First up is Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, the third version of Street Fighter IV. Remember when there was a new version of Street Fighter II every six months? Well, they’re doing it again! Unlike Super, you can buy this as DLC for $15. All retail copies of the game will be Arcade Edition from here on out. There are four new characters and some balance changes, so unless you’re really into SF4, this probably isn’t going to look too exciting.

Also not exciting this week is Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, which takes a kinda neat extra from RE4 and 5 and tries to make you pay $40 for it! Unless you can’t survive without some 3DS RE until Revelations comes out, you’ll probably not want to be playing something else.

On XBLA this week is Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax, an updated version of the PSP RPG spoof released a while back. Some people say it’s the same as the PSP version, others say it’s changed, but everyone says it’s pretty good. You can also look into Galaga Legions DX, which is the Pac-Man CE DX treatment, but for Galaga. If you like Galaga and pretty lights, this is the game for you!

You can also now get Beyond Good and Evil HD on the PSN. Beyond Good and Evil is a pretty good game! You might want to play it.

Got a pair of Virtual Console titles this week. Kirby’s Dream Land is available for the 3DS–it’s clearly a well-made game for its era, but the later entries in the series are so much better that it kinda makes this one redundant. More interestingly, you can now get Final Fantasy III–the one released as VI in Japan–on the Wii VC. Widely regarded along with Chrono Trigger as the best 16-bit RPG, it can be yours for just $8! …Assuming you don’t already own one of its myriad remakes.

Dungeon Siege III is out for PS3, PC, and 360. Early reports are that it’s not great–some control weirdness, a lot of bugs, and a big lack of content for an RPG. It seems Obsidian still has yet to pull out an unequivocally great game, with all of their previous titles showing flashes of gameplay brilliance and generally excellent writing, only to be overcome by technical issues and a lack of mechanical polish. You’re probably better of sticking with Torchlight until Diablo 3 comes out.

F.E.A.R. 3–or F.3.A.R., as the box would have you believe–is out for the Big Three. The F.E.A.R. franchise seems to have really dropped off. I remember that a lot of people really enjoyed the first game, then the expansions and sequel got a lukewarm reception, and now… well, it seems 3 has kind of just been shoved out the door. It looks like a perfectly competent shooter, but without any special spark to recommend above the million other perfectly competent shooters crowding the market.

Also, Shadows of the Damned is out for PS3 and 360–a game put together by Suda 51 (of No More Heroes fame) and Shinji Mikami (of Resident Evil fame). If you like heavily Japanese-flavored insanty, this is the game for you! It’s… man… there are demons, and strawberries, and third-person shooting, and cursing… and the main character’s name is Garcia Hotspur. There’s little else I can say about this game. Other than that I would like to play it! Because crazy.

If you’re into a slightly more refined brand of crazy, have a look at The Cat and the Coup, available on Steam. It looks to be an adventure game based on real events, featuring a surreal collage art style. You play as the cat of Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister during a CIA-constructed coup designed to bring about the minister’s downfall. Read that sentence once or twice more. It seems really interesting, and it’s free! I really appreciate that games like this exist.

Also on Steam is Solar 2–essentially PSN’s flow, but in space. You start as an asteroid, absorb other asteroids until you become a planet, absorb more asteroids, turn into a star, absorb more planets, and so on, all while competing with other asteroids/planets/stars. Looks fun!

There’s something interesting for DSiWare this week. I know, right? Pro Jumper! Guilty Gear Tangent?!, which is (you guessed it?) a Guilty Gear spinoff. Not a fighting game, but a platformer, it features a weird little dude jumping around, and… well… it looks like a video game. Which makes it stand out for DSiWare, I guess.

XBLA’s big release this week is Trenched, the latest from the folks at Double Fine. Half shooter, half tower defense, all manly men with awesome facial hair saluting one another. It’s got all the charm and wit you’d expect from a Double Fine title, and it actually looks to be a pretty good game, too!

Last (and probably least) is Lucha Fury, a Mexican wrestling themed beat-’em-up. It’s got a pretty attractive cel-shaded art style, but I feel like a beat-’em-up really has to be something special to stand out in 2011. I’m mainly including this here because of how astounding it is that Microsoft’s willing to just throw this one under the bus. Unless you get some good hype before release, or get to be part of one of the big promotions, most XBLA games seem to be getting released to indifference. Scheduling this game the same week as Trenched just spells murder for it.

Action, in fact, plays only a small part in most of the cases. Most of your time will be spent investigating crime scenes for clues, interviewing witnesses, finding new leads, and then repeating the process across a number of locations until you’ve found your suspects. Clue-hunting can seem like a formality, as the game makes it difficult to overlook important objects. Musical cues will play as you pass by interactable objects, and Cole’s dialogue will quickly let you know if the object you’re looking at is irrelevant to the case at hand. While the actual process of investigation is not the most interesting, there are some great “aha!” moments when you find the evidence that blows open your case. All the information you’ve gathered in case is tracked in an automatically updated notebook, making it pretty easy to keep a grip on who’s who and what’s what.

The much ballyhooed facial animation got a lot of press prior to the game’s release, and it’s not without reason. The performance capture looks amazing, with every subtle detail of a real person’s mannerisms coming out in these digital performances. Brows crease, muscles twitch, and eyes flit about with the utmost realism–you’re straight up watching actors’ performances transplanted into an interactive environment. Not only does this create additional dramatic flair in cutscenes, but it allows for an additional layer of information in interrogations. The game does a good job of easing you in to reading its actors–the early cases tend to focus on crimes of passion, and your suspects will often make their guilt apparent. Later suspects get much more difficult to read, as you start dealing with more hardened criminals.

The animation adds a great layer to the interrogations, but the system’s not without fault. There are some technical issues with the animation (mainly due to the synching of the face and body actions), but most damnable is the rigidity of your questioning. As you come into an interview, you’ll be able to ask a series of questions based on the information you’ve gathered in your investigation. You ask a question, the suspect gives a statement, and you’re presented with the options “Truth,” “Doubt,” or “Lie”–believe the statement, cast the statement into doubt, or use evidence to directly contradict the statement–and you have to guess the appropriate response. There’s only ever one right answer, and a chime plays to immediately let you know whether you got it right or wrong. The cases are actually impossible to fail, as anytime you lock yourself out of some information through a poorly conducted interview, a new avenue of inquiry will pop up to take its place, encouraging you to play through supposed failures–and these alternate routes are every bit as interesting as the “right” ones. However, the game’s rigid insistence on immediately telling you when you’ve responded incorrectly can lead to a lot of frustration, and has encouraged many players to quit the game and reload a save to get a do over on a bad interview. “Intuition points” will allow you to remove an incorrect response or, more interestingly, see other players’ responses to the same statement. While these can be helpful, the game offers you such a limited supply that you won’t be making a whole lot of use out of them.

While most of the game is spent in investigation, there are occasional action sequences to lend a bit of drama to the proceedings, including a variety of car and foot chases as well as some good old-fashioned shootouts. Each type of action plays perfectly fine–while the gunplay, for example, isn’t as polished as you’d find in a dedicated shooter, it’s entertaining enough to be a welcome diversion.

The game’s reproduction of 1947 Los Angeles is among its most impressive aspects. There’s an obscene amount of detail to be found around the city, from era-appropriate licensed cars down to pieces of signage on the buildings. Every street corner feels unique, helping to make the backdrop feel alive. While the city is well-realized, there is less side content than you might expect from an open world game. You’ll occasionally receive dispatches over the police scanner, offering you five-to-ten-minute side missions, usually focused around gunplay or some other sort of action. There’s a nice introduction to each, crafted with the same quality as the scenes within the cases proper. There are also challenges related to the gathering of hidden film reels and the collection of all of city’s considerable selection of cars, but these goals are best left to the most obsessive of completionists.

While the bonus content might be lacking, LA Noire is not a short game. It should clock in for most players at just under 20 hours, and none of that time feels like filler. There are four downloadable cases available, each one built with all the same care that went into the main game. At about an hour each, the $4 asking price for each is just a bit high, but the $12 package is much more attractive. The two cases that I’ve played integrate well into the storyline, offering some surprisingly substantial character development that heightens the impact of many of the end game’s events. If you’re interested in the DLC, it would be ideal to play these cases within the context of your first run through.

For every great thing about LA Noire, there a couple of small gripes holding it back. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that I’m able to enumerate them, however. While playing through the game, I was completely wrapped in the world, its characters, and my investigations. If you’re able to overlook some mechanical issues, the story, setting, and performances will make your time in the corrupt world of late 40s LA well-spent.

Microsoft opened their press conference with Modern Warfare 3–in turn, setting the tone for big games all over the show. Now, I know it’s hardly unprecedented, but it strikes me as very weird to be leading off with multi-platform games. “Hey, guys, hope you’re really excited for these games that will also be just as good on our competitor’s system!” MW3 seems to be reaching a creative dead end. There were some crazy moments in Call of Duty 4, but they worked because they were in the context of a (fairly) grounded game. Infinty Ward just seemed to get caught up in topping those moments–now that we’re at MW3, we’re just blowing up the whole damn world. Which, I mean, I guess. Sure. It seems we’ve missed all opportunity for Modern Warfare to be that “smarter” shooter it occasionally showed promise of being. There was some interesting stuff in that first game in terms of the gunship level or the nuke sequence that pushed the game’s themes just a bit further without devolving into Metal Gear-style philosophical insanity. MW2 seemed to be trying t00 hard with the “No Russian” mission, but at least it was trying. Now, though… well, whatever. That campaign will be a fun ride, however “deep” it is.

But: So. Many. Shooters. Just in terms of the press conferences, you had Modern Warfare 3, Future Soldier, Gears 3, Halo 4, Battlefield 3, Resistance 3, and Far Cry 3. Some of those games look really good! Great, even. But man I’d like to see some other types of games. I personally feel like shooters reached their pinnacle with Gears–great game mechanics, with the macho-tough-guy dramatics taken to such an absurd level that it nearly became parody. (I think I could make a pretty decent case for the self-awareness of that franchise.) Bioware even seemed to be taking great pains to make Mass Effect 3 look like a straight-up shooter, and their conference demos really suffered for it. If you’re judging Mass Effect just as a shooter against competition like this, it starts to look really poor in comparison.

I’m not going to sit here and say that I don’t enjoy this type of game, or that the genre is dying, or that I want the genre to die, or anything crazy like that. But I really wish that the shootingpeoplegame wasn’t the dominant genre in the industry right now. It chokes out some of the creativity that we might otherwise be seeing.

The hero of No More Heroes is Travis Touchdown, a sleazy sort living in a hotel room with a collection of anime figures, a stack of overdue porn rentals, and an adorable little kitten. Travis is an otaku, a socially awkward obsessive fan of Japanese pop culture. While not synonymous with video games, otaku culture is closely related, making Travis’s excesses familiar to the game-playing audience. Travis turns into a geek superhero–he buys a lightsaber–…er, laser sword off of eBay–…er, an online auction site and sets to work trying to become the top ranked assassin in the world.

Now, video games are basically violent–there’s no getting around that fact. The easiest way to create an exciting situation for the player is to make it about survival, to trigger the basic emotional action responses. This is true from the cartoony world of Mario to the modern military action games. As a result of this, most games have to make killing fun. The side effect of having Call of Duty be so fast-paced is that you’re rarely able to focus on the actual deaths of any individuals. It’s a quick pop-pop with a pistol before immediately looking for the next threat, making the violence roughly on par with an episode of the A-Team–you see a lot of general mayhem and destruction, but you never see anyone actually get hurt. That would be too close to real-world violence, the reminder of which would destroy the fun of the game. What No More Heroes does is recognize the inherently violent nature of most video games and exaggerate it to such a degree that it becomes absurd. Enemies must be taken down with a finishing move that causes them to explode into giant showers of stylized blood (and coins, naturally). The very nature of the game’s story, climbing the ranks of a league of assassins, means that every goal is based on violence–kill these guys to get to the guy you need to kill. The game’s not ashamed of this fact. Instead, it’s happy to celebrate what video games have been and are, and that includes violence.

No More Heroes is also obsessed with sex–but not with sex. Most of the female characters are–naturally!–overtly sexualized, typically dressed down to bikinis and lingerie. The “sex” is all cheesecake, which is well-represented by Travis’s utter lack of sexual or emotional maturity. One of his conditions for entering into the assassin’s league is that his attractive benefactor “do it” with him when he becomes number one. The excitement of his request would lead you to believe that his only understanding of sex comes from porn. Travis’s one moment of genuine emotion with a woman is presented in ridiculous tones, where he plays the stoic hero carrying his dead love’s body across the beach–with no regard for the fact that said body’s upper torso has been blown clean off and is now dripping blood. It’s the most absurd version of the tragic hero that you’ll ever see, and the implication seems to be that this is Travis’s fantasy of what “true love” is supposed to be, an idea born perhaps of too much anime. Interestingly, the game’s most sexualized character is also its least appealing–Bad Girl, an alcoholic dominatrix who struts around in a pink lolita dress. She’s the only sexualized character who really goes beyond mere cheesecake, and the result is a horrific sight–perhaps giving Travis a bit of self-awareness about his sex-obsession.

Even mechanically, No More Heroes tributes video game excess. Doors lock behind you in order to say “kill everyone to move on,” without even giving a pretense of why those doors are shutting. Levels take totally extraneous paths–there’s a mansion where you have to make a complete circuit of the upper floor in order to unlock the downstairs hall. Why? Who knows! Half of the game is spent grinding for money in menial jobs and side missions, a tribute to the days of Dragon Quest and other such games, where grinding levels was the game. There’s even an open world, sprawling but devoid of anything interesting to do, consisting merely of a series of mission start points–which could either be a satire of bad open world game design or merely bad open world game design. Or, most likely, both. In any case, No More Heroes is willing to be a video game for video games’ sake. The trappings of context–or even logical sense–are of no consequence.

Travis’s whole rise in the league seems to be a dream world populated by anime and video game heroes. Travis is an otaku who gets a sort of otaku ascension, leaving his pathetic little apartment into a world populated by the same sorts of crazy heroes that populate his media. He represents a sort of geek catharsis, a reconciliation of the lonely loser stereotype he fills in the real world and the heroism of the violent fantasy world in which he actually lives. No More Heroes loves video games, it loves itself, and it loves you (yes, you) and the gamer geek culture you represent. As Grasshopper’s logo boldly declares, “PUNKS NOT DEAD.”

Also out this week is LEGO Pirates of the Carribean: The Video Game, so named to avoid confusion with, um… LEGO Pirates of the Carribean: The Movie? If you’ve played any modern LEGO game, you probably know what to expect. But now expect it with Jack Sparrow! Available for every system you’ve ever owned in your life.

THQ brings us MX vs. ATV: Alive for 360 and PS3. If you need your racing action but feel that cars are just too darn big, maybe this game is okay!

XBLA’s big release this week is Gatling Gears. It’s a twin-stick top down shooter. You know. Because we need more of those on XBLA. It’s loosely related to the little-known strategy game, Greed Corp, released some time ago by the same developer.

Apparently, Atari feels an overwhelming need to keep updating its 2600 catalogue–this time with Star Raiders. I thought people felt more of a general nostalgia for the Atari days than any love for specific games, but eh–what do I know? With Star Raiders, you’re looking at some TIE Fighter-style space combat action, so I guess I can’t complain.

Woah, it’s a 3DS game! Dream Trigger 3D. It’s not Rez, but it sure takes a page from that style of Japanese WHATISEVENHAPPENING. I watched a trailer, and I still can’t tell–there are bullets, and you’re shooting, and it seems like rythm might be involved? I don’t even know. But it’s in 3D!

I hate to start giving these Steam indie games the short end of the stick, but man there’s so many of them! They need a little condensing. Fortix 2! It’s called reverse tower defense, but it looks like a less abstract version of arcade classic Qix. Hydrophobia: Prophecy! It was a not very good character action game on XBLA, but they’ve since released a million updates for it, each more fervently claiming “no really it’s good now!” than the last. Garshap: The Monster Slayer! An action game based on Persian mythology. Looks a lot like God of War! Lume! An adorable-looking puzzler–the art style is so charming, in fact, that I’m really considering having a closer look.

Games on Demand this week gives us high quality racing game DIRT 2, high quality crazy Japanese shooter Vanquish, middling stealth action game Velvet Assassin, and I-don’t-really-know-if-it’s-any-good-or-not shooter Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

If you’re into old adventure games, free stuff, or perhaps even free old adventure games, GOG put out Dragonsphere this week. I can’t speak to the game’s quality, but its production values are kinda crazy for the time–full voice acting and really nice animation.

And a bunch of crap came out on DSiWare. Whack-a-Friend is whack-a-mole, but with pictures of your friend’s faces! Or perhaps those of mortal enemies. GO Series Tower of Deus looks like the vertical Metroid stages, but with a timer. Might Milky Way kind of makes me feel bad about saying “crap” up there–it was developed by WayForward, makers of the super-well-recieved Shantae games. It looks almost like a 2D Mario Galaxy, though the levels seem a bit sparse. “Let’s stare into the sun with stoic tears and embrace the rolling chaos that is life!”

Finally… are you ready for this? A Bioware game is out for WiiWare. MDK2! Not an especially Biowareish Bioware joint, granted, but still! It’s an actual game for WiiWare, so be grateful. Your mid-90s action shooter needs are covered!

After a lavish 3D opening cutscene of… a desk… I was greeted by an inspirational quote from Gaiden Shinji. You know, Gaiden Shinji–that famous guy who said the quotes and things. There was a scroll and some talk of prophecies and my place therein, but I was too distracted by the GLARINGLY UNESSECARY COMMA to notice. The title screen promised me that this was but the first chapter of the Elder Scrolls! However, I was unaware that scrolls had chapters, so I was unsure what to make of this claim. The title screen was sadly devoid of that Amazonian chick with the leather string bikini from the cover art. All I got was a lousy pixelated castle.

I indicated my desire to start a new game, eager to enter immediately into the action, wishing to kick some fantasy ass–but there was some more exposition in my way. At least it was presented in a delightful scroll comic book! Emperor… mage betrayal… outer realm imprisonment… taking over the throne… yadda yadda yadda, you get the idea. I guess I was there? around? somewhere? In any case, evil mage Jagar Tharn decided he wanted me in prison. I guess I’m just that cool–gotta get a tat, fashion a “shank” out of a plastic spoon…

But first, I had to choose my class. I decided to go with the generate option. I was asked a bunch of personality profiling questions–I’m not really certain how this is a class determiner, though. Given basic RPG archetypes, your reaction to any given situation should be:

A: Stab him in the front.

B: Stab him in the back.

C: Hurl a ball of flame at him.

These were not accepted answers to any of the questions, leaving me to suspect that this was all a Rorschachian personality profile. (I had to reassure myself that this game was released prior to the proliferation of the Internet and the subsequent destruction of “privacy.”) I dutifully answered anyway, and was told I should be a monk. I completely disregarded this advice.

Warriors are the way to play, man.

For some reason, the race select screen decided it suddenly wanted to be in Ye Olde Englishe (by which I mean standard modern English, but with extra consonants addedst ontoth the endeths of wordstht). After I decidedst that I wouldst be a Nord, I was remindedeth that as a Warrior, I must strengtheneth mine body and mind. I didst not signeth up for thine intellectual improvements, game! I wast subsequently advised to writeth mine fate in the Elder Scrolls, but yon introductory cutscene gaveth me the impression that mine fate were already written.

Now I got to assign attribute points! I was told to keep in mind the “recommendations for thine chosen class,” but that seemed kind of silly, since the game recommended improving mind and body for a warrior–which, in RPG terms, is about all you can improve. Stats are determined by digital dice rolls (with all the positives and negatives that entails), which leaves one with a bit of a dillema. Do you:

A: Accept your initial dice roll, reasoning that the naturally random nature of the roll gives you an interesting means by which to roleplay a character strong in some areas but flawed in others.

B: Repeatedly click “reroll” until you get near-optimal stats.

C: Repeatedly click “reroll” until you get near-optimal stats.

The correct answer was clear. I distributed my additional attribute p

oints mostly into Agility (this being one of those old games where you still have to worry about “to hit” ratios), and put a few additional points into Strength and Endurance.

A ghost lady named Ria started saying stuff after I clicked done. The voice acting was terrific! However, the audio files seem to have been broken up in strange ways, leaving some awkward pauses right in the middle…of sentences. She told me about the traitorous Imperial Battle…Mage who imprisoned me here and said she would give me a ruby…key that I could use to get out of the cell. She then suggested that I loot the dungeon. I like this lady! She recognizes a terrible danger to Empire, an unrecognized usurper to the kingdom, and she still believes I’ve got time to fulfill basic mercenary needs and greed. Good head on your incorporeal shoulders, ghost lady. She said through fuzzy audio compression that she’d place a “shi(f)t gate” somewhere in the dungeon that would transport me to frendlier locales. After she warned me about monsters, I couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t just place the shit gate right in the cell with me. Ah, well. Such is the life of the adventurer. Ghost lady promised that she’d be back… in my dreams.

I was standing in an alcove in my cell, directly under a flashing neon sign marked “GENERATE PLAYER CHARACTER HERE.” The dungeon was otherwise pretty dungeon-y. There was unidentifiable ooze on the cielings, grime around the floors, and lion-man heads sticking out of every third wall tile. I had a broadsword on my person–aparantly, Tharn hated me enough to have me imprisoned, but not enough to kill me, nor even to leave me undefended against any rats that might stray into the cell. Ghost lady’s promised key opened the promised door into the promised dungeon. And there was loot right outside my door! It looked awesome, too–it was a great big pile of gold and jewels, some awesome pieces of armor and some weapons, and I was thinking “Man, this is my kind of dungeon!” But when I clicked on it, all I got were a few lousy gold pieces. Ah, well. I killed a few monsters.

And then the remainder of the game consisted of clicking loot and killing monsters in a number of dungeons which, despite differing tilesets, all looked exactly the same.

There’s a handcrafted feeling to Arena. The niche PC games of this were directed towards a very specific audience and generally came from small developers. Even modern indie studios reach for a broader audience. You don’t see touches like the “Designer’s Note” in the manual anymore: “As with any creative endeavor however we know that we do not have all the answers. Your feedback on TES: Arena is very important to us.” This creates a certain charm about Arena, reminding you that the game you’re playing was made by actual people.

Which is ironic, given how much of the game is randomly generated–landscapes, dungeons, loot, characters. Coming from Oblivion, it’s impressive early on how huge the environments are (Oblivion’s massive landscape is just one of the many countries depicted in Arena), until you realize that it’s just a procedural generated map with no beginning or end. Towns don’t connect with each other (you have to use fast travel), leaving the exploration that made later games in the series so enjoyable feeling absolutely pointless. The hundreds of large towns are an impressive bullet-point, but since they’re all made up of the same basic components cut and pasted again and again, you’re left thinking that just one fully-detailed city would’ve been vastly preferable. It seems that Bethesda’s ambition far exceeded their abilities here. The similar nature of the locations is especially problematic in the dungeons, which is where most of the game takes place. Mapping out the labyrinthine halls of the dungeons can’t stay interesting for long when they’re all fundamentally the same.

The game is barely recognizable as what we now know as the Elder Scrolls. In terms of systems, there are no skills, leveling is based purely on experience points, enchantment is completely different–the list goes on and on. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as those systems had to evolve from somewhere. It just makes the transition backwards very strange for a new fan.

The more troubling thing is the story–what there is of it. The plot is the most generic fantasy set-up conceivable: an evil wizard has imprisoned the king, now go find the eight pieces of the magic artifact and rescue him. By the time you’ve left the opening dungeon, you know exactly what’s going to take place over the rest of the game. I know it’s a dungeon crawler at heart, but I’ve never found pure dungeon crawling terribly interesting without context. You can see some elements that would lead into the rest of the series: the world map, the basics of the races, the emperor’s name, among others.

Arena doesn’t contain a lot of what made Morrowind and Oblivion great, at least to me–that being the fully-crafted world and rich (if derivative) backstory. The charm of the game’s old-school, low-budget, niche charm can carry interest a few hours in, but the exceedingly repetitive nature of the locations means that you’re likely to run out of steam sooner rather than later–I doubt I’ll make it much farther than the first artifact of Ma’gu’ffan. Arena’s cool as a historical piece, a time capsule to an earlier era of RPGs, but it works better today as a curiosity than anything else.

Kalkstein denied all of my accusations, leaving me no choice but to ally with Raymond. He wishes to lay a trap for Kalkstein at the mage’s tower, and just happened to be in possession of the final magic stone. This confrontation will prove interesting, at the very least, and I’m interested in what spoils I might find in the tower. I have but to place the stones in their obelisks- the trek through swamp this entails might prove tiring, but it will provide me with an opportunity to forage some more alchemical ingredients.

I was invited to a party last night, as well. There was singing. It was terrifying. I walked back to the inn drunk, and saw some thugs being assaulted by a monster in the street. I attempted to help, but my swordsmanship suffered under my inebriation. The men were less than pleased when one of my wide swings gashed a hole in one of their arms. Ah well. Vizima is hardly the sort of town which is upset by a few more bodies in the street.

My kinsmen and I have followed leads on the cult to the four corners of the earth. I followed their trail south, to the city of Vizima, eager to track down Azar Javed, and his accomplice, the mysterious “Professor.” The events that have transpired since my arrival would remain confusing even if their motivations were not a mystery. Upon my release from prison (there was some… confusion regarding the legality of my entry papers), I was directed to a local private investigator, Raymond Maarloeve, who promised that he would be able to aid in my search for Salamandra. We began an investigation that seems to have involved every major player in Vizima’s politics. He directed me to a prisoner, a member of the Salamandra, being held by the city guard at St. Lebioda’s hospital.

This took time, however, and I needed a fair amount of gold to convince the guards to allow me to speak with the prisoner. I had to ask around town, engage in a fair amount of more mundane Witcher’s work- eliminating monsters and hunting all manner of unnatural beasts. One of my more interesting jobs came from an alchemist named Kalkstein. He wished to gain entrance to a mysterious mage’s tower, abandoned in a swamp outside Vizima. We compiled information from a variety of tomes, which pointed to a series of magic stones, scattered throughout Vizima and the surrounding wilderness, and a corresponding series of obelisks in the swamp. Once all the stones are returned to their obelisks, the tower will open and its secrets will be revealed. Kalkstein’s notes occasionally read more like a scrawling of gypsy fortunes than the notes of a man of science, but they have been useful in my search for the stones.

By the time I managed to make contact with the prisoner, he was already in hopeless condition. He only managed to utter one word before his death- “Kalkstein.” After some difficulty in securing the man’s body, an autopsy confirmed that he was done in by a sophisticated poison, one that could only be created by an alchemist of some skill. The only one in Vizima who fits that description is, indeed, Kalkstein. Raymond wishes to set a trap for Kalkstein, yet I’m disinclined to play my part in it. I do not trust the investigator- all of my Witcher’s senses tell me something is not what it seems with him. Yet Kalkstein was certainly responsible for the murder of my biggest lead into the Salamandra organization. I feel I should confront Kalkstein directly with what I know. I feel that this mage’s tower holds things which shall be of immeasurable use in my quest, and I may yet need Kalkstein’s assistance to defeat the golem which guards one of the magic stones.

Further troubles complicate my investigations. A war is brewing in the swamps between Scoia’tel and human factions. The Scoia’tel are a group of elves and dwarves protesting human racism. While their goals may have once been noble, they are now consumed by hatred and bloodlust. I would be inclined to simply let the conflict resolve itself, but their battlefield will be the very swamp I am searching to open the mages tower. Further, Siegfried, the leader of the human faction, has proven to be a great asset and as true a friend as can be in times such as these. I consider now that their fight will likely take place near to the stone golem which I must awaken and defeat. There may yet be a way to turn this situation to my advantage.

My recent amnesia has been a hindrance in many ways, as well. My knowledge of alchemy has proven to be the greatest loss. I feel the only way to regain a strong knowledge of the field is in experimentation, but while the liquors I need for the bases are inexpensive, the individual ingredients are often quite dangerous to acquire. I am reticent to use them in unproven concoctions for this reason (and also for the fear that I might end up simply poisoning myself). Yet a pouch full of strong potions may be the only way I will survive the dangers of the swamp. I certainly learned of their importance in my struggles with the hell hounds about the Vizima outskirts.