Month: January 2018

On the 2017 Game of the Year

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Excuse me while I brush the cobwebs off.

At some point this month (possibly even this week), there’s going to be a Game of the Year show from Aggrochat. I’ll keep most of my thoughts contained to that show (or possibly a post after said show), but I do want to place some special emphasis on one game from last year. In a year filled with many incredible games, one stands out as my overall favorite.

Hollow Knight was my favorite game of 2017, and also my favorite Metroidvania, period. (For anyone wondering, it’s displacing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.) It’s a beautiful and expansive entry into the genre, set in a kingdom of bugs. The art style is fairly unique: It’s hand-drawn with limited use of color. This is fairly subtle, but it’s enough to give most areas a unique feel. Things that hurt you tend to be orange.

A while back, Matt Lees mentioned (when talking about Hyper Light Drifter) that “It’s a bit like Dark Souls” basically translates to “I don’t know what I’m talking about.” I’m not really going to help matters at all: Hollow Knight bears a more than superficial resemblance to Dark Souls. Aside from the obvious “lose all of your currency on death” aspect, it really shows in the storytelling. You are dropped into the kingdom and a nearly empty town with no context. Bits and pieces of the story are handed out as you go, mostly from various NPC interactions. Taken as a whole, you can get a picture of the world (and the awful things that happened before you got there). You get the feeling of being alone in a very big world, thanks to how rare it is to see NPCs that don’t want to do you harm.

The thing that really puts Hollow Knight over the top for me is the incredible sense of exploration. The game is very nonlinear even for the genre, and the map is very large. Without sequence breaking, you need to get the fireball, the dash, and the wall climb. After this point, things get really open. You’re intended to go into City of Tears, but there’s very little preventing you from poking the other edges of the map and finding your way into some very dark places. On a smaller scale, the game is good at rewarding poking into things. Hidden rooms are blacked out until you either walk into them or break open the entrance. Tiny corners tend to have some sort of reward, usually in the form of a relic (lore and currency) but sometimes a captured grub or something rarer. I also found traversal a lot of fun once you have the dash and wall-jump, although no single ability stands out in this area. (Ori still holds the crown for most fun movement ability ever.)

All of this without even mentioning the charms, or the bosses, or the major secrets. I really had fun with this one, and you can probably hear me repeat a lot of this in a few days.

On the 2017 Game of the Year

by

Excuse me while I brush the cobwebs off.

At some point this month (possibly even this week), there’s going to be a Game of the Year show from Aggrochat. I’ll keep most of my thoughts contained to that show (or possibly a post after said show), but I do want to place some special emphasis on one game from last year. In a year filled with many incredible games, one stands out as my overall favorite.

On the 2017 Game of the Year

Hollow Knight was my favorite game of 2017, and also my favorite Metroidvania, period. (For anyone wondering, it’s displacing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.) It’s a beautiful and expansive entry into the genre, set in a kingdom of bugs. The art style is fairly unique: It’s hand-drawn with limited use of color. This is fairly subtle, but it’s enough to give most areas a unique feel. Things that hurt you tend to be orange.

On the 2017 Game of the Year

A while back, Matt Lees mentioned (when talking about Hyper Light Drifter) that “It’s a bit like Dark Souls” basically translates to “I don’t know what I’m talking about.” I’m not really going to help matters at all: Hollow Knight bears a more than superficial resemblance to Dark Souls. Aside from the obvious “lose all of your currency on death” aspect, it really shows in the storytelling. You are dropped into the kingdom and a nearly empty town with no context. Bits and pieces of the story are handed out as you go, mostly from various NPC interactions. Taken as a whole, you can get a picture of the world (and the awful things that happened before you got there). You get the feeling of being alone in a very big world, thanks to how rare it is to see NPCs that don’t want to do you harm.

On the 2017 Game of the Year

The thing that really puts Hollow Knight over the top for me is the incredible sense of exploration. The game is very nonlinear even for the genre, and the map is very large. Without sequence breaking, you need to get the fireball, the dash, and the wall climb. After this point, things get really open. You’re intended to go into City of Tears, but there’s very little preventing you from poking the other edges of the map and finding your way into some very dark places. On a smaller scale, the game is good at rewarding poking into things. Hidden rooms are blacked out until you either walk into them or break open the entrance. Tiny corners tend to have some sort of reward, usually in the form of a relic (lore and currency) but sometimes a captured grub or something rarer. I also found traversal a lot of fun once you have the dash and wall-jump, although no single ability stands out in this area. (Ori still holds the crown for most fun movement ability ever.)

On the 2017 Game of the Year

All of this without even mentioning the charms, or the bosses, or the major secrets. I really had fun with this one, and you can probably hear me repeat a lot of this in a few days.

Reading Challenge #84: The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

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I managed to finish one more book from reading challenge before the end of the year, and am finally getting around to posting about it. At this rate it will take me about 6-7 more years to get through my list of 100 books. That’s not ideal! Hopefully as I start moving farther up the list the better books will be more compelling reads. This one certainly was. Let’s talk about The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart, first published in 1970.

I read this book more than 20 years ago, and remember liking it, so I was worried whether it would hold up to a critical re-read as an adult. This book combines a lot of things that normally are huge turn-offs for me. It’s low-magic fantasy with plenty of war and politics, embedded in a quasi-historical real world setting. Any one thing on that list is often enough to make me completely mentally check out. Luckily in this case the story and characters are well-written and compelling, and the Arthurian legend is both beloved and familiar but also flexible enough to withstand many interpretations. The combined effect is a book that I routinely stayed up hours past my “bedtime” for, eagerly devouring chapter after chapter.

The Crystal Cave is the first book in a series, and the whole story takes place before the birth of Arthur. Instead, it follows the life of Merlin from his childhood as a royal bastard with an unknown father, through his mundane and magical education, and sees him coming into his powers as an advisor and a prophet. One of the things this book does so well is it forces us to see Merlin as a human being, one whose magical gifts aren’t always controlled. We see his seemingly unending need for information and knowledge, and how much of his magic and prophesy are really just a combination of soaking up information and combining it with intellect to suit his needs. He’s a man who has a small amount of magical power, but uses his wits to leverage that into a larger-than-life reputation and political clout.

I know the shape of the myth of King Arthur but not all the details, so I don’t have the clearest sense of what is “canon” and what is unique to this retelling. What I do know is that this book places the coming-of-age of Merlin into a historical context that feels authentic from my admittedly fuzzy point of view. The details of daily life, the scope of the battles and military intelligence, the medicine and engineering were all touched on with a level of care that drew me deeply into the world and held me there. It may not be completely accurate, but the world felt alive and real on every page.

Honestly I was surprised that The Crystal Cave was listed by itself, instead of as the full series like so many other works on this challenge list. It left me wondering if the quality of the later books isn’t up to the level of this one, or whether this was just the most well-known of the series. I loved this one enough to want to keep reading. Honestly my only complaint is that it wasn’t available on Kindle, which made it harder for me to read in bed until the middle of the night like I wanted to.

TL;DR: An origin story for Merlin and the beginning of the King Arthur Legend.

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

Rating: 5/5 stars

Verdict: Excellent read, if you’re interested at all in the Arthurian mythology I would highly recommend.

Next up: The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks


Reading Challenge #84: The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

January 2018 Gaming Goals

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Happy new year! December was a month of mostly not meeting my goals. Let’s resolve to do better in 2018!

December Goals in review:

WoW: Decide on a new long-term goal. Done! I’ve been chasing old transmog sets on my priest. As an extra bonus side project I’ve been trying to go through her tailoring and craft every item she still needs the appearance for too. It’s not super exciting but it is keeping me busy.

Destiny 2: Explore the new expansion content. Sort-of. I have explored some of the new expansion, but I still haven’t finished the story or moved on to the new grinds yet.

Diablo 3: Complete the last Necromancer set dungeon. Nope.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete the new DLC. Nope. I fully intended to do this over the holidays but I got distracted by other things.

January Goals:

WoW: See every Legion raid at least once, even if it’s just LFR. The last bits of the current WoW raid will be out for the LFR crowd this month. That means it’s time for me to see them. I still haven’t finished all the wings of the previous raid yet so I’ve got some queuing to do.

Destiny 2: Finish the Osiris storyline. I’ve been working through this with the spouse on my hunter and solo on my warlock. Hopefully I can finish both soon.

Diablo 3: Finish that last set dungeon already dang it. I have no motivation to play D3 right now but this goal has been on my list for months and it would feel great to knock it out.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Start playing the new DLC. I might not have time to finish it considering all the other things on my list this month, but I would at least like to see it.

Hollow Knight: Get to an ending. I picked this one up on the Steam holiday sale and have been loving it. I have a lot of trouble with the boss fights but I like everything else so much it balances out. I doubt I’ll ever get close to 100% completion, but I hope I can progress far enough to see an ending.


January 2018 Gaming Goals