One Happy Team…

Category: PC Gaming

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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).

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Only after the funeral he receives an anonymous note that it wasn’t an accident.

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    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.

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    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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  • 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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  • 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.

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  • 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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  • 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 😅

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    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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Path of Exile 2

    Trial of Sekhemas is basically a rogue-like mode, where after each level you pick what boon or curse you want. There’s also a honor system: kind of global HP counter, that fails the run if it’s depleted, even if you didn’t die.
    Out of ascendancies, I chose Witchhunter, as a straightforward option of instantly killing enemies at low health and gaining energy shield later.

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  • Drifter

    Completed Drifter.
    It’s a good length of a game, not too short, not too long, you finish it before mechanics start getting on your nerves.
    Theme-wise, it’s all over the place: conspiracies, ghosts, monsters, time travel. Turns out it’s Zero Escape most of all, though: death allowing consciousness to travel back in time.
    There are just a few plot twists that irked me in retrospective. First, the friendly homeless guy getting stabbed with protagonist’s knife. Both the false and the true antagonists didn’t had any reason to kill him or to frame the protagonist, this is just to give police reason to chase Mick. Annie, Mick’s sister, hitting a detective unconscious and walking free. I can believe in time travel, but this is too much. And finally Mick accidentally killing Annie during a hallucination. This is just to force him to participate in the experiment, but again, doesn’t make much sense, as him seeing his son’s ghost was always helpful until that point.
    I thought that by the end they’d pull Shutter Island: Mick is in asylum, and the reason antagonist is wearing a lab coat is because he’s doctor in real life. But glad they didn’t go that way.
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  • Drifter

    I expected something set in 1920s, maybe. Instead, it’s modern days, 1999, to be exact. Story resembles Condemned the most: the guy was a runaway as a kid, divorced after losing his son, returns to his hometown to attend mother’s funeral. Discovers that homeless people are going crazy, and some specops dudes killing them, while the police hunting for a serial killer. And of course he gets framed as that serial killer himself.
    In addition to a regular inventory the character also has inventory of thoughts, represented as pictograms. This acts as both quest log and dialog options.
    Narrative-wise, it’s close to Ghost Trick. If the character dies, he rewinds the time, getting another chance.
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  • Evil Islands

    Completed Evil Islands.
    The only good thing from Act 3 is that you can get a really good spear from one of the companions early. Otherwise, it’s the same critfest, if not worse. Either you crit and kill your enemy, or they crit you. My guess is that authors wanted it to be a stealthy game until the very end, but considering how well enemies see and hear you in the 3rd Act, it’s not very enjoyable. And it’s ridiculous that having maxed out melee, I still can’t land a hit on the Imperial Guardsman.
    The last stretch has you deactivate a magic minefield. For some reason, they decided it’s a good idea that the only way to do that is to use two spells that you aren’t automatically given. And the only way to equip spells is to head back to town. way to equip spells is back in town. Have a great journey!
    The actual story is surprisingly good. Zak is the male of the ancient race, which explains everything: how he lost his memory, why he ended up where he ended, why he was so attracted to the female of the ancient race. It’s just not clear why the curse is in the form of a flying demon. And it’s such a weird final boss. Even with all the levelling, and the armor given specifically for the final battle, it kills you in 2 hits. You have the Magician helping you, that hits it three times before he dies. So you just need to finish it off in the few seconds you have left.
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  • Evil Islands

    I’d thought I’ll never reach that point, but finally I can take on a blue troll. It takes time, as I can only can deal damage with crits. But at least I can outheal troll’s damage. Unicorns are even worse, since I don’t have a defence from their lightning, and they can be hit only with a spear. One thing you can give credit for: it’s a rare RPG that gives you a reason to use something besides swords.
    Reached Act 3. I understand what they did, but I don’t like it: random quest in Act 3 gives you more XP than your final quests in Act 2, two chests on the first map give you more money that you could have accumulated in the previous act as well. It brings you up to speed, but while I killed blue trolls an hour ago, I can’t kill a random guard now, and die to a bunch of rats as well. Diablo 4 level of bullshit.
    At one point you need to sneak past banshees, because they are too powerful for you. The problem is, they move in unpredictable manner, and have 360 vision.
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    Also, during the escape half of my armour got broken, including pants, and you can only repair them in town. So I fought mindflayers bareassed.

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  • Evil Islands

    Due to the XP splitting I resort to leaving my companions back in town before completing quests, to get all the XP. Speaking of companions, the knight is great because he has some enchanted armor you can get from him.

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    The game has an actually solid upgrade system, which is just isn’t explained well. You can disassemble any item you have, and reassemble it using superior materials.
    Disassembling items usually costs money. But there’s a bug, disassembling broken items actually gives you ton of money back. Recycling in Middle Ages 🤡
    Reached the mines. The game is decisively unfun at this point, I’m not sure why I’m even doing that to myself. Almost ruined my playthrough when a troll chased me in the “green elves labyrinth”. Either trolls move to fast or see too far, but it almost impossible to sneak by them in those narrow valleys.

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    Then there’s fight with the magician Deidra, that kills you in 3 shots, because lightning passes through steel plate, and my character couldn’t hit her due to her ridiculously high defence. The only thing that saved me was a lucky critical.

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    And the game is all about those criticals. Another thing that is never explained properly, but it seems they can do x3 or even x5 damage, so it’s often better just to focus on them.

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  • Evil Islands

    The writing is very much edgy early 2000s, the closest I can think of is probably Gothic series. The hero is a bit of a scoundrel, despite being amnesiac, accepting his role only because otherwise he’d be lynched, and looking for any way to escape. While the villagers try to screw him, the Elder by setting bandits or orcs on him directly.

    I struggled with rescuing the Witch’s granddaughter sidequest, so I decided I’ll get to the Magician, level up and get back at the orcs. Instead, I was propelled to the 2nd Act, looking for lost Mayan princess in the snows. It’s humiliation all over again, as Zak can’t land a hit on enemies. And the two new companions are Archer and Mage, which makes Zak a tank, a role he’s clearly unfit for, even with a newly available set of metal armor.

    I begin to understand why people play this game solo, despite it turning into a boring version of Diablo. Since the XP is divided between all characters and only Zak is transferred between acts, he has 3rd of the XP he could have if he completed the 1st Act alone.

     

    I was wondering why the game looks so… flat. Turn out, GOG version has shadows permanently disabled.

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  • Evil Islands

    I almost dropped the game when the only quest I had was getting the gold back from the caravan. It’s guarded by overpowered skeletons, which spot you from afar. But at some point I just got lucky with their random patrolling.
    The quest with the ambush provided full set of better armour, which did help to push through. It’s ironic how Diablo 3 had those pilars of light coming out of items, while here I have to go back to town to discovered I actually picked a magical helmet.
    The experience system is quite weird. You don’t have levels per say, but your character HP does increase with XP. Most of the perks are extremely expensive and quite useless. At first I thought I’d take Sword perk, then I understood it gives same 5 points to attack as directly increasing the melee skill. The only amazing perk is unassumingly called Actions, and it’s a permanent 15% haste to both attacks and casting.
    The money problem got solved from an unexpected angle. Skeletons you find in Dead City drop bones, a crafting material. And a lot of bones. By selling them, I got more money than from all the previous quests combined.

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    Also in the Dead City, a dragon gives you an Ancient Sword. Not much damage, but it constantly casts Weaken on enemies, which reduces their total HP, making them easier to kill.

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  • Evil Islands

    I think I even bought the original game back in the day, but never managed to progress far.
    It’s supposed to be a fantasy RPG, but it actually feels more like espionage stealth: you can crawl, target enemy limbs, characters leave tracks, and if they step into pool of blood those will be bloody, but can’t open your inventory outside of cities.
    The fact that you can get injured in arms or legs also means that it’s a rare system where badly damaged character is less deadly, as arm injury halves attack and cast speed.
    I wonder if I dropped this game because it didn’t work well on my weak PC, or because it was too difficult. Even a goblin can kill the hero pretty quickly at first. Maybe I didn’t understand you can pick a companion early on. Still, it’s quite brutal, with characters dying from a couple of critical hits. And monsters have infinite agro, so you can’t just run away.
    The game has elaborate crafting system, which you’d expect from a post Minecraft era more likely. You buy blueprints and materials, so a stone axe can be crafted from both simple stone, whatever that is, or granite.
    Money is very limited, as monsters drop almost nothing. I barely have enough to keep my equipment repaired.
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  • Red Alert Remastered

    I mentioned AI in the Soviet campaign getting reenforcements from offscreen. In Allied campaign, it’s actually worse. First I noticed more planes coming than AI had airfields. Then in some missions it will drop flamethrowing paratroopers that decimate buildings, and don’t exist in normal game.
    Allies have more missions than require you to get a spy into a specific building, which caused a few Mission Fails for me because I would destroy it by mistake.
    With all that, as I suspected from the Soviet campaign, once Allies get helicopters, it’s game over for the Reds. They simply don’t have a good enough counter to that, plus Tech Centre that reveals the entire map.
    Evidence and Focused Blast are probably the most unfun missions in the entire game. The first gives you Tanya, but doesn’t explain it, while the second is just a chore

    There are a few interesting ideas: like timer carrying out between missions. But they are more annoying than fun.
    In the last mission, AI cheats a little, using Nuke even while not having a silo anymore. But other than that, it’s as I expected: helicopters all the way. The fun part is when you destroy enough buildings, AI attempts a zerg rush at you. But I still had to hunt the very last civilian to complete it.

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    The only positive about the Allied campaign is the satisfying ending.

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