Atomic Heart

I wonder what is it with Cyprus in particular that makes it a desirable place for Russian game developers to allegedly start operating from, but both Owlcat Games and Mundfish have opened an office there: to hide their nationality that is currently very unpopular in Europe, and maybe to have an easier time with transferring finances with the sanctions and whatnot. I doubt that either company have actually moved an entire studio's worth of personnel to another country -- I think some sort of "façade office" scenario is more likely.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

The second game I played while waiting for Atomic Heart to get patches, was Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Like Crystal Dynamics before, was Eidos-Montréal too tasked by their (now past) overlord Square Enix to make a game set in Marvel's comic book universe. I think the poor reception of Marvel's Avengers earlier hurt this game's initial sales, people being hesitant to jump into a possibly similar mess even if this one is solely a single player game. The general consensus on Guardians is positive but I personally found it a fairly tedious, sometimes even painful, of an experience.

Shadow Warrior 3

While waiting for Atomic Heart to gets its inevitable first post-release patches before starting it, I played through a couple of other titles on the PC game pass. The first one was Shadow Warrior 3, a first person shooter which was released a year ago. It's the third game in the series ever since it was rebooted in 2013, Flying Wild Hog as the developer. (The original Shadow Warrior was released in 1997.)

Far Cry Primal

The amount of interesting games on Ubisoft+ was getting pretty low, even nonexistent. But because I still had two whole weeks of the cheap month left, I had to dig up something. I ended up on Far Cry Primal.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Post-Release Content Updates

Ubisoft+ subscription was again 1€ for a month and it was time for me to return to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which had finally gotten the last of its story updates at the end of last year. And there sure was a whole lot of content added in the two years the game was actively supported post launch. In total, Valhalla got three paid expansions and about five free additions that could be considered as separate bigger features. I was finished with the full game at 270 hours played.

Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

I beat the original campaign of Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition at the end of 2021 already but only earlier this year finally returned to do the expansion, Heart of Winter, as well. I've always done the expansion just before beating the main game but this time I decided to do it differently and import my characters to the expansion after defeating Belhifet. That wasn't as smooth of a process as I wanted, and while I did get it sorted out, something else came up and the playthrough went on a hiatus.

Alamut

I thought to actually read the novel Assassin's Creed was inspired by after having learned about it last year. The book, Alamut by Slovenian Vladimir Bartol (1903 – 1967), turned out to have a Finnish translation (by Kari Klemelä). The covers had some background information like how the novel was mostly forgotten during Bartol's lifetime but was found again and became more widely known after the September 11 attacks.

Last Argument of Kings

Unlike with the names of the previous two novels in The First Law trilogy, this last one's origin I was familiar beforehand: There's a roguelike in development called Ultima Ratio Regum -- Last Argument of Kings -- which are the words King Louis XIV had had cast on his armies' cannons. The novel's title is again maybe somewhat relevant to its plot but I feel it's again mostly there just because it's cool.

Games I Finished in 2022

Looking at the list of games I beat this year, I think there were more suspect ones than usual. But at least the current backlog is looking to be of somewhat higher quality, although it has its unknowns as well. I almost beat all the games I had a year ago on my backlog but subscription services again and the sudden Assassin's Creed series binge prevented that from actually happening. Currently my backlog is about the same size as it was at the end of 2021. Theoretically it's once again doable in a year but backlogs have a tendency to grow, as one knows.

Of Orcs And Men

There was still one more older Spiders game I was slightly interested in: Of Orcs And Men (2012) that Spiders co-developed with Cyanide Studio. The latter went on to make two prequels to it later on -- the Styx stealth games I have already played.