Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and When the Past was Around

Blood and sorrow.

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

I've always enjoyed the Dishonored series as it has that Thief like stealth option where you can simply sneak your way to victory without killing anyone (which is pretty tough). Alternatively you can use your void gifted powers to just absolutely murder everyone or any variation in between. That design is the same here, but unlike Dishonored 2 which lets you do "powerless" run through, this one straight up encourages you to use everything you have - even just for "Quality of Life" displays.

Also, with just five missions it is quite short even though said missions could take a few hours. Or just minutes if you're a blood bath type of player. If you enjoyed the other Dishonored titles, this is an easy one to recommend. It's just more Dishonored (but not as good / in-depth as Dishonored 2). If you haven't played any of the Dishonored series, don't start with this one.

When the Past was Around

This short puzzle game is a work of art with wonderful visuals and really nice music. While the theme of playing a woman battling against grief might not be high on your to do list, this is a rather nice experience which will hit your feelings mostly at the end. There's also not a lot of back tracking which is a huge tick for me. My only two criticisms are that I prefer the music piece in the prologue (but that's minor, the main theme is good too) and some puzzles are totally out there, like a combination lock that includes the numbers of birds and butterflies present in the scene. There are hints but those can be pretty vague. Still recommended though! Good game.

What's in your Favorites?

Or what would you put there?

This question stems from my last free Steam games post, where I made a passing mention of my favorites which is actually a sub section available to all Steam users that I've only started using recently. I thought I'd share the 15 games that made it in there, my main criteria being "games I would play again". Obviously this doesn't cover any games outside of my steam library so maybe I'll do a bigger list later down the track.

It's currently a pretty short list.

Going over them really quickly in no particular order: Black Desert is a beautiful and interesting MMORPG, but it stopped letting me play (startup error) so I'm not sure if that's staying in here for much longer. I love the stealth mechanics in Thief, both Dishonored games which also have multiple ways to play, Skyrim which has tons of mods to enjoy (it also stole my name, arrrrgh *shakes fist*), and GTFO - my current regular multiplayer stealth horror.

Sleeping Dogs is just fun in a chaotic way while To the Moon and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice are both excellent game wise and in hitting me in the feels. The remaining six are all free games: A Raven Monologue and When the Past was Around: Prologue are more feels hitters, Dead Horizon is an excellent lesson in short story telling, and High Entropy Challenges, Gravitas and Liquidators are all good first person puzzlers featuring in the same order: stealth, humor, and Chernobyl. :P

But what of these do I consider the best you ask? That's not so hard to answer. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice wins easily.

What games do you have flagged as your favorites?

Take Two: Resident Costume of the Dishonored Bannerlord

Four game sequels, and two days to read all about them. :)

Resident Evil 2

More about running than fighting!

This retelling of Leon and Claire's arrival in a zombie filled Racoon City really shows off how graphics have improved since the original. While the finite enemies are mostly slow they also take too many bullets to permanently kill so you'll need to get good at -sprinting- slow jogging around them while you solve the many puzzles that block your path.

The horror level really ramps up when the unkillable Tyrant arrives too - he's slow but  relentless as he chases you across the neatly designed maps, even into your "safe" rooms. Strangely, that is the best part of the game. Combat in general is average and the story is ludicrous.

Better off running than reloading that weapon...

There is a replayability factor here too as I believe each protagonist has two unique playthroughs but once is enough for me. I did dabble with the "ghost survivors" mode with new heroes and zombies though, but with no save points in any of those scenarios that just became too tedious for me.  All up, pretty good and worth it if you are a RE fan. I give it three green herbs out of five.

Insight: Always use the map to help your searching, a red room means there's still stuff to loot. Second, always ditch items that have a red tick as they have no more uses and simply occupy inventory space.

Costume Quest 2

Now with timey-wimey shenanigans!

I quite enjoyed the first Costume Quest and its DLC. This time around the kids are back to stop a time traveling dentist from banning Halloween and making the world a dental utopia! Much of the game play is the same as last time though you will be using a new set of costumes with slightly different powers.

The puzzles and combat system are simple enough and there's not much grinding to do which is great. Once again, you shouldn't be defeated by anything here as long as you remember the super helpful combat training. Highly recommended, but you need to play the original first as the story does continue on from there. I give it three candies out of five.

Insight: Make use of those combat cards! They don't vanish after use, instead just requiring a cool-down of a few battles. Handy ones are force the enemies to skip a turn, fill up everyone hero gauge, and make minions attack themselves - which you can use to cheese the mini-boss fights against moles and snails.

Dishonored 2

A master class in world building.

Taking place years after the first game, a new threat emerges and this time you can choose your protagonist - Empress Emily Kaldwin or her father and hero from the first game Corvo Attano, in a quest for retribution - which can be as bloody or as bloodless as you want, just be ready to face the consequences.

In fact in my playthrough, I told the Outsider to take a hike and play without any supernatural powers (and only killed two people) which made it feel almost exactly like a thief game! "A+" to player agency! There are some fantastic maps too, all of which have loads of world building thrown on top.

One of the best missions lets you jump through time!

I cannot recommend this game enough, though if you play it as a fully super powered rage machine it might be a tad on the short side. Five exploding bullets out of five.

Insight: I only personally killed two people but lots more died pursuing me into random monsters. Not my fault as I didn't attack them at all! :P

Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord (Early Access)

Brilliant when it comes to sweeping, large scale battles.

After an epic battle participated by every nation resulted in a loss for everyone, Calradia is more divided than ever. While you start out as an individual on a revenge trip, you can eventually grow your army and own shops, villages, castles, cities and even the entire continent if your ambition (and patience) is large enough.

The little quests, tournaments and tavern board games are great (I now love Tablut!) but what this game shines best at is medieval tactical large scale combat - and there is a LOT of it. You'll be charging across plains and hills of grass and sand and snow, skirmishing in forests, using rivers to slow down enemy cavalry, and participating in sieges with functional siege equipment all to some pretty epic music.

While this is certainly an improvement to the original Mount and Blade which laid the foundations nicely, it does suffer a few problems. First, there is a really long intro quest that might put you off but that's quite intentional so that you can build up your clan enough to handle what comes after. The bigger problem is in "the after" and the same one found in the first game: repetition.

The game is good at what it does, but there's only so much before that content grows stale. Sure, this castle looks different than the last one but functionally its the same to get in. Once you've fought one or two massive armies you've fought them all. Don't get me wrong - it's super fun, I'm just wondering ... where to next? Hopefully when this gets out of early access it will have an answer. As it is I give it three battering rams out of five.

Insight: Press N to use the encyclopedia to find people on the map. Also hang on to one handed axes and buy wheat in bulk if offered in "The Art of the Trade" as they are used in other easy quests. You can also slowly cheese some sieges if you go up a ladder with a two handed spear and stab the defenders out of their range. This won't work if enemy archers are covering the ladder though.

Riva: Screwed

[Part of the Darklands of Arkania Story.]

Thanks to the late hour the team has a really easy time infiltrating the castle, avoiding guards and dealing with a handful of sleeping ones in a non-lethal fashion. Eventually they come across the torture chamber where they find one of the wizards they are meant to rescue strapped on the rack. Wolfy doesn't hesitate to lead the attack.

What sort of wizard gets captured anyway?

While the fight itself is easy, the problem comes after due to a read error/bad file. Story wise, I suppose this wizard is dead, so the party has no choice but to try find the others and sure enough there are locked doors present they don't have keys to. "Well someone must have them!" exclaimed Talarian, and so began the mass murdering of every living soul in the castle.

It's worked before! :P

Alas, against all logic - no one had the key(s) and as the dawn approached the team retreated back into the sewers with as much loot as they could carry from the treasure room and armory. Using the tunnel that lead beyond the walls they then escaped into the woods to try their fortune elsewhere, leaving Judge Bosper Jarnug's reputation of screwing his enemies intact and another victory under his belt.

Pity that Riva comes to a close on this game breaking bug, but I'm sure this is not the end of the story.

Riva: Not Responsible

[Part of the Darklands of Arkania Story.]

Mandara doesn't stay with the team long, because the first thing she does is open a secret passage which leads them right into "the Guild", that nefarious crew that resides down here. In a most perplexing chain of events, the party is taken hostage briefly and then is immediately set free by a swarm of rats.

Someone's playing Dishonored down here.

Lost in the maze of tunnels (auto moving), Allison leads the party to a dead end where the Guild finally catches up to them, only to then have Mandara fully vampire out and begin feeding on the pursuers. With that entire mess going on the team flees to the surface, and by chance come up beside one of the giant town gates. Deciding it's probably best to let things settle down they exit to the nearby and generally pleasant country side of green rolling hills.

By chance they come across a group of eight Thorwallians who ask them for ale. Since the party isn't carrying any, they apologize and state the truth. The drunkards don't believe it though and choose to attack anyway. The last choice any of them will ever make.

Drink responsibly... OR DIE.

Devil's Tears

Having finished the awesomeness of Dishonored (where I ironically prefer the "bad" ending simply because my character lives) I've moved on to a different kind of awesome, the type that breaks logic - the type only found in Devil May Cry. I was very critical upon first hearing of this reboot with the "new" Dante but now that I actually have the game he is still just as snarky cool as his white haired version (whom I still prefer, but I can see how he can "grow" into that).

The city is more modern-techno and less modern-medieval (erm, what? redundancy detected :P) but it doesn't matter because half the time you'll be fighting the hordes of demons in limbo - an alternate plane that pretty much blows the Outsider's realm (from Dishonored) out of the water. Like in the previous titles there are long and very drawn out cutscenes that give the main narrative while the interactive part pretty much is just hacking, slicing, shooting and breaking everything in the world - but doing so with style (very important as it gives you more points to unlock more upgrades)!

As if Limbo wasn't broken enough...

It's a very fun game however I get the feeling that it is also going to be short duration wise because of its many difficulty locks which are supposed to encourage me to play the game over and over. There are also tons of hidden collectibles too but I'm not sure I'll be hunting them down here since limbo (and the camera controls) are a bit annoying to navigate with. Minor, minor drawback. In any case if you were steering clear simply because of the "new" Dante, don't. He grows on you quick, moves just as fluidly as he did previously, and is really good at making those devils cry.

Gift of the Void

Since the NWN Foundry was down for a few days I have been playing "Dishonored" as of late, and wow is it good. It reminds me so much of my other favourite game series "Thief", but is obviously more modern with its crisp graphics and more fluid movement. Even the gear loadout screen generates nostalgia. Unlike Garret from Thief, the main character here named Corvo is a killer. He is quite fragile in hand to hand combat but so are his enemies, giving him insta-kill combos with the correct timing. He also carries a whole armament of deadly stuff and if that wasn't enough he even gains magical powers from a supernatural entity early on which while really cool, makes the gam almost too easy even if you are trying to not kill anyone, which is what I'm doing at the moment - ala thief.  All the patience and adrenaline of being sneaky can just be tossed out the window when your character can literally stop time.

The one harder run is to "ghost" which means never get seen and don't touch anyone but that's a bit -too- pacifistic for me. Ofcourse there are crazy people who are doing/have done that with the "it was all a dream" self imposed difficulty (no use of magic) which is impressive. Anyway I am already looking forward to doing the whole thing again in berserker blood bath mode too - because I can see it's going to be very fun and very quick (comparatively speaking). Solid game so far, with a good story to boot. Definitely high up on my recommended list! Most importantly though it led me to discover that Thief is being rebooted! AWESOME. I'm definitely grabbing that when it comes out on the PC. :)

In the meantime...