Botany Manor is brilliant. There is nothing more frustrating than illogical puzzles. It is subjective, but I never got stuck on one in this game. The overall pleasantness of the world with a touch of, shall I say, melancholy also helps.

Gylt is a more light-hearted Silent Hill, I guess. Not particularly scary, but spooky atmosphere, with lots of world to explore, secrets to discover and enemies to fight.

Indika left me cold. Not a bad game, not at all, but if the story does nothing for you, like it did for me, there is nothing else there.

Stitch is an interesting variation of nonogram-like games. You have numbers that tell you the size of rectangles that should fill the whole area. The overall picture kind of helps because you can guess which colors go where, but it can fail in places if you’re colorblind. There are a lot of penguins!

There’s not much more I can say about Star Trek: Discovery now that it’s finished its final season. Also, I tend to judge the thing as a whole, not individual elements. In the end, I’m glad I watched it, but I wouldn’t give it a medal, so to speak.

Fallout is a comedy. A dark, violent, crude, bloody comedy. That doesn’t mean it’s funny, the structure is comedy. Ridiculous and awful things happen to ridiculous and awful people. But yeah, sometimes it is funny. And very good!

Princess Peach Showtime! has an inherent problem: rarity. Mario seems to appear in a dozen games a year, but Peach may appear as a playable character in two, if that. So no matter what happens, the game will be at a higher level of scrutiny. I’m not saying that as an excuse, Nintendo doesn’t deserve it. They should do better!

But if you ignore that for a second, I think the game is pretty good. Not great, but good. Would be a great start to a series! *stares at Nintendo*

Also, it seems that the premise of the game – Peach playing many roles – is the answer to the rarity problem. They want to bridge the gap faster by having 10 games in one. That is probably not the logic the developers had, but it is funny to think that way.

I am a “Hey, listen!” liker and Water Temple defender. Can I list a bunch of flaws of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? Sure! Can I praise it a lot too? Of course! Does anyone not know about this game and I would be wasting my time doing both? Definitely. So, yeah, it’s good, really good.

Lutris installs Ship of Harkinian. I also installed Malon (Heroine) and Female Pronouns mods.

And that’s about it. I started a couple of games and then abandoned them or put them on hold. I tinkered with a few things, but nothing really finished. At least nothing worth sharing. One of those months, I suppose.

My logic for the month was: if I have a new PC, with a new (-ish) OS, and a new gamepad, it would be logical to test it all with something familiar. Besides, something familiar is comforting, which is nice these days.

I started with Dungeon Keeper. Then I remembered this post and went from there. But not just to replay those four games, I also used them as jumping off points to look at other similar games. Oh, and I narrowed it down to games that are 20 years old or older, in addition to the usual restrictions.

Dungeon Keeper is a very atypical RTS. Something of a god game, something of a management sim, something of a first-person shooter. At this point I do not trust myself to judge it properly, it is undoubtedly one of my favorite games. Except for a couple of levels that are actually evil.

KeeperFX is a good improvement, and works great in Lutris.

Dungeon Keeper → Project Nomads is also an atypical strategy/action hybrid. You have an island that can go on a predetermined path. You build structures on it in a sort of RTS fashion. But you can also control turrets and planes, and there are even levels where you are mostly on foot. If you try to be careful, you will spend most of your time flying ahead and destroying enemies before they can even get to your island. Also, while it is clearly a huge stretch, I decided to put it in sailing games. Sure, your island is more like an aircraft carrier that you can barely control, but why not!

I have written a lot about Quake II.

Quake II → Unreal had a lot going for it back then. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the negelect we see today from an apple-biting Fortnite maker, it would have been a series on par with id’s Doom and Quake.

We have a story of sorts, told through logs and books. We have interactions with friendly NPCs. Heck, it was even occasionally shown in promotional art that you could play as a woman. And it is a legit choice, not a hack, like in Quake II.

And, of course, it was a pretty impressive technical achievement. Huge maps. It had good gameplay tweaks (alt-fire for example). The multiplayer was not bad, much improved in Unreal Tournament.

Let’s start silly. I described my @bmo account (update: I no longer use it) as a rubber duck. You should explain the problem you have to it. But I put solutions there. And I can justify it. Well, sort of: I don’t want to complain, I want to be useful.

But it goes way, way beyond that. You see, I’m disabled. I have a pension and everything. But I never talk about it. Why not? Internalized ableism? Patriarchy? Self-esteem issues? All of the above? Probably all of the above.

It even goes to ridiculous places. I care about ableist language regardless of the fact that I’m disabled. I care about racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. languages without being a member of any of the groups affected by those. But I fear that my contribution would be less if I presented myself as disabled. “Of course you care about yourself!” Ridiculous, as I said.

I have no opinion about “disabled person” vs. “person with a disability”. You can call me both.

I even justify writing this not as something about myself, but because it is still very important to raise awareness. Which is true.

At the end of the day, I don’t think I would ever feel comfortable complaining about everything about or around me. I would never call myself a survivor. But at least I would try to pick one or two things and be more open about it.