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Happy New Year :) I've been playing a fair amount of TS3 (actually playing my Goth test family in between, well, testing!)

Some time before Christmas I won Call of Juarez: Gunslinger in a giveaway & installed it. I played it today. I lasted like, 5 minutes. I couldn't take no more talking and stopping and menus and looking and oh my GOD I am here to shoot, how hard is it? Put people in front of me to shoot with my guns. Actually the talking wasn't too bad when it was in the background, but all the cutscenes...! Do people really enjoy games like these?

I stopped playing Dishonored, god, two years ago, when I thought I hit a bug, but actually I think the DLCs were just kind of badly made and it wasn't properly responding to me being so fast at the objectives (even though I am not fast in the slightest). I decided to load it up again yesterday, and trundled all the way around the map relearning the controls, and then the valves started working! So I've been Daud for like 24 hours straight it feels like lmao! I finished The Witches of Brigmore just now.

Now, I'd heard that it makes you see Daud in a whole new light and you won't be able to kill him or whatever but like, no? He didn't really "save" Emily - Emily was only in danger because of him. All those nice people in the pub only died because of him - to say nothing of Corvo getting his shit kicked in so many times - all after watching his lover die! But like yeah, fun to play as, sure. I kinda missed turning into animals, though.

I did go murder mad, as I predicted I would, and it was FUN! Actually, I think I got the special endings for most of the baddies, and I don't think I killed any civilians, oh but everyone else? Heads were rolling, when they weren't exploding - before I got the useful but lame instadusting power ;_;

I had to look up which of the other games comes next (I installed both) and I've just accidentally read some of the plot summary of Death of the Outsider and like what? but they're all dead? so why is it in the future? what? what? Well, maybe it will make sense when I get there. :)

I suppose I should also note I'm still pressing on with TS3 cc sorting! But this is a fun change of pace.

I started Dishonored 2. First of all, my pc is too old and it got churned up to hell even after turning the resolution down from what it wrongly thought I could manage (or maybe it just thinks I'm okay with running my gpu hot, but goddamnit that's not how you keep one for 15 years!! (is that really for reals... I don't know... I think so though...)) Second of all, scratch all that shit I said about wtf are they doing with Billie and Delilah in the 2.5 - what's Delilah doing in 2!!! I literally just trapped her in a painting with the option to kill her so this is so much fresher for me than someone playing at release lol. But whatever, it's fun so far. I resisted the option to play as dad!Garrett (this time) so I'm Grunting Emily. Or is it not just her? Is Corvo old and unfit in D2 too, or maybe they'll claim it's some silly "realism" choice? Well who knows - I just choose to believe this ~tiny babby child~ 20 year old? 23 year old? - is as physically unfit as she is unfit to rule. What happened Corvo, what happened, what happened!

I started Dishonored: Death of the Outsider yesterday. It's incredibly bad so far in terms of writing and the fact that it keeps exposing me to the writing, but at least it loads faster than D2?

Yeah, Dishonored 2... hmm... well... it kind of sucks. The story made literally no sense at any point. And I wouldn't have even cared if they hadn't kept talking about it. Not just permachild Emily muttering under her breath every step she took, but all the bloody audiographs that no-one would have recorded lol! Not just, aren't I lucky they didn't destroy this, aren't I lucky they phrased it that way, aren't I lucky we caught what was supposed to be before or after recording: just plain "they wouldn't have said that (into a microphone)". The worst part is still the central conceit, that a bastard can usurp the throne and no-one will care: it's only "but we liked Emily :(" or "I'm not sure I trust her story!" like please. I guess I hate it most because it's part of the whitewashing, and I know that the whitewashing was to make what already appealed to me appeal to "me" when it's the opposite. No longer was Jessamine this kind of Virgin Queen who skirts around it with their day-of-no-rules thing, her daughter that she just has by none of your business, and that even her enemies adhere to this custom so strongly that people who've never really seen her and Corvo aren't aware of their relationship. In fact I'm pretty sure I read a note in this game somewhere saying that it was never like that in the first place lol wtf ;_; And I dislike how they went from Corvo being this untrustworthy swarthy foreigner in Dunwall to there being loads of black people both there and in his homeland. It just winds me up a lot honestly. If they're going to introduce the character of Billie into this world where women and dark skinned people are discriminated against, and where I don't believe we get the treatment of gays but we can surmise it's not great, like why the fuck do we have this black pseudo-lesbian (I wish they'd gone the whole way or just made her flatly bi) and the only thing anyone looks down on her for is her upbringing. BUT THEN they don't look down on Delilah for this, nor her common mother (who the fuck is Jessamine's mother, oh, I don't really care.) I hate the royal surnames! I hate that they did that and then did this lame "first of her name" thing (is that from Game of Thrones or something???) I should bloody hope you've not had two Delilah Kaldwins, that'd be odd considering wasn't her dad the first Kaldwin on the throne?

Duke Luca Abele! Duke Luca Abele! Duke Luca Abele!

Oh my god, but I'm so annoyed the more I think about it. Why is it 15 years later? 5 years later Dunwall would be reeling from the plague still. Actually 15 Emily would be struggling to deal with that, and you'd understand more how Corvo had failed to protect her, and how she was neglecting the rest of the Empire. And even, even even their stupid cherry on stupid top would be less offensive now - the idea that in all this chaos, and "don't you recall how the regent then lied", and how "this probably isn't the real Emily anyway, she probably died of plague" and you're fed up of this teenager who hasn't yet restored your city and and and. Also would make more sense that Delilah would have all her allies still. And instead of going full insane witch, she could play up her similiarity to her beloved adult sister at least at first. See? I'm just rambling on my blog and I already fixed it all so easily, but nooooooooo, let's play as a childish 25 year old who was groomed to rule and who is having her first teenage romance too also I think (I laughed at the way they'd appeased the prudish yanks by saying Jessamine only ever even kissed Corvo when she was 18, but no, they weren't appeased apparently, it's an age gap!!!!! and he GROOMED HER (his empress he met when she was 12 and she picked him to serve her))

Yeah so I finished Dishonored 2 lol. But now I'm playing another differently disappointing Dishonored game. You know, I was kinda wondering how it happened, how they stopped making them when they made an amazing game and 2 sequels apparently even better, but they're just plain not! I'm always being taken in by lies apparently, but I don't really regret playing D2 and finding out for myself. Some of it was fun. But so much of it was just a slog :( I do think there were problems with the ai. Not really played enough of DOTO to know if they fixed it yet. I picked hard for both because it recommended that for someone who played the first game, and it's really weird, sometimes just crazy "they're cheating" hard (in D2 at least I noticed they auto become aware of me whenever I load in a hidden but near space??), sometimes I'm waving my hands in front of their faces, doing a little dance. Technically that evens out, but that's not the feeling you come away with!

I finished DOTO. It's not good. It's just not. The talking never let up. In fact it got worse. At one point I was being droned at by Daud as I let Billie do overlapping monologues about a thousand sheets of paper, and like how is so much talking still half silence? If they wanted a talky game, why couldn't they get people who could read a line fluently, and then play the lines immediately one after the other in a natural style? I have never been so bored!! Just blah blah blah all the time! And it's not just the new style of the talky protagonist - the eavesdropping was bad in D2 and worse in DOTO. Just on and on and on and nothing actually said! (Fewer audiographs this time, which was nice: but they were all stupid. And the SINGER? Omg until just now I seriously forgot the world's worst singer!)

I feel like in D1 I would exhaust npcs' topics before I was satisfied. Which I guess is not good and they wanted to avoid. But to be left wanting more of something that's very very secondary is really much better than this constant verbal assault!

The dialogue (avalanche) is not the only writing problem: the story sucks so much. The Daud stuff doesn't actually make sense. And the Outsider stuff? Oh my GOD. Why did they want to shit on like 75% of what they had? Actually, I was glad we got some factory setting again at the end. That was a good thing about D1 that was totally neglected in D2 as I recall. And I guess it was kinda fun how there was the super stealth bank mission and then the super violent museum mission (btw I literally ran around the map 3 times and still missed some overseers/sisters, wtf? I mean, the witch got out... by which I mean, got down to a deadend in the sewers...) But the rest was just boring. I was only playing it because I liked the first game. I really, really really need to stop doing that! (I guess I avoided it with TW3, but I gave into it with DA:I, and maybe also FO4, but it's hard to judge with my Fallout brain disease. And I guess it was also just respect for my previous DA brain disease.)

Omg I literally wrote all this and just now upon seeing the achievement I got for talking to the rats I remembered how incredibly bad that was!!! Completely annoying voice, physically painful style, and completely and utterly pointless!! Like "omgggg Billie there are... ENEMIES ahead scary wary enemy wenemies eat our ratly bones crunchy munchy ooh ouch ooh!!!" but like make that 3 lines. And put really big gaps between them. Not as bad as how the Outsider in D2 started saying things like "press r to eat a health potion. when your health is low. from damage" I didn't really notice him do that in this one but maybe that's because I wasn't listening.

... that's so bad. Am I just forgetful? Was D1 this bad too? It's not like I was terribly younger 2 years ago lol, but maybe I'm more fed up with shit games. I'm going to replay it some time, maybe soon (I keep hearing that main wobbly violin sound effect whenever my mind goes blank...) so then I'll find out. And update all loyal readers of my game diary!

Okay, so what have I been playing? I was playing Kenshi until 24/03; Dwarf Fortress until late May; Warband from early June until the 14th; Civ V until 26/07; TS3 since 31/07 (for a given value of "playing")... There was also some Desperados 3 at some point. Oh, and I was modding Stardew Valley between, ugh, April and July, but I gave up before the end just like I typically do!

I also got into Minetest some time in July. I just want to play it like old Minecraft but with crazy shit like this DF caves mod, but idk, there's a lot to contend with before I can actually, hehe, dig in.

I need more games I can just play! My husband has been replaying the Half Life series and I'm kinda jealous... I mean, not enough to follow or anything, haha!

I've been thinking about a new Kenshi playthrough for a few weeks, so that's what I'm going to do today! I hope you play some games too, dear reader!

I've been playing more Kenshi. I had a fun save going where I started in UC and was sympathetic to slavers, even after being enslaved and escaping (because they heal people) - but then I had an escaped slave I wanted to leave with the thieves in one of the towns. I forgot I didn't have Each Person's Life installed any more. I struggled to install it and get it working - not even with an import - but it worked in a new game, so I just gave up on that save before I got any further. But then my next save was less interesting (started in Dreg, invented a backstory that involved crossing the shrieking forest and the floodplains alone and very weak, which was kinda fun) and then the tech hunters in Flats Lagoon got weird about me taming a wolf so idk. Bored of Kenshi for now maybe?

I've also been playing a fair bit of Tropico, but I was getting frustrated at the ugly palace placements in random islands. I don't really understand map editing enough to make one...

What have I been playing before today? TS3 here and there mainly for testing. I think that might be all? A little FNV for screenshots, too?

Today I finally gave Planescape: Torment a whirl after installing it two years ago. And reinstalling it because it had a 0kb exe for some reason wtf? And well, now I'm uninstalling it because it's boring. It's slightly more charming than Pillars of Eternity but far uglier and just generally kind of dull. I didn't get super far (around the main, idk, square? ugly town. And doing some quests in an alley where I could hardly tell what was a tent/building and what was just like, there. And so ugly) but I think I've seen enough.