Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Differing Opinions

If you read yesterday’s post I did on the video game Gone Home, you know that while I was generally positive about it, I didn’t care too much for the story. I must admit, though, with all the awards that Gone Home won back when it first came out on PC, I felt strangely guilty for not liking it more. It was as if somehow I was obligated to sing its praises, since most of the critics loved it. The people who hand out these awards are professionals, whereas I’m just an amateur, so conforming to their opinions is a good thing, right? It means I’m more cultured if I see things their way, right?

Well, no, not necessarily. The critics might be right, but if I automatically adopt the thoughts of others and fail to think for myself, then I’ve just become a robot who parrots what other people are saying. Part of my growth as a writer over the years has been becoming ok with the fact that sometimes I don’t agree with the majority opinion or with those whose positions would make their opinion seemingly have more weight. If I didn’t think Gone Home’s story was that good then I need be honest and say so, even if most critics would think I’m wrong. This process of learning not to shy away from being contrarian is sort of like how I had to let myself dislike things I had spent money on while I was overseas last year (which you can read about here). In the case of Gone Home, I think the gaming press has gone a bit overboard with their praise of the game. The game is good, but I wouldn’t call it a game of the year contender.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Late to the Party - Gone Home

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a new series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Gone Home, which first came out on PC back in 2013, and got its console release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in January of this year. In June it was one of the free games available via PlayStation Plus, so I downloaded it, and last week I sat down and played through it. I will be giving full spoilers of the game, so if you haven’t played Gone Home, consider yourself warned.


Monday, June 27, 2016

Second Reviews

Some games, particularly ones with heavy online functionality, such as Destiny, change substantially after their initial release. One person playing the game at launch and another person playing the game a year later can have very different experiences. Because of this, I’m a fan of second reviews, aka updated reviews, whereby you do another review of a game at some point in the future after it comes out. The second review takes into account all the changes that have happened since launch and evaluates the game again based on its current condition. Thus, people like me who usually aren’t able to play games for some time after their release have a better idea of what a game is like now, rather than just what it used to be. Understandably, second reviews are not common because most games don’t need them, and because they require dedicating the limited time, money, and personnel of games media outlets to older games, when those same assets could be better spent on current games that generate more web traffic and ad revenue. If I worked for one of those publications I would gladly put in the overtime to do the job of second reviews, and my bosses would probably look at me funny for volunteering for such a thankless task of questionable value to the company’s bottom line. The reason I would do it because I believe there’s untapped potential in second reviews. It might not be much, but I know I’m not the only person who is normally late to the party, and I think it would be a valuable service for the small slice of the gaming population who are like me in that regard.

Friday, June 24, 2016

The Future of El Progreso Del Peregrino

In the place of my normally longer Friday writing piece, I thought I’d do something a little different this week and talk about the future this online writing canvas that I call El Progreso Del Peregrino. Last week saw the publication of my 300th piece of writing. It was certainly a notable milestone, and I’m proud to see how far this blog has come, but over the past several weeks I’ve started to wonder whether El Progreso Del Peregrino has run its course and its time to move on. I’m not going to stop writing, but I’ve been thinking about perhaps creating a new website on a different blogging service and migrating everything there. While Blogger works fine with just text, whenever I try to do more complicated writing pieces with images and/or movies I tend to run into formatting issues. Additionally, I sometimes wonder whether or not the name of this blog, El Progreso Del Peregrino, is still appropriate for the work I do here. For those that don’t know, the name translates to “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” which is both a reference to the seminal John Bunyan book, and to my feeling like a perpetual foreigner wherever I go. While the name is fitting for some of my posts, such as the travel-related ones, others, like the gaming-related posts, don’t always seem in sync with the name. I’ve brainstormed a few possible ideas for the name of a new website, but right now there’s no clear-cut winner.

With all the things that are going on in my life right now, any creation of a new website or substantial modification to this blog is still some ways out. If I did create a new website and migrate my writing material over to it, El Progreso Del Peregrino would remain open, though with a notice on it about the new website. Since Blogger is free, it can remain in existence in perpetuity, and perhaps it will stand as a monument/museum of my first few years writing online.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Unread Emails

We all have our personality quirks, and one of mine is related to emails. In my short existence on this planet I’ve known people that have dozens, or even hundreds of unread emails in their inbox, and a few times I’ve even run into persons with well over one thousand unread emails. Personally, I have zero unread emails in any of my inboxes, (aside, of course, from those that have shown up since I last checked) and I take a strange pride in that fact. This trait of mine does not make me superior to anyone else in any way. Part of the reason why I read every email and reply to all of them that require a response is just my inner need to keep everything in order, but another part of this obsession has to do with personal pet peeve of mine. I’m not a fan of when I send out an email inquiry and then never get any sort of reply back, so I’m personally committed to not doing that to anyone else. Though I fail every once in a long while, I always try to respond within no more than 24 hours of receipt of any given email, assuming that email requires a response. I want to be known as the type of guy that at any given time can be counted on to reply to both the urgent and the mundane and not keep people hanging for too long. There will be exceptions, of course, such as when I’m traveling, but it’s a goal I continue to strive for.

Oh, and if I fail to reply to your email within 24 hours, that clearly means I’ve snapped, and I’d like you to imagine me as some sort of comic book villain who is nefariously twirling his mustache and laughing maniacally while ignoring the emails in his inbox.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

E3 2016 Reflections - Day 3

Last week was E3 2016, and it was epic. I know that term has been so overused in our modern day that it has become nearly devoid of any substantial meaning, but I’ve been following E3 news and events for about a decade now and this year’s E3 just might have been the best I’ve ever seen, so epic is a fitting description of it. This year’s lineup of games was simply phenomenal, and even though I’m not interested in all of them, there’s no denying that the sheer number of quality titles we are getting over the next year is an embarrassment or riches for the gaming community.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week I’m going to be giving my own thoughts and observations on this year’s E3. I won’t talk about every game or every announcement, but will instead be focusing on the ones that meant something to me. On Monday I will discuss the EA, Bethesda, and Ubisoft press conferences; on Tuesday I will discuss the Microsoft and Sony press conferences; and on Wednesday I will discuss the showcase from Nintendo, as well as a few miscellaneous items.



Today is Wednesday, so to finish off the E3 2016 notes here is a brief collection of thoughts on the Nintendo showcase and some other stuff that I didn’t mention in the other two posts. This post will be much smaller than the previous two.

Nintendo
* The big focus this year for Nintendo was the next entry in The Legend of Zelda series, titled The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The only Zelda game I’ve every played to completion was Twilight Princess, so I can’t call myself a fan of the series. For that matter I can’t call myself much of a Nintendo fan either, as the only Nintendo games I really pay attention to are the ones from the Smash Bros and Mario Kart series. The Zelda series is regarded as one of the greatest in all of gaming, and this new Zelda game looks like it might be another strong addition, but I’ll probably never play it because it will be locked away on a console that I’ll likely never purchase.
* Related to the last sentence of the previous bullet-point, the next Nintendo console, currently known as the NX, was not shown in any capacity, just as Nintendo said it wouldn’t. I’m guessing the NX will get its own reveal event sometime later this year, and hopefully Nintendo will do enough to convince myself and others that the NX is worth buying. The Nintendo Wii gave me two or three good years of gaming but then left me unsatisfied for the remainder of its lifecycle, and the Wii U had absolute no appeal to me whatsoever, so I’m not willing to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt about the NX. Nintendo is going to have to really sell me on this thing.
* Along with Zelda, Nintendo also had a few other things being shown off, such as the next Pokemon games. I played the first five Pokemon games (Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, and Silver) via an emulator on a computer many years ago and I’m impressed that the series is still going. At the same time, I wonder when the creators will run out of ideas for new Pokemon. There used to be only 151. Now it seems like there’s a thousand of them.

Miscellaneous
* Just before E3 began, Injustice 2 was leaked, and shortly afterwards an official trailer was released. Although I’m not a comic book or fighting game enthusiast, I really liked the first Injustice and I hope the new one is just as good. Some new characters such as Supergirl, Atrocitus, and Gorilla Grodd have been revealed, along with returning characters Batman, Superman, Flash and Aqua Man.
* Not surprisingly, there was nothing from Kingdom Hearts 3 at this year’s E3. I’m guessing we won’t see anything substantial on it until next year.
* Another year, another E3. Even though I wasn’t there, at the end of each E3 I feel strangely exhausted from consuming so much video game related content in such a short period. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the media people who actually have to work during E3 and produce all the things I watch or read. Hats off to them.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

E3 2016 Reflections - Day 2

Last week was E3 2016, and it was epic. I know that term has been so overused in our modern day that it has become nearly devoid of any substantial meaning, but I’ve been following E3 news and events for about a decade now and this year’s E3 just might have been the best I’ve ever seen, so epic is a fitting description of it. This year’s lineup of games was simply phenomenal, and even though I’m not interested in all of them, there’s no denying that the sheer number of quality titles we are getting over the next year is an embarrassment or riches for the gaming community.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week I’m going to be giving my own thoughts and observations on this year’s E3. I won’t talk about every game or every announcement, but will instead be focusing on the ones that meant something to me. On Monday I will discuss the EA, Bethesda, and Ubisoft press conferences; on Tuesday I will discuss the Microsoft and Sony press conferences; and on Wednesday I will discuss the showcase from Nintendo, as well as a few miscellaneous items.



Today is Tuesday, so it’s time for the conferences of the two great rivals - Microsoft and Sony.

Microsoft
* Microsoft put on an outstanding show at E3. It was one hour long hardly missed a beat.
* The conference began with the reveal of the Xbox One S. It is a new iteration of the Xbox One that is 40% smaller, supports 4K resolution output, has an integrated power supply (so no more power brick), an updated controller, and a few other improvements. The Xbox One S comes out in August.
* During the rest of the conference there was a repeated emphasis on the Xbox Play Anywhere initiative, which allows many digitally purchased games to be played across both Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs. While this is great in concept, I’m wondering what is going to be done about competitive games like Call of Duty, where players with a mouse and keyboard have a notable advantage over people using a controller.
* The first game shown was Gears (of War) 4. With the way Gears of War 3 ended you might have thought that the people of the planet Sera had finally caught a break, but you’d be wrong. A generation has passed, and now the planet is threatened by a new menace called the Swarm. The gameplay demo showed off the singleplayer campaign being played cooperatively, and it looks like more of the same dumb fun I expect out of the series.
* Killer Instinct and Recore both made appearances, but they’re not games I’m interested in.
* To my surprise, Final Fantasy XV showed up (I had figured they would be at the PlayStation conference). A gameplay demo showed a three-way fight between the protagonists, a giant, and opposing forces. The demo itself wasn’t that interesting and in the first minute I wasn’t sure if they guy playing it was having difficulty or taking hits on purpose. I’m still going to play the game, but a better section of the game should have been shown.
* Like at the Ubisoft conference, there was a trailer for The Division. For me it was yet another reminder that I have to get around to playing it sometime in the next year.
* Battlefield 1 was next. The only new thing was the announcement that players on Xbox One, and people who had subscribed to EA Access, would be getting the game a little earlier than other people. They showed the same trailer that was at the EA conference, which is a good trailer, but redundant since everyone had already seen it.
* I don’t think I will every completely understand the appeal of Minecraft.
* A trailer for Inside was shown. Inside is being made by the same studio that made Limbo, which I played but but didn’t finish because I didn’t like it. Limbo is now free on Xbox One, so maybe I should give it a second chance.
* A new slew of indie titles are coming to Xbox One. I’ll probably miss most of them.
* A trailer for a new game called We Happy Few was shown. I don’t know what to think of this one.
* Tekken 7 is coming out next year and we got both a trailer and a demo for it. Tekken games are among the few fighting games I care about, though, like all fighting games, I’m terrible at them. Series producer Katsuhiro Harada showed up, wearing some sort of traditional Japanese priest outfit. Harada is known for his eccentricities and showmanship, so him wearing something like that to E3 should be no surprise.
* Later we got a demo for Scalebound, the latest game from studio Platinum Games. Platinum’s reputation has taken a hit over the last few years, so perhaps Scalebound will be their redemption. The game strikes me as DMC with dragons. No idea if it will be any good or not.
* A pair of trailers for Sea of Thieves were shown. No interest in this one.
* Halo Wars 2 had a new trailer. While I didn’t play the first Halo Wars, I might check out this one since it’s both a Halo game and a strategy game.
* The Microsoft conference ended with the big announcement (actually, since it was leaked online, I guess we should call it a confirmation) of Project Scorpio, which has no relation to Hank Scorpio, the villain from that one episode of The Simpsons. Project Scorpio is the next version of the Xbox One and will be a significant hardware improvement over the current Xbox One. It promises to be the most powerful game console to date, and a few of the internal components were shown. This new Xbox will come out next year, and I’m guessing Microsoft will do its own event in the future to reveal the final product.
* After the conference was over, it was pointed out that during the entire event there was not a single Xbox console exclusive game shown. Every game in the conference can also be played either on PC or on PlayStation. This doesn’t detract from how well the conference went, but it is interesting to think about.

Sony
* After Microsoft’s strong performance, I was wondering whether or not Sony could deliver a strong response, but they did. The Sony conference was roughly an hour and twenty minutes, but unlike the Ubisoft conference, I wanted it to keep going because the hits never stopped.
* The Sony conference began with an orchestra and an all-male choir. Sony certainly upped the bar on showmanship this year.
* The first game was the new God of War. Leaving the Ancient Greek world of the previous games behind, we now find Kratos in a Nordic setting. The gameplay demo had a The Last of Us vibe, and it looks like this God of War will be a reinventing of the series. Crazy fact: the orchestra from the start of the conference supplied all the music during the gameplay demo.
* After God of War there were four game trailers/demos in quick succession. See below.
* Bend Studio, which has been MIA for years, finally announced its new game, called Days Gone, which is a game about a motorcycle gang member trying to survive the zombie apocalypse.
* A new trailer for The Last Guardian was shown, but more importantly we got a release date. It is set to come out on October 25. After a decade of waiting, I still don’t totally believe this game exists.
* An impressive demo of Horizon: Zero Dawn came next. Taming wild robots, destructible environments, slow motion, dialogue options, and demon robots were all shown.
* A trailer for Detroit: Become Human wrapped up the first third of the Sony conference. The game is being made by Quantic Dream, a studio known for making very unique games. The story of Detroit: Become Human seems to center around androids in a futuristic Detroit struggling with issues of consciousness and trying to find their way in a human society that is not always friendly to them. The trailer showed an android named Connor who is a hostage negotiator and demonstrated the various ways a hostage crisis can play out, depending on what choices Connor makes.
* The next segment of the Sony conference was dedicated to PlayStation VR. One of the things shown was the reveal trailer for Resident Evil 7. While I’m not a horror game fan and I won’t be buying any VR equipment for at least a year, I’m always interested to see what game developers are working on for VR.
* PlayStation VR will launch on October 13 and will retail for $400, making it cheaper than other VR offerings such as Oculus and Vive.
* Right after the VR section we got a gameplay trailer for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. At first I wasn’t sure if this was still part of the VR announcements, but after a minute it was clear that it wasn’t. As always with Call of Duty games, I’m looking forward to playing the singleplayer campaign but I’ll be skipping the multiplayer. The gameplay trailer showed battles in space and then boarding an enemy ship, which reminded me of the space battles in Call of Duty: Ghosts. It also appears you have some level of choice in what order you tackle the missions.
* The first three Crash Bandicoot games are getting remastered for the PlayStation 4. I never played any of the Crash Bandicoot games (which were on PlayStation 1) but I know this is a big deal for a lot of people.
* Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens got a trailer. Although its easy to construe the Lego games as being for kids, having played some of them I can say they are legitimately fun and as a Star Wars fan I’ll be playing this one eventually.
* The crowd at the conference freaked out when Hideo Kojima made a dramatic entrance and revealed a trailer for his next game, called Death Stranding. I have no idea what this game is about. Kojima trailers are oftentimes odd, but his track record has made him a god among men with the gaming community, so no matter what he does it will be labeled a masterpiece and no one will question it.
* A new Spiderman game was announced, and it is being made by Insomniac. While I would have preferred a new Resistance game, it was a good reveal trailer and hopefully will be a good game.
* The Sony conference ended with a demo of Days Gone (the Bend game from earlier). The zombies move like a living river (like in the movie World War Z, but not as fast) and the second half of the demo was the protagonist’s desperate escape from them.
* A final montage trailer showed various games coming to PlayStation over the next year.
* While I’m not a zombie fan, I’m very interested in the placement of the Days Gone demo at the end of the Sony conference. You would think it would have been more fitting to do it after the reveal trailer, but instead it was the final demo of the show. A few days before the start of E3, Sony announced that the PlayStation Neo (aka the PlayStation 4.5) was not going to be at E3, and I wonder if originally the Neo was going to be the final big announcement, but it got removed on late notice and the Days Gone demo was separated from its reveal trailer to fill the gap. This is all purely speculation, but it would make sense.
* Interestingly, there was not a single announcement during the Sony conference related to the PlayStation Vita.
* Like Microsoft, Sony had a strong conference. It might just be the best Sony conference to date, and if not then it’s definitely in the top 3.

Monday, June 20, 2016

E3 2016 Reflections - Day 1

Last week was E3 2016, and it was epic. I know that term has been so overused in our modern day that it has become nearly devoid of any substantial meaning, but I’ve been following E3 news and events for about a decade now and this year’s E3 just might have been the best I’ve ever seen, so epic is a fitting description of it. This year’s lineup of games was simply phenomenal, and even though I’m not interested in all of them, there’s no denying that the sheer number of quality titles we are getting over the next year is an embarrassment or riches for the gaming community.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week I’m going to be giving my own thoughts and observations on this year’s E3. I won’t talk about every game or every announcement, but will instead be highlighting on the ones that meant something to me, and I’ll be using a bullet-point format. On Monday I will discuss the EA, Bethesda, and Ubisoft press conferences; on Tuesday I will discuss the Microsoft and Sony press conferences; and on Wednesday I will discuss the showcase from Nintendo, as well as a few miscellaneous items.



Today is Monday, so here are the things that stood out to me about the EA, Bethesda, and Ubisoft press conferences.

EA 
* EA’s conference began with Titanfall 2. Because the first Titanfall was multiplayer only, I skipped over it even though it looked fantastic from the media coverage I watched at the time. Titanfall 2 has a dedicated singleplayer campaign, and is coming to PlayStation 4, so I’ll be playing it at some point after it comes out.
* The EA conference was actually held simultaneously in two places, Los Angeles and London, and the camera would alternate back and forth between locations at certain times. While the idea of having the same conference in two different cities at the same time is novel in concept, I found it a bit disorienting to be moving back and forth between them.
* Mass Effect Andromeda got another behind the scenes trailer. While I would have liked a trailer that was just gameplay, or better yet, an actual gameplay demo, there were bits of the game in the trailer and I pulled a few more details about the game from them. The name of our new ship is the Tempest, and both the Asari and Krogan races are confirmed in the game. Since the trailer is about an exodus out of the Milky Way Galaxy and into the Andromeda Galaxy to find a new home for humanity, it seems reasonable to infer that in the cannon ending of Mass Effect 3 the Reapers messed up the Milky Way really bad. The fact that we’re still not getting a substantial game trailer or demo for Mass Effect Andromeda likely means that the game is still far from being completed, and I would not be surprised if it gets delayed again, into the second half of 2017.
* A good chunk of EA’s conference was dedicated to its various sports games. I don’t play sports games, so I zoned out during those sections.
* Star Wars Battlefront 2 was confirmed. I messed around with the first Star Wars Battlefront a little and had a good time, so I’m looking forward to this one.
* EA also has a bunch of other Star Wars games under development and we got another behind the scenes trailer showing the various studios working on them. Almost nothing from the games themselves were in the trailer, making the Mass Effect Andromeda trailer look like a deep dive by comparison. EA really needs to stop announcing games before they are ready to be shown. They made the same mistake last year with Mass Effect Andromeda’s premature announcement.
* The EA conference closed with Battlefield 1, which is one of my most anticipated games coming out this year. We got a very cool trailer for the game, along with actual details about how it will work. Being set in World War 1, the game will have both airships and horses, as well as dynamic weather (such as rain and fog) that will effect multiplayer. A public beta will take place later this summer, and if I have time I will get in on it. After the conference ended there was a live 64-player multiplayer match demonstration, which I watched part of.
* Overall, the EA conference was just ok. There was some good content, but also a lot of material that had no business being there, like the Star Wars games in the behind the scenes trailer. That should have been cut in favor of going deeper with other games that are closer to completion.

Bethesda
* The Bethesda conference was an interesting reversal from the EA conference in that while Bethesda only had one game that I’m interested in, the conference itself was much better, keeping a steady pace for the most part and having more content in the games it showed.
* The first game shown was Quake Champions. I remember playing a demo for the original Quake when I was a kid, but otherwise I have no history with the series and have no desire to play it.
* A bunch of Fallout 4 DLC was next. Again, don’t care.
* A little later there was an announcement for a remastering of Skyrim. While I’ve never played any of the Elder Scrolls games, I’ve known some people who played Skyrim and it seems to be well liked, so I might give this one a try.
* A CG trailer for Prey was shown. I assume this game replaces Prey 2, which disappeared into development hell some time back. As much as I love CG trailers, you can’t use them to make any substantial judgments on the games they’re for.
* DLC for Doom was revealed. Another game I have no interest in playing.
* A number of announcements related to the Elder Scrolls Online came next. Generally speaking, I avoid playing MMOs so I’ll pass on this.
* Bethesda is working on some VR offerings for several of its games. I’m probably not going to get my hands on VR for at least a year, so this doesn’t affect me, yet.
* The final section of the Bethesda conference was dedicated entirely to Dishonored 2. This part of the conference lasted too long and dragged down what had otherwise been a well-paced performance by Bethesda. There was both a trailer for the game and a demo. While the world of Dishonored looks interesting, something about the way it plays does not appeal to me. I didn’t play the first Dishonored and don’t see myself touching this one either.

Ubisoft
* Clocking in at a full two hours, the Ubisoft conference was the longest of the major E3 press conferences. While there was a lot of good stuff shown, there was also at least 30 minutes of material (if not more) that could have been cut for a better, tighter conference. Aisha Tyler hosted the Ubisoft conference again this year, and she did a good job with it.
* After the opening, the Ubisoft conference’s first game was Ghost Recon: Wildlands. I’ve only played one or two Ghost Recon games in the past, but I remember liking them. There was an extended gameplay trailer for Wildlands that showed off the tactical gameplay with four players working together to capture a target. I liked what I saw, though the banter between the players was the cringe worthy sort of people trying too hard to sound like Special Forces operatives.
* The next South Park game followed. While I’m not a South Park fan, the game looks like it will have the same crude humor the TV series is known for.
* After that was a trailer and announcement for the DLC expansion of The Division. Before the year ends I hope to have played The Division in some capacity.
* VR got its own section of the Ubisoft conference. Because of the way VR works, it’s hard to demo, but to Ubisoft’s credit they made a good effort with a game called Eagle Flight. There was also a trailer for a Star Trek game that uses VR. I can’t remember when was the last time I played, or even heard of, a good Star Trek game (and who knows if this one will be any good). Actually, when was the list time I played a Star Trek game at all?
* When the VR section ended, there was a cinematic trailer and a gameplay demo of For Honor. This game looks really cool, but I have a bad feeling that it will turn out to be like Ryse: Son of Rome (a great looking game with so-so gameplay).
* Trials of the Blood Dragon got announced. It’s a fusion of Far Cry: Blood Dragon and the Trials games. While I would have preferred to just get a new Blood Dragon game, this might be fun.
* For some reason, Ubisoft felt compelled to talk about the upcoming Assassin’s Creed movie. I realize that as part of their greater entertainment portfolio they must have deemed it worthy of stage time, but in my opinion it had no business being there. This, along with the later discussion about a future Watch Dogs movie should have been cut from the conference.
* Speaking of Watch Dogs, we got to see a good amount of Watch Dogs 2. The new game is set in San Francisco and looks to be improving on the features of the original. In particular, the new protagonist appears to be much more interesting than the one in the first Watch Dogs. I expect good things from this game and look forward to playing it.
* The last game shown was a new extreme sports game called Steep. I’m not an extreme sports person, so this game doesn’t appeal to me. More interesting to me was the placement of Steep as the final game of the conference. I think a stronger finish would have been to switch the placement of Steep and Watch Dogs 2, as Watch Dogs 2 makes for a much bigger exclamation point to end the conference with.
* Before the conference ended, all the developers behind the various games shown at the Ubisoft conference came out to waive and say goodbye to the audience. While sort of awkward, I liked it that Ubisoft took a moment to highlight the people who make the games, as they oftentimes toil in obscurity.

Friday, June 17, 2016

Late to the Party - Destiny

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a new series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Destiny.


Thursday, June 16, 2016

Journey vs. Destination

Does the journey matter if the destination sucks? I've pondered this question a number of times, sometimes in regards to life in general, but frequently with regards to video games in particular. This Tuesday’s post on Mass Effect 1 brought this question to mind again, as Mass Effect 1 is the start of a great journey, but that journey’s final destination leaves something to be desired. When you get to the end of Mass Effect 3, you have reached the conclusion of a long series of choices, character moments, and battles as part of the story of one person’s quest to save the galaxy. Then, all that suddenly becomes seemingly irrelevant when you are offered four options for how the story ends, and some parts of those options don’t really make sense. While I’m more forgiving of Mass Effect 3’s ending than some other people, I will concede that it could have been a lot better. It was a remarkable journey, but when you get to the end you might wonder if it was worth it or not.

This question of the journey versus the destination perplexed me for some time, until I hit upon two rather obvious realizations. The first was that video games are a lot like movies, books, and TV shows, in that not a lot of them have truly satisfying endings. There are a few great endings, some good ones, and then a giant mass of mediocre or bad endings. The second was a response to a related question: if the destination really invalidated the whole journey, then why do I continue to replay games with questionable endings? If a bad ending makes everything up to it truly a waste, then I wouldn’t start the journey all over again, but I continue to do so, and that means that, at least for me, a less desirable destination does not compromise the value of the everything that lead up to that point, assuming the journey was a good one.

And with that, I had my answer. Yes, the journey matters, at least in gaming. A great journey is still a great journey, even if I don’t like where it ultimately leads.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Vocation

It's a powerful thing to feel like you've finally discovered your vocational calling in life, and it's an incredibly discouraging thing to know it is out of your grasp and may forever stay that way.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Experiencing Mass Effect 1

The Mass Effect games are among my favorite video games of all time. However, because I predominantly played on PlayStation 3 during the last console generation, I only played Mass Effect 2 and 3. The original Mass Effect was exclusive to Xbox and PC for many years, and consequently I jumped into the series later than some other people. When I played Mass Effect 2, the game gave me a summary of Mass Effect 1’s major events and let me decide the bigger choices of the game, and some time later I went online and looked up Mass Effect 1’s story in detail. Consequently, I was fine not playing it, and even when Mass Effect 1 became available for PlayStation 3 as part of the Mass Effect Collection, I skipped over it. For a long time I felt no guilt whatsoever in not playing Mass Effect 1, but when Microsoft announced last year that a number of Xbox 360 games, including Mass Effect 1, were going to be playable on Xbox One via backwards compatibility, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should finally give it a try.

Two weeks ago I put Mass Effect 1 into the Xbox One and began my journey. I elected for a male Commander Shepard with the default appearance and the soldier class. The beginning of Mass Effect introduced me to my ship and some of the crew, and then sent me into the first mission. Years ago, when I was reading reviews of Mass Effect 2, one thing that came up consistently was reviewers noting how much the gameplay of Mass Effect 2 was better than Mass Effect 1, and from the opening minutes of that first mission I could understand what they meant. To put it bluntly, Mass Effect 1 plays terribly. It’s the sort of game where half of the difficulty comes not from the enemies, but from having to fight the game itself to get it to do what you want. Taking cover is harder than it should be, the guns are inaccurate, your teammates are stupid beyond measure, and a number of times when I died I felt more cheated than bested. The problems with Mass Effect 1’s gameplay can be somewhat overlooked, though, because when you’re not on missions you get the Mass Effect experience we all know and love. It was cool to see Shepard meeting characters like Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Ashley, Joker, and others who would play such a big part of the rest of the Mass Effect story in the successor games. The storytelling of Mass Effect 1 is top-notch, something that would continue through the other games, and if there was a way to play the game while skipping all the combat, I would be completely down for that. Unfortunately that’s not possible, so I’m not sure if I’m going to keep playing Mass Effect 1, or just return it and start working on another game. Since I already know the rest of the story of Mass Effect 1, there are no surprises or plot twists that I won’t see coming. The story of Mass Effect 1 is outstanding, but having to go through the game’s missions to progress it may be a price I’m not willing to pay. Still, even if I don’t finish it, I am glad I played Mass Effect 1 in at least a limited capacity, as now I am more able to discuss the Mass Effect series as a whole.

Monday, June 13, 2016

E3 2016 discussion next week

This week is the week of E3, the annual video game convention is Los Angeles. There have already been lots of announcements and reveals, but I’m going to withhold any discussion on E3 until next week, when all the information has come out and I’ve had a chance to think it over. I’m guessing it will be a multi-day discussion, and if there’s enough to talk about then I might dedicate all of next week to it. Whatever the case, I wanted you, the reader, to know what my plans were so that you don’t have misplaced expectations. You’ll get my E3 thoughts soon enough - just wait a little longer.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Today is a momentous day. Today I have published my 300th post to this blog. For the last week I had been thinking about what I wanted to do for this occasion, and after mulling over a number of ideas I came to the conclusion that it was time to do something I had mentioned at the end of a previous post. It was time to finally resurrect and finish my incomplete and long-dead writing piece on a video game that I played on PlayStation 3 called Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. I had started working on this piece back in March of 2013 and it was intended to highlight a game that I had enjoyed but at the time didn’t seem to be getting much attention from the gaming community. Unfortunately, I got distracted by other things and the post fell by the wayside. Since then it has been waiting for the day where it would come bursting back into the light. Today is that day. To complete this post I had to take a look at screenshots, watch some Youtube videos, and remember the game as best I could, since I hadn’t played it in years. Resurrecting an old writing piece isn’t easy, but when you succeed it’s like your work as a writer has been vindicated. And now, without further ado, I give you, after three years in the grave, (and with full spoilers) my thoughts on Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (referred to hereafter as Enslaved) comes to us from the folks over at Ninja Theory, the studio behind Heavenly Sword and DMC. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where most of humanity has been wiped out by murderous robots. It is never said exactly what happened, but from the dialogue and clues in the game it seems that at some point there was another world war in which humans unleashed powerful machines on each other, but when the war ended humanity lost control of the machines and they went on the massacre most of the global population. Now these machines wander the land looking for humans or lie dormant until they detect a human presence. The remaining humans either live in scattered villages or wander the lands that were once theirs. Suffice to say things are looking so good for humanity, and as if the machines weren’t bad enough, there are also mysterious gangs of slavers who fly around looking for people to capture. Humans taken by slavers are given headbands that compel obedience through pain and are capable of killing their subject if they continue to disobey orders. Who is in charge of the slavers is unknown, but they always seem to come when a human settlement reaches a certain population.

Welcome to (what's left of) New York
Into this scenario we meet Monkey, the main character, who has just been captured by slavers at the start of the game. Monkey manages to escape his cell onboard the slaver airship and fights his way through the ship as he looks for a way out. Along the way he notices another escaped slave who has sabotaged the ship and two manage to get to an escape pod before the ship crashes (albeit, Monkey is left to cling to the pod’s exterior as it is launched). The pod makes a hard landing in the remains of New York City, knocking Monkey unconscious. When he comes to, he finds that the other slave, a young woman named Trip, has placed a slaver headband on him. Infuriated, Monkey tries to attack Trip, but is subdued by the headband. Trip explains that she does not want to harm Monkey, but needs him to help her get back to her village, as she will never survive all the killer machines on her own. Upon her return, she promises that the headband will be removed and Monkey will be free. She also informs him that she has tied the headband’s kill protocol to her own heartbeat, so that if she dies, Monkey will also die. With little option but to help her, Monkey and Trip set out for her village. The rest of the game plays out as the two make their way through the remains of New York City and then beyond as they travel to the village. Upon arrival at Trip’s home, they find it overrun with machines and after Monkey clears them out Trip’s father is discovered dead and all the other villagers are gone. Vowing revenge, Trip refuses to remove Monkey’s headband and the two of them travel to meet Pigsy, a friend of Trip’s father, who is a skilled mechanic and also has an odd obsession with pigs. Monkey, Trip, and Pigsy commandeer a massive war machine and use it to reach the base from which the slavers operate, though Pigsy sacrifices himself in the process. Inside the base, Monkey and Trip confront the man who has been running the entire slaver operation. The leader of the slavers, who calls himself Pyramid, is quite indignant, claiming that he actually hasn’t enslaved anyone, but rather he has set people free. Those who have been captured by the slavers and brought to him are plugged into a virtual-reality simulation, much like the movie The Matrix, where they experience an existence free of the machines and the other horrors of the world. While the lives these people now live are fake, they are much better than lives they would live in the real world. To prove his benevolence, Pyramid allows Monkey to try one of the devices that everyone else is plugged into. Monkey is instant mesmerized, and is about to become lost in the alternate existence when Trip kills Pyramid and disconnects everyone from the program. The game ends with a massive “what have you done?” moment, as everyone in the simulation is brought back to reality and it is uncertain as to exactly what the fallout of Trip’s actions will be.

Crossing the river
The story of Enslaved is loosely based off a 16th century Chinese novel, and I liked it a lot. Post-apocalyptic stories and journey stories are not uncommon in video games, but Enslaved is one of the better ones I’ve encountered. In particular, the relationship between Monkey and Trip is very well developed, as we get to see the slow transition from antagonism at the start of the game to a close friendship at the end. Strong voice and motion-capture work by the actors behind Monkey and Trip also goes a long way in making them believable characters. When I was playing Enslaved I was concerned that the story would take the token approach of turning Monkey and Trip into a couple, but thankfully that does not happen, as that would have felt really forced and would not have fit well with the game’s storyline. The only part of Enslaved’s story that I had a major problem with was the ending, which is rather abrupt and feels like there was supposed to be more. If the final cutscene of the game was extended a minute or two to show more of the consequences of Trip’s actions, then perhaps it would feel less awkward.

Fighting off the machines
Enslaved is beautiful game. Unlike most games in the post-apocalyptic genre, the world of Enslaved is not grey and dusty, but rather brilliantly colored. In the absence of humanity, nature has encroached on New York City and covered it with grasses, flowers, vines, trees, and other plant life. Blue skies and a strangely clean Hudson River also bring out the feel of a place that is very much alive in spite of the wrecked buildings and lack of people. The rusted and decaying remains of human civilization are themselves part of the beauty of the game, with the stone, metal, and glass of former structures contrasting with the overgrowth of nature and creating a literal urban jungle. Despite coming out back in 2010, Enslaved’s environments are still pretty to this day, as I can attest from the Youtube videos I watched in preparation for completing this post. Enslaved’s developer, Ninja Theory, has a talent for creating distinctly vibrant and colorful games, and I would go so far as to say they are on of the few studios whose games I can recognize purely by the color palate.

Trip deploys her drone
Though Enslaved’s gameplay is good, it is also where you’ll find most of the small number of problems that the game has. During traversal there are times where you experience some slight lag between button presses and the actions onscreen, and in combat the camera often zooms in closer to Monkey, which makes fights more dramatic but also limits your situational awareness. The game’s engine also starts to chug during some of the more hectic sequences, causing noticeable drops in the framerate. Despite these and a few other minor issues, however, Enslaved is still a fun game to play. Combat is simple but satisfying, with new combos and abilities for Monkey’s staff unlocked by gaining experience points. Strong level design keeps traversal from getting boring, and at one point you get to ride around on small floating disc, which Monkey uses to help him and Trip cross the Hudson River (this was one of my favorite parts of the game). The occasional boss fights or set piece sequences also make for some exciting game moments. Pacing between everything that happens in Enslaved is excellent, ensuring a good balance between traversal, combat, and story moments. Lastly, although you play the game as Monkey, Trip also has an important role in the gameplay. What she lacks in physical prowess, she makes up for in technical expertise. Trip can deploy a drone to scout an area, distract enemies with holograms, and interact with the various technology found throughout the land. If attacked by the machines, she can briefly disable them, giving you a few seconds to get to her if she’s in trouble. I’m normally not a fan of escort missions in games, and Enslaved is arguably one giant escort mission, but Trip is both helpful and is likable as a character, so I didn’t mind having her around.

Escaping New York
Enslaved truly is a gem of a game. Captivating from start to finish, it received positive reviews from most of the major games media outlets, but unfortunately it didn’t sell well enough to warrant a sequel. For whatever reason, not many people were interested in playing Enslaved around the time it came out. Reading comments online over the past few days has been encouraging, though, and I think the game is finally starting to get the recognition it deserves. Better late than never, I suppose. If you have a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or a PC that can run it, I highly encourage giving Enslaved a try if you’ve never played it before. You might just be pleasantly surprised, like I was, with how good of a game it is.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Late to the Party - Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've had the time to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a new series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.


Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Kotaku application, submitted

Some of you might remember that back in April I wrote about a job opening at Kotaku, a major video games media website. The job was for an entry-level writing position, and while I thought about submitting an application, I got sidetracked by other things that were going on in my life. The Kotaku job slipped to the back of my mind in the following weeks and I assumed it would be filled by one of the many candidates who are far more qualified for it than myself. Two days ago, however, on a whim I decided to take a look back at Kotaku’s job postings, and to my surprise the position was still listed as open. I knew then that I had to apply, or I would be kicking myself for the rest of my life, pondering the great what-ifs. True, the job listing could very well be a technical error, whereby the post has been filled and someone at Kotaku merely forgot to remove it, but what if it wasn’t? I quickly set to work editing my resume to try to highlight my writing experience, and also typed up a cover letter to explain why I would be a valuable employee. Then, after filling out the other parts of the application, I uploaded my resume and cover letter, and with a touch of fear and trembling, I clicked the Submit button. It was done.


What happens now? Likely nothing. I calculate my odds of success as being incredibly low, but all the same, I’m glad I did this. Should I be interviewed and then offered the job I would be inclined to jump on it, as one does not get an opportunity like this often. One day I hope to show the world what I can do with my writing, and this job just might be the place to do it.

Oh, and if anyone at Kotaku is reading this, thank you for taking the time to check out my writing. Hopefully you like what you see, and if so perhaps I’ll be speaking with you, and working with you, in the near future.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Kingdom Hearts Unchained X


With yesterday’s cell phone-related post, I realized that it was about time I finally write something about a mobile game I tried out a few months ago but haven’t mentioned until now. Prior to that point I had only played one game on a phone, which you can read about here, as I normally do all my gaming on console. The game that I played was Kingdom Hearts Unchained X (the “X” is actually the Greek letter chi). As a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series, I was interested in trying it out, and as a bonus it was free, though you can spend money if you choose. I’ve only played about four or five hours total of Kingdom Hearts Unchained X, so keep in mind that my thoughts only reflect the first few sections of the game. Also, I’m going to refer to the game as KHUX for the rest of this blog post. See if you can come up with a fancy way to pronounce that and then use it while reading the rest of this post.

Exploring Wonderland
KHUX is a prequel to the other Kingdom Hearts games, and thus adds on to the beginning of the convoluted Kingdom Hearts storyline. I can’t say too much about what happens, as I haven’t gotten very far, but after you create your character the game opens with you choosing one of five clans to join, and I picked the one with a bear for an emblem. You are given a companion to guide your path, and are then sent out to various Disney worlds to help the locals and defeat the Heartless infestations you encounter. So far, I’ve journey to the worlds of Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, and Aladdin, along with the non-Disney world of Daybreak Town.

Upgrading the Keyblade
To progress the story you play individual missions, and each of these take about five minutes to beat. This makes KHUX good for short bursts of play, and if I was commuting on a bus or train I could see myself using that time to knock out a few missions while on my way to work. Sometimes in-between missions a Raid Boss will appear, which is a large Heartless that is harder to take down, and these provide a bonus boss fight for those so inclined (if you do not engage it, the Raid Boss will disappear after a few minutes).

Entering combat
The gameplay of KHUX is very simple and the game itself is fairly easy. Basic touch mechanics are used for both moving your character and combat. While exploring, you just touch the screen where you want your character to go and they will go there. In combat, you touch the enemy you want to attack, and swiping the screen is used for special attacks. The combat in KHUX is turn-based and very forgiving, and there were only a few points where I was actually in danger of losing all of my character’s health. Even when that does happen, though, KHUX gets you right back into the action with a small deduction from the supply of jewels you steadily collect while playing the game.

Meeting the Cheshire Cat
On the backend of KHUX, there’s an upgrade systems allows you to boost the stats of your character and their Keyblade. Your Keyblade itself can be infused with medals, which allow different sorts of special attacks, and these medals can be upgraded. You can also unlock various outfits for your character, though I have so far stuck with one of the default appearances. The outfits are purely cosmetic, and do not affect your character’s stats.

Facing a Raid Boss
I don’t know when I will finish KHUX, as I when I have the time for gaming I almost always opt for turning on the PlayStation or Xbox. My schedule is also getting busy again, so it could take a long time to whittle away at it. Regardless, whenever I finally beat KHUX I’ll write up a brief report on my final experience and let you know what I thought of the game overall.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Modern Technological Lifespans

This past Saturday my iPhone 5c suffered a massive seizure and died. I had been having problems connecting to Verizon’s cellular network for the last two months, and normally the issue would solve itself after a few hours, but this time it wouldn’t going away, so I paid a visit to the local Verizon store. The staff there took a look at it and gave my phone a new SIM card, in addition to doing some other troubleshooting. The problem remained, so they suggested paying a visit to the nearby Apple store to have them check and see if it was a software issue. At the Apple store the staff there did some more work on the phone, but also with no success. With the other avenues exhausted, it was decided that the phone would be restored to factory settings, which would wipe out all the phone’s data and make it like it had been back when I first acquired it. The restoration process was going along fine, but then got stuck in during the final 5% of the process. Nothing done by the Apple staff or myself could get the phone working again, and it was pronounced dead on the spot.

Once invaluable, now worthless
I got a replacement phone the next day, but this incident got me thinking about how some technologies don’t seem to last as long as they used to. My first phone, which I got in 2004, lasted me nine years and was still working fine when I opted to get a new one, whereas this last phone only survived just under three years. As the type of guy who keeps his hardware well maintained and doesn’t subscribed to the consumerist culture of technological waste and expendability, I was disappointed that the phone didn’t last longer, but I can also understand part of the reason for it. As technology advances, our devices become increasingly complex, and the more complex something is, the more ways it can fail. My first phone really only served four purposes: making calls, sending/receiving text messages, telling me what time it was, and waking me up each morning with its alarm clock. The phone that died was full of apps and did so many things, but also needed regular software updates and required more protection from physical harm. I’ve experienced a similar phenomenon to this in the world of video games, in that my PlayStation 3 twice needed servicing, but my PlayStation 2 has never had any issues, and I’ve known plenty of people who own old consoles like the NES and Sega Master System that still work like they’re brand new. Newer technologies are great, but some of them seem to be more fragile than older ones.

It was an unpleasant (and expensive) experience, but after acquiring a new phone and restoring the information and apps I had on the previous phone, I was back in business. Now I have a newer model of the iPhone, and while it’s shinier and has much better internal hardware, this experience has left me nervous about its life expectancy. Hopefully it lasts longer than its predecessor.

Friday, June 3, 2016

Upcoming Games - Day 5

We’re getting close to E3 2016, the annual video games convention held in Los Angeles. That means we’re about to get a bunch of previews for games that will be coming out either this year or in 2017, and in that spirit I thought I’d dedicate this week to highlighting several of the games I’m personally looking forward to. Each day I’ll feature two games and a short description of what they are and why I’m interested in them.

To wrap up this short series of blog posts, today I present to you an intergalactic space opera, and a story about a boy and his oversized bird-dog creature.


Mass Effect Andromeda
The Mass Effect games were some of my favorite ones from the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 console generation, so it’s no surprise that Mass Effect Andromeda is near the top of the games I’m looking forward to. Though there have been a few press releases and leaks since its announcement, we don’t know too much about Mass Effect Andromeda, other than that it takes place in a different galaxy and its story comes after the events of Mass Effect 3. Because of this, I’m very interested to see what was decided as the canon ending of Mass Effect 3. For those that don’t know, there was quite the controversy when Mass Effect 3 came out, as there were only four endings and these endings seemed to nullify the importance of all the choices players had made leading up to them. While I wasn’t one of the people who was up in arms about Mass Effect 3’s ending, I do concede that it could have been much better and I’m hopeful that developer Bioware will take the hard lessons learned from it and uses them to make Mass Effect Andromeda better.


The Last Guardian
No other game on this list has caused me as much mental grief as The Last Guardian. I played and loved its two predecessors, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, and when The Last Guardian first was announced in 2009 for the PlayStation 3 I was on top of the world with anticipation. But then the game fell into development hell. Year after year, there were rumors of its reemergence, and year after year it was a no-show. All the news related to the game sounded bad, with talk of the development team having major hardware difficulties and game director Fumito Ueda leaving Sony (though still working on the game as a creative consultant). I confess I had just about given up on The Last Guardian by the time it was formally re-revealed in 2015. Part of me will remain pessimistic and not believe this game actually exists until I have it in my hands, but now the end finally seems to be in sight. The Last Guardian is scheduled to come out this year, but whenever it comes out I’ll finally get to play the game that mesmerized me all those years ago with its tale of a boy and his giant chimera creature. Hopefully it’s been worth the wait.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Upcoming Games - Day 4

We’re getting close to E3 2016, the annual video games convention held in Los Angeles. That means we’re about to get a bunch of previews for games that will be coming out either this year or in 2017, and in that spirit I thought I’d dedicate this week to highlighting several of the games I’m personally looking forward to. Each day I’ll feature two games and a short description of what they are and why I’m interested in them.

Today features two of gaming’s biggest first-person shooter franchises. Both had reveal trailers that came out not too long ago, which I discussed here.


Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
I am one of the few people who play Call of Duty games exclusively for their singleplayer campaign. Since the majority of Call of Duty players only play multiplayer, I keep expecting the series to just drop the singleplayer campaign, but year after year they still have it. I guess the singleplayer story gives context to the multiplayer, so maybe that’s why it hasn’t gone away. Call of Duty Infinite Warfare’s story jumps into the distant future with space battles and interplanetary travel. I’m not expecting anything particularly deep or profound about the story, but as long as the game is fun like the other Call of Duty games I won’t mind. Call of Duty singleplayer campaigns are also normally only about eight or so hours long, making them great for knocking out in a single weekend. Though I won’t get much time out of Infinite Warfare, I expect to enjoy my brief experience with it.



Battlefield 1
Battlefield 1 (which I personally think should have been titled Battlefield 1914) is moving in the opposite direction from Call of Duty Infinite Warfare. While Call of Duty is leaping forward into the future, Battlefield is taking a step back into the past, setting its game in World War 1. I’m curious to see how Battlefield is going to handle things like the trench warfare and poison gas that World War 1 was known for, and how players will react to not having modern technologies at their disposal. The singleplayer campaign for Battlefield 1 will likely be decent, but the Battlefield games are among the very few that I’m actually interested in putting some time into the multiplayer. Even though I’m generally no good at multiplayer, I still find Battlefield’s multiplayer fun to play, so even though I’m getting murdered left and right I enjoy myself partly because I’m doing crazy stuff, like ramming a plane into a tank. I missed out on Battlefield 4’s multiplayer, so hopefully Battlefield 1 will get me back into it.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Upcoming Games - Day 3

We’re getting close to E3 2016, the annual video games convention held in Los Angeles. That means we’re about to get a bunch of previews for games that will be coming out either this year or in 2017, and in that spirit I thought I’d dedicate this week to highlighting several of the games I’m personally looking forward to. Each day I’ll feature two games and a short description of what they are and why I’m interested in them.

Today’s two games come from the same publisher, Square Enix, and represent two of the most beloved series in all of gaming.


Final Fantasy XV

 Final Fantasy XV has been a long time coming. I first got excited for this game back when it was announced in 2006 under the name of Final Fantasy Versus XIII. In the years that followed I remained interested, but with so little news coming out it was relegated to the back of my mind. Then, in 2013, the game was re-revealed, branded now as Final Fantasy XV, and the hype train rose from the ashes like a phoenix. Even though I can’t claim to be a longtime fan of the Final Fantasy series, having only played two of them, I like what I’ve seen so far of Final Fantasy XV. It looks like it’s borrowing some of the open-world elements common to western role-playing games as well as learning from the criticism related to a few of the immediately preceding Final Fantasy titles. If the team making Final Fantasy XV can get the gameplay and story elements right, and pair it with their natural talent for creating fantastical worlds, then we might just have the game to return the Final Fantasy series to its former glory.



Kingdom Hearts 3
On paper, the Kingdom Hearts games sound like a joke. Combining the characters and worlds of Disney and Final Fantasy sounds weird at best, and disastrous at worst. And yet, the Kingdom Hearts games not only work, but indeed they excel. Following the journeys of several protagonists across different times and universes, Kingdom Hearts weaves together a thoroughly enjoyable fantasy narrative, even when it gets overly convoluted. I first fell in love with the series when I played Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 on the PlayStation 2, and although the other games came out on handheld systems, I watched playthroughs on Youtube to stay current with the series. Kingdom Hearts 3 will continue the story of Sora, the hero of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, and I’m curious to see which Disney and Final Fantasy worlds return from previous games and which new ones get thrown into the mix. Since Disney now owns both Marvel and Lucasfilm, I would love to see Sora and his friends journey to worlds based on The Avengers and Star Wars.