Half-Life 2

After having bought (and played) Black Mesa, I thought I might as well get Half-Life 2 (or HλLF-LIFE² as it's stylized) and experience first hand how Gordon Freeman's journey ends. The game's second standalone DLC, Episode Two, which was released in 2007, teases another sequel but Valve has not been willing to create one so far. In 2020, they did release a virtual reality game called Half-Life: Alyx (stylized with an upside down lambda as y which I'm unable to reproduce in text) but its events are concurrent at best (though the game does add to Episode Two's ending a bit).

Black Mesa

I have not been interested in Valve's Half-Life games because I knew I wouldn't be able to appreciate the possible innovations they did at the time: I have already played newer games that have done same things better. Half-Life and its sequel would just feel old to me. Despite that however, due to a deep discount last year, I bought Black Mesa (or BLλCK MESA as it's stylized on the cover with the lower case Greek lambda letter) which is a third party remake of the first Half-Life (1998). Originally it was a free mod but later Crowbar Collective got approval from Valve for a commercial release.

A Plague Tale: Requiem

Everything I wrote about A Plague Tale: Innocence applies to its 2022 sequel, Requiem, as well. I don't know myself how one would exactly expand the adventure-stealth gameplay but you'd expect that at least the story would have some progression. But even that in Requiem is pretty much the same thing all over again.

Scorn

Back in 2019, on my Agony post I noted how some people had mixed it up with Scorn and had been disappointed. Well, here we are in 2022 and Serbian Ebb Software's Scorn too is finally out -- and it's not exactly much better than Agony. Visually Scorn is without fault -- it is one massive, masterfully created moving digital painting -- but its gameplay leaves a lot to be desired.

Silverfall: Earth Awakening

Years ago, I eyed up Silverfall, an isometric action roleplaying game developed by a now-defunct French company Monte Cristo, wondering whether I should buy it. I decided against it -- which was a smart decision because there are dozens of more interesting and entertaining titles in the genre out there, especially these days. However, last year I saw someone on my Steam friendlist pick up the game and its standalone expansion Earth Awakening -- most likely entirely for collection purposes -- while they were next to free on sale. Against my better judgment, I bought them too but with the intention of actually playing through them. (Don't do that.)

Legend

I borrowed Legend by David Gemmell (1948 – 2006) from the local library because I remembered reading one of his novels a couple of decades ago and wanted a refresher on how his heroic fantasy was like. There's a pretty high chance the novel was this one because only two of Gemmell's works have ever been translated into Finnish. The other one would be the second volume of this same Drenai series, called The King Beyond the Gate whose Finnish title for some reason was quite liberally set, instead meaning 'prince of shadows' (Varjojen prinssi).

Far Cry 6

My Ubisoft game binge continued even further when Ubisoft+ was free for a month again right after I was done with Assassin's Creed Revelations. In addition to Far Cry 6, I was going to use the month to play through AC Valhalla's DLC but they announced the game would be still getting one final story update (which it just got now in December) so I decided to postpone that until next time. Far Cry 6 also took a lot longer to beat than I had anticipated. I did however briefly revisit AC Odyssey as well for the crossover story it got. Turns out there's not much actual crossover on Odyssey's side: Kassandra just has a bit of a holiday trip and prepares to live through the ages with the Staff.

Edgedancer

Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson is a novella in the epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive, set between its volumes two and three. Its protagonist is Lift who we already met in an interlude of Words of Radiance. Sanderson felt Lift needed a longer introduction before she becomes more important in the series.

It

I don't know what prompted me to read It by Stephen King. I must have seen some reference to it or something. It has been a while since I watched the 2017 and 2019 film adaptations too (which I barely remember). I rarely even read horror fiction -- not because it's scary but the opposite. The whole thing kind of loses its point if there's nothing else to it.

Assassin's Creed Revelations

Unlike previously in the series, Assassin's Creed Revelations' (almost) whole open world is unlocked very early on. I did right away pretty much everything that didn't progress the main memory sequence and thus had an unusually story-focused playthrough after sequence 3. That may have had a slight effect but I think that even without beelining the story, Revelations' ending is a very satisfying and conclusive finale for the Ezio trilogy.