The Haunting of Hill House

I still haven't read the novel. I should fix that. Soon.

I've been excited for this show since it was announced. Mainly because I love the 1999 movie, but also because I've seen the 1963 original movie. But I haven't gotten around to watching it until just now.

This show is slow at times but excellent at building suspense and the ghosts were genuinely creepy. Especially the tall man with the hat and cane. He has visited my dreams a few times since I first saw him on the show.

I really loved how the first six episodes only provided clues and pieces to the story and then the last four episodes were all about watching the pieces come together and seeing the puzzle solved. And omg I loved to see the puzzle solved. Such a great feeling of contentment.

I instantly liked Theo. Steve was the one I wanted to like but he made it so very, very hard. Shirley kept pushing me away no matter how much I tried to like her. Both Nell and Luke made me sad for different reasons.

This is a very sad show. But you can also turn it into a game of "Spot the Ghost" as there are almost always ghosts lurking in the background.

Seems like Netflix is turning this show into some sort of American Horror Story thing, as there'll be a second season but with another house and new characters.

Absolutely worth a watch.

Playing Skyrim quest mods: The Forgotten City (again)

The last time I made a venture into Skyrim's quest mods I played this one. But when I decided to head into it again I redownloaded the few I had already completed to play them again. The Forgotten City is the first of those.

Last time I played this I was mostly confused by the whole thing, mainly, I think, because I went too fast. This time I resolved to really take my time and that decision made the whole mod a lot better.

By taking my time I got to know the characters. I got to know what led each of them there and how they felt about the Dwarves' Law, but also what they were hoping for for their futures.

In the beginning after the leap of faith you find Altrius' suicide note which basically encourages the player to keep failing by letting you know that Altrius decided to take his life after not being able to change things and he just went mad with having to go back to the lakehouse over and over again. The quest is actually set up so that you have to "fail" to reach the good ending.

So what I did is that I talked to everybody, went into everybody's house and read every single letter I could find. I went down into the underground tunnels via Ulrin's house and discovered everything down there and then I climbed my way into the Palace and discovered everything in there. I found every single part of the Immaculate Dwarven Armor needed to pass through the radiation in the Underground tunnels proper except for the chestplate. The only one who had the chestplate was Rykas and he refused to let go of it. And here's where it's set up to force you to "fail" to succeed. You need to kill Rykas to get the chestplate, but when you kill him you activate the Dwarves' Law which annihilates everyone in the city. The Jarl opens the time portal and back you go. Except you retain every piece of knowledge and everything in your inventory - including the chestplate. So equipping all of the Immaculate Dwarven Armor you can just ignore everything this time around and go straight into the Underground Tunnel. Fight your way through and you end up face to face with the Arbiter. An actual, real, 2000 year old, Dwemer, who acts as the Judge and watches over everyone and everything that happens in the city. Here you have two options. If your Speech skill is high enough you can just persuade him to stop and abolish the Dwarves' Law. The other option is to fight the Arbiter and when you kill him the Dwarves' Law will be no more. With the Arbiter defeated you'll be returned to your own timeline and meet Altrius. You'll also discover that the City is thriving. The Jarl was replaced after the citizens found out what he did to Ulrin's wife and everybody's happy.

There is another way to get back to your timeline and that's by having the Jarl killed so that he can't create the time portal. Either by killing him yourself (either unprovoked or by accusing him of being the threat to the city), or by telling Ulrin what the Jarl has done to his wife, or by discovering and releasing Ulrin's wife and have her do it. That's what I did the last time I played. I let her kill him.

This mod is amazing in its replayability and I love it's intricacy. It also tickles my love for the Dwemer.

Playing Skyrim quest mods: Project AHO

This mod tickles my love for the Dwemer.

I got this mod not really knowing anything at all about it. It was among the top ones for quest mods and I wanted a mod that added new quests, items, locations... So I got this one.

It starts off by you getting hit with a paralysis spell, stripped of all of your gear and then sold as a slave to a Telvanni scholar. At least you get to keep your tongue, unlike all the other slaves. So of course the first thing you do after you've been let out of your cell is to go talk to everybody and explore and find out their secrets.

You find yourself in Sadrith Kegran. A Telvanni city underground, built on the ruins of a Dwemer city. The whole DLC is like if Vvardenfell and Blackreach had a baby and I absolutely love it!

As time goes on and you help the people in Sadrith Kegran with small troubles you're soon let in on the secret of project AHO. AHO was something the Dwemer worked on and two rival scholars in Sadrith Kegran both want to use it. Your master is one, but it's becoming evident that he's slowly losing his mind.

So will you stay loyal to your master even after the rulers give you your freedom and help him use AHO? (Despite his budding insanity). Or will you help his rival achieve the same goal? One of them will doom the city, the other will save it. There are two endings to this story. Take your pick.

(And this mod had the best Easter egg ever)

Another cool thing is that hidden deep inside the Dwemer ruins is a music organ, and you can find Dwemer cubes with songs on them to use on the organ. One of them plays the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. Another one plays the Dragon Age Inquisition soundtrack. There are lots of familiar tunes to be found all over.

I chose to destroy the town but save AHO. I'm not entirely sure I made the right choice, but it seemed right at the time. Don't overthink things.

Playing Skyrim quest mods: Helgen Reborn

This mod was strange. It seemed like this neat little thing that lets you rebuild Helgen, and I figured why not. Turns off there's so much more to it than that.

So it starts off with you meeting this old guy at an inn and then convincing the leader of the bandits who have now holed up in Helgen that they should instead try and rebuild rather than destroy. Turns out these bandits aren't actual bandits but members of a secret order and the old guy knows their leader since way back.

So off we go to make the area safe by clearing out undead, necromancers, vampires and bandits from different locations in the area. The one that made the biggest impression on me was the mine where somebody had summoned a dremora who killed everybody and made the mine haunted. Every single effect in that location was amazing and I was just waiting for the jumpscares. The best part was when I discovered the remains of an Oblivion gate at the bottom of the mine.

Fast-forward a bit and we have saved the remaining members of the secret order from the Thalmor as well as recruited a bunch of people to act as city guards. Time to take the fight to the Thalmor. Somehow we're directed to a tavern in Hjaalmarch. Only it turns out that the tavern is more of a... brothel. And I was so not prepared for it that I was laughing my ass off listening to the noises on a faded-to-black screen. But apparently my Dovahkiin is a godess in the sack :P

With my sex powers we have now got the information we need from the girl in the "tavern" and off we go to fight the Thalmor. We save a bunch of people destined to be sold into slavery inside a cave, but when we go out the Thalmor are waiting for us and cast paralysis spells on us. When we wake up we're a prisoner of the Thalmor. Aerandil, the leader, asks us to bring the leader of the secret order to him at the Thalmor prison. Lure him to his death. We do so with the full intention of beating his ass later. The last part of the mission turns into a big battle where all the characters are involved. It ends in tragedy and you're invited to participate in the funeral back at Helgen.

But hey, at least you've rebuilt a town.

Overall I enjoyed this mod. There were some minor grievances. Like I really, really, really didn't like Korst's voice-acting. It was too immersion breaking for me. Every other voice actor was amazing though. In the very beginning there's this part where you sign up as a fighter in an illegal arena to win back money that the lumberjack was supposed to use for lumber for your rebuilt town, but instead gambled away. And that would've been fun if the cave it was in hadn't been designed in such an annoying way. But due to the design completing this part just became a hassle of running back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. But I had actually forgotten about the arena part of the mod until I saw it in a video review of it. So with Korst's voice-acting as my only real grievance I'd say this mod is pretty darn great. Go get it.

The Harry Potter mobile games

Wizards Unite: I got this when it released. I loved Pokémon Go and this is the same concept. I was very excited for Pokémon Go when that released but I was doubtful whether the same thing would work in the wizarding world. Wizards Unite has a sort of questline where you work for the Ministry and your job is to catch magic anomalies and return them to their rightful place. It was fun for a short while but soon felt like you were collecting stickers and not much else. I liked that there was a questline, I'm all about quests in any game I play, but fetch quests become boring and grindy in pretty much any game and this was just that. . I got to around level 12 before I stopped. In comparison I played Pokémon Go for more than a year.

Hogwarts Mystery: I started playing this game this past Sunday and it's really a lot of fun! The story is a lot more engaging than in Wizards Unite, and the gameplay is a lot more varied and fun. The only negative feedback I have is the same as what everyone else is saying: you run out of energy too quickly and then you either have to wait hours for your energy to recharge completely or pay real money to buy more in-game currency to buy energy with. And you need energy to be able to complete classes, and you need to get the House points from doing the classes to get the items needed to complete sidequests... It all goes in circles. I'm almost done with Year 1 at the time of writing this and so I have a whole lot more gameplay to do, but I'm actually looking forward to it! Let's see what this game has to offer.

Watching old, old movies part 11

Going through this list and here are my previous entries :)

31. The Uninvited (1944)
Another haunted house! With special effects that are still pretty good for being 70+ years old! This movie was a classical haunted house tale, which unfortunately meant that it was very, very predictable. Even the twist at the end didn't come as a surprise to me. But that's really on me for having watched too many haunted house tales and not on the movie. It has aged pretty well and I did enjoy watching it. This movie is apparently based on a book so I'll be looking into that. I still really dislike the whole notion of "We met two minutes ago but now I love you and want to spend my entire life with you" that's so prevalent in old movies, and this isn't an exception. But unusually enough they do make the effort to get to know each other on screen rather than just falling into each other's arms and proclaiming marriage. Overall I liked this movie. It gave me that whole creepy-cosy feeling that I like.

32. The Body Snatcher (1945)
Every movie where Boris Karloff has a major role is a joy to watch! This movie, based on the novel by Stevenson, stars Karloff as the titular body snatcher. The movie takes place in Edinburgh some years after the whole graverobbing mess of Burke & Hare was finished. I actually squealed when the camera panned of the Castle in the beginning. Karloff is just as imposing and creepy as always and his voice is so chillingly smooth. I love watching him play his part. This movie also has some skillful foreshadowing in a way that you don't realise it's foreshadowing until it happens. Every movie I've seen starring Karloff has had me glued to the screen and this is no different. The Black Cat remains my favourite Karloff movie, but this one isn't far behind.
Oh, and Bela Lugosi (a.k.a Dracula) is also in it.

33. Isle of the Dead (1945)
This movie was strange. We're in Greece and it's during the 1912 war and there's also a plague going around. The General of the troops go to an island to visit his wife's grave and an American correspondent go with him. On the island the General discovers that his wife's grave has been vandalised and the body stolen. They walk over to the only house on the island (I assume the home of the keeper?) and meet a bunch of people who are also visiting his home. The old woman is ofc superstitious and tells the General that the young woman in the house is a sort of mythical vampire creature because the woman in her care keeps getting sicker and weaker. The plague arrives at the house and they self-isolate (that's hitting pretty close to home atm) and try different approaches to stave off the plague that kills two of them before the climax of the movie. Which then reveals that yes there was probably (possibly, potentially?) a vampire-like spirit among them, but not the one they suspected. I didn't like this movie, because it was totally uneventful and extremely slow. I enjoyed seeing Karloff ofc, but it seems like the script for this didn't give him much to work with.

Locke & Key

I've heard of the graphic novel that this show is based on before but I haven't actually read it. But when I saw this name on Netflix along with all the raving reviews everybody kept giving the show I knew we had to watch it.

And it was amazing. We were both in awe of the house and the keys. And as the mysteries unfolded we became even more invested in seeing it all play out. Sure, the plot had some issues and there were instances of the characters making really stupid decisions just to make the plot move forward, but all in all it was an exciting story. Pretty simple, but exciting, which makes it both entertaining and easy to watch.

We both agreed that we'd really like to have the Head Key.

Really looking forward to a second season.

Playing Skyrim quest mods: Blackreach Railroad

It's been four years since I last played Skyrim properly. I blame Nate for making me pick this up again. Just like the last time I played through this I decided to get into a bunch of quest mods. Last time I played through Moonpath to Elsweyr, Forgotten City, Falskaar, Following Mercer and Pit Fighter.

The first mod I completed my playthrough of this time around is a nice little possibly lore-breaking thing called Blackreach Railroad. Basically you can find the railway station in the Silent City inside Blackreach and then you get a quest to get the train up and running again, which turns into a quest to clear all the stations throughout Skyrim.

I really, throughly, enjoyed this mod. There's something of a steamtrain fan in me (I just love old things) and this mod spoke directly to that part. I also love all things Dwemer. The quest also gives you a proper Dwemer to talk to, fully voice acted, and he has the most hilarious story to tell about how he became a literal part of the railroad.

The questline to clear the stations throughout Skyrim ends with a badass freaking boss battle that had my heart pumping so fast ♥

Stranger Things

We're probably the last people to join the party on this one. Toni discovered Netflix in January this year (even though he's had his own user on my account since I got my account like three years ago). We started watching Stranger Things a couple weeks ago. Both of us had heard great things about this show and it didn't disappoint.

I loved Mike and Eleven in the first season. Eleven was so cute and Mike was so patient and friendly and caring. I loved the whole conspiracy theory angle they had for the story and how the kids made sense of it using D&D material. The nerd in me greatly approves. I also loved seeing Nancy grow from the shy and somewhat dorky girl into pure girlpower. And seeing Steve grow up from a douchebag teenager to a young man was just perfect. And I loved how they defeated the demogorgon :)

Second season was not as strong as the first season imho. I adored that Hopper got to adopt Eleven. That was perfect, but for the most part this season was a bit slower than the first one. I wasn't as much fan of possessed Will as I was of kidnapped Will. However, I did adore seeing Dustin with Dart :3 And Max is a pretty cool girl. Seeing Eleven close the gate was so frickin epic I was just on the edge of my seat.

Third season is omg yes! I loved seeing Eleven become a real girl. I loved watching the kids turn into teenagers and everything that meant. I loved seeing Steve with Robin and helping him get over Nancy even if he'd never get more than friendship from Robin. I hated that Eleven lost her powers though, even though I loved that Joyce took her into her family after Hopper disappeared. I also hated that they moved away from Hawkins, although it's understandable.

After we finished the third season we watched the teaser for the fourth season. None of us understand the outcry that fans made that it was a spoiler to show Hopper alive. After the credits of the final episode of the third season they show Russians in Siberia talk about an American locked in a cell. It was a pretty obvious hint that they had Hopper there. The season four teaser just confirmed it. Not a spoiler.

Really, really looking forward to the fourth season!!! :D

Dealing with backlog: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

I started this game with the intention to play through the entire AC franchise so I'd be up to date when Ragnarök releases this year. That... didn't happen.

As you know from my post about AC2 I don't like Ezio, and that didn't change with Brotherhood. I enjoyed the game mostly, especially the Ubisoft trademark things with all the collectables. But the story seemed repetitive after AC2. Same main character, same villains, same basic plot. The only thing I thoroughly 100% enjoyed doing was to restore Rome to its former glory. When I quit all the districts available to me were 90-100% completed.

From the looks of things, even in the very beginning of this game, the plot will turn out exactly the same as in AC2, except we know that Ezio can't kill Borgia because he's the frickin Pope. Everything went pretty smoothly (there were a few annoyances due to the wonky controls that I've come to expect from an AC game) until I got to the mission where Ezio infiltrate a party with the goal to kill The Banker. If you're spotted by the guards you get desynchronized, but they're positioned so that one of them will spot you if you move to kill another of them. So you have to basically just dodge and hide, but they can see from basically every angle. Also the target is moving and if you get too far away you get desynchronizzed so you kind of have to hurry. Also because the target is moving you're not allowed to lose sight of him, because if you do you get desynchronized within 25 seconds. After getting desynchronized about 20 times I gave  up and started playing another game. I fully intended to come back to Brotherhood at a later time when I did, but after two weeks I realised that I wouldn't. So I uninstalled the game and read up on the plot what would happen next. And yes, it's pretty much exactly the same as in AC2.

I even played through the DLC telling the story of Leonardo's disappearance and got his war machines away from the Borgia soldiers. And aided Copernicus, although that was less fun.

If that mission hadn't seemed so unfair, or if I had been able to quicksave after getting past each obstacle so that I'd feel like I had made some progress I probably would've continued playing this game. I don't like it when games hold your hand too much, but I also don't like it when I feel like I make no progress and like I'm basically just banging my head against a wall. Having to restart from the latest checkpoint each time I desynchronized made me feel just that.

I'm still planning on playing through the entire AC franchise. But that won't happen any time soon.

Watching old, old movies part 10

This has been on hiatus for almost 2½ years! I'm going through this list and here are my previous entries.

28. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
I've wanted to see this one since I watched the 25th anniversary of the musical back in 2011. I read the novel before I watched this and this is a lot more truthful to the original novel than the musicals are. I enjoyed seeing the parallells between the musical and this movie (as well as the novel) but I especially liked seeing the references to the novel, like the Phantom's underground mansion and how he snorkled his way through the underground lake. Ofc being used to the musical the movie had a lot less oomph because there's no epic music, but the story is still the same and just like every time I watch the musical I just feel so sorry for the Phantom. He is what the cruel world made him. In 1925 when this movie was released the legend is that the women were warned to keep smelling salts with them because they were expected to faint at the face reveal. It's also said that Lon Chaney did the make-up for the Phantom by himself. This is a masterpiece.

29. The Innocents (1961)
Finally a haunted house that is haunted! I had never heard of this movie before, but it was a really good one. First thing it does is making me laugh because the uncle's attitude towards the children is so relatable. I loved the whole Victorian setting and I marvelled at the clothes of the governess and Flora. The story has two layers; the first one could be interpreted as an ordinary haunted house tale and the governess is trying to save the children from the ghosts possessing them; the other is a tale of a governess slowly losing her mind as it becomes obvious right at the end that she's the only one who can see the ghosts. I love the ambiguity! The first three quarters of the movie go by pretty slowly as the suspension builds up (I was pretty bored with it in the first half) but then it becomes oh so good. The final scene was a wtf moment for me.

30. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
First old-timey movie I see starring both legends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee :3 And more will come. This is basically a remake of the Frankenstein movie from 1931, but with a little more refined storytelling. As with every Frankenstein movie I've seen it bothers me how different the monster is compared to how he is in the novel. In the novel the monster is sentient and quite intelligent, the only screen adaptations of the monster that I've so far found to mimic this have been in Penny Dreadful and Van Helsing. The conclusion of this movie is very final as both the monster and his creator are killed and disposed of.

Elder Scrolls Online: Dragonhold

The last part of the Season of the Dragon. This DLC features a new zone, Southern Elsweyr, and concludes the story of Abnur Tharn and the dragons.

It took me ages to play this. Mostly because I think Elsweyr and the Khajiit never were a favourite of mine. Abnur Tharn most definitely is, though.

The zone itself is beautiful, and the main questline is definitely really cool. But the sidequests fell pretty short imho. They were way too few, and those that were weren't engaging enough. Except for the settlement Black Heights and the exorcism side quest that can be found there. I loved the painting!

The dragons in ESO remain unimpressive imho and the dragon world boss events are usually just something to overcome along the way to somewhere else- For me they kind of give me the same feeling that randomly spawned oblivion gates did in Oblivion; mainly just a big sigh and getting it over with.

The main quest however was so cool and I enjoyed (almost) every bit of it. I just wish that it was longer or that they spent more time developing the side quests and delves.

Edinburgh

Since my planned time off this Christmas didn't go exactly to plan I ended up with a week of paid time left to use. I decided to use this week to take a well-earned holiday and go back to (probably) my favourite city in Europe.

This past Sunday I went to the airport and got on the plane. It was a very nice flight actually. I had booked business class rather than economy for once since the price differed very little, and I was all alone in my row of seats. Very nice. Both flight and tram to the city went by without a hitch. I arrived a little bit early for check-in at the hotel, but decided to try anyway and the receptionist let me check in :)

After checking in and dumping my bags I went to meet up with a friend and we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the city and also grabbing a coffee at a random café that we happened upon. Before we went our separate ways in the evening we also grabbed dinner at a sushi place (although neither of us had sushi).

The rest of the evening was spent watching TV and talking on Discord in my hotel room.

The day after I got on a train to go visit my friend at his place and meet his dog :3 Once again we had coffee and dinner and I ended up joining his stream on twitch. Time flew by and before either of us knew it I had missed the last train back, so I ended up staying at his place.

The day after I took the train back and then spent the whole day just holed up in my hotel room; reading, watching TV and being on the Internet.

Wednesday was my last day in Edinburgh and so I spent it the way I had originally planned to spend at least two days. I went to The Elephant Café and spent about an hour in there just writing. J.K. Rowling style :) After that I took a walk through the Greyfriars Kirkyard and finally found the Tom Riddle stone :) I then walked up to the Castle and spent about an hour or so there. I couldn't come up with anything special for dinner and so I ended up going to the same sushi place I went to on my first day. But I didn't have sushi this time either. In the evening I decided to go and grab a beer or two at The Black Rose. I spent the evening chatting to the bartenders and also getting completely destroyed at the pub quiz. I stayed for a couple of songs of the ensuing karaoke night before I called it a night and went back to the hotel where I fell asleep pretty instantly.

Yesterday was going home day and once again everything went perfectly smoothly.

Dealing with backlog: Two visual novels

The Agency: Chapter 1
This is a short one, since the devs decided to make it episodic and I only ever got the first part. Not sure if I will be getting the second part. The voice acting is terrible and the puzzles are super easy, although there seems to be a story there, and I'm all about a good story!

It took me 75 minutes to complete this episode and I don't feel like it gave me much, although there was one giggle when a window broke and this guy just casually walks up and says "Hey guys it looks like my bar is being attacked". One giggle is good so I may get the second chapter just because of that.

Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~
This is a visual novel in the most literal sense. There's very little interactivity and mostly you're just following a story and watching it play out. The only thing you have any control over is which areas of Tokyo to explore.

Had I never been to Tokyo I would've found this game extremely interesting, since they go out of their way to explain everything and highlight the little differences between Japan and most other countries. Having already been there a lot of the time it was like "Yes, yes, I know. Next!"

But more than anything this game gave me amazing nostalgia feels.