I played the base game at the end of last year, basically as soon as it dropped, and had a blast. So when the first story DLC released last week I had to play it.
After not having played the game for months it was an adventure to just get back into the game.
"Where's my horse?" "Alright, how do I get off my horse?"
"HELP HOW DO I DODGE?!!?!?"
There were a fair few trips into Options and Key Bindings in the beginning. (Maybe trying my hand at the free update Mastery Challenges right off the bat wasn't such a good idea?) But then off we went to Ireland.
It didn't take long to figure out that the DLC was pretty much just more of the same, and why should anyone expect otherwise. I kind of liked Bárid from the start, and everything Flann Sinna did exasperated me. I really did like Ciara, though, and it hurt me to watch the story hurt her.
Exploration offered a host of many more collectables, I was so sad to realise that both flying papers and cairns had made it into the DLC. I liked chasing after most of the wealth and artifact collectables in this DLC, though. And raiding was just as fun as I remembered. I really enjoyed the addition of trading posts to be claimed and restored. I brought all of them up to max and finished all of Azar's trading deliveries.
I don't know much about Celtic mythology/history so can't really say how accurate they're being, but judging from how they've handled the Viking aspect then maybe I can be somewhat reassured that they've handled it (mostly) well.
I wish the game had given a way to remove the druids' poisonous fog somehow. Maybe the same way as removing cursed symbols? It was somewhat annoying to keep running through areas covered in green fog long after I had cleared it of enemies.
I enjoyed going through another Order tree; this time the Children of Danu, and trying to figure out where the members were and get clues to the next one. Halfway through the story/the tree I had already figured out who the mastermind was, though.
The DLC took me around 13 hours to complete, and I had a lot of fun, so well worth it :)
While playing through the base game I had this song stuck in my head. Playing through the DLC this song (and this particular version of it) was stuck in my head to the point where I turned off the in-game music and just had this song on repeat.
Thanks, EA. I've been needing an excuse to replay this masterpiece.
For the past month I've been living and breathing Mass Effect. Almost every waking moment has been spent either playing the games or discussing them over three (out of five) different Discord servers (and none of them are technically dedicated to Mass Effect). It's been absolutely amazing.
Apart from being excited to play through the story again and make the same choices again, I was also really looking forward to seeing how they changed things with the remastering. Turns out, not a lot. The graphics are improved but the animations still show their age, especially in Mass Effect 1.
It was a whole new experience to play the games so close to one another. Even if I first played through the trilogy after all the games and DLCs were already released there was still gaps between the playthroughs, even if just for buying, downloading and installing the next game. Now it was just straight going from one game to the next and so many more details stayed in my mind from one game to the next. Small things that would've been lost in the "downtime" otherwise.
I played through Mass Effect 1 twice before (once for Liara and once for Kaidan) and I was surprised by how much I didn't remember and how much of what I did remember was wrong. I had absolutely no recollection of Feros or the Thorian until I was there and that mission started. None. I remembered hating Noveria from those two playthroughs, but this time around I kind of liked it. The Mako wasn't as bad as I remembered it, but maybe I've just gotten better at driving since then. As much as landing on uncharted worlds is time-consuming it's also a fun way of exploring and still keeping the game semi-linear, but with an open world feel. I liked the planet exploring a lot more this time around. I romanced Kaidan. A Team = Kaidan and Tali.
I was looking forward to Mass Effect 2 the least. I played that twice before also (once for Garrus and once for Thane). Back when I played the game before I remember not liking the story or the new exploration thing. Scanning and probing takes up way too much time and it's too tedious. Yet the completionist in me must scan every single planet to depletion. There's no other way. Next time I play I'll be getting the mod that scans to depletion instantaneously. Thane and Legion are the only new companions that I liked in ME2, the other new ones only grew on me in ME3. I messed up the narrative by completing everything but Firewalker DLC before I went and got Legion. Apparently Firewalker counts as missions you have to bring Legion to to unlock his loyalty mission, but not as missions that grant you a grace period before the Collector attack on the Normandy. So to do Legion's loyalty mission I had to sacrifice half the crew. But Legion is worth half the crew. Priorities. The gameplay is definitely tighter and smoother in ME2 than in ME1, but the half-assed story, the meh companions and the absolutely ridiculous final boss all contribute to making ME2 my least favourite Mass Effect game. And those things held true even in the Legendary Edition. To get the absolute best heartbreaking moments in ME3 I decided to romance Thane. As much as I love Garrus I feel like he's more BFF material than boyfriend material. A Team = Garrus and Thane.
And then there was Mass Effect 3. From my three previous playthroughs (once for Garrus, once for Liara and once for Kaidan) I knew this was my favourite Mass Effect. It's epic, the story is tight, the whole gang is there, I get to tell Cerberus to fuck off multiple times... I love everything about Mass Effect 3. The story, the exploration (even though it can get a bit annoying to run from the Reapers all the time), the gameplay, the companions and the DLCs are all amazing. Thane's story was absolutely heartbreaking this time too even though I knew it was coming, and Kaidan is exactly the kind of sweetness Shepard needs after going through that. Both Mordin and Legion's sacrifices made my heart ache. All of the ME2 companions grow on me in ME3, but not enough in ME2. In ME2 they are forgettable. The Citadel DLC is still the best thing to ever happen to a game and it made me laugh out loud so many times. Javik's day out is absolutely hilarious.
One thing I love about ME3 is actually the endings. How all of them appeal to different people for different reasons. I had a big discussion about the endings on one Discord server and I can see the point of choosing each of the different endings. But in the end I'll always choose red. Even though I go through all the work to get the geth and the quarians to make peace and live together, and even though I love Edi to bits, I'll still choose red. A Team = Kaidan and Garrus.
Halfway through ME3 a friend on Discord pointed out that EA's website has a thing where you can design the official Legendary Edition logo to show your favourite companions, place and playstyle. So I've had that as my desktop background for the past few weeks.
When I finished with the Legendary Edition I decided that it was time for a replay of Andromeda. I played it back when it was new, but I still had a crappy old GPU back then that forced me to play the game on low graphics settings. So already back then I promised myself I'd replay it at some point when I had a better GPU so that I could experience it in its proper beauty. I had forgotten so much. Most of what I remembered from my first playthrough was tied (either directly or indirectly) to Liam or Jaal. Just as the last time I played through it, it really struck me how Andromeda is so full of potential it can hardly contain it. There's so much promise in the story and in the new galaxy and it makes me so angry/frustrated that they just dropped it after its rocky launch. This game was worthy of love. Still is. I love the semi open world and all the exploration to be done. Apart from Cora I love every single companion. First time I played this I romanced Jaal and it was very hard to not fall back into that because Jaal is so goddamn adorable. Liam is too and I don't regret choosing him this time. I'm considering Reyes for the next time. Because there will be a next time. I did every single thing this time around, including every side quest without map markers on every planet. Every bug that had prevented me from completing side quests last time around was gone. It was great. I loved my gang. Even Peebee grew on me this time around. Which proves my theory that Peebee is the Sera of Andromeda. The story in Andromeda is obviously a preparation for something else, something spanning several games and DLCs, and none of that came to fruition so as a stand-alone it leaves a lot to wish for. But as the start of a new trilogy? It was amazing. I kind of equal the kett in Andromeda to the geth in ME1. Everyone is so focused on this one tangible enemy that they don't see that there's something bigger on the horizon. Can't see the forest for the trees? They hint towards something bigger out there several times at the end of the story. And I'm just gaaaaaaaah that we're not getting it. I love how every single planet feels disctinct from each other. They all have their own "personalities" which makes each of them their own separate adventures. This game made me laugh out loud so many times. There's a lot of humour in it and this game's sense of humour is exactly like Citadel DLC. And I love it! A Team = Liam and Jaal.
I love my Shepard and I love my Ryder.
And for some reason, this four game playthrough made me really love all the krogan.
This was Toni's pick for dinner show after I Am Not Okay With This. He chose it mainly because the trailer looked cool and he had no idea it was based on a kids show. I was over the age of the intended audience when the cartoon was on TV, but iirc my sister watched it sometimes. When I showed him all the pink and cutesy pictures from Winx Club he seemed to first think he made a mistake picking this show, but we started watching it anyway and in the end we both liked it.
The story is very straight-forward and sometimes extremely obvious. We saw most of the twists coming before they happened. But even so the action and interaction were well done and we both enjoyed watching the show. The next season promises to be interesting.
Robert James-Collier plays Saul in this show but all I could think whenever he showed up was Thomas. I've been watching too much Downton Abbey.
And Lesley Sharp, who was brilliant in one of my favourite Doctor Who episodes (Midnight) plays the "evil genius" in this show and I'm so for it. She absolutely knows how to give off creepy vibes.
So I played The New Order back in 2018 and got Old Blood pretty soon after that, but didn't get around to playing it until now. But I figured, since I have the whole series, why not do them all in one go? Like I did with Xcom. So let's go :D
The Old Blood: This is a prequel to The New Order and it's pretty short. This game felt more like Uncharted than Wolfenstein, because of the whole archeaology thing. It was pretty cool to see the whole story evolve from two agents on a secret infiltration mission; to fugitive kills everyone in sight; to zombie shooter; to delving deep into ancient ruins to find out what's at the bottom of it. All the while killing Nazis. But there was a lot more focus on the historical and archeaological aspects in this game, and a lot less mechanized supersoldiers and dogs. Which I kind of preferred. Just as with the last game I had a lot of fun with all the nightmare sequences when you get to play levels of the old Wolfenstein games. Poor B.J. has very weird dreams. Not a lot of characters to get attached to in this game, since I knew what would happen to most of them in The New Order if they even survived that long. But did I like it? Yes, very much. And with the way things turned out at the end I really find the old school horror movie-ish logo appropriate.
The New Colossus: Second main game in the rebooted series. I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed New order and Old Blood, even though it had its moments. I really enjoyed the fight through New Orleans when BJ was riding a Panzerhund, just roasting everything. And the fight atop the Ausmerzer in the end with three of those really big Supersoldiers. But even if I played FPSes like this I'm mostly still a RPG girl and my favourite moments in the game turned out to be the moments where the characters in the Kreisau Circle interact with each other. BJ's birthday party was amazingly fun to watch and I loved the scene where Anya just goes completely wild at the end. The second Act was better than the first, mainly because BJ was so frickin depressed (by all rights) in the first Act, and then he gets his shit together in the second Act after the execution. The second Act feels more Wolfenstein than the first despite all he does is shooting Nazis in both. Seeing Hitler was an experience in itself and the way they portrayed him made sense (but not very flattering). This is the 1960s and he's in his 70s, clearly not ageing well. I played through the Wyatt timeline and after seeing the differences between Wyatt's and Fergus's timelines, I think I'm happy with my choice. I had no patience for Wyatt's shit in the game, but I'd dislike Fergus's anger even more. There were parts I really liked about this game, but they were spread over so many things that were just average. It's fun to shoot Nazis, I guess? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Youngblood: Set in the 80s we play as one of B.J.´s twin daughters as they shoot Nazis throughout Paris to find B.J. who has disappeared. Anya, Grace and B.J. make brief appearances but this game is mostly all about Jess, Soph and Abby (Grace's daughter - the baby in The New Colossus). I know this game got a lot of complaints over the girls. Complaints that they were loud and annoying and not at all relatable. I guess that's because the main audience for Wolfenstein games are adult males? Because I found them to be cute, fun, slightly childish (but they're teenagers, hello) and completely 100% relatable. But I have been a teenage girl, something most adult males can't claim. I enjoyed this game a lot more than The New Colossus tbh. The story was as solid as any Wolfenstein game, while also serving as a coming-of-age story for the girls. I enjoyed the quests and I enjoyed exploring every zone. I went back several times for side quests and to collect all the collectibles. The last free update to the game that added the Da'at Yichud artifacts also addes some annoying new enemies that I didn't like, but they were only there for that one mission. I really don't need laser shooting robot dogs with turrets on their backs, ok; or electrocuting drones in environments full of water, ok? Every single loading screen showing the twins' antics with each other and with that 80s music on top... I just really enjoyed it. I enjoyed every part of this game.
The first game was the best one, but I liked both Old Blood and Youngblood a lot more than I liked The New Colossus.
My pick for dinner show after Tribes of Europa. It's a dark comedy and exactly my sense of humour as it's dark and cynical and sarcastic and I love it. I laughed out loud so many times while we watched this. Toni thought it was cringey though, but comedy shows that he likes I usually find cringey so... He also found it a little bit too girly, but I really liked it.
However, we were both very disappointed to find out that it got cancelled due to Covid hardships with production. I really liked the show and Toni got pretty into it in the last two episodes. So we really would've liked a continuation.
The show is about high school girl Sydney Novak whose father has recently died and she is discovering that she has telekinetic powers. She's not exactly bullied, but she's not very popular at school either. She has a few friends and that's about it. She's also trying to figure out her sexuality, which might be gay, might be something else, but she doesn't know and so neither do we. It's a slice-of-life/growing up show with added powers and how things kind of just escalate and end up outside of her control.
The episodes are sitcom length, so around 20 minutes, so we finished this show in two days. I really want more, though.
This show was Toni's pick for dinner show after Shadow and Bone. It's a German post-apoc show and the story follows three siblings from the Origine tribe. The setup is that one December about 45 years past all technology suddenly stopped working. Everything just went dark and after that society as we know it collapsed. In the show's present day Europe no longer has countries, but is divided between different tribes of people.
The story starts off by a jet crashing in the woods where the Origine tribe lives. The youngest of the siblings finds a control cube and takes it with him. A pretty savage tribe called the Crows were the ones to shoot down the jet and they are also looking for the cube. Looking for it the annihilate the monk settlement called Little Praha, with whom the Origines trade, and then they turn their eye on the Origines themselves. The tribe is massacred with only a few survivors.
The oldest brother, Kiano, ends up being taken by the Crows where he struggles to find a path forward and to freedom.
The sister Liv gets taken in by the militaristic Crimsons where she plots to free her people from the Crows.
The youngest brother Elja runs off on his own, but soon finds a companion in the vagabond Moses (same actor as Ulrich in Dark so we keep calling him Ulrich). Elja sets himself on a quest to return the cube to where it came from - a mysterious and technologically advanced tribe called the Atlantians.
The show is German in origin and so they mainly speak German, but there's also a lot of English involved as all the tribes don't speak German and some of them have travelled a long way and have territories stretching over Europe. It's a neat feature that not everybody speaks German, which wouldn't have been the case if the show was British or American in origin. And everybody who speaks English in this show does it with an accent, which also wouldn't have been the case if the show was British or American. I really appreciate that addition.
The show starts out kind of meh, but around halfway because really frickin interesting and I hope it will get another season :3 None of us speak German, but get some subs on there and it's no issue :)
1. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. A few years ago everyone was buzzing about this book and I'll admit that it was a pretty wild ride. It takes place in 19th century Britain and it's also written like a 19th century novel. I love historic settings and old-style language, but even so this book was almost a DNF for me. I usually give a book about 100 pages before I decide to stick with or not. After 100 pages of this book I was still undecided, because the premise was so immensely promising, but hardly anything had happened at all. I read online a bit what other people said and decided to at least stick with it until Jonathan Strange shows up - which he did about 220 pages in. Even with Jonathan in the story it continues being pretty slow going until he goes off to Portugal/Spain to fight Napoleon (with magic), but as soon as that happened I was stuck and my appreciation for this book went through the roof. I could even see myself reading it again. I loved everything about Jonathan Strange, even when he was being extra and summoned thunder storms for the heck of it. I tend to really enjoy fairy magic and this turned out to be no exception at all. I loved seeing how the different storylines came together and finished and how each character met their fates. But I would really like to have a sequel story where they dispel the Darkness and rediscover their country now so full of magicians and fairy magic. Childermass was my second favourite character in the book, and I would also really enjoy more of his story. I wanted a better ending for Strange, but I suppose what I got was fitting in the end. After being so slow to start and get going the end of this story had me like:
2. Good Behavior, by Blake Crouch. Yes, I admit to finding out about this book after I saw the TV show and I only watched the TV show because of Michelle Dockery. But hey, it was worth it. This book is actually a compilation of three novellas chronicling Letty Dobesh. The first novella starts off pretty much exactly like the pilot for the TV show and I could literally hear every line Letty said in Michelle Dockery's voice. Her portrayal was just that good. After every novella there are some comments from the author about choices and changes they made for the TV show and I really appreciate having those tie-ins because it explains their thought-process and makes the changes less glaring. The first novella ended extremely different from the pilot of the TV show and I can certainly see why. The novella is so dark. The second novella had pretty much nothing to do with the TV show (and the author explains why afterwards) but it was a really great glimpse into who Letty is and the story was fast-paced and fun to read. The third novella had glimpses of scenes from the show, but all in all it played out kind of differently from the show. Honestly, the blurb at the back of the book gave me the expectation that Arnold/Javier would play a much larger role in the story (like he does in the show) but he literally only shows up in the first novella and there's no strange relationship between them. All three stories were action-packed and exciting and made me unwilling to put the book down, even when it dealt with Letty's addiction and self-hatred. It was a fun read. I would've liked it even more if the three novellas didn't feel a little bit disjointed. And if they didn't leave me wanting so much more of Letty.
3. Mirage, by Somaiya Daud. I think this is the first time I've read a book set in an Arabia inspired world. Which is a shame really, because there's a lot of romance in the old classic Arabian culture. I liked the world-building, I liked the characters, I liked the story, and yet this book didn't leave me wanting more. I finished the book and was just... content? It is set up for a sequel, probably set up to be a trilogy, but I just don't care enough? It's a weird feeling. Usually when I like something I want to consume everything about it. Anyway, this is a sci-fi world of terraformed moons and droids. The Andalaans were conquered by the Vath around a decade ago and everyone's wounds are still fresh, even though most people are afraid enough of the Vath might to keep to themselves and not bother anyone. There's a rebellion and then there's the farm girl Amani and the princess Maram. Amani looks extremely similar to Maram and she is kidnapped from her family to serve as the princess's body double during occasions where they expect trouble. Maram is half Vath and half Andalaan and both sides hate her. The Vath because she isn't pure and the Andalaans because she's a constant reminder of the occupation. The Vath are working tirelessly to beat the inherited culture and language out of the Andalaans and replace it with their own. The whole thing is pretty sad tbh, and yet there's something with the language or story-telling that isn't compelling enough to make me want to read more. It's such a shame.
4. A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle. I've consumed countless screen adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and several games and yet somehow I have never read a book until now. It was a short and easy read. Its age is clear from the simplicity of the plot (detective novels tend to be a bit more complicated nowadays), but I enjoy that it's so straight-forward and yet doesn't give the reader all the clues. If I hadn't known the plot from before I wouldn't have figured out the murderer before the reveal, and the reader only gets what clues Watson can gander himself or is told by Holmes. It's a neat trick to avoid frustration on the reader's part for having to wait for the characters to catch up to what the reader already knows. I like the legend of Sherlock Holmes (it's old enough to be a legend now, isn't it?) and Holmes as a person is very relatable to me. So I probably enjoyed this book more than I would have if I perceived Holmes as a narcissistic emo with a superiority complex, which is a description I have seen thrown around on the internet. I love how the story ends with a hinted promise from Watson that he's gonna make Holmes famous and let him have his due :3
5. Le Cid, by Pierre Corneille. I feel like I should write this review in French since I read this book in French, but my spelling is bad and my grammar is worse so I'll make do with English. The first time I read this book was for French literature class at university. I didn't keep a lot of the books from that class, but I kept this one because I remember thinking it was pretty interesting and funny at times. So I picked it up and wow, this was a ride. So much melodrama! I didn't remember the story, but Chimène is such a whimsical drama queen and poor Rodrigue (and the King) is just along for the ride. She's so obviously a teenager trying to be an adult and not really knowing how to go about it, so it's like she says and does things that she's seen and heard other adults do, but it's never really what she wants to do, only what she thinks others expect her to do... And it's a mess. The fact that these are actual conversations in the book is hilarious to me (and way more modern than I expected of a 17th century story): Rodrigue: Listen to me. (Écoute-moi.) Chimène: I'm dying. (Je me meurs.) Rodrigue: One moment. (Un moment.) Chimène: Go, let me die. (Va, laisse-moi mourir.)
~~~~~
Chimène: Go, I don't hate you. (Va, je ne te hais point.) Rodrigue: You should. (Tu le dois.) Chimène: I can't. (Je ne puis.)
They're both such emotional drama queens. And I love it! Just kiss, already! But yeah, so this book was a lot more fun than I thought it would be from what I remembered. Definitely keeping this to read again.
We both really enjoyed the first season so when the second season released this week we binged it. The first season had 18 episodes, while this one only had 8 and every episode where only around 10-15 minutes long, so it didn't take a lot of time to binge it.
My favourites in this season were:
Automated Customer Service: An elderly woman's automated cleaning bot goes on a murdering rampage and she calls customer service for help, but all it does is help escalate the situation.
The Tall Grass: Beautifully crafted animations. An old steam train stops in the middle of nowhere for some "maintenance" and a man wanders off despite warnings not to do that. What unfolds is kind of Lovecraftian.
All Through the House: An absolutely horrifying rendition of the night before Christmas. Loved it!
The rest of the episodes were all pretty good, but none of the others stuck as these did. The episode called Ice is probably my least favourite of this season.
Toni and I started playing this last summer after we had finished with the Pre-Sequel. As much as I found Tyreen and Troy to be an absolutely hilarious parody of Twitch streamers, I also found the Borderlands 3 base game story to be one of the weakest Borderlands stories. I loved how integral the original gang was to the story and that the gang from the sequel also showed up, especially Maya, but apart from sweet, sweet nostalgia that was it. It was pretty sweet to see the events of the Telltale game made canon though, with the inclusion of Rhys and Vaughn.
We played as FL4K and Amara respectively. I just got a thing for Sirens after playing as Maya in Borderlands 2.
The final fight against Tyreen was completely underwhelming, but the final fight against the Pandoran Vault monster was pretty cool iirc.
I know Ava has gotten a lot of mean comments, but I really ended up liking her as an addition to the gang and I hope she'll be a playable character if there's ever another Borderlands game coming.
As with most games the DLCs are better than the base game. The first DLC was to hijack Handsome Jack's casino, which was cool, but we both feel like the Jack angle is kind of a done deal. It's been made to death.
The second DLC was Hammerlock and Wainwright's wedding which was Lovecraft inspired and I absolutely loved it. Every single main quest was named after a Lovecraft story and they all felt like we were playing table-top rpg Call of Cthulhu: and it was so creepy in a good way. Loved it!
The third DLC was inspired by the wild west but with a Japanese twist. It was so weird to have all the NPCs call us tomodachi (friend in Japanese) with a Southern accent. I'm not big on the wild west, so for me this DLC was pretty meh. Rose was kind of cool though, and we both really liked the song.
The fourth DLC had us delving into the mind of Psycho Krieg, which gave us flashbacks to the last DLC for the Pre-Sequel in which you go inside Claptrap's mind. This DLC was weird and hilarious, but felt way too short. We both laughed until we could barely breathe during the sidequest where we help a gun AI take back its nest and then watch it give birth to an egg. Which Amara sat on until it hatched. It was so weird and hilarious.
After the fourth DLC I decided that I was done with the game. There was no more story. We did all of the Circles of Slaughter, and we even tried to do the Takedowns, but we both found them annoying and tedious. Initially we both found the second season pass to be a greedy money-grab and so neither of us got it. After Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck we were done. Or I was. I'm a RPG girl at heart. Games are a way for me to consume a story. Toni on the other hand kept playing, because he wanted the best loot. So for him Borderlands 3 turned into a Diablo-esque loot hunt.
I really enjoyed Borderlands 3, but I definitely agree that Borderlands 2 is the best. Borderlands 3 had the best DLC, though; Guns, Love, and Tentacles.
I was super excited for this show and I've been waiting for it for over a year! The first season is based on the first book of the Grishaverse, also called Shadow and Bone. I fully expected to be sitting there watching and complaining about things they didn't get right. But just like with Good Omens, the show turns out right if the original writer is more literally involved in the process.
Kaz & co. aren't in Shadow and Bone book, but the gang's addition to the plot was made flawlessly. What happened to Nina and Matthias isn't explored in the first book either, but the timeline adds up, so I'm glad they actually showed that part in the show. Nina, Matthias, Kaz, Inej and Jesper don't show up until the book Six of Crows - three books down the line. But I'm so glad to see them. When Kaz said 'No mourners' I automatically replied 'No funerals' before even Inej said anything.
The book is literally all about Alina and from Alina's perspective. I really loved the scene where they show how the Darkling created the Fold. That scene isn't in the book (since it's all Alina) only explained and told that he did it.
They've given the Darkling a name, which was interesting. Ofc he told Alina his actual original name, Aleksander, in the book as well, but for everyone else he was just the Darkling or the Black General. He never had a name in the books. But in the show he's Kirigan.
I'm really excited for the second season. If the end of season one is any indication, then the second season of Shadow and Bone will feature both the plot for the second Alina-book as well as the plot for the first of the Kaz-books, or at least half the plot for the first Kaz-book.
Which should mean that Nikolai will show up in the second season and I'm stoked. They got the casting for everyone absolutely right and I can't wait to see Nikolai in the flesh :3
I watched the first season on Netflix last year, and then the second season just now. It's pretty chilling to watch about all these murders and disappearances that are unsolved and nobody knows how or why they happened.
In the first season I was the most interested in the one about the French family, but I was also pretty curious about the case in the very first episode. Both completely chilling.
In the second season I was the most interested in the murder in the hotel in Oslo. But the episode about Fukushima brought me almost to tears, just like it did when I first heard the news in 2011.
Some episodes are straight-up weird, but some are so chilling. Like how can a person just disappear like that? And these are real-world cases.
The trailer for the first season tells the viewer that these are real unsolved cases from around the world. But there are just 1-2 episodes per season that are not in the US. The rest are all American.
In any case, this show is super interesting and if there's a third season I will continue watching it :)
I started watching this show last year. I had heard a lot about it, both good and bad, and decided to give it a go. The first season was really hard for me to watch, because bullying is something I have first-hand experience of and it gave me all the memories, even though my bullying wasn't so... hands-on. So that's why I waited 6 months to continue with the rest of the show. Second to fourth seasons weren't as hard to watch, but they still gave me all the feels. Especially the end of season four broke my heart.
I enjoyed watching the second season and how it dealt with the fallout from the first season. It really showed what happens to the ones that are left behind after a suicide and it felt on-point to me. All the grief and the questions.
When the third season came around I had no idea what to expect, since the second season pretty firmly dealt with all of the aftermath, but the third season escalated issues that were brought forth in the first two seasons and it did it brilliantly.
The fourth season is all about Clay and I thought finally we're dealing with his obvious psychological issues. But it became so much more. Children on the verge of adulthood trying to find their voices and paths in life. While some paths end abruptly. I was so sad about Zach going completely downhill and Justin just broke my heart.
Damn, this show was a ride. A really good ride. It dealt with a lot of current issues and I feel like it did so brilliantly. The horrors that can happen while growing up and still having to figure out who you are and who you want to be. And also realising that a lot of thing that grownups do that seems unfair is only because they try to protect you from the world. The world is pretty darn grim. Clay's speech on top of the car in season four is exactly my thoughts. They were my thoughts when I was 18 and they still are.
Next up of our dinner shows was Altered Carbon. The trailer looked cool and so we decided to try it out.
The first season was really good and I really enjoyed the world-building and how the story progressed. The writers kept the storylines so frickin tight that I hadn't figured out who was behind it all until Kovacs told everyone what he knew, but when he did everything made total sense I all the pieces fit together. It was beautiful.
Unfortunately it felt like they dropped the ball in the second season. Mostly because the few subtle hints towards what Elders actually were that they had dropped throughout season one and two had been too subtle and the pieces didn't fit together as well as they should have. Poe carried this whole season. He was the best part of it. Dig helped, but man, I loved Poe. I loved him from the get-go in the first season and figured out every reference to Edgar Allan Poe even before they made it obvious. He's one of my favourite classical authors, so what do you expect?
Joel Kinnaman was great as Kovacs and I also really enjoyed seeing Will Yun Lee as original Kovacs. Anthony Mackie, somehow, didn't bring the same feel to the character. Mackie was less intense, I think, than Kinnaman and Lee, and I guess that's a danger for every show like this where you can switch actors for the main character.
First season was really good, second season was meh.
I started this project in November last year. Then AC Valhalla and Cyberpunk interrupted, so when I returned to Enemy Unknown in Feburary I had almost no clue what I had been doing. But here goes.
Enemy Unknown: This was so epic. I had heard a lot of good about this game and since I enjoy TBS I decided to give it a try. I had a lot of fun with it, even when some of my favourite soldiers died. There were a lot of times where I just reloaded the latest autosave to avoid having anyone killed altogether. It's funny how you can grow attached to characters that have no backstory and basically no personality, but here we are. I struggled a lot with money in the beginning, only to have way too much money at the end. And I realised way too late that I had forgotten to level my soldiers' Will and they kept getting mind controlled and panicked all over the place. So when I already had the Gollop Chamber built I started to level up my rookies with Will hoping to get them at a decent level before I started the final assault. Way too late. But it worked out in the end. The final assault was so epic and it explained the whole backstory of the alien forces and the different kinds of aliens I had been fighting throughout the game.
Enemy Within: Let's do it all again, but better! Enemy Within is an expansion to Enemy Unknown, but it's basically the base game with added features. Enemy Within is so much better than Enemy Unknown. New features include cybernetics (I loved, loved, loved the brain implant that made the soldiers immune to mind control), mec troopers, medals, new aliens, new weapons, new missions and an entirely new threat added on top of the alien threat. I was completely surprised by the sudden attack on HQ and I wasn't entirely pleased with how that played out. There were a lot of reloaded autosaves before I completed that mission, but man was this expac worth it overall. There was so much more going on and I loved the different types of missions and the different story paths that this version offered, that Enemy Unknown didn't. Enemy Within is just... more. It was amazing. Without being deliberate I ended up with a full squad of black women fighting on the front lines. It was pretty cool. My Heavy class soldier got the nickname Big Momma. (The game assigns random nicknames to high-ranking soldiers). My A-team was usually five black women and Shaojie Zhang from the Slingshot DLC as an upgraded Mec Trooper.
The Bureau: This was different from the others. Instead of a being a clear TBS like the others, this was more of a tactical FPS. It gave me strong Mass Effect vibes. The gameplay was a lot like the first Mass Effect game. The story is set in the 60s instead of contemporary times so we have all the macho men and casual sexism. Both Carter and Faulke really bothered me in the beginning due to this, but the more I played and the more I interacted with the characters the more I came to really like Carter. The game is short, only around 14 hours, but the story gets pretty deep nevertheless. I feel like if they had made the game longer the story would've become diluted. Was it as good as the others? I can't compare it gameplay-wise, because it's a completely different style, but storywise I feel like it's up to par. However it was a little janky to see the XCOM HQ filled with those massive 1960s computers and yet they still somehow manage to understand and pick up on alien tech. This takes place before humanity got to the moon on the processor power of a calculator, so how are you even able to use their tech? At the very least; how are you able to use their tech so quickly? It should take months, if not years, for you to understand and implement. Anyway, the story seems pretty straight-forward but there are several twists at the end and the player gets to make several choices that impacts how the story ends. I'm always one for war table missions, so I really liked that I was able to send other agents on missions and have them report back while I was out doing other things. More of that, please!
XCOM 2: I enjoyed going "back to normal" with this one unlike in The Bureau. What I didn't like was the Avatar Project timer making me stressed. Stressed to the point that I decided to start up the dev console to gain some kind of control over it. I don't want to be rushed through these kinds of games. I want to take my time and do everything to the best of my ability. Not haphazardly hoping everything will turn out alright because a stupid timer is stressing me out. I only used the dev console once though in the very beginning, soon after that I realised I could control it pretty well anyway by doing the actual missions instead of just hopping around scanning things xD Did I enjoy the game? Yes. At the moment I'm not sure which I liked the most of EU/EW or 2, but I did find myself missing EU/EW sometimes while playing this one, which is definitely in favour of EU/EW. So it's been 20 years since the first game and XCOM doesn't exist in the same way anymore. After the original invasion the aliens came back and settled down, brainwashing the people to think that they were benevolent overlords. Bradford (mission control from the first game) rescues the commander from alien grasp and sets up a makeshift XCOM and starts raising the resistance all over the world. This game was cool. All the new aliens and tech and stuff. I also very much enjoyed all the nods to the first game, and was actually kind of sad to find out what happened to Council Man. XCOM 2 was a wild ride.
War of the Chosen: Let's do it all over again, but better! This seems to be a theme of XCOM's. This is an expansion to XCOM 2 that's basically the same thing as the base game but with added content. This expansion adds three new factions, covert missions (basically a war table - yay!), and three super villains called the Chosen. The Chosen each added another timer on top of the Avatar project timer, but this time, instead of getting stressed about it I realised I could deal with it if I focused on it. If those timers are left to run their course the Chosen will attack and infiltrate the HQ - not ideal. But focusing on the Chosen I managed to defeat all three of them before I even got halfway through the main mission and with time to spare on the Avatar Project timer. I loved the three new factions. The Templars are super cool and I loved seeing my Templar buddy do every single one of her Rends because omg so cool *_* But Mox became my sweetheart. I just loved him to bits and brought him on every mission I could. WotC also added soldier bonds, meaning that soldiers who do a lot of things together get bonuses, which was cool. I really enjoyed getting Mox to the highest bond level with my Reaper buddy because they hated each other in the beginning. WotC also added an energy meter on every soldier. After going on a few missions in a row a soldier usually gets tired and has to rest for a day or two before they can head back out. That was a pretty neat feature imo which forced me to use more than my standard ten soldiers; six default and four backup in case of injury. If I get the urge to play XCOM again after this series playthrough I'll definitely play WotC before I play the original XCOM 2. So much more to do, so much more fun :3
Chimera Squad: This is the most recent game of the bunch and it's obviously a spin-off. It takes place five years after the events of XCOM 2 and instead of playing as XCOM you play as an off-shoot called Chimera Squad employing both humans and aliens (and hybrids) working in a single city instead of all over the globe like previous XCOM games. This game very much feels like a simplified version of the other XCOM games and the campaign is very short and straight-forward. The one thing I really liked was that instead of randomly generated soldiers without background or personality this game has a preset group of soldiers to choose from and they all have background and personality. What I didn't like about this setup was that I was forced to choose only 8 when the game actually has 11 soldiers to choose from. Which means that if I want to play all the characters and get to know them all I'm forced to play through the game at least twice. Because of this I ended up with the same people in the squad pretty much all the time (because why change when I found my style?) Cherub, Shelter, Zephyr and Torque became my default team. All the missions are super short and in the same style and don't offer much room for being creatively handled. It was a surprise to find out that a mission failed and had to be restarted if a soldier died, because that hadn't been the case in all the other XCOMs. When I realised that one time that I wasn't going to be able to save that solider I figured I'd simply get a new recruitment slot. But no. I was forced to restart. The game is cute and has a lot of personality and I kind of like the cartoony comicbook style of the game, but it didn't catch my attention the way the others did and it didn't scratch that itch.
I probably won't be going back to the 90s and play the original XCOM games, but you never know. I went back to the 90s to play the original Elder Scrolls games, just because I love the last four entries in that series.
