Heroes of Might & Magic 3 is Ruining My (Gaming) Life

It all started one fateful evening when the bf pointed out that to get time to spend together just the two of us, we'd probably have to schedule it because having two little kids just saps the life force out of you and when the evening comes we're too brain dead to think of anything and just end up playing separate games. Said and done, we decided that two evenings every week we'd try to do something together, like watch a movie or play video/board games. When our first scheduled evening arrived we were juggling a few ideas. Sega Mega Drive collection on the Switch? The Amazing Labyrinth board game? Vampire Hunter D movie?

I am still waiting for the full 3D HD remake.

I don't remember who first suggested it, it was probably me, but one of us threw out Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Why not? We both love it and we knew we were going to have a good time. A great way to start off the evening. You'd think after hundreds of hours of playing HoMM3 in the past, we should've known better…

We played all evening. The bf, who has to get up at 5 am for work, said it was time to wrap it up. He needed to go to bed. But there it was. Something happened. Just another turn. And then, just one more turn. An extra 30 minutes after we had said we definitely needed to stop playing, we finally managed to pull ourselves away.

The day after was a regular evening. Meaning we hadn't planned to play HoMM3, and had instead in fact plans to do other things. Play other games, read, watch things, write. But come evening, kids in bed, we looked at each other and said: "HoMM3?". There was only a moments hesitation, a quick thought to the things I had actually wanted to do that evening before we both agreed - let's play HoMM3. After all, we were right at the moment of winning, weren't we? And after that, we could go back to business as usual.

This guy hasn't picked up anything!

That entire evening went, and again it took us a lot more time to turn the game off than it should've. If we thought we were close to winning, we were at least a couple of hours wrong. But then it was so easy to get sidetracked. Instead of heading straight for the enemy castle, you see a resource you want or an artifact you know will make the fight a bit easier. Or maybe I should just head back and top up my troops, make sure I really kick the enemies behind real hard. How sure am I after all that 5 Black Dragons will be enough? And I just need a little bit more money to get that Portal of Glory.

The evening after that we again thought that we for sure were close to winning, so we decided to just get that done quickly and then move on to whatever we actually had planned, play all the other games we also wanted to play. We did actually finish the game that evening, but not before we yet again had to play just a little bit longer than we really should have.

After that we both decided that playing HoMM3 was probably not a good idea. Clearly we couldn't handle it and we should stay away from it. There were plenty of other games out there for us to play together.

On our next planned evening together we look at each other and said "well you know, if we just play this when we're supposed to, and turn it off when we're supposed to, then there is no problem, right?". Right. But this is HoMM3. You don't just stop playing HoMM3 whenever.

What were those wood elves thinking?

We had a repeat of the first session and realized that no, we really can't handle HoMM3. It's just too much fun, it's just too addictive. The reward-feedback is perfectly balanced to make you just want to play a little bit more, in a way I have not encountered in any other game. There is always something you need to do, something more to explore. A creature to build or a resource to gather. There is no lull in the pace for you to think "oh here is a good time to take a break". It's greatness can not be understood until it has been experienced, text and pictures does not do it justice.

The other day we were yet again pondering what to play that evening and yet again HoMM3 was mentioned. Yet again the argument of "we'll just turn it off when we should now". But this time we know, there is just no way to play HoMM3 moderately and we managed to stay away from it. For now.

Maybe we should play World of Warcraft together instead?

Top 10 Best Games I've Played the Last 5 Years (Part 2)

And here is part 2 of my Top 10 list that you probably thought I had forgotten about by now! You can find the first part here.

5. Planescape Torment

Although I am a big fan of old CRPGs I often find that while they hold up storywise, they don't always gameplaywise. Because of that I can often be quite wary when trying them out, knowing that I am going to need a fair amount of patience (and sometimes googling) for the initial couple of hours to get acquainted with the somewhat outdated and sometimes unintuitive systems.

Those late 90's graphics *heart*

I barely even remember if that was an issue with Planescape Torment. Sure I had some minor gripes with some design choices - the fact that you had to rest to be able to gain back your spells for instance - but they all drowned out in the experience that was the Planescape. As "The Nameless One", aptly not only amnesiac but also immortal (which sounds like it would break the game, but it is very cleverly implemented), you wake up into a world that just barely makes sense to you, yet manages to keep you interested and invested throughout. You'll meet crazy and broken people along the way as you try to uncover more about yourself (sounds like The Witcher took a page from this). I hate the cliché "you have to experience it to understand it" but that is ultimately the kind of game Planescape Torment is. Words just don't do it justice and anything I could tell you about the stories or characters you encounter would spoil the experience. 

This game really has it all - great characters, great gameplay and a world you won't find anywhere else.

4. Deus Ex

Back when I was barely even playing PC games, my dad brought home a game for me and my brother he had received from a co-worker who had told him it was "really, really good". I took one look at the cover and decided it was not for me. It looked dark and kind of scary. Surely it would be too hard for me anyway.

The game was Deus Ex and years later I decided it was time to give this all-time classic a go. I was hooked from the very first mission. As JC Denton (who I keep misremembering as Fenton in my head) I absolutely loved to sneak, shoot and blast my way through the levels. I was amazed at the possibility to try out different solutions, allowing me to avoid danger or go in guns-a-blazing as it suited me. My jaw completely dropped to the floor when I was able to completely avoid a boss-fight by choosing the appropriate dialogue options. To me, this game was pure genius.

More beautiful graphics

It hardly made matters worse that the story was interesting but the amazing gameplay is what I would return for. I didn't love every level, I remember being quite creeped out by the huge water stage (I don't like swimming in water in games, don't ask me why) but I loved how clever this game made me feel (this is something in common with a lot of other entries on this list). The level design is nothing but brilliant and manages to make you feel like a master puzzle-solver without any big signboards displaying how and where you should do something. The game smartly leads you to find alternative routes if you are interested in looking for them and to give you the feeling you have outsmarted the game and its inhabitants. Few games adapt themselves as much to the player as Deus Ex and I think no two players will play it the same way.

3. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

I can hardly say much more about this game than hasn't already been said. It not only started a genre, the Metroidvanias, but is probably without argument the best entry in said genre. I knew of this game long before I ever decided to play it, and it wasn't even my first foray into the Castlevania series (see Circle of the Moon in my previous post).

I think my only real reason it took me so long to get around to playing SotN, other than it being quite tricky for me to get hold of without having to live off bread and water for a month, was that I had heard so many good things about it that it started to intimidate me. I wasn't even really worried that I'd be disappointed with the game, I sort of knew that it was going to rock my world just like it had pretty much everyone elses, but I knew that once I had played it that was it. You only get one first playthrough of a game, and I wanted it to be special. I wanted to be able to get it all the attention it deserved, so I bided my time.

Maybe awesome graphics is what all the games have in common?

Then, it was finally time. I played it through (and recorded it here)* and yes - it is amazing. The gameplay, the setting, the MUSIC! I wasn't disappointed for a second (not even the clunky handling of items could sour my gleeful mood). Even the voice acting has become a classic. Not only was it a game so full of new ideas convened into an amazing package, it also showed game designers high on 3D graphics that pixel art and 2D games were nowhere near done being awesome and that some games needed to be in 2D to be at their best.

What really makes Symphony of the Night stand out from other games on this list is that I don't think you have to enjoy this genre to enjoy this game. It offers a more universal type of enjoyment and has a style that will always be unaffected by time, technological advances or changes in tastes.

2. System Shock 2
If there was one thing I would like to change about mysef, it's being such a scaredy-cat. Sure, I am quite capable at social situations but I am like a child when it comes to darkness and scary things like horror movies and games. One of the creepiest things I know is an illustration from Edgar Allan Poes "Masque of the Red Death" that I stupidly read as a child (if you click that link, don't say I didn't warn you).

So I scare easily and probably the most when playing games. I tend to get very invested and immersed and that doesn't help in the slighest when you think (or know) some ghoul is breathing down your neck. Unlike a movie I can't make it better by closing my eyes. Unfortunately this has kept me from fully enjoying otherwise brilliant games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

I am trying to change this about myself though, and one way to do it is to challenge myself to playing games that are just creepy enough to keep me on edge but not keeping me from playing. It doesn't hurt if the game is also really, really fun. System Shock 2 is definitely such a game.

Cyborg Assassin, probably the most annoying enemy in the game.

Firstly, it's not scary because it makes you feel too vulnerable or because the enemies you encounter are that freaky (compared to a game like Amnesia: The Dark Descent for instance) but because of the weird mood and atmosphere it sets. In this way System Shock 2 and the first entry on my list have a lot in common and you might find me saying similar things about them. The tension doesn't rise so much from the fact that you're pretty sure you're going to die any second, but that you just don't know what is coming around the corner. In System Shock 2 you start out on a space station, but towards the end you're in some sort of body, jumping on teeth and stuff? I don't even know and that's part of the fun. The twisted people you meet who try to kill you even shout things like "Forgive me!" as they try to bludgeon you to death.

Like I said, it definitely doesn't hurt that it has excellent gameplay with fun role-playing elements that allow you to tackle situations differently from playthrough to playthrough (that being said I've only played it through once, but I have watched LP's of it since). Good level design means you're rarely confused as to what to do and where to go, at least not long enough to leave you frustrated, and Shodan is one of the best villains in video game history of you ask me (too bad she has a pretty lackluster boss fight). It will drown you in sinister and eerie, but always keep you curious and wanting more.

1. Thief: The Dark Project

So here it is, the game that has left the most scars memories and that I keep returning to in my head over and over - Thief: The Dark Project, that is the original and not the remake that came out a couple of years ago. I mentioned that it's similar to System Shock 2, and that goes most prominently for tone and atmosphere. Gameplay wise they're not overly similar, whereas SS2 allows you to be sneaky if you want to, there is also a lot of room for going around guns-a-blazing if that is your cup of tea. In Thief however, staying in the shadows is essential and I found this game very trial-and-error heavy. Never have I played a game that made trial-and-error so much fun though. Just timing going around a corner, sneaking into a room, shooting a moss-arrow at the right time - everything has to be perfect if you want Garrett to survive the harsh world of "The City". 

Sometimes you're not entirely sure what you're fighting.

The story is ominous, it starts out light-hearted enough with you getting a mission to steal some nicknacks, but soon you find yourself trying to avoid zombies and monsters. There are factions to ally yourself with and demons to destroy. It all sounds convoluted, but Thief has some of the slickest level-designs and densest feeling worlds I've experienced. Every second is a delight and I can't ever remember feeling frustrated or cheated - every failure was my own. 

In fact the game weighed so heavy on me that it was almost like running a marathon every time I sat down to play it. I really had to mentally prepare myself for the all the concentrating and quick thinking I was going to do, to me this was far from a game you can play around in leisurely. There is a reason I have been very hesitant about getting started on the second game even though I enjoyed the first one so much. But it was all worth it because of the overwhelmingly rewarding feeling you got when you got through a mission. 

This game is pure brilliance, even though it (just like SS2) gets very weird towards the end. Overall though, it's a must-experience game in my book.

Omikron: The Nomad Soul - Unfinished Playthrough Review

After what is probably a year of trying to get through it, I decided to uninstall Omikron: The Nomad Soul. And what really bugs me about it is that I can't really put my finger on why I couldn't get into it.

There are plenty of games otherwise that I enjoy well enough, but I just know that I will never be able to beat them for one reason or other - most often the reason being that it's just too damn difficult. For instance I loved Faster Than Light and played it countless hours but I still ever only managed to beat it on easy (and I am pretty damn proud at that). I could've played it still today, and probably will play it again in the future, but I just had to recognize that eventhough it was still fun there were also other games I wanted to try out (oh, so many) and I simply needed to make room. For FTL it was not goodbye however, simply auf wiedesehen. I am also currently playing Crypt of the Necrodancer and having great fun with it but I can also tell already that I will never be able to beat that game - I've made it halfway through world two at the moment and damn those dragons get me every time! I am still far from giving up on that one however, thanks in large to the über-awesome OST, so you never know - miracles to happen.

Just your typical bar.

That was not the issue with Omikron however. I don't know what the issue with Omikron was! Just a bit of background here, it was originally released in 1999 (a great year for PC gaming - Age of Empires 2, System Shock 2 and Planescape Torment were also released this year, to name a few!) by Quantic Dream, you know the people who later did Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls? Yeah, this was their first game.
It really had everything going for it to sweep me off my feet. It was from the time period of PC gaming that I love, it has the fugly graphics that I love. The story is pretty good and the characters are interesting enough. I didn't even think the controls and gameplay mechanics were overly difficult, once I finally got them working anyway (turns out Omikron doesn't particularly like it when you have a controller installed but that took me way long to figure out). The controls were far from perfect, for instance why would you have two completely different control schemes depending on if you're swimming or walking? That nearly had me drowning way too many times. But that is something I come to expect from that time period, I've played plenty of games from that time to know that back then people just invented their own way of doing it, WASD was barely a thing yet. So with each game you try out, part of the fun is trying to figure out how to move around at all. And like I said, it wasn't overly bad in Omikron, but pretty standard tank-controls with easy to understand trigger-keys.

You can tell it's David Bowie, right?

And the gameplay, well - many of the gameplay aspects were actually quite good. They had the regular mode, but then in some parts of the game it turns into some style of shooter (and again, different controls) but all of these were well designed enough to add rather than subtract from the whole. It spiced things up and never became frustrating. The "hail-a-taxi"-feature was great, making sure you could always get to quest-points you needed to go to, or had already visited. This made sure you never got lost and confused. Ok, scratch that - I was plenty confused. Some of the puzzles were quite tricky and I definitely had to employ walkthroughs to get through them. Even when I knew exactly what I had to do, I wasn't standing in the exact right place or talking to the right people in the right order to get it to work. And I would've never been able to figure out I needed to take over the guards body to escape from the prison, I didn't even know I had that ability! But again, it's the style of the times and that in combination with my, quite frankly, abysmal puzzle-solving skills is just a hotbed for frustration on my part. I don't blame the game for that though, the information was there if you knew where to look (or had the patience to keep looking).

It didn't crash or bug on me even once either (not counting when I first started playing it and couldn't get the controls to work), unlike games like KOTOR. KOTOR I had to stop playing after I realized I had spent more time troubleshooting bugs and crashes than I had spent time actually playing it. After a critical bug saw me having to replay hours of the game (I had chosen the wrong dialogue option way back, not triggering an event to happen) I decided enough was enough. No such trouble with Omikron, it ran smoothly.

The cab is the best.

And yet, it just never was... fun enough. But like I said, I can't explain why. Somehow the the whole ended up just not being as good as the parts of it. I could appreciate each element of the game on their own (especially the part where David Bowie has a pretty big part in it) but it just didn't manage to come together in a way that kept me around.

I can't say it's a bad game though, because it really isn't. The whole idea that it's not actually a game and you as a "player" is actually sucked into the world of Omikron to save it from some sort of demon is actually a really fun and interesting one. Maybe I just got stuck too often. If I have to resort to a walkthrough too much, I'm not really playing the game anyway, am I? I might as well just watch a LP of it, because that is basically what I am doing anyway. So, that is what I might just do. But finish this game, I will not.

Man Up or Manual - Comparing Diablo-clones

As I've been on a streak of playing Diablo-clones, purely coincidentally as I often install games on random, I've also come to think of the subtle differences that make or break a game. What makes a good game? It's a question almost as difficult to answer as the big one about the meaning of life, especially since it often comes down to subjective ideas of fun. It just really popped into my head when playing these Diablo-clones specifically because they're somehow so comparable. Often the core mechanics are pretty much the same and the differences are too subtle to explain in a good way.

I never played Diablo or Diablo 2 much when they were released, but once I got around to it I loved them. I never beat Diablo, but went through Diablo 2 a couple of times. I was quite thrilled when Diablo 3 was announced but got bored with it after some months, I gave it another chance a while after but never could get into it. I've filed it under the list of "unsuccessful Diablo-clones" (although technically not a Diablo-clone), along with a whole bunch of others. Din's Curse (2010), Torchlight (2009) and FATE: The Cursed King (2011) joined that list pretty quickly. Eventhough I had fun with all of those games initially, since I am quite a fan of the core mechanic, I ended up losing interest fairly quickly. I even bought Torchlight 2, having heard it was better than the first one, over two years ago. I still haven't played it.

FATE is pretty much Torchlight - amazon.com

Then I started playing Darkstone (released 1999) and something changed. The interesting thing was that all of the abovementioned boring games were simple to get the hang of. They either had tutorials that explained what you needed to know, or game mechanics easy enough to figure out on the run. But they lacked something that made it fun to stick around in the world. To me, Din's Curse, FATE and Torchlight all suffered from the same feeling of meaninglessness, the way all that killing never felt like it was leading anywhere or at least nowhere I wanted to go. Diablo 3 had the same problem of repetitiveness and sense that I was bashing my head against a wall even when I was making progress. But I had so much trouble figuring out how it differed from Diablo 2. What made the one fun and the other one not?

Torchlight - gamespot.com

Darkstone did things differently than the other games. It has a tutorial, if you can call it that - a dude tells you where the vendors are and you get to test some different weapons and that's it. Quests are given to you by random people walking up and telling you "good luck finding the Holy Shield! You're going to need it!". I am paraphrasing, but that is literally all the information you get. Not a word about where the item is, which seems like pretty essential information. It took me 2 hours to figure out how to make my companion use spells. Or how to lock spells into my spellbar. Or what the different skills you can buy actually do. All thanks to me digging up the actual manual of the game. Apparently you have to hold in shift while clicking a spell to make it stick to your spellbar. Apparently you have to tell your companion how much mana they can use by marking their mana bar before they start using skills. Apparently the Language skill is completely useless in single player.

Needless to say I was frustrated as hell the first couple of hours of playing, which wasn't the case with the other Diablo-clones. Diablo was released several years before this game so I was desperately trying to find the key that would show me all the loot at my feet, but alas. You have to use your eyes and try to see that tiny ass pixelated ring somewhere among all the cracked urn pieces. Trying to open a chest I often end up circling it because targeting is wonky as hell. There is no pet to conveniently run off and vendor your things. Eventhough you're a team your characters control as two different people, which means if you want to sell or buy stuff from the vendor you have to do it individually. Swapping between characters is also unintuitive (especially since there is no key for it) so I've already died a couple of times from freaking out when in the wrong character, using the wrong skills. But somehow, rather than making me angry, it made me all the happier when I got it right.

Closer to the style of Diablo - megagames.com

But it was fun. I kept trying, I kept playing - eventhough all the game mechanics told me I should've given up long ago. I kept thinking "what the hell is wrong with this game" but I didn't close it down. When I finally ended up reading the manual to be able to actually do simple stuff, I even got a bit sentimental. I can't explain it. I don't think it's a bad thing at all that games nowadays come with tooltips and explain basic game mechanics from the start. There are even old games that do this without it feeling like the game is holding your hand, like Geneforge or Planescape: Torment. And I don't think it's the handholding alone that makes a game more or less fun, Darkstone also has a more interesting world and manages to make dungeon crawling feel like an adventure and not a chore, just like the original Diablo did. I passed a lake and a fairy in it told me to "blow the reeds from the smallest to the biggest". "What reeds?" I thought. There were no reeds anywhere and she didn't tell me where to find them or why (to play the song of snakes, whatever that was good for). After some clicking around I decided to just leave it. Venturing into the next dungeon, I happen to find some reeds in various locations. Now I am curious.

Worst graphics, best game? - gamersinfinite.com

There was just something about the ruthlessness of getting thrown in at the deep end, the feeling of the game developers thinking "they'll get this, they're not stupid" (although clearly I was) that felt refreshing. If done right, and that's obviously easier said than done, saying "we don't need to tell you, you'll figure it out" really adds to the sense of achievement. You need a lot of faith in your game to think people will stick around for it. A lot of upcoming games will add this as an optional feature (like the new Hitman, and I believe the new Thief had this as well) where you can choose to get more or less information. I think that is a brilliant idea. If the popularity of Dark Souls is anything to go by, people enjoy good trial & error. And for the rest of us, there is always the manual.