Absolution Gap

Absolution Gap is a direct sequel to Redemption Ark in Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space. It has some amazingly imaginative elements and the story seemed to get truly wild after it got going. But it didn't last until the end: central characters were written off in lame ways and the narrative fizzled out. Multiverse stuff gets worse in Gap: always too convenient a tool to explain stuff -- anything can happen.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn released in July without making much of a splash. In my opinion, Flintlock is at least an improvement from A44's previous game, Ashen, already for the fact that it has a lot more variation in combat actions. There are some questionable design decisions and I suppose overall it's not that special of a game. However, I would say it's enjoyable enough on Game Pass if you're hungering for a straightforward soulslike action roleplaying game.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Of all the past decade's many PlayStation exclusives, Horizon Zero Dawn, a vibrant third person action-adventure game, was the one I wanted to play the most -- well, until replaced by the slightly more recent God of War (2018). Unfortunately Zero Dawn failed to meet my expectations spectacularly. By now, the game's first release was over 7 years ago, so the game is pretty old, but I didn't expect it to feel so much worse than Tomb Raider (2013), which I had just been replaying for its multiplayer achievements. General movement is considerably slower, mantling less universal.

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days & Galactic North

With some exceptions, it doesn't matter that much when you read the novella/short story collections of Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days and Galactic North in relation to the rest of Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space series -- at least to the Inhibitor Sequence: I have not yet started on the Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies. However, I would say the best place to read them is probably after Revelation Space and Chasm City, before Redemption Ark, with the exception of the eponymous Galactic North story which I would leave after Absolution Gap. It might hit the same when read right before that novel too.

Days Gone

Sony's exclusive first-party console games from the late 2010s started making their way to PC at the turn of the decade. Days Gone was not the first of them but it was the first to make it onto my backlog. The game's reception was lukewarm and maybe that's why Sony declined the pitch for a sequel by Bend Studio. Overall Days Gone is an extremely solid production; its weakness lies in its plot premise and writing. The game does however cast a delicious sequel hook at the end, and people who've gotten that far do seem to want to see where a second game would go.

Authority & Acceptance

Sort of morbid curiosity led me to read the rest of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy -- and apparently a fourth book, Absolution, is already forthcoming. It puzzles me quite a bit that there's demand for this kind of unrewarding literature that offers mystery without answers. I didn't find the books compelling at all; everything is so meaningless when anything can happen, consequences don't matter.

Lords of the Fallen (2023)

The 2023 reboot of Lords of the Fallen dropped its definite article eventually and instead one has to use the release year to distinguish the titles -- which might actually be clearer. The developer studio CI Games had founded to make the game also ended up being called Hexworks instead of the initially announced 'Defiant Games' for whatever reason.