Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

I started Assassin's Creed Brotherhood expecting a quick and cheap standalone expansion kind of deal. To my surprise, it instead polished and added enough to stand on its own as a separate game.

Assassin's Creed II

It's like I had skipped a game in the series. The first one truly was like a tech demo, a proof of concept, so much does Assassin's Creed II improve from it. The potential was claimed and the result is a well-rounded game that is surprisingly close to the newer end of the series, at least feature-wise -- there's still room for polishing.

Assassin's Creed

My Assassin's Creed franchise run (of the pre-Syndicate games) started earlier than intended when Ubisoft in July (I think it was) announced that on September 1st they would again decommission online services (i.e. anything that requires an online connection, including the redeeming of unlocked Ubisoft Connect rewards) of a selection of their older titles. At the end of August, Ubisoft postponed the decommissioning by a month, allowing me to finish all of the affected AC titles in time.

Project Hail Mary

It's such an optimistic thought that humanity could ever be capable of interstellar travel. A tremendous amount of energy would be needed to be harnessed for a spaceship to reach a feasible velocity for so vast distances. Science fiction novels like presenting different ways to accomplish this, with varying degrees of plausibility. In Andy Weir's third published novel, Project Hail Mary (2021), the solution is quite an imaginative one, quite the fantasy for the required technological leap. It is also the problem that raises the need for interstellar travel: the Sun is dimming.

Children of Ruin

Children of Ruin would have been far more deserving for the Arthur C. Clarke award than Children of Time (though I suppose this sequel wouldn't exist without the first book). I found it far more interesting a read. It has more concepts, bigger ideas, and surprises. I was few times reminded of Blindsight by Peter Watts -- I wonder if Adrian Tchaikovsky had read and been influenced by it.

The Blade Itself & Before They Are Hanged

Fantasy author Joe Abercrombie's name has been popping up whenever I've searched for new books to read. I finally decided to check his stuff out: his First Law trilogy is available here in libraries as Finnish translations. I've already read the first two novels.

Chorus

I was impressed by Rockfish Games' strong 2017 debut Everspace, but while it's indeed the studio's first title, I have later learned that the founders Michael Schade and Christian Lohr weren't exactly newbies at making space combat games. Back at their previous company, Fishlabs Entertainment, they had been releasing for good many years a similar game series for mobile called Galaxy on Fire. Fishlabs ran out of money in 2013 and after brief bankruptcy proceedings it was acquired by Koch Media (now Plaion) who placed the studio under their Deep Silver publishing arm. (And Schade and Lohr proceeded to found Rockfish.)

Weird West

In my Prey: Mooncrash post I speculated there was more than family reasons behind Arkane Studios' founder and president Raphaël Colantonio quitting in 2017. Since then, in an interview, he has added that there had been "creative anxiety" involved with delivering big titles, having to make products rather than focusing on other things. Neither did he seem too happy about the Prey name that had been bestowed upon his last project.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Since Crystal Dynamics were busy, after having been tasked -- punished -- by Square Enix to make Marvel's Avengers, was the final Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy game developed mainly by Eidos Montréal instead. They didn't really take any risks and Shadow of the Tomb Raider turned out pretty much what I would've expected had it been made by just Crystal Dynamics. The gameplay felt instantly familiar, even down to keybindings. There are however some differences that I think show the Deus Ex prequel studio was handling the reins in this one.

Demonicon

If I recall right, Demonicon was a pure impulse purchase for me: I saw a deep discount and the logo of the German tabletop RPG, The Dark Eye, which I had encountered before in the Blackguards games. And I suppose my backlog wasn't as lengthy as it is currently. Demonicon didn't turn out to be the worst experience ever but there's just not much of a reason to play it over something else.