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THURSDAY 4 JANUARY 2024


GAMES OF 2023 - THIS YEAR HAS BEEN INSANE



This year has had way too many amazing new games coming out and I've been
struggling to keep up tbh. 

Fire Emblem Engage. 81 hours. What a start to the year. A new Fire Emblem!
Admittedly it wasn't as great as Three Houses, but it was still really, really
good. I had an amazing time with this. When's the next one?





Hogwarts Legacy. 87 hours. Easily my game of the year. It doesn't get any better
than this. I cried so many times while playing this. Mostly tears of fangirl and
happiness. I've wanted an open world Potterverse game for 20 years and they
fulfilled my every expectation ♥





Atomic Heart. 20 hours. The overland was annoying and the enemies were
repetitive. But story was good and gameplay good and characters memorable. I had
fun with this. Might replay it for the DLC, even.

ESO: Necrom. I haven't been this excited about a new chapter since Morrowind
released. Archanist was a great class addition and the story was good. I really
like Torvesaad, although I'm not sure why. Lore implications of this chapter are
massive and I really want a continuation of this story.





Starfield. 175 hours. The most anticipated game of 2023 if I dare say so. The
community's expectations were through the roof and unfortunately not many of
them were fulfilled. That said I still go that Bethesda feeling from this game
and I had a lot of fun with it. My playtime ought to speak for itself.





We Were Here Expeditions. 2½ hours. This game came out of nowhere. It wasn't
expected, but it was definitely welcome. We enjoyed the other We Were Here games
and had a lot of fun with this one too!





AC: Mirage. So Connect doesn't show the amount of hours played for this, but it
does for Valhalla and Odyssey. I dunno what's up. I had a good time with this.
They were banking hard on people's nostalgia and pulled out all the stops to
make it relatable for people who've been with the series since the beginning. I
kept seeing Aladdin while I was playing as Basim running along the rooftops of
Baghdad. 

Sons of the Forest. 22 hours (so far). We finished The Forest earlier this fall
and started with Sons of the Forest immediately after. We had a blast with the
first game and figured this game would be just more of it. Sons of the Forest
definitely has its quirks though, and so far it isn't as great as The Forest,
but it's also still in Early Access with full release coming in 2024. With the
way things are going we may still be playing at that point :D





CP2077: Phantom Liberty. 110 hours. I haven't played Cyberpunk since February
2021, but I decided to replay the entire thing for Phantom Liberty and Update
2.0 and it's been amazing! This game is fantastic, although I did experience
more bugs in the game now than I did in 2021, go figure. Phantom Liberty has a
great story with so many twists and turns I hardly knew who to trust at the end,
which is the entire point. There were a few badass boss battles and a bunch of
cool new gigs. It was quite the ride!





ESO: Endless Archive. Why does a MMO need a roguelite mode? I knew this wasn't
going to be the regular small zone DLC that they usually do in autumn, but I
expected something more than a room of spawning enemies, unfair bosses and
effects to add to yourself as you went on. I didn't struggle at all until I ran
into Z'Baza. A Sload boss that kept spawning AoEs and adds and never remained in
one place, making him hard to actually hit with anything. I'm not too excited
about this DLC overall, and I suppose it will be added to the ever-growing list
that is Maelstrom Arena and Vateshran Hollows that I never complete. But as
always, I'll give it a few more tries.





Baldur's Gate 3. 61 hours (so far). I immediately fell in love with Astarion. I
also really like Gale and Karlach, and Wyll grew on me. I played the first game
some years ago and it's been really nice seeing references to what happened in
that game. Other than that first game I'm generally clueless about The Forgotten
Realms. I'm playing a kinda reckless character, making shit up as I go along. At
the time of writing this I'm running around the Shadow-Cursed Lands, trying to
infiltrate the Moonrise Towers and being constntly encumbered because I pick up
everything that isn't nailed down. Will do a proper post once I'm done,  but
until then have a screenie of my character sitting on Yurgir's throne:






This post is for games that I played that released in 2023. I started BG3 too
late for it to be included and I played Fire Emblem, AC and ESO elsewhere, but
here's my Steam Wrapped 2023:





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MONDAY 18 DECEMBER 2023


ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE: ENDLESS ARCHIVE




Sorry, Infinite Archive. My bad. 



So I was pretty disappointed to find out that the autumn DLC wouldn't be the
usual small zone DLC, but rather something akin to a roguelite arena added as a
location in Apocrypha. I'm not a big fan of roguelites, but as usual I decided
to give it a go anyway. Never say I didn't try. 

So I logged on with my main, which is a healer build with decent dps and the
only character I have who's got a companion, and off we went to the Archive.
Things went fast and easy until the fifth boss, which is the last one of an arc.
The bosses are all randomized nerfed dungeon, trial and world bosses. The fifth
one I got for my very first arc was Z'Baza, The Sload secret boss from the Coral
Aerie dungeon, which I haven't actually done. This boss summoned lots of adds,
covered most of the fighting area in AoEs and also teleported around which made
the boss very hard to properly attack while also dodging everything all at
once. 

You get three attempts in one arc. After you've died the third time it's off to
the start with you and start over. I got Z'Baza down to 50% HP every time, but
never further. 





After every boss you get to pick an effect which lasts you either specific
amount of time or until the arc is over. The effects are typically extra damage,
extra defense or extra healing, and it works well. I think my favourite effect I
got that first arc was the summons of plague rats which would help fight the
enemies and once they died they'd turn into plague blobs that could be picked up
and thrown at the enemies doing poison damage. Pretty neat. Another great effect
I got was the ability to summon a decoy which would distract the enemies and
effectively make them stand still in one spot attacking this decoy with a huge
health pool, making them easy to kill all at once. 

The Tho'at stuff could prove interesting though. New Daedra Lord! :)

All in all, not very impressed with this, but I'll keep at it for a while
longer.



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SUNDAY 10 DECEMBER 2023


I REPLAYED CYBERPUNK 2077 FOR PHANTOM LIBERTY



I originally played this in early 2021 on my old PC and I had an absolute blast.
Hardly any bugs and only a few negligible glitches. Despite everyone's
complaints about Cyberpunk's state of release.


Fast-forward to November 2023. I receive Phantom Liberty as a birthday gift and
get playing. I resolve to play through the entire game from start to finish and
not just do the DLC. That turned out to be a good thing because they have
changed so much since my original playthrough. Especially the levelling system,
which was a lot more extensive and a lot quicker. There seem to be less NCPD
scanner things and less gigs in each zone, which makes completing each zone less
of a hassle. I'm disappointed there still isn't any follow-up to Regina's
cyberpsychosis research. 


Ironically, now that everyone is praising the game for being good I'm starting
to experience all the bugs people complained about the last time around. I've
had CTDs, I've fallen through the map, I've had loot fall through the ground and
vanish, quest NPCs getting stuck, calling the car simply not working and being
stranded in the Badlands after a gig, having to reload the game to get quest
prompts to work, and with a better GPU I could have larger crowds which meant I
got to see first hand people's complaints about duplicate NPCs - hell I even had
quadruplets attending the Samurai concert:



Complaining done, let's get into the good stuff. 


I loved all the hints to Edgerunners that they've added to the game and until I
got Johnny's jacket I ran around in David's. Once I got Johnny's I put David's
jacket in my stash because I'm holding on to that ♥



I wanted to do all the side content available before I did any main story so I
completed Watson before I even got the biochip, and then I did each zone before
I moved on with the main quest. Which ended up meaning that I was almost level
50 by the time I started Phantom Liberty and got inside Dogtown. 


The Phantom Liberty story was overall really great. Starting with a bang
(literally), mellowing out as a multitude of questions rose up, before all hell
broke loose at the conclusion. I made sure to make several separate saves so
that I could unlock and see all the endings, just like I did with the base game
back in 2021. The King of Wands and King of Swords endings were less dramatic
and chaotic than the King of Cups and King of Pentacles endings. Those last
two... My adrenaline was so high my hands were shaking by the time I got to make
my final choice. That damn robot piece of shit junk... The new ending to the
whole game made me super sad. 





Another thing I really liked about Dogtown was that the gigs there always came
with a twist and they were never as cut and dry as the ones from the base game.
Always a choice would pop up around the middle that could give the gig an
entirely different outcome than you would originally think, sometimes for the
better and sometimes the fixer would call afterwards and scold you. But that
twist and choice & consequence really made those gig a lot more memorable. Run
This Town is probably one of my favourite side quests in the DLC. 


Last time I played I missed out on saving Takemura so this I made sure of that
and then followed through on his ending so I could get that last achievement. 





Speaking of achievements, some of them don't seem to work. I know for sure I
affected 3+ enemies with one single Detonate Grenade quickhack more than once,
but that achi never popped for me. I know I hit 2 enemies with the sname sniper
rifle shot more than once, but that achi never popped either. And I rigorously
used the Distract Enemy quickhack to get that achi, but that never popped
either. 


Towards the end of this playthrough they dropped Update 2.1 which added hangouts
with your love interest, radio for walking, being able to take the metro around
the city (sightseeing woooo!) and repeatable car races. I made sure to do
everything.



I had a really great time with Cyberpunk this time around as well, despite this
buggier experience!




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SATURDAY 9 DECEMBER 2023


THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER



From the creators of The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor,
still this show came completely out of left field since neither of us had even
heard about it. Yet after two great shows ofc we had to watch it and it didn't
disappoint.

Because each of the other two shows were based on one book each, I originally
thought this would be a show based entirely on the eponymous work by Edgar Allan
Poe, but I soon discovered that each episode was named after a Poe text, and
each of the episodes was a retelling of a Poe story with the House of Usher as
the overarching plot. It was brilliant.

I love Poe and I've read a bunch of his work so it was great to see how they
transferred the plots of those stories into the overarching plot of the show and
make it work. 

There's very little of the "spot the ghost" game from Hill House, but it does
happen. There are a few jumpscares, but nothing too bad and usually you can see
them coming from a mile away. 

All in all, this was absolutely brilliant.



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SUNDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2023


MY LAST 5 BOOKS: THRILLER AND ADVENTURE



1. Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith. This book was brilliant in so many ways.
Exploring Strike's feelings for his family, but also for Robin, and Robin
exploring her feelings towards her job, her future and for Strike, as well as
dealing with a nasty divorce from Matthew. The agency is doing great and they're
handed their first cold case: the disappearance of Margot Bamborough back in
1974. This book takes place in 2013-2014 and it's almost 40 years since she
disappeared. Strike and Robin are given a year to try to find out what happened
to Margot, and it becomes a case that has them delving deep into astrology and
psychopathy, with lots of unsavoury men and women who aren't what they seem.
There are so many plot points, so many side plots and all of them come together
brilliantly in the end. It's extremely satisfying to see the author tie together
everything in a way that makes complete sense. The only thing that brings the
overall rating down is the fact that it sometimes gets a bit too preachy with
the feminist stuff.



2. Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood, by James Malcolm Rymer. This is a
compilation of a penny dreadful, so it's trash literature, but it's trash
literature that has somehow lasted almost 200 years so that's got to count for
something. This penny dreadful predates Dracula by half a century and I was so
excited to get into another gothic vampire tale. But penny dreadful authors were
paid by the word and damn it shows. After 210 pages I just couldn't anymore. In
those 210 pages we've had the initial vampire attack and then just 200 pages of
reiterated dialogue and back-and-forth actions that didn't lead anywhere. 200
pages in and we're still in the same situation we were 200 pages ago. And it
isn't even halfway. As to not completely kill my reading mood I decided to DNF
this and potentially come back to it at a later time. There are glimpses of a
complicated and interesting character in Varney, but it's all so densely buried
in all the useless dialogue and non-actions. The editor's footnotes in this
edition are a highlight though, as it seems they might've been a bit
passive-aggressive towards Rymer and the Victorian society overall. It's so
frustrating because I can see there's a story underneath all the useless words,
it just takes an age to get through all the words to find the story. 



3. The Ink Black Heart, by Robert Galbraith. These two characters has to be the
slowest slow-burn in the history of slow-burns. I need them to stop being so
goddamn polite and considerate and just talk to one another! The story in this
one revolves around the dark side of fandom, and it's eerily accurate sometimes.
Honestly, the most unbelievable thing is that Robin didn't know tumblr or
Twitter before she started working on this case. It's 2015, she just turned 30,
which makes her only five years older than me, she would've known about both of
those sites. Or it's just implied she has spent the last 12 or so years living
under a rock while social media evolved online. I get Strike not knowing, but
not Robin. I had all sorts of theories throughout reading this as to who the
killer was, and once or twice those theories touched upon the truth, but I could
always find reasons why someone else was more probable. As someone who spends a
great amount of time chatting online while staying mostly anonymous, this was a
great and pretty chilling story. One of the best ones in the series!



4. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. A few years ago everybody
talked about this book so I decided to read it. It started out interesting
enough, but within 100 pages it was getting obvious that this was all there was
to it. This is the story of their lives which are absolutely ordinary aside from
the little thing that Henry is so-called chrono-impaired, meaning he sometimes
just time travels for no reason at all. Sometimes just for minutes, sometimes
for days. It never becomes a conflict and the only major issue it presents is
that it makes it difficult for them to have a baby. Throughout the story there's
this looming shadow of something that's going to happen when Henry is 43, but
when it does happen it's completely underwhelming and I just face-palmed when I
read it. It was a very disappointing end to an otherwise bland book. Not my
thing.



5.Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. I've
been meaning to read this series for years. I love Greek mythology. This book
was just as fun as I expected, albeit a bit predictable. I didn't expect Percy
to be twelve though, I thought he'd be at least fifteen, but it ended up not
being such a big deal. Despite the book being a lot of me figuring things out
way ahead of time and me just waiting for the characters to catch up, I had a
lot of fun reading it and I'm excited to keep going with this series. Despite
having heard of this series I knew nothing about it going in. I knew there was
Greek mythology and that was about it, really. I figured out Percy's father long
before the rest of the characters. I figured out who was going to betray Percy
as soon as the Oracle told him the prophecy. I figured out who the ultimate bad
guy was long before they started speculating, but it's a kids book so it was
fine. I love all the characters and the story was fast-paced and fun. I'm into
it. 

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THURSDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2023


GAME COMPLETED: ASSASSIN'S CREED MIRAGE (+ THE END OF AC VALHALLA)


This is like the fifth post of mine that's related to Valhalla... This game...
it feels good to finally have completed it. 


After I finished with Starfield I decided to do the last few things of Valhalla
before I started up Mirage. So I started out doing the last few Tombs of the
Fallen and finished that little thing and then I dove into The Forgotten Saga,
which is a roguelite and I'm not the biggest fan of those. But I gave it my best
effort. I managed to get all the way to Nidhogg, the poison dragon, and the last
boss before the last area and Hel herself. At that point I was breezing through
everything up to Nidhogg, and he thoroughly put me in my place and told me to
not think so highly of myself in the most detailed way possible - his adds
beating me to a pulp while he solemnly watched. The fight was just a whole bunch
of AoEs to dodge or I'd get a DoT (which stacked) and there were no healing
items in the area - not equipped, not lying around, just nada. I was so done
with The Forgotten Saga after that, and decided to just do The Last Chapter
update and then move on to Mirage.


The Last Chapter was a nice little ending to Valhalla, which probably would have
had a bigger impact if I hadn't played the base game in late 2020 when it was
new, and barely remembered half the characters on the goodbye tour. The Basim
stuff was a lot more interesting than Eivor's goodbye tour and half-assed
footnote as to how she ended up in North America. The Basim stuff explains how
he's still alive over 1000 years later and how they got their hands on his DNA
so they could view his memories. It was a pretty decent connection/bridge over
to Mirage.


I don't like sand. Every time a game asks me to play through a desert I'm
instantly bored. Sand is just boring. I don't like it. And I knew the landscape
of Mirage would bore me even before I went in, which was a contributing reason
for why I shelved the game for two weeks before I finished it. 


That said I did enjoy the game overall. They were hitting people's nostalgia as
hard as they could but implementing a lot of polished up mechanics from the
earliest AC games. I hated pickpocketing in AC2, but in Mirage it was a lot of
fun, especially Darvish's collectables. Being at Alamut made me half expect
Altaïr to show up, except it would be a few more centuries before he's even
around. That tutorial climbing scene with Basim is a direct translation of the
tutorial climbing scene in the original Assassin's Creed with Altaïr :3 And
those are just two examples, there are many more ways that Mirage attempts to
throwback to the earliest games of the franchise. It's great fun. 


As always I made sure to get every single collectable and do every bit of side
content and uncovering the entire map before I completed the story.


As for the story itself, I feel like it was pretty predictable. I had figured
out Nehal's circumstances way before that reveal even came. The only thing I
hadn't figured out was the purpose of the djinni and I was dreading it as a
final boss of the game, instead... nothing. So that was a bit disappointing. I
also feel like they established the characters of Roshan and Basim in the early
stages of the story only to throw it all out in the end scenes and have them
become complete stereotypical tropes, which kinda ruined the end a bit. And as
much as the current time portions of any AC game kind of feels like filler, I
did miss having it in Mirage. Even as filler it's an integral part of the games'
universe. 


But all in all it was a good game and as much as I love massive open world RPGs
it was nice to play something smaller for a change. 


And I forgot to take a single screenshot.


And young Basim just reminds me of Disney's Aladdin. 




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THURSDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2023


GOOD OMENS S02


I don't know why we didn't watch this season sooner considering we both loved
the first season (which I know realise I never wrote a post about, oops). 


So the script for this season was allegedly based on an
unfinished-but-practically-finished manuscript that Gaiman and Pratchett had
written as a sequel to the novel.


I feel like the original will always be the best version in terms of sequels
etc, but this season was really damn funny. Shax was great (who knew Rita
Skeeter could be that funny?) Jon Hamm was fabulous as a confused and blundering
dude and then as hopelessly in love. Every role I've seen of him he either plays
stoically handsome or strong-but-sad (strong man refuses to accept he is
currently broken, i.e. still stoic), so it was very nice to see him in something
more comedic :3


New Beelzebub was better than old Beelzebub.


I did not like that ending T_T




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MONDAY 30 OCTOBER 2023


YOUNG SHELDON S01-S06


We're both fans of The Big Bang Theory so when we saw that Young Sheldon had
come to Netflix we decided to watch it.


Sheldon himself is great as usual and so dimwitted despite being so smart. It's
great :3 Missy, Connie and Paige are amazing characters, whereas Mary is just a
big facepalm for me, but she means well. Georgie is dumb but street smart. And
George is just always trying so hard and it never gets him anywhere. 


Paige's storyline alongside Sheldon's storyline shows two different sides of the
same coin and I always enjoy the episodes with Paige in them, because it shows
just how damn lucky Sheldon is throughout his whole childhood. 


Season 6 ended at a bit of a cliffhanger and season 7 keeps being delayed due to
the strike shenanigans going on, but I really can't wait for season 7 :3




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SUNDAY 15 OCTOBER 2023


GAME COMPLETED: WE WERE HERE EXPEDITIONS



After Grounded we discovered that there was a new We Were Here that just
released and it was free. We jumped on that and immediately got it downloaded
and started to play. It was really nostalgic to be back in the roles of our
Arctic explorers/rescuers even though it wasn't all that long ago we played
through the series. 


This time the setting was more piratey than the
medieval/castle/knights/royalty/magic kind of theme the rest of the series had
going, but there is a tiny reference to previous games in the very beginning, in
the intro, so that's cool. 


Just like the original We Were Here our only complaint is that this game is too
short. It took us just over two hours to complete and that's with us redoing
several of the puzzles just for fun and to try to get better results. Why is it
that a puzzle always goes better before we're really sure of what we're doing
and when we know what we're doing we somehow end up doing worse? 


The puzzle where one player is drugged to see paths that aren't there or paths
that are there have turned invisible, and the other player watches from above,
mind unmuddled, and guides them through what's real or not was a really cool
puzzle and we had a lot of fun with it. 


I also really liked the puzzle where you had to coordinate between each other to
make the best and most color combinations. 


We did both of those puzzles so many times xD Which the short little
shareable/downloadable clip at the end showcased xD


All in all, this was a really fun adventure. Could've been longer, but that's
honestly the only nitpick and for a free game it's negligible. 




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TUESDAY 10 OCTOBER 2023


GAME COMPLETED: STARFIELD




Alongside Hogwarts Legacy this was my most anticipated game of the year. So when
September 1st rolled around I immediately started to play even if the time was
2am. I didn't do much aside from creating my character that night, but at least
the game worked and for me it has been mostly smooth sailing throughout all of
my 174 hours. 



I'll keep this post very vague so as to avoid spoilers and you'll mostly be
getting my overall thoughts and feelings rather than any details of companions
or quests.

I put off doing the main quest for so long, which I realise now was a bit of a
disservice to the game. I was probably level 30 before I even encountered the
main antagonist. That first encounter adds a lot more to exploration and I
recommend getting to at least that point in the main quest before heading off
whichever way to explore.

So for my first character I chose traits that were pretty much all useless to
me, but that I thought sounded cool. Neon Street Rat was very useful, but Alien
DNA I had removed with a doctor almost immediately. I chose the Adoring Fan perk
because of nostalgia and then I never used him because he was just as annoying
as I remembered. I just stuck him at an outpost in the middle of nowhere and
never saw him again. 

Surveying planets became tedious if it was done too much and too often, but as
someone who enjoys ticking boxes it was very much my thing - if done sparingly.
Every time I visited Earth I got sad.






As for the side quest lines, my favourite was easily the Crimson Fleet. I always
try to do a good character so navigating the Fleet questline via Persuasion and
Bribery instead of murder and robbery was a lot of fun and actually made me
think more specifically how I would get through a quest. 

I also enjoyed the UC questline for the sheer amount of wow moments. Revelation
after revelation, it was great! I really liked Hadrian when she was part of her
questline. Too bad she lost all her personality afterwards when she became just
another follower. 

The Ryujin questline was a slog to start with, but once I gained access to the
Executive floor things became really interesting and the last few quests were
pretty cool. I ended up having more fun with this one than I initially thought.
Unfortunately those early quests are indicative of the kind of missions you get
from their mission board post-questline, and they aren't very engaging. Still a
lot of easy credits though.

Finally, the Freestar Collective questline wasn't my thing at all. I struggle to
remember what it was even about and had to look it up to even write this post.
The final confronation was kinda cool I suppose. Unfortunately the final
confrontation of this questline was at the same place I had a Ryujin stealth
mission at and it wouldn't let me sneak past the final confrontation to complete
the Ryujin mission before going back to do the final Freetstar quest... So I
ended up getting a pay deduction from my Ryujin mission -.-

The main quest proved a lot more interesting than I normally expect from a
Bethesda game and at one point even heartbreaking. Literally sat crying in front
of my PC until I could reload an earlier save so I could change the outcome
because I was not ok with that! It didn't hurt that the main quest had some of
the most beautiful visuals in the entire game. Temples did get slightly
repetitive though. 





As for the companions, I adored Sam. He became my best friend and my husband
(and he made me smile like a doofus every time I talked to him after we got
married). Andreja, despite being the last Constellation member I picked up,
quickly became my favourite after Sam. Both Barrett and Sarah annoy me. Barrett
is too silly and Sarah is too high and mighty. That said, I still got a ship
that could fit all of the Constellation followers at once and they all became
sort of like a family. I also made sure to do all of their companion quests.
Everybody's except for Barrett's were pretty interesting tbh. I liked Sarah's
and I hope there'll be more to Andreja's at some point. Sam's felt oddly
high-stakes but that's probably due to Cora's presence. 



I'll end this by addressing some of the complaints I've seen regarding the game.
Some of them are just too stupid to address though, so I'll just leave this
here:





Complaints about graphics and crashes and optimization, I can't do much about.
The game worked well for me (rtx 3060). I had two CTDs in all my 174 hours. The
game didn't like when a download was running in the background and became laggy
whenever Windows Update decided it was time to download an update, otherwise it
worked great. 

People complain about desolate worlds and I can't help but wonder if they only
ever landed on moons or planets without an atmosphere. There was an abundance of
planets that had all sorts of life and were beautiful to just wander through.I
have so many screenshots from both desolate and vibrant moons and planets.







The achievement disabler was buggy, though. Which is probably the only major
issue I had with this game. I had to use the console to no clip through a door
that remained [INACCESSIBLE] even though the quest was supposed to open it to be
able to progress a quest. I was hoping that achievements would only be disabled
for that session (like in New Vegas) and then be enabled once I restarted my
game. No such luck though. I wasn't too far in so I figured I'd make a new
character and start over. It wasn't too bad. Except the game marked my brand new
character and saves as modded too. Despite me never touching the console on that
character. It's supposed to not do that on new characters :P So I downloaded the
mod that make achievements work even on modded/console playthroughs. Problem
solved.

Another complaint is that locations are copypaste. Unless you do a lot of
mission board bounty quests you probably won't even notice this much. But every
single Abandoned [...] on planets are the exact same. So when I was running
through my probably 50th Abandoned Cryo Lab to get that outlaw bounty I was
pretty sick of them. All Cryo Labs look the same, all Relay Stations look the
same, all Robotics Labs look the same... Which I can kinda, sorta justify by
them all being UC and UC probably had a model they built things after, but damn
it gets tedious.

Finally, the end of the main quest leads you right into NG+, but you can choose
to not play through the main quest in the exact same way all over again. So now
I'm kinda excited to play through it once more just to see how much will be
different. Probably not a lot though, so I'll be moving on to other games, but
keeping a lookout for DLCs because I really don't feel done with this game.



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MONDAY 2 OCTOBER 2023


DISENCHANTMENT S05


The final season! Time for all the loose ends to come together and for Bean to
say goodbye! We've both really enjoyed this show and this last season was no
exception.


Mop Girl was a welcome addition to the team and I love her with Elfo.


I enjoyed seeing Luci embrace his goodness when he was with Jerry visiting God. 


The shenanigans with bad Bean alongside Bean's relationship with Moira, and Bean
finally embracing her weird-ass family were all highlights of the season. 


The ending gave a sense of finality, but also left things slightly open-ended
should they wish to make more Disenchantment. 


Such a great show.




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TUESDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2023


GAME COMPLETED: GROUNDED



Our next co-op game after the We Were Here series became Grounded. It's a
survival crafting RPG and we had a lot of fun with it.


Storywise this game takes place in the late 80s and you play as 1-4 school kids
who mysteriously get shrunken to ant size and find themselves in a garden. Your
job is to find out how you ended up there (because you can't remember) and how
to get back to normal size, all the while exploring the garden, fighting insects
and figuring out how to better survive. 


You start out with nothing, but as soon as you get your first axe things start
to move along. Berry leather became the first hurdle, but via exploration we
found out where there was a bunch of berries and I could easily shoot them down
with my bow and arrows while climbing around inside the berry bushes and Toni
picked them up as they fell. The next hurdle was underwater exploration which
took a fair bit of time to overcome and in that time I expanded our modest
shelter into a grass fortress with the help of Toni cutting grass and weeds.



Eventually we had ziplines across the entire yard to easily traverse it.


The most annoying boss fight was easily the robot assistant manager in one of
the labs. Took us three attempts and a guide to defeat it, but otherwise we
managed the game well and there were no hurdles too big so as to not overcome
them. 


Spiders were very scary in the beginning, but in late game they were easy
enough. Except that one scary infected wolf spider by the oak, that one was
still scary even though we defeated it. And the black widow never stopped being
scary. 


MIX.Rs ended up being simultaneously annoying and fun to me. They're like tower
defense things spread throughout the yard and once you activate it you have to
protect it from insects trying to attack it until it's done. Towards the end we
had so much crafting mats that we just brought a bunch of stuff with us to the
MIX.R and built walls and roofs around it to keep the insects from even reaching
it while we fought them. Mushroom brick walls and feather roofs are great. 


So while we finished the game storywise and decided to move on from it, I kept
it installed on my computer because I can really see myself playing around with
crafting and building some more at some point.




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MONDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 2023


BLACK MIRROR S06


This season was very morbid. It wasn’t futuristically dark like the previous
seasons, but rather it explored darkness in other settings aside from dystopian
futures.


Joan Is Awful is about people signing the rights to their lives away via the
Terms & Conditions nobody reads before signing up to a service. In this story a
Netflix equivalent has taken over Joan's life and an AI produces episodes of her
life as they happen. As a result she loses her relationship, her friends, her
family and her job. 


Loch Henry is about a couple studying movie-making, returning to the small
seaside town where the guy grew up to make a documentary. The girlfriend
discovers the dark past of the town and convinces the guy that they should do a
documentary on that instead. So they start digging and discover something really
dark. I enjoyed this one.


Beyond the Sea is a futuristic story about two astronauts living in space, but
they can transfer their consciousness to body-doubles (androids made to look
like them). When one boyd-double is destroyed by cult activists along with his
entire family getting murdered, his colleague agrees to let him borrow his
body-double so as to not go crazy from the isolation of being alone in space all
the time. It starts out as a nice gesture and ends up going very, very wrong.


Mazey Day is about a paparazzi photographer in 2005 always on the lookout for
the next big scoop to sell to the magazines. She finds out about an actress
called Mazey Day who has quit acting and is hiding out at a secret rehab
facility in the mountains and along with her friend she goes to investigate.
What they find is incredibly dangerous and life-altering.


Demon 79 is about a mousey immigrant girl in 1979 Britain who accidentally
summons a demon and now has three days to kill three people to stop the world
from ending. It's really interesting to see this girl embrace her inner rage and
attempt to fulfill her contract. The character growth is immense in this one. 


All in all we had a good time with this. My favourites being Loch Henry and
Demon 79. All of the stories were really dark in true Black Mirror spirit, while
still taking a step away from the usual theme of slightly futuristic but still
oh so relatable. 




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SATURDAY 2 SEPTEMBER 2023


ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE: NECROM



Last time I was this excited for a chapter was Greymoor, and before that
Morrowind. We're back in Morrowind and it’s all about my beloved Hermaeus Mora. 


I didn't like Leramil in the prologue, but she really grew on me as the chapter
went on. I loved Scruut! Gadayn is super cute. 


The story offers some pretty strong implications for the entire lore with
Torvesard and Ithelia, and if Mora could do that, then what else has he covered
up in his endless pursuit of hoarding knowledge?


Peryite never gets to take much space in the games so it was pretty interesting
to see more of him. 


I originally played through the chapter with my main and then I created a new
character in the new Arcanist class and played through the chapter once more.
The Arcanist class has potential to be one of my favourites, so much fun to
play! 


As for the zone(s), it was pretty much the same deal as usual: world bosses,
skyshards, tiny little things discoverable in the world that count towards
exploration achiecements... The Bastion Nymic daily quest was entirely too much
work for a daily and probably the one thing I wasn’t a fan of. To start with you
have to run around the map looking for 3-4 world boss level Seekers, defeat them
one after the other and then bring their ichor to specfic locations where you
can open a portal to Mora's Bastion Nymic. Which is sort of like a weaker group
dungeon set up like the public dungeons in Blackwood/The Deadlands in that you
enter from different places each time and get different bosses. I entered my
first one by myself and managed to get all the way to the last boss on my own,
which I then constistently got to 50% HP but then couldn’t get any lower. I
continued to be in groups consisting purely of DDs every time I did this, and
once I did it just me and another guy when we couldn’t find any others to join.
Nymics are too much work and so not worth it. I did it four times while I was
playing the chapter as my main, comparatively I did the delve and boss dailies
six times each in the same time frame. 


I loved the look of Apocrypha. First time you enter as part of the story Scruut
tells you to not lool up as their sky can be disconcerting. So ofc I had to look
up and that sky was beautiful ♡





As for side quests, my favourite was probably the one with Ysgild and Vorm, and
the one with Morian Zenas, and the one referencing Sotha Sil's past. But I
really loved exploring every place in Apocrypha. Azandar is an Arcanist so cool
by default, but I can’t stand his personality. Sharp on the other hand quickly
gained my approval and he became my Arcanist's steadfast companion.


The story played out pretty expectedly, but I’m still happy with it and I can’t
wait to see what will happen next! This one had some pretty cool fights at the
end :D


I love Meln.




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IN CASE YOU WONDER

Elin Södertälje, Sweden Thirty-plus. Rocker. Gamer. Geek. Linguaphile.
Potterhead. Whovian. H!P OG Wota. View my complete profile



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