I bought The Swapper yesterday because I heard good things about it. And man, I loved the game.

It is a platformer puzzle game, like the classic Braid, but the major feature is the ability to create a clone of yourself and migrate the controls to it. It might be considered a form of teleportation, but your old ones will still be there. It opens opportunities for several interesting challenges. It also uses, [minor spoiler alert] at mid-game, a similar feature as VVVVV that is changing the direction of gravity. The puzzles have a nice and steady evolution in difficulty, combining the new features each time they are added to your repertoire.

The only thing that I was a bit confused it the collectible orbs. For a completionist like me, and a pleasing game like The Swapper, I felt compelled to collect of them. But the counter that shows in the UI does not have a one-to-one relationship to the amount of orbs you collect. At the beginning of the game, it is one-to-one, but in later stages, each orb you get adds you dozens into the orb counter. It is confusing to track the general progress you are making. I guess the developers wanted to make the reward the player more the more complex the puzzle is, but I did not feel this way. These orbs are not just optional. In order to progress, you have to collect a certain number of them to open locked areas. But in most cases, you have to collect almost all orbs possible to reach the required number, so it turns out to be even more useless the multiple orb value per orb collected intended feature. Minor complain thou.

The game have a very great visuals. Dark and a bit spooky, but not in the way of horror games. It is designed to be just uncomfortable, just like Limbo and (presumably Inside, but I didn’t play it yet). But unlike Limbo, it rarely inputs pressure. You are always in a lonely and calm journey. It imprints the sense of loneliness, desolation, mystery and insanity.

The overall theme is a science fiction. During the game you face several dialogues and recordings of a technological discovery. It presents the theme in a more philosophical approach, similar to Talos Principle. However, due to the super short texts and obtuse ways to tell it, it does not feel very mind melting like Talos. It was a bit unsatisfying. A professional scientist would never write a log in such enigmatic way. It would be much clearer and direct to the point. This obtuse style of storytelling is typical on horror and mystery games, novels and movies. They rely on telling the audience so little that you do not understand the meaning way to the end. Despite it, I like the approach.

The game is short, which I would say that is a plus, because it gives the sense of completion and that it is not dragging you for hours for the sake of appearing more substantial.

I recommend this game. One of the best indies and best games overall I played this year so far.

I first “met” Yuval Noah Harari in a TED talk last year. He was talking about Nationalism vs. Globalism: the new political divide. I like him and his ideas. Interesting and compelling. I didn’t know at the time he was a writer. By accident, I found his book.

I read it entirely in 2 days. Love it.

It is a comprehensive visual of mankind. Several sub-subjects are in my top interest subjects, like religion (from a scientific perspective), politics, economics, and scientific advances. It dedicates several initial chapters explaining what we know about the origin of our species. The point when we forked our hereditary tree from other primates and other man-like species, like Neanderthals (in fact, he argues that it is not exactly like this). It is a 50000+ years analysis of the importance of agriculture, language, and religion. The origin of states. It is mind-blowing.

Then he enters a revision of the known history, also, focusing on one layer at a time. He explains why the Homo Sapiens because the rulers of the planet Earth. Why we managed to be so successful? The book is very centered on religion and religion-like lines of thought, like capitalism (yes… very thought-provoking).

The book is mostly founded on science and data. But also on plausible extrapolations and reasoning. And his writing style is quite convincing.

It is not an accident it is a bestseller. It is not an accident it is a loved book by many.

Simple: READ IT.

Beautiful. This new expansion of my favorite game of all time, The Witcher 3, have a major single adjective. It all happens in a different territory of the main game. A vibrant and colorful Toussaint. It was clearly (and admittedly) inspired by southern France and Italy. The very first minutes into the expansion and your head will probably explode. It is gorgeous. The city of Beauclair is amazing. The mountain that is always at the horizon looks stunning (is it possible to climb it? I did not try)

I started a new game dedicated to the expansion. Mostly because I’ve played the whole game in the original TW3 game but when I bought the Season pass including both expansions, it made available the TW3 complete edition for me. However, it does not include all the playing data from the original one, including achievements. Unfortunate. So I decided to test the feature that it generates a new game, but the main mission was already finished. It works fine. Geralt started the game in level 25 or so with a basic high level armor and sword kits.

I also wanted to test the game using the Brazilian Portuguese audio, and English subtitles for the sake of from-to mapping of concepts. I was impressed the not only CD Projekt Red did a text translation of the game but a full voice over and the same for the expansions! That’s why they are my top 3 favorite developers. However, the Brazilian audio is a hit-and-miss. The actor choices are not perfect (Geralt is really cool, but there are some that are weird) but the most critical point is the pronunciation of the Witcher 3 specific things. They are a mess. Beauclair, Toussaint and even Geralt are pronounced differently actor from actor and even from the same actor in the same dialog tree. Using the English subtitles helped be to surpass the confusion.

[this post mentions the game story]

The gameplay continues top-notch. Added some extra features in the leveling system and the possibility to have your own vineyard. And getting a custom armor with the banners of your family is a very Game of Thrones coolness. However, I personally disliked one of the main recurring enemies: the giant centipedes. Not obvious why they are so difficult.

There are more jokes and culture references that the main installment. The mid-game side story in the world of fairy tales is super-hyper-mega bizarre. And I loved it! No further spoilers. Even inserted there as 100% out of nowhere plot.

The story is original but not particularly fun. The main villain is forgettable. It is a legendary character that you have to meet very few moments, so you are never convinced that he is so good and powerful and charming and wisdom and cool as described by almost all NPCs that managed to know him. I would love to have more interactions with him, becoming friends and then being betrayed. The way it is now, I don’t care much about him. You companion, however, is much more likable.

The final mission (no spoilers) was a bit disappointing. There are a few problems: It locks the player in a series of events, the final boss have a multistep fight and if you die in the last stage, you come back just before the first. Even worse, it brings you back before a cinematic sequence. Arg. CDPR used the same technique on the main game. I hated it. I would never pass this unnoticed if I was called to do beta testing. I was a mix of relief and satisfaction when I finally managed to finish him.

Now I’m going to play the first expansion, knowing that I might be too powerful. If it half of the fun that I had, I would love it too.

The best game expansion I ever played.

In just a few days, I finished this game. It is the reincarnation of the classic Tomb Raider series from Crystal Dynamics. I was not a PlayStation gamer at the time, but this one I liked. Not mind-blowing, but I had my good moments.

This Lara Croft is a more mature and complete character. It was designed to be modern. She will have many more adventures for sure.

The universe of Tomb Raider always have the extraordinary and magical. The story suffer mainly because we cannot anticipate what is possible and what is not. The boundaries are not clear to the player. So when we are about to understand what the hell is going on, the game shows a whole new layer of problems that probably involves magical items or supernatural stuff. It’s like going in an Orlando’s theme parks: one step you goes from Happy Potter to Spider-man.

The mechanics are a bit of combat, a bit of stealth and a lot of cinematic timed actions. It is decent in all these aspects but not great in neither. The collectibles are easy enough to be a valid pursue. This is why I probably finished it entirely.

At a certain point, I was a bit lost, and careless about the main plot and played to reach the end. Nice but not great. Next game!

Last year I watched the Mad Max franchise revival in the theaters. And loved it. And it seems that world loved it too. The game was launched later, so it was surrounded by expectations. But the developers promptly affirmed that the game is not based on the movie, but in the universe in a broad sense. The protagonist is also Max, but like in the movies, it is a bit different Max from the original movies.

First, the visuals. The movie got a lot of notoriety mostly because its breathtaking visuals. The game… well, I will praise its graphics, however, they are not as impacting as, just as a disclaimer. The game uses a lot of post-processing effects to give a perfect look of a post apocalyptic world. The high speed camera and distortions are also very well employed. In general, the game have a good aesthetic.

It makes a reasonable good use of the franchise. The game have the same desolated atmosphere where the automobiles are essential part of living. However, it also brings a sense that that whole world is, in fact, empty. It’s good to traverse the map in a turbo’ed engine, but doing it often becomes repetitive and boring. It seems that they created the map but did not have enough ideas to fill it with.

The main plot, like most recent open-world games, are paper thin. Max is famous for being quite a guy, the same for most of the people that lives there. The ones that talk are, in fact, annoyingly talkative, like your sidekick master of the technicians. Nothing against him being playing ugly, but he is annoying and pretensions. He says all the time how good he is. He says all the time a lot of things.

In contrast, what could potentially be the major companion disappears after minutes of the gameplay. I’m talking about the dog. Just like the thematic cousin Fallout, there is a dog that we presume that will follow the protagonist all along. But it is not true here. He is put away and rarely shows up. Sad.

If the main story is ok, the same cannot be said about the side missions. The mission givers are super shallow and their tasks are generally repetitive. Not much fun. The collectible items and objectives are divided between the fun and achievable and the boring that you should let it go.

Reducing the threat level is really a nice concept. It reminds me of Shadow of Mordor. Not the same, but similar.

Overall, I had a good time playing it. It was a bit unremarkable, but fun.