Top

< Previous Page

Latest Page >

Clear Filters

20th September 2024: Yikes Forever

Just got done with a short 2019 game called Little Misfortune. I say "game" in the loosest sense, as there's not really any gameplay here at all.

This is mostly a storytelling game, that pretty much just gives the player occasional choices to make along the way.

In it, the player takes control of a little girl named Misfortune, who heads out on an adventure to find the Eternal Happiness as a gift for her mother.

That little description makes the game sound all fun and sweet, but it most certainly is not. It's actually super dark, and really quite twisted.

As she begins her journey, Misfortune starts to hear a strange voice inside her head. Along the way, she has brushes with some real adult issues, like depression, suicide and drug abuse. She also starts to encounter an elusive bipedal fox, who appears to be a mage of some sort, who may or may not be from another reality.

If all of this weirdness wasn't bad enough, it soon becomes apparent that a malevolent force is looking to manipulate our little protagonist, but for what reason?

Yes! Kick them in the bird balls

Yes! Kick them in the bird balls

Don't forget your creepy mask

Don't forget your creepy mask

Yikes forever

Yikes forever

Despite all of its dark and depressing themes, the game is also fun of charm and bizarre humour. I think a lot of this is due to the writing and voice acting of Misfortune in particular, the little girl who is forever the optimist in the face of all kinds of messed up shit.

I wasn't always convinced by the other main voice actor in the game, who takes on the role of "Mr. Voice", who only Misfortune can hear. He has a very odd sound for the role he is cast in, and can't say closer properly, always saying clozer instead. That always just seemed weird to me.

If there's any big problem with the story of the game, it's that it becomes apparent far too early what is actually happening, at least for the player, if not for Misfortune. It would have been better to maintain more of a mystery, at least until the latter half maybe.

It was only short, but it was worth going through, and it's another game ticked off the very long list.

Fanceh!

Letting rip with real bullets

Letting rip with real bullets

Little Lady visits He-man in the toy graveyard

Little Lady visits He-man in the toy graveyard

What a weird and wonderful team we make

What a weird and wonderful team we make

4th September 2024: Hello Hydaelyn

After the recent debacle of trying (having) to play Star Trek Online again, the tiny remaining bit of the MMORPG addict in me was awoken.

But which one to play? I wasn't going to play STO again, and The Old Republic was out of the question because of its IP. I wasn't going to play more free WoW, and Tera was no longer a thing.

There was however one huge MMORPG that I had not played yet. And it made sense to at least give it a test run.

Yes, at long last I have started to dip my toes into Final Fantasy 14. In fact, I first downloaded this way back in April 2022, and created my first character. But back then, I did nothing more than view the opening cutscene and pick up my first quests.

Upon logging back into it for the first time in two years and five months, I was greeted by a 52GB update that said it was going to take eight hours to download. Thankfully, this did not turn out to be true, but still took a whopping four hours. British internet, I suppose.

It had been so long that I couldn't even remember the name of the character I had made, and while I assumed it was some form of Kreethen, it turned out to by Vilton Sydor. It also turns out that he's a Gladiator, which is a form of tank character. Odd choice for me, but I'll roll with it.

As I couldn't remember any of the little starting tips, it took just a little while to remember where I was, what I was doing, what icons meant what on the minimap, and so on.

The first screenshot I took in this game, taken on 30th April 2022

The first screenshot I took in this game, taken on 30th April 2022

Get stabbed, little creature

Get stabbed, little creature

I'm not even trying to hide, weird little child thing

I'm not even trying to hide, weird little child thing

Oi, come down here so I can twonk you

Oi, come down here so I can twonk you

But as this is an MMORPG with a very typical MMORPG style, it really wasn't hard to pick it up. Auto attacks: check. Triggerable actions with cooldowns: check. Auto-running: check. Teleporting back to home base: check.
Yadda yadda yadda.

And the quests. Boy, the quests. Go kill 5 of these. Bring me back 5 of those. Go deliver this letter to so-and-so. So-and-so has gone missing, and you've got to find them.

Straight up, full-on typical MMORPG fare indeed. The only thing I haven't seen in the first 11 levels is an escort quest. I'd heard the base game was supposed to be a bit of a drag, but sheesh.

The music so far is pretty good, but not really good. I know I'm not far into the game yet, but mostly the music seems to just make you think of other music from the rest of the series.

So far I'm not a huge fan of how the voice acting is implemented, though I guess it's no different here than in other games like WoW or STO. It's just so weird to sometimes have spoken dialogue, but mostly just text. Hell, this mix can sometimes happen even in the same cutscene. It's pretty jarring.

After just my 2nd play session, I was already getting bored of the typical MMO fetch and kill quests. To really brighten up my day, I tried some creative jobs, being goldsmithing, as well as mining to actually find the raw materials.

This was about as exciting as you would expect, so after another couple of hours doing the typical MMO fetch and kill quests, I thought I'd log off for a while and try and get some other games done.

Scrapping with a big angry space hopper

Scrapping with a big angry space hopper

What the hell is on this dude's face?

What the hell is on this dude's face?

Learning some goldsmithing in my pants, while a cheap Vivi knockoff acts hard

Learning some goldsmithing in my pants, while a cheap Vivi knockoff acts hard

Mining for the Fjords!

Mining for the Fjords!

So how's it been, playing a game with a very typical MMORPG style once again? Well, as you might expect, it's just like playing any other. There really is nothing else I can say on top of that.

I'd like to comment on the story at least, which is supposed to be the best thing about this game. Problem here is that it's not supposed to kick in until much later in the base game, and only really gets going in the expansions. All I can tell you so far is that there are a lot of people and places with a lot of weird names, and I think a crystal spoke to me.

Odd.

But what is it with eastern developers and these weird little childlike characters? It's so creepy. It's the same problem here I had with Tera, and I really don't like it.

I guess I'm really not sure whether to carry on with this. Even if I really got into the story, to play all of the expansions I would have to subscribe. Man, I just don't do subscribe games any more. It's such a dirty payment method when I would only be able to dip in and out of the game at irregular times.

But still, for now at least, it's free. So I could always just play a few hours here and there and see where it goes...

23rd August 2024: A Humbling Return To The Beta Quadrant

Getting my ship together

Getting my ship together

It's been over eight years now since I last logged in to Star Trek Online. Considering I only played it for four years, a period that itself included several hefty breaks, these eight years have felt so long that I may as well consider myself brand new to the game.

To be honest, playing the game again was never really on my mind. There was, however, a six year old task that needed to be tackled that I had not yet sorted out. And in contradiction to what I believed, I actually needed to play to get it done.

See, back in 2018, I picked up the Star Trek Online Humble Trekkie Pack from Humble Bundle. Other than logging in to the Arc website to reclaim my code I did nothing else with this as I wasn't playing at the time. However, it's always been in the back of my mind that I needed to get back into the game in order to fully claim the items. For some weird reason that I can't explain, I was recently inspired to do just that.

After all, it shouldn't be too difficult to download the game, log in, click a few buttons, and then get the hell out. Right?

Right?

Show / hide my latest STO trials and tribulations

11th August 2024: Stomp! Stomp! Stomp!

It's getting on for 2 years since I last played some Total War: Warhammer, and even longer for Scoob. So we thought it was about time we dusted it off and tried to turn our losing streak into a winning one.

First, we played 2 battles against the Empire, but as we couldn't really remember what to do we lost pretty badly. It didn't help that the 1st game saw us fighting in snow in a dense forest, and we couldn't see what the hell we were doing.

Trying and failing to make something happen in the trees

Trying and failing to make something happen in the trees

My army of entirely foot troops doesn't make a dent in the Empire line

My army of entirely foot troops doesn't make a dent in the Empire line

In our 3rd game against the Empire I was starting to remember how to play a bit more, and I brought a massive force of Boarboyz, with a couple units of Wolf Riders to harass their ranged units. Though the Wolf Riders died immediately, the Boarboyz were able to get off some good flanks, and we surrounded them for the win.

Our 4th game saw us change the enemy and take on the vampires. I forgot to select a more open map, and instead we ended up with several chokepoints to contend with. This made all my Boarboyz a little useless. I think we got lucky here that they had taken so many bats that we easily dispatched, because when the bulk of their forces got into us we really struggled. I ended up getting battered around by both Vampire Lords and a Terrorgeist, as I'd sent my Black Orcs to help Scoob when I'd seen a good opening on the enemy flank. There was little left of my main force when Scoob's army and my Black Orcs managed to reinforce me, but this was easily enough to turn the tide and we won our 2nd on the bounce.

My Black Orcs get crumpin' the Empire boss

My Black Orcs get crumpin' the Empire boss

The Empire army is routed at last

The Empire army is routed at last

My poor Boarboyz have no access to the flank

My poor Boarboyz have no access to the flank

My Black Orcs charge into the rear of the enemies attacking Scoob

My Black Orcs charge into the rear of the enemies attacking Scoob

The 5th game was against Chaos, and we had a much more open map this time. Surprisingly, we absolutely smashed them. They didn't even try to stop my seven Boarboyz mobs from getting around behind them, and instead mostly headed for Scoob. This allowed me to take out their artillery and get behind them very easily. Once we'd got them surrounded, they didn't hang around very long.

We continued to move through the opposition, and our 6th game was against dwarves. I'd got memories of these being the hardest enemies for the orcs to deal with, but just like against the previous foes, we absolutely smashed them. The dwarves made it even easier to flank them, as they were fully focused on going after Scoob. Several of my Boyz mobs even got in on the action, and made it around the flank to attack the dwarves from behind. So even though both Dwarf Lords were attacking Scoob and causing issues, it ended up being a fairly easy fight overall.

There was only one enemy we could have chosen for our final fight of the day. It was time for some greenskin on greenskin action. This was a very chaotic and evenly matched fight, made more difficult (for me) by the AI sending a lot of troops towards me for a change. This meant far fewer of my Boarboyz were able to get down the flank, though those that did promptly dispatched the enemy artillery. In probably the longest game, we just about managed a win by the end, though we're not sure what really happened. Which is how it should be, in an orc versus orc scrap.

My Boarboyz are free to flank the Chaos Warriors

My Boarboyz are free to flank the Chaos Warriors

My boss chases off the Chaos Giant as the rest of the Chaos army gets smashed

My boss chases off the Chaos Giant as the rest of the Chaos army gets smashed

The slow moving dwarves can't stop me getting a huge flanking move off

The slow moving dwarves can't stop me getting a huge flanking move off

Pure madness ensues as orcs clash with orcs

Pure madness ensues as orcs clash with orcs

It's not impressive, but winning 5 games on the trot on normal is a lot better than how much we used to lose on easy back when we last played it.

< Previous Page

Latest Page >

Clear Filters