Year-End Reads 2018

To close out the year I am working through some of the 40K source books I have been collecting over the last few months. I read through the introductory magazine Getting Started with Warhammer 40,000, which came with a free Primaris Intercessor miniature. It was nice and informative of basics of the universe, game, and hobby, which is nice for a completist like myself who even after all this exposure could use some shoring up of the basics. I have then moved into the 7th edition set of basic books for the game, the first of which is entitled A Galaxy of War, and serves mostly as a showcase for beautifully painted armies meant to represent the hobby, with some bits of lore behind their creation. The second volume in this set is the one I am reading now, Dark Millennium, which is a much deeper dive into the fundamentals of the lore of the 40K setting, for people wanting to add a bit of role playing to their hobby, or just to fill out background lore of the universe for those reading the novels. I am of course a real lorehound in any fictional universe I really buy into, and the grim, dark future is one I find very compelling indeed.

I also read the final Horus Heresy short story from the Black Library advent calendar, one called A Rose Watered with Blood, about the shipsmistress of the World Eaters legion flagship, The Conqueror, Lotara Sarrin. She is a real gem of a character in the Heresy setting, or even 40K at large.

Since finishing up all the loose Heresy shorts, I have started into the newest novel, book 53, Titandeath. I'm only a few chapters in though, having been busy with other stuff lately.

A Few Things for Year-End

I wanted to try out The Messenger, which is a game I got for free from the twitch.tv client somehow, for a potential mention during Game of the Year podcasting. It's pretty good as throwback action platformers go, but I just didn't make it far enough in to come to a conclusion. I may still go back and play more, though. I understand the game takes a turn after a few hours to reveal its true nature, and I haven't gotten that far yet. I will call out the humorous, self-aware, meta-layer aspects of the game's writing, though. I don't like them. I could always do without that sort of sneer.

Valve recently added a battle royale style mode to CS: GO, and I thought I'd give that a shot. It seems OK, but as usual Counter-Strike just isn't my speed. I am nowhere near devoted enough to multi-player FPS for it to make sense for me.

Lastly, my daughters were exposed to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and decided they wanted a copy for themselves. This is the first experience I have ever had with the series, aside from watching a friend play the Gamecube entry in the series. It's unintelligible at first, but it seems to be fairly simple to control, and so even my four-year-old is able to have a good time playing it. I hear the adventure mode is good in this one, so I'll have them check that out sometime.

Heresy Short Story Wranglin'

I have been going and collecting all of the various Horus Heresy and Primarchs short stories unavailable in anthologies lately, and reading those. The final novel of the Heresy series proper is coming up soon, and it's unclear whether or when Black Library themselves might gather these all up and publish them that way, so I elected to track them down piecemeal to catch myself up on the series before it transitions into the Siege of Terra sub-series to end the whole thing. Or at least wind it down to a dull roar.

Some of these have been Summer of Reading or Advent Calendar releases, from this year and last, and some have only seen light in Black Library event-exclusive anthologies, like Sons of the Emperor. 

I really would liked to have gotten Sons of the Emperor at the same time I was able to pick up this and last years' event anthologies, that is when a friend visited Warhammer World in Nottingham, but unfortunately they were sold out. I stumbled on another method of reading the stories contained therein, though. They were great. All of these were, in fact:

The Passing of Angels

The Abyssal Edge

Mercy of the Dragon

Shadow of the Past

The Emperor's Architect

Prince of Blood

The Ancient Awaits

Misbegotten

Grandfather's Gift

Restorer

Prologue to Nikaea

Two Metaphysical Blades

Old Wounds, New Scars

Abyssal

A Lesson in Iron

The Atonement of Fire

Champion of Oaths

Child of Chaos

The Last Council

I also read through one of the Tabletop 40K gaming books I bought recently:

Warhammer 40,000 Campaign - Crusade of Fire

This book was full of cool background and pictures of armies on tables as the GW team played through a long campaign made up of many separate battles, telling the story of one solar system being consumed by war. This kind of thing is more interesting as I get deeper into miniature painting.

Hitman 2

I am playing Hitman 2 inasmuch as I am playing the levels from the 2016 Hitman game recreated within the new game's shell. It's a cool thing that they did, making this possible. I never played more than a couple of levels of the game in 2016, but heard no end of praise for it across many podcasts.

Being a fan of the series since the first Hitman 2, Silent Assassin, it was only a matter of time before Hitman (2016) clicked with me. I'm glad it could be within the sequel, with whatever added modernization and features were added in making more levels for the base game. It's nice because all of the progress I make through the levels of the game from a couple of years ago will be tracked alongside that of the levels of the new game.

There looks to be enough content here to keep me busy for a good long while, and that is before figuring in any of the limited-time elusive contracts or any future content additions that might come about.

I like how divorced from a plotted narrative the focus of this game is. It's all about the varied play of the systems in the environments presented. There is an over-arching story, but it's demphasized, which I think is preferable in a game like this. I really wouldn't mind games like Dishonored taking this approach rather than the series of sequential missions that you must do in the order presented to you.

Better Red Dead Late than Red Dead Never

I finally finished the first Red Dead Redemption last night, after nearly two months. I had focused pretty much entirely on the missions, not caring enough for the way the game plays to do anything optional.

My final impression of the game is that the better writing at the end of the game really sticks out in people's minds, and makes them willing to overlook some of the other hack-level stuff through the middle of the game, and the awful, kludgey way that the game feels to play.

That, and it's a pretty nice and big open world to ride around on your horse. I'm not incredibly eager to play the sequel, but I probably will at some point.

Diablo III Again

Blizzard went and re-released Diablo III on the Switch this time, and I had to pick it up. It's a pretty near flawless port of the PC experience, re-tooled for enjoyment using a controller. I have been having a great time playing it, already having reached level 70 with a Witch Doctor, and having now moved on to Paragon levels and working on the challenges for the current limited-time season event.

I'm not sure there is much more to add, other than the game continues to be great. It's really cemented itself in my all-time favorite and most played lists over the last 6 years or more. I still have yet to delve much into Hardcore mode, though. It just seems like a waste. I do want to get one character to max level that way, though, eventually.

Heresy Winding Down

I've been reading through the most recent Horus Heresy releases, the anthology Heralds of the Siege, and the two novellas Dreadwing and Spear of Ultramar. A common theme to all of these tales is the wrapping up of loose and hanging threads in the overall saga, as the remaining works in the series will focus on the climactic Siege of Terra.

Heralds of the Siege was full of short stories acting as catch-up or parting shots for many disparate factions throughout the galaxy, and then toward the end a lot of preparation and vigilance from the parties on Terra awaiting the coming of the Warmaster and his legions. A couple of these stories literally end with Horus' fleet having appeared on the edge of the Solar system.

Dreadwing and Spear of Ultramar show the Dark Angels and Ultramarines legions, respectively, after the events of the novel Ruinstorm, and explain why it is that neither legion was to be on Terra for the big final act of the war. The Lion was convinced he would be too late anyway, and wanted to burn as much of what he presumed was now Horus's galaxy as he could on the way to the Throneworld. Guilliman, it appears (I have only begun Spear), will be delayed due to the stalwart last stand of a small band of Iron Warriors determined to bloody and occupy him even to their own eventual deaths at Perturabo's order.

The Plague War

Guy Haley's follow-up to the book that launched the new era of Warhammer 40,000, Dark Imperium, entitled Plague War, is out, and I have finished it.

It is definitely the middle part of a trilogy. While Guilliman has a face-off with his fallen brother Mortarion at the end of the book, and interesting barbs are traded, they are prevented from coming to blows, with the promise of a meeting on the planet Iax to come in the final book. Elsewhere a Primaris marine comes to finally feel at home in his new chapter, the Novamarines, who lose their chapter master in single combat with Typhus aboard the star fort Galatan. The Death Guard aboard are routed, though, allowing the massive space bastion to fire down on the remaining forces of Nurgle on the surface of Parmenio, and forcing a retreat and handing victory to the forces of the Imperium.

Here we also see Guilliman railing against the Imperial Cult as he has before, but eventually deciding that dismissing it out of hand again would be repeating his worst mistake from the age before the Horus Heresy, and resolving to read his wayard brother Lorgar's earlier work, the Lectitio Divinitatus.

I am very excited to see where the story goes from here, and how the Primarch and Imperial Regent manages to synthesize the warring ideologies of the secular Imperium and the cult of the God-Emperor.

Into Mexico

I have played very little in the last few weeks, and only Red Dead Redemption to speak of.

I have made it through the first portion of the game and through the sequence that everyone raves about, the ride into Mexico, where a song (not the score) plays. Apparently that really did something for most of the people who remember the game, but I found it extremely underwhelming. Maybe it's that I was expecting something great, or maybe it's just that it's not all that special of an event on its face, and its just that it is memorable for how singular a moment it is in the game, which is usually pretty understated in the way the world is presented when it's just the world on display, and not presenting you with some broad approximation of a tired Western movie trope.

I'm fairly underwhelmed with the whole of what is on offer in Red Dead Redemption, but its world is pretty impressive. By which I mean the environment exclusively. The denizens are your typical Rockstar hackery, and the play mechanics your typical Rockstar garbage fire. I think I'll keep playing it for the time being, though. Until something breaks the camel's back or I finish it.

A New MOBA Appears

I have picked up a game called Arena of Valor on the Switch. It's from the huge Chinese game company Tencent, and it's basically a League of Legends clone meant for mobile phones, but now ported to the Switch, and so playable with a controller. It's a lot of fun, actually, and distills a lot of what makes games like LoL and Dota so much fun, which effectively makes it more accessible. You don't have to think much about skills or gear you buy, and matches rarely seem to go to twenty minutes, even. I could do with some improvements to the UI and UX, but this is a very good start.

This past weekend I also made a little progress in Shovel Knight, defeating one of the mini-boss guys on the map, and buying some new armor at an armorer.

I also played a couple of matches of Fortnite, also on Switch, just to see what was up with how the map has changed lately.

I continue to practice my Spelunky runs, and to make progress through Red Dead Redemption, as well.

Breaking from Eorzea, to the Old West

I finished up the main story quests of FFXIV: A Realm Reborn. I had a pretty good time doing so, as well. However, I have decided to pause my sub to the game for a while. I don't like the mental pressure I feel to get the most from a game subscription, at least not while I have hundreds of games on the backlog, still. And many of those that I do actually want to play.

To that end, I have begun Red Dead Redemption, only about 8 years too late to be a part of the conversation, by my recollection. I'm impressed so far, even knowing the game's reputation as the greatest game of the last console generation. One thing that has struck me about it so far is the feeling of being in a vast open world, especially in contrast to FFXIV, which feels very theme-park-shrunken-kingdom. I'm not so sure about the voice acting. Some of it is really good, like the marshall in Armadillo. Some is pretty shaky, though, like Bonnie or John Marston, the player character himself. I had a pretty good time with a longer mission last night involving a firefight through a canyon as a part of a small posse. I also like that you can hunt wildlife and gather herbs and such. There's also just something nice about being in big sky country, shooting bandits and carrying on in that manner. I think I'm going to stick with it. I'm curious to see how the plot develops.

Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon is deceptively quick and easy to play and to jump in and out of, for a turn-based hex-based tactical war game.

And of course, I continue to play Spelunky each day, hoping to gradually get better at the game and to be able to finish it, and push beyond even that.

Codexes Warhammer and Other Another Game Book

I'm halfway through Heroes of the Space Marines at the moment, taking a diversion into Warhammer tabletop game Codexes, to both get the broad strokes of the lore behind major factions, and to check out how the lore has evolved over the years.

I went to ebay and bought a bunch of old 40K Codexes from past editions of the game. Most of the background here will still be applicable, but some has definitely been contradicted elsewhere, if not blatantly retconned. The nature of the setting is such that whether these changes are one or the other is up to interpretation. I prefer to think of the Codexes as being written (when it comes to the lore at least) from an in-universe perspective, and thus subject to mis- and dis-information, as well as the mundane twisting effect that the passage of time has on historical narrative.

So far I have read the Space Marines and Assassins Codexes, and have gotten into the Chaos Space Marines one. That leaves several more, including Necrons, Orks, Eldar, Tyranids, Eye of Terror, Space Wolves, and Imperial Guard. Many more remain that I haven't bought yet, and that's before I start trying to address the different editions of these books, or other campaign books, like the Gathering Storm set I read previously. If I continue to find them in the neighborhood of $5, shipped, then I likely won't hesitate. I just can't get enough Warhammer 40,000.

I am also continuing to read Derek Yu's Spelunky book, which is a pretty interesting window into the development mind of the creator of one of my favorite games.

Making the Aliens Pay in the Near Future and the Far

For my next backlog removal task, I was due for a game with a title beginning with an X. As it happened, I also had XCOM 2 installed on my PC and ready to go, following a long period earlier in the year in which I was engrossed in the previous game and its expansion.

XCOM 2, thus far, seems like a smart evolution of the first game, featuring a lot of the same systems and mechanics as Enemy Unknown, with some new twists and additions, as well. The theme of the game this time out is guerilla-like resistance to an entrenched and oppresive alien regime, and a lot of the machanics flow logically out from that. This time, most missions begin with your squad in a concealed state, and you are able to move around and get into position before springing your ambush on the unsuspecting Advent soldiers. The game also hits the ground running in terms of difficulty, being much harder right off the bat. It seems to almost be picking up from where the first previous game left off. I'm doing well so far, a handful of missions in.

I have also picked up my campaign of Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon. Returning to the game, I am more interested in figuring out how all the myriad tanks and infantry units differ from one another, and in making it to some of the missions where Space Marines and Titans come into play.

I keep playing Spelunky in futile hopes that I am getting better at the game, and may one day be able to finish Olmec at least, if not make it through hell to the extra hard part.

I'm also chipping away at the final parts of FFXIV: A Realm Reborn. I went to play a little last night, but it was down for patch day, so no dice. I need to find some better gear to get my item level up so that I can go into the next story dungeon duty. Quests in this game are called duties.

Years Later, No Ordinary Headache Solved

I played a little SpaceChem for the first time in forever this weekend, what's more, I finally worked out a solution to the toughest mission I had yet seen, entitled No Ordinary Headache. This one involved splitting molecules in one reactor, sending their constituent parts to another reactor, waste atoms to a recycler, and assembling the end product. It was very tricky, and I'm not sure my solution would work indefinitely, but it was good enough to get the 40 units of the final product I needed to move on. I may never solve the next puzzle, though.

While reading Derek Yu's Spelunky book, I am also playing the game again most days. I don't have any progress to report, though it will be a happy day when I do finally manage to defeat Olmec. I have started to try to speedrun the game, though. It is possible to make it through some levels in under fifteen seconds, I have discovered. To get the Speedlunky achievement, I think you have to finish the Temple in 7 or 8 minutes, all in. It sounds insane if you are familiar with the game, but I know for a fact it's doable. Can I do it? Maybe with everything breaking in my favor? Doubtful, though.

I'm getting near the end of A Realm Reborn in Final Fantasy XIV. I really like this game, but so far not at all for the same reasons that I love FFXI. It's just a different thing, even for all the shared elements.

Books! Check 'em Out!

I'm in the middle of  several different books at the moment. I wound up reading the entirety of Boss Fight Books' Soft and Cuddly, which was damned entertaining, actually. I learned a lot about Sinclair computers of the 80s in the UK. For instance, they used cassette tapes as storage, and a fifteen-year-old could shake the foundations of the UK video game scene in that day, which a hacked together shock horror maso-core game inspired by Alice Cooper.

I have since moved on to Derek Yu's book about Spelunky in the same series. This one is much more about the development of the game, being by the game's creator rather than a third party. Spelunky is one of my favorite games, so the book is pretty interesting.

As a political dissident and leftist by American standards, I have had a good time listening to the Chapo Trap House podcast, and so I thought I would pick up their book. I can hear the podcasters' voices as I read through it, but I'm not sure the entirety of that raucus schtick plays as well in the medium of print. Sarcasm and bite come through much more clearly when spoken aloud, but the same statements just appear odd in print, minus the tone, inflection, and other context clues you get from a spoken statement. I think it's still worth a read, though.

With regards to the 41st millennium, I picked up a set of four anthologies of stories about Space Marines. I finished Treacheries of the Space Marines already, and have begun Heroes of the Space Marines. I have read comparatively few stories about Space Marines set in 40K as opposed to 30K. It's interesting to see how, for instance, the Night Lords or Iron Warriors have changed in 10,000 years, and the ways in which they have not. September has nothing new that I am interested in releasing from Black Library, but there are several things coming in October I want to get, so between now and then I want to get through as many of these ...Of the Space Marines anthologies as I can.

More Twaddling

On the reading front, which has really come to the fore this year, I have come to the end of my 30K supply, and for a while I will be reading 40K. That will, however, be somewhat backgrounded because of the fact that I'll be reading paperback anthologies, rather than on my Kindle phone app.

What I'll be reading there will instead be a bunch of non-fiction. For my first couple, I have decided to look in on the Boss Fight Books collection I picked up a while ago. I started with the two I thought I might never read, Kingdom Hearts II, and one about a game I had never heard of before, called Soft and Cuddly.

The Kingdom Hearts II book was a personal analysis of a game I could not care less about if I tried. The parts where the author described her experience playing the game and how that fit into her personal life were nice, but the parts where she summarized the game plot and characters were pretty dull, I must admit. I skimmed through a lot of that.

Soft and Cuddly, and I'm only a chapter in, seems to be about placing the game of the same name in time and context. It seems to have been an accidental inflection point in the interactions between UK games and politics. I'm eager to learn more of this game I know next to nothing of and will never play.

When it comes to games, I've kept waffling back and forth between things lately. At first I thought I was kind of in the mood for some Mega Man X, but rather than hook up my SNES Classic to play that, I thought I would reinstall A.R.E.S. Exctinction Agenda and play a little more of game very much inspired by the old Mega Man games. There are some differences, of course. Ares doesn't seem to come together as nicely. Polygonal 2D games pretty much always look awful, and this is no real exception.

Next, I thought I could maybe actually get into La-Mulana in a real way, but that game continues to elude me. I admire it a lot, but it turns out I'd rather play Spelunky, after all. So I did just that.

Waking Mars I tried out because it begins with W. It seems OK, but I'm not sure I'll play any further past the 25% mark that my save has me at. It plays with jetpacking around subterranian Mars, and encouraging native plant life to grow, but something about it just wasn't quite hooking me.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is free for new players at the moment, and so the multiplayer mode is experiencing a bit of a revival, which is nice. The last time I tried to play, no one else was. And that's a shame, because this is the best 40K action game out there. I got in a few rounds last night, and I'll continue checking in for as long as the audience holds out this time. It may be the last time the game is really playable online.

I have also begun a subscription to FFXIV. I haven't made much progress in the last couple of weeks, but I am committed to seeing it through to the endgame. Going into Labor Day weekend 2018, this is what I am most focused on.

The Khan in the Great Crusade

I read the eighth book in the Horus Heresy Primarchs series, Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris.

Like most in the sub-series, it explores the role of the titular primarch and his legion during the period of Imperial expansion before Horus fell, a period called the Great Crusade. The Khan was the fifteenth primarch to be found and reunited with the legion bred from his geneseed, the Star Hunters, which soon would be known as the White Scars, that moniker itself apparently a mis-hearing of their own term for themselves, Talskars.

Jaghatai and the Scars were always a group apart from the rest, preferring the wild and ragged edges of the Imperium, where they could be mostly left to themselves and their ways, some of which would come into conflict with those of their cousins in other legions. Chief among those was their use of Stormseers, those legionaries who were gifted and worked with psychic powers.

A good portion of the book deals with the early formation of the Librarius, a kind of joint venture between Jaghatai, Sanguinius, and Magnus the Red, to safeguard a place for psykers among the legions, which were scorned by some, Mortarion, Perturabo, and Leman Russ, especially. The Khan had been trying to sway Horus to their way of thinking on the matter, but the future Warmaster could not afford to take a side in the matter, maneuvering as he was for the promotion he knew was in the offing for one of the primarchs sooner or later.

The book also does a lot to set up the Khan's dilemma after the wider Heresy conflict has broken out--who to trust, the brother he admires and feels a tight kinship with, or the father he disagrees with but owes everything to? Who to side with?

Chris Wraight does a great job writing this one. He's quietly turned out some very good books and stories in the series, almost completely owning the White Scars, and doing a good amount of Space Wolves, as well.

Twaddling About

I don't really know where my head is with games lately. I suppose I need to just continue to focus on one thing, like I have been with FFXIV until the last week or so, when I deviated from the path. I went and dawdled in several things, but I may get back to Eorzea while my last couple of free weeks is in effect, before I have to take the sub plunge or not.

Grand Theft Auto III - I really wanted to hear the soundtrack and run around this iteration of GTA again, for the first time in about 17 years. It's still pretty fun, and I find the simplicity of the game refreshing. Granted, I have yet to play GTA V at all. I should get that at some point.

Minecraft - Similarly, I just wanted to jump into a world and waste some time poking at things without thinking too much about it. I dug deep into a mountain and that's about it.

No Man's Sky - It had a big update recently, and I thought I should check that out. It still seems too survival-oriented for me, like one big festival of gathering up stuff from a list to process into other things to give yourself even the barest improvement in quality of life. At least there's a new story thing that is kind of interesting, and the visuals are very nice. It's still no Elite: Dangerous, though.

Elite: Dangerous - Speaking of which, I had a craving for some deep space exploration and serenity, so I got in here and ranged out a few thousand light years to double my liquid assets by selling exploration data at a far-flung outpost. I have my next expedition planned, as well.

FFXIV - I'm working my way through the main story quests of A Realm Reborn. My character is a level 41 Warrior now. I'm still enjoying the game. I think I'll pick it back up tonight.

Slaves to Darkness

I just finished book LI, or "51" of the Horus Heresy, a novel by John French entitled Slaves to Darkness. It was grand.

At this point in the story, Horus has broken open the path through space he needs to take to Terra, and now needs to consolidate his forces for the final push to confront the Emperor and cast him down. However, his coalition is really not one at all, and drastically needs marshaling and whipping into shape. Which is where his brothers Lorgar and Perturabo come in.

The primarchs of the XVII legion Word Bearers and the IV legion Iron Warriors, respectively, they are also the only ones Horus can turn to in order to track down and break (as one would a wild animal) his brothers, now ascended to daemonhood, Fulgrim and Angron. The wayward brothers have to be focused so that their respective legions can be gathered and controlled and brought together with the rest of the Warmaster's forces for the assault on Terra.

This book involves a lot of primarchs, but rarely is anything shown through one of their own points of view. Instead, we get to see through the eyes of several legionaries close to Horus, Lorgar, or Perturabo for various reasons, to observe how these titans deal with one another.

I was struck by how much Perturabo got to be cool this time out; he is usually being played or subordinated or humiliated in some way. I think French likes him. I do, too. He's (usually) cold, calm, stoic, and dependable. And loyal, in his own way. Iron within, iron without. Just don't let him feel neglected or unappreciated.

I'm impressed by French's works. First Praetorian of Dorn, and now this, not to mention Tallarn or his other stuff I've read.

Chaos Space Marines Research

Since finishing up my last Horus Heresy novel, book L, I have elected to read more about the Black and Alpha legions in the post-Heresy period of the Imperium of Man.

It can be hard to pin down when these take place, but its safe to assume the ones around the Black Legion are in the first few millennia of the post-Heresy period, and that the ones about the Alpha Legion are happening in M41, or perhaps even M42.

Extinction is set in the period where the Sons of Horus are being persecuted by the Emperor's Children and other traitor legions and warbands. Abaddon has abandoned them, and is making a pilgrimage across the Eye of Terror to find himself, as it were.

Abaddon: Chosen of Chaos is just a scene or two from the point of view of Khayon, the POV character of the Black Legion series. Curiously, it is set later in the timeline than either of the existing books, and likely even the next one in the series, since Abaddon appears to be in posession of the daemon sword Drach'nyen in this story.

Unearthed is the story of an interrogator in the Inquisition doing his best to foil an Alpha Legion warband that have decimated an imperial planet. In the end, he appears to have been able to remotely trigger a self-destruct sequence in his own ship, killing the Alpha Legion that have taken it over. Their leader is a character who was at least mentioned in the book I am reading now:

Sons of the Hydra. This is an interesting tale of an Alpha Legion warband made of entirely of space marines who were once members of other legions or chapters. One came from the Night Lords, one from the Dark Angels' Fallen faction, one from a now wiped out Ultramarines successor chapter, and so on. They are being led on a quest to steal a warp artefact of some sort from the Word Bearers to supposedly deliver it to whoever is currently leading the overall Alpha Legion. We'll see how that turns out, of course.

Truth is my Weapon was basically just an Inquisitor interrogating a captured Alpha Legionnaire, and eventually executing him, done stylistically, of course.

We are One is the story of an Inquisitor who is tracking the Alpha Legionnaire Phocron... to the end of his career.

Hunted is centered around an Imperial Guardsman who is being used in ways he doesn't quite understand by an Inquisitor to track down cultists from within their cells.

Eorzea, Ho!

Vana'Diel, the world of FFXI, is perhaps my favorite in video games. It won't be around forever, though, and it's game systems are getting stiff in their old age. It was time I really gave Eorzea a shot as a replacement in my life, if not in my heart.

Eorzea is the titular reborn realm of FFXIV, a legendarily troubled game, at launch. The relaunch sometime later has gone on to become a very successful game, and one living very near to the top of the subscription MMO genre. This is no accident.

With A Realm Reborn, and the two expansions out at the moment, Heavensward and Stormblood, S-E has just about nailed the fusion of FFXI and WoW that they seem to have been going for. XIV retains a lot of what made XI great in the flavor of the world, characters, writing, and overall spirit, not to mention a flexible class system. It also rounds off much of what made XI difficult, if not player hostile, in its heyday. This is where I see the influence of WoW. The experience of getting in game and leveling my character up to 30 has had much more in common with Blizzard's MMO than S-E's previous.

I am fine with this. In fact, this might be the platonic ideal of the genre, in my book. I have played a lot of WoW, and really enjoyed it, but never grown attached to the world. I have only ever stayed around as long as the desire to level up lasted, and never felt and draw to go back and revisit any parts of the world I had previously played in. By contrast, just about all of my affection for FFXI is tied up in the world of Vana'Diel, with consideration to the friends I made in my time there. Melding very strong systems and game loops and structures to very strong world building is just good sense.

I watched the noclip video series about FFXIV on YouTube, and I think Naoki Yoshida, the game runner, has a really good head on his shoulders for MMO development. I don't know whether he was ever on FFXI, but having played Ultima Online and WoW, he was able to bring knowledge of what others were doing in the space to his work on FFXIV at S-E after the game's initial failure, for its relaunch.

I could see myself playing a lot of XIV, and I am planning to stick with it, probably as a subscriber after my now 45-day free period ends. I hear Yasumi Matsuno has been doing some work on the game, and I am very excited to get through the story to those parts.

I have created a Marauder, named Warmaster Lupercal, in tribute to Horus Lupercal, fallen son of the Master of Mankind. My semi-RP justification for this is that Horus once spent untold decades in the warp accruing power before returning and laying siege to his father's realm. I posit that Eorzea was one of the places he visited, and did many good deeds and fetch quests before gaining the power he desired from that place and then moved on. My adventures in XIV are surely reflective of Horus' trials.

I have reached level 30 so far, at which point I am given to understand that I can change classes to Warrior, though I don't know whether I should or should not, yet. Perhaps its even necessary; I haven't done much research to this point, because I haven't really had to. I'm just enjoying playing the game and having it explain itself, for the most part, and not having to rely on extra-game research. I'm sure there would come a time where that would be necessary later on down the line, if I wanted to get hardcore, but for now I'm content to explore Eorzea at my own pace, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of it soon.

Gaming While Abroad 2018

Having the Switch has been a real blessing in terms of the breadth and depth of experience available to play while way from home. I would never have thought to be able to take with me games like Fortnite, Bayonetta, Breath of the Wild, or the hottest new JRPG on the scene, Octopath Traveler, in the days of even the Vita or 3DS.

Much of my game time in Japan this year was spent with those, but I also checked in on a few others, including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (for the kids, mostly), Shovel Knight, and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon.

I took my 3DS along for the trip with the express purpose of playing Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux, and I did just that. I got about 3 hours or so in. So far, so good. the dungeon exploration is reminiscent of Etrian Odyssey, though thankfully without the need to manually draw in features on the map.

I thought I might like to play some Rocket League, but my wifi speeds are apparently not sufficient for it to work well via the Steam Link on my TV, so I guess I will have to keep that bounded within the four sides of my desktop monitor for the time being.

Words from the East

Most from as east as the UK, some about the Far East.

The Red Path - This story sees Kharn being sent an emissary from Abaddon. The Warmaster of Chaos apparently wants the Betrayer's help in his upcoming 13th Black Crusade. Kharn has no desire to follow the will of anyone but the Blood God, however, so Abaddon is forced to confront him in person, which goes about as well as you might imagine. It turns out, though, the for a time, the will of Khorne is aligning with the rest of the Chaos Gods through Abaddon. The Red Path will see Kharn act in concert with the Black Legion in the campaign to come.

Shroud of Night - This is mainly the story of an Alpha Legion warband, a harrow, in the newly split galaxy after the eruption of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the great rift of warp space to have spilt forth after Cadia fell to Abaddon in his 13th Black Crusade. They have been hired, in a way, by an Emperor's Children captain, sent to the world of Tsadrekha to corrupt the beacon there, a telepath witch the ability to act in a limited way like the Astronomican. However, a Khorne berzerker lord is also laying siege to the planet, and Kharn himself is in the mix, as well. This was a cool book, also featuring Primaris Imperial Fists, Sisters of Battle, and the Living Saint Celestine.

Born of Flame - Book 50 of the Horus Heresy. This is a compilation, though, of stories about the Salamanders legion before and during the galactic civil war. It's three novellas and a couple of short stories all by Nick Kyme, who has also written a trio of novels within the larger series around the legion and their primarch, Vulkan. The final novella in the collection, Sons of the Forge, has a cool flash-forward ending showing the 40K Salamanders chapter discovering the artefacts of Vulkan's creation that the story was centered around.

A History of Japan to 1334 - Just what the title says. I have only just begun this tome, but it's interesting so far. I know a decent amount about Japan's history from the Sengoku period through the Edo period, but not a ton outside of those.

The Quickest of Hits

I've had a pretty crazy week, touching on a lot of different games, but basically all just because the whim struck.

Grand Theft Auto III - How many years has it been? I wanted to hear the soundtrack again, and just see what the game felt like after so much water under the bridge.

The Elder Scrolls Online - Revisiting the Orc paladin-analog I created here. Zenimax Online's dedication to the game has made me consider playing it more.

God of War II - Hype around the PS4 reboot made me want to go back and play this one that I never got to, previously. The first 45 minutes or so were pretty impressive.

Team Fortress 2 - I've been on a bit of a shooter kick lately. What really is the greatest of all time?

For Honor - I do like melee combat systems in games. This one seems good and crunchy so far.

Magic: The Gathering Arena - Maybe I do like this better than Hearthstone, after all?

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon - It was the game going when I turned on the Switch. Still very cool, of course.

Shooter McWeekend

I was bitten by the shooter bug this weekend.

I woke up Saturday and played a little Quake: Champions, and I would return to it late Sunday night after podcasting. Champions has the unparalleled feel of the original Quake game, and is a pretty casual and accessible shooter, being the basics of the genre as it emerged, and nothing like a lot of the more modern games which feature things such as cover, destructible environments, vehicles, and even reloading. I've had a good time playing the game so far, and I think I'll continue to do so. I've somehow managed to be the top scorer on my team in two of the four matches I've played. Matches seem to either go 10 minutes or until one team gets 75 kills. The mode I have been playing so far is four-on-four. I have one character unlocked aside from the Slipgate Marine, an alien warlord called Scalebearer, whose active ability and starting armor value I prefer, I think.

On Sunday morning, I thought I would check in on Call of Duty mutliplayer. However, no one is playing Call of Duty 2 online these days, so instead I decided to check out the campaign mode. I played the first 3-4 missions as a Russian in Stalingrad, and it was good fun, if a very simple game at its core. I don't think I'll bother going back to it, when there are so many other Call of Duty games to choose from. I have World at War still sitting untouched, and I would bet there are still people playing the first Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare online, as well.

Later Sunday, before going out for the day, I thought I would knock another off my backlog: Quake Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity. I played the first mission of the first episode, and it was cool. This may be a little more in line with the original game than the first mission pack, Scourge of Armagon.

Finally, Sunday afternoon, as a reward for finishing my chores for the day, I let myself try out Fortnite Battle Royale (now just Fortnite) for the Switch. I really like the game on that platform, maybe even more than on the PC. It's much less of a pain to run endless distances with an analog stick than by holding down W, and it seems easier to quickly swap to build mode, as well. I think it's a good fit for the system, but what's not? The only drawback I see is that the Switch requires Wi-Fi, and unfortunately does not use LTE, and so it's portable playability is hampered. I'll play more of the game this way.

Grim 'n' Gothic, Furturistic 'n' Medieval

Quake Champions - I have been curious to try this out, and it was free on Steam, so I thought I would give it a shot. It's much the same arena deathmach style of multiplayer FPS as Quake III or Quake Live were. It plays fast and smooth, with a focus on older values like knowing the power-ups, and raw reaction timing and aiming skills. It mixes these with the modern conventions of free-to-play games, including earnable loot boxes containing cosmetic rewards for your characters, and an overall player profile XP level. I want to play more. It's pretty effortless enjoyment.

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin - I never made it very far into the vanilla release of Dark Souls II, but I had heard this was the better version to play for a number of reasons, so I picked it up on the cheap some time ago. I'm in a spot now where I want something to play while I can listen to some podcasts, and Souls games are almost perfect for this use. There is very little in the way of spoken or written narrative to concentrate on; its mostly crunchy combat and character building concerns, which I find go really well with spoken word audio.

At the moment I am building a melee-focused warrior, with an aim fight with a great axe or great club. I may try to get away from the sword and shield approach I used for a lot of the first Dark Souls.

Black Legion and Kharn

I've just come home from a week away on business, and I took the opportunity to dig deeper into Chaos Space Marines in 40K:

Black Legion - sequel to The Talon of Horus, and second book in the series of the same name. This one was all about the up and coming Black Legion breaking out of the Eye of Terror for the first time and starting their Long War on the Imperium. Rival traitor marine warbands in the Eye are a big threat, as are Sigismund and his Black Templars chapter keeping vigil over the Cadian Gate, awaiting the return of the traitor legions. Aaron Dembski-Bowden does not disappoint. And given the events of The Master of Mankind, I'm very much looking forward to the next book in this series, which it seems like will be about Abbadon claiming the demon blade Drach'nyen.

Kharn: Eater of Worlds - More than anything I was kind of shocked at how many beats this book shares with The Talon of Horus. In both books, the return of the legions former second in command is the centerpiece the whole thing swings around, in both the Emperor's Children are the main antagonists, in both a voidship is cast down as a projectile onto one of their cities, and both books are mostly focused on one warrior's point of view of the leader figure they are attempting to find or resurrect. From the looks of things both books must have been being written around the same time, as well, which is interesting. As for the Kharn book, it seems to have ended right at the climax. It's like it's missing a third of the book. What's here is pretty good, it just kind of ends, and there's no follow-up as far as I know. I would like to see what comes next at Skalathrax.

I didn't realize it until just now, but the short The Weakness of Others is from the POV of Kharn, and it is during the action on Skalathrax that earned him the moniker of Betrayer. It's just a short, though. A proper window into that event would have been nice, to see why it happened that way. It would still be possible, especially if told from the POV of the other characters in Kharn: Eater of Worlds.

One other short I read, Enyalius, In Memorium was about another onetime World Eater, dedicating the death of a massive Ultramarines voidship to a fallen brother Khorne berserker.

I still have a couple of Kharn/Chaos Space Marines books plotted out ahead of me, so I'll give an update on those when I finish them.

V Week, and Visitations

I wanted to check out Valkyria Chronicles for V week on the backlog. It made a really positive first impression. I'm definitely looking forward to playing more. I was a little surprised to find that the girl wearing the neckerchief in her hair is one of the military leaders at the outset of the game, Alicia. It seems to have a cool tactical battle system, though.

I played some of the newest single player content in Hearthstone, the Witchwood monster hunting stuff. In this mode you basically build a deck as you go, choosing passive abilities and cards to incorporate into your deck as you fight through a gauntlet of 8 bosses. I've made it as far as the seventh or either encounter, thus far, before hitting a seemingly totally insurmountable wall of a boss.

I have also spent some more time tooling around Skyrim in the past few days, not knowing what else to play so soon after coming home from a long business trip. I'm just checking things off the quest log in that game. I can't commit to any one storyline or character growth area for long, though I do like melee/ranged over anything at all magical.

Victory and a Ticker-tape Parade

I finally polished off my campaign of Final Fantasy Tactics using only generic soldiers and the job system. It wasn't easy, and I resorted to the use of save states sometimes, effectively creating my own version of the Chariot Tarot from Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. It was pretty satisfying, though, even if I did lock myself out of a lot of side content by removing Mustadio from my party early on. Turns out you need him to get half of the side quests and other special characters later on in the game.

Victory would have been much more difficult to achieve if not for one of my Orators having convinced a Tiamat hydra to join us in one of the final battles. That thing was invaluable in the fight against Ultima, the reborn high seraph. It was a lot of fun to revisit this old favorite of mine. I still feel like it's one of my favorite games of all time, even seeing some of its shortcomings in a fresh new light this time around.

For lack of knowing what to play next, I have spent the past few days frittering away free time in Skyrim, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm.

I may have found a way to come to peace with Hearthstone. After having seen what a real Magic: The Gathering looks like in this format (hardcore and demanding of an attentive and dedicated player), Blizzard's dumb, bright, and capricious take might be more my speed after all.

I like playing Heroes of the Storm with and against a full load of bots. I don't want the pressure to perform or unwanted social interactions of opponents in... any game, really. I enjoy HotS and other games like it for the push and pull mechanics, comfortable in the knowledge that I have aged out of actually playing these against other people. I should probably just focus on single-player RTS games, but no one does progression and ongoing development like Blizzard.

There's not too much to say about my time in Skyrim over the weekend, other than that I decided to focus on some quests in a small area of the map, and decided to use fast travel sparingly on this character, to facilitate the completion of quests in a timely manner so the narratives aren't all hacked up, similar to how the medium of film uses jump cuts.

Talon of Horus, The

I've just finished Aaron Dembski-Bowden's 40K novel exploring the beginnings of the Black Legion, and the first in the series of the same name, entitled The Talon of Horus.

The book is set some indeterminate number of centuries after, but within a millennium of, the Horus Heresy. By this time the traitor legions defeated at Terra have all retreated into the Eye of Terror, and the Imperium has mostly forgotten about them and become accustomed to living under their undead god-emperor, now entombed on the Golden Throne.

It is told via the point of view of a onetime legionnaire of the Thousand Sons, Iskander Khayon, and has him laying out the story as a framing device to the Holy Inquisition on Terra, to whom he has willingly surrendured himself. Khayon begins the account with a short explanation of the state of the Nine Legions in the Eye, the ongoing Legion Wars, which pit them all against one another, for old grievances or for the glory of their respective Chaos gods, in some cases. We're introduced to Khayon's retinue, and before long he forms a loose band of other traitor space marines to go on a hunt for a weapon to foil the Emperor's Children and their plan to dominate the rest of the Nine Legions by cloning Horus, whose body has been kept by his former legion, until only recently having been taken in a raid by the Emperor's Children.

Over the course of the story, Khayon and crew come to meet Ezekyle Abbadon, former first captain of the Sons of Horus and right hand of the man himself, who goes on to be the main frontman of Chaos Space Marines in the 41st millennium, and the rest is fake history.

It was a pretty entertaining book for one somewhat versed in the overall lore of the setting, but I don't think I would recommend it as a place to begin for neophytes to 40K. Also, the Abbadon we see here is a wholly different person than the one present in the Horus Heresy series. Fair enough, it's eons later, and the man has been through some momentous things in the intervening years, but the only real explanation we have other than the obvious fact that time passes and things evolve and change is that at some point he went on a pilgrimage of worlds in the Eye, and through overcoming various trials basically reforged his personality, taking a lot of the edge off, while retaining and even bolstering his natural charisma and leadership abilities. He is able to compel loyalty and subordination here in a way not unlike how Horus and the other primarchs are described to so in their day.

Next up on my agenda is the next book in the series, simply called Black Legion.

The Iron Hand, Medusa's Gorgon Explained

Well, perhaps not fully explained. The Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa explores a little of Ferrus' mindset in the later stages of the Great Crusade, as the Emperor mulls over deciding on someone to take command when he wants to retire to Terra for his next grand project.

Ferrus of course thinks it should be him given the honor and responsibility. At least, going into the Gardinaal compliance campaign, he does. By the end you get the sense that he doesn't really want to bother with command of more than one legion, and all the coordination and patience that goes with that kind of role.

Despite being a book centered around the primarch, there are a ton of other characters present here, several of which are from other legions, with a lot being Emperor's Children legionaries. We even get the rare POV of the enemy force, in this instance a not-yet-compliant branch of recently rediscovered humanity that has mastered it's own local star system, but nothing further. They are recalcitrant to join the Imperium, and are in general a real trial of Ferrus' temper.

It was a pretty decent story, but perhaps the least focused on its title character of the bunch so far, or perhaps sharing that distinction with the Guilliman book. These two are as much about the character of the legions present or the events of the campaign they take place during.

Next up, having come completely current with all of the released full numbered volumes of both the Horus Heresy and Primarchs series, I'm going to take a diversion over to 40K to read the two books currently released in the Black Legion series by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, who is without a doubt a top-tier author in 30K. I'm excited for these.

Omnibus Sessions

I made good on getting Samurai to 75 in FFXI this year. I'm done with the game this time around, though I am set on trying out FFXIV soon.

I've also made some pretty good progress with my ongoing FFT campaign. I'm ready to begin the last several story battles, having trained up my crew of generics to a pretty high degree across their many classes.

I should briefly mention Mario Kart 8 Deluxe just because I loaded up my Switch for another purpose and found a race set in progress that I wanted to finish. May as well get all of the trophies in the 50 cc class, I figure.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is a throwback to Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, and was created to fulfill a backer stretch goal for the Kickstarter of Bloodstaned: Ritual of the Night, which is a throwback to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Curse of the Moon seems very good, so far. It has multiple characters and pathways through the levels, looks and sounds like its inspiration, and has a friendly casual mode that grants infinite lives and removes knockback on enemy contact. I wasn't really aware this was coming, but it's been a pleasant surprise.

I've also been playing the beta versions of Magic: the Gathering: Arena, and Dauntless, though I think I'll put some more time into each before giving my thoughts on them.

Fantasies, Never Final

Final Fantasy XI is celebrating it's 16th anniversary, and so it is free to returning players during this period. I had such a good time revisiting the game last year that I thought I would check in again this time. It's nice to be able to visit that world that I used to spend so much meaningful time in. This time I do begin to feel like I am limited in being able to enjoy it by it's outdated interfaces and systems and paradigms, though.

I got a lot of revisiting the world out of my system last year in leveling up Samurai from 1-64. This time I've taken that further, up to 72 at the moment, and really only spent time revisiting the endgame Sky and Sea zones, as well as some of the Aht Urghan zones, in trying to do missions and gain XP.

Unfortunately I've hit a couple of mission progress blocks. In the Aht Urghan mission chain I have reached a burning circle notorious monster (BCNM) boss fight that I'm not quite strong enough for, being not yet at 75, and having only a party of 5, since I can only summon 4 Trust companions at the moment. In the Rhapsodies mission chain, which I am pursuing to unlock that final Trust slot, I have to kill a popped NM, Siren, that seems entirely out of my league for the time being.

I am now thinking the logical thing to do, especially in light of the fact that the free period is wrapping up in a few days, is to find a good hunting ground and focus on hitting level 75 on Samurai, and maybe call it good there, at least for this year. I'm really excited to play some FFXIV, if I'm honest. I'm planning to get into that soon.

In Final Fantasy Tactics campaigning, my progress has slowed, but I am well into the latter part of the game, now. I have finished Chapter III: The Valiant, and am working on Chapter IV: Someone to Love. I need to go and do all of the Errands around the world and level up some, since I want to tackle the optional dungeon in addition to finishing the story campaign. I have all of the character classes unlocked that I want now, I'm just trying to get the most out of them. I'm afraid the Arithmetician (Calculator) may be too slow to be of much use as things currently stand. Equipping him for speed might help with that.

Wolfsbane

I just finished Guy Haley's Wolfsbane, book 49 of The Horus Heresy.

The great galactic civil war is drawing toward a conclusion. This is the story of how, late in the war, Space Wolves Primarch Leman Russ takes his legion from the defense of Terra and strikes out on a doomed attempt to kill the archtraitor, the Warmaster Horus Lupercal himself, before he can lead his forces to an assault on the Sol system.

We know going in that he is not able to kill Horus of course, and that the attempt destroys a large portion of the Space Wolves legion. These are future historical facts, after all. The tale is in the telling, though, and Haley spins a fast-moving one covering a lot of ground and featuring a lot of important characters and momentous events in what felt like a pretty tightly wound novel.

Coming out of Wolfsbane, we know that the surviving Space Wolves are bound for Yarant, pursued by a joint-traitor legions force led by Horus' right hand, Ezekyle Abbadon, and that Horus himself is rounding up the rest of his forces to move on Beta-Garmon, which is a big and important strategic location on the way to Terra. I understand a major battle takes place there. That may be addressed in the next book to move the overall story forward, which should be book 51, Slaves to Darkness.

Book 50, titled Born of Flame, is an anthology of to this point uncollected novellas and short stories around the Salamanders. Also coming up on the release list are the Primarchs books for Jaghatai Khan and Vulkan. Up next for me is a Horus Heresy short story I have not yet read but own from a recent humble bundle, and the Primarchs book on Ferrus Manus. I haven't settled on what's after that one yet.

Introversion's Uplink

It was U week in the backlog bum's rush this week, so I thought I would check out the hacking roleplaying game Uplink.

It casts you in the role of a hacker mercenary taking jobs gathered up by the titular organization. The game is played through a Hollywood movie-esque PC GUI purpose built for hacking into remote systems and accessing the files there. If you can steal or destroy whatever it is the client needs you to without being traced or found out, then you are rewarded with credits you can use to upgrade your hacking hardware and software.

It's a clever take on an ancient formula of character progression, and it's done very well from a presentation standpoint. I liked it. I don't know how much more I might play of it, but I did enjoy testing it out.

The Tale of a Genre Not For Me

It was T week in the backlog blitz, and I thought I'd try out Tales of Monkey Island, a Telltale adventure game. Monkey Island started out at Lucas Arts much earlier; this game was a revival of the series. 

I gather it was well regarded, but once again this genre just does nothing for me. I tend to dislike comedy in games anyway, and the play mechanics, if you can call them that, are so tedious that I can hardly bear to play these games. I end up forcing myself to stick it out for half an hour or forty-five minutes just to push past the intro and into the meat of what it's going to be. 

Boring, is what it's going to be. The stories are sometimes more interesting, and sometimes less. Blade Runner, or the Blackwood games, or Pendulo's Yesterday all had more interesting themes and narratives, but even those failed to keep me, through their obtuse, repetitive puzzles that only serve to stand in the way of those narratives.

Maybe that is the core problem of this and other some other genres--an imperfect union of story and mechanics. The two mesh together for me in a lot of other contexts, but not so much, here.

The Primarchs: The Second Batch

I'm finishing up the second trio of books I elected to read in the Horus Heresy: Primarchs series. These shorter length novels are pretty quick reads, and I get the sense they would be really adaptable to the screen, if anyone ever wanted to do such a thing, because of their generally smaller scope as compared to one of the Horus Heresy novels proper.

Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar - An interesting look into Guilliman's philosophy of war and legion building. We get to see the Ultramarines waging war against orks while trying to preserve the remnants of a long extinguished human civilization on the same planet. Some of the themes here are of the integration of the Terrans and Ultramarians in the legion, and when and where certain types of warfare are appropriate.

Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero - Magnus and Perturabo are sent to a compliant world in order to evacuate the population to save them from a natural disaster. All is not as it seems, of course, and the people may not be savable, after all. Magnus's thirst for knowledge and Perturabo's ends-justify-the-means pragmatism are both on display here.

Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix - It is early in the Great Crusade, and Fulgrim is just getting his legion up to its fighting strength, and getting out on his own with the 28th Expedition fleet. For his first compliance, he wants a quick, efficient, and bloodless settlement, if at all possible. To add a bit of flair to the challenge, he takes only a small handful of legionaries to the world, and sets himself a deadline of a single month to bring the world to heel. This book shows an interesting side of the Phoenician as he is yet to really fill out into his role as an arrogant perfectionist and aesthete.

Is Nothing Sacred 2?

Actually, many many many things are Sacred, or rather, Sacred is just like a million other games out there. A good portion of those do everything here better, as well.

It's almost a shame to get into a game and be kind of digging what its doing, only for that experience to be hampered by something like a cumbersome camera or the fact that the game is just plain old and many other things since have covered this ground with much more panache.

All these things and more are a drag on Sacred 2: Fallen Angel in 2018. It's my fault of course; I should have played this when it was new, probably nearing on a decade ago. However, all I can think playing it now is how much nicer it would be to be playing Path of Exile or Diablo III or Skyrim or Dark Souls 2 or...

I will say the UI isn't terrible, and the skill and character development systems seemed well thought out and allowing for a lot of crunchy customization.

Well, that's another off the backlog. I'm coming to realize it's better not to buy games if I'm not going to immediately sit down and play them.

Middle-campaign

I wanted to briefly mention that I did reinstall and pick up Shadow of Mordor once more. I have been kind of rewatching the Lord of the Rings trilogy lately, and wanted to play some in that world. Maybe I will eventually find what others have in that game.

In Final Fantasy Tactics, I have made it up to the beginning of Chapter III: The Valiant. I'm currently grinding out random battles to get my force to the jobs I want them to be going forward. I'm also roaming the land doing errands out of the various towns. I don't recall if anything important comes out of these, but they're fun to do all the same. I have Ramza as dragoon now. I'm not sure where he will end up. Maybe as a samurai, or perhaps even as a Mime. I have yet to unlock either samurai or ninja, or summoner or mediator on the magic track.

The campaigns continue.

Rocketbirds: What the Hell is This?

I wanted to knock something off the backlog, so I decided on Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken, which was a kind of uneven experience.

It's hard to really see what the developers were going for with this game due to how the themes of the plot, the art design, characters, and music all come together so disjointedly. It's not a great action-platformer to begin with, but the mixture of mid-aughts emo rock with cartoonish bird humanoid creatures and themes of total war versus an evil regime only serve to confuse. Were these supposed to be jokes?

On it's face, it's a bland 2D action game. There's shooting, and a little bit of navigation puzzling, but nothing even so complicated as in the original Metroid. A mechanic introduced a few levels in lets you mind-control enemies which is OK for setting up some slightly more interesting puzzles. One level I thought was kind of cool was set up as a jetpack dogfight in the sky outside the penguin regime's zeppelin. It played kind of like a twin-stick shooter but that you could only shoot in the direction you were flying in.

I got about halfway through the game, I am led to believe by the chapter count, but I don't think I'll ever be back to it. It's just not my kind of thing.

The Lion War for Ivalice

I've played almost nothing but Final Fantasy Tactics in the last week. In that time, I have progressed through Chapter I: The Meagre to the early part of Chapter II: The Manipulator and the Subservient.

Chapter II begins with a bang, the first movement, back to the merchant city Dorter from Orbonne Monastery, results in the band of Ovelia's protectors (led by Agrias at this point) being ambushed by mercenaries and having to fend them off. An unknown malefactor from the princess's kidnappers has hired a crew to waylay Ramza et al to put them off the trail. Just who is behind Ovelia's kidnapping is unkown at this point. The band will move from here toward a meeting with Cardinal Delecroix of the Church of Glabados, though, in hopes he can somehow protect the kidnapped Ovelia.

For this playthrough, I decided to eschew the use of overpowered characters like Agrias and Mustadio and T.G. Cid where possible, to instead rely on training up generics through the job system. I'm not certain how to proceed at the moment, though. Do I keep knights and archers in those jobs, or level characters through those jobs on to more advanced ones? I am leaning toward the former, where in the past I think I mostly did the latter. I may only need a single party member as a given class, too, since the battle party size is only a max of 5 in this game.

At the moment, I have Ramza as knight, along with two generics in that class as well. I also have three squires in training along with two or three chemists, two archers, and combination black/white mage. I'm running the mage and a chemist in battles now, along with a mix of knights, squires, and archers as leveling dictates. Squire and chemist not only compliment each other perfectly, but are also the cornerstone of every good fighter- or mage-derived class available in the game. I think it's probably wise to go ahead and have every party member master one or the other (using the other as their sub-job) before taking another class as their main. To that end I should probably get my current chemists up to white and black mage status and then allow my current black mage to go back and master chemist. Chemists are always good to have around, especially later in the game when they get access to guns. Same goes for squires; they have a really good set of abilities and thus can always be useful.

So then, my new plan of development will be to always be rotating through the party of battle at least one squire and chemist, while also pulling from the other classes whatever is needed, be it knight, archer, dragoon, monk, or any various mage type. I'm looking forward to applying this new strategy already.

I'd like to progress through the story and into the 100-floor dungeon this time through the game, as well. We'll see how that goes.

The War for Valeria

I finally managed to wrap up my campaign of Tactics Ogre last night. That is to say I finished the lawful route of the main story. There is still a huge amount of game there to explore in the form of sidequests, a hundred floor dungeon, alternate chaotic and neutral paths through the story, and a postgame coda section of further missions.

I'm not sure what I want to do next in the game, but I definitely want to play more of it. I wonder though if I should take a break from it and come back at a later date. I suppose I can play a little more now and kind of gradually segue away from it to something else. Or maybe I'll just dive into my optimized version of FFT.

Tactics Ogre is great, though. It's a real masterpiece and by itself justification for owning a PSP, Vita, and/or Playstation Vita TV microconsole. The story didn't impact me as much at 37 as FFT did at 17, but it is no less well realized, and is certainly better localized than FFT originally was. I also finally came to appreciate the larger (up to 12) force sizes, appreciating the fact that I could double or triple up on classes I liked to really get the job done.

And that surprise ending! Now I see where the Delita/Ovelia epilogue scene from FFT was delineated from.

The Burden of Loyalty

Book 48 of The Horus Heresy is another anthology. They stories are all loosely collected by the theme the title encapsulates -  that it's not easy being on the loyalist side in this war, for a number of reasons. They are mostly tales of sacrifice of one type or another in the name of Primarch, Emperor, and Imperium.

The Thirteenth Wolf features a group of Space Wolves who follow some wily Thousand Sons into warp portals as they are escaping the massacre at Prospero. I believe these are the ones who emerge much later on, changed, just before Guilliman returns in the 40K period.

Into Exile, Cybernetica, and The Binary Succession all deal with the split in the Martian Mechanicum during the war, and the eventual establishment of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the power structure of the Imperium.

Ordo Sinister features a powerful Psi-Titan that has been called upon to help out in the war in the webway, where the Emperor himself has busied himself and the Adeptus Custodes after Magnus the Red breached the portal connecting it to the chamber containing the Golden Throne.

The Heart of the Pharos sets up the novel Pharos with the mystery of what's in the mountain of the same name on the agri-world Sotha.

Wolf King is the story of the Space Wolves being waylaid by the Alpha Legion after their actions against the Thousand Sons at Prospero. They have to fight for their existence in the Alaxxes nebula, and Russ has to learn a lesson about who he is and who he pretends to be.

Perpetual catches us up with the location of Oll Persson and crew after their flight from Calth, and on their way to Terra. They are still in transit, here, pursued by Alpha Legion operatives, seemingly.

The End for These

Every now and then I revisit a game that put me off previously, or that I'm kind of on the fence on, and decide that it really just is not for me. I had around of these over the weekend:

Hearthstone - I thought to go back and give it another shot after a long time away, but it does definitely still turn me away with the nature of how random and haphazardly balanced many of the game mechanics and card abilities feel. I also really don't want to put in the time it would take to learn all the cards and combos I would need to get good, or to go about acquiring all of the cards to use, either. I am looking for something like a deck building card game to fit into my life, but this is not it.

Destiny 2 - I thought I might like to spend some more time in this game after recent updates, but just tooling around it a little the other night was enough to make me certain I had no interest in continuing to try to enjoy Bungie's latest, beyond completing the base campaign. At least not now. I might have been hasty to uninstall, but really I do think it's for the best. This game is nothing but a treadmill in the end.

Fortnite Battle Royale - I've had a fun enough time playing about 30 rounds of it, but I don't feel any drive to play to win, and I don't really care for the moment-to-moment gameplay now that I've seen most of the map. I get why people like the game, if not quite why it's hit such a critical mass lately. I just don't personally want to play it anymore. I'm really hoping for this mode to be dropped into another game I like and for it to be paired with some kind of interesting strategic progression or something I could sink my teeth into.

On a separate note, I my have a new beginning for an old favorite, Final Fantasy Tactics. I found a fan patch that would take the PSX version of the game, which is technically superior to the PSP port, and inject into it the new and far superior translation from said PSP port. Through the magic of emulation, this best-of-both-worlds amalgamation is playable on my PC. I would no doubt already be deep into the game once more, but for the fact that I am trying to finish off Tactics Ogre at the moment, as well. I do look forward to eventually playing through the game again in this theoretically optimal incarnation.

Very Much Timely, Very Much Not

The hottest new thing in the gaming zeitgeist at the moment is Fortnite Battle Royale. Epic announced Fortnite what must have been 5 or 7 years ago, and it languished in development hell for ages until Player Unknown's Battlegrounds found huge success last year, when Fortnite quickly bit off that same idea and recreated it within their game. It's been a massive success. They even got me to give it a shot, which is nothing short of miraculous, being that I had to download Epic's own separate game client to give it a shot.

In short, I think Fortnite Battle Royale is a pretty solid and fun multiplayer game mode. It's a very good fit for me, particularly because of the solo mode where the game is everyone-for-themself. That said, there's a lot of downtime in the game as I have played it thus far. I have been electing to drop into various areas around the map, usually away from others, in order to scrounge materials and an arsenal before making my way to wherever the shrinking circle is. I'm usually careful to keep a low profile until I have seen someone I can get the drop on. This means a lot of running behind cover and scouting out a location before venturing in. Sometimes a match can be 10 or 15 minutes of this before ending in just few short seconds of a firefight, or being sniped from afar with no warning whatsoever.
It's been fun to play some, and I'll keep dipping in for now, but it's hard to say how long it might hold my attention. I've made it into the top 10 a few times, as high as 5th place once.

I wanted to knock a game off of my backlog, and I was up to Q in the rotation, so I went with Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon. I'm on to the third level now, I believe. I keep hopping back and forth between this, the main game, and DOPA, the mission pack Machine Games put out a couple of years ago to celebrate Quake's 20th anniversary. I absolutely love Quake. These new missions feel pretty good for the most part, as well. They have added some environmental puzzles and elements to the game, and a few new weapons and enemies as well. I don't really have much of anything to complain about with what I have seen. Quake is great, and more of it is always a good thing, as far as I can tell. At some point maybe I'll get around to playing other games in the weird series.

I have also continued to make some progress through Tactics Ogre. I have taken Denam and his band up to chapter 4 in the campaign now. It appears he and his sister Catiua are secretly the heirs to some title somewhere or something. I don't quite follow the story, but then this campaign has been in progress since around 2010. My plan from here is to go find the next story mission and then grind if need be to finish it. Once my characters are closer to level 20, I can go to the pirate island in the southwest to do the optional mission there.

A Transition Point for Gregor Eisenhorn

The Magos & The Definitive Case Files of Gregor Eisenhorn was released last month, and I have just finished it. The first half of the book, the definitive case files part, is a collection of just about every short story written featuring Eisenhorn or his protege, Gideon Ravenor, with some that don't feature either, but end up relating to the new novel, The Magos, in a different way.

Of the collected stories, a few were new to me: Pestilence, The Curiosity, Gardens of Tycho, and The Curious Demise of Titus Endor. A couple of these introduce the new character of Magos Biologis Valentenin Drusher, who figures heavily into The Magos in the latter half of the volume. Not included, that I know of, is a short, very short, story called Born To Us, which features Eisenhorn and longtime associate Harlon Nayl stumbling upon a Necron king.

The Magos is the first Eisenhorn novel not written from his own first-person perspective, which is in interesting choice made necessary by how the story is told, and the nature of the story being told. From this point in Eisenhorn's career and on (and previously in Master Imus' Transgression and Thorn Wishes Talon), we only get him in the third-person. We're not privy to what's going on in his head, because he is very literally no longer the protagonist and figuratively may even be an antagonist, especially going forward after The Magos, in Pariah, and the other books in the Bequin trilogy to follow.

The Magos, in plot terms, is much more like one of Eisenhorn's short stories than one of his novels. It's set in one place as opposed to across many planets, and much more about one particular lead in the quest he has taken upon himself--to defeat and destroy the Cognitae order, who serve the Ruinous Powers against the Imperium. By the end of the new novel, we wonder if he still has that goal in mind, or if another has taken its place as his prime motive, and we also have reason to doubt his mental health. Has old Gregor finally crossed that line into becoming the radical he always denied he had become?

It's enough to make me want to go back and reread Pariah, but I think I'll wait until author Dan Abnett is at least done writing the next in the series.

Stepping Out of the Light and Into the Dark Ages

I did manage to finish of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In the end I feel it was pretty so-so like I mentioned before. Playing the Director's Cut edition meant that I got to play the Missing Link DLC section in line with the rest of the game, and that part was mostly pretty good, I'll admit, if a little heavy on the backtracking. I appreciated that at the end of the DLC section there was not just another poor boss fight, but a scenario that you could resolve in ways Deus Ex does better.

The final boss encounter of the game was also pretty weak, I felt, and then the pick-an-ending-any-ending thing at the very end was also kind of lame. Maybe if one or two options were closed off to Jensen based on his actions throughout the game leading up to that point, then it would have some kind of impact. Overall, I'm feeling underwhelmed.

Out of morbid curiosity I also went and played a little more of Deus Ex: Invisible War after finishing Human Revolution. It might have been an OK game, but I will never suffer through the way that engine constantly goes back to the desktop during loads and resets your desktop resolution to some archaic trash from 2003. Also, who has time for games that are merely OK these days? Ignore the fact I just soldiered through DX:HR for no apparent reason.

I also managed to sneak in some Tactics Ogre on the Vita last week. Miraculously, I brute forced my way through a battle that had given me trouble in the past. Come to find out, I made it harder on myself by attacking a bunch of neutral dragons in the map that I need not have fought with. Ah well, live and learn. I think I'll continue on a bit further in TO now that I got past that progress blocker. I ordered a PS Vita TV as well, so with luck I'll have it up on the big screen soon. Finally finishing off Tactics Ogre after all this time would be a hell of a thing.

I Guess I Asked For This

I've been playing a lot of Deus Ex: Human Revolution over the last week or so. I thought about returning to it to play something stealthy and because it was keeping with the theme of cybernetic augmentation present in XCOM: Enemy Within.

I'm not sure it's quite as good as I had expected or hoped, though. The options for navigating through the world are varied enough that you are not usually forced down a single path, but instead are given two or three routes to get to your prescribed destination, one of which is usually through some vents. I am thinking a lot of players and critics may have been taken in by the illusion of choice in this game. Next to Dishonored, the options appear very limited indeed.

I also question how varied it is possible to develop your Adam Jensen over the course of the game. There are only so many abilities you can use skill points to buy, and the game seems long enough that by the end you will accrue enough points to buy about every ability available.

One thing I like is that there is a shotgun-analog among the non-lethal weapon types. This allows you to knock out 2-3 guards at once whenever you accidentally raise an alarm, meaning you have more options than just quickloading when things go awry. Of course the most fun toys like the minigun and rocket launcher only do lethal damage, but even they come in handy when you are subjected to mandatory lethal boss fights, which is another iffy design decision at hand here.

Of course, the art is nice and very cohesive. It's not a terrible game, but in a lot of respects I feel like I'm constantly seeing the artifice that went into creating it. I'm sure its not just that the game is 7 years old now, and that everyone was a little naive when it first came out. Dishonored was released only the following year and I feel like it is a much better and more realized immersive sim. I'll keep playing it for now. I must be about two thirds through the game at this point.

Xenos Downed

I wrapped up my Enemy Within campaign, and my time with the 2012 XCOM series revival, this weekend. I ended up losing 4 nations from the council before stabilizing. I incorporated a MEC trooper into my permanent squad formation in place of one of the Assaults I had used previously, taking one of all 5 squad roles (MEC being the 5th), and a second Support.

Things started to turn around for this campaign as I got up more satellites, and was finally able to progress the main story by building the alien containment facility, capture some live aliens, and mount an attack on their base, while also fending off EXALT raids through covert operations. Eventually I both raided and destroyed both enemy factions' hideouts, and was raided in turn by the aliens, who lost grievously versus my well armed and experienced squaddies and a bunch of rookies. From there it was just a matter of encountering Etherials, researching psionics, and getting the last bit of research and tech-ing up done that was needed before I boarded the aliens' temple ship. The mission went off without a hitch.

After it was done I played another session to try and mop up a few achievements within reach. There are still others I could go for, but I feel like I've reached a stopping point. I'm planning to pick up XCOM 2 the next time I get a craving for the game. It's been a great time going at it intensively over the last few weeks.

Enemy Within

I've been away from gaming at large for a week or so, having to schedule a quick trip to my hometown due to my dad's death. I'm back home now and back more or less to normal, now.

During my time away I only briefly played some New Super Mario Bros. 2. I finished out the World 2 of that game. It plays like a New Super Mario Bros. game, by and large. It's solid.

I did manage to finish my campaign in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It was my first victory. My first soldier with psionic abilities was absolutely clutch in the final mission. At one point he smoked two fresh Sectopods with a single critical psi storm ability. I believe he was a heavy, with the ability to double all damage to robotic enemies. They took 17 points each, and were insta-fried.

I'm now working on a campaign of Enemy Within, which so far seems a little bit overwhelming with new features. I've probably gone a little too far into cybernetic upgrades so far, not realizing my soldiers would lose their former classes in doing so. Now I am down to only a single assault and support trooper, while I have entirely too many heavies and snipers. I will need to get in some new recruits to hopefully get a couple more of each class I need, to ensure there is always one available and not wounded and recovering. I haven't delved into the genetic modding side of the expansion yet, but I am on my first covert operative recovery mention against the Exalt faction.

This new campaign is off to a somewhat rocky start, having lost 2 countries from the initiative so far,and being slow to accomplish priority tasks. I have built a stunner, but have yet to construct a live alien containment facility yet. I also have several nations at mid-to-high tier panic, so I'm worried about losing continent bonuses or even losing too many nations to continue, period. If this campaign fails, I'll have to be smarter about satellite coverage next time. I may be able to stabilize, though.

XCOM has finally hooked me in the way I knew it should have when I bought it over 5 years ago, now. I hope to finish a campaign of Enemy Within and then move on to XCOM 2.

Blasting and Backlogging

While I'm deep in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, I've been trying to play something new each week from the backlog.

Offspring Fling! - This must have come from an indie bundle at some point. It's a puzzle game where you play a forest creature who must navigate puzzle/platform levels while finding and ushering her offspring through them to the exit. One of the main things you can do to that end is to pick them up and hurl them across the level in a straight line. They will continue on all the way across without dropping at all until they hit something that obstructs their path, and then drop straight down. The levels couple this fact and the fact that the offspring are stacked on your character's head, increasing her height, and necessitating tunnels with a higher clearance, to come up with navigation and dexterity challenges. From the outset, there are 100 levels, mostly confined to a single screen, at least through the first 49 that I saw. It's a kind of cool little game, with a decent challenge curve as you get into it. After about an hour I had had enough, though. It's more than I can say for a lot of games, though.

Pokemon Picross - Picross is almost its own genre of puzzle game as far as I know. You have a grid of squares, most puzzles being 10x10, it seems, and you have to shade some of them in, based on numeric hints as to the number in the row or column to be shaded in each before there is an unshaded square or squares. When the puzzle is complete, the shaded squares make up an image of some sort. Pokemon Picross adds the wrinkle of a Pokemon theme, Pokemon bonuses at the outset or in the middle of each puzzle (reveal a few squares' true natures, etc.), and the F2P staple "energy" mechanic, which is just a progress gate that can be passed by paying a little money or by coming back after a timer has counted down. You also need to earn gems to move on to the next puzzle. It strikes me as Nintendo or The Pokemon Company's first foray into the mobile/F2P games paradigm, though this was a (free) 3DS game. The Pokemon and F2P trappings only serve to put me off, but I don't really know if I find Picross itself very interesting, either. It's not entirely dissimilar to Hexcells, but for some reason doesn't click with me at all in the way that game does.

Mostly, I have been laser-focused on XCOM in the last week or so. I finally managed to win a raid on the aliens' base, and now have my squad all up to colonel or major rank, all with titan armor and plasma weapons, and now I'm beginning to create advanced fighter aircraft to shoot down UFOs with weapons that will minimize damage to the alien craft. My satellite coverage is almost complete, though two nations have pulled out of the project. The next big task is to build the base facility for psionics and delve into that. I think I'll also get a couple of suits of the final armor types that offer stealth/flight/psi abilities and bonuses, as well. With luck I'll also be able to research and develop everything in one campaign. This one should prove winnable, now, I'm confident, especially considering that I can save scum if I need to. It's just a matter of time, I think, but I do need to be diligent in accomplishing the council's goals.

The Primarchs: The First Batch

Between books of the Horus Heresy series proper, I've been dipping into the parallel Primarchs sub-series. It's six books strong as of now, with more coming out just about monthly, with audio dramas and short stories in tow as well, unfolding in the same manner as The Horus Heresy, Warhammer 40,000 fiction as a whole, and just about everything Black Library deals in these days.

Leman Russ: The Great Wolf - A tale of early on in the Great Crusade, with an episode after the siege of Terra, set within the framing device of an older Leman Russ telling a tale to the first Space Wolf to be raised, after the second founding, to the chapter of the same name rather than the legion. It's an interesting look into some internal dynamics of the legion, including how they view themselves in contrast to their cousins of the other legions. The Lion and the Dark Angels appear here too, and the storied duel of the primarchs is part of the tale.

Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia - The origin story of Perturabo couched within the story of the Iron Warrors' grueling campaign against the alien Hrud and their return to Perturabo's home world to put down it's rebellion against the Imperium. This is where Perturabo breaks, and everything that comes after begins to make more sense having read this narrative.

Lorgar: Bearer of the Word - The intertwined stories of the emergence of Lorgar and Kor Phaeron, who, at least for a time, was closely associated with the primarch of the Word Bearers legion. We see how Lorgar, Aurelian, the Urizen, came to be the spiritual leader of the world of Colchis, and get some insight into what drives him to keep looking for truth in the galaxy and in the warp, even after being sanctioned by The Emperor for his habit of worship, which is contra to the Imperial Truth.

Book 48 of the main series is out now, and I'm going to read that next.

New? Video Games

I noticed a theme among the games I've been playing in the last week. New Super Mario Bros. 2, Geometry Wars 2, Spelunky, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown are all newer takes of previous games or series.

Geometry Wars 2 is the sequel to Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, which was an HD realization of the bonus mini-game Geometry Wars, which I believe was playable in Project Gotham Racing on the original Xbox. This is one of my favorites of my time with the Xbox 360, and I was able to play it for a little while via a friend's Xbox One's backward compatibility over the weekend, which was cool. It's one of the best arcade-style games I've ever played.

Spelunky is really also known as Spelunky HD, and it's the fully realized version of an older freeware game, I think. I've heard there are some play differences, and that it's not just a visual remake, but having never played the original, I don't know what those are. I still have yet to best Olmec, but I keep trying.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is of course the modern revival of a very ancient and venerable series known variously as UFO: Enemy Unknown or X-COM: UFO Defense. It's a fantastic game that delivers on nearly everything the original also succeeded at, but greatly modernized and streamlined. I'm at the point in my current campaign, which is going much more smoothly than any previous, where I can assault an alien base. I should probably do that soon, but I want to continue to tech up at least to the point where I can use some improved body armor before I try that mission.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is the sequel to New Super Mario Bros., itself a reinvention of the Mario franchise in 2D. It seems to stick mostly to the beats established by its predecessor, but with an increased emphasis on coin collecting. I'm not sure how much of an impact that has on the game as a whole quite yet, though, having only just made it to the second world.

Plugging Away/Revisiting

I mentioned appreciating my good Warhammer 40,000 games in my last entry. Space Marine is one such game. Always good for a quick taste of the power and majesty of what it is like to blast some orks as one of Primarch Guilliman's finest, the Ultramarines. I wanted to see if anyone was playing the multiplayer mode of this still, in light of Eternal Crusade seeming dead. No luck, at least not at that time. I may try again sometime, but even if no one is playing, the campaign is still pretty cool.

Another game I jumped into for a little bit on a whim was Just Cause 2. It's just a big open-world playground where the object of the game is literally just to go in and cause chaos around the countryside to somehow whip up enough anti-government sentiment to topple it. It's ludicrous, but the game world is a gorgeous tropical paradise where everything can be flown or driven, and the character has a great grapple-arm and parachute combination to make the most of doing daring stunts.

I accidentally clicked on Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin Edition in my library the other day, but I might have carried on playing it had my save from the original version of the game been usable. Alas, it was not, so at some point I will have to restart the game in this version. That will be fun, when the time comes.

I have made record progress through Spelunky. I managed to get the Tunnel Man everything he needed to open up a permanent shortcut to the temple zone, and I've been running nothing but that zone ever since, trying to familiarize myself with its traps and denizens. It is by far the most ruthless set of stages yet. I've made it through to Olmec several times, but have yet to manage to beat him and win the game. That is my next goal. Eventually I would like to be able to go from the entrance of the caves through Olmec, and even on to the hell zone. Who knows if I'll ever be able to pull that off, though.

I also continue to make progress through The Witcher 3. I am to the point now where I am ready to rescue Dandelion from his captors. I have seen Triss and the other mages off from Novigrad with the help of the former Redanian spymaster, Sigi I think he's called. Next I'm going to pay a visit to the sorceress Philippa Eilhart at the request of the Redanian King Radovan. I think I'm getting these names right. I've also been going around Velen doing low level quests, trying to catch up my quest log to my character level. There's a lot in this game.

I've also found myself playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Enemy Within again lately. I'm allowing myself to reload after bad moves this time, and things are shaping up well for the very early stages of this campaign. I've just finished the first month and have already captured a live Sectoid for research and I'm working on unlocking beam weapons, now. This is such a cool game.

Though This Battle Is Lost, We Will Fight On, Brothers!

It's time to pour one out for Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade. The multiplayer third-person shooter with aspirations to the Battlefield-like genre blend of open conflict both on foot and in vehicles, and with a long-promised-but-never-realized open world component, seems to be basically dead. I fired it up last night looking for a game I was never able to match into, and coincidentally also yesterday the developers posted a blog entry that amounted to them issuing and apology, lamenting their low numbers, and promising to do more. I can't see the game pulling out of this tailspin, to be honest. Games are a rough business at the best of times, and in the current environment a game like this that was released far to early to Early Access, that eternal curse, with no fanfare, is as good as dead, and no doubt destined to be as forgotten as any lost civilization in the darkness of Old Night.

I will hug my Relic 40K games close and support them as much as I can going forward.

The 4X bug came back to bite me over the weekend, and after reinstalling both of Amplitude's Endless Legend and Endless Space, I finished off suspended campaigns in both. I was able to pull out a win in Legend, as the Drakken, taking a diplomatic victory. I think this game must have been in progress for two years or more, but it's done now. In Space, however, I wasn't able to salvage the setup I'd found myself in. Somehow I had two games set up as myself playing the Pilgrims against a single other faction, the Hissho. I'm not sure how that happened, other than maybe they both started out as the same game in the base game, and I then completed it there in addition to in the expanded version of the game. In either case, I ended up conceding, unable to do any real damage to the other faction's fleets in war. I was inspired to start a new campaign, though, as the hostile Cravers, which exist only to consume and expand, and in fact cannot take part in diplomacy. It's early on in that campaign yet; I'm still expanding to fill my starting area and having to tech up to the point where I can get further out to start warring on other species.

I've been doing daily sessions of Spelunky, too. I'm still trying to get good again. I've never been great at the game, but I do hope to finish it someday, still. I think if I just keep at it regularly it'll begin to happen eventually.

Every time I play The Witcher 3, I'm convinced again that it is one of the best games out there. I'm pretty invested into playing Gwent within the game, as well. I still only have cards for the Northern Realms deck, but I may be on my way to getting the right cards for the Scoia'tel deck, as well. As goes the main thrust of the quest to find Ciri, I'm currently trying to track down Dandelion, who may have seen her recently. That involves talking to other people in the area who he's had contact with, to get a clue on where he might be, since the tavern he runs with Zoltan Chivay was left abandoned. I can hardly wait to play more.