order you complete the next seven dungeons seems to be mostly up to you.
Completed Fallout.
To this day, I didn’t know what’s the proper way to find the Military Base where the mutants dwell. I just go to Necropolis to deliberately get captured and delivered to the Leutenant.
Turns out, if you go to Cathedral first, there’s a computer with the base location.
By that point I also decided to get rid of my companions, as a supermutant with a rocket launcher or a minigun would wipe them out anyway. I began to feel like a play “Save Dogmeat” game. It’s ironic that even developers were aware of this. Official way Dogmeat dies is one of those forcefields. Forcefields are a pain in general. You just need to stock on Stimpacks and hope for the best.
Also by this point you get so much experience from simply whacking supermutants, you don’t need quests anymore.
There’s a special perk called “Mental Block” that is used only in one encounter against the Master.
I’m glad I now properly played Fallout. Despite game crashing on me occasionally. It speaks a lot that a 25 years old game is still playable. But I feel like there’s just one way to play this game: get Plasma Rifle, burn everything. Any other path just takes more time.
Decided to use my visit to the US to purchase Misono UX10 knife, that isn’t sold in the UK. For those that don’t know, this knife is heavily promoted by America’s Test Kitchen:
What’s interesting about this knife is that although it’s made in Japan, the steel is from Sweden. Also, it has an asymetrical edge: 12 degrees on one side, 20 degrees on the other. Most European kitchen knives are 20 degrees, and Japense are 15 degrees. It is also much lighter than any other knife of comparable 18cm length. Hell, Wusthof Icon 16cm weights 179g, and Misono UX10 is only 155g.
But… the knife isn’t very sharp. Which is funny, because out of the box, they should be the sharpest you can get them. But Global is sharper. And Wusthof is more comfortable.
Killed Mother Deathclaw by trapping her between three of my companions. The game was noconcept of aggro.
Gave Ian the unique “Blade runner” pistol from freeing the ranch. He’s a beast with it, if only the AI wasn’t so dumb as to switch to knife every time he needs to reload.
Boneyard is a story about town mayor hiring you to avenge his son, supposedly killed by a gang, only to discover it’s his bodyguards who killed him. The battle between bodyguards and the gang is quite epic by ’97 standards, but it has one major issue: Regulators also try to kill some key NPCs, so you’re in a rush against time and luck yo save them.
I always assumed that Necropolis and The Glow where the same place. Turns out The Glow is a dungeon full of robots Brotherhood of Steel sends you to in order to get accepted. I didn’t remember any of it.
You can actually get two suits of power armour. One as a possible reward for rescuing the initiate held hostage in Hub, and another if you manage to get needed parts and repair it. Also, they make a lot of fuss about the laser pistols, despite the fact that by that time you should have much more powerful options.
TV version of Last of Us reminds me of those videos where people cook mashed potatoes out of a box of pringles. Let me explain.
The game took the popular concept of zombie apocalypse, sprinkled it with colour, and let the player feel that they are in a movie. “Cinematic experience”, so to speak. TV version is… Just a zombie movie. Yes, with good actors, but I can’t even say that the writing is that good. It’s one thing when TV tropes are successfully re-enacted in a video game. It’s another when it’s just a TV trope in a TV show. And on top of that, they kept some video game tropes as well. Like the collapsing ceiling in the museum that blocks the path back.
I remember some complaints about the gay couple episode, but it’s actually good. Reverse gender of one of them, and it would still work. Just two lonely people in a post apocalyptic world caring for each other. The manly beards just make it a bit ironic. But also tragic. The good part of that episode is also the bad part. It’s a standalone story, that doesn’t have much to do with the Last of Us as a whole. But it’s a great story.
One bit that series does better than the game is explaining the origins of the virus, and why everything started falling in a day or two. Or maybe the game did that, and I forgot. The spores were in the flour, that was shipped around the world. The day Joel first doesn’t get pancakes, because they ran out of flour, then also forgets to get the cake, that’s why his family doesn’t get infected.
As a side note, I’m amazed how they found actress that plays Ellie’s mother, Anne, to resemble Bella Ramsey. Usually they don’t bother.
Speaking of tropes again, when you’re in a game, it’s only expected that you’d be able to kill 20 people. Otherwise, that wouldn’t be very challenging. But in a movie, Joel being able to mow down groups of raiders and what not kind of shows. But then, it’s honest to the game, at least.
The book certainly has some interesting ideas. Rath ends up accidentally shooting a man who’s been following him. Then he’s put on the case of investigating that same murder. Moreover, he discovers that his buddy has killed another cop who was secretly working for the Political Police, and now that buddy tries to frame Rath. It’s not brilliant by any means, but it’s better than standard “noir” “an alcoholic cop shaking a mob boss” theme.