Quest for Glory III: The Wages of War is Worse

I once saw an interview with Josh Mandel, a great adventure game designer who worked at Sierra during its heyday. Most Sierra games (like Quest for Glory 1 and 2) used the old "text parser" interface, leftover from the text adventure games.  I had always wondered why Sierra stuck with this old interface for so …

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Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon

You are Tex Murphy. A 30s private eye in an 80s cyberpunk novel. One day while searching for the next inventive excuse to keep the landlord at bay for another week, a dame walks into your office. That means trouble at the best of times, but this broad had the unholy trifecta – she was …

Divine Divinity – problems with an “open world”

Another month, another game off the list.  This time it's Divine Divinity - another 80hrs+ RPG - my backlog would be so much easier if I played something else.  It's from 2002 so it's comparatively recent compared to my usual fare, closest to Wizardry 8 (which came out in 2001). Do I recommend it?  Yes.  …

A Better Look – the man in the iron mask

The following post is in response to a writing challenge from Matthew of Normal Happenings.  The challenge was "What is a work of art...that you liked when you were younger, but enjoy even more now in the light of additional knowledge and experience?". I grew up with Ned Kelly.  He was hanging in the lounge …

Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics – neither cold nor hot

(The following review is also posted on The Well Red Mage) Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics reminded me of some truly great games – the elegant rebooted XCom, the engaging storytelling of Shadowrun: Dragonfall and the intricate design of 2018’s Battletech.  With each turn, I thought of those games more and more, until with one fateful turn …

Curse of the Azure Bonds – D&D Tactics

  Curse of the Azure Bonds is a game I didn't mean to either buy or play.  But I did both, and I'm glad of it. As I stated in my very first post, the whole point of this blog was to chronicle a project - I would buy no more video games until I …

Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire – better can just mean blander

I'm writing this because I wanted to play Ultima V.  I realise that may take some explaining. I recently put up a webpoll of what game I should play next, and the winner by a longshot was Ultima V.  Fine - Ultima IV was a long time ago, and while it was a game that …

Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate

And with that, one childhood dream completed - I have finished the entire original Bard's Tale Trilogy!  What an achievement!  What a pinnacle of Retrogaming!  What a testament to human endurance! And now that I have finished all 3 of the original games, would I recommend this quest, this undertaking, this odyssey of RPGs to …

Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight and the joys of mapping

This was a victory 30 years in the making.  I finally finished Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight. The Bard's Tale was, of course, a series that is dear to my heart and one I never shut up about.  Back when I was kid on our trusty Apple IIe we had Bard's Tale 1 (or …

“Sunshine Blogger Award” (Disclaimer: not a real award)

Being comparatively new to the realm of blogging, I am somewhat surprised at the number of awards that are available.  I am even more surprised at the number of "awards", which are only "awards" in the same sense that there are "single girls in your area". Whatever, they're stil fun. I was nominated for this …