Nostalgia: The Lone Wolf Game Books

I have a (probably bad) habit of periodically checking video game sales to see if there's a good sale on a game that had fallen off my radar or possibly didn't know about. Usually there's nothing I haven't seen before, but this week I did a double take as I stumbled across a sale of a game called Joe Dever's Lone Wolf.

This awakened all kinds of feels in me.

You see, before I played Dungeons & Dragons, before I decided I wanted to be a writer, I was kid who discovered Lone Wolf in her school library. They were like choose your own adventure books, but with game mechanics in them and a random number table in the back so you could do combat or encounter different results when trying the same action.

Lone Wolf was your protagonist, but you could build him with different skills, and what skills he possessed led to different options as you read through your adventure. Being able to talk to animals might allow the animals in question to lead you to a secret route you wouldn't otherwise find. Being skilled in camouflage might allow you to hide when you otherwise couldn't.

Lone Wolf even "leveled up" between adventures, gaining one new skill for each book the player completed, and the series itself was a continuing storyline that followed Lone Wolf from a slacking student who survived the massacre of his order by dumb luck to a grand master of his kind.

I read a review to see if the game was any good (and surprisingly for a licensed title it seems to be) and it was funny seeing someone refer to the Giaks as Lone Wolf's version of orcs, because to me, Giaks predated my knowledge of orcs, and even now that I know what orcs are, I still don't see them as the same. (For what it's worth, I picture Giaks as being smaller and a bit more cowardly. Closer to being big goblins than orcs.)

Reading about the game reminded me of all the lore, the setting and the monsters, that I devoured as a kid. While I didn't think much of the game's character design (Lone Wolf looks like he's going to an Assassin's Creed audition), the writing itself was apparently the late Joe Dever's final project, and knowing that the author himself was penning the script gives me some hope that was otherwise lost on seeing Lone Wolf skulking around in black. (What happened to the green cloak of the Kai Lords? The color is so famous that in some books he gets identified immediately by other people when he wears it.)

I decided to buy the game (it was on sale, and as of this writing, it still is), because I hadn't journeyed as Lone Wolf in years, and because the game is supposed to be in continuity with the books, I decided that I needed a refresher.

One thing Joe Dever did that was incredibly kind to his fans, is give permission for his most of books to be uploaded to the web, free of charge, and you can read them at the fan run Project Aon. All of his Lone Wolf game books are there, though the novelizations are not (much to my dismay, because most of them were never published in the US and teenage me had been reading them). Unfortunately he passed away leaving his New Order sequel series unfinished, but it looks like his son and a co-author are trying to finish it.

In prep for playing the game, I started noodling through the game books and I'm rather surprised by how much I remember. Not always in regards to specific decisions, but the worldbuilding. I knew vordaks were! And that they are not to be messed with as a scrub initiate. Drakkarim are human enemies though, the only humans in the Darklords' armies. I also got to meet my magician friend Banedon again (and two more times as I kept reading)!

The books feel a bit dated now, especially with its less than flattering portrayal of people from Middle Eastern and Alaskan-themed lands. Lone Wolf can get screwed over by people of all nationalities (there's a reason you can choose Sixth Sense as a skill), but it's notable that the Middle Eastern country actually allies with the Darklords and the pseudo-Alaskans are introduced as "ice barbarians" who are so hostile even their children are shooting at you while riding on their parents' backs.

Though if you want to look at the story through a more progressive lens, Lone Wolf could be read as gay or bi, since the second person narrative repeatedly notes that certain men are handsome. (It's probably unintentional, but it's definitely something I didn't notice as a kid.)

Also hailing from a more simplistic time, is some of the decision-making, where shooting first and asking questions later is okay, even if you're the good guy. There's one time when you need to find out who tried to poison you and no clues as to who it was, and the way you accuse someone is by attacking them. Even if that's not the best way to find out who's your would-be assassin, fighting is generally something you don't want to do too often (unless you have the Healing skill), because healing potions are hard to come by, so getting into a fight just to get it wrong is rather clunky. Fortunately most of the time you can choose to run away from non-monster fights if you prefer not to kill someone.

One thing I was surprised about though is how little Lone Wolf's gender is referred to, which might be one of the reasons I got into the series as deeply as I did. I don't think it's until the sixth book that Lone Wolf is specifically referred to by another character as "he." Though there's a blond teenage boy on the cover, the book is written in second person, so it's easy to read without paying attention.

True, he's a "Kai Lord" (eventually), but the novelization established that the Kai Lords trained both boys and girls, so even referring to him as that felt gender neutral to me.

I figure I'll go through the original twenty books (it sounds like a lot, but they're fast reads since you don't go straight through) and then dive into the video game. I'll skip the New Order sequel series since follows a new protagonist. Unsurprisingly after twenty books Lone Wolf himself is pretty dang powerful and probably doesn't need to level up anymore! And I assume that's the point when the video game picks up, when he's no longer a teenage boy, but the man who's rebuilt his fallen order.

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

Platform: Windows (also on PS4, PS3, XB1, X360)
Release: 2014

I wasn't sure I was going to cover this game, but then I realized that if this had been a Japanese title rather than a European one it would have been a visual novel, in which case I'd write about it without a doubt. As a fan of games and series like Danganronpa, Ace Attorney, and Hotel Dusk: Room 215, I realized that there wasn't much separating Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments from them aside from the fact it's more oriented towards three dimensional exploration and there is no personal story at stake for our main characters.

Rather, it plays like a series of Doyle's short stories, where Holmes is called on to investigate a crime for one reason or another and then he needs to figure out what happened and who did it. In fact, some of the game's mysteries are based on actual stories, though I hadn't read the ones in particular before playing.

Like most games of this type, Crimes and Punishments involves gathering clues and talking to people. And then the player as Holmes assembles all the pieces to arrive at a conclusion. The largest difference between this game and the others I mentioned is that the conclusion is not always clear.

With games like Danganronpa and Ace Attorney, if you're wrong about your conclusion, the fact you are is quickly thrown back in your face. (Or occasionally, if you're two steps ahead, the fact you are not on the same page as the story expects you to be, is what gets thrown back in your face.)

Crimes and Punishments lets you interpret evidence in different ways. Was the culprit skilled or merely lucky? Does the presence of extra water in the blood at the crime scene mean an unusual killing method or is it because the victim was in the steam baths?

Deciding which interpretation to go with is part of the fun, and you can flip suppositions at any time to see if they'll lead to a new conclusion and thus a new avenue of investigation.

The presence of red herrings and multiple suspects also helps muddy the waters. When you can see multiple people with a motive and multiple ways the murder could have happened, that makes it harder to pin down the actual circumstances as they occurred.

I thought the opening case was a particularly good chestnut (and it's one of those pulled directly from Doyle's stories) with multiple suspects, multiple motives, and the lack of a clear smoking gun. But by going through the evidence it was possible to figure out who the murderer logically ought to be, and thereby getting it right.

I enjoyed it, and expected to enjoy the rest of the game as well, but it didn't turn out as pleasant as that.

The second case was too straightforward for my liking. I kept expecting there to be a twist somewhere, but there wasn't. The fourth was even easier than the second, and the sixth was similarly in difficulty, which was a bit disappointing because it was the final one.

The two cases I enjoyed investigating the most are ironically the ones I got wrong. It's perhaps not surprising that I enjoyed them because they were complicated and they made me work. I don't play murder mysteries to have the solution handed to me on a silver platter. However, once I learn the correct answer, I do expect to understand where my reasoning went astray. That's not the case with these two mysteries; neither of which are directly based on a particular Doyle story, so the fault does not lie with the original creator.

Blood Bath is the third case, and it's probably the thorniest one in the bunch in that we have three suspects in a supposedly locked room, one of whom killed a fourth. The murder weapon has disappeared and no one could see more than a foot or two in front of them due to the steam so there are no witnesses. Not only do we need to pin down the culprit, but we need to figure out what the weapon was and how it left.

I really thought on this one, and eventually concluded that it was Mr. Garrow with a silver dagger. Garrow was suffering from hallucinations due to his medication, but he had clearly disposed of a silver object in the brazier in the steam bath, and the amount of recovered silver was exactly the amount needed to produce a replica dagger using a mould from the victim's workplace. I didn't like fingering the mentally ill guy, but he clearly knew a lot about the victim's research, the rituals involved (which included melting down valuables), and was concerned about the worthiness of someone to witness such secrets.

However, the answer was Blinkhorn with an ice dagger.

I didn't like this one because an ice dagger is an impractical weapon (even though, yes, it would disappear in the steam baths). The mould to form the weapon was found at the victim's dig site, which is not close to the bathhouse at all, which means that the culprit would have had to make the dagger and then carry it to the crime scene without anyone noticing and without the ice dagger melting. He could not have discarded the mould after the crime since he and all the other suspects were booked at the scene of the murder.

There was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket in the changing room of the steam bath, which presumably Blinkhorn used to transport the dagger, but the victim was not killed immediately, which means that the dagger would have been left in the changing room and retrieved later because it would have melted if kept in the steam bath too long. However, opening the noisy doors would have alerted the attendant outside that someone had left the baths. While the attendant did have a twenty minute gap when he was away from his post, there's no way the murderer could have known that opportunity would have existed and they would have known about the noisy door went they went in.

There is some hand waving about the pre-industrial way of making ice cream with ice and salt as a way of allowing an ice dagger to better retain its shape, but really, would ice cream last that long in a sauna? And it still couldn't have lasted all that long because it needed to conveniently vanish by the time the murder is discovered. If was slow melting, then it would have been useless as a weapon by the time the murderer could be assured it would disappear before discovery.

(Aside from that, if the murder was done with the ice dagger, where did the melted silver come from? Everyone stripped down to go in the bath so even if Garrow wanted to melt some other silver as penance he wouldn't have had the opportunity to get any since he was taken directly from the steam bath to the station.)

The fifth case was a similar three suspect set up, but with the twist that the initial primary suspect has an accomplice. This one I messed up largely because I chose to believe Holmes when he told me that a piece of evidence spoke to a particular character being in a specific location for a long time. After all, Holmes is your player character and you presume he's not an idiot, so when he says you don't need to listen to an hour long phonograph because what he's heard is enough to draw a conclusion, there's a tendency to believe him.

Unfortunately, he's wrong. Because I listened to him I picked the only other option available. I didn't really think the person I accused had done it, but there was most likely an accomplice and this guy was the only person left after Holmes's own words provided the actual accomplice with an alibi.

That was a game writing failure.

Without Holmes's interference I would have accused the proper accomplice, so I was really disappointed in that.

I'd say that Crimes and Punishments was fun, but it needed another pass on its most complicated mysteries. The fifth case probably would have been my favorite if Holmes had been more circumspect in his assessment of the phonograph recording, and the third could have been salvaged with an alternative explanation for the melted silver, or if the amount of silver hadn't exactly matched the amount needed to forge a dagger. (Really?)

Because otherwise I enjoyed juggling evidence that required some level of interpretation and not having the clues spoonfed to me. When I started playing this at the end of 2019, I really thought this was going to be in contention for my top three of the year, but it fell short by the end.

My Favorite Anime of 2019

Ironically, despite having more time to watch things in 2019, I actually watched less. I think that's because anime is usually a thing I'd watch after coming home from work, and ends up part of my daily ritual, but since I was sick so much of last year I didn't come home from work nearly as much. Most of what I watched was from the winter season (pre-cancer diagnosis), and I'm including season 2s and 3s as long as they finished their run before the end of the year.

Anime listed are not ranked, but presented in the order I watched them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).

Run with the Wind *

I'm not a sports anime fan, even though I'm told people normally watch them for the characters and not what they're playing. But for me, I need at least some part of the sports element to catch my interest. Run with the Wind does that with running. The characters are a motley bunch that by rights should not even be trying to place in the Hakone Ekiden (a grueling relay marathon), but the training they go through is highly relatable for anyone who's ever done a bit of track and field, as are the moments they share along the way.

Dimension High School

This a completely zany series about puzzle solving which involves a group of students and their teacher from our world (depicted in live action) being sent into a 2D universe (depicted in anime) where they have to solve puzzles presented by a series of sphinxes in over to save the world. The puzzles are incredibly difficult and for the most part impossible for someone not fluent in Japanese to solve, but the whole premise is so screwball that it's entertaining from a camp perspective. They do explain the logic behind each of the puzzles when they solve them, so you can still follow along even if you can't participate.

Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka

There have been a lot of darker spins on magical girls ever since Puella Magi Madoka Magica became a hit, and Magical Girl Asuka's take is: magical girls in the military. The interesting thing about this one is that the international team of magical girls actually won their war a few years ago and are now trying to move on with their lives, some of them more successfully than others. The early episodes in particular deal with the fact that Asuka is still suffering from psychological trauma from having lost her parents and several friends during the war, but unfortunately the introspective parts fall by the wayside later to focus on more combat and some fairly graphic torture.

The Promised Neverland *

The Promised Neverland was my must-watch every week that it aired. I couldn't get enough of the twist in the first episode and how that impacted everything to come. There's a real sense of peril and helplessness since the protagonists are so young and they live in an orphanage so you know they don't have family looking out for them. But despite their age they're also extremely creative. Though the odds are against them, they earn every victory they get along the way. I also really like Emma, who gets to be such a tomboy and the face of the series, despite being in a manga that is ostensibly marketed to boys.

Real Girl Season 2

Though I really liked Real Girl's first season when I watched it in 2018, I found the second half much weaker, even though it eventually deals with why Iroha has to leave after six months. I don't know if the reason was planned at the start, because it feels rather contrived, as does the extended epilogue that follows. There are still aspects of the show I enjoyed, but it's better when the series is grounded in experiences that a teenager could realistically expect to go through.

Attack on Titan Season 3

Season 3 probably would have been one of my favorite views of the year, but they butchered my favorite story arc, most likely because political theater is not as visually interesting as fight scenes, and fight scenes are what the series sold viewers on when the manga made the transition to animation. As a result the first half feels rushed and some things don't quite make sense. The second half is a different arc and recreates the manga fairly faithfully. I'm also happy it's finally out because it makes the series much easier to talk about with people who have only seen the anime, now that one of the biggest twists is out of the way.

Psycho-Pass Season 3 *

It's no secret that Psycho-Pass is one of my favorite series, so I was quite happy to dive into the third season. It's a little shaky at first since it has an unusual hour long runtime instead of the standard half hour, and I don't know the writers were prepared to pace for that, but in the end that actually gives us sixteen episodes' worth of story. Though the on-screen violence has been dialed back, the storytelling is much improved from the second season and I really like our two new leads. The meat of the plot is surprisingly topical too, dealing with immigration, particularly of refugees, and those who will or will not welcome them. My primary knock on the season is that it's incomplete and will be wrapped up via a movie.

My Favorite Games of 2019

I'm getting better at not buying more games than I can consume in a year, but I still play the occasional free-to-play indie title and wind up with a number of commercial games through promotional giveaways. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed.

These are the 12 games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2019, in the order I played them. If the game is available on multiple platforms, the one I played on is listed first. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).

Doki Doki Literature Club (Windows, Mac, Linux)

This is an excellent pay-what-you-want indie title that has been sitting in my backlog for a while. It was really popular in 2017, but never got close to the top of my list due to the fact I play a lot of visual novels and visually DDLC fell out of my usual genre preferences, even though I knew there was a twist. Despite its cheerful appearance, there's a not suitable for children or those easily disturbed warning for a reason (specifically those suffering from anxiety and depression). The less you know the better it's supposed to be, but if you want to be spoiled there's also my VN Talk write-up for the game.

Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard (DS, remade as Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight on 3DS)

The Etrian Odyssey series is made for people have a fondness for old school dungeon mapping; the kind you do on paper. This is a game out of the unfinished backlog where I started it years ago and abandoned it. As dungeon crawlers go though, I like the EO series for providing us with lush, natural looking dungeons; non-traditional monsters; and an interesting variety of classes to build a party out of. EOII introduces an additional healing class which is nice, and expands a bit on the late game twist from the first EO, but otherwise doesn't have much in the way of twists itself. Overall I think I like the first game better, but the second isn't bad.

Code:Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~ (PS Vita, PS4) *

This is the second fandisc in the Code:Realize otome series. Though it came out on Valentine's Day in the US, it's actually Christmas themed. Most of its content is alternate universe material based off of the Finis route in ~Future Blessings~ and will expect you to have played the previous games, but that said it's an excellent send-off to your favorite characters and well worth it if you enjoy the franchise. Those love interests who didn't already have weddings in their original timelines, finally have them here as bonus epilogues.

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince (PS4, Switch) *

Liar Princess plays like an indie puzzle platformer, though it comes from a more established Japanese publisher. A wolf accidentally blinds a prince who was trying to catch a glimpse of her while she was singing, and to make up for her mistake, the wolf gives up her voice to take on a human shape. She pretends to be a princess from a neighboring kingdom so she can guide the prince to a witch who can restore his sight, but along the way she has to take pains to hide who she truly is out of fear the prince would call her a monster. The story is very sweet and a little sad, and the art design is fantastic.

We Were Here (Windows, Mac, Linux)

A friend and I played this on a whim since it's a two player co-op puzzle-solving game along the lines of real world escape rooms, and it's free to play. Both players are separated and have to work together to solve clues that will enable them to be reunited. There are no jump scares, but the atmosphere is definitely on the side of creepy. It's possible to get game overs in a few places if you take too long, but the game has several checkpoints so you'll never be more than a quick puzzle away from where you failed. We Were Here took my friend and I about two and a half hours to get through and it was a fun way to spend an evening, especially if you like puzzles and escape rooms. You do need voice communication though, so if you're not playing in the same room you'll need a mic and the game comes with voice chat capabilities.

Divinity: Original Sin (PC, PS4, XB1)

I'd been hankering for a good party-based western RPG in the void of waiting for another Dragon Age, and though the worldbuilding took me a little time to get into, the game itself is pretty fun, though a bit merciless. It's turn-based, which is an oddity in this day and age. Each move takes a certain number of action points and each character gets a certain amount a round. Feels very table-top. The story is serviceable, but hampered by pacing issues. The dual protagonists are what the player makes of them, and I'd advise having some personality conflicts between them to bring out the more engaging banter. I played the Enhanced Edition which added additional quests and reworked some of the story (including the ending).

Persona 3 Portable (PSP, versions without female protagonist also on PS2)

Persona 3 Portable is the only version of Persona 3 to have a female protagonist option, and game is substantially different for it. All the Social Links have been redone, so even though the dungeon delving and overall plot is much the same as the original male playthrough, there's a lot of new secondary content and tons of VO has been rerecorded to change pronouns to match to the protagonist's gender on the female route. I can't imagine how much work that was, since English is so heavily pronoun dependant, but Atlus really went the extra mile, and I'm grateful. I actually had this game sitting partially completed for years, but just went back to it so I could finish before I played Persona Q2, which features the return of the female protagonist.

Bad Apple Wars (PS Vita)

If you like otome and have a Vita, this is a solid afterlife romance with no locked characters and is completely yandere free. (Which I consider a plus.) The art might not be as pretty as some, and there are a couple questions the game never answers, but I like the way it chooses to integrate romance-specific scenes into the common storyline so it feels natural rather than having the player bumble around trying to score points with a particular bachelor. In most cases, you have to work to get a bad ending. Showing up at all of a love interest's color coded scenes and not hurting him during late game Soul Touches is pretty much all you need to do to get the best endings, and the in-game flowchart makes it incredibly easy to revisit old scenes.

Final Fantasy XV (PS4, XB1, Windows) *

I went into this game with fairly low expectations, having bought it due to all the memes and a really good Christmas sale. Mark me surprised. This ended up being my second favorite Final Fantasy of the four I've played. It's not a perfect game, not by a long shot, but what it does well, it does really well, which is specifically the friendship between Noctis and his companions. The first half of the game is ridiculously open world just as the second is ridiculously linear, but oddly enough, the second half wouldn't work as well if all the free time in the first half didn't exist. It's a difficult issue to resolve from a gameplay standpoint, but I respect the gamble taken.

Death Road to Canada (Switch, PS4, XB1, Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android)

This game boils down to being a more actiony, violent version of Oregon Trail. Instead of heading for Oregon, you and your buddy (or buddies since up to four people can play) are stuck in a zombie-filled America and you have to ration your supplies and scavenge for more as you head for the only safe country left; Canada. Like Oregon Trail, gameplay is a mix of random events, choices you have to make, and careful management of your resources. Something is going to go wrong along the way, and sometimes you'll die, but playthroughs are short enough that it's easy to just try again.

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth (3DS)

This is one of those games that's not going to make sense to anyone unless they've played at the bare minimum Persona 5, but really, you'll get the most joy out of it if you've played Persona 3 and 4 as well. For people who've missed the female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable she's back and gets a ton of face time. It's a little bizarre thinking of a cast of 28 characters rolling through a dungeon all at the same time, but everyone gets to weigh in on everything even if they're not currently in the active party. It might not be realistic, but this game primarily exists as fanservice, so some break in reality is acceptable and even welcome.

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (Windows, PS3, PS4, X360, XB1)

I'm not a diehard Holmes fan, but I do love myself a good detective game. Controls are a bit wonky for someone unused to FPS games, but the mystery-solving is good and I like that the game lets you make the jump from evidence to answers without necessarily confirming whether you are right. The possibility of getting it wrong and allowing the game to continue after you do, adds a little edge that other mystery games lack. It won't affect later cases, but it's nice not being forced to replay segments in the game until you follow the logic a developer had in mind. I would have liked this one more if two of the casess weren't hard to solve due to dubious logic or misleading dialogue from Holmes himself.