Games I Finished in 2021

Compared to the last two years, the amount I spent on games spiked up this year though it didn't reach the numbers of the two years before those. It was almost exactly equal to the price of two fresh AAA releases but since I only buy stuff with deep discounts, I got a lot more than two games. The purchases went mostly into growing my, once again considerable backlog because gaming subscription services kept me busy (even now).

Hades

Pyre (2017) is almost like the black sheep of Supergiant Games, I feel. At least I personally lost all interest after seeing how it did combat encounters as some sort of sportsball matches. I think the game was received positively overall but at least my perception is that Pyre was a low point for Supergiant after Bastion (2011) and Transistor (2014). The studio pretty much fell off my radar after that.

The Technomancer

I suppose there's no reason to play The Technomancer if you want to just play the best game (so far) by Spiders; GreedFall is better in about every way. The only thing that The Technomancer has going for it over the latter game is perhaps its scifi setting over fantasy but even that's not that interesting. The coolest part was left for the ending to raise questions that then never get answers.

Mars: War Logs

I was pretty much out of new games to play outside game pass and thought that I should buy The Technomancer, the Spiders game I had skipped. However, before getting to play it, I read that another, even earlier game by the developers was set it in the same universe. The story of Mars: War Logs is not directly related to The Technomancer, but I reckoned I might as well pick it up too since it was cheap and going back to an older game after playing a later entry in a series is rarely pleasant.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I didn't expect to be back on Ubisoft+ so quickly but another month for 1€ was too great an offer to pass. During the month I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which I had previously dismissed because:

1. I hadn't played AC Origins yet,
2. I expected it to barely even run on my PC (the game's performance turned out to be about the same as AC Odyssey's though, meaning just about playable 45 FPS with a mix of medium and high settings), and
3. The game's not fully done yet, still receiving updates and DLC.

One title update during the month even introduced an immensely annoying bug with the constantly appearing player avenge quests, making every interaction with any world object to constantly re-accept the quest (show the text and play the associated sound effect). 

The Ascent

As the actual last game to finish off my game pass summer, I chose to play The Ascent, the freshly released (at the time) debut game of Neon Giant. It is a cyberpunk twin-stick shooter whose strong suit is its presentation although I found its other aspects adequate as well.

I bounced pretty hard off Solasta: Crown of the Magister

I was looking for one more game to play during my summer with game pass and ended up on Solasta: Crown of the Magister, a game on my wishlist. However, I didn't get far into it before I uninstalled it.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

With Obsidian Entertainment now under Microsoft, the Pillars of Eternity games being on the Game Pass is hardly surprising. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is even available as the full, Ultimate Edition. I wasn't expecting it to be a huge improvement from the mediocre first game due to this one's reception having been pretty lukewarm as well, but I was still looking forward to continuing my character's journey.

House of Suns

I had put House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds on my list of readings based on a recommendation I encountered on Youtube. Why it had been recommended and what the book was even about I had already forgotten by the time I finally got to it. Thus I got to dive pretty much blind into this science fiction novel.

Torchlight III

The story of Torchlight III began with the founding of Runic Games back in 2008 by brothers Max and Erich Schaefer (co-founders of Blizzard North and creators of Diablo) and Travis Baldree (creator of Fate), plus others not relevant to this post. Runic released the first Torchlight in 2009 and its quite successful sequel Torchlight II in 2012. In 2014, Baldree and Erich Schaefer left the company to found Double Damage Games. I remember thinking that it was a considerable loss and a bad omen for the action RPG series. And indeed in 2017, instead of continuing Torchlight, Runic released Hob, an isometric action-adventure game.

Assassin's Creed Origins

To get more value out of my 6€ Ubisoft+ month, I decided to play Assassin's Creed Origins as well. Origins is not quite as content-bloated as AC Odyssey which came after it but I still barely managed to complete it before the month was up. You really start feeling Ubisoft Open World fatigue when you finish two of such games at 100% completion back to back.

Death's End

死神永生 (Sǐshén yǒngshēng), the final volume of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy has a slightly different name in English than it has in Finnish. Google translate says the squiggles mean 'death immortality' so I'm not sure which is more accurate: Death's End or Kuolema on ikuinen ('death is eternal', or maybe 'death is forever' like how one James Bond novel by John Gardner is titled and translated). A character in the novel does say death to be the only lighthouse that is always lit so I'm kind of favoring the Finnish name.

Immortals Fenyx Rising

Getting a month of Ubisoft+ maybe wasn't the most optimal course of action while also having an active 3-month Game Pass subscription going. But it was offered for a lowered price and I didn't know how long that offer would last. And most importantly, I wanted to play Ubisoft's colorful action-adventure game from last year, Immortals Fenyx Rising.

STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order

Like it states, EA Desktop is definitely still a beta phase client. I encountered problems with its installation and launching it afterwards, although the latter went smoothly every time when I did so via Xbox app. I wonder though if EA plans to wholly move to the Desktop and abandon Origin. It's a bit weird to support two launchers even if one was purposed just for their subscription service, EA Play.

Dune, Books 2 & 3

The third book of Dune (and only the third) having a hefty appendix, including a map and a glossary, makes the novel being in three covers truly seem questionable. Maybe if you buy them as a boxed set it would be fine, but as a library book, they definitely should be a single volume. The local libraries do have a single volume English version but by the looks of it it also tends to have a few reservations lined up. Waiting for it to become available could've taken a while.

Control

There are not many game developer studios making big PC/console titles in Finland. Remedy Entertainment is one of the few, known in the past for their Max Payne and Alan Wake games. In 2016 they released Quantum Break which has basically TV show episodes mixed in. I don't like that. Games are an interactive medium; passive entertainment should be kept separate. That's why I haven't been interested to try it. Neither have I played Remedy's other games, simply due to lack of interest.

Risen 3 - Titan Lords

In an unexpected turn of events, you don't continue playing as the same nameless hero in Risen 3 - Titan Lords. Instead your previous character has been demoted to a cameo role while the spotlight is taken by Captain Steelbeard's son -- who suddenly exists, I guess. He's also left nameless, which I think is dumb. It doesn't add to immersion in any way. The most jarring thing is his (English) voice however: he kind of looks like Chris Pratt and I definitely wasn't expecting to hear a voice that tries immensely hard to sound like the baddest motherfucker there is. I never grew to like it and started truly missing the previous protagonist.

Prelude to Foundation & Forward the Foundation

Now, after having read the Foundation prequels as well, I would say that one might be better off just going through the original trilogy and leaving it there. You won't get a conclusion to Seldon plan (though how much do you get even with the sequels?) but you will keep the series separated from the 0th Law of Robotics. The trilogy will stay as a centuries spanning galactic struggle just among humans. These two prequels do at least bring back the Encyclopedia Galactica epigraphs I missed in the sequels.

Risen 2 - Dark Waters

Risen 2 - Dark Waters takes the series into a pirate themed direction. The still-nameless hero, currently a soldier of the Inquisition, goes undercover to put an end to another Titan threat. Shields, plate armor, and arcane magic are gone and instead you get cutlasses, muskets, and rum. There is also voodoo magic if you decide to side with native tribes.

The Dark Forest

The Dark Forest (黑暗森林 / Hēi'àn sēnlín) is the second novel in Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The Three-Body Problem was a good read but I think this one had even more deliberation put into it, making it feel like an important work of science fiction, mainly because of it coining cosmic sociology. The sole thing I didn't like in the novel was the viewpoint of a Chinese navy officer Zhang Beihai whom I thought boring and the little payoff at the end not worth it for the time spent on following him.

The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings begins Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic, The Stormlight Archive, which is currently at four published novels out of ten planned. The series has garnered a lot of praise but I personally went in with low expectations, kind of anticipating typical Sanderson cast of characters, same old traits shuffled around a bit.

Foundation and Earth

Foundation and Earth picks up where Foundation's Edge left off: Councilman Golan Trevize with his uncanny ability to always make the right choice decided that Gaia -- a superorganism planet where all things are part of a group consciousness on some level -- should be the eventual future of the galaxy instead of the First or Second Foundation. Gaia removed the memories of the planet's existence from the Foundation people involved in the stand-off at the end of the novel and everyone went back to their lives except for Golan and his historian friend Janov Pelorat.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Some say The Elder Scrolls series gets simpler with every iteration. That may be true particularly when it comes to spells, but at least when going from Oblivion to Skyrim, I would say nothing of value was lost when something was streamlined -- even in regards to spells. I think in general Skyrim is a better game, a more polished version of Oblivion in almost every way.

The Three-Body Problem

The Three-Body Problem (三体 / sān tǐ) is a science fiction novel by Liu Cixin. It was recommended to me on Reddit when I mentioned Blindsight by Peter Watts. The redditor in question said Blindsight had been the most significant scifi book they had read until The Three-Body Problem trilogy -- or Remembrance of Earth's Past as it's officially called. That was enough of a recommendation for me to check it out.

The Wise Man's Fear

In the second book of Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle, titled The Wise Man's Fear, innkeeper Kote continues telling about his life as young Kvothe. While I still wouldn't call this would-be(-maybe?) trilogy one of my favorites, I wouldn't mind reading its conclusion one day.

The Council

Developed by a French studio called Big Bad Wolf, The Council is a 5-episode third person mystery adventure game set in 1793. You play as Louis de Richet, a member of the Golden Order, a secret organization interested in the occult and such. You have been invited to the private island of enigmatic Lord Mortimer somewhere off the coast of England: your mother Sarah de Richet -- also a member of the Order -- has gone missing.

Neuromancer

Neuromancer, a cyberpunk novel written by William Gibson, is one of those classics that had lost its novelty over the years. I didn't find it special, having already been exposed to all the works that were influenced by it; it was just more stuff I was already familiar with. I think I was kind of blind to all the words and concepts Gibson may have invented too. I have to trust the word of others that this fabled, the sole Nebula, Philip K. Dick, and Hugo Award triple winner was that remarkable at the time of its publishing.

Lords of the Fallen

I was reminded of Lords of the Fallen's existence once again when it was included in a Polish Games sale on GOG few months back. I thought that was a bit odd: isn't Deck13 Interactive German? Was the game published by a Polish company or something? Yes, as it turned out. The publisher CI Games were also a co-developer of this Dark Souls style third person action roleplaying game and have also founded a new subsidiary Defiant Studios for its sequel.

GreedFall

I guess it was for the better that EA Play being included on the PC Game Pass was postponed (on the supposed launch day of all days) because I wouldn't have had the time to play STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order after all. DOOM Eternal took longer than expected and then GreedFall was a proper-length RPG. I managed to beat the latter on the day before I would've needed to renew the subscription at a 15 times higher price.

Dune, Book 1: Dune

I don't know why I tend to be surprised when a classic novel turns out to be good. I guess I expect that the novelty that made it good has been lost over the years: having already been exposed to other works that were inspired by the classic. It won't feel special anymore.