Wednesday, 6 December 2023
Castlevania: Nocturne
Sunday, 26 November 2023
My last 5 books: Thriller and adventure
Thursday, 23 November 2023
Game completed: Assassin's Creed Mirage (+ the end of AC Valhalla)
Thursday, 9 November 2023
Good Omens S02
Monday, 30 October 2023
Young Sheldon S01-S06
Sunday, 15 October 2023
Game completed: We Were Here Expeditions
Tuesday, 10 October 2023
Game completed: Starfield
I'll keep this post very vague so as to avoid spoilers and you'll mostly be getting my overall thoughts and feelings rather than any details of companions or quests.
I put off doing the main quest for so long, which I realise now was a bit of a disservice to the game. I was probably level 30 before I even encountered the main antagonist. That first encounter adds a lot more to exploration and I recommend getting to at least that point in the main quest before heading off whichever way to explore.
So for my first character I chose traits that were pretty much all useless to me, but that I thought sounded cool. Neon Street Rat was very useful, but Alien DNA I had removed with a doctor almost immediately. I chose the Adoring Fan perk because of nostalgia and then I never used him because he was just as annoying as I remembered. I just stuck him at an outpost in the middle of nowhere and never saw him again.
Surveying planets became tedious if it was done too much and too often, but as someone who enjoys ticking boxes it was very much my thing - if done sparingly. Every time I visited Earth I got sad.
As for the side quest lines, my favourite was easily the Crimson Fleet. I always try to do a good character so navigating the Fleet questline via Persuasion and Bribery instead of murder and robbery was a lot of fun and actually made me think more specifically how I would get through a quest.
I also enjoyed the UC questline for the sheer amount of wow moments. Revelation after revelation, it was great! I really liked Hadrian when she was part of her questline. Too bad she lost all her personality afterwards when she became just another follower.
The Ryujin questline was a slog to start with, but once I gained access to the Executive floor things became really interesting and the last few quests were pretty cool. I ended up having more fun with this one than I initially thought. Unfortunately those early quests are indicative of the kind of missions you get from their mission board post-questline, and they aren't very engaging. Still a lot of easy credits though.
Finally, the Freestar Collective questline wasn't my thing at all. I struggle to remember what it was even about and had to look it up to even write this post. The final confronation was kinda cool I suppose. Unfortunately the final confrontation of this questline was at the same place I had a Ryujin stealth mission at and it wouldn't let me sneak past the final confrontation to complete the Ryujin mission before going back to do the final Freetstar quest... So I ended up getting a pay deduction from my Ryujin mission -.-
The main quest proved a lot more interesting than I normally expect from a Bethesda game and at one point even heartbreaking. Literally sat crying in front of my PC until I could reload an earlier save so I could change the outcome because I was not ok with that! It didn't hurt that the main quest had some of the most beautiful visuals in the entire game. Temples did get slightly repetitive though.
As for the companions, I adored Sam. He became my best friend and my husband (and he made me smile like a doofus every time I talked to him after we got married). Andreja, despite being the last Constellation member I picked up, quickly became my favourite after Sam. Both Barrett and Sarah annoy me. Barrett is too silly and Sarah is too high and mighty. That said, I still got a ship that could fit all of the Constellation followers at once and they all became sort of like a family. I also made sure to do all of their companion quests. Everybody's except for Barrett's were pretty interesting tbh. I liked Sarah's and I hope there'll be more to Andreja's at some point. Sam's felt oddly high-stakes but that's probably due to Cora's presence.
I'll end this by addressing some of the complaints I've seen regarding the game. Some of them are just too stupid to address though, so I'll just leave this here:
Complaints about graphics and crashes and optimization, I can't do much about. The game worked well for me (rtx 3060). I had two CTDs in all my 174 hours. The game didn't like when a download was running in the background and became laggy whenever Windows Update decided it was time to download an update, otherwise it worked great.
People complain about desolate worlds and I can't help but wonder if they only ever landed on moons or planets without an atmosphere. There was an abundance of planets that had all sorts of life and were beautiful to just wander through.I have so many screenshots from both desolate and vibrant moons and planets.
The achievement disabler was buggy, though. Which is probably the only major issue I had with this game. I had to use the console to no clip through a door that remained [INACCESSIBLE] even though the quest was supposed to open it to be able to progress a quest. I was hoping that achievements would only be disabled for that session (like in New Vegas) and then be enabled once I restarted my game. No such luck though. I wasn't too far in so I figured I'd make a new character and start over. It wasn't too bad. Except the game marked my brand new character and saves as modded too. Despite me never touching the console on that character. It's supposed to not do that on new characters :P So I downloaded the mod that make achievements work even on modded/console playthroughs. Problem solved.
Another complaint is that locations are copypaste. Unless you do a lot of mission board bounty quests you probably won't even notice this much. But every single Abandoned [...] on planets are the exact same. So when I was running through my probably 50th Abandoned Cryo Lab to get that outlaw bounty I was pretty sick of them. All Cryo Labs look the same, all Relay Stations look the same, all Robotics Labs look the same... Which I can kinda, sorta justify by them all being UC and UC probably had a model they built things after, but damn it gets tedious.
Finally, the end of the main quest leads you right into NG+, but you can choose to not play through the main quest in the exact same way all over again. So now I'm kinda excited to play through it once more just to see how much will be different. Probably not a lot though, so I'll be moving on to other games, but keeping a lookout for DLCs because I really don't feel done with this game.
Monday, 2 October 2023
Disenchantment S05
Tuesday, 19 September 2023
Game completed: Grounded
Monday, 11 September 2023
Black Mirror S06
Saturday, 2 September 2023
Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom
Monday, 28 August 2023
Dealing with backlog: Red Dead Redemption 2
I watched Toni play it when it was first released because it wasn't announced for PC at first. So I wasn't sure I'd get to play it. With the result that I knew the broad strokes of the story going in.
Being mostly used to RPG games, this game offered a few initial challenges. Like I couldn't find anywhere in the game (even in the help section) that told me how specifically to raise my HP and so struggled for a while with Arthur dying every time he met an enemy... Until I properly figured out the take cover mechanic and the dead eye.
Aside from the initial hiccup in learning mechanics, the most continuously annoying thing was steering the goddamn horse, and I don't know if it's just poorly implemented on PC or what. But usually the horse was steered by moving the mouse (similar to the stick on a controller I assume), with nudges in either direction being possible with the A and D keys. All okay. Except if I entered the map while the horse was moving or otherwise paused the game, when I'd return to the game the A and D keys wouldn't nudge in any direction but just cause the horse to do full 90 degree turns, which more than once caused me to fall off a mountain or off a bridge. And if I was driving a coach or a wagon the mouse wouldn't steer at all, but it was exclusively the WASD. After spending so many hours on horseback steering with the mouse, it was always jarring to suddenly not be able to do that.
I decided early on that I'd do my best to 100% the game, and not just what the game considered 100%, but what I considered 100%. So I did all the camp upgrades and all the trapper clothing. I completed the compendium and every entry in the compendium is at 100%, including horses, fish and plants. I did every treasure trail and every challenge, every stranger quest and every honor mission. And most of the time I had a blast.
Some animals have a really unfair spawn rate though. I struggled for ages to find a moose with horns until one time I was at Wallace Station paying off a bounty and then just turned around the the moose was just standing there behind me. I've never pulled out my rifle so quickly. The American Robin for the Hunting Delivery was a bastard to find too, until I found a guaranteed spawn point at Ringneck Creek in Lemoyne. The Guarma-specific animals were surprisingly not too difficult, but nothing had me tear my hair out like the Carolina Parakeet. omg I wanted to call it quits so many times, but my stubbornness won out every time and I reloaded my save just one more time, just one more time, just one more time... Until I finally found the goddamn green bird so I could study it and then shoot the fucker to oblivion. Nothing was as annoying as the parakeet. Not the hunting deliveries, not the gambling challenges, not even Algernon's exotics quests. Fuck those birds.
I had a lot of fun trying to find all the secrets and easter eggs in the game. Two of my favourites were the vampire in Saint Denis and the Witches' Cauldron up in Ambarino :3
I hated Micah from the start. That first line out of his mouth and I wanted the game to give me a reason to hurt him. My feelings toward Dutch were more chaotic. The first two chapters I believed he was trying his best, but from chapter three onwards it gradually became obvious that he had no idea what he was doing and was just making it up as he went along. "I got a plan", sure you do, buddy. I've read fan theories that Dutch lost his marbles when he hit his head in chapter four, but the more I played the more I came to believe what John says in the epilogue to be true; which is that Dutch's real character was coming out after years of carefully hiding it. He's a narcissistic egotistical asshole and always has been.
I cried a bit at the end of chapter six, even though I knew it was coming.
Building a home with John in the epilogue was a nice change of pace from the rest of the game and I really enjoyed it.
Still kinda pissed the rdr1 remaster wasn't ported to PC.
Wednesday, 16 August 2023
Manifest S01-S04
Monday, 31 July 2023
The Witcher S03
Going into this season felt kind of bittersweet, knowing it would be Henry Cavill's last.
Just like previous seasons it was pretty slow going up until the last couple episodes. As much as I enjoyed seeing the family stuff between Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri, most of it wasn't very exciting.
As much as this season tried to be all about Ciri, the story revolved more around the mages. Tissaia pays the ultimate price for their involvement in everything. Fringilla's character arc in this season is one of the most interesting things to watch unfold.
I loved watching Ciri grow as a person and more as a witcher than as a mage.
The fight against the Experiment was easily the most disgusting horrific fight of the season.
Half of me wants to continue watching season 4, the other half wants to boycott the entire thing. We'll see how it goes...
Geralt at the end though... T_T






























