Avowed

Avowed is the first game from Obsidian Entertainment under Microsoft that was of interest to me -- Grounded and Pentiment were not that. I expected the same kind of mediocrity The Outer Worlds was made of and pretty much got that. Avowed is a professional production that feels smooth and fun to play but at the same time is limited in scope and ultimately a shallow experience.

Red Rising

Red Rising by Pierce Brown is another book that I've seen being recommended. It and its sequels are available here in libraries so I decided to check out the first one. I didn't look any more to what kind of books they were but the quote on the cover from Scott Sigler told me exactly what I was about to read: "Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow."

Atomfall

Rebellion Developments is probably known best for their Sniper Elite series. The company has been around since the early 1990s, though, so they have had time to produce all manner of stuff, like the 2010 Aliens vs Predator, the single one of their games I had played before. I was recently made aware that the man on the Youtube channel Modern History TV is Rebellion's CEO, Jason Kingsley ᴄʙᴇ. It's curious that Rebellion don't seem to have attempted a medieval game series.

Slow Bullets

Slow Bullets is another shorter form science fiction story by Alastair Reynolds. I wish Like -- who's the publisher for the Finnish translations of the author's books -- had prioritized the short story anthology with the Netflix-adapted Zima Blue and Beyond the Aquila Rift over these one-off novellas because then that collection would most likely be available at the library and I could actually read it. Maybe one day...

The Alloy of Law

Brandon Sanderson has recently decided to embrace a direction that makes his books rather unappealing to me. I don't want to be constantly reminded of the raging culture war while reading a fantasy novel. Dawnshard may have been a watershed moment. However, I have yet to read many of his works published before 2020, like most of the second set of the Mistborn series.

Eternal Strands

Eternal Strands is a third person action-adventure game developed by Yellow Brick Games who are led by Mike Laidlaw of BioWare fame. The game looked akin to Immortals Fenyx Rising: colorful, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild -inspired fun, with maybe a touch of Shadow of the Colossus. However, it didn't turn out to be nearly as competent. There were few amazing moments but overall Strands is a repetitive experience that more than overstays its welcome.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a Borderlands series spin-off, kind of a sequel to the Borderlands 2 DLC, Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep (which has been later released as a standalone game as well). Tiny Tina is again the bunker master for a game of Bunkers & Badasses, the Borderlands equivalent to Dungeons & Dragons. My impression is that Wonderlands was well received but its poor post-release support and monotone endgame soured its repute. The publisher 2K's recent EULA changes have also caused many to leave negative reviews on all of their games on Steam.

Outward

For the the longest time I was undecided if I really wanted to play Outward or not. It is a third person fantasy action roleplaying game that emphasizes survival mechanics, preparation, and learning by trial and error. Would it actually be fun to play or would all the management get tiresome? Since the game's release in 2019, there have been quite a few mods made for it; you no longer have to play strictly as the developer, Nine Dots Studio, intended. Thus I ended up eventually picking the game up.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982) was first translated into Finnish in 1989 by Kari Nenonen in the wake of Blade Runner (1982), the film that is based on the novel. The translation got titled Palkkionmetsästäjä ("bounty hunter") and also had 'Blade Runner' on the cover like many later English printings of the novel -- impossible to make the connection between the book and the film just on their names. A couple of years ago, in 2022, there was a second Finnish translation by J. Pekka Mäkelä, instead titled after the original novel name: Uneksivatko androidit sähkölampaista?

Terminal World

Terminal World is one of Alastair Reynolds's standalone novels. Its Finnish title, Pääteasema, discarded the world part and is instead the (compound) word for terminal station. It gives off a somewhat different meaning but I suppose it can be interpreted in a more figurative way that aligns with the original too. But I definitely took it in the former and I think that threw me off a bit.