#also right before the final cutscene where you get the candles

[rainbow-angel110]

How I did today's shard

[vivi-the-sky-kid]

I went digging through my screenshots and found more pics of the Original Stadium so I am sharing them here for posterity

Here's me (left) posing on top of the small platform with the blue butterfly and a stranger I ran a race with. Note how absolutely barren the stands in the background are

Here is a shot of what it was like flying into the stadium once you slid off the edge and took flight. As you can see, it's basically all cloud all the way through

This one is an aerial shot showing the front of the temple. We also don't have the giant statues in this shot (those were added in a later update I believe, though iirc the statues present in the Twins' cutscene have always been there). That ledge way up at the top between the long ramp on the left and the temple is where the winged light once was, and because of how the stands were set up, the only reliable way to get it when you had few wedges was to land on the ramp and run up it

Here is another aerial shot showcasing the stands better. That side of the stadium was where Cheer used to be. There really wasn't much else going on in the Stadium before Dreams. Cheer was the only Stadium spirit that even had memories at this point. Bow and Proud had Nothing. Nada. Zilch. They were just little lights that you'd collect during the races, and then you'd free them at the end and get the stance/emote

This one shows the bonus candle on one of the pillars. This set is already lit, but if you were unlucky enough to end up on a server where they weren't lit, your odds of successfully flying to the pillar from the central platform were basically zero

This is what the entrance to the stadium looked like from the central platform. You could sometimes land on the pillar right in front during the end-of-race cutscene, before you were teleported to stand right in front of the small platform in its center, just like what happens now following the final collect lights portion

And this is what the small platform looked like. That light would always be there, even if you already got both Proud and Bow (and this was back in the days when the spirits didn't even have names!). You also could not jump onto this platform, because it was too tall. If you wanted to stand on it, you had to fly

[viridiave]

Daylight Prairie- Creatures of the Light (lore dump)

I've had a couple of theories and headcanons stirring around my head regarding Prairie for a while now- so right here we're gonna tie some of them together cuz I haven't lored in a good long while XD

Note- btw I'm not part of beta so this is purely just me- a crackhead- putting together a crackpot narrative. SOME spoilers for Eden are present.

<THE CEREMONIAL WORSHIPPERS>

okay these guys drive me fucking nuts

We barely know anything about these guys- and what little we do know is derived purely from their closed off uh... Worshipping space. Look at this freaking thing.

In the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by clouds for miles. Fairly advanced diamond technology. Altars with graves decked out in gold and candles. The mechanism for the entrance to the elevator to begin with is fairly complex as well- activated by butterflies and the butterflies don't even die in the process. And to top everything off, this place has a portal that leads directly to the Prairie Temple.

If this isn't sus I don't know what is- but I think I have an explanation.

There are six spaces for six more people that we are not aware of. The only people we DO know of is one bald person in the short garb and another bald person in the long garb. I propose that these six missing people are the Whisperers.

Which is... pretty out there, I know. Counting the 'voices' that we get in game, (including the ones from previous Seasons like Lightseekers and Sanctuary) we have one for Birds, Whales, Mantas, Memories, Crabs, and Jellyfish. For now, we're not counting either Butterflies or Krill- and I'll explain why in a bit.

As for the initial proposition that these Whisperers are the missing six, first we need to ask ourselves what exactly it was that the Worshippers were... worshipping. There is a possible god of which we see in game, and the name of this god is the Megabird.

Megabird here was heavily present in concepts, and in the final product we only ever get to see traces of her and heck to this day we're not sure if she's a canon entity in the final game at all. Megabird as an entity in the concepts is basically the god overseeing the world of Sky and is comprised entirely of light. It's unclear whether or not the Ancestors were aware of her existence after or even before the King rose to power. The Elders themselves are likely privy to this information, but somehow I doubt that it's something anyone wanting to assert control over their people would encourage.

There's certainly the possibility that these Worshippers were a religious sect dedicated to the Elders themselves- but since I'm here trying to propose that they're worshipping something tangential to the possible actual god, we're going to assume this isn't the case. On that note-

<THE WORSHIPPERS WERE DEVOUT TO LIGHT ITSELF>

I propose that the Ceremonial Worshippers valued the Light above all else- and this worship was extended towards the light creatures themselves.

'Oi. Vir. Crabs are DARK Creatures.'

Not all of them. Heck, a dark crab might not have been the norm back then, but that's a stretch and besides- the fact is that these crabs on the far end of Sanctuary are docile.

Keep in mind that these followers were stationed in Prairie, of all places. You know what else is in Prairie? Sanctuary Isles- home to several kinds of manta, butterflies, jellyfish, and even the elusive Elder Manta (yes that's what the big chonky boi that looks like a light krill is called- it's not a whale.).  Daylight Prairie is in no shortage of light creatures- and at the center of it all is its Elder.

Prairie Elder is implied to have responsibilities toward the light creatures as presented in the SkyShop poem featuring them:

'Fields of harvest, prairies of joy.

Farmer and fauna as one.

The Elder protects the creatures of light,

For darkened days to come.

Fly up, fly away,

For the Children of Light in need.

We shall recall our days of wonder,

And feel its air once more.'

-SkyShop Poem (Prairie Elder Pin)

In the greater context of the story, Daylight Prairie is the primary source of light energy in the form of the light creatures- it makes sense that the Elder of that realm would oversee the flow of light creatures from one realm to the other, and that the Ancestors in their domain would have a greater respect for the creatures than others. They're the ones working with them, and they're the ones that know them best.

Enter the Worshippers- who were likely serving directly under the Prairie Elder. I'm not confident that the Prairie Elder could have shared information about the Megabird- or if they even know the god existed. 'The Light itself' is pretty vague for something to be worshipped, and it's possible that the Prairie Elder instead encouraged people that the Light manifested itself into the various light creatures that we see.

In this world however- industrialization marches on, and eventually these light creatures became things to be harvested rather than worshipped. It's speculated that light creatures were used in the production of diamonds- we see signs of this scattered throughout Forest, and Wasteland by proxy. The mural under the bridge in Forest and the doors to the Temple seem to suggest as much at least. Eventually, this industrialization will grow out of hand. I have a few theories on what the Prairie Elder might have done to passively rebel against this.

<PRAIRIE ELDER AND THE BUTTERFLIES>

We learn in the Prairie Elder's cutscene that they are able to form- not summon- butterflies from fire. I'm not proposing that the Prairie Elder is single-handedly responsible for the existence of butterflies- rather I'm proposing through the Prairie Elder's abilities that light is able to be manipulated in such a way that one can create light creatures, should they know how.

It could just be the butterflies, honestly. And really it could just be the Prairie Elder that's capable of such a feat- and because of these holes in this theory it's the first to go.

And yes this is the reason why the Butterflies don't count. I think. That has holes too and I can make a case for the Butterfly Charmer technically being part of this... But I digress.

<SANCTUARY ISLES>

Sanctuary Islands could be a literal Sanctuary for the light creatures- there is an impressive variety of them present. It's also very out of the way, tucked away in a corner of Bird's Nest. The theory I'm proposing here is that the Prairie Elder and the Sanctuary Guide worked together to keep this place hidden from the rest of the Kingdom- and that it was the Sanctuary Guide that broke the bells that would have granted the Ancestors access to the light creatures.

<THE WORSHIPPERS DISBANDED>

This is... probably improbable, but my whole post was leading up to this so we're doing this. The missing six Worshippers are the Whisperers that we've encountered throughout the game- leaving in order to either develop their relationship with or protect their creatures of choice.

The Bird Whisperer stayed close and remained in Prairie- and is probably the reason why Bird's Nest exists at all. The Jellyfish Whisperer remained as well, opting to stay in Sanctuary- the natural habitat of the jellyfish.

The Whale Whisperer ventured to Forest- where there probably once was a small population of Whales, given the corpse we see in the Bridge Area and the live Whale in the Underground Cavern.

The Manta Whisperer went to Valley- I'm guessing to see how mantas were being used for labor and competitions? And Valley is right next to Wasteland so I might be reaching but they could have been monitoring that too.

The Crab Whisperer is a tricky one because we see them travelling with the Lightseekers, and yes I am proposing that this lady was formerly a Worshipper. But because we're dealing with a creature that we now know is more dark than light, maybe the Crab Whisperer joined the Lightseekers in order to observe that phenomenon more closely? Because she does refer to the crabs as friends in her SkyShop poem. Wasteland wasn't always a... wasteland, after all. Things could have been different, and the crabs could have been adapting in a time where they would be relatively dangerous but not so much that an Ancestor couldn't approach them.

And then there's the Memory Whisperer. For this one, I don't think a spirit manta actually exists- at least, not as an organic creature and moreso just an interactive holograph courtesy of the machinations of Vault. I'm actually not too sure on what this person could have been doing, but they have a call- and my best guess is that the Memory Whisperer is one who listens to the last vestiges of light leftover by a creature- because we do see skeletons in Vault, and one is of a creature that looks like an amalgamation of several spirit mantas.

<WHY DON'T THE KRILL COUNT?>

As far back as Prophecy, Krill don't appear to be aligned with the light. They aren't depicted as former light creatures, nor a corrupted variant of an elder manta or whale- they are presented as thenselves in that Prophecy mural. Though I'm sure we'll get a Krill call later on, I'm not going to count them until then.

<CONCLUSION...?>

This huge post is... full of holes and heavy speculation, I'm aware. Mostly I just wanted to dump a bunch of shower thoughts and leftover lore I came up in the Discord lore chat. Go check it out sometime, I've derived a few points in this from interacting with people there. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter, by the way- it's fun theorizing! I haven't done this seriously in a long while.

[chongoblog]

Zero Time Dilemma Review/Ramble

Okay, so if you’ve been following me, you know that I’ve gotten into the Zero Escape series, famous for 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward, streaming both games. I recently took the time to experience the last game, Zero Time Dilemma by watching cutscenes rather than playing it proper mostly because A) I heard it was REALLY dark and didnt want to risk it on Twitch and B) I wanted to experience it more freely like while I’m at work.

After experiencing it. I have......feelings about it. And because there’s MASSIVE spoilers involved, I’m making it its own post under the ReadMore below.

tl;dr LOADS of bullshit, flawed execution, and stupid decisions, but still REALLY enjoyed it

Okay so a LOT of this is going to be complaining, and like I said in the tl;dr I still legit enjoyed this game, so I’m gonna make this a compliment sandwich by saying something nice now, loading up on complaints, then ending with more compliments. Carlos is good. So is Sean. Sigma being voiced by Matthew Mercer actually makes him more interesting imo. I REALLY like Phi’s new design and the way they build on the initial concepts brought up in VLR more accurately portray the ideas that started all the way back in 999, that being the idea of taking thoughts across timelines, just like the player. From the beginning, the theme/gimmick was always “what if your character remembered information when you savescummed?” In 999 that began as flashes of information, and in VLR the characters’ consciousness actually time traveled at the very end. ZTD now uses the idea of the consciousness traveling across time and space and RUNS with it. I also think that Delta has a cool design.

I’ll be nice again later, but now for the things I Did Not Like.

Emo Moody Junpei makes sense from a writing standpoint, but that doesn’t mean I have to like him. Maybe I just got spoiled since Evan Wilson did a spectacular job with his deliveries in 999 and in ZTD it seems like his soul got sucked out. Not the fault of the delivery as much as it is the writing. Eric is bad, and I feel like that statement isn’t controversial. I don’t think anyone likes Eric, and if you do, then sorry for shitting on him so much, but god I just don’t like him. And the abusive childhood thing doesn’t give me a drop of sympathy, but then again I’ve always hated the writing trick that “this person is shitty and pathetic but it’s because abuse!” (see also Mikan). Diane is boring (sorry).

But I fuuuuuckin HATE Mira. I hate Mira so much. Like, at first I thought she’d be alright, yeah she’s definitely The Boob Character™, but I liked Lotus well enough and Alice grew on me significantly, so I don’t see why Mira won’t. Then she’s like “surprise I’m a serial killer”. Now if they just made her a serial killer, it would be kinda boring so I’m glad they TRIED something new. I just think the result was bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad. Like....”hmm I never felt any emotions so when my mom told me they were kept in hearts I just ripped em out of people :)” is some garbage I’d write in middle school when I felt especially edgy. Also yeah seems p ableist. I won’t go too deeper into Mira, since she’s a sociopath and I don’t know enough about the actual disorder to put a candle to the real thing, but....bleh.

I won’t touch on THIS aspect for too long because I’m aware that it had barely any budget and it wouldn’t have happened without a kickstarter (don’t know the details), but the animation is just....so stiff. It really takes away from the dramatic impact some scenes are meant to have. But even IF the animation wasn’t stiff, I still am not a big fan of the darker and moodier direction it went. Although that’s moreso down to personal preference. Final note about the presentation (which is by far the game’s weakest aspect) is that I noticed multiple points in the sound mixing got to nearly Sonic Adventure 2 levels of being unable to understand what people were saying.

Alright. Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Let’s talk about Delta. This is going to make up a MAJORITY of this post so strap in.

Delta is a meme. There’s no other way to say it briefly. He’s just such a huge fucking meme. Almost everything about him, from his plan to his “complex” motives to his backstory to his powers. I mentioned liking his design, but fuck it. That’s a meme now too. Delta is the stupidest part of the game, and as much as I kind of love it, I also need to complain about it.

First let’s talk about Delta’s plan (because it starts with the nicest part of this segment). His motives are “complex” which is actually greek for “he’s probably either a liar, an idiot, or both”. I said there was nice things, so I’ll start with those. The very ending’s “ah ah ah. I never killed any of you in this timeline. If you arrested someone for crimes of another history, there would be criminals everywhere” was something I actually legitimately enjoyed. Yeah, intent was still there and he’s still a bastard (plus there was kidnapping and non-consensual drugging involved so kind of a stupid take), but I still thought it was a fun attempt. And also the “I had to make sure I was born” thing is a mindfuck, and I love those. Basically the first retort is “well I’m alive, right? So I don’t need to make sure I was born with powers because I WAS born with powers, which means it happened in another universe. So I don’t have to.” Only to then realize that we’re just in the universe where he DID do that but then the only justification is “someone had to” right? Wrong. Let’s talk about the rest of his “complex” motives

So I give a pass to “I had to make sure I was born”, but now we see why he had to do this whole deal and what he declares at the end of the game. That there’s some religious fanatic who intends to blow up the world and completely end humanity. And he released Radical-6 in the VLR timeline hoping that it would kill the terroris only killing 4 billion people instead of 6 billion people. In the timeline at the end of ZTD, he says that they had used this experience to hone the skills of the Shifters that way they could use their newly honed take down the religious fanatic WITHOUT Radical-6 and save the world.

What?

Now......before I tear into this.....I have ONE nice thing to say. The “unleash radical 6 and kill 4 billion vs let a terrorist end humanity” gambit IS cleverly foreshadowed with the radical 6 decision game with Q Team. But also wouldn’t that have made, like 1800 times more narrative sense to give that decision game to team D who KNOWS the impact of radical 6, or team C who he explains this plan to later on? Damn, even my nice thing was backhanded. Alright let’s REALLY tear into it.

FIRST of all, this is the exact same plot of Virtue’s Last Reward. Only difference is that somehow Akane and Junpei are just as skilled at this technique as Sigma and Phi despite the latter going to do Moon Training (granted the moon training was also to give them enough of a jump to go back 45 years). Speaking of Virtue’s Last Reward, this game also reveals that Delta is Brother, the leader of Free the Soul. A group of religious fanatics. So I wouldn’t be especially shocked if the religious fanatic is working with Free the Soul. But for the sake of this argument, let’s just say they aren’t with FtS. How in the Flavor-Blasted FUCK does he know this? Did somebody Shift back from that timeline and then just get Mind hacked (and we’ll fUCKING talk about Mind Hacking dont you worry)? How would that be the only piece of information known about the end of the god damn world? And if there IS more, then why the fuck wouldn’t you tell them the information? How does he know that it’s inevitable when apparently a god damn snail can unleash Radical-6?

I call bullshit on the “religious fanatic” thing. Wanna know why? Because at this point, Delta had already founded Free The Soul. He started this shit in 1938. At this point in time, he and the rest of the Free the Soul had already kidnapped Alice’s dad to create clones of his dead brother. He was pushing for a new world order and then in the VLR timeline, tried to PREVENT this whole thing from happening by sending Dio to the Moon. So if he actually gave a shit about “honing their abilities” then why would he do everything in his power to stop it? There is ONE out that there can be, but it’s something not even HINTED at (and I’ll talk about this later), but I think that "religious fanatic” is a big ol’ lie that he made up to try and save face when he was faced with a consequence, but even that explanation makes no sense since he’s like “lol shoot me if u wanna I wont mind hack you”

And let’s talk about mind hacking. Let’s fucking talk about Mind Hacking. Adding Mind Hacking was stupid, completely pointless, out of left field, and actively makes Delta a worse character. For those that don’t know, Mind Hacking is an ability that only Delta has (and I guess the player character technically but that’s a whole meta thing from VLR that doesn’t get followed up on) where you can read people’s minds and also fuckin control them. Why? Why was this necessary, ZTD? You wanna know what I thought was really neat? When I saw that different timelines produced different X-Codes. I thought “oh shit, I know this is Game Stuff, but the sheer foresight of the villain to do that? That’s some Moriarty shit.” It would require some insane explanations, but we’ve had enough sci-fi that we could imagine with enough advanced tech, you could set up systems that could use conditionals to give certain responses based on certain outcomes. Like if someone dies after the decontamination room button is pressed, then the central computer outputs a different X-Code than if it’s after the initial vote. Just make up a new tech that accounts for Shifting (plus the QUANTUM COMPUTER you have RIGHT THERE) and you could make a villain with so much calculated foresight that he’s just a god damn genius. But no. Mind hacking. None of that interesting stuff, just “lol I read ur mind idiot”. No outwitting anyone, just “lol get mindhacked eric u scrub bang bang”.

Honest to god, honest to FUCKING god, do you want to know how cool the final cutscene would have made Delta look if he walked out and just KNEW what happened in another timeline because of his plans. Like everyone recognizes him as Delta and he just goes “ohoho I see you had a fun time in my other timeline” using that deduction alone. But nah, he’s just like “yo I just mindhacked y’all, nice experience y’all had” I hate mind hacking so much. There’s no part of his plan where he NEEDED to mind hack in order to succeed that could have been written without mind hacking.

Now there’s a bit of a missed opportunity here that could both make mind hacking relevant, made his motive not shit, and also maybe even developed him into a SUPER interesting character! I know this is a bit fanfic-y, but hear me out. Make Delta a VICTIM of the stable time loop/bootstrap paradox. For those who don’t know, the bootstrap paradox is when time travel makes certain events happen seemingly out of thin air since they are their own cause. Basically it’s this clip from Milo Murphy. This is something that seems like it’s KINDA there in the subtext, but if they actually dove into it, they could have a GOLD mine.

What if we keep the mindhacking, and before he even MAKES Free the Soul, he mindhacks someone who experienced the events of the “religious fanatic”. But not just anyone. An experienced SHIFTer who made it their goal to stop this religious fanatic. After hundreds of attempts, they still fail. Delta sees this and determines it to be inevitable. So he’s having fun, cursed by the knowledge of an inevitable apocalypse. Then he meets Akane, Phi, Sigma, or Junpei after they had undergone the events of VLR and ZTD. He learns that particular timeline. A bleak future, yes, but one single future where humanity is alive. He sees two futures, one in which all of humanity dies, and one where he is the leader of a religious cult that wipes out 4 Billion People with a deadly pandemic. And the idea of being that person disgusts him. He despises it. But he’s completely resigned to fate. He knows that things must go precisely as he’s seen at the price of humanity, too frightened by such a burden to even take a toe off of the predetermined pathway. His motive is that he’s so tightly bound to fate and so afraid to let it slip that he has no choice but to commit the atrocities, despising himself for it every step of the way, but considering it better than the inevitable alternative. It would give a purpose for the mindhacking powers, it would give him a solid motive, and it would make the ending SO much stronger, showing the contrast between a group of SHIFTers confident that they can change fate and the man who is completely resigned to his own. Fuck, I might steal this character concept because I REALLY think this idea would work to make an interesting villain!

Like I mentioned, this is KINDA there in subtext (with him quite frequently saying “life truly is unfair”) and this could be an interpretation of the character, but if ZTD had explored that theme, then holy hell what an interesting character Delta would be.

But even WITH this fix, holy hell, this plan is stupid. Because guess what, dingus. You just created like 30 new timelines that all end in annihilation.

He coulda said ONE line about “even if there is only one history that ends nicely, that is solace enough”, that might have been dark, but still powerful. You know, add some depth. But instead, he’s just like “hmm hmm shoot me”

And the Q Twist? I’m honestly not as mad at it as I should be. On one hand, it does that cute thing where there are little bits of foreshadowing so when you rewatch it, you notice little bits like shadows and stuff, but on the other hand, there are PLENTY of points where either the camera just straight up lies to you and doesn’t show him when he should be there or Delta’s just been fuckin SHMOOVIN on his wheelchair around the room constantly to stay out of the camera and everyone’s just been kinda chill with it. Maybe if they had been more careful with the camera it could have delivered a TOUCH better. Like, even if the shots are a bit off, that’s noticeable enough to be part of the hint, no? I don’t have as much to say about this, mostly because this post is getting long as fuck so I’m gonna wrap it up so I can move on with my life for a bit.

So even with ALL OF THAT, I still enjoyed playing the game. That’s right, compliment sandwich time. The three wards all being one ward was a really neat reveal. The fact that you can shoot Delta in one scene is creative with its replay value. I’m glad they touched on the philosophical idea of what happens to the people who made it out from the coin flip only to get SHIFTed into the exploding lab, and exploring that idea was fun. I absolutely lost my mind at the idea of the gun to sigmas head had a random chance of firing and then seeing it elaborated on in the dice scene directly after it. Gab is a good boy.

Cant wait to play AI

[reddeadreference]

Blog Progress Update (Travel Blog Style 😎 #9)

Before I get on with the travel blog portion of the blog update I just wanted to say some of the links on the index pages go to the wrong posts (idk why tumblr changed them on me because I know 100% I put the right ones in. somehow it glitched.) so I’m going to go through and fix what’s already there, THEN, I’ve decided to not put in links into the index pages until I know I have them all done. (Which is more of a problem for current navigation but it means it’ll be correct when it is done…. 

I’ve also discovered I didn’t make the Colter Outfit post… and I missed a few missions so I might as well go back and do those so I can finally make a chapter 1 complete post for app navigation then finish chapter 2’s post.

Anyway chapter 3

Guess who COMPLETELY forgot how we find Trelawney in this chapter…

Oh my god the things in this game I have forgotten… I love this game. (Just saw the Anderson bro get knocked off the train XD)

Hm? Oh yeah what no, we’ve never been to Rhodes before, never even heard of the place. Ha ha… *Furiously stuffing 100s of photos in pockets* 

Time to go fishing with Arthur’s dads! Wholesome content *chef’s kiss*. I feel like fishing should be a camp activity you can trigger like dominoes and poker. I think I legit just sat there fishing for like half an hour ^_^” the wholesome praise and encouragement …. 

I was going to wait to do Sadie’s mission until it was daytime but we went to get stew and suddenly the camera spun and horror violins started playing and they both had knives! (The initial cutscene was at night but it magically was day when we got onto the wagon.)

Sadie Arthur bonding time is so wholesome… *Sadie whips out the gun* CHILL WOMAN (again the stuff I forgot in this game… I haven’t left chapter 2 in so long)

Arthur: “Keep it cool Sadie”

Sadie: Cool?... So gun, right? GUN! 

Arthur: O_O

Sadie: *runs a man over*

Arthur: JESUS WOMAN!

Back at camp, played a relaxing round of dominoes with Tilly, she won. Gotta go get her a necklace and Sadie a harmonica BUT FIRST Sean seems to have a little mission he’s got in mind.  

Robbin’ went well and when Arthur left he found this peculiar little caravan toppled over with an even more peculiar Mr. Margret. (Oh did I miss this mission so much ^_^ I think I’m legit going to have to do yet another playthrough where I just clip all my favorite lines, this game is gold.)

Uh anyway Arthur’s gonna have some nightmares about getting got by a lion…. (in case it wasn’t clear, he has “nightmares” every time he ‘dies’.... I’m not very good a drawing my gun or shooting sometimes…)

“Failed - The Lion Escaped” … Yeah no I don’t think that’s the problem… *staring at Arthur who just got his FUCKING THROAT SWIPED by said lion*

On the way back to camp to change clothes after finishing Margret’s mission… seems I found a… a little meeting in the woods…. 

*takes out stick of dynamite* 

seems like a little celebration.... probably needs some candle- what the hell…

*watches as a random buck knocks over one of the men and just takes off…. Points at the buck.* He’s cool. Be like him kids. Deer hate racists too. Needless to say I had a blast. Hehe puns…

Anyway back in camp and I’m noticing people sleeping in different tents (i.e. Lenny sleeping at the main fire… which confuses me cause earlier Javier was laying there chilling… now Lenny is laying there… is he just hanging out? Was Javier laying on Lenny’s bed? did he ask first??) Uncle hasn’t moved from his spot under the tree… I left him there yesterday... someone please poke the man…

John is magic when it comes to closing his tent. I blinked as he walked in and it was just sealed. I had come back around 4 am and everyone was in their PJs but they were all walking around… I need everyone to not be doing that so I can see where each person sleeps dang it. .. that sounded less creepy in my head. Also did you know you can fucking TRACK camp members????

I keep missing little scenes cause I’m too far on one side of camp and by the time I get over there they’re either halfway done or have one line left. Though I didn’t miss Tilly saying Karen might kill Grimshaw. Very… vivid picture she painted.

Gonna get a few more camp photos before continuing on. (since I have all the bag upgrades and camp upgrades it shouldn’t take me as long to finish chapters at this point…)

Have a photogenic photo of Sadie where she looks like a damn MODEL ( I really need to make that photoshoot post on my other rdr blog...

[eframschweigersskincells]

So, Return to Hell was an absolute rollercoaster of emotions and I couldn't have asked for a better ending to the season three dlc missions.

SPOILER WARNING BY THE WAY!

Holy shit was this season a wild ride and with an absolute banger of an ending all I can say is well done rebellion you pulled it out the bag and held it high, I was so happy with everything and just my god its really hard to put down everything I'm so enthralled I can barely think straight.

I remember when the trailer dropped and I was so overcome with both excitement and sadness at seeing what the dlc entailed, I was so happy to see schweiger alive but devastated to see what was happening to him and originally I thought we were going to sacrifice him to help Umbra which terrified me, thank fuck I was wrong I dont think I could handle hurting my boy.

The intro was excellent, it really felt like distressing and that this was truly a moment of despair the way bruno spoke of it was absolutely amazing and I couldn't wait to get stick in. And when it finally gave way to the gameplay the opening area was absolutely stunning!

The way it's so familiar yet so foreign, like I'd seen it before but it had been so twisted that it was unrecognisable, lava around every corner and debris floating as if frozen in time the ground and walls cracked and crumbling and the fiery hues made this a fantastic yet haunting sight I hadn't even begun playing and I already fell in love with it.

When I finally moved on and the Baron began his tirade about the state of hell and how it was shaped and molded to fit the subconscious mind of schweiger I was shocked and saddened, to think that this was schweiger's fractured mind was frightening, all his guilt, fear, anger, confusion, sadness became reality and hell took its horrifying form filled with endless undead. I also found it really cool to see events play out from schweiger's perspective, meat locker, hell base and terror lab all playing out in schweiger's memories allowing us a glimpse in to everything that happened to him. He was betrayed so many times, I don't blame him at all for turning on us in deeper than hell, the amount of cruelty he suffered would drive anyone insane.

Being captured and forced to research the occult without any understanding of why, being tricked in to activating the relic allowing hitler to activate plan Z, working your hardest to try and make the world right then have your team infiltrated by nazi bastards who push you in to a hell tower and forcefully tear you from this plane of existence and left to rot in hell. Just when you think you can finally escape you're confronted with the fact you can not leave, only your closest comrades can leaving you in hell against everyone's will, then a voice manipulates you in to believing you were betrayed by your friends you're lied to and tricked in to believing this voice is your only friend who makes you do horrific rituals.

I remember how horrific I felt hearing this and then when Umbra revealed that he did all of this so he could break schweiger's will so he could steal his body I was filled with rage. Rebellion were amazing at putting emotion in to this one I genuinely went through constant emotional shifts realising that everything we had done up to this point was planned by Umbra and that everything we had done was only to fuel his plans. It was never schweiger's fault it was umbras and that knocked me on my arse.

The gameplay was a lot of fun, one of the best parts was that absolutely everything was randomised! The main sections of the map where always switched around no matter how many times you play it at first I went meat locker, hell base then terror lab then my second time I went hell base, terror lab then meat locker! I was shocked when everything cane out of order but it fits so well with everything! Schweiger's mind is so badly fractured that when hell took form as schweiger's subconscious not even hell itself could keep things in order.

I genuinely adore how the old familiar faces of these maps are destroyed, twisted and corrupted they are what we have seen before but warped till they look like different maps entirely, with so much more to explore in some areas it really gives you a sense of walking through broken memories like piecing together a memory Efram barely has a grip on anymore.

I loved how enemies were randomised too, getting attacked by a screamer around the corner then next time you go there prepared for a screamer you get blown up by suiciders or slaughtered by skeletons or an elite or in my favourite case being attacked by zombie alpha squad members! When zombie me jumped out and attacked I was so confused I didnt have time to respond when zombie jun popped out and killed me it was fucking awesome!

All our favourite enemy variations are here too, vampire creepers, electric suiciders, armored commanders, skeletons etc which really made for a really tough but good fight, never knowing what variation was coming to get you made everything even more fun.

And with the spitters now having a variant that spat magma it made what was usually an annoying inconvenience an actual proper threat and I love that so fucking much, maybe the spitters aren't so horrible after all.

That's a lie I still fucking hate them but oh well!

Once we successfully complete all three areas we now return to the main area with a very pissed off Umbra and schweiger who although conscious is barely alive. As soon as we arrive back to were we began we are immediately attacked and dragged off to an unknown place that we only know as the void as coined by Umbra.

Let me tell you when I say the void is creepy I fucking mean it, the void is of course pitch black you cant see anything not even your flash light does anything to the surrounding darkness, all you see when you spawn is the pitch black and eframs body of a slab surrounded by candles with Umbra looking over us and you really get the the sense of "holy shit, this is it!"

I genuinely adored the design of the void, the fact you only ever see your surroundings when a split second of bright red lighting strikes and even then you only see the faint outline of distant places, walking through the endless river of blood that stops you to a near snail's pace while fending of oncoming dead is genuinely spectacular! Holy fuck did rebellion pull it out the bag this round!

Just when you think you're about to have to do something to the incapacitated schweiger, Edie finally fucking shows up and does something useful for once, breaking schweiger out of his trance and giving him enough power to fend for himself when she realises Umbra has no defences! Thank fuck because now we know how to finally end The Baron and let me tell you I couldn't be happier to get the chance at killing the bastard.

The fights were challenging and had me cornered a few times and I'll admit I died a couple times but it was absolutely worth it, there was so much going on but it wasnt overbearing, with how large the areas you had to fight the hordes in were it made the fucking insane amounts of zombies absolutely balanced, I never felt like it was impossible but never felt it was too easy either just the right balance of insanity. And to make it even better I get to listen to schweiger shit talk the Baron as we help Efram regain strength while weakening Umbra.

Listening to Umbra beg and plead for mercy was great, it really felt like we were overpowering hell itself, no matter what Umbra threw our way it did absolutely nothing and listening to schweiger come to terms with what he's done and immediately work towards redemption by putting down Umbra was heartwarming. We were the winners not Umbra.

Then finally we get to what I've been wanting to do since the beginning of the DLC, after two whole hours I finally got to put an end to the Baron, activating that ending cutscene was so satisfying and I got to put down my controller and watch.

I'll admit I was confused when Umbea sprung back to life and actually attacked, where hitler failed to stop us during hell machine Umbra full pounced, he was going to take us with him and for a second I absolutely believed we were going to die with him, the fuck tries ripping our soul out rendering us absolutely useless. Its schweiger that saves us, pulling us away from Umbra then eviscerating the fuck out of him with ease and with that The Baron himself is dead, finally the tyrant is dead and everything we had worked towards was finally put to rest.

Just before that scene ends, we see schweiger smile! He's actually happy for once, free from Umbras grip, he's faced his fears and insecurities and in the end was the one who saved us and destroyed The Baron. To see him smile was one of the greatest things ever and I'm so glad we finally got to see that.

In last few moments of the ending, we wake up on the side of a cliff with Dr schweiger by our side and as the camera zooms out we see nothing but an endless sea of lava and I'm left thinking.

What the fuck is Projekt Ragnarok?

[bltngames]

Review: Hotshot Racing

(For this review, Hotshot Racing was played on the Nintendo Switch and the Personal Computer)

If you were to ask me what the most important features of a racing game are, somewhere near the top of the list would be artificial intelligence. Racing games are one of those genres, like fighting games or shooters, where simulating how real human people play the game is vital to the experience. They are inherently multiplayer concepts, even if you’re playing by yourself.

Focus on multiplayer artificial intelligence has waned over the last 15 years. With the rise of the premium multiplayer subscription, it’s more important than ever before to drive players to play matches with flesh-and-blood human beings online. Thus, advancements in “bot” (simulated human player) development hasn’t just slowed down, but in some cases actively regressed. Epic Games, once home to some of the smartest, most robust first person shooter bots in Unreal Tournament, now features bots in their popular Fortnite Battle Royale that fumble around the map with low attention spans and aim like they're blindfolded.

Humans are hard to simulate. The basic functions of a player are easy to emulate -- navigation, aiming, and so on, but it’s the organic logic underneath that proves to be the primary challenge. Humans have lapses in judgement. Humans make mistakes. Mistakes compound on other mistakes. A person wins or loses a given game because of a constantly cascading sequence of decisions, all feeding in to and out of themselves. Whether they realize it or not, every individual person is their own infinite web of chaos. For a computer, which operates in a binary of either perfect success or total failure, no amount of processing power can make for an accurate duplication.

As such, artificial intelligence has to “cheat.” Flaws are introduced into the simulation in order to throw the player a bone. Intelligence almost doesn’t even enter the equation; instead, it’s more about developing a bot that the player simply believes is human, like some kind of a magic trick. It’s a tight balancing act -- if the bot is too good, it looks like an unfeeling terminator. On the opposite, well… compare my Fortnite example up above. There’s a sweet spot that must be hit: smart, but not too smart. Dumb, but not too dumb. It’s easier said than done.

Racing games are a special category here. On top of simulating a human, they must also simulate an automobile, with all of its physical interactions. Tire friction, suspension bounce, weight distribution, and horsepower efficiency just to start. I’d argue that this lends to a much greater tendency for natural mistakes to occur, as the two different simulations (vehicle and player) interact and bounce off of each other. This has led to racing games relying on a handicap known as “rubberbanding.” Essentially, if the player is doing a little too well, the game will start giving tiny advantages to the computer-controlled racer. A boost to top speed, a reduction in weight to improve handling, whatever it takes to ensure the player does not remain unchallenged for very long.

Which finally, at long last, brings us to Hotshot Racing. Developed by Lucky Mountain Games, with assistance by Sumo Digital, it attempts to capitalize on the growing faux-retro-3D trend. It promises visuals to remind you of Sega’s Virtua Racing or Namco’s Ridge Racer, but with decidedly modern vehicle physics and a bit more content than any of those old games could muster.

It honestly makes for a weird first impression. This is a retro-looking game that does not feel like any retro racing game I’ve ever played. Some would undoubtedly argue that’s for the better; like with most sports games, there’s this sense that more simulation is always better. Even modern “arcade” racers like Need for Speed or Wreckfest run pretty robust physics simulations under their hoods, even if they do not necessarily adhere to the rules of reality. But I’ve honestly never seen a problem with this -- I will readily go back to something like Daytona USA or even Stunt Race FX on the Super Nintendo, and never feel especially bothered by their primitive simulations. To me, racing is often more about the sense of speed, how well the controls respond, and the track design than any notion of feeling “realistic.”

That’s not to say it’s really a negative that cars in Hotshot Racing have some vague facsimile of modern weight and “realism” applied to their driving physics, I guess. It’s just something that takes a little bit of getting used to, because seeing these cars drift and sway like the racing games of today is a little anachronistic to the era being called back to. If you still burn a candle for the eventual release of the long-lost Kickstarter darling “90’s Arcade Racer,” know that this isn’t that game. I think it’s fair to say it’s trying to scratch a similar itch, but it’s doing so in a very different way.

One of the more important things Hotshot Racing brings to the table is a roster of personalities to race as and against. When you think of characters in a racing game, your mind probably more naturally gravitates towards something like Mario Kart or some other similarly kid-friendly cartoon racing franchise. For most "serious" racing games, your opponents are unknowable, faceless competitors, but Hotshot gives them voices and identities. Every character in the game has a garage of four cars unique to them, in addition to having their own story to tell. It’s nothing especially deep; most plot manifests in a single cutscene played at the end of a given grand prix, sort of like what you'd get for finishing arcade mode in a game like Street Fighter 2. It’s just a snippet, a taste of what motivated these people and what they’re going to do after winning, but it’s enough.

It goes back to what I said earlier, and how it’s important for the player to believe the artificial intelligence is more than just a computer. Making the racers into characters, with identifiable personalities, faces, and dialog goes a long way to fleshing things out and makes you connect with what’s going on just a little bit better. Or at least, that’s how things would work in theory.

The problem is… well, none of that matters. Put simply, the actual artificial intelligence you race against kind of sucks. In fact, it’s hard to even call them competitors, because your opponents seem to be running a different race where you straight up don’t exist. During any given event, your rival computer drivers seem to be totally blind to your presence, as they will spend the entire race trying to drive straight through you. I don’t know how else to explain it. This isn’t a simple case where the computer drivers are a little aggressive, because they usually aren’t racing to be destructive. They never seem to specifically go out of their way to attack, they just don’t seem to be able to see where you are, and make no effort to react to your presence. You happen to be in their way, so they plow through from behind, ram from the side, and generally just knock you around as if you were invisible.

A side effect to this is something I’ve started noticing in games that bear the Sumo Digital name: computer drivers can hit you way harder than you can hit them back. Whether rubbing against a rival car or engaging in a full-on collision, computer drivers always seem to be able to overpower player vehicles no matter what. In Hotshot Racing, I’ve encountered multiple scenarios where a computer driver shoves me around with little effort, but any attempts to return the favor and my car may as well be made out of styrofoam for how little impact there is. I know Sumo Digital only assisted Lucky Mountain Games on the back half of developing Hotshot Racing, but this has been a consistent element I’ve noticed in Sumo’s Sonic Racing games, too. The computer can be as aggressive (or as blind) as they want, but human players are never allowed to retaliate in a way that feels meaningful.

The worst, by far, is what I mentioned earlier: rubberbanding. “First place” in Hotshot Racing is an often endless war of attrition, where no matter how fast you drive, there are always cars nipping at your heels. Hotshot Racing has a boost system, wherein by drifting or drafting you charge up a segmented meter. Once a segment is full, you can burn it for a burst of speed. I’ve spent 2, 3, even 4 consecutive boosts in a row and the same three opponents were still right behind me, aiming to blindly smash my car out of the way. Hard, medium, or easy mode, it doesn’t matter. They are always there, just a few feet from your rear bumper, magically closing the distance to constantly steal your lead.

From a game design perspective, I understand why rubberbanding exists. It’s to keep the player feeling challenged and engaged. Spending too long in first place going unopposed can start to feel boring. Some game designers view that as a turn off. Races are meant to be battles. At the same time, being able to totally shut out my opponents and gain huge leads makes me feel good. Hotshot Racing robs you of that sense of total domination because of some artificial rule of competitiveness. It’s not that the computer-controlled racers are better than you; they don’t seem to race with any sort of great care or skill. Instead, they catch up and pass you strictly because the Hand of God bends the rules to accommodate them. That doesn’t feel very challenging and it certainly doesn’t feel fair.

That being said, the pseudo-realistic physics mentioned earlier do have their own downside: I found it a little too easy to lose control of my vehicle and spin out. If you brush against a wall wrong or get bumped by a rival during a drift, you often find yourself in a tailspin and unable to recover. Combined with the blind artificial intelligence and the rubberbanding, you have a recipe for getting frustrated. I want to feel confident in my losses, not because I couldn’t predict what Mr. Magoo was going to do next. To add insult to injury, the rubberbanding only gets more prominent as you move up in difficulty, so expect to get spun out more and more as you progress through the game.

There also isn’t a lot to do with your vehicles, either. For many, tuning is an important aspect of racing games, going all the way back to 1989’s “Super Off Road” in the arcades. No upgrade path is available for any of the vehicles in Hotshot Racing, with a basic unlock system geared towards limited cosmetic tweaks. There's tons of tracks to race on, and you constantly earn currency for winning races, but I never cared about spending any of it, because there wasn't much worth buying. Arguably the specific mid-90′s era that Hotshot Racing is aiming at wasn’t really heavy on upgrading or modifying around vehicle stats, but neither were they focused on visual customization either, so it does feel a little arbitrary what they chose to modernize about this experience and what is intended to be a retro tribute.

Beyond standard racing, Hotshot does offer a few alternative modes, but none of them are spotlight features. “Barrel Barrage” has you earning an explosive barrel to drop behind you at every checkpoint until the track becomes a minefield. “Drive or Explode” takes the concept of 1994’s “Speed” and straps a bomb to your car that will explode if you slow down for too long. Finally, “Cops & Robbers” is a confusing push-and-pull where you must steal money as a robber and alternatively wreck other racers as a police officer. Of the three modes, “Drive or Explode” is the clear winner, as it most easily fits into the standard three-lap structure the game centers around. “Barrel Barrage” is merely okay, and benefits more from an increased number of laps, as things slowly get more and more dangerous as you progress. These modes would also benefit if I didn’t get thrown back to the menu after every race; they really needed some kind of Grand-Prix-style playlist.

“Cops & Robbers” deserves its own entire paragraph for what a weird idea it is. It’s less about stealing and arresting and has more in common with the “zombie” modes seen in other games, where everyone gets converted to a specific team until there are no more players left. The idea is that you start with a pot of money that slowly depletes, and you have to race to the next checkpoint to cash out. The faster you get there and the higher amounts you cash out with, the more the cops specifically will target you. Once they wreck your car, you become one of the cops, and it’s your job to wreck the remaining robbers until they all become part of the cop team. Once all the robbers become cops, winners are tallied based on who stole the most money. On paper, this works, because it plays into the game’s slap-happy nature, but in practice I would find myself miles ahead of my fellow robbers and once I finally switched over to a cop, I had to slam on my brakes and wait for everyone else to catch up. By then, the computer-controlled cops had usually done most of my work for me and I lost for... being a better robber than a cop, somehow? It left a lot to be desired.

All of these modes can be played online, where presumably human players would make them more balanced and fun, but finding random pick-up games proved difficult in the time I spent with Hotshot Racing. Now, to be fair, I didn’t try especially hard -- racing games have always been a single player experience for me, as should be obvious by my spiel on artificial intelligence. But I did spend a couple nights trying to match into an online “Quick Race” on the Switch, where I universally came up empty handed. On the PC version of Hotshot Racing (which I received as part of a Humble Bundle), the application completely froze upon trying to start a “Quick Race” lobby, forcing me to ALT+F4 to close the game. For what it’s worth, the Switch version does also include a “local multiplayer” option for playing wirelessly with friends in the same room, and all versions support traditional split-screen.

Despite all of these shortcomings, I just can’t bring myself to hate Hotshot Racing, and it’s hard to pinpoint why. I’m definitely in love with this aesthetic -- the retro visuals, the upbeat music, the blue, blue skies (that I see), it all appeals to a certain part of my brain that likes razor-sharp, ultra-clean polygons. The introduction of named racers with backstories and character-specific “endings” is a really smart, fun idea. I just wish it was more fun to actually, like… run a race in this game. I understand the necessity behind concepts like rubberbanding, but it feels like the artificial intelligence cheats just a little too much, and as a player I don’t feel like I can do a lot to fight back. Running a good race isn’t always good enough.

Some games deliberately incite a feeling of disempowerment in their players, and that can be a totally valid design decision. But should that really be the goal of this kind of racing game? I guess I don’t have an answer for that, but I do know that I probably won’t be going back to Hotshot Racing very often.

[sny-bylle]

Personal Dark Souls rankings

World Building:

DS1 > DS2 > DS3

Let’s start with an quite obvious one. I agree with many fans that DS3 is more linear, while the other two games allow more exploration. 

What gives DS2 the lower place is the fact that sometimes hidden paths are SO WELL hidden that I actually lost orientation at some point. I couldn’t find the next location or simply couldn’t recognize if a place actually was a dead end or not. That way I really was unsure whether I was making any progression in the game or not. 

DS1 linked the levels perfectly. At the beginning, I immediately tried out all paths from Firelink Shrine. And I had no problems memorizing the several locked / accessible entrances and where they (might) lead.

Soundtracks: 

DS3 > DS1 > DS2

You mainly hear Music played either when you’re in a Boss Battle or at Firelink Shrine / Majula. And while I consider Majula’s Soundtrack better than the Shrines, I can’t say the same about the rest in its game. 

Generally you’re too busy focusing on the boss to pay much attention to the Soundtrack. But in DS3 it happened often enough that I still noticed some bosses’ melodies. First it was at the Cryszal Sage battle, where I thought: Man this music is creepy and intense! Then in the Abyss Watchers battle I thought: Holy sh*t the bell and the violins and the voice! Absolutely badass! These are only a few examples of many times I caught myself focusing more on the soundtrack than the Boss. Yes, it cost me many lives, but it’s worth it! 

DS1 didn’t have many soundtracks I really noticed. But still, after some boss battles I had an earworm. Right while I’m typing this, I have the Gaping Dragon’s soundtrack in my head. 

And DS2... In short: There isn’t a single soundtrack I had really memorized. Majula is the only great exeption. 

Level Design:

DS2 > DS1 > DS3

When I think of it, DS2 generally has he biggest world. And due to this size, so many different locations could fit into the game. We have a great underground “labyrinth”, stormy mountains with Dragons flying around, sand pits, giant castles built at the edge of the ocean, simple forests and don’t get me started on Drangelic Castle. I think from all levels in EVERY Dark Souls game, Drangelic castle has to be my favourite... Okay, next to Anor Londo. 

All places in DS2 are noticeable and memorable in their very own way and I love that! I could never look my fill when I traveled from one location to the other. Even the Gutter has its own uniqueness. I still hate it. 

Now to DS1. It’s lower placed because in my opinion the levels are too bound to the Dark Medieval Fantasy theme. The game mainly consists of Castles, Dungeons, Catacombs, ruins of Castles, evil lairs filled with fire, abandoned Cities, maybe a forest. The only exceptions I can think of right now, are the Crystal Cave and Blighttown. But I think that’s it. 

Now to DS3. I don’t dislike the levels at all. I just think they’re... not quite diverse. Just like DS1, we have our ruins, catacombs, castles, forests, etc. But plus to this, another detail makes almost every location similar to each other: Everything is in ruins. Destroyed. Far past its glory. Abandoned. And full of freaking candles. Again, not that I dislike it. But I feel like so many levels follow the same style. Of course there are some exceptions here and there. Sure, it might have something to do with the lore in DS3. But it is as it is.

Bosses:

DS3 > DS1 > DS2

As I mentioned before, what makes bossfights far more enjoyable for me than in the other games, is the soundtrack. That already is a big plus point for DS3. Apart from that I appreciate the variety of the bosses. With that I don’t only mean the species, but also the sizes. From a group of old men up to one gigantic skeleton. 

Also I think DS3 has the most cutscenes for its bosses. Altogether I feel like most efforts were put into DS3 bosses than in the other games. And the fights themselves are often enjoyable. I can’t think of much that really frustrated me in the game, except the Curse Rotten Greatwood. But again, there I like that you have a different fight mechanic, where you have to hit specific spots to deal damage. Heck, I even like the fight against the Ancient Wyvern, just because the mechanics are different. 

The fights against DS1 bosses was also often fun. Except Bed of Chaos. But here you mainly just have the “beat it until it stops moving” fight. Pretty simple. Not that I complain though, it doesn’t make the fights less enjoyable. 

What I like the most about DS1 bosses, are the bosses themselves. With that I mean their character, their design, and most importantly: Their lore. I already knew Sif’s story before I started to play any Dark Souls just because he got so famous. I like how we have our four main bosses introduced in the beginning cutscene. With Gwyndolin you have the chance to freaking challenge a god. In the DLC you get into the role of the fairytales’ noble knight, who saves the land from evil forces, and who slays the big monster to rescue the pretty princess. Also the fight against Artorias is one of the best fights in the entire series. 

DS2 also has bosses which I like, simply because of their lore. Especially King Vendrick and the Ivory King. But what gives DS2 the last place, is the lacking diversity in the bosses. Many of them are... well... Dudes in Armors. Of course I think of the exceptions, too. And the fact that DS2 has so many bosses. But to put it simple: The number of good and enjoyable bosses is heavenly balanced with the number of frustrating / less memorable ones.

DLCs

DS2 > DS3 > DS1

As I said before: DS2 has a great level design. And the same goes to its DLCs. 

Frozen Eleum Loyce with its clear blue sky and buildings covered in snow is one of the prettiest areas in the series. And I love the idea, where you have the option to search for trapped Knights which will then help you to fight against the final boss. And the bossfight itself is also one of he best in the series. Mainly because of the boss stage itself and the Burnt Ivory King’s epic entrance. 

Heck, I even loved the Frigid Outskirts. I can see what it’s so hated by many fans, but I enjoyed the concept of this great field of snow, where you have to navigate trough the storms and defend yourself against demonic thunder horses. The grim Atmosphere is intense. Okay, I didn’t like the bossfight, but that’s actually the only negative point I have. 

While the other two DLCs weren’t that much fun and eye-candy, I still couldn’t stop exploring every corner of the maps. Especially the Sunken King DLC. Also the bosses were great, too. Even if I got really frustrated at the fight against Elana, I still liked her character design. 

So, in short: The flaws in DS2′s DLCs could be easily overshadowed by all the good aspects.

I actually had to think whether I should put DS3 above DS1 or otherwise. But I decided to rank DS3 higher because of the level design. To be honest, it wasn’t really that much fun to navigate through any DLC maps. The Ringes City looks beautiful though. And I liked that the lore about Gwyn was picked up again. The characters all were great and the fight against Ariandel and Friede was epic in every aspect. 

But from all levels in the series, I felt like the DLCs in DS3 are the least obliging. Yes, Dark Souls is known to be hard, I know that. But here it was just frustrating and disheartening. Usually when I die in Dark Souls, I’m thinking: Okay, next time I got this. I need to pay attention to X so I won’t get killed again. I can make it. Challenge accepted. But here I just was glad when I could bring places behind me. I didn’t feel that much of a sense of accomplishment while I fought my way through. It’s definetely the Lore that carried DS3′s DLC to the second place. Also Lorian was mentioned and had a role. Yes, that is important.

The main reason I placed DS1′s DLC last is the location’s design. Mainly it’s just a brighter, dryer version of Darkroot Garden. On the other hand I liked Oolacile and The Abyss. But especially in Oolacile I didn’t have that much fun either. Mainly because of the enemy type you encountered there. What I really liked though, were the bossfights. Okay, the Sanctuary Guardian and Kalameet were very similar to Monster Hunter battles for me. Manus was fun to fight because dodging his attacks felt really rewarding. Plus you had Sif by your side. But Artorias. Dang, he was hard. And Challenging. I died at least 20 times against him. But i didn’t care, just because the fight against him was so fantastic!

As I said, DS3 and DS1 are very close to each other and DS1 could have easily landed on second place, just because of Artorias. You could actually just consider both of them as second.

_________________________________________________

So, for now this will be it. I have no idea if anyone will ever read this list, or even care about my opinion. But I just felt like talking about anything Dark Souls related. Noone in my real life is interested in Dark Souls at all, so I decided to share my thoughts here.

If you want, you can write why you agree or disagree with my views. If you want, you can even ask for other aspects to rank the three games, but it’s totally up to you.

For those who spent their time reading this: Thank you very much for reading. It’s much appreciated!

[yoshifawful64]

For the meme: Neyla or Clockwerk! (who's the better villain?)

Ooh, this is a tough one — not just because they’re both fantastic villains, but also because (despite the whole Clock-La thing) they’re two very different approaches to villainy, and thus a bit harder to compare.

Like, Clockwerk’s this huge imposing centuries-old supervillain, you know? The sheer intimidation factor is super high with him, and in more than one way he kind of transcends everyone else, on a pedestal of notoriety and threat level that practically no one else can hold a candle to. Just the idea of a single person systematically hunting down and killing every single member of a family for eons, for no other reason than a hatred strong enough to overcome death itself, is a chilling concept. All that talk about being “superior” may not have been true, but it wasn’t exactly unfounded either — just by being who and what he is, Clockwerk creates a massive distance between himself and everyone else in the entire series, and that’s a big part of what makes him such an imposing and iconic figure.

In contrast, Neyla is nearly the complete opposite — she initially seems down-to-earth and streetwise, not to mention a friendly ally (and even a potential love interest). She gives off the impression that she’s just another regular person, if a little wilier and more informed than most. Then, of course, she starts revealing her true colours and almost methodically betraying every single person she’s met. Instead of evil lairs and death rays, she operates on a much smaller (yet no less effective) scale, by simply forging friendships and alliances, getting those people to trust her so she can get whatever she can out of them, then pulling the rug out from under them at the perfect moment. It’s impressive, too, how despite all the backstabbing, she still manages to give off the impression that she’s working for someone, just a piece of some bigger plan, until the very end where she finally reveals the only side she’s ever been playing for — her own. It’s a clever series of twists that is, in a sense, just one big twist, and I think that’s really brilliant. All this makes Neyla a villain that keeps surprising and never stays out of the narrative for too long, and her presence is felt throughout the whole game.

It’s a close and difficult choice, but ultimately, I think I’ll have to go with Neyla. I think Clockwerk’s unapproachableness kind of ends up being a double-edged sword — it gives him an unparalleled air of menace and gravity, yes, but it also makes him feel like he lacks depth a little; we only really know him for doing one thing, even if he does do it very well. I really think he could’ve used just a little more fleshing out — I agree too much knowledge could ruin his character, but I hold that he could’ve benefited from a just a vague hint or two about the origin of his feud, or a bit more foreshadowing in the first game. As is, he kind of turns up at the end without any real buildup beyond the (admittedly very ominous) cutscene right before his episode starts.

In comparison, you have a very personal stake in beating Neyla unlike all the others who are just mad at Sly’s dad. And not only has your relationship with her changed from friendly to hostile, her power level’s been steadily growing throughout the game too — from a lone constable to a skilled manipulator, then a police captain with enough authority to command an army of tanks and planes, and finally a mastermind on the cusp of immortality and likely world domination. Neyla’s there from start to finish, doing her best at every turn to manipulate events to her favour; she’s an active force who often dictates what direction the story goes in a way that Clockwerk never did.

[carrollstreetstation]

blood: a level-by-level breakdown

episode 1: the way of all flesh

the first episode, and the one included in the shareware version. like a lot of shareware episodes, it's generally a sort of mishmash of themes and ideas to provide a reasonable cross section of what a potential buyer could expect from the full game, introducing a small selection of enemies (zombies, the basic cultist and his tommygun counterpart, gargoyles, as well as minor menaces such as rats, the zombie fish, bats and a single grasping hand) as well as about half of the arsenal (up to and including the napalm launcher.) the name is a euphemism (actually a mistranslation from hebrew) for dying.

E1M1: cradle to grave (james wilson) almost every classic FPS game's first level is iconic and the subject of many remakes in other games. let's face it, there's few things a mapper covets more than the E1M1 slot. so here we are with caleb RISING FROM HIS GRAVE. the level is a cemetary and associated funeral home, rather short compared to the immediate next level, but twisting nicely in on itself. the opening room is surprisingly non-descript, just a simple, small crypt. duke nukem 3D in contrast might have dumped you on a fairly blank rooftop but it was a much more dynamic introduction to the game.

after a short couple of encounters in a cemetary you enter the funeral home proper. the chapel is where you get your first taste of the game's tendency to have enemies ambush you from above. up the stairs, past the organ, and through the mortuary, eventually winding up in a small crypt behind the building that leads to the exit. short and simple, but introducing some of the basics -- combat, enemies, secrets, while also showcasing a bit of the game's blackly morbid humor. by 1997 standards it's a gorgeously realized opener, with excellent use of texturing to create a gloomy, creepy setting to shoot zombies in.

E1M2: wrong side of the tracks (craig hubbard) this is where the game really starts to pick up. flowing smartly from the first level -- you start in the same spot you ended the last level, only now the way you came in is sealed off -- you start the level working your way down some train tracks; zombies and cultists stand in your way, and they've been offloading barrels with corpses in them, visible through the glass pane in the side (a reference to the classic zombie film "return of the living dead.") eventually you wind your way around to the front of 'miskatonic station' (heh) and it's lousy with tchernobog troops. they're not just gunning for you either, the zombies are swarming the nameless sadsack innocents that the cult has enslaved.

shoot your way through the station to the incoherent sound of announcements over the PA speaker, answer obscene calls on the public phones, check out pickman's bookshop and stop in for a bit at cask of amontillado. some really good moments here, such as the swarm of zombies breaking through the walls in the foreman's office and the bats flying out of the access tunnel leading off the tracks. it's also one of the best examples of the build engine era's attempts at creating realistic, every-day places to shoot things in.

E1M3: phantom express (james wilson) you've boarded a train and now you have to find a way to get into the engine car. a great opener as the train runs over some hapless folk stuck on the tracks. while the level is literally linear by necessity, it's still a rip-roaring good time as you clear out the cars one by one, culminating in an all-out shootout in the dining car in the back. for 1997 this level was extremely technically impressive; using a conveyor belt effect, they've created the impressive illusion that you're on a fast-moving train across the country. if you fall off, you die, so don't fall off. the conclusion of the level is quite dynamic, as you overload the engine and it explodes, ending the level.

E1M4: dark carnival (kevin kilstrom with revisions by james wilson) blood's pitch black sense of humor is on full display here. after the train derails you pick your way through the ruins until you reach a dark carnival full of wonders. a ghastly ticket collector sics zombies on you after you jump the line, and more zombies and cultists (and mimes) crowd the carnival from end to end. the midway has games of chance -- a shooting gallery, or the opportunity to field goal some severed heads for a prize. in the big tent is the tightrope over a pit of snakes, the big act of everyone's favorite circus freak, jojo the idiot boy. this is also where you meet your first gargoyles, when the carousel comes to life -- a good scare, there. on the way out, you have your options of where to go, even though the bridge collapsed: take a dive and swim to the exit, or cross the remains of the bridge to the secret level, provided you've found and remember the passcode. also: a delightfully vicious secret duke nukem cameo.

E1M8: house of horrors (james wilson) in case you weren't done with the carnival theme, E1M8 provides you with the ultimate carnival ride. the opener is pretty great, with a big horrible clown mouth you have to climb through; the walls are fleshy and gross, giving you the sense that maybe this might be more than just a carnival ride... it's an extremely linear affair as the water ride ferries you down a long winding tunnel, complete with ambushes and a few hilariously ineffectual jumpscares. the finale has you jumping out a window into a back lot for a big showdown before finding your way back to the regular ending of E1M4.

E1M5: hallowed grounds (nick newhard, craig hubbard, terry hamel) a major thematic change, one taking more after doom or quake than the usual "duke nukem for goths" that this game is. on rare occasion (well, half of episode four does it) the game decides music isn't necessary and turns it off for a level. deep, gutteral chanting, wind and thunder are your only soundtrack as you blast your way through a creepy temple. the cult's armies are out in full force here, lurking around every corner and coming at you in packs, with lots of ambushes from above and below. it's a long, winding nightmare that repeatedly loops in on itself. there are a few hints on how to complete the level, and you'd better heed them, because choosing the wrong door at the finale means fiery death. it's all burning torches and glowing candles, making this level a dark, moody affair, and one of the best-looking in the game.

E1M6: the great temple (terry hamel with revisions by james wilson) the climax of the episode is a big quake-style temple in the mountain, initially a linear affair as you work your way through some caverns up into the temple proper, only to switch back on itself several times. zombies, cultists and gargoyles are absolutely freaking everywhere. the level is highly reminiscent of quake in both layout and aesthetic, though as you near the upper areas and get a good look at just how high up you are it takes on a different vibe. plenty of traps, indiana jones style; plenty of firefights too, the best one being a huge shitshow in a room with a ramp that lines the walls, every inch of it covered in assholes to blow up -- and there's a dual akimbo powerup right there for you to grab.

E1M7: altar of stone (james wilson) the grand finale is just a simple boss level, though it'd make a good bloodbath level with its round shape, height variations and small dimensions. other than a couple of trash mobs nothing much happens until you step onto the central platform, at which point the biggest enemy you've seen yet, the huge stone gargoyle cheogh, comes after you. he doesn't have much in the way of attacks -- mostly just flies around and shoots electric blasts out of his eyes -- but he takes an enormous amount of punishment, shrugging off even your napalm launcher. upon prevailing, you're treated to a CGI cutscene that's far darker than its goofy early-90s models give it credit for.

final thoughts: for a shareware episode this is a fairly eclectic offering. the cemetary level sets the tone for the rest of the episode, but it's the train station that most ties in with the game's roots as a horror-themed response to duke3D. the train level is a technical marvel by 1997 standards, but it's probably the carnival levels (which are a clear reference to "something wicked this way comes") that give the episode its most iconic images, as carnival themes keep popping up. the back half of the episode with its sprawling temples really drive home the gothic horror vibe that the game goes for, as well as showcasing some of the more creative level design. if you're in 1997 and you're trying to decide if this game is right for you, this grab bag of a shareware episode should give you a good idea of what you're in for.

episode two: even death may die

while E1M1 is iconic, the entirety of episode 2 is equally so. set in the frigid north, with whole-level references to some of the most iconic horror tales ever written ("frankenstein," "the shining,") it's a departure from the first episode in that the theming is consistent throughout. even the haunted house level is surrounded by snow and cold. it also introduces several new enemies: the bloated zombie, the giant fish monsters, spiders, and most notably, the phantasm, a terrifying ghost that's only able to be hurt when it's about to attack you. the arsenal gets filled out a bit as well -- you now can use the special dynamite types as well as the ever-popular aerosol can flamethrower, plus the voodoo doll.

E2M1: shipwrecked (craig hubbard) the frozen north theme hits you like cold wind in the face, starting you out on a tiny boat heading towards a big wooden ship, locked in the ice (and named the HMS victor, in keeping with the obvious frankenstein ref.) while there's a few treats in the water, most of the level is spent exploring the relatively small ship, moving from fore to aft and back again as you collect keys and open up new rooms. your first encounter with gillbeasts will probably be in the small, flooded room at the fore, a nasty place to meet such a dangerous enemy. the finale is nonsensical, but kinda cool, and a quick swim later you're at the entrance to the next level.

E2M2: the lumber mill (craig hubbard) a quick little romp around a lumber mill, as the title suggests. mostly a small compound of small buildings, you'll be working your way around and through them, visiting each one in turn and clearing them out. first introduction of "bloated butchers" -- fat zombies with toxic puke and big cleavers that they throw at you. these guys can take a hell of a beating before going down. fun, short little level that exemplifies the exploratory focus a lot of these older FPS games had. good bit of humor to be had by the outhouses.

E2M3: rest for the wicked (kevin kilstrom and craig hubbard) it took me a long time to figure out what the hell this was supposed to be. essentially it's a prelude to the next level, a small hedge maze and resort complete with pool, hot tub, and the like -- all frozen over, of course. it's very restful with between 43 to 105 enemies running around. the hedge maze makes up most of the first part of the level, before switching over to the resort area, and then looping back around, finally sending you back to the start of the level, where you unlock a gate that leads to the exit. looming in the distance is a big old house, with one light on upstairs, and something in the window watching you...

E2M4: the overlooked hotel (kevin kilstrom with revisions by craig hubbard) zero points for guessing what this level is a reference to -- especially with that frozen guy in the hedge maze. the hedges aren't all that interesting otherwise, but once you get into the hotel proper the level really opens up, with an extremely non-linear layout for you to explore. not only that, but a series of very obvious secret passages basically connect the entire hotel, making it possible to duck in and out of rooms at will. this is also another example of the game making secret exits require a little bit of thought -- you need to find five tomes hidden around the hotel to unlock a portal. some good scares and creepy moments in this level, mostly based on "the shining," but my favorite is the library, the stacks illuminated by suspended lanterns, except for one in the far back, the chain swinging uselessly, with phantasms lurking in the shadow.

E2M9: thin ice (james wilson) if you liked the frozen sea from E2M1, you'll like this level, a big twisting network of caverns and cliffs overlooking a frozen lake. not much in the way of civilization here, but plenty of goons to shoot through. not a very visually interesting level, but it's fun to throw a dynamite plunger and watch chunks of ice break off and float to the other side of the lake. towards the end things get treacherous as you have to make some daring jumps from one jagged ice peak to the next.

E2M5: the haunting (james wilson and kevin kilstrom) while blood is primarily an action game, the developers did not at all forget that this is a loving pastiche of the horror genre, and as such have crafted one of the creepiest levels in the game, and my personal favorite of this episode. a sprawling old manor with a detached guest house, the enemy count is surprisingly low for the most part, allowing for a slow buildup of tension as you first work your way through a creepy hedgemaze, past the guest house (the same house you saw at the end of E2M3 in fact) and eventually into the mansion proper. it's all dark tunnels and cobwebs everywhere, most of the windows boarded up. phantasms lurk about upstairs, you can hear what sounds like hundreds of rats in the walls of the basement, and when you finally access that mysterious guest house...

if there's a level that most exemplifies what a creative mapper can do to scare people with the limited technology of the mid-90s, this is it.

E2M6: the cold rush (james wilson) after the open-ended nightmare that was E2M5, E2M6's little mining compound nestled in the cliffs is a refreshingly short little jaunt that's somewhat reminiscent of E2M9. at first the camp building (the sole structure) is inaccessible, requiring an extended detour of hopping from ledge to ledge around some perilously steep cliffs, eventually finding the key in a cave, which allows you to access the building proper. lots of gargoyles flying about to irritate you, along with the usual zombie/cultist trash. fun little surprise flamethrower trap when you go to look in a mirror, complete with crawling hands coming out of the walls to choke the life out of you. opening up the locked gate to the mine proper offers a real sense of forboding for such a simple effect -- but we're nearing the end, now.

E2M7: bowels of the earth (james wilson) the penultimate level of the episode is appropriately epic in scope: a long, mostly linear journey through a dark, seemingly abandoned mine that's already partially collapsed. while abandoned mining equipment has been left lying around here and there, for the most part this is a generally featureless series of tunnels and chambers, though towards the end it starts taking on a more concrete identity with a big underground waterfall as a major setpiece and some long-abandoned temple ruins. trash mobs are everywhere, including a great ambush early on where the tunnel collapses and zombies break out of the walls to surround you. at the end of your journey you're rewarded with what looks like a huge temple, with a swarm of spiders (and a stone gargoyle) crawling out of the darkened entryway. the lair of shial is near...

E2M8: the lair of shial (james wilson) like E1M7, the final level of the episode is just a small arena, though in this case it's a much more convoluted knot of twisting tunnels and chambers, with a huge spider nest in a small chamber that overlooks the bigger starting room. in that nest is shial, mother of spiders, and your boss for this episode. compared to cheogh she's much easier to deal with -- she moves slower and mostly sends swarms of spiders after you. and unlike cheogh, it's much easier to send her bouncing around with napalm launcher fire, thanks to her much smaller size. once she's been squashed, you're treated to another CGI cutscene, caleb cracking wise with an andrew dice clay reference of all things.

final thoughts: episode 2 is probably my favorite of the four original episodes. it's a gorgeously realized trek through varied settings that fit very well into the far north/winter theme. while craig and kevin's early levels are all great, it's james' later levels where the episode truly shines. hinting at the guest house of E2M5 as far back as E2M3 with two, if not three levels in between, was a great touch, and the way it teases you throughout E2M5 until you finally find the house key adds a little bit of power to a scene that otherwise might have been just another grisly moment in a game full of them.

episode 3: farewell to arms

episode 2 might have been cold and dark, but episode 3, in contrast, is positively explosive. this is probably where the game comes closest to its roots as a horror take on duke nukem 3D. set predominantly in a town somewhere in france, you'll spend a lot of time fighting in and around the streets, working your way through commercial businesses and other things you would expect to find in a small city. the cabal have come for war, and with them they've brought a dangerous new enemy: hellhounds, whose flaming breath can sap your health in seconds. fortunately, you also get to use the tesla cannon for the first time, and it puts them down right quick.

E3M1: ghost town (james wilson) right off the bat you know this isn't the typical blood level. you're dumped unceremoniously in a small section of the city, with a number of the shirtless innocents running away from you in the distance. tall buildings surround you, and the streets seem clear of cabal. this all changes once you start poking around in buildings, as cultists and zombies start coming out of the woodwork and stuff starts blowing up. in true duke3D style, after surviving a shootout in a small office room, you get to watch from the window as the building across the street is reduced to rubble in an impressive explosion. the biggest challenge, however, is clearing the hotel lobby, which is just lousy with armed cultists, who've put up couches as barricades. if you're savvy and quick, a reflecting shots powerup will make this encounter a breeze. some other neat moments are the elevator that collapses with a super secret at the top of the shaft if you can climb to it, and the secret room modeled after the sloth murder scene from the film se7en, complete with air fresheners.

E3M2: the seige (craig hubbard with additional work by terry hamel) craig hubbard has pulled out all the stops for what's one of the most creative and brilliant levels ever devised. judging by the development notes, craig really enjoyed himself with this level, and it shows. right off the bat you get to watch as literal actual airplanes bomb the streets below (using some cool design tricks to make it look good,) followed by room-to-room fighting, shooting your way through the city as air raid sirens scream non-stop and explosions and gunfire ring out in the distance. it's a brilliant piece of work, atmospheric as hell and fitting right in with blood's overall theme as caleb's all-out war on the cabal escalates into full-scale mayhem. probably my single favorite level in the whole game.

E3M3: raw sewage (james wilson) obligatory sewer level. seems like almost every early FPS game had to have one, going at least as far back as doom 2's second level in 1994. in any case, this is a fairly linear but twisting shootout through a rather modern sewer system. the usual trash mobs are here, including plenty of zombies, but little in the way of higher-level enemies save a few bloated butchers and a poorly placed mother spider. not a lot to really write home about, though some neat build engine tricks like opening the machine that protects the eye key provide some nice visuals to an otherwise non-descript series of tunnels.

E3M4: the sick ward (craig hubbard and james wilson) probably the very first use of a hospital in an FPS game (or second, if you count system shock's medical deck) and it continues with episode 3's rip-roaring urban warfare setting. it's a sprawling, thoroughly modern (and anachronistic) medical facility, filled with the usual goons and ghouls for you to gun down. most encounters aren't too tough, though a surprise pair of hellhounds can catch you off guard as you round a corner. some good laughs with the "assisted suicide ward" being a torture room and some good creepy moments with zombies rising from their beds to come after you, among others. eagle-eyed players (or just anyone who played duke nukem 3D) can spot the button in the chapel that opens up the secret exit. all in all, a solid, well-rounded level that offers a decent challenge and takes a setting that's already kind of creepy and ramps it up.

E3M8: catacombs (james wilson and craig hubbard) normally you would expect a secret level to have some kind of gimmick or whatever, but unfortunately E3M8 offers very little of interest save for a few cool encounters (mostly tons of zombies crowding some of the back corridors, and a prominently-placed guns akimbo powerup to mow them down with.) it doesn't even really look like much of a catacomb, just a series of poorly-lit, underground corridors filled with enemies to mow down. feeling more like a doom level, it's the kind of abstract nowhere that games like duke 3D were intended to move away from with their focus on realism. a fairly weak outing, all the more annoying that it's a secret level. the end has some neat rotating sector tricks to lead into the far more industrial E3M5.

E3M5: spare parts (james wilson and craig hubbard) and now for something completely different. wilson and hubbard have crafted a convincing industrial nightmare here, some sort of foundry perhaps -- it's hard to tell as it seems to be generally a series of big rooms full of molten material, and most of your time will be spent traversing the catwalks and side passages surrounding it. good use of textures enforces a consistent theme, and there's a subtle style to the architectural detailing that makes it more than just a series of boxes. some fun encounters here, especially the security scanner which detects you as an intruder and first sets flamethrowers on you, then some zombies.

E3M6: monster bait (james wilson and terry hamel) continuing in the industrial theme of E3M5 we have a sprawling dam complex reminiscent of duke 3D's water treatment plant level. it's a little anachronistic, but it works within the context of the episode. like E3M3 and E3M5 it's a mostly linear affair with you blasting your way through a horde of trash mobs (including a ton of cultists) and the occasional hellhound or butcher. the turbine room isn't the most intense encounter, but it's certainly the most visually arresting. though you do get a cool vista from the dam.

E3M7: the pit of cerberus (james wilson and craig hubbard) it's fitting that an episode so focused on fire and explosions should end in an underground temple crumbling under lava flows. it's a bit less interesting, design-wise, than shial's lair; first you have to find four switches to start the battle against cerberus, who announces his arrival with cool collapsing walls and explosions. cerby is dangerous when his AI works, spitting fireballs at you that do incredible damage (and set you on fire.) when he gets stuck on architecture is when he's most vulnerable. other than that, it's a pretty straightforward fight, especially since he's relatively slow, so it's easy to lure him down one of the side paths for a breather.

final thoughts: episode three is, if nothing else, a showcase for the build engine. all kinds of little tricks are at work here to give the episode its look and feel; take a look at how the airstrike in E3M2 works sometime. while it's a bit more varied in its theming -- moving from urban warfare to industrial carnage, with a decidedly out-of-place secret level -- it's still a generally coherent trip, moving away from the grotesqueries of the first episode and the frigid nightmares of the second towards a modernist city setting. with a little creativity one could run with this theme for some interesting horror-noir stuff, but the all-out action we get for this outing is perfectly fine too.

episode 4: dead reckoning

the final episode of the original retail version, "dead reckoning" is like episode 1 in that it's a bit of a grab bag of themes, feeling overall like where the leftover levels and dregs of the design team's ideas went. the first half is a weird mix of mad science and a few whole-level references to classic slasher flicks, only to switch to a hellish setting out of doom for the back half. the hellstaff makes its appearance at last in this episode, proving itself a devastating top-tier weapon.

E4M1: butchery loves company (james wilson) starting episode 4 off right with a classic frankenstein-style mad scientist's castle. based on development notes this was one of the very earliest maps to be created, and it shows, as it's very small and doesn't really come up to the standards of, say, E2M5. at best we can see a few sights like what might be frankenstein's main lab, brain storage (no zombies allowed), a ritual and/or book club meeting in the front hall, and a lot of timing-based secrets that reveal themselves without the player even trying. despite its short length, you'll have to manage your ammo carefully, as the level is a bit stingy with weaponry while throwing a few high-level enemies at you like hellhounds. eventually you find your way into a back room and the exit, all too soon.

E4M2: breeding grounds (james wilson, craig hubbard, terry hamel) but wait! there's more! apparently not satisfied with the tiny mad scientist level, wilson et al. went on to create a much larger level that, thanks to the level transition, is very clearly part of the castle proper, despite its much more modern look. oriented around a pair of huge flooded fish tanks full of angry gillbeasts and bone eels, the level is a mostly linear affair that loops in on itself, with locked gates and doors eventually being reached from the other side. it's a visually striking level at times, with scenes such as the curved observation hallway with a view into the big round tank, or the forboding gate to the spider habitat that you must clear. combat is a steady drip with occasional hellhound encounters as well as a mother spider and stone gargoyle to block your way.

E4M3: charnel house (craig hubbard and james wilson) of course, if you're running an evil mad scientist lab and you're going through a lot of bodies you're going to need a place to deal with the leftover cadavers, right? the actual corpse-disposal facility is but a small part of the overall level, and much of your time is spent blasting your way through the tunnels and corridors of an aqueduct system the charnel house sits atop. fairly low-key for the most part, save for a few intense moments where gillbeasts come after you when you're in the water, though there is a moment where part of the map is repopulated by a troop of zombies. a decent little maze but nothing to write home about.

E4M4: crystal lake (kevin kilstrom and james wilson) ki ki ki ma ma ma

i mean, what else do you want me to say about an obvious friday the 13th reference? you can even find jason's mask and knife in a barn. in any case, this is one of those build-cute type levels that's mostly a series of tunnels and corridors where all the walls are plastered with a forest texture to give the impression that you're in an actual forest, punctuated by a disjointed collection of buildings to give the impression of camp grounds. it's largely very linear, your path through the woods eventually terminating at an outhouse, beneath which is a flooded tunnel that leads to the exit as well as to the infamous crystal lake, which is home to a school of gillbeasts. the lake itself has very little to distinguish itself from any big water-filled hole, though there's a hellstaff on a raft if you need it. also, though the secret exits of the first two episodes required a little thinking to work out, in this case they don't even make you look for a button. you basically have to know exactly what wall to blow up, because the classic cracked-wall sprite that indicates a destructable wall is almost invisible against the cave texture it's on, and the chamber is dark anyway. it's worth it, though...

E4M9: mall of the dead (craig hubbard) craig's solo act returns for a level that's easily as memorable as E3M2, if only for that goofy-ass mall music. no prize for guessing what movie *this* is based on... though there's curiously not as many zombies as you'd expect. it's not super huge, but there's some good encounters (including a twofer stone gargoyle bout in the fountain room) and there's a few laughs with the store names. a sudden swarm of zombies as you turn a corner reminds you of this level's inspiration, and to escape the mall you climb up onto the roof. it's anachronistic, but who cares?

E4M5: fire and brimstone (james wilson) the back half of the episode begins in earnest with james wilson offering a taste of hell in this jarring thematic departure from the early levels. (there's a possibility the regular ending of E4M4 naturally leads to this level, but it's not the cleanest transition.) essentially a big volcanic pit honeycombed by cavern tunnels and ancient ruins, your path winds through the caves, hopping over lava flows, through the upper rooms of a central tower and finally on to an underground temple of sorts. pretty steady drip of combat, though lots of hellhounds and an inordinate amount of gargoyles to blow up. not a long level, nor particularly intense, but thematically stands out a bit from the other ancient ruins of evil this game features.

E4M6: the ganglion depths (james wilson and terry hamel) while it's not the penultimate level before the final boss, it very much feels like one, reminiscent of E1M6 with its mostly linear traversal, high-above-the-clouds setting and sinister ancient ruins set into steep cliffs. lots of tough encounters here, including several spider mommas (notably a twofer in a tomb) and a nasty fight right at the start with gargoyles (including a stone one) and some goons with only a bridge and some ledges to fight on. lots of generic evil chambers as sinister chanting fills the air, but some creative encounters and setpieces help salvage what's largely a lot of narrow corridors.

E4M7: in the flesh (craig hubbard and james wilson) the penultimate level is by far the weirdest one, thematically. no ancient temples, no crumbling cities. just a huge cavern of flesh, filled with the sound of slow breathing. a shockingly low enemy count for the final non-boss level, but devoid of the usual trash mobs, instead throwing gargoyles and gillbeasts and hellhounds at you. a few distinct areas evoke actual internal organs, such as the heart, lungs, and, amusingly enough, the stomach. combat is either trivial or a pain, the latter especially when dealing with the stone gargoyle in the stomach area.

E4M8: the hall of the epiphany (kevin kilstrom) the game's finale, and the place you've been trying to get back to since E1M1. after a brief cutscene, you're treated to a tiny map that opens up in sections as you first have to fight another stone gargoyle, another mother spider, and another cerberus, in order, before finally confronting tchernobog himself. the battle is not as straightforward as you'd expect; aside from a hitscan attack that sets you on fire, he also shoots out devastating fireballs akin to a cyberdemon rocket in doom. it's largely down to who kills who first, though utilizing the high-level weaponry such as the hellstaff will help. a bit of a disappointing fight altogether.

final thoughts: for what's essentially the finale of the game, episode four is dissapointingly the weakest part of the game. while the final few levels have a coherent theme and transition among them, the first half feels like the design team had too many ideas they really wanted to put into the game and had nowhere else to put them. it's not to say they're bad, but E4M1 especially feels like a wasted opportunity and probably deserved to have been cut, or at the very least merged with E4M2. the mall level is truly great, though. the final boss was also disappointing, with a poorly-designed arena making matters worse. as a whole it's simply not as memorable as the rest of the game.

h/t to the blood wiki for the screenscreamshots

[imx-doomer]

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (A review of sorts)

[Image Credits: @CallegosY on Twitter]

The latest entry in the Wolfenstein franchise has left quite an impact in many ways. It is been four months since the release of the game but, has it really been said everything about the game? I don't think so.

(I mean, I wouldn't be writing this if that were to be the case, I think).

A disclaimer: This post will be very, very long (I think it has the right to be), and it will contain major spoilers about Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and the previous games (The New Order and The Old Blood). Desist from reading this post if you have not played and finished the game(s) on its entirety, and go play them before reading this.  English is also not my first language so please excuse the grammatical mistakes I might have.

As of right now my experience with the game is based on me watching someone else play the game on launch, not because I prefer it that way (I heavily oppose that kind of practice, actually), but because I do not own Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus or the hardware to run the game on my PC. However, it is my intention to acquire the means to play the game as soon as possible, because I firmly believe that's how you're going to get the full experience.

It took 25 years for a Wolfenstein game to feature Adolf Hitler up front in its main story again. That same amount of time also happens to be the time Wolfenstein was absent from being in a position of controversy. But, contrary to what one would have thought a few years back, the inclusion of Hitler himself was not the cause of the controversy.

A lot has changed in those 25 years, but, as the saying goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same. And if there's something that I have learned from all my years spent playing videogames is that people will always complain about them no matter what. I don't have the exact percentage, but most of the time, those complains are dumb. Really dumb.

As a matter of fact, back in the day in 1992 when Wolfenstein 3-D was released it received complains about being "too violent" and "being heavy on the ketchup", and also even the Anti-Defamation League protested the inclusion of swastikas and nazis in the game (Source: Masters of DOOM, pages 114-115). This also ended up causing the game to be banned in Germany, because of the prohibition of nazi imagery in entertainment.

Keep in mind, this was way back in 1992. Of course, don't get me started when DOOM came out. That's a whole different story.

Another game that fell into controversy (as that franchise usually does, now that I think about it), was GTA: San Andreas. I remembered San Andreas while I was writing this post because I reminded myself of the days where I swore to not even touch the game, in part because of a portion of its fanbase (my experience with the game back then consisted of annoying kids playing nothing else but GTA:SA in arcades or cybercafes).

But then one day I decided to play the game myself for the first time, and after the first three hours I was sold. There's this one spot in the highway that connects Verdant Bluffs with Downtown Los Santos, near El Corona and the Los Santos Intl. Airport, where cars would go fast enough to crash with one another and cause huge explosions without any actual input of the player. Those who have played the game might remember that spot. You could just stand there and watch the show unfold, it was so hilarious to me.

That's how I learned to separate the game from the things that ultimately had zero impact on the game itself. A very valuable lesson.

But now, let's talk about the Wolfenstein II, shall we?

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a videogame released in November of 2017, developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks for PC, XBox One and PlayStation 4. In this year (2018) it is expected to be released on the Nintendo Switch with help of the same studio (Panic Button) that worked on the port of DOOM 2016.

Now. The game?

The game...is good.

Keep in mind, I said "good". Not very, or great, or excellent, or fantastic, or maybe even GOTY. "Good". There is definitely a feeling that the game could've been -at least- very good, or that it could've achieved GOTY status. In fact, even after some people claimed The New Colossus to be their own GOTY, it wasn't until very recently that Wolfenstein II received a nomination from an important institution for GOTY; a GOTY nomination that ended up losing in favor of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Now, some of you definitely have issues with a few parts of the game, and I don't really know if we have the same kind of issues, but I'll give you the very short description of mine:

-The story happens, B.J. liberates America from the nazis (big spoilers there I know), but it doesn't really feel like it actually did. There's a feel of balance between the gameplay and cutscenes, but some key moments in the story lacked the necessary impact that was needed in order to strengthen their importance in a game where the story is supposed to matter. -The game also has some balance issues with the difficulty, or rather, the AI of a few enemies. -The gameplay enhancements (you know the ones) arrive perhaps a little bit late, and are not properly introduced in a way that could've improved the experience of the game for many players. -The main villain of this game doesn't even hold a candle compared to the main villain of the previous game, or even other villains of the new game itself. And this is further reinforced by... -The absolute STATE of the last sequence of the game.

There was also another issue. When the game was released there were two groups of people, those who couldn't run the game, and those who bought the console versions. Jokes aside, there were (and maybe still are) some optimization issues with the PC version of the game that stopped a lot of people from playing it, but then again, you had people with PCs that could actually run the game with little to zero issues. Such is life in the mustard zone, I guess.

(Wasn't DOOM 2016 plagued with those issues too? Someone help me with this)

I will expand on each issue in a moment, but before that...

-Wolfenstein: The New(found) Audience-

...Remember what I said about GTA: San Andreas and actually giving videogames a chance? That's more or less what happened with the new Wolfenstein game, I believe. We all were witnesses of that, because the moment when the first trailer for Wolfenstein II was shown back in last year's E3, people that have never touched or mentioned a single FPS game in their lives became instant fans of the franchise.

But, well, to be completely honest, there was more to that than just the footage of the first trailer that made people glued to Wolfenstein. I believe I don't need to go in full details about what I'm talking about. That's not (and will not be) what this post is about and that's an entirely different subject anyway. These series of events have naturally left a lot of people angry and tired. And it should be no surprise that people would latch onto the new game as soon as it was officially announced and started being promoted.

Quite frankly, if you didn't see that coming after the events of August of 2017 in the US, you were either looking the other way, or you haven't realized the kind of impact videogames have these days.

I mean, there's no gentle way for me to put it, that was bound to happen one way or the other. It's not my intention to brag (it isn't something to brag about anyway), but I hinted this scenario way back in a post made in January of last year, so I guess you could say my expectations were met on that aspect.

Though I must say, I genuinely did not expect to see people loving this game when last year they were part of the crowd criticizing DOOM 2016 for being "too violent"...

I did not expect to be proven wrong, that is! I thought their morals were firm about that subject, one can only guess they had a change of heart when they saw the trailer, too!!

(Image by @gamepadink on Twitter)

You have to admit that Bethesda and MachineGames capitalized on this. It took a while, but they did.

They initially choose to distance themselves from any comparisons with real-life events....

And here’s the [SOURCE] of that, by the way.

They did, however, a release of a partial demo of the game to various gaming websites featuring two sections of the game, one of them featuring a very peculiar chitchat between two nazi soldiers that served as a double hook aimed at the new audience gained by the E3 trailer.

It also hinted the very premature death of a certain character, that's also why I told everyone who were avoiding being spoiled to look away from the videos featuring that demo.

They maintained their distance for a while, but then on October 5th they decided to bite the bullet and go all-out. I don't have the screenshot of the initial promotional message but at this point there's no need for a reminder, I think.

Naturally that move turned some people off, and not because they felt personally attacked by the decision, but because there were fears of the game being unnecessary meddled with references to modern-day political events, and making the game look and feel dated in the process.

At least that's how one group of people felt. You also have that other group of very fine tiki torch people that...well, you know the story by now.

Now, after the game was finally out in the shelves and people finally got to play it, personally, I think that was not the case. Keep in mind, there is a handful of nods to modern-day events here and there, but you have to really deviate from the gameplay and search for them in the game to find them; and there's nothing that genuinely gets in the way of gameplay and the main story, and barring three characters that may have been based on real-life characters of the time and a certain old nazi German, there's not a single character in the game that resembles someone in our current day or anything like that.

People will definitely have their opinions of the marketing moves made by Bethesda and MachineGames to promote the game, but you gotta admit that, marketing-wise, they played their cards very well. I mean, one of the golden rules of marketing is to make the consumer feel like they need your product, isn't it? It might be a poor move, but in general the basics of marketing have never been about morals. Whether they turned more people off compared to the ones being brought in or not, I feel it can't be guessed right now. The game was released four months ago and the Switch port is coming soon, I feel there’s something more to come to give a final verdict.

"But WHY were people complaining? Wolfenstein has always been about killing nazis!"

I mean, yes. Nice observation. That is absolutely correct, but let me ask you something:

Where were you back when Castle Wolfenstein was released? Where were you when Wolf3D or maybe Return to Castle Wolfenstein were released? Shit, where were you when Wolfenstein: The New Order was released?

Where were you these 24 years while Wolfenstein was a thing in the gaming industry? Where were you back when Wolfenstein was seen as 'yet another boring WWII FPS game'?

Feel free to not give an answer, I'm not expecting one anyway, but me and many others were suspecting, almost standing by for this to happen around the time of release.

But hey, who the fuck am I to be the unofficial Wolfenstein gatekeeper, anyway? As a matter of fact, fuckin’ welcome to videogames! Pick your favorite and feel free to disconnect a little bit from reality. That’s why they were made!

-The Right Game, The Wrong Time?-

In a way, Wolfenstein II can't really be compared with other games that don't rely heavily on its story like the ones from the new, current Wolfenstein timeline do; DOOM 2016 for example, it employs 20 seconds of the beginning of the game to show the player how much the story matters by making the main character push away a status screen during a cutscene while making a little bit of fun of the usual cinematic sequences that some modern FPS games have.

Wolfenstein II, on the other hand, uses the first 10 minutes to set up the tone for the game by going full narrative/interactive cutscene mode. Unlike the new DOOM, the current timeline for Wolfenstein sets the player in a game where the story takes a slightly bigger spotlight compared to the gameplay.

And from what some of the reactions I saw, most people who picked the game seemed to ignore this, expecting The New Colossus to play like DOOM 2016. Big mistake.

You're not an unstoppable inter-dimensional being of legend, prohibited by Hell itself from being disturbed from its involuntary and forced imprisonment (Doomguy/Doomslayer), you're a war hero that went back from being comatose for more than 20 years, barely survived a grenade blast, and is stuck with half health for half the portion of the game (Blazko).

(Some of) those who complained also seemed to completely forget the existence of The New Order, and treated The New Colossus as the very first time where a Wolfenstein game was more story-driven compared to previous installments. Now, I did not have the opportunity to time the cutscenes and the actual gameplay, but truth be told, and comparing it to other modern-day games, The New Colossus doesn't feel like you're "playing" a movie at all.

With that being said, the story portion could've definitely been expanded a little bit. Some side missions are somewhat important in terms of additional upgrades and missing holes in the main story, maybe they could've been included in a way where you can get to play them in a specific order before getting into the main missions of the game. It's definitely not the "interactive movie" that some people were painting The New Colossus to be. And while it may or may not have the amount of levels that The New Order had, it's still a good single-player ride. But...maybe it wouldn't have hurt if the ride lasted a little bit more?

I will touch the main story in a moment. And boy oh boy, there's a lot to talk about it.

-From 0 To 10, How Hard Do You Want The Nazi Dog To Kill You?-

The difficulty is also something that I've been hearing a lot about. I think this was something that an important portion of the people expected to happen with the buzz that Wolfenstein II got (me included). Now, like I said in the disclaimer, I don't own the game (YET), so I can't really speak much about the difficulty of the game as much as I would like to, but I'll say this:

A good game is not a good game without some kind of challenge. When trying a new game, let the game challenge you for a bit, see for yourself how much you can handle. If you're facing heavy opposition and you can't get past it, lower the difficulty, but JUST by one level.

And if you really can't help it, fine, go ahead and take the dive straight to "Can I Play, Daddy?", but please don't go around saying the only way to enjoy The New Colossus is on Easiest! That's just something you don't want to say in public, unless getting trashed on the internet is your kink.

(Not that I'm actively trying to kinkshame anyone, mind you. You do yourself!)

From the gameplay that I was witness of when I was watching a stream of the game, some enemies were just your normal, run-of-the-mill mobs, then you had the ones that had a little bit of a different dynamic that the player had to get accustomed to in order to advance, and then you had the bullshit nazi dogs that could just end your run in less than two seconds.

There's also another issue with some bosses of the game, because at the time, there were at least a couple of boss battles that the player could dismiss entirely without any punishment. One of them was definitely in Roswell. You could just, escape, run over a few nazis on the way and completely skip fighting that big ass robot. Was this intentional or not, I'm not that sure myself.

Apparently a patch was released recently in order to fix and balance the difficulty a little. Like I said, I really can't say much about it or confirm anything about it, my experience was obtained during the first days after the release of the game. But only those who are willing to give the game a second play might want to check if this ended up benefiting the game or not.

What could also benefit from a patch of sorts is the plot of the game, if you ask me...

-The Story-

Boy...

Except for a couple of people, the characters were fine to me. There was a continuity between some of the characters in terms of their background, but some others were kind of dismissed as the story went along.

Barring the obvious changes that he went thru before The New Colossus, Blazkowicz was the same good ol' Blazko from the previous game. His struggle is pretty damn present throughout the game, and we get a bit of background in regards of his childhood.

In regards to how the game starts, it goes more or less like this:

The game starts with B.J. Blazkowicz back in General Deathshead's compound on the brink of death. A grenade just exploded right between him and Deathshead, which obliterated the nazi leader's head to pieces and left Blazko with a nasty open wound, laying on the ground. Blazkowicz starts having flashbacks as he's being rescued by his comrades before an atom bomb hits the compound. One of the flashbacks involves his mother Zofia (with a very visible black eye) feeding him on his bed, another flashback is the "Make A Choice" scene where you pick between saving Wyatt or Fergus, which is the same choice you make in The New Order that determines which timeline you play in both games. It seems like they decided to make the player pick a timeline again.

After you make a choice, you see Anya (B.J.'s girlfriend) with the rest of the search group (and the person you saved) rescuing B.J. before an atom bomb hits Deathshead's compound, which is something I assumed was going to happen *after* the bomb hit.

B.J. Blazkowicz somehow surviving an atom bomb would've kicked major ass. Oh well. Letdown City - Population: Me.

Someone gives the order to Bombate to drop the bomb, and as soon as it hits the compound Blazkowicz blacks out again. Back to his childhood, his mother (with no black eye this time) hands him a heirloom, an engagement ring that was handed by her father. Then, Blazkowicz's father is back home, and she quickly tells him to hide it.

And speaking of which, yeah. B.J.'s father. Not the very best example of a model dad.

-Rip Blazkowicz, American Traitor-

MachineGames took some ballsy decisions with the direction of the sequel to The New Colossus. One of them being turning B.J.'s father into basically the complete opposite of his son.

On one hand, you have William Joseph Blazkowicz, undeniably a war hero, hardened by one tragedy after another, and caring of his close friends and loved ones, going as far as willing to give his own life to save theirs. On the other, you have Rip Blazkowicz, a good for nothing, selfish, avaricious and failed salesman, and a traitor to the country.

Oh, and he's also racist.

The game tells you right away that Rip is not a very good person. It actually gets you involved with B.J.'s childhood in such a way that the very first interactions you have in the game are throwing jars at him after he hit Zofia, and the other one involves taking yet another impactful decision over the family pet dog. And I really, really hope you were part of the group who intentionally missed that shot.

Rip is straight up a bona fide asshole. And while you may have the usual crowd that will complain about its inclusion because they feel projected on him, some others might be concerned with the prominence of the role he was given in the story

He actually plays a key part, not only in Blazkowicz's childhood but also on the events of the game. And again, more to that in a moment; but if you still can't get over his existence in the game and the role he takes in Blazkowicz's life, just remember that this current timeline is set in an alternate universe where the nazis won WWII; it does not rewrite the events of Wolfenstein 3-D, and in that timeline Blazkowicz still lends a hand in helping the Allies beat the nazis and win WWII, he's still a war hero with a proud family behind him.

I mean, the Blazkowicz from the Wolf3D timeline married a (seemingly) all-American woman, I guess that's all you need to differentiate him from this Blazko (who married an ass-kicking Polish nurse of Jewish descent).

Now back to The New Colossus and back in 1961, B.J. Blazkowicz wakes up after remembering those traumatic moments, and barely manages to sit in a wheelchair in order to defend Eva's Hammer (the submarine he captured in The New Order) from an assault of nazis leaded by Frau Irene Engel, seeking revenge after Blazko killed her lover, Bubi, and destroyed Deathshead's compound.

Blazko receives a gun from a guy that looks a lot like Dolph Ziggler back when he had brown hair, and then goes to town killing nazis while he's sitting on a wheelchair.

Surprisingly enough one of the most enjoyable points in the game. It was also a really big introduction of Blazkowicz's all-out approach against opposition to the newest players, because nothing beats the feeling of killing nazis while strapped on a wheelchair.

(Well, maybe being Doomguy can beat that).

After being (re)introduced to the Jewish scientist Set Roth and seemingly killing all the nazis that got inside the submarine, he gets rescued from a sneaking nazi soldier by a pregnant Anya (pregnant with twins!).

Holy shit, Anya. She became the low-key MVP of the Resistance, and she also plays a few roles in some of the most ridiculous moments of the game. It can be argued that she doesn't really have to do the stuff she does, but if some of the info. I gathered about The New Order is true, she might as well be one of the most heavy-tempered women in any WWII game.

A few moments later you are re-introduced to two returning characters (Frau Engel, the main villainess, and Caroline Becker, the leader of the Resistance) and a brand new one who is directly related to Frau Engel. Engel takes her sweet time to both call out Blazko while she holds an unconscious Caroline captive as well as reprehend her daughter, Sigrun Engel, for not being tough enough to be part of the Regime and their antics. The player can't help but reflect back at the flashback moments that transpired between Blazkowicz and his father, which is definitely something that was put there intentionally by MachineGames to get you involved even further with the story.

Blazkowicz lets himself get captured with the intentions of saving Caroline with help of the friend who was saved during the first cutscene of the game. Inside their ship, Frau Engel taunts Blazko as well as Caroline, orders the nazi guard to knock her down and hands over an axe to Sigrun. Engel wants her daughter to kill Caroline herself by chopping her head off, but Sigrun refuses. Engel insults and berates her own daughter, makes her cry, slaps her, takes the axe, and does the job herself. Frau Engel proceeds to take Caroline's lifeless head and taunts Blazko with it.

Yet another traumatic moment for poor B.J., and boy oh boy, unfortunately the trauma won't be stopping there.

I think the game failed to set up the importance of Caroline for the Resistance, as she was the former leader of the Resistance before her unfortunate demise. She also played an important part in the previous game, which is yet another reason why you should play it just so you can get the idea! Caroline inadvertently becomes a martyr, and one of the main reasons why Blazko pulls himself thru all the bullshit from the first half of the game, to the point of murmuring to himself, asking her to "borrow her wings" for a moment (he actually wears the Da'at Yichud Power Suit that Caroline wore during the first game).

Once she's done, Frau Engel attempts to harm your comrade with the same axe, but Sigrun prevents her own mother from killing him, and then you either get Fergus with only one arm or Wyatt with severe ear damage, depending on which one you rescued. Blazko kills the guards, gets inside the Power Suit and proceeds to fuck up the nazis on their own ship. Having played the first proper level of the game, you end up freeing Eva's Hammer from the nazi captivity, and proceed to carry over Caroline's headless body alongside your friend and a poor Sigrun who wants to redeem herself and distance from her vile mother.

And who wouldn't want to distance itself from your parent who is a fucking nazi general, anyway?

-Sigrun Engel, Too Pure For This World-

Okay everyone, raise your hand those of you who did not like Sigrun at all. Okay, lower them down. Now close this tab and be gone from this post. Leave her alone, you of little faith.

In the midst of the most gruesome global conflict planet Earth has seen yet, Sigrun Engel takes a role that she wouldn't have wanted to play if given the chance. It's one thing to be born a German during WWII, but being the daughter of a nazi general with thirst of world dominance and revenge? Shit, man.

It's pretty clear that before meeting the Resistance (and even after doing so), Sigrun had nobody to talk to and help her cope with her grief. She suffered abuse from her own mother because of her condition, and she goes as far as describing in her diary an encounter with fucking Hitler himself where he orders Frau Engel to put her daughter in a body conditioning camp of sorts.

If you don't side with someone who got fat-shamed by fucking Hitler, I'm letting you know right now, I don't fuck with you.

Now, naturally a few interactions were to be expected between a descendant of a nazi and a descendant of a Jewish family, and this ends up being the case with a heated discussion between Sigrun and Anya that takes place in the dining area of the submarine of the Resistance. Blazkowicz can't help but feel bad for her, and Sigrun seems to understand that virtually nobody wants her to take part in the group.

And things just get uglier when Grace joins the Resistance as their new leader.

After you're done with the first proper level of the game and finish paying respects to Caroline, you are now free to wander around the submarine. You can do a few side missions, interact with some of the members of the Resistance, and you can also end up killing a few nazis that were pretty damn hidden inside the submarine! Apparently they were the reason why they were captured by Engel at the beginning of the game, so your second mission ends up being cleaning that hidden area of the submarine.

After doing that, your next stop is New York, which ended up being victim of an atomic bomb from the nazi regime that ended up causing the defeat and surrender of the US. Caroline's will was to liberate the US from the nazis and make it the central base of operations with the purpose of liberating the rest of the world. With that objective in mind, it seemed that Caroline had made contact with another resistance group hiding in the Empire State Building. And Grace Walker is their leader.

Now, Grace is uh...well, she's tough, and she's got a deep sense of assertiveness that makes her naturally a leader. But she's far from being a great, let alone a perfect leader.

She naturally hates nazis and the white supremacists that oppressed her and her people before, during and after the war, and that's completely understandable and justifiable. But what I find hard to justify is the severe trust issues and prejudice she has.

First of all she points a gun at B.J.'s head the moment he arrives at their base despite the fact that she may have been told by Caroline beforehand that there might be a chance of a white, tall dude with blue eyes named William Joseph Blazkowicz to show up in their base and contact them. Maybe she completely forgot about that, maybe she didn't. Then Grace pulls that idiot prank on him with the grenade that wasn't a grenade but actually it was a dud. Like, come on.

Then you have the inevitable clash with Sigrun Engel. Grace doesn't hold back and just kept calling her names and calling her a 'nazi spy' until the poor European girl had enough. Grace genuinely spend her moments as leader in the game bullying Sigrun whenever she dared to speak, and this isn't up to debate, it is a fact. 

And if you ask me, Grace is a downgrade from Caroline when it comes to leaders of the Resistance. Anya actually ended up being the interim leader while the New York mission played out (a pretty damn fun mission, I might add), and she seemed to be pretty good at it, so why Grace ended up being the new leader, anyway? Yes, she has a good amount of experience, but so does Anya. Oh well, apparently it was part of Caroline's plan for Grace to become the new leader (according to some dialog found in the game).

Grace is also married and has a child. Her husband is Super Spesh, which is a lawyer that successfully defended her on a trial for a murder that Grace didn't commit (and ended up being a trap from the FBI). This trial happened before the events of WWII. Super Spesh (real name Norman Caldwell) is also a little bit paranoid and an avid conspiracy theorist with a certainly unhealthy obsession with UFOs and space alien technology. This takes further meaning when the next mission after the contact in New York is Roswell, New Mexico itself, with Super Spesh's front of operations taking a role during this mission.

Blazko meets with Grace and Super Spesh, they're found by the nazis but they manage to escape with their fellow members of their resistance group while Blazkowicz mows down all the nazis invading the building. Blazkowicz successfully recruits Grace and co., and they part to the submarine again.

With Grace as their new leader, their objective now is Roswell. Grace's plan is to drop a fucking atom bomb in the nazi-filled, underground Oberkommando base in Roswell, which was originally a site of an unearthed Da'at Yichud cache. For those who are not aware, the Da'at Yichud was (is?) an ancient Jewish mystical secret society that designed and created many inventions and artifacts, centuries ahead of the time. This secret society has played a huge role in the development of this timeline and it might be further explored in the next game of the franchise. In fact, the suit that Blazkowicz was wearing during the first half of the game is of Da'at Yichud manufacture and is originally from the first game.

Back to TNC, Blazkowicz is sent to Roswell with the disguise of a firefighter, while carrying the atom bomb inside a portable container. There are ads everywhere with Blazkowicz's face on them, with the intention of selling him as a “dangerous terrorist”, going as far as to label him "Terror-Billy".

Now, there's no gentle way for me to say this, but Roswell has been culled. I don't recall seeing a single non-white person in the town (which had a fucking nazi parade going on during the mission), and this is further reassured when you listen to some of the dialog the NPCs have during the first part of the mission in Roswell. One person talks about slave auctions as if it were the simplest thing in the world, and then you have another person trying to play nice with a nazi officer by speaking German in a poor manner. And then you have some of those white wizards (you know the ones) walking around fully clothed and shit.

All of that was just fucked up.

Your first objective is to locate the base of operations of Super Spesh, which ends up being a diner that he inherited from his father. A nazi officer walks in and you get to see that one scene from the first trailer where he questions Blazko about his whereabouts. The one that ends up killing the nazi officer is Super Spesh, and after doing so, proceeds to lock down the deli and hide Blazkowicz inside.

Once inside his bunker, Super Spesh tells him about a secret tunnel that connects his base to the Oberkommando, not before going into yet another space aliens conspiracy rant while Blazko was there. After he's done, you're set to go through the underground tunnel and reach the nazi base where you naturally dispatch as many nazis as you can, while also finish the job of putting the atom bomb inside a reactor within the base for maximum damage. Once Blazkowicz escapes the base, he detonates the bomb while strapped on a pretty damn cool unicycle, obliterating the Oberkommando in the process.

With that mission done, Blazkowicz is set to return back to the submarine, but then for some godforsaken reason, he decides to take a quick detour to Mesquite, Texas, which was where he used to live.

Now, you have to admit that this ended up being a damn stupid decision. Why would he even return there in the first place? I mean, sure, the heirloom that was mentioned at the beginning of the game was there all this time and Blazko wanted to give it to Anya, but that was actually a setup. Blazkowicz had no business being there. Oh well.

Anyway, Blazkowicz ends up having even more flashbacks to his childhood, one of them being the actual encounter with the African-American girl that his father wasn't happy to learn about (her name being Billie).

Apparently Billie is somehow an easter-egg/reference of a real-life African American jazz singer and musician called Billie Holiday. Now, I'm not entirely sure if this is real or not, but this is what I remember reading on a post in Reddit (which has been deleted by now, but I'm leaving a reply made to it), so take this with a grain of salt.

Blazkowicz enters his former home, and starts wandering around, having even more flashbacks to his childhood and the handful of amicable interactions he had with his father.

I would also like to take the time to point out and remark that, at one point during this section of the game, you may end up interacting with a piece of newspaper located inside the house.

This piece of newspaper in the game was titled "Fragment of Old News Article", and quotes an excerpt of a piece written by Henry Louis Mencken, a newspaperman and political American commentator of the first half of the 20th century. Here's a screenshot of said piece:

This is an exact quote of what Mencken said all the way back in July of 1920, in an article titled "Bayard vs. Lionheart". This quote has been passed around for almost a century, and it had a resurgence because of certain real-life events that have no business being mentioned here.

Now, I won't question what was written by Mr. Mencken, but what I'd really like to question here instead is this: How this piece of paper ended up being there, when we later learned that Rip Blazkowicz had been hiding there all along ever since he learned about the attack to the Oberkommando, and he doctored and moved around a few things inside the house?

Why this particular piece of newspaper didn't include a date that matched the setting of the game, while the rest of the (fake) newspapers bits in the game had a date each, and matched the particular time? (From the early 30s to early 60s)

Especially when this quote was written all the way back to the days before The Great Depression (started in 1929) and the date could match the settings of the game with zero issues? (July 1920)

Why would Rip Blazkowicz keep a piece of paper that could ultimately contradict the way he thinks about the new regime that governs his country?

This particular interaction made me think a lot about whether or not there was an intention to send a message thru the game with the inclusion of this particular piece, even if it ultimately can be ignored completely and has no impact in the gameplay. What I'm trying to say is that this piece could've fit better inside Grace's personal space in the submarine rather than being in Rip Blazkowicz's setup in the house. That detail felt kinda out of place.

Moving on, Blazkowicz finally arrives to the room where he used to sleep, and finds the heirloom. And his father, somehow still alive. Fucker. Rip and William start having a heated discussion, where is revealed that Rip ratted out his friends and his own wife to the nazis and sent them to extermination camps in New Mexico. William has heard enough, and despite being held at gunpoint by his own father (branding the same shotgun he used to kill the pet dog), he takes the gun off from him and kills him with an axe.

His father musters his last words, revealing that the Nazis heard everything thru a telephone. After what could arguably be considered the best non-interactive confrontation in the game, the player now has to deal with nazis falling down the sky while Blazkowicz tries to find a way to escape the house which has been ripped from the ground by Engel's nazi spaceship

Unfortunately for B.J., he ends up falling from the house to the ground, severely hurting himself in the process. He wakes up only to find Engel putting the heirloom in her own dirty hands while he is stripped apart from the Da'at Yichud supersuit.

And this, my friends, is where things...they don't fall apart, but...keep reading and you'll find out.

Blazkowicz is captured, and he somehow wakes up inside a small room in an undisclosed area, only to be greeted by Super Spesh himself, who apparently is now your lawyer (?) for a trial for murder and treason (!!) with heavy implications that you could end up being publicly executed. Spesh claims that the Resistance have a plan, and that they're going to get you out of there (wherever you ended up being sent to). In order to do so, he hits himself on the table in order to bleed, and he's going to pretend that you attacked him so he can stab the officer from behind. Okay?

This obviously doesn't work the way Spesh intended, and he ends up being killed by Engel herself after pretending the nazis didn't knew he was there to rescue you. Now apparently the Resistance is being attacked in the parking lot by the nazis guarding the building, while you're being subject to the weirdest, most awkward attempt of torture ever conceived in videogames by Frau Engel, who puts the same gun she used to kill Spesh in your mouth. Finally, you're punched in the back of the head and they put the black veil on his head again.

And now we arrive at everyone's favorite part of the game: The courtroom level! Yayyy!

Boy, what a shitshow.

The game took a huge jump in difficulty, because at some point the player didn't knew if the enemies were endlessly spawning or not, and it was definitely the hardest level in the game so far and arguably the hardest in the entire game, pre-difficulty patch.

And not only you're out of your supersuit, making you extremely vulnerable to damage, you also have very limited armor and you're also fairly limited in terms of cover in some points of the level. If you were begging for more action after the first levels of the game, the courtroom level was definitely the answer to your prayers.

And what was the reward for your efforts, you might ask? A cutscene where Blazkowicz somehow finds his mother in one room, falls to her knees only to be comforted by her and told that "You just have one more hardship to go through". The screen fades to black, and you're back at the beginning of the courtroom level, only to realize that you're actually being sentenced to death.

All of that was for nothing.

You never punched that nazi in the face. It was all a dream.

Damn.

That was genuinely a criminal move by MachineGames. Think about it, they made you kill all those nazis, reload the level I don't know how many times, and just for "heh, Blazko was hallucinating all along. time to die lol". If I were to be playing that game blindly (as in, first playthrough ever with no spoilers), I would've been so upset. Why didn't you make it into an entire cutscene in first person? You're making the player think that his actions are actually going to influence the outcome with no confirmation or hint that it won't be the case. It wasn't until the last moment where they pull the "it was all a dream" card. Damn.

And then you have the public execution scene. That one moment that cemented two things:

- Frau Engel is genuinely a main villain with no major impact in the story of the game. She might as well be replaced by someone else entirely and there'll be zero impact in the game whatsoever. - In terms of how unrealistic a Wolfenstein game can be, they might've jumped the shark with what they did in The New Colossus.

Blazkowicz is sentenced to death for treason, and beheaded personally by Engel at a heavily vandalized Lincoln Memorial in front of millions in a televised event (or so the game thinks it's making you feel; more to than in a moment).

“The old and the weak are doomed” - Blazkowicz’s “last thoughts”. You get your head chopped off your body, and then you “die”.

"Look, guys, Blazkowicz is dead. For realsies!"

Now, a parenthesis. There were some rumors going on before the game was released that Blazkowicz was apparently going to have his head reattached to a new body because of the heavy damage he suffered from the previous fights with the nazis in the timeline. At the time, I decided to dismiss them, thinking that they were too far out there to actually become reality. Boy I was wrong.

Not only the game hints, almost spoils the fact that Set Roth might've found a way to reattach someone's head on a different body, there's also the omniscient reminder that B.J.'s body is failing him. Anya actually confronts Blazko because of this; she knows something's wrong but Blazkowicz doesn't want to admit it. He knows he must be strong, for Anya, for his future children, for the Resistance, for America.

But as the game went on, I kinda settled on the idea that this was going to happen. And it didn't dawn on me at the time, but it does now, they pulled it off in a mediocre way.

Okay so, you have the cutscene where Engel throws the head of Blazko down the furnace, and it apparently it goes all the way down...

Except not. Because apparently we've been watching a screen all this time, as a tape apparently starts rolling back, and we see Blazkowicz's head fall down the pit, but then some kind of 60's styled drone picks Blazko's head, and replaces it with someone else's head (presumably just another nazi), and flies away from the scene.

Then you're told that Set Roth, Max Hass, your companion and Anya are trying their damnedest to rescue the head in order to make the quick transplant to a new body. The drone arrives where they're hiding, they proceed with the operation, and it is a success! Hooray!

Why did this felt way unrealistic to me? More to that in a moment!

Blazkowicz wakes up in the submarine, and he's told by Anya that they reattached his head to a super-soldier body stolen from the nazis. Somehow they survived the assault at the parking lot from earlier (how they did it is never addressed in the game), and now you're told to make a choice between what kind of upgrade do you wish to have.

You can choose between Battle Walker (some huge ass sticks), Ram Shackles (shoulder pads that can fucking gib nazi scum) and Constrictor Harness (they literally make you a snek).

You go from being literally a dead man walking to a nazi-killing Megaman X

After choosing one of the upgrades, B.J. proceeds to murmur to himself: "Caroline, thank you. Take back your wings. I don't need them anymore". And proceeds to go back to New York in order to retrieve a location of another resistance group located in New Orleans.

Not before catching Sigrun and Bombate having sex in a boat.

If this ends up in the Nintendo Switch port I'll be pretty damn impressed.

After the sequence where you get accustomed with the new contraption, the side missions will be unlocked. These side missions can be unlocked using Enigma Codes, cards that some mobs in the game often dropped during gameplay after being killed. These side missions are pretty entertaining, and like I said previously, they could've enhanced the experience for a lot of people if they were to become part of the main story, because not only they unlock all the contraptions and help you reach their maximum potential, you can also discover new things about some characters.

Like for example, the one side mission where you return to Roswell (the one where you can get to kill the white wizards? Yeah, that one), it is explained that Spesh was actually aware he was going to die one way or another during the fight of the resistance, and had left a goodbye letter to Grace. There's another couple of notes in a side mission in New York where the real name of Super Spesh is revealed (Norman Caldwell).

And of course, like I said, there's also the fact that once you finish all the side missions you'll end up with all the three contraptions fully upgraded. Wouldn't have ruled to have all three of them before the final mission, or the ones before it? You don't really need all of them, but they could've been of great help and could've improved the experience for many.

Now, let's address what bugged me in the second half of the game.

-Where. Is. Everyone?!-

“Hewwo...? Echo, echo, echo...”

Remember what I said about certain moments of the game that felt like they were "not actually happening at all" and needed more impact? Well, let's go back to the execution scene.

Do you recall seeing any American person watching the execution live, regardless if they were pro-nazi or not? Do you recall anyone of the Resistance watching the nazi shitshow before the execution? That's right, we didn't see anyone. The same thing happens a bunch of times later on. For a "highest rated TV hour in history" (according to an article found in the game), it seemed like nobody was actually watching his execution at all (I even recall hearing some 'boos' while Engel was holding Blazkowicz' head).

Why you didn't show any Americans watching the execution live? Where are they?

Barring the members of the Resistance that end up joining you in Eva's Hammer and the people at Roswell on the first half of the game, you never get to interact with a single regular citizen of the US during the game.

They're all either members of the small resistance groups that you recruit during the game, or they're part of the group of NPC white Americans that were inadvertently being oppressed by the nazi regime.

For a game where rising against your oppressors is the main message that is trying to be conveyed, I'm sure as hell that I didn't see any regular citizens that could've felt identified with the liberating actions of Blazkowicz. If your game is meant to be narrative and story-driven, make sure the player is genuinely feeling it, make goddamn sure like it's actually real.

Fuck, I mean, the only regular person that the player could witness in the game got instantly killed by some nazis in the very next level (New Orleans). Barring that single moment, it seemed like all the levels in the game were exempt from any humans other than Blazko and the nazis. And again, yes, the members of the Resistance that join the group and become NPCs inside the submarine exist, but they were all active members already.

Postcards and letters won't just cut it this time. Make sure the next game has some regular citizens, otherwise it'll feel like there is no actual connection between the Resistance and the regular people.

Moving on with the game, Blazkowicz arrives to New Orleans, who has been affected by the nazi regime in a hard way. Basically they have separated the people deemed as "undesirable" in one part of the city and the other "fine people" in the other. The problem is, they basically wiped both these sides at the time of your arrival.

Your objective is to meet Horton Boone, a leader of a small resistance group hidden deep within New Orleans. Horton is a man with strong communist beliefs, an avid alcohol consumer, anti-capitalist as well as a "preacher" (even though he really isn't). Horton didn't seem to have that much of an impact in the game, and was relegated pretty damn quickly. Which is unfortunate because he was a such a refreshing character in the sense that he actually put some resistance (hah!) before joining the group.

When Blazkowicz finally meets him, Horton seems surprised that he's still alive. Blazko initially tries to recruit them, but Horton doesn't seem to be that motivated, as he hands him his "Horton Special" (a liquor of his own craftsmanship). They start having a heated discussion about political beliefs and the way they thought of each other's side during WWII, which ends in Blazkowicz kicking his chair away, claiming that he won't be raising his future kids in a world dominated by nazis. Horton is surprised by Blazkowicz resilience, and as Blazko starts blacking out because of the strong liquor, Horton accepts his proposal to join them.

Grace advises Blazkowicz that they're about to be assaulted by nazis soon, so they escape New Orleans by using a goddamn atom bomb to impulse themselves. The New Orleans stage was pretty damn fun from what I saw. Unfortunately you don't get to mount a Panzerhund in the game after that, which is a shame because the Panzerhund fucking rules.

When you get back inside Eva's Hammer, you're told that the nazis employ the Ausmerzer (the ship they used to trap your friends at the beginning of the game) to shut down any attempts of revolt. Naturally, the Ausmerzer is heavily guarded, and after the events of Roswell, the security codes to deactivate the heavy weaponry were secured in a place far away from our planet. Venus.

Jesus Christ they also conquered Venus.

-It Was Space Nazis, Maaaan!-

Your next stop is naturally Venus, and in order to get inside the new Oberkommando headquarters, you must disguise as an actor named Jules Redfield trying to participate in an audition for a propaganda film based on the capture and execution of "Terror-Billy". Once you get inside their facility, you're greeted by the director of the film, Helene Winter, and the rest of the people trying to get the same role as you, and then...he arrives.

One of the game's highest points, arguably the best moment in the entire game, is when Hitler shows up to the audition. Goddamn. Godfuckingdamn. These twenty-five years of wait were so fucking worth it.

Holy shit, Hitler's portrayal is fantastic. KEEP IN MIND, it is fantastic in an historical and logical sense, don't get confused and start calling me a Hitler-lover. He is (clearly) old, senile, has severe mental issues, aggravating paranoia, he pukes in the floor, he attempts to pee but fails miserable (indicating some severe issues related to pissing blood), mistakes Helene for his own mother...yeah, basically the Fuhrer is not with us anymore.

And it makes sense, because it has been thoroughly documented that he used to be a heavy cocaine and drug addict, and he was malfunctioning already before his death; it only made sense for him to go on a downward spiral at his 70s.

I've been clamoring for Hitler to come back in this current timeline, because who the hell doesn't want to kill that fucker again? Good on MachineGames for having the balls to do that after all this time.

Going back to the main story, Hitler demands immediate respect from the auditionees to his persona, and because of his paranoia against Jewish people, he ends up killing one of them after an hilarious exchange.

RIP Arizona Man

Something to point out here, some people started throwing around the idea that this person was actually Ronald Reagan. Initially I didn't see the resemblance at all, specially when you attempt to align his timeline and age with WWII, but then the developers started uploading the concept art and model designs to ArtStation (preeety beautiful and thanks to every single game developer that does this, by the way), and as it turns out, this character is indeed a reference to Ronald Reagan!

I still don't get it. Maybe because I'm not American?

Blazkowicz in the disguise of "Jules Redfield" is told by Hitler to recite the lines of his role of Terror-Billy. Blazko barely manages to do so, and then Hitler proceeds to ask another participant to do the same. This other guy does a pretty damn good job at it, and both Hitler and Helene get ecstatic about it.

Later on they move to the second part of the casting, which consists of taking down a nazi soldier and recite a monologue inside a glass panel. A participant enters the panel, does a poor job, and gets out not before getting shot in the head by Hitler. Now there's only two of you, and Blazkowicz is asked to participate next. William then proceeds to kill the nazi soldier for real, slams the panel and asks the directors if that's "good enough". Hitler seems perfectly pleased with his "realistic" performance, and ends up killing the other participant left sitting in the room with another bullet to the head. The audition is over, you got the role.

Hitler leaves the audition and is not seen again for the remainder of the game. Until Wolfenstein III, old fuck.

The Venus level is goddamn fantastic, and if you played DOOM 2016, you'll definitely be reminded of the extraterrestrial/futuristic scenery of the game. The mechanics involving the space suit may seem bothersome to a few players, but it only makes sense once you learn about the temperature of the planet (over 400 Celsius/752 Fahrenheit!!).

The nazi Venus facility is far, far bigger compared to the Moon facility of the previous game, and it also features a brand new gun called the Ubergewehr (roughly translated as the "Supreme Gun"), which is basically the BFG9000 equivalent of the game, and perhaps the franchise. According to the game, this weapon is partially powered by energy from micro-portals of extra-dimensional origin. And I don't know about you, but the energy that emanates from this weapon is red, and it bears a striking resemblance to the Argent Energy of DOOM 2016...Unfortunately this weapon appears in a later stage in the game, and you really can't enjoy it as you could've wished for.

B.J. obtains the documents pertaining the secret code to shut down the system, and leaves Venus for good. Back on Earth and back on the submarine, Blazkowicz hands over the code to Sigrun so that she could analyze it, and she finds that the code to shut down the Ausmerzer is VALHALLA. Happy with this discovery, Sigrun proceeds to tell Grace and everyone else about it, but is completely dismissed by Grace and is once again berated.

Sigrun has had enough. She yells at Grace, and proceeds to slap her. Following that, Grace seems to attempt to return the favor, but is stopped and overpowered by Sigrun who shuts her shit down and asks her to start respecting her by stop calling her something that she is sick of hearing (being called “a nazi”). Grace admits defeat and swears to not call her nazi again.

That was an amazing moment. To top this off, NOBODY intervened. Grace had it coming, for all the time she spent literally bullying and bothering Sigrun with that nonsense. If you were to ask me, she should be glad she didn't die at Sigrun’s hands in an hypothetical betrayal plot. I was actually surprised myself because I thought Sigrun was going to betray the team at one point of the game, but fortunately that wasn't the case. Please forgive me for not trusting you, Sigrun.

Now, moving on to the final level...the Ausmerzer. Blazkowicz and Anya (!!!) end up being the ones spearheading the assault to the airborne platform. The level is similarly great to the Venus level, except that it is relatively shorter in comparison. Lots of nazis to kill, including two super soldiers that end up becoming the final bosses of the game (I know, I'll discuss this in a moment). The final encounter with the Zerstörer isn't that much of a hassle if you finish the regular mobs first and then dispatch them later. Add this that you get to maneuver the Ubergewehr again, and the fight shouldn't be that much of an issue.

Before reaching the final room, a door opens revealing a good bunch of enemies, and Blazkowicz is about to be obliterated, but suddenly Anya appears out of literally nowhere, throws a grenade, catches flames from a Panzerhund, takes off her jacket (the only thing covering her naked upper body) and proceeds to shoot everyone and everything on her path.

...Oooookay?

I mean, after the execution scene, the over-the-top silliness of this scene was kinda pointless for me. I personally found unnecessary that Anya ended up playing an active part in the actual fights against the nazi forces, I mean, for God's sake, she's pregnant with twins. I had fears that she was going to die during the entire game, and that scene didn't help at all.

I'm glad that she's still alive, but please, keep her at home in the next game. Blazkowicz has suffered enough, losing her would be devastating for all of us.

Blazkowicz and Anya proceed to enter the VALHALLA code, and the defense system is finally shut down.

And now...the final encounter with Frau Engel...boy oh boy.

-Frau Engel: Die Neue Enttäuschung-

So...Engel is in Los Angeles a guest on The Jimmy Carver Show, but Blazkowicz and co. have taken control of the Ausmerzer, traveled to L.A. and infiltrated the studio. The last thing you ever do in the game is to sneak past the public and get in front of her, she tries to shoot him but Blazkowicz chops her arm off, and proceeds to split her face open with the hatchet. Engel dies immediately afterwards, and that's it.

No fanfare, no spectacular last boss fight, no nothing. That's it. She's dead, Jim.

Here Lies Engel, She Never Scored.

Before I give you my overall thoughts about her, let's recapitulate what Engel did in this game. Let's ignore whatever happened in the previous game and let's focus on what happened in The New Colossus:

-She kills the leader of the Resistance (at the time), Caroline.

-She berates her own daughter for not being nazi enough.

-Kisses Blazkowicz, steals the heirloom from him, and puts a smoking gun in his mouth in what apparently was meant to be a torture scene.

-"Kills" him on a public showing that who knows if it was actually watched by anyone on the planet and felt completely ridiculous.

Now, let's compare what happened in the previous game with Wilhelm Strasse, Deathshead, the previous main villain of The New Order:

-Assumes control of ancient Da'at Yichud technology that helps the Reich take over and gain advantage in WWII

-Captures Blazkowicz's squad in his compound, incinerates some of them, and proceeds to toy around with the rest, forcing Blazkowicz to decide between one of his teammates (Wyatt or Fergus) to sacrifice.

-Then he proceeds to vivisect that teammate on the spot, in one of the most gruesome sequences ever recorded in the Wolfenstein franchise, and saves that person's brain for later.

-HE FUCKING TOOK YOUR FRIEND'S BRAIN

-Successfully invades the original hideout of the Resistance, and his squad captures/executes some of their members, one of them being totally-not Jimmy Hendrix himself in one of the timelines. -Remember the brain of your friend? Well, now he put it inside a goddamn war machine, and now that machine is trying to kill you.

-He basically forces you to kill your friend again to end his suffering.

-And after you're done fighting with that nazi fucker during an actual final boss fight, he somehow pulls a grenade (probably out of his ass) and attempts a suicide attack.

-He dies but he definitely left you for death at mercy of your own friends who are about to drop a goddamn atom bomb.

Well, I don't know about you, but I guess it's unanimous.

Not only Engel’s death resulted in perhaps the most disappointing moment of the game, but overall she was perhaps one of the most pointless, inconsequential main villains of the franchise. She doesn't even come close to what Deathshead did in the previous game, and not just because Deathshead may have put the bar way too high for her, but because she really didn't to much at all during the game to warrant her becoming the final person to be killed at the hands of Blazko in the main story of game.

You know what would've ruled? An actual boss fight against Engel.

Now that her lifeless body is laying on the desk, Horton, Grace and Blazkowicz walk up to the screen and tell the American people watching the show to rise up against the nazis, and start revolting. Game logo on the screen. The End.

(Cue some really, really horrible version of 'We're Not Gonna Take It' playing in the background as the credits roll)

In a post-credits scene, Blazkowicz takes back the heirloom ring from Engel's lifeless body, and proposes to Anya with it. And if you picked either Wyatt or Fergus, you get one of them ranting around in front of the screen.

Well. What can I say?

The main story was okay, it could've definitely been polished a bit in order to turn it great. The liberation of America from the nazis was kind of a given, and when you look back at The New Order and compare it to The New Colossus, the ending of the latter ended up becoming the lowest point of the story. In the New Order the game ends on a cliffhanger, while The New Colossus doesn't offer much in terms of what could possibly happen next.

There's not that big of a difference if you pick Wyatt or Fergus, I think. The interactions with Fergus are more leaned towards your typical "heh, remember the time when you threw away your bionic arm while you were drunk?" war stories, and Wyatt's timeline is more focused with the problems he has to overcome because of war trauma.

Max Hass was fantastic. Max Hass!

The side missions on the submarine are fine. You actually get to explore the same areas but in a different way each. The side missions for the additional upgrades on the other hand, not so much. The majority of these missions are just revisiting old areas, discovering hidden areas, and that's it. The DLC doesn't seem to offer much in terms of new areas to explore except for maybe one or two stories.

Overall, Blazkowicz's father ended up becoming a better and more meaningful antagonist than Engel, and maybe he could've become the actual final boss of the game. Imagine if the Rip Blazkowicz that you killed in your old home was actually a clone, and you end up fighting him at the top of the Ausmerzer while he's controlling a clone of the London Monitor (remember the giant nazi robot machine from the first game?).

The way they handled the story, and adding the fact that some encounters were lackluster, and how they completely missed the opportunity to build some characters that needed more spotlight, leaves the feeling that The New Colossus ended up being a rushed project. I definitely hope this isn't the case and we can get a few explanations about some of the issues I wrote in this post (thanks for reading it, by the way).

With that in mind, I would like to take the opportunity to advise you all to give the game a try. If the contents of the story bother you in some way, try to dismiss them as much as you can, and focus on the gameplay itself. I don't know, you might end up liking it despite of your initial opinions about this game!

Would I recommend The New Colossus?

Well, here's the deal. As of right now, the game is sitting at $60 USD on Steam, and with the DLC added is $80 USD. And look, I'm not the kind of person that prefers to engage in the "is it worth X amount of price" debate for any videogame. Ultimately, a videogame costs what you want it to be. You can buy it right now, you can buy it later at a certain discount, you can visit some third party site to obtain a cheaper copy, I don't know. That's not my problem, it's yours. You should know by now how much money you can (and you're willing to) spend for something, and you should also know by now what you value the most about what you want to obtain in life.

Yes, yes I would recommend The New Colossus on the virtue that, if you want to play the third game, you might want to get some background first about the first two games (The New Order and TNO) before diving in to the third.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I'm not the kind of person that prefers to watch someone else play a game rather than experience the game myself, so at the end of the day if you want to watch a LP the decision is yours. I definitely won't agree, but I'm willing to respect it if you give a good reason about why you don't want to play a videogame.

With that being said, and this is something that is definitely worth pointing out, as of right now you can buy the first two games (The New Order, and the prequel The Old Blood) for $30 USD on Steam. These games were released four years ago, and they're in sale on a regular basis on many sites. If you want to keep your money for whatever reason and wait until a “tri-pack” bundle is released, go ahead. Unlike a handful of games that unfortunately ceased to exist because of pettiness from the developers (looking at you, Konami), The New Colossus is going nowhere. It's going to be there for the moment you want to give it a shot.

Now, if you were part of the group of people who got pissed after what happened with the promotional campaigns for the game, I'd say that you should still give the game a shot, at least one play. If it changes your mind, good, if it doesn't, it's okay. But just be careful not to say dumb shit that could reveal that you're talking out of your ass about things that don't exist.

I will be expecting news about the third installment of Wolfenstein, and there's no other choice but to have Hitler be the main antagonist of the game. I mean, who the hell could it even be other than fucking old Hitler himself?

Any question/comments/suggestions? Let me know! My inbox is open! Thank you for spending your valuable time reading my post!

[renkura]

COMPLETE WALKTHROUGH OF HAPPY MELANCHOLIC KID’S DEMO

hi everyone! i decided to make this walkthrough for the demo of HMK’s first episode. in this walkthrough i’ll explain how to gather a number of emotions, two ways to get two-slightly-different-but-somewhat-similar endings, and the side quests you can find in-game. this walkthrough will be accompanied with screencaps of areas to establish who and what is located where as well as hints to... some things and spoilers. note: this is going to be long, so i’ve put the walkthrough under a readmore.

LIST OF EMOTIONS AVAILABLE IN THE DEMO (In-order): Italicized emotions are found through exploring, talking to characters/NPCs or unlocking events. Emotions in this walkthrough will be capitalized, bolded and italicized.

Curiosity

Happiness

Disgust

Shyess Modesty

Anger

Excitement

Gratitude

Sadness

FIRST AREA: PROFESSOR DELYTH AMITA’S LABORATORY

EMOTIONS IN THIS AREA:

Curiosity

Happiness

Disgust

Modesty

Anger

Excitement

After witnessing the first opening cutscene where ????? and Professor Amita talk, you are then instructed to go find Miki and Wendee. Wendee does not make an appearance until after you find Miki.

To locate Miki, first you must enter the game room in the right corridor. It is located in the top right, where there is a [OPENED BAG OF POTATO CHIPS] lying on the floor. 

Talk to Todoroki and Fubuki to witness their introductions. During their dialogue, you will gain the second emotion, [HAPPINESS]. Fubuki will promptly tell you that Miki should be in the garden. The garden is the middle room in both corridors.

Enter the Garden. All the way to the bottom standing in front of the blue roses is Miki. Miki will introduce themselves and give you the third emotion, [DISGUST], before asking for your help to clean up the gardens. Pick up all the leaves and drop them into the garbage can in the shed, which is located to the top right in the Garden.

Once Miki is in your party, you can get the emotion [MODESTY] by looking at the pale peach roses. You must have Miki in your party to do so. Having Miki changes the dialogue of things within the garden.

After adding Miki to your party, make your way back to the game room. There you will find a very angry Todoroki chasing Wendee. After the two of them finish talking and are both staring at eachother from the opposite sides of the table, you may now add Wendee to your party.

However, before doing so, talk to Todoroki to gain [ANGER].

Go back to where the Professor is located. After obtained the [FRIEND-CHIP] and [GPS UPGRADE], you are now free to go to the city.

Head outside by going to the bottom corridor. Standing and witnessing more dialogue will make you gain the emotion [EXCITEMENT].

Congratulations! You just finished the first half of the demo!

SECOND AREA: OBSIDIAN DISTRICT

EMOTIONS IN THIS AREA:

Gratitude

Sadness

This is where the demo’s ‘endings’ split and you are free to roam around. 

To get Demo Ending A, you need 7 or less emotions.  To get Demo Ending B, you need all 8 emotions.

At this point, doing the side-quests here is totally optional. You may choose to end the demo early or keep on playing. For this walkthrough I will go through on how to complete the side-quests. As a hint, NPCs who have a character bust are minor characters who will ask for your help.

To find the first side-quest, talk to the npc wearing the white coat standing in front of Somneo’s map. He will give you a side-quest to go find his glasses. He gives out hints that the cat ran off into one of the alleyways within the Obsidian District. Miki also says entrances to alleyways can be distinguished by their shadows.

To find the cat, go down Onyx Street and enter the 2nd alleyway, just past Grim Sweetness. Enter it and choose the path on the right to find the cat. After the first attempt to catch the cat, it will run away. Exit that alleyway.

Now go to the other alleyway in Onyx Street. It’s the first one you see when you enter the street, right before Grim Sweetness. Enter that alleyway to encounter the cat for a second time.

Make your way back to Obsidian District’s center (with the large map/Crescent Moon Jazz Club) and enter the alleyway next to the tree.

Go into the alleyway. Keep going right until you see a second fork in the road. Head all the way down and then turn right to finally get the glasses.

Once you obtain the glasses, go back to npc with the white coat. He will give you [GRATITUDE] and introduce himself as Carrion. He says he will let the bouncer know that you and your party are permitted inside of the Jazz Club.

[OPTIONAL] THIRD AREA: THE CRESCENT MOON JAZZ CLUB

EMOTIONS IN THIS AREA:

Sadness

After witnessing... a couple cutscenes, Carrion will give you the [ANTIQUE POCKETWATCH] and you will be introduced to Dinah, one of the workers inside the Jazz Club. 

Before or after talking to Dinah and accepting the first side-quest she gives you, head over to wear Miki is and talk to them. This will prompt another dialogue section where Dinah will give you insight on... something. By the end of this small cutscene, you will receive [SADNESS].

Also as a bonus, before you complete all of Dinah’s side-quests, you can talk to Carrion, who is located at the bar to the right.

Finish Dinah’s first side-quest by picking up all the trash and throwing them away in one of the trashbins. (WARNING: THERE IS A BUG IN THIS QUEST. THERE ARE 12 DUSTBUNNIES IN THE CLUB. The hidden dustbuny is located in the image below, please avoid it if you can or you will be permanently stuck inside the club.)

Carrying on, report back to Dinah once you finish the first task, she will give you another one. This time, she will ask you to put candles at all the tables. Finish this task and talk to her once you are done. Dinah will then give you a [BUBBLE TEA TICKET], which can be used in the full release to fulfill the hidden side-quest for H**** and A** in Onyx Street. Before leaving, the club, you will witness another important cutscene.

Congratulations, you gathered all the emotions and finished all the side-quests in the demo! Now you can make your way to the end of Onyx Street to wrap up the demo!