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

XCOM 2 (2016) by Firaxis

XCOM 2's predecessor XCOM: Enemy Unknown was a fine enough game, though even with its expansion (Enemy Within) and mods such as The Long War, I often felt myself growing bored towards the latter half of the campaign. Snipers were too overpowered with the jet pack suit and high ground perks, the overarching strategy layer was tedious to manage for the majority of the game and non-existent once you got enough satellites up, and the UFO combat instances were pretty bare-bones and not very much fun. I often found myself getting into the game a bit before growing bored and putting it down. I've only ever finished it once despite my nearly 100-hour playtime on Steam, which does not include another 50-60 hours of playing time on the Xbox 360.

Most of this has been solved by XCOM 2's sheer added depth. The overarching strategy layer has been completely revamped from Enemy Unknown and now gives me an extreme sense of "just one more round" that I've gotten from some other games such as Firaxis' own Civilization series. XCOM 2 is incredibly addictive and weaves into tactical combat missions way more intuitively than the strategy layer in the first game ever did. UFO combat with your own fighters has been completely removed, replaced by UFOs that hunt your big airship and involve a specific mission type that I won't spoil because it's amazingly fun and legitimately surprised me when it first happened.

But more than anything, XCOM 2 features something I didn't realize was lacking in the first game until I played the second: A far more effective mise en scène and an immersive quality that the first game lacked. The first XCOM feels like a game. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but XCOM 2 really puts you into the cast's predicament in a way the first game does not. There's something about the maps and the added character depth that I think adds this feel, but I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps it's the way the maps sometimes will feature the overgrown ruins of gas stations, towns, abandoned family homes, and ruined cities, or how engineers and scientists now have names and all of the soldiers have written backstories. It really provides the feel of a grassroots guerrilla effort in a conquered world, which was a much more interesting premise to me than the first game's invasion defense. The story is also more interesting, with a few more unique twists than I would have expected.

Storytelling, though, is obviously not this game's forte. The strategy layer is much, much improved from the first game, and though the tactical combat and RPG management system of both the Avenger (your aforementioned giant airship) and your troops and equipment is mostly unchanged save for a lot of added depth. Weapon mods have been introduced and there is now a new, semi-random way of developing the most powerful mods and utility items for your troops, which helps to add to the addictiveness of the strategy layer since you're constantly looking things to do in order to give your engineers time to develop the next shiny new toy for your troops to use. Armor types are more balanced and include flavor from the mechanized units introduced in Enemy Within. Psi Operatives have been completed retooled with their own twist that I think works incredibly well, certainly much better than the first game. The entirety of squad management has been retooled and streamlined.

The strategy layer and the tactical combat feature an added emphasis on creating tension, and while this works well and feels natural for the strategy layer, it sometimes comes off as forced with clumsily inserted mission timers in the tactical missions themselves. I don't mind the occasional timer, but I feel it could have been better implemented than just "blow up this common-looking piece of alien machinery before the timer ends" missions. The absurdly common mission timers served to keep me from buying the game for nearly a full year-and-a-half after its release before I finally found it on sale for ~$20, and shortly after some vanilla gameplay I ended up downloading a mod that removed them entirely. I would have greatly preferred having mission timers for much fewer encounters, perhaps only for one or two specific mission types. It feels like a crutch, like somebody at the top decided the tactical missions needed added urgency in order to create tension, and the people designing the missions either couldn't think of a good enough game mode to do this, or didn't have the time to do it.

The game looks just like an improved version of the initial XCOM, with some really nice lighting and particle effects. Unfortunately it also runs surprisingly poorly. I'm playing a nearly 2-year old game on a GTX 1080, and I'm experiencing regular dips down to around 30 fps when I'm zoomed out, or there's a lot of fog on the screen. That's pretty inexcusable for a turn-based tactical game like XCOM, and it's really disappointing that the team couldn't have optimized it better. It doesn't affect gameplay (which at this point is far less buggy than the original XCOM; I haven't seen even half the glitches in one full XCOM 2 campaign as I did in even half of a campaign of Enemy Unknown), but is quite an eyesore.

Another complaint I have is regarding the game's soundtrack. Michael McCann (of Deus Ex Human Revolution fame) did the first game's score, and it was fantastic. It lent the game a brooding, scary feel that the otherwise cartoony art design would not have imparted, and that feel is sorely missed in XCOM 2. The score here is utterly forgettable; the same cheesy, uplifting Hollywood tunes seem to play whenever you enter combat. It takes away the feeling that this is guerilla warfare against a technologically superior enemy that is committing various atrocities against your species, that you are hopeless outgunned and scratching and clawing at an enemy that has its boot on your throat. Instead it makes the game feel like a triumphant, heroic Hollywood action film; that you're destined to win in glorious combat. It clashes directly with the games maps, which feature ruined and decrepit homes and the absolute destruction of the human way of life, replaced with a polished cities that just seem off. It fails to impart the sense of an epic struggle, in which many of your own troops will die in the missions that you will not always succeed in. After about 15 hours I simply muted the music in the settings and resigned myself to getting by on just the ambient sound design of the tactical levels and the Avenger instead, which is really quite good compared to the stale, monotonously average soundtrack. At its best this soundtrack is a poor imitation of McCann's previous work, at its worst it's an overly loud cacophony, egregiously clashing with the tone the rest of the game tries to impart. I should note that the music is not bad, it's actually quite good, and composer Tim Wynn is obviously a talented man. I just feel that not only did it not fit the game, it actively dampened my experience. Perhaps this is due to the direction given to Wynn and not the man himself.

These criticisms are really not a big deal, though. XCOM 2 does not strive to be an artistic game, and so it probably should not be judged as one. It did, however, succeeded in grabbing me in a way that I rarely felt from XCOM: Enemy Unknown and that only the best of video games seems to do. It had me fiending for just one more scan, one more mission, one more piece of tech researched. It had me playing until midnight on a work night, skipping my runs and workouts to play for just a few more hours. And it held me throughout without fizzling out and becoming tedious. It's a great game and there is a serious dearth of good tactical RPGs on the market these days. Jake Solomon and Firaxis have succeeded in making a game that you can play forever a la Civilization.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 127 hours

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen (DLC)

So I really liked vanilla XCOM 2. I thought it added quite a bit and fixed some of the issues I had with Enemy Unknown and its expansion Enemy Within.

It's amazing how much War of the Chosen has done the same with XCOM 2. This is definitely a full-blown expansion and not just a DLC. Hell, it's maybe even more than that; potentially something between an expansion and a full blown sequel. It's clear that a lot of the ideas here were probably once potentially part of what they wanted to do with XCOM 3. So much content and depth has been added to the existing systems within XCOM 2 that they could easily have handled the bulk of a sequel if given time to pad out the narrative in a full development cycle.

I've seen a lot of people gripe about the $40 price tag, but to summarize this really quickly: If you liked vanilla XCOM 2 as much as I did, War of the Chosen is well worth that price. Pick it up now, no need to read the rest of this review. It's just a way deeper, way more polished version of vanilla XCOM 2.

Most noticeable is that there's an entirely new narrative layer added to the game. Vanilla XCOM 2 was somewhat sparse when it came to the main narrative, but I didn't find that too much of a drawback because I enjoyed the gameplay in both the strategical and tactical layers so much. Now there are several new enemies, an entirely new enemy type to add to Advent and Aliens, and several new allied resistance units that all play a role in this narrative. It pads out the game and adds a ton of mileage without adversely affecting the pace. In fact, the pace actually feels better now. In vanilla XCOM 2 I felt the game begin to drag towards the end. That's now been alleviated by having more to do. And these new characters and factions are all superbly well-written and intriguing, enough that I'd say they're more compelling than anything in the base game. The hero units they offer and the enemies (clearly inspired by Shadow of Mordor's nemesis system) all serve to scale up the balance as well. The strongest units in the game, both allied and enemy, are now nearly twice as strong as the strongest enemy units in the base game could have become. No exaggeration. It's an absolute blast akin to getting Orlandu into your squad in Final Fantasy Tactics... Except that now there are 3 enemy Orlandus to deal with as well. I love it.

Aside from this big stuff, there are also some great quality of life and depth changes to the game's foundation. Soldiers now bond with one another and gain perks when together on a mission, there's a newly revamped perk system with ability points you gain during combat a la Final Fantasy Tactics' JP, the UI has been improved, structure building has been rebalanced and streamlined, there are now hero units to recruit, units become fatigued and need to rest if you send them on too many missions, difficulty can be altered (including lengthening the controversial mission timers from the vanilla game)... And probably a ton more little things that I'm forgetting. I notice new things constantly every time I play, it's really amazing the work Firaxis has done in less than two years. It feels like they took XCOM 2 off the shelf, thought "we can make this game way better", worked on it for a couple of years, and rereleased it as a better version of itself.

The game also runs way better now, too. Some have debated the grossness of locking optimization behind a $40 expansion, and it is pretty grimy, but I felt the need to touch on that in this review. I no longer see the frame drops to 25-30 fps that I did in the vanilla game, and although bugs have occurred with more frequency than during my vanilla campaign, I chalk that up to XCOM 2 having nearly 2 years of patching and this expansion being less than a month old.

If you're new to XCOM 2 but like turn-based tactics games, you should begin by playing the vanilla game to completion first. War of the Chosen adds so much that it might be overwhelming to deal with on a first playthrough. And the vanilla game is good enough by itself to warrant a purchase and playthrough. And that way you'll come to appreciate War of the Chosen so much more for all of the great content it adds.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Domina (2017) by DolphinBarn

What seems like a relatively charming pixel art management sim with a great soundtrack and interesting premise ultimately gives way to intense frustration.

As a history major with a focus on Roman Civ I was really ready to like this game, and I did... Until I ended up watching fights and having my seemingly superior gladiators get their asses kicked in fights that they should have been winning. Look, it's no problem if that happens, fine. The problem is that there's no feedback whatsoever as to why this occurs. The action happens so quickly that you're left scratching your head as to why what happened occurred.

So after bumbling through blindly for my first couple of games I decided to consult some guides to try and figure out what the hell was actually going on during the fights. Turns out... There really aren't any to be had. There are guides out there that will tell you what upgrades to purchase, who to employ, etc. But nothing about what stats guide gladiators and how they interact with other types during battles. So maybe nobody actually knows? Maybe the stats play out somehow, or different types of gladiators beat other types in a rock-paper-scissors style triangle, but if there was some kind of framework guiding such interactions then I was blind to it. It seemed like the two sets of AI simply ran at each other until one randomly died. I couldn't tell whether superior equipment was the cause, or a stat like aggression or evasion came out on top. I'm not asking for the game to hold my hand, I'm asking for the game to be a game and allow me to learn and improve by having its underlying systems be identifiable. They are not, and as a result, it just feels cheap and left up to chance no matter what you do in your gladiator school, even on the easiest difficulty setting.

I ended up following a guide which said to increase your gladiators' AI all the way via meditation and hire key employees and take key skills, so I did that, yet the same thing kept happening. In some fights my gladiators would absolutely paste the competition, in others they'd just be completely ineffective and die. I had one specific instance where one of my gladiators was absolutely crushing the competition, taking minimal damage and 3-shotting enemy gladiators. Then, abruptly, against an enemy gladiator with seemingly inferior statistics, he got absolutely starched and killed. I still don't have a clue why.

After several more fights and continuing to analyze the stats to each gladiator I still had no clue whatsoever as to why this was occurring, so I eventually dropped the game in frustration and I can confidently say I won't be going back without a major overhaul to the underlying systems that guide the actual fights.

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but the entire thing seems broken to me.

⭐

Playtime: 2 hours

Firewatch (2016) by Campo Santo

I'm a huge fan of story-driven, atmospheric experiences and this is a game I really, really wanted to like.

I was immediately intrigued by the prologue, which seems a simple enough choose-your-own-adventure type portion, but does very well to invest you in your player character, Henry. After doing some research I discovered this game was made by the same people responsible for The Walking Dead Season 1, which I adored and consider one of the best written games I've played. Walking Dead Season 1 had characters that you ended up growing incredibly attached to, and the same ended up being true of Firewatch. Unfortunately, that did just enough to get me to finish the game, because I was disappointed with pretty much every other aspect of Firewatch, including the story's resolution.

Firewatch looks really good for an indie, but it didn't run so great on my system (i7 4790, gtx 1080, 16gb RAM). I would experience pretty regular frame drops through my nearly 6 hours of play. And while the game looks very good, I never felt much drive to explore after the first couple of hours simply because there just isn't much to find. Aside from some notes in caches, I never found anything more interesting than a slightly larger tree or a nice viewpoint, and soon I began avoiding any exploration altogether because the characters and the dialogue had grabbed me so much. Any actual "gameplay" (ie. "walk here and then click the radio for a dialogue option") became a chore, a barrier behind which the game would reward me with some more bits of dialogue from these two characters that I had really grown attached to. There was a specific moment about 2-3 hours into the game where I was informed that I had to cross the entire map in order to find somebody to help me through a fence, and I came very close to just quitting because I almost didn't feel driven enough to take the next step. That's how dry and unfulfilling I felt the actual gameplay was in Firewatch. But I ended up doing it anyway just to hear more of Henry's and Delilah's story. I was fully invested in these two characters.

And that's really saying something considering how short this game is. The ability of these writers and the voice cast to grab me so quickly is pretty impressive now. The big problem I had with this game is simply that nothing else even came close to being as compelling as the relationship between Henry and Delilah. There's an overarching mystery that drives the plot forward, but once you actually begin to uncover what's going on it just felt too hokey, too clumsy, and just not believable enough despite being pretty grounded in reality. One of my issues with this mystery was that I simply wasn't feeling the isolated paranoia that my avatar within the game, Henry, seemed to be feeling. His actor seemed close to completely losing it, whereas I was just making my way to the next task and hoping for some interesting Delilah dialogue. The game failed to impart any sort of anxiety due to the setting and the isolation, possibly because it was so short, or that it had to skip days in order to keep things interesting due to a lack of any real gameplay systems outside of walking to an area indicated to you and pushing a button, or reporting back to Delilah via your radio.

Firewatch reminds me a lot of Gone Home. Both games offer an interesting setting and premise with some well-written characters, both try to impart a feeling of creepiness which succeeds at first but both ultimately fails to amount to anything substantial and becomes overly hokey after just a couple of hours. Additionally, the resolution of both games' mysteries are wholly unsatisfying, and the endings in general are not very good. Firewatch, in particular, really dropped the ball and left me feeling unfulfilled; like I had wasted my time despite really enjoying the characters and dialogue. It's the type of experience that will you have you saying, "Really? That's it!?" as the credits roll. If the ending had been a fulfilling conclusion for these two characters then I believe I'd have recommended this game just on that strength alone. But squandering the story of two compelling characters left a sour taste in my mouth, and for that reason I can't recommend it to others until it begins selling at a sub-$5 price point.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 6 hours

Final Fantasy VI (1994) by Square

I fondly remember the days of playing this game in my parents house as a 9-year old, awestruck by just how good video games can be. I played it for hours upon its release and it ignited a love for RPGs that lasts to this day. I still go back every once in a while to replay the game, and I'm happy to see that it's been ported to Steam so I don't have to break out the old Nintendo DS or -- gasp! -- my grandfatherly SNES that still sits in my closet next to a shoebox on my most cherished titles from the '90s.

Most reviewers gripe about the graphics "update", and while I generally do prefer the original sprites (sprites tend to age better than any polygonal graphics), I don't find the graphical change to be much worse. It's different, sure, but really not worse in any objective way. I can understand how the greybeards would be miffed at a change to their beloved classic games, but it really didn't bother me. And as a nearly day-one played of the original title in 1994, I'm about as old school as they come.

I absolutely adore Final Fantasy VII, but I did knock some points off for how bad the port from the PS1 to Steam was, and I'm happy to say that's not much of a problem here. This one, while it's not fantastic, seems to work fine. You're going to lack some high resolution options here, but given how badly they were implemented in Final Fantasy VII with its disastrously upscaled backgrounds, I'd say that's not too much of a problem. This isn't an HD remaster, it's just a port of the original game, which was designed for tube TVs rather than PC screens. As such, this is a perfect game to play windowed while you've got some other stuff going on in the background.

While the graphics have aged incredibly well, the story and writing, however, have not. When this game released it helped to push the bar of good character writing and narrative. Unfortunately that bar has long been pressed onward and well past where Final Fantasy VI left it. While the characters are still incredibly charming and thoughtfully written, and the plot has some decent surprises in store for you, the writing in general lacks a lot of the depth that we can find in modern day games.

That's no reason not to play Final Fantasy VI, though. The combat system is still fun, with a grand cast of party members each featuring their own special abilities carrying combat through the majority of the game. Using such a colorful cast of characters is a joy, and the game really takes pains to ensure that they're all unique and introduces them in a manner in which none of them are just a face in the crowd. You genuinely care about them all and want to see them succeed. You'll find yourself cheering when one of them lands a critical or pulls you out of a tough situation. The game isn't overly challenging unless you've got no idea what you're doing, though.

The Esper system is good, but lacks a little bit compared to the job system and the later Materia system, which is probably my favorite in the series outside of Final Fantasy Tactics' jobs and abilities system.

Seriously, Squeenix, can we get a PC port for Final Fantasy Tactics? Please?

It'd be a crime not to mention Nobuo Uematsu's unbelievably amazing score, which is among the best in the Final Fantasy series and certainly among the best scores in all of video game history. It's spellbinding, utterly engrossing. To this day I can't hear a track from it that doesn't take me back to sitting on my parents' carpet, staring up at the 20" tube TV, playing the best game I had ever played up to that point of my life; one that would stick with me more than 20 years later and inspire me to write a review about this newfangled Steam version. And that's why I love this game so much. It's a charming, emotionally impactful roller coaster ride to a simpler time.

Play it and maybe it'll be the same for you.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 108 hours

Tyranny (2016) by Obsidian Entertainment

This title is no graphical powerhouse, but the environmental design is very good. There's a clear emphasis on the late bronze age here a la The Iliad, and it's really wonderful. Though I actually like the late middle ages as a setting I recognize that it's beginning to become tiresome to constantly set fantasy in that time period. As a classical history major myself I found the influence of Hellenistic culture in Tyranny to be more refreshing than even I'd have thought before getting into it. Merchants sell olives, the Disfavored fight in a phalanx, etc. It's surprisingly refreshing not to have knights riding around on horses, swearing fealty to dukes, while everyone attends the coronation of the boy king. Instead we're dealing with emperors, heavily armored infantry spearmen and peltasts. It's a welcome change in setting and it makes me wonder why more fantasy isn't set in this type of era.

A great feature of Tyranny is how it smoothly introduces its lore. It begins with "Conquest", a choose-your-own-adventure prologue where you flesh out your player character's backstory in much detail. It affects a whole lot of atmosphere in the game, including how NPCs refer to you, dialogue options, plot options, and even active combat abilities your character has available to them. Conquest is good not so much because of what it affects in the game because of how it smoothly introduces the player to the world's lore. Fantasy games featuring deep worldbuilding are often prone to getting bogged down with too much exposition in the first few hours. The first Mass Effect is guilty of this when it strands you on the Citadel for hours after Eden Prime without much to do but speak to NPCs and read codex entries to learn its lore. Tyranny is able to get around that because you've already been introduced to major past events and characters in the Conquest prologue without having realized it as you made choice after choice. It's really a brilliant way to do things, and it made jumping into the game smooth. There is still some exposition to be had when speaking with squadmates but it's very relaxed compared to many other titles with similarly well-designed lore.

The biggest drawback I noticed with the Conquest prologue is that it can sometimes create jarring, disjointed dialogue in-game. I've had people meet me and immediately praise me for having made a decision beneficial to them early in Conquest, only to have them passionately insult me in the very next window of dialogue for making a later decision in Conquest that was damaging to them. I understand the difficulty in blending so many prologue decisions into the campaign, but this happened too frequently and it was incredibly immersion breaking.

Another drawback is the voice acting, which is pretty bad in general save for certain performances such as Verse and Eb. The Voices of Nerat is particularly awful -- He sounds more like a Twitch streamer reading Nerat's dialogue than a professional voice actor. Barik is nearly as bad; his delivery is universally wooden and awkward. He sounds almost like a teenager trying to deepen his voice to sound more mature. I'd have been fine with no voice acting whatsoever.

Tyranny's combat is pretty standard cRPG fare. I tolerated it for the first portion of the game only to try and dive into the narrative, but it quickly grew boring and served only as something I had to reluctantly push through to try and see more of the story. Not too far into the game I found myself sloppily pushing through most engagements just to get them over with. On the plus side are the spells used in combat. They're the prettiest thing about this game: They're viscerally impactful and feature gorgeous particle effects. Combat is not very good, but it's also not why people are going to play Tyranny, so I don't weight it as much as the writing in this review.

In classic Obsidian fashion, this game lives and dies upon its writing. And this, to me, is where the game fails.

I found too many of the characters to be too gimmicky and, at worst, downright cheesy and contrived specifically to be as unique as possible. It's always good to have interesting, unique characters, but you've got to draw the line somewhere before things start getting ridiculous. There also needs to be a touchstone of relatable characters so that the contrast between them and the more outrageous characters exists. In addition to this, some characters just struck me as "off". For example, The Voices of Nerat is a mage who absorbs the minds of other mages he's conquered. He basically lives with a thousand other minds in his head and a world's worth of knowledge and intelligence. I'd assume a character like this would be wise, quiet, always plotting, with just a subtle touch of insanity peering through every once in a while. Instead he's written as more of a Joker-esque madman, cackling and blathering on about nonsense when he's not hurling juvenile insults at Graven Ashe for no real reason. It's just too much. It seems as if the writers were trying too hard to make his persona notable when subtlety would have served far better. A lot of the writing warrants exactly that criticism: It just seems to be trying too hard, as if Obsidian is aware of its reputation for sterling writing and is struggling to live up to it.

I also found the dialogue to be sub par. It has a tendency to sound unnaturally casual or out of place. The Disfavored are supposed to be unmatched in their discipline, so why do they all refer to their commander by his first name rather than his rank? And Graven Ashe is centuries old but talks in colloquialisms. Good dialogue writing is about getting the little things right. Too many of them are wrong in Tyranny.

It's not all bad, though. The writing is at its best in its allowance for roleplaying. This is a game that will have you staring at dialogue screens for 10 minutes, tempted to alt+tab into your browser to google results of a decision because you're honestly stumped as to which choice is the least of a half-dozen evils. I found myself struggling to roleplay not because it was bad, but because I was constantly tested by the complexity of the pickles it presents, constantly weighing the effects of each choice and the repercussions against each party involved. Balancing the favor of the larger forces at play (ie. your party members, the Disfavored legions, the Scarlet Chorus horde, and the Archons who control all of the above, and more) is the core of this game. And it's what it does best.

I'm not an old school cRPG fan but I have been playing RPGs for nearly 30 years. Even despite that background I only made it about 15 hours in to Tyranny before I simply lost the desire to keep playing. Considering that, I can't recommend this game to the typical RPG fan looking to try out a new title.

Tyranny is a decent game... Depending on what you're looking for. It aims squarely and unapologetically at the cRPG fanbase and provides some solid roleplaying but features quite a few damning flaws. If you're a hardcore cRPG fan and willing to overlook some rough edges, then you'll probably like Tyranny. However if you're just an RPG fan looking for a new game to play, I'd probably pass on this one. It's too uneven an experience with too many flaws that add up to damage the overall experience.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 14 hours

Mark of the Ninja (2012) by Klei Entertainment

I'm a huge stealth fan and I heard people championing Mark of the Ninja as an amazing stealth experience from pretty much release day onward. I played the crap out of it originally on the Xbox 360 before I fully converted to a PC gamer, after which I purchased it on Steam and have played through it a few times here. I just bought Invisible, Inc. tonight, which is made by the same developer, Klei, and it made me realize I should get off my butt and write this gushing review about what an awesome damned game Mark of the Ninja is. I should have written this review years ago, but hey, I'm lazy. So here it is now.

The put it simply: Mark of the Ninja is one of the best pure stealth games ever made. Yes, ever. It's up there with the classics of the genre like Thief, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Tenchu, etc. It's that good. If you enjoy the stealth genre and you for some reason have yet to play this game, buy it this instant. It's easily worth full price. Don't even read the rest of my review, just thumb it up for knocking some sense into you, buy Mark of the Ninja, install it, and play it all night until you're surely screwed for class/work/whatever you have to wake up for tomorrow morning. You can thank me later.

If you need some more convincing, then feel free to read on.

Immediately noticeable are the beautiful, comic book-esque visuals and the amazing work from the animation team. The environments are vibrant, colorful, and full of atmosphere. There's not a bad one in the game. And the character models are what Klei has come to be known for: Cartoony, charming, but with a gritty edge to them. The art design in general is utterly fantastic. Seriously, I'd hang a print of some of the backgrounds in this game on my living room wall as art. And the cutscenes are beautifully animated as well. They wouldn't be out of place in any feature animated film of years past. Simply put: It's a gorgeous game. It does a lot without using many resources; it should run very well on most machines.

Another thing worth mentioning is the gameplay role that lighting takes. The art design blends into gameplay on harder difficulties when a background blur and varying directional light shift with where your player character is looking. It functions very well as a gameplay features but also looks really cool. Win-win.

The sound design of this game is another thing that stands out. Ambient sounds are engrossing and carefully crafted, the effects themselves are also phenomenal. Footsteps from running are crisp and sound like the real thing, they're also louder than you'd expect and serve to remind you that you're being a bit too noisy. Everything sounds remarkably crisp and has a solid echo and weight to it. It seems as though the volume levels of your actions have all specifically been altered to sound more jarring than they normally would have, which fits great with a stealth game since it constantly makes you feel like you're making too much noise even when you aren't. It serves to craft your mood as you're playing the game. It's brilliant.

The core stealth gameplay itself is actually remarkably simple. There are few bells and whistles here, which is good considering that the core gameplay is more than robust enough to carry the rest of the game. Level design is superb, enemies are interesting and challenging. You're given enough tools to make you feel superbly bad ass when you pull of something cool, but still vulnerable enough to require quite a bit of skill to get through unscathed.

The replay value of this game is a huge plus. The various challenges and collectibles in each level in addition to the heightened difficulties (which are the best way to play the game in my personal opinion) left me with a feeling similar to what platforming fans must feel when they're repeating the same level of Mario in order to get the perfect score. There are also a number of different costumes you can wear that alter your abilities, there are a number of different tools you can equip to augment your favorite way of getting past guards, etc. There's a lot of modularity (is that a word?) here, and quite a few different ways to play through the levels. There are also some neat developer commentary tracks that are worth a listen as well.

I've never been a platforming fan, but this game is definitely influenced by them. There's maybe 8 hours of gameplay here if you're taking your time, but you can easily triple that with replays. I still jump back into this game from time to time and it not only does it offer significant replay value, but it also stands the test of time very well. The gameplay is so no frills that there's nothing that'll really grow old, and the animated visuals will never go out of date. Hell, Chrono Trigger still looks good, and that game released in, what, 1995? 1996? Sprites, man, how do they work?

Anyway, this is the point when I'd typically bring up some of the drawbacks of a title, but Mark of the Ninja is a game I honestly can't find anything wrong with. It's just that good. I suppose I can see how non-stealth fans might find it slow, maybe? But not really, because there's also some combat involved if you get caught, and it's totally viable to play this game in a more run-and-gun style. It is kind of short, I guess? But the price reflects that.

I don't gush very often and I tend to be a harsh reviewer in general, but this one is a masterpiece in every sense of the word and you're missing out as a stealth fan until you experience it. Buy it gladly and thank Klei on Twitter for making such an awesome video game.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 23 hours

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2016) by Eidos Montreal

I feel like I should qualify this review by first stating that I'm a massive fanboy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I recognize that that game has some flaws but the ambiance is second to none, the stealth gameplay is satisfying, and the way the plot drives you forward to its conclusion makes you loath to put it down. It's one of the few games in which I've gotten 100% of its Steam achievements. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one of the best games of the 2010s in my own humble opinion.

This game just fails to live up to pretty much every level set by the previous game.

The gameplay is returned more or less unchanged from the first game. The only real difference is that Jensen is given several new tools to use, justified by some cheesy in-plot explanation as someone having altered his augmentations while he was comatose after the first game. The problem here is that not enough has changed from the first game. And while that doesn't seem like much of a problem given how much I enjoyed Human Revolution, it's starting to feel quite dated and lacks any further development over the past 5 years.

I'll approach this mostly from a stealth angle since that's how I play the game.

The most glaring issue here is that there's a core problem with the energy system that regulates your use of augments. Jensen has some awesome tools to use to maneuver around the environment undetected, but the problem is how overpowered these tools are. To solve the issue of being an absolute god, the devs chose to reign these in by using the same battery meter from the first, which is replenished by consumables when it gets low. This is a problem simply because you end up playing the game without ever using them, instead choosing to save them for when you really need them. Now that's not a problem by itself, but it is when you realize you're sneaking through entire areas trial-and-error and never actually using the majority of your augmentations. This was a weakness in Human Revolution, and it was greatly disappointing not to see it rectified in this game. There has to be a better way to balance these powers than resorting to consumables. Perhaps a smaller battery meter that recharges more slowly? The battery meter refueled by consumables feels archaic and clumsy in a game that features otherwise interesting stealth puzzles to overcome.

And on top of that, the new augments present aren't actually all that useful. Aside from remote hacking I never used any of them, instead relying on the vanilla mods from Human Revolution. This could have been dealt with by having a new playable character, or a second one like the route Dishonored 2 went. Anything would have been more interesting than the same exact skillset from Human Revolution with the addition of a half-dozen augmentations that aren't even particularly useful. The fact that Jensen is back reeks of the studio's unwillingness to take a risk, or perhaps it was dictated to them by their publisher that coverboy Adam Jensen needed to be present in the game. I suppose we'll never know. But a new protagonist or at least some kind of change to keep things fresh would have added a lot more flavor to the now-stale gameplay present here.

Ambiance was something that Human Revolution did amazingly well. There were complaints about the gold filter but I really thought it added to the game's ambiance and I never had a problem with it. On top of that, the Michael McCann's absolutely mind-blowing score changed the entire feel of the game and was arguably the single best part of it. Mankind Divided instead goes for a more realistic feel, and the score, while at times comes close to the high bar set in Human Revolution, is far more inconsistent and settles for more subtle, less noticeable score. I didn't feel nearly as blown away by the sense that I was in a different world in Mankind Divided that I did when I played through Human Revolution, and for me that was a real disappointment.

Don't get me wrong; the world in Mankind Divided is good. Very good, in fact. The environmental design and level design is the only aspect of this game aside from its graphical prowess that is clearly better than Human Revolution. But I really missed the blatant, heavy-handedness of Human Revolution's ambiance in this title. In going for more realism they lost some of the weight of Human Revolution's atmosphere. It's now less cyberpunk-comic-book, more hard-science-fiction-thriller. I suppose it depends on what you prefer, but I was disappointed. I'm typically more a fan of subtlety, but I loved the chronically overdone atmosphere that Human Revolution featured.

Lastly, and perhaps most glaringly: The plotting of this game is a cruel joke. It starts off with a bang then slows to a crawl, with hours of exposition and environmental narrative introducing plot points that are barely touched upon later, if even ever mentioned again at all. There are several interesting threads kicked along only to be left completely unresolved while we instead focus on investigating a terrorist bombing. Jensen's mods, the group he's working for, etc. are all left unresolved in an egregious example of sequel baiting. Finishing this game is wholly unsatisfying; I was left completely undriven by the frankly boring plot, and although the level design is great, the dated gameplay itself does nowhere near enough to carry the game on its own. As you can see from my achievements, I got right up to the end and never even finished the game. The side quests were far, far more compelling than the main plot. And once I was done with them I felt like I was grinding out the rest of the game until I decided just to stop and move on to something I'd actually enjoy.

All of these flaws might be passable if only to experience what this game does well: Interesting, well crafted environments, excellent level design, great side quest writing, solid voice acting. But this game, unfortunately, runs like absolute garbage.

I have zero issues running most games in 1440p at 60 fps, however this title barely broke 40 fps in most places with low to medium settings. Turning off SLI actually improved my framerate by 5 fps or so. Not a great sign. Even after turning off SLI and running it on my 1080p monitor I still experienced frame drops to around 50 fps on medium settings. This is simply unacceptable, and had I known the majority of the game ran like this then I'd have refunded it within 2 hours. But, interestingly enough, the entire first area runs quite well and it's only once you get to Prague that the problems start.

Interesting how games are shipping with more polished early areas ever since Valve adopted its refund policy. Quite interesting. And infuriating.

There are also several graphical and physics bugs present, and the game didn't even ship with DX12 (though it was later patched in and is now active). This is a title that clearly needed a few more months of polish, but with Square Enix's dumpster-tier publisher reputation it's not a surprise that it was forced out early. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if this is actually half of the game and the developers at Eidos actually had a full, satisfying plot written but were told to cut it in half so Square Enix could double their profits with two releases rather than one. This is purely speculation, but I surely won't be purchasing Mankind Divided's inevitable sequel until it's well below a $30 price tag. Fool me once...

This is a bad port and a disappointing game. Even as a fervent Human Revolution fanboy I can't recommend purchasing this title at full price. Wait until it gets under $30 and take a shot at it. Just make sure you go in with tempered expectations.

⭐⭐

Playtime: 54 hours

Shadowrun: Hong Kong (2015) by Harebrained Schemes

For some reason I slept on Hong Kong for a while, which is odd considering I loved Dragonfall and thought it showed growth in leaps and bounds from Harebrained Scheme's initial effort with Shadowrun Returns.

I really wish I hadn't. I'm enjoying this one nearly as much as I did Dragonfall.

There are some minor differences, but most of what I described in my Dragonfall review remains the same here. I'm a big fan of story-driven RPGs, I love good characterization (though who doesn't), and I'm a massive fan of good tactical RPGs (I count Final Fantasy Tactics among one of my top-5 favorite games of all-time). This is another solid entry in the series with more good writing, great art design, a fantastic score, and deep turn-based tactical combat. If you liked Dragonfall, then buy this game. You'll love it. And if you haven't played Dragonfall, feel free to give them both a shot.

For the rest of the review I'll talk about some minor differences between this and Dragonfall and how the two games stack up.

First, and perhaps most notable: The Matrix has been greatly expanded upon. It's no longer just a separate tactical combat portion mostly mirroring combat in the normal game. It now features a stealth aspect and more puzzle-solving. The visual aspect of the Matrix has also been greatly augmented. It has more of its own feel now, something I didn't realize the series needed until I played this game. Rather than just the regular game with lots of translucent blue, it now exhibits some incredibly foreign feeling background visuals along with odd lighting and blocky, jutting architecture. The dev team clearly put some time into rounding out decking, which I appreciated because I typically play a weaponless Decker/Rigger player character. There's an added stealth element which I'm not a huge fan of as it promotes too much of a trial-and-error, save scumming style of play since it's simply too expensive to go all-out as a Decker and always roll in with your own ESPs and programs. And once you've alerted the system too much, it's simply too difficult to always fight unless you're spending your Karma and money on nothing but Decking points and gear. I spent lots of time saving before the Matrix, quicksaving during runs, reloading when I got caught and continuously trying to get through fighting only where I needed to. If I went through and just played it as-is, I would always end up getting caught too frequently, leading to system-wide alarm, and then getting my face stomped in by enemy Deckers and IC. I literally didn't succeed once in these situations, and that's with spending the vast majority of my earnings just on Decking gear. In my experience it's simply not possible to get through the Decking sections successfully without save scumming, and that's a huge problem indicating that the balance is off. The movement is too imprecise to really nail the stealth sequences (which leads to a lot of frustration) and once you set off the alarm, the response is almost always too difficult to simply fight through unless you're loaded up with programs and ESPs. That leads to you being forced either to save scum or simply failing and getting knocked out of the Matrix. You have to be insanely lucky to succeed otherwise. It all boils down to the fact that the Matrix sections rely too much on a stealth element that is too imprecise to be relied upon. So I'm not wholly on board with the Matrix redesign as my frustrations with this game almost always occurred there, but I do like that they're making an attempt to flesh it out a bit more, as there's a lot of potential there.

Thankfully the "meatspace" combat doesn't reflect the imbalance of the Matrix gameplay. It's challenging without feeling cheap, and unlike Matrix combat it's approachable from many different strategies. Great tactical gameplay.

As far as the general non-combat gameplay is concerned, I have to issue a warning here: There's a lot of text here, and a lot of reading. This game is a classic cRPG at heart, and if you're not ready to read through tons of dialogue then you probably won't like this game. The way I play (speaking with everyone and constantly exploring every nook and cranny) led to about a 90% to 10% split between dialogue/exploration and combat. That means I spent about 90% of the game walking around and talking to people. It's that extreme.

That would be a bad thing if the writing wasn't so good. The story is more personal than Dragonfall, and less sprawling and epic. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it gives the characters more room to maneuver amongst each other, and some of their interactions are more heartfelt than in Dragonfall. I'm not sure I'd call one better than the other. They're just different, but the character writing here is equally as good as Dragonfall and the plot drives forward briskly without leaving you feeling too bogged down in hub areas.

Seriously, these characters are fantastic. Some of the NPCs in the main hub area are so likeable. Shoutout in particular to Ten-Armed Ambrose who runs the cybergear shop. But the entire game is chock full of well-written, interesting character -- Just like Dragonfall was.

One thing that is notably better is Jon Everist's score. Anyone familiar with my reviews know that I'm a big fan of good OSTs in games, and Everist has noticeably stepped up his game from Dragonfall, which had a great score in its own right. The tracks here are less obtrusive; they're more ambient in general and do more to craft the feel of the game's world while at the same time adding touches of traditional Chinese music. Combat themes and the more fast-paced pieces are electrifying as well. I'm incredibly excited at the direction the Indie scene is taking game scores. Jon Everist, Austin Wintory, Darren Korb, etc. These are all great talents that are adding massive value to small-budget games. I can't wait to see more of what they craft in the future.

If I have one complaint about the game it's probably regarding the interface. Clicking action nodes to talk with people or examine something in the environment is sometimes problematic. The nodes disappear, or they register a misclick when you're clearly clicking on them. The karma interface is improved from Dragonfall but the overall interface still leaves a lot to be desired. Why can't I see drone HP? Why can't I see my Decker's HP while he's in the Matrix? Don't show me a health bar, that's not exact enough. It doesn't do anything to help educate me so I can make decisions on what my next moves are. Just small things like that. A minor complaint, really, but still enough to comment on.

If you like tactical RPGs like the old Tactics Ogre series, Disgaea, or the XCOM revival, then this game should be an instant purchase for you. It's fantastic. However if you find those types of games to be too slow I'd stay away from this one unless you're in the mood to grind through gameplay you dislike just to experience an immersive story filled with genuine, interesting characters.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 64 hours

Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015) by Ubisoft

Oh, my.

I never thought I'd enjoy an Assassin's Creed game this much ever again after playing the utter disaster that was Assassin's Creed Unity. I'm having so much fun with this game I literally just paused it right now and Alt+Tabbed into Steam to write this review.

To sum everything up really quickly: Combine the amazing ambiance and atmosphere of Assassin's Creed II with the sheer fun and satisfaction of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and you get this game. It's that good. If you're a fan of the series, buy it right now and don't look back. Trust me.

For a bit more detail, read on.

Some background on me: I'm a monumental, long-time fan of this series. A history major in college, I reserved the first game on Xbox 360 and played it the day it came out in 2007, eager to see what a video game rendering of the Crusades would be like. Assassin's Creed II came along and struck me like Cupid's Arrow; the unrepentant love I have for that game still exists to this day and even motivated me to visit Florence and Venice multiple times in the past few years. I played AC3, didn't like it much, played Black Flag, and did like it much.

Then Assassin's Creed Unity happened, and pretty much drove a rusty dagger through the heart of my love for this series. What an absolute disaster. I hated every bit of it. It caused me to all but abandon the series... Until now, almost a year after Syndicate's release, when I decided to give it a try despite my hatred for Ubisoft and all of the bad will I still hold from being burned by Unity, which still doesn't run on my PC.

And boy, am I glad I tried Syndicate. I have almost no complaints about this game. In fact, it's the best Assassin's Creed game I've played since Brotherhood, and maybe even better than that. It stands up there with Assassin's Creed II as one of the best game of the series. Yes, better than Black Flag. It's that good.

The game is drop dead gorgeous. Ambient occlusion and bloom make the lighting utterly beautiful, and the rain and water effects are jaw-dropping. The character textures are good but not great, but the environment textures are wonderful. Graphical prowess is nothing new for this game, though. What is strikingly better than recent efforts is the sheer immersion of Victorian London. I haven't felt so immersed in an Assassin's Creed setting since Florence and Venice in Assassin's Creed II. The NPC interactions on the street, ambient noise, and weather effects are all amazing. Drunks will sing, people will get into fights, there will be random shakedowns in alleys. There are evocative bills posted everywhere outside and indoor areas have Holmesian decorations like old couches and oil lamps. It's just fantastic the way that good film sets are fantastic; it adds so much atmosphere without you ever really noticing where it comes from unless you stop and serious examine your surroundings. There's so much to talk about that I can't possibly touch it all, but it all combines to a sum greater than its parts and transports you straight into the era in a way that few others games have. Maybe just Dishonored -- And that game was a fantasy only inspired by Victorian London.

The Frye twins

Black Flag was a great game, but to me it didn't really feel like an Assassin's Creed game. It was more of a pirate game inspired by Assassin's Creed. Edward doesn't even become an assassin until the very end! Yet people still loved it, myself included. Arno was admittedly dull in Unity (a somewhat lesser rehash of Ezio Auditore but without the motivating factor of vengeance and half the charm), so to solve the problem of where to go with this protagonist, the developers give us two playable characters: Evie, the quintessential no-nonsense assassin who is completely dedicated to the creed (a la Altair in the first game), and Jacob, the loose cannon, troublemaking, bar brawling Englishman who isn't a serious assassin, only joining because his parents raised him to be one (a la Edward Kenway from Black Flag). And the system works perfectly. The two characters, between whom you can switch at any time, are the most well fleshed out playable characters to appear in this game in a long time. They each have chemistry, their dialogue is written well, and their voice actors are excellent. Motion capture serves well as they each have unique mannerisms. The skill trees can be individualized between them both, creating a drive to continue on playing and customizing to your liking. And gang upgrades and skill trees ensure that you'll spend hours just gathering money and items, staying up until 2:00 AM because "I just want to unlock one more thing", something I haven't felt about these games since the Apprentice missions in Brotherhood.

The gameplay itself provides ample opportunity to play it as either a brawler, a pure stealth venture, or something in between. Whatever you want, it's here, and they blend seamlessly into one another. Past Creed games have overloaded the player with too many tools, effectively eliminating any challenge the game poses. This game fixes that by giving you just enough to keep it interesting, but not so much that you're easily able to breeze through everything once you have all of the unlocks. The stealth sequences give you just enough tools to remain challenging, and the combat is less Assassin's Creed, more Batman Arkham, which is a good thing in that it provides depth to the experience. And traversal is easier and more satisfying than ever thanks to the hookshot. This game is so. Much. Fun.

The soundtrack is also noticeably better than recent entries into the series thanks to Austin Wintory's superb score of both subtle ambient tracks and crashing woodwinds and strings for the battle scenes. Again, the best score in an Assassin's Creed game since Jesper Kyd's watermark score in Assassin's Creed II.

If I do have one complaint about this game, it's the control. The improved traversal from Unity is here, but for some reason the Frye twins seem to respond to change of direction a bit more slowly, and deciding when to free run up is sometimes clunky. Everything feels more muddy than in previous titles, which can adversely affect some stealth sequences.

In order to assuage any worried about Ubisoft's bad PC ports in the past, I will say that this game runs superbly on my rig. This is the best running Assassin's Creed game I've played since Brotherhood. Even Black Flag was a bit more shaky. Unity ran around 50 FPS on high settings on my machine, this game is locked at 60 FPS with all settings maxed and I've seen very few bugs outside of normal fare for open world games.

Another plus is that, while they're still there (unfortunately), Ubisoft has greatly toned down the in-game microtransactions from Unity. Instead of popping up all over the map like in Unity, now they are relegated to being only an option in the menu, easily ignored. As a completionist I still get pissed off thinking about how annoying those microtransaction icons were in Unity. Despicable.

This is a great game. It absolutely breaks my heart that this title was completely overlooked and did poorly financially upon release all due to Ubisoft's screwing the pooch and releasing Unity as a broken mess when it honestly could have been a good game with another year of development.

If you're a fan of the series and you're in the mood for some face and neck stabbing then you have to purchase this immediately. Don't wait like I did. It's worth an immediate buy. If you aren't a huge fan of the Assassin's Creed series and you just like open world action games like the Batman Arkham series, give Syndicate a whirl. I bet you'll like it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

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