Continuing their efforts to provide a unified record of the vast Warcraft lore, Blizzard has now released the second installment of the Warcraft Chronicle.

This time, focus shifts away from Azeroth to cover the history of Draenor, before jumping back to Azeroth and reciting the history of the First and Second Wars, up to and including the events of Beyond the Dark Portal.

The first installment was for the most part of a fascinating dive into a lot of mostly unknown lore, but perhaps inevitably, volume two is less impressive.

My favourite part was learning about Draenor’s pre-history. This was for the most part totally new lore, and while it may not have been quite as thrilling as learning of Azeroth’s origins and the days of the Black Empire, it was nonetheless an interesting read. I particularly enjoyed learning the history of the Arrakoa civilization.

However, once it got around to more familiar history, it became much less impressive.

This is perhaps to be expected, as it’s all stuff I’m already familiar with, but the familiarity wasn’t the thing that bothered me most. Quite the opposite, actually.

When this whole Chronicle business started, I had the vague worry this might be another excuse to start retconning everything willy-nilly. Seems I was right to worry.

Much of the history of Draenor leading up to the First War has now been changed. It’s mostly smaller changes more than total rewrites, but when you add up all the little changes, it starts to become a rather different story.

The intention seems to have been to unify history by incorporating elements of the alternate versions of Draenor seen in Warlords of Draenor and the film, but I’m not sure why they felt the need to do that. Both of those were pretty clearly alternate realities, and attempting to combine all the different versions of Draenor causes more confusion than it solves.

It’s doubly confusing when you consider that neither WoD nor the movie were terribly well-received. I really don’t think any Warcraft lore fan was like, “You know what we need? For Warlords of Draenor to be more canon!”

Hilariously, Garona’s origin story has been retconned yet again. I believe this is the fourth backstory she’s been given now? It’s getting hard to keep count. I think she officially takes the crown as the most heavily retconned part of the Warcraft universe now.

To be fair, most of these retcons don’t make the story any worse. Some even make it better. There’s finally a clear explanation of how the Twilight’s Hammer went from being a Draenic Orc clan to a multi-racial cult of Azerothian Old God worshippers, and it actually makes pretty good sense. I’m glad of that.

But sadly they do invalidate a good chunk of Warcraft literature, including a lot of Christie Golden’s work. And that’s a real shame. Rise of the Horde was one of the better novels.

In the end, volume two of the Warcraft Chronicle occupies an uncomfortable middle ground where the people who are most likely to read it are hardcore lore fans, but the people who are most likely to enjoy it are those with only minimal experience of the lore to date.

Overall rating: 6.2/10

“I fear no enemy, for the Khala is my strength. I fear not death, for our strength is eternal.”

After a minor content drought, StarCraft II has come roaring back with a big update to co-op. The star attraction is a new commander, Fenix.

Well, sort of. It’s not really Fenix; it’s Talandar. But the name “Fenix” is more recognized, so I guess it makes sense that’s what they went with, even if it gives us lore fans eye twitches. Either way, he still captures the essence of the OG Protoss badass.

I had hoped for Selendis next, but I can’t say I’m heartbroken by Fenix. A proper Purifier commander without Karax’s baggage is very welcome.

He’s got some interesting mechanics, too. His theme is around downloading AI consciousnesses between various bodies, which confirms with certainty that Purifiers are Protoss Cylons.

Fenix himself can swap between three bodies at will. Each has their own unique stats and abilities, but they only regenerate health and energy when they aren’t deployed, so you have to swap them out regularly.

Probably a good thing, too, because otherwise I’d never use anything but the Dragoon body. That thing’s damage is nuts.

Fenix can also call upon AI champions based on the personas of legendary heroes from throughout Protoss history. The champion will inhabit the body of one your units, greatly increasing their stats and granting new abilities. If a champion is killed, it will transfer to another unit of the same time at no cost. So you basically can’t ever lose them.

Each of these is an actual character from within the lore, though some are sufficiently obscure even I barely know who they are. The biggest name is probably Kaldalis, the Ahkundelar champion featured in Reclamation and the Legacy of the Void cinematic.

Unfortunately, they didn’t bring back any of the original voice actors, so Kaldalis, for example, still sounds like a regular Zealot. I realize it’d be a lot of investment for just one commander, but it would have been cool.

They did put a lot of work into his visuals, though. Not only does he have all-new Purifier skins for all his buildings and units, but even a unique UI, which is a first.

I’m still pretty low level, but my initial impressions of Fenix are positive. He’s not as overpowered as he seemed from the initial previews, but he is pretty strong. Like Nova, he’s very versatile, with many viable builds and no obvious weaknesses.

Similarly, he’s probably not going to be my favourite commander, but he is pretty fun. He has a lot of my favourite Protoss units that were either missing or consigned to Karax: Adepts, Scouts, Colossi, Carriers.

I’m sure it’s not the most efficient strategy, but I’ve been having a lot of fun just going for mass infantry. I love the aesthetics of the Protoss warriors (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) heroically charging into battle with Fenix at their head.

My only real concern is that Fenix may be the last Protoss commander to be added. I can’t really imagine what’s left to do with the race at this point, which is a shame because I still want to see Selendis get some love.

Scythe of Amon:

Patch 3.13 also included a surprise new co-op map, Scythe of Amon.

The map’s been getting a lot of criticism for being so similar to Rifts to Korhal, which it definitely is. Go around, kill Void Shards Slivers, and beat the time limit. The bonus objective is an escort mission, with all the annoyance that entails, which doesn’t help, either.

That said, there are a few things that make it a bit more interesting than Rifts to Korhal. The time limit is tighter, making it more challenging. You have more choice in what order to tackle the objectives in. You have enemy forces of all three races. The Slivers have more diverse and deadly attacks to avoid.

So really it’s an improved version of Rifts to Korhal. If Rifts didn’t already exist, it probably would have been received much better.

It’s very pretty, too. The lighting and rain effects are gorgeous.

The colours, children!

Finally, Blizzard has at long last enabled custom team colours in co-op. It’s the same system as in ladder, meaning it requires some tinkering in the depths of the options menu and then hitting a button next to the mini-map in-game to work, and your ally won’t see what you’ve picked, but it’s still a lot better than just being blue or orange every single game.

I’ve been trying to find the best colour for every commander. I highly recommend white for Fenix. It looks fantastic with the Purifier skins.

I’ve always felt rather torn over Dragon Age II. I loved the story and the characters, but hated the gameplay. Normally it is my habit to play through Bioware games several times to see different plot branches, but due to the bad gameplay, I never managed to get myself to play through DA2 a second time.

But the desire was always there. Recently I got it into my head to try playing it with some player-made mods to make the gameplay a bit more bearable.

Normally, I’m not a fan of mods. I’m always paranoid about technical problems resulting from the use of unofficial software, and it feels a bit like cheating (which, let’s be honest, it is).

But in this one case it seemed like an exception might be warranted.

To keep the risk of technical difficulties low, I tried to limit the number of mods I used. These are what I settled on:

• Total Freedom: Remove all prerequisites on learning abilities and reduce ability cooldowns by 50%.
• All Specs – All Abilities: Unlock every specialization and talent tree for every character, including companion-specific trees like Dalish Pariah or Tevinter Fugitive.
• Modest Run Speed Increase: Slightly increases Hawke’s movement speed out of combat.

Of them all, the reduced cooldowns made the biggest difference. After a few levels, it removed virtually all the downtime from combat and made it simply dull, instead of excruciating.

This also obviously had the effect of lowering the game’s difficulty, but it didn’t make as much of a difference as you might expect. The only really broken thing I was able to achieve was getting Fenris to 100% magic resistance.

It was a success in that I was able to play through the game to completion, though I have to say that even with all the changes the combat did start to drag me down a bit near the end.

I’ve also come to the conclusion I’m not a big fan of lady Hawke. I really like Jo Wyatt in SW:TOR, but she just sounds a bit too refined and imperious to be believable as an underdog refugee.

It was interesting to revisit the game, though, and I was reminded there’s a lot about it I truly appreciate. It has better pacing than most other Bioware games, and it’s the only Dragon Age game to date to display any particular style or personality in its art or world-building.

Also, it’s so much vastly better to actually get notifications when companions have new conversations. Why on Earth didn’t this become standard for every Bioware game? It’s such a basic convenience…

One of my big goals for a second playthrough was to romance Fenris and see how he reacts to it if you’re a mage. I’m coming away from that with mixed feelings.

First of all, it’s definitely possible to romance Fenris if you’re a mage and support mage freedom. It’s difficult, but it’s possible. I will admit I turned to some guides online to smooth the process.

It doesn’t feel very natural, though. There are some lines that make mention of how he thinks you’re one of the good ones (or words to that effect), but mostly the game kind of glosses over his mage prejudice during the romance scenes.

Other than that, it was well-written. I’d say I recommend romancing Fenris; just don’t do it as a mage if you want it to feel natural.

I do like how he lunges at you. He and Sera should compare notes.

This was also my first time playing through with Carver instead of Bethany.

Oh my gods is he ever an asshole. I mean, just, wow. There have been some unpleasant Bioware companions, but this guy just might take the cake. He’s like Alistair’s whining crossed with Vivienne’s condescension and Jorgan’s prickliness sandwiched between two thick slices of unrepentant spite.

I was disappointed he didn’t side with Meredith at the end. I so wanted to murder him.

Beyond that I didn’t do much differently this time compared to my first playthrough. There’s no way in hell I’m ever going to side with the Templars in this game. I still lost Isabela (too bad; I was hoping to sell her to the Qunari), but I managed not to have to fight any companions at the end. I thought I’d have to fight Avelline because I wound up with a pretty toxic relationship with her this time, but she had a last minute change of heart. I still supported Merrill and Anders at every turn, and I was still friends with Varric — is it even possible to get on his bad side?

I did pick up the Legacy DLC, since it ties into Inquisition, but it was actually a bit underwhelming. Normally Bioware’s “set up the next game DLC” is amazing (see: Arrival and Trespasser), but Legacy didn’t really impress on any level. Corypheus came across as more of a confused old crank than the world-ending threat he was in Inquisition. I wouldn’t say it was a bad DLC, but it’s definitely not a must-play.

The one change that I really don’t get is that for some reason I had a dog this time. I have no idea how that happened. I figure it’s either some side-effect of the mods or something to do with the flailing at the DLC page I did before starting. But I definitely didn’t have a dog the first time I played this game.

I named him Rufus. I liked how Merrill told him Dalish stories about dogs.

Whatever the actual end date turns out to be, it is now clear that The Secret World’s days are numbered. I have decided to say goodbye to the game while I still can, conducting a final tour of some of my favourite parts of the game and finding thematically appropriate ways to retire my many characters.

And taking an unhealthy number of screenshots.

This may seem a little premature, given that the servers are still intended to stay up for the immediate future at least, but there’s no point in continuing to invest in a dead game, and frankly at this point I don’t entirely trust Funcom not to just shut the servers off without warning.

Red fades to black:

The order in which I retired characters was dictated more by whim than any particular logic. For whatever reason, I began with my “main alt,” Dorothy the Templar.

I started by repeating issue seven, A Dream to Kill, which I think remains the best thing TSW ever did. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it may well be the high water mark for video games as an art form.

And the passage of time has done nothing to dull its brilliance. It remains an absolutely masterful experience — surreal, haunting, chilling, and awe-inspiring.

Of course, I’ve had Sleepless Lullaby stuck in my head ever since.

It was also a good reminder of just how badass Carmen Preda is. I realize there’s no end of competition, but she really doesn’t get enough mentions on people’s lists of best TSW characters.

Before the end of the game was announced, I had been pushing Dorothy towards completing her ability wheel and earning her Panoptic Core, my second on the account. With the aid of an AP booster, issue seven was enough to earn the last few abilities and unlock the Core. Totally pointless to do now, of course, but for some reason to gives me comfort to have finished the project.

As my darkest and most twisted character, it seemed only right her fate be the most bleak. In the end, she shared the fate of Tyler Freeborn, wandering out into the ocean around Solomon Island, to be swallowed by the fog and the waves. To join the Red Sargassum Dream.

No debauchery like end of the world debauchery:

On my Illuminati, I began by repeating one of the missions at Innsmouth Academy. No tour of The Secret World’s best moments would be complete without Innsmouth, and it’s an Illuminati stronghold, so it seemed an appropriate fit.

I also paid a brief visit to New York and talked to Geary briefly, if only to hear her admit defeat to the Dragon one last time.

After that, it was time to retire the character. His end proved far more raucous than Dorothy’s. He went to the Horned God in London, drank the entire menu, and ultimately passed out shirtless on the dance floor.

The flame burns out:

Saying goodbye to Kamala was one of the more difficult parts of all this. By the time I created her, I’d already played the game so much it was hard to get the motivation to actually level her, so she wound up eternally neglected. But her backstory and personality had always been very vivid in my mind, and I loved her look and her outfits. For a character I spent hardly any time playing, she managed to be quite dear to me.

I wanted to introduce her to Ricky Pagan before the end, as I’d always thought they’d be a good pair, but you can’t get to Tokyo without completing the whole story, and she’s nowhere near that. It didn’t seem worth the effort.

In the end, she simply returned home to Seoul, to the hotel where it all started.

It’s funny how even after so long you can still notice new details. I never realized you can see the Kumiho girl in one of the windows. You can even click on her. Turns out her name is Hana.

I brought Kamala to the room — you know the one — and sent her to sleep for the last time.

Ragnarok:

Like Kamala, my “Elf” character, Freydis, is a sad case of wasted potential. I created her just a few months before news of TSW’s end was announced. She’d barely even made it to Kingsmouth.

I wanted her to end her days among the snow, and thankfully, that was more doable than a meeting with Ricky Pagan.

It was of course a bit of a challenging journey to reach the Carpathian Fangs as a character who isn’t even ready for the Savage Coast, but it wasn’t as difficult as I feared. There were a few hairy moments involving fleeing from vampires whilst spamming Blood Shield for all I was worth, but she managed to avoid any deaths over the journey.

Actually, she may have gone her entire short life without dying, come to think of it. Feels almost like an oversight in a game like this.

I did make a few stops along the way, mostly involving more screenshot opportunities. I did pause at the Owl and the Eagle to talk to Cern a bit. He’s one of the few true peers Freydis could find.

Her journey ended among the snows of the Carpathians, but before it did, I picked up one of Traian’s missions. She’s too low level to complete it, of course, but I wanted to see the cutscene.

Like Carmen, Traian is a character who doesn’t get enough praise. Who wouldn’t love a sage elder werewolf who sounds like Sean Connery?

Ouroboros:

I saved my main for last and used him to tour a few more of TSW’s best moments. I did the Tyler Freeborn arc again, and despite the game’s flagging population, I managed to get a group for The Facility, which remains my favourite of the game’s dungeons.

Also, having been denied the opportunity on Kamala, I headed to Tokyo to do Ricky Pagan’s first mission one more time.

In a game drowning in fantastic characters, I think Ricky might just deserve to be remembered as the best. He manages to be so silly and so entertaining, and yet also so deep and so real. Nowhere else is the sophistication of TSW’s writing on better display.

And when it was all done, like Kamala, my first and most-played character in The Secret World went back to the beginning, and I logged off for perhaps the last time within the Dojang.

* * *

I won’t say that this is definitely the last time I’ll play TSW. I haven’t uninstalled it, and I won’t rule out ducking in again if the mood strikes me or I’m given a good reason.

But I don’t have any firm plans to. There’s no point in continuing to upgrade my gear or hunt down lore. For now, it seems best to have made a clean break.

Obviously there was a lot of sadness around this farewell tour, but I also had a surprising amount of fun. It was really nice to revisit the game’s best moments, and I was reminded of all the little things that made me love TSW so much.

I was particularly struck by how even after nearly five years and being spoiled by Andromeda, this is still an incredibly good-looking game. They hit a very good formula with the art style where things are mostly realistic, but there’s just enough stylization to give it some flavour, to make it a little better than real.

I would definitely recommend doing something like this to anyone who’s upset about TSW’s fate. It’s very cathartic.

Perhaps I’m being fatalistic, but part of me is also starting to wonder if this isn’t for the best. Realistically, what are the odds TSW’s story was ever going to get a proper conclusion, or that said conclusion could ever satisfy the monstrously high expectations we’ve built up over the years?

As it is, content droughts aside, TSW leaves the world with an almost flawless track record. For several years it provided us with amazing experiences and set a new standard (at least in my mind) for what video games can achieve as an art form. We have been gifted with no shortage of great memories that will endure long after the servers go dark, from Nassir to Montag, Maine to the Dreaming Prison, rockabilly to Sleepless Lullaby.

The Secret World may have died young, but it left a beautiful corpse.

Into the Badlands is something my father discovered while perusing Netflix and then recommended to me. Without much else to watch between episodes of iZombie, I decided to give it a try.

It’s a strange show. It’s some sort of post-apocalyptic Western kung fu… thing, set in a far-flung future where the civilization we know is a distant memory. The land is ruled by ruthless barons, aided by their armies of “clippers,” which are sort of like samurai without the honour.

The story focuses on Sunny, a weary veteran clipper in service to a cruel baron, and M.K., an orphan boy with a mysterious power. Fate causes their paths to repeatedly cross as Sunny’s master prepares for war with his rival, a revolutionary known as the Widow.

It’s a pretty unique mash-up of genres, and certainly the concept holds a lot of potential, but the problem with Into the Badlands is that it isn’t very good.

That’s pretty much it. It’s mediocre in almost every way imaginable. None of the characters are all that interesting or likable. The plot’s pretty unsurprising. It’s often silly and illogical — I like how they were able to preserve the technology for cars and X-rays, but not guns.

All the absurdity of the show would be fine if it weren’t determined to take itself so deadly seriously. Into the Badlands has all the ingredients for a fun, light-hearted action-adventure, but it’s trying to be a serious drama. It has no whimsy, no self-awareness, and no sense of humour.

The shortness of its season doesn’t help matters. Season one is just six episodes, and it’s a pretty complicated story, so I’m not sure there’s really time to develop anyone or anything enough. On the other hand if the season had been any longer I might not have made it to the end. At just six episodes there wasn’t much to lose by sticking it out.

I suppose the acting is not bad — I actually rather like the guy who plays Sunny; he’s got some gravitas — but the writing is so weak that the cast’s talent is largely wasted.

Really the only thing it’s got going for it is that it’s a very visually appealing show. If all you want is to see good-looking people in really cool costumes doing extravagant wire fu moves in front of pretty backdrops, this is the show for you.

If you want anything more than that, move on.

Overall rating: 5.9/10

As an aside, has it occurred to anyone how inaccurate the show’s title is? The story is about trying to get out of the Badlands, and the “Badlands” appear to actually be quite fertile and clement.

/equip_tinfoil_hat

So I’m possibly reading too much into something small, but I stumbled across a rather intriguing story last night. It seems Christie Golden has suddenly moved to California so that she can work at Blizzard’s main offices for a secret project that will last until October.

I’ve been a pretty big fan of Christie Golden’s for a while now, as both an author and a person. She’s written a number of excellent tie-in novels for Blizzard’s various games, and I have had enough sporadic contact with her over the years to determine she is a pretty excellent person. Therefore, the news of her doing more work with Blizzard excites me.

But what’s really intriguing is the question of just what she’s doing there. While I’m not an expert, I have done some research on the process for how authors produce tie-in novels for Blizzard, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t normally require actually working at the Blizzard offices for months. Why would it?

Again, I might be jumping the gun, but my mind has turned to the possibility that she may be writing an entire game. It would explain why she needs to be in close proximity to the development team(s).

But what game?

Christie Golden has the most history with the Warcraft universe, but I’m not sure things quite add up for her to be working on WoW. It seems a bit early for them to be designing the plot of the next expansion in detail, and the continuous nature of WoW’s story doesn’t mesh with the temporary nature of her job at Blizzard.

Given she is in theory only there for a few months, I would think she’d be working on something with a clear beginning, middle, and end. A game that can be finished.

The only other Blizzard franchise she’s worked on in the past is StarCraft, so perhaps she could be writing a new mission pack. Blizzard’s said they were moving on from story content for StarCraft II, but they could always change their minds.

However, I see no reason she must be limited to franchises she’s already worked on.

We do know something is in the works regarding Diablo, though whether it’s an expansion, Diablo IV, or some kind of spin-off is anyone’s guess. I have a little bit of trouble picturing someone as sweet as Christie Golden working on a series that’s basically all torture and brimstone, but then I remember how dark some of her past writing has gotten, and it doesn’t seem quite as far-fetched.

The possibility that really intrigues me, though, is that she could be working on Overwatch, either a story mode within the current game or entirely new title in the same universe that focuses on story instead of PvP. There’s clearly a strong desire for such, and the Overwatch universe seems the perfect fit for her emotive, character-driven style of writing.

Regardless, I hope it is a new game she’s working on, because any game written by Christie Golden is a game I want to play.

Lot of interesting stories coming out of the Blizzard camp this week.

Yesterday we learned that Destiny 2’s PC version will be published by Blizzard and playable only through Battle.Net.

This is simultaneously very surprising and not at all surprising. On the one hand, I don’t think anyone saw this coming, but on the other Blizzard and Activision are part of the same conglomerate, so it makes sense.

For me personally, this feels bizarre because two companies that helped shape my childhood, Blizzard and Bungie, are suddenly collaborating. Though it’s far less exciting than the Warcraft/Myth mash-up my eight year old self would picture if I was to go back in time and tell him about it.

I was already curious about Destiny 2, and Blizzard’s involvement — however minimal — puts it a little more on my radar. The fact you’ll be able to potentially buy it with WoW gold certainly doesn’t hurt matters.

To be honest, though, most of my interest stems from Bungie’s past history, and it’s an ancient history by now. I stopped playing their games when they gave up on PCs, and that was quite a while ago now. I’m sure a lot has changed since then.

The one trailer for Destiny 2 I watched was less than inspiring. It tried to be funny. It did not succeed. The Bungie of my youth this clearly is not.

There’s also the fact I never played the original Destiny, and I’m really not a fan of jumping into the middle of franchises. I’ve done it from time to time, but it always leads to a certain degree of confusion and dissatisfaction.

Still, it’s worth mulling. I shall mull.

When I tried The Division’s beta last year, I knew I would end up buying it sooner or later. It was just a question of when. A recent Steam sale coupled with a lull in other major gaming projects to pursue provided the perfect storm of conditions to finally pony up and get the full version.

The Division is a strange game. I went into the beta expecting very little and came out enjoying it far more than expected, but now that I’ve bought the full game, I question whether I made the right choice.

Magnificent desolation:

Everything that I initially liked about The Division holds true. It is a game that does some things very well, and overall is rather charming.

Its best feature by far is its attention to detail. The Division’s vision of a ruined New York is spectacularly detailed, incredibly well thought-out, and beautifully realized. The graphics are stunning, and the game design is solid, providing an excellent formula of exploration.

The game is empty enough to sell the loneliness of a dead city, but not so empty as to become boring. There’s always something neat to find, be it loot, missions, lore, or just a cool set piece.

Cell phone recordings reveal haunting slices of life from those who died in the outbreak. Storms roll in, dusting your character with snow and cutting visibility down to virtually nothing. Distant gunfire rattles the otherwise tomb-like stillness of the city.

An early mission has you rescuing the sister, a musician, of one of your fellow Division agents. Much later on, I stumbled across the sister in the base of operations, strumming on her guitar for an audience of refugee children. It was an incredibly charming scene, and somehow far more satisfying of a quest reward than XP or loot could ever be.

“Immersion” has become almost as much a buzzword as “epic” these days, but it’s still a valid concept, and The Division has it in spades.

And yet I already myself struggling to find motivation to log in, to the point where writing this post seemed a significantly more appealing prospect than actually playing. Why?

Stumbles:

Certainly The Division does have problems. The actual main plot of the game is underwhelming at best, from both a story and a gameplay perspective.

While it may become more interesting later on, so far the main story has been quite simplistic — terrorist attack, yada yada — and it’s just not written very well.

The dialogue is so cartoony and ridiculous it almost achieves a sort of kitschy, “so bad it’s good” charm. It’s hard to believe it comes from the same game as the achingly real recordings you find while exploring, or even the goofy but fun NPCs who deliver your side missions.

The main story missions also aren’t that fun to play. As I noticed in the beta, the difficulty is oddly tuned. I don’t think you’re meant to solo the main story, which is an incredibly strange decision in a game that otherwise seems to hew closer to a single-player game than an MMO (while obviously having elements of both).

I don’t like being pressured into things, though, so I’ve stubbornly continued to solo the main missions, frustrating as it can be at times. It’d be fine if player characters in this game weren’t so squishy, but your incredibly low health pool severely punishes the slightest error.

You can mitigate the issue a bit by outleveling the missions via side content, but as much as I enjoy the side missions in The Division (much more so than I usually do), it doesn’t feel good to do them because you have to, and it detracts from what could otherwise have been a pretty solid sandbox-ish experience.

There are also smaller hiccups. The Division may well have the worst character customization of any game I’ve ever played, and I’ve been gaming for twenty years. The options are shockingly limited, and made even more so by the incomprehensible decision to tie certain options together. For example, only about half the female faces can have ponytails.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Even with my relatively small amount of time in the game, and even playing entirely solo, I’ve still managed to find someone who was pretty much my character’s exact doppleganger, minus only the lip piercing I gave her in a vain attempt to inject some personality into my avatar.

I think the idea is you’re meant to rely on clothing to make your character stand out. TSW had a similar philosophy, and I don’t hate the idea, but in this case, it doesn’t work as well as it could.

There are a lot of clothing pieces in The Division, but there isn’t that much difference between them. The game clearly tried very hard to make them all realistic choices for the setting. I’m torn because I really admire the commitment to verisimilitude, but it also means that your choices are pretty much down to what colour of winter jacket and pants you want to wear.

Less than the sum of its parts:

Still, none of these seem like crippling flaws. I’ve been able to overlook bigger issues with games. So why am I losing interest in The Division so quickly?

I don’t know. It’s not even that I’m not enjoying myself. It’s fundamentally a good game to play. But I just find that my motivation to keep going is rapidly dwindling.

Even if this is the end, I don’t necessarily regret buying the game. I maybe should have waited for a better discount, but I did get at least a few good hours out of it. I explored a lot more than I was able to in beta, and I generally had a good time.

* * *

One final note before I go: I was deeply amused to discover that the very first safehouse you’re sent to is actually Illuminati headquarters. Both The Division and The Secret World replicated the same neighbourhood of New York, and the first safehouse is in the exact same building as the entrance to the Labyrinth.

There’s even some blue pyramid graffiti in the area. I kind of wonder if one of the environment artists was a TSW player…

Of Bioware’s two main franchises, you would think Dragon Age would be my favourite. While I enjoy both genres, I prefer fantasy to sci-fi by a significant margin. The very fact that Dragon Age has Elves should be the trump card.

And yet this is not the case. Quite the opposite. I strongly prefer Mass Effect to Dragon Age. It’s a franchise I’m genuinely passionate about, whereas I didn’t start to gain any unvarnished enthusiasm for Dragon Age until Inquisition’s DLC.

So why is this? Why do I enjoy Mass Effect so much more than Dragon Age despite my strong preference for fantasy? I can think of a few reasons.

Continuity

I think one of the biggest factors is simply the continuity of the series. The first three Mass Effect games were far from perfect, but the fact that they formed a continuous narrative allowed them to become far more than the sum of their parts.

Take Garrus. He is, when you get down to it, really not that interesting of a character. But after three games of fighting alongside him, you can’t help but form a special bond with him. By the end he feels like family, and it becomes easy to forget how cliched he is.

There’s also something very special and unique about being able to develop Shepard over such a long period of time. It makes them feel so much deeper and more real than most video game protagonists, despite ultimately being a faceless cypher for the player.

Dragon Age, on the other hand, has jumped around between different plots, settings, and protagonists quite schizophrenically. Some elements may carry over between games, but there’s not the same sense of continuity. By the time you get really invested in a set of characters, it’s time to move on again.

As an aside, I would like to reiterate how hard I’m going to nerd rage if we’re not able to play as the inquisitor again in Dragon Age IV.

Combat

I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about Bioware’s combat over the years, but even so, Mass Effect is the clear winner in that arena.

The combat of early Mass Effect games is a little shallow and extremely repetitive, but fundamentally, it works. The mechanics are sound, and the moment to moment gameplay feels good enough.

By comparison, early Dragon Age combat makes me want to claw my own eyes out. Cooldowns are so long and characters so resource-starved that you spend half your time just watching your party auto-attack. It’s excruciating.

Both franchises saw the quality of their combat improve immensely with their most recent releases, but while I enjoyed both, I’d still give the crown to Mass Effect. Andromeda’s combat was more visceral, more satisfying.

Inquisition had better boss fights, though, so I’ll give it that.

The ship

This is a smaller thing, but while playing Andromeda, I was reminded how much I enjoy having the ship as a home base to come back to. It’s just comforting to have a bit of the game world to call your own, to kick back and relax in.

The continuity of the original trilogy obviously helped the Normandy feel like home, but even after one game, I have grown very attached to the Tempest, as well.

Dragon Age games have home bases that are analogous to the ship, but none of them quite click. Origins’ camp is too dull and generic. The Hawke estate wasn’t used enough. Skyhold was too big, cold, and empty.

Thedas is an ugly place

And I don’t mean in terms of how it looks, although it’s kind of ugly that way too.

What I mean is that Thedas is not a place where I would ever want to live. It’s a monstrously corrupt society where injustice and cruelty are everyday events. I suppose the defense would be that this is realistic, and maybe it is, but while I can enjoy a dark story, I’m not particularly enamored of wallowing in awfulness the way the Dragon Age writers seem to delight in doing.

In a strange sort of way it fosters my engagement with the franchise, because I hate Thedas so much I always want to change it for the better, but it still ends up leaving a bad taste in my mouth, and I leave every game wishing I could have done more.

I prefer Mass Effect’s setting, which has enough bad people and societal flaws to create drama but doesn’t make me hate every culture and institution until I want to cleanse all I see with holy fire.

New game plus

One thing I love about the modern era of gaming is the concept of new game plus. Not having to start over from scratch makes replaying a title a much more appealing prospect.

Mass Effect has always made very good use of the idea, and it’s one of the driving factors behind why I’ve replayed the original trilogy so many times.

Dragon Age, for reasons that I can’t begin to understand, has never offered new game plus. That coupled with the poor combat has made replaying Origins or DA2 to the extent I have Mass Effect games fairly undesirable.

Inquisition has the Golden Nug, at least, but it’s still a pretty poor substitute for a real new game plus mode. I can only hope such will finally be included in the next game.

The opposite of what you’d expect

Lately I’ve been wondering if I’m not underwhelmed by Dragon Age despite the fact it’s fantasy so much as because it’s fantasy.

Let me explain.

Bioware is great at character building, but fairly crumby at world building. Both their main franchises feature very generic and frankly dull settings comprised mainly of the most stock standards archetypes imaginable. There’s very little that’s creative about either one.

But I have much more experience with the fantasy genre than with sci-fi, so Dragon Age’s bundle of cliches feels more tired to me than Mass Effect’s.

Everything about Thedas from its art design to its cultures seems culled from a handbook of overused fantasy archetypes. This is most true of the Darkspawn, who are such pathetically generic fantasy villains I just go cross-eyed whenever they show up.

It even applies to class design. Whereas Mass Effect offers a pretty healthy selection of different class archetypes, some of them generic and some more unusual, Dragon Age is limited to just warrior, rogue, and mage, which are pretty much the three classes someone who’s never played a fantasy RPG in their life could name if you put a gun to their head.

Even the name! “Dragon Age” is such a predictably generic fantasy title that there is at least one other fantasy franchise that I know of named Dragon Age, which is going to make my blog tags terribly confused if James Maxey continues that series like he’s been hinting he will.

Even on the rare occasions Dragon Age does buck trends — like by making the Elves an oppressed under class — it does so in such a simplistic, direct reversal sort of way that it somehow feels even more lazy than when they are directly aping the standard archetypes.

A large part of the reason I’m so keen on Descent and Trespasser is that they’re the first time it’s felt like Dragon Age has had any real colour, any real imagination. I won’t pretend the additions made by those DLCs are wildly original, but at least they don’t feel like they’ve come off an assembly line of fantasy cliches, either. They begin to add some personality to the history of Thedas, and now for the first time I want to learn more.

* * *

That’s not to just completely dump all over Dragon Age. Obviously I do enjoy those games as well, or I wouldn’t play them. I don’t have much good to say about Origins, but DA2 had a great story, if not great gameplay, and despite flaws Inquisition mostly won me over (again, helped by the strength of its DLCs).

I can also think of some things I prefer about Dragon Age. As mentioned above, those games have proper boss fights, something Mass Effect never seems to have gotten the hang of, and Inquisition’s were actually pretty good.

I would also say that on average Dragon Age tends to have more colourful and perhaps deeper characters, though clearly both franchises have lots of great NPCs, and they seem to be a bit better at romance, as well.

Along that line, I think companion approval/disapproval is a vastly superior way to track the consequences of your actions than the rigidity of paragon/renegade or Andromeda’s system of just not really having consequences at all.

But taken all in all, Mass Effect still feels like the clearly superior choice to me.

Over the past few months, I’ve found my interest in Heroes of the Storm waning. I’m starting to worry it will be like Guild Wars 2: a game I was once very passionate about that I then totally lose interest in.

I’m not sure how much of this is just my own burnout and how much is due to the game itself. It does seem to be a bit of a different game than it once was. After that big rebalance they did to prevent snowballing (which it had no effect on), everything seems so much more bursty and unforgiving. Add to that Blizzard’s apparent aversion to add any more heroes that aren’t super squishy, and the game’s becoming almost as much a nerve-wracking one-shot fest as Overwatch.

Still, I have enough history with the game to make me reticent to write it off too easily, so with the big 2.0 update, I once again delved in to see how things had changed. My full thoughts form my latest article on MMO Bro, but in the end, it’s not that different.

Also on MMO Bro, I take a look back at the WoW clones of yesteryear and how they’ve evolved over time.

Speaking of Overwatch, I’ve been playing the free weekend again. They have a new(?) mode called Total Mayhem where everyone’s health is doubled, and it is so much better.

I mean, it isn’t balanced very well, since the game wasn’t designed for this. The mode also includes reduced ability cooldowns, and between that and the increased health pools, a good Lucio can keep his team alive almost indefinitely, leading to some frustrating stalemates sometimes.

I also seem to perform better in Total Mayhem. A little.

Even so, I consider this a vast improvement over standard Overwatch. You actually have time to react to threats. You don’t just get constantly one-shot out of the blue. There’s room for tactical play, and when you do land a kill, it’s so much more satisfying.

I’m not sure if it’s a permanent mode or not. It’s surprisingly difficult to get a clear answer on that. If it is, I’m tempted to finally pull the trigger and buy the game, especially with the sale on right now. Heck, I’m tempted either way.

But then again I already wasted so much on the new computer, and I’d probably get bored of it fast.

Sigh… self-control was never my strong suite.

The past few days have seen a couple of game sales tempting me.

First, Steam offered Black Desert for a measly $6. Now, I have no real interest in this game. I tried it, was underwhelmed, and promptly moved on.

But that character creator, though. I had a blast recreating all sorts of characters from my writing, and there were many more I would have liked to get to. So in the end that seemed worth $6 to me. It’s probably the worst reason to spend money on an MMO ever, but here we are.

I’m not in a massive rush, but you can probably expect to see more Black Desert-spawned recreations of my characters at some point. They’ve expanded the character customization options, especially for male characters, so the list of characters I can faithfully duplicate should be greater now. I want to try for a better rendition of Tyrom.

One wrinkle is that it’s apparently impossible to use an old Black Desert account on Steam. You need to start a new one. But I’m not really planning to actually play the game, so it doesn’t really matter if my original account and its associated progress is lost.

Meanwhile, Overwatch.

The free weekend has now wrapped up. Overall, I had a lot more fun this time than in any of my previous stints with the game. As I said in my last post, the Total Mayhem mode is a vast improvement over the standard gameplay.

Even so, I managed to talk myself out of buying it. It’s just too shallow of an experience to justify spending time and money on when there’s so much I want to play. These days, simply being fun isn’t always a good enough reason for me to play a game. I prefer to focus on games that stimulate my mind or emotions. Give me a good story or some really fascinating gameplay. Or ideally both.

Before the weekend wrapped up, I was able to earn enough credits to buy the legendary D.Va skin I got in beta before the account wipe (which is also my favourite skin in the game), and I also got lucky and had the Symmetra anniversary skin drop.

I’m not sure why this pleases me, considering I’m not sure when I’ll even play the game again. But somehow it does.

I stopped following the Marvel movies (not counting X-Men) a while ago. I just wasn’t enjoying them, so I moved on. Still, the trailers for Doctor Strange intrigued me with their spectacularly surreal special effects. It slipped off my radar and I wound up missing it in the theatre, but now that it’s one Netflix, I figured it was worth a try.

I was really only expecting good visuals and a weak plot, so I guess I wasn’t too disappointed.

Doctor Strange does truly have jaw-dropping special effects. This is one of the best looking movies ever made.

When it comes to everything else, though… sheesh.

Let me just start by summarizing the beginning of the movie.

Desperate for a way to fix his injured hands, brilliant but arrogant industrialist brain surgeon Tony Stark Steven Strange hears one word from some random dude on a basketball court and then proceeds to fly to Katmandu (!), where his strategy is to just wander around asking random people.

Amazingly, this actually works, and he’s brought to the leader of the sorcerous monastery he flew halfway around the world to find, who for some reason is a white British lady, and upon being told she can provide the miracle cure he seeks, he begins berating her for offering miracle cures.

And it just goes on like that. For two hours.

There’s just so many plot holes and inconsistencies it’s impossible to even keep track of them all. Characters’ beliefs and views change radically from moment to moment with no explanation given.

I’m starting to realize that Marvel films aren’t really stories. They just seem to be collections of scenes that seemed entertaining or amusing hammered together without rhyme or reason. There’s no themes here, no heart to the story. It’s a drunken pen meandering across the page with no destination in mind.

Insomuch as the movie seems to have any theme, it seems to be the Ancient One’s lesson to Strange: “It’s not about you.”

Except it is. The entire movie is about Dr. Strange just waltzing through every challenge through his own inherent awesomeness. No one else matters. Nothing else matters. It’s just a shrine to how amazing he is. The message the movie is trying to sell is completely at odds with every other part of it.

Also, I’m getting really tired of stories about cocky assholes who Break All the Rules™ and still succeed because they’re Just That Good™. Wouldn’t it be nice to see more heroes who triumph through hard work and good judgment?

Oh, yeah, and of course he’s got a love interest, and she’s on screen for maybe three minutes (I exaggerate, but not by much). I tend to feel that the Bechdel Test isn’t something that always needs to be taken literally, but this movie probably should have.

To be fair, Doctor Strange does improve significantly in the last half hour or so. Strange himself actually displays some genuine growth (even if it comes out of nowhere with no apparent justification), and his solution to defeat the Big Bad is pretty clever (even if it’s odd no one thought of that before now).

I also quite liked the villain, Kaecililus. He had a lot of charisma, and for a good chunk of the movie I spent more time cheering for him than for Strange.

But those things aren’t enough to fully redeem to movie.

Overall rating: 5.5/10

Kritika Online isn’t a game that’s really been on my radar. On paper it seemed to be a very generic action MMO made noteworthy only for its anime-inspired cel-shaded graphics, and even that’s not exactly unique.

However, a faint curiosity inspired me to try the recent closed beta event, and while my expectations weren’t entirely disproven, I did find the game to be surprisingly well-executed in many ways, and it stands as a strong argument for clarity of vision in game design.

Hit the ground killing:

A lot of the marketing on Kritika Online talks about how you’ll jump into the action right away. This is a promise I’ve seen a lot of MMOs make, but very rarely do they deliver on it.

Kritika is a welcome exception.

Immediately after character creation, you’ll already have enough skills to comprise a basic rotation, and you’ll set off slicing and dicing your way through hordes of enemy minions.

This, really, is pretty much the entire game. You carve your way through small, linear dungeons; head back to town for a few brief minutes of handing in quests and managing your inventory; and then head back out to start the cycle all over again.

If you’ve played other dungeon grinds like Vindictus, the routine will feel familiar, but Kritika manages to pare the formula down even further. This is as a no-frills of an experience as you’re going to get.

It is a very simple, very shallow game, but for what it is, it manages to work pretty well.

While visual character customization is severely limited, there is a healthy selection of possible playstyles for your character. While the class list is relatively short, each class can later evolve into one of several advanced classes, and these add a lot more variety. Oddly, the number of advanced classes isn’t equal between classes, but perhaps they just haven’t all been implemented at this stage of beta.

I chose reaper as my base class on the grounds that it has a scythe. I was rather hoping it would be analogous to the oracle in Dragon’s Prophet, an excellent class trapped in a very mediocre game. I wasn’t entirely disappointed on that front, but the class didn’t start to get really interesting until I chose my advanced class.

I picked “vamp,” which is silly name for a pretty fun playstyle. It’s a sort of melee/caster hybrid that eschews mana in favor of draining the blood from its enemies. This blood is then used to fuel the most powerful spells.

Also you can turn into a cloud of bats and eat people’s faces.

In general I greatly enjoyed Kritika’s combat. It maybe could have benefited from a bit more combo play, and there seems to be a certain degree of redundancy between some of your abilities, but overall it’s visceral, visually engaging, and just plain fun.

A game like this really lives or dies by the strength of its combat, and the Kritika devs clearly understood this. Hacking and slashing your way through endless swarms of trash mobs might not be the most intellectually stimulating gameplay ever, but damn if it’s not entertaining.

Something else I liked is that each instance has four separate difficulty settings that you can choose from freely — there are recommended character and item levels for each, but they’re not strictly enforced. This makes it very easy to find a difficulty that feels comfortable for you, and it’s something I deeply wish more MMOs would offer, though I grant it would be very tricky to implement in an open world game.

I also found the game’s story to be of a higher quality than I was expecting. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I’m not going to be listing it as one of the great story-driven MMOs anytime soon. But I was expecting nothing, and I got something.

Kritika’s story is very straightforward. A genius inventor created revolutionary new magical technology that vaulted society forward, but in the process gained nearly total dominion over the world and has now become a ruthless tyrant. The player finds themselves fighting alongside a rebellion to bring him down and restore peace and liberty to the world.

Again, it’s simple, but it works. It gives you a decent motivation, and the whole steampunk/magitech feel of the setting is kind of neat (though hobbled by how shallow and limited the content is). The quest NPCs actually have some personality, and the dialogue is well-translated and actually reads pretty well most of the time, if you don’t mind a little cheese.

The chief downside of Kritika is that this is clearly a very, very grind-heavy game. Even as a low-level character just playing through the story, you can expect to have to repeat each dungeon several times before moving on. I can only imagine what it’s like at endgame.

This is further complicated by the game’s rather extreme version of rested experience, which severely curtails your rewards if you play too much each day. I don’t doubt there will be a way to circumvent this with real cash. In general Kritika has “overbearing monetization” written all over it.

As an MMO:

If you’re a purist, it could be debatable as to whether Kritika Online is actually an MMO, honestly. With its tiny maps and total reliance on instancing, it’s certainly not massive. What about the multiplayer part?

One of the stranger things about Kritika is that from what I can tell it doesn’t have dedicated group content in the traditional sense. It’s entirely up to you whether you want to tackle the dungeons solo or with allies.

Realistically, I expect that grouping becomes mandatory at higher levels and/or difficulties, but at least early on it’s all up to you, which is a level of flexibility I can’t help but admire.

This flexibility is further reinforced by the fact that Kritika doesn’t seem to be obey the “holy trinity.” A few classes seem like they could be analagous to tanks, but I saw nothing resembling a healer. This would be in keeping with the game’s overall philosophy of removing all obstacles between you and the brutal mayhem of the combat.

Again, this is all surprisingly good design from what’s obviously a low budget game. I could see Kritika being a great game for casual, small group play. Doesn’t matter what classes you play or your relative skill levels. With no trinity and a wealth of difficulty options, it should always be easy to play with a friend or two.

When it comes to PvP, though, the news is a lot less positive. Kritika doesn’t appear to have any matchmaking. Instead, there’s just a rather difficult to navigate player-run lobby system, which I guess is great if you’ve been craving that retro 90s nostalgia. For the full effect, have someone shriek dial-up noises at you over the phone while waiting on a match.

I couldn’t find any other players near my level, so after getting curbstomped by someone ten levels above me, I decided it was time to give PvP in Kritika a pass.

The one thing I did find interesting about the experience is that Kritika allows you to spectate other players while waiting on a match. It’s a nice idea — something more games should offer.

Clarity of purpose:

There is something to be said for a game that has a clear vision and executes it well. Kritika Online is mindless and grindy, but it was never meant to be anything else.

And as mindless grinders go, it’s not half bad. The combat is fun, the classes are interesting, the story is a little thin but adequate. It’s a fundamentally good game to play. The developers seem to have set out to make the best mindless grinder possible, and for the most part, they succeeded.

Kritika Online won’t be for everyone. I’m already losing interest. But I do admire the purity of its design, and I’d recommend trying it. Even if you don’t stick with it for long, the sheer addictive violence of it is bound to provide a few hours of entertainment.

Six years have now past since the first post appeared on Superior Realities. Time flies when you’re yelling at Blizzard, I suppose.

In some ways it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, but in others it feels like a lifetime. I was still writing Dispatches from the Romulan War when this blog started, for crying out loud.

When the blog started, I lived in Toronto, then I moved to the country for a few years, then I moved back to the city. Seems like rather a lot of effort just to move from the west end to the east end.

I still miss Parkdale. My new neighbourhood is nice, too, but that’s the problem. It’s too nice. I’ve been here for going on two years now, and I’m still waiting to get the bum’s rush. I don’t fit in here.

I try to visit Parkdale as often as possible. I feel like I belong there. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where I’m not the weirdest person around.

When I lived in Toronto the first time, I lived with my father and a couple cats. Now that I’ve returned, I live alone with many books but no cats.

When the blog began, freelance writing was still some new and exciting adventure I was embarking upon. Now it’s just old hat.

I’ve written… three novels since this blog started. I think. Three or four. Of course only one of them (Human Again) has seen the light of day so far. I’ve also written who knows how many short stories in that time.

Six years ago, I had hair. I should really update that profile picture at some point. Male pattern baldness can suck it, by the way.

When the site launched, I was a huge Metric fan, and now I’m a huge Metric fan who’s shaken Emily’s hand (best day ever). I’m also now a huge Chvrches fan, but I haven’t shaken Lauren’s hand.

When Superior Realities began, I was still in the process of re-entering the gaming world. Of course I’d been playing WoW for a while by then and had also played StarCraft II and maybe one or two other things, but I was still a bit out of the loop on the industry as a whole.

Since then I’ve broadened my horizons considerably. I eventually got around to most if not all of the games I missed out on during my teen years and embraced many modern classics, as well as a few more obscure titles. I hated Bioware for a while, then I kind of liked them, then I loved them, then I think I hated them again for a bit, and now I’m just generally confused.

I’ve blogged through four WoW expansions, the rise and fall of my passion for Guild Wars 2, and my totally unexpected dive into Star Wars: The Old Republic. I fell in love with The Secret World, and now I’ve had to cope with its inglorious collapse. In general I’ve created enough MMO characters to form an entire battalion, and like half of them are named Maigraith.

I’ve mourned the cancellations of Defiance and Sanctuary, and I’ve fallen in love with Continuum, Dark Matter, and iZombie. I’ve reviewed some very good movies, and also Immortals.

It has been suggested I should take this opportunity to examine whether I’ve achieved my goals for the blog, to which I can only say… maybe? I guess?

Honestly I’m kind of losing sight of what the point was originally supposed to be. Nowadays blogging is just part of my routine; it’s not something I think a lot about. Just an excuse to run my mouth (figuratively speaking) without anyone trying to change the subject on me like they usually do.

I’m mostly happy with the traffic I get, though of course it’d always be nice to get more, and I do get a decent amount of attention within the greater community, so that’s nice.

Shake your head, it’s empty…

I will confess that I wish I got more comments, though. Figure pretty much every blogger wishes they got more comments, and compared to the handful of blogs I follow, I seem to get less comments than most. Not sure why this is, but I imagine it’s some combination of my terrible opinions, my long-winded endurance test of a writing style, and my cantankerous personality.

Of course, reflecting on the past also invariably leads one to pondering the future. For the most part, I suppose it will continue to be steady as she goes for Superior Realities for the immediate future.

I’m always mulling ideas for new types of content, but I dismiss almost all of them.

There’s often the temptation to expand beyond my relatively narrow sci-fi/fantasy/video game focus (the lack of Simpsons content on this blog saddens me sometimes), but at the same time I think there’s something to be said for keeping a clear vision for the site. I like the idea that my readers know what they’re getting: angry nerd rants and Elves.

I’ve thought about doing a series on various songs that I use for inspiration when writing fiction, but most people’s ears start bleeding when confronted with my musical taste.

I could also probably get a lot more posts out of the head canon and backstories for my video game characters, but my previous posts on that subject have the dubious distinction of being the least popular posts I’ve ever done by every available metric, so I probably won’t bother with that.

I tried my hand at video content recently, and there’s some temptation to do more of that, but it’s another thing that didn’t get much reaction. Plus I’m not sure I can bring anything to the table that the legions of YouTubers out there aren’t already covering, and I definitely have a voice for text (which is like a face for the radio, kind of).

I’m also often tempted to post more of my fiction and thoughts related to it on the blog, but again, such posts never seem to generate much interest, so I’m kind of gravitating away from that at this point.

Seriously, if you ever feel like doing me a favour, go read some of my stories and leave feedback. I don’t mind criticism as long as it’s constructive. I’m particularly interested in opinions on The Wounding and Lady of the Dawn, as that setting is very important to me, but In Her Sister’s Pose is probably the best thing I’ve written as far as short fiction goes.

Anyway, if any of these ideas sound like they’d interest you, or if you there’s something else you’d like to me to do with the blog, let me know, but otherwise it’s probably going to be status quo for the time being. There is many a Warcraft rant yet to be written.

In closing, I would like to thank my readers for sticking with me all this time. Be seeing you, sweetlings.

In the half-light.

Dark Matter is back!

To my eminent joy, the best sci-fi action-adventure on TV today has returned with a two-part premiere, and as always, Dark Matter is hitting the ground running.

“Being Better Is so Much Harder” (season premiere):

Season three picks up immediately after the end of season two with the crew of the Raza scattered following their shocking betrayal by Ryo — for he is Four no longer. Six and Two cling to life in a crippled Marauder as their life support systems fail. Three crashes on a barren world alongside the Galactic Authority officer who apprehended him. Five makes it back to the Raza only to come under attack by the forces of Ferrous Corp.

And all across the galaxy, the first shots of corporate war are fired.

It wouldn’t be Dark Matter without plenty of action, and I do love that Five and the android are continuing to kick all of the ass. I’m already getting the impression Five’s huge leap into the spotlight in season two wasn’t a fluke.

But by far what impressed me the most about this episode is the much quieter scenes focusing on Two and Six.

Two has always been this larger than life, superhuman character. But finally now she’s reached her breaking point. She blames herself for Nyx’s death, and she’s hit the end of her rope. And damn, it’s powerful.

Six really shines, too. I kinda don’t want to get into too much detail for risk of spoiling more than I already have, but while this isn’t necessarily the best episode of Dark Matter to date, it could be the one with the most depth and meaning.

I am a little mixed on Nyx’s death. I was just starting to like her, and it feels a bit like a waste of potential.

On the other hand, it does wonders for ratcheting up the intensity of the conflict with Ryo. This is a “crossing the Rubicon” moment. Ryo may not have been the one holding the blade, but he is responsible for her death all the same. I don’t think that’s something the crew can forgive, nor should they.

I’m calling it now: This arc will end with Ryo having a change of heart, but too late. He’ll end up making some sacrifice for his former friends, regaining his honour at the cost of his life. I can’t seem him being welcomed back into the fold after what he’s done, but I don’t think they’ll entirely ignore the influence his time as Four had on him.

This being sci-fi, it is possible that we haven’t seen the last of Nyx, of course. Especially given that rather cryptic final scene…

My one real complaint about “Being Better Is so Much Harder” is that Three’s plot didn’t add much. They needed to give him something to do, but his story is not particularly compelling or illuminating. It’s just there.

Still, a solid start to season three.

Also, glad we’re still seeing Torri Higginson’s character. I like her.

Overall rating: 8/10

“It Doesn’t Have to Be Like This”:

Perhaps not surprisingly, Dark Matter is wasting no time in escalating the conflict between Ryo and his former comrades.

Using her stolen memories, Five learns where Ryo is holding the blink drive, and the Raza goes to reclaim it as the first part of their plan to defeat him. While Two, Three, and Six storm the proverbial castle, contending with Ryo’s defenses and the errant laws of physics alike, Five suffers side-effects from looking into the past one too many times.

This is a very standard episode of Dark Matter. It keeps you on the edge of your seat, it has good character moments, it has some interesting revelations, and it advances the plot a bit.

This show is nothing if not consistent.

“It Doesn’t Have to Be Like This” isn’t as special as the premiere, but it also offers very little cause for complaint.

I am glad to see yet more evidence that Five is going to continue playing a major role. I guess I should stop being surprised, but it’s just so rare for a character like her to get so much attention and so many opportunities to play the hero, and it’s so damn refreshing.

Now, her latest revelation is a bit soap opera for my taste, but if anyone can make a plot like this work, it’s Jodelle Ferland.

Overall rating: 7.4/10

Over the years, I’ve mostly been consistent about blogging on every game I’ve played, but there are exceptions. Usually games that I didn’t play for very long. I don’t have enough to say about each one to fill a whole post, but I thought it might be interesting to collect them together into one quick list. Today, the unblogables will come to light (all right).

This isn’t necessarily an exhaustive list of games I’ve played but not blogged about, but these are the more noteworthy ones.

WildStar

I played WildStar during its open beta, and I actually wrote up a fairly extensive impressions piece for a paying client. Unfortunately, due to circumstances outside my control, the article never saw the light of day.

The fact that I never returned to WildStar after the beta should give you some idea of what I thought of it. I did like the housing, at least. Every MMO on the market should be rushing to steal WildStar’s housing system wholesale.

The combat was also pretty fun solo, though it turned into an incomprehensible rainbow spew in a group setting. And the environment art grew on me — like playing a Dr. Seuss MMO — but I never did learn to like the character models.

Overall, though, I found the glacial pacing, grindy gameplay, and obnoxious forced humour were enough to turn me off the game pretty fast.

I regret that my article never saw the light of day, because I feel like I was one of the few who predicted WildStar’s collapse early on (if anything I underestimated how badly it would crash and burn). But now I can’t prove that, so my opportunity to gloat has been denied.

I could just see that this was a game that didn’t know who its audience was. It has a deep backstory, but Twitter-style word count limits on quest text. Its constant humour and silliness screams casual game, but the actual gameplay is a brutally grindy homage to the days when MMOs were more like second jobs.

Skyrim

I can definitely see how Skyrim could be an amazing experience for a certain kind of gamer.

I’m not that kind of gamer.

Really my gripe is that it’s mislabeled. It gets classified as an action RPG, but it’s not. It strikes me as more of an exploration sandbox/kleptomania simulator. And again, that’s fine, and they do it well enough, but it’s just not what I’m looking for in a game. The phrase “a mile wide and an inch deep” does come to mind.

EVE Online

I thought it’d be the infamously cruel and ruthless community that drove me away from EVE — I did love how the very first thing the tutorial tells you is “don’t trust the other players” — but actually it was the clunky UI and stiff gameplay that I couldn’t get over. After a couple hours, it was just making my brain hurt, and not in a fun TSW kind of way.

Lord of the Rings Online

As a big fan of both Lord of the Rings and MMOs, LotRO seems like a game I should love. But when I finally got around to trying it, I barely lasted an hour.

It’s the same old story: It’s a WoW clone, through and through. When I want to play WoW, I’ll just play WoW.

And more importantly, if there’s one setting that doesn’t belong in that mould, it’s Lord of the Rings. In a Lord of the Rings game, I do not want to be doing meaningless kill ten rats quests for faceless NPCs. I do not want to be an overpowered god who can one-shot any foe with a dirty look. I want to feel the texture of the world’s history and challenge myself against epic foes.

Give me The Secret World: Middle-Earth Edition, and we’ll talk. I’d also settle for Elder Scrolls Online: Middle-Earth Edition.

I also found it a profoundly unappealing game from a visual perspective. I know Lord of the Rings Online is considered one of the most beautiful MMOs out there, but for the life of me, I’ll never understand why. It’s not just that it hasn’t aged well (although it definitely hasn’t aged well), but the fundamental art style is just unpleasant. Everything is muddy and dull and bland and just… ugh.

Ironically, the character models — the one aspect of the graphics that does usually garner complaints — was one aspect of the graphics I didn’t mind. They’re not great, but they’ll do.

I will grant that getting to visit the Inn of the Prancing Pony was really neat, and I am often tempted to give it another try. Maybe I’d like it better with a different class (I was a hunter), but the only other one that strongly appeals to me on paper is warden, and you have to pay for that.

Pay-gating classes is a really good way to make sure I won’t play your game.

I suppose if any LotRO players out there want to suggest a (free) class they think I might like, I’ll take it under advisement. Despite how my above ranting may come across, it’s a game I want to like.

Viking: Battle for Asgard

This was some no-name title I picked up dirt cheap on a Steam sale just because Vikings.

I actually made it pretty far in the game before I called it quits. It’s very mindless and has no real plot, but the combat was delightfully brutal, and it was enjoyable in a simplistic sort of way. I was also impressed by some of the huge battles you can participate in; it’s surprisingly rare to find games where you can participate in large scale battles as one of the boots on the ground.

The main problem was for some reason the developers decided to stick a bunch of mandatory stealth missions throughout the game. They felt totally out of place compared to the rest of the game, they were very frustrating, and after a while I just couldn’t be bothered anymore.

The Witcher

I didn’t like the combat.

That’s pretty much all there is to say. I gave up after about an hour because the core gameplay was just too unpleasant for me.

I know everyone’s over the moon about Wild Hunt these days, but having seen Moiren stream some of it, I’m not getting what the fuss is about. Seems like a very standard open world fantasy game to me. It certainly doesn’t look bad or anything, but I also feel confident that I’m not missing much.

Transistor

I think the surest sign video games are now being taken seriously as an art form is that, as in all art forms, there are now emperor’s new clothes situations where incomprehensible titles are praised simply for being incomprehensible. Enter Transistor.

They just sort of dump you into the game with little to no explanation of the controls, the game mechanics, the story, the characters, the setting, or much of anything else. You’re just left to fumble blindly and hope for the best. I feel like it might have been an interesting story if I’d had the faintest clue what was going on, but I didn’t.

As frustrating as that was, it was losing abilities upon death that soured me on the game permanently. That’s a strong contender for the worst design decision I’ve ever seen in a game. It’s the traditional RPG formula in reverse: Every time you fail, it gets progressively harder. It makes for the most unbelievably miserable experience.

I did like the artwork. I’ll give it that.

In my sixth anniversary post, I lamented the lack of Simpsons content on Superior Realities. I think it’d be too big a change of direction if I started talking about The Simpsons all the time, but I have decided it’s high time I do at least one post on the matter.

It may not often come up on this blog, but I am a massive Simpsons fan. I’m every bit as obsessed with it as I am with Warcraft or Metric. It’s a pillar of my life and always has been. I grew up watching The Simpsons — I literally can’t remember life without it — and I’ve continued to be a fan to this day.

Yes, this does mean I’m one of those people who still thinks The Simpsons is funny after all this time. I’ll definitely grant that it’s a lot more hit and miss than it once was, but there are still good episodes, and even the more mediocre ones still usually have at least one or two excellent lines (“This simulation has been brought to you by Your Brain, a subsidiary of Your Penis”).

Honestly if you ask me the real nadir of the series was probably around seasons eight and nine. That one where it turns out Principal Skinner is an impostor? Ugh, just dreadful.

And I think some of the best episodes have come from relatively recent seasons. I’d say “Mona Leaves-a” from season nineteen is probably the most emotional episode of the series, intensely bittersweet while still managing to bring some humour to the tragedy.

Then there’s season twenty-three’s “The Book Job,” which is easily one of my all-time favourites. I’m totally biased, of course, but I think that episode is absolutely brilliant, and I’d consider it required viewing for anyone who has written or even thought about writing a novel.

Plus you get to hear Neil Gaiman doing a terrible American accent. What’s not to love?

Normally Simpsons holiday episodes are pretty bad, but “Holidays of Future Passed,” also from season twenty-three, was a rare exception, being both funny and heartfelt. In general I’m fascinated by the whole alternate continuity that has been developed through the various flash forward episodes.

Interestingly, the one other holiday episode that I enjoy is also from a modern season: season twenty-six’s “I Won’t Be Home for Christmas.” I like it because it has a very simple premise — even if it goes to some pretty weird places along the way — and it puts Homer in an unusually positive light. For once, he’s the wronged party; he did everything right.

I can think of lots of other examples, but the point is, I’m still having fun with the show.

Of course, I also have lots of love for the “classic” days, as well. Never going to stop loving the Stonecutters, hired goons, Evil Homer, sixty-four slices of American cheese, or the cursed frogurt.

There are some fascinating things about a show that’s been around as long as The Simpsons. I’m always amused by its take on continuity.

You might say The Simpsons has no continuity, and you’d be mostly right, but not entirely. Things rarely change in Springfield, but sometimes they do, and you can never predict which changes will stick. I fully expected Comic Book Guy’s wife to be a one-off character, but she’s still showing up from time to time, as is Selma’s daughter.

The Simpsons kids never age, but oddly, some of the show’s other children do. Both Ling Bouvier and the Nahasapeemapetilon octuplets have visibly aged since they first appeared, though not enough to reflect the actual real world time that has passed.

Bizarrely, though, Jamshed Nahasapeemapetilon has aged in real time and is now an adult.

Under other circumstances, this level of inconsistency might be frustrating, but at this point it’s just part of The Simpsons’ charm. Springfield exists in a surreal nether realm where the logic of our world simply doesn’t apply.

The Simpsons’ long run can also make it a fascinating sort of cultural barometer. Earlier on, computers and the Internet were treated as some novelty the characters rarely interacted with. Now Lisa’s doing research on Google all the time and the rest of the family all have smartphones and tablets.

Homer used to be intensely homophobic, but now he’s evolved beyond all that, and the number of openly gay Springfieldians has increased significantly. Even if no one’s gay for Moleman.

The Simpsons is, if nothing else, unique. Even if it did stop being funny, I’d probably still watch. It’s just a part of who I am at this point. I’ve probably spent at least as much time with them as I have with my real family…

One of the things I love about Dark Matter is that it’s incredibly consistent. Maybe not every episode will blow your mind, but it’s always solid. In its entire run, there’s been just one bad episode: that fembot mess from season one.

That is, only one bad episode, until now. I fear it’s time to add another to the list.

“Welcome to the Revolution” has a lot of cool ideas, and some scenes are very good, but it’s trying to do way too much, and the end result is confusing, half-baked, and downright damaging to the series going forward.

While attempting to meet up with Tabor, their handler, the crew of the Raza once again finds themselves embroiled in corporate intrigue, as the local miners foment rebellion against their corporate overlords.

It’s a story that’s eerily — and I believe intentionally — similar to the series premiere, but this time it’s far less black and white. The corporate soldiers aren’t all brutal tyrants, and the rebels aren’t entirely guiltless, either. At times they seem more villainous than their oppressors, in fact.

And that part I liked. They managed to cram a lot of moral complexity into just one episode, and it once again shows that the Raza crew’s efforts to reinvent themselves as heroes will never be easy or simple. Again, being better is so much harder.

Things get even more interesting when a late twist ties the conflict into bigger plot arcs from Dark Matter’s past, but unfortunately, that’s also when things start to go off the rails.

“Welcome to the Machine” is a complicated story, and there’s not nearly enough time to do it all justice. This needed to be a two-parter at least. But it isn’t, and so it feels rushed and unfinished, and the resolution honestly just doesn’t make sense given past context (this is a very hard episode to review without violating my spoiler policy).

Ultimately, the goal of “Welcome to the Machine” seems to have been to provide another cast shake-up, and that’s the worst thing about it. The show has now lost one of its best characters, who has always been essential to its core themes, not to mention arguably its most talented actor.

In exchange, the cast seems to have picked up two new characters. One has already proven himself finger-nails-on-a-chalkboard irritating, and the other could potentially be interesting but has yet to do much or display any real personality.

This is not a good trade.

In general I am now growing frustrated with the extent to which Dark Matter hemorrhages cast members. I was never the biggest One fan, so I didn’t mind his death (though it’s disappointing that mystery was never solved), and the senselessness of Devon’s end was sort of the whole point of it, but Nyx and the latest loss are just examples of wasting potential. The show is worse for their loss.

These losses are beginning to undermine the core themes of Dark Matter. It’s about the crew, about the unique family they’ve created with each other. The more those bonds are broken, the more the show loses its heart and soul.

This has to stop.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

New articles:

In other news, I’ve had some more articles published on MMO Bro.

First, I imagine the possibility of a purely PvE survival sandbox, and how it could perhaps be superior to the PvP focused games currently dominating the genre.

Interestingly I wrote this article before the Fortnite reveals at E3, but Fortnite seems pretty close to the PvE survival sandbox I was imagining (though smaller in scale than my hypotheticals). There’s still a lot of unanswered questions about Fortnite, but I gotta say the trailer made it look really fun, and it’s now on my radar.

My main concern is that it seems like a game that’s really meant to be played with friends, but I don’t have a lot of gamer friends. It doesn’t seem like a good game for PUGing, and it’s not clear to me if playing solo is even an option, let alone an enjoyable playstyle.

But I’m definitely going to keep an eye on it.

Also at MMO Bro, I list off six ways World of Warcraft still has the rest of the MMO world beat. WoW is really showing its age these days, but there are a few specific areas it’s still trouncing the competition.

I’m not the biggest super hero fan to begin with, and Wonder Woman ranks near the top of the list of super heroes that I’m just not interested in, alongside Superman, Captain America, and Aquaman. But the trailers looked surprisingly good, and the buzz has been excellent, so I decided to take a chance.

For or better or for worse, Wonder Woman has become an icon of feminism to the point where it’s impossible to discuss the movie without also discussing its significance as such. This is troublesome because any criticism of the movie could potentially be viewed as sexism — and I have no doubt that there are plenty of people criticizing it purely for its feminism — but at the same time it would also not be fair to avoid criticizing it.

I understand why my feminist friends are so in love with this movie, but I can’t bring myself to fully share their enthusiasm. Allow me to explain, and as always I will say that I am a guy and that you have every right to dismiss my views on women’s issues as worth less than nothing at all.

So basically Wonder Woman is a power fantasy. Diana is infallible in every conceivable way. She has nothing resembling flaws of any kind, she embodies every virtue you can possibly imagine, and she’s pretty much omnipotent.

My knowledge of the character is minimal, so going in I wasn’t entirely sure what all her super powers actually were. Based on this movie, the answer appears to be “all of them.” She’s indestructible and seems to be able to do basically anything. She effortlessly defeats every challenge she encounters throughout the entire movie.

Here’s where it comes down to perspective. This kind of power fantasy story is not  uncommon in our culture, but it rarely if ever features a woman. It’s always a guy who has the privilege of being this perfect and unstoppable. Superman is the best example I can think of — this does feel very much like a Superman movie.

So from that perspective I totally get why so many women are over the moon about this movie. It must feel incredibly refreshing to be able to see yourself in that kind of larger than life heroic role, and if we are to have a fair and equal society, then women should be able to indulge in power fantasies, too.

So in that way, it is a win for feminism, and I respect what this means to people.

But the thing is I’m just not a fan of this kind of power fantasy, regardless of gender. This is why Superman is one of my least favourite super heroes. He’s totally infallible, so there can never be any real drama.

In the same way, the Wonder Woman movie has no real drama, because Diana is simply perfect in every way, and there are no limitations on her power whatsoever. Never for a moment does it seem remotely possible that she could fail.

I’ll also mention that Wonder Woman is a bit of a role reversal in that the male characters are often forced into the kind of reductive roles women usually get. They tend to be quite incompetent and rarely contribute meaningfully to the plot, and Chris Pine’s character in particular is pretty much the archetypal shallow girlfriend boyfriend character that’s always shoehorned into these movies, gratuitous skin scene and everything.

There are lots of movies where men get to be the heroes, so it’s not the end of the world for us guys to get a taste of how women are so often ill-served by writers, though — maybe that was even the point. Maybe it was meant to be an education in how women feel when female characters are just props in stories.

Now, all that being said, this still isn’t what I’d call a bad movie. There is a lot to like, despite its flaws.

Something I absolutely was not expecting was the ruminations on the dual nature of humanity, our potential for both incredible tenderness and shocking brutality. For all that it can be quite mindless in some areas, Wonder Woman can also be incredibly smart in others.

I was also greatly impressed by how the film pulls no punches on showcasing the tragedy and brutality of war. In addition to being smart, this movie can also be very powerful.

And despite their sometimes poor writing — Diana’s over-perfection and everyone else’s incompetence — the characters still manage to be pretty likable and draw you in, helped in part by strong acting from pretty much every cast member. The quieter moments when the cast is at its most human are often the highlight.

Aesthetically, Wonder Woman is also excellent. The fight choreography, while wildly unrealistic, is gorgeous, and the special effects, art design, soundtrack, and cinematography are top notch.

As a mythology fan, I was worried I’d end up cringing over the film’s treatment of Greek myths, but while it heavily departs from the original mythology (unsurprisingly), it doesn’t do so in a way that feels cheap or disrespectful, which is more than can be said for many similar movies. My one complaint would be that in a movie about Greek gods and badass warrior women, there was somehow not a single mention of Athena. Missed opportunity there.

Finally, I think the best part of the movie for me was the villain. Hard to say too much without getting into spoiler territory, but he is charismatic and surprisingly nuanced, and a major contributor to the surprisingly smart social commentary within the film.

As a comic book movie, I’d say Wonder Woman is okay but not great. As a milestone for women’s portrayal in the media, I’d say it’s a step in the right direction but that feminism deserves better champions in the long run.

Overall rating: 7/10

Time for that old sci-fi tradition: the time loop. It’s Groundhog Day for Three as he relives the same twenty-four hours over and over again. In his efforts to break the loop, he discovers a deadly plot by Ryo to kill the crew and retake the blink drive.

And then things get really weird.

“Busy” doesn’t begin to describe this episode. There’s so much going on I’m having trouble keeping it all in my mind, and I literally just watched it. I may forget a subplot or two.

The sheer volume of things at play here is kind of a good news/bad news situation. The good news is there’s so much going on you’re bound to enjoy at least some of it. The bad news is the opposite is also true. There’s way too much going on for it all to be good.

First, Three’s initial trials with the time loop. Not my favourite part of the episode, but not the worst part, either. Perhaps not surprisingly considering this is Three we’re talking about, it’s played for laughs more often than not. Dark Matter has always had a healthy sense of humour, but this is probably the silliest it’s ever been. All things being equal, I’d prefer a more serious plot, but I won’t lie: I laughed.

Things suddenly get a lot more serious when Three discovers the assassin lurking on board. This plot was very good, and I wish it had been given a lot more attention. It could easily have been the focus of a full episode. That assassin’s genuinely scary.

But he got pretty short-changed by how overcrowded the story in “All the Time in the World” is. I’m still not even sure how he got on the ship.

Similarly, the actual cause of the temporal loop is very poorly explained, and in particular there doesn’t seem to be any explanation for why Three is the one affected, unless I missed something (which is possible in an episode so scattered).

Speaking of Three, I’m less than thrilled by his tribulations over the return of “Sarah.” I’m not a big Three fan, and his relationship with Sarah was always one of the weak points of the series for me. It’s just so at odds with the rest of the character. I understand the idea is supposed to be that his gruff exterior masks his inner pain, but he’s just so much more believable as an asshole than as a romantic. The mask feels more real than what’s underneath.

On top of all that, we’re also still getting used to the new characters. The new guy — I refuse to expend the effort necessary to learn his name — is still proving himself to be a waste of oxygen. He’s the Jar Jar Binks of Dark Matter. Yay.

Solara, the other newcomer, is growing on me, though. Still a bit early to be drawing any firm conclusions about her, but I like the cut of her jib. I really want to know her backstory. How did someone as badass as her find her fate shackled to such an imbecile?

And then there’s the mind-frack of an ending, which gives us some tantalizing glimpses of what might be coming. I’m still digesting it all.

Overall rating: 7.2/10