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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Been playing Arcanum, hopefully through to the end for the first time this time. Only begun it before, never got far. The game has a lot of charms, but also a lot of frustrations. Typical Troika, I guess. When it’s firing on all cylinders and the pieces of a quest puzzle happen to click into place it can be great, but oftentimes imbecilic design decisions get in the way of having fun. And it doesn’t help that combat is horrible and the animations are ugly, even for its time.

    I’m towards the end of the game now so I’ll try to push through since I’d like to have finished it at least once. I do enjoy the world building, at least parts of it. It’s a little disappointing that the races are derivative sort of boilerplate fantasy Tolkienesque Dwarves and Elves and Halflings etc, but the Victorian era inspired steampunk setting is well executed and the tension and conflict between magic and technology feels fully fleshed out and very grounded in the game world. I also really appreciate the again very Victorian flavored racism towards Orcs and Half-Orcs, including an explicit reference to The Jewish Question.


  • Ahh, the nostalgia of hearing about those old titles again. Takes me back to the days of being a kid reading PC Gamer monthly with ravenous wonder and excitement. That period of '94 to '06-09 or so really was the golden age of PC gaming. I’ve been thinking about starting up a sub specifically about that era actually, retro gaming subs often tend to focus more about old consoles and arcade games.

    Similarly, Desperados 2 (2006) made the first game feel a century old. From the same camera distance as the first game, it both looked far better than the original and had the advantage of dynamic lighting, more fluidity and a freely rotatable camera. Up close it was a bit blocky, but this was to be expected back then.

    Interesting! I’ll take a look at the graphics, but I was otherwise set to skip it as it didn’t look like it was particularly well received.

    I can confirm that these looked magnificent on a high quality CRT.

    I’ve been on a bit of a retro game kick lately and have been wishing I had a really good one. It’s a shame they’re so damn bulky.


  • I never heard of it back in the day, but I did see it suggested on GOG when I looked at Desperados. I might consider grabbing it the next time it’s really cheap if it’s really that good. Better than Desperados/Commandos you reckon?

    some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I’ve ever seen in an isometric game.

    The old isometric games have really aged so gracefully. Desperados looks absolutely fantastic still imo and Baldur’s Gate 2 also has some fantastic isometric art (sprites not so much). I bet they’d look even better on a good CRT, too.





  • I finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker after putting 250 or so hours into it and now I feel kind of empty. I still don’t think it’s a particularly great game, but after spending so much time on it you develop a sort of Stockholm syndrome. There are things about the game I enjoyed, but also endless frustrations. The ending chapters especially were an absolutely insane slog of numerous terrible Wild Hunt encounters that seem completely mindlessly thrown together to up the “challenge”. It’s a shame, really because there is a good game in there somewhere if you’d only scale back the bullshit. It could also do with some editing in general, I don’t think it justifies being so goddamn long.

    Looking for the next thing to fill the void has been a bit of a challenge, I’ve been at it with Kingmaker for so long it’s been tough to switch focus suddenly. I started Weird West, which I bought on the last GOG sale and the beginning of it seemed alright, not sure if it will stick though. I also played through the first couple of levels of Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive which is an absolute classic that I never played back in the day. The AI is pretty dumb, but immersion breaking stupidity aside it’s still super fun to approach it as a puzzle and work around and abuse the dumb AI.

    Still, my brain might still be in the CRPG frame of mind after two months of Kingmaker so I also installed Arcanum with the Multiverse Edition modpack. Perhaps this is the time I finally play through it.



  • I’m about 160 hours into Pathfinder: Kingmaker and I can’t say for certain if it’s a good game or not. It’s certainly captured my obsessive attention, and there are parts of it that I really enjoy. However, the game is also frustrating and messy and the two halves of CRPG on one side and kingdom management sim on the other really don’t mesh well. It’s also a complete nightmare for any completionist with the huge amount of timed quests, many of which never announce their timer publicly. The encounter design also doesn’t feel great and the difficulty is often unfun - though there are some menu settings that can mitigate some of that.

    The writing also feels very hit-and-miss.



  • The SoD expansion was made by Beamdog some 15 years after BG1 was released. It’s admirable that they tried getting the original voice actors back, but otherwise the team behind BG 1&2 (and ToB) had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t get through it, and I have a hard time supporting the Enhanced Editions as is due to Beamdog inserting their fanfiction into them as well - though I recognise they’ve been instrumental in revamping the engine and bringing the games to a new generation of people.


  • Dividing my time between playing STALKER 2 and modding it. There is a really great game underneath the surface - at least the potential of one - but it’s a shame it released in the state it did. The A-life offline simulation being turned off smells of console constraints and/or a forced release after they ran out of possibilities to delay further. I really hope they’ll be able to keep working on the game through patches because it has the potential to be truly fantastic.

    Also still playing Deadlock, a game or two a day or so. It’s an often frustrating experience - as MOBAs tend to be - where matchmaking still has a huge impact on your fun, but the core gameplay is just so damn good. I just wish I was in a skill bracket where people are actually using mics and coordinating and communicating. Partly an EU problem though I’m sure.





  • The only real qualm I have is the lack of Ukrainian and Russian accents on the English dub. I don’t really understand the thought process as I felt like it added a lot of character and immersion to both the originals and to the Metro games.

    Otherwise I’m optimistic, I think the game looks good and they’ve been saying all the right things. Game journalists who have played it also report things that make me feel very hopeful, both in terms of micro gameplay (atmosphere, tension and isolation without reliance on jump scares) and macro gameplay (decisions mattering, branching stories and factions).

    I pre-ordered the ultimate edition regardless to support the studio after the horrors they’ve survived over the war, including losing colleagues to the frontline.


  • I’m in a bit of a down period as STALKER 2 is coming out soon so I don’t want to pick up a new story campaign from my backlog in the meantime (Metro: Exodus, Bioshock Infinite and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided are on the docket) in case I’m not finished in time for release day.

    Still playing lots of Deadlock, but for a single player story game I’ve gone back to some bits of RDR 2 when I’m not in the competitive mood. I started it earlier this year but abandoned it as I burnt out on it a bit. Coming back to it has been a very mixed experience, there is still so much about it I love - but also some very deep frustrations. And absence hasn’t really made the heart grow fonder in that regard. I don’t really like the mission structure. I know it’s been brought up by others, but I too seem to be among those who are bothered by it. I also find the sheer body count forced on you through main story missions to be so ludicrous as to regularly ruin my immersion. I’m not even that far in and I’ve already basically committed genocide levels of murder! And then the mission is over and nobody is talking about the massacre of hundreds of lawmen?