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.