Lich King is weakening, so Arthas travels to Northrend to help, while Sylvanas gets autonomy. She’s a one-trick-pony, even if the trick is very powerful: Possess. Still, I can understand the sexy zombie appeal.
There’s a certain power creep. In Reign of Chaos, maximum hero level was 10, and so was the maximum level of the creeps. Now you get creeps up to level 15, while Arthas gets downleveled every mission to represent Lich King getting weaker.
Still, the missions are some of the easiest in both campaigns. As Sylvanas, you can mass frost wyrm, while Arthas gets three dungeons one after the other. I completely forgot there was a Chtulhu themed Forgotten One.
I remember the last mission as very chaotic and frustrating. I think they’ve changed the map, but it is still annoying as hell. Not sure if in the original AI was as efficient in countering, because when I went frost wyrms, it massed the naga flyers, so I had to wait for Illidan to start channeling to have any chance, otherwise it becomes a complete mess.
Finally, Arthas duels Illidan and even wins, becoming one with the Lich King.
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Category: PC Gaming
Об играх
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Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne
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Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne
Second campaign is for Blood Elves, led by Prince Kael, whom we’ve met in the first campaign. Humans abuse them, and they also feel the need for a magic source, since the Sunwell was destroyed by Arthas.
Their Spellbreakers are amazing, an Human version of Driads, basically: immune to magic, with dispell, and mana burning effect on top. Dragonhawks are specialists: either to disable towers or frostwyrms. Since elves don’t have heavy infantry, they get naga instead.
The dungeon is basically practicing the same trick over and over again: block enemies with sturdy spellbreakers, then flamestrike the middle of it, as spellbreakers are immune.
Then comes the DotA mission. I didn’t remember it was there, but it is DotA: you can control only your heroes, and all the other units spawn automatically, and you fight for the caged Illidan.
My main problem with the Blood Elf campaign is how gimmiky it is. You put against netherdragons, that have heavy armor, so resistant to archer, but weak to magic, but they are also immune to magic, so they don’t have weaknesses at all.
I ended up going into High Upkeep and massing Dragonhawk Riders, basically playing Warcraft as if it was Starcraft.
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Death Stranding
Completed Death Stranding.
We meet Heartman. This one is a bit heavy on metaphors even for Kojima. His heart stops every 21 minutes, then he gets automatically defibrillated. Also, he has a condition that makes his heart be shaped like a cartoon heart. Also, he lives near a lake that is shaped like a heart. Also, his family died in an accident while he was getting a heart surgery. This dump is lengthly.
Then we finally reach Amelie. She’s the BT from the beginning of the game. The boss fight looks amazing, but it’s boring in reality: both Amelia and Higgs are merged into the giant, and you shoot Amelia while avoiding shooting Higgs who’s taunting you.
Then there’s a stealth boss battle with Higgs, where you need to sneak up on him or counter him enough times.
Then there’s a boxing match with Higgs. It’s impressive that they developed this mechanic for a single boss fight.
Then Amelie tells us that she was never trapped, and just wanted you to be her errand boy. And to finish it, you need to travel back. All the way back.
Then you fight a blue whale. Although “fight” is a strong way to put it. You shoot it as it flies by, mostly.
Then there’s the epilogue. It’s an epilogue of the epilogue’s epilogue. The problem is I did not subscribe to all that Extinction Entity theory. Or the separation of Ha and Ka. Or the Beaches. Or the chiralium. It’s a well crafter story, which I didn’t like at all.
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Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne
First of the Frozen Throne campaigns is again for the Night Elves, but they have a few units unique to the campaign: Sentry, which uses Archer voice and Spirit of Vengeance model, but is able to cast Bloodlust, and owlbears, that have Stomp.
You also get to construct ships, including Frigates from Warcraft 2.
I really enjoyed the Broken Isles mission. It’s what you later came to expect, small islands which you can visit or skip in any order, in order to battle their inhabitants. Here’s a den of hydra. Here’s a murloc village. What would become World of Warcraft later on, basically.
Then comes a dungeon mission, which is the first mission I didn’t manage to complete the optional objective, collect all 10 pieces of Guldan’s orb, without a guide. They are tucked away something brutal.
One cool detail is that we are shown a few flashbacks of Guldan through the temple, and in the end we find his headless corpse. You know, because Skull of Guldan is a thing 😆
Other missions are quite simple, if usually they try to split your heroes and base, so you have to juggle two at a time. Also, Reign of Chaos campaign rarely gave you 2 heroes. Here you get 3 often. The final mission you need to play with naga army, which isn’t very fun, because they are quite basic. But the previous mission I got to do mass wyverns.
The story is surprisingly a nothingburger: Illidan gets his hands of Eye of Sargeras, which is supposed to shake Northrend or something. First Maiev tries to recapture him, brings his brother and Tyranda onboard, but then Illidan saves Tyranda and everything is forgiven. Considering the fact that we seemingly prevented him from earthquaking Northrend, I don’t see the point.
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Death Stranding
In the 6th chapter BB28, which by this point Sam calls “Lou” is taken away, which makes avoiding BTs even more annoying than usual. And you’ve made to run back and forth between an inconveniently located mountaineer and a doctor. I ended up just arming to the teeth and taking out the stalking “wolf”, then you don’t need to sneak past the ghosts anymore. If that wasn’t enough, you need to make the final delivery in a snowstorm, where you can barely see for 5 minutes of real time.
In the end of the episode, we’re transported to World War 2 this time. Again, we fight the Cool Guy, whose name is Clifford.
Also, turns out Sam had a wife called Lucy, and they planned to name their son Lou. It’s her in the picture, not his sister, if he even has a sister.
Also, Deadman is a Frankestein monster, literally created from cadavers. That explains the forehead scar.
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Warcraft 3
Instead of following with Frozen Throne, I decided to give Classic campaign a try. As I suspected, Reforged completely broke the balance of the original. In my ways, the original is easier: Human riflemen are much more potent, for one. AI focuses on closest enemy, not on the most injured one.
I was surprised that the Culling map, where Arthas competes in killing infected townspeople, is completely different in the remake. In the original, your base is at the top, in the remake, it’s at the bottom. Not sure why the changes.
Also, as I suspected, the final mission in the Human campaign in original wasn’t anything special.
Can be easily done with mass gryphins, and Malganis is rather useless in it.
Also, we came a long way, didn’t we?
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Warcraft 3
The Night Elf campaign is bizarre. First mission, you can construct only archers, and need to overrun a double base: orcs and humans. I only managed that by zerg-rush.
Then the second mission you need to sneak past Doom Guards, which I now understand demons from Warcraft 1. Which is easy, because it turns out night elf invisibility mode kicks in almost immediately, and even stops enemies attacks: if a demon was swinging his sword at an archer that went invisible, the archer won’t get hit.
But then you need to plow throw Undead base, with a limited and not very sizeable army. I’m not sure if on Normal you’re supposed to destroy the entire base, but on Hard I only managed to run through everything.
Best Night Elf unit are the Dryads. They are fast, ranged, magic immune, have automatic dispell and slow poison. Maybe you can’t only mass them, but you almost can. Paired with bears, they can win some battles without even micro.
Funny, I always thought Malfurion is an elk-centaur, just like Cenarius. Turns out he’s a druid riding an elk. Also, I didn’t remember Illidan is his brother. And they were both in love with Tyrande.
Arthas points Illidan to Skull of Guldan. They have this clear homoerotic tension between them, must be because Jaina left Arthas, and Illidan spent 10K years in prison.
The skull is what allows Illidan to turn into demon, kill Tichondrius, second dreadlord killed in this game, and get expelled, all in the length of two missions.
Final mission is another last stand, and it is as unfun as the Undead one. That’s the only mission I decided to complete on Normal, as on hard it gets quite ridiculous.
The idea is that you first help defend the Human camp, once it falls you retreat to the Orc camp, and finally you hold final land of defence in your own Night Elf camp. But I managed to stop them at Orcs.
A nice detail, when Medivh tells his story, there’s both recreation of events from Warcraft 1, where you actually hunted him in a dungeon, and from Warcraft 2, where it shows two headed ogres and troll axe throwers.
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Warcraft 3
In survival missions, I always try to flip the script and destroy the bases that spawn enemies. In the last Undead mission, I didn’t manage that, but otherwise, it is not hard. I didn’t even realize it’s the final mission in their campaign.
Orc campaign starts pretty easy, despite them lacking early heal. The only point I was doubting myself is when facing Cenarius. He has ridiculous amount of HP, and either self-heals or has some kind of invulnerability skill.
You also get the chaos orcs in that mission, which I didn’t remember. Their warlocks are similar to Undead necromancers, but with a fireball skill, which I never used, because it required too much micro. They replace shamans, which is ironic, because shamans are great without micro. Also grunts, kodos and wolf riders all become “fel” and get chaos damage, which is good against any armor.
Then there’s the plato mission with wyverns. It isn’t hard, as in the enemy can’t beat you, but because the opponent has almost infinite gold, and you can only deploy from zeppelins, it’s also takes forever to beat him. I ended up cheesing the dwarf hero with wyverns.
In the last Orc mission, I’ve got Spirit Walkers, which I think is a bug, since those were only added in the Frozen Throne expansion.
It is quite ridiculous, because Infernals, which are one of the best units in the game, can land in the middle of your base, stunning your peons and killing half of your troops. They have heavy armor, which means they take less damage from piercing attacks, and more from magic attacks, but they are also completely immune to magic, so nevermind, they have no weaknesses.
But actually, it’s no so bad. The Tauren hero I left at the Human base, because Infernals tend to target him, and he’s a great meat shield and also buffs human knights. And the fel orcs don’t have trolls with them, so they can be cheesed with mass wyverns.
When Hellscream kills Mannoroth in the canyon, I always thought the pitlord injured him. Turns out, he died in the explosion 🤷♂️ -
Warcraft 3
Undead’s “Into the Realm Eternal” where you breach the Elfgate is also not fun. It’s the same problem, where the opponent is able to recover from almost any loss.
The next two missions are far easier, though, and I wonder if it is because you get crypt fiends, which are tankier, or just a bad design of the former.
What they did really great in the remake is the rebirth of Sylavanas.
I appreciate the small details: like the fact that not all paladins carry warhammers, some of them wield sword and shield. There are also unique high elf heroes you need to fight.
And of course there are the Blackrock clan orcs. Now this one I remembered. In Warcraft 1, orcs had warlocks. And Warcraft 2 they had dragons (albeit green). So when I saw orcs with warlocks and red dragons, I assumed those are their regular units. But no, turns out this was created just for the campaign. Those orcs are easy prey for mass frost wyrms.
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Warcraft 3
The funniest thing is that I managed to execute tower rush on the first Northrend mission.
It was all fun and games until final mission of Human campaign, Frostmourne. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but Mal’Ganis was able to counter my every strategy, recovering every time. I thought that I could do mass griffins, he went mass gargoyles. I tried mass tanks, he went mass meat wagons. I went knight, riflemen and priests, he managed to destroy me with abominations and frostwyrms. The only way I managed to beat that mission without looking for a guide is by eventually destroying both his mine and town hall with tanks, so he ran out of money. No fun, just frustration.
I forgot that Arthas killed Mal’Ganis. And Uther. But the dwarf friend isn’t killed directly, looks more like an accident during release of Frostmourne.
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Death Stranding
And just like that, we’re thrown into World War 1 trenches. With a few lethal weapons, finally. The standard fare: pistol, assault rifle, shotgun. We also meet Mads Mikkelsen character, whom we see in BB’s interludes. He cosplays Apocalypse Now. It’s a nice boss fight, were he summons WW1 soldiers, and you need to beat him a couple of times before you’re teleported back.
Then we meet Mama (Margaret Qualley). She had a stillborn dauther, and now she’s attached to that ghost-child.
That’s why she cannot leave the compound. She also has a twin sister, Lockne, and the child is actually her’s, Mama was a surrogate mother. She asks Sam to sever the cord, so she could travel and see her sister, but when she does, turns out Mama was dead all along, but now she finds her peace, reunited with Lockne.
Lockne’s eyes also change color: one remains yellow, one turns blue, like Mama’s.
That’s all very imaginative, if only the episode wouldn’t be so boring. At one point you have to deliver Mama all across the map, 10km of rough terrain, some 20 minutes of real time. -
Warcraft 3 Reforged
I know I completed both Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne, but it was more than 20 years ago. And I feel like I was playing games always in a hurry back then, so I don’t actually remember much of the story.
Generally, I like the Reforged version. The only issue I have is similar to Age of Empires 2 remake: when you zoom out, the image becomes all foggy, some kind of original engine limitation. This, and also the microstutters: the game goes from 240fps to 50fps every few seconds.
My personal issue is that the game had received updates for over 20 years, so I’m not sure what version am I playing when I’m playing the campaign. I don’t remember “Sundering Blades” upgrade, for one. And did Orc grunts always had heavy armor and thus weak to magic?
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Death Stranding
In the 3rd act your bike is taken away, but you finally get fast-travel between cities and also leg exoskeleton, which allows you to carry more and run faster. So it’s not all bad. Later, you also get antigrav sledges. Those are impressive, as you can chain two together, and drag them like a locomotive you are.
In a game not about shooting, a bolo rifle is incredibly effective. Let me explain. Your only enemies are MULEs, your tribal human, armed with spears. They can throw spears at you, but not overly accurate, and they can try to tackle you on melee. Bolo rifle shoots in a wide arc, and incapacitates any mule in a single shot. It also carries plenty of ammo. Once depleted, you can usually find more in mule camps, or you can just carry a couple of those. As a result, Sam can take out an entire MULE camp if needed. Later you also get a gun that can steal enemy cargo and a gun that’s effective only against monsters and uses blood bags as ammo. It’s inventive, true. But I’d just prefer a conventional arsenal, honestly. -
Death Stranding
There are a lot of motives: bonds, knots, bridges, strands, “make us whole again”, “I’ll be waiting for you on the beach, come and find me”. Still no idea what any of that means.
There’s a boss fight, but you don’t have conventional weapons yet, only grenades. Luckily, it isn’t very hard, although the boss can instakill you if you aren’t careful.
Boss is summoned by Higgs, who’s the leader of a terrorist group. Once one of the monsters devours a human, it results in an explosion, and Higgs orchestrates those events.
Every time Sam rests we’ve shown some memories from the perspective of the baby in the artificial womb. We’re told not to worry about this, which means that either memories are important, or the memories we see aren’t the fetus we carry, but Sam’s own (which also means President is not his mother).
Sam is also carrying a photo which supposed to be of him, his mother and sister. But even although the face is smudged is not the face of Amelie, I suspect.
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Death Stranding
Death Stranding reminds me of scifi of the 70s, that leaned into weird and unknown. Here we have creatures invisible to most people that age everything they touch, and apparently people corpses not disposed properly exploding like a nuclear bomb.
There are some concepts that are mundane in cinema, but grounbreaking in games. Like body hair. Or tears. Nobody cares about those, except Kojima. But those are the most technologically advanced tears I’ve seen, and may yet see for many more years.
We play as Sam, a postapocaliptic porter. His last name is Porter as well. Sam has center of gravity and momentum. If he runs downhill, he’ll stumble and fall, and if his backpack is too heavy he’ll fall on his back.
Sam is also son of the last America president, who’s dying of cancer. One of your first tasks is to cremate her, so she doesn’t explode. Then your sister becomes the next president (not very democratic), but there’s a catch: she’s held by some organisation on the other side of the continent. And now it’s up to you to go and rescue her.
You’re given a BB, artifical baby in an artifical womb, that once connected, outlines the monsters, which you need to sneak by. Innovative, but not very convenient. Although that goes for the entire game.
The problem is that there isn’t much game to begin with. Or it’s like the most boring and mundane things were put into a single game. I always avoided online interactions in the Souls series. And here we have more of those: you supposed to share cargo with other players, and your currency is literally likes they give you. And the entire gameplay is just endless strings of fetch quests. Now I guess it all started with Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, a low budget game for a portable console. So they had to make a lot of very small, self contained missions, and a ton of meta-management in between. Then we got Metal Gear Solid 5, which wasn’t small anymore, but still was an endless stream of stealth missions and meta-management. Now, you aren’t even given weapons at first. The first weapon you are given is a vial with your shower water you are supposed to throw at monsters like a grenade.
Avoiding online interractions, fetch quests and I’m sure later they’ll make you throw piss at enemies too. What you wouldn’t do to watch best cutscenes industry can produce?
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Callisto Protocol
Completed Callisto Protocol.
You discover that Warden of the prison is still alive. He prevents your escape by shooting down the ship. Then there’s a lenghty sequence where you have to sneak past blind zombies. It’s possible to fight past them even if you fail your sneaking, so it’s not a big deal. And it’s also possible to take them down stealthly. The funny part is just how much noise Jacob produces while doing so, without any zombie noticing.
The game starts to remind me of Order 1886. It is very compelling visually, has simple but effective mechanics, but doesn’t excel at anything in particular. The first boss, two headed ogre, is an example of it: it looks good, but all you need to do is to dodge its attacks and shoot it until it dies.
Because Dani mentions that you can relieve the memories through the chip you have, I was expecting a twist that it was all just a dream or someone else memory. But it is mostly what it is: shadowy organization seeking to evolve humanity discovering alien lifeform and experimenting on the prisoners.
The upgrade system plays a trick on you. Throwing enemies at spikes and fans is very effective, I got through the entire transporter arena by just throwing mutated zombies at the fan over and over again without wasting a single bullet. So you are tempted to upgrade telekinesys as much as possible. But it doesn’t work on bosses. Same goes for melee.
The final boss is good, despite its shortcomings. It’s so big you can hardly see what’s going around you, and what’s going around you are suicide zombies, which you supposed to throw at the boss, but if you don’t, kill you. Also, the boss kills you in one hit. But at least you can see where you need to shoot, and out of all “tyrants”, I enjoyed it one of the most.
Also, that’s the only encounter in the game I found automatic pistol to be useful, as the target is so big and you don’t need to save bullets anymore.
In the end, Jacob accepts that his smuggling operations is what allowed outbreak of the virus on Europa to happen, killing Dani’s sister (that’s all to the cube you’ve shown in your dreams, it seems). He sacrifices himself to save Dani. But there’s also a DLC where I guess he tries to escape, but I’m not gonna try it.
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Callisto Protocol
There’s no experience, but there are credits, used to upgrade the weapons and the telekinetic glove. Inventory is very limited, so most of the excesses should be sold, since there isn’t much backtracking.
Something I thought we got over with around 2010: transitions. Every few minutes you need to squeeze through some tight space, or crawl through an air duct, or slowly open a door with your bare hands.
Enemies start to mutate, and if you don’t kill them in time, become stronger. Resident Evil 4 used a somewhat similar system.
Once you get your suit and go out: that snow is really impressive. Not just a texture, but with a depth to it.First part of the game we mostly guided on radio by another convict, Elias, who finds different reasons why he can’t come with us. So I fully expected him to betray us. But no, he just dies once we get out.
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Callisto Protocol
It’s Dead Space. I haven’t played the 2023 remake, but still. The colors, the camera, the movement, audiologs, body stomps, it’s all there. Nice introduction overall, explains neatly why protagonist has traffic light in the back of his head.
Impressive how sweaty characters are. And also some familiar faces among the actors.
Gameplay wise, it feels much more melee oriented. Luckily, without any Souls like influence. Blocking with “back” button is something common in fighting games, but I don’t ever remember seeing in third person action. Once you get a pistol, you also can perform a combo where you auto aim at a stunned enemy. Handy.
Of course there are upgrades for your weapons. Nice that the upgrades actually change the look of the weapon, and in a way that makes sense: stability upgrade adds a foregrip, for example.
You also get a powerglove to drag objects or even enemies like a Jedi. I remember this was popular in early 2000s games, but everything makes a comeback eventually.Something very strange happened with this game. I had it bought on Epic Store (I actually received it for free), but when I went to my library to install it, it wasn’t there. So I thought maybe I didn’t remember correctly. I went to the Store page, but there it was saying “In Library”. I checked Library again, it wasn’t there. I contacted support, but by the time they responded, it reappeared again.
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RoboCop Rogue City
Completed RoboCop Rogue City .
You have to deal with the walking tanks twice more, but they are more of a joke at long distances. Still bullet sponges, though.
After a disastrous first boss, I’m surprised how well the final boss came out. It has phases, clear weak spots and attack telegraphs, just overall very enjoyable.
The story is bolder than I expected. I thought they’d pull a W40K, leaving everything were it was, but they actually got rid of some of the key characters.
It’s a blend of Robocop 1 and Robocop 2 stories, leading straight into Japanese arc of Robocop 3, but then, this is what’s expected. OCP corporation controlling Detroit police force, and sabotaging it at the same time, in hopes to make the city uninhabitable and rebuild it from scratch. OCP CEO, literally called Old Man, is afraid of death, so he tries to use psychologist send to Robocop to properly digitalize himself for the afterlife (Robocop is the only success ever, after all). The interesting twist is that the main antagonist, who introduced himself as the brother of villain from Robocop 1, is actually a fraud, and his real name never revealed, because who cares?!
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RoboCop Rogue City
One mechanic I don’t remember seeing much in other games is competing with allies. Robocop would compete with the walking tank ED-209, or a SWAT team, and if you kill more criminals than they do, you get extra XP.
The fight with ED-209 was surprisingly annoying. Because otherwise, the game is quite the pleasure. Robocop moves slowly, and the robot is accurate, so you end up dying to chip damage. And despite the hint that it has a weak spot at the front, it still feels like a bullet sponge.
While there are plenty of weapons to pick from enemies, including some of the all-time favorites like Barrett sniper rifle, G11 assault rifle and SPAS-12 shotgun, most of the time you’ll be using Robocop’s siderarm. Because it has infinite ammo (I’m not sure if it’s a nod to 90’s action movies mentality or just convenience) and with it burst fire mode is good enough for most situations. You can also customize it, by finding alternative PCBs and playing a simple puzzle game: turning it full auto or single-action Magnum style, or adding a belt feeding mechanism so you don’t ever need to reload it again.
