Blood of Elves

Blood of Elves (Krew elfów) begins the Witcher Saga, which currently has six volumes. Though since the latest one is apparently a prequel story, and was published just last year -- 14 years after the previous one -- I guess the story will end in the fifth one. But since it and fourth one still lack translations, hopes of ever finishing reading the series are not too high.

Deus Ex: The Fall

Deus Ex: The Fall looks deceptively like Human Revolution. However, closer examination and actually playing the game quickly reveals it is no more than a touchscreen port impostor made with the Unity engine. It does not look as good, there does not seem to be a physics engine, and the gameplay does not have all the features you would expect when coming from DX:HR.

BloodRayne 2

Terminal Reality improved upon many things in BloodRayne 2. Not enough to make me like it, though. In fact, at times it was worse than the first game and I almost left it unfinished.

The Sword of Destiny

Since The Sword of Destiny (Miecz przeznaczenia) -- the other witcher short story collection -- hasn't been translated into English, I bought it as a Finnish one. Which means it cost more than twice what an English paperback would cost. But what can you do; they just decided to skip translating it, even though it has two stories leading into the saga.

The Last Wish

I thought it was about time to read Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher books, and bought all the short story collections and novels at once. All the translated ones anyway, as curiously enough, only three of the five volume novel saga have been translated into English (and Finnish) even though the last two came out back in 1996 and 1997.

BloodRayne

I bought quite a few games off GOG's and Steam's summer sales this year. Mostly RPGs, and from GOG if I had to choose between the two stores -- mainly because I like to buy games in USD. Aside from having higher prices for EU, Steam is not too bad, though. However, once GOG gets their client out -- which will hopefully include screenshot and played time features -- there is no question which distributor I will always prefer.

Knights of the Old Republic

I decided to replay Knights of the Old Republic, because, for some reason, I never wrote a post about it even though I'm pretty sure I had this blog when I first played the game. And I needed to refresh my memory before writing about it. I replayed the second game as well, and in this post I will probably compare the two games quite a bit.

Doom 3

I got pretty far on my first attempt to beat Doom 3. Maybe even 75% through. That leaves a good many hours left, though, as according to Steam it took me 13 hours to complete the game on this try. Which I think is too much with such monotonous gameplay. F.E.A.R. had the same problem.

Dead Space 3

For the third installment in the Dead Space series, Visceral decided to shake things up a bit. Various changes here and there, but the biggest new thing is the co-op. Because that is what people wanted into their previously single-player horror game series, I guess. To play with someone else and make the experience not spooky at all...

Icewind Dale (Remake)

The Icewind Dale remake for Neverwinter Nights 2 will stay as the last NWN2 campaign I will play in a while. I finally got enough of the constant party rebuffing you have to do in order to survive. NWN2 is probably the worst of the D&D CRPGs in this regard, and this mod is no exception.

Dead Space 2

I saw someone describing Dead Space 2 as Dead Space 1.5 because it does not add enough to be a whole new game in their opinion. Which might be true. The story takes place in a different location and moves the arcing plot forward but the mechanics and how the game generally works are the same indeed (if more polished).

Dead Space

I think I watched a full playthrough of Dead Space by Jesse Cox a year or two ago, and thus I was quite familiar with the game before playing it. I had definitely forgotten a whole lot of it, or maybe I only watched parts of the playthrough. Still, it may have made the game less scary and surprising.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

There are multiple reasons why I could never get into The Elder Scolls IV: Oblivion. And I will probably mention a few of them in this post as I feel the fifth Elder Scrolls game suffers from many of the same issues what pushed me away from previous one. But it is definitely better; I did finish it after all. Well, if you can say so of an open world game like Skyrim.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate

Mysteries of Westgate is not really an expansion pack, even if the Wikipedia article claims otherwise. It has nothing to do with the original Neverwinter Nights 2 campaign or the two expansions. Nor does it add an expansion's worth of new stuff to the game. Merely few monsters, a sewer tileset, and some new music.

Just Cause 2

Various recommendations and cheap price made me pick Just Cause 2 off Steam's holiday sales few months back even though it did not look that interesting to me -- not my favorite genre with the lack of swords and sorcery. I guess it turned out to be a worthwhile purchase, however, as I now have around 80 hours clocked in the game.

Elminster Enraged

The final volume of The Sage of Shadowdale trilogy, Elminster Enraged, continues with the same theme and style as the previous ones. Again there are dozens of characters and sideplots, and the story jumps all over the place. I found the book alright, but I'm still almost hoping that in his next novel, Ed Greenwood would try something different.

The Companions

I wonder how much beforehand this book was planned. Was the return of Drizzt's companions meant to happen already back when the D&D 4th edition changes and the 100-year jump hit the Forgotten Realms? Perhaps, considering the fact that the novel authors were not warned of it, and R. A. Salvatore had to somehow get the characters to survive beyond their normal lifespans.

The Best of YouTube 2013

For the sake of tradition, let's start this post by checking how the Yogscast (Lewis & Simon) is doing... Evidently, they dropped from their rank 14 to 32nd, even though they gained 3.6 million subscribers over the year and are now at 6.7 million total.

2013 Movie Roundup

I'm a bit late with this post. I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about writing it because I saw no exceptionally good movies in 2013; not a single four-star one. There were quite a few entertaining ones, though.

F.E.A.R. 3

F.E.A.R. 3 is the first game in the series that has actual replay value as after completing an interval as the Point Man -- who makes a canonical comeback -- you unlock his brother, Paxton Fettel, for the mission. (Fettel apparently returned in F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn, a DLC for the second game, which I have not played as it was not included in the WB bundle).

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

F.E.A.R. 2, subtitled Project Origin, introduces a new protagonist, Michael Becket, a Delta Force operator. But as he is mute like Point Man, there is not much of a difference. Somewhat similarly Becket also gets tied to Alma and soon enough you are off to stopping her again. Or attempting to anyway; how often is evil ever actually stopped in horror games and movies?