Horizon: Zero Dawn (2017)

 

Genre: Open World Action RPG | Players:1 | Developer: Guerrilla Games

     Tribal humans fighting mecha-dinosaurs? Quite a pitch. Sign me up. I see why they put that as the first trailer for the game. That child's dream premise is the setting of Horizon: Zero Dawn, where an unspecified apocalypse has left humanity on the brink of extinction. Those left have reverted to tribal stone age societies that survive by hunting animals and scavenging the mechanical beasts that now roam most of the land.

    At the center of this is Aloy, a girl cast out from her tribe at birth for unknown reasons. Raised by her adoptive father figure and mentor, she trains to be able to take place in a tribal tradition that will win her re-admittance to the tribe as well as the right to demand answers of the matriarchal tribal leader of her past and banishment. Things go wrong tho when the contest is interrupted by outsiders raiding and slaughtering the contestants and other warriors who have seemingly come specifically to kill Aloy. This spurs her to journey outside tribal territory on a journey to find answers to not just the attack, but to her own heritage and how it connects to the legacy of the "Old Ones"; the humans of the pre-apocalyse who are both semi-worshiped for their technological knowledge and feared for their downfall that has left only ruins.

    Players control Aloy in an open world setting where they can do quests for NPC's, follow the main story, fight machines both stealthily or openly with a wide variety of weapons and skills, or scavenge resources to craft items, weapons, ammo and outfits. The combat is decently fluid and the skills and weapons give many ways to take down enemies. Each enemy type has strengths and weaknesses that Aloy can scan to learn the best way of taking them down and leveling up gives skill points that can be spent for Aloy to learn new abilities which gives the RPG part of this action RPG. The enemy AI is decently challenging, but can feel a bit stifling when multiple enemies attack patterns overlap effectively stun-locking until Aloy dies. The world is large and heavily explorable with villages, bandit camps, cities, landscapes and the ruins of the Old Ones. More chances to run into the more colorful NPCs. The characters are all interestingly designed and acted as they go about their lives like the man who pays players to collect "artifacts" which are actually just ancient coffee mugs with corporate branding on them because he thinks they were part of a sacred ritual. Too bad Aloy is the least animated of them. Natural given she has lived isolated for 18 years, but she never seems to grow out of it. Ashly Burch gives great emotion in some dialogue, but Aloy's whole personality can come off kind of flat. There are also some technical bugs like voices sometimes going out of sync with mouths, or Aloy becoming torso-less when an outfit change won't load. Nothing unseen before in video games and it doesn't dampen what is an excellent science fiction story and adventure with varied combat and deep exploration with a bit of replayability in different dialogue trees and choices to be made.

Buyer's Guide: Was a PS4 exclusive for years until a PC port was released. The PC port was super buggy. It has since been patched, but is still the slightly less stable version with more versatility in technical options being on PC. Later editions come with the Frozen Wilds DLC already included.

4 Corporate Sponsored Apocalypses out of 5

Rainbow Six: Vegas (2006)

Genre: FPS, Tactical Shooter | Players: 1-2 | Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Logan Keller is on his first mission as team leader of a Rainbow Six team in Mexico to find a terrorist leader. Things go awry and his two team members are captured, but before he can launch a rescue, he is brought back to help deal with an attack by terrorists in Las Vegas. He joins up with a new squad as team leader to clean up the city and find out what the terrorists objectives are.

Players control Logan directly in a first person view and can order his team around with various commands mostly just by pointing where you want them to go. This being a tactical shooter, it focuses heavily on team tactics and remaining in cover which makes the camera zoom out slightly to a 3rd person view. If you just go in guns blazing like any other FPS, you WILL die pretty instantaneously. There is regenerating health, but it is very limited. Sustained fire will kill you in less than a second. Your teammates are a bit more durable, but they are not invincible. You can get through a good chunk of the single player just ordering your team to clear every single room, but pretty much every encounter has multiple viewpoints from which players can support the team. Using different weapons with different properties is useful, but not entirely necessary. They are still mostly interchangeable unless you try to snipe with a shotgun like an idiot. The main thing is to know when to use silencers. Though there is almost no reason to take them off. You lose some power with it on but not enough to outweigh the advantage stealth can give you.

While certainly more tactical than most other shooters, R6: Vegas is certainly less so than its predecessors. Not bad per se, but it is certainly streamlined. Overcoming a gaggle of enemies quickly and efficiently is the point and can be satisfying. The varied architecture of the various environments makes the possibilities of  encounters like puzzles. It can be hampered somewhat by your teams limited AI that sometimes act like morons. Co-op multiplayer was a better option. Overall a mostly satisfying experience.

Buyer's Guide:
Available on PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and a different version also called R6: Vegas for PSP.

3½ Breach and clear out of 5

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011)

Genre: FPS, RPG, Stealth | Players: 1 | Developer: Eidos Montreal

Eidos takes the reins for the Deus Ex franchise with some help from Square-Enix who have begun to make a push towards publishing since they have recently forgotten how to make games and are now buying up other developers to make games for them. In the case of Eidos, it has paid off with an entry in the series that more than lives up to the franchise's pedigree.

Adam Jensen is the new head of security of Sarif Industries who produce biomechanical augmentation technology. Just before an important congressional hearing, a group of soldiers storm the laboratory complex killing scientists and destroying equipment and research during which they brutally put Adam down. Adam is then augmented to save his life from his massive injuries. 6 months afterwards, Adam is healed and called back to look into who is behind the attacks as there are a number of suspects including rival companies and purists who object to augmentations among others.

Like the rest of the series, players are given a great amount of freedom in how they approach mission objectives. Cover-based gunplay and stealth can be used and enhanced with a wide array of choices in augmentations to suit either play-style. Augmentations can be gained with points by completing objectives or buying upgrades at clinics which is where the RPG part of the game comes in as well as extensive weapon modification. There is also a great emphasis on character interaction. Players will often have multiple conversation choices and characters will react differently based on what players choose versus the character's personality. Depending on the person, players can flatter their vanity, appeal to their reason or just plain coerce them into giving up information. Also whether the player uses lethal force or not can affect gameplay.

The depth of story and themes of trans-human ethics give a rich experience along with solid gameplay. There are only so many character models, but Eidos tried their best to cover it up with mixed results as players may notice a lot of the same faces running around. The levels are surprisingly big given the detail put into them and while shorter than the original, the length is surprisingly long for a modern game. At least 20 hours depending on player skill and sidequests chosen. There were some technical hiccups like NPC's sinking slightly into the pavement and such, but nothing game breaking. The boss battles were somewhat incongruous with the rest of the game, but that is to be expected when they are done by a totally different studio. Pretty, but not shallow with some replay value.

Buyer's Guide:

Available on PC, Mac, PS3 and 360. There is also downloadable content called The Missing Link.

4 The I.T. guy is an abrasive douchebag, like a lot of real counterparts out of 5

Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003)

Genre: FPS, Action, Stealth | Players: 1 | Developer: Ion Storm

20 years after the events of Deus Ex, the world has been reshaped following a period of global depression and war called the Collapse. Players control the either male or female Alex D. after a terrorist attack using nano-explosives destroys Chicago. Alex discovers the academy he attends is actually a front for bio-augmentation experiments when a group of religious extremists raid the campus. After escaping, players are then free to choose which faction they want to follow.

The open ended gameplay is mostly intact from the first game and several other elements have been streamlined. Skill points have been removed and the skills they affected are now static abilities or are now gained through augmentation. There are now only 5 augmentation slots though with 3 options for each rather than the original 2. 2 regular ability choices and 1 extra that can be gained with special black market bio-mod canisters. Choosing one makes the other 2 unavailable as long as players have the ability, but they can be overwritten if players gain more canisters. Ammunition is also now universal for all firearms with different guns using different amounts. Or players can augment their melee ability and anything they can pick up such as crates, chairs and coffee cups can become lethal weapons.

Players can still achieve objectives multiple ways such as through direct confrontation, stealth or just rubbing elbows with the right people. Though choice feels somewhat less important when it is really hard to make any one faction hate Alex enough to break contact. Directly disobeying an order rarely has serious consequences with usually at most a bit of dialogue saying they are disappointed, but then offering Alex a chance to redeem himself. In fact it almost doesn't matter which path players choose as it can all be undone with one choice near the end.

The game is significantly shorter than the original, there were a few graphical hiccups and combat is a bit clunky with some stiff movement and the enemy A.I. is really easy to overcome. The actual areas are also really small. Still worth the time though.

Buyer's Guide:

Available on PC and Xbox. Can be bought off Steam for $9.99.

4 Players can totally murder the children unlike that wimp Molyneux's game out of 5

Deus Ex (2000)

Genre: FPS, RPG, Action, Stealth | Players: 1, Multi | Developer: Ion Storm

The always dystopian future is one where a plague called the Gray Death ravages the population. The vaccine is in short supply and is rationed for those deemed valuable to society and leaving everyone else to suffer. This causes resentment and an explosive growth of terror groups. To combat them all the United Nations expands it's influence, forming the United Nations Anti Terror Coalition (UNATCO). Players control new agent JC Denton (I see what you did there Ion Storm) as he navigates his missions.

The whole game is full of choices in interaction, character customization and accomplishing objectives. Talking to NPC's gives several dialogue options before Bioware made it cool and each can have a lasting effect on gameplay i.e. being a dick to someone will make them less inclined to help you or flat out killing them will change the story somewhat if they were meant to be in the plot later. Players can customize JC with earned skill points to enhance abilities like weapons proficiency and with nano-augmentations to different parts of the body. There are 18 total with 9 body slots so players must choose wisely as choosing one will make another unavailable. There are multiple ways to complete mission objectives as well. They can be done stealthily with lock-picking and hacking or with guns blazing and explosions. Or be nice and just bribe someone to help you. There is multiplayer though it is a bit tacked on as it wasn't originally intended to be there.

The dark, gritty plot is full of interesting conspiracies, secret agendas and political struggles and changes somewhat based on player choices though a basic story thread is followed. Just how you get there changes based on how players interact with the different factions.

Interesting narrative, complex gameplay and very high replayability for all the choices, dialogue and sub-plots that are sure to be missed on just one playthrough make this very deserving of it's numerous Game of the Year awards.

Buyer's Guide:

Available on PC and as a PS2 port under the title Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. Also recently added to the Playstation Network. Available on Steam for $9.99.

4½ I wear my sunglasses at night out of 5