Mass Effect Andromeda (2017) by BioWare

Perhaps the most important part of playing Mass Effect Andromeda is to go into it with carefully managed expectations.

This was a game made not by the flagship BioWare team (they were working on Anthem at the time), but by BioWare Montreal—the team primarily responsible for Mass Effect 3's phenomenal multiplayer component.

Going off of that, you can expect really good combat. Andromeda is easily the best a Mass Effect game has ever played, combat-wise. You are far more mobile than ever before thanks to jump-jets, there are more powers to choose from in your build than ever before, and guns feel almost universally exceptional. They even fixed the original trilogy's notoriously awful vehicles by having by far the best feeling, looking, and controlling vehicle in the entire series in the Nomad.

In addition to the strong combat, the move to the Frostbite engine (although it caused a severely difficult development, as Frostbite was not intended to be utilized for RPGs) looks absolutely beautiful in comparison to the Unreal Engine 3 which the previous games were built on. Perhaps most stunning about this game's visuals are the lighting and particle effects; the way light glows in space, reflects off of surfaces such as ice, and scatter due to particle effects such as fire and explosions is unequaled by any other game in the series. I would even make the claim that space has never looked better in a video game than it does in Mass Effect Andromeda—no exaggeration! It looks incredible.

To top it off, this game sounds amazing. Sound design is something we don't typically notice much, but Andromeda is one of the best sounding games I've ever played. Gunshots echo beautifully throughout the environment, every weapon has pop, the way biotics distort sounds is really impressive. The deadened sound of space is engulfing. Even the effects used for things like reloads or door switches sound really great. Top-notch sound design, and it really makes a difference in the gameplay.

There are some drawbacks to combat, though. BioWare Montreal chose to remove the pause-and-command features from the original trilogy, which is a huge disappointment. I'm sure they chose to play to their strengths—which are real-time—but the tactical aspect of pausing and assessing the situation was a huge feature that made Mass Effect different from every other third-person shooter, and it feels more generic without it.

In addition to this, managing your squadmates loadouts and power usage is also gone, further removing the more tactical feel of the original trilogy.

Aside from these drawbacks, though, the game really does play wonderfully in combat. Being in the thick of it, causing biotic detonations and hearing the amazing gunfire makes combat a joy.

Unfortunately, though, BioWare Montreal are not a team who have ever put together a story or compelling characters, and it shows.

One of my favorite things about the Mass Effect series is its worldbuilding and its strong characters. The original trilogy feels so alive because its galaxy feels like a real place with real political squabbling and real conflict of cultures. The Batarians versus the humans, the Krogan versus the Turians and Salarians, etc. And its characters feel so real and lifelike that their conflicts ring true and really affect the way you view them and the norms of the setting. Sadly, this is not the case with Andromeda, which feels incredibly basic, tacky, and uninteresting by comparison. The entire setting feels so generically space opera that I find myself wholly uninterested with any of its lore.

Peebee's obnoxious nature falls victim to stale cliché.

This lack of writing prowess sadly extends to its characters as well. Although I really liked Drack and Vetra, there were so many crewmates I absolutely detested that I refused to bring them with me in almost any situation. Peebee is little more than an impulsive moron, whose flimsy loner personality feels completely artificial—she feels like a writer tried really hard to give a "character quirk" rather than simply writing her as an actual, complete person with motivations and desires; which is what all good characters should feature if they're to jump off the page at you.

It often seems the rest of the crew hates Liam as much as I do.

And then you have Liam, who is basically just an obnoxious, impulsive screw-up. Liam is such an unrepentant idiot that it even seems like most of the rest of the team hates him as much as I do. Perhaps some of his hijinks were meant to endear him to me, I guess? If so, his writers completely failed on that front. I truly wished I had the option to kick him off the crew in-game, as he did nothing but act like a fool and consistently put everyone in terrible, life-threatening situations. And then you have people whose dialogue is just flat-out annoying, even at the best of times: an example being Gil, the mechanic. Go away, Gil. I'm tired of hearing your annoying, nasally voice and try-hard attempts at wit.

The entire game is permeated with poor dialogue, too. Characters say things that feel awkward and completely unrealistic. Every time I sit down to play this game, I think to myself, "This isn't how people talk! Nobody would say things like this!" None of the writing feels natural or real. The characters feel like video game characters, the world feels like a video game world. And so none of the conflicts or the ideas this game feebly attempts to discuss are interesting at all. They're just busywork; something that's in place because it's a Mass Effect game, and Mass Effect games need to have things like squadmates and aliens. The writing in general is so uninspired that I've never replayed this game—even though I've replayed Mass Effect 3 a dozen times at this point. It's so, so disappointing to see from my all-time favorite video game series.

In addition to this, the quest design really leaves a lot to be desired. There are far too many busywork fetch quests here. BioWare Montreal designed these gorgeous, huge, atmospheric environments which feel amazing to look at and fight in, and then chose to populate them with some of the most mundane, uninteresting busywork crap-quests imagineable. Get ready to scan 32 plants, mine 26 rocks, kill 10 beasts, etc. Over and over. Ad nauseam. Because, unfortunately, Mass Effect Andromeda is that kind of game.

It's really unfortunate that the poor animations (they are bad, but they're nowhere near the biggest flaw this game has) got so much press at the time of release, because, in general, this game really does look excellent. And its biggest flaw—by far—is how it fails the series' reputation by putting together such a mediocre writing effort.

If you're looking for a fun third-person sci-fi shooter with some nice visuals, give Andromeda a shot. That being said, although Mass Effect Andromeda does indeed do some really great things, I still don't think I would recommend it unless you're a very hardcore fan of the series. And even then, it's important to go in with well-managed expectations: Mass Effect Andromeda is certainly not a great game, but, depending on your tastes, it can be an enjoyable experience.

⭐⭐

Dragon Quest XI (2017) by Square Enix

I'm awestruck at the near-unanimously positive reception this game has received.

Maybe this is partly due to its looks. Right off the bat, it's incredibly impressive visually—especially on an artistic level. Toriyama's character designs are timeless. His style has aged like wine, from his Dragon Ball manga until the present day and pretty much everything in between. The game also features surprisingly good visuals on a technical level; the way it renders lighting and water will often surprise you.

Unfortunately, unlike Toriyama's art, the rest of this game has aged like milk.

First, some necessary backstory for context so nobody mistakes me for simply being a JRPG-hater. The original Dragon Quest (called Dragon Warrior back in the '80s here in the states) was one of the first games I ever played back as a young sprout on my father's NES console. I played it at such a young age I had to wait for my father to come home from work so he could read me the text, because I wasn't able. Dragon Quest II introduced companions to accompany you on your journey; a novel idea at the time. Dragon Quest III had you put together a team of various different classes of warriors—whichever you liked! Incredibly novel for back then. And Dragon Quest IV, with its varying scenarios, was probably my first favorite game ever. The shock of the end of chapter 2! Playing as an actual storekeeper in chapter 3! The tragedy of the beginning of chapter 5! What a game. Incredibly inspired, perfectly paced. They executed on everything they sought out to do. To this day I'm a massive fan of RPGs, and turn-based games don't bother me. JRPGs are some of my favorite games of all-time.

But man, even given all that, the most unfortunate thing about this game is that it feels old. And not in the timeless, classic way that Toriyama's art feels. So much of what this game relies on as its core loop, as its reason for keeping people coming back for more, feels so stale and ineffective that I grew to hate it inside just a few hours. The turn-based combat feels slow and antiquated and made obsolete by games like Persona 5, the music sounds incredibly bland, uninspired, and poorly mixed (despite the game being peppered by some original sound effects from the old NES games, which I enjoyed). And perhaps most damning; the story writing is of substantially poor quality. Although some of the characters are charming and well-acted by the voice cast, the main plot includes some of the most ridiculous, childishly contrived, video-gamey nonsense I've played in years. Most of the characters in the story regularly make stupid and puzzling decisions for no other purpose than the developers creating this story decided it should go in one direction or another without giving any thought as to how plausible said direction felt. It feels like something a child would write. It feels like fan-fiction. No, it's worse than fan-fiction.

There are numerous instances of moment-to-moment actions making little logical sense. A couple of early examples:

The prophesied hero finally shows up! But you know what, we should throw him in jail because his appearance means the bad-guys are gonna show up, too! He's not The Luminary! He's The Darkspawn!

I'm sorry, what? How does this make any sense whatsoever? What human being would make a decision like this?

This thief is in jail, and he's been tunneling through the floor to escape (presumably a process taking many years of painstaking, Andy Dufresne-esque hard work and suffering to complete) but he's able to instantly steal the guard's key to his cell and unlock his door simply punching him in the gut through the bars—punching him through the guard's steel plate armor and chain mail—to knock him unconscious! And not only that—the door's now unlocked and he's free to go straight out, but instead, he'll use the tunnel he dug, which requires going through the sewers and a dragon's den. He'll go that way instead of simply leaving through the door he just opened.

Games are no stranger to contrived writing. But this isn't just excusable as, "well, it's a video game, I can put up with some contrived nonsense if it's fun". Dragon Quest XI's caliber of writing is so bad, so utterly amateurish, that it pulls you straight out of the experience and prevents you from taking anything in the story seriously. And without a compelling story as context to fall back on, this game is nothing more than a series of old, stale systems dragged forth to the present from the 1980s, including archaic turn-based combat, monotonous fetch-quests, and dry overworld travel from point to point through an uninspired, linear, tunnel-and-corridor style map.

Look, my games don't have to be literary. I'm not some high-minded snob who refuses to dirty himself with anything not to the caliber of War and Peace or King Lear. The games I play don't even have to have high-minded themes or make moral or political points. That stuff is completely unnecessary to a medium which puts you straight into your player character's shoes and hands you agency over his or her actions. But what my video games do have to do is make sense! And they have to tell a story with real stakes, with events that seem real, and threatening, and compelling! And they have to give me characters that I can relate to, that I can care about and root for and sympathize with when they fail and triumph alongside when they succeed! They can't give me a silent, d e a d - e y e d protagonist who acts so unnaturally through it all that he may as well be a puppet being moved around by a ventriloquist; an ambulatory anime body pillow with so much plot armor he may as well not take damage in battles!

I have so much nostalgia for this series and I wanted so badly to love this game. It's not even that far-gone! I could have put up with everything else as-is, if only the story was well-written, emotionally affecting, and inspired. The flaws Dragon Quest XI exhibits may have worked in the '80s and skated by on name merit in the '90s, but packaged with such awful writing, it just doesn't float the boat anymore in a world in which games like Disco Elysium, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Witcher 3 exist. And I'm not saying every game has to have the caliber of writing as those games, either. But damn it, can't they at least try!? There's no longer any excuse for the awful writing, for the tinny, uninspired music, for the empty, silent protagonist, or for the lame, busywork chores that are the fetch quests that populate Dragon Quest XI. This stuff doesn't cut it in video games anymore, and people searching for quality Japanese roleplaying games shouldn't be settling for this kind of trite, stale drivel. A charming, well-executed art style is not enough to carry a video game with such uninspired gameplay, sound, and story as Dragon Quest XI.

If you're a Dragon Quest mega-fan and all you want is another formulaic Dragon Quest game, then by all means, purchase this. You'll probably love it. It's exactly the same game Enix (and now Square-Enix) has been making for decades. But this game can't stand with other, modern roleplaying games. It's not even in the same building as the better RPGs being developed today—much less on the same level.

This game is a colossal disappointment and doesn't deserve to have a single minute wasted on it by any player out there.

⭐

Prey (2017) by Arkane Studios

There are a lot of things Prey does really well that made me want to like it. I love its cousins, Dishonored and its sequel, and I was hoping for a similar experience when I picked up Prey. Prey features a lot of the same things that Dishonored does well and even though they're different games I couldn't help but to compare the two while playing through Prey.

Prey features the same stunning level design and environmental art that Dishonored does so well. Places function as well as video game levels as they do immersive areas. Each locale feels like a real place with functional design, looks beautiful, and works extraordinarily well as a level. It's an impressive feat pulled off by the developers. The graphics are fine, with some great lighting effects. And the story is just intriguing enough to keep you moving forward, though devolves into fetch quests and "go here to fix this door" a bit too often.

My biggest problem with the game is that playing it just doesn't feel good. This is because there seemed to be very few efficient solutions to a lot of the problems it presents. In Dishonored you're given an ample amount of tools with which to overcome the different challenges the enemies provide, whether you wish to play stealthily or loud, lethally or nonlethally. However I couldn't shake the sense that with each enemy encounter in Prey I was doing something wrong. Bullet-sponge phantoms took multiple magazines to bring down, poltergeists left me missing them and wasting most of my ammo just to bring them down. I put the game down for a long time just 6-7 hours in because of this and picked it up again recently and put about 20 more hours before putting it down again for the same reason. There were times I'd try to sneak past encounters as well, treating the game more like horror, but even that fails to work at times as certain enemies seem to auto-detect you no matter how many skill points you have in stealth. I'd google strategies to kill certain enemies only to find that-- Surprise! There are none. Want to sneak by it instead? Well, the phantom patrols and now you're missing out on exploring and taking in good environmental storytelling and looting half the level, which is your driving force for exploring these spaces to begin with since the story missions are uninspired at best.

The game gives you an unlimited amount of tools to accomplish the problems it presents in clumsy, unsatisfying ways.

There's a reason many people complain about this game's difficulty. I played most of the game Normal, but even on "Story" mode enemies too often feel like bullet sponges. Something about playing it just feels off, whether you're tackling it as a shooter or a stealth game. Clearing a room just doesn't feel satisfying. Even after dealing with enemies and solving a problem presented by a monster in a room, I couldn't shake the fact that I had done it in the sloppiest, most inefficient way possible. This had me replaying rooms, trying different tactics; sometimes for half an hour at a time, but it always felt similarly unsatisfying. For a while this kept me pushing forward in search of unlocking new skills, until I had unlocked enough Typhon abilities to summon the Nightmare, another bullet-spongey enemy which I googled to learn would continue to appear every 20-30 minutes for the rest of the game. It was at this point that I lost my drive to play the game completely and finally put it down for good.

Dishonored felt fresh and challenging and even when I mucked up an encounter I could clearly see where I'd made my mistake, and would focus on doing better next time. And it was extremely satisfying to sneak past a room full of enemies, or take them out, or use the environment to my advantage. I never felt this playing Prey. Not one single time. I felt like a bumbling idiot, relying on my upgraded shotgun and combat focus to deal with nearly every challenge. While the levels can feel like a fun sandbox I ended up feeling that none of the tools they gave me to play with were very effective at dealing with any of the problems provided, so I resorted to smashing through it with the proverbial hammer (or in this case, shotgun) instead.

There are some other things that bothered me about the game as well. The sound mix is absolutely terrible, which I remember from day one but still hasn't been patched to adequacy yet. You can be hugging a wall in a room and hear electricity from a broken wall in the room adjacent and above you, or hear a fire that you passed 20 minutes ago still raging two floors below. Certain instances of dialogue are far too loud or sound like the mic was too close to the actors' mouths when they were recording their lines. Gunshots don't sound loud enough for what they are, and space doesn't sound quiet enough.

In addition to this, Mick Gordon, who was perfectly at home doing the Doom soundtrack, just doesn't feel like his music fits Prey. There are some nice tracks here and there but subtlety is definitely not his strong suit, and that's what I feel this game required. Though this is very much a matter of taste, and I am in the minority: Most folks liked the score.

I also had an issue with the annoying, lazy, scripted jump scares that permeate this game and was surprised that other outlets did not mention them. I'm not talking about happening across a mimic, which is an organic part of the game. I'm talking about scripted sequences such as the "Touch Me" calibration screen scene in Psychotronics, which was so infuriatingly lazy and offensive that it actually led to me to halt playing the game for the night. Or the theater screen screeching to life in Crew Quarters with no warning. There are numerous instances of this crap, and the awful sound mix only serves to deafen headphones users, which is where my key gripe comes in. It's not just startling, but literally painful due to the ineptitude of the sound mixers. If you crept up behind me while I'm at work and blew a damned air horn into my ear I'd probably jump a mile, too. Is that good horror? No. It's a lazy prank. It's annoying and infuriating, and it had me hating the moronic developers who'd think up such a rote, lazy tactic that's been ruining Hollywood horror films for decades now.

For the record, there are instances of real horror and tension in this game that are actually quite enjoyable. A great example is the morgue scene in which you're creeping along into the morgue only to see a suspended body slip off the rack and slump quietly to the floor. You're sure there's a mimic in there somewhere, so you cautiously creep into the room, searching for it, on edge the entire time and filled with suspense... Only to find nothing but some supplies and notes inside. This is great horror, and the fact that it's often mixed in with lazy jump scares only serves to show how frequently the game fails. It seems to me that the developers strove to add a horror element to the game, but were unskilled in specifically how to do it and perhaps unfamiliar with effective horror, relying instead on recent experiences they've had in theaters.

In a word I'd describe the game as uneven. At its best it's hitting the same heights as other great Arkane games, but at it's worst it comes off as incredibly lazy and uninspired, which is a shocking imbalance for a game that does so many original, inspired things. I had some great times with the game but couldn't shake the fact that it just did not feel good to play most of the time. If you're looking for a horror game then I suppose you might like this, but it doesn't feel great to play as a shooter or a stealth game, so I'm not confident in recommending it.

I do hope Arkane takes another crack at it with a sequel, because there are some really great ideas at the core of Prey that I'd like to see polished up a bit in another effort.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 32 hours

Doki Doki Literature Club! (2017) by Team Salvato

Those of you familiar with my reviews know I almost always run up to the character limit in every review I write. I'm not going to do that this time, because I can't really review this game in-depth without spoiling everything, and I believe going in completely blind is imperative to ensure that this game has the biggest impact possible upon you.

What I can say is that these characters are incredibly well-written, to the point where even though I'm a Visual Novel neophyte I'd assume that they would stand up to characters in other games of this type. This game dives quite deeply into the themes it chooses to explore. It doesn't rely on any sort of cheap gimmick to heighten its impact, it has such an impact because it builds from the ground up using great characterization as its bedrock and taking things in unexpected directions from there. If you find the game a bit tedious to begin with, just continue playing. It will surprise you with its depth in the second hour, and it'll surprise you with some truly innovative story and writing beats afterwards.

In terms of the medium, this is one of the most inventive games I've ever played. I don't particularly care for the majority of horror subgenres, be they slasher, monster, body horror, etc. I have always, however, been a great fan of psychological horror (eg. The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, Psycho). And I can say with confidence that this is the single best psychological horror game I've ever played in my life. I'm an "old guy" among online gaming communities (I'm in my mid-30s and have been gaming for over 30 years) and I can confidently say Doki Doki Literature Club! is absolutely one of the most unique and worthwhile experiences I've had with a game, period.

Not a fan of anime or manga? Neither am I. Never played a dating sim or even a visual novel in your life? Me neither. And I still went through this experience in absolute disbelief of what Dan Salvato and co. were able to create here. This is a mind-bending, genre-defying treat, and the fact that it's free boggles my mind.

Don't read any other reviews, don't read anything about the game. Download it and play it through to completion. Demographics don't matter, tastes don't matter. Everybody needs to play this game.

Get out of my head.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 6 hours

What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) by Giant Sparrow

I haven't particularly liked most games lambasted as "walking simulators", such as Gone Home or Firewatch, but I've always been quick to note that that dislike doesn't stem from what seems to be inherent in this subgenre (short, story-focused, dialogue-heavy, and very light, unchallenging gameplay scenarios), but rather because these games put such an emphasis on story and often don't feature a good enough story to carry the game. I talked about this in my Firewatch review and felt the same way about Gone Home, though I didn't write a review for that one. What Remains of Edith Finch is remarkably similar to those two games, but I like it a whole lot more.

Edith Finch is notably different from those games in that I felt the story succeeded in carrying the effort and provides the emotional heft necessary to make the game worth playing. While the story in Gone Home had nowhere near the impact on me its writers seemed to expect, and the twist reveal and unsatisfying conclusion of Firewatch left me feeling cold and disappointed, Edith Finch's story hit like a ton of bricks to the gut. This is a story about the last surviving member of the Finch family, Edith, and her rumination upon the curse that has taken so many members of the family due to accidents, illnesses mental and physical, and violent crime. Experiencing the story felt very much like opening Pandora's box to me; there's a whole lot of sadness and the game's somber mood, supported by a great score and some lovely melancholy scenery, is uplifted by small moments of levity in which hope seems to shine through. This is not a happy story, and though I wasn't personally moved to tears, I could easily see how one would be.

I can't really analyze this much as a video game, as it is pretty light on gameplay mechanics and heavy on story, and I can't go into the story much without spoiling its impact. I will note one stupendously designed segment of the game during Lewis Finch's story, but I'd rather not describe it in detail because it should be experienced blind. But it's a wonderfully designed segment that tests coordination and does an extraordinary job of engrossing you in the young man's experience. The game is full of notable sequences like this that help set it apart from the games I mentioned earlier, where Gone Home had not much to note and Firewatch had you trekking over samey landscapes and performing busy-work tasks.

My only complaints are that the control can be a bit wonky in some of these unique sequences, and that the game ran surprisingly poorly on my i7 4790k / GTX 1080. I experienced quite a bit of stuttering and some odd frame drops for a title that, while beautifully constructed, is decidedly not a graphical powerhouse.

Edith Finch is a remarkable work of art that's wonderfully designed. thoughtfully constructed, with a poignant story focused on the hope that drives us to persevere through painful experience. It is quite short, though, so you're better off waiting for a sale than paying full price for this one. But if you're looking for a engaging story that will leave you thinking long after you've completed it, I would heartily recommend you give What Remains of Edith Finch a shot.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 4 hours

Assassin's Creed Origins (2017) by Ubisoft

I have a really hard time actually selecting a star rating for this Assassin's Creed Origins.

There are some things it does so well that it's just a joy to play; the environments are stunningly well-crafted and the graphics are gorgeous. But there are also some features it's either completely missing or does so poorly it leaves me wanting to bang my head against the wall because they detract from what could have been such a better game. It also runs very shakily, with regular, ugly frame drops.
If you adore the series like me, then go ahead and pick this up. You'll get enough out of it to make it worth a purchase (as I feel I did). But if you're not a fan then skip Origins unless you love Egyptian history. This game won't convert you. And I'd go even further to say that if you're lukewarm on the series, you probably want to skip this, too. All it really does well is open world and soundtrack. So unless one of those two are something you love in a game, you're probably not going to like Origins enough to spend $60 on it.

I'm pretty stunned that there are a number of things this game actually does worse than its predecessor, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which is a game that many consider to be one of the poorer entries in the series.

For starters, free climbing is an absolute mess in Assassin's Creed Origins. The reinvention they worked so hard on in Unity with the Free Climb Up and Free Climb Down buttons, and the perfection of that system into what I consider the smoothest free climbing in the series in Syndicate is completely gone from Origins, which instead has reverted to the absolutely terrible "One Button to Free Climb" system that birthed the frustrating moments of the worst game in the series (in my opinion), Assassin's Creed III. Get ready to randomly jump off walls into the middle of 8 enemies in a courtyard when you're trying to stealth, or to begin climbing up the wall next to you when you're just trying to reposition yourself in the middle of a fight. In addition to this, what you can climb is not really indicated visually anymore. Some buildings have clear grooves that are not usable as handles, and there are statues that have no handholds whatsoever that are easily scalable. Some spaces seem to far to jump but you can with ease, others seem clearly in reach but are not. It's completely arbitrary and leaves you feeling railroaded.

In addition to the poor free climbing, combat is a mess. Ubi has swiped Witcher 3's combat system without shame, except the smoothness of that game is completely gone, leaving you janky, unnatural, strangely timed animations, and dodges that happen inhumanly fast yet still get you hit by enemies because the hitboxes feel so imprecise. And you have no Signs or potions to deepen the experience. It feels weird, it looks bad, and it's shallow. It's not fun. I played through Witcher 3 on Death March and had a lot of fun, so it's not that I'm bad at video games. Origins saw me turn the difficulty to Easy almost immediately so I could just button mash and blast through the enemies and avoid the combat almost completely.

The stealth is not as good as Syndicate, which made great improvements such as using cover and specific designs in the environment to your advantage. It's not even as good as the stealthy side missions (saving child workers, etc) in Syndicate. It's the same stealth gameplay from Black Flag, which was fine... 4 years ago. Really disappointing if you love the stealth genre like I do and were happy with the improvements from Syndicate.

Another puzzling design choice is the complete removal of the Codex and the historical info blurbs that pop up as you're free roaming. One of my favorite things to do in an AC game is to free roam, hitting map markers, while reading the historical blurbs that pop up to provide improtant context. It's absurd that Ubi would completely remove them from this game for the first time. I'm a layman to Egyptian history and they could have provided some great context to some of these characters. It's great knowing that they're based on real, historical people who actually lived. That context is completely gone and the majority of these characters I'm meeting are way too thinly written without it. They're dry as paper and may as well be scarecrows with costumes. The story is mediocre in general. It's a generic revenge tale with some oddly inconsistent tone (Bayek seems awfully cheerful for having a young son who was brutally murdered less than a year ago) and peppered with some awful voice acting. Bayek and Aya's performers are great, but Layla's is awful, and a lot of the minor characters are inexcusably bad, too.

Okay so I'm kind of crapping all over the game here, but it does still do some things amazingly well. The addition of RPG elements, including ranked loot, really help push you towards exploring, too. At its best, Origins will keep you up all night hitting question marks on the map, levelling your character, getting new loot, and generally just progressing and clearing the map. The open world is spellbinding. There's such a variety in terrain -- desert, arid mountains, oases, cities, woods, etc -- That you never get tired of simply hopping on your camel or horse and exploring. There's verticality, water to dive in, tombs to raid, and caves to spelunk. And the variety in cities is excellent as well. Gone are the samey cities from past games, and back is the huge variance in cities such as between Florence and Venice in II. The Greek architecture of Alexandria, the old Egyptian setting of Memphis, and the varied small oasis towns and camps in between them keep everything fresh and you never feel tired of exploring. There was a point for about 50 hours when I was just free roaming, having a blast experiencing these great environments, and I seriously considered changing this review to positive. But roaming an open world can't carry a game by itself. So I eventually grew bored of hitting points of interest and continued Origins' story missions only to be forced into bad mission design, bad combat, badly designed stealth segments, and bad plot writing, and began hating this game all over again. A lot of this game reminds me of Assassin's Creed III, with all its poor mission design and bad story.

To be concise, the problem is that too often the great stuff in Origins is broken up by one of the negatives I mentioned earlier. I'll stealth through two or three bandit camps, hit points of interest, gain levels and hunt loot while progressing my character, taking in the quiet moments and enjoying the great soundtrack... Then I'll run into a free climbing snafu, or get bogged down in its clunky combat for 10 minutes, or play some drearily designed story mission that kills any desire to keep playing.

Despite all my hours logged currently standing at just over 100, I still haven't finished the game. I've cleared most of the map icons from free roaming, but the story, combat, stealth, and general mission design failed to engage me to such an extent that I have no desire to actually complete the game. I've already gotten what I wanted out of it: A great open world experience that I can take in at my own leisure. It's unfortunate that so much other frustration got in the way. And because of that I can't honestly recommend this game to any but the most hardcore Assassin's Creed fans. 

Origins is nowhere near as good as II, Brotherhood, or Black Flag, but still a more enjoyable experience than the putridly awful III and the below average Unity.

⭐⭐

Middle Earth: Shadow of War (2017) by Monolith Productions

Officially licensed games are typically not all that impressive due to publishers making a profit on the name alone if not the substance of the game. Shadow of Mordor was a surprisingly good game in that regard. It was released an underdog and turned out to incorporate some interesting new ideas in its nemesis system, some nice tidbits from Tolkien's legendarium to find, and some nice sound design. It provided me 40ish hours of decent entertainment until I grew bored of the grind towards the end. I still haven't finished the game. There just wasn't enough meat on that bone to keep me playing past the 40 hour mark.

When I first saw it previewed, Shadow of War really interested me in terms of its overarching metagame. But sadly there really isn't much new here despite the efforts at evolving the original game. There's a new system in which you're fighting a literal war between orc armies, but it's so bogged down by an abysmal UI and a grindfest of new orcs constantly flowing into areas that it really doesn't do anything to add fulfilling gameplay on top of the foundations set by the first game. There's a neat system of storming enemy forts but there's so much dry, boring legwork to do ahead of this that it feels like a grind almost immediately despite a lot of it being new to this game. You're supposed to be able to manage your own loyal orcs into attacking others and doing certain more subtle treacherous acts, but it's so difficult to keep track of what your orcs and your enemies traits are that the whole thing is just an obtuse clusterfuck and I ended up just saying screw it and killing the enemy orcs myself, which became tedious after a dozen or so hours. This is in large part due to the bad UI, but also because the core gameplay mechanics here just aren't all that much fun after you've done them 20 or 30 times -- Especially to those of us who've done this stuff in the first game. And this is a game that expects you to repeat them many, many more times than that.

There are some new areas this time around to differentiate the game from the same brown, crappy areas that permeated the first game outside of Nurnen. Minas Ithil, initially, was amazing! It was so cool seeing a city that I'd read about in Tolkiens works come to life. Sadly, there just isn't much substance to the areas outside of the initial feeling of, "hey, this is different!" One of my favorite things to do in open world games such as the Assassin's Creed series or Witcher 3 is to wander the open world, immersing myself in its environments, its denizens, and their daily lives while I collect all of the things listed on the map. The collectibles in this game don't do very much for you at all, and the world itself is unfortunately pretty bare, without much depth past orcs taking dumps in bushes or walking around aimlessly from point A to point B. Sure, there's a human, Gondorian city in the beginning. But beyond the visuals being different, ie. marble buildings and streets instead of muddy ground and wood huts, there isn't anything actually setting it apart from the Mordor areas of the first game. There don't seem to be any civilians, anywhere (where'd they all go? Minas Tirith?), and the soldiers that are present are either fighting, standing around, or behind the gate lying there injured. And that's just a very small portion of the map -- 80% of it is just a ton of orcs running around doing the same orc things they were doing in the first game. It doesn't feel like a real, lived-in space; it feels like a gamey arena in which you're supposed to fight orcs. This game suffers from what old open world games used to suffer from back when they all copying the GTA3 -- It's got a vast, wide open space peppered with absolutely nothing interesting aside from lots of bad guys to fight and some collectibles that, while they give you some interesting tidbits of information, do very little to make you want to chase them down otherwise.

A lot of this is hurt by the fact that the combat and stealth are almost wholly unchanged from the first game. If you loved the gameplay of Shadow of Mordor, you'll like this one. I was always lukewarm on the combat and stealth of the first game and was disappointed not to see it evolved upon in this game.

The story is laughably bad in most cases and forgettable in others. Most of the characters are cliche and there are some plot holes present that make me think any time spent in the writing room here was likely spent trying to finagle Tolkien's legendarium into justifying some of the odd writing moves here. For example, why did Shelob even want the "new ring" (ridiculous in its own right but whatever)? She had it for like a quarter of the game and didn't do a single thing with it but sit in her cave, presumably staring at the wall? Another character has been fighting orcs his entire life and knows the treachery they're capable of, yet still tries to make a deal with them that you can see going wrong from a hundred miles away. The entire thing is ridiculous and the prerendered cutscenes suck you right out of the moment anyway.

They've added some loot and some RPG elements to this one, which was very interesting to me in previews, but they're incredibly basic and don't even really warrant mentioning. The equipment is all very generic looking and the stats make the barest modicum of a difference. There are class tiers of equipment now, and the only stuff different enough to notice is the top tier stuff, but obtaining a full set of legendary gear requires so much grinding that it isn't even worth it. Perhaps if the top tier stuff was interesting in some way it might warrant the grinding in the way that a game like Diablo, Destiny, or Borderlands does, but this stuff doesn't. And all of the lower and middle tiers are not notably different. Sure, the middle tier stuff has some unique perks, but none of them make any real impact on the gameplay.

The loot system seems only to have served to make the balance of this game skew heavily towards grindiness. You've got to accomplish the same tedious stuff over and over but the loot perks and abilities give you very disappointing rewards for doing so. And what you're doing to gain experience and loot is not only uninteresting, but requires you to repeat the same activities so frequently. You can spend 4 hours grinding experience by taking out or recruiting enemy orcs, but they'll be replaced again by fresh orcs once time passes and you'll have to spend another 4 hours doing the same stuff over again with the new guys that have just come in, all while these activities and the setting get old and tiresome, while rewarding you with loot that you never see making an actual difference in gameplay. It loses its fun factor very quickly and this continues ad nauseam throughout the entire game.

It's really the pacing that's a problem here. Some of this stuff is fun initially, but not for the amount of repetitions that you're required to do to progress into conquering an area. Something else aside from this core gameplay loop of kill/recruit, then take fortresses needs to be present to drive you forward -- Whether it's an enticing plot, interesting characters with good dialogue, loot or new abilities that greatly increases your player character's power, a well-crafted game world you can lose yourself in, SOMETHING! And there's nothing here that does that. It's the same repetitive, dry task of killing/recruiting/ambushing orcs that leads to chasing loot that has no impact, upgrading your abilities not far past what they were in the first game, or progressing an unengaging story.

I didn't even notice the much-maligned microtransactions but I can't help wondering if they ruined the balance, because this is just not a fun game to play after a few hours. If you loved Shadow of Mordor, then sure, give this a shot. But after putting 40 hours into the first game I found that I grew tired of this one way before that.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 22 hours