Age of Mythology: Retold

As many would know, strategy games aren't really my forte but this one has somehow made it into our Friday night game sessions and has probably become my most played strategy one for awhile. Obviously the co-op component helps a lot, though you can only co-op two players if going through the campaign story. That's ok though as there are many other modes that you can play through which is good, given my graphics card bombs out on some of the maps too.

A standard game round has you selecting your civilization (Norse, Greek, Egyptian, Atlantean, etc) followed by a major deity in that civilization - so for a Norse player you'd be choosing between Loki, Odin or Thor for example, each giving you slightly different "god" powers and "tech" trees in the form of minor gods who you get to pick as you advance from age to age.

Usually you get a town center, some peasants and some form of scout of your civilization type and from there have to collect food, wood, gold and favor to expand up through the ages. Favor is your battery for magical powers or making magical creatures and you how you gain it depends on your civilization. Atlanteans gain it by having their oracles stand as far apart from each other as possible. Greeks gain it by having as many people worshiping at the temple. Norse get it by killing enemies, and so forth.

AI wise, the fun bit is getting the mix n match of their personality types. A few examples are the defender who only defends, an attacker will constantly harass you, a humanoid will ignore all magic-related things and just fight you with men and machines, and an overwhelmer will just mass a big ball of troops and then throw it at you if you wait too long. You can also up the "difficulty" by letting the AI cheat basically if you really want a challenge (your peasant hits a tree once and gains 1 wood, their peasant hits a tree once and gains 1-3x wood).

It's simple enough to learn and fun enough to keep playing. Coming from me, a non strategy game player whose PC can't even run 1/4th of it properly, that's saying something so it must be doing something right! :)

Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel and My Night Job

Games in perma-horde mode!

Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel

This slow loading game has you playing in various Norse arenas against swarms of beasties, ghosts, and others while you do repetitive objectives within a time limit to ultimately summon the Jotunn boss of the level. While there are multiple characters, weapons, and maps and difficulty modes you could possibly choose from the vast majority are locked and you must do specific tasks to unlock... the game basically (grind mode activate!). I also wasn't too keep on the game pausing every time you level up to pick a perk, but given the game play I can't really think of a better way to have done that. Ultimately not for me.

My Night Job

This small and silly action platformer has hand drawn characters and you play as some guy recruited by the military to save x number of civilians from a haunted house (at least in level one) which endlessly spawns all sorts of violent spooks that range from ghosts, goblins, and zombies to robots with gatling guns (I hate those). You're also under the clock since if rooms get too full of bad guys not only do they kill the people you're meant to be saving, they start stomping until they break the room entirely - causing no more spawns to occur there! All up the game is a short and crazy experience that you should try out if you can find it for free. 

Adolesence and Twilight of the Gods

Two Netflix series about killing!

Adolesence

This four episode British series starts off with the arrest of a 13 year old boy for murder and goes from there. It's a pretty heavy story in terms of content but also features excellent cinematography and acting, the primary reason for which is that each of the one hour episodes is all shot in a single take with no cuts. This is excellent TV and is high on my recommended list.

Twilight of the Gods (Season 1)

This Norse themed animated series has a high content of violence, gore, nudity and sex - definitely not for younger audiences! It follows a vengeful bride to be who goes after Thor with the help of Loki and more than a few other Norse mythological beings. I like the art style and the flowing animation but it suffers from characters passing the idiot ball which makes the tale far less epic than it's trying to be. I'll watch season 2 if they make it but am not so fussed if it never happens either.

Ragnarok (TV Series) and Nimona

It's bad to be different.

Ragnarok (TV Series)

This three season Norwegian TV show is a modern day take on Norse mythology with people being the reincarnations of gods and giants starts of really slow until the "hook" towards the end of episode one. From there it gets pretty good as the ordinary and extraordinary worlds collide and it always helps that there are likeable characters to root for. However it is very combat averse (which is strange given the title), two of the main characters look way too old to be in school especially towards the later seasons, and the ending feels like they got cancelled and had to just put something together quickly. Could have been better.

Nimona

This woke animated comedy takes place in a world where being a knight usually means having a high noble pedigree so when the gay dark skinned protagonist of low "unworthy" birth (need to tick all those boxes huh) makes it to knighthood it seems to be the start of a new era... until he is framed for killing the beloved queen at that very same public event and is forced into hiding. This attracts the attention of Nimona, who happens to be in the same boat of being hated by everyone for being different.

There are some nice story beats here with decent humor throughout as well as superb CGI animation but plot wise there are some whale sized holes and Nimona is at times over the top irritating. I'm also not sold on the whole, I am only bad and do bad things because people think of me that way message here (so what, that makes it ok to be bad? It's ok to be a bully if you've been bullied? Nice message film!) . Overall an ok film to leave running in the background while you do something else.

Jotun

It's all about impressing the gods.

Having drowned at sea, Thora the viking finds herself in the otherworldly realms of Norse Mythology and must prove herself to gain entry to Valhalla by striking down the titular Jotun that reside within. The hand drawn artwork here is great, as are the Icelandic voice overs and each area has its own form of puzzles and rewards exploration through new powers or increasing your life bar - however this short game does suffer from the "empty space syndrome".

Not so empty in this fight though.

There are very few minion type enemies leaving most of the battles focused squarely on the handful of giant Jotun present in the game and while those fights are pretty cool, the sections in between are a little bit stagnant which is a bad feeling to take from an already short game. It's entertaining enough, but unless you are a die-hard art fan or Norse fan you would be better served playing other games - namely Bad North or Hellblade for a viking fix or Ruiner which uses this style of game play. I give Jotun 2.5 giant birds on an even giant-er(?) bird out of 5.

Insight: When fighting the last boss not only can you can dodge those seeking spears, you can also destroy them with a regular attack.

Today I Smiled: Font of Knowledge

Been ages since I've put up a Today I Smiled post, and today's one is to share all the strange and wacky stuff I've been learning about over the past few months, like the Babylonian's used a base 60 numeral system, or that there's an island that uses giant stones as currency, or that it takes the whole year's crop from one tree to make 450gms of chocolate. Yes, you can (mostly) blame Reddit! :P

Interested in conflict? Well here are two that might be of interest: The Syrian Civil War and the animated, lazery Norse Attack Map. Just be sure not to ridicule a person who refuses to duel in Mississippi. That's a misdemeanor!

In the event you do get into a fight, in might be better to lick your wounds than to get put into St. Luke's hospital, where they potentially can keep you (or your corpse) hostage indefinitely.

Also don't mess with the Russians, they have a knack for fixing mundane problems with nukes! That might lead to having cities with a population of zero. Or worse, with hoverboard zombies...

Only made worse with XCOM odds to hit! :P

But who needs zombies when there are giant centipedes and spiders that go fishing? I'm guessing the two women who jumped into the river to see which one their man would save (spoiler: he chose Rong) didn't know about those critters!

I've also come across nice art ... made with Microsoft Excel of all things as well as a bunch of doodles that summarize all of this season of the Walking Dead. There's also a hilarious synopsis maker who does the more recent episodes for Arrow, Flash, Vixen and Legends of Tomorrow! Might be worth taking a look if you want to catch up on the shows without actually watching them. :P

Speaking of art, I would be remiss if I didn't share with you at least one song - this one for all the Metal and Vanilla Ice fans, with Metal Ice Ice Baby (wut?). If you are more the type to appreciate the written word see here the Chinese story of Stone Lions composed entirely with the word "Shi" 101 times.

Lastly here's a clip called Ultimate Skyrim, which show cases what happens when one uses too many mods in the game. Have a great weekend everyone!

Today I Smiled: Video Update Temple

A video-link heavy post today, mostly thanks to my late viewing of the Superbowl related stuff! Apart from Katy Perry's halftime show (yeah, I'm a fan), my favorite ads were the ones for Clash of Clans, Snickers, and Esurance's Say my Name. I quite liked the Toyota Camry one too but for different reasons. Guess I'm a sucker for "dad" ads now.

Seen all of that? Maybe you'll enjoy Penn and Teller's anti-anti vaccination vid, or these Japanese commercial featuring sizzling maids or this ... other weird one. Tired of vids? Maybe this article on Iceland building a new temple to the Norse gods is what you need.

I've also revisited Forced recently and found that in now has coop save points, making it much more playable than it was before. Also updated is the link to the Neverwinter Nights module by my brother, Dragonlord, which had moved to the NWNVaults awhile back. In bigger update news Feng Lee's Attack on Titan game has gotten some awesome upgrades. If you are a fan of Shingeki no Kyojin I suggest you give it a try, though be warned - the steep learning curve hasn't changed one bit!

The graphics got better, but not quite as good as Tybee Diskin sitting in a tree. :P

Lastly I've added 12 new blogs on the Paths I Travel link to the right, mostly taken from Massively's farewell page. Always good to have more things to read. I'm also interested to see if  they can withstand my simple "rule".

Hope you all have a lovely day!