Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Well, poor console-less me gets to sit on the sidelines for the big release of Red Dead Redemption 2. Alas. Maybe  PC version will come someday. Meanwhile, I've "finished up" AC Odyssey. I think my previous remarks and impressions stand. I would add that there are occasional issues with the targeting system, leading to doing damage to unintended targets (killed the NPC I was trying to protect from a bear in one quest because he was too close when I attacked the bear) during some swings or the odd situation where I would even lock on to one of my own ship lieutenants when boarding an enemy vessel. And, whether you consider it "realism" or a drawback, there are a good number of quest situations where the best outcome is less than perfect - making the "good/heroic" dialog choices does not guarantee innocents will survive and such. Also, sometimes you can  talk your way out of a bad situation, but that makes the things that can only be solved with weapo...

So, following up on The Alchemists of Loom , I read through The Dragons of Nova and The Rebels of Gold . I have to say, the second book has a surprise amount of "character does something that hoses longer-term plans." These are things that make me, as a reader, cringe and want to chide the character for being stupid/impulsive and making things worse. I also have to acknowledge they often end up making the narrative more interesting. That's a point I've considered in roleplaying from time to time - few players will ever allow their characters to make obvious mistakes. I'm not altogether sure if it's something that should be addressed, or how, but I think about it anyway. Arianna becomes a little less the primary protagonist, though she's still critically important to everything that happens. Cvareh is forced along a fairly predictable path. Florence steps out from being more-or-less Arianna's sidekick to become leader of a rebellion. Inter-character ...

Assassins Creed: Odyssey (partial review) Just about everything I've heard in reviews, I agree with to some degree. For me, that makes it a good game, partly because of its flaws. Odyssey is expansive and looks good. The controls don't feel revolutionary by any means, but they work well. The sea battles are run to have back, if not quite as cool as Black Flag's. There's a lot to like. The war is more a gameplay convention that lets you weaken and flip regions for rewards, though, than something meaningful. I can see the arguments about the microtransactions. I have not felt compelled to pay for anything (save a few things that are "bought" with Uplay points you get from just playing Uplay games), but I totally understand how some would feel pushed to do so. Whether you hit a level barrier and how much that bothers you would totally depend on how you play the game. I tackle a lot of side quests and I still hit a few minor bumps, plus one notable one as I fo...

Racial/class conflicts in a steampunk-ish world? Adventures of a trio of central characters there? Sure, it sounded interesting enough to give a try - certainly more so than the piles of self-published LitRPG books that seem to like to fill up my Amazon "recommended" lists. Overall, I think it is pretty good and I expect to follow the series, but there are a few details that seem to hold it back from being "great" in my eyes. The world is interesting enough, though feels a little shallow in areas. We have the surface world of Loom occupied by the Fenthri, who seem to be more-or-less gray-skinned humans, who were roughly organized around technical guilds as they built up to steampunk-ish tech levels and reached up into the sky. At which point, they came to the attention of the Dragons, who are strong and magical humanoids (even though dragon-dragons seem to exist in myth, which begs the question in my mind of whether there is a connection). The Dragons impose their...

So... yeah... I've been eyeing some games recently, but the ones available at the moment give me pause. As mentioned, I like the idea of Star Control Origins , but I'm not sure it lives up to it. I think it's something I might pick up discounted down the line. I've also been looking at Insomnia: The Ark , which seems like one of those second-tier enjoyable-but-technically-hindered-by-small-dev-studio games that may be worth playing, but will definitely be more worth playing after it has seen some patches. So that's at least two new releases that I feel I should hold off on. With the reviews (and my general enjoyment of the previous installment), I think I'm down to dive into Assassin's Creed Odyssey on release, though that doesn't come out 'til the end of the week. It seems like a pretty safe bet in terms of overall quality as well as a lot of play time. I dipped a toe into the second LFR wing of Uldir in WoW over the weekend, and that was a...

I started watching Altered Carbon a while back and ended up taking a break partway through because... hmm... perhaps because the episodes are an "hour" long plus general seriousness. But I came back and finished it, and I don't mean any of that as a knock against the series. It's set much more in the future than what I typically think of as "cyberpunk" but it very much holds true to the themes of the genre - AI, gentrification, questioning humanity. There's a mystery for the main character is hired to unravel that turns into much more along the way. It does all that well and looks good. The characters are generally solid. There are some truly great moments of acting when certain characters are dealing with their consciousness being loaded into very different bodies. I think the series leans a bit heavily into unveiling new things to open up more questions every episode or two. Whether that's a good or bad thing may be up for interpretation, but I c...

The game was enjoyable to play. I have a lot of little nitpicks and criticisms, but really I've had fun with the recent Tomb Raider trilogy and this works okay as an ending or a break point in a larger story. The game looks good. It (mostly) plays well. I might revisit it if there is some story-ish DLC in the future. So what would I criticize about the game? Well, I ran into a few technical issues where the game slowed to a crawl - primarily in cut scenes or interactive sequences. Maybe my hardware is starting to show its age, but that's a drag. Also, it's one of those games where you might die a couple times in combat situations over the course of the game... but half a dozen times or more in sequence during an interactive/QTE scene because something comes up after 20+ seconds of quick reactions and you may not have time to process what you're doing wrong that causes Lara to miss a jump. I'd also say the pacing feels a bit off overall and I wish the scenes of bei...