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

Don't forget your creepy mask

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

Little Lady visits He-man in the toy graveyard

What a weird and wonderful team we make

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

Get stabbed, little creature

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

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

What the hell is on this dude's face?

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

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...

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

I already knew that using my old character Macan to claim this bundle would be a waste, as he already has the Borg bridge officer from back in the day, and that was one of the items you pick up as part of this bundle. Therefore, a new character would be required.

I decided on a character that would be part of the Romulan storyline, as I read on the t'interwebs somewhere that these characters get two Borg officers from the bundle, being a Romulan, and either a human or Klingon.
Yet after logging in for the first time in all these years, I saw that I already had a Romulan character. He was only level 12, and for some reason was named Tarl Kreethen. I do not remember starting a Romulan at all back in the day. I definitely do not remember making a character called Tarl Kreethen. Sure, this is one of my common character names, but Macan has a ship called the Kreethen, so this would have made no sense.

I quickly decided that poor Tarl was out, and deleted him. As I'm typing this, I'm sure hoping I wasn't using him as a bank character, as I realise now that I may have just lost some of Macan's items.
Oh well. Screw it.

In Tarl's place, I created a new character called Kallisto Blaze. A fiery, red-skinned alien, who would be a tactical officer and recipient of the bundle's goodies.

Kallisto Blaze reports for duty

High five, little bug?

How does that massive beam come out of such a small muzzle?

The R.R.W. Kachiri blowing some shit up

I got into the game, brazenly skipping the tutorial. After all, I could clearly remember how to play, right? Ahem.

I eventually found where to redeem the items in the Zen Store, but it was greyed out. After logging in with Macan, I saw it was also greyed out here. The only info I could find at first was that the code needed to be redeemed by 2020, but I'd already done that back in 2018. So maybe the items also needed to be redeemed by this time?

It was on the Humble website that I found out the reason. After redeeming the code, it required you to play the tutorial missions in order to claim the goods. Yes, the tutorial missions I had just skipped.

As there is no way to elect to replay the tutorial missions, I had to delete poor Kallisto and remake her again, allowing me to play the tutorial this time.

Sheesh.

However, after playing the tutorial, I discovered that I still could not claim the goods. What was more confusing was, after logging back in with Macan, I saw that I could now claim with him.

But I didn't want to claim with him. Sigh.

It was at this point that I learned that the account bank is not available for Romulan characters until later in their story, after they have chosen whether to join the Federation or the Klingons. It dawned on me that perhaps this was also required for the bundle to kick in, so the game would know whether to give you the human Borg officer or the Klingon Borg officer.

I guess it was time for some long overdue adventures.

I sighed again, and ventured out into the galaxy...

Miss Blaze is a bit challenged in the height department

The R.R.W. Lykopis getting stuck in

What's going on with this dude's tassles?

I'd hardly call this a fair fight

I worked through the introductory Romulan story, then started the other episodes. I think I got the choice to join the Federation or Klingons at about level 13, and as I wanted to be able to trade items back and forth with Macan, I elected for the Federation. This allowed Miss Blaze to slip into something a little more comfortable, in the form of the same uniform as my old characters. Gotta admit, she looks way better now.
It sucks however that the Romulan officers can't be put in the same uniform, even though they are now with the Federation. The only clothing available to them are crappy looking generic Romulan things that just look a bit poop. I had to put them in some armour just so that they would look even the slightest bit cool.

As expected, I could now also claim the bundle on this character, and some relief washed over me. However, I had picked up four bridge officers along the way, and I had no more empty slots being at such low level. In order to get two Borgs in there, I would need to free up some space. After another quick Googling, I found that I would get another officer slot, and another free ship to boot, when I got to level 20. It would mean a bit more game time in a game I wasn't really feeling, but I thought it wouldn't hurt much.

So off I went again, butting heads with the Tal Shiar, the Cardassians and the Borg, to name but a few.

And pretty soon, I was level 20. With one officer slot now available, I discharged my poor engineer Veril to make way for both Borgs, and claimed the bundle at last.

Imagine my surprised (not) face when I saw that I only got the Romulan Borg officer, and not the human one as well. Either the internet was lying to me about getting 2 officers, or something was up.

A little perplexed, it was at this time I did something I had never done before in an MMO, and submitted a help ticket from the in-game menus.

I take part in a massive battle against the Tal Shiar

I knew these buggers would show up soon enough

Shoot the Borgie in the backie

Tackling some more shady Romulans

A several day back-and-forth occurred, where I first asked whether I was also supposed to get a Federation Borg officer in addition to the Romulan one.
A GM told me that I'd successfully redeemed all items from the bundle, including the Romulan bridge officer.
I had to write back saying that I knew I'd got the Romulan one, as I'd already stated this fact to them. Then I had to reiterate my original question while simultaneously pointing them to the wiki page that states I was supposed to get two officers.
So they then wrote back saying that some bug must have happened. In order to get this problem sorted, I would need to post in the game's support forums, which should get eyes on it from a senior GM, who could then elevate the problem to the game developers.

This seemed ludicrous to me. I mean, what is the point of using the in-game support menu if senior GMs and developers don't see it? And why can't the GM just forward my issue to a more important GM or developer themselves?

Whatever, I suppose. I went and logged into the forums using my Arc account, only to find I had no way of creating a new forum post or topic. Odd.
However, I was doing this on Windows 7, on a version of Firefox that is probably a good year old by now. It's possible, I thought, that something was unsupported on this setup.

So out came my laptop with Windows 10, with updated Firefox. No luck here either. Can't make a new post, or even reply to ones that are already open. Hmm, so maybe it was Firefox, I thought. The vast majority of people use Chrome now, so I downloaded that and logged in again. But still no luck. I am completely unable to create new forum posts or reply to existing ones.

So how the hell am I supposed to post in the support forum if there is simply no option to?

I considered going back to the original GM and bringing up this matter, but then I simply thought "why?" I'd already spent a few unplanned evenings on the game as it was, and I was probably never going to play it again.

So I didn't bother. It's just way too evident that the game continues to be a buggy, grindy mess, just like it was eight years ago, and will no doubt continue to be. It's a shame, but it's just not worth it.

Perhaps the only interesting thing about this entire entry is that the three ships that I unlocked, the R.R.W. Kachiri, the R.R.W. Lykopis, and the R.R.W. Xanara, all had their names taken from a list I made years ago that was going to be for new Amazon Blood Bowl players. Seemed fitting, what with Kallisto being my new character.

Forty Five Of One must have received the height buff meant for Kallisto

My one and only space battle in the R.R.W. Xanara

Once again fighting the Tal Shiar. Getting a bit bored of this...

Kallisto waves goodbye to the game on my behalf

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

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

The Empire army is routed at last

My poor Boarboyz have no access to the flank

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 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

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.