Games

Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood : Solid buy if you get it for $5 or less. I knew going in that it was supposed to be mediocre, but I what I didn't know was it's relation to the Vampire: The Masquerade series, so that was a fun rabbit-hole to explore.

The gameplay is very sloppy but mostly decent fun, split between very bland stealth segments and gigantic hulking werewolf action segments that kind of remind me of the combat in games like Prototype, if people remember that game (you're a super-hero / bio-horror in an open-world setting).

The premise of the story is great, in that you're a band of werewolf eco-terrorists who ... do werewolf eco-terrorism. The game was either unwilling or unable to fully actualize this vision in the actual plot. Might have been publisher squeamishness, might have been EU arts funding stipulation.

Most of the other characters you have relationships with have models that look multiple console-generations older than the protagonist (who to the game's credit looks pretty good in human and werewolf forms), and this makes some of the attempts at emotional cut-scenes very funny. One of the main allies you have looks like she was purchased from the Unity asset store and they forgot to add anything to her model.

Environments look great though, shout-out to the environmental artist. The first area is my favorite: pacific northwestern forest at night with a full moon looking gorgeous, realistically rendered but with some stylization in its presentation to give it a more mystical vibe, but then inter-cut with scenes of a devastating logging operation, oil-rigs visible off the coast, hastily build roads carving through to facilitate the continued extraction.

It's alright.