Drakensang: The River of Time

Drakensang: The River of Time is a prequel to Drakensang, released a year (in Germany) or two (North America) after the first game. As far as I could tell, the subtitle doesn't refer to anything specific (even though the locations are by a river): it's merely something characters say when speaking of the passing of time. The main story is less of a world-saving epic in this one; for the majority of the game I didn't even know what exactly the main quest was even going to be about.

All Systems Red

All Systems Red by Martha Wells is a science fiction novella, the first volume in The Murderbot Diaries. The book was sort of an impulse pick for me. I had heard the series was adapted into an Apple TV show, and thought I might check out what the books are about. The novella length surprised me, though: the hard covers could have held a full novel inside them but there turned out to be not that much text on the pages. And I suppose not that many pages either: 191 in the Finnish translation.

Revenger

Revenger by Alastair Reynolds was not marketed as young adult fiction but I guess it's the young protagonist and the straightforward space opera story that led it to get classified as such, the book even winning the 2017 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book. A praise quote on the back cover from SFX claims the novel to be the most enjoyable of Reynolds's books. I'm not sure if that's quite true -- especially now with almost another full decade of books from the author in the mix -- but Revenger is definitely from the top end.

A Mighty Woman With a Torch - The Vibes of Wolfenstein

I think it was maybe earlier this year when I happened to stumble upon the Wikipedia article about The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, a sonnet that is cast onto a bronze plaque mounted inside the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. So that's the significance of Wolfenstein II's subtitle, I then learned: the New Colossus is the Statue of Liberty! I had been so unaware.

Mein Leben - The Infamous 'Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus' Achievement

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus had been sitting in my Steam library imperfect for good many years. One reason for that was missing the DLC. Bethesda's pricing policy had made the Deluxe Edition cheaper than the Season Pass -- it felt stupid to pay for the base game "again" for the DLC. But eventually I did do just that. The other reason -- and why I had 49/50 on the non-DLC achievements -- was 'Mein Leben'. I was saving it for last because I predicted it would be the hardest one to unlock. And damn if I was right.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III (Revisited)

For a few years, I had been wondering why the number of games I had achievements in wasn't matching between my Steam library and the achievement showcase on my profile: the showcase had 2 games more than I could find. Late last year the mystery finally started to unravel. I had figured that by playing Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III during a free weekend back in 2017, it had been added to my permanent achievements record, even though I had had access to the game only temporarily. And that indeed proved to be the case when I bought the game from a sale and it came with partial completion -- kind of mean for Steam to be like that.

Drakensang

There always seems to be another Dark Eye video game adaptation I hadn't heard of before, although in Drakensang's case it's because I had mixed it up with Drakengard, thinking they're the same game. And as I don't play Japanese games, I had ignored it until I happened to watch some video featuring less-known roleplaying games and I realized my error. Drakensang seems to have carried 'The Dark Eye' as its subtitle (the other way around in German: 'Das Schwarze Auge: Drakensang') but now the game is being sold without it.