Gandheezy22
If you are in the video game sphere at all you have heard about The Witcher 3. I don’t care if the only game you’ve ever played is Super Mario 64 remaster for the Nintendo DS, someone somewhere at some time has demanded you play The Witcher 3. It’s god’s gift to mankind! CD Projekt Red single-handedly saved the industry with this game! It has broken relationships, forged friendships, and dominated internet conversation for five years now. Why is this one so revered, and hailed by video game snobs as the greatest of all time?
Because of the Netflix series, you’re likely familiar with the premise of this world by now. Geralt is a Witcher, essentially a contract monster hunter imbued with magical enhancements. He was raised from birth to kill monsters after going through a painful transformative process, The Trials of the Grasses. The story of TW3 catches us as Geralt is on the tail end of middle-aged, starting to feel weary of adventuring. The first scene of the game makes a splash, dunking you the classic “Penis in a Bathtub” scene, setting the tone magnificently.
Ciri, Geralt’s adopted daughter, is on the run because a gang of hooligans (the titular Wild Hunt) is trying to chase her down. He goes on a quest to get to her before the baddies, retracing her steps across the beautiful lands of Nilfgard and beyond. You’ll meet love interests Yennefer and Triss along the way and choose between them. Let’s be real, this game is a dating sim that has a bonus 100 hour RPG to hide how horny it actually is. Geralt does actually get around quite a lot, and what’s not to like? The ladies love his demon cat eyes, long, unkempt hair, and monster-juice smell. This is not the fault of the game as it’s quite present in the novels as well, but there’s definitely a catering to the audience of 13-year old boys living vicariously through Geralt as a big, physically dominating man who has hot sorceresses fighting over him. That’s not necessarily a criticism, just an observation.
For all its flaws in over sexualizing women, TW3 has three 3-Dimensional, believable, realistic women who have meaningful goals and act in pursuit of achieving those goals. You know, like humans.
THE BAD STUFF
Why is this game only pretty good? Why would you say that, you heathen? Well my biggest and really only complaint is that it feels like ass to play. The first thing you need to do in the options menu is switch movement to Alternative, which makes it feel better but still awful. Trying to move Geralt the way you want him to move is one of the major challenges of the game, to be honest. He accelerates and decelerates seemingly at random, can’t jump in half an inch of water, and dies from falling 8 feet. Roach (his horse) controls better than the horses in a lot of games, so props for that.
Combat ends up being a mix of smashing R1 (fast attack) and using Quen (the shield spell) every time your mana gauge fills up. Dodging is almost useless, because Geralt never rolls the way you want him to. You get five spells right out the gate, but Quen is the only one that is useful for about 90% of it. You could use Aard (wind blast) or Igni (fire) for fighting, but you’re just wasting mana. Quen is infinitely more powerful, especially once you upgrade to the exploding shield. Basically, combat is a slog, Geralt does not react to control inputs in a smooth way, and spells are totally unbalanced giving you no reason to diversify your fighting style.
THE GOOD STUFF
Now that I’ve gotten that stuff out of the way, everything I have to say from here on out is glowing praise. I won’t give away more of the plot, because the story is the best part about this game. Not just the main story, either. Almost every side quest is written with the depth and care you’d normally never see in a giant open-world RPG like this, because the development team just doesn’t have the time. Well, CDPR made time. For any other complaints I may have, I’ll attest to TW3 having consistently the best-written side quests in any RPG I’ve ever played. Again I will avoid spoilers, but the quest with the Bloody Baron and the baby made me cry real human tears, which is something that has only happened two other times in video games (the endings of Nier Automata and Final Fantasy XV).
Even as I’ve described how much I hated the gameplay of TW3, I kept playing it for ~50 hours and finished the story. Because it was that damn intriguing. All of these characters are so well crafted, each of them feels real. Again, it sounds basic, but the fact that each character has identifiable goals and takes action to reach those goals consistently is the highest praise I can offer a writer. The most basic part of character design is often the most forgotten one.
This world is incredible. The City of Novigrad is a technical masterpiece. There are thousands of NPCs in it, each with a daily routine, each going about their business. This is the closest a video game has ever gotten to putting you into a city from Dungeons and Dragons. Many of the NPCs have something to say, but most do not. That’s okay, that’s the exchange you make for having an appropriate number of them. This world feels alive in a way that puts Skyrim and Fallout to shame.
This city is unbelievably big and packed with interesting NPCs and quests. It really makes you feel like a Witcher.
Outside of Novigrad, you’ll traverse dozens of distinct environments and biomes. Lush jungles, freezing tundras, salty marshes, and precipitous crags dot the beautifully rendered landscapes and their vivid colors. If you’ve read my other reviews, you’ll know the quickest way to my heart is bright, distinct, vivid colors in a game. I cannot gush enough about the artwork and design of these villages and natural environments.
The creatures are designed with astounding skill and are somehow both memorable and varied. I’d currently say the Fallout series has the best roster of enemies in video games, but the Witcher 3 cuts a close second.
The music is excellent. It takes hints from modern fantasy styles but leans more heavily on traditional Polish instruments and styles to create a strange new kind of sound. Something that reminds you you’re in another world but still keeps you grounded to the gritty, immersive open world and the danger within it. The barbaric calling and deep throat chanting resonate with the heavy use of plucked strings to create something real and distinct, something you haven’t heard before but will feel. I will easily nominate The Witcher 3 for top 5 game soundtracks of all time.
I haven’t talked a lot about the finer RPG points of this game, but that’s because I didn’t find them to matter much towards my enjoyment. There’s a pretty deep crafting/alchemy system, but I literally never used it because I didn’t care about it. That’s a plus from me. It’s there if you want it, but if not, no problem. The upgrade trees give you small boosts here and there, but ultimately won’t influence your fighting style because Quen + Spam sword attacks is your best bet no matter what. I loved the idea of applying special oils to your sword to fight specific enemies, but these oils were rarely found in the wild and mostly required crafting, which I don’t enjoy. You can also upgrade your weapons and equipment as you progress through the game, and equip weapons with stones that slightly alter their abilities. Again, I’m glad it’s there, but I didn’t pay too much attention to it. On higher difficulties you will need to utilize enchanting and alchemy to survive, but I played most of the game on easy mode so I could experience the world without too much confrontation. The menus could have used some work, but hey, it’s functional.
There are also some UI problems that I need explained to me. Why can’t I consume food from the menu? I have to equip it to Up or Down on the D-pad and then exit the menu and consume it there. Sometimes I eat the wrong thing, and I’ve got no idea why. The writing is tiny as hell, and if you’re on a TV you’ll need to use a mod to see it from 10 ft away. Luckily you can alter the HUD elements and hide them if you wish, because they really get in the way of enjoying the real treat of the game, which is the world around you.
Final Verdict: 8.0/10 — Toss a Coin to Your Witcher (to Buy this Game)
For all its shortcomings in gameplay, the Witcher 3 manages to be an artistic masterpiece. The monster designs are imaginative and mostly unmatched, both across video games and film/TV. The vivid colors that are used to create the varied landscapes are gorgeous, and there is always someone or something to see when you arrive somewhere new. I would not describe this game as “fun” to play, but I would describe it as a great game altogether. The deeper RPG elements are there to mess around with if you’d like, but are easily avoided for those like me that just want to explore a huge fantasy world. It ain’t the second coming of Jesus, but if you like open world, fantasy, or great stories (or all of the above), you owe it to yourself to walk in Geralt’s shoes.
Because of the Netflix series, you’re likely familiar with the premise of this world by now. Geralt is a Witcher, essentially a contract monster hunter imbued with magical enhancements. He was raised from birth to kill monsters after going through a painful transformative process, The Trials of the Grasses. The story of TW3 catches us as Geralt is on the tail end of middle-aged, starting to feel weary of adventuring. The first scene of the game makes a splash, dunking you the classic “Penis in a Bathtub” scene, setting the tone magnificently.
Ciri, Geralt’s adopted daughter, is on the run because a gang of hooligans (the titular Wild Hunt) is trying to chase her down. He goes on a quest to get to her before the baddies, retracing her steps across the beautiful lands of Nilfgard and beyond. You’ll meet love interests Yennefer and Triss along the way and choose between them. Let’s be real, this game is a dating sim that has a bonus 100 hour RPG to hide how horny it actually is. Geralt does actually get around quite a lot, and what’s not to like? The ladies love his demon cat eyes, long, unkempt hair, and monster-juice smell. This is not the fault of the game as it’s quite present in the novels as well, but there’s definitely a catering to the audience of 13-year old boys living vicariously through Geralt as a big, physically dominating man who has hot sorceresses fighting over him. That’s not necessarily a criticism, just an observation.
For all its flaws in over sexualizing women, TW3 has three 3-Dimensional, believable, realistic women who have meaningful goals and act in pursuit of achieving those goals. You know, like humans.
THE BAD STUFF
Why is this game only pretty good? Why would you say that, you heathen? Well my biggest and really only complaint is that it feels like ass to play. The first thing you need to do in the options menu is switch movement to Alternative, which makes it feel better but still awful. Trying to move Geralt the way you want him to move is one of the major challenges of the game, to be honest. He accelerates and decelerates seemingly at random, can’t jump in half an inch of water, and dies from falling 8 feet. Roach (his horse) controls better than the horses in a lot of games, so props for that.
Combat ends up being a mix of smashing R1 (fast attack) and using Quen (the shield spell) every time your mana gauge fills up. Dodging is almost useless, because Geralt never rolls the way you want him to. You get five spells right out the gate, but Quen is the only one that is useful for about 90% of it. You could use Aard (wind blast) or Igni (fire) for fighting, but you’re just wasting mana. Quen is infinitely more powerful, especially once you upgrade to the exploding shield. Basically, combat is a slog, Geralt does not react to control inputs in a smooth way, and spells are totally unbalanced giving you no reason to diversify your fighting style.
THE GOOD STUFF
Now that I’ve gotten that stuff out of the way, everything I have to say from here on out is glowing praise. I won’t give away more of the plot, because the story is the best part about this game. Not just the main story, either. Almost every side quest is written with the depth and care you’d normally never see in a giant open-world RPG like this, because the development team just doesn’t have the time. Well, CDPR made time. For any other complaints I may have, I’ll attest to TW3 having consistently the best-written side quests in any RPG I’ve ever played. Again I will avoid spoilers, but the quest with the Bloody Baron and the baby made me cry real human tears, which is something that has only happened two other times in video games (the endings of Nier Automata and Final Fantasy XV).
Even as I’ve described how much I hated the gameplay of TW3, I kept playing it for ~50 hours and finished the story. Because it was that damn intriguing. All of these characters are so well crafted, each of them feels real. Again, it sounds basic, but the fact that each character has identifiable goals and takes action to reach those goals consistently is the highest praise I can offer a writer. The most basic part of character design is often the most forgotten one.
This world is incredible. The City of Novigrad is a technical masterpiece. There are thousands of NPCs in it, each with a daily routine, each going about their business. This is the closest a video game has ever gotten to putting you into a city from Dungeons and Dragons. Many of the NPCs have something to say, but most do not. That’s okay, that’s the exchange you make for having an appropriate number of them. This world feels alive in a way that puts Skyrim and Fallout to shame.
This city is unbelievably big and packed with interesting NPCs and quests. It really makes you feel like a Witcher.
Outside of Novigrad, you’ll traverse dozens of distinct environments and biomes. Lush jungles, freezing tundras, salty marshes, and precipitous crags dot the beautifully rendered landscapes and their vivid colors. If you’ve read my other reviews, you’ll know the quickest way to my heart is bright, distinct, vivid colors in a game. I cannot gush enough about the artwork and design of these villages and natural environments.
The creatures are designed with astounding skill and are somehow both memorable and varied. I’d currently say the Fallout series has the best roster of enemies in video games, but the Witcher 3 cuts a close second.
The music is excellent. It takes hints from modern fantasy styles but leans more heavily on traditional Polish instruments and styles to create a strange new kind of sound. Something that reminds you you’re in another world but still keeps you grounded to the gritty, immersive open world and the danger within it. The barbaric calling and deep throat chanting resonate with the heavy use of plucked strings to create something real and distinct, something you haven’t heard before but will feel. I will easily nominate The Witcher 3 for top 5 game soundtracks of all time.
I haven’t talked a lot about the finer RPG points of this game, but that’s because I didn’t find them to matter much towards my enjoyment. There’s a pretty deep crafting/alchemy system, but I literally never used it because I didn’t care about it. That’s a plus from me. It’s there if you want it, but if not, no problem. The upgrade trees give you small boosts here and there, but ultimately won’t influence your fighting style because Quen + Spam sword attacks is your best bet no matter what. I loved the idea of applying special oils to your sword to fight specific enemies, but these oils were rarely found in the wild and mostly required crafting, which I don’t enjoy. You can also upgrade your weapons and equipment as you progress through the game, and equip weapons with stones that slightly alter their abilities. Again, I’m glad it’s there, but I didn’t pay too much attention to it. On higher difficulties you will need to utilize enchanting and alchemy to survive, but I played most of the game on easy mode so I could experience the world without too much confrontation. The menus could have used some work, but hey, it’s functional.
There are also some UI problems that I need explained to me. Why can’t I consume food from the menu? I have to equip it to Up or Down on the D-pad and then exit the menu and consume it there. Sometimes I eat the wrong thing, and I’ve got no idea why. The writing is tiny as hell, and if you’re on a TV you’ll need to use a mod to see it from 10 ft away. Luckily you can alter the HUD elements and hide them if you wish, because they really get in the way of enjoying the real treat of the game, which is the world around you.
Final Verdict: 8.0/10 — Toss a Coin to Your Witcher (to Buy this Game)
For all its shortcomings in gameplay, the Witcher 3 manages to be an artistic masterpiece. The monster designs are imaginative and mostly unmatched, both across video games and film/TV. The vivid colors that are used to create the varied landscapes are gorgeous, and there is always someone or something to see when you arrive somewhere new. I would not describe this game as “fun” to play, but I would describe it as a great game altogether. The deeper RPG elements are there to mess around with if you’d like, but are easily avoided for those like me that just want to explore a huge fantasy world. It ain’t the second coming of Jesus, but if you like open world, fantasy, or great stories (or all of the above), you owe it to yourself to walk in Geralt’s shoes.
Nine strangers awake to find themselves in an abandoned luxury cruise liner. Each of them has a watch strapped to their wrist with a number on it, 1–9. There are a variety of paths to access, but each of them is numbered 1–9. Each door can be opened only be a combination of people whose numbers add up to that door number. For instance, door 5 can be opened by person 1 and person 4 or person 2 and person 3. The decisions you make as to who goes through which door at what stage of the game influences the story and the ending, of which there are several. A mysterious man named Zero taunts them over the loudspeakers, asking archaic and inscrutable questions, laughing maniacally, and then disappearing. What’s his game???
This cast of characters, anime as they may be, is actually great. Each one of them, even your own player character Junpei, has well thought out backstories that are fed to you slowly over the course of the game. Each of them has distinct and visible motivations and goals and their decisions in the game reflect those goals. Seems like simple praise, but you’d be amazed how many ensemble casts lose the thread of what each character wants halfway through. Plus, each character is filled with inane and useless pseudo science facts that are fascinating. One of the key elements of this trilogy is that each character is weirdly knowledgeable about various pseudoscience fields and will launch into a lecture without warning.
It’s mostly a visual novel, but there is quite a lot of game in it as you solve the room puzzles and make difficult decisions on which door to take. The true ending is unexpected and twisty in the best ways and leads right into Virtue’s Last Reward. The whole thing takes maybe 8 hours max if you do all the endings, which you don’t need to on this one. Alternatively, watch a YouTube video of the plot summary and skip straight to Virtue’s Last Reward because it is sooo good.
This cast of characters, anime as they may be, is actually great. Each one of them, even your own player character Junpei, has well thought out backstories that are fed to you slowly over the course of the game. Each of them has distinct and visible motivations and goals and their decisions in the game reflect those goals. Seems like simple praise, but you’d be amazed how many ensemble casts lose the thread of what each character wants halfway through. Plus, each character is filled with inane and useless pseudo science facts that are fascinating. One of the key elements of this trilogy is that each character is weirdly knowledgeable about various pseudoscience fields and will launch into a lecture without warning.
It’s mostly a visual novel, but there is quite a lot of game in it as you solve the room puzzles and make difficult decisions on which door to take. The true ending is unexpected and twisty in the best ways and leads right into Virtue’s Last Reward. The whole thing takes maybe 8 hours max if you do all the endings, which you don’t need to on this one. Alternatively, watch a YouTube video of the plot summary and skip straight to Virtue’s Last Reward because it is sooo good.
2013
I will maintain to this day that TWAU is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, narrative games ever. It is certainly Telltale's second best work, after the Walking Dead Season 1. This game serves as a prequel to the events of the Fables comics from Vertigo. It's well written, very well acted, and you choices have visible consequences all throughout the story. The comic book style art is incredible, similar to Into the Spider-verse. All in all, I can't recommend it enough. The sequel we thought was dead is on the way! Make sure to catch up quickly. And when are we getting a live action version of this with Hugh Jackman as Bigby?
I really cannot sell this game hard enough. It is so good. It is so good I want to scream. We have full motion characters and voice acting now for the visual novel parts. The music is out of a slasher movie. We have 9 more anime friends to meet, each more knowledgeable about stupid pseudoscience than the last. We have way better fully 3D puzzles now and each of them are designed around escaping. The theme of escape is packed tightly into every facet of this game. Get out!
The pitch for this one is similar: 9 strangers wake up in a futuristic facility full of robots, laboratories, and other crazy technology. Each one has a watch strapped to their wrist, but this time with a color: red, blue, and green. Combining these colors and their respective people in different ways results in the three Chromatic Door colors, Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta. So this time, if you want a team to go through the magenta door, you’ll need to send a blue and a red person. And it’s all being orchestrated by an AI rabbit called Zero Jr. He’s much more like Monokuma from the Danganronpa games, but less fun and more murdery.
The real kicker is the AB game. You will choose to either ally or betray other teams in isolated chambers in a crazy situation based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Every time you cross through doors and team up, your team has to rely on the other teams to not Betray them. Betraying a team that allied with you loses them life points (BP) and gains you a hefty few, getting you just a bit closer to having enough to escape. With all these choices (who you ally/betray and who you team up with when), there’s a lot of different paths, right?
Don’t get too comfortable allying with everyone, because you will play through over 30 instances of this game before you are done, each one of them drastically different from the others. You will experience every single outcome that could happen. Don’t worry though, you can skip around timelines and through conversations with the press of a button. You will see every character you love ripped to pieces in one timeline, become a bloodthirsty killer in another, and sacrifice their life for someone they barely know in yet another. It’s absolute madness that destroys all sense of the linear value of time. And it is sheer brilliance.
One last thing is that many paths of the game are blocked until you learn something from another timeline, like a code or password, that lets you move forward. Timeline A stops at scene 12 and the scene ends with a pass code lock. Luckily, timeline F scene 4 has a pass code that you can use to unlock it. This opens you up to Timeline A Scene 13 which gives you access to the pattern needed to solve the sun puzzle in Timeline X scene 9. Etc, etc. It’s so good, man. Play it. It is a literal masterpiece that I truly think could not be any better.
The pitch for this one is similar: 9 strangers wake up in a futuristic facility full of robots, laboratories, and other crazy technology. Each one has a watch strapped to their wrist, but this time with a color: red, blue, and green. Combining these colors and their respective people in different ways results in the three Chromatic Door colors, Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta. So this time, if you want a team to go through the magenta door, you’ll need to send a blue and a red person. And it’s all being orchestrated by an AI rabbit called Zero Jr. He’s much more like Monokuma from the Danganronpa games, but less fun and more murdery.
The real kicker is the AB game. You will choose to either ally or betray other teams in isolated chambers in a crazy situation based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Every time you cross through doors and team up, your team has to rely on the other teams to not Betray them. Betraying a team that allied with you loses them life points (BP) and gains you a hefty few, getting you just a bit closer to having enough to escape. With all these choices (who you ally/betray and who you team up with when), there’s a lot of different paths, right?
Don’t get too comfortable allying with everyone, because you will play through over 30 instances of this game before you are done, each one of them drastically different from the others. You will experience every single outcome that could happen. Don’t worry though, you can skip around timelines and through conversations with the press of a button. You will see every character you love ripped to pieces in one timeline, become a bloodthirsty killer in another, and sacrifice their life for someone they barely know in yet another. It’s absolute madness that destroys all sense of the linear value of time. And it is sheer brilliance.
One last thing is that many paths of the game are blocked until you learn something from another timeline, like a code or password, that lets you move forward. Timeline A stops at scene 12 and the scene ends with a pass code lock. Luckily, timeline F scene 4 has a pass code that you can use to unlock it. This opens you up to Timeline A Scene 13 which gives you access to the pattern needed to solve the sun puzzle in Timeline X scene 9. Etc, etc. It’s so good, man. Play it. It is a literal masterpiece that I truly think could not be any better.
2015
In the fall of 2015, a musical composer for the webcomic Homestuck self-published his debut game, Undertale. By the end of the year, Toby Fox's notoriously humble pixel-art game was sitting on dozens of accolades and perfect reviews almost across the board and has continued to dominate internet culture to this day. A young child falls into the Underworld, a sunless land where monsters have built a civilization of their own. Adopted and instructed by a loving goat mom, the child makes their way across the world and meets enemies and friends alike, including the infamous Sans.
The entire draw of Undertale is that it is a turn-based combat RPG (similar to old school Pokemon in many ways) where you don't have to kill anything. There are three endings to the game: the pacifist run where the player kills no one, the neutral run where the player kills at least one monster, and the genocide run where the player kills every single creature in the underworld. All three yield a drastically different ending; the lore of Undertale is deeper than many long-lived franchises. Most importantly, Undertale will serve as the greatest showcase that all you need is determination.
Determination is what separates humans from the animals and defines the human spirit. We all have the ability to persist. Undertale will make you laugh, cry, scream, and slam your controller on the ground in frustration. With characters as real and lovable as these, and real stakes on the table, will you become the murderer they believe you to be? Or is your determination enough to save the world?
The entire draw of Undertale is that it is a turn-based combat RPG (similar to old school Pokemon in many ways) where you don't have to kill anything. There are three endings to the game: the pacifist run where the player kills no one, the neutral run where the player kills at least one monster, and the genocide run where the player kills every single creature in the underworld. All three yield a drastically different ending; the lore of Undertale is deeper than many long-lived franchises. Most importantly, Undertale will serve as the greatest showcase that all you need is determination.
Determination is what separates humans from the animals and defines the human spirit. We all have the ability to persist. Undertale will make you laugh, cry, scream, and slam your controller on the ground in frustration. With characters as real and lovable as these, and real stakes on the table, will you become the murderer they believe you to be? Or is your determination enough to save the world?
2015
You could do a lot worse for $0.
2007
I'm sure you don't need me to sell you on this game, but it's an actual masterpiece. Everything about it comes together so fluidly. It's exactly the right length, just challenging enough, and has a story you'll actually want to pay attention to. Plus, it's just funny. Almost every joke lands. I honestly prefer this to Portal 2, so I highly suggest you start on this one. Plus, being an FPS without an enemies, this is the PERFECT game to learn how to shoot on M+KB. Or if you have a friend who's learning how to move in a 3D space for the first time in a game, this is the one to give them. They can take their time, figure out what does what, and learn to shoot all without the threat of enemies or combat but still with enough challenge they'll feel good about conquering obstacles. This game is like $2 on Steam right now. What are you waiting for? Go buy it!
2008
Pip-boy is dead. Now, I am Pip-Man.
My first playthrough of Fallout 3 was entirely mod-free, so I’ll be reviewing it through that lens. Strap on your Pip-Boys, grab your Todd Howard collectible bobble head, and follow me into the wasteland!
It is no overstatement to say that in 2008, Fallout 3 changed the course of the entire video games industry, rerouting seemingly every project in development that may have been a linear game into an open world adventure. Oblivion was great and all, but what Fallout 3 did with its open world was unprecedented, even in Grand Theft Auto III (often credited as the father of the genre). Followed by two other open world hits, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim, this game proved that players didn’t need or necessarily even want direction in their video games. Go anywhere, do anything. It just works.
The game begins with a quick history of what happened to the world — in 2077, the Chinese dropped bombs on the US, we returned fire, blah blah blah world is ended in a nuclear holocaust. The world of Fallout isn’t our own, though; it’s a very different one in which the transistor was never invented, cars run on nuclear energy, and 50s Americana vibes dominate popular culture. Suddenly, you’re born! (Don’t feel too bad about being born. It happens to the best of us).
Your father, Liam Neeson, pulls you from your mother’s womb as you enter this exciting new world of nuclear mutants and wasteland horrors. Your mother dies in childbirth, and your Liam Neeson dad raises you in the safety of Vault 101, one of the few underground safe havens that protects from the creatures on the surface. Your best friend, Amata, is the daughter of the Overseer, the tyrannical leader of the vault. You go through some typical growing up stuff, from baby to prepubescent teen to a grown ass 19 year old. You see some glimpses of the trials and tribulations of growing up, choosing a career, and getting bullied. Tunnel Snakes rule! This whole section is quite interesting but only lasts an hour at most, so hold on to your hat and we’ll get you out into the open world in just a bit.
Like I said, in 2008 this was a literal game changer. Leaving the vault to chase after your missing father, you step out into the world for the first time and see the expanse of the Capital Wasteland. The visuals have not aged well, but a few mods will definitely make it more bearable. I won’t get too much farther into the story of Fallout 3, of which there isn’t much. I want to focus on the world. This game, much like Skyrim, is a sandbox for you to build your own post-apocalyptic story.
There isn’t much of an overarching objective beyond “Find your dad.” There’s one simple reason I still praise this game design to this day: “Find your dad” is exactly the right balance between urgent and trivial. Most open world RPGs, including most of Bethesda’s, suffer from creating a main objective that is so urgent that if you truly want to role play you can’t do any side quests. There isn’t time for exploring when the Dragon God is attacking villages or your son has been kidnapped by the Institute. But your dad, a seasoned wastelander and capable doctor, has wandered outside of his own volition. He’ll be fine on his own, but I still want to find him. But if I stop here and check out Paradise Falls… well, it’s not a big deal.
Fallout 3 features some of the most interesting quests in RPG history. I don’t want to spoil them, but look out for Tranquility Lane, The Mechanist vs. the Ant-Agonizer, Oasis, and Our Little Secret, among others. There are less quests than you might be used to in other open world games, but each quest is a lot more substantial than you’d anticipate, all of them with multiple branching paths and conclusions. Each quest comes to you pretty organically through conversation, environmental clues, or just overhearing something interesting at the local bar. Fallout 3 features a Karma system that disappears from later games, which works just as it sounds. Do something bad and you lose karma, do something good and gain karma. Karma is said to influence events around you and determine how some NPCs interact with you, so stop stealing stuff! Or don’t.
The music is amazing. Inon Zur is as purposeful as always, matching ambient soundscapes to the marching rhythms of war. The main theme is nothing short of iconic, and is still the main theme of the Fallout franchise today. Dun dunnnn dunnnnnnnnn
Although not as fleshed out as the characters in Fallout 4 or NV, Fallout 3 does feature some great characters to team up with. Among the companions, I stuck with Fawkes the super genius Supermutant and Dogmeat, my loyal mutt from the junkyard for the majority of the game. Other characters like Charon, king of the Ghouls, Sierra Petrovita, Curator of the First National Nuka Cola Museum, and the residents of the all-child city of Little Lamplight round out a cast of interesting people to meet. The dialogue is quite well written as well, and conversations are interesting and not something you’re skipping through to get to the “good stuff.” Conversations are, for the most part, the good stuff. Sierra was my first video game wife. Well, you can’t marry her, but we’re all just doing a make pretend here.
The gun play is bad. I don’t have a lot else to say. It’s clunky and it feels bad to shoot. There’s no way to reliably aim your gun in this game that is dependent on guns. VATS is essentially a lock-on system using AP (Action Points) and is the best way to ensure you’re doing any damage to enemies. You can also pick which body part to hit with your shots, and crippling specific body parts is the most strategic way to win fights. Cripple legs to immobilize enemies, or cripple arms to make them drop their weapons. Be aware there is weapon degradation ! But no crafting needed, stop by any merchant and pay them to repair your weapons and armor. I recommend a melee build, this game is a good bit easier with a Shishkebab. The shooting has aged terribly, but again that’s not the good part of the game. VATS is a clever holdover of the combat from the first two games, sitting somewhere between turn-based and live combat.
The settings are amazing. Oasis is my favorite, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. Just head north, you’ll get there. Paradise Falls, the slave city, is very neat for a city built entirely of junk. Little Lamplight is a town of all children and entirely subterranean. Seeing the 70 story Tenpenny Tower in the middle of the desert for the first time is a wonder I will never forget. Rivet City is a whole city build into a dilapidated aircraft carrier parked right on the river. Underworld is a secret city of ghouls trapped underground. Visit the proud Republic of Dave. And when you see the White House in shambles, the Washington monument crumbling… it makes you feel something (if you’re American). It’s all so dismal, wonderful, and hopeless at the same time.
And if you’re unfamiliar with Fallout, the monsters will blow your mind. Fallout has always had some of the best monsters in video games, so this isn’t surprisng, but some of them are legitimately scary while others are simply baffling. Supermutants and ghouls are all well and good, but let’s hang out with a centaur sometime. Whenever I look at it I remember how far we have strayed from God’s light.
More than anything, this game lets you explore. You can go far and wide, or stay on the short and narrow. Care about the story or don’t. It matters exactly as much as you want it to. Find the people, go to the places, shoot the stuff, don’t shoot the stuff, I don’t care. Just go. Any direction you please.
Fallout 3 is a wonderful and depressing trip into post apocalyptic America. Go literally anywhere and do literally anything you please. If that’s scary to you, the main quest will take you all over the map. But I encourage you to stick to the road less traveled- that is to say, don’t follow the roads. Fight for good or evil, for the Brotherhood or the Enclave, for justice or chaos. Just make sure to allow yourself to feel that freedom. They keep telling you that war never changes, but more importantly you’ll find that in some terrifying ways America never changes, either.
My first playthrough of Fallout 3 was entirely mod-free, so I’ll be reviewing it through that lens. Strap on your Pip-Boys, grab your Todd Howard collectible bobble head, and follow me into the wasteland!
It is no overstatement to say that in 2008, Fallout 3 changed the course of the entire video games industry, rerouting seemingly every project in development that may have been a linear game into an open world adventure. Oblivion was great and all, but what Fallout 3 did with its open world was unprecedented, even in Grand Theft Auto III (often credited as the father of the genre). Followed by two other open world hits, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim, this game proved that players didn’t need or necessarily even want direction in their video games. Go anywhere, do anything. It just works.
The game begins with a quick history of what happened to the world — in 2077, the Chinese dropped bombs on the US, we returned fire, blah blah blah world is ended in a nuclear holocaust. The world of Fallout isn’t our own, though; it’s a very different one in which the transistor was never invented, cars run on nuclear energy, and 50s Americana vibes dominate popular culture. Suddenly, you’re born! (Don’t feel too bad about being born. It happens to the best of us).
Your father, Liam Neeson, pulls you from your mother’s womb as you enter this exciting new world of nuclear mutants and wasteland horrors. Your mother dies in childbirth, and your Liam Neeson dad raises you in the safety of Vault 101, one of the few underground safe havens that protects from the creatures on the surface. Your best friend, Amata, is the daughter of the Overseer, the tyrannical leader of the vault. You go through some typical growing up stuff, from baby to prepubescent teen to a grown ass 19 year old. You see some glimpses of the trials and tribulations of growing up, choosing a career, and getting bullied. Tunnel Snakes rule! This whole section is quite interesting but only lasts an hour at most, so hold on to your hat and we’ll get you out into the open world in just a bit.
Like I said, in 2008 this was a literal game changer. Leaving the vault to chase after your missing father, you step out into the world for the first time and see the expanse of the Capital Wasteland. The visuals have not aged well, but a few mods will definitely make it more bearable. I won’t get too much farther into the story of Fallout 3, of which there isn’t much. I want to focus on the world. This game, much like Skyrim, is a sandbox for you to build your own post-apocalyptic story.
There isn’t much of an overarching objective beyond “Find your dad.” There’s one simple reason I still praise this game design to this day: “Find your dad” is exactly the right balance between urgent and trivial. Most open world RPGs, including most of Bethesda’s, suffer from creating a main objective that is so urgent that if you truly want to role play you can’t do any side quests. There isn’t time for exploring when the Dragon God is attacking villages or your son has been kidnapped by the Institute. But your dad, a seasoned wastelander and capable doctor, has wandered outside of his own volition. He’ll be fine on his own, but I still want to find him. But if I stop here and check out Paradise Falls… well, it’s not a big deal.
Fallout 3 features some of the most interesting quests in RPG history. I don’t want to spoil them, but look out for Tranquility Lane, The Mechanist vs. the Ant-Agonizer, Oasis, and Our Little Secret, among others. There are less quests than you might be used to in other open world games, but each quest is a lot more substantial than you’d anticipate, all of them with multiple branching paths and conclusions. Each quest comes to you pretty organically through conversation, environmental clues, or just overhearing something interesting at the local bar. Fallout 3 features a Karma system that disappears from later games, which works just as it sounds. Do something bad and you lose karma, do something good and gain karma. Karma is said to influence events around you and determine how some NPCs interact with you, so stop stealing stuff! Or don’t.
The music is amazing. Inon Zur is as purposeful as always, matching ambient soundscapes to the marching rhythms of war. The main theme is nothing short of iconic, and is still the main theme of the Fallout franchise today. Dun dunnnn dunnnnnnnnn
Although not as fleshed out as the characters in Fallout 4 or NV, Fallout 3 does feature some great characters to team up with. Among the companions, I stuck with Fawkes the super genius Supermutant and Dogmeat, my loyal mutt from the junkyard for the majority of the game. Other characters like Charon, king of the Ghouls, Sierra Petrovita, Curator of the First National Nuka Cola Museum, and the residents of the all-child city of Little Lamplight round out a cast of interesting people to meet. The dialogue is quite well written as well, and conversations are interesting and not something you’re skipping through to get to the “good stuff.” Conversations are, for the most part, the good stuff. Sierra was my first video game wife. Well, you can’t marry her, but we’re all just doing a make pretend here.
The gun play is bad. I don’t have a lot else to say. It’s clunky and it feels bad to shoot. There’s no way to reliably aim your gun in this game that is dependent on guns. VATS is essentially a lock-on system using AP (Action Points) and is the best way to ensure you’re doing any damage to enemies. You can also pick which body part to hit with your shots, and crippling specific body parts is the most strategic way to win fights. Cripple legs to immobilize enemies, or cripple arms to make them drop their weapons. Be aware there is weapon degradation ! But no crafting needed, stop by any merchant and pay them to repair your weapons and armor. I recommend a melee build, this game is a good bit easier with a Shishkebab. The shooting has aged terribly, but again that’s not the good part of the game. VATS is a clever holdover of the combat from the first two games, sitting somewhere between turn-based and live combat.
The settings are amazing. Oasis is my favorite, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. Just head north, you’ll get there. Paradise Falls, the slave city, is very neat for a city built entirely of junk. Little Lamplight is a town of all children and entirely subterranean. Seeing the 70 story Tenpenny Tower in the middle of the desert for the first time is a wonder I will never forget. Rivet City is a whole city build into a dilapidated aircraft carrier parked right on the river. Underworld is a secret city of ghouls trapped underground. Visit the proud Republic of Dave. And when you see the White House in shambles, the Washington monument crumbling… it makes you feel something (if you’re American). It’s all so dismal, wonderful, and hopeless at the same time.
And if you’re unfamiliar with Fallout, the monsters will blow your mind. Fallout has always had some of the best monsters in video games, so this isn’t surprisng, but some of them are legitimately scary while others are simply baffling. Supermutants and ghouls are all well and good, but let’s hang out with a centaur sometime. Whenever I look at it I remember how far we have strayed from God’s light.
More than anything, this game lets you explore. You can go far and wide, or stay on the short and narrow. Care about the story or don’t. It matters exactly as much as you want it to. Find the people, go to the places, shoot the stuff, don’t shoot the stuff, I don’t care. Just go. Any direction you please.
Fallout 3 is a wonderful and depressing trip into post apocalyptic America. Go literally anywhere and do literally anything you please. If that’s scary to you, the main quest will take you all over the map. But I encourage you to stick to the road less traveled- that is to say, don’t follow the roads. Fight for good or evil, for the Brotherhood or the Enclave, for justice or chaos. Just make sure to allow yourself to feel that freedom. They keep telling you that war never changes, but more importantly you’ll find that in some terrifying ways America never changes, either.
2010
Fallout: New Vegas is, to me, definitively the best RPG ever made. And it isn't close.
The Fallout franchise has a long and storied history that bares repeating for the sake of context. Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game was created by Black Isle Studios in 1997 as an isometric, tactical CRPG. The point-and-click, turn-based game was one of the first games to rely on clever dialogue and branching quest lines and while not very popular, set a new standard for these niche types of games. Just a year later Fallout 2 was released, using the same engine and graphics as the first game.
Interplay, the publisher, rented out the license to external studios to create two poorly received spin-offs, Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. These games attempted to spin the license into a pure overhead tactics game and an action game, but with their failure Interplay shut the franchise down and sold the near-useless Fallout IP to Bethesda Softworks. The rest, as they say, is history; Fallout is now one of the biggest gaming franchises on earth. Fallout 3 was 2008’s definitive Game of the Year. Fallout 4, despite disappointing a lot of fans, is one of the best-selling RPGs of all time, topping Bethesda’s own Skyrim and sitting second only to the juggernaut that is Pokemon. While Fallout 76 holds the esteemed title of “worst launch of all time,” the Wastelanders update has made the game playable and even pretty good. Essentially, Fallout games have a history of being all over the place.
Nestled comfortably in this complicated release history is 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas. Following the success of Fallout 3, Bethesda rented out the Fallout IP to a new studio called Obsidian Entertainment, made up of the very ex-Black Isle Studios employees that had created Fallout in the first place. Bethesda handed Obsidian the Fallout 3 engine and put them to work — and so it was that the planets aligned. All the best parts of the classic Fallout games and the Bethesda version came together to form Fallout: New Vegas, one of the greatest RPGs (and dare I say greatest games) of all time.
A quick cut scene establishes the world of Fallout: war between the US and China escalated in the year 2077 to the point of total atomic annihilation around the world. The bombs dropped and ended humanity as we know it, leaving the survivors to scrounge for food in a horrific wasteland. The Forced Evolutionary Virus escaped containment, transforming everything from scorpions to lizards to humans into grotesque mutants. Over a hundred years later, a courier travels through the Mojave desert to deliver a package. The Courier is stopped by Benny, played by Matthew Perry (Chandler from Friends), and is shot in the head when they refuse to give up the goods.
The player wakes up in the run-down home of one Doc Mitchell, a kindly old man who explains the situation and acquaints the Courier with the state of the world. He then guides you through a clever set of questions in a psych test to determine your optimal character build, but you can of course set your stats however you’d like. After point-buying from your seven S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck), you’ll select a few special skills for your character to have. You design your character in a subpar character creator (but hey, it was 2010) and then it’s off to the wasteland!
New Vegas was the first Fallout game I ever played, and I had no idea what the series was about before that. More than that, though, this was the first open world game I had ever played. And the first western RPG I’d ever played as well. This was all new to me, every piece of it. New Vegas eases new players in to the post-apocalypse by introducing a compelling cast of characters in Goodsprings, the starting town, and having them drip-feed you exposition through well-written dialogue. Sunny Smiles and her dog Cheyenne walk the Courier through the basics of shooting, VATS, item management and exploration if they choose; if the player is a veteran, they can simply exit Doc Mitchell’s house and begin wandering the waste in literally any direction they choose. New Vegas does a near-perfect job teaching new players how to learn about the wasteland themselves, rather than dumping exposition and calling it a day.
The premise of the story is that you, the Courier, were delivering something called the Platinum Chip to the mysterious owner of New Vegas, Mr. House. After being shot in the head the Courier has lost their memory, and remembers only Benny’s smug face as he pulled the trigger. You’ll set out from Goodsprings to track down Chandler and get the full story out of him, dead or alive. Meanwhile, a war is brewing; two huge armies are moving slowly towards the coveted Hoover Dam, the biggest source of power in the Mojave.
The New California Republic is the remnants of the governments of six West Coast States that formed a new union upon the destruction of the United States, while Caesar’s Legion is a tribe of barbarian sex-traffickers marching from the midwest, believing they are the chosen army to achieve the glory of Rome. This is to say nothing of the aforementioned Mr. House, sitting pretty in control of New Vegas and all the food, water, electricity, drugs and luxuries that come with it. The underground militia of The Brotherhood of Steel sits quietly in the dunes waiting for their moment while the drug-pushing Great Khans stake their claim in the deserts. The Boomers have taken control of an old Air Force base up north and claimed the weapons, but there are rumors that the husk of the American Government has formed once more into the Enclave. Each and every one of these factions have a relationship with the others, and your actions determines who allies together, who betrays each other and who ultimately is victorious.
It is almost impossible to understand the moving pieces of the world as they change around you in response to your decisions. Shooting one person at the wrong time could have ramifications that reach across the deserts and through to the end of the game. Dialogue choices become available to different players depending on how they’ve statted their character, so it’s unlikely any two people have played Fallout New Vegas exactly the same way. Dialogue is more clever than it has any right to be all the way through to the end of the game, and your dialogue choices can have very immediate ramifications if you say the wrong thing. A pleasant chat can become a shootout in a matter of seconds, but hey, that’s the wasteland, baby.
The shooting in Fallout New Vegas is not good. It does improve upon its predecessor, Fallout 3, by offering a much larger assortment of guns; however, the feel of gunplay has not improved. Guns continue to be hard to aim, and moving targets are almost impossible to hit without using VATS (the lock on mechanism). There are many action RPGs in which players will try to power through the dialogue sections to reach the action, however players will likely find the reverse true in New Vegas. Utilizing the correct weapons, armor, chems and skills will give you the edge in individual fights, but the overall war will be decided by how well you can play your character, whether its a max-strength barbarian or a lucky sonofabitch. The RPG mechanics of this game are deeper than most will care to dive into, but rest assured they are there.
The companions in New Vegas are for the most part well written, interesting people that have discernible goals and will join the Courier if they believe it’ll help them reach those goals. Cass, Boone, ED-E and of course our very good boy Rex are just a few of the great characters that will accompany you, each with their own specific set of powers and skills. Dialogue and interactions with other characters will change depending on who your companion is, but be wary that they’re also keeping an eye on you. If the Courier makes too many decisions in favor of a faction they’re not aligned with, the companion will leave your party or even try to kill you. If you’re trying for a Legion playthrough, I’d advise you to assassinate Boone as quickly as possible.
Fallout New Vegas takes everything that Fallout 3 brought to the series stretches it over the skeleton of the classic games, creating something much more elegant than it has any right to be. Aside from the numerous technical problems and impossible-to-aim guns, Fallout New Vegas is a flawless masterpiece. The player will continue to be astounded that the developers thought of one thing or another and prepared for it; your choices in both dialogue and action do truly affect and alter the world around you. And endless cast of well-written characters with overwritten backstories will carry the Courier through the wastes in search of the truth and land them in a very specific position to determine how the war plays out. Although the player is always in control, most repercussions of your actions are completely unintended and leave you scrambling to figure out how to repair an alliance or take a stronghold to remedy it. Obsidian has created the most intricately crafted game ever written with excellent DLC and well over a hundred hours of content — and I didn’t even touch on mods. Get it.
The Fallout franchise has a long and storied history that bares repeating for the sake of context. Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game was created by Black Isle Studios in 1997 as an isometric, tactical CRPG. The point-and-click, turn-based game was one of the first games to rely on clever dialogue and branching quest lines and while not very popular, set a new standard for these niche types of games. Just a year later Fallout 2 was released, using the same engine and graphics as the first game.
Interplay, the publisher, rented out the license to external studios to create two poorly received spin-offs, Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. These games attempted to spin the license into a pure overhead tactics game and an action game, but with their failure Interplay shut the franchise down and sold the near-useless Fallout IP to Bethesda Softworks. The rest, as they say, is history; Fallout is now one of the biggest gaming franchises on earth. Fallout 3 was 2008’s definitive Game of the Year. Fallout 4, despite disappointing a lot of fans, is one of the best-selling RPGs of all time, topping Bethesda’s own Skyrim and sitting second only to the juggernaut that is Pokemon. While Fallout 76 holds the esteemed title of “worst launch of all time,” the Wastelanders update has made the game playable and even pretty good. Essentially, Fallout games have a history of being all over the place.
Nestled comfortably in this complicated release history is 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas. Following the success of Fallout 3, Bethesda rented out the Fallout IP to a new studio called Obsidian Entertainment, made up of the very ex-Black Isle Studios employees that had created Fallout in the first place. Bethesda handed Obsidian the Fallout 3 engine and put them to work — and so it was that the planets aligned. All the best parts of the classic Fallout games and the Bethesda version came together to form Fallout: New Vegas, one of the greatest RPGs (and dare I say greatest games) of all time.
A quick cut scene establishes the world of Fallout: war between the US and China escalated in the year 2077 to the point of total atomic annihilation around the world. The bombs dropped and ended humanity as we know it, leaving the survivors to scrounge for food in a horrific wasteland. The Forced Evolutionary Virus escaped containment, transforming everything from scorpions to lizards to humans into grotesque mutants. Over a hundred years later, a courier travels through the Mojave desert to deliver a package. The Courier is stopped by Benny, played by Matthew Perry (Chandler from Friends), and is shot in the head when they refuse to give up the goods.
The player wakes up in the run-down home of one Doc Mitchell, a kindly old man who explains the situation and acquaints the Courier with the state of the world. He then guides you through a clever set of questions in a psych test to determine your optimal character build, but you can of course set your stats however you’d like. After point-buying from your seven S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck), you’ll select a few special skills for your character to have. You design your character in a subpar character creator (but hey, it was 2010) and then it’s off to the wasteland!
New Vegas was the first Fallout game I ever played, and I had no idea what the series was about before that. More than that, though, this was the first open world game I had ever played. And the first western RPG I’d ever played as well. This was all new to me, every piece of it. New Vegas eases new players in to the post-apocalypse by introducing a compelling cast of characters in Goodsprings, the starting town, and having them drip-feed you exposition through well-written dialogue. Sunny Smiles and her dog Cheyenne walk the Courier through the basics of shooting, VATS, item management and exploration if they choose; if the player is a veteran, they can simply exit Doc Mitchell’s house and begin wandering the waste in literally any direction they choose. New Vegas does a near-perfect job teaching new players how to learn about the wasteland themselves, rather than dumping exposition and calling it a day.
The premise of the story is that you, the Courier, were delivering something called the Platinum Chip to the mysterious owner of New Vegas, Mr. House. After being shot in the head the Courier has lost their memory, and remembers only Benny’s smug face as he pulled the trigger. You’ll set out from Goodsprings to track down Chandler and get the full story out of him, dead or alive. Meanwhile, a war is brewing; two huge armies are moving slowly towards the coveted Hoover Dam, the biggest source of power in the Mojave.
The New California Republic is the remnants of the governments of six West Coast States that formed a new union upon the destruction of the United States, while Caesar’s Legion is a tribe of barbarian sex-traffickers marching from the midwest, believing they are the chosen army to achieve the glory of Rome. This is to say nothing of the aforementioned Mr. House, sitting pretty in control of New Vegas and all the food, water, electricity, drugs and luxuries that come with it. The underground militia of The Brotherhood of Steel sits quietly in the dunes waiting for their moment while the drug-pushing Great Khans stake their claim in the deserts. The Boomers have taken control of an old Air Force base up north and claimed the weapons, but there are rumors that the husk of the American Government has formed once more into the Enclave. Each and every one of these factions have a relationship with the others, and your actions determines who allies together, who betrays each other and who ultimately is victorious.
It is almost impossible to understand the moving pieces of the world as they change around you in response to your decisions. Shooting one person at the wrong time could have ramifications that reach across the deserts and through to the end of the game. Dialogue choices become available to different players depending on how they’ve statted their character, so it’s unlikely any two people have played Fallout New Vegas exactly the same way. Dialogue is more clever than it has any right to be all the way through to the end of the game, and your dialogue choices can have very immediate ramifications if you say the wrong thing. A pleasant chat can become a shootout in a matter of seconds, but hey, that’s the wasteland, baby.
The shooting in Fallout New Vegas is not good. It does improve upon its predecessor, Fallout 3, by offering a much larger assortment of guns; however, the feel of gunplay has not improved. Guns continue to be hard to aim, and moving targets are almost impossible to hit without using VATS (the lock on mechanism). There are many action RPGs in which players will try to power through the dialogue sections to reach the action, however players will likely find the reverse true in New Vegas. Utilizing the correct weapons, armor, chems and skills will give you the edge in individual fights, but the overall war will be decided by how well you can play your character, whether its a max-strength barbarian or a lucky sonofabitch. The RPG mechanics of this game are deeper than most will care to dive into, but rest assured they are there.
The companions in New Vegas are for the most part well written, interesting people that have discernible goals and will join the Courier if they believe it’ll help them reach those goals. Cass, Boone, ED-E and of course our very good boy Rex are just a few of the great characters that will accompany you, each with their own specific set of powers and skills. Dialogue and interactions with other characters will change depending on who your companion is, but be wary that they’re also keeping an eye on you. If the Courier makes too many decisions in favor of a faction they’re not aligned with, the companion will leave your party or even try to kill you. If you’re trying for a Legion playthrough, I’d advise you to assassinate Boone as quickly as possible.
Fallout New Vegas takes everything that Fallout 3 brought to the series stretches it over the skeleton of the classic games, creating something much more elegant than it has any right to be. Aside from the numerous technical problems and impossible-to-aim guns, Fallout New Vegas is a flawless masterpiece. The player will continue to be astounded that the developers thought of one thing or another and prepared for it; your choices in both dialogue and action do truly affect and alter the world around you. And endless cast of well-written characters with overwritten backstories will carry the Courier through the wastes in search of the truth and land them in a very specific position to determine how the war plays out. Although the player is always in control, most repercussions of your actions are completely unintended and leave you scrambling to figure out how to repair an alliance or take a stronghold to remedy it. Obsidian has created the most intricately crafted game ever written with excellent DLC and well over a hundred hours of content — and I didn’t even touch on mods. Get it.
Makoto is an average Japanese student heading into high school (you’ve probably heard this one before) and receives a letter inviting him to the very exclusive Hopes Peak Academy, reserved for Japan’s best and brightest. Every year, a random student is drawn into the class even without a specific skill, designating them the “Ultimate Lucky Student.” You’re going to be seeing the word “ultimate” a lot here, so buckle up. Each student in the school is designated the “ultimate something,” indicating they are the absolute best in their field, no matter how specific or useless. For example, in Danganronpa (D1 going forward) you’ll meet the Ultimate Programmer (cool!), the Ultimate Pop Star (okay…), and the Ultimate Biker Gang Leader (…). Try not to get too tied up in all this. It’s very anime, I know. These characters, who are presented as 2D and entirely focused around one aspect of personality, are amazingly well crafted. This game leans heavily on what it does best, and that is the characters depth and interaction with each other.
When Makoto arrives at school, he’s gassed and wakes up with 15 other new students, trapped inside the school. And when I say trapped, I mean trapped. The doors and windows are all covered over with steel plates 6 inches thick and bolts bigger than a fist. No one knows what’s going on, and everyone remembers having just arrived moments before getting knocked out. After introductions are made, the kids make their way to the gymnasium where we meet the star of the show - Monokuma. Ah, what a delightful little bastard. Monokuma is the villain of the story, and he is something you haven’t seen before, i guarantee it. Without spoiling too much, he is a mechanical teddy bear controlled by a sadistic game master somewhere watching everyone through cameras mounted all around the school. He’s charismatic, funny, lame, and terrifying all at the same time.
Monokuma outlines the rules of the Killing Game, which you may have surmised was going to happen. The only way out of Hopes Peak is to kill another student without getting caught. When one student kills another, they are put on a class trial, which makes up the game portion of D1. I’ll get to that in a second. If the class as a whole is able to figure out who the killer is, that person is killed. If the class guesses wrong, the killer escapes and the rest of the class is killed. Ostensibly, only one person can escape either way. The students are given free reign of the boarding school with all its amenities and are sent on their way.
As you imagine, while they are all initially adamant about not taking part in the killing game, it only takes about 3 days for one of them to break. The game follows you as Makoto conducting investigations after a murder, piecing together evidence, and going to the class trials. There’s a lot of downtime between each trial and the next murder, called “School Life.” This is the visual novel part, and can largely be skipped if you like. You collect coins, buy gifts for specific classmates, build affinity, unlock new conversations with some light romance options, etc. Pretty standard fare for an anime visual novel. That’s when the murder happens.
The class trial consists of several minigames as well as logic puzzles that become pretty difficult to solve in the second part of the game. Play hangman, twin stick arcade shooters, and shoot logic bullets from your idea gun to support or refute classmates’ arguments. It sounds crazy but it’s very well done, and is pretty difficult. And let’s get to that right now: this is a hard game for the most part. You WILL NOT solve any of the murders before the trial begins, and if you think you have, you’re in for a rude awakening. They get more cleverly designed as they go and by the end you’ll just feel like a big jackass for ever thinking you could be a detective. But that moment when you realize everything and connect that last dot halfway through a class trial… it’s priceless.
Besides the characters, the other big selling point of this game is the music. I can’t really describe how good and ridiculous it is, so just take a listen to the main theme. It’s a banger, no two ways about it.
This game is about 35 hours long, so it’s a bit of a commitment to be sure. The only negative thing I have to say about it is the clunky controls during the School Life parts, but that doesn’t make up a lot of the game and it’s mostly skippable, plus the fast travel option helps. My last note is that the ending will blow your mind and fuck you up, and you’ll probably race to start downloading the second game.
This is a violent game. It’s gorey. It’s unforgiving. But it’s also hilarious. There’s a weird line Spike Chunsoft straddles here that I didn’t know about between sadistic murders and funny pranks. But again, it’s so self aware of how ridiculous it is it all feels right. Monokuma is a great and memorable villain, and you’ll find yourself casually checking Amazon to see how much a plush costs.
Danganronpa knows its strengths and leans on them - the ridiculous dialogue and puns, the deeply detailed characters, the wacky art and music. The school life sections, which I find to be tedious, are mostly skippable. The murders are brilliantly put together and full of red herrings, and you’ll walk into the class trial feeling confident but looking like a total dumbass. The logic puzzles are difficult but mostly pretty fair, and you’ll think “oh I see I should have done that” a lot. Yes, this is an anime game, and it’s somewhere between a visual novel and an arcade puzzle, but even if you don’t like any of those things I honestly think you might still like this game.
When Makoto arrives at school, he’s gassed and wakes up with 15 other new students, trapped inside the school. And when I say trapped, I mean trapped. The doors and windows are all covered over with steel plates 6 inches thick and bolts bigger than a fist. No one knows what’s going on, and everyone remembers having just arrived moments before getting knocked out. After introductions are made, the kids make their way to the gymnasium where we meet the star of the show - Monokuma. Ah, what a delightful little bastard. Monokuma is the villain of the story, and he is something you haven’t seen before, i guarantee it. Without spoiling too much, he is a mechanical teddy bear controlled by a sadistic game master somewhere watching everyone through cameras mounted all around the school. He’s charismatic, funny, lame, and terrifying all at the same time.
Monokuma outlines the rules of the Killing Game, which you may have surmised was going to happen. The only way out of Hopes Peak is to kill another student without getting caught. When one student kills another, they are put on a class trial, which makes up the game portion of D1. I’ll get to that in a second. If the class as a whole is able to figure out who the killer is, that person is killed. If the class guesses wrong, the killer escapes and the rest of the class is killed. Ostensibly, only one person can escape either way. The students are given free reign of the boarding school with all its amenities and are sent on their way.
As you imagine, while they are all initially adamant about not taking part in the killing game, it only takes about 3 days for one of them to break. The game follows you as Makoto conducting investigations after a murder, piecing together evidence, and going to the class trials. There’s a lot of downtime between each trial and the next murder, called “School Life.” This is the visual novel part, and can largely be skipped if you like. You collect coins, buy gifts for specific classmates, build affinity, unlock new conversations with some light romance options, etc. Pretty standard fare for an anime visual novel. That’s when the murder happens.
The class trial consists of several minigames as well as logic puzzles that become pretty difficult to solve in the second part of the game. Play hangman, twin stick arcade shooters, and shoot logic bullets from your idea gun to support or refute classmates’ arguments. It sounds crazy but it’s very well done, and is pretty difficult. And let’s get to that right now: this is a hard game for the most part. You WILL NOT solve any of the murders before the trial begins, and if you think you have, you’re in for a rude awakening. They get more cleverly designed as they go and by the end you’ll just feel like a big jackass for ever thinking you could be a detective. But that moment when you realize everything and connect that last dot halfway through a class trial… it’s priceless.
Besides the characters, the other big selling point of this game is the music. I can’t really describe how good and ridiculous it is, so just take a listen to the main theme. It’s a banger, no two ways about it.
This game is about 35 hours long, so it’s a bit of a commitment to be sure. The only negative thing I have to say about it is the clunky controls during the School Life parts, but that doesn’t make up a lot of the game and it’s mostly skippable, plus the fast travel option helps. My last note is that the ending will blow your mind and fuck you up, and you’ll probably race to start downloading the second game.
This is a violent game. It’s gorey. It’s unforgiving. But it’s also hilarious. There’s a weird line Spike Chunsoft straddles here that I didn’t know about between sadistic murders and funny pranks. But again, it’s so self aware of how ridiculous it is it all feels right. Monokuma is a great and memorable villain, and you’ll find yourself casually checking Amazon to see how much a plush costs.
Danganronpa knows its strengths and leans on them - the ridiculous dialogue and puns, the deeply detailed characters, the wacky art and music. The school life sections, which I find to be tedious, are mostly skippable. The murders are brilliantly put together and full of red herrings, and you’ll walk into the class trial feeling confident but looking like a total dumbass. The logic puzzles are difficult but mostly pretty fair, and you’ll think “oh I see I should have done that” a lot. Yes, this is an anime game, and it’s somewhere between a visual novel and an arcade puzzle, but even if you don’t like any of those things I honestly think you might still like this game.
2015
Do you remember your freshman year of college? The sweet elation of freedom that came as you lay down in your dorm bed for the first time, probably wasted as hell, and realized you were responsible for your own fate? This game is that moment.
Life is of course a collection of moments, but Life is Strange is a collection of very distinct moments. When you realized you had total control over what you could eat for the first time. The slow learning that friendships were way more important than they were in high school. Coming to terms with your sexual wants and needs and pursuing them. Staying up drunk with your friends till sunrise talking about nothing. Getting stoned at a friend’s house off campus and being discovered on the floor of a stranger’s home the next morning. Spewing bullshit philosophical theories and believing you and your friends were at the height of your intellect. Spending a full 18 hours studying for a test without eating or sleeping in between. These are the moments, the feelings, that are captured in Life is Strange. If those moments are foreign to you, I can understand if this game doesn’t hit as hard. This game is for those who want to live in that moment again, if just for this one video game.
You play as Max, the somewhat awkward but somewhat confident freshman at a prestigious but tiny art school in the pacific northwest. Max wakes up on a day like any other only to discover she has super powers — she can rewind time by about 30 seconds. This realization of course leads to some wild shenanigans at school, until the shit hits the fan and you see a girl murdered in the bathroom during a drug deal gone wrong. Rewinding time, you save her life only to discover it’s your childhood best friend, Chloe. The crazy, junked up teenager who murdered Chloe happens to be the son of the school’s largest donor and is insanely rich (of course). In addition to that, you’ve got your bitch-ass bitch classmate Veronica to deal with that is majorly crushing your vibes. Plus your best friend Warren who’s falling in love with you. And there has been a mysterious number of young women that have gone missing in Arcadia Bay recently… I don’t want to give away much more of the story than that. Suffice it to say it’s quite interesting.
The characters are lovely and quite believable. Max feels like a real person I could have known in college, and in a lot of ways she feels like me. Max feels like one of those characters, like Harry Potter, that anyone can find a piece of themselves in. Chloe is a wonderfully developed character as well, and their investigation into the missing girls drives the plot forward.
The game controls like a Telltale game with a bit more freedom. You will be making A LOT of decisions, big and small, without and without consequences. You will second guess yourself on all of them. The game’s brilliant design comes out during the choices you make. Remember, you can rewind time. So if you make a decision and it seems to have a negative outcome, you can just rewind and do it another way, right? Have fun with that. Every decision you make has immediately negative consequences. You will never be given the impression after making a choice that you’ve done the “right” thing (if there is such a thing). There are simple puzzles to solve here and there, but the bulk of the game is mostly dialogue and conversation trees with immaculate voice acting and writing.
Most people you talk to have had a different experience with the story. The story does morph and change around you as you make decisions — for instance, I was speaking to a friend and she was reminiscing about the very memorable scene one of the characters had in the last chapter. My response? “Oh, that character died in chapter 2 for me.” She was shocked, and didn’t even know that could happen.
This game is episodic, but all five parts have been out for a while now and you’ll get the full game experience at once. This is one of those that I could not put down, even for a day. I had to see my way to the end of it. The game’s ending has been pretty reviled by a lot of people, but I saw it through a different lens and quite liked it. Or at least it gave me closure. I highly recommend it for anyone that’s maybe a little lonely, a little nostalgic, or who just wants to live in a teen d
Life is Strange is a game that will tug on your heartstrings. It feels like a real journey that you’ve been on before, sometime long ago. That evening in the early fall where you and your friends ran from one side of campus to the other for ice cream, got blasted in someone’s dorm room, played Mario Kart until you passed out — you can live in that again with this game, if only for a moment.
Life is of course a collection of moments, but Life is Strange is a collection of very distinct moments. When you realized you had total control over what you could eat for the first time. The slow learning that friendships were way more important than they were in high school. Coming to terms with your sexual wants and needs and pursuing them. Staying up drunk with your friends till sunrise talking about nothing. Getting stoned at a friend’s house off campus and being discovered on the floor of a stranger’s home the next morning. Spewing bullshit philosophical theories and believing you and your friends were at the height of your intellect. Spending a full 18 hours studying for a test without eating or sleeping in between. These are the moments, the feelings, that are captured in Life is Strange. If those moments are foreign to you, I can understand if this game doesn’t hit as hard. This game is for those who want to live in that moment again, if just for this one video game.
You play as Max, the somewhat awkward but somewhat confident freshman at a prestigious but tiny art school in the pacific northwest. Max wakes up on a day like any other only to discover she has super powers — she can rewind time by about 30 seconds. This realization of course leads to some wild shenanigans at school, until the shit hits the fan and you see a girl murdered in the bathroom during a drug deal gone wrong. Rewinding time, you save her life only to discover it’s your childhood best friend, Chloe. The crazy, junked up teenager who murdered Chloe happens to be the son of the school’s largest donor and is insanely rich (of course). In addition to that, you’ve got your bitch-ass bitch classmate Veronica to deal with that is majorly crushing your vibes. Plus your best friend Warren who’s falling in love with you. And there has been a mysterious number of young women that have gone missing in Arcadia Bay recently… I don’t want to give away much more of the story than that. Suffice it to say it’s quite interesting.
The characters are lovely and quite believable. Max feels like a real person I could have known in college, and in a lot of ways she feels like me. Max feels like one of those characters, like Harry Potter, that anyone can find a piece of themselves in. Chloe is a wonderfully developed character as well, and their investigation into the missing girls drives the plot forward.
The game controls like a Telltale game with a bit more freedom. You will be making A LOT of decisions, big and small, without and without consequences. You will second guess yourself on all of them. The game’s brilliant design comes out during the choices you make. Remember, you can rewind time. So if you make a decision and it seems to have a negative outcome, you can just rewind and do it another way, right? Have fun with that. Every decision you make has immediately negative consequences. You will never be given the impression after making a choice that you’ve done the “right” thing (if there is such a thing). There are simple puzzles to solve here and there, but the bulk of the game is mostly dialogue and conversation trees with immaculate voice acting and writing.
Most people you talk to have had a different experience with the story. The story does morph and change around you as you make decisions — for instance, I was speaking to a friend and she was reminiscing about the very memorable scene one of the characters had in the last chapter. My response? “Oh, that character died in chapter 2 for me.” She was shocked, and didn’t even know that could happen.
This game is episodic, but all five parts have been out for a while now and you’ll get the full game experience at once. This is one of those that I could not put down, even for a day. I had to see my way to the end of it. The game’s ending has been pretty reviled by a lot of people, but I saw it through a different lens and quite liked it. Or at least it gave me closure. I highly recommend it for anyone that’s maybe a little lonely, a little nostalgic, or who just wants to live in a teen d
Life is Strange is a game that will tug on your heartstrings. It feels like a real journey that you’ve been on before, sometime long ago. That evening in the early fall where you and your friends ran from one side of campus to the other for ice cream, got blasted in someone’s dorm room, played Mario Kart until you passed out — you can live in that again with this game, if only for a moment.
2016
Just to qualify some of the things I say, here’s my history with Pokémon. Blue was the first video game I ever played and first game I ever beat. I spent hundreds of hours on Silver, and remember the exact moment as a 6 year old that I beat the Elite Four. I completed the National Dex on Ruby (with a little help from my friend Game Shark). I’ve played every Pokémon spin off game. My brother and I put hundreds of hours into Stadium 1 & 2 as kids, and Pokémon Snap still sits in the Hall of Greats for me. When I got to high school and Diamond/Pearl came out, I was too cool for Pokémon. It’s for babies! I also missed out on Black/White for this reason. Sue me, we all had this phase.
As did every single one of us, when I got to college I realized it was okay to like the things you like, and all of my friends were back into Pokémon as well. I remember being so excited for XY in my Junior year of college. Nerd stuff makes you cool in college! My roommate and I rolled up to the Gamestop on release date and each bought a 2DS with X or Y (I got Y). It was so cool seeing Pokémon in 3D for the first time, but i have to admit that when I finished it 50 hours later it fell a little flat. Whatever, I was just glad to be back. I love this little fighting cactus, or whatever! Who remembers. I’ve been playing Pokemon Go every single day for the last 2 years. This franchise is close to my heart.
When Sun and Moon dropped, I got my pre-order ready. I upgraded to a New 3DS XL from my 2DS to prepare. And you know what? Not disappointed. Let’s get into it.
From humble beginnings, you’ll start your journey as a 10 year old (I know, I know) who has just been forced to move to Alola (Hawaii) from Kanto (Japan) because your mom has a new job. This heartwarming ad for SM is basically that story, and boy did I cry when I watched it. https://youtu.be/Byg1Ti15K_o
We’re all one just people, man. Pokémon, as the biggest franchise in the world, has a distinct honor of connecting people across races, nationalities, gender identities, orientations, and even language barriers. Trade, battle, work together. Pokémon is how I made many of my friends as a kid and even a few in college. The power of this franchise should not be underestimated, even if you turn your nose up at it. Remember that first month of Pokémon GO? That was the closest we will ever be to world peace.
______________________________________________________________
The Game
Of course the first thing we want to do when a new Pokémon game drops is get a look at those beautiful, beautiful starters. Pictured above, from left to right we have Rowlett, Litten, and Popplio. Personally, I’ve always picked the water starter, although I experimented with Treecko in Ruby (it was a phase). I know Popplio has gotten a lot of flak for being a literal clown, but wait until you see her final form’s Z-Move: https://youtu.be/S85tGtPHOSI
I couldn’t resist her siren song. I’m a proud father of a young, healthy Primarina.
Regardless of who you pick, this batch of starters is the best since Gen III, at least in my opinion. You’ll end up with either Decidueye, Incineroar, or Primarina, all pretty good designs. As is customary, here’s an absolute bop from the soundtrack of this game. Play this as you read for the sake of immersion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REC7daXbjho
After leaving home, you’ll experience the most beautiful region yet, Alola. Look, the map design itself was better in Gen III, sure, but no one can argue that the lushness of the tropical jungle makes Pokémon finally feel fresh again. The new Pokémon designs, for the most part, are really good and sometimes clever. I love Mudsdale so much. These are the best Pokemon designs since RSE, don’t @ me. Alolan Pokemon also were a great move. Alolan Exeggutor is a masterstroke for meme potential, and seeing an Ice Ninetales and a Ghost/Fire Marowak is just exciting for fans of the 1st Gen.
SM was a, well not a breath of fresh air, but a puff. More like how Link’s Awakening reinvigorated the Zelda series with new stuff rather than how Breath of the Wild tore it apart and rebuilt it from the ground up.
Mega Evolutions? Ugh, Mom, we’re on Z-Moves now.
That’s right, Megas are out. Hot take: Z-Moves are fun. You do a dumb dance with your Pokémon, it uses a super-powerful attack, and then you can’t do it again the rest of the match. Megas always felt overpowered to me, and I like that any Pokémon can use Z-Moves. Plus, it’s a onetime attack so it’s good to get out of a tight situation in a gym battle.
Gym battles? Mom, gym battles are so 2015. We’re doing Island Trials.
That’s right, gyms are gone. They’ve been replaced with Island Trials, which are definitely not gyms. Despite my saltiness here, I preferred the format of Island Trials to gyms. You explore a small area, do a small side quest, battle some minion Pokémon, and progress to the boss battle: A Totem Pokémon. Totems are larger and more powerful than their counterparts with the main distinction of being able to summon minions during the fight. This turned out to work very well and provided wildly different levels of difficulty. WishiWashi provided a considerable challenge and actually KO’d my whole party the first time through. I had to fight Larantis FOUR TIMES before I was able to kill it. In contrast, I one-shotted Salazzle on the first turn. So… your mileage may vary. At the end of each Island you’ll fight a boss, the Island Kahuna, who again is somewhat of a challenge. Then you unlock a new mechanic to help you traverse the overworld. Yeah, like an HM -
Mom you’re embarrassing me! HM’s are dead. We have Pokémon Uber.
That’s right, HM’s are out as well. Gone are the days of wasting a move slot on a party member for Cut or Flash. We’ve now got a smartphone (I’ll get to the Rotom Dex in a bit) with the Poke Ride Share app, which calls to your aid different Pokémon to either solve environmental puzzles or help you cross difficult terrain. You unlock more as you go along, and it works well. SwSh has no HM’s and no rideshare either, the world is free of “cut trees” and “strength boulders.” Honestly, good move.
So those are the things that are different. How’s everything else?
The game is definitely a bit more difficult than XY, no question. Not to say that it’s hard, just harder than XY, which was a game a baby could play while asleep. EXP share is a team thing again, which sucks, but you can turn it off, which I did immediately.
There. Are. A. Lot. Of. Cutscenes. And you know me, I love those 9 minute unskippable cutscenes. This is probably the worst thing about the game, to be honest. There are cutscenes every 4-5 minutes in the story heavy parts, and they’re all about 5 minutes long. Pokémon has long sufficed on not really having a story, and when they said “this one is going to have a big story” they meant it. Usually you’d want them to spend more time honing a finely crafted story, but this seems like they just crammed 20 years’ worth of story into the game to make up for all the previous gens not having one. The story is fine and would actually qualify as good if not for such lengthy, arduous cutscenes. SM managed to produce the most memorable characters the series has had since GSC.
So let’s get into the characters. Professor Kikui is a hot young stud in the academic world, looking to prove himself. He has a flair for the dramatic, and I won’t say more than that to avoid ruining the best scene in the entire game. To round out the dynamic trio, you’ve got Lillie, the adopted daughter of Professor Kikui, and Hau, your dumb best friend/neighbor/rival who really just believes in everyone. Lillie and Hau act as companions on your journey, but they don’t actually walk everywhere with you. They just move around to each area/island as the story moves them, and I liked this system. It felt enough like having companions without feeling like I had to drag them everywhere. Then we have your real rival, Gladion, a smug blond Draco Malfoy-type who puts up an actual challenge when you fight him.
And then the Rotom Dex, your constant companion. Yes, your Pokedex talks to you. No, it doesn’t ever become more endearing. I like the ideas of companions in concept, and they really went half-assed with this one. We need a full fledged Navi if we’re going to go in on that, not a constantly buzzing cartoon phone that keeps sending you tutorial hints 80 hours into the game.
There are two major institutions in play here – Team Skull and the Aether Foundation. That’s right, Pokémon has factions now. Too bad you can’t join them! Team Skull is, well, amazing. They are definitely the best evil team we’ve had since Team Rocket. They’re dumb, funny, and have amazing music. I personally have a Team Skull cosplay that’s a big hit. They’re led by Guzma, who comes off as kind of an ass, but I guess that’ll happen when you are the head of an evil team of thugs. One of my favorite sections of the game was Po Town, a village that Team Skull basically invaded and took over. The Aether Foundation is just a ton of science fiction tropes in a shiny chrome laboratory trying to break the laws of reality for the sake of progress. If you are familiar with Fallout, this is the Institute to a tee. They’re doing research on a weird phenomenon called Ultra Beasts. Their leader, Lusamine, looks awfully familiar…
This game is also a lot more anime than the previous ones, which works fine for it. You can see they dove even further into the anime aesthetic in SwSh, and it works well there. Lillie has a pet Cosmog named Nebby, who is quite obviously a legendary Pokémon. The plot of the game revolves around the bad guys, Team Skull, trying to obtain Nebby and you trying to keep Nebby is his goddamn bag for five fucking minutes. While being annoying in that he keeps getting kidnapped, Nebby is charming and cute, and I grew to love that little bastard.
The world is broken up into four islands, each one more tropical than the last. Mechanically it just is a way of locking off the game until you progress the story, but each individual island is fairly open, so you can kind of explore that any way you’d like.
Once you beat the Elite Four equivalent, there’s a bit of post-game and it’s not bad. The post-game of XY, Delta Episode, was the highlight of the game and made me hopeful for something crazy in SM. Alas, nothing to write home about. There’s a final boss battle at the end which is very cool, followed by access to the Battle Tower. This is again not the Battle Frontier, just an endless roulette of trainers. It’s fun, and I’ve spent a few hours fighting doubles in the tower, but it could have been way more entertaining.
Sun and Moon don’t quite provide the big reimagining the series desperately needs, but they at least try something new. The new Pokémon designs feel fresh, as does the tropical nature of the region. There are a lot of references to Gen I, which feels pandering but probably did its job getting old fans back into the series. The characters are interesting and memorable, but the story is weighed down by 5+ minute unskippable cutscenes all the way through, ruining what would otherwise be an above average JRPG story. The bosses in this game are difficult and will actually defeat you here and there (sometimes requiring multiple tries even for the best trainers) but the difficulty of regular trainers in the overworld remains a bit too easy. SM rectifies a few of the traditions that have been holding back Pokemon since RSE, and it’s absolutely worth a shot to experience a new, beautiful world.
As did every single one of us, when I got to college I realized it was okay to like the things you like, and all of my friends were back into Pokémon as well. I remember being so excited for XY in my Junior year of college. Nerd stuff makes you cool in college! My roommate and I rolled up to the Gamestop on release date and each bought a 2DS with X or Y (I got Y). It was so cool seeing Pokémon in 3D for the first time, but i have to admit that when I finished it 50 hours later it fell a little flat. Whatever, I was just glad to be back. I love this little fighting cactus, or whatever! Who remembers. I’ve been playing Pokemon Go every single day for the last 2 years. This franchise is close to my heart.
When Sun and Moon dropped, I got my pre-order ready. I upgraded to a New 3DS XL from my 2DS to prepare. And you know what? Not disappointed. Let’s get into it.
From humble beginnings, you’ll start your journey as a 10 year old (I know, I know) who has just been forced to move to Alola (Hawaii) from Kanto (Japan) because your mom has a new job. This heartwarming ad for SM is basically that story, and boy did I cry when I watched it. https://youtu.be/Byg1Ti15K_o
We’re all one just people, man. Pokémon, as the biggest franchise in the world, has a distinct honor of connecting people across races, nationalities, gender identities, orientations, and even language barriers. Trade, battle, work together. Pokémon is how I made many of my friends as a kid and even a few in college. The power of this franchise should not be underestimated, even if you turn your nose up at it. Remember that first month of Pokémon GO? That was the closest we will ever be to world peace.
______________________________________________________________
The Game
Of course the first thing we want to do when a new Pokémon game drops is get a look at those beautiful, beautiful starters. Pictured above, from left to right we have Rowlett, Litten, and Popplio. Personally, I’ve always picked the water starter, although I experimented with Treecko in Ruby (it was a phase). I know Popplio has gotten a lot of flak for being a literal clown, but wait until you see her final form’s Z-Move: https://youtu.be/S85tGtPHOSI
I couldn’t resist her siren song. I’m a proud father of a young, healthy Primarina.
Regardless of who you pick, this batch of starters is the best since Gen III, at least in my opinion. You’ll end up with either Decidueye, Incineroar, or Primarina, all pretty good designs. As is customary, here’s an absolute bop from the soundtrack of this game. Play this as you read for the sake of immersion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REC7daXbjho
After leaving home, you’ll experience the most beautiful region yet, Alola. Look, the map design itself was better in Gen III, sure, but no one can argue that the lushness of the tropical jungle makes Pokémon finally feel fresh again. The new Pokémon designs, for the most part, are really good and sometimes clever. I love Mudsdale so much. These are the best Pokemon designs since RSE, don’t @ me. Alolan Pokemon also were a great move. Alolan Exeggutor is a masterstroke for meme potential, and seeing an Ice Ninetales and a Ghost/Fire Marowak is just exciting for fans of the 1st Gen.
SM was a, well not a breath of fresh air, but a puff. More like how Link’s Awakening reinvigorated the Zelda series with new stuff rather than how Breath of the Wild tore it apart and rebuilt it from the ground up.
Mega Evolutions? Ugh, Mom, we’re on Z-Moves now.
That’s right, Megas are out. Hot take: Z-Moves are fun. You do a dumb dance with your Pokémon, it uses a super-powerful attack, and then you can’t do it again the rest of the match. Megas always felt overpowered to me, and I like that any Pokémon can use Z-Moves. Plus, it’s a onetime attack so it’s good to get out of a tight situation in a gym battle.
Gym battles? Mom, gym battles are so 2015. We’re doing Island Trials.
That’s right, gyms are gone. They’ve been replaced with Island Trials, which are definitely not gyms. Despite my saltiness here, I preferred the format of Island Trials to gyms. You explore a small area, do a small side quest, battle some minion Pokémon, and progress to the boss battle: A Totem Pokémon. Totems are larger and more powerful than their counterparts with the main distinction of being able to summon minions during the fight. This turned out to work very well and provided wildly different levels of difficulty. WishiWashi provided a considerable challenge and actually KO’d my whole party the first time through. I had to fight Larantis FOUR TIMES before I was able to kill it. In contrast, I one-shotted Salazzle on the first turn. So… your mileage may vary. At the end of each Island you’ll fight a boss, the Island Kahuna, who again is somewhat of a challenge. Then you unlock a new mechanic to help you traverse the overworld. Yeah, like an HM -
Mom you’re embarrassing me! HM’s are dead. We have Pokémon Uber.
That’s right, HM’s are out as well. Gone are the days of wasting a move slot on a party member for Cut or Flash. We’ve now got a smartphone (I’ll get to the Rotom Dex in a bit) with the Poke Ride Share app, which calls to your aid different Pokémon to either solve environmental puzzles or help you cross difficult terrain. You unlock more as you go along, and it works well. SwSh has no HM’s and no rideshare either, the world is free of “cut trees” and “strength boulders.” Honestly, good move.
So those are the things that are different. How’s everything else?
The game is definitely a bit more difficult than XY, no question. Not to say that it’s hard, just harder than XY, which was a game a baby could play while asleep. EXP share is a team thing again, which sucks, but you can turn it off, which I did immediately.
There. Are. A. Lot. Of. Cutscenes. And you know me, I love those 9 minute unskippable cutscenes. This is probably the worst thing about the game, to be honest. There are cutscenes every 4-5 minutes in the story heavy parts, and they’re all about 5 minutes long. Pokémon has long sufficed on not really having a story, and when they said “this one is going to have a big story” they meant it. Usually you’d want them to spend more time honing a finely crafted story, but this seems like they just crammed 20 years’ worth of story into the game to make up for all the previous gens not having one. The story is fine and would actually qualify as good if not for such lengthy, arduous cutscenes. SM managed to produce the most memorable characters the series has had since GSC.
So let’s get into the characters. Professor Kikui is a hot young stud in the academic world, looking to prove himself. He has a flair for the dramatic, and I won’t say more than that to avoid ruining the best scene in the entire game. To round out the dynamic trio, you’ve got Lillie, the adopted daughter of Professor Kikui, and Hau, your dumb best friend/neighbor/rival who really just believes in everyone. Lillie and Hau act as companions on your journey, but they don’t actually walk everywhere with you. They just move around to each area/island as the story moves them, and I liked this system. It felt enough like having companions without feeling like I had to drag them everywhere. Then we have your real rival, Gladion, a smug blond Draco Malfoy-type who puts up an actual challenge when you fight him.
And then the Rotom Dex, your constant companion. Yes, your Pokedex talks to you. No, it doesn’t ever become more endearing. I like the ideas of companions in concept, and they really went half-assed with this one. We need a full fledged Navi if we’re going to go in on that, not a constantly buzzing cartoon phone that keeps sending you tutorial hints 80 hours into the game.
There are two major institutions in play here – Team Skull and the Aether Foundation. That’s right, Pokémon has factions now. Too bad you can’t join them! Team Skull is, well, amazing. They are definitely the best evil team we’ve had since Team Rocket. They’re dumb, funny, and have amazing music. I personally have a Team Skull cosplay that’s a big hit. They’re led by Guzma, who comes off as kind of an ass, but I guess that’ll happen when you are the head of an evil team of thugs. One of my favorite sections of the game was Po Town, a village that Team Skull basically invaded and took over. The Aether Foundation is just a ton of science fiction tropes in a shiny chrome laboratory trying to break the laws of reality for the sake of progress. If you are familiar with Fallout, this is the Institute to a tee. They’re doing research on a weird phenomenon called Ultra Beasts. Their leader, Lusamine, looks awfully familiar…
This game is also a lot more anime than the previous ones, which works fine for it. You can see they dove even further into the anime aesthetic in SwSh, and it works well there. Lillie has a pet Cosmog named Nebby, who is quite obviously a legendary Pokémon. The plot of the game revolves around the bad guys, Team Skull, trying to obtain Nebby and you trying to keep Nebby is his goddamn bag for five fucking minutes. While being annoying in that he keeps getting kidnapped, Nebby is charming and cute, and I grew to love that little bastard.
The world is broken up into four islands, each one more tropical than the last. Mechanically it just is a way of locking off the game until you progress the story, but each individual island is fairly open, so you can kind of explore that any way you’d like.
Once you beat the Elite Four equivalent, there’s a bit of post-game and it’s not bad. The post-game of XY, Delta Episode, was the highlight of the game and made me hopeful for something crazy in SM. Alas, nothing to write home about. There’s a final boss battle at the end which is very cool, followed by access to the Battle Tower. This is again not the Battle Frontier, just an endless roulette of trainers. It’s fun, and I’ve spent a few hours fighting doubles in the tower, but it could have been way more entertaining.
Sun and Moon don’t quite provide the big reimagining the series desperately needs, but they at least try something new. The new Pokémon designs feel fresh, as does the tropical nature of the region. There are a lot of references to Gen I, which feels pandering but probably did its job getting old fans back into the series. The characters are interesting and memorable, but the story is weighed down by 5+ minute unskippable cutscenes all the way through, ruining what would otherwise be an above average JRPG story. The bosses in this game are difficult and will actually defeat you here and there (sometimes requiring multiple tries even for the best trainers) but the difficulty of regular trainers in the overworld remains a bit too easy. SM rectifies a few of the traditions that have been holding back Pokemon since RSE, and it’s absolutely worth a shot to experience a new, beautiful world.
Why do we love Sonic so much? This question has been asked many times to many people over the last 30 years, and every year it becomes increasingly harder to answer. Do I love Sonic? Hell yeah. Why? Um, the colors? The whimsical characters? The TV shows? Maybe. It sure as hell isn’t because of the games, though.
I will preface this with a disclaimer that although I do love sonic games, and have played most of them, I can’t point at any specific game as honestly being excellent. Just so you know where I stand, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on Gamecube was a HUGE part of my childhood. My brother and I played hundreds of hours of that game, between the fun extra challenges that were available for EVERY STAGE (collect 100 rings, find the chao, time attack, and hard mode), the Chao Garden and its mini games, and of course the ridiculous 2 player mode (Chaos Spear! Ouch!). And the music was straight bangers, from Live and Learn all the way to the Chao Garden Lobby. But for how much I love the game, it’s not particularly good. It’s clunky, glitchy, the voice acting is hilarious and horribly dubbed (I found you! Faker!) and the “shooting” stages, roughly 1/3 of the game, feel like garbage to play. But I love it. I didn’t purchase Sonic Forces with the expectation that it’d be great. I hoped that it would be campy and funny and playable enough that I would remember why I loved Sonic so much. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
Remember Shadow the Hedgehog, the edgier version of Sonic? Well say hello to Shadow 2, the sequel. The story begins with Sonic facing off against a new, even edgier hedgehog named Infinite. Please listen to his theme while reading this or you won’t truly understand what you’re getting into.
Sonic is taken by Dr. Eggman, and Tails suffers PTSD. We skip to 6 months later, and Eggman has taken over the entire world with the help of Infinite. This is where perhaps the only truly great part of the game comes in — the character builder.
This is something that I did not ask for, but now can’t believe I ever lived without. I created my own guy, Cowbop, an anthropomorphic something or other. The point is, he’s very fancy. I wanted a Texas oil tycoon vibe around him and I think I got it in one. Anyway, there’s a character builder with an insane amount of outfits, hats, shoes, and other gear to unlock as you play the game. The Gamer Hat sticks out as maybe the most memorable of the bunch. Your avatar will join the cast of Sonic Forces and you’ll get to high-five Knuckles, just like you always dreamed. I had a ton of fun changing up the styles and customizing by avatar throughout the game, and I think that’s the last good thing I have to say about Sonic Forces.
So why is this game so bad? I can sum it up in one sentence. It feels awful to play. The game is split between modern Sonic stages (3D similar to Colors and Generations), Classic Sonic (2D as presented in generations), and Avatar stages (3D stages like modern Sonic). The Avatar and Classic Sonic both feel like garbage to play. I can’t say much about the classic Sonic stages except that they’re uninspired, hard to navigate, require a lot more slow careful movement than actual speed, and are quite boring. The Avatar stages themselves are mostly sound, and playing with Modern Sonic doesn’t feel as bad, just kind of boring. The Avatar character does not have a homing attack, which Sonic veterans know is literally his entire thing in the 3D games. Instead he’s got a grappling hook that works sometimes, and much more slowly than a homing attack. This was intended to make the character more versatile, since you can install weapon modules that give you different abilities later on, but I’ll get to why that ruined the entire game further down.The whole thing is clunky, and nothing about the avatar’s movement is fluid or smooth… which is like the one thing you need in a Sonic game. Again, modern Sonic’s stages are passable, but mostly don’t require you to do anything. There are sections of the game where you can literally not touch the controller for 2 minutes and continue progressing through a stage.
Sonic games are often praised for their music, even when the rest of the game is actual garbage. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen with Sonic Forces. The typical thing we’ve come to love and expect from Sonic soundtracks is that upbeat rock sound with atmospheric hard vocals. The soundtrack of this game is almost entirely EDM. Now I like EDM normally, but it’s not Sonic music. There’s a lot of generic singing and beats and sounds and all the tracks blend together. Not to mention the main theme, First Bump, is not super good. It’s not bad, but it’s probably the least exciting and catchy of the main game themes. The Infinite song is its own beast.
Speaking of Infinite, fighting him felt very… dumb. It was repetitive and there were no consequences for screwing up. It took a long time to do the mini boss fights against him, and really didn’t make me feel like I had accomplished anything. The final boss fight was challenging and forced me to try 4 different weapons before finding one that actually allowed me to win. It took probably half an hour to do, but on the run where I won the final boss took maybe 5 minutes. I was… unimpressed. Winning required me picking the right weapon, not learning how the boss worked and outsmarting it. That’s just me, though, it’s conceivable that other people enjoyed the boss fights. Big snake, anyone?
The environments were largely, to use the word again, uninspired. All of it was totally forgettable with the sole exception of the Casino Forest, which I would love to have seen more of. Sonic veterans will know there’s always a casino stage and they’re normally pretty samey, but putting it in a forest really mixed it up and I actually paused the game to admire the scenery a few times. Hoping it comes back in the next installment, which I will for some reason still buy.
My last main thing to talk about is a specific incident I ran into that ruined the whole idea of the game (luckily it was the penultimate stage.) I will first preface with the fact that nowhere in the game are you told that certain stages can only be completed with certain weapons. I had been switching weapons almost every stage with my avatar and hadn’t run into any problems I couldn’t get around, even if it would have been easier with, say the fire gun instead of the lightning cannon. This stage has a section in it at the very end that is only doable with the drill weapon. That’s right, after spending almost half an hour trying to get past one specific part of the stage and getting stumped over and over, I finally had to look it up. In all the playthrough videos I watched, everyone said “just attach the drill.” Cool. There are 8 different weapons in this game. You can’t switch weapons mid-stage. So I had to go back and restart the stage with the drill weapon, and I blasted through that section. Cool. So it was literally impossible to beat this stage with all but one weapon, and I wasn’t told anywhere that this would be the case, nor that this kind of thing could even happen in the game. After all the time I lost on this section in vain, I was more than a little salty about the experience. But about half an hour later, the game was over. A smooth transition to my next point.
This game is 4.5 hours long, if you spend some time character creating and do a few extra missions along the way. There is some replayability built into the game but it feels so damn bad to play it you won’t want to do that. The Shadow DLC, which is also not fun and fully of RNG bullshit traps that randomly toss you off the stage, takes about 15 minutes. Thank god it’s free DLC. I paid $40 for this game, but that’s my own fault.
Sonic Forces is not a good game. It feels clunky, the levels and music are generic and uninspired, it’s full of annoying pandering, and your player character you spent 45 minutes making handles like a Razr Scooter in a swamp. Infinite is a boring villain with boring boss fights. The customizability of your avatar’s gear is fun and overloaded with outfit combinations, but the fact that certain weapons don’t allow you to complete certain stages with literally no warning from the game is inexcusable.
If you’re itching for some Sonic Forces, I highly recommend the Game Grumps playthrough of it. It’s hilarious and they don’t shit on it nearly as much as I did here. It’s one of their funnier things and they finish it completely.
I will preface this with a disclaimer that although I do love sonic games, and have played most of them, I can’t point at any specific game as honestly being excellent. Just so you know where I stand, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on Gamecube was a HUGE part of my childhood. My brother and I played hundreds of hours of that game, between the fun extra challenges that were available for EVERY STAGE (collect 100 rings, find the chao, time attack, and hard mode), the Chao Garden and its mini games, and of course the ridiculous 2 player mode (Chaos Spear! Ouch!). And the music was straight bangers, from Live and Learn all the way to the Chao Garden Lobby. But for how much I love the game, it’s not particularly good. It’s clunky, glitchy, the voice acting is hilarious and horribly dubbed (I found you! Faker!) and the “shooting” stages, roughly 1/3 of the game, feel like garbage to play. But I love it. I didn’t purchase Sonic Forces with the expectation that it’d be great. I hoped that it would be campy and funny and playable enough that I would remember why I loved Sonic so much. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
Remember Shadow the Hedgehog, the edgier version of Sonic? Well say hello to Shadow 2, the sequel. The story begins with Sonic facing off against a new, even edgier hedgehog named Infinite. Please listen to his theme while reading this or you won’t truly understand what you’re getting into.
Sonic is taken by Dr. Eggman, and Tails suffers PTSD. We skip to 6 months later, and Eggman has taken over the entire world with the help of Infinite. This is where perhaps the only truly great part of the game comes in — the character builder.
This is something that I did not ask for, but now can’t believe I ever lived without. I created my own guy, Cowbop, an anthropomorphic something or other. The point is, he’s very fancy. I wanted a Texas oil tycoon vibe around him and I think I got it in one. Anyway, there’s a character builder with an insane amount of outfits, hats, shoes, and other gear to unlock as you play the game. The Gamer Hat sticks out as maybe the most memorable of the bunch. Your avatar will join the cast of Sonic Forces and you’ll get to high-five Knuckles, just like you always dreamed. I had a ton of fun changing up the styles and customizing by avatar throughout the game, and I think that’s the last good thing I have to say about Sonic Forces.
So why is this game so bad? I can sum it up in one sentence. It feels awful to play. The game is split between modern Sonic stages (3D similar to Colors and Generations), Classic Sonic (2D as presented in generations), and Avatar stages (3D stages like modern Sonic). The Avatar and Classic Sonic both feel like garbage to play. I can’t say much about the classic Sonic stages except that they’re uninspired, hard to navigate, require a lot more slow careful movement than actual speed, and are quite boring. The Avatar stages themselves are mostly sound, and playing with Modern Sonic doesn’t feel as bad, just kind of boring. The Avatar character does not have a homing attack, which Sonic veterans know is literally his entire thing in the 3D games. Instead he’s got a grappling hook that works sometimes, and much more slowly than a homing attack. This was intended to make the character more versatile, since you can install weapon modules that give you different abilities later on, but I’ll get to why that ruined the entire game further down.The whole thing is clunky, and nothing about the avatar’s movement is fluid or smooth… which is like the one thing you need in a Sonic game. Again, modern Sonic’s stages are passable, but mostly don’t require you to do anything. There are sections of the game where you can literally not touch the controller for 2 minutes and continue progressing through a stage.
Sonic games are often praised for their music, even when the rest of the game is actual garbage. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen with Sonic Forces. The typical thing we’ve come to love and expect from Sonic soundtracks is that upbeat rock sound with atmospheric hard vocals. The soundtrack of this game is almost entirely EDM. Now I like EDM normally, but it’s not Sonic music. There’s a lot of generic singing and beats and sounds and all the tracks blend together. Not to mention the main theme, First Bump, is not super good. It’s not bad, but it’s probably the least exciting and catchy of the main game themes. The Infinite song is its own beast.
Speaking of Infinite, fighting him felt very… dumb. It was repetitive and there were no consequences for screwing up. It took a long time to do the mini boss fights against him, and really didn’t make me feel like I had accomplished anything. The final boss fight was challenging and forced me to try 4 different weapons before finding one that actually allowed me to win. It took probably half an hour to do, but on the run where I won the final boss took maybe 5 minutes. I was… unimpressed. Winning required me picking the right weapon, not learning how the boss worked and outsmarting it. That’s just me, though, it’s conceivable that other people enjoyed the boss fights. Big snake, anyone?
The environments were largely, to use the word again, uninspired. All of it was totally forgettable with the sole exception of the Casino Forest, which I would love to have seen more of. Sonic veterans will know there’s always a casino stage and they’re normally pretty samey, but putting it in a forest really mixed it up and I actually paused the game to admire the scenery a few times. Hoping it comes back in the next installment, which I will for some reason still buy.
My last main thing to talk about is a specific incident I ran into that ruined the whole idea of the game (luckily it was the penultimate stage.) I will first preface with the fact that nowhere in the game are you told that certain stages can only be completed with certain weapons. I had been switching weapons almost every stage with my avatar and hadn’t run into any problems I couldn’t get around, even if it would have been easier with, say the fire gun instead of the lightning cannon. This stage has a section in it at the very end that is only doable with the drill weapon. That’s right, after spending almost half an hour trying to get past one specific part of the stage and getting stumped over and over, I finally had to look it up. In all the playthrough videos I watched, everyone said “just attach the drill.” Cool. There are 8 different weapons in this game. You can’t switch weapons mid-stage. So I had to go back and restart the stage with the drill weapon, and I blasted through that section. Cool. So it was literally impossible to beat this stage with all but one weapon, and I wasn’t told anywhere that this would be the case, nor that this kind of thing could even happen in the game. After all the time I lost on this section in vain, I was more than a little salty about the experience. But about half an hour later, the game was over. A smooth transition to my next point.
This game is 4.5 hours long, if you spend some time character creating and do a few extra missions along the way. There is some replayability built into the game but it feels so damn bad to play it you won’t want to do that. The Shadow DLC, which is also not fun and fully of RNG bullshit traps that randomly toss you off the stage, takes about 15 minutes. Thank god it’s free DLC. I paid $40 for this game, but that’s my own fault.
Sonic Forces is not a good game. It feels clunky, the levels and music are generic and uninspired, it’s full of annoying pandering, and your player character you spent 45 minutes making handles like a Razr Scooter in a swamp. Infinite is a boring villain with boring boss fights. The customizability of your avatar’s gear is fun and overloaded with outfit combinations, but the fact that certain weapons don’t allow you to complete certain stages with literally no warning from the game is inexcusable.
If you’re itching for some Sonic Forces, I highly recommend the Game Grumps playthrough of it. It’s hilarious and they don’t shit on it nearly as much as I did here. It’s one of their funnier things and they finish it completely.
2017
It is no overstatement to suggest that Mario has defined and elevated the industry to new heights during the last 30 years with unparalleled endurance. Super Mario 64 was the first game to get a 3D camera right, and placed so much importance on it that the camera is an actual character in the game. Super Mario Sunshine, my personal favorite, gave Mario a set of tools far beyond the jumping we had grown used to for so many years. Super Mario Galaxy was the most innovative platformer of its time, taking full advantage of gravity and perspective to enhance the gameplay. Super Mario 3D World brought co-op to the mainline games and proved that pure, old school platforming in 3D was still fun. Even so, Super Mario Odyssey is something special. Previous Mario titles have continually redefined 3D platformers, but Super Mario Odyssey has perfected them.
When Mario finds out that Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach and arranged a wedding, he sets out on a quest to track down the King Koopa and stop this most unholy of matrimonies. He teams up with Cappy, the magical hat demon, and they set off to rescue both Princess Peach and Cappy’s sister, Tiara.
Cappy at first seems like a simple mechanic. At first glance it appears that Mario can throw the hat at enemies and defeat them. Cappy has so much more to offer though, that is perhaps not on display just from the ads. He can be tossed directly upwards, in a rolling motion along the ground, in an ascending spiral around Mario, or even in a vertical circle from the air. He can be tossed and held in place in to create a platform, or if you’re looking for the advanced stuff he can utilize the dash jump to extend Mario’s jump length tenfold. Cappy’s wide swath of abilities provide the player freedom to try and play however they’d like.
Cappy’s main ability is possession — throwing him onto enemies and objects around the world let’s Mario take control of them. Every one of Mario’s age old enemies, from Goombas to Koopas to Chain-Chomps, is controllable in this game. You can finally be the Bullet Bill you always wanted to be! Cappy additionally can be played by a second player, and working together on a co-op experience in a sandbox Mario game is a dream come true. Don’t expect the co-op to make the game easier, though.
The game so cleverly sets up puzzles in its sandbox world to be solved by utilizing the abilities of some foe while not making it obvious. Children can play this game with a little help, but some of the puzzles can stump even adults. The puzzles and environment tie in so closely with the possession mechanics, yet maintain an air or nonchalance; there are often more clever ways to make it past obstacles than the game would have you think.
Super Mario Odyssey’s theme of world travel is never forgotten or thrown to the wayside. Travel to Mexico, New York City, an underwater kingdom, the deep forest, the moon, the second moon, and even a world a little too similar to Dark Souls. I don’t want to spoil the adventure for you, but the 16+ worlds, some larger even than their Super Mario 64 predecessors, have nothing to offer but beauty, excitement, variety, and an impossible number of challenges.
That brings me to the Moons, the objects you’ll be collecting to power your ship, the Odyssey, and chase down Bowser. First I’ll commend the cleverness of choosing Moons — after all, this is the spiritual successor to Super Mario 64 (in which you collected stars) and Super Mario Sunshine (where you collected suns). Moons are much more plentiful than either of those, and over a hundred can be found in each of the larger worlds. The challenge difficulty of obtaining a moon can be anywhere on a scale of Animal Crossing to Bloodborne, so you’ll always feel that you’re both working towards something and earning something along the way.
Super Mario Odyssey has built on the backs of its predecessors to create an unparalleled 3D platforming experience. The pacing of collecting moons, variety of worlds, Cappy’s distinct platforming abilities, and general attention to fun make Super Mario Odyssey the best 3D platformer ever created. Cappy feels like a natural companion to Mario and I weep at the thought of setting sail on the next adventure without him. Nintendo has proven once again that concentrating on pure, unadulterated fun is what makes Mario games so perpetually strong. No bells, no whistles, just smiles on faces of every age.
When Mario finds out that Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach and arranged a wedding, he sets out on a quest to track down the King Koopa and stop this most unholy of matrimonies. He teams up with Cappy, the magical hat demon, and they set off to rescue both Princess Peach and Cappy’s sister, Tiara.
Cappy at first seems like a simple mechanic. At first glance it appears that Mario can throw the hat at enemies and defeat them. Cappy has so much more to offer though, that is perhaps not on display just from the ads. He can be tossed directly upwards, in a rolling motion along the ground, in an ascending spiral around Mario, or even in a vertical circle from the air. He can be tossed and held in place in to create a platform, or if you’re looking for the advanced stuff he can utilize the dash jump to extend Mario’s jump length tenfold. Cappy’s wide swath of abilities provide the player freedom to try and play however they’d like.
Cappy’s main ability is possession — throwing him onto enemies and objects around the world let’s Mario take control of them. Every one of Mario’s age old enemies, from Goombas to Koopas to Chain-Chomps, is controllable in this game. You can finally be the Bullet Bill you always wanted to be! Cappy additionally can be played by a second player, and working together on a co-op experience in a sandbox Mario game is a dream come true. Don’t expect the co-op to make the game easier, though.
The game so cleverly sets up puzzles in its sandbox world to be solved by utilizing the abilities of some foe while not making it obvious. Children can play this game with a little help, but some of the puzzles can stump even adults. The puzzles and environment tie in so closely with the possession mechanics, yet maintain an air or nonchalance; there are often more clever ways to make it past obstacles than the game would have you think.
Super Mario Odyssey’s theme of world travel is never forgotten or thrown to the wayside. Travel to Mexico, New York City, an underwater kingdom, the deep forest, the moon, the second moon, and even a world a little too similar to Dark Souls. I don’t want to spoil the adventure for you, but the 16+ worlds, some larger even than their Super Mario 64 predecessors, have nothing to offer but beauty, excitement, variety, and an impossible number of challenges.
That brings me to the Moons, the objects you’ll be collecting to power your ship, the Odyssey, and chase down Bowser. First I’ll commend the cleverness of choosing Moons — after all, this is the spiritual successor to Super Mario 64 (in which you collected stars) and Super Mario Sunshine (where you collected suns). Moons are much more plentiful than either of those, and over a hundred can be found in each of the larger worlds. The challenge difficulty of obtaining a moon can be anywhere on a scale of Animal Crossing to Bloodborne, so you’ll always feel that you’re both working towards something and earning something along the way.
Super Mario Odyssey has built on the backs of its predecessors to create an unparalleled 3D platforming experience. The pacing of collecting moons, variety of worlds, Cappy’s distinct platforming abilities, and general attention to fun make Super Mario Odyssey the best 3D platformer ever created. Cappy feels like a natural companion to Mario and I weep at the thought of setting sail on the next adventure without him. Nintendo has proven once again that concentrating on pure, unadulterated fun is what makes Mario games so perpetually strong. No bells, no whistles, just smiles on faces of every age.
2017
Every so often there comes a trailer that grabs you. It steals you away to another world, a future time where you have you finally have your hands on it — and it’s perfect. Usually I try not to get caught up in flights of fantasy about what a game could be. Hype is a dangerous thing, and I try (mostly unsuccessfully) to keep it in check. But when I saw the initial trailer for Prey, the upcoming new IP from Arkane Studios (IMO the most talented developers in the world), I lost it. I NEEDED this game. This game was for me. It was made for me.
I was swept up into the hype. I checked for news articles every day for updates on the development. I scoured the subreddit every morning for some morsel, some new tidbit about this game which I knew would be perfection. I even set up a google alert to tell me whenever an article was posted about Prey, and I read every single goddamn one of them. Hype consumed me. And finally it was launch day. I pre-downloaded it and waited patiently until midnight that Thursday to launch it. Finally it arrived. And guess what? It fucking delivered.
The reveal trailer at E3 that caused me a hundred sleepless nights, screaming into the darkness in terror that it wouldn’t be good.
What’s Prey all about? Arkane has sort of coined their own term for their games, including the Dishonored series, referring to it as an “immersive simulation.” That’s a bit on the nose for Prey actually, but it doesn’t say a whole lot about what the game is like. I’d describe it more closely as a fusion of Bioshock and System Shock with a sprinkling of Dishonored mechanics. In fact, this game, while in early development, was titled “Psychoshock.” The reason it is now called Prey is because Bethesda bought the license for Prey (from the completely unrelated 2006 game) and needed to unload the name somewhere to justify the purchase. Once they saw this game was in space, the slapped the name onto the project despite the two games having no relation to each other whatsoever. It’s a shame too, because the name Psychoshock would have sold a lot more copies of this masterpiece.
Prey wears a lot of different hats at the same time. It’s a high-octane first person shooter. It’s an RPG with experience points, leveling up, skill trees, and weapon and armor mods. It’s a platformer where you build your own platforms to access the dozens of different ways to clear areas. It’s a crafting game about harvesting and managing resources from the environment around you and then building them into items for you to use. It’s a dystopian future story-heavy narrative experience that’s sort of drip fed to you over the course of the game with several layers of mystery over every discovery. It’s a high-stakes stealth game. It’s a dual wielding Bioshock-esque where you use magic with one hand and guns with the other. Most of all, it’s a straight up horror game. If you really can’t stomach horror, this may not be for you. Here’s your exit ramp.
Talos I is overrun with Typhon taking revenge for the torture humans have inflicted upon them. Who’s the real aliens?
Still with me? Good, good. I’m going to skip the spoilers for this one and focus on the gameplay mechanics. You play as Morgan Yu (male or female per your selection, doesn’t change the story), a young astronaut who is the heir to the largest space exploration company in the world. After some shennanigans I don’t want to spoil, you’ll find yourself on board the Talos I, the largest international space station in history. Unfortunately, the Typhon (an alien race) that humans have imprisoned on the station and experimented on for years have orchestrated a coup! Taking an opportunity for revenge, the Typhon unite to rise up and kill their captors, the humans — leaving you as one of the last survivors on this massive, open world space station. A lot of the game revolves around you trying to find your older brother Alex, the director of Talos I, and get some explanation as to how this all happened.
Welcome to the arboretum! Who says space stations need to be metallic and boring?
The environments of this game are a beautiful art deco style, reminiscent of the utopian future sci-fi seen in Star Trek. There is a lot of diversity in them as well, working in everything from cavernous hallways to GUTS, the zero gravity tunnels that run through the station. There are water features, upside down ventilation shafts, offices, bedrooms, swimming pools… you name it. The world is done in the same art style as Dishonored. Think of this as the sci-fi counterpart to it. I’ll also mention that Mick Gordon, of DOOM 2016 fame, is the composer for this game. So yeah, the music slaps. And Everything is decidedly NOT going to be okay.
Weapons are sooooo cool. There’s your standard shotguns and flamethrowers and pistols… whatever. There’s a cool laser beam gun called the Q Beam and a few other standouts, like the recycler grenade, which I’ll get to later. The shooting feels good, but those aren’t what you came for. You’re here for the GLOO gun, and you will not be disappointed. The GLOO gun is the first weapon you get in the game, and its utility cannot be overstated. This hand cannon shoots out globs of a sticky substance called GLOO, which goes from a liquid adhesive to a solid rock-like substance the moment it makes contact with the air. Your first question is probably “why?” Coating enemies with GLOO will temporarily freeze them into statues, giving you a second to breathe or run away. Or perhaps you freeze a Typhon into a solid GLOO statue and shatter it with your wrench. You can also use the GLOO gun on the walls to create platforms, and use these platforms to access hidden areas and get to the high ground. The GLOO gun will help you traverse each area in the way you want to, not restricting you to what the game designers planned for.
So, on to resources. Remember, this is a survival horror game too, so we’ve got to do some crafting. You’ll find Recycle Machines scattered about Talos I, accompanied by Fabrication Machines. Dump your items you’ve been collecting, everything from antibiotics to Tyhpon parts to mugs, into the recycler machine to break them into one of 4 basic parts — organic material, exotic material, synthetic material, and minerals. Those are the only 4 things you build from, so it’s easy to remember. The fab machine will turn those parts into ammo, guns, health kits, neuromods, and even new items if you find a schematic. You WILL run out of ammo in this game. You will be in a very inopportune place when it happens. You will need to crawl on your hands and knees to a fab machine to create more GLOO canisters as the Nightmare stalks around the storage facility looking for you. It adds exactly the right amount of panic while not being too cumbersome. Crafting is shoehorned into a lot of games nowadays, but Prey was built around it.
You also have a brilliant little device called a recycler grenade. You can toss it and everything, yes I mean EVERYTHING, in a 10 foot radius will be sucked into it and reduced to its composite parts. Running low on organic material again, huh? Well there’s a bunch of corpses right over there… and no one’s using them…
Prey forces you to be resourceful in everything you do. I remember the exact moment early in the game I realized this was a masterpiece. I was trapped in the power plant on a catwalk a hundred feet above two Voltaic Phantoms, and I had no exit. I had run out of ammo. I had nothing in my inventory. I was about to jump in and die valiantly wacking things with my wrench when I saw the recycler grenade. The inspiration that struck me in that moment was so powerful, I’ve never felt anything like it. I waited for the two Phantoms to walk near each other and tossed the recylcler grenade at them. And they were recycled alive in front of me, screeches echoing around the room, into exotic material. I could not believe how smart and resourceful I felt in that moment. Reduce, reuse, recycle. These are the core concepts of surviving in Prey.
Alongside your guns, you’ll utilize Typhon powers, which are magic spells written off as telekinesis to match the sci-fi aesthetic. You obtain these powers with neuromods, which function the way runes do in Dishonored. Inject them into your eye to gain abilities like flight, fire, electricity, mind control, and more! You trade in X of them for something on a massive skill tree, which has both enhanced physical abilities and Typhon powers. You have mana as well, called Psi, that you need to keep an eye on. Psi refills are scarce, so you can just go wrecking everything with magic powers. Hot tip: as soon as possible, take the perk that allows you to refill Psi by drinking water. It will be a lifeline in your darkest moments. And keep an eye on how much Typhon blood you inject into your body. The more powers you gain, the more Typhon you become, and there are real repercussions for that. Will you choose to sacrifice your humanity for absolute power?
Phantoms were the scariest enemy for me to cope with.
Finally, we’ve made it to the monsters. These designs are incredible. I wish there was a bit more diversity, but the dozen or so enemies have 3–4 variations each that keep things relatively fresh. Remember that many of the Typhon are intelligent, sentient beings. And many of them are VERY SCARY. You all know the mimics from the trailer — they’re small, spider-like monsters that can transform into literally anything in the game. Wait, I think you may have misheard me. You may have heard me say “they can turn into a lot of things in the game.” No. What I said was “they can turn into LITERALLY ANYTHING.” That door over there? Could be a mimic. That pillow? Mimic. I once found a fucking health pack that was a mimic, who promptly killed me. Everything you see anywhere in the ship could be a mimic waiting to kill you. A lot of it isn’t, but the constant threat keeps you on your toes, even when an area looks completely cleared out.
The Phantoms are, in my opinion, much scarier. The reason being that when they kill humans, they consume them. And when they consume a human, they will continue to repeat the last words of that person in slow, broken, scratchy English as they stalk around a room looking for more prey. Hiding under a desk and hearing a monster that’s looking for you say “Please… my children… they can’t lose their father” in a broken guttural tongue will make you shit your pants. Similarly, the operators (robots) are infected with a Typhon virus, turning them against you. Hearing the dead silence of a maintenance tunnel interrupted by an echoing robot voice screaming “SOMETHING’S BROKEN” is the real shit I came for. This is slow burning, earned horror. These scares are not cheap. This is constant, chronic fear. The other enemies like telepaths and weavers are scary too, but I want to leave some surprises for you.
The story of the game focuses on you finding the remaining survivors on the ship, and either saving or slaughtering them. That’s right, you can side with the Typhon if you want. There are 3 very distinct endings (one of them is the true ending). If you side with the humans you’ll find lots of side quests and story bits that will make your heart soar and sink. I personally loved the true ending and got it on the first try, but I won’t spoil it for you here. The story is well written and responds to your actions appropriately. Will you save the earth, save yourself, or save humanity?
So just a paragraph about the DLC, Mooncrash. It is, without contest, the best DLC I have played in my entire life. It’s a first person shooter rogue-like with a procedurally generated moon base you must escape from over and over with 5 different characters trapped in a Majora’s Mask-esque time loop. Every run you take will affect your future runs, and no two runs are the same. The goal is to learn how the world works and then get ready to get fucked, because it’ll just change everything around on you on the next run. This DLC is the ultimate test of your improvisational skills and your resourcefulness. It is like the base game on speed. Get it.
Prey manages to take pieces of almost every action game ever and do them all better, fitting them together with unbelievable seamlessness. Stealth, shooting, magic combat, platforming, death lasers, completely destructible environments, crafting, resource management, skill trees… the game absolutely shouldn’t work as well as it does. And yet the core gameplay loop is 100% effective. Collect resources, save lives, build new items, and fight the alien invasion… or join it. The monsters are terrifying, the music from the impeccable Mick Gordon is an A+, the open world is gorgeous, and your resourcefulness will be tested to its absolute limit. The theme of holding onto your humanity is prevalent during the entire game and never gets lost. Would you sacrifice your own humanity to save all of humankind?
I was swept up into the hype. I checked for news articles every day for updates on the development. I scoured the subreddit every morning for some morsel, some new tidbit about this game which I knew would be perfection. I even set up a google alert to tell me whenever an article was posted about Prey, and I read every single goddamn one of them. Hype consumed me. And finally it was launch day. I pre-downloaded it and waited patiently until midnight that Thursday to launch it. Finally it arrived. And guess what? It fucking delivered.
The reveal trailer at E3 that caused me a hundred sleepless nights, screaming into the darkness in terror that it wouldn’t be good.
What’s Prey all about? Arkane has sort of coined their own term for their games, including the Dishonored series, referring to it as an “immersive simulation.” That’s a bit on the nose for Prey actually, but it doesn’t say a whole lot about what the game is like. I’d describe it more closely as a fusion of Bioshock and System Shock with a sprinkling of Dishonored mechanics. In fact, this game, while in early development, was titled “Psychoshock.” The reason it is now called Prey is because Bethesda bought the license for Prey (from the completely unrelated 2006 game) and needed to unload the name somewhere to justify the purchase. Once they saw this game was in space, the slapped the name onto the project despite the two games having no relation to each other whatsoever. It’s a shame too, because the name Psychoshock would have sold a lot more copies of this masterpiece.
Prey wears a lot of different hats at the same time. It’s a high-octane first person shooter. It’s an RPG with experience points, leveling up, skill trees, and weapon and armor mods. It’s a platformer where you build your own platforms to access the dozens of different ways to clear areas. It’s a crafting game about harvesting and managing resources from the environment around you and then building them into items for you to use. It’s a dystopian future story-heavy narrative experience that’s sort of drip fed to you over the course of the game with several layers of mystery over every discovery. It’s a high-stakes stealth game. It’s a dual wielding Bioshock-esque where you use magic with one hand and guns with the other. Most of all, it’s a straight up horror game. If you really can’t stomach horror, this may not be for you. Here’s your exit ramp.
Talos I is overrun with Typhon taking revenge for the torture humans have inflicted upon them. Who’s the real aliens?
Still with me? Good, good. I’m going to skip the spoilers for this one and focus on the gameplay mechanics. You play as Morgan Yu (male or female per your selection, doesn’t change the story), a young astronaut who is the heir to the largest space exploration company in the world. After some shennanigans I don’t want to spoil, you’ll find yourself on board the Talos I, the largest international space station in history. Unfortunately, the Typhon (an alien race) that humans have imprisoned on the station and experimented on for years have orchestrated a coup! Taking an opportunity for revenge, the Typhon unite to rise up and kill their captors, the humans — leaving you as one of the last survivors on this massive, open world space station. A lot of the game revolves around you trying to find your older brother Alex, the director of Talos I, and get some explanation as to how this all happened.
Welcome to the arboretum! Who says space stations need to be metallic and boring?
The environments of this game are a beautiful art deco style, reminiscent of the utopian future sci-fi seen in Star Trek. There is a lot of diversity in them as well, working in everything from cavernous hallways to GUTS, the zero gravity tunnels that run through the station. There are water features, upside down ventilation shafts, offices, bedrooms, swimming pools… you name it. The world is done in the same art style as Dishonored. Think of this as the sci-fi counterpart to it. I’ll also mention that Mick Gordon, of DOOM 2016 fame, is the composer for this game. So yeah, the music slaps. And Everything is decidedly NOT going to be okay.
Weapons are sooooo cool. There’s your standard shotguns and flamethrowers and pistols… whatever. There’s a cool laser beam gun called the Q Beam and a few other standouts, like the recycler grenade, which I’ll get to later. The shooting feels good, but those aren’t what you came for. You’re here for the GLOO gun, and you will not be disappointed. The GLOO gun is the first weapon you get in the game, and its utility cannot be overstated. This hand cannon shoots out globs of a sticky substance called GLOO, which goes from a liquid adhesive to a solid rock-like substance the moment it makes contact with the air. Your first question is probably “why?” Coating enemies with GLOO will temporarily freeze them into statues, giving you a second to breathe or run away. Or perhaps you freeze a Typhon into a solid GLOO statue and shatter it with your wrench. You can also use the GLOO gun on the walls to create platforms, and use these platforms to access hidden areas and get to the high ground. The GLOO gun will help you traverse each area in the way you want to, not restricting you to what the game designers planned for.
So, on to resources. Remember, this is a survival horror game too, so we’ve got to do some crafting. You’ll find Recycle Machines scattered about Talos I, accompanied by Fabrication Machines. Dump your items you’ve been collecting, everything from antibiotics to Tyhpon parts to mugs, into the recycler machine to break them into one of 4 basic parts — organic material, exotic material, synthetic material, and minerals. Those are the only 4 things you build from, so it’s easy to remember. The fab machine will turn those parts into ammo, guns, health kits, neuromods, and even new items if you find a schematic. You WILL run out of ammo in this game. You will be in a very inopportune place when it happens. You will need to crawl on your hands and knees to a fab machine to create more GLOO canisters as the Nightmare stalks around the storage facility looking for you. It adds exactly the right amount of panic while not being too cumbersome. Crafting is shoehorned into a lot of games nowadays, but Prey was built around it.
You also have a brilliant little device called a recycler grenade. You can toss it and everything, yes I mean EVERYTHING, in a 10 foot radius will be sucked into it and reduced to its composite parts. Running low on organic material again, huh? Well there’s a bunch of corpses right over there… and no one’s using them…
Prey forces you to be resourceful in everything you do. I remember the exact moment early in the game I realized this was a masterpiece. I was trapped in the power plant on a catwalk a hundred feet above two Voltaic Phantoms, and I had no exit. I had run out of ammo. I had nothing in my inventory. I was about to jump in and die valiantly wacking things with my wrench when I saw the recycler grenade. The inspiration that struck me in that moment was so powerful, I’ve never felt anything like it. I waited for the two Phantoms to walk near each other and tossed the recylcler grenade at them. And they were recycled alive in front of me, screeches echoing around the room, into exotic material. I could not believe how smart and resourceful I felt in that moment. Reduce, reuse, recycle. These are the core concepts of surviving in Prey.
Alongside your guns, you’ll utilize Typhon powers, which are magic spells written off as telekinesis to match the sci-fi aesthetic. You obtain these powers with neuromods, which function the way runes do in Dishonored. Inject them into your eye to gain abilities like flight, fire, electricity, mind control, and more! You trade in X of them for something on a massive skill tree, which has both enhanced physical abilities and Typhon powers. You have mana as well, called Psi, that you need to keep an eye on. Psi refills are scarce, so you can just go wrecking everything with magic powers. Hot tip: as soon as possible, take the perk that allows you to refill Psi by drinking water. It will be a lifeline in your darkest moments. And keep an eye on how much Typhon blood you inject into your body. The more powers you gain, the more Typhon you become, and there are real repercussions for that. Will you choose to sacrifice your humanity for absolute power?
Phantoms were the scariest enemy for me to cope with.
Finally, we’ve made it to the monsters. These designs are incredible. I wish there was a bit more diversity, but the dozen or so enemies have 3–4 variations each that keep things relatively fresh. Remember that many of the Typhon are intelligent, sentient beings. And many of them are VERY SCARY. You all know the mimics from the trailer — they’re small, spider-like monsters that can transform into literally anything in the game. Wait, I think you may have misheard me. You may have heard me say “they can turn into a lot of things in the game.” No. What I said was “they can turn into LITERALLY ANYTHING.” That door over there? Could be a mimic. That pillow? Mimic. I once found a fucking health pack that was a mimic, who promptly killed me. Everything you see anywhere in the ship could be a mimic waiting to kill you. A lot of it isn’t, but the constant threat keeps you on your toes, even when an area looks completely cleared out.
The Phantoms are, in my opinion, much scarier. The reason being that when they kill humans, they consume them. And when they consume a human, they will continue to repeat the last words of that person in slow, broken, scratchy English as they stalk around a room looking for more prey. Hiding under a desk and hearing a monster that’s looking for you say “Please… my children… they can’t lose their father” in a broken guttural tongue will make you shit your pants. Similarly, the operators (robots) are infected with a Typhon virus, turning them against you. Hearing the dead silence of a maintenance tunnel interrupted by an echoing robot voice screaming “SOMETHING’S BROKEN” is the real shit I came for. This is slow burning, earned horror. These scares are not cheap. This is constant, chronic fear. The other enemies like telepaths and weavers are scary too, but I want to leave some surprises for you.
The story of the game focuses on you finding the remaining survivors on the ship, and either saving or slaughtering them. That’s right, you can side with the Typhon if you want. There are 3 very distinct endings (one of them is the true ending). If you side with the humans you’ll find lots of side quests and story bits that will make your heart soar and sink. I personally loved the true ending and got it on the first try, but I won’t spoil it for you here. The story is well written and responds to your actions appropriately. Will you save the earth, save yourself, or save humanity?
So just a paragraph about the DLC, Mooncrash. It is, without contest, the best DLC I have played in my entire life. It’s a first person shooter rogue-like with a procedurally generated moon base you must escape from over and over with 5 different characters trapped in a Majora’s Mask-esque time loop. Every run you take will affect your future runs, and no two runs are the same. The goal is to learn how the world works and then get ready to get fucked, because it’ll just change everything around on you on the next run. This DLC is the ultimate test of your improvisational skills and your resourcefulness. It is like the base game on speed. Get it.
Prey manages to take pieces of almost every action game ever and do them all better, fitting them together with unbelievable seamlessness. Stealth, shooting, magic combat, platforming, death lasers, completely destructible environments, crafting, resource management, skill trees… the game absolutely shouldn’t work as well as it does. And yet the core gameplay loop is 100% effective. Collect resources, save lives, build new items, and fight the alien invasion… or join it. The monsters are terrifying, the music from the impeccable Mick Gordon is an A+, the open world is gorgeous, and your resourcefulness will be tested to its absolute limit. The theme of holding onto your humanity is prevalent during the entire game and never gets lost. Would you sacrifice your own humanity to save all of humankind?