Recently I was taking a walk down nostalgia lane, listing off some of my favourite older games. This put me in mind of how much I missed some of them and wished those franchises were still around.

Some random morose Googling later, I stumbled across No One Lives Forever Revival Edition. This is a free fan-made update of both No One Lives Forever games that will run on modern operating systems.

I was a little suspicious at first, but I did some research, and it all seemed legit. Download seemed to take longer than it should have, but once it finished, I was able to install both games successfully, and they work!

The Operative holds up really, really well. I just launched it to see if it worked, and the next thing I know I’m halfway through Misfortune in Morocco.

I wondered if perhaps some of my love of the game was just due to nostalgia, but that’s definitely not the case. If anything it may be better in some ways than I remember. The core gameplay is still silky smooth and intensely satisfying, and the writing shines as much as ever. This game is just so clever, so much fun.

It’s a small thing, but something I really appreciate about NOLF is that pistols are actually a viable option. I like pistols aesthetically, but in most shooters they’re pretty weak compared to the other options. In NOLF, they’re actually pretty good.

The people behind the Revival even tweaked the graphics a bit. No One Lives Forever now supports widescreen format and HD resolutions, the anti-aliasing looks better, and to me it seems like the textures and lighting are popping a little more. It won’t be mistaken for a modern game, but the graphics were good for their day, and with the tweaks, they’re holding up pretty well all things considered.

I have encountered a few issues here and there, but nothing game-breaking. Most notably all the keybindings were messed up at first for some reason, but it was nothing a few minutes of rebinding couldn’t fix.

I don’t know if I’ll play through the whole game again. I’ve played this game an enormous amount, even if the last time was about fifteen years ago. I can still quote most of the conversations verbatim. Says something to just how memorable the game was/is.

That said, I do feel kind of tempted to at least get to Unexpected Turbulence… or maybe Rendezvous in Hamburg. Always liked that one.

I went into No One Lives Forever 2 long enough to verify that it works, but I didn’t explore it in any depth. I do plan to play through it, though. It’s another game I missed out on due to Real Life, so it’s all new to me.

I’m kind of nervous, honestly. After how brilliant the first was, and after so much time, how can it possibly live up to expectations? I feel disappointment may be inevitable. And I know they replaced the voice actress for Cate Archer, which is a heinous sin.

But still, I need closure.

Now, I will be honest: This Revival Edition is essentially piracy, and normally I don’t approve of that. I believe that creators should be paid for their works.

But there are a number of extenuating circumstances here.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, there is no legal way to obtain a copy of either NOLF game anymore (short of finding an original disc, and good luck with that). They haven’t been for sale in a very long time, and they’ve fallen into a legal limbo that may prevent them from ever going on sale again. I’d pay for these games if I could, but I can’t. It’s simply not an option.

Secondly, these games are classics. I don’t know about NOLF2 (yet), but The Operative is easily one of the greatest games ever made. It should not be lost to history. It deserves to be kept alive. Newer gamers need to have the opportunity to experience it.

So in this case I think it’s better to keep the games alive, no matter the method.

If you’ve never played No One Lives Forever before, I highly you take the opportunity to do so now and enjoy one of the high water marks of the gaming industry. And if you have played them before, enjoy them all over again in HD!

I’m making it a goal to finish every class story in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’ve already done half of them, and with all the various different experience boosts I’ve accrued over the past few months, I can afford to skip everything but the class missions themselves when leveling a new character. That makes each class story quite a quick, breezy affair.

I’ve spent the large majority of my time on the Imperial side so far, so it’s time to show the Republic some love. I’m starting with trooper. This actually isn’t my original trooper that I created when I first tried the class a few months ago, but a new one I started recently with a different subclass and appearance.

The mission:

I’ll be upfront: This was probably my least favourite class story to date.

Chapter one was somewhat interesting. It’s a good premise, anyway. Not exactly what you’d expect, and it gives you a strong personal motivation. I don’t want to say too much because it’s a pretty good twist, and I don’t want to spoil it.

However, it had issues. Normally I’m not one to complain about the lack of meaningful choice in this game — it does a good job of presenting the illusion your choices matter, even though they usually don’t — but in this case it really did feel like I had no say in things. This was a rare case where I usually wanted to spare my enemies, but I never seemed to have the chance.

And in general chapter one’s story wasn’t explored in enough depth. You learn some disturbing things, but nothing ever comes of those revelations.

Unfortunately, flawed though it was, chapter one was still the highlight of the story. I literally just finished the story before writing this, and I’ve already forgotten much of the last two chapters. They’re that forgettable.

Spoiler alert: You shoot Imperials. That’s basically the whole story.

Something else that bothered me is how flat the trooper himself feels. Normally in this game I can quickly get a good feel for who my character is, where they came from, and what their goals and ideals are. My trooper just felt like a soulless avatar the whole way through.

I’ve heard and enjoyed Brian Bloom in several other game roles, and I know he’s a good voice actor, so I don’t think it’s his fault. Either my creativity has failed me, or the writing for the trooper was just that bland.

I have mixed feelings on the class’s gameplay. I liked this subclass a lot on my bounty hunter, but the trooper’s animations don’t have nearly as much flair, and it turns out to be another class that suffers badly from the inevitable button boat as you level. Always good to enjoy your class less the higher level you get.

I’m trying to unlearn the desire for min/maxing drilled into me by the MMO community and ignore the stupid fiddly extra abilities that are important for optimal DPS in a raid scenario but largely unnecessary when just messing around on my own, but it’s difficult.

That said, there are a few things I did like about the trooper story.

For starters, the actual mechanical design is a little better than average. The cutscenes are a little more cinematic feeling, and the mission design is a bit more creative — there’s the occasional simple puzzle, for instance.

Doesn’t make a big difference, but the effort deserves recognition, at least.

I also found it interesting how incredibly bad the Republic looks in the trooper story. There seems to be no end to the corruption and incompetence within the Republic hierarchy, and at times your superiors can be so nasty they’d fit right in with the Sith.

I think the trooper story did a better job of making the Republic unlikable than most of the Imperial stories have.

The squad:

The companions for the trooper also mostly failed to impress.

I found Jorgan absolutely intolerable out of the gate. When even I think you’re too uptight and hyper-critical, you really have a problem. Even the Sith are over here like, “Whoa, dude, lay off that Haterade.”

To be fair, though, the later missions do put him in a better light. I wouldn’t say I like him now, but he has earned a certain degree of (grudging) respect from me. At the very least, I don’t want to make a rug out of him anymore.

Vik, on the other hand, was utterly unlikable from beginning to end. Just a slimeball on every level. This is another case where I wished for greater choice, because he really deserved to be dishonourably discharged (again) the moment he was no longer useful.

I don’t know what to make of 4X. He’s equal parts comical, inspiring, and horrifying. I genuinely can’t tell if he’s a somewhat tone-deaf attempt at comedy relief, or a subversive criticism of blind patriotism, or both, or neither.

Yuun seems cool, though they didn’t do much with him. Would have been nice to get to know him better, learn what exactly it is a Findsman does.

Elara, at least, was somewhat interesting.

Halfway through the story I realized I’d much rather be playing as Elara than my own character, actually. Not because I like Elara so much — I like her, but there are plenty of other characters in the game I like better — but because she has a really compelling character arc. The Imperial defector desperately trying to prove herself in the face of constant scorn and suspicion. That’s a much better hook than… whatever the player’s motivation is supposed to be.

I’m not sure she should have been a romance option, though. I did romance her anyway just for completionism’s sake, but it doesn’t seem to suit her character very well.

At least you get all your companions much quicker than in most stories (before the end of chapter two). That’s always nice.

Not really a complaint, but one thing I did find a bit odd is how similar the first three companions are. Jorgan, Elara, and 4X are all super uptight, serious, patriotic types. At least it makes farming influence easy, since they all approve of the same things nine times out of ten.

The future:

Five down, three to go.

I’m not entirely sure which I’ll do next. Bounty hunter has the strongest appeal, but I think I’d prefer to hold off on it for precisely that reason.

I’m thinking maybe smuggler next. Initially it was the class that least appealed to me, but I did finally make one and play her long enough to finish the first planet, and while I’m still not sold on the class’s concept, I do like the character I came up with, and the voice actress for female smugglers turns out to be a lot of fun.

Whatever I pick, it might have to wait a few weeks, at least. I’m thinking I’ll dive into the Overwatch free weekend that starts today, and then the final part of the Nova DLC in StarCraft will finally launch, so I’m going to play that for sure. Knights of the Eternal Throne will launch shortly thereafter. So I’ll be busy for a while.

With my Star Trek rewatch wrapping up, I was looking for something new to watch on Netflix. Enter Glitch. I’d not heard of this show, but the premise seemed intriguing, so I decided to give it a shot. What I discovered was an intriguing, if flawed, series.

So far, only the first season is available, and it’s extremely short (only six episodes), so it seemed to make more sense to review the entire season instead of going episode by episode.

The other walking dead:

Glitch is a show with a simple yet unusual premise. One night, in a small town in rural Australia, a number of dead people claw their way out of their graves. Confused and frightened, they are found by a local police officer named James, and a doctor named Elishia.

They are not zombies. They’re not animate corpses. They appear to have been truly resurrected, restored to life in apparently perfect health.

This despite the fact that all of them have been dead and buried for years. The most newly deceased is Kate, James’ wife, who died of cancer two years previously. The eldest is Patrick Fitzgerald, the town’s founder, who has been dead since the nineteenth century.

In between those extremes are a diverse collection of deceased. The kind and gentlemanly Charlie was a soldier in the First World War. Carlo met his end in the 40s. Maria is a pious Italian housewife who fell in the 1960s. Kirstie was a wild child before her untimely death in the late 80s. One, found in an unmarked grave, has no memories at all and is simply labelled John Doe.

It falls to James and Elishia to hide the Risen (as they are called) as sinister forces begin to seek them out. As for the Risen themselves, they are left to struggle with life after death. Many of them are alone in the world, their friends and family having died long ago, yet for those who still have relations among the living, the path may be harder still.

It’s certainly an interesting premise. I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. The mystery is intriguing, but there may be a little too much of it.

You would think that a show with such a short season would waste no time, but in fact Glitch is a very slow-paced show that is very stingy with its answers. Most of the questions you probably have right now if this is your first time hearing about the show are questions I still have, even after seeing every episode.

There is going to be a second season, so there’s still time to explain things, but I don’t like being strung along like this.

It also turn into a bit of a soap opera sometimes. Being who I am, I am of course most interested in the fantastical elements of the show, but Glitch spends more time on interpersonal relationships and who’s sleeping with who this week. It can get a bit tiresome.

Glitch also features my least favourite kind of story: the love triangle. And this is a really good example of why I hate love triangles so much. It takes up a lot of screentime while doing nothing whatsoever to advance the story. It accomplishes nothing but to make every character involved look like a total sleazebag.

On that note, another issue with Glitch is that most of the characters are pretty unlikable. It lessens the drama when you don’t care about half the cast.

The good news is that the characters that I do like, I really like.

By far the highlight of the show is Charlie. His earnest, good-hearted nature does wonders to make the otherwise grim tone of the series easier to bear.

I’m also rather fond of Kirstie. She’s not the most level-headed person, but her spunk can be endearing, and she has one of the better stories in the show. I won’t spoil too much, but the most powerful scene in the season comes from her exploring her tragic past. It’s very powerful.

Patrick grew on me after a while, too. He’s a bit of a lowlife in some ways, but he’s not without his own odd form of charm.

Those three are what carry the show. Even if I’m frustrated by the slow pace or sneering at the rest of the cast, I’m enjoying the stories of Charlie, Kirstie, and Patrick enough to make Glitch worthwhile.

Overall rating: 7.3/10 Probably not going to be your new favourite show, but it might be worth a look if you want to try something different.

I had been planning to spend this past weekend playing Overwatch during its free event, but I grew bored with it in record time. Not wanting to start another storyline in The Old Republic just yet, I looked to other options.

And then I saw the huge ad for Elder Scrolls Online on my Steam homepage, looking all sexy and winking seductively at me.

I’ve often talked about returning to the game, but this sure isn’t how I expected it to happen.

A new face:

They were holding a big sale on cash shop currency, so I decided to buy a recustomization token and tweak my character’s appearance. I had long planned to change her hairstyle, but I wound up adjusting her face a fair bit, too.

When I started playing, I knew almost nothing Elder Scrolls lore, and I had no idea what sort of person my character would be, so I defaulted to my go-to of a serious, militaristic character. But now I know a lot more about Bosmer, and a stern-faced, disciplined woman didn’t seem to fit anymore.

I came to view my character more as a darkly playful trickster. She’ll greet you with smile, and she’ll eat you with a smile.

So now she has loose hair and softer, friendlier features. I also made her a little shorter, because now I know Bosmer are supposed to be tiny. I think she might still be a little on the tall side for Bosmer, but she shouldn’t be head and shoulders above her own people anymore.

Before.

After.

Also horns because why not.

The lack of a wardrobe system still rankles me quite a lot, though. I love the outfit I have now, but I’m going to outlevel it soon. That’s honestly been one of the things holding me back from playing more. You can get costumes in the cash shop, but the selection is woefully inadequate; apparently the developers regularly remove outfits, which seems very wrong-headed.

I did grab one costume that’s okay, but it doesn’t quite fit her barbaric aesthetic. At least it shows off her tattoos.

Exploring One Tamriel:

As MMOs are wont to do, the game has changed a bit since I played last. One nice thing is that you now get additional skill points for leveling up, so I had a bunch of points to spend upon logging in. I always did feel starved for enough skill points to do everything I wanted to, so it’s quite welcome.

But of course the big change is One Tamriel, which has united the world with universal level scaling (both and up and down, which is a rarity) and relaxed faction barriers.

Theoretically I think the level-scaling is a great idea, but in practice I don’t see it affecting me much. It seems to be of more benefit to people who are already far-progressed in the game. Yes, I can jump ahead to high level zones now, but why would I want to? Might as well keep playing through the story.

The faction changes are a little more interesting. Just for the novelty, I decided to hop on my horse and spend a few hours sightseeing in some of the zones for the other two alliances.

I’ve always felt the graphics in ESO were overrated, but after visiting Glenumbra, I’m not so sure anymore. That zone is gorgeous. I’m an Aldmeri loyalist to the end, but that place is far nicer than any of our zones.

Meanwhile, the Ebonheart Pact zones are… interesting. I had written Elder Scrolls off as purely low fantasy, but then I got to the Dunmer zones and it’s all giant mushrooms and ash raining from the sky and glowing fungi and floating brain-tentacle monsters. It’s definitely a change of pace.

I also made a point to visit the capitols of the other factions. That’s one thing the Aldmeri definitely win. The Covenant capitol is barely distinguishable from any other random town, and while the Pact city is neat, it’s nothing compared to Elden Root.

Of course, like any self-respecting Bosmer, I made a point to grab some “souvenirs” from the palaces of both rival factions. I had a terrible misunderstanding involving a lockbox in the Pact council chambers and several heavily armed guards, but I somehow managed to escape and proceeded to flee north across Dunmer territory.

When I logged off for the night, I was camped out in the woods of eastern Skyrim, waiting for the heat to die off. It’s another lovely zone, actually — not a bad place to be stranded, as these things go.

So now what?

I enjoyed revisited Elder Scrolls Online. It’s pretty rare for a game to be able to hold my attention without constant action and/or gripping story, but I just gladly spent several hours doing little but sightseeing. That says something.

Of course, the biggest reason I stopped playing wasn’t that I didn’t like it. I stopped because I didn’t have time, and with many other games currently demanding my attention, that’s still true. I might make more of an effort to carve out some time for it here or there, though, and I’d still like to sit down and really delve deep into the game at some point. If I can find the time.

I’ll be upfront here, guys: I don’t have a lot to say about this. I just wanted an excuse to talk about the Warcraft movie some more.

Recently I picked it up on DVD, and I took the time to watch through all the deleted scenes. I know that over forty minutes of footage was cut from the theatrical release, and much as I enjoyed the movie, it definitely suffered for it. Like many people, I had hoped for a director’s cut, but I suppose the deleted scenes are the next best thing.

So did they change my view of the movie? Kind of, maybe?

Firstly it needs to be said I don’t think the DVD contains all of the deleted content. It took me less than half an hour to watch it all, so the math doesn’t add up.

It’s also a bit hard to judge things when the scenes are all out of context. Some don’t have all their special effects done, either, which is distracting.

There are also some scenes that probably deserved to be deleted. I didn’t need to see anymore of Garona and Lothar’s relationship, and the bit with Khadgar being all edgy to Antonidas didn’t add much. Actually I rather object to Antonidas being portrayed as some spineless politician. He’s supposed one of the truest heroes of the Alliance, a man of vision and principle.

But there are quite a few scenes that I wish could have been included in the theatrical cut. For the most part they’re not big or dramatic scenes, but quieter moments that flesh out the characters and the world. There are some cut scenes from Draenor that add some further depth to the Orcs, on a cultural and individual level.

As a fan, I really enjoyed getting to see more of Ironforge, and Stormwind, and hearing Grom Hellscream actually talk. It’s also a real shame Chris Metzen’s cameo didn’t make it into the theatrical cut.

I think smaller scenes like this add a real texture to the movie, make the world and its inhabitants feel more real. It’s unfortunate they were excluded from the theatrical version.

Otherwise, my feelings on the Warcraft film remain largely unchanged. It’s got flaws, but its strengths outweigh them — same as every other part of the franchise, really. I still think Garona and Gul’dan totally stole the show, while the human characters were merely adequate — I must admit my patience for movie Lothar wore thin on second viewing. I still love the soundtrack, and it’s still a thrill to see Azeroth brought to life so vividly.

If you’re wondering whether the DVD is worth picking up for the extras, I would say yes, but then again I’m the eternal fanboy when it comes to Warcraft, so I guess take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Blizzard has at last released the third and final installment of its Nova Covert Ops story DLC. Having waiting for all three parts, I played through it all in one go.

Despite the fact Nova is one of my favourite characters from all of fiction, I admit I had a fair degree of trepidation going into Covert Ops. Legacy of the Void was a really tough act to follow, and with DLC there’s always the concern that quality will drop, that it will turn out to be just a cheap cash grab.

I shouldn’t have worried.

Rogue agent!

As revealed in its initial trailer, Covert Ops begins with Nova awakening in a mysterious lab, with her memory wiped. A message on her visor warns her of imminent danger, spurring her to enact a daring escape from her mysterious captors.

What follows is a blisteringly fast-paced adventure as Nova discovers a conspiracy that threatens to bring the Terran Dominion to its knees and cost countless innocent lives.

In practical terms this takes the form of a nine mission campaign in which the player commands both Nova herself and the elite black ops forces under her command.

As with previous StarCraft II campaigns, there are unique progression mechanics that allow your troops to grow in power and gain new options as the campaign progresses. In this case, the mechanic is equipment, for both Nova and her units.

Nova herself can choose from a variety of guns, gadgets, and different types of armour to radically alter her stats and abilities. Weapons include everything from her standard sniper rifle to a shotgun, a lightsaber, and even more exotic options still, while different armours can boost her energy, permanently cloak her, or even grant her the use of a jetpack similar to those used by reapers.

Unit equipment is a little different. There’s a shared pool of upgrades, but each upgrade can only be equipped to one unit type. If your siege tanks have spider mines, no other units can equip spider mines. Certain upgrades can have different effects depending on the unit, too, so it’s important to check all the possible combinations.

The number of options is impressive, especially for such a short campaign. If you factor all the possible combinations of different guns and gadgets Nova can equip, there are in essence a few dozen different versions of Nova you can play with — at least. Want to be a tanky melee brawler? Go for it. Want to be a stealthy ranged sniper? Also cool. Want to dance up and down cliffs, hurling grenades left and right? Yeah, you can do that too. And that’s not even the limit of all the different things Nova can do.

The mission design takes this versatility into account, too. Some missions have been specifically designed to have many different potential strategies that can lead to victory, from stealth to brute force and everything in between. The amount of thought that has gone into some missions is truly impressive.

Mission design has always been one of StarCraft II’s greatest strengths, and even after all this time, they’re still coming up with creative new ideas. Highlights this time included a high speed getaway on a vulture bike that practically turned StarCraft into a driving game, and a very clever mission that played out almost like a choose your own adventure novel, allowing you to dictate what to face and how the mission would play out. Incredibly clever.

And that’s without even getting into the seamless way the campaign blends between traditional RTS gameplay, RPG segments (including some epic and intense boss fights), and more exotic sequences like the aforementioned vulture scene.

There’s a still a certain bias towards shorter missions and missions with hard time limits, but there are also a few that take a more sedate pace, and overall the campaign feels pretty well-balanced.

They didn’t skimp on the difficulty, either. I was only playing on hard, but even so the final missions were incredibly nail-biting. As I’m writing this, I still haven’t entirely come off my adrenaline high.

Of course you can always play on lower difficulties if you’re not in the mood to test yourself too much, but if you want to push your skills to the limit, Covert Ops definitely delivers.

The past doesn’t matter:

Covert Ops is virtually flawless from a game mechanics perspective, but it doesn’t disappoint on the artistic front, either.

Visually it’s a great experience. The graphical fidelity of Blizzard’s cutscenes just keeps getting higher, and there’s plenty of them to enjoy.

The in-game graphics are holding their own, too. Blizzard’s good at giving their games ageless artstyles, so while StarCraft II is a few years old now, it doesn’t look it, and they’re still making improvements. In a ruined cityscape, skyscrapers fall to form bridges over chasms. On an ice world, you can see frost form on your units’ armour.

The music is also excellent. In a departure from the guitar-heavy sounds we’re used to from the Terrans, Covert Ops’ soundtrack leans more on synth and orchestral sounds reminiscent of Mass Effect (yet another case of overlap between the two franchises — seriously, I just learned there’s a ship in Andromeda called the Hyperion; come on, man).

The story is, in a word, fun. It’s very intense and thrilling, with little chance to catch your breath, and it captures the cool factor of being an elite ghost operative very well.

And while the focus is on Nova, there are plenty of appearances by other familiar faces. At this point I just can’t help but smile whenever I hear the familiar guitar strums and Swann shows up to drop off a new toy. It’s Pavlovian.

It’s not all Terrans making cameos, either…

Although it’s very different in a lot of ways, there’s a quality about Covert Ops that reminds me of Mass Effect’s Citadel DLC a bit. There’s that same feeling of a final gift to the fans.

There are a lot of little things that add flavour, too. Study the maps on your briefing screen and you’ll find interesting little factoids about local landmarks and the history of whatever world you’re on.

I love things like that. It’s the small details that really make games come alive.

A lot of the twists and reveals are easy to see coming, especially if you know StarCraft lore, but there is one reversal near the end that caught me off guard in a very welcome way.

If I’m being honest, there are some flaws in the story. While it’s not as rushed as I worried it might be going in, it’s still kind of rushed. There’s isn’t a whole lot of time to flesh out the characters, so they tend to feel a bit flat.

Even Nova herself doesn’t get as much development as you might expect. Nova’s a very deep character with a lot of complexity, but you don’t really see that in Covert Ops. If you haven’t read the books, you might not be able to readily understand why she behaves as she does in the story.

If I’m to continue being honest, though, I’m not sure I care. Maybe these flaws will begin to rankle me after I’ve had time to digest, but right now the sheer cool factor of Covert Ops is enough to make me forgive any sins.

The cold, analytical part of my mind is pointing out ways it could be better, but the rest of me is like, “I JUST VAPOURIZED HALF A BATTALION WITH A PLASMA RIFLE, AND NOW I’M MIND-CONTROLLING THE SURVIVORS INTO MURDERING EACH OTHER. THIS IS SO $%@#ING AWESOME.”

And I love Nova. I always have. It’s lovely to see her finally get a starring role in-game.

Overall rating: 8.9/10

It amazes me that more than five years after its initial release, StarCraft II is still innovating, providing experiences that are as good as anything in gaming, and generally making the rest of Blizzard look bad.

It does sadden me a bit that there are no current plans for any more mission packs, but I suppose all good things must come to an end. Over the past few years, we’ve gotten nearly a hundred missions of StarCraft II story, so even if this does turn out to be the last of it, you can’t say we haven’t gotten our money’s worth.

It’s been a hell of a ride.

One nice thing about starting on Knights of the Fallen Empire so late is that I didn’t have long to wait for Star Wars: The Old Republic’s next expansion, Knights of the Eternal Throne. I’ve also been subscribed long enough to qualify for early access, so while the expansion didn’t officially launch until yesterday, I’ve already finished.

Against the empress:

Knights of the Eternal Throne is so much a continuation of Fallen Empire’s story I’m not sure why they even bothered to label it a separate expansion.

The war against the Eternal Empire enters a dangerous new phase as Valkorion’s strongest and most depraved child usurps the Eternal Throne. The focus this time is on Vaylin, and I gotta say, she’s a much better antagonist than Arcann ever was.

Vaylin manages the incredible trick of being both hideously, irredeemably evil, and yet somehow still something of a tragic figure. Maybe she was never entirely stable, but her father robbed her of any chance she ever had to be a whole person. She’s a monster, and she has to be stopped, but yet I still spent a lot of the story feeling sorry for her.

Plus, Natasha Loring does an absolutely fantastic job voicing her. Probably one of the better vocal performances I’ve heard in a game.

It’s not entirely the Vaylin Show, though. There’s lots of other intrigues and plots going at the same time.

There’s a school of thought that says that Disney declaring most of Star Wars’ extended universe non-canon is a good thing, because it frees the EU properties to chart their own course more than ever before.

I’m wondering if KotET is an example of that, because more than ever SW:TOR is developing its own unique mythology that is very different from and honestly better than the world of the movies. At one point in this expansion I found myself caught in the civil war between two hyper-advanced AIs in a post-apocalyptic Dyson Sphere. There’s nothing like that in the movies.

I also very much like that KotET spent some time revisiting familiar locations and plot threads from the base game. One flaw of Fallen Empire was that it felt so utterly disconnected from what came before, but Eternal Throne makes an admirable attempt at bridging that gap.

Also, this is probably the first time in the game the Sith Empire has been portrayed in a more positive light than the Republic, and as an Empire fan, I’m pretty happy with that.

They did a good job of making it all fit together, too. Despite pursuing several plot threads at once, KotET is a very tight, very focused experience, and for the most part it’s an epic thrill-ride from beginning to end. The only significant stumble was chapter eight, which was mostly just an endless slog through mob-filled wilderness in an attempt to pad out what would otherwise be a very brief chapter.

It is a very short storyline, but it’s well-paced, so it doesn’t feel rushed, and it only costs $15, so it’s hard to argue you aren’t getting your money’s worth.

Choices felt a lot more impactful this time, too. Reading up after finishing the story, it seems there’s quite a lot that could have turned out differently if I’d made different choices. Should be good for playing alts.

Alongside the Alliance:

Something that’s a bit more mixed is how Eternal Throne has treated the issue of companions.

No additional companions from the base game were brought back this time. I can see why they did that, because it did make for a smoother and more focused story, but at the same time there are still a couple of companions I’d really like back. I guess it’s kind of a no win scenario.

They did spend more time on the previously returned class companions than I thought they would, though. Well, Vette and Torian get a lot of screentime, anyway.

I’m also of two minds on how the ongoing romance with Lana Beniko was treated this time.

To be blunt, it’s barely there. There are no actual romance scenes; just some extra or different lines of dialogue that are few and far between. I have to ask myself if it was even worth the trouble of establishing the romance in the first place if it’s going to be so neglected.

On the other hand, minimal though it may be, I did think the romance content was really well done. I find Lana’s fretting whenever you’re in danger very endearing, and there’s one moment in particular that really stood out.

Without spoiling too much, there’s a scene where you’re heading into a place full of Force-related nastiness, and it’s bad enough that even Lana, normally icy calm, is starting to lose it. If you romance her, there’s an option to tell her, “I’ll be with you the whole time.” And it just felt so sweet, and so real. I think it might be one of my favourite moments from any Bioware romance to date.

I’m torn. I generally say I prefer quality over quantity, but Lana’s romance in KotET is a rather severe application of that principle.

My biggest complaint about Fallen Empire, having no choice in what companion you use when, also returns, though in this case it didn’t bother me as much. Partly because they did a better job of justifying it from a story perspective, and partly because you spend most of your time with Lana or Vette, which is more or less who I would have picked regardless.

Claiming your prize:

There’s something else that gives me mixed feelings. Normally I’d say it’s a big spoiler, but they’ve been telegraphing it so heavily it’s hard to call it a surprise at this point. If you’re determined to go in fresh, I suppose you should stop reading now, but honestly if you’ve been paying any kind of attention to SW:TOR lately, you had to know this was coming.

Knights of the Eternal Throne ends with the player claiming the titular seat, which pretty makes them the ruler of the universe.

Now, it’s hard to deny the cool factor of that, or how viscerally satisfying it is to receive such an epic reward for all that you’ve done.

But I do have to wonder where they go from here. How do you escalate from, “You are the all-powerful lord and master of the galaxy”? Can you top that? Will they be forced to just hit the reset button on the story (again)?

It’s a little bit of awkward fit for my character especially. She’s a spy, used to lurking in the shadows rather than leading in the open, and my entire backstory for her is based on her desire to be a servant of a greater cause. Now she’s a great cause unto herself, and I’m not sure how to adjust.

Marching into the future:

Something else that needs to be highlighted about Knights of the Eternal Throne is how much it’s improved the fundamental components of the game.

For one thing, the graphics continue to improve. Environments are looking ever better, and I noticed another sharp uptake in the quality of cutscenes. Many of them are quite spectacular, and almost as thrilling as what you’d see in the Star Wars movies.

Even outside of cutscenes, the game is becoming more cinematic. We’re starting to see things like terrain changes in real time — like a bridge exploding as you try to cross it.

Character models are also getting much better, though this can create a jarring disconnect. New characters like Empress Acina look almost real, while my own character still looks like she’s made out of Plasticine. It’s distracting, to say the least.

They did implement new facial animations for characters both old and new, though it’s a bit of a mixed blessing. It does add more personality, but it can get a bit uncanny valley in places. Lana’s shocked face doesn’t really communicate what it was probably intended to.

Bioware also put a lot more effort into game mechanics this time. SW:TOR now features vehicle mechanics, allowing players to pilot walkers against the forces of the Eternal Empire, among other things. They’re not the greatest vehicle sequences I’ve seen in an MMO, but it’s a good thing for the game to have going forward. Opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities.

One thing I did enjoy that was very different is one chapter that was devoted almost entirely to puzzle-solving, something the game hasn’t really seen before. They’re relatively simple puzzles, but it still turned out to be a pretty fun, clever chapter.

Finally, core class mechanics and combat seemed a little better, at least for the Imperial agent. Cutting out a few of the more irrelevant abilities and offering a talent to let me cast lethal shot while moving are small but welcome steps towards improving the otherwise dull core gameplay of The Old Republic.

At a fundamental level, as a game, Knights of the Eternal Throne is a significant improvement over what’s come before.

There has been a lot of controversy around the new Galactic Command progression system, but while it’s probably a downgrade from what we had before, it’s still better than what a lot of MMOs offer, and honestly I think the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. I got several powerful upgrades and useful items out of it just by playing through the story normally.

And let’s be real here: Who’s playing SW:TOR for the gear grind endgame at this point? It’s like playing TSW for the PvP, or EVE for the story. Sure, you can, but…

I’d be more concerned with new the Dark vs Light system, honestly. It’s very poorly explained, and from what I’ve seen so far, the Light Side seems to win every single time.

* * *

Overall, while it’s not perfect, I’d consider Knights of the Eternal Throne an improvement over Fallen Empire, and a pretty good experience through and through.

I’ve been pretty harshly critical of the Harry Potter films over the years. Mostly they’re adequate at best, and just bad at worst. However, I maintained a minimal interest in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them spin-off. My logic was that with nothing to compare it to, there was less potential for disappointment.

Even so, I wasn’t expecting a lot. I went in anticipating a popcorn movie with some pretty special effects, and no more.

Boy was I off.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them turned out to be a far deeper, more mature, and more powerful story than I expected.

Fantastic Beasts begins with Newt Scamander, author of the book the film is named for, as he arrives in New York with an enchanted trunk full of magical creatures. This is a rather illegal thing to do, given the American wizarding government thinks rather poorly of fantastical creatures and general prefers to hunt them rather than preserve them.

And it doesn’t take long for him to run into trouble. When several of his creatures break free, Newt runs afoul of disgraced auror Tina Goldstein, who apprehends him for endangering the secrecy of magic. Along the way, he also becomes entangled with Tina’s sister, a boisterous mind-reader named Queenie, and Jacob Kowalski, a local muggle (or “no-maj” as the Americans like to call them) who has seen far too much.

Newt’s mishaps couldn’t have come at a worse time, either, as a string of magical calamities throughout New York have inflamed the already high tensions between the magical and mundane worlds. It doesn’t take long for the authorities to blame Newt and his animals, but he knows they can’t be to blame, and he and his newfound allies must work fast to recapture them and prove their innocence.

If I have a complaint about Fantastic Beasts, it’s that there’s this weird disconnect between the whacky and whimsical quest to wrangle Newt’s critters and the surprisingly intense geopolitical/magical concerns that end up forming the real meat of the story. It’s sort of two movies at once, and the one it advertised itself — the one about Newt and his animals — is a lot less interesting than the other one.

Similarly, Newt himself is kind of weak compared to Tina’s pure-hearted determination, Jacob’s humble lovability, and Queenie’s flirtatious charm.

There is something to be said for a hero who solves problems with knowledge, understanding, and compassion rather than brute force, and intellectually I appreciate what Newt represents, but the fact is he just doesn’t have the charisma or charm of the rest of the cast.

Come to think of it, this is kind of a hallmark of J.K. Rowling’s work. Harry himself was one of the least interesting characters in the Harry Potter books. Even in the Cormoran Strike novels, I like Robin and Shanker a lot more than I like Cormoran.

But I said Fantastic Beasts is like two movies at once, and it’s the other one, the one about the friction between magic and mundane in New York, that’s special.

What really impressed me about Fantastic Beasts is how incredibly heavy a lot of the themes it deals with are: segregation, conservation, religious extremism, child abuse, bigotry and what it does to people.

In retrospect, I maybe shouldn’t be surprised. I’m always telling people how smart and mature the Harry Potter books are. I just didn’t expect Fantastic Beasts to follow in that tradition.

Part of it is probably down to the fact I didn’t follow the movie’s production very closely. I was of the impression J.K. Rowling had simply tossed out some general ideas and then gone home to cash her cheque while the movie studio did the rest. I didn’t realize she’d written the entire screenplay herself. That explains a lot.

I want to be even more careful with spoilers than I usually am here because I think Fantastic Beasts is one of those stories that’s much better if you go in fresh and watch it evolve naturally. I will say that it’s a very powerful movie, and that what the threat actually turns out to be is both conceptually brilliant and genuinely terrifying.

I also think the villain of this series has the potential to be much more interesting than Voldemort was. Not so much due to anything inherent to the character as the way the series is showing the rough edges of where the magical and mundane worlds meet in Rowling’s universe. Voldemort just felt evil for evil’s sake, but this character reminds me more of X-Men’s Magneto — someone with legitimate anger over the world’s injustices who has taken that anger too far.

The ending of the film is a little underwhelming in some ways — it’s what we in my family liked to call a “Voyager Ending” in honour of Star Trek: Voyager’s ability to always resolve any crisis in the last five minutes, logic be damned. But it’s not enough to spoil an otherwise excellent experience.

Overall rating: 8.9/10 Vastly better than I expected.

Also, now I’ve dug out my copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to read more about the critters in the movie.

Blizzard has what I’m going to call an inconsistent history with its portrayal of women in its games. There’s been a lot of criticism thrown at them over the years, and a lot of is quite justified (some cases I may disagree with), but they’ve also created some pretty interesting female characters over the years.

Today I want to look at how the StarCraft franchise in particular has portrayed its female inhabitants over the years, because I think that’s been a pretty fascinating evolution.

Before I go any further, I will offer the caveat that I am a dude and that my opinions on issues relating to women should be taken with a grain of salt. I try to be sensitive and understanding, but obviously I lack the level of perspective and investment a woman would have for issues such as the portrayal of female characters in the media. What follows is my viewpoint; you are welcome to disagree.

In the beginning:

The first StarCraft game had a grand total of one female character. Now, to be fair, she was a pretty huge part of the story, but I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t a heavily male-dominated game.

Similarly, there was only one female unit in the game (well, two if you count Zerg queens): the Terran dropship.

However, even as early as the Brood War expansion, things were starting to change, if only slightly.

The number of major female characters in the story doubled with the introduction of Raszagal, who was also the first female Protoss we encountered.

This is somewhat significant because video games have a bad habit of only ever showing us one sex of non-human races (the neglected sex almost always being female). After twenty years, we still haven’t seen a female Ogre in Warcraft, and even Mass Effect took until the third game to show us a female Turian, and then only in DLC.

Raszagal was ultimately something of a weak character, but Brood War as a whole was devoted almost entirely to building up Kerrigan as a character — albeit in a very poorly written way that did more to make the other characters look stupid than to make her seem impressive. But, still, she was the star of the game, however mishandled the story may have actually been.

Brood War also began introducing more female combat units, though it was only two — both Terran, and one just a cheesy collection of “sexy nurse” cliches. Valkyries were pretty badass, at least.

Brood War gave a lot more attention to women than the base game had, but StarCraft as a whole remained a game mostly defined by its male characters. It would take until much later for more significant changes to take place.

Between games:

Some mention needs to be made of Nova and her rather strange saga.

Nova was to have starred in her own game, a shooter called StarCraft: Ghost, but it was cancelled before its release. However, she was not forgotten, by fans or by Blizzard.

Nova’s first appearance to be released to the public was the novel that bears her name by Keith R.A. Decandido. This established her as not only one of my favourite characters from the StarCraft universe, but also one of my all-time favourite characters in all of fiction, a complicated yet lovable and just downright cool person.

Nova would go on to star in quite a lot of tie-in fiction and become an icon for the franchise, though it would be a while before she took a major role in-game (more on that later). I’ve also previously pointed to her as a good example of sex appeal done right.

Also on the subject of tie-in fiction, I’d like to take note of R.M. Dahl of Christie Golden’s Dark Templar trilogy. Although she did not have any real appearances outside of the trilogy (bar her terribly ill-conceived cameo as a damsel in distress in Project Blackstone), R.M. is like Nova in that she became one of my most beloved characters. I always respect an author who can make me love a character I initially hated, and that’s R.M. in a nutshell. She’s a very complex person with a lot of layers.

Note to self: Reread those books sometime soon.

Hell, it’s about time:

StarCraft II is where I start to see big changes taking place, though I’ll definitely grant it’s not a perfect track record.

Wings of Liberty was still mostly the guys’ story, I admit. And there’s the utterly cringe-worthy Ariel Hanson to consider. It was Nova’s first appearance in-game, but she didn’t exactly do much.

They did start including more female units, though. Still a minority, but more than the original game launched with. For some reason the banshee pilot seems to strike a cord with people especially.

Heart of the Swarm was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Kerrigan took center stage again, and there were some prominent female characters among the supporting cast — though I’m not sure Izha should count anymore the Terran adjutant does.

On the other, the ending of the game could be considered kind of problematic, with some of Kerrigan’s thunder stolen at the finish line. I have a strong recollection of the profane rant I got from one of my feminist friends after she finished the game.

I don’t think it’s quite as bad as she did, but I can sympathize with the perspective, and I have my own problems with HotS’ ending, so I’m not going to waste much energy defending it.

Heart of the Swarm did add another female unit to players’ armies, though, in the form of the Protoss oracle — which is good because Protoss females have traditionally been very underrepresented in-game.

And that brings us to Legacy of the Void, which saw an explosion in the number and prominence of Protoss women in the story. Selendis unfortunately did not get the big role I’d hoped to see for her since her small appearance in Wings of Liberty, but we were introduced to Vorazun, Talis, Rohana, and Ji’nara.

I really like how Protoss women are portrayed. So far as I can recall, at no point in the entire StarCraft franchise have Protoss females been treated in any way differently from their male counterparts. It would appear the Protoss have achieved — or always had — perfect gender equality.

They’re not treated differently by the writers, either. Protoss women are, without exception, every bit as proud and formidable as the men.

I’m also quite fond of their art design. There’s a definite feminine quality to their appearance, and you can readily tell the difference between Protoss males and females at a glance, but they haven’t been sexed up or otherwise made to appeal to human ideals of beauty. They still look decidedly alien.

This stands in stark contrast to the ludicrous sexual dimorphism that you tend to find in the Warcraft universe — especially with the Draenei, whose males and females do not appear to even be from the same species.

I suppose you could make an issue of the fact that all these Protoss women are still largely playing second fiddle to the male characters — Selendis and Vorazun sort of share the role of Artanis’ sidekick, and Ji’nara is obviously second to Alarak — but they are all powerful and interesting characters in their own right.

Vorazun may be second to Artanis in the overall Hierarchy, but she is the sovereign ruler of her own people, and Artanis has been shown to trust her to lead the Daelaam in his absence. And frankly she’s a far more interesting character than Artanis ever was.

Meanwhile, Selendis is the commander of the Golden Armada, Ji’nara is a heartbeat away from ruling the Tal’darim, and Rohana is the only character shown to be strong enough to resist Amon’s direct influence.

There’s also a fairly credible fan theory that Selendis was the player character in Brood War’s Protoss campaign, similar to how Artanis was the player character in the base game. This isn’t confirmed, though.

We shouldn’t forget the ending of Legacy of the Void, either, which I think served as redemption for the mistakes of Heart of the Swarm.

Outside the main story, LotV introduced more female units — the liberator for Terran and the adept for Protoss — and the co-op mode, which prominently features several women as playable characters or mission contacts.

Finally, there’s the Covert Ops DLC. That was, in fact, the main inspiration for this post, as it undoubtedly gave more attention to women than ever before in StarCraft – or arguably any Blizzard game.

Obviously Nova was the hero, and she did nothing but kick ass and take names the whole time, but the villain was also a woman. Not exactly unexplored territory for StarCraft, but it was interesting to see a story that was entirely about the conflict between two women. That’s not something Blizzard’s done a lot of.

It also struck me how many women there were in more minor and incidental roles throughout Covert Ops. The Defenders of Man pilot on Tyrador, Horner’s lieutenant on Borea, Kate Lockwell on the news, and so forth.

It’s certainly a milestone for a franchise that began its life with one solitary female character.

* * *

There are two main points I’m trying to make here.

1: I really like StarCraft.

2: Blizzard has made a lot of mistakes in how it handles its female characters, and that deserves to be criticized, but I think they are making a genuine effort to do better, and I think that, too, deserves recognition.

I continue my march toward legendary status in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’ve now completed the smuggler story.

The heist:

On paper, the smuggler was the class that least appealed to me, and in a sense, I was right. It is pretty much a collection of all the sorts of tropes I normally don’t like — over the top lovable rogues, selfish criminals as protagonists, and so forth.

It’s just that the story is told with so much wit and charm that it won me over anyway.

Of all the class stories I’ve played to date — which is nearly all of them now — the smuggler puts by far the most emphasis on humour. Others have had occasional moments of levity — the warrior story especially — but the smuggler story is pure comedy. Which is probably a good thing, because otherwise the story of a selfish idiot somehow stumbling into conquering the galactic underworld and saving the Republic would be a pretty hard to swallow.

I do credit a lot of the story’s success to the voice actress who plays the female smuggler. The entire story is pretty much just her putting on a master class in snark and smugness, and it’s just delightful.

I was also once again amused by the maturity of the content in the smuggler story — even if some of it is a pretty immature sort of maturity. At one point I somehow wound up debating the villain about the size of my companion’s Johnson. I may not have been romancing him, but I wasn’t about to let the good name of Corso’s dingus get dragged through the mud.

Also I killed a Hutt by throwing a grenade down his throat. So there’s that.

This was also the first class I’ve played mainly dark side (though I still made more than a few light choices). Just seemed to make sense to bit a more ruthless and selfish than usual on this class.

Smuggler is another class story whose best chapter is definitely the first. The good news, though, is that its quality doesn’t fall off a cliff the way it did for the inquisitor.

Chapter two and the first bit of chapter three are a bit dull, but it’s all part of setting up something pretty interesting (best I can do without major spoilers), so it works out in the end.

Part of the problem is they start trying to tie the smuggler’s journey into galactic politics and the like. It sort of makes sense for them to do that in an MMO, but it’s an awkward fit for a class whose whole identity is based around being a petty criminal.

I’m definitely glad I was able to skip everything but the class missions. I can’t imagine how you could logically justify doing all the other content as a smuggler.

Must be even worse in the expansions. Parts of the Eternal Empire story felt a bit awkward as an agent, but as a smuggler, it all must be patently ridiculous.

The crew:

Smuggler has very good luck when it comes to companions, compared to most classes. While none of them are quite as amazing as, say, Vette or Nadia, they’re mostly likable, and smuggler is the only class I’ve played who don’t have any companions I strongly dislike.

Corso was probably my favourite. Yeah, his over the top folksiness can be a bit much sometimes, but mostly he’s so decent and good-natured it’s pretty hard for him to not get under your skin a bit. He reminds me of nothing so much as a big, dumb puppy following you around.

I decided not to romance him on the grounds he didn’t seem like a natural match for my smuggler, but they still had a pretty warm, compelling relationship. Interestingly, it seems like Corso will develop feelings for a female smuggler regardless of whether you choose to flirt with him. He never said so in so many words, but he got really jealous whenever I flirted with other guys, and his feelings for the player character seem pretty deep.

He also has a lot of hilarious interjections when you bring him along on missions — nearly as many as Vette.

Smuggler: “Why do people always assume the worst about me?”

Corso: “I’ve been wonderin’ that mahself. I think it’s got somethin’ to do with the hair.”

The others are mostly a good lot, too, though. Risha’s not the most warm or lovable person, but I liked her “girlfriend” dynamic with my smuggler. I can just see them planning their next robbery while they do their nails or something. Bit of a shame her story never really gets a proper resolution, though.

One other interesting thing about Risha is the fact she’s probably the most clear example yet of crossover between different class stories. If you’ve only played the smuggler story, Risha’s history will be a big question mark at first, but if you’ve played the warrior story, you already know quite a lot about her and her big reveal.

Gus is kind of amusing, and I like the “failed Jedi” angle. It’s an interesting take on the Star Wars lore — obviously not every Force wielder is going to be good at it, but you never think about the washouts. They could have done more with him, though. He suffers from the lateness of his introduction to the story.

Bowdaar can be a bit irritating just because Wookie screeching gets hard on the ears after a while, but if you can get past the noise, he’s a fairly compelling character otherwise.

Akaavi is the only weak link in the chain. She’s as dull and one-dimensional as every other Mandalorian I’ve met in this game to date. Would still take her over Kaliyo, Jorgan, or Zenith, though, that’s for sure.

The next job:

I still have two more class stories to do: knight and bounty hunter. I’m also tempted to play more of the expansion content on my alts — I miss playing my warrior.

I think that stuff can wait though. I’ve been playing a lot of SW:TOR for a while now, and I’m starting to feel a bit burnt out. Boy am I ever sick of Hoth, let me tell you.

So I think it may be time for me to take a break. Maybe not a long break — maybe just a few weeks. We’ll see. But I want to play something else for a bit.

I tried really hard to give this book the benefit of the doubt.

Oh, there were warning signs early on. Little things that were wrong, that showed an author who hadn’t done their research. Since when does Valerian Mengsk of all fekking people use casual slang?

Still, I didn’t want to judge too harshly out of the gate. This was Timothy Zahn’s first book in the StarCraft universe, and besides, a few hiccups here and there aren’t the end of the world. Knaak’s writing can be a little rough, too, but I usually end up enjoying his stuff all the same.

I did a double-take when I realized that most of the new characters had received little to no physical description, forcing me to conjure my own images of them out of whole cloth. (I decided Tanya has red hair because she’s a ghost and, y’know, Kerrigan and all.) That should have been a pretty big red flag right there.

But StarCraft has had a really good run over the past year or two. Everything that’s been released in-game has been excellent, pretty much without exception, and it’s felt like the franchise has entered a golden age, like it can do no wrong.

So I pressed on. And I kept pressing on, until the end of the book, at which point I had no choice but to admit the truth: Evolution is a sloppy, dull book written by someone who appears to have little to no understanding of the StarCraft universe or its characters.

Evolution presents a rather bizarre scenario. It involves an attempt at a peace conference between the Swarm, the Dominion, and the Daelaam Protoss. What’s even more shocking is that the conference was orchestrated by the Zerg, by Zagara herself.

Zagara claims she wants to usher in a new era of peace in the Koprulu Sector, and to prove her intentions she’s used the Zerg mastery of bio-engineering to bring life to a formerly dead world. She promises do the same on Terran and Protoss worlds, to heal the scars wrought by the End War.

To test the truth of her claims, Emperor Valerian sends a survey team to the surface, including a surprisingly chill reaper, an underachieving pyrokinetic ghost, a scientist, a mysterious Protoss exile, and Generic Meathead Marine Dude #24601. It soon becomes clear to the survey team that sinister forces are at work on the newly green world, and tensions run high on all sides as a new war seems increasingly likely.

It’s a pretty weird premise, and a bit hard to swallow at first, but ultimately it’s the execution far more so than the concept that drags Evolution down.

And to be fair, it’s not entirely bad. Some of the new creatures and concepts introduced are pretty cool from a strictly sci-fi perspective, and if these plot threads are ever revisited (hopefully by a different author), they could go interesting places.

Some of the new characters aren’t bad, either. They’re no R.M. Dahl or Mike Liberty, but they’re not without their charm. Tanya, the ghost, is kind of cool, and I love the nickname the other ghosts gave her: Pyrokeet.

The pre-existing characters, though, are a mess. I’ve already said that Valerian’s speech pattern was all wrong, and Horner displayed basically zero personality through the whole thing.

Abathur, though, is the real travesty here. The author does not understand Abathur at all. He acts so wildly, absurdly out of character in this book that it’s just intolerable. I clearly remember dialogue in Heart of the Swarm that directly and completely contradicts all of Abathur’s behaviour in this book.

Artanis feels right, but really, how hard is it to write for Artanis? The man isn’t exactly complicated.

And there’s no shortage of things that are far-fetched, or just straight up don’t make sense. Like how an interstellar transport takes about eight hours just to cross one planet for some fekking reason.

The only real silver lining here is that Evolution doesn’t seem that relevant to the ongoing story. Normally this would be a bad thing, but this book is such a mess I’m glad it’s not super likely to have a lasting impact of the course of the StarCraft universe.

I wouldn’t mind seeing more stories about the adostra, but please, Blizzard, get Christie Golden to write them.

In the end, Evolution is a wreck, but it’s a pretty self-contained wreck. It’s not enough to spoil StarCraft’s current golden age.

Some of the StarCraft novels have been truly excellent, and are among the best sci-fi books I’ve ever read. This isn’t one of them.

At least it was better than Speed of Darkness.

Overall rating: 4.1/10

Before I start on my holiday blogging break (cause nobody reads this thing over Christmas anyhow), I have a bit more rambling on StarCraft to do, plus a rant on digital holidays.

They prefer to be called the “living impaired”:

Last week saw the addition of another playable commander to StarCraft II’s co-op scene in the form of Admiral Alexei Stukov, otherwise known as the only good thing to come out of Brood War.

Stukov is an unusual Zerg commander who leads an army of infested Terrans, combining elements from both races.

I was a little on the fence about buying Stukov, but then I saw the previews for his “apocalisk” cooldown: a giant cyborg ultralisk with flamethrowers and rocket-launchers strapped to its back.

Yeah that’s worth $5.

Stukov is, in a word, weird. Along with Nova and Karax, he’s another commander who’s so unusual it’s like playing an entirely different game.

Many of Stukov’s core units are only temporary, lasting about a minute on average, but they’re free or cheap to make and can be produced in vast numbers. He does get a few permanent units, but they’re very expensive and not terribly strong all things considered. I’ve had some luck with mass diamondback, but that’s about it.

Like a lot of people, I thought he was very weak initially, but as I’ve grown accustomed to his playstyle, I don’t think he’s bad so much as strange and awkward. It’s like fighting with one hand tied behind your back, but the other hand has a chainsaw.

He does struggle in the early game, but once you’ve got your economy up and running and have upgraded your infested colonist compound a few times, the endless flood of zombies will eventually wear down virtually any obstacle through sheer attrition. Back them up with a small force of diamondbacks and infested bunkers and you’re good to go.

He’s definitely not going to be my favourite commander anytime soon, but there is a certain satisfaction to unleashing the zombie apocalypse on your enemy and overwhelming Amon with literally thousands of disposable units.

For all that he’s ostensibly meant to be a hybrid of Zerg and Terran mechanics, Stukov is probably the most fundamentally Zerg commander in the game. His units suck, but you simply choke your enemy to death with the sheer number of them. It doesn’t matter that his units are weak individually because you’re sending hundreds at a time.

My biggest complaint at this point would be that he has so few strategic options. Infested spam seems to pretty much always be the way to go. Mass diamondback can work, but it’s expensive, and it’s hard to recover if you suffer any significant losses. They’re also worthless versus heroic air units.

He’s also unusually lacking in polish for something Blizzard puts out. He has a lot of bugs, reused assets, and quality of life issues. Having to constantly spam the button to spawn infested marines gets really old, really fast. Why can’t we just spawn them in batches?

Nova guide and holiday article:

Also on the subject of co-op, I’ve now published a detailed guide to playing Nova in co-op over at MMO Bro. If you’ve been unsure how to best wield the power of this legendary operative, this will help you master her abilities.

Also at MMO Bro, I’ve written an article on why MMO holidays suck and how to fix them. I don’t know about you, but I’m almost always underwhelmed by the holiday events found in most games.

I have now returned from my short holiday blogging break. As always, the holidays brought with them a wealth of in-game events in various titles, so it was a time for me to go full game-hopper. Here’s a sampling of some of the more interesting things I did over the holidays.

Elder Scrolls Online: New Life Festival

I had already been thinking of getting back into ESO, and the newly implemented holiday event provided the perfect excuse.

Like the rest of ESO, the New Life Festival isn’t amazing but nonetheless has a certain charm. It definitely doesn’t give one much cause for complaint, managing to avoid most of the pitfalls outlined in my recent article on MMO holidays.

The event’s hub is a Nord woman named Breda in Eastmarch, who sends you on daily quests relating to the nine main playable races and their unique holiday practices. It’s not exactly thrilling, but it does add a nice texture to the world.

Naturally the Aldmeri quests are the best. The Bosmer quest wins for most fun, allowing you to toss mudballs* at basically anyone, be they players or NPCs, up to and including Queen Ayrenn herself. Now, I quite like Ayrenn, and my character is rather fond of her too, but when you have the chance to chuck a wad of mud at the high and mighty queen of the Altmer, you take it.

*(I guess when you live in a place that doesn’t get snow you make do.)

Meanwhile, the Altmer quest is a bit dull but very quick and farmable, and the Khajiit quest is a nice mix of fun and convenience. It involves stealing things because of course it does.

That said, the Breton quest is kind of cool, and the Nord one is also fun, if a little on the longer side compared to some of the other dailies. Really the only bad ones are the Dunmer quest (fun concept but way longer than it needs be) and the Argonian quest (ew fishing).

My only minor grievance would be that the event does involve a lot of travel. If you’ve already explored all the zones where quests take place (which is nearly all of them), you can use wayshrines to save a lot of time, but if not… I’m very glad of that spurt of exploration I had recently; saved me a lot of time during the event.

It does illustrate the potential inherent in One Tamriel, at least. It’s great to see an MMO utilizing all of its game world; makes it feel like a real place.

It’s also a fairly rewarding event, especially when you consider the double XP buff you can get from Breda’s keg (which I wish I had learned about earlier in the event). You can get pretty respectable amounts of gold and XP from the dailies, and they also drop holiday loot at a pretty generous rate. With the help of a little trading, I got nearly everything I wanted in the first two days.

On that note, one significant piece of loot is the Nordic Bather’s Towel costume. I have been considering it as a potential new go-to outfit for my Bosmer.

Normally I avoid revealing gear in games, but in the case of the Bosmer, it seems to make sense to invoke a more barbaric aesthetic. She’s a barely civilized cannibal from the deep jungle; it just doesn’t add up for her to be in full plate or something. And despite the name, the towel actually works pretty well as a sort of barbaric kilt look.

Then again, it is really revealing. I’d like a more savage style of armour, but I’d still like it to be armour, which the towel isn’t. At least it shows off her tattoos…

Bleh. The Argonian low level tops are exactly what I want, but I’m about to outlevel them. Why doesn’t this game have a bloody wardrobe? What kind of game doesn’t have a wardrobe in this day and age?

If nothing else, I guess she’s now equipped to defend herself from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

Heroes of the Storm: Varian impressions

I’ve barely touched Heroes over the last few months, but Varian is a character I’ve loved for years, and I’ve wanted him in Heroes of the Storm for a very long time, so when he came up on a free rotation coinciding with a holiday XP boost, I knew I had to give him a shot.

The interesting thing about Varian is that you would think he’d be a very complicated character, being the game’s first multiclass hero, but he’s actually quite mechanically simple.

He’s still theoretically complex because he is basically three characters in one, but once you’ve decided which build you’re going for, his actual ability toolkit and moment to moment gameplay are very simple.

I actually think he’d be a good choice for newer players because the simplicity of his kit allows you to focus a lot more on the fundamentals of the game — positioning, team play, and the like. There’s a certain purity to his playstyle that’s very charming. No gimmicks, no tricks, just charge in and bring the pain.

I tended to prefer his Twin Blades of Fury self-healing build — I found it to be both very fun and very powerful. Reminded me of how Valla used to be, except melee.

His tank build seems decent, too, though the range on Taunt really needs to be longer. I almost never got to use it because I was never in range when it counted.

That said, though, I’m still feeling pretty burnt out on Heroes, so after getting Varian to level five, I’m now on another indefinite hiatus from the game.

The Secret World: Same old, same old

Didn’t spend a whole lot of time in TSW this year. The holiday event was pretty much the same as previous years, with only a few very minor new additions. I did a few Super Hels and bought my usual party bag, but that’s about it.

There is one interesting thing to come out of this year’s event, but that deserves a post of its own…

Titan Quest: Not quite…

While it’s not holiday-related, one other thing that’s worth mentioning here, if only because it wouldn’t fill a whole post on its own, is that I finally cleared out the last of my Steam backlog by giving Titan Quest a go.

Titan Quest is an older game that recently got a remastered edition. The new version launched at a generous discount, so I figured it was worth a try, especially since Titan Quest is a game I’ve been mildly curious about for a while. On paper, it’s a game right up my alley: an action RPG based on ancient mythology.

The game does have a lot going for it, and it left a pretty good first impression. The graphics in the remastered version are gorgeous, and I was really glad to see that they seemed to have done their research in regards to the mythologies the game is based on. They actually know it’s Herakles, not Hercules!

There’s also a “build your own class” system wherein you can combine any two skill trees out of a long list of possibilities that I think is at least theoretically interesting.

I enjoyed my first few hours in Titan Quest, but over time, the game’s old school obnoxiousness really started to wear me down. Boss mechanics weren’t really a thing in those days, so the average boss fight tended to involve nothing but holding down the left mouse button and hitting the healing potion button on cooldown.

For, like, three minutes straight.

What really dragged me down, though, was the agonizingly slow pace of character progression. Leveling is slow, and there just never seems to be enough skill points to do everything you want. Not only do you need to spend points to unlock abilities, but you also need to keep investing large amount of points to keep your abilities up to par, and you need to invest points separately into the skill tree itself to unlock later abilities. Points spent on abilities don’t count toward advancing the skill tree for some incomprehensible reason.

I didn’t feel like I was building the awesome character I wanted to. I just felt like I was constantly trying to play catch-up and never really getting anywhere. A feeling I remember being common in older RPGs.

So as it stands now I don’t think I’m going to continue with Titan Quest. It’s a shame, because there is quite a lot about the game I genuinely like.

If nothing else it was good to confirm that my memories of older RPGs are in fact accurate and that RPGs actually are much better nowadays.

And finally…

I have also had another article published at MMO Bro: a guide to taking great MMO screenshots.

Since starting blogging, taking screenshots has become something of a crippling obsession oh gods help me hobby for me, and I’ve had a lot of time to practice taking good shots. I now pass my wisdom on to you.

At least some of these tips should apply to single-player games, too, if you’re not an MMO fanatic.

The Secret World’s holiday event this year was a tad underwhelming. No new content beyond some tacky decorations in Agartha and a very dull snowball fight minigame.

Some of the new cosmetics were nice, though. The moose and reindeer mounts are cool, though sadly out of my reach, and the new frost sprint is really pretty. Plus some nice general use winter clothes… and Elf ears.

Elf ears.

An item that gives your character Elf ears in The Secret World.

Elf.

Ears.

In.

TSW.

Aaaahhhh myyyy gaaawwdsss.

So, um, I had kind of a brain meltdown and a brief existential crisis and stuff happened, and…

Well, long story short, I bought yet another character slot and created a character I could RP as an Elf from the start.

So yeah.

This is my fifth character, and once again this is a game with very little use for alts to begin with and no reason at all to have more than three characters.

The worst part? She’s another Dragon — my third Dragon. It seemed to make the most sense from a lore perspective, and I wanted her to have as many green outfits as possible.

I don’t know if I’ll even play her to any serious degree. I still haven’t even finished Kingsmouth on Kamala…

I am at least trying to make her fit within the TSW universe. “Everything is true,” after all, and there’s already lots of Norse mythological stuff in the game, so I’m basing her character on the Elves the ancient Norse believed in — gave her a Norse inspired name and so forth. My thinking is the Elves in TSW would be a bit like the Jinn — embittered ancients struggling to cope with the modern world.

I’m waffling on her build at the moment, as I am wont to do. I started with elemental/chaos, but now I’m thinking elemental/blood makes the most sense, given Elves were viewed as the bringers and curers of disease. Shame — one day I’ll have a character that actually uses chaos seriously, maybe.

She did turn out to look pretty cool, at least — really surprised how good she looks in the geisha top from the issue ten CE — and if nothing else she’s been good screenshot fodder.

And honestly? Just knowing I have an Elf in TSW makes me feel better. More at peace with the universe.

Because Elves, that’s why.

Tutorial changes:

This was also my first time creating a new character since the global rebalance whose proper name escapes me but is usually referred to by fans as the NGE or the EPEEN.

It’s not a huge difference, but it is noticeable. The main change is the section in your faction’s training area. It now includes more instructions as to the proper use of the builder/consumer system (tailored to the unique mechanics of each weapon type, which is a nice touch), and it makes sure you grab two weapons before leaving.

It’s still a long way from explaining all the complexity TSW offers — I especially think more attention should be put toward explaining the importance of using passives from multiple weapons — but it’s unquestionably an improvement.

One strange thing is that you no longer get a full set of white gear upon leaving the tutorial and now enter Kingsmouth with most of your gear slots empty, but that gear never made much difference anyway, and it was always replaced quickly, so I guess it’s not too big a deal.

Interestingly, not all the changes are mechanical. The cinematics for new characters have also received at least one change: The dark-clothed fellow who appears to speak for the Dreamers has had a makeover and now sports some gnarly face tattoos.

Exactly what this means is somewhat open to interpretation, as are most things in TSW, but if you read through the discussion I started about it on the official forums, it seems it may actually have some intriguing lore implications.

Being a long-time Douglas Adams fan (as you all should be), I was excited to see a TV adaptation of his novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency appear on Netflix and started watching almost immediately.

It didn’t blow me away out of the gate, though. It was a strange, confusing show that didn’t seem to have much to do with the Dirk Gently story I know. I almost gave up on the show after the first two episodes, but something about it stuck with me, and I decided to give it another shot.

This turned out to be a good call.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is a very, very strange show. Far stranger than I have the ability to adequately communicate through a mere blog post, and almost certainly the strangest television show I’ve ever seen.

It’s also almost entirely unlike the book it’s supposedly based upon. Really the only common threads are Dirk himself (and even he’s changed somewhat compared to the books) and the underlying concept of the holistic detective and the “fundamental interconnectedness of all things.”

So much has been changed that the show is now a totally different genre. While the book was a lighthearted comedy, the show is definitely a drama, and a surprisingly dark and sometimes gory one at that. It’s not without occasional moments of levity, but it’s definitely more serious than silly.

Still, I’ve never been much of a purist. I generally try to judge each incarnation of a story on its own merits, and while the TV Dirk Gently is a radical departure from its source material, it manages to be pretty interesting in its own strange way.

And it is strange. I can’t overstate that. This show is just so weird. I don’t know if I could even attempt to summarize the plot, but it involves a kitten, a shark, time travel, anarchist energy vampires, and an heiress/corgi.

Alison Thornton plays dog very well. She’s very convincing as a corgi.

Early on, I was turned off by the show’s surprisingly gritty tone, by how different it was from the books, and how unrelentingly strange it was. However, over time, it began to grow on me.

There are a few reasons for this. The main cast members are all pretty likable and managed to feel pretty convincing as real people despite the oddness of the situations they find themselves in. Dirk is pretty bizarre, but that’s the point, and he’s entertaining.

Dirk is obviously the main character, but much of the story is told from the perspective of Todd, his hapless “assistant,” played by Elijah Wood of Lord of the Rings fame. Rounding out the core protagonists are Farah, a highly competent but not entirely confident bodyguard, and Amanda, Todd’s punk rocker sister, who suffers from a severe mental illness involving frequent and painful hallucinations.

There’s also a side plot following a strange woman named Bart, a holistic assassin who utilizes a method similar to Dirk’s (IE just wandering around doing random things for no reason) but with a lot more murdering.

What really started to hook me in, though, was the realization that the show does share one important quality with its source material.

As popular as he is, I don’t think Douglas Adams gets enough credit. His books aren’t just fun; they’re brilliant. When you start to analyze his books, you realize there’s an incredible depth and complexity to many of them.

Douglas Adams books always began with numerous bizarre, seemingly unrelated plot threads. It would seem like he was just rambling without purpose. Then, slowly, all the threads would begin to come together, and gradually you would realize that it was all connected, that he had a grand plan behind everything. What began as chaos became a symphony.

The Dirk Gently TV series has that same quality. At first, it seems like nothing but an incomprehensible spray of random, nonsensical events. Over the course of the season, you will begin to see the connections form, to see events align, and eventually every question will be answered, every loose thread tied together into a grand and beautiful whole.

As a writer, it leaves me awestruck. I could never write something like this.

There are still things that bother me about the show. The biggest is that I really dislike the attempt to give something approaching a rational explanation to Dirk’s abilities — the mystery is his whole charm — and the very cliche plots that spring from this explanation.

Still, a show that I initially met with profound skepticism has won me over. I got more into the series with every episode, the season finale was spectacular, and I’m looking forward to season two.

Also, “Two Sane Guys Doing Normal Things” is going down as one of my all-time favourite TV episode titles.

Last night, I got an email from Daybreak Games about Landmark. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I clicked and found my fears confirmed: Landmark will be shutting down next month.

If I’m being honest, this isn’t hugely surprising. Landmark has struggled to find an audience since its inception, and while I didn’t expect the end to come quite this quickly, I thought there was a pretty good chance it wouldn’t survive the year.

But that doesn’t make the news any easier to hear. Landmark has never been a focus of my gaming time the way titles like World of Warcraft or The Secret World have been, but the 72 hours I’ve logged in it (according to Steam) is still more than you get out of most single-player games, and while my play has dropped off over the last few months, I’ve always enjoyed the time I’ve spent with it.

Landmark was a very bare-bones game, but the potential of what you could create was always exciting, the beautiful works of fellow players always inspiring. Gorgeous graphics, lovely music, a warm and welcoming community, and an endless stream of new sights to see made it a great game for relaxation.

I am reminded of some of the most impressive things I’ve seen. One person on my server bought up builds all along one coastline and built themselves an entire kingdom, with castles and towns and outposts. Another constructed a huge hollow tree with an incredibly beautiful and detailed home amongst the branches. I’ve seen screen-accurate replicas of the Enterprise and the Serenity, functioning Stargtes, and even a Tim Horton’s.

I think, also, of my own builds. I think of all the hours I spent perfecting my ambitious second build, and I can’t help but be frustrated that the Vale of Whispers’ life will be cut so short. I try to comfort myself with the knowledge of the players who’ve visited and enjoyed it.

I think the first build is what I’ll miss the most, though. I built Maigraith’s Grove to be a serene place capturing all that I love about the fantasy genre, the natural world, and the interplay between the two. It was a wonderful place for relaxation, a literal happy place, and even as my time in Landmark dropped off, the mere knowledge of the Grove’s existence provided me a certain comfort. I may have grown up to be a city boy, but on some level the forest will always call to me, and my first build was a way to connect with that part of myself.

In a few weeks, they will be gone forever. I have taken many screenshots, and I may take more, but it will never be the same.

The journalist in me is watching my own reaction to the news with a kind of cold fascination. I’ve long lived with the knowledge that MMOs don’t last forever and that sooner or later I would become one of those people mourning a game lost, but this is the first time an MMO that I actually care about has shut down (it’s the third MMO I’ve played to sunset, but I had no real investment in or attachment to Dragon’s Prophet or Trinium Wars).

I am curious to see how I will cope with Landmark’s impending end. Will it motivate me to enjoy the game while I still can, or will the futility of it all drive me away?

My feelings can and likely will evolve over the coming weeks, but right now one emotion is drowning out all the others: Anger.

To be blunt, I think the blame for Landmark’s end rests squarely on the shoulders of the MMO community.

When EverQuest Next was cancelled, the community turned on Daybreak, apparently not understanding that sometimes new concepts simply do not work. I, too, was disappointed by the cancellation of what looked to be a very promising game, but as someone who works in a creative field myself, I understood that it was simply a failed experiment. Unfortunate, but sometimes unavoidable.

The community, however, chose to demonize Daybreak as some sort of ogre. They took EverQuest Next’s cancellation personally. And a lot of that hate spilled over to Landmark, the proverbial lemonade made from EverQuest Next’s remnants.

People hated Landmark because it wasn’t Next. People hated Landmark just because it was made by Daybreak. People hated it because they had misinformed or unrealistic expectations of what it was supposed to be.

Landmark was never given a fair chance by the community. It was written off as a failure before it launched. It was lambasted with unfair and often misinformed reviews. It was attacked at every turn.

That’s not to say that all criticism of the game was unfair, or that it was by any stretch of the imagination a perfect game. It was grindier than it needed to be, its combat was weak, and it suffered from an unacceptable level of bugs and technical hiccups.

And it is true that Daybreak has mismanaged it in some ways. It didn’t seem to get much in the way of marketing, for one thing. But far less deserving games have succeeded where Landmark failed. If Daybreak is the one that steered it into dangerous waters, the community is still the one that sunk it. Again, it was simply never given a fair shot.

I have long been a harsh critic of the state of the gaming community, and I’m sad to say that my cynicism has once again been proven right. We live a world where people cheer for games to fail, where the slightest misstep by developers is met by a level of bile that should be reserved for war criminals.

People are always wondering why MMO developers are so risk-adverse. Why they so rarely try new things, why they tend to be so cagey and uncommunicative. Look in the mirror, because that’s where you’ll find your answer.

I did have a nice if bittersweet time commiserating with the other Landmarkians last night. Lots of people visiting each other’s builds while they still can, lots of support. I got a nice compliment on my build from one person. They’re trying to find a way to keep the community together even after the game shuts down. I haven’t played the game enough to rightly count myself a member of the community, but I wish them well.

As regular readers may know, there was a period of several years in my life where I had to give up video games due to various Real Life issues. There are a number of games I regretted missing out on during this period, but few that stung as much as No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way. The original had been an instant classic, and I sorely wanted to play the sequel.

Now, fourteen years later, the fan-made Revival Edition has at last given me the opportunity to play through NOLF 2. I went in with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. How could it possibly live up to the impossible standard set by its predecessor?

Aging in reverse:

There are a couple things that gave me a negative impression of No One Lives Forever 2 out of the gate.

By far the biggest is that an RPG-style skill point system has been implemented. I barely tolerate these sorts of things in RPGs; I definitely didn’t want one in No One Lives Forever.

And this particular skill system embodies pretty much all the worst sins of RPG design. In essence, they nerfed the player’s capabilities into the ground and then let you buy your way out of the suck with skill points. Upgrading a skill doesn’t feel like a reward; it just makes you feel less broken.

A lot of the skills are really basic quality of life things, too. I shouldn’t have to spend hard-won skill points just so it doesn’t take an eternity to loot a body.

The only silver lining is that it doesn’t take very long to earn enough skill points to overcome the most irritating disadvantages.

NOLF 2 is also missing a lot of the things that made the original special, such as being able to choose your equipment before a mission. This was one of the biggest contributors to the original’s high replayability. Missions could be a very different experience when you redid them with equipment earned later in the game.

It feels like a cheap way to add difficulty, too. There were lots of situations where I found myself badly wanting a specific tool or gadget, but the game had forbidden me from bringing it.

Dialogue choices are gone, too. The original game didn’t exactly have a lot of these, but they were a great element of flavour, and they added some interesting non-combat gameplay at times.

I’m not really fond of the addition of health power-ups, either. It’s a small thing, but I liked the balance between armour (which could be replenished) and health (which couldn’t) in the original game. Now armour and health are virtually interchangeable.

Having replayed some of The Operative recently, I’m left with the very strange feeling that the first No One Lives Forever was actually a lot more modern in its sensibilities than its sequel. Aside from the graphics and a few minor quirks, The Operative could pass for a game from the current year, whereas NOLF 2 feels like a product of a somewhat outdated school of game design.

Remember what H.A.R.M. stands for:

Something else that disappoints me is that they replaced the voice actress for Cate Archer. The new actress is not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s just not the same. It’s especially distracting given that most if not all of the other returning characters have their original voices.

In general the characters this time around don’t feel as fleshed-out as they did in The Operative. Now, NOLF was never the most character-driven game, but it feels like the original put a bit more time into dialogue, backstory, and character development. The villain had a strong motivation, whereas NOLF 2’s villain is given no such depth.

One notable exception to this, though, and one major highlight of the game is a new character named Isako, who is the leader of a clan of ninja assassins. She’s a bit cliche in some ways… but this is No One Lives Forever. That’s the point. And I think she actually has a pretty interesting backstory and character arc.

Found this one on Google. Somehow managed to go the whole game without getting a decent shot of Isako.

I tell you this: If Tumblr had been a thing back in the day, Cate/Isako shipping definitely would have been a thing.

Overall I would rate the story of NOLF 2 as good, not great. It’s a fun ride, but it’s a bit straightforward, and the ending is a bit of an anticlimax. There definitely aren’t as many twists as there were in the original.

This is one area where I’m willing to grant my nostalgia may be a factor, though. I’m definitely a more critical player now than when I played the original.

Super groovy:

But there’s still plenty to like about A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way. If I’m harsh with it, it’s mainly because the original was such an incredibly tough act to follow.

A lot of what made the original excellent remains. The core gameplay is still pretty fun. You still have lots of cool gadgets and toys. There are still informative and amusing intelligence items hidden everywhere. There are still hilarious conversations to eavesdrop on. Nothing like creeping through an enemy base only to have the tension shattered when you overhear an anguished voice wail, “Who keeps eating my mango chutney? My mother made that for me!”

And then there were the fruit vendors and their growing fears of a vast and nefarious monkey conspiracy, and many others.

The Operative had some of the best level design in gaming history, and while NOLF 2 doesn’t quite equal it, it does make an admirable effort. One dramatic moment has the player fighting a boss while trapped in a mobile home that is being tossed around in a tornado… though in practice it’s just window dressing, since the tornado doesn’t do much to affect gameplay.

The real highlight of the game is a not so high speed chase in which the player pursues a tiny mime on a unicycle whilst riding a giant Scotsman riding a tiny tricycle.

Yeah, you heard me.

You also once again get to visit a dizzying variety of exotic locations, including India, Japan, Ohio, Antarctica, and a secret base at the bottom of the ocean.

Also, while NOLF 2 introduces a lot of new annoyances, it does scale back on the main problem with the original game: stealth missions. There’s really just one true stealth mission in the game; otherwise it’s mainly left up to the player whether they want to sneak around or do their best Rambo impersonation.

The graphics also hold up very well, considering their age. In particular I was impressed by the quality of the facial animations. They’re not only good for their time but would even equal or surpass many more recent titles. The eyes, especially, are very expressive and realistic.

The soundtrack is still full of delightful retro cheese, too. I’ve still got the theme song stuck in my head as I write this. (“Cause no one lives forever… but evil never dies…”)

Overall, A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way is a good game. It’s just not the must-play eternal classic the original was.

Overall rating: 8/10

By the way, while I chose not to factor it into my review score, it is worth noting that I had a lot more technical problems with the Revival Edition of NOLF 2 than I did with the original’s. These range from minor graphical hiccups to frequent crashes and other catastrophic bugs. It wasn’t enough to stop me finishing the game (obviously), but it was undeniably frustrating.

At least I was able to get it to work through Steam and take screenshots this time.

The StarCraft II trilogy has now wrapped up, and Blizzard doesn’t seem to have any immediate plans for more stories in-game. For better or for worse, though, Blizzard doesn’t let any of their franchises lie fallow forever, so sooner or later the StarCraft story is going to start moving forward again.

I have to wonder, though, where does it go from here? Both StarCraft games formed a pretty coherent story arc, all building to the conclusion in Legacy of the Void, and now that arc is finally over. For the first time, we’re in uncharted waters with no clear indication of where to go next.

Still, there are some possibilities. Obviously, there will be spoilers for the StarCraft story to date here.

Rogue elements:

Even if the main factions of each race — the Swarm, the Dominion, and the Daelaam — manage to stay on mostly friendly terms, there’s still the potential for rogue elements from within each race to cause trouble.

I definitely think this is the intended role of the Tal’darim. They’re a readily available bunch of nasty Protoss for the player to beat on, and they serve that role well.

Terran society, as well, offers plenty of opportunity for further conflict. It’s just human nature; we’re a fractious bunch. We’ve already seen that with the Defenders of Man in Covert Ops, and there’s also the potential for renewed conflict with the Kel-Morian Combine or even the Umojan Protectorate, though the latter is a bit of a stretch.

The Zerg are theoretically homogeneous, but there’s still the possibility of feral broods wandering the cosmos, mindlessly consuming all in their path, and there’s Dehaka and the Primals to consider. Their loyalty to the Swarm was always tenuous at best, and they have no code beyond the desire to feed and grow stronger.

This is the safest route. It won’t radically change the feel of the StarCraft universe, and it’s a logical evolution of the current story. It doesn’t lend itself well to the kind of epic story-telling we’re used to from Blizzard, though. The Tal’darim are scary, but they’ll never equal Amon.

Other aliens:

One of the interesting things about StarCraft is that it’s clearly established there are many intelligent races in the galaxy beyond the big three and the Xel’naga, but we just never see them. The only species beyond the majors even mentioned by name is the Kalathi, and we know next to nothing about them.

If Blizzard were to introduce new aliens into the StarCraft universe, it could be in the form of an entirely new playable faction in all areas of the game, or maybe just something that only appears in campaigns and/or other story-telling mediums (like novels).

I think my preference would be the latter. I loved it when Warcraft went from two playable factions to four, and the sheer ballsiness of adding new playable races would be exciting, but at this point the traditional StarCraft triad is so entrenched and iconic I’m not sure it should change.

But if they’re just a story-telling element, it could be interesting. There’s no limit to what Blizzard could come up with, so from that perspective the prospect of new aliens has the most potential of all the ways to continue StarCraft’s story.

Earth:

Then there’s the United Earth Directorate to consider. Their last attempt to conquer the Koprulu Sector ended very badly, but there’s no guarantee they won’t try again.

For my part, though, I rather like that Earth is some distant, unknown thing in the StarCraft universe, and I’m not sure I’d want to jeopardize that.

Actually, I would like to see what Earth is like in the StarCraft universe, but I’d like to see it in some spin-off that’s unrelated to events in the Koprulu Sector. Let the two realms stay separate.

Amon’s legacy:

Legacy of the Void wrapped up the main story very well, but one thing it did leave a bit unanswered is what became of Amon’s armies after his defeat.

Of course, the simple answer is that they were destroyed, and I’m sure that’s true… but were they totally wiped out?

Moebius Corps and the feral Zerg broods were just mindless tools, so I don’t imagine they’re still kicking… but what of the Hybrids? Was every last one of them eliminated?

And what of the Tal’darim? Surely some must have remained loyal to Amon in their hearts, even if they dared not speak out against Alarak openly.

Amon is gone for good, but the horrors he unleashed may not be so easily caged.

Continuing with Amon’s legacy is of course the most predictable route, and it risks simply rehashing Legacy of the Void… but tell me the thought of a lone Hybrid lurking in the dark places of the universe and plotting its vengeance doesn’t give you chills just a little bit.

The WoW route:

Everyone just starts fighting again because reasons.

Not a great option, but it wouldn’t be quite as illogical as the transition between Warcraft III and World of Warcraft was, at least.

* * *

Those are the possibilities that immediately come to mind for me. It’s entirely possible there are some I over-looked. You could also combine elements of the above. Maybe a heretofore unknown alien race conquers Earth, and the survivors are forced to seek refuge with their cousins in the Koprulu Sector. Maybe a surviving Hybrid stumbles upon the Kalathi and uses their hatred of the Protoss to turn them into an army.

Do you have any theories for where StarCraft can go from here?

I have been playing World of Warcraft off and on (more on than off) for over seven years now. That’s a Hell of a long time to play a video game, and in that time, I’ve seen and done almost everything the game has to offer.

Almost.

There are still a few things that, for one reason or another, I’ve never done. I thought it might be interesting to look at those things that I still have never experienced within the world of Azeroth.

Played a Gnome:

Over the years, I have tried every class and every race at least once, and in many cases more than once.

Every class and race, that is, except for Gnomes.

I just don’t like Gnomes. They’re a comedy relief race that isn’t funny. They’d work fine as some background element like the Grummles in Pandaria, but Blizzard’s halfhearted attempts to make them a race worthy of sharing center stage have just created an unhappy medium where they’re still not terribly compelling as heroes but have also lost whatever quirky charm they once had.

Plus, they’re about as deep into the uncanny valley as you can get. Gnomes are so horrifically disproportionate they make Orcs look like beauty queens.

I might have played one if they had their own unique starting zone — completionism and all that — but since they share Dun Morogh with the Dwarves, there’s just no point.

Quested through Bloodmyst Isle or Loch Modan:

As mentioned above, I’m a serious completionist when it comes to story, and as a result, I have played through virtually every zone’s quest content at least once — though a few I haven’t been through since the Cataclysm revamp.

Two zones have slipped through the cracks entirely, though.

The first is Bloodmyst Isle. Despite my disdain for the Draenei, I have played through most of their first zone, but my interest always drops off by the time I get to Bloodmyst Isle. I’ve managed to do the first few quests, but I don’t think I’ve ever even gotten to the halfway point of the zone, let alone finished.

I tend to think of Bloodmyst as the only zone I’ve never done, but in writing this post, it occurs to me I can’t recall having spent much time in Loch Modan, either. I remember riding through there a lot of times, and I’ve probably done a quest or two, but I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and properly played through it.

I don’t really have anything against Loch Modan. It’s a pretty zone, and Dwarves are okay. I guess it got neglected because I like the human and Night Elf leveling zones so much. Shame you can’t do Loch Modan as Horde — it surely must be nicer than the Barrens.

Roleplay:

This entry almost doesn’t qualify for the list, because I have flirted with the periphery of roleplay for a long time. I have fairly strong backstories/personalities for all my characters — the potential to build new stories is a strong contributor to my altoholism — and half my characters are on a roleplay server.

I enjoy watching other people roleplay as I walk by — gives the world some real texture — and I used to attend the regular Thunder Bluff story-circle. Arguably I was RPing then, as I was in-character for the event, but mostly that just entailed walking to my seat, sitting down, and occasionally applauding or offering a brief comment.

I am eternally tempted to give RP a try, but I have no faith left in the WoW community, my experience as an outside observer has been that RP tends to entail a lot of drama, and I don’t think my characters would be accepted by the greater RP community. I’m not interested in playing ordinary people, and I would likely be labelled a Mary Sue and summarily rejected.

Also, most people type much, much more slowly than me, and I am not a patient man. That’s pretty much why I stopped going to story circle.

Pet battles:

Thanks to some bad experiences in childhood, anything resembling Pokemon is anathema to me.

And even if that wasn’t the case, pet battles still wouldn’t much appeal to me. They have no story-relevance, no rewards that I care about, and just nothing at all about them appeals to me. I didn’t even like pets when you couldn’t battle them.

That said, I have a lot of respect for pet battles from a conceptual perspective. They’re a very deep mini-game that offers many, many hours of play for those who enjoy them, but those who don’t care (like me) can ignore them without consequence. All the game’s systems should follow this model.

Rated battlegrounds:

Despite the fact my opinion of WoW PvP runs the spectrum from disinterest to disdain, I have participated in most every kind of PvP the game has to offer at some point.

I even had a brief, disastrous arena career back in early Cataclysm when a guildie roped me into it. You’d think, being a rogue, I’d be good at this sort of thing, but no.

Rated battlegrounds, however, elude me. It’s not the sort of thing you join up with on a whim. It takes a fair bit of planning and organization. And I only pop into PvP once in a blue moon when I’m bored and can’t think of anything better to do.

Faced Jaraxxus:

I had pretty poor luck with Trial of the Crusader back in the day. Every PUG I ever joined for it back in Wrath failed.

Later — I think sometime in Cataclysm — I finally joined a group who managed to finish it, but by the time I joined, they were already on the faction champions, meaning I have never killed the first few bosses. That includes Jaraxxus, Eredar lord of the Burning Legion.

He’s such a famous meme of a boss that I almost feel guilty — like I’m not a true WoW fan — that I’ve never actually encountered him.

At this point I’m sure I could go back and solo him, but it’s just not that interesting of a raid, so I haven’t been strongly motivated to do so.

Feeling burnt out on SW:TOR and having finally cleared out my backlog of single-player titles, I’ve decided to invest some time into Elder Scrolls Online once again. My theoretical goal is to finish the main storyline and the Aldmeri Dominion zones, but before embarking on that, I picked up the Thieves Guild DLC. Being a fan of the game’s justice gameplay, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while.

Sun and larceny:

The Thieves Guild storyline begins when you are approached by a fellow thief in your local Outlaw’s Refuge. She offers you a lucrative job, but when your perfect heist is crashed by a group of fanatical mercenaries, you and your accomplice find yourselves drawn into a web of conspiracy centered around the Thieves Guild and their crime-ridden home city of Abah’s Landing.

One minor design flaw of this scenario is it means you’ll be dumped into an unfamiliar city full of guards with an active bounty and an inventory over-flowing with stolen goods. Not the greatest situation to be in.

Like a lot of things in ESO, I’d rate the Thieves Guild story as firmly in the category of good but not great. I found it pretty dull at first, but it does evolve into a fairly interesting mystery over time.

It has an interesting structure, too. There’s a sort of cadence where every major story quest is followed by a simpler quest to flesh out the stories of the various cast members, and vice versa. It’s like a Bioware game, but with better pacing.

On that note, the greatest strength of Thieves Guild is definitely its characters. Nearly every character is colourful and entertaining. There’s a quest at one point where you have to infiltrate a fancy party, and you get to choose which character you bring as your “date.” I think it says something that I kept wishing I could bring all of them.

Of course, I still chose Quen without hesitation. If you don’t think I’m going to immediately pick the quirky Elf girl, you don’t know me at all. But still.

The DLC includes access to the small but well-made zone of Hew’s Bane. Next to the characters, the new zone is probably the best feature of Thieves Guild. It has a small but satisfying collection of side quests, delves, world bosses, and skyshards to encourage exploration and provide some content beyond the main story.

Normally I’m not a fan of desert zones, but Hew’s Bane has enough foliage, variety of environments, and interesting geography to avoid becoming the endless smear of gray and brown that most desert zones are. It’s actually quite a lovely place, and I greatly enjoyed my time in it.

It also seems to have an unusually dense concentration of crafting nodes, making it a good place for farming.

Similarly, its main settlement, Abah’s Landing, is one of the more impressive cities I’ve seen in a video game, with beautiful architecture and an incredible level of detail.

However, there is one thing about Thieves Guild that did frustrate me. Your ability to get new story quests is gated behind the progression of your Thieves Guild skill line, and the only way to increase its rank is by doing quests for the guild. This essentially makes it a reputation grind by another name, and we all know how I feel about those.

It sneaks up on you, too. For most of the story, you get enough “reputation” simply by playing through the story normally, but then eventually you hit a roadblock where the only way to progress is to start grinding the guild’s daily quests.

And nothing in the game explains this. I only figured it out after some Googling to find out why I had suddenly stopped getting quests.

Now, as grinds go, this one is pretty tame. Even calling it a grind is stretching the definition of the term a little. Still, “stealth dailies” are two words I never wanted to see combined, and it just kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It’s unnecessary. Even without the extra padding, Thieves Guild is quite a meaty DLC with far more content than I was expecting from it.

Overall, I think I’d still recommend Thieves Guild, but the daily grind aspect does somewhat dampen my enthusiasm for an otherwise excellent DLC.

Readjustments:

Coming back to an MMO after a long time away can often take some getting used to. I’m still learning how Elder Scrolls Online has changed following recent updates, especially One Tamriel.

While One Tamriel has undoubtedly been a net positive, I am starting to find some things that I’m less than thrilled with.

For example, crafting surveys from writs can now apparently send you to any zone in the game. This might be a positive for someone who’s reached endgame and unlocked every wayshrine, but as someone who’s still leveling and had only ever been to the first few Aldmeri zones up until recently, I’m really not enjoying having ride off to the ass end of High Rock to finish my crafting tasks. The point of something like One Tamriel should be to allow the player to make use of the entire game world, not to force them to.

I got a survey for Craglorn the over day. Craglorn! I mean, I know they nerfed it a bit, and level-scaling means I can technically go there now, but even so…

I don’t know if it was part of One Tamriel or not, but somewhere along the line world bosses also got massively buffed and are no longer remotely soloable. Finding groups for them isn’t enormously difficult, but it isn’t entirely trivial, either, and it just doesn’t feel good to see content get more restrictive. Especially when you consider the rewards for killing them don’t seem to have increased alongside the difficulty.