Tyler F.M. Edwards's Blog, page 6

WoW: Time Is the Fire in Which We Burn

Well, it finally happened. After six years away (discounting brief flirtations with the free version), I have returned to World of Warcraft in anticipation of the Worldsoul Saga. As of this writing, I’ve barely set foot in the Dragon Isles, so I have no cogent thoughts on the current expansion. Instead, I want to talk about something much more… philosophical.

Mai’s hair is going grey.

As I considered this return, I was struck by how long this game has been around, and how long I’ve been playing it. I was a teenager when I created Mai. I’m thirty-three now. And I started thinking about the passage of time in-universe as well as in the real world.

Really I suppose this started with the War Within cinematic trailer. Anduin was a child when this game started. He’s a grizzled adult now. Thrall was barely an adult when we met him in Warcraft III. Now he’s a middle-aged father with a salt-and-pepper beard.

And Mai? I pictured her as in her early to mid twenties when I started playing her, which means she must be in at least in her mid-forties now, and she’s had a hard life. The years must be taking their toll. Hence my changing her hair.

As I’ve said many times, I never really got into role-playing with other people, but the histories and stories I make up about my characters in WoW have always been important to me. I haven’t put so much thought into these things in recent games — my New World characters have only the slimmest of concepts behind them. I think it’s a combination of the fact I was a lot younger and less depressed when I started WoW, combined with the — to be brutally honest — tedious nature of its gameplay. This game gives you a lot of time to let your mind wander as you play, so why not tell yourself some stories?

Thinking about Mai getting older makes me feel some surprisingly strong emotions, though I’d be hard-pressed to name them. I remember her as a bright, patriotic young soldier who got recruited out of basic training by Stormwind Intelligence. But that was a long time ago now. Now she’d be staring down middle age. I can’t imagine she had time for marriage or family. She’s likely the last of her line. How does she feel about that?

And Mai wouldn’t be the only one of my characters feeling the weight of years grow heavy. My shaman was old when I made him. Likely he’d have died of old age now. I could never bring myself to delete him, but I’m not sure I’ll play him again. The old man deserves his rest.

My paladin is no spring chicken, either. In her current incarnation, she’s a veteran of the Second War. She’d probably still be alive — probably — but I doubt she’d be in fighting shape these days.

Shaman and paladin, at least, are classes I wouldn’t mind rerolling. I always wanted a Blood Elf paladin; my current one is only human for the sake of a guild I haven’t talked to in years. I’m also weighing the possibility of creating a shaman with the new (to me) Dark Iron Dwarf allied race. I like the cut of their jib.

Time is little concern to my many and sundry Elf characters — two or three decades isn’t much to the likes of them — but that doesn’t mean they might not retire for other reasons.

My warlock’s story was always about defeating the Burning Legion, and she did that. Part of me is keen to keep playing the character, for both role-play and gameplay reasons, but part of me likes the idea of letting her retire to Quel’thalas so she can finally start to heal her many hurts. If anyone deserves it, she does.

I’m not sure how much of this will be relevant. I don’t know how much I can restrain my alt addiction, but I do want to at least try to treat WoW more casually this time. I’m not done with New World by any means, and there’s only so many hours in the day. That might mean that I only play one or two characters.

Mai will keep fighting until she can’t, but the rest of the roster has a more uncertain future. Maybe more of the old cast will return, or maybe it’s time for a new generation of heroes to rise.

I’m not sure what point I’m trying to make here, except I guess that this game is making me face my own mortality in some truly strange ways.

The Age of Empires Revival Exits the Honeymoon Phase

After more than a decade of being all but forgotten, the Age of Empires franchise has had an incredible renaissance in the last few years. At first I was overjoyed by this, and I’m still glad it happened, but I do find I am now reaching the end of my honeymoon phase with this new incarnation of the franchise. Some of that is due to burnout from over-exposure, but I do think some genuine missteps have been made in the games’ management, as well.

I’ve already talked at length about my frustrations with the bizarre, unfocused direction Age of Empires IV has taken since launch, but other AoE games are starting to stumble, as well. This was best embodied by the recent “New Year, New Age” stream. It featured announcements for multiple games in the franchise, all of which managed to disappoint me on some level.

Definitely my greatest dismay came in regards to the unveiling of Age of Mythology: Retold. Age of Mythology was one of the most beloved games of my childhood, and I’d been very hyped about its upcoming remaster, but it already it seems to be making some major mistakes.

Some of it sounds good, to be sure. The new graphics look decent, and shifting god powers to a cooldown-based system will definitely make the game play a lot better, though I don’t envy the devs who have to figure out how to keep the game balanced after such a massive change.

But I had assumed it would be getting the treatment given to other Age of Empires definitive editions: All previous content, plus new stuff. That is not the case.

Firstly, we don’t seem to be getting any significant new content. I’d dearly hoped for a new civilization with an accompanying campaign (though I grant that is an ambitious ask), or failing that maybe some new gods and/or campaign content for existing civs. Neither came to pass.

The only new content we’re getting is a solo/co-op “arena of the gods” feature about which few details are available. This could be really good. If it’s something with the replayability of StarCraft II co-op missions, that would be amazing. But it could also be (and realistically is much more likely to be) a single scenario with minimal replay value.

Worse still, we’re not even getting all the previous content. The entire Tale of the Dragon expansion from the Enhanced Edition has been cut out.

I knew Tale of the Dragon didn’t receive the warmest of receptions, but I was shocked to see just how much people despised it and its Chinese civilization. The more moderate China haters “only” think it needs completely rebuilt from the ground up, but many others are deliriously gleeful that it’s been removed and/or ardent that no Chinese civilization should ever be added to the game at any point in the future.

The whole thing smacks of xenophobia, and the fact the developers appear to have bowed to such attitudes has left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth.

I agree that Tale of the Dragon had some polish issues, especially in the campaign, which would probably need a major overhaul. But that’s exactly why I was excited to see it in Retold. As horrible as their current government may be, China is a culture with a rich and beautiful history and mythology that deserves proper representation in this game.

A lot of people are speculating an updated Chinese civilization may be a free DLC post-launch, and if that’s the case, I’ll be mollified, but it is just speculation. If Tale of the Dragon never arrives or is something we need to buy again on top of the purchase price of Retold, I’m less likely to be forgiving.

AoM: Retold has now gone from one of my most anticipated upcoming games to something I’m on the fence about purchasing at all.

Age of Empires III, meanwhile, got an “announcement” for a new DLC that consisted of nothing but two flags being thrown up on-screen, which is a contender for the most half-assed announcement in gaming history.

Fans identified the flags as belonging to Denmark and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In a vacuum, I’d say those are decent choices for new civilizations, but… this was already by far the most Euro-centric AoE game, and the last several DLCs have also been focused on European civs (or culturally European civs, like the United States). If past history is any guide, this DLC will also feature no campaigns or much of anything else for single-player fans, so it’s likely to be a hard pass from me.

On the bright(?) side, AoE3 was always my least favourite installment of the franchise. My expectations for it are never terribly high, so it can never disappointment me too much.

That brings us to Age of Empires II, historically the best game in the franchise and to this day the most well-supported, but even there my enthusiasm is starting to dip.

For one thing, the sheer amount of content and DLCs is starting to feel overwhelming, and I’m not thrilled with the direction of a lot of them. Again, they have focused far too much on Europe, and to a lesser extent Asia, while leaving more under-represented regions neglected. Did we really need an entire Burgundian civilization while Africa and the Americans still have only three civilizations each?

I haven’t bought the new Mountain Royals expansion, I may not in future, and I am beginning to really regret having wasted money on the in-hindsight deeply unnecessary Lords of the West expansion. I was just so happy that AoE2 was getting new content at all that I was happy to throw money at anything they offered.

I’m also finding it increasingly hard to go back to AoE2 when AoE4 improved on its gameplay so well. This is probably the biggest source of my newfound ennui with the franchise: AoE4 has the mechanics I want, but it does little to support my playstyle, whereas AoE2 treats single-player fans very well but has dated gameplay. There’s no “goldilocks game” that does everything I want.

AoE2’s announcement at the New Year, New Age stream didn’t help matters. Going in, we were told to expect a “campaign-focused” expansion. Pretty much everyone took this to mean we’d get a DLC adding campaigns for older civilizations that still don’t have them, something I would have been happy to see.

Instead, the upcoming Victors and Vanquished contains exactly zero campaigns. It’s a collection of standalone single-player scenarios, most of which are more polished versions of already existing community-made scenarios. That’s similar to campaign content, but it’s definitely not the same thing.

A lot of people are grumpy about being asked to pay for stuff that was already available for free, even if it’s been given a spitshine. I’m turned off because apparently most of these scenarios get very experimental with the game’s mechanics, especially eschewing traditional base-building and economy. I never liked those kind of missions in the campaigns, and I don’t think I want to pay for more of their ilk.

I wouldn’t really mind so much if they hadn’t managed expectations so poorly. It’s not the end of the world if they do an experimental DLC that doesn’t appeal to me personally, but the “campaign-focused” comment really had us expecting something completely different.

So yes, there’s been a lot of disappointments. By no means am I ready to throw in the towel on Age of Empires, but I think I am past the point of uncritically gobbling up anything they offer. The novelty of games that were so important to my childhood getting new content once again is no longer enough on its own; new content must prove itself on its own merits.

Song of the Month: Metric, Lost Kitten

Recently I was talking to someone about how much I enjoy the dichotomy of songs that sound light and fun, but which have very dark lyrics. This is something of a specialty of my favourite band, and never have Metric taken it to such an extreme as in Lost Kitten from the Synthetica album.

This is a sugar-sweet, bouncy, bubblegum pop song… with some of the most depressing lyrics you’ll ever hear.

I don’t know if Metric has even explained the meaning behind the song. My interpretation has always been that it’s sung from the perspective of a man who’s fallen in love with a substance-abusing sex worker. She’s too lost in her self-destruction for them to ever be together, but he can’t let her go, so he’s become her enabler.

I’ve heard other interpretations that are far less sympathetic to the viewpoint character, however.

StarCraft II: A Prestigious Endeavour

I’m currently in a bit of a gaming limbo where I’m killing time until the release of New World’s next patch and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. Lacking any clear direction, I decided to bust out Ol’ Reliable: StarCraft II co-op missions.

I’ve played a lot of co-op over the years, so I’m at the point where I’m struggling to find ways to keep it fresh. I decided to turn to the prestige system, wherein one resets a commander to level one in exchange for a talent you can equip that changes their playstyle in some way. I knew I hadn’t done much with prestige, but I was surprised to realize Raynor was the only commander I’d prestiged to date, having unlocked all three of his talents and regularly using two of them (first and third).

While I appreciate the prestige system is meant to be a time sink, I always felt it was an error to make you unlock prestige talents in a specific order. To me the chief appeal of prestige talents is to improve characters you didn’t otherwise enjoy, or at least weren’t your favourites. I have no interest in prestiging Nova; she’s perfect the way she is. But I also don’t want to relevel a character I don’t much like two or three times just to get a prestige that might appeal to me.

That said, I looked over the options and found a few commanders who fell into the sweet spot of being commanders I enjoyed playing enough that I didn’t hate releveling them, and which I still felt had room to be improved by prestige talents. These were Alarak, Karax, Han and Horner, and Zagara.

Karax took some willpower. My goal was to get his second talent, Templar Apparent, which removes his ability to produce turrets but makes his combat units cost less than they normally would instead of more. Karax has many of my favourite Protoss units, but their massively inflated cost made it difficult to use them viably.

The trouble is low level Karax suuuuucks. He’s probably the most dependent on leveling upgrades of any commander, and even at max level he’s a candidate for the weakest commander, assuming you’re not on a defensive map or using prestige talents. There’s little risk of losing co-op matches these days, but being totally dependent on your ally carrying you isn’t a great feeling.

It was worth it, though. Templar Apparent makes him a much stronger and, more importantly, more fun commander. It’s a very Protossy feeling army: tanky and hard-hitting.

Alarak’s first talent, Artificer of Souls, buffs his mechanical units, which was already my preferred playstyle for him, so it’s pretty much just a direct buff for me. Only reason it took me this long to unlock is because I had fallen out of the habit of playing Alarak, and he’s one of the hardest commanders to play, so it was intimidating to pick him up again.

Long term, I would like to unlock his third prestige as well. It lets him build an army normally, instead of it only being a temporary calldown. I’m not as horny for the Deathfleet as most fans seem to be, but it would be nice to have the option to go that way. It would also be good to have an army for him that isn’t quite so dependent on essential upgrades — I love my Wrathwalkers, but having to upgrade them so they can hit air is a pain. Don’t see myself getting around to unlocking prestige three any time soon, though.

So far my biggest disappointment has been Zagara. Her first prestige talent removes her as a hero unit but allows you to more quickly produce even bigger swarms of lings and scourge. A beefy hero unit always felt like a bit of an odd fit for a commander focused on swarms of disposable trash units, and certainly prestige one seems to be the only version of Zagara I seem to group with these days.

But now that I’ve tried it, I don’t think I like it. Without Zagara’s hero unit to micro, there isn’t really anything to do but build a couple macro hatches and hold down the Z key for twenty minutes. It’s boring.

I may at some point give her second prestige a try. It buffs her aberrations and corruptors, which I always thought were underrated units anyway.

I was also hoping for more from Han and Horner’s second prestige talent, which was my goal for them. It reduces the vespene cost and charge cooldown for summoning Horner’s air units in exchange for reducing the number of galleons you can produce.

I was always a bit disappointed that H&H play more like a Mira Han commander with occasional cameos by Horner’s troops, so doubling down on Matt’s air fleet appeals to me, but I don’t think the talent goes far enough. Even with the cost reduction, his units are still crazy expensive. I think it should have been 30% reduced vespene cost rather than 20. One time my partner DCed and I got four bases worth of gas income, and I still felt starved for it until mid-late game.

Also, as much as it makes sense to reduce your galleons as a way of shifting away from Mira’s units, the fact remains galleons are H&H’s best combat unit, even without taking into account their unit production capabilities, so losing them stings.

I’m going to keep using the talent, as it still brings me closer to the playstyle I want from H&H, but I was hoping for more.

I’d be lying if I said I was still having as much fun with co-op now as I did when it was new, but the fact it still holds my attention at all after the truly ungodly amount of time I’ve put into it is high praise in and of itself. Especially when you consider it’s actually a relatively small amount of content.

One thing about playing anything this long is that even the smallest flaws start to really wear on your nerves. I wish more gamers understood this — that there’s a difference between “this game has severe problems” and “this game has minor problems, but I’ve played it for 2,000 hours so they seem big to me.” The latter is where I’m at with SC2 co-op.

For me the biggest issue is the power creep. This is a comfort game for me, and I don’t need it to be super hard, but most matches are just absolute facerolls these days, even on brutal. Mutations aren’t a great solution since most are annoying or only beatable by certain commanders, on top of being super hard generally.

Pain.

You can really see the design philosophy shifted a few times over co-op’s life. Early on they clearly wanted each commander to have weaknesses as well as strengths and rely on each other for success. See Karax’s inflated unit costs, or Alarak’s struggles against air units.

But then around Nova, they stopped giving commanders clear weaknesses. Nova’s my favourite commander, but she wasn’t healthy for the game. She should have had an Achilles heel of some kind, even if she remained strong in most areas. From that point on, commander design became about making them generalists without any flaws.

And then starting with Tychus, they just abandoned all semblance of balance or sanity. They started making commanders not just crazy strong, but strong in a way that leaves their partners often unable contribute meaningfully. It’s like they forgot it’s a co-operative game mode and designed each commander to be able to solo the map. Stetmann is a minor exception, being very strong but not game-breaking the way the other later commanders are.

Tychus and Mengsk are the worst offenders for me. Not just broken in terms of power level, but potentially in very uninteractive ways.

With Mengsk it depends on the build. Most are fun to play alongside, but a lot of people play him by massing earthsplitter ordinance and just wiping the entire map with artillery barrages, without even leaving their base. When you’re paired with one of these players, there’s little to do but sit and watch.

Tychus is even worse. His crew of hero units are so strong, and so easy to use, that every Tychus player can effortlessly solo any co-op map. Most Tychus players even seem to go out of their way to prevent you from contributing in any meaningful way. They’ll make sure to fight in front of your mines if you’re H&H or Abathur. They’ll teleport in front of every attack wave, wiping it before you get a chance to fight.

It’s gotten so bad I’ve started doing something I once would have considered unthinkable: I’m immediately leaving games if I get pared with a Tychus or a Mengsk with the earthsplitter talent. It feels like a bit of a dick move, but I’ve got better things to do than sit on my hands while my partner solos the map, and based on the way they play, I think most of these players would also prefer not to have a partner.

It’s funny how Tychus managed to be the worst part of both the story and co-op mode.

These problems aside, though, there’s a reason I’ve put so much time into co-op, and even if it’s lost some of its lustre these days, I’m glad it’s always there for me when I need to kill some time.

Gaming Round-Up: Massively Leftovers

One of my struggles with this blog since I started working at Massively Overpowered, and one of the reasons I don’t post nearly as much as I used to, is the decision of what to put here versus what to put on Massively. My recent Not So Massively column on Redfall, for instance, is something of a sequel to a blog post I made about it a few months ago, and I originally intended it to go on Superior Realities, but ultimately I get paid if I put it on MOP, so that’s what I did.

New World is another good example. It’s been my main game for the last two years, but I’ve barely mentioned it on my blog, because nearly everything I have to say about it goes into the Vitae Aeternum column.

That said, I now find myself with some thoughts to share on multiplayer games that are too short and rambly to form a MOP column, so it’s time for another gaming round-up blog.

New World

I’ve settled into a loose pattern of playing New World heavily for a few weeks, then putting it on the back burner for a few weeks (but rarely quitting entirely), rinse and repeat. It’s a good fit for both my own fickle attention span and the game’s seasonal content model.

During December I went through a phase where I took the unusual (for me) step of actually playing it the way you’re “supposed to” play MMOs: doing lots of endgame group content, chasing rare drops, trying to improve my gear.

This mainly took the form of elite chest runs, a form of open world zerg that will feel very familiar to anyone who’s ever done a hero point train in Guild Wars 2. In fact, the more I play of it the more I feel the endgame structure of New World is closer to that of GW2 than anything else. Despite its increasingly inaccurate reputation as a hardcore PvP game, New World truly has become a casual PvE paradise.

A particular goal was earning some more artifacts. I grabbed the Boltcaster bow for my Convenant alt (who is now more of a co-main, as usually happens with me) without much difficulty. What took more grinding was the Abyss, a great axe that deals void damage and can scale off intellect, but after a few dozen Corrupted portals, I finally got it on my main.

I like the idea of artifacts, but so far most of their designs have been a little unambitious, not really delivering on the “build-defining” role Amazon intends for them. However, the Abyss is an exception. Being able to use a great axe in a mage build is a fun novelty, and I completely retooled my fire staff skills to support the close combat. I wasn’t sure I’d actually use Abyss much, but I’m actually having a blast with this newfound battle-mage playstyle.

I also took a run through the new dungeon, the Glacial Tarn, to finish upgrading Boltcaster. This was only my third dungeon run in my New World career, and we didn’t have a proper tank, so things got a bit hairy at points, but the story mode introduced with the expansion is indeed pretty easy, so we were able to press through.

I wouldn’t say the mechanics of the dungeon were anything too exotic in the MMO space, but the environment art was great, the music was amazing, and overall it was a pretty good time, despite my dodgy group. It has me excited to see more of the game’s dungeons once the dungeon finder finally launches.

I also did quite a bit of grinding on the Winter Convergence event. Various circumstances led to me being unable to fully participate in it for the first two years, so I essentially did three years of grinding at once, but I managed to get pretty much all the cosmetics I want on both characters.

Finally, I did some redecorating on my Reekwater home, and I think it’s cozier than ever. All in all, a pretty productive couple of weeks.

Heroes of the Storm

When I wrote about my brief return to Heroes of the Storm on Massively OP a few months ago, I said I’d already uninstalled, and I did… but I reinstalled again not too long after. I’ve been playing off and on since.

As I always have, I maintain mixed feelings on the game. When you get a good match, it can be an incredibly exciting experience, but you won’t always have good matches, and it is kind of an empty and mindless experience even at the best of times. I can never quite escape the feeling that I’m wasting my life even more than one usually does when playing video games.

It also remains true that nearly every major change to the game since launch has made it worse, at least in my opinion. I hardly play my old favourite heroes, because almost all of them have been altered or nerfed too much. Jaina and Johanna are the only major exceptions.

The loss of Tassadar as a support character stings especially. I’ve been playing nearly every remaining healer trying to find a replacement, but none of them quite click so well. Whitemane is very fun, but also very difficult and thus too stressful to play all the time. Anduin is very easy, but a little bland. Tyrande’s not bad, but she still doesn’t feel as good as Tassadar did when he was a support.

I’m painting a very bleak picture of the game, but the core gameplay does remain very fun, and in terms of balance, the game is in a pretty good place. There’s a few overtuned heroes, but this feels like one of the most well-balanced periods of the game’s life.

And as always, the chief appeal is simply in nostalgia. Even with all we’ve learned in the last few years, I can’t help but get the warm fuzzies from all those classic Blizzard characters all together.

As is the case for all MOBAs, the sheer variety of heroes also does a lot to keep things fresh. Of the new heroes added since I lasted played, Fenix is probably the biggest hit for me. He’s very simple to play, but that can be a nice change of pace. I’m quite perplexed that I rarely see anyone else playing him; he feels incredibly strong to me, and I’ve had many dominant performances with him.

I’ve had a lot of fun with Imperius, too. Brusier was never my favourite role, but charging into the thick of it to impale people with your spear just never gets old.

Also, while I do tend to complain about the revamps over-complicating heroes, in the case of Raynor adding some depth to him was actually welcome. He’s still pretty simple, but no longer to the point of being boring. This pleases me a lot because he’s always been a favourite character of mine lore-wise, and I was disappointed he wasn’t more fun to play in Heroes.

Finally, I’ve been playing a lot of D.va lately, to the point where she feels like potential “new main” material. I barely played her before my long hiatus, so I can’t say if she changed or I did, but she feels far stronger and more fun than I remember. The fact you can almost completely avoid death with her given good play and a little luck is just so nice. Plus she combines my long-time affinity for short, mildly insane women and my natural masculine desire to pilot a big stompy robot.

I don’t know if I’m going to stick with Heroes much longer or not. I do want to at least try every hero, which is proving frustrating since Qhira and Hogger almost never get picked for the free rotation and Mei was never added to it at all for some incomprehensible reason. I’m grinding the gold to buy her just for completionism’s sake, which for now keeps me doing my dailies and trying to find a healer who feels just right.

Song of the Month: Young Empires, We Don’t Sleep Tonight

I wanted to dig a little deeper into the back catalogue for this month’s selection, so here’s a song from about ten years ago.

This song is from the album Wake All My Youth, which is not one of my all-time favourite albums, but it is one of my all-time favourite album titles. This song was also featured in an episode of Continuum, which is pretty cool.

I’m also writing this post at about 12:30AM, so the title checks out.

Review: This Bed We Made

Decided to do a good old-fashioned numbered review for this one. By gar, it’s been a while!

For Christmas this year a friend got narrative mystery game This Bed We Made, which I only realized after I started playing is designed and set in Canada (bonus!). In it, you play as a nosy hotel maid in 1950s Montreal, who becomes embroiled in a tale of intrigue involving several of the hotel’s guests.

As you investigate, you must also continue to perform your maid duties, from emptying trash cans to scrubbing toilets (thankfully the mechanics for the latter are not detailed), and you can recruit one of your co-workers to become your sidekick, and potentially your love interest.

It’s a short, simple game, but largely well-executed. The mystery is less the standard thriller full of twists and more about interpersonal drama and social injustices. If you enjoy gossip, you’ll love this game, but even as someone with little interest in such things I got pretty sucked into peeping through the personal secrets of the hotel guests.

I’d also like to give a lot of praise to Victoria Diamond, who voices the lead character, Sophie. She gives Sophie such spunk and charm that you just instantly fall in love with the character.

As far as criticisms go, I found the romance angle of the game felt a bit tacked on. While both your potential paramours (one male and one female) are reasonably likable, neither really stood out to me as especially appealing, and the game isn’t really long enough for the budding relationship with your chosen partner to get fleshed out in any meaningful way.

I also found out the hard way that this is not one of those “choices matter” games where every choice is equally valid. It’s a very pass/fail system where you’re shooting for a good ending, and it seems to fairly difficult to get the best ending, especially as what’s required for it isn’t entirely obvious on a first playthrough.

On my first attempt, I got a very bad ending. I replayed the last forty minutes or so of the game with different choices, and I got a better ending, but still not an ideal one.

This is the sort of thing that would normally infuriate me, but in this case I found it only mildly irksome. There’s a couple reasons for this. One is how charming the game had been up to that point. Another is that the game is so short (~4 hours) it doesn’t feel too onerous to do another playthrough to try to get the best ending; I’m just going to wait until it’s a little less fresh in my mind before I attempt that.

But most importantly, I think it makes a big difference that this is a pretty grounded, realistic story. If there was any supernatural element, I would definitely be fuming that I wasn’t able to use my superpowers to fix everything, but it makes sense that a mere hotel maid from an era where female voices were usually discounted would struggle to shift the trajectory of events.

Overall rating: 7.9/10

Song of the Month: Aurora, Your Blood

Aurora’s latest.

I feel like Aurora started as something of a folk-pop singer but becomes more and more straight-up pop with each new release. This isn’t a complaint; just an observation.

Aurora: “I refuse to die.”

My brain: “Norwegian woman literally too wholesome to die.”

 

My Brother Started a Podcast

Uncreative title is uncreative.

For some years now, my brother has spent most of his time in the jungles of Peru (yes, really) doing biological studies. Tracking and cataloguing local wildlife and such.

Now, he and his team have decided to launch a podcast called Field Stories in which they’ll recount the colourful (mis)adventures they get up to down in the South American wilds. In the first episode, he and his co-host introduce themselves and share some stories of their own.

My brother is the exceedingly tall man on the right.

Song of the Month: Metric, Who Would You Be for Me

As I’ve probably mentioned before, I was not terribly happy with Metric’s Formentera album. It had only a couple songs I liked, and even those didn’t really feel like their best work. I was understandably less than thrilled when they released a sequel, Formentera II, a few weeks ago, and sadly, I found it even more disappointing than its forebear.

There’s only one song on this album I like, but on the plus side, it is truly excellent, and a welcome sign that Metric has not yet lost their mojo entirely.