Foreword

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₪ Genre: Action, Adventure
☑ Release date: September 2014
♬ Soundtrack: Attack on the Gate and The Rescue

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Now that I think about the ordeal it has been a while since I last played this sort of open world game. Well, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor happens to be the one which breaks the streak of no-plays. How did it do? Only one way to find out.

Let's get one thing out of the way first – this is a glorified and well-produced fan fiction. I've seen so many people lose their minds over how it insults Tolkien and Lord of the Rings. In my opinion these people are taking their fantasy way too far. Story-wise Shadow of Mordor needs to be looked at as something standalone even if it does draw from familiar imagery and, for book readers at least, character(s) you may not have necessarily imagined as competent warriors. To put matters into perspective game follows one Talian, a ranger of Gondor standing watch over the Black Gate, as some shenanigans involving developer original characters raid the place, put himself and his family to the sword for some weird ritual and call it a day. Or do they? Well, that's obviously not the end of the journey for our ranger as he soon find himself sharing his body with a mysterious Elf wraith and sets out to avenge his family and undo as much of the damage as he can.

Problem here is, well, story is very weak. Not necessarily in the premise alone which is your classical “revenge story, but something happens along the way so things escalate”, but in essence how it's presented. Perhaps due to game format with the way it handles open world, but I think it has more to do with how sparsely the main story is dolled out to you. There's maybe five or six hours of it in a 20+ hour game and that's probably being generous. Just as much is allotted to side missions which I hesitate to call quests because they're really not, few exceptions where you team up with exiled ranger, smug dwarf and warrior princess notwithstanding. Game also embraces “collect X of Y” for side content, but I actually rather liked how these had stories associated with them. Broken dagger is just broken dagger until you find out how a slaved escaped with it, for example.

As far as gameplay goes... well, have you played any of the Batman Arkham games? Then you've played Shadow of Mordor. Not to say game doesn't make use of its license for flavor, but that's pretty much it when you boil it down. You do missions, collect experience and currency called Mirian to further your abilities and upgrades. One twist here is that to unlock further ability tier you need Power aka red points which you procure by dealing directly with Uruks, main enemies of the game. I'll talk more about the Nemesis system itself in a later paragraph because it's the sole highlight of the game, but I wasn't really a fan how some pretty vital abilities are locked from you until story advances far enough. This just doesn't work in an open world game where you can explore the first half pretty much however you want and the second half is a greener version of the first.

It should also be noted there is a stealth system in the game and it synergizes pretty well with the rest. It doesn't feel tacked-on so you will fortunately never have the “forced stealth level” experience. I would say stealth and head-on action are represented in equal parts both in gameplay and abilities you can unlock. There is another advancement route and those are Runes you acquire as you kill Uruks, runes you can implant into your three weapons – sword, bow and dagger – for various status modifiers. This is the main way you can affect how Talion plays seeing as you will [eventually] get your hands on all the upgrades/abilities.

It's not all brown in Mordor. Sometimes it's all green, too.

Full-fledged cinematics are relegated more to distant flashbacks.

Nemesis system – highlight of the game without peer. Provided you feel like gaming it a tad.

Speaking of the Nemesis I've hinted at earlier now's the time to tackle it. I love the damn thing. Could it be improved? Absolutely, but I think the biggest problem is how game essentially locks the most important aspect, branding Uruks and making them your slaves, until you get to the second half of the game. This feels like a really underhanded move for no real reason because they give you everything else and let you have fun with the system. So what is it? Well, there are regular Uruks running around and then there are Uruk captains with their own hierarchy of power on top of which sit the Warchiefs. These captains/Warchiefs are named and have their own cocktail of strength, immunity, fear, etc combinations which you may prey on or otherwise exploit. So what's the best part then? You can game this system to your pleasure. Until you get the branding ability you don't really have much freedom over “do I kill this cool looking captain or not?”, but once you acquire it the world opens do you. Like that particular captain for his ninja mask? Well, brand him and make him your pet project – he goes on a recruitment drive and you follow, rival is about to execute him and you step in to save him... eventually you make him betray his Warchief and you have an inside man. Sadly, for all the amazing uses and potential the Nemesis system requires you to to be bad at the game to A) actually use it naturally without forcing passage of time if you don't die and B) need it to get things done. Which leads me to another point, that being....

Game is damn too easy. I'm not even such a good player or anything, but had the story not forced my hand in dealing with Warchiefs and if I wasn't interested in the system, I think I would've most likely ignored it all because you are a one-man army. Just play smart and use all the assets as well as check for enemy weaknesses and you'll do fine.

I also played DLC for the game so let's give that a whirl or two.

Miscellaneous DLC is straight up Pay2Win overpowered runes you should forget even exist. Do yourself a favor and don't make an already easy game even easier. First real piece of content we get is Lord of the Hunt in which Talion teams up with Torvin and they hunt even deadlier prey. Really, this is all about riding and creature variants. If you liked monsters in the base game and wanted more, this is it. Torvin's journal entries were a really nice additions. Second piece of story is The Bright Lord which is actually a prequel where we assume the role of [name redacted for spoiler reasons] Elf lord before he became a wraith and see how he got entangled with Sauron. The One Ring is OP as hell, but this story also gimps the protagonist and is probably the most challenging of the bunch. Honestly? Both additional campaigns could use more variety and were pretty short running, maybe under two hours each, but if you liked what you already played they're worthwhile extensions. Trials of War is a collection of challenge maps which weren't really my thing because this is not the kind of game where I care about my score, but you might.

So in closure – would I recommend Shadow of Mordor? Yes, just keep in mind you're not really getting an original experience and if you approach with expectations of LotR fan you might be in for some hurt. This is yet another case where Steam could benefit from some neutral recommendation, though.

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₪ Genre: FPS
☑ Release date: March 2011
♬ Soundtrack: Main Theme and Goliath

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It might be difficult to imagine when you look at what I mostly play these days but I was once an avid player of FPS games. Looking back at it in hindsight rise of these so-called "modern military shooters" like Homefront put a stop to that in due time yet I also think this specific case warrants a closer look at. It also helps I got the game really cheap so there's no place to justify my expenditure, hype or anything of that sort now that it's been good six years since the game came out. Needless to say multiplayer was off the table for this one. Mainly because I couldn't be bothered as there is/was some revival movement on Steam forums to get it going again. It's a mystery.

Probably the only interesting part of the game and one that struck a chord with me personally is the setting itself and backstory which lead to current state of things in 2027 when now Greater Korean Republic, having been united under a fictional version of Kim Jong-un, has been fighting the US on its own soil following an EMP strike that paralyzed the country. Basically, it's a “what if?” scenario in which Korea invades the United States and isactually doing a rather good job of it. They form a puppet state called New Korean Federation of Occupied America where western states used to be while eastern states still remain free. Why is this the most interesting part? Because game puts in effort to explain how GKR actually accomplished a feat such as this one which seems outlandishly impossible. I mean, it is no matter how you look at it but there's some effort put into and explaining the timeline from how they united, took over Japan, how US had a series of unfortunate events like a vicious strain of Bird Flu, gas prices going up over Middle Eastern meddling, etc. It's a compelling read you have to hunt for in the form of newspapers articles and one that is wasted in a straightforward and barebones shooter such as this one, but I appreciate its existence.

And sadly that's really where my praise for the game ends and I could end the review here, but that's not why I'm here.

Actual plot of the game is so generic it hurts and characters fare no better. You get your crazy paramilitary guy, your “are we doing the right thing?” female character, techie Asian guy who fortunately also doubles up as a fighter and our protagonist is a pilot who gets recruited, well, because the story says so. Alright I'm lying but it's a mystery until the last two levels as to why they're dragging you around. And the story? I can't remember when was the last the time I played such ridiculous setup played so perfectly straight only to further rub it in with forced sentimentality and beating you over the head with shocking imagery. This is one of those cases where saying less would've been preferable over characters clearly overreacting to something that's been going for two years.

Game's rapid aging really comes through when you look at characters away from action.

While there are frankly too many decaying urban locales to guerrilla fight in some outdoors also show up here and there. Some.

Homefront does make an effort for atmospheric locations from time to time.

But this is an FPS and we can excuse all of that if the gameplay is good, right? Well, it's really not. At best I would also describe it as generic which is also par for the course with modern military shooters sadly. What really pushed my buttons is how the game doesn't trust you to do anything. For 90% of the game you're accompanied by other characters and they constantly direct the action telling you where to go, blocking advancement until conditions are met and distract you from all the invisible walls that surround you. I think I got to bust open a door twice in the entire game and for the remainder I had to sit there and wait for them to do it. Short seven levels and even shorter play time, with some segment replays on my part mind you, also don't help the overall impression.

In terms of presentation you can clearly tell the game has aged more like milk than wine, but it was always a case of suffering from lack of production values you kinda need when you go up against a big boy like Call of Duty. Keep in mind this was a 2011 release. Even more than that game sparsely employs unique animations and you'll get sick of Connor moving a fallen object to open up passage, for example. In my opinion it did a lot better in the sound department although this is also a very typical militaristic HURRAH song repertoire meant to get you hype. If it does that for you then you're in good company. I could've sworn some songs looped quite aggressively which becomes real apparent as you search around for newspapers and your comrades are egging you on to get going.

At the end of the day Homefront is a game that doesn't really excel at anything tangible and at this point there's really no need to play it unless you've played everything else under the sun or want this specific kind of dystopian future scenario. It gets props for the setting building even if you don't actually see much of it. Maybe the sequel handled it better.

Maybe the sequel handled it better.

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₪ Genre: Action, Horror
☑ Original release: July 2017
⇲ Episodes: 4

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Castlevania. There's a name thing should sound familiar to games of all ages, but it's also one that has largely remained in domain of video games. Castlevania, as produced by Netflix, is an odd example because while it is an adaption of the third game in the series it is one that does the deed in its own way. Some things are definitely moved around a bit or outright changed, but all that guarantees is anyone can jump into the show without having to keep track of, well, rather loose story of the video game series.

It should be noted this first season aka four episodes is really a greatly expanded prologue for the second season which should broach the story itself. In this incarnation Dracula falls in love with a mortal woman and while he's away traveling the world like a regular mortal she gets burned at a stake as a witch. Surprisingly enough she wasn't one but rather a woman of science and Dracula genuinely loved her. He returns and sees what's happened only to give people of Wallachia a year to move away before he unleashes his army of horrors upon them. Much to their own expense people, and corrupt head priest responsible for the burning, of course don't take Dracula's warning seriously. They soon learn to regret that. In the middle of all the chaos that begins to unfold we also learn of the Belmont family, famous hunters of the supernatural who have fallen on hard times and our resident Belmont, Trevor Belmont, is up to no good getting drunk wondering what to do next now that he's lost his purpose. Dracula's army catches up.

Above is a very basic summary of the first episode and is just a launching point that sets up the story concerning less “how are we going to fight Dracula?” and more what's the current state of civilized places in Wallachia now that Dracula has been true to his word and unleashed an army of monsters. Make no mistake because show sure won't hold back any punches in terms of what it's willing to show – from massacred piles of bodies and dead child or two to general level of gore you would expect a show to do a quick cutaway or fade for black, for example. I'm not even talking solely regarding the monsters, but also people killing each other as Church goes into full control mode and does away with any pretense while only aiming to control through fear because it can as people are frantic witnessing what must be from their POV the apocalypse. Popular practice of denying the Devil hardly works when supposed illusions and trickery can rip you apart with ease.

I won't go into story anymore because I would like you to watch the show for yourself, but I think the problem is the first season is essentially about gathering the party that will take on the big bad guy in the next season. It just comes off as a sudden.

Turns out excommunication is no fun and games, kids.

Characters could have also been a bit more fleshed out, but I think we got what kind of a person Trevor Belmont is and he's definitely the star of the show in this one. Underneath all that dejection and depression is still a hero who will do right because by god it's what Belmonts do even if they get no praise for it. Other than him I think the only other character who genuinely stood out in a sympathetic fashion I did not expect was Dracula himself. We see why and how he transformed from a wandering loner into a rage-filled monster everyone imagined him as anyway, and it's justified. He still took the wrong approach in venting that anger, though. There are Sylph and Alucard who stand out more thanks to their designs than clever writing, but we'll see how they develop in the future.

I love me how the show looks. Clean art with somewhat appropriately dimmer color palette, but artists made great use of the color scheme to get this almost perpetual oppressiveness going on no matter what time of the day is. In my opinion they also minimized CG effects and opted for pure 2D art which really benefits the show, especially during few action scenes where there's less of amazing direction and more of decent choreography taking place. Especially in the last fight of the season. Show also kinda gets away with having LESS action than I expect it to have and yet I wasn't bored by that fact. Nicely done for the visuals department. Audio stuff is alright, but not going for some signature Castlevania songs is a major strike against, though.

If you want my honest opinion I have to say I enjoyed these four episodes. I'm not stickler for what Castlevania is supposed to be or anything like that so my opinion may be worth somewhat less, but I would still recommend you take a gander. Just keep in mind it's kidna slow and builds up things more than it provides concrete answers.

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₪ Genre: Science Fiction, Space Opera
☑ Publication date: January 1934
⇲ Pages: 287

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Triplanetary has gone through some rather strange history as a novel, primarily being much shorter in its original release and without many of the prologue stories we get in the novel nowadays. As it has happened with some of my reviews previously you can read Triplanetary for free by clicking on the cover seeing as it has entered free domain

Where to even begin with a space opera hailing from what was arguably the golden age for genre as far as literary works go? Well, I guess I could touch on what I previously mentioned – this final release of the work was not exactly how it began. Putting aside the fact it was serialized in parts it originally also only dealt with the latter half of the work, and even that was reworked for the final version to include references and tie-in more closely to the entire Lensman series. Which I guess makes the entire thing ironic that for me, as it is right now, it's the newly added prologue that really connects an otherwise very generic SF story to a greater whole and gives weight to events.

Until the original story begins in the second half we are treated to two supreme races; Arisians and Eddorians. They're two polar opposites of each other and yet both are bent on shaping the universe with their hands. Arisians take the role of the archetypal mentor race that was content just observing how things shaped up for the most part and interceded where appropriate for their grand master plan until they met the Eddorians who are just as archetypal evil race doing evil for it's own sake and superiority over everyone else. Sadly, this doesn't mean they're stupid and Eddorians in fact have arguably just as much success as Arisians do even taking into account they subjugate and kill without qualms. This results in a long game of sorts because Arisians realize full-out confrontation between the two would just result in destruction of everything, and it's decided they'll oppose the Eddorians covertly and using others. Book than fast forwards multiple times to different epochs; from fall of Atlantis, Roman times to three World Wars after which there's a break and the original story begins. It was the less engaging part for me so I'll just say it concerns a special agent operative for the Triplanetary government raiding a pirate's artificial moon, government itself finally creating an inertialess drive and there's also a first contact scenario with another race that seeks to claim all the iron it can.

Basically, Tirplanetary the novel is kind of a jumbled mess of many ideas but I rather liked it regardless. I just wish more of said ideas were better explored because it keeps switching to multiple POVs in a relatively short story so it ends up being disorienting. I wish I could tell you more about how it ties into the series at large, but seeing as this is the first book that may be kinda difficult at the moment.

Characters are a sore spot for the story because, well, there really aren't any that get much of a spotlight in the first half because it blazes through so much time so fast. Something is clear, though – Arisians are definitely either encouraging certain characteristics in groups of people or there's a more going on with the story I'm not yet privy to. Triplanetary story proper gets more fleshed out, though. Triplanetary Patrol agent Conway Costigan is our so characteristic for the period protagonist who is seemingly everything rolled into one, from a badass soldier to genius scientist and ladies man. He and crew, of which captain Bradley stands out as support, get rolled up with the whole pirate moon affair and our hero's love flame Clio Marsden ends up coming for the ride. Much to my own surprise she's not as useless as I imagined she would be even if she does still swoon over her man. Pirate boss apparent Gray Roger comes off entirely purposefully almost a a non-character, but has a darker secret that was added with the rewrite and I liked him as the antagonist. Definitely worth mentioning are also the characters working on faster-than-light engine and they're all awesome in their own non-awesome way.

I alluded to it previously, but Triplanetary is written in that very '30s and '40s style of SF where you can immediately tell the author had a background in chemistry of some sort the way he throws term at you. This strangely enough ages the work in my opinion. Not to say that's a bad thing, but coming to it from the way modern SF is written it's definitely odd. While it may suffer from weak characterization it espouses the approach of showing and not telling with rarely present narrative dumps on the reader. This in return means you may not understand what everything characters are talking about is, but I prefer that organic approach. First and second half also feel like contrasting parts in how they approach storytelling purely because one is a setting primer while other is the actual story.

I may have given the impression I didn't like the novel, but that's pretty far from the truth. It was very much enjoyable and sure got me motivated to check out the rest of the Lensman series.

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₪ Genre: Fantasy, Action
☑ Release date: May 2017
⇲ Running time: 126 minutes

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How many times already has the story of king Arthur and more specifically legendary sword Excalibur been told and retold? Not that I'm complaining since it really is a great story, mind you. Well, it's time for another take titled King Arthur: Legend of the Sword which amusingly enough premiered in China of all places. Coincidence, what with more and more moves adopting the trend? Hmm...

I don't like it when stories lie to me and that is precisely how the movie starts. What we're presented with in the opening act is a story I genuinely wish could have been the meat of this movie instead. King Uther goes against evil warlock Mordred as he brings his evil army to smash Camelot. Evil army? Well, giant elephants on top of which sit mounted wooden pyramid construction from which Mordred charges and unleashes his magical fireballs. In the darkest moment Uther grasps Excalibur and mounts one of the giant elephants in order to barge into the summoning room and kill the warlock in classic good blue vs evil red confrontation of powers. Things happen afterward and we see Uther's brother Vortigern conspires against him going as far as to make some sort of magical pact to dispose of his brother. This is where the opening act moves on as Uther's son Arthur barely survives the slaughter of his family and proceed to grow up in anonymity among the common folk.

See, all of the above is really presented in epic fantasy style you might've come to expect from a story of this caliber. And it genuinely feels grand with appropriate song choices choices and gravity of consequences. Problem is the remainder of the movie seems intent on taking a piss on what is established early on and is a completely different movie in tone and approach. Baring some scenes where it wants to be taken seriously and falls flat on its face due to tonal backlash.

If you've seen anything recent from director Guy Ritchie, primarily his Sherlock Holmes movies, you'll quickly notice he attempts to pull off the same thing in King Arthur as well – fast talking characters being smarmy and witty, scenes that double as montages in perpetual fast forward mode, etc. In my opinion all of this lightheartedness clashes totally with a largely grim and serious undertone the villain presents or very serious characters like the nameless female Mage who ended up being one of my favorite characters purely for standing out so blatantly in her no-nonsense and “you don't understand the severity of the threat, stop fooling around” sensibility. Characters aren't bad per se, but they're very archetypal trope and you have to like that – from cocky Arthur who only in the last quarter or so becomes likable, his forgettable merry cast of bandits who are meant to represent lower class Brits, and honestly other characters I can't even remember because they all blend together. It was amusing to see Aidan Gillen and Djimon Hounsou make an appearance in more grounded counterweights who actually carry the story for a while, though.

Would it be fair to say this was my face throughout most of the movie?

Something also irked me tremendously in the visuals department. As if the movie swung between looking like a highly produced LARP effort due to costume designers trying to avoid generic fantasy looks, except for the bad guys who get black spiky armor, so everyone wears vaguely modern-looking cuts but they're in earth tones so it's totally quasi-fantasy AND on the other hand the CGI. Goddammit, that CGI. I swear to god it got worse as the movie went on and started using more and more of it down to the last few big fights when Excalibur gets to shine and every scene becomes a video game cinematic. Think Neo vs Smith from Matrix Reloaded except a bit better. I also have a bone to pick with most of the music choices, except for a particular folk song that plays in the prologue when Uther rushes the not!Mumakil and it fit the scene like a glove. Rest of the soundtrack is standard fare with some odd fast-paced strings highly reminiscent of the Sherlock Holmes movie when Arthur is fast-talking his way out.

I think I made my opinion sufficiently clear at this point. No, don't watch this movie unless you're in it specifically for a schlocky or campy fantasy movie. Even in that case legend of Excalibur deserves a better story and for all the production values it could've been handled better. Wasting some recognizable actors on 90% of forgettable characters was also disappointing considering story is as basic as they come aka revenge story of an unwitting hero who learns to embrace his destiny, and yet they somehow manage to frontload it with cool inform action that doesn't amount to anything.

If you want my honest opinion watch the prologue somewhere online and call it a day. All I can say is I'm not exactly a fan of this trend where studios make sub-par movies and recoup their losses in China.

I live in Croatia, specifically in its coastal region which springs to life during summer because of tourism, and this always translates to crowds of people turning up in cities that were not really built for so many. Fortunately my work has nothing to do with the service industry or tourists themselves so I'm off the hook on that one, but it's the summer heat that really kills my desire to play anything. It doesn't help we're not really accustomed to spending 24/7 in air conditioned rooms like the western world seems to be so I do my stuff in the evening or early morning.

Games? I've noticed I avoid intense games where my GPU has to work overtime because good god does that heat up the place real fast if you can't get some air circulation going aka almost all the time because it's rarely windy when the heat sets in. This means Witcher 3 is currently off the hook and I'll probably play something on my consoles instead provided heat from my TV dissipates better. Let's not even get into holding a gamepad when hands get sweaty. Should've bought that 360 gamepad with in-built cooling mechanism.

In summation – summer is hell and can't end soon enough as far as gaming is concerned.

Consequentially winter is entirely different, but not really an opposite affair in a sense we don't get harsh winters in the region and it rarely snows. Means no white Christmas here where I live, but ferocious winds make up for it because sometimes it blows so hard you can't walk down some awkwardly designed streets out of sheer fear wind will stop you in your tracks. The way it usually goes with bustling tourist places they go numb and quiet during the winter season so it feels like you're going through a deserted city at times. No one sane is coming to the party unless the sun is also invited.

With games I find myself attracted going for more atmospheric winter levels. I can be the only weird who will crack open a window to simulate the cold character must be experiencing himself, right? This struck me as something I do only when I was playing Mafia 2 couple of years back and that first winter level just resonated with me perfectly.

I try to fight somber mood with tea where I can.