Wordsmith's Anvil

Image credit: Random House Worlds This will mark my first review of a book outside of the annual reviews that I've been doing. Those have been fun, but I believe that they don't fully encompass the heart and soul that many of these authors have poured into their work.     Jaleigh Johnson's The Road to Neverwinter gives us a glimpse at what life was like for Edgin and Holga in the lead-up to the Dungeons & Dragons movie. We knew that Edgin was a thief, we knew that he was a father, and we knew that he was friends with Forge prior to meeting him again in the film, but we might not know to what extent all of these things fell into place.  The Good The narrative of Johnson's work is certainly one of its strong points. We are introduced to Edgin, a father who is struggling to make ends meet for his baby daughter. He meets Holga, an exiled barbarian just looking for a place to call home.     The unlikely pair work together to raise Kira over the years, doing small...

  Image credit: Reikon Games It's been a hot minute since my last gaming review! Just kidding it's been like a literal minute. That's because Ruiner is one of those bite-size games that can be blown through in a single weekend without even having your wife grab the butcher knife and threaten your livelihood if you don't go to bed.     Ruiner is a 5-hour romp through the gritty undercity of a cyberpunk hellscape. You're a nameless, faceless, action hero armed with nothing but a busted pipe and an easily-modded gun called a "Ruiner." It starts you off with the goal being to assassinate the boss of a megacorporation called Heaven. After taking down some thugs on your way to do this task-a task that you have no real reason to do besides it just being the current assignment and flashes of someone telling you what to do-your brain is hacked by Her. "Her" is intent on getting you to safety for the time being so you can find out what's really going o...

The Footpad The Phoros slowed to a halt on Triton’s soft sands. Donovan stood at the stern of the ship with his arms folded. He had to mentally prepare himself for what he was to do on the island. It was not that murder was abstract to him, he had assassinated more men and women than he could remember. However, he always took precautions. “You must find a way to make it seem a suicide,” Nicolette had told him back in Tellus. He had been agitated with their exchange but did well to hide his thoughts, counting from one to a hundred and then back down again as the conversation ensued. “I know my job, Madam. Leave the thinking to me.” Nicolette had touched his muscled bicep then and grinned. “Do the job to my satisfaction and you will find me worth more than mere coins.” “The job won’t cost mere coins,” Donovan had replied and moved his arm away from her touch. It was not that the diplomat was not attractive. The footpad figured he would enjoy rutting with her enough, but he never mixed bu...

  Images courtesy of Harebrained Schemes I think most trilogies try to improve upon their formula with each iteration. This can be seen with film classics like the original Star Wars trilogy, and also with gaming epics like Mass Effect . It's a tried and true method of getting your audience to continue returning. The stakes have been amped up from piece to piece, and we all want to find out what happens next.     The same can definitely be said for Shadowrun .     I never had the privilege of playing the original Shadowrun on SNES, but I was pretty excited to find out that some of the original creators of the work landed themselves in Harebrained Schemes to set up the Kickstarter campaigns needed to flesh out a new series for the title. Now, granted, this trilogy came out quite a few years ago and then was ported to current consoles several years later (still a couple years back, by now), but it was a new foray for me into a cyberpunk world the likes I'd never...

  Image courtesy of WolfEye Studios This was an odd one that I glommed onto. And I don't just say that because of the title.     There are a lot of things in Weird West that make it such an appropriate title. Some of them work. And some of them don't. Either way, it's guaranteed to stick in your craw for a fortnight or two once you've played it.     Weird West is led by five different protagonists that are all controlled at separate times from the actual player. There's a bounty hunter, a pigman (yes, you read that right), a Native, a werewolf, and a cultist. Each one of them has their own goings-on that would likely never intersect in their daily lives, but for reasons unknown to them... they do over the course of the weeks transpiring in game-time.       Put simply, a calamity has made its way to the west, and it's not just the run-and-tell-the-sheriff kind. This is more along the lines of a devastation that could wreak havoc across the ent...

Image courtesy of Complex Games I've definitely gone down a bit of a rabbit hole in the last year or so when it comes to Warhammer 40,000. It started with Owlcat's  Rogue Trader and then continued with Neocore's Inquisitor . Now granted, both of these titles were really more brought to my attention because of the respect that I have for the developers. Owlcat has been my favorite studio since the long-gone glory days of BioWare, and Neocore captured my interest with their spin on King Arthur . Nevertheless, these studios have introduced me to the wide world of 40K and everything it entails, and I've been more than intrigued enough to pursue other titles to delve further into the grim darkness of the future.     Chaos Gate takes Warhammer 40K and puts an XCOM spin on its tactics. We play the newly elevated commander of a ship filled with Space Marines and led by a rigid old commandant, a mouthy tech-priest, and a pushy Inquisitor who will stop at nothing to combat an is...