The Night Watch

The back cover of The Night Watch (Ночной Дозор) claimed the book, and the series it's a part of, are more popular in Russia than The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. That might very well be the case -- hell if I know. The Harry Potter series is a good comparison though. Similarly to it, The Night Watch is low/urban fantasy (not to be mistaken with low and high magic) and the relationship characters have with magic and supernatural is the same way sort of relaxed: fear is not the first reaction to magic and even seemingly grievous injuries can be healed and undone.

The Book Was Better -- Or Was It?

Reading a novel before watching its TV/film adaption(s) is the correct order of doing things. Going the other way around I always find it challenging to picture my own visuals of a book's world and characters: seeing first someone else's vision of it and then replacing it is difficult. It's like most of the author's work had already been done and experiencing the story again via reading feels otiose. Comparing my own, already existing mental images to an adaption is more worthwhile.

The Surge 2

As far as video game sequels go, The Surge 2 is a fairly good one. It has the familiar gameplay of the previous title but also introduces new features and improvements. I even liked the game enough to immediately replay it. New game plus mostly offered just bigger numbers though: I had been so thorough on my first playthrough that an alternative final boss armor set was pretty much the only thing I was missing.

Warbreaker

Since Mistborn's world was so bleak and gray, Brandon Sanderson wanted to write something more colorful after it and thus Warbreaker came to be. He also released the novel for free on his website much to his publisher's dismay. The novel's still there though now it's available as multiple webpages rather than a PDF file. Good thing I grabbed the latter when I first heard about it: I think it felt more proper to read something that looked like an actual, printed-on-paper book.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a peculiar spin-off for the Wolfenstein franchise because it establishes that Germany was pushed out of the United States off-screen before it had a chance to happen in the mainline titles. Then towards the end, the game gets uncertain if things will go that way in Wolfenstein III after all.

A Plague Tale: Innocence

It was again time to knock few games off my wishlist by playing through them on the game pass. The first one was A Plague Tale: Innocence, a third person stealth adventure game from Asobo Studio. They're a French developer whose name I don't remember seeing before but they have been in the business for some time now. Currently they're working on Microsoft Flight Simulator which should increase their renown.

Just Cause 4

Just Cause 4 is a good example how multiple game launchers on PC might lead to half-assed releases. It was one of Epic Games' weekly freebies: finally one that I wanted to check out (to a degree). Just Cause 4 hadn't been well received on Steam so I wasn't expecting much but even having gotten the game for free didn't stop me from feeling disappointed.

Atlas Shrugged

I remember how in 2017 I read in a newspaper that Atlas Shrugged had been translated into Finnish, 60 years after its original publication. I had seen the novel mentioned here and there before, which usually signifies a classic. I thought it was kind of an oddly long wait for such a book to get a translation. Maybe the novel's resurgence after the 2007 financial crisis had something to do with it finally getting a Finnish print: evidently just in 2011 Atlas Shrugged's English editions sold nearly half a million copies which I think is impressive for an old book.

Top 10 + 1 Games of the 2010s

I started compiling a list of my all time favorite video games at some point last year and I came to the realization that apart from isometric roleplaying game classics from the turn of the millennium, the vast majority of the titles on the list were just from the last ten years. And so I decided to elect my top 10 favorite games of the past decade by cutting down the list a bit.

Games I Finished in 2019

In 2019 I beat about the same number of games as in 2018 but I paid for them only about half as much. That is largely thanks to the various subscription services now available. They're great value if you want to play a game just once. Great ones I still prefer to own outside a subscription though. Being able to play games for so cheap has also made normal prices seem really expensive to me. A game's discount now needs to be even deeper before I buy it.