Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) by Konami

What begins as a unique, enjoyable open-world romp quickly turns to tedium when you realize how sparse the open world is and how repetitive the gameplay begins to feel. There are some notable gameplay quirks and some trademark Kojima touches, but it wasn't enough to keep me playing through this one until the end.

The best thing I can say about Phantom Pain is that the graphics are really solid, once again. I'm coming off spending about 150 hours in Witcher 3, and though this game doesn't quite compete with that one on a graphical level (nothing does, honestly), it still looks really freaking good. The Fox engine's lighting and particle effects are stunning. And it runs amazingly on PC. I'm holding 60fps solid at 1440p. No complaints here.

In the beginning I found the open world progression to be incredibly addictive. That's something that always seems to draw me in. As a minimap completionist games like this, the Assassin's Creed series, and Witcher 3 are absolutely my bread and butter. I hated how limited Ground Zeroes was. The entire game felt like continuous retreading of known ground. It bored me. This game is a step completely in the opposite direction, at least at first. The base building, the weapon and equipment progression, the buddy system... It all tickled my fancy. There was so much to do it was hard to put down. It was melting hours out of my day. However, this all eventually becomes the norm, and you begin to realize that these environments, though large, begin to grow incredibly sparse and your same repeated activities start to become monotonous. I eventually but the game down and didn't finish it after about halfway through. I've come to realize that this world was meant to be much more populated with life and activity than it is. The story, too, has some of Kojima's touches, but ultimately feels similarly sparse and incomplete.

Like my unpopular Ground Zeroes review, I have some notable criticisms of the game. Some will fall on deaf ears, again like the Ground Zeroes review, as Kojima fans love his trademark weirdness.

I dove heavily on the dated control scheme in my Ground Zeroes review, so I won't say it all again here. Instead I'll summarize and just say the control scheme is dated and unintuitive. That's an especially bad thing for a stealth game, because you need to be able to react without thinking if you turn a corner and run into a guard. Too many times early in the game I'd have to actually think about what button did what, and a few times I even had to look up the controls to find out what I needed to know: Example: "How the hell do you sprint on horseback? Oh, the X button? WTF? That makes no sense, why the X button when it's L3 to sprint on foot?" You expect the controls to make sense, and if you play as many hours of video games as I do, you can pretty much pick up anything and play it within a few minutes. That's not the case with this and Ground Zeroes, and while it's not a MAJOR issue since the problem is solved by a few hours of getting used to the controls, it's still a pain in the ass, and something that the Metal Gear team should have figured out between 2008's Guns of the Patriots and now.

Another negative is the cover system, which never seems to function as smoothly as I'd like. There's no button press involved so the game judges when you want to be stuck to cover and when you don't, which never seems to work properly in any video game that tries to implement it. Too often I'd get stuck to a wall when needing to move quickly, and too often it would take too long for it to stick me to cover so I could pop off a quick cover shot or target acquisition with the binoculars. This is just another example of dated game design. Cover systems are figured out. There's no reason for Kojima's team to get it wrong here.

By now most people know Hideo Kojima's style. He's an incredibly quirky guy as a writer and a designer. I typically love his design quirks. They add flavor to the game and keep things interesting. It's why he's great for the industry and why his dismissal from Konami is so disappointing. Even if this game does show some age in the aspects I've mentioned, he still belongs in the pantheon just due to his constant ability to surprise the gamer by implementing completely new, weird things (try playing a certain tape while hiding in a bathroom). He's a boundary-pushing designer. But Kojima as a writer? I know people will hate me for saying this, but I absolutely cannot stand him. Since MGS2 the series has devolved from being a James Bond-esque spy thriller with some weird anime quirks to a nonsensical, incoherent mess. The terribly convoluted story makes little sense. The action sequences are downright cheesy. The characters seem written by a teenager. Full disclosure, though: Campy, kitschy-type stuff has always been completely lost on me. I've never gotten it, never come close to liking it. Perhaps I'm too serious (or boring). It's always made me cringe and instantly turned me off. If you like that sort of thing, then I'm willing to bet Kojima's writing won't be a negative for you.

Another thing I'd like the mention is the foolish way the game handles the secondary objectives to story missions. They're unknown to begin with, and if you do accidentally trip over one -- such as discovering an item deposit, saving some prisoners, etc -- then they'll become revealed on your objective list and checked off. This isn't bad by itself: It promotes exploration and drives the player to explore the area more thoroughly, which is a necessity in the stealth genre when you often just want to complete your objective and get out quickly in order to maintain your stealth rating and not take a chance of being spotted. The problem I have is that after the you finish the mission, THEN the secondary objectives are revealed. It doesn't make sense for the game to do so. Why now? What changed? Now I'm just magically directed to these other things that I missed? Either keep them unknown until I discover them, or tell me right up front what I need to do. It's a cheap ploy to get you to replay missions multiple times. It feels like the developer is just trying to pad the game's length. It would be a lot more fun to allow me to replay the missions without EVER telling me what the secondary objectives were and simply letting me find them myself.

Finally, I have to mention how awkward Snake/Big Boss is in this game. It's not because he has a new voice actor, it's because his you hardly ever hear his voice! Seriously, could they just not afford to pay Kiefer Sutherland? He puts forth a great performance when you actually hear him, but he hardly has any dialogue at all! Snake is conspicuously silent during most of the cutscenes, and it's really awkward and offputting. It's completely immersion breaking. There must be a bigger story here, because it's obvious that there were some issues with his dialogue when Ocelot and Miller are holding entire conversations with Snake and Snake isn't saying a damn word. Really, really strange. For now my head canon is that Hideo Kojima and Kiefer Sutherland had a falling out when Sutherland discovered Kojima's favorite James Bond was Roger Moore.

What begins as a unique, enjoyable open-world romp quickly turns to tedium when you realize how sparse the open world is and how repetitive the gameplay begins to feel. There are some notable gameplay quirks and some trademark Kojima touches, but it wasn't enough to keep me playing through this one until the end.

I really can't recommend this game to anyone but the most hardcore Metal Gear fans, though gamers with a modicum of interest in the stealth or open world genres might want to take a shot at this game. It's admittedly a lot of fun in the first few hours before it overstays its welcome and starts to become tedious.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 74 hours

Dishonored (2012) by Arkane Studios

Successful new intellectual properties are typically very difficult to produce in the world of game design. The process requires the developers to build all aspects of the video game from the ground up. They have to decide what type of art direction they're going for, conceive all pieces of the plot and characters from scratch, and build all of the technical systems such as graphics and combat from scratch. This is why new IPs are often rough around the edges. Sequels are so ubiquitous and generally more critically acclaimed because the developers already have an existing foundation to build upon from the previous title and they can focus on adding polish.

Dishonored is one of the special few new IPs that manages to avoid most of the pitfalls and delivers a diverse, adaptable, polished experienced right from the get go.

The most noticeable aspect of the game is its art design, which was deftly crafted by one Viktor Antonov, a Bulgarian art director famous for his work on designing City 17 and its outskirts in Half Life 2. His touch is recognizable in Dishonored as chaotic Dunwall shares many similarities with totalitarian City 17. Nothing feels like it was pasted over from Half-Life 2, though. Dishonored is a true steampunk game and Dunwall has it's own feel that's inspired by Victorian era London gone bad. There's a dirty river, loads of industry, and even a familiar-looking bridge. All of it is given a unique touch, and the result is a very immersive world. This is escapism at its finest; be prepared for the Dunwall to suck you in immediately and carve away the hours of your day as you explore every nook and cranny. I haven't been as enamored with a new setting since playing BioShock and first experiencing Rapture.

The plot is serviceable though predictable. Daud, the conflicted villain of the game, is the strongest and most interesting character. It's a shame he doesn't get more screentime, though Arkane have remedied this with a pair of DLC episodes in which he is the playable character. The player character, Corvo Attano, is a silent protagonist. This is a negative for me since I personally detest the silent protagonist trope in video games. I understand that the goal of the silent protagonist is to allow the gamer to project his own reactions into the game, and I know that many gamers enjoy it, but it pulls me out of the experience when I don't hear my character speaking to anybody addressing him because it's so unnatural. I can't logically connect the fact that my character is mute, yet nobody in the game ever seems to comment upon it. I don't enjoy it in the Half-Life series, and I'm not a fan of it here, either. I will say that the game deserves a mention of its voice acting, particularly the role of Daud as played by Michael Madsen of Tarantino fame. Other praiseworthy roles are played by John Slattery (Mad Men), Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass), Brad Douriff (Lord of the Rings), Lena Headey (Game of Thrones), and Susan Sarandon (Thelma & Louise). They spent some money on voice talent, and it pays off. The one qualm I do have is the repetitive nature of the guards' canned conversational quips, of which there are few. They repeat themselves regularly which breaks immersion.

The wasted landscape of the plague-ridden city can become tiresome and a bit grating. There are corpses littered about, filth, rats, and crumbling buildings galore. The design is fine but the pacing leaves you in these types of areas for a bit too long. The more civilized settings in certain levels such as the gentlemen's club and the high society party feel special by comparison, but the pace would benefit from seeing more of the inhabited areas of the city and fewer of the burned out, deserted ghettos. There are only so many ways you can depict diseased ruin before it becomes repetitive.

The game's graphical muscle won't blow you away if you're used to games like Crysis 3, but the art direction props up the visuals enough to make them astounding in certain areas. There's an old oil painting feel which permeates the game, and it fits the look and feel of the setting very well. I get a sense of great design while playing this game. There aren't all that many graphical options to tinker with, but there is a field of view slider, which is always cause for celebration with PC ports. The game also runs exceptionally well on PC, so even if you're not wowed by the visuals and the art design like I am, the technical aspects of the visuals won't hinder you from enjoying the gameplay at all.

Dishonored is fully adaptable to your style of play, which is refreshing in a game that emphasizes stealth. If you're a stealth fanatic (as I admittedly am), then you'll enjoy it here. It's possible to finish the game without ever killing anybody or being spotted, and you're able to accomplish this thanks to being provided the tools to move quickly and silently throughout huge areas. Blink allows you to teleport instantly a certain distance across the map, and you can also acquire the ability to see through walls. Mobility is a requirement in many stealth games, and Dishonored gives you the tools to traverse the environment quickly when needed.

The beauty of the strong stealth play is that it's balanced by an arguably better combat system. The combat powers at your disposal (slowing or stopping time, possessing enemies, finishers, etc.) all synergize incredibly well with one another and they allow you to take out your enemies in endlessly amusing ways. It's a sign of the design team having clearly described objectives, and I was genuinely amazed at how well the game flows between stealth and combat. I expected to play this game for its engrossing, artistic setting and ended up getting the biggest kicks out t's combat system. In my opinion it's the strongest aspect of the game, which is indicative of the game's greater value considering its already great art direction. There are multiple reasons to play this title, which helps it appeal to a broad demographic. It's no one trick pony.

The only real criticism I have of the game is the clumsy way in which it handles morality. Great games have been bungling morality mechanics for nearly a decade now (BioShock immediately comes to mind), so it's not surprising, but in Dishonored it becomes a glaring flaw because they get so much else right.

You're informed very clearly that the city will descend more and more into chaos if you kill your enemies rather than avoiding them or knocking them out, and your allies will begin to view you unfavorably the more deadly you are. While this is logically understandable (a lack of law enforcement officials presumably increases chaos in a troubled city), the mechanic unintendedly puts shackles on your ability to transition between stealth and combat. The gameplay seems designed to be freely adaptable so you can move seamlessly between stealth and combat when you're spotted, but it then tells you via the plot that playing stealthily and non-lethally is better. You begin to feel corralled into playing the game stealthily rather than being free to adapt to combat situations if you get caught. The plot punishes you for being spotted and having to fight your way out.

It's a disconnect in design between a plot that wants to make you accountable for your choices and gameplay that wants to be flexible. A potential solution would be leaving the chaos meter to be regulated entirely by how you choose to dispatch your assassination targets. Then it's isolated to the plot and doesn't have any effect on the way you choose to play the game. It's a disappointing flaw, but it doesn't take much away from a game that offers so much to begin with.

Overall, this game is a beautiful, immersive experience and it should absolutely be played by anybody who typically enjoys stealth games, or games that offer rich, engrossing settings. I'm very much looking forward to Arkane's inevitable sequel to this game.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 46 hours

Game of Thrones (2014) by Telltale Games

As a huge fan of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice And Fire book series and Telltale's other titles The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, I was really looking forward to this title. However, I've found myself more and more disappointed with each episode I've played. I wanted to reserve judgment until the first season was complete, but playing the game seems more like a chore that I have to force myself to complete.

The first, and perhaps the most obvious negative, are the graphical capabilities. Telltale's games were never very impressive in the graphical department, but The Walking Dead was at least adequate, and The Wolf Among Us had some great art direction and used a bright, attractive set of colors. This game, however, fails to reach even a mediocre level. It has a similar style to The Walking Dead, but the textures are far muddier and at a lower resolution. The colors are unattractive; the artists seemed to rely on only a mixture of earth tones. It's not inspired artistically, and it's inadequate technically. Perhaps the artists felt too constrained by being forced to live up to the style of the HBO series. Whatever the reason, the game looks very poor, and it strongly affects the experience in a way that I didn't expect it to.

This leads me into the bigger problem with the series: Everything in the game seems grating and unpleasant. I play video games for entertainment and escapism, and playing this game is simply not an enjoyable experience. The beauty of A Song Of Ice And Fire is that things feel real despite it being set in a fantastical world. People are human and make choices that often best serve their own interests. It's somewhat cynical, but events occur that feel believable, which is an incredible accomplishment when you're reading about people living through decade-long winters and dragons. Terrible things sometimes happen to good people in the real world, and A Song Of Ice And Fire reflects that. The good guys don't always win, but when they do, it's special. The tragedies make the heroic moments all the more enjoyable. You find yourself grinning from ear to ear and pumping your first when a character you love finds good fortune or acts heroically and things go well. It's all about the payoff.

The problem with this game is that so far, throughout the three episodes of this series, only torturously terrible things have happened. There has not been a single moment of triumph. It actually damages any feeling of suspense or tension the designers are trying for, because I've so far been taught by the game that no matter what decisions I make, something awful is sure to happen because of them. Im fact, I'm not even positive that you can avoid any of the terrible occurrences from taking place, as I've replayed some sections and made different choices and had nothing change. The same people still die, the same people get angry with me.

About halfway through the third episode I found myself deliberately making the most aggressive choices possible despite their likelihood of leading to poor situations for the characters, and when I stopped to consider why, I realized that the game had trained my thought process to expect the worst, and thus attempt to get it over as quickly as possible. This is a very bad thing for a game, and playing through these episodes feels utterly masochistic. Literally nothing good has happened to any of these characters through three episodes. They die, they become grievously wounded, they're insulted constantly, etc. It's all absolutely punishing with zero payoff, and my desire to continue playing wanes with each chapter Telltale releases.

In conclusion: What makes A Song Of Ice And Fire so enjoyable despite its bleakness are the monumental triumphs of characters you've grown to love in the face of so much violence and despair. The writers of this game series simply do not seem to understand this, and as a result playing this game is an incredibly unpleasant experience. Everything about it is unremarkable at best, and ugly and unattractive at worst, from its graphics, to its characters, to its plot.

⭐

Playtime: 11 hours

Shadowrun: Dragonfall (2014) by Harebrained Schemes

I greatly enjoy tactical RPGs when they're done right. I'm a big fan of the Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics series, and that plus an affinity for cyberpunk novels are mainly what drew me to Shadowrun despite never playing the original SNES or the tabletop RPG.

I played Shadowrun Returns and enjoyed my time with it save for a few key complaints, mostly around the pacing, shallow combat, and characterization. I'm pleased to say that all of those issues are cleared up with this game, and that it's an utterly fantastic title. I went so far as to recommend that people skip Returns completely in my review of that game and proceed onto this one instead. It's that much of an improvement.

The pacing problems I had with Returns often caused me to lose interest in the game and stop playing it for weeks at a time. Those issues are completely alleviated here. The game seems to have taken some inspiration from the Mass Effect series, as missions are structured in a similar manner in Dragonfall. Something happens in the first mission of the game that creates an overarching plot, and you're gradually working towards the solution of that by taking odd jobs to build up your bankroll. You're also conversing with your regular allies--something else that Returns lacked that I disliked--and completing missions specifically regarding their background. It worked excellently in Mass Effect, and it really works well here.

The combat has taken even more inspiration from XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and it now feels far more fleshed out than it did in Returns. Each class has far more depth than it did in Returns, and there are more opportunities to utilize the environment in interesting ways. Some of my favorite missions in the game involved the opportunity to have your computer hacker operate in the Matrix, simultaneously fighting a tactical battle in a cyber world with the aims of unlocking doors and disabling or even turning the security systems to your teams side while they proceed with a battle in the real world. There are some incredibly compelling race-against-time type missions in this game that require that sort of thing. It creates a ton of suspense and allows you to take combat in exponentially more directions than the first game did.

The characters and the story in this game is the largest improvement over Returns, though. Your squadmates have obviously been crafted with a caring touch, and they feel like well-rounded human beings (or metahuman beings), which is a far departure from the hire-a-mannequin system that Returns did. They've got their own motivations and their own reasons for being there, and they're not always going to agree with the path you're taking. I even feel like I got a deeper roleplaying experience out of my player character than in Returns. I felt like I had more opportunity to inject my own desired personality into him, which I hadn't realized I was missing in Returns until playing this game. Even the minor characters are compelling, from the civilian engineer dwarf roped into a job she has no interest in doing to the loving Grandfather who works as an accountant but also moonlights as an assassin for a loanshark named Meat Grinder, who he hilariously refers to as "Mr. Grinder". Writing is the strength of this game, and it would have compelled me to continue onward and finish even if I didn't really like the combat.

I should also mention the music, which was of quality in Returns but seems improved here. I read somewhere that the composer for the music in the original SNES game did this one as well, which was interesting to me. It's very good, and it properly encompasses the mood of a world that's caringly built as an homage to William Gibson's in the Sprawl trilogy.

Gibson, for those who have never heard of him, is to cyberpunk what Tolkien is to fantasy. His novel Neuromancer, released in 1981, inspired a great many of the ideas included in this game, particularly the Matrix, which is nearly unchanged from those novels. I'd highly recommend the fans of this game pick up a copy of Neuromancer and immerse themselves in the grassroots of the cyberpunk subgenre.

The only real gripe I can think of is the way the game depicts corporations. It's utterly cliche, uninteresting, and tiresome. Look, I'm no fan of stodgy, bureaucratic, inhuman multinational corporations. But not every company is Comcast. Literally every corporation in this game is depicted as maliciously evil and self-serving to the point where the player is dealing with atrocity after atrocity. The one "good" CEO in the game is promptly fired for not putting the bottom line first. That's just boring storytelling. There's great value in turning the cliché on its head, and it would have been nice to see a depiction differing from norm since the writers did such a good job of that otherwise.

In conclusion, this is an excellent tactical RPG set in a well-crafted world. It's beautifully presented, beautifully written, and just a hell of a lot of fun. Hairbrained Schemes has met all of the potential set forth by Shadowrun Returns, as this is probably the best RPG I played in all of 2014.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 52 hours

Shadowrun Returns (2013) by Harebrained Schemes

I was excited to play Shadowrun Returns simply because I'm a big fan of both tactical RPGs and cyberpunk. I've read William Gibson's work and liked him, and Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my favorite games of all-time.

This game is obviously influenced on the combat side by XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which I loved. But I found it to be a bit light as far as tactical RPG depth. The robustness of the different systems in play in XCOM, including the greatly varying types of enemies and huge differences in classes and abilities, is just not present in this game. Now, a game that relies on a very basic combat system is certainly not always at fault for doing so, but it's got to be a strong enough core mechanic to carry the weight of the entire combat system, otherwise is just gets boring. This game is nearly there, but I just don't feel that the tactical combat in this game is solid enough at its base to accomplish that. It requires a more robust, deeper experience.

RPGs will always grapple with their pacing. It's easy to leave a player a bit too long in a hub world, and make them feel bored with some of the more tedious tasks they're assigned there. The pacing in this game suffers from that problem. You're spending too much time running around aimlessly, chatting people up, and doing other miscellaneous things. Again, there's just not enough depth here. I don't feel like too many of the things I'm doing actually matter. They don't interest me. I'd be itching to get into more combat, but then I'd actually get into and get bored of that, too.

The writing is there, but I didn't find any of the characters particularly compelling save for Sam Watts, who doesn't get much screentime.

Shadowrun Returns is not an offensively bad game by any means. It's actually a very promising one. It's a portent of what's to come from Hairbrained Schemes. This title is one of those examples of a developer getting their feet under them with some nice basic design and then releasing an initial effort. The obvious emphasis is on core systems: The building blocks are here, and they've got a lot of potential. But the combat system, the characters, and the pacing leave a lot to be desired.

The emphasis on community developed content is a strong one as well, so there's a lot to do here outside the main game. But as a standalone game, I can't recommend Shadowrun Returns simply because I highly recommend its standalone successor, Shadowrun Dragonfall. Dragonfall succeeds in every category of Returns that I found wanting. I'd recommend to anybody considering Shadowrun Returns to skip this title and play Dragonfall instead. It's really a fantastic game.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 18 hours