Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes - I Waited 4 Years For This

Or at least close to.

As someone who really enjoyed Suikoden 1 and 2, I was immediately intrigued when I heard a spiritual successor by no one less than the original creator Yoshitaka Murayama was looking for funding on Kickstarter in mid-2020. This was also before I had had a few bad experiences with Kickstarter so I eagerly threw my money at a physical copy and started waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

To their credit, the development team were very informative and transparent about the ups and downs of the developmental process. So much in fact that I stopped reading the steady flow of updates that came to my inbox not long after I had backed the project. I realized that the game would either be a thing or not be a thing (as is the way with Kickstarter) and basically stopped thinking about it for a year. And another year.

I had genuinely given up hope on the whole thing towards the end of last year and sort of just started seeing the updates as another junk mail to delete. 

But then one of the updates caught my attention (fortunately). The subject line asked for my personal information so that my physical copy could be sent to me (and also to pay for shipping, more money into the void I thought). It was easy to submit, but I was nervous and shaky nonetheless. It almost felt unreal to actually be at this stage, finally. After I had submitted my information I set my mind to another year of waiting, or maybe just not receiving anything at all.

But then one day, not long after, when I came home it was there in my postbox waiting for me. My very own copy of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. I have waited so long for this game, actually forgotten about it and written it off as a myth not going to materialize that I didn't really know how to handle that physical manifestation in my hands. My mind was empty. I couldn't muster excitement about something I had considered dead and non-existent for so long. I had also missed that poor Murayama-san had passed just before the release of this game and heard of it the day after I had received my copy (coincidentally? Who knows).

So now I think that whatever I end up feeling about the game - whether it was worth the wait or not - it will hold a special place in my heart because of the journey, because of the symbolism. This Kickstarter story ended up on a mixed note. I am glad I got the game, I believe it will at least be entertaining but of course playing it will will also fill me with sadness knowing Murayama didn't get to see the final reception himself.

I will start the game up soon. I haven't finished mentally preparing myself for it yet.

Field Report #30 - I Am That Noob Now

Back in the day when I played WoW, after a year or so of finding my footing, I started to play fairly seriously. Especially when I started to get into raiding in TBC, I was one of those people who pored over logs, read every detail in patch notes and analyzed it all to bits. I wrote posts on how to play classes I didn't even main, because I even put time into analyzing their rotations (can't say whether my guides were good or not though). While I hope I never looked down on the players who spent their time doing other things, I do know occasionally thinking "why wouldn't you want to bring your A-game to every group?".

Now I find myself constantly being that person. I don't know tacs for raids (other than what I barely remember from having done them 10+ years ago). I don't know what I need attunement for nor do I keep track of my rep on any of my characters (it doesn't help that I level everything simultaneously). Just the other week I joined a raid for Mount Hyjal only to find out I can't enter. I was mortified... My guild asked me if I wanted to join for their raids and I was almost embarrassed to say I hadn't signed for anything yet because I have no idea how Discord works. Fortunately they were kind enough to work me through it slowly and it's not that hard after all.

I have no idea what my BiS gear is and I only just downloaded an Addon that allows me to see what loot I could get from bosses (AtlasLoot) so that I can join in on that Reserve Loot thingy in Pugs. When the new patch was released and we suddenly only needed Honored to get into Heroics I had no idea until someone told me. Joining a Pug for Zul'Aman this week I quickly read some notes on raid tacs while I was making my way there so I wouldn't ruin the evening for everyone else (I think I did ok). I used to know these things way ahead and plan ahead, knowing exactly where I was going, what I was doing and what I needed. I used to be the person who explained these details to other people. Maybe it is karma then that I am receiving the same from others now.

Because now I log in and I don't have a clue. I feel like I have to ask about everything. I feel like I am constantly left behind, gear-wise. Everyone is going to fancy raids and have all the fancy gear with the fancy DPS. I am never the best in my groups.

This might sound horrible but it's actually all just pretty amusing. It's how I started out in WoW and somehow I've come full circle. I've seen what it is like on the hardcore side of things, doing the server first runs and discussing every fight with your fellow guildies. While I loved that part of WoW as well, I don't miss it. I enjoy this side of WoW just as much, for completely different reasons. I log in and I don't have a mission. I have nowhere I need to be and nothing special I need to do. It's whatever I have time for or brain power left in my head to do that evening. I don't have a purpose other than what I fancy for the evening and it's exactly the way I want it to be. 

Fortunately I feel like people have patience for my lack of knowledge, and hopefully my cheery demeanor can make up for some lacking gear. I still try to do my best of course. And best of all, I finally got to answer my question - now I know exactly why some people don't bring their A-game. 

Anachronox #15 - The End?

I thought I knew this game by now, I thought it couldn't throw me any curve balls anymore. I thought wrong. The end of Anachronox offers up some exhausting material and now that I feel like I've closed it down for the final time I don't even know how to wrap up my thoughts. What did I even experience? What did I just go through?

It's a roller coaster for sure and while the end is probably the games' weakest point it doesn't leave me unfulfilled. No wait, that is not entirely true. In many ways it does exactly that. I can't explain it without going in to major spoiler territory, but I guess we've already passed that in all my previous posts.

Detta's castle/fortress/home base is another maze. But I've got to hand it to them, even though almost every place I have gone to in this game has been some sort of maze, at least they've been pretty inventive with the areas. I still don't feel like it's repeating itself, too much. 

PAL works alone.

For Detta's the schtick is that we've got the entire team with us for once, which means we split up in three teams that you can easily swap between. Sly heads one and Stiletto heads one and PAL is on his own. The teams need to solve different puzzles in order to open up paths for each other and it's a fun experience. 

I think overall they've done a good job with keeping the same concept interesting, because as I've probably mentioned a couple of times the general idea is that you go through some sort of maze like structure, solve puzzles and fight some enemies. But the variety, both in settings, enemies and puzzles is good and it doesn't bore me.

And dark. Don't forget dark.

Of course the characters and the story is the real highlight of the game and there is a lot of potential here. I wish there was more of it, even after almost 40 hours of playtime. By more I mean more world building, it's a really interesting place that we get to explore here and I would love to see more of it.

Once we get towards the end of the game they've made several choices that give me reason to be frustrated though. First of all, the difficulty ramps up significantly. I guess when my team mates told me they needed better weapons they weren't lying. The final bosses, because spoiler there are two, are silly difficult compared to what I have been fighting so far. And honestly I really don't like it when games does this. I played another game recently, though I can't remember which, which was quite easy on regular enemies and extremely difficult on bosses. Anachronox has been fairly easy throughout though, and throws me off a cliff right at the end. Not cool.

You're not a true mob boss without an indoor pool.

The boss fight with Detta sees my team dead except for Sly (unfortunately I am forced to bring Stiletto with me for this fight and she is easily my worst team mate). Detta does an attack that just about halves my hp, so every other turn I need to throw a full heal and every other turn I can do an attack. But only my special attack does damage to Detta, my regular one always misses. This means I can only do damage to Detta every four turns (because the special attack needs recharging). And Detta himself does an attack that literally takes 30 seconds of cut scene every. single. time.

I have no happy memories of this room.

After Detta is defeated it seems like we're about to win the game. But then... it turns out Grumpos had been on the side of the bad guys all along. No I am not talking about Detta, but the actual BIG BAD that has been threatening to destroy the universe. Thanks a lot Grumpos!

I never understood how these people could get henchmen anyway, doesn't Grumpos realize that he is part of this universe too? He is kind of putting himself in the same danger. But apparently Grumpos still thinks he's better off helping the bad guy than trying to stand against him. Coward.

So instead of throwing the Key Stone into the energy well like he is supposed to, to destroy it, he activates it and summons the bad guy on our confused and shocked asses. And then it is time for another, even worse, boss fight.

Ok ok, this fight maybe actually isn't so bad. It's just that I haven't been allowed to save at any point since I beat Detta and the fight is confusing as heck. This time we get to fight with all six of our remaining characters (Grumpos not being with us for obvious reasons, traitor). Mr Evil as I will call him since I can't recall his actual name (though it is bound to be along those lines) fights on a platform with six colorful orbs around him. Ok, I think. I probably need to destroy those orbs first in order to do damage to him. This turns out to be only partially correct. And the bit I got wrong is pretty dang important.

For some reason I can only attack him with three of my six characters, though this also means only these three characters take damage. Again unfortunately Stiletto is on my team and again unfortunately she is still useless. Each turn every single one of the six orbs do an attack on one of my characters, while they don't do much damage it is extremely tedious to have to sit through. And as soon as I destroy one and start to focus on the others it respawns again. Ok, I think. So I have to destroy them all at the same time?

Again, only almost correct. After I manage to do that, which also is extremely tedious and time consuming I realize that that isn't doing what I was hoping it would do at all. I don't do more damage to the boss and the orbs almost instantly reappear. At that point my play session has been going on for way too long and I actually need to go to bed. Should I leave the game on for 24 hours and continue the day after? I choose not to do this but simply close it down, mostly out of nerd rage reasons to be honest.

So how am I supposed to beat that sucker then? Oh, apparently you need to move your characters into position whenever you destroy an orb, so that they can't respawn. Of course... I wish I had looked that up before my annoyance got the better off me and now I probably have to do the really frustrating fight with Detta all over again too.

They look as disappointed as I feel.

Nah.

Especially since I now also know the game doesn't even end, even after you manage to beat that guy. It's intentionally open-ended because the creators wanted to make a sequel. But we know that is never going to happen. And if they ever do announce one I will go back and do those fights again, maybe. Because dang, they were some horrible fights.

Everything up until that point was really good though, and I think that is the reason I am so disappointed with the ending. I guess I could live with the non-ending if the difficulty didn't karate chop me so hard over the neck though. That's just not cool, it's like they didn't actually want me to see the end once I got there.

It's so unfortunate because I have had ~35 hours of great fun with this game and then the lasting feeling with me ends up being some of disappointment, frustration and pure "oh come on!". Like that one time I went to a birthday party at a restaurant and we had an amazing time but one of my shrimp must've been a bit off because I got really sick and all I can think of now is how unwell I got, not how much fun I had beforehand.

But those last couple of boss fights were definitely some sort of bad shrimp and I still can't shake how frustrated they made me feel, unlike anything else in the game.

I'll get over it, I hope. And I hope I will remember the game for what it really is. An extremely underrated, funny as hell, well written and well played out little gem that I definitely recommend anyone to play through. And I wish there would be a sequel, that would be amazing. Because I actually think this world and these people have a lot more to tell before I get bored.

I Just Got My First Ignore [WoW Classic]

After harping on about how nice everything is in WoW Classic I guess it is only fair that I share an encounter I had with someone that clearly wasn't having a very good day.

My bf tricked me into going to Loch Modan with my level 18 paladin, when I realized I was too low level for most quests in Redridge and didn't really know where else to go. I say "tricked" because I don't like Loch Modan and I also outleveled a lot of the quests there.

After I had a successful group to kill Chok'sul, which is almost a story worthy telling in itself seeing that we pulled four elites on a group of three and still got out of it alive (well I wasn't but the other two were), I ended up running around and passed a Peacebloom.

I've decided to go for gathering professions on my paladin because I suck at collecting money otherwise and so I stopped to get the Peacebloom. I also really fancied some cake. I had been thinking about it for a while but didn't want to run off mid-elite-killing. So I started picking the flower and went to get cake thinking I'd auto-loot as usual. I was gone less than a minute. Apparently I had full bags, so when I came back my character was still in the loot window. No biggie I thought.

But oh no, there was a biggie.

I noticed someone had apparently run past me while I was kneeling there next to the Peacebloom and said "Either loot it or don't".

I could've just left it at that. Maybe I should've. But I like talking and for some reason I thought it could start a fun conversation, since people are generally nice and easy to talk to.

"Sorry, I went afk while looting and apparently had full bags" I told the person through whisper.

"Who goes afk while looting" they answer.

"Someone who really wants cake" I wanted to answer.

But they had ignored me.

Ignored me! Over a Peacebloom!

But it gets better. When I shift-clicked them to see their level I noticed their guild name - "No Offense Taken". Fighting over a Peacebloom. Some times, comedy just writes itself.

So I've just gotten my first (that I know of) ignore in WoW Classic, but I'll definitely try to step up and loot my herbs a lot faster from now on.

We Don't Need to Worry About Skynet Any Time Soon

Disclaimer: This is a rant, the only sources are personal anecdotes and it should be considered as food for thought and nothing else. Ranting in the comments section is welcome!

I read an article in Swedish magazine Axess the other day. In it they had interviewed a man named Ulf Danielsson, professor in theoretical physics (ie a lot of difficult maths) at the Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden. They discuss the dawn of AI and whether it is even possible for a program to gain consciousness. Ulf does not think so, in fact he says he doesn't believe in the duality of the body at all - the idea that we have some sort of "soul", "essence" or "consciousness" that can be spoken about as separate or even separable from the body. According to him the body is the consciousness. You don't have a body, you are the body.

I thought it was a very interesting line of reasoning that of course would have huge ramifications for science fiction. I also find it very plausible that he is correct. I don't believe in a duality either, I don't think there is something inside us that makes us "us" that isn't deeply connected and entrenched with what is also our body. Imagine all those body swap movies/animes/sci-fi books? Imagine all the fiction about downloading your consciousness into a computer or saving your brain in a jar? Would it ever be possible?

I think, therefore I am. But what am I?

If you really think about it, it seems like a daunting task. We already know that our mood, behaviour, feelings and thus everything we are come down to things like neurotransmitters. Without being an expert on anatomy, the neurotransmitters themselves are in turn affected by bodily functions that would have to be replicated as well. Could we build a machine that could successfully not only translate the function of these neurotransmitters into 1s and 0s but also make them function with a conscious mind the way they do in the brain and the body?

Even if we could, we now know that there seem to be other body parts than the brain itself that has a big impact on our personality. Lately it's become a bigger and bigger field of research to find out how our gut and the microbiome that lives in there affects everything from what we like to eat to how we feel and even think about things. While we know very little about these things yet, we can probably safely draw the conclusion that a brain without a stomach or any other microbiome would act differently to what we're used to (we're in fact more microbiome than human!). Of course we don't know how yet. And we also don't know if this extends to other body parts. How much will we ever really know about how our muscles, blood, lungs etc affect our personalities, our capability to form thoughts and what those thoughts are?

Even if I could picture us being able to take a snapshot of an active brain the way it is at any given moment, it seems like one big leap to go from that to being to progress it forward in a natural way. So I could basically have a mental image of my consciousness as it was at some date in time, but getting that to be active on its own, to be able to react to the surrounding to form new feelings, memories and thoughts?

I think what I am trying to say is that if we ever want to create an AI that could call itself conscious we would first of course have to know every intricate detail about what makes a human conscious (and call me a pessimist but I never think we will). And then we need to successfully translate that into a program that can not only run all that data in the way it needs to but also be able to react to the outside world the way it needs to. It can not be separated from input, and that input has to be a lot more than just audibly and visually.

Asimov's Robot-series is also very good.

In a way this then becomes similar to the discussion about whether we would ever be able to reliable predict the future. I know at least one really interesting sci-fi series has been written about this subject, I am of course talking about Isaac Asimovs "Foundation"-series. I believe it is theoretically possibly to have so much data about everything going on that you could predict how something, by law of nature, is going to go down (although the Foundation series is about the laws of society, but the core concept is the same. You need a lot of data). But practically it will never be possible for us to calculate all the variables. The same will be true when it comes to creating an AI.

We will probably be able to create programs that are clever enough to outsmart humans in different areas, even intricate conversations like the Turing test (didn't they already do that by the way?). But create a self-conscious robot/computer like in the books and movies? No, I don't think so.

Zinn's New Years Wrap Up - A Look Back At 2018

The year is coming to a close and it is time to do what a lot of people do at this time of year, prepare for the new year by taking a look back at the old one. First of all, I hope you all had a great year. What with how the world looks right now things might feel gloomy, but let's leave that for a bit and focus on a world that usually only brings us joy - that of culture. In this post I thought I'd take a look at some of my favourite gaming, watching and reading experiences of 2018.

The Books
Let's start with the reading ones.

The Expanse Series by James S.A Corey
This was the year I discovered The Expanse by James S.A Corey. People, I think my mom mainly, had nagged me into checking out this series on Netflix. It took me quite a while to get around to it anyway, simply because I am not really a series-watching kind of person. But once I did, holeymoley was I hooked. The Expanse has pretty much everything I ever wanted from a tv-series; big space ships, drama that keeps you on the edge, great characters that you care about, big space ships... I was absolutely devastated to learn that it had been cancelled but then I also learned that the series was based on books and I could just read those instead of sit and cry over no more Expanse on Netflix. Said and done, I quickly bought the first six books in the Expanse series and yes, they are also awesome.

I love every character except the main one actually.

Interestingly enough, I actually think the tv-series is better, but we're talking awesome with a topping of awesome here, the book series is absolutely amazing as well. The tv series expands and changes a couple of things that I feel make certain parts more coherent. They add and remove characters here and there but in essence it is extremely faithful. They've even changed some of the main characters, some because of necessity like Naomi Nagata's long body frame, and some because I don't know like Amos not being a middle aged bald guy. But I actually prefer the way it is in the tv-series, which might simply come down to the fact that I watched it before I read it.

Either way, the books are absolute must-reads if you have even the slightest interest in science fiction. Without spoiling anything, I was worried after book three that the story was taking a path in the wrong direction, but I am currently on book four and things are still just as interesting as ever.

The Martian by Andy Weir
As we're on the topic of science fiction, another really great book I read this year was Andy Weir's "The Martian". It was one of those books where I thought it couldn't be as good as everyone said it was, but it really is. After I had read it I also watched the movie, which yet again is extremely faithful to the source material, but actually cuts out two or three quite important incidents so if you liked the movie I can really recommend reading the book. Poor Mark actually gets through even more shit there.

The Way to Hudson Bay. The Life and Times of Jens Munk by Thorkild Hansen
As we're on the topic of exploration then (see how great I am at segwaying?), a third book I really enjoyed this year was a thrift shop find. When I buy books in thrift shop I go 80% by the cover, and considering that I have been quite lucky with my finds, I often find books I end up really enjoying. This was a book called "The Way to Hudson Bay. The Life and Times of Jens Munk" by Thorkild Hansen, a Danish author. Jens Munk really existed in around the year 1600, and this is a telling of his life as he tries to find the Northwest Passage. I have something of a fascination for Arctic and Antarctic exploration as it was done back in the day, and the way people dared to face those extreme dangers for the sake of curiosity (and probably a lot of fame). In many ways it is very analog to space exploration, because back then these regions were as alien as things got.

The Mother by Pearl S Buck
As we're on the topic of people facing hardship and adversity, a fourth book I really enjoyed was "The Mother" by Pearl S Buck. Last year I went around to my grandpas to bring home a couple of boxes of books from my late grandmas. She loved reading just as much as me and I was curious to see what kind of literature she enjoyed. Most, if not all, is in German so it had the added benefit of getting me to practice that while also feeling like I was sharing something with a person I hold extremely dearly. From my book haul I can tell my grandma liked stories set in the East, and I remember she used to tell me she liked traveling there. The Mother is about a mother in an unnamed asian country and the hardship she faces together with her family living and farming in the country side in the early 1900's. It's got a very subdued and matter-of-factly sadness to it, it doesn't try to tug on any heartstrings but simply states it the way it was. It's enough for me to feel extremely blessed to live the life I live now.

Apelsinflickan by Lena Kallenberg
As we're on the topic of the life of women back in the day, my fifth and final book I am going to mention is "Apelsinflickan" by Lena Kallenberg. As far as I know this doesn't have a translation into any other language, but Apelsinflickan means "the Orange Girl" and was a term for prostitutes in late 1800's Stockholm. Apparently, walking around with an orange in your hand was a signal to men on the lookout. I read this already back when I was a teenager in high-school and loved it then. This year I decided to hunt it down, buy it and reread it to see if I still liked it as much. And I did. The characters are great and you feel like you're right there with them. You can really get a sense of how trapped and reliant on a benevolent man to take care of you a woman really could be back then (and a reminder that this is still reality for many women around the world). I don't know what I enjoy so much about reading about people whose lives pretty much suck, but maybe I just like to have the reminder that my life right here and now is great in so many, many ways.

The Movies
I keep track of which movies I've seen and when through IMDB, and it's clear that it would be impossible for me to properly judge how long ago it was since I saw something without it. When I look at the list and see movies I watched in early 2018 I could've sworn it was only a couple of months ago, like The Shallows. Overall, 2018 has been a pretty bad movie year for me unfortunately, with few movies seen that I really enjoyed and some were quite disappointing, like Black Panther.

There were a couple of good ones though;

Dirty Ho (1976/79)
Despite its name it's not what you probably think. Dirty Ho is the somewhat unfortunate English title of Lan Tou He, a Chinese martial arts movie from 1976 (or 79, it's a bit unclear). I like martial arts movies, and many of the best ones are from the 70's and 80's. Dirty Ho is the main protagonist who gets employed by a mysterious man to protect him from assassins. What we as viewers know, but Dirty Ho doesn't, is that the mysterious man is actually a prince, fully fledged in martial arts. To hide his identity from Ho and others around him, the prince often must use his martial arts covertly, for instance by using the body of another person, and so a lot of really cool fighting scenes play out. I can definitely recommend it if you have an interest in these kind of movies. It's both funny and well choreographed and the premise is quite clever.

Doom (2005)
Most movies based of video games are not very good. Some times the artistic licenses taken don't end up well, but some times I think they do. Resident Evil (only the first one!) is an example of where I think it works (and I am a huge RE fan) and Doom is another one. I had seen this before but couldn't remember anything about it. When I read that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Karl Urban were in it, I decided it required a rewatch. And it's actually not that bad. Johnson even plays a bad guy, so that's pretty fun to watch. Maybe it was weighed down by the expectations from the license, but as a horror-action movie it's quite entertaining.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
I had very low expectations when I went to watch this movie, because for some reason super hero movies just don't seem to jive with me. I didn't like the first Avengers, nor Black Panther, thought Dr Strange was fairly boring... In fact I think the only super hero movies I've seen so far that I liked were the X-Men ones. So why did I go see this movie you might wonder? Hope, I guess. And good thing I did too because this one hits all the nails. While I think it does require some previous knowledge of the MCU (and that makes sense given the story of the movie) this one gets the epic tone right and feels worthwhile. Characters get to use their powers properly and for the first time in a long time I actually cared. And that ending... it has me pretty hyped for what's to come.

The Invisible Man (1933) & The Mummy (1932)
I love old timey movies, and old timey horror movies are probably my favourite kind of old timey movies (also a nice way for me to substitute the fact that I am too squeamish for modern horror movies). The Invisible Man and the Mummy are classics for a reason, and half the reason I enjoy them so much is just because I marvel at the technical work. In Invisible Man they manage to make a whole lot of things move around as if worked by an invisible person, solely through practical effects. I love practical effects.

In the Mummy I simply enjoy the way of the story telling, the way scenes are allowed to linger and take their time, and there isn't incessant cutting and editing everywhere. Watching old timey movies make me feel all cozy, even when they're about mummies and invisible men killing people.

The Games
I don't know if I managed to finish more games than I usually do this year, but it sure feels like it. And a lot of them were really good too. Here are my top picks;

Tales of Phantasia (GBA)
I had played a bit of the fan translated ROM way back in my teens and thought ToF was quite fun. Back then I gave pretty much every RPG I could get my hands on a couple of hours of my time, and almost never finished them, ToF was no different. It kept nagging in the back of my head though, having made more of an impression on me than many of the other RPG's I had tried, not to mention that the Tales of-series kept growing and piquing my interest. Since the SNES version was never released in Europe I got the GBA version a while back and finished the game this year. I loved it! Probably one of the best RPG's I've played in fact, with great characters, a story that keeps you entertained and an awesome combat system.

Chronicles of Riddick (PC)
I played both Escape from Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena, and Dark Athena is basically just more of the same so if you enjoyed the first you should really play both. CoR and DA are mainly sneaking games, but with quite a lot of shooting mixed in. They keep it simple and don't try to deviate from their working formula by making things more complicated than they need to be. This way they hold a nice pace throughout, and with clever level design and well designed gameplay they are fun all the way through. You can read my review of Escape from Butcher Bay here.

Koudelka (PSX)
Speaking of great RPG's, Koudelka could've been right up there with the very great ones if it just hadn't been so short. It has pretty much everything else; a bonkers story, cheesy characters (and the hammy dialogue that seems mandatory on PSX), interesting combat and gameplay and the fairly unique schtick of being a horror-RPG. But unfortunately it's all over far too soon, I finished it after about 14 hours and that's including the final boss fight which was 1 hour on its own. You can read my review of Koudelka here.

Orcs & Elves (NDS)
This was John Carmack's pet project, and maybe that is all I have to say about it to convince you that it was a good game. This is nothing like Doom though, although you do go around corridors shooting things with a wand... Just like CoR I think I like Orcs & Elves just as much for what it isn't as for what it is. Orcs & Elves doesn't outstay it's welcome, it throws in a couple of variables here and there to keep you interested and really twists all the juice out of its gameplay idea. It's great for a couple of hours of well-designed fun and I always appreciate any kind of entertainment that does what it came to do and just leaves it at that. You can read my review of Orcs & Elves here.

Dishonored (PC)
Out of the games on this list, Dishonored is the only one of which I had no previous knowledge, as in I hadn't played or seen any of the game. Dishonored turned out to be in the same vein as some of my favourite games - Thief and Deus Ex - and I am always happy to play more sneak-em-ups. It also did it well, with fun super powers and cool levels to sneak around in. My only gripe was that the game didn't flesh out some of the characters as much as I'd liked, but it's also possible it was designed this way intentionally with several playthroughs in mind. You can read my review of Dishonored here.

So those are pretty much the highlights of my year as far as entertainment goes. I can't end this post without mentioning the main highlight of my year however, the birth of my baby daughter Alexandra, born this summer and probably the happiest baby on the planet. She is still way off playing games on her own of course (who needs that when watching the washing machine is enough), but I am really looking forward to introducing her to the world I love so much, the same way I have done with my son.

Me and my son also got into playing games cooperatively more in this year (when he was younger it was more about helping him out than helping each other) which has been great fun. I am really looking forward to what the gaming, watching and reading year of 2019 has in store for me and maybe I will make a post about some of the things I am particularly hyped for as well.

Borderlands (PC) - Review

In the Borderlands of fun.

I've been on a streak of completing games that have been high on my "to-play"-list for many years, and I must say it feels good. Borderlands is no different, I've been meaning to play it ever since I first saw my now-ex bf play it back when it was released in 2009. Back then I was neck-deep into WoW though and had little time for any other game, something I've mentioned many times before and basically what I've been trying to rectify since.

Watching over the shoulder of my ex, I liked the way Borderlands looked. While I thought the intro gavethe impression of the game being a bit try-hard, it looked like it had some fun shooting and looting going for it. Having tried it now though, nine years later, I can say that whether you have any fun in Borderlands really depends on how you play it.

Borderlands is essentially the simplest kind of shooter. Ever heard of Space Invaders? Yeah, it's actually not many steps removed from that. You can pick from four different classes - Soldier, Sniper, Siren and Berserker. Note that I've only played the game as a Soldier so obviously this review is limited to that viewpoint. I have a tendency to choose what many say to be the most "boring" class, so maybe I should reroll and give it another go. Unfortunately what I experienced as a soldier gives me no desire to do so.

Graphics have changed a bit though.

Not that Borderlands is an awful game, even if I am really making it sound that way right now. It's just very... meh. It was difficult not to compare it to Fallout 3 and New Vegas, because they both take place in a post-apocalyptic setting with a lot of different gear, wonky characters to meet and zany enemies to fight. While Fallout 3 and New Vegas definitely also has its flaws, that's a whole 'nother post, suffice to say that a lot of the things they have got in common mostly work in Fallout and not so much in Borderlands.

What kind of things for instance?

Well, Borderlands is loot-heavy. A lot revolves around gathering or purchasing new gear and comparing it to already existing gear. Unfortunately you rarely get excited about any of it because they all feel pretty same-y. Maybe this is where the different classes come in? As a soldier I was pretty much limited to just using arms (not the ones you flail with, the ones you shoot with) but as I understood it it's not much different with the other classes, just which weapons you choose to use. In Fallout, I often use pretty much every weapon I come across at some point, giving me a lot of variety in how I choose to tackle an enemy. Here, I found that there was really only two types worth using - one spray and pray for close combat and one sniper gun for far away. The only time I swapped was because I ran out of ammo.

It's raining guns.

There are skills to put points in, but they don't feel like they make much of a difference really. Some of them are even specifically for multiplayer, and therefore pointless (pun intended) if you're playing at it alone. This says a lot about the game actually, and I will get back to this.

You'll meet NPC's, most notably probably the Claptraps (who along with the guy who seems to threaten to kill himself, because that's cool, are the faces of the game), and fight a lot of monsters, but the game is really struggling to make me care. There are also little details that just doesn't make me feel like the world is real (which is obviously a tricky word to use with something that is technically not actually real). While some things I do have a permanent effect on the surrounding, they are few and far between. Most locations are only available through teleports and so feel more like stages than actual sites. Most places in Fallout are seamlessly connected, you open a door to the subways or a vault and you are there without a loading screen in between that teleports you to a new location. It makes a world of difference for immersion, at least for me. Borderlands is just a whole bunch of disconnected areas for you to do quests in and that makes everything you meet and fight in them feel disconnected as well.

Not only that, you interact with the areas in the exact same way every time you return. Enemies come charging at you in the exact same way every time you turn the same corner. If you play this game often enough I am sure you could play it blind-folded, because there will be literally no surprises.

The DLC I tried were just more of the same.

And the quests themselves are never particularly inspired, at least not the lot I came across during my total of 14 hours played. While in Fallout you can find some really weird and memorable quest chains, in the eight hours I managed to get myself to play singleplayer of Borderlands I can't recall a single quest I did except for "kill named supermob X". It really wasn't much different in multiplayer either. Also, something I sort of have mentioned already, the quests seem to have little effect on the surroundings. Killing off a tribe of bandits or the beforementioned supermob doesn't mean the tribe or the moblings will be gone or changed in any meaningful way. They will still be there the next time you pass through, as if you hadn't done anything to them.

Even if I might be exaggerating reality a bit, this is exactly how it feels when you play the game - as if everything is just a giant Sisyphos project and you are struggling without a purpose. What is the goal of the game anyway? I have no idea actually. If there was a main quest chain in there somewhere, it completely failed to catch my interest.

Graphically I was happy to see what felt like a fresh take with the cel-shading, and I am sure the game would've only felt even more dull without it. While it only emphasizes the promise that Borderlands makes and can never deliver, because the game definitely looks like it could be a lot of fun, it's still one of the better components of the game. I mostly enjoyed the enemy designs as well, both gameplay wise and aesthethically. It's interesting then that combat still manages to be overall quite boring, but that wasn't down to the enemies or how they acted as such. Instead I put it down to the beforementioned issue of repetitiveness. While a fight with a group of enemies could be fun the first and second time, when you ran into them the tenth time and knew exactly what was coming, the fun had definitely worn off. And to show that the circle always is complete, I read reviews of Fallout 76 and find that a lot of the critique of that game reminds me of the problems with this game, at least regarding world-building.

Overall Borderlands left me with a feeling of almost wanting to be mindless. And maybe this isn't trying to be a memorable or awe-inspiring experience, it's supposed to just be some thoughtless run and gun fun! In many ways that takes me back to my comment about Space Invaders. You'll see and fight the same enemies over and over and maybe that is supposed to be the fun - you're simply not supposed to have to think much about what you do. And I would never have realized that might be the case if it wasn't for a funny coincidence.

The graphics are pretty much the only thing that makes the world come alive, at least a little bit.

After having played Borderlands for eight hours on my own, I decided to give it another couple of hours to wow me before I uninstalled it and moved on. As I was playing that final push, one of my oldest and best friends asked me on Steam if he could join me. Sure thing, I thought, it can only make the game better, surely.

And I was correct. The multiplayer skills in singleplayer mode had already given me the hint that this game didn't seem designed for singleplayer experiences at all. Running around with someone you enjoy playing with, allowing you to heroically save each other from gunfire or death and discuss which loot should go to which person really made all the difference. Most games are made better when played with a friend but that doesn't necessarily mean a game can't have a fun singleplayer mode, like Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and 3. Here I'd say the difference between singleplayer and multiplayer fun is almost as profound as in a Mario Party game.

But in the end Borderlands still suffers from a great lack of depth. It seems to try to mask this by showering you in loot like some sort of Diablo-clone and let you talk to wonky characters that still manage to leave no impression. Throughout my game time with Borderlands I never once thought "oh I just need to do this" or "I wonder what happens next" or even "huh, that's cool". When I play a game like Pokémon I'll look at the time and wonder what happened to the last two hours. With this I look at the time and wonder how it's only been twenty minutes.

In before someone chimes in "you should use this and that mod though"; firstly I am against a game needing mods to even be fun and secondly I really don't think mods could've fixed the issues that made the game tedious in the first place.

If you happen to have a buddy and you're looking for a game you haven't played together yet and you can find this cheap, then sure, I think it could provide you with a decent amount of fun for a decent amount of time. Otherwise, there is a lot better things you can do with your time. Play Borderlands 2 maybe?

Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS) - Review

Stick it where it don't shine.
Rage-filled spoilers!

I love the Mario & Luigi games. They've got great characters, fun stories, interesting gameplay and exciting worlds. Don't worry, you're not in the wrong review. I'm just listing things that Paper Mario: Sticker Star could've had, but doesn't. Paper Mario: Sticker Star, or PMSS as I am fittingly going to abbreviate it, because it made me rage like I had PMS, has flat characters, a boring story, nerdrage inducing gameplay and tedious worlds instead.

After 20 hours and almost at the end of the game I just slammed my 3DS shut and decided enough was enough. The game had made me angry for the last time, and I wasn't going to deal with any of its bullcrap any longer. Those 20 hours had been filled with me going "what the heck am I supposed to do here?!" and then "how on earth was I supposed to figure that out?!" after googling the answer. I am daft with game logic at the best of times, and often find I want to kick myself in the backside when I can't figure something out. Not so with PMSS which I thought was genuinely unfair. I'll give you some (un)funny examples in a moment, but first let me explain to you how I ended up playing this game.

Again, I've got to mention the Mario & Luigi games. The RPG-series in which you play Mario & Luigi through some of the weirdest places have been a truly entertaining one for me through all the games I have played so far (which are Superstar Saga, Partners in Time and Dream Team Bros.). It made me think that maybe the Paper Mario series would be worth checking out, and the easiest for me to obtain without selling a kidney was PMSS (since I don't own a Wii or WiiU).

I was immediately disappointed when it turned out Paper Mario isn't an RPG at all, which I had for some reason gotten into my head. I wasn't going to let that stop me though, since I play loads of games that aren't RPGs but it definitely made me wonder if I had any clue as to what Paper Mario was at all, or if I had been thinking of some other game all along. This review might also make you think I am an easily angered person, but I am really not. I am usually serenity incarnate, but this game made me tap into

The schtick about PMSS is that not only is Mario and everything around him made of paper (which I find is a fun and interesting aesthetical idea) but everything you do also revolves around stickers. Combat, which is similar to that in the Mario & Luigi games in which you're required to time your attacks and blocks to increase damage done and reduce damage taken, is done entirely by using stickers you find around the world and buy from the store. These stickers can pretty much be anything. From your down to earth stomp and hammer pound, to more esoterical items like Fans, Vacuums and Scissors. And this is where some of my biggest issues with PMSS rears its ugly head.

I don't even want to get into the story, because it is completely pointless. In essence however, you set out to rescue some royal stickers because of reasons. You get a side-kick sticker named Kersti who quickly tells you about something called "paperization". Paperization basically allows you to manipulate the world in different places with the help of stickers. It sounds pretty cool on paper (no pun intended) but doesn't always work so well in action. Sometimes these paperizations are necessary to advance the game and almost always it's extremely unclear which sticker it is you need to use. If you use the wrong one, it disappears and you have to go back to wherever it was you found it and pick it up again (something I didn't even know was possible until about a third into the game).

Let me explain the scenario here. You get to someplace in the game and you don't know how to advance. The first and easiest thing to figure out is that you probably need to paperize somewhere. Finding the right place is also rarely an issue. But you're only presented with an empty box and no inkling as to what sticker should go in there. This is especially infuriating during boss fights, because some are unbeatable unless you figure out which sticker needs to be used.

Here's an example; you fight a big cheep cheep about half way through the game. Almost immediately the fish jumps far out into the water, out of reach of your attacks. Not only might you have lined up some of your best stickers to hit him, which will now fizzle and be wasted, you also can not hit him and will die unless you figure out a way to get him back to you. The solution is a fish hook sticker. That sounds completely logical right? Sure enough, but only if you've already found the fish hook sticker, which is hidden in a completely different level. If you, like me, stand there without that sticker you have to just realize that "hey, I should probably have a fish hook here", then go to every stage and try to find the secret place where a fish hook, that you don't even know for sure is in the game or the solution to your boss fight, might be. This obtuseness just goes on.

In a later stage you need to find a sticker piece hidden underneath a pile of garbage. The solution is to have a goat sticker eat all the garbage. There is a chomp-chomp boss you can only defeat by removing the peg he's chained to before you enter the fight so that he jumps off instead of fights you. There are doorways that you genuinely can't frickin see because they're hidden behind objects. Not doorways to secret areas, just regular doorways you need to go further into the stage! (While that has nothing to do with paperization, it is very annoying).

The straw that finally broke my back was when I was fighting another chomp chomp, which to beat I had to enter a fight with to put to sleep with a certain sticker, then run from the fight so I could hit the peg, then re-enter the fight and have him run off. Trying to hit the peg I accidentally re-entered the fight by hitting the chomp chomp instead and since I for some reason couldn't run from the fight again I was screwed. I would have to restart the level to retry. I just looked at the screen and thought "No. I'm not doing this. This game is legitimately making me angry, and that is so not worth my valuable game-time".

Bosses are also often so much more difficult than everything else in the game that if you don't figure out their weakness you'll basically run out of all your stickers trying to kill them. I've always had a pet peeve with this kind of discrepancy between regular mobs and bosses if it doesn't feel natural or well-designed (the Persona games is an example of where this makes sense). But fighting a boss and find that the same attack suddenly does a tenth or even twentieth of the damage with no explanation, it just feels unnatural and unfair. It feels like they are trying to force me to use my special stickers, rather than making it optional to ease the fight.

In all of that it doesn't help that, as mentioned, the story is completely meh (which it often is in Mario-games, but countered with great gameplay). It doesn't help that none of the characters are interesting, or even make me remotely chuckle, like in the Mario & Luigi games. It doesn't help that the stages have jumping sections that almost made me want to crush my 3DS in my hands out of anger. But on the other hand I find it really doubtful that even if those elements had worked, it would've been enough to remove the extreme frustration I felt with the gameplay. It's also made me seriously wonder if I should play Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam...

I do have to give credit where credits due though and say that the OST is well worth a listen as there are some really great tunes in this game. It is actually a bit of a comfort knowing that I haven't just wasted 20 hours on this game but at least walk away with some nice songs for my playlist (songs I could've admittedly found anyway and with a lot less rage, but still).

In the end PMSS felt like I was playing a really cruel point & click adventure game - requiring me to picture solutions I didn't know for sure were even in the game, then set out to find this mirage. And just too much trial and error, putting me in situations where I realized I was screwed only because I had no idea what was coming. Imagine King's Quest but with none of the heart or fun.

Quick Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery Ep 9

Into the Forest I Go
And as usual, spoilers.

Was this the mid-season finale? I'm not sure how those things go since I don't watch many TV-series. In either case, it was quite a good one albeit with some stupid things. But to be fair, if I were to nitpick every other episode of Star Trek I'd end up with about the same amount of stupid, in the end it's about whether it comes together as something with a Star Trek feeling or not. I think this episode did.

Where to start? Well, last episode basically left us in the middle of a shit-pickle. The Pahvo'ans had just invited the Klingons to their coordinates and Federation want Discovery nowhere near that mess. No one on the Discovery wants to leave the Pahvo'ans to their demise so Lorca decides to disobey the order and just do the opposite of what he is asked, as usual. That anyone expects him to do anything he is told anymore suprises me. And the Vulcan admiral, or whatever he is, that he talks to seems so annoyed that Lorca won't just do what he says. How absolutely un-Vulcan.

A much better Vulcan.

Lorca thinks it's a better idea to try to solve the Klingon cloaking device issue in an arbitrary three hours, which is interesting considering the entire Federation science force has presumably tried to do this since the start of the war and failed. But they don't have Michael Burnham, so of course they succeed.

It's not an easy feat though, they basically need to plant sensors on board the Klingon ship, aptly named the Ship of Death or something like it, and then perform exactly 133 spore-jumps to get enough data to crack the cloaking device. The sensors can only be planted by beaming someone over there to put them there. Sounds like a great plan that can't fail.

This is also when Lorca, and Stamets boyfriend the Doctor, find out during a medical check-up that the spore-jumps are messing up Stamets' brain. The Doctor (who actually has a name, I just forget because he's unfortunately the most underdeveloped doctor in the Star Trek universe) strongly advices against it but since "trillions of lives", as Lorca puts it, hang in the balance Stamets doesn't really have a choice. You'd think Stamets would have regular full-body check-ups anyway, considering what he is doing, but apparently not.

Why can't someone else just do the jumping? Did they establish somewhere that Stamets is uniquely qualified? Granted, it might be difficult to persuade someone else to do it given the side-effects it's had on Stamets, but considering the circumstances probably not. Speaking of side-effects, Tilly of course blabs that she knew about it all along and that makes for an awkward moment between Stamets and the Doctor.

The best Doctor.

I also wonder why Discovery is still the only ship with the spore-drive? Did I miss when they explained why this can't be copied onto other ships, especially considering how insanely, awesomely useful it is? One explanation could be that Lorca hasn't given the Federation the chance to go through the Discovery enough to replicate the spore-drive, but still.

Speaking of something else though, at this point I really like that they've established Lorca as having such dubious morale, because in every scene he is in and every conversation he has you question whether he has an ulterior motive. It really makes him a very interesting character and give some otherwise ordinary scenes an extra layer.

Michael and Tyler are sent over to the Klingon ship who has de-cloaked to be able to fire on the Discovery. Apparently they also lowered their shields because I thought you couldn't beam through shields? I think that is something that is a bit on-again off-again in the ST Universe.

Either way, Michael and Tyler make it over without any issues. Then they start planting the sensors and they are big, noisy and shiny. Really? Just about the most useless sensors ever if you want them hidden. Let's go with the explanation that they weren't designed to be hidden and there was no time to even turn off the annoying bright, blue lights or beeping they do. Of course they need to beep, or they don't work.

While on the ship they find another human life sign (don't worry, they've masked their own) and who could that be? That's right, Admiral Cornwell isn't dead. To get into the room she's in, Tyler does some nifty "removing of panel and cutting wires" that seems to work in every movie and series. Star Wars had it right, you need an R2D2 to hack into stuff, just breaking it won't work. Although they employ that as well on occasion, anyway, I digress. Tyler says he's been imprisoned long enough to know these things, but unless they're how he got out (and we know it wasn't) there is no reason he would know that.

In essence, Star Trek needs more robots.

In the room where Klingons apparently throw corpses, they find Cornwell alive but not so well, and also L'Rell who has been a bit beaten but not killed. Why was she left there exactly? If they didn't kill her, why not imprison her? They left her with the dead people because they were going to come back and kill her later?

Seeing L'Rell puts Tyler into full PTSD mode and he becomes a blabbering heap of uselessness, leaving Michael to do the rest. He has been hiding that issue pretty well! The rest involves getting onto the actual bridge and planting the last sensor there. I love how the Klingon bridge just conveniently allows someone to sneak in and sit behind a corner and plant sensors. Sounds like a pretty big design flaw to me and it would've been impossible on the Discovery. We don't actually see how Michael gets onto the bridge (unless I blinked in that moment) but she's there and that sensor is even more noisy than the rest. Not that anyone notices, maybe the Klingon are hard of hearing and that would explain why they shout so much.

Best hard-of-hearing character

With the planting of the last sensor, the Discovery starts doing its 133 jumps and Stamets is not doing well at all. Long before they're done however, the Klingons decide to leave so Michael decides to reveal herself and fight Kol to stall them. It does mean the humans in the death-hold get discovered though and fighting ensues. Cornwell basically tells Tyler to get his act together, and he does enough to shoot a Klingon that dies with a sound effect that sounds ripped straight from Dungeon Keeper.

Eventually the Discovery is done jumping and Michael is saved from Kol as he goes to kill her. At the same time L'Rell jumps and grabs onto Tyler just as he is beamed out, allowing her to leave the ship with the others. Then Lorca orders them to destroy the Klingon ship and they do. Kol is presumably dead and now we don't know who will take over to lead the Klingon war-effort.

Back on the Discovery, they've been ordered to return to base. Tyler reveals to Michael that he was a sexual abuse victim to L'Rell, beside also being tortured by her for seven months. It also seems L'Rell still has some sort of Stockholm Syndrome power over Tyler, because he runs to her in her prison confinement and acts weird.

Meanwhile Stamets agrees to do "one last jump" to get everyone back to base safely. The fact that the jumps already almost fried his brain is apparently not so important. Of course this can only go one way - Stamets promises to take the Doctor to the operas if he allows him to do one last jump, because gay people like the opera-cliché - they kiss and then Stamets' fate is of course sealed, Hollywood-style. To no ones surprise Stamets fries his brain in the jump, which means the jump fails and sends Discovery into "where-the-heck-are-we?", basically doing a Voyager. The only thing they see are a load of derelict Klingon ships, which can mean basically anything. Are they in Sto-Vo-Kor?

Stamets demise would've been sadder if it hadn't been so obvious and also kind of unecessary. If he had had his brain fried during the 133 jumps that would've been more powerful, even though that is also kind of expected. But like this it is so extremely sign-posted and also feels a bit forced. Stamets deserved better.

Overall though a good episode with some nice and intense scenes. The ending is exactly what I wanted to make me look forward to the next episode. It looks again like they're moving away a bit from the war-story and at least allowing for the possibility for some mysterious episodes, the kind that make Voyager my favorite Star Trek series.

What do I think of Star Trek Discovery so far as a whole? In short, it's alright. I definitely didn't dislike it but I think I need to see how it all comes together before I can give a verdict on the first 9 episodes. On their own they swayed from mildly interesting to pretty entertaining but they have the potential to be part of a greater whole. Fingers crossed that'll happen.

Quick Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery Ep 8

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum
I have no idea what that means.
Yes, there are spoilers.

We have yet another decent episode this week, and a return of the Klingons. This time the Klingons screen presence wasn't as boring and I am starting to like Voq's second hand L'Rell who gets some character development here.

It all starts out when the Discovery jumps into battle to save some fellow Federation ships, but fails pretty miserably when it turns out that more and more of the Klingon fleet have stealth technology. This makes Lorca angry and he demands a solution right now. As he speaks to different characters on the bridge around him, I realize that we know nothing about them except for their first names. I have never been so uninformed about a bridge crew in Star Trek ever.

Somehow they find an item that can help them on a planet somewhere. I must've missed where this information came from, but my immediate thought was that whatever it is, it can't work very well since they have no nifty anti-cloaking device in the later instalments of Star Trek. Yet again they are introducing something they will need to un-explain by the end of the show, very much like the spore-drive.

Saru, Michael and Tyler (which I swear they pronounce as Taylor) beam down to the planet which is not supposed to have any life forms. Instead it has... singing trees? Well, the trees turn out to be sentient in what can only be described as hilariously Star Trek. Honestly, this was so Star Trekky it made me smile.

Since the trees are somehow sentient Michael decides that they need their ok before they can use the anti-cloaking device, which is basically a huge crystal tree worthy of any JRPG (it is also purplish-blue like the rest of the trees). Meanwhile Saru is not feeling well from all the singing and Michael and Tyler do some more love-bonding but I just can't see those two together. But neither could I any other couple in other Star Trek series (except maybe Worf and Dax) and I know I talked a bit about this in my episode 7 post already.

Saru begins to try to learn to communicate with the sentient cloud-thing the trees emmanate, and has a scene where he tells Michael and Tyler he's barely made any progress learning their vocabulary, n the next sentence he has a long tirade of back-story on the Pahvans (or something like it) as the beings are called (named after the planet). For someone who just said he barely understood them he had already gathered a lot of information.

At least they're not Phylosians.

Back to the Klingons and things are getting very confusing. L'Rell hates the new Klingon leader Kol but offers to interrogate the prisoner because she needs him to accept her into his ranks. What prisoner? Well, Admiral Cornwell of course. Instead of doing that though, she tell Cornwell she wants to defect and they try to sneak to L'Rells ship together. So that's why she wanted to interrogate her! On their way there, Kol sees them and L'Rell kills Cornwell. Or does she? It is not very clear. Either way she returns to Kol and swears fealty to him, he awards her the face paint that they're all wearing and the second after he tells her he knows she is trying to deceive him and arrests her.

Ok, what just happened there? Was it really necessary to go through the whole kneeling and face painting and talking if he knew she was up to no good in the first place? And why let her be alone with their most useful and valuable human prisoner? And where is Voq in all this? Last time we saw him he was stranded on the destroyed ship of Giorgiu with L'Rell, they were talking about getting some sort of revenge and how does all of the stuff that just happened in this episode tie in with that? And how does the face painting work anyway? Do Klingons never shower or do they just re-apply afterwards?

They'd better explain a lot of the things that went down in this episode or it didn't make much sense.

On the Discovery it seems like Stamets is not feeling too well from all the spore-jumping anymore. So he's basically gone from being a really grumpy hater to a cheerful loving everyone kind of dude, back to a grumpy hater again. Tilly is worried and asks him about it. He tells her to sod off, when she doesn't move he just opens up to her, so he changed his mind pretty quickly. Nothing is explained however, he just confirms that the spore jumps are starting to make him confused.
On the planet Saru has been possessed by the tree-spirits while trying to understand them. They're basically all about harmony and peace and really made me think about the Mako lifestream from Final Fantasy VII. Saru becomes a bit creepy and won't let Michael or Tyler leave the planet. Overall Saru gets some character development here. Earlier on in the episode they "casually" mention that Saru's species the Kelpiens can run really fast. Guess if that is going to play a part later in the episode?

The Pahvans actually look a lot like this.

Tyler tricks Saru so that Michael can run off and fiddle with the anti-cloaking device, which is also a transmitter somehow? Saru figures it out because he can sense that Tyler is deceiving him with his "threat-ganglia", I really hate that name by the way. Saru gets really violent, almost tries to kill Tyler and then runs really fast to get to Michael and almost kills her too. My first thought was that all that talk about peace and harmony went away pretty quickly, but this is actually something Michael points out as well and Saru basically blames Michael for forcing his hand.

The tree-spirits interfere in the end when they turn up and Michael beg them to allow them to use the transmitter-anti-cloak-device to stop the war, since that will bring peace and harmony. The tree spirits agree but it turns out they're actually just stupid and have instead sent out an invitation to the Klingon fleet to come join the Discovery by the Pavan homeworld, presumably for negotiations.

And that is where the episode ends, so it's pretty much a two-parter because this episode didn't answer any questions but only raised them. Overall it was a pretty confusing episode that often had me feel like I missed a scene somewhere, but I like the idea of the sentient trees because it's just so silly.

Vanilla WoW Is Coming Back!

If you ask me, the only interesting news we got from Blizzcon, which I only know anything about since pretty much every one on my Twitter won't stop talking about it, were the news that Blizzard are launching Vanilla servers. For the uninitiated (and if you are I doubt you're much interested in this post), "vanilla" refers to WoW before expansions. They've existed all along as unofficial "pirate" servers without any kind of support from Blizzard, now they are coming legitimately with all that entails. This blew my mind. As you may or may not know, I started playing WoW around April 2005 and played it until somewhere around April 2013. That is 8 years of my life invested and some of my fondest memories, not just gaming memories, are from that game. I met my bf and we have our child thanks to WoW. I can not overstate what an impact it has had on me and I still think about it  anecdotally pretty much every day. Although I didn't start playing it seriously (as in more than 1-2 hour a day and with raiding) until Burning Crusade, Vanilla WoW is where I started out. Breaking the news to my bf we just stared at each other, memories coming rushing back.

After I had gone past the initial amaze-balls feeling of just hearing about it, my first thoughts were - which kind of Vanilla? Vanilla was around for about two years before we got Burning Crusade and a lot happened during that time alone. Will we get early-Vanilla or late-Vanilla? Which patch are they going from? And are they going to do it hardcore, no Quality-Of-Life-Changes from later patches/expansions added whatsoever? It made me and the bf reminisce about what all that could mean. What was Vanilla all about? Here are some completely random memories from back then;

• Horde didn't have paladins and alliance didn't have shamans.
• Shamans had totem quests! I wrote about them several times on this blog, and I particularly hated the Water Totem Quest.
• Shamans had several talents and skills as if they were meant to be able to tank, which I wrote about here. I even wrote a guide on how to do it!
• Most classes required consumables to be able to do their best buffs and/or certain skills. Symbol of Kings of 30 min Blessings for Paladins, Candles for 30 min Prayer of Fortitude for Priests. Rogues still needed ingredients to do different poisons and had to carry around those poisons. Warlocks needed a ton of Soul Shards for Healthstones which had to be summoned one by one. Imagine that when you want to give your raid of 40 people a Healthstone each. Mages also had to summon their food one by one, although they required no ingredient to do it. Instead they needed materials to open portals and to teleport.
• Spellpower was based off Intellect and mana regen off Spirit. This means most classes had a spellpower gear for when being in combat and a spirit gear to swap into when out of combat, to regen mana in.
• Every skill had ranks and they all scaled about equally with spellpower, but had a very different cost in mana. This means Paladin rank 1 Flash of Light cost basically no mana but could heal for a lot anyway if you had enough intellect.
• You couldn't have dual-specs. You had to pay to swap and you had to buy all your ranks back. I forgot to do this several times and ended up tanking end-game instances with rank 1 skills.
• Tanking as a warrior was pretty damn difficult and required a lot of cooperation from your team or quick reflexes. As a warrior you started each fight without any resource which meant you either needed initial rage or needed to keep the pace up so that your rage never went down to zero. I wrote a lot of guides on warrior tanking, they are from later points in the game but warrior tanking regarding this point hadn't changed much then. Things that annoy me when tanking. Tanking heroics nice and smooth.
• Classes had class quests, some of the best ways to see if someone knew their class or not because they were genuinely some of the most difficult ways to obtain a certain item. I did the Anathema/Benediction quest on my Priest, but I think that didn't hold a candle in difficulty compared for instance to the Rok'Delar/Lok'Delar Hunter quest.
• Obviously Blood Elves, Draenei, Worgen and Goblins didn't exist yet. Introducing Blood Elves and Draenei in Burning Crusade was how Blizzard explained Alliance getting shamans and Horde getting Paladins.
• No flying mounts!
• You didn't get your first mount until level 40 and getting enough money to afford it was not easy. I think it cost some 90g.
• There were no Looking For Groups or Looking For Raids. Originally there weren't even Summon Stones or game-wide channels that allowed you to find people, but you had to stand around in a major city to collect enough people for an instance. Then get everyone there. And if anyone left mid-instance, someone had to travel/hearthstone back to a major city to find a new player and get that new player to the instance. This meant just making any old instance could take hours. HOURS!
• Some instances were hell just to get to let alone get through. Maraudon was infamous for having people lost and confused long before they even entered the instance. If you died you had to corpse-run from outside the instance back in if no one could resurrect you. My brother was known as "Luzi the lost" in his guild because he could never find his way back into Maraudon.
• There was no roll for "Need", "Greed" or "Disenchant" system. You could only roll to either take an item or not. Initially this was one system I wish they didn't bring back, but my bf pointed out that this was the best way to find out who was worth grouping with again or not. You could find some really nice people based on how they treated the rolls, although it also meant a lot of frustration from people treating everything as a potential weapon for them, even when it clearly wasn't *cough*Hunters*cough*.
• Some instances that are now instances were initially raids. Scholomance and Stratholme come to mind. They were first 10-man raids and then 5-man raids if I remember correctly. I recall priests being the go to healer for those instances because we could remove both magic and disease debuffs, had Shackle Undead and that buff that protected from fear.
• Paladins had Judgements and Seals, they only lasted a few seconds. I remember having a macro where I would rebuff my Seal every time I used Judgement.
• Rogues could still open Lockboxes, that was a big thing actually. I loved leveling up my lockpicking skill and offering up my services to people in big cities.
• There were still chests around the world. I really miss those, although they were pretty heavily exploited.

These are just off the top of my head and as soon as I post this I am going to think of a ton of more ones. But I could do this all day and both me and the bf realized that we would love to go back to an unaltered experience of Vanilla WoW. It was harsh, but absolutely amazing. My personal favorite expansion was Wrath of the Lich King, but maybe Blizzard intend to make it slowly through the old expansions again? That would be so, so cool.