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.