Ohio Must Be Destroyed!

Nestled in what looks like pristine forest on a map there lies a nightmare. But don’t forget: it’s only one of many, all in the same U.S. state.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park is a fair amount of land, but it’s no park. Under a canopy of imaginary forest there was, for a while, a town. There was even a mill. The Cuyahoga River ran beside the town. In the later 1800s the Eerie Canal rail lined the other side of the river. Boston Mills eventually became incorporated as Boston, Ohio.

In 2016, the federal government razed the last of the structures and homes. Before that, everything was vacant. Residents had long since been forced out of the area, and grasses, weeds and the odd sapling were allowed to take over. Officially there was little the government had to say, but kicking an entire town off their own land was difficult to make look innocent. A park. Right, the people said. They had fought bitterly, but in vain. The town of Boston was unincorporated. No zip code. No nothing.

Almost at once, rumors, then full-blown urban legends, spread across the state and, even worse, the Internet. “Helltown” was born, and the conspiracy theories abounded. Each had the quality of being more gory, evil or terrifying than the last, until ghost hunting amateurs began to explore after dark.

There was a sighting of a Bigfoot. Of course there was. Then came the urbex morons who claimed to have seen and been chased by satanic cultists. In some variants, the “investigators” claimed to have fired shots at their pursuers. After the last of the ruins had been bulldozed, these reports died down. Today, most oddity hunters have forgotten about Helltown. They have no idea what a small and mostly unseen part Helltown had been in the most impressive cover-up in the history of the United States. And a horror story that lives on.

The real story began in the late 1400s. The Knights Templar had supposedly been murdered after a bounty had been placed on them. However it was not known that the Order of the Templars had already grown to such a size that their ranks occupied secret strongholds in every known country, recruiting by unknown methods locals who could walk among the public when foreigners could not. Relic hunters who sought control over the world, they had one true goal: finding an ancient relic that would, if used, eradicate all free will. An end to all violence. They could not foresee that if such a thing existed, and was used, it would end the human race. An end to free will also meant an end to craftsmanship, art, religion, political freedom and everything else that humans need.

Opposed by the Hashashin during the Crusades, they used armor, weapons and mercenaries to wage overwhelming war against the order of the Assassins. Battles and territory were won and lost. The conflict never ended.

It was up to Viking explorers and one other man to take the next steps. Christóbal Colón, known to modern Western schoolchildren as Christopher Columbus, had come into the possession of a map inked by cartographer Piri Reis in Venice. To protect the map, or atlas, from Templar operatives, an assassin named Ezio Auditore helped Colón hold onto it until his three ships could depart. Colón never made it to mainland America, but he had bigger things to worry about than finding China. Ezio had been pursued by Templars, and gave Colón something to guard with his life. This he did, taking the relic, called an Apple of Eden, to his grave. Having sailed with the Templar cross on his main sails, though, gave them an edge. All they had to do was find and exhume the body to find it.

When the Spanish empire’s naval fleet was decimated, the Templars had taken heavy losses.

Edward Kenway, a man not satisfied with his family life and wanting to do more for them, a man yearning adventure and riches, became a pirate and then an Assassin. His kin would go on to help both sides in the future, but many vessels were to be named in his memory after his ship, The Jackdaw.

During the American Revolution and afterwards, the Kenways and the Assassins played a role, but Haytham was killed by Connor and the family bloodline ended except for its offspring from women who married into other families. Desmond Miles was a result of that DNA mix, and was used in the early 2000s by a Templar organization called Abstergo Industries, then operating as an entertainment venue with machinery which could allow one to live the genetic memories of one’s ancestors. By this time the Apple of Eden along with pieces of Eden were being aggressively hunted for by the Templars. But they never put all their money on that; they used secluded places like Helltown to set up laboratories to actually create clones of assassins with genetic memories intact. But the underground site at Helltown was discovered by urbex and paranormal explorers who video-recorded too much footage for Abstergo to squelch or debunk. The site was abandoned and Helltown was made a part of the park. They sealed every entrance so well that even Homeland Security couldn’t find it. Even lidar could not detect it. Josh Gates came away from one such search with nothing but a red face.

Layla Hassan used stolen Abstergo equipment and evaded the Templars while investigating Bayek, one of the last Madjays of Egypt, a contemporary of Cleopatra VII and Julius Caesar. Bayek and his ex-wife Amunet founded the order of the Hidden Ones, the very beginning of the Assassins. No one knows what happened after that, or how they evolved into the Hashashin, but the first true assassins were Bayek and Amunet. Layla went from Egypt to Greece and recovered the spear of Leonidas I, who died with the 300 at the Battle of Thermopylae. DNA from two of his descendants could be used, and she learned that during the Peloponnesian War, Kassandra of Sparta was a genetic ancestor of Amunet. Kassandra won the Staff of Hermes and it granted her immortality. With her whereabouts unknown, she spent two thousand years fighting against the Cult of Comos’s next totalitarian iterations including the Templars and fanatics of Nazi Germany in World War Two. As her native Greece was occupied by Himmler’s SS, Kassandra organized resistance operatives and tormented superstitious Nazi relic hunters. A very good and compassionate woman, she nonetheless had fun assassinating top commanders and dumping their bodies into the Aegean. When the tide took them out to sea only to bring them back to the beaches weeks later, blackened, bloated, bitten by crabs and rogue fish, it truly spooked the troops. This was true guerilla warfare, psy-ops and biological combat not seen since Alexander and Genghis Khan.

By the last months of the war, Kassandra of Sparta was no longer playing by any rules. Only hers. She had watched her brother die, having felled him herself, and she remembered the monster he had been turned into. She fought like he had. She missed out on the fall of Berlin, but she did have the pleasure of tracking Mengele down in Argentina. She hung him by his wrists and tortured him for days before abandoning him to the dogs.

She was next seen in the 1990s in Raccoon City, Ohio. Infiltrating the Abstergo cloning facility, she beheld horrors such as Greece itself could not rival. There were freaks back then. The Gorgon, the Minotaur, the Cyclops. All defeated by her, earning the Staff for herself. But in Raccoon City? It sickened her. People with skin falling off, sloughed as they robotically walked, a stench worse than Athens during the plague in 430 BCE accompanying them.

A mansion and underground labs were ground zero but whatever was causing the condition soon escaped into a downtown area.

It was Kassandra who stopped that plague at first, but a man of no honor named Wesker found new ways to keep it spreading. Travelling south, it found its way into Silent Hill, West Virginia. In Springfield Ohio, it began heading north. The victims of the virus became, literally, dead and rotting. Dying, yet they could not actually die. The only way to kill these things was with shotguns and submachine guns. The government moved in. West Virginia and Ohio were battle zones. The CDC, the Army, Army reserve, and Army National Guard went in with flamethrowers and grenade launchers, tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

In 2010, it was believed that the nightmare had ended. It was premature. It took years, but the mysterious condition popped up again in 2023-24 when immigrants were spotted in Springfield Ohio eating feral cats and stealing dogs out of people’s yards, and eating them alive. Ravenously.

You don’t believe me?

Ok. Ask Donald Trump.

He saw it. On TV. And he knew they were immigrants.

Haitian immigrants.

Don’t vote for that moron. He’s a Templar, a traitor. And Templars are idiots and racists and liars and fascists.

See Donald run. For president; he can’t physically run.

See Donald eat. French fries, Big Macs, and beautiful chocolate cake.

See Donald drool. Donald’s brain is dying.

Watch Donald turn into a zombie.

Perhaps the process has already begun.

The Zombie Apocalypse may be real after all, eh?

Maybe keep the kids in the house on Halloween night. Springfield ain’t that far away from Helltown. Or the White House, or Hangar 18…

Did you really think I was going to let this one go?

Father and Son

First, I want to thank you for being here with me to share in this inspired moment. I’m grateful for you.

Next, I’m going to set up a video I found. I’m back on Twitter because I needed to get information about things that I can’t otherwise see. I’ve been good, because I’ve learned so much. I can control myself and I have no wish to be cruel with words. Sure, I’m still angered by republican subterfuge and their undermining of our government, but I think everyone should be. We’re talking current events, but also about the future. I see nothing they’ve done as trivial or honorable, not in the least.

There was a post I saw with a question: in Assassin’s Creed games, what is your favorite Father and Son?

I was quick to answer, and no, the question did not trigger me; there’s some recovery behind me after all.

Two years after the photograph above was taken, I was talking on the phone with my son, and he described a game he was playing that involved assassins and Egypt and pyramids. I had, impossibly, never heard of Assassin’s Creed games. I had been out of the gaming loop because I was on disability and gaming was beyond my means; I had an original Xbox with a few good games, but that was it. We still played Serious Sam co-op and it was still fun, but I couldn’t afford any newer consoles.

He wanted my help on some places he was stuck, and I worried because his mother’s place was infested with roaches, and those buggers love electronics. I knew a guy who bought a used PC and brought it to our group home and sure enough, there was the devil to pay getting rid of those roaches. I’m not scared of bugs, mind you; but having roaches is a nightmare. E.G. Marshall played one of his final roles in Creepshow, an anthology film with Adrienne Barbaeu and Leslie Nielsen. In Marshall’s segment he was a real phobic, a hermit terrified of germs, insects and just about anything else. He sees one roach, abusively demands an exterminator, and, well…I guess you can see where this goes.

I’m hardly that character, but my ex was doing nothing about her roaches and I didn’t want them in my new place. If you are a fan of hindsight and regret, you understand why I’ve often wished I could change that decision.

My son was the one who got me into gaming. We found common ground there, where his autism and other issues vanished, leaving a boy whom I could talk to and who could talk to me. We laughed together, cussed together, threw Playstation controllers on the floor, and we were happy.

I took the time to answer his questions about life, about how to treat people, about how God is real and loves us, and some of it got through, and some did not. That’s how it always is with fathers and sons.

Another thing that held me back was that when he said “assassins”, I confused it with the “Hitman” series, games I didn’t like. I passed up an opportunity to play one of the greatest games ever made with him for stupid reasons. He was still trying to beat that game when drugs took his life. After the first stimulus check came, I bought a refurbished PS4 and by then knew what Assassin’s Creed games were. The latest one was Odyssey, but I wanted to start with Origins because I didn’t know the series went all the way back to 2007. I thought Origins was the beginning and I should start there.

I quickly realized that I was playing the same game my son had been playing. Oddly, it begins with Bayek of Siwa, a Medjay, or protector, returning from a year abroad tracking and killing one of the men who killed his son, Khemu. The death of Khemu has turned Bayek into an infuriated killer. Bayek still holds to his Medjay principles and is an honorable man with kindness still a part of his soul, but a cult still exists, those who kill the innocent. He has vowed to kill them all. During the game, he must find stone circles and use them to sight constellations. He had visited all of these with his son, and used their quiet time to gently answer questions the boy had. These flashbacks of those conversations are in the following video.

How odd that this game touched me so much. The question on Twitter did not trigger me. I didn’t cry. I watched the video above before posting the link, and I did not cry. But that’s my son, and me, in simpler, happier times.

One of my favorite YouTube personalities was Simon Whistler. One day he remarked that something was “about as relatable as an Assassin’s Creed game”. And I’ve not watched his videos since. He was talking down, in a way I found insensitive, to fans of his who played the Creed games. And I thought, what’s more relatable than a father losing a son? He’s never experienced loss, or he wouldn’t have said such a nasty, condescending thing. He’s also never played Origins, because the story premise alone is plainly about loss, something everyone must experience. Death is a part of life. Unnatural death should not be. Yet it is.

Father and Son. A title. A relationship. A bond that is sacred and must be nurtured. It cannot be left unattended or it begins to wither. Sometimes….too often….it cannot survive.

I’m out of time for looking back and blaming myself. God will judge what I’ve done right, and what I’ve done wrong. And though a violent video game is seldom considered a tool for learning, I did learn from it. I was reminded of the importance of honor and living up to the concept as best I could. I was forced to face memories of better days, and of the worst days–the days my children died.

Perhaps seeing the tweet helped me to turn a corner. I will still cry, and always grieve for my children. Khemu asked his father if they would be together in the afterlife.

I have to believe I will see them in Heaven, where we will run on green grass and laugh together again.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. (Revelation 21:4)

Assassin’s Creed: Origins–Four Years After Curse Of The Pharoahs, It’s Still Magic

When Ubisoft announced that a new Assassin’s Creed game would be released in 2017, I took no notice; I was too poor to afford a new or used console of any kind. I was trapped in Xbox hell, playing the same games in cycles.

When the chance for a refurb PS4 came, I jumped on it. It was the year of Covid and I needed to keep busy.

There were two things I didn’t know:

The controllers for PS4 are notorious for having the thumbstick on either or both sides jam and make it impossible to play. In the case of Assassin’s Creed Origins, the right stick controls the camera. Mine got stuck always looking up or spinning in a circle, which drove me nuts with recon, fighting, swimming, even riding a horse.

So I fought the stick but to be honest, almost all sticks have had this problem from the Xbox up. I invested in a new one and continued.

The second thing I did not know was that there are hundreds of complaints about the game. Early on there were some bugs, and playing on the “Normal” difficulty setting was frustrating players.

Grinding

If you don’t know, this game doesn’t force you to “grind”; but it is designed to engage you in side quests that are telling more of Bayek’s story, and the story is very good. A man haunted by the death of his son, he seeks revenge and finds along the way that he can no longer tolerate the horrible things common people must deal with under Pharaoh Ptolemy who is fighting his sister CleopatraVII for sole control of Lower Egypt. Yes, that Cleopatra.

The first part has him returning to his home town after a year’s absence, with long hair and beard. He meets a friend who has been trying to keep the peace, but Bayek is a Medjay and those were kind of like the police back then. As he begins getting his bearings, short tasks get the player familiar with the controls, inventory, crafting upgrades to his armor and assigning ability points to gain new skills.

Ubisoft has long since patched up bugs, and gameplay is ripping good fun. One of my favorite Original Playstation games, Legacy of Kaine: Soul Reaver played very like this game engine does, as I was immediately reminded. Nostalgia has its benefits, even to a casual gamer. I loved Soul Reaver, so I wasn’t exactly a fish out of water.

Grinding doesn’t sound like much fun. Some players don’t mind a bit of it, but say this game wants too much out of them. Some never finished it out of frustration. I found the side quests fun, exciting and a very good way to occupy my time during the last couple of weeks, when my health went on a little trip. By which I mean deep depression and bouts of anxiety. This game was medicine. No triggers from the outside world can touch me when I’m in full game mode.

Besides, you’re not going to be able to stay in an area where XP levels 1-5 can survive, and going ahead will put you in battle with enemies two levels or more above you; you have to stay long enough to level up, make some loot, upgrade your weapons and abilities. Because not being ready means Desynchronization over and over again.

Framework

Bayek cannot die; he lived long ago. What we’re doing is reliving his memories through a modern rogue scientist, Layla Hassan. She has developed a technology called an Animus and lies down on a table, reliving Bayek’s memories gained by a DNA sample. In as much as she is only seeing his life, any mistake you make that gets Bayek killed can’t really happen. What results is “desynchronization” and the scene resets because he did not really die at that time. There’s never a “Game Over” screen.

That said, you can cause a desync to a frustrating degree if you choose poorly. I used a balanced approach, and went heavy on melee skills and weapons at first to get out of trouble faster but then started in on Seer and Hunter as I got more crafting materials and ability points.

Still, the first thing you need is to activate fast travel points as soon as you can. If you find yourself in too deep, press the control for the map. Any fast travel points you’ve synced with Senu, Bayek’s eagle, can be used to get out of trouble quickly and then you can spend time leveling up and then you go back and kick ass.

Weapons

There are three classes of weapons: regular, rare and legendary. Each type of weapon, predator bows, hunting bows, and warrior bows can be found in the three classes. The same goes for swords, maces or scepters and spears and long-handled blades and blunts.

The difference in classes are that regular weapons have one attribute, rare weapons have two attributes and legendary weapons have three attributes. A regular sword may have a critical hit rate, a rare sword may have a critical hit rate plus bleeding on hit, but a legendary sword may have a critical hit rate, adrenaline on hit, and poison on hit. As soon as I was able, I made every weapon I equipped legendary, including the shields and my horse. This earns you the trophy “I am a Legend” although I admit I didnt know that. I never tried for trophies because I had enough to keep me busy.

In the end, I stuck with the Barbed Longbow, a precision bow which is like a sniper weapon, the Ultima Blade (sword), the Tempest Blade (sword), The Shark Fin (long-handled blade) and the Ziedrich Shield.

Cursed Weapons

This is a completely different category of weapon; they’re rare and I don’t recommend using them. As soon as you equip one, before you even move Bayek, you’ll see that his health bar is down to one third capacity. There is nothing good about having less health before starting a fight. Cursed weapons supposedly deal more damage, but I couldn’t see it, and Bayek’s speed in his attacks dropped off. They’re not worth it. Sell them to the blacksmith.

Final Fantasy Crossover!

At one point in the game you have to solve a puzzle. Once you do, a character from Final Fantasy XV comes and gives you the Ultima Blade, the Ziedrich Shield along with a cross between a chocobo and a camel. All legendary and all cool.

The Right Tool For The Right Job

I switched out swords at times because in boss fights, one hit can take a huge amount of health from your bar. While the Ultima Blade is definitely the best in the game, the Tempest Blade gives you a bit of health every time you hit an enemy. It can prove the difference in a boss fight, which toward the end are serious. Especially if you’ve added the Curse of the Pharaohs, downloadable from the Playstation Store. Well worth it to get both DLC add-on or expansion packs. Seeing new places and fighting new enemies? Yes, please.

Stuff

Along the way, Bayek gets new outfits and the coolest is the Spaniard’s armor once you’ve fought as a replacement in a gladiatorial battle. It’s badass.

“The Spaniard, addressing the crowd asks, “Are you not entertained?”

Bayek and the Legendary Abyssal Steed, afire with the will to charge into battle anytime, anywhere

The cool never stops coming. During Bayek’s journey, he reunites with his wife Aya, also a Medjay. She’s awesome.

A Labor of Love

The Ubisoft developers put a lot of hours, study and work in on this game, and it shows. While not to scale, the world ingame is absolutely huge. I was amazed at how historically genuine the locations were. The first time I saw the Giza pyramids, I thought, back then, this is how they may really have looked. Long since plundered, they were still magnificent. More time had passed from their construction to Cleopatra’s time than from Cleopatra’s time to now, but this team knew that and yet retained and demonstrated the knowledge that even then, ancient religions and established cultures respected the old ways and tried to stop robbery and desecration. The detail in every featured landmark, I have to say, is special.

Ancient Egypt today is not well respected. Not only do people enrich themselves by digging up mummies; that’s terrible enough.

People believe that pyramids were built by extraterrestrial creatures, but not one of them can give a good reason to believe anything except that Ancient Egypt was built over ages by the people who lived there. They were brilliant and driven. Cleopatra was actually a wise ruler, but is given the image of a sex freak, a reflection of how Westerners have always viewed women. Ancient Egypt at the time of the pyramid building was lush, not desertified. The archaeological evidence proves this. They respected the dead, at least royalty, they brewed beer, baked delicious breads, cooked meat. They had medical practices that we find revolting but that were actually effective. They shaved their heads and women wore wigs because of lice; most were fastidious in upper classes, and even so, that hasn’t stopped developers from having fun with ancient aliens going back in time to change history. Duke Nukem did it in Time to Kill, and traveled back to the Old West, Medieval Germany and Ancient Rome. When fans were promised a new Duke Nukem game and didn’t get it, Croteam put a Serious Sam port from PC to the original Xbox and added new content. Where did that game begin?

The Temple of Hatshepsut.

It’s a cool level, but the game is strictly cartoonish and an arcade-based FPS.

The base game you get is itself worth every penny and every hour you can spend on it. There are epic fights like “The Battle of the Nile”, where Aya is trying to get to Rome to stop Cleopatra from allying with Caesar. You control the ship’s speed and direction and it’s all there, even the drum for the galley slaves. I took way too much damage and kept desynchronizing, but finally learned to take out the smaller ships first, then take on the Roman dreadnought. It fired volleys in threes and as long as I held R1 to keep those on deck with shields raised, I took no damage. I did ram a smaller ship or two but learned never to let the dreadnought get near me, nor I, it. You ram it, you take damage. I covered, took the volleys, then quickly aimed catapults and after a while sank her. When you get that cut scene, it’s a really cool moment.

Small Issues

All games have contact or boundary glitches. Developers hate those because they check for them and have beta testers check for them. It can’t be avoided in any game, but this one is big, yet I found very few problems with it. A surprise is that if you get too close to the map’s edge, a black wall springs up like a grid you can’t go beyond. Because that part of the world is unknown to Bayek, it can’t be seen except in the distance. But you can’t approach it.

Very early, I was chased by Ptolemy’s soldiers. I ran for cover because there are bushes and grass you can hide in. But there was no grass and I found myself halfway underground. As the soldiers ran past, they couldn’t see me but I could kill them by repeating shots with my bow to their feet. They knew I was close, but not where. When they were dead, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t get away. Turning the camera revealed that I was inside the base of some large rocks, and the glitch was made worse by not being able to use the world map. I had to eject the disc and restart. The odds of it happening to anyone else is near zero.

Gallery of Geek

Here’s a few images, the difference of which is striking. We love surprises in long games, and we especially love rewards.

Top to bottom: we all love breasts but stalking is not cool, Bayek; a dappled sunny lane makes for a scenic ride in search of the next battle; a few dark shots I won’t explain because, spoilers: I’ll only say it involves Bayek’s Promise and some weird stuff that involves the infamous Cicaeda conspiracy theory and some anachronistic tech; at the end of it you need 50 silica to operate a final mechanism to unlock this Marvel-looking armor for Bayek which looks silly and adds no protection whatsoever. Which sucks.

Expansions

The Hidden Ones and Curse of the Pharaohs DLC

These are downloadable content (expansions) for the base game. I wasn’t really overwhelmed with “The Hidden Ones” but it was good enough for me. The real payoff comes in “Curse”, in which Aya messages Bayek that someone has summoned the dead to the living world. To the Ancient Egyptians such a thing would be a horror; unspeakable and unthinkable. But in COTP, someone does it. Enter: Bayek of Siwa, no longer a Medjay but a Hidden One, the name of the order which will precede all assassins in AC games. As soon as he gets off the ship at Thebes, he witnesses an apparition of Nefertiti beating someone down. Bayek defeats her but knows now that the message wasn’t a joke; something terrible is happening.

You can be higher than level 50 by now, but you can’t be lower. I don’t think that’s a good idea. Hit “Atlas” on the world map, go back to Lower Egypt and grind out some more XP. It’s worth it. Before leaving Lower Egypt for example, you should have handily defeated the Phylakes. Those are bounty hunters out for you. You should also have completed every event at both arenas including making it past level 20 in the horde mode. Then proceed to The Hidden Ones and complete that story. By then you’re level 51 or 52, and leveling up takes a lot longer, but you can handle most of the mayhem if you don’t let yourself get mobbed. You’re no longer fighting Greeks loyal to Ptolemy; 8 years have passed since Caesar was assassinated but Cleopatra had done the damage by then. Now Roman forts dot the map and legionaries are aware of you and will do their best to stop you.

There’s only one way to take a Roman fort unassisted: find a high perch, snipe the soldiers and set a trap on the brazier so they can’t call reinforcements. Use your longbow for distant targets, your warrior bow for the ones who rush you and a sword when they’re too close. I prefer the Shark Fin because it sets enemies on fire, but if there’s clay pots or straw or tall grass, you’ll desync fast because you’ll burn too.

The bosses in this DLC are pharoahs risen by a cursed object. Their sleep disturbed, they need Bayek to send them back. These fights are mean. You can’t let them touch you. Start off with a power attack, run in circles dodging their charges while shooting arrows at them. Fire bombs work well after your arrows run out and by then another couple of power attacks should finish them off. I used the Shark Fin for the power attack because it does a shitload of damage.

After defeating Akhenaten you visit a sunny Duat, the land of the afterlife. That’s too cool because there are missions and quests and cool enemies.

After Tutankhamun’s battle you enter a darker Duat.

You see the darkness, the glowing flowers that close as you approach, a vast underworld. Bayek, shown in the bottom shot, still has to use his power (full adrenaline meter) attacks.

Bestiary

In the first part of AC Origins, there are a number of animals that can desync Bayek. Leopards, lions, hyenas, crocodiles and hippos. Even vultures are difficult on early XP levels. But the ones I feared the most were cobras. You’ll never see them the first time before they strike. If you don’t have enough XP or your breastplate developed, two strikes desync Bayek. Later you’ll spot them when they hiss, and the warrior bow or fire bombs work best. Beware: they’re never alone.

It was when I got to COTP that I saw something I really, really really hate. I won’t tell you what else is in the Duat, but this is nightmare shit.

Called Ba, these are vultures with the heads of women. The first time I saw them I was sure they were owls but I got a closer look.

They exist in the myths of many lands. In some, they have the head and body of a woman but the wings and claws of carrion or predator birds. Most have the head of a woman and the full body of a bird. They’re called harpyx, harpies.

Well they’re here in The Valley of the Kings and in the duat and I hate them. They fly about, mumbling what sounds like part laughter and part speech. Hell. That’s creepy. Give me a sphinx, a hydra, a gorgon even; but those creepy-ass harpies are nightmare fuel. So of course I found the high scaffolding in the Valley and shot as many as I could. I had the flock thinned considerably, and by the way, if you only wound one, they will attack you. I’m like, Ew, no, get the fuck away from me!

Call it what you want, but *that’s* a harpy, and I happily killed the fuckin thing because they’re just wrong

A Drop of the Good Stuff

Bayek can interact very little with NPCs. Consider that most are civilians. Do not kill civilians. Even if accidental, you’ll get the warning “Medjay are supposed to protect the innocent”. From what I’ve read, you do it too many times and you’ll desync, and according to one player, that desync caused all of his fast travel points to vanish. It’s possible I guess, because to open a fast travel point Bayek has to climb it and synchronize it with Senu. But my guess is he pressed up while on the map, which cycles all the icons or locations visible or hidden. He claimed though to reload the game, and couldn’t get it working properly. If so, bravo to Ubisoft’s team for enforcing the law against mass murder.

Bayek can, however, find a woman sitting in the grass, and kneel down, and she will smile, look him lovingly in the eye then look down as if blushing.

There are cats, too. And they love Bayek. They’ll meow and stand beside his legs. Here’s the cool part. If you can get Bayek to kneel facing the cat, he will occasionally give it a stroke on the head. Freaking awesome, such attention to the little things.

I Am Not Hardcore

I played this entire game on the “Easy” difficulty setting because I’m a lightweight and not ashamed of it. Neither should anyone else be; I still had my hands full and was challenged plenty every step of the way. I can’t even imagine boss fights on Normal or nightmare mode.

I took all but a few side quests, found the stone circles, tried to get the tablets, solved papyrus puzzles, and two hundred forty hours in, I can honestly say I’m awed, I’m glad I played, and I got through a bad spell because this game is engaging, beautiful and fun.

It is not the best game I’ve ever played. It isn’t my favorite game, but it’s at least in the top three. But I’ll give it a perfect score because it’s beautiful, technically awesome, has great voice acting (John Delancey even steps in for a moment) and is well researched and a wonder to see.

Next up: I’ve ordered AC Odyssey and will load it up as soon as I get it. I can’t wait!

Assassin’s Creed Origins and the Casual Gamer

With the Playstation 5 now on sale, leave it to me to just be getting into the previous platform; I missed the PS3 completely and now I can’t lay my hands on one. I regret letting go of my Playstation 2, as that console has the biggest library ever. I loved that I could play original Playstation games on it and I did so often, but the fact is, the PS2 had great games that I’d love to be able to play again.

Now that I have a refurb PS4, I’ve sampled a few games, and for the most part been disappointed. A game that made me want the console in the first place, Call of Duty: World War Two was at first exciting. The graphics were there, the gameplay seemed good with the controls, and then it happened: a timed button-mashing move to hit a German soldier with a helmet or die and repeat until I got it exactly right. I hate that. Shooters should be shooters. I’m old school. I’m not hardcore. I never minded the puzzle elements in Half-Life, a PC port well done on the PS2, a great game. And I loved the RPG elements in Deus-Ex: The Conspiracy, graphics below par but engrossing in its gameplay and story, not to mention the way a player’s choices affected not just the ending but various events during the game. I may be casual gamer but I do appreciate the good stuff.

I made it past levels I didnt think I would beat in COD: WW2, like timed levels when I had to drive a jeep with clunky controls, a Sherman tank up against a Tiger, and other levels, like a spy level that required some stealth, which always makes me nervous.

Then I hit a level I couldnt beat. No matter what I did, how i approached it it, the level was lopsided and strategy was out of the question. I had to put it back in the box and I want to forget the entire game.

On a chance I came across a YouTube video where someone was playing Assassin’s Creed: Origins. The graphics alone blew me away. As an ancient Egypt buff, I knew I had to have this game. Wait! A game that gives the origin of the Assassins, with pyramids and Cleopatra?

First, I had never played an AC game before and they weren’t on my radar. So I decided I would start with this one because it tells the story of the first assassin.

The main character, who the player takes control of, is Bayek, a man who has been away from his home for a year following the death of his son, which has turned him into a vicious, efficient killer.

Bayek searches for his wife, who also quests for vengeance. It turned out, though, that justice and vengeance blur, that their enemy really consists of more than one person, and that all of Egypt and Ptolemy himself are to be contended with. He hates Ptolemy and longs for the old ways under the real pharaohs of old, when reverence to the gods and to the ruler made the world make sense.

During the first levels, I found out that leveling up depended on side quests, a first for me. Completing one gets you XP and Drachmas. Also ability points which, RPG style, you apply to a chart at will. There are three ability sections. There’s Hunter, where skills with the bow are gained, Seer, where the use of tools like firebombs are available, and Warrior, where melee combat skills are added, like a double weapon attack with two swords.

The RPG elements don’t end there. You also need to upgrade weapons because fighting at level 16 with a level 2 sword isn’t fun. And sometimes killing and looting an enemy yields a rare or legendary weapon that can also be leveled up and should be. A long handled weapon like the Shark Fin is great for use when mounted on horse or camel and will set enemies on fire. One of the shields poisons enemies on contact. It is immersive and addictive, giving layers to a great game that might otherwise have been lukewarm.

The environment is crazy. It’s a huge game, and it’s possible that you can cross into a section when you’re level 20 but the map shows that the enemies there are 35-40. Even if you can make the crossing, you don’t want to. One arrow will kill you.

The main story takes a back seat to the side quests, but I found I dreaded them without cause; you’ll never finish the game without using the side quests to learn the controls, fortify Bayek, and enjoy exploring a massive gameplay area that is beautifully rendered, from the first level on ward.

Travel can be done by horse and camel or chariot, or just plain running and swimming. Maybe the coolest mode, though, it by boat. That surprised me.

1I’m currently at level 22 with very little of the total game complete. And I’m enjoying every minute I play. I have my favorite games, but if this one holds up such quality to the end, then Assassin’s Creed: Origins will take over the top spot.