Elder Scrolls Online: When your guild goes completely mad

So one of our guildies got the idea to do a madness run of a trial (12 man dungeon or raid) with lvl 15-20 characters. Originally it was supposed to be lvl 15, but crafting equipment is either lvl 14 or lvl 16, and we allowed up to lvl 20 for unintentional overshooting.

So for the past two to three weeks we've been getting a group together consisting of people who have experience running veteran trials, setting up our characters, setting a date and choosing a trial. I decided to stick to my healer role which I have the most experience doing trials as, but going as my new Warden character (playing Warden for the first time). Crafting purple (epic) lvl 16 high-end gear felt completely wrong but hilarious at the same time.

We decided today. 8pm my time. Normal Sanctum Ophidia (the toughest of the pre-DLC trials). No CP allowed.

All of us fully expected it to be extremely hard and expected us to wipe several times and mostly not even get past the first boss.

Pre-run group shot!

Not only did we get past the first boss, but we completed the run with no wipes. And with all of us being so used to the mechanics of normal trials it actually went really smoothly. Everyone knew exactly what to do and when to do it and in the end it didn't feel very different from doing an ordinary trial with our fully levelled CP characters. It was mostly just slower than usual.

Post-run group shot!

It was a lot of fun and we're already planning another run, with the same characters, but with a different trial!

A couple of guildies recorded the run and here's Nico's video:

Game completed: Prey

There are no story spoilers in this review.

I've been following this game for the entire year and I was so excited about it when I got it for my birthday. I started playing it just a few days later.

What intrigued me to begin with were all the parallells to Bioshock. Scary things happening in a confined space, experimental drugs that enhance people, and a mysterious threat. But as soon as I started playing, Prey came into its own and completely separated itself from Bioshock. They are both FPS with RPG elements. They are both dipping into the horror genre, Prey even more so going into survival horror as it is. Prey is scarier than Bioshock. While Bioshock created tension it relied more on jumpscares with the Spider splicers than anything else. Prey has the affinity of creating the psychological horror of never knowing what to expect around the next corner.

Being a little bit of a survival horror game, Prey had an ammo problem. Several times I ran out of ammo because there just wasn't enough crap to scavenge and recycle into clumps to make ammo from. That's until I read up about other people having ammo problems and learned to abuse the Recycler charges and turn doors and cargo and furniture into clumps to make ammo from. The space station was pretty darn empty when I was done with it, but afterwards I had no problems with ammo anymore xD

Storywise Prey is really, really good. Without spoiling anything, you play as Morgan Yu (doesn't matter if you're male or female - you're Morgan Yu) and you work at a space station. Yay, you! When you wake up things are weird and you start trying to figure out what has happened. This is hard because you're suffering from memory loss and it's up to you who to trust (even which version of yourself to trust), and the choice who to trust will change several times over as you learn what happened on the space station while you were out.

The game has multiple endings. One of them can come about waaaaaay ahead of the others and even without solving anything. You can just leave. There's one more ending where you can leave without actually solving anything, but that's the asshole ending. The other two versions completely depend on who you choose to trust in the end. I did both of them and in total three endings. I liked one of the true endings better than the other.

The final parts of the game where you choose which person to go along with had me going WHAT THE SHIIIIIIIIT!!!! several times. Because holy shit. Wow. I have no other words. Just wow.

No matter which true ending you choose you'll end up with exactly the same little cutscene after the end credits. The fact that it was the same no matter what you did at the end cheapened it a little bit. But if you only do one ending this cutscene definitely adds to the whole "what the frick. what is real" vibe of the game.

Prey is excellent. I loved it. I even missed it in the days that followed after I had finished it. Go play it.

Dealing with backlog: Bioshock Remastered

I played the original years ago and I remember thinking it was difficult. Especially the last bossfight against Fontaine. This time I just breezed through the whole game. I saved just before the last fight since it was getting late and I had to go to bed. Started the game the next day and I finished the fight and thus the whole game in about five minutes. Wtf? I expected an epically hard fight and it was over in five minutes. Talk about anti-climactic!

But apart from the anti-climactic ending this game was just as amazing as the first time I played it. The whole Would you kindly twist is still great even if I knew it was coming this time, and having played Infinite too this time around, the whole Would you kindly thing was just amazing.

I had completely forgotten exactly how crazy Steinman and Cohen were, and that's even with having read the book! It was chillingly amazing to rediscover their insanities.

Like the last time I played I chose to do go the good way and save all the Little Sisters.

There isn't really much else to say. This game is amazing. Go play it.

Elder Scrolls Online: The Clockwork City DLC

I was planning on doing this post ages ago, but it kept slipping my mind! A while ago the new DLC, Clockwork City, was released for ESO. I was super excited about it since it will probably be the only Dwemer-ish release we're likely to get and because I'd finally be able to explore Sotha Sil's realm more than I could in the original Morrowind.

Before the release an introductory quest showed up in-game telling a story of how people were attacked by their own shadows due to some daedric influence. With the release of the DLC Divayth Fyr shows up in your alliance capital and asks you for help in getting inside the Clockwork City, Sotha Sil's realm which is hidden in a different dimension. Getting there you realise that the shadow problem is there too and that there's a plot against Sotha Sil that you have to uncover and stop.

I really enjoyed the look of the Clockwork City and the two world bosses were really cool. However the delves were not really to my taste. All the quests were really cool, though I'm not a fan of the Blackfeather Court daily quest.

What was amazing was the new trial: Asylum Sanctorium. It's a mini-trial so it's not much bigger than an ordinary dungeon, with the exception that you need twelve people rather than four to complete it. I've only done it a few times, but we did really well those first few times. The last boss was of course the hardest, but we didn't wipe as many times as we did with for example Halls of Fabrication or Maw of Lorkhaj. Actually after just a few tries we didn't wipe at all, though many people died from time to time we always had great teamwork and ressed people as soon as possible so that we always had a team.

Dealing with backlog: Thief

I first started playing this game in 2014 or 2015 when it was new. But back then I thought it was really difficult, especially I thought that everywhere looked the same and I couldn't figure out how to get from place to place. I didn't get further than chapter 2 that time.

I decided to play through it properly this time around, and I feel like it goes to show home much I've evolved as a gamer in the past three years. I had no trouble finding my way anymore, sneaking about and using powers came naturally and for the most part I actually found it to be quite leisurely. The only thing that bothered me was that the playing tips on the loading screen kept telling me that if I had a running start I could leap great lengths - but every time I tried it Garrett just fell to his death.

I rarely play stealth games as stealth games, and Thief was no exception. Instead of bothering sneaking past the enemies and the guards I pretty soon started to just eliminate the enemies and then casually stroll about looking for loot.

The story was alright. It felt like it needed to have the details worked out more, and it would also have been nice if the story missions weren't all broken up like they were. While I really liked Garrett as a character Erin came across as a weedling, whining, childish brat both before and after the Primal and I just couldn't like her. The Thief-Taker General was an odd character. Whose side was he on? Was it always Aldous'? Because it seemed, for a while, as if he was working for the Baron... The boss fight against him was interesting but pretty straight-forward. First I tried sneaking past him and let him live, but because he kept one-shotting me with his blast arrows or whatever every time I tried to make it across the room, I simply decided that he was too annoying to live and so I defeated him, looted the room and then left him to go deal with Aldous.

The story mission at the old asylum was the creepiest thing I've played in a long long while. The invisible ghost making noise and groaning sounds at the male ward creeped me out, but even scarier was the ghost in the female ward who kept appearing and disappearing and force me out of rooms and at one point even made an illusionary fire burst out of one of the cells while pushing me out of it. That's when I nope'd out on exploring and just decided to follow the quest markers. That wasn't any better, The people warped by the Primal freaked me out and they hurt like hell. It wasn't until much later that I figured out that fire arrows could damage them and blast arrows disintegrated them. The visions Erin kept sending me via the Primal's power didn't make things any better. I was extremely grateful to be out of there.

The final battle was odd, but way too easy to even be considered a battle. Just dodge and run.

I can't help but compare this game to Dishonored. While I think Dishonored has a much better story I actually prefer Thief's gameplay. Less powers in Thief (I rarely use anything other than seeing hidden things in Dishonored anyway) and less huge annoying enemies in Thief. I hated the guys on stilts in Dishonored and the clockwork soldiers in Dishonored 2 were equally bad. Thief didn't have those higher level enemies, and was more focused on stealth and loot, which I actually prefered. Thief made me realise that I prefer my stealth games to be loot-based rather than action-based, and Dishonored is definitely more action-based.

I really liked this game and I'm hoping for a sequel. I'm aware it's a remake, but I don't feel ready to try the old games.