Disco Elysium (PC)

Developer:

ZA/UM

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Release Date:

2019

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Systems:

Windows (PS4 + Xbox One later in 2020)

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Disco Elysium, a brand new game that's the opposite of obscure. Everyone's heard about it, everyone knows about it. But I have to write about it anyway, because it was a surprise birthday gift and I'd be some kind of ungrateful monster not to. It's a bit of a roll of the dice though, seeing as I could end up writing a whole essay here on why it's bad and I hate it. Which would be awkward.

Fortunately the game's got immense critical acclaim, so it seems like a pretty safe bet. In fact I often hear it compared to The Outer Worlds, which came out shortly afterwards and deals with some of the same themes. Or, to be more accurate, I heard people saying "Outer Worlds' biggest problem was that it came out right after Disco Elysium instead of right after Fallout '76". It's apparently narratively masterful in a way that makes the writing in other video games look like video game writing by comparison, plus it's got a name that sounds like a boat in a James Bond movie.

It originally had the title No Truce with the Furies attached to it, but that was apparently only ever supposed to be the project name. Personally I think they made the right choice going with Disco Elysium, as it's got a nice sound to it, it's distinctive, and it's a lot quicker to type. Plus 'disco' is also a Latin word meaning 'I learn' and the game's all about learning things, so it's being clever.

Okay, this is a story driven detective game based around mysteries, so this article is inevitably going to be full of SPOILERS. But I'm only going to play it for exactly one in-game day, so I hopefully won't ruin too much of it for you if you haven't played it yourself. Plus I'm going to pick all the boring options to ensure there's no risk of anything interesting happing and preserve all the wondrous fuck ups for you to discover on their own.

I should also mention that the game is full of bad words, depressing themes, gruesome descriptions, and opinions about politics, just to let you know what you're in for. Not that you'll necessarily see much of it in my article.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (PC) - Guest Post

Today on Super Adventures, I dragged my old friend mecha-neko back and made him write another guest post for you! We used to get a first person shooter a month out of him, now we get one every two years. It's fine though, he added more words to make up for it.

'sup.

Developer:

GSC Game World

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Release Date:

2007

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Systems:

Windows

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I'm guest poster mecha-neko and today I'm going to tell you all about a game I'm not too familiar with called S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. I played it once, a hundred years ago, but my memories are hazy. It's the perfect time for me to stalk once again!

(Since I've got a brand new GeForce 9600 GT! graphics card, these images are presented in super high-res. Click to make 'em big.)

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC) - Part 2

Click to jump back to part one.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC) - Part 1

And this year's final 'K' game is... Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic!

I've spent forever trying to capture screenshots from the Xbox version of this game, but the best I've managed has been fuzzy black and white footage from an old DVD recorder. But then one day a copy of the game miraculously appeared in my Steam library. I'm taking it as a sign that fate does want me to play this game, it just wants me to play the PC version instead.

I admit I have played through this before on the Xbox, about a decade ago perhaps, but thankfully my crappy memory means it'll likely be as if I'm seeing it all for the first time! I didn't even remember it has its own unique theme tune instead of reusing music from the films: youtube link.

Though here's one big difference I've noticed between the two versions: the PC version does not like my Xbox 360 pad one bit. Mouse and keyboard only, controllers not allowed.

(Click the pictures to view them at 1280x960 resolution. Except for the next one and the one after that.)

E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy (PC)

Super Adventures' ambitious "Year of Games That Begin With a Letter" gimmick continues in an alphabetical fashion with another requested game for you: E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. Uh, sorry I mean E.Ψ.Ǝ: Divine Cybermancy. Always nice to have a legitimate excuse to use an italic letter psi.

I've been curious about this one for a while, because I've seen the name mentioned a few times but I've never really formed a clear impression of what kind of game it actually is. Though the ambient knowledge I've absorbed through the internet is whispering to me that it's a little like an ambitious indie Deus Ex clone, constructed by a tiny development team and held together with sheer willpower.

(Click the pics to view them at double the size.)

Dust: An Elysian Tail (PC)

Today the 'D' titles continue with a game request: indie platformer Dust: An Elysian Tail. It comes with a subtitle attached because when you're not id software it can be hard to make a one-syllable common word title show up in search results (especially when games like Dustforce and From Dust are already out on virtual shelves). If you're wondering what the symbols mean by the way, they're Korean and they spell out... 'Dust'. I was as shocked as you are.

This was originally an Xbox 360 game, but I'll be playing the PC version as I still haven't found the screenshot key on my 360. I'll get the hang of this game capture thing some day though.

(Click the images to view them at 1280x800. Might not be all that impressive, but you'll get a better view of them than at 640x400 res at least.)

Arx Fatalis (PC)

I'm still going through titles beginning with A and today I've dug up another game from my epic pile of requests for you: classic PC/Xbox RPG Arx Fatalis.

I know next to nothing about this other than that it came out in 2002 (a couple months after Morrowind) and that it's the first game from Arkane Studios, the creators of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and Dishonored, but hey that's enough to catch my interest. Well okay to be fair I haven't seen much of those two games either, though they seem like they could be cool, so maybe this will... seem cool too.

Arkane actually had another big project secretly in the works during the mid 00's, called Half-Life 2: Episode 4, but that didn't work out in the end; partially because Valve forgot to release Episode 3. Over six years we've been waiting for the resolution to that cliffhanger now in case you're wondering.

(Click the images to view their giant-sized doppelgängers.)

Planescape: Torment (PC)

Okay, today I'm playing critically acclaimed universally adored D&D PC RPG Planescape Torment! Actually it's set in the Planescape universe, so I suppose the title should be read as Planescape: Torment (or even just Torment). Crap, I've looked at the word too many times in a row and now I'm reading it as 'Plan escape'.

This was the second game use the Infinity Engine after Baldur's Gate (or should that be Forgotten Realms: Baldur's Gate), so I'm expecting the same sort of gameplay from it. Well, to be honest I already know exactly what kind of gameplay it has as I've played it before, though I didn't get very far. All I really remember about the game is getting locked inside a tomb and nibbled to death by an army of super intelligent rats over and over again until I turned it off in despair.

Galerians (PSX)

This time I'm taking a quick look at another requested game: Galerians on the original PlayStation. From the title I thought this one was going to be a shoot 'em up until I saw this JRPG kid growling at me on the cover. Not that I'm saying it won't be a shoot 'em up, it's just that with three CDs I wouldn't bet on it.

Final Fantasy V (PSX)

Today I'm taking a quick look at Final Fantasy V, the last of the numbered FF games to not get a Western release, at least not for a long while. But FF2 and FF3 were skipped over at the time because the NES had become obsolete before they could make it across the ocean. FF5 on the other hand could have made it into US shops mid 1993, around the peak of the system's popularity, so why didn't it? Apparently the reason was that it's "just not accessible enough to the average gamer", which has me a little worried, because I'm an average gamer! I don't want to get hopelessly confused by a SNES RPG, that'd just be embarrassing.

Incidentally, Square's refusal to give the world a English release made this one of the first games ever to get a full fan translation. Fortunately I don't need it though as Square eventually did give English speakers their own version of the game a decade later on the PlayStation.

Hotline Miami (PC)

Today on Super Adventures I'm playing something recent for a change, ultra-violent action game Горячая линия Майами... uh, Hotline Miami. I had to check to see if I'd gotten the Russian version by mistake, but nope that's the actual English language menu screen up there.

The game has a retro pixelled look and no resolution options, so these screenshots are going to look pretty bad after being resized to fit the page. Of course it was never going to look like Crysis 2, it's a cheap indie release apparently designed to look like a video game from the late 80s played on a flickery TV while on drugs, but clicking the pictures will let you see them at the optimal level of crapness the developers intended.

Shadowrun (SNES) - Guest Post

A mysterious new guest poster called Kraed has appeared to temporarily hijack my site. But in a good way.

Ray Hardgrit is overworked and not managing to keep up with his schedule of posting games so I am posting for him. Hooray! What a lovely person I am. Here’s a game about running in the dark or something.