Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)

The story of a girl trying to stop endless blizzards.

In this puzzle platformer you switch control between two characters to get past various obstacles. While the plot and graphics are good, I found the controls for the fox (especially towards the end) to be a bit challenging - especially when you need to switch quickly.

Can't let either of them die.

Still not overly difficult but the part I liked the best are the cultural insight videos you unlock throughout the game because I love learning new things. Not great in terms of replayability, but the one time through is enough to net three bolas out of five. Recommended!

The First Tree

Fails to be zen.

With really cool visuals, a nice sound track and decent controls the First Tree is quick to grab your attention as you play a fox looking for her pups in an almost sand box environment with no enemies and a nice visual goal of a huge, distant tree.

Awesome opening.

My problems come with the constant narration, where in a man describes this "fox dream" you are playing through to his partner/wife/booty call/shrink as he basically tells an entire life story to the poor woman. Worse than this though, is that somehow the level design still incorporates platform puzzles some of which are mandatory to advance. And not in the "just do a double jump" kind of way. More like in the "hunt the x" which will "make you jump higher" or "open the vines".

Never had I more wanted to be human height so I could see where all this crap to find was without meandering through the tall grass. Good idea, poor execution. I don't recommend this walking simulator to anyone. Just get your fill of fox antics from the saveafox channel instead.

January 2021 Review: Speeding Up

Belated Happy New Year! Feels like its been awhile since I've done one of these yet I don't have a lot in the way of news. Well, that combat nerf update in Neverwinter Online is live now, and it's surprisingly not too bad and since the New Sharandar module is set to appear next month, I've been grinding the current one like mad since I can already foresee a shortage in Feywild supplies to continue our stronghold progress. 

I've also upgraded my internet which means its more possible for me to get those bigger titles now and there by get distracted from the Feywild farming. :P

That's a decent improvement!

Blog wise I'm also trying to compress down my posts in waiting so that I can get through them faster. You might be seeing more of these multi-targeted things shortly as I'm actually getting tired of having stuff "ready to go in advance". Might mean less posts afterwards but certainly more spontaneity.

On to some future tech, since powered exoskeletons have that problem of "power" - did you know there are unpowered exosuits already in use? Dang. That's news to me! Lastly this little fox named Finnegan (and the saveafox foundation) has really kept me entertained lately. Now you know the answer to "What does the fox say?"

 Lose 1kg this month (fail)
 Web comic (-error: no progress detected-)

BLOG STATS

One Year Ago

I wrote an Ode to some of Neverwinter's forgotten/removed content. That seems to be status quo now as the New Sharandar module next month will completely remove the old one.

Five Years Ago

I was playing Arkania and it's sequel Star Trail. Also our guild hall in Neverwinter was at rank 4... we've come a long way since then!

Most Viewed Posts in the last 30 days

MGSV: The Hammer and the Snake
GTFO: R4A1 - Cytology (Extreme)
MGSV: Fog of Skulls

While I kinda expect the GTFO tutorials to show up here I'm a bit surprised with  the two MGSV ones. Maybe it's because they have epic screenshots? :P

Battle Brothers: Picking a Side

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

As the Noble war rages on elsewhere, the Spears next find themselves attacking a bandit forest base - making use of the tall grass to advance out of sight from the enemy archers. Mostly. Russ breaks from cover early and dies for it, as the rest of the company pincer the bandit position and wipe them out.

My battle strategy for the forest fight.

They then hit a goblin camp where a slow, advancing shield wall proves to be a good tactic when lacking war dogs to distract and run down the nimble archers. Alas Fox, poisoned by an arrow to the knee, is run through with a pike in the melee.

On the way back to civilization another acquaintance of Sid, Colonel Vodka, is met at a small village working as a grave digger. He joins the Spears. While Big Mike plays dice with Pioyer (who has a lot more coin than he's letting on), Faltran and a few others patrol around the town and find soldiers of House Grimmund about to hang one of their own.

The soon to be executed soldier, Gaius Caligula Augustus "the Honorable", pleads for help since he is about to be killed for disobeying orders to kill women and children. Faltran doesn't think twice, slaying the Grimmund bastards and freeing Gaius to join the Spears - much to Big Mike's chagrin.

Battle Brothers: Filling the Ranks

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

Fox, a caravan hand, joins the Spears and earns his place early as he manages to slay the bandit leader "Roderick the Slaughterer". In the same battle Sid loses a finger to a crossbow bolt, and has an elbow broken by Roderick, leaving him less effective in combat. The peddler is just happy to be alive.

That would sting.

Gander is named Sergeant shortly after, for his high resolve, and Kamots shares a story of his past revealing he is not that bright. Sahkarov takes it upon himself to try teach him, but fails and is left dissatisfied.

A few bandits (35+ since they are getting paid by head), courier deliveries and direwolf hunts later the Spears recruit a dangerous looking man named Stargazer and the disowned noble Sir Julien, who apparently was disgraced by losing his forces overseas.

They also help a deserter, William Beardguy, escape from the soldiers looking for him - in return he joins the Spears, claiming he had left due to money issues. Big Mike assures him he won't have that problem working for the Spears.

Night of the Full Moon

My journal through Stalker Soup - a mega mod for Shadows of Chernobyl! You can follow the rest of the story here!

My second task at Agroprom was to locate Ghost's diary for Kruglov. The idiot placed it on a highly irradiated hill guarded by pseudodogs. After sniping said dogs it took me a few goes using anti-rad to locate the thing only to then suddenly take fire from a nearby hill. Since it was night time and a storm had begun pouring rain from above I had no hope in fighting back from that open location so instead I opted to make a wide run back to the facility where the friendly stalkers were camped, losing my pursuers in the process. There was no point in going back out there with poor visibility so I decided to nap only to be woken up by another blowout at midnight. Once it passed, so had the storm and the full moon lit up the surroundings enough for me to travel. Returned to Garbage after killing a pair of would-be robbers and traded in some dog parts for equipment and cash from the fat trader. From there I decided to cross over to the Dark Valley to try wrap up more quests and was pleased to find a Duty Squad guarding the Western woods of the area. I proceeded North where Fox had joined Bes and Mole's camp, and handed in Strelok's armor to Bes as I promised earlier.

Decided to try retrieve a laptop from the lab here too so I circled around the bandit buildings, killing their lone sentry as well as a wandering burer then remembered to detour into an abandoned house where the injured guy I left here from last time was still bleeding out. Must have a lot of blood? Anyway gave him a medkit and he accompanied me to the lab entrance where I eliminated a random mutant camp (rats, snorks and bloodsucker) before continuing downstairs to face the pair of poltergeists that survived my previous venture here. Finally cleared the place but they managed to smash my armor. With the laptop in hand I made my way back to the surface only to find a new military APC had parked itself right outside the gate! I used up what little grenades I had left but the damn thing was still alive. There was no way I could outrun it's autocannon and no cover to run to from there so I made my way upstairs to the roof and did some parkour to the next building. It was a long drop from the roof, but was the only way I could see to get out of the perimiter without passing the APC. Needless to say, it hurt. - but I lived!

Did a huge circle around the area again, passing Bes' camp and the Duty team to avoid the APC and reach the bunkers in the bottom part of the region. There I was meant to hunt down a stalker called "Vampire" which turned out to be pretty easy as he was just chillaxing by the fire. Punched his lights out to complete the quest then took the South path to return to Cordon.

I like to think this is what he looked like.

Southern Circuit

My journal through Stalker Soup - a mega mod for Shadows of Chernobyl! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Blew through Bar pretty quick, though I had to take some time on the Southern border to snipe a whole pack of dogs waiting for me. Tried sniping a wandering Burer too but I ended up having to just run past the telepathic bastard. Pushed through Garbage to Agroprom for a small detour of sniping a military grunt at a toxic lake. Also found myself attacked by a small litter of fast moving cats. Yes. Cats. God damn. Everything here wants to kill me. Fortunately some drop good loot like the bandit bunch I ran into. Managed to pickup a "Bandit Exo-skeleton suit".

Decided to then take a short-cut back to the Cordon via a foresty path filled with anomalies, boars and fleshes. Thought I'd finish off a few quests while I was here only to find I couldn't for some because a) the quest giver had travelled to a different location and b) the item I retrieved and used was so damaged they wanted me to fix it first. Sigh. Fortunately Sid repairs for resonable prices. Got a replacement shottie while I was at it and I also found a fat guy named Tolik bleeding out in the bush, patched him up and helped him get vengeance on the dog pack that got him and his buddies.

I also met a group of three hunters who wanted my help in staving off an attack by bandits near the rail-crossing. I agreed and sure enough a large firefight ensued with the hunters all dying in the first 10 seconds of combat. To make things more interesting a group of wandering stalkers and Colonel Vodka and his squad decided to join in. In the end everyone except for the invincible Colonel and myself were dead.

After the blood bath I had to elude the Colonel with a large detour, then it was time to push back North. My journey was slightly delayed by a heavy storm so I made camp to wait it out near the ruins where Fox's team was - though one of their number had been killed by another pack of dogs. They weren't what I came across when following the road to Garbage though. It was this guy...

Yup. A psuedogiant.

Fortunately I was well stocked on launchable grens and took it down with no fuss. Still high on ammo and supplies, I headed for my next stop: the Dark Valley.