RAGE 2

I wonder if it was Bethesda/id who saw Mad Max, thinking its engine would be a good fit for RⒶGE 2 (as it's stylized), and approached Avalanche Studios for a collaboration. Or was it vice versa. The credits have more Avalanche's people than id's so I would guess it was mainly their project.

The Outer Worlds

Epic Games released their own digital games store and launcher about a year ago. Epic's approach to competing against Steam's massive market share on PC has been simply to offer a game library -- a reason to stay on the platform. One half of that tactic has been giving away weekly freebies of already released games and the other half -- which has caused considerable ire -- has been paying developers/publishers for timed exclusivity of their new titles. One of those titles has been The Outer Worlds by Obsidian Entertainment.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Perhaps due to the success of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) and desiring a piece of that success too, has Ubisoft introduced more roleplaying elements to their Assassin's Creed franchise. Perk trees, equipment, and combat was made more complex than before, and dialogue choices and story branching were added. Assassin's Creed Origins (2016) had some already, I believe, but it was Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018) that took it even further. What really got me interested in the series again however, was seeing Odyssey's The Fate of Atlantis DLC. It appeared Ubisoft Quebec had gone full fantasy action RPG with the game.

Far Cry New Dawn

Far Cry New Dawn could have included the digit 5 in its title. I have trouble understanding why exactly it is not there. Most often (if not always) the reason companies do anything is money though. Maybe there's no 5 because this way the game seems more like a new title instead of DLC which people generally aren't as keen on buying. Regardless, New Dawn is very much a sequel to Far Cry 5. I'd say it's also a better game, a more even experience even if somewhat smaller in scale. (Thus the lower price.)

Far Cry 5

I was late to Ubisoft's Uplay+ service launch. Playing their games for free in September would've been nicer than paying for a month later on but I thought it would still be worth it since Ubisoft doesn't really make games that I'd see myself replaying after finishing them once. Thus Uplay+ was a good way to knock three Ubisoft titles off my wishlist even though 15€/month is a pretty hefty amount compared to something like the Xbox game pass for PC beta with its 1€ price tag. You do get an access to the complete editions of the games however -- all released DLC is included.

Tiamat's Wrath

Don't be a whiny little cunt, Avarasala said in his imagination. Hope in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first. Get to work.

Blair Witch

Bloober Team's newest, Blair Witch, came available on the Xbox-PC game pass on day one of the game's release. I thought I might as well quickly play through it and get slightly more value out of my second month of subscription. Having played two of the developer's earlier titles, I wasn't expecting much from it however.

The Roman

The Roman is the last of Mika Waltari's big historical novels. It's a sequel to The Secrets of the Kingdom. Both take place during the birth of Christianity, in and around Rome. The Roman follows Minutus who is the son of the previous novel's protagonist Marcus.

Lust for Darkness

Lust for Darkness looked interesting enough to buy at a heavy discount -- some sort of Eyes Wide Shut kind of thing with added horror elements. I didn't expect much from it though. I've seen Playway S.A. publishing a lot of straight up trash on Steam and the developer's name either -- Movie Games Lunarium -- wasn't promising much of an actual game.

Fahrenheit 451

I don't know why I had expected Fahrenheit 451 to be bad. But as it turned out to be an entertaining and good read, I was pleasantly surprised. I had read Ray Bradbury's work before -- one or two short story anthologies at least -- but that was like two decades ago. That's a way too long time to remember what they were about or how was Bradbury's writing style.

ReCore: Definitive Edition

While looking at ReCore: Definitive Edition at a recent sale, I realized the only reason I wanted it on Steam was to get its stats added up to my profile's achievement showcase. I came to my senses and instead decided to play it were it was cheapest, which still was on the Windows Store with the Xbox Game Pass for PC. Especially since the pass remained 1€ even though it had said 4€ per month after the first. Maybe its counter reset when I canceled my subscription.

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider is a continuation to the story arc of the first game's DLC, The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches, and a conclusion to "the Kaldwin era" and the series overall. Maybe in hopes of selling more copies, it was released as a standalone title instead of DLC to the second game. Death of the Outsider is smaller in scope (and price) than a full-size Dishonored title but doesn't lack on the detail and great gameplay I've come to expect from Arkane Studios.

Thanks to Crealgood for gifting me this game!

The Etruscan

Mika Waltari (1908 – 1979) was a Finnish author, notable among other things for the historical accuracy of his novels. He's best known for his book The Egyptian (Sinuhe egyptiläinen). I actually read it last summer but neglected to write a post about it before it was no longer fresh in my mind. I would note though that 'Sinuhe of Egypt' would've been a cooler title for the English translation.

Dying Light

I had chosen to ignore Dying Light for the longest time. It had seemed merely a continuation to Techland's earlier game Dead Island -- just another dull zombie smacker with craftable and constantly breaking weapons. But I kept hearing about how great the game's movement system was and eventually I ended up buying it. With hindsight, I should've continued to ignore it instead.

Vampyr

Microsoft announced and launched Xbox Game Pass for PC at this year's E3. For a monthly fee you get access to a selection of games on the Microsoft Store. The initially available ones included three titles from my wishlist so I thought I might as well spend the 1€ for the first month to try and maybe even play through them.

Prey: Mooncrash

Metaprogression has become increasingly more common in new games with roguelike elements. I reckon that's because people simply hate permadeath so much. Even with procedurally generated content (which in theory is what makes permadeath to have more value than merely being a punishing difficulty), the thought of losing everything upon death really puts them off. Thus permadeath games that move forward even with botched runs seem to sell better.

ECHO

Danish game developer ULTRA ULTRA closed their doors about a month ago. The sole game they put out before that didn't sell well enough to keep them afloat. After having played it, I am not surprised. Echo (stylized in caps as ECHO) has some impressive visual detail but is ultimately a painfully repetitive and unrewarding gaming experience.

Whirlwind

The Asian Saga ends with its low point when reading it in the series' internal chronological order. Or at least I personally found Whirlwind to have the least interesting characters and setting among all the books.

Noble House

Hong Kong in 1963 isn't as interesting of a setting as it was in 1866. Even the current day would've been more intriguing with the region having been returned to China as well as China's rather strong position in the world's economics. But 1963 is dull to me like about all of the 20th century.

EVERSPACE

The last space combat game I had played previously was Freelancer many years ago. Its story ended all of a sudden and I was left on my own to do repetitive randomly generated tasks, which were alike to Skyrim's "radiant" quests -- the same dogfights over and over again. Or at least so I vaguely recall. It gave me a slight distaste for the genre and I hadn't touched it again until now.

Agony

Perhaps Agony wasn't the biggest scam of a game in 2018 but it sure did manage to get a lot of undeserved attention. Judging by a handful of comments I've seen, some people also mistook it for another, still upcoming game called Scorn, and were then doubly disappointed.

Brave New World (and briefly of Animal Farm)

The Finnish title for Brave New World by Aldous Huxley bothers me. Not because Uljas uusi maailma is a mistranslation but because the identical word order in Finnish sounds clumsy to me. You have to emphasize the end of uljas to avoid muddling the consonant to the following word. Uusi uljas maailma instead rolls off the tongue more naturally and I've seen others accidentally calling the book by that name too. But even if the translator thought so as well, they probably wanted to keep the title matching to an earlier translation of William Shakespeare's Tempest: "How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, / That has such people in't."

Bound By Flame

Bound By Flame is a third person action roleplaying game developed by a French studio called Spiders and published by Focus Home Interactive in 2014. It didn't look like the most expensive production but I hoped it would still be able to provide entertainment.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (and briefly of Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

I was at one of the local libraries recently. There's a shelf for newly returned books, divided into genres. I checked the scifi/fantasy section to see what people were reading and to my amusement was reminded of a picture (or two) I had seen of someone moving George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four from their fiction section to non-fiction. I didn't move the book to non-fiction but instead picked it to read it myself as I had never done so.

The Talos Principle

The Talos Principle was my sole purchase from Steam's 2018 winter sale. An impulse purchase too, the decision assisted by a deep discount and overall overwhelmingly positive user reviews. It is a puzzle game comparable to Portal although The Turing Test with its philosophical and ethical aspects might be closer.

King Rat

They say an author should write about what they know. King Rat, James Clavell's debut novel, is a result of that advice and quite a vivid one too. It is a semi-fictional story based on the author's time as a prisoner of war at Changi prison camp in Singapore during World War II.

Gai-Jin

Gai-Jin ('foreigner') was the last novel James Clavell wrote for the Asian Saga before his death. Its purpose was to tie together Shōgun and the Struan Noble House that is present in four of the series' books. And indeed, even though set in 1862, 262 years after Shōgun, Gai-Jin references a lot of the older novel's events and characters.

Pillars of Eternity

Pillars of Eternity was quite cheap a year ago in the beat-the-average tier of Humble Paradox Bundle. I paid less than 6€ for it but I could've waited a few months more as the game became even cheaper at the end of the summer when the definitive edition was on the house for Twitch Prime members. But I did get the game's expansions (practically) for free thanks to that.

Life Is Strange: Before the Storm

Since Life Is Strange was so well received, Square Enix (most likely) wanted to expand the franchise. Dontnod Entertainment wasn't quite ready yet to continue the series, however, and instead the task was handed to Deck Nine.

Tai-Pan

The second novel -- in both; publication and internal chronological order -- of The Asian Saga is Tai-Pan. It takes the reader to the shores of China and the founding of Hong Kong in the year 1841.

Shōgun

Shōgun by James Clavell was a big deal back in the day, selling millions of copies and being adapted into other forms of media. Maybe it still is popular reading, I don't know, but the novel is almost 45 years old now. It is a work of fiction but its characters and events are based on or inspired by actual history.

Fallout 4

Fallout 4 is a massive game. One could technically beat it way quicker than the 275 hours it took for me, but if you explore every single location and dabble in some settlement building, the hours start stacking up. This is the longest single playthrough of a game I've ever done by a good measure and will probably remain so for a good while. Maybe till Elder Scrolls VI?

Games I Finished in 2018

I considered finishing Fallout 4 before writing this post but since I still have 2 pieces of DLC to play, I instead decided to do the annual roundup close to the turn of the year for a change.