More than Nothing: Highthrone

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Resting up again at the Temple of Stillness, Mirror Knight Gowere lets the party meet a hologram of Halo Knight Ruskyn who offers them paid mercenary work (in the form of reroll coins) for keeping peace on the island - telling them of the secret signal his allies will use to indicate such (by touching their nose twice). This meeting is interrupted by the Bell Knight Dame Dellakar seeking aid against a mushroom uprising and they assist, losing two soldiers to the cordyceps mummies before dousing their source, a death-farting candleshroom. 

They proceed onto the now empty Echo cave save for the guardian wraith within, which has no chance against Jergonson's god spear, to retrieve an indigo tapestry for Dellakar. She claims she was getting visions that the tapestry would take her to the city and upon wearing it she vanishes! This doesn't help our heroes though who continue on the road and accept a job from the pillar wielding rune knight Myghal to defend Highthrone against a number of beasts sent by the dust knight - one of Ruskyn's enemies who seeks throne. 

The first is a gargoyle who manages to petrify Orwan so they spend some time getting him unstoned which involves burying his statue then putting a chicken egg on it, waiting 24 hours without looking at it for it to hatch a brand new Orwan, albeit more chickeny. The next beast is a Wyvern who is easily baited and slain, then a lion that can shoot lazers that kills four more soldiers, and shortly after a great flaming eagle but "I am bright!" from Aah blinds it and a critical arrow from Mamita finishes it before they reach the dust knight's garbage fortress. This lone enemy manages to magically force all the fluids out of one more soldier (yeah, that's fatal) before he is slain by overwhelming numbers. 

Myghal leaves the party at Highthrone where they rest up and Mamita collects the handsome reward from Ruskyn while Aah and Jerghonson  participate in a tourney against some clockwork knights. The last surviving robot, Kenrick, surrenders against its master tinkerer's wishes. It then kills its cruel creator to prove it's more than nothing and begs to join the team, which Jerghonson and Aah accept.

Meanwhile Ughh assists the pigeon knight Jacobin look for a cursed crown which turns out to be easy to find. He lets Jacobin put it on which instantly drives him insane, making him mutter "the city is a lie" over and over before his head explodes. Ughh takes the crown and passes a will check to resist the temptaion to put it on. He then also befriends a mistreated giant worker bird called Wazzletard (because that's the only sound it makes), and buys it from its cruel boss to join the party.

Xenonauts: Dili

[Part of the Xenonauts story]

An aerial terror strike at Reykjavik proves to be a good time to unleash the newest marauder aircraft to butt kick the aliens back into space, but a terror mission in Dili introduces a new alien variant - the tough, large headed wraiths who have a knack for teleporting.  Dr. Monique is caught be surprise and wraithed while Megan Allen is mind controlled into a building that the scimitar tank drops down on top of her for an instakill. Worth it as it took three wraiths down too! The large drones that accompany them are also decently annoying and a good match against the scimitar.

Of course, the Xenonauts didn't know these were NOT the Praetors they needed to capture and lost a few soldiers trying to take some in with Straggler Rachel plasma-ed by a lizardman and Ursula getting lizardmelee'd to death, Sera getting sniped by a jetpack boss and Ghorlak Beholder eating a friendly grenade to ensure a clear path to capture a creature they didn't actually need to.

Since the aliens are clearly becoming stronger (like those lizardmen are now regenerating) MAG rail-gun type weapons are produced for all the soldiers as well as three power armors for the LMG carriers which makes it easier to win battles against the alien battleships landing to terrorize Nairobi and Cape Town. Despite this Dr. Isaac is still killed when taking the bridge of one of those multi storied UFOs. 

It's the only way to be sure.

Dili then is the target of another terror attack, and since their previous efforts did not make Indochina return to the council this time they just nuke the entire city, populace and all. If you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem! Then for whatever reason, Dili is terrorized and nuked AGAIN. Who were they terrorizing, I'm not sure... the aliens either really want something there or are just kinda stupid.

Decluttering Day 23: Broken Pig charm.

The Cursed: Keep to Yourself

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Looking for an exit the team run into a powerful wraith demon, and only thanks to Neera's chaos orb do the team manage to take it and it's allies down. Unfortunately Haer'Dalis is killed in this battle as his minute meteors are reflected back to him by the wraith's shield.

Mazzy can do that too!

One member down and wandering this place of demons really blows so Catharina switches tactics. The team are now just gonna run. Run like hell. Using invisibility and haste, this actually works - somehow getting past rooms and rooms of enemies until they find themselves back at the start.

Exhausted and again one person down they return to Athkatla to regroup. During their rest Catharina suddenly realized... "Shouldn't we be rescuing Imoen?"

Insight: Haer'Dalis is a strange cat. He's weak, but actually good at everything if you can micromanage him. Too bad, I hate micromanagement.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

This game has taught me why Sauron is the Dark Lord. He sends forth the BSOD! :P

After the first 10 minutes which serve both as a tutorial and a quick story segment to let you know why a wraith possessed ranger of Gondor is sneaking about Mordor you quickly get into the guts of this Assassin's Creed like game, only this is better than almost all Assassin's Creed games I've played to date. You only get three weapons: a sword, a knife, and a bow that easily runs out of arrows but with just those and the unlockable skills you get you can interact with the open world in so many cool and violent ways. Oh yes - super violent ways which gives it a huge tick of approval from me. Not only do you dismember your foes but you can make heads EXPLODE.

This is one of the -tamer- finishers.

And you can make orcs flee in terror. Yup, an often missed behavior pattern in most AI these days (outside scripted events) the orcs actually can do a bit more than flee and die, especially as they climb up the ranks of Sauron's army to become war chief. These mostly randomized bad guys have names, behavior patterns, remember what you've done to them personally, have effects that make them stronger and immunities but also have weaknesses to be exploited. Each one different enough from the next to have an impact when you meet them. Maybe this one hates fire and the other one loves fire and is immune to everything but stealth. Obviously getting caught by them unawares in the open world is bad.

The protagonist is quite godly once you max everything out, but nowhere near the AC curb stomp heroes. Here just the sheer numbers of normal foes can take you down if you aren't careful. Death also has some meaning here as it passes time, which in turn begins refilling the ranks of orc captains you were probably busy emptying. Orcs that kill you and captains that survive the encounter gain in power, making them more dangerous the next time you meet!

Music wise it is ok but its the voice actors that really shine here. I found it clever that the loading scenes have story fragment voice overs which help piece together the past. The story is very cool too, especially for Tolkien fans. I was also impressed by having mountable critters and being able to fight while mounted. All of this makes for a really great game except for two things: a disappointing final fight and that the graphical requirements caused a LOT of restarts for me (PC Version), obviously impacting my overall experience with the product. I stuck with it to the end though, and can safely give this four elven arrows out of five.

Would have been perfect without all those crashes. For anyone else having NVidia issues what I did is put everything at the lowest setting and changed the Win 7 color scheme from Aero to Basic. This cut down the crashes by half.