Greetings. I am Stebloke, and I am a bit strange. This website contains my blog, where you can read about the things I create, the games I play, and any other things I get involved in. I make this blog mostly because I like to look back on the things I do and feel nostalgic, but also because it really does help motivate me to keep doing things.

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Up next in the completion list is the 2017 game Pyre, by the same people who made Bastion and Transistor. With those first two games, I had kind-of opposite experiences. I really liked Bastion at first, but it started to drag as I got further into it. And I really struggled to get into Transistor at first, but then started to enjoy it more once I'd unlocked more skills.

This game has been a different experience yet again. Though unfortunately, the experience was one of very little enjoyment from start to finish. I guess I really should have stopped playing it soon after the half way mark, as I was getting frustrated. But the end of the game did at least earn it a little bit of redemption, so I was at least a little glad I stuck with it.

So just what is the game, and why did I not get on with it very well?

The game is mostly delivered in two very different ways. The story sections are all in a visual novel style, with no voice acting and lots of text to read, and occasional choices to make that will have an effect on your characters stats or equipment.
The meat of the gameplay comes across like a fantasy version of basketball, where two teams of 3 players fight in out in real time, and try to throw or dunk a celestial orb into the opposing team's pyre, in order to reduce its flame to nothing and win the contest.

The massive amounts of text in the game quickly became boring, especially as a lot of the world's history and lore is delivered in the form of a book, with dozens of pages that you are expected to read. Let's just say I barely touched all that shit.

The competitions themselves, which are called "Rites", were also frustrating to play. Partly this was because I was using keyboard and mouse, which I chose so I could aim my attacks better. But this choice gave me some trouble seeing as my characters only then had 8 directions of movement with WASD.
All that I could deal with for the most part, but the main problem was that the enemy players just seemed to be more responsive somehow, like they could move faster, and jump better, and their auras would return faster. That kind of thing.

The story and characters were quite interesting, even though it did feel like it took forever for it to go anywhere and to get any pay off. But this feeds into the main double-edged sword of this game. See, when participating in the Rites, occasionally you will have the opportunity to free one of your characters from the exile you have all found yourselves in. Because I quite liked many of the characters, I wanted to free as many of them as possible. Problem is, when they are free, there is no longer any way to use them when competing in the Rites. And as all the characters have different skills, once my favourites were free, I was left with a bunch of players I didn't really like using all that much, making the Rites even more frustrating.

The little bit of redemption I mentioned earlier comes at the end of the game, where you are presented with information about all of the characters in the game, both on your team and on others, and learn what happened to them after all is said and done. I imagine the information here can be quite different depending on which players go free, and what other choices you make during the game, and this was the only time I was really into reading every last little word.

Concerning the characters, my fave was easily Jodariel, and I selfishly regret freeing her so early in the game. But I also really liked several other characters, including Ti'zo, Sir Gilman and Pamitha.

With so many games to play, it's unlikely I'll play Bastion or Transistor ever again, but at least there's a chance. This one however, has no chance at all. I mean, I'm glad it's done, but oof, I could have done without it.

One game I managed to get working after a bit of tweaking was Virtua Tennis. I played it for a couple of hours, and found it was ok, but it struggled to keep my attention when so many other games are vying for it.

It wasn't bad. I just found the player movement a little bit sluggish, and it seemed inconsistent when trying to place my shots. The main problem though was that progression seemed to be locked behind training sessions. I didn't mind playing the games, because at those times it was like the other (very few) tennis games I've tried in my life, being quite playable. However, the training sessions were frustrating and boring.

Still, I'm not saying I'll never come back to this, but it's highly unlikely, and definitely won't be anytime soon.

All done with another PS4 game, this time in the shape of Immortals: Fenyx Rising. This is a 3rd person action and exploration game set in a total cheesecake version of Greek mythology, where Typhon has stripped the Gods of their powers, meaning you have to step up to put things right.

It was strange at first to find that, even using a controller, there was a mouse pointer on the menu screen. Out of interest I plugged in a mouse and keyboard, and to my delight found out that this is one of those rare console games that support such inputs. However, I soon grew frustrated, as the mouse lag was so bad that it was making me feel sick. It must have been at least half a second between moving the mouse and seeing the action happen on screen. Totally vomit inducing.
With a sigh, back to the controller I went.

I enjoyed the game well enough for the most part. The combat is fast and fun, with lots of different types of attacks and item builds available. I also quite liked how fun and silly the game was, and with the exception of Hermes, who could be irritating, I also liked all of the characters.
However, I'm still not sure about the humour in the game. I mean, it wasn't really funny, even though it was trying hard to be. But it was fun that it was trying to be funny, if that makes sense?

The puzzles were a bit weird, though. I don't remember it ever seeming hard to solve the actual puzzles, but I do remember getting a bit annoyed with having to run around and find the pieces you needed to solve the puzzles, like a rock or a ball, for example. I don't like things that purposefully waste my time.

Very early on in the game, you gain a companion bird named Phosphor. This dude and I got on very well, and I based my entire combat strategy around him. I would use my stamina to constantly call Phosphor to attack. Whenever he attacked, he would also heal me. Then my gear was set to give me loads of stamina back every time I went in with the sword, which was also upgraded to do as much damage as I could afford. This strat worked a treat all through the game, so you can imagine my frustration when I went into the final fight against Typhon and found Phosphor was not available. It made the end fight a much longer slog as I had to constantly back off to use healing items, instead of just tanking and chopping my way through the threat like I had been doing up to that point.
Maybe if I'd created a more skill-centric build I would have been alright.

But then again, I would have needed actual skill for that tactic to work.

By far my biggest gripe with the game was the traversal. Sheesh. What an absolute ball ache it is to move around the world in this game. Until you've got more fast travel points open, getting from one place to another means a lot of foot slogging, or taming a slightly faster mount. The problem is there are always ravines or cliffs in the way to wherever you want to go. This sucks when climbing up the myriad of walls or rocks, or gliding just a short distance, drains your stamina in no time, especially early in the game. You have to constantly plan your routes to make sure there are enough stopping points to get your energy back. It fucking sucked.
And by far the worst place to get around in the game is the final zone in the north of the map. Even later in the game with more stamina and abilities, that area makes it as hard and as frustrating as possible to scale that mountain. I gave up trying on my own, and had to resort to a walkthrough. Felt like a right muppet.

But still, it's done, and I can move on to the next one.

At some point during summer last year, I watched someone on Youtube play a board game where you play as a detective, and have to go around a map of Los Angeles and solve a murder. I was very intrigued, but when I looked into it I found the game was Kickstarter only, and was seemingly not coming to retail in the UK at all. So I pretty much forgot about it.

Cut to early this year, and it popped into my brain again for some reason. Of course, I had forgotten what it was called, and all my searches brought up other detective games. Then as luck would have it, I was watching the Dice Tower's Top 100 games a little while back, and this game got mentioned. After another search for info, I found not only had the developers of the game gone back on their original decision not to release the game at retail, but that it was already available, though at quite some cost. Nevertheless, I quickly decided to put in an order before I regretted not taking the chance.

A few days later, the game arrived and my journey commenced. A journey I have now completed.

This game is called Detective: City Of Angels.

And now that I'm all done with my play through of the base game and its expansion, Bullets Over Hollywood, using the "sleuth" solo mode, I thought I'd share some thoughts about it, as well as reveal how well (or how badly) I performed as a 1940s dick.

Blood On The Pier

First up was the intro case. It took a little while to get into it, and I ran out of time, going all the way to the final guess marker. I was sure of two of the three solution "elements", but had to do a 50/50 guess between two suspects I could not choose between. Luckily I got it all right. It felt like a good start.

Murder At Sunset

In this one, I was onto the murderer right from the get go, and it was all about learning more information just to make sure I wasn't barking up the wrong tree. I'd got the wrong motive in my head for most of the game, until I learned something else with two days left, after which I quickly solved the case correctly.

Heist To Nowhere

This one was a bit different as you were looking for stolen money rather than a murderer. I somehow found the cash with 3 days left, though I felt I was stabbing in the dark with little idea of what had really happened other than vague assumptions.

Bloody Christmas

This was the first of the 3 medium cases in the core box, and the first one that I ran out of time and made an incorrect guess. I got it right with my second guess during the first overtime period, but never felt like I had all the facts.

The Last Embrace

I ran this one down to the final guess marker again, but this time had just about managed to piece enough info together to get it right with my first guess. Looking back, this was one of my favourite cases, as it at least gave some solid info to go on rather than leaving you to make wild assumptions.

Murder On All Hallows' Eve

I loved the reveals in this one, but it was the first case where I did not gain a single stress marker, and solved it quite easily with three days to go.

El Fantasma

In the first hard case, there was no need to find a weapon, but rather the location where the next crime would take place. It was hard to get any info at first, and it had me moving all over the board trying to uncover things. When my time ran out I only knew the location, but had no idea of suspect or motive. I literally guessed at the suspect based on what car I thought they would drive, and randomly guessed the motive. Somehow all three things ended up being right.

The Final Strikeout

My, how different this was from the first hard one, as this really wasn't hard at all. It just seemed very obvious who had done it and why, and I played just to convince myself I was right. I solved with 5 days left, and got it right. I mean, the suspect straight up admits what they did when you question them. Where was the "investigation" here?

The Black King

Now this was more like the difficulty I was expecting for hard. I started out great with all the new puzzles, but getting info out of the characters was like trying to get blood from a rock. This was the first one I failed to solve, even after using all 3 allowed guesses. I was disappointed (and a bit annoyed at myself) when I found out the answer, as on my first guess I'd only got the motive wrong, but being incorrect had turned me in other directions for my other guesses. Oh well.

Crimson Obsession

Unfortunately, I could not complete the first case of the expansion, because as soon as I started to play it, it seemed very familiar. Then I remembered this was the case I watched being played on Youtube months ago, and when I realised that I immediately remembered the solution. Oh well.

Christmas In July

I was assuming the correct answer for a large chunk of this game, but before I made my guess I checked how blank bullets work on the internet. That info turned me away from the solution, as blanks don't really work the way this case makes them out to. With my final guess in 2nd overtime, I went with my original assumption and it was right. I sighed hard with diappointment. Probably the shoddiest writing of all of them in this one.

The Masterpiece Of Madrid

I really liked the addition of the puzzles in this one, and I quickly had strong suspicions that turned out to be true. However, I first had to solve all the puzzles and gather all the clues, and just made it by the time I hit the final guess marker.

Requiem For A Gangster

I managed to scrounge enough info to make an educated guess at the first final guess marker, and managed to get it right. After this, I really wished I could have played as a detective in the full game mode.

Man, I loved the look and feel of this game, and think it's got some great ideas. However, the enjoyment I got out of it really did depend on the writing on a case to case basis. Some of them were really interesting, and made you feel like you were actually being a detective. Some of them were just downright janky.

I also think my experience was hampered a bit by playing it alone, and I'm hoping people I play it with in the future will enjoy it more with me playing as the Chisel.

My Detective adventure was not my only recent dabble into board gaming, as I've also found time to make and print my own version of Dead Last, which like the full version of Detective now awaits the time when lockdown is over.

We've also had a crack at some other "escape room" style games. First up was The Chair by Evadere. This was much like Clue Kingdom, being just a series of puzzles one after another, and not being very interesting. So after that, we returned to ClueHQ to play their Warp Core game, which again was much, much better. We were hampered a little during the play by Discord being an arse, and we failed by 3 minutes. Bum.
Still, I felt a lot more useful this time compared to when we did the train one.

My Epic Eldar army is now complete after I finally found an Avatar that didn't cost an arm and a leg. I had forgotten how much smaller the model was compared to the Chaos Greater Daemons, so I raised it up a little on its base using some card. To smooth the weird stepped look, I used some of the milliput I bought a couple of years ago. I didn't know this stuff had a shelf life, and the one stick had gone brown with all bits in it. Luckily, there was still usable stuff inside when I broke it open.
I guess I'll have to find some use for the rest of it before it's all completely useless. As luck would have it...

My new Epic rules ideas are continuing to form, and seem like they will allow us to play some really fun and simple games. Well, that's the way is feels to me, at least.

But in order to play some new games of Epic, I think I really need to get my 6mm terrain in order. I have long known this day would come, so have been stashing things in boxes in the loft for years. And the time has come to prepare some new battlefields for the little guys and gribblies.

There's so much stuff here, and so many ideas in my brain, that most of them will probably never get done. Not only will it be hard to find the time to build all this, but I also lack the space needed to store it all.

But I will definitely have a good go at making some new Epic terrain, as the vast majority of my terrain is geared for 28mm. And that doesn't seem fair to me.

In amongst all my bits boxes, I recently found the Warhound Titan my bro started to scratch build 12 years ago. He passed it on to me back then and the idea was that I would finish it. Maybe it's about time I got around to this enormous task...

It's been a long, frustrating time for fans of tabletop action such as I. This stupid fucking pandemic has meant that no dice chuckin', card shufflin', or miniature mayhem has been going on in nearly a year.
Blows. Blows hard.

And yet, one or two occasional things have happened to help me get a little fix here and there.

On the boardgaming front, there have been a few efforts to play some games over the internet. In addition, I've recently picked up a pretty cool game called Detective, which is a deduction game set in 1940s LA. I've been playing through it in solo mode, to varying degrees of success. Looking forward to when we can all get together again, where I will be taking the Chisel role and messing with everyone else while they try and solve the cases.

For something different, we have also tried a couple of online escape rooms. We did a few of these a couple of years back and enjoyed them, so I was looking forward to diving into the web-based equivalents. Unfortunately, the first one, which was called Clue Kingdom, was very disappointing. Didn't really have an escape room feel at all, rather just a series of puzzles on consecutive web pages. I literally could have made it myself.

Thankfully, the one we tried a few weeks later was much better. Trapped On A Train by ClueHQ made it feel much more like an actual escape room, with 360^o environments you can move between, and puzzles that all link to each other. Oh yeah, and a frickin countdown clock! What's the point of an escape room without one of those?
It was actually funny at the end, as the game claimed we had smashed it, whereas in reality we only had 22 seconds left. We cut it so close partly because of me, as just like in the first ever escape room I did in person, my usefulness tanked in the second half. Hopefully I'll do better when we inevitably go back and do their other room.

On the wargaming front, my efforts have died down a little since Christmas, and I need to get back into it pronto. I was supposed to be painting my epic Evil Sunz, but after making my own clan I just had to start painting them instead. I've done them all except the Grots which are mostly basecoated, with the Boarboyz to do after that. If only I could finish something before moving on to something else...

Been spending some more time in Gotham, and have managed to apprehend all the villains and collect all of Riddler's trophies in Arkham Knight. I'm still not sure why I really bother with all the trophies and crap in these games, as I didn't really get much out of it in Asylum or City, and didn't really get much out of it in this. But I just had to shut the annoying little shit up again.
Also, why did they make the Riddler kind-of the end boss in these games, as you spend way more time hunting him than dealing with any of the other members of Batman's Rogues Gallery?

With the main game out of the way I went through the six mini-games, called the Arkham Episodes, which I think had all been DLC when the game originally released. In the episodes, you play as other characters instead of Batman. Surprisingly, the one I enjoyed the most was the one where you play as Red Hood, one of my least favourite characters in this game. There was just something about his play style and no-nonsense attitude that made it that bit more gratifying than the others.

The least favourite episode I did was the last one, which happened to be Catwoman's. The entire series of Arkham games up to this point has rewarded a certain approach to fights, by being tactical and precise. But the end fight in this was incredibly frustrating, and in contrast punishes you for trying to fight in the "proper" way. I tried and tried a bunch of times, with absolutely no chance, until I settled for just spamming the attack button, which easily beat the fight on my very next attempt. I didn't feel either happy or skilful after that experience. Just relieved.

So now I'm all done with Arkham Knight, and therefore, the entire Arkham series. It's been a wild, mostly very enjoyable, ride.

I've taken the chance to revisit one of my favourite game franchises after GOG released the Batman: Arkham series. This was pretty damn awesome as it had been a long time since I had played any of them, and I'd never played Arkham Knight at all.

I scooped up Knight, and also added City, as City was the best of the ones I had already played, and it also came with the stuff I had not played like the Harley DLC. I figured I could always fire up the old PS3 if I ever wanted to play Asylum or Origins again. Not that I would ever want to play Origins again, but whatever.

So it was into Arkham City first, to act as a refresher before tackling Knight.

There's no doubt about it. This is still an awesome game, even more than 8 years later. Though I must admit, it took a little longer to get into it than I would have thought. It was also a little harder in some of the fights. I'm chalking that all up to me being older and slower now. Sad but true. Though somewhat interestingly, the stealth missions were pretty much a breeze this time round. I can't explain that, because I've certainly not become more patient in my old age.

I spent my time fairly evenly between pushing through the story and doing all the bonus stuff. When I got to the end of the story, I first decided to fully wipe the map like I did back in 2012, but only worked my way through the western half of the map before deciding to move on. After all, this was only an appetiser before the main course.

I also tackled Harley's Revenge for the first time. In this, you play as Robin for most of it, as Batman has been captured by Harley. For such a small new mission, this thing had some serious sneaking around, and Robin doesn't come with all the tools to take out gun-toting creeps like Batman does. Yet it only took a couple of hours at most to punch my way through it, and unsurprisingly, it's more of the same. Can't whinge at that.

I never played Arkham Knight when it first released, as I didn't have a PS4, and on PC it was a buggy mess and Steam only. I guess I should have thought of the game when I finally bought a PS4 just over a year ago, but it slipped through my large mental gaps. Never mind. It was meant to be, it seems.

Before playing the game I assumed I would still get some performance and bug problems, considering the state of the game at launch, and the fact that my computer is nearly as old as the game, and was not exactly a powerhouse even back then. The performance wasn't too bad, even with the better graphics in this. The majority of the time I was running around as Batman I was able to keep a stable 60, and only a few times did it drop. Hell, even Arkham City did that at times on my machine. However, driving around in the Batmobile did cause a lot more stuttering, and it's pretty much convinced me I need a new computer some time this year. Urgh, Windows 10 at last. Not looking forward to that.

The game definitely still has its bugs though, that's for sure. I faced some doozies, such as when I went down an elevator, and when it got to the bottom I somehow clipped up and through the ceiling, trapping me in the elevator shaft. In another session, every time I entered combat, the enemies would not attack me, and the camera would constantly rubber-band to look in one particular direction as if fixated on something. But it's far improved from the shoddy state it launched in.

The gameplay, as Batman at least, was more of the same, just more refined and with even more options than before. Overall, I liked the combat a bit more than the other games, but found it harder. I just found there to be a little less time to react, and there were more enemy types to deal with. Though I loved, and greatly appreciated, the new fear takedowns, making it much faster to take out groups of gunmen, and making the stealth missions a little more bearable.

Batman's mostly enjoyable gameplay was balanced out by something though, and if you've played the game you know what it is - simply the worst thing about this entire game, and that is the Batmobile. I would gladly take more bugs and stealth missions if it meant I could play this game without this stupid vehicle. Simply put, I hated it. I hated the way it controlled. I hated its combat sections. I hated how you had to use it for Riddler challenges. And most of all I hated how it felt like I was in the Batmobile for nearly as much time as I was running around as Batman.
I am so very glad I did not think of playing this game on console. On PC, at least I could quickly switch to mouse and keyboard for the Batmobile combat sections, so that I could aim straight, and then switch back to controller for the driving and Batman sections. So much more comfortable that way.

As of yet, I have not reached a full 100% completion like I did for Asylum and City. Don't get me wrong, I've put a lot of work into the side content, but it turns out this game is so freaking huge that it's taking forever. Some of the side content is also a bit of a drag, so I'm still not sure if I'll ever be fully motivated to get that full 100. But for now it's going to stay on my computer, and I'll dip in and out now and again in between playing other games. I think I owe it, and myself, a good try at least.

Speaking of the side content, some of the DLC missions were odd, and threw up some contradictions with the base game. For example, I used the hacking tool early on in the Mad Hatter's DLC mission, but it would not let me use it elsewhere until I unlocked it in the main story. In another instance, I'd already tackled Firefly in his DLC mission several times, but later on in the base game mission where Batman has to save a bunch of firemen, it came as a shock to everyone involved that Firefly was even around at all.

Overall though, barring the Batmobile sections, and a few crappy boss fights against the Arkham Knight, the game is pretty good. I wouldn't put it above City, which remains my favourite, but this still has a lot of good things going for it, like better graphics, slightly better combat, and much better Batman traversal. Well worth the play through I reckon.