Which seems fitting. First Contact was, if anything, a singular science fiction setup. Wilds of Alaska, hardcore Christian prepper family, tough park ranger, mysterious object landing from space—those are four ingredients which make a stew the likes of which sf readers have yet to taste. Glassing the Orgachine serves a steaming portion.
Little Nightmares II is in almost every way more of the same. Developers changed the motif from quasi-Oriental to small town America, but the game's mechanisms, design, and gameplay loop are the same. For those who wanted more, II delivers precisely that. In fact, you can could read my review for the original Little Nightmares and be well informed about II. Art, mood, and length remain strengths.
To get the obvious things out of the way, it is the right of the The Witcher's showrunners to interpret the source material as they see fit. It's just as obvious, however, that audience perception is what determines the show's success. For better or worse, that is the model we in the the West live in, and what Netflix uses in determining the funding of future projects. Season 1 was a huge hit. The showrunners did their job. Additional seasons were funded. Season 2 slipped in terms of commercial success, but another season had already been budgeted and was underway. We are now post-Season 3, and the people have spoken. It's a low point. Season 4 is not confirmed.
Over the three seasons of The Witcher, cinematography has been consistent, personnel consistent, budget consistent, special effects consistent, and the story generally consistent with the novels. So why the downturn in success?
Flight opens on a lengthy space marine battle against xenos, lead by Captain Nathaniel Garros. After dealing with the xenos, Garros is called to Isstvan III to help Horus battle a world ostensibly rebelling against the Emperor. Garros is tasked with bombing the planet, but when he discovers what the bombs are, he is forced to choose sides, and choose quickly, nothing certain as the planet burns.
When I Sing, Mountains Dance floats above the Pyrenees, shining a light on the various members of a Catalan family, as well as the flora and fauna who likewise call the mountains home. The sunbeams casting forward and backward, Sola skips around in time. The narrative is anything but linear as it tells of relationships made, children birthed, mushrooms formed, roe deer leaving the nest, teenage romances, and many other inflection points of existence—mostly human, but plant and animal, too. I hope I'm not cutting too close to the bone, but it is more garden of story than story.
The Bad Angel Brothers is the slopping-waves-on-the-ocean story of Frank and Cal Bellanger. Born into a small Massachusetts town, Cal eventually heads off into the wide world to make his fortune as a miner and geology expert, whereas Frank stays close to home building a successful law office that has fingers in pies all over town. At odds since birth, the pair subtly antagonize one another in ever subtler ways as they grow older, leading to an event that changes both their lives forever.
Switching from land to sea, Far: Changing Tides sees one player take on the role of piloting a steampunk(ish) vehicle, in this case a sailboat cum mechanical paddle boat cum steam turbine. Requiring love and care, players raise the sails and feed the vehicle fuel propelling it through a watery, anthropocenic, post-global warming world. Environmental puzzles once again impede the player's left to right progress on the screen. But the rewards of speed and sitting back to watch the world go by, remain.
And ugly indeed. Sadists, malcontents, deviants, and degenerates populate the stories. Only occasionally do sunbeams of light push back the evil. It's crime, more often than not from the criminal's perspective. A couple are stomach churning, but most are visceral entertainment to be consumed like candy.
Wake Up and Dream is technically dieselpunk, but in Macleod's sure hands the taxonomy fades to the background. It's more a Los Angeles in which feelies technology has shoved aside the moving pictures industry to form a new cultural phenomenon. Black and white stars whose names we know today have been overwhelmed by celebrities in the new medium. An alternate '40s LA with a big splash of Brave New World cinema, it tells the tale of Clark Gable, private eye at your service. In the opening pages, Gable, as with much noir, has a woman named April Lamotte come knocking at his door requiring services. Married to a successful but alcoholic Hollywood writer named Daniel, she convinces Clark to do what he used to do before becoming an investigator: to act, in this case to pose as Daniel while signing a lucrative script contract. Daniel too drunk to do it himself, Gable agrees to dress and play the part for a tidy fee. One tailored suit, script, and handshake later and the contract is signed. Simple, right? Of course, not. There wouldn't be a book otherwise. And so the skeletons in Hollywood's closet come knocking.
What a merry, tentacle trip it's been. Jungles and snakes. Small New England towns and ghouls. Excursions into dreamland. Stuck in the middle of warring Masons and witches. And of course, witnessing a theatre production that may not have been theatre. To date, Arkham Horror: The Card Game has delivered a half-a-dozen campaigns that showcase the heights which the base system is capable of achieving. Something fresh, innovative, and new added with each campaign, it's time to see what the latest “The Innsmouth Conspiracy” (2020) has to contribute to the trip.
Unlike all the major campaigns to date, “The Innsmouth Conspiracy” forgoes back story. It throws the players into the frying pan on the first sentence with no preamble. Caught in a rocky basin as tide waters rise, the first scenario asks players to find a way out of their wet predicament before they drown. No time to spin a yarn, the need to escape is imminent. For players who do escape, a window is opened onto the setting, the small town of Innsmouth, Rhode Island. Strange things brewing in the watery underworld, it becomes the investigator's goal to find out how and why they were in the tidal basin before the threat consumes Innsmouth. Once they learn, they may not want to explore further, however. The fire proves to be just beyond the frying pan.
