Dealing with backlog: Three short games

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge. I've really enjoyed the Monkey Island games that I've tried and so I decided to play this one as well. While not as hilarious as the original (when is it ever?) I did really enjoy this one too. The characters weren't as memorable, although Stan made a small comeback, along with the main duo. The most annoying part and interestingly my favourite part of the game was in the end when Guybrush is in LeChuck's fortress and getting through that labyrinth and later being chased by LeChuck while trying to defeat him. This game probably has the most wtf ending I've ever seen.

The Raven Remastered. I played the original years ago and really enjoyed it. It's one of those games that I never imagined would get a remaster, so imagine my surprise when I casually open up Steam one day and I have the remaster in my library. Totally free and completely out of nowhere. This game was just as good as the last time I played it. It's kind of like three Agatha Christie novels turned into one with the end presenting a twist you don't see coming. There is the end and then there's the ending that comes after the end. I remember the ending cutscene being a big surprise the first time I played it, but this time I remembered it and so I just enjoyed seeing the pieces come together towards that very ending. I'm a little disappointed that several of the bugs from the original game were still there in the remaster, but those bugs were never game-breaking, they just made achievements a little harder.

Root Letter. This is a visual novel kind of game. All the voices are in Japanese but with English subtitles which I really enjoy. Japanese games should be in Japanese. Trying to catch the same feeling with English voice actors as they had with Japanese almost always fails and sounds cringy. Anyway. this is a story about a man who had a penpal in high school by the name of Aya Fumino. When he's packing up his things to move he finds a letter without a stamp from this girl that he hasn't seen before. The letter has seemingly arrived 15 years too late and the contents is a confession of murder. The man decides to go and find his penpal and find out what happened. He arrives in her hometown, only to find out that the girl named Aya Fumino died 25 years ago. This obviously doesn't make sense and so he sets out on a quest to find the classmates mentioned in the letters and to find out the true story. The game has five endings. The first ending "The Cursed Letter" is pretty much a horror story. The second ending "The Princess of Himegamori Forest" is creepy but definitely my favourite because it makes sense while still being unusual. The third ending "Crossing Paths" didn't feel like an ending as it just created more questions and hardly answered any. The fourth ending "A Government Plot" seemed pretty much like an X Files episode. The fifth ending "The Bond of Marriage" is supposedly the true ending, but it's the most boring one. The whole game is a murder-mystery with a lot of unexpected humour. The most obvious one to me being the characters Morita and Sugari who were 100% based on Mulder and Scully. And they work at the UFO Research Lab! This game was so much more than I expected and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Kingdom Come Deliverance

When this game was announced I was so excited. It was described as Skyrim but without magic and that sounded too good to be true.

It was.

It's also described as a hardcore old-school RPG. But even in old-school RPGs you get to choose a class for your starting character and that starting character gets a few (3-5) skill points to dole out according to their class. So at least you're good at something when the game starts. Not the case in Kingdom Come. Henry knows absolutely nothing, it's a miracle that he can walk and talk. A blacksmith's son should at least know some rudimentary smithing, sword-swinging and letters, right? At the very least the smithing. But Henry knows zilch.

*rant start*

The story could be interesting enough, but when the cutscenes stop there are the missions where you have to do stuff. Like there should be in RPGs, except it's almost impossible to complete quests without any skills at all. Lockpicking and pickpocketing are sort of mini-games that are extremely frustrating. I failed at lockpicking so many times that I ran out of the few lockpicks I had, which meant I couldn't complete the quest, and surprise, surprise! I need to complete the quest to get access to the fence who sells more lockpicks. And I can't get better at lockpicking because I can't practice because I have no more lockpicks. Catch-22.

The sword-fighting mechanics are made to be realistic but they are mostly just frustrating and incredibly clunky. Same mechanics apply for fist-fighting. When almost every quest in the early game involves sword-fighting and/or fist-fighting every single quest becomes a chore.

I tried to explore the map instead. Find some quests that I could feasibly complete without too much frustration. But fast-travelling worked very much in the same way as Dragon Age Origins, meaning that if you tried you would get interrupted and attacked and almost always by at least four attackers. The game's targeting mechanism made it a hassle to fight more than one enemy at any given time, meaning that while Henry was preoccupied with one enemy, the other three hit on him until he died. So I got to travel everywhere by horse and the distances are soooooooooooooooo vast. It takes forever to go anywhere by horse. I think half my playtime is travelling by horse, and I haven't even explored a fourth of the map. Big maps are good, but it should feel like you can cover the distances without too much of nothing in-between the settlements/cities. There's so much nothing in Kingdom Come.

Archery was easier than sword-fighting but still a hassle because Henry sucks and can't aim. Literally. He can't aim so the player can't aim. I think I wasted 10 arrows per rabbit during the hunting quest with the noble arse whose name I can't remember. And then I had to rescue his ass. There were two enemies. TWO! And it took me about an hour to find a way past them. And it wasn't by fighting, because they were two, and Henry can only look at one person at a time. In the end I hid in the bushes close to their camp and waited until they went to sleep and then I choked them. Too bad that most quests in Kingdom Come can't seem to be completed by stealth.

The next quest was that I had to steal a key from the executioner. I decided to go with stealth because that worked so well for me last time. Except Henry is about as discreet of a pickpocketer as a raging bear so ofc the executioner woke up and literally chased me from his property with the dogs running after. The dogs stopped following after a while so I turned around and resolved to knock this dude out. Fist-fighting it is, because I had been a fool and tried to equip a sword that was too high level for poor little Henry (my bad, but it really isn't obvious). After two in-game night-day cycles (TWO) I gave up and continued running until the executioner stopped following me.

Asking the gaming community about tips and tricks about how to manage the game's crappy clunky controls was worthless. Because all anybody got from anyone was "git gud". Oh gee thanks! Why didn't I think of that!! -.-

I put 10 hours into this game and I got nowhere. When I quit I was still in the starting city. During those 10 hours I think I died more times than I ever have before in an RPG. Because Henry is a fragile little flower who dies if someone pinches him.

*rant over*

My last 5 books: Lots of Swedish horror and one OwlCrate!

1. Pappersväggar, av John Ajvide Lindqvist. En riktigt bra novellsamling av Sveriges bästa skräckförfattare. Favoriterna var lite blandade. Dels gillade jag verkligen öppningsnovellen Gräns, som nu även har blivit film (även om filmen i vanlig ordning inte ser ut att ha särskilt mycket med novellen att göra). Jag gillade även By på höjden eftersom den kändes så klassisk i sin skräck, samma känsla fick jag av Vikarien. Majken var en frisk fläkt. Jag har sällan läst något som gått i samma banor som den novellen - och hur ofta får man en pensionär som huvudkaraktär? Jag läste Sluthanteringen innan jag överhuvudtaget hade läst Hanteringen av odöda, men det visade sig vara en bra sak. Novellen var så pass bra att jag blev otroligt pepp på att läsa boken, och den gav mig en djupare insikt i själva situationen som gav boken ytterligare djup. Den sista novellen, Kommunion, var helt fantastisk. Äcklig på sina ställen, men till största delen var den kuslig på ett sätt som jag verkligen uppskattar. En helt klart godkänd novellsamling!

2. Hanteringen av odöda, av John Ajvide Lindqvist. Zombies. I Sverige. Hur awesome är inte det? Fast inte de klassiska zombierna. Dessa äter inte på folk, men samla ihop tillräckligt många på ett ställe och man kan höra andra människors tankar. Coolt och creepy samtidigt! Flora och Elvy fungerade riktigt bra som huvudkaraktärer, men den karaktärs öde som slog mig hårdast var Anna och hur man överhuvudtaget kommer över sin sons död, bara för att sedan se honom vakna upp igen som något annat. Människoödena i den här boken var riktigt kraftfullt uppbyggda. Det enda som drar ner betyget är avsaknaden av ett riktigt slut. Slutet finns sedan i novellen Sluthanteringen, men denna fokuserar endast på Flora och Elvy och man får aldrig riktigt veta hur det slutade för de andra karaktärerna i den här boken.

3. Rörelsen, av John Ajvide Lindqvist. En liten kort bok som gav mig riktigt konstiga associerande drömmar. Speciellt efter att jag läst om Parets öde! Den delen där deras öde beskrivs måste vara något av det äckligaste jag läst någonsin. Det är flera år sedan jag läste den första boken i den här serien, Himmelstrand, men Rörelsen står på egna ben tillräckligt bra att det inte behövdes någon omläsning - trots flertalet hintar till campingplatsen och husvagnen från Himmelstrand. Det som drar ner betyget är avsaknaden av ett slut. Det känns på ett sätt som om Rörelsen bara är en intermission mellan Himmelstrand och X, som inte riktigt tillför något till serien mer än en jäkligt konstig bok som man inte riktigt ville lägga ifrån sig!



4. X - Den sista platsen, av John Ajvide Lindqvist. Jag tyckte om den här boken när jag läste den, men jag vet inte vad jag faktiskt tycker om den. Till att börja med så är det mer än deckare än en skräckhistoria och jag och deckare har aldrig varit särskilt bra vänner. För det andra så ska det här vara upplösningen! Boken där alla svar ges på frågorna från Himmelstrand och Rörelsen och den ger mig absolut ingenting! Jag kände mig bara tom när den var slut, liksom "That's it?! Är det allt du kommer ge mig?!" Slutet skapade fler frågor än det besvarade. Om Lindqvists mål var att lämna sina läsare "wanting more" så lyckades han, för jag vill definitivt ha mer! Vad hände sedan? VAR ÄR MIN UPPLÖSNING?! Godammit...

5. The Hazel Wood, by Melissa Albert. If American Gods and Once Upon A Time had a baby and that baby was on drugs, this book would be that baby. Seriously. This has been one of the strangest rides I've been on. The book thoroughly explores the question "What if fairy tales were inherently evil?" I quite enjoyed the book all the way until the end, where it seemed like the author lost the grip of her story and didn't quite know how to go about finishing it. The ending that finally came about isn't one I especially like and it really hurt the final rating.

Dealing with backlog: Beyond Good and Evil

When I first met Toni he told me how great this game was and I started playing it a little bit on his old Xbox 360. But I rarely work well with consoles and controllers and so I dropped it. When Beyond Good and Evil 2 was announced last year I bough the original on Steam and finally got around to playing it on the PC. 

The story is about Jade and how she works as an action journalist to bring down the corporation that runs and "protects" the planet by uncovering the corruption and their cooperation with the forces that are continuously attacking the planet. 

The use of the camera as a part of the gameplay mechanics was interesting and there were a few puzzles that were slightly complicated, but mostly the game was very straight-forward and a lot more childish than I thought it would be. 

I noticed early on exactly how straight-forward it was and decided not to worry about collecting every single pearl, because the game kept giving you the exact amount needed to continue the story. There was no need to do the races etc except for completionist purposes and the game didn't catch my interest enough to make me go all completionist on it. 

I enjoyed the game but it wasn't a wow experience. It's something to file away as done and not think anymore about. I will be playing the sequel (which is a prequel) althought the original failed to wow me. 

Game completed: Anthem demo

After the hellishly cringeworthy E3 announcement video I refused to watch any more Anthem videos. But I was still curious about the game. It's Bioware so I almost have to be. Kind of like when Bethesda releases 'most anything :P

Not watching any videos at all it's no surprise that I didn't know about the demo until a couple of ESO guildies started chatting about it. So I downloaded the demo and started playing.

The demo is more a means to show off the mechanics and the world. There is very little about the story and the characters, which is a shame because those things are usually what Bioware does best. What you get about the story is five quests in a short quest line that don't really do much else but creating more questions.

The first thing I was unsure about was the fact that I needed to be part of a squad to do a quest. I was playing the demo alone, but I decided to go with random matchmaking and go in my own pace. The game made sure to teleport me to the others if I strayed too far behind. I know some players complained about in-game communication not working, but I'm quite happy about that.

After having done the five quests that the demo allowed I realised that I didn't care about the other players. It's like - yes, I have to group up with you but it doesn't seem like I have to bother with you anyway (at least not on the standard  things, maybe harder things will come along with release that actually require a communicative squad), which kind of gives Anthem a MMO feeling. There will be people around, but unless you want to you don't have to bother with them. That's good.

After having done the five quests I played around some with freeplay, which made it seem even more like a MMO. Freeplay allows you to roam the open world, run into other players doing the same and if you want team up with them to do world events - alternatively do the world events yourself. I am going to assume that you can choose to do quests in freeplay too, although I didn't actually try that or see any random fifth person join my random four person squad at any point during my gameplay session.

All in all I'm pretty excited for Anthem. I will definitely buy it and play it. I'm hoping that it will be another one of Bioware's games that I can just drown myself in and completely obsess over, but I'm being cautiously optimistic.

Dealing with backlog: Assassin's Creed 2

It's been two weeks since I finished this game, but who's counting?

I had a really bad experience with the first Assassin's Creed, because the port was so bad and the controls not even in the slightest fitting for K+M. But I still believed that I would like this series if I kept at it. The later games really do seem like something I'd enjoy, but I want to play the series from the beginning. So I got Assassin's Creed 2 and got playing.

The controls were still a bit wonky but compared to the original game they were miles better. The wonky controls were still the reason why I didn't complete all the tombs in the game, because who wants to do timed jumping puzzles with wonky controls?

At first I had decided to not care about all the feathers, but when it became apparant that I needed them to unlock something special I started collecting all of them with the help of guides on where to find them all. I went through all the areas in the game with the help from guides and when I reached the end I was missing one feather. I had collected 99 of 100. I was not about to go through all of the areas again looking for one single pesky feather. No way in hell.

Mainly I just played through the story. Before I started the game I thought the "contemporary" futuristic bits would be annoyances. Things I wouldn't like. Things that were just there to fill out the game. But before the end those sequences became something I was looking forward to - these little hints that something that happened hundreds of years in the past actually had a bearing on the contemporary. That was huge and made it all seem a little bit closer. And I wanted more clues to the previous civilisation.

Then we also have the other thing. I don't like Ezio. He's stubborn and reckless and he doesn't listen and he's got a major case of the god complex. I understand why it's easy to make a protagonist this way, but it doesn't make me like it. And I understand that Ezio is only 17-ish when the story starts, but that's no reason why he should still be acting reckless and why he's still so childishly stubborn when he reaches Venice, some 15-ish years later. If you're still harboring a childish god complex by 30, something has gone really wrong.

I thoroughly enjoyed all the Italian. Kudos to UbiSoft for making the accents and the language true to history. If the game is set in the Italian Renaissance, the characters should speak Italian. Simple enough, but still so easy for developers to overlook.

One part of me wants to skip the other two Ezio games and go straight to Assassin's Creed 3, but a bigger part of me wants every bit of Desmond's story. I know, right? I just can't conform to the general opinion! ;P Everybody loves Ezio, but I'm curious about Desmond.