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 This time I do begin to feel like I am limited in being able to enjoy it by it's outdated interfaces and systems and paradigms, though.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.

Is this Ninja Theory?

I was in the mood to try something new last night, so I grabbed my copy of the early PS3 game Heavenly Sword, the first prominent character action game from Ninja Theory, who have gone on to make some well regarded games in the genre since. To be honest, I expected more to like here. It seems pretty derivative of God of War in some ways, and perhaps just emblematic of where games were back in 2007 in others. I can see glimmers of what the developer would come to be known for here, but there's not enough to make me interested in playing through the whole game, especially after a taste of the awful Sixaxis use on display in the game's "aftertouch" system. That can be turned off, thankfully, but then you're still left with a game with a bad frame rate and a ridiculously dressed lingerie model heroine (and her whole village who sleep in full battle regalia out in the cold, snowy open on flagstones with no fires or blankets, weirdly), with a story I am not invested in. Everything this game attempts has been done better in the decade since, if not previously, so though it seems cold and dispassionate, the calculus in my head points to it being a waste of my leisure time to continue playing Heavenly Sword when there are so many other more interesting things to spend it with.

Among those more interesting things are Spelunky, and Mark of the Ninja, both of which I have dipped into this week. They're both good to have on hand for quick fixes of action, I think. Mark of the Ninja seems to have some encouragement of returning to past levels to find secrets and things, as well has having a new game+ mode, I noticed. I'll play some more of that one, for sure.

I'm also continuing to delve into Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon. I'm starting to get more familiar with its mechanics and workings, which I have stated before are just enough to make for a good tactical wargame without being to overwhelming. I like it. I've done around a third of the campaign scenarios at this point, I believe.

Caught up to Horus on the Way to the Siege of Terra

For probably the first time ever, I am current as goes the main numbered series of Horus Heresy novels, 47 books in! I know you're thinking that now I might go and read something unrelated, and while I still may, I do have all five of the currently released Primarchs series novels to read, as well. It's not clear how that series will evolve as time goes on, but it does already contain offshoot short stories and audio dramas in addition to the main novels which each, to this point, seem to focus directly on one of the space marine primarchs. Out now are the ones for Roboute Guilliman, Leman Russ, Magnus the Red, Perturabo, and Lorgar. I may begin one of those very soon.

Impressions on the last few main series novels are below. Beware spoilers, if you are reading the series, as well.

The Crimson King - Magnus and the Thousand Sons' first book since very early in the series. The book centers around Ahriman and his crew's attempt to track down the pieces of Magnus' shattered psyche/soul. A few remembrancers from Prospero, a Knight Errant, Yasu Nagasena, and a Space Wolves watch pack also star.

Tallarn - The collection of a few short stories and a novella set on Tallarn during the Iron Warriors' invasion. Perturabo is looking for something before being eventually called away by Horus to lay siege to Terra. The stories are mostly told from the point of view of Imperial army personnel, though the novella Ironclad also features an Officio Assassinorum clade operative, Alpha Legion operatives, and one key Iron Warriors battle brother encased in a Dreadnought's sarcophagus.

Ruinstorm - Sanguinius, Guilliman, and the Lion leave Macragge after the dissolution of Imperium Secundus and make their way through the titular warp disturbance toward Terra. Curze is in tow, as well, and each primarch faces a personal trial before their paths are made clear. Ruinstorm has direct ties back to David Annandale's previous book in the series The Damnation of Pythos, as well as Fear to Tread, The Unremembered Empire, and Angels of Caliban.

Old Earth - The main story here is Vulkan's journey from his resurrection at Mount Deathfire on Nocturne to The Emperor's side by the Golden Throne on Terra. The book also sees an end to the stories of Shadrak Meduson and the Shattered Legions agglomeration forged in the wake of the Dropsite Massacre on Isstvan V. Another subplot sees the Eldar Farseer Eldrad Ulthran work in concert with Barthusa Narek, errant Word Bearer, to help Vulkan on his journey, permanently ending the lives of many seemingly immortal members of the Cabal along the way, sparing John Grammaticus and Alivia Sureka, notably.

Book 48 is slated to release next month, another collection of novellas and short stories, but there's no word yet of 49. I'm guessing that one may be the same. Book 50 will likely be pretty important. Yarant or Beta-Garmon, maybe. Or even the kick-off to the Siege of Terra.

Blasting in the New Year

I caught a bit of the DICE bug over the weekend, and decided to crack into both Battlefield 1 and Star Wars: Battlefront for the first times. I had some good fun with both of them, the only real sour note was when a player on the other team logged on with unsavory ideological messages conveyed in his player emblem.

I was impressed with the graphics of both games; the Frostbite engine is really something. Both games were fun and had a good feel to what I played. I get the impression that Battlefront may be a little more casual and arcade game-like, and Battlefield 1 a little more geared toward the classic hardcore shooter. I'd like to play more of both, but it's hard to say whether I'll put too much time into them. It would probably behoove me to get Battlefront II, instead, so maybe I'll lean toward Battlefield 1 more if I do want to play a game like this.

I played a little Rocket League, as well. That game is as smooth and fun as ever. It's really smartly designed and presented. Again, I should play more of this.

Mark of the Ninja is another new one for me. I chose this one to knock off of the backlog both because I was kind of feeling like a 2D action game and because it starts with M. It's much less the platformer I was kind of craving and much more of a hardcore stealth game pulled off nearly flawlessly in two dimensions. It's a joy to play. Everything feels crisp and intentional, and there's very little room to fumble your actions in the control scheme. The levels branch nicely and offer alternate pathways through the spaces, which is impressive for 2D environments. It's like Klei wanted to bring over all the best parts of immersive sim stealth into 2D, and it really works. I played a solid 2 hours in my first session.

I also finally got around to trying out Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon. It's a hex-based, turn-based war game, as I anticipated, but not quite so hardcore and forbidding as I had thought it might be. It's maybe not even much more complex than Battle of Tallarn; indeed it lacks the import that game puts on unit facing on the battlefield. I'm not sure it is more complex at all, come to think of it. It offers more units, sure, and they're upgradable, but I'm not sure there is that much more to it. And it doesn't quite raise the production values bar as high as I'd like above Tallarn, either. It is better presented, to be sure, but not that much better presented.

Regardless, I'm having a good time with it, and the campaign seems pretty long and involved, with a lot of scenarios. I'm definitely going to keep playing this one, and I'm sure I'll have more impressions as I delve further in.

2017 Book of the Year

Book of the Year: The Master of Mankind
Honorable Mention: Angels of Caliban/Praetorian of Dorn

I'm completely unable to decide between the two runners-up, but the BOTY has to go to Aaron Dembski-Bowden's examination of The Emperor and his closest confidants in the war in the webway during the great heresy war. It was illuminating.

This year in reading has been almost entirely about Warhammer 40,000 and its forebear, the Horus Heresy. I finished 20 whole books this year, which must be a record.

Tallarn
The Crimson King
Shattered Legions
Warhammer 40,000: 8th Edition
Dark Imperium
Gathering Storm: Rise of the Primarch
Gathering Storm: Fracture of Biel-Tan
Gathering Storm: Fall of Cadia
War Zone Fenris: Wrath of Magnus
Garro
The Master of Mankind
Corax
Praetorian of Dorn
Angels of Caliban
The Silent War
The Path of Heaven
Eye of Terra
The Ninja
Pharos
War Without End

Previous years' tallies:

2016:20ish
2015:4ish
2014:18
2013:9

I'm hoping to draw up to being current with the Heresy series this year, and read more 40K fiction in addition to other fiction and non-fiction. I'm trying to lean more into reading, since my booklog is pretty extensive, as well.

2017 Wrap-up with GOTY!

This has been a good year in games. The Switch was released with a killer couple of entries in the Zelda and Mario series, as well as a number of other good to great Nintendo first party releases, and the other platforms saw a bunch of other huge AAA releases as per usual. My picks for honors this year will probably seem contrarian or unconventional, but of course this is one man's point of view, and intensely personally focused.

My 2017 Game of the Year: Mass Effect Andromeda
Honorable Mention: Diablo III: Rise of the Necromancer

There you have them. I was more into the newest Mass Effect for its duration than any other game released this year. I know the wider response to the game has been negative, and I count myself lucky that I was able to look over whatever the collective complaints were to the entertainment beyond. I wish Bioware was able to follow through on whatever the DLC plans had been and with the logical subsequent series entries, but sadly it looks like Mass Effect my be being mothballed instead. My message for anyone thinking of playing the game is to go for it, and enjoy. It's got the best combat and world of the series, a good cast of supporting characters and villains, and a very cool speculative sci-fi premise.

Rise of the Necromancer brought a whole new game to Diablo III, just like every new class is a new way to play. This was basically more of one of my all-time favorite games, and if I take into account how it brought me back to the game for a good month and a half this year, there's no denying it deserves this runner-up spot in my game of the year consideration.

There was a real wealth of other things I played this year that were very good, like the aforementioned Zelda and Mario games, as well as Mario Kart, Opus Magnum, Destiny 2, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, Dawn of War III, and many others I think I'll love but have yet to get around to, like Prey, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Nier: Automata, Hollow Knight, Battle Brothers, and more.

As for game achievements and backlog progress this year, here's the Pile of Skulls:

Assassin's Creed Unity
Assassin's Creed Unity: Dead Kings
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Crimson Shroud
Democracy 3
Destiny 2
Diablo III Anniversary Event
Diablo III: Necromancer 70
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls (Necromancer)
Dishonored 2 (Emily, Low Chaos)
Dungeon of the Endless
FFXI: Samurai Artifact
Hexcells
Hexcells Infinite
Hexcells Infinite (60 Down)
Hexcells Plus
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Spec Ops: The Line
Super Mario Odyssey
The Horus Heresy: Battle of Tallarn Apocalypse Campaign (Loyalists)
The Horus Heresy: Battle of Tallarn Apocalypse Campaign (Traitors)
The Horus Heresy: Battle of Tallarn Resurrection Campaign (Loyalists)
Titanfall 2

I count 23 this year, the same as last year, coincidentally:

2017:23
2017:23
2015:26
2014:32
2013:33
2012:23
2011:21
2010:23
2009:19
2008:26
2007:15

I also tally a total of 21 additions to the backlog this year, though I don't really keep track of how many it was reduced by in the same time. Suffice it to say it doesn't look much smaller, though I know I knocked a few things off. Maybe I'll manage more in 2018.

I don't have much in the way of new year's resolutions other than my usual desire to play more strategy games and RPGs. I'll also add character action games this year--Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, et al. Even if I have to play them on easy. If there's one thing I want done and dusted this year, it's The Witcher 3. I don't know why I deprive myself of it like I do, honestly. It's very good.

2018 releases I'm looking forward to include Bayonetta 3, and maybe more on Cyberpunk 2077. I can't think of anything else at the moment.

Closing Out 2017

I've been off for about 10 days for the holidays, and I've been trying to get in some good game time. In this span I have made some good progress through Opus Magnum, finished the main game content in Super Mario Odyssey, played my fill of Battle of Tallarn, and returned to the Hyrule of Breath of the Wild to do some pretty serious shrine hunting.

I'll just single out Battle of Tallarn here. I think the game is pretty good for a mobile port. It lands squarely in that range where I could just keep playing it until I've exhausted it of content, but will instead forgo spending any more time doing just that and instead look to other games that I suspect will be better. Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon, namely, but also others in general.

I'll also just mention that in the last few days since Christmas I have been back into Zelda in a big way. I've spent much more time than anticipated each session hunting for that last shrine or wanting to quickly investigate something off in the distance. I even thought about reordering my game of the year rankings, but in the end I think it'll just miss being named there. That post is to follow.

Tallarn and Temeria

Progress continues little by little in both Opus Magnum and Super Mario Odyssey.

The real meat masticated in my gaming jaws lately has been with The Horus Heresy: Battle of Tallarn and The Witcher 3.

Tallarn takes the largest military engagement of the fictional galactic civil war that kicked off the Warhammer 40,000 setting and envisions it as a hex-based tactical war game. On one side is the traitorous Space Marine legion the Iron Warriors, and on the other is the ragtag planetary defense made up mostly of idle Imperial Guard on the world when it was killed from orbit by the opposition. Battles play out on small hex grids covered in a virus bomb miasma that doubles as fog of war, with small squadrons of tanks and other armored vehicles of various types including flying transports and the gigantic bipedal war machines known as Titans, and their cousins, the slightly smaller Knights.

Tallarn is very clearly a pretty quick port from iOS, but with a few key rebindings, I was able to make it feel pretty good on PC despite the big dopey UI. Scenarios can be played relatively quickly and simply, which is a plus for a player with my level of sophistication and dedication to games like this. I have completed the Apocalypse campaign from both sides so far, one of four or five in the game. As a very fervent fan of setting and especially the novel series that to a large part defines it, I have been enjoying this relatively simple war game. I'm actually reading the collected stories around this particular theater alongside playing the game, and it's harmonizing nicely. I might even recommend the game to non-setting fans, but the developer HexWar has about 20 other games that I'm guessing are similar enough that are set in other, real-world historical, settings that are probably worth looking at as well.

In The Witcher 3, I've gone back to flip flopping between control devices and settings for play. Last night I put in a good hour or two on the TV with the pad again. I think the sweet spot may actually end up being at the PC with the pad. There's no doubt the game looks better on my PC monitor, and the 360 pad control scheme, for all its own oddness, may just edge out the mouse and keyboard scheme due to some iffy menu design choices. It seems like they tried to come up with something that worked both ways, when they probably would have been better off coming up with two separate menu systems dedicated each way. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons why doing that would suck for the development of the game, but it would have been nice. There are too many little rough edges on either scheme for me to be completely comfortable just yet, but with some refinement I may be able to get to that point, and it might as well be with the pad, for the same reason I play Bethesda's RPGs that way; it gets really tiresome holding down W for hours at a time with my middle finger, and that's just not a problem using an analog stick for movement.

Progression-wise, I have now made it to Noveria and met up with Triss Merigold. Apparently she and Geralt fell out about six months previous to this, which does a bit to explain how he could begin the game once again apparently an item with Yennifer of Vengerberg. I don't know if there will be more to explore to that story, or whether the player is meant to respect their privacy on the matter and decide for Geralt who he is more interested in romantically going forward. As a player of the previous games, I feel like I know who Triss is. I'm interested in learning more about Yen before committing to anyone, if I do. I've read the first couple of books in the Witcher series, but I don't remember if there was enough in them to know much of anything about Yen from those. It's been a good long time since I read those. It was before The Witcher 2 came out. Now most or all of the rest of the series has been released, and I own some of them, so at some point I'll actually delve deeper in.

Apart from meeting up with Triss, I'm still following leads toward Ciri. I helped to awake the dream-scryer Corinne Tully in a "haunted" house, last. I want to follow the main thread to the next large piece or event, but I also don't want the rest of the game to get away from me. I don't want to outlevel any quests or contracts or potentially great witcher gear out there. I'm still settling in to how this game flows, nearly 50 hours in, now. Granted, I was away from it for two and a half years between hours 35 and 36, but the point still stands.

Today is my last day of work for 2017. I'm hoping to get in some real solid game time over the break, along with a good bit of reading, as well. I'll have my GOTY/BOTY posts in the next week or so, as well. I have already declared a GOTY and two runner ups on the GameBytes Show podcast, but I do reserve the right to change these up through the 31st!

Going with Geralt

I mentioned last entry that I was experimenting with how to return to The Witcher 3, and I have settled for now on at my PC, using mouse and keyboard. I may hop over to the TV through the Steam Link from time to time, but I haven't been able to shake the feeling that the PC experience is the best one. I went and met the Bloody Baron and did his questline, and at the moment I'm knocking out a few sidequests and contracts that I have found myself having outleveled. Experience seems kind of hard to come by, so I'm sure it'll pay to be thorough, aside from exploring the cool narratives of the world. The next big plot point I'm sure is waiting in Novigrad. I'm to go there to meet Triss Merigold, whom Geralt has been an item with during the last couple of games, and also to hunt for signs of Ciri. I have a couple of other errands to run first, though.

I'm also playing some Spelunky here and there, still. I don't know if I'll ever finish that game. Oh well, I'll be all over Spelunky 2 as soon as that comes out, either way.

The end of Super Mario Odyssey also can't be far away now. I'm in the Luncheon Kingdom now, and I have just found the painting that lets you warp to the Mushroom Kingdom, or at least a small part of it.

Progress also continues apace in Opus Magnum. The critical path puzzles are nice and doable, which I appreciate. It's always cool to see the finished process, as well.

Ready to Proceed

Last Booklog entry, I mentioned heading back to the Horus Heresy series after catching up on the Warhammer 40,000 proper timeline. As it turns out, I decided to read through all of the lore of the tabletop game's 8th edition first. There's a lot of interesting info on the current state of the galaxy in there, along with a cursory glance at all of the relevant factions. I still don't really know much to speak of of the T'au or Genestealer Cults. Are the latter a part of the Tyranid race or not? If so, how are they different? I'll have to delve into some more 40K fiction at some point to find out.

In the meantime, I have returned to the Heresy timeline, finishing off book 43, Shattered Legions. It's a collection of short stories and a novella featuring Iron Hands Warleader Shadrak Meduson and other key players in the remains of the three loyalist legions smashed at the Dropsite Massacre. Meduson becomes a type of guerrilla leader for this asymmetrical war effort to confound and delay Horus's return to Terra. There is a lot of exploration of themes like survivor's guild, betrayal, the desire for vengeance, justice, and the righting of wrongs, as well as integrating disparate parts into a new alloyed whole and modifying the organizational structure of a fighting force to adapt to a wildly different set of circumstances than it was originally built for. It's a kind of underexplored area in stories of Space Marines, since the Shattered Legions are much more of a handicapped and underdog faction than most in the fiction.

The next book in sequence is The Crimson King, which will be the first time we've seen much of Magnus and the Thousand Sons since the razing of Prospero much earlier in the series.

Ready to Rejoin the Rivian Roamer

I am ready to return to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt!

I wrapped up my playthrough of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night last night, coming up to a total of 200.5% of the game explored. I believe the last .1% could be gained by going into the final room and then using a library card to warp out of it before saving the game again. I also seem to remember some kind of glitch in the castle towers using the sword familiar maybe to somehow get outside the castle walls. That might make it possible to add a few more percentage points to the tally, but I don't recall exactly. I'm ready to another Richter playthrough at some point, too. I did that once, in college, I think. If I recall, you can get to most but not all places in the game and actually finish it. I'd like to explore some of the other ways to play at some point, as well, including as an Axe Armor (which I remember being very limited) and with your luck stat to the max but others lowered, which could be another fun spin on the game.

Opus Magnum also continues to captivate me. I've been playing a lot of its sub-game Sigmar's Garden, which is a kind of Shanghai variant played with the marbles used in the main game. It's diverting and goes well with a podcast. I want to get to 100 wins for the achievement and to see whatever story dialog goes along with doing so.

I have to work out exactly how I'm going to go forward with The Witcher 3. I briefly considered restarting the game, but being 35 hours in, I think I'd probably rather just continue on. I'm sure the game will end up over 100 hours in all, maybe 150, even. I think I remember the essentials, even though I might like to rewatch a few cutscenes. I also need to decide whether I'll play at my PC with mouse and keyboard, or on the Steam Link with a controller, or maybe even at my PC with a controller. I may re-familiarize myself with the game at the PC, then move over to the TV. Or, maybe it's better to just re-acquaint myself with the game using the pad from the jump. Content on screen isn't really a worry, since I'll mostly play when the kids are asleep, though at times I may want to play on the PC while they use the TV. Still, The Witcher isn't usually overly adult, it's only that way at certain times.

A Link to the Path

I'm still on track back to the Witcher 3. I'm drawing nearer to completion of this run of Symphony of the Night, with only about 4 sections of the inverted castle remaining to conquer before taking on Shaft and Dracula.

Something I've noticed this time around is that for as well as the castle inversion works for the game, there are some rough edges that prevent the second leg of the game from being quite so effortless as the first. It's easy to go the wrong way and find yourself under-leveled or under-geared for a section of the inverted castle, since there can be no mobility-based progression gating once you have acquired all of the motive skills and abilities from the first castle. Instead there is old-fashioned enemy toughness gating. This can still be gotten around, though, with some creative play and knowing when to mist by rougher sections on the way to gear upgrades or more beatable enemies to farm XP and upgrades on.

Elsewhere, I've done some podcast listening to Titan Quest and Spelunky while going for progression in those titles. I've also added some hardware to my setup, both a terabyte hard disk to the PC, and a Steam Link to the TV. The former allowed me to go and re-download some games that I plan to revisit, and the latter was cheap enough ($1) that I couldn't resist.

I toyed around with Skyrim and XCOM: Enemy Unknown a bit while trying out the Link. I decided to start a new non-Ironman campaign in XCOM just to see if I can't eventually actually win a campaign of that game. I'll need to focus on it at some point to make that a possibility.

The biggest addition to the rotation lately has been Opus Magnum, the new puzzle game from Zachtronics. I have long been a big fan of one of their previous games, SpaceChem. Opus Magnum is in some ways a lot like that one, though I haven't yet encountered its kind of insane difficulty here. Opus Magnum is a real looker, as well. It's got a great posh steampunk style and the alchemy machine works animate really well in a believably mechanical fashion. You play a newly graduated alchemist brought into a great house and tasked with combining base alchemical elements to do things like transmute mundane metals into gold or manufacture talcum power analogues, propulsion fuel, or even just hair product for your noble masters.

You're given a set of inputs and told what the required outputs are, and you have a selection of tools to use to assemble a machine to take care of the process that you have to envision and execute by programming grabber arms that can rotate or extend or move along tracks to deliver elements to various stations where they are transmuted or bonded or split in various ways so that you eventually end up with the finished product and deliver it to the output receptacle. It's a pretty basic concept, elaborated on in a huge variety of ways to create a very interesting and challenging and expressive puzzle game. Your creations only need to get the job done, but once finished they are evaluated against those of other players, so if you like you can chase efficiency on a few axes to enjoy refining your base creations, as well. I'm really enjoying the game so far.  

One Does Not Simply Play Through Mordor

I've given up on Shadow of Mordor. The game has never managed to click with me. I did feel like I finally got a good grip on it this last session, but in the end I still felt like it was an overall pretty mediocre game made up of component parts done better elsewhere. Assassin's Creed, the Batman Arkham series, Hitman, and others, cover all these bases sufficiently. I'm considering this one done.

Which, along with my completion of the Destiny 2 campaign and beginning of the upside-down castle in Symphony of the Night, puts me well on my way back toward playing The Witcher 3 again.

I'm still making my way through Super Mario Odyssey, too. I'm just past New Donk City and in the Seaside Kingdom, now. I like how this game lets you bypass a lot of things if you like, and come back to them later if you wish.

I'm also continuing to practice running Spelunky, hoping for an eventual victory. I still don't reliably make it to the Jungle stages, though.

I did manage to finally finish off Hexcells Infinite, getting that achievement for doing 60 procedurally generated puzzles. That is definitely a low-stress way to play that game, though less interesting accordingly.

Finally, Titan Quest has received an unexpected expansion some 11 years after release. Its called Ragnarok and adds a fifth act as well as some other improvements. I've never made it much past the first act, but curiosity and wanting to encourage such rashness from THQ Nordic overtook me, and I bought in. Maybe this will do the trick, finally.

On the Road Back

I'm sticking to the plan I laid out last week.

I've polished off the Destiny 2 campaign. Overall verdict: better than the first game, not as good as any of Bungie's Halo games. I question the need for a campaign at all. Perhaps Destiny should cut straight to the gear chase. I've set the game aside for the time being.

In it's place I've been concentrating on my Symphony of the Night save. As of this writing just prior to a trip out of town, I have 100% of the initial upright castle completed, and I'm ready to tackle the inverted castle. So, pretty decent progress, so far.

I'm unsure of whether I'll end up clicking with Shadow of Mordor and finishing it. I've struggled to, but then I don't think I've actually focused my efforts to do so on it to this point. Every fight I get into, it still seems like I'm being overwhelmed by too many orcs, and too many of them want to get in my face and start a Nemesis system action. I don't know if this is just how the game will always be, or if at some point I am supposed to be able to slay them 10 at a time and be able to fight 50 of them off without breaking a sweat. Something just feels off about the balance to me. I think I may need to just really start trying to grind out some ability and skill points on lower level nemeses in order to be able to tackle tougher orcs and larger groups of them.

I'm at I think 52/60 Hexcells proc gen puzzles done, and I've been brushing up on my Spelunky skills, trying to get back in the swing of things. These may be what I play tonight, if I have any free time.

This will all be put on hold, though, since we're headed out of town for 5 days. I'll take the Switch, but I'm not sure what else. Perhaps the DSs or SNES Classic? I'm leaning away from the Vita, though, and the PS3 and PC are obviously not coming along. I'll probably do more reading than gaming, but we'll see.

Catching Up to the 40K Timeline

I took some time away from the Horus Heresy series to read about recent developments at the end of the timeline, in the 40K era. A friend into the tabletop Warhammer 40,000 game sent me a bunch of the latest campaign books that ushered in the 8th edition of the game: Wrath of Magnus, and the Gathering Storm trilogy of Fall of Cadia, Fracture of Biel-Tan, and Rise of the Primarch.

These are all very matter-of-factly written, in a dramatic historical style. They don't read like the novels at all. They're drier, but still kind of interesting. Things that would be momentous in a novel are at times glossed over or related with little to no fanfare. I think they are meant to serve more as background lore ("fluff" in Warhammer terms) for players of the wargame than as a successful dramatic narrative, which the Horus Heresy books hew more toward.

It was interesting being introduced to some of the successor factions 10,000 years after the era that I am most familiar with. Previously there were no loyalist primarchs around in M41, or M42 now, I suppose. Roboute Guilliman has been awoken from stasis as of the current events, though, and led the forces of the Imperium of Man on a century's crusade to reclaim worlds lost to the forces of the Warp after the opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the great galaxy-spanning Warp rift dividing the Imperium in two.

I followed up these campaign books, which dealt with events leading up to Guilliman's resurrection from stasis, with the first new era 40K novel, Dark Imperium. Here Guilliman ends the Indomitus Crusade to go back to Ultramar and free it from an incursion of Chaos forces from the plague god Nurgle, led in part by the traitor daemon primarch Mortation, Guilliman's erstwhile brother in a previous era. The novel also introduces some Primaris Marines characters and delves into how they're fitting into the newly reconstituted Space Marine chapters since the newest Ultima founding that Guilliman undertook after his return to the Imperium. The novel leaves off with the primarch, now Imperial Regent and overall military commander in chief, setting of on a lead after Mortarion to hunt him down and kill him. I understand from the Lexicanum wiki that in the campaign to follow, the Ultramarines defeat and drive away the Death Guard, but that Mortarion escapes, and the Nurgle forces have to contend with advances from the other gods of Chaos into some of their newest territorial gains. I'm not sure any more has been written after this point in the timeline. Presumably Guilliman will circle back to Terra to do some of his non-military duties as Imperial Regent, leaving the newly bolstered ranks of Primaris and Adeptus Astartes to the work of war going forward, at least until its time to confront another of his brothers. He's already encountered both Magnus and Mortarion, and been taunted by Fulgrim, as well. Maybe that's the next showdown, or maybe Angron or Perturabo or Lorgar, if he's still out there, will appear to challenge the returned primarch.

My hope, though, is that we next hear from another of the several loyalist primarchs long disappeared. Maybe they come back as contra-Chaos, but also not aligned to the Imperium. That would be a likely role for many of them. It could be Vulkan, Jaghatai Khan, The Lion, Rogal Dorn, Leman Russ, or Corvus Corax. None of these are certainly dead, as far as I know. Dorn or Vulkan could be, I guess, but in the case of the latter, I doubt it. The rest I've heard have either disappeared or are kept in stasis (The Lion).

It'll be back to the Heresy time period next. I'm still in the middle of book 43, a short story collection. There have been 3-4 other books released in the meantime. There is other material in the universe outside of the Heresy that I want to read, though, The Beast Arises and the Black Legion series, in particular.

Roadmap to Rivian Redemption

I haven't done one of these in a while. These roadmap projects don't tend to work out, but this time I have a particular destination in mind, and I don't think it's that far away.

I want to get through the Witcher 3. It's a farce that I haven't yet, since I was into The Witcher back in 2009, before the second game was even announced. Yes, I was into it long before most anyone else in the west knew what it even was, let alone that it was cool. Credit to the old GFW Radio for turning me on to it. I never said I discovered it.

For whatever reason, I set the game aside after about 35 hours and got distracted by something else. Spring/Summer of 2015... I'm not sure what it might have been then, but definitely by the time MGSV came out I forgot about it entirely, and have yet to return. This then, is me plotting a route back.

To account for what stands between me and going home today to reinstall the game: I've recently dabbled in both Skyrim and Shadow of Mordor, two games in different ways adjacent to the Witcher 3. Skyrim is different enough and long enough that it needs to stand alone. It's also got a kind of timeless quality that keeps me circling back to it. I won't be finishing it off, but I can veer around it. Shadow of Mordor, that one definitely has a finite well of enjoyment that I could exhaust, and probably should, before turning back to Geralt's adventures. So there's one thing to tackle.

I also have a number of other non-fantasy, non-roleplaying engagements at the moment, including Destiny 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Castlevania: Symphony of the night, Hexcells, Diablo III, Breath of the Wild, and others. Mario is new and will last forever. That will get some more play here and there, but not be a priority. Zelda gets avoided like Skyrim. Destiny 2 gets polished off, at least the campaign portion. After that, it can simmer, much like Diablo III will. I want to finish this run of SotN, as well. That won't take too long. Hexcells can run in parallel, as can my quest to finally complete a run of Spelunky, whether through Olmec or Yama. Perhaps both. I also have suspended games of Metal Gear Rising, Metroid: Samus Returns, and AM2R to consider. Or not, maybe. For now I'll try to clean my plate of these three, in no particular order:

1. Shadow of Mordor
2. Destiny 2 campaign
3. CV SotN

Cornucopia of Delights

I played some Team Fortress 2 for the first time in a long time last week. There was an update recently, and I was kind of curious to see what was new or different. It mostly feels like the same old good game as before, with new maps and a new system of "contracts" which seem like class-specific challenges to accomplish, probably to unlock new cosmetic items in the game. I was just as bad as I remembered at the game, to boot. Unfortunately it'll probably be a while before I'm back again because I might have a multiplayer FPS that feels worth playing PvP in, and that is...

Destiny 2. The PC version of the game finally came out last week, and I've been enjoying it, so far. It's very much the same game as the first, but with some of the harder edges rounded off a little by all accounts, and now actually present on my preferred platform. This is important for a couple of reasons. First, I can readily dip in and out of the game. Second, I very much prefer playing FPS with mouse and keyboard. Once I finish the story campaign and get to the meat of the game, I can focus on the good stuff--finding gear and progressing my character. One facet of Destiny I like is that both PvE and PvP can contribute likewise to said progression. I've used the Crucible mode through the campaign so far to level up when the next mission has been gated by experience points. As I stand now, my Warlock, who as far as I am concerned is my same unremarkable not-very-accomplished Guardian from the first game, has just hit 15 and is ready to go on the mission to commandeer a Cabal ship to use to infiltrate their "Almighty" star-killer ship and show that Space Marine reject Dominus Ghaul the stellar door, as it were.

In other large release news, Super Mario Odyssey came out last week as well, and I also bought that. I figured the kids would enjoy it, but also that it's basically a compulsory purchase for Switch owners. Plus, I was curious. I've never really loved 3D platformers, but Super Mario Galaxy was pretty good, and I enjoyed that. Odyssey so far is pretty charming and good fun. I've made it to the Mexican-inspired third kingdom so far, and let Mia play a little in that area. We'll be playing more, I'm sure. I'm not sure what to say about the game, though, other than it feels good and has inventive and original level design ideas. Mario has cosmetic wardrobe changes now, as well, which is kind of interesting. None cost any real money, of course.

A few smaller updates:

Diablo III - running bounties here and there, still wanting to improve my Wizard's Vyr's set build. I still need to ace that set dungeon.

SotN - fairly deep into a run by this point, one that I would like to see through to its end. Still love this game so much.

Hexcells - over 40 out of 60 procedurally generated puzzles done.

Mix Me Up, It's Autumn

I'm all over the place right now.

What I really want to do, though, is go home and play more Symphony of the Night. I played maybe an hour over the weekend, and it's still so great. I've got my current save up past the point of where the prior PS3 one was, before I wiped the system out of frustration with some other aspect of its operation. The save file on the Vita copy of the game I have is further along, I think, though maybe not by much.

Another game I've played catch up in recently is Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. I bought this on PS3 back at release, but never made it very far in. Soon, a PC port was announced, and I resolved to buy and play that instead. Now, I've made good on that resolution, at least partially. I'm now past where I was on PS3, at least. It's a good game. I'll keep it around until I finish it, maybe. No reason to play Bayonetta or Devil May Cry or anything like that while this is unbeaten, I figure.

Last week I decided to check out World of Tanks: Blitz upon learning that one could unlock Warhammer 40,000 tanks in that game. It's surprisingly good for a very F2P mobile game port. I think I'd prefer to play the real PC client, though. Hopefully that is better put together. As for the 40K tanks, there was no way I was going to play it hardcore enough to get that far, much less take advantage of them once I had.

I'm still plinking away at Hexcells Infinite, as well. I'm over halfway to the last achievement, with about 33 or 35 randomly generated puzzles finished. I have my eye on another puzzle game to fill this slot once I'm done with this one.

Talk of Shadow of War has driven me back to Shadow of Mordor once more. I continue to be frustrated with the 50-on-1 structure of it's fights, though. It's a little ridiculous, really. The nemesis system could really be toned down some. I don't need 4 new hopeful captains to chime in with a taunt every time I get into a little scuffle at an orc stronghold. I may as well finish it, at this point, though.

I also spent some more time in Skyrim again this weekend. I might as well get on with playing a lot more of it, too. It seems like there's never a time to be free of the mainline Elder Scrolls games. They're too weirdly compelling.

Lastly, I've finally slowed my Diablo III roll down a bit from the fevered pitch of the last several weeks.I am kind of just waiting for the forthcoming patch, now, to see what changes there. I will continue to run bounties and rifts here and there, in the meantime. I need to improve my gear more to complete the Vyr's set dungeon, and complete the Delsere's and Tal'Rasha's sets to do those ones, as well. At that point I might consider my Wizard done, or press on for a clear of GR70 if that doesn't happen in the meantime, in order to unlock access to primal ancient gear. That would be the play; and from there on to Barbarian and the rest of the classes to do those set dungeons as well.

Trapped in the Burning Hells

I can't break free from the grasp of Diablo III's endgame. Or, maybe I just don't want to. I'm to the point where I can handle Torment IX, though I do die some. I will try to push on to Torment X in my next session. It seems like you really should play on the highest difficulty level you can, reasonably. The drop rates for things increase with difficulty. Torment X is another nice increase to drop rates, provided I can survive it well enough. If not, then I'll continue playing Torment IX until I can get some upgrades.

At this point that's tough to do, though. I would need ancient pieces where I don't already have them, as well as synergized and maxed rolls from the mystic. It's no longer as easy as finding a lucky yellow or simple legendary. Now it's all about the legendary affixes and set bonuses and ancient pieces, and of course, paragon levels. Luckily you get more paragon experience points too, with greater difficulty settings. I did manage to get a couple of Unity rings and the Templar relic that makes it impossible for him to die. Thus, my damage received is permanently split among us, effectively mitigating a lot of it. More is mitigated by a legendary gem I have socketed to take the edge of damage spikes, taking the damage and parceling it out evenly over a few seconds, with a chance that the running balance will be wiped with every kill. I should now just make sure I am killing as quickly as possible, which could mean remaining on Torment IX, or even VIII, in order to maximize efficiency.

I finished all of the designed puzzles in Hexcells Infinite, and I'm working on finishing 60 of proceduraly generated ones. I have 20 down, so far. These are much easier and faster than the human-created ones, full of hints and free of consequences for mistakes. As long as you finish the puzzle, you get credit for it. It's up to you if you want to cheat or not. I don't let myself take shots in the dark, but if I make a mistake out of carelessness or haste, I'm not bothered by it. I take the mistake (and free cell) and move on.

I decided to check out something new last week, and that was the old LucasArts adventure game Loom. It seems like an interesting setting, but I just cannot get along with this genre. Everything is so slow, hard to use, and generally obtuse. I don't have the patience or time for this sort of thing. I gave it a half hour, that's enough.

Look Out! Samus Is Here

I've been playing some Metroid games over the last week or so. Metroid: Samus Returns recently came out on the 3DS, it being a remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus, the old Game Boy game. I played through that game in its entirety whenever that was, maybe 25 years ago.

The remake is pretty solid. It's fun enough to play, but as is usually the case with polygonal "2.5D" graphics, its pretty ugly. Super Metroid, which I played a little of as well this past weekend, and the fan-made AM2R, which also attempts to remake Metroid II, but with Super Metroid-style 16-bit graphics, both look much nicer.

Another problem with Metroid: Samus Returns is that it forces you to use the circle pad to control Samus, and the d-pad below it as a simple selector of ancillary modules in Samus' suit. 2D action-platforming is never ideal on any sort of analog stick or pad. There is also the somewhat questionable addition of the melee counter move to the game. I find that it makes combat a more reactive prospect. It seems like the best course of action with an enemy is to let it charge you, bat it away, and then put a few energy rounds into it. I'm not decided on whether I feel this harms the flow of the game yet.

I might prefer to continue playing AM2R over the remake, if I'm honest. Maybe there's room for both, though. They don't seem to be exactly the same in terms of map layout, at least.

I'm still working toward completion of Hexcells Infinite, as well. I had some problems with the last couple of puzzles involving misclicks and jumping the gun, so I had to screenshot my progress to those points and painstakingly recreate it to ensure I could get a perfect clear on each.

Otherwise, the last week or so has been all Diablo. I felt the call back again, and decided this time to dust off my Wizard, the first class I played when the game launched, and delve into the real endgame. I've been trying to sort out a solid play loop while also reacquainting myself to the class. I've settled on running bounties enough to keep a stock of materials for use in extracting legendary affixes to save in Kanai's Cube, and then running Nephalem Rifts to keep a stock of Greater Rift keystones in order to run Greater Rifts for upgrades to legendary gems. All while collecting loot along the way, periodically using infernal machines to collect Hellfire jewelry materials, and trying to track down as yet unexperienced events and places to fill out my achievements list. I would also like to collect all the full class sets in the game and run all the associated dungeons, while I'm at it. There is seemingly no end to the things one can get up to in this game.

Emily Kaldwin Retakes the Throne

You can safely assume I'm always dipping into Elite Dangerous, Diablo III, and Spelunky here and there. I may not mention them every time, going forward, but they do seem to be ones I regularly revisit for a top-up. Since the last post I've flown some in Elite, discovering new worlds, and I believe ran some bounties in Diablo III.



I am also still working on Hexcells Infinite, too. I'm getting near the end of the pre-made levels, and maybe the ends of my skill level with the game. Or maybe I just need more sleep before loading it up the next time.


Most of my game time over the last week has been spent finishing up Dishonored 2 ahead of the Death of the Outsider. I maintained a low chaos world state up through the very end of my play through as Emily, and did most or all of the non-lethal and optional 'better' ways of eliminating targets.


Perhaps my favorite was the mission A Crack in the Slab, which involves going back in time to prevent a mining magnate from witnessing the séance that brings the witch Delilah back into the world from the void, a sight which drives him mad and leads to the gradual deterioration of Karnaca and the Dust District in particular. Another good one was replacing in office the Duke of Serkonos with this body double, which seems a little far-fetched, but was also a tidy solution to the problem of his rule. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't find a non-combat way of making Delilah unconscious in the final mission, but I probably just wasn't trying hard enough. I was trying to finish the game while wrangling kids.


Dishonored 2 really seems like a game you are meant to play through multiple times. Not only are there two characters you can take through the game, but each has so many different skills that it's probably impossible to see everything without doing two or more runs through each, especially considering the varying world states you might want to see. I might like to do a Corvo run at some point, being a little more lethal, since that kind of seems more in keeping with his character. I never finished my second Corvo run of the original Dishonored, either. I should go back and do that too. Then I'd also want to replay the Daud missions, as well, since they connect to Dishonored 2 much more directly than the first does.


I really like this series, and I have Death of the Outsider queued up and waiting. I'm excited to get into it.

Regulars

I finished off Hexcells Plus in the last week, and have gotten into Hexcells Infinite. I've been lucky enough to not mis-click too many times, and I got the achievement for perfecting all of the levels in Plus. I'm looking forward to doing the same for Infinite. I tore through about 5-6 levels pretty quickly the other night.

In Dishonored 2, I played through the Clockwork Mansion level. I'm not sure what I expected, but so much was made of it that I was a little underwhelmed, to be honest. It is a cool design, to be sure, but I think it might have had more impact if I hadn't thought to expect to be blown away. Regardless, I am maintaining my low chaos world state, even if my stealth skills leave much to be desired. I noticed that I had begun this game on Hard difficulty, which I am now thinking was a mistake. For a first time through, especially in a game like this, Normal is probably better. I made the mistake of assuming that because I'd played a lot of the first Dishonored that I would be in tip-top shape to take on the sequel, not taking into account that I might spend months away from the game between levels.

I made a similar over-estimation of my capability in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, insisting on playing on Classic difficulty, and then never yet being able to complete a campaign. Well, I got the urge to play more again (XCOM 2: War of the Chosen just released), and decided to abandon that ongoing campaign and begin another in the expanded game, XCOM: Enemy Within. This time I'm sticking to Normal difficulty, albeit still on Ironman mode and with several of the "Second Encounter" options flagged to make the game more interesting. These seem like they can impact difficulty as well, but in both directions, as opposed to only making it harder.

In Elite, I made my way back to the bubble to pick up a second Auto Field-Maintenance Unit, and while there was able to fairly quickly rank up my Engineer relationship with Felicity Farseer to the point where she would do fifth-level upgrades on my Frame Shift Drive, meaning now I can jump nearly 46 LY at a time from star to star, where before I was only able to jump about 34 LY. Now I'm out exploring again, having dropped by Betelgeuse just last night. I'm angling above the galactic plane now, and directly out to the galactic east, thinking to explore some of the apparently empty regions out there to begin with. Maybe after that I will swing wide around back toward the core and the Colonia region. This would be months' worth of playtime, though. Who knows what might happen in the meantime, especially with a large game update not too far over the horizon. 2.4, which I believe has been dubbed "The Return" is going to be pushed out before too long, according to Frontier Developments.