Tag: Games

Star Wars Zero Company Review

To unfairly summarise Star Wars Zero Company, it is XCOM with a Star Wars skin. This reductive assessment, however, neglects Zero Company’s lean toward story, and the overall polish of a product that genuinely builds on XCOM’s foundations.

Mechanically, I was surprised how similar to XCOM the game is, right down to the UI. The moment-to-moment gameplay will be immediately familiar to fans of the tactics gene and XCOM in particular. Operators run around the map, take cover, shoot, assume overwatch position, throw grenades and deploy a variety of other tools to outsmart and outshoot their opponents.

The game overall is a strong package: beautiful, varied visuals connect with an addictively flowing gameplay loop. The pleasure of setting up tactical traps for your enemies never gets old, and on victory you are returned to a hub in which you can choose and purchase meaningful (particularly in the early game) upgrades for your next adventure. I think Zero Company deserves particular praise for its “Star-Wars-ness”, an intangible quality that various media have had varied success in capturing: flawed but likeable characters swashbuckling across the galaxy against a backdrop of larger melodrama.

The story follows a politically-neutral group of mercenaries toward the end of The Clone Wars, who take whatever jobs they can get to pay the bills. They are pulled into a Republic plot to foil a Separatist ploy to use a disease against the republic, and action, drama, comedy and betrayal flow from there. Some aspects feel a little rushed here and there, some resolutions unearned, but it works well, is enjoyable and thematically consistent.

Zero Company ties the in-game operators that do the running and shooting into the narrative in a manner that XCOM never did, and this raises some new benefits and disadvantages. The pros are that Zero Company integrates story into the gameplay in cool and meaningful ways. Without resorting to blatant spoilers, just at the point when you have become comfortable with the play and feel of your operators, a powerful Jedi is dropped into your team. They are only present for part of one mission, but completely blow the rest of your operators out of the water. You really feel the strength of the character. There are more impactful examples later in the story that I don’t want to spoil, but suffice it to say that a particular betrayal is sown into the gameplay in a neat and innovative way.

On the other hand, some problems emerge from this integration. For instance, it confuses your choice of Operator for missions. You are given more than enough “main characters” with individual stories and side missions that you would never need to choose one of the randomised recruits – so why are the randomised recruits there? It kind of felt like they were there because they were in XCOM. Additionally, who should I take on the next mission? The heroes that are the strongest and least likely to get everyone killed? Or the ones that make most narrative sense? Perhaps these were choices developer Bitreactor wanted players to make, but it didn’t sit well with my desire for tactical purity.

I was most impressed with this game in its first act, when things were still a little chaotic and I didn’t have the technique nailed down. There was more risk and higher stakes. Operators actually got knocked down (which incidentally forces you to use other characters while the injured party “spends a cycle in the med bay”). As the in-game “cycles” (days) wore on, a bit of the novelty and sheen wore off and repetition set in.

While it never gets old setting up a complex chain of moves allowing you to clear most of your enemies in a single turn, the fact remains that after about 15 hours you are simply repeating the same procedures with incrementally improved efficacy. This is exacerbated because the systems encourage you to stick with the same operators since this is how you improve their “bond” – the main upgrade system in the game. I feel there should have been an alternative system that gives more XP-equivalent for switching up your operators and varying your methods.

(Having looked on reddit it appears that there are some benefits to switching up your squad, but they are only meaningful on the very highest difficulty)

I played the game on Hard, and it really was too easy. Once I was through the first act there was very little jeopardy. The game has a knockout system, from which a character can be easily revived by any other – but the third knockout is an automatic kill. However, I didn’t see a single knockout in the last 20 hours of the game, and had zero permadeaths at all. In the final few hours I didn’t even need to think about cover because by Operators took such little damage from a shot to the face. I defeated the final boss in a single turn.

I am also obliged to mention the performance issues that I experienced, primarily in the form of crashes to the PS5 home screen. These were not enough to completely write off the game, but were certainly an irritation. At one point I thought my whole save file had been lost, but with the help of Sony Support I was actually able to recover it.

Mostly, my criticisms are minimal and nitpicky. Overall this is a great package and a wonderful modern spin on the XCOM formula. The visuals, story, mechanics and upgrade system mesh together into a characterful, flowing piece of the Star Wars universe.

Death Stranding 2 Review

Death Stranding 2 proves that games are an art form – and not all art is for all people.

If you liked Death Stranding you will certainly like Death Stranding 2. I never felt that DS1 was incomplete, or any kind of “tech-demo”, but DS2 certainly feels more fleshed out and consequently more impressive. Kojima has been able to develop the mechanics of the first game into a truly manic sandbox of possibilities. Whether the narrative has been able to evolve similarly is much less clear.

Death Stranding 2 unleashes players into Mexico, and subsequently Australia. To me – as someone who had enjoyed DS1 and had long enough away to forget my gripes – it felt like putting on a comfortable old jumper. I was once again marching across beautifully rendered landscapes, linking up facilities in return for a variety of rewards: some were simply numbers going up, but others were often meaningful new tools and upgrades to further help my advancement. The sheer scale, variety and imagination present in the weapons and tools to be unlocked is remarkable. As a fan of the art-form, I enjoyed the throughline of crazy sandbox/toolbox development from Metal Gear Solid 5, to DS1, to this game. It was a real thrill to be dragged into an unexpected combat-stealth sequence when I wasn’t geared up for it. I had an item in my inventory with a secondary use that, if applied carefully, allowed me to scrape through. I appreciated the flexibility this kit offered.

At first I was a little shocked at how similar to DS2 is – and how quickly you acquired the same tools as before. However, as the game progressed I could see how Kojima had layered additional material into the substrate of the first game in a way that was ambitious, novel and satisfying.

One can certainly see that the game was made with accessibility in mind – everything seems to flow a little more easily than the first game. I was never able to pin down how much of that came to me because I was a returning player. Mechanically the game was more of the same – not necessarily a bad thing – with newer content sprinkled in as you progressed. For instance, I was aware that the menus could overwhelm with information, but roughly where to look to find the key bits. Narratively, the story begins much more straightforwardly – though, again, having played DS1 the world was already built in my mind, and was a stage against which a new story could unfold. This may not be true for a brand new player.

So I set off into this fresh but familiar world, linking up bases and clearing enemy camps with my growing array of fun and interesting tools at my disposal. I’m always a little wary of Kojima’s story-telling, but as I settled into the first third of the game I was reminded to just think of this as a live-action anime; to let the madness wash over you, enjoy the bombastic set-pieces and wait for the next, inevitable, unhinged moment. Indeed, the story begins relatively straightforwardly, a relief after the chaotic, worldbuilding exposition dumps of the early first game. I will note further that the game is visually breathtaking from the start and does not let up – from the variety of landscapes, to the character design, to the future-industrial facilities, it never stops being stunning. The music also is a delightful mix of composed pieces and licensed work. It is highly curated and – in a game where tone can be an issue – acts as a fantastic stabilising influence. Elsewhere, however, cracks begin to show.

Firstly, despite the inventive and numerous tools that protagonist Sam Porter Bridges is provided with, they all achieve the same goals (of which in combat there are two: knocking out humans and blowing up robots). You can achieve these goals with the starting equipment, and – due to the lack of mission variety (discussed later) – there is very little reason to change things up. I suppose this is a case of making your own fun, and using the different weapons and gadgets just because you can, but it would have been nice if Kojima had given us a reason to do so. I played the game on normal difficulty, and honestly it felt like if you were doing anything other than walking into a base and mowing every enemy down with your highest powered automatic weapon, you were wasting your own time.

Which raises the next issue: Does Kojima respect your time? The answer is “no”. This is a game full of donkey-work almost by definition, and there is simply too little variety in the game to justify it. At the time, I felt that completing side quests was useful, since I was unlocking gear that would make my onward journey easier.  Looking back over all my time with DS2 now, I realise that it was in fact unnecessary, and I could have marched on a mainline track to the end of the game, without that side stuff and without missing much. 

An easy fix for this would be to make the side missions more interesting, varied, and in particular challenging. Ranking up your rating with each facility requires dozens of deliveries, many literally identical. It is repetitive and unrewarding – especially since you get very little in return for reaching the fifth star. Why not make the missions harder to get the higher ranks? Missions that force you to use all the tools at your disposal.

“I cannot overstate what an unbelievable amount of cutscenes are dedicated to filing systems in this game.”

This has knock-on effects to the narrative, which began to lose me at the midpoint of the game. Around this time you have uncovered so much of the map, and have so much to do, that you can spend hours without seeing any story content. This is a negative feedback loop: I’m not that interested in the story, so I go and do other stuff, so when I get back to the story I’m even less connected with it, so I go and do other stuff. There is simply no getting around the fact that Kojima Productions has paid A-list actors to spend literally hours talking about how a fictional government organises its filing system. I cannot overstate what an unbelievable amount of cutscenes are dedicated to filing systems in this game.

Not to be too negative, the really impactful stuff never failed to please. I don’t want to spoil anything, but from start to finish this game contains ideas, images, action sequences and dialogue that left me in disbelief at what I had seen on the screen. I commend in particular the sequences near the end of the game, drawing from Inception-style playable set-pieces and some general anime insanity. These moments will stay with me for a long time. It definitely didn’t all work, but I always admired Kojima’s ambition in trying to pull it off.

On the other hand, I was occasionally left wondering: “How the hell did he think he was going to pull this off?” Tonally, the game is absolutely all over the place and explores some of the darkest possible themes. It would take a generational talent with the deftest narrative touch to walk the line between laugh-out-loud grandiosity and the (attempted) narrative weight present here. Kojima is not that person, if it can be done at all. This probably contributed to the surprising lack of feeling I experienced toward this story – by swinging for both ends of the spectrum it achieved neither.

Where I found the first game’s story actively aggravating, it is perhaps worse that I found the story of DS2 leaving me fairly switched off and neutral. An epic cutscene would play out, some lines of (undoubtedly well acted) dialogue would be delivered, swelling music would play at the point of a revelation, and I would find myself saying to myself: “Ok…?” Sometimes the narrative beats simply do not hit, a problem in itself but leading to a greater issue of alienating me as a player, and making me feel outside the game. As if this game is for other people, Kojima and his fans, but not for me.

To further add to the pacing concerns, and to give a minor but unsurprising spoiler, Kojima pulls the same move he did at the end of DS1 by demanding the player retrace their steps through the 50+ hour game they just worked through. No doubt this is intended as a time for the player to reflect on the themes and revelations of the game, but in a game that is already overlong this is not a positive.

There is no doubt that Death Stranding 2 is a monumental achievement, made with love and care to a high standard of quality, at the hands of an auteur designer. The sheer force of Kojima’s imagination and personality is present in every moment of this game. It is, without doubt, a work of art. However this does not make the work accessible to everyone, it does not make it coherent or masterful. To have the experience of playing this game is essential for fans of videogames as a medium, but not everyone will like it.

Pacific Drive Review

When you really like something, you think about it a lot. And as you think about it, you discover lots of little gripes that prevent it from being more perfect. Those issues, when discussed, might make it seem like you don’t like the thing, but actually they are a symptom of liking it so much. So just to be clear before I begin, I really like Pacific Drive.

Pacific Drive is a game with a slippery genre. It’s mainly a survival game, with a flavour of horror and elements of rogue-like and extraction looter. The narrative is a science fiction mystery that runs like a radio play. The gameplay loop sees you head out into a mysterious “Zone” in search of answers, salvation and – mainly – loot as you desperately try to keep your trusty station wagon running to the end of this journey and into the next.

The loop itself is a near-perfect execution of the standard survival formula. Drive out into the hazardous world to find resources that allow you to make better equipment so you can get more resources when you head out the next time. So when you get back you can build better equipment and blah blah blah. When done well, as here, the repetition is addictive with each new addition to your survival arsenal providing impetus to head back out and try it. Pacific Drive provides a variety of interesting and unique options to increase your range in the Zone, and also your chances of survival.

The star of the show is the car itself, which functions as a character in its own right. Some of the highlights of the game are in the nervy early stages as you try to keep the car limping on – patching tyres, siphoning dregs of fuel – until the end of the current run. I found our mutual dependence nurtured a distinct affinity for the car. I looked after it and it looked after me.

Unlike more purist survival games such as Minecraft or Rust, Pacific Drive offers a narrative to provide the motivation for continued missions into The Zone. The developer, Ironwood studios, deserve tremendous credit here for the effort that has been put into the worldbuilding. Every item has flavour text in addition to hundreds of text and audio files that create a vibrant universe with a well-defined style. To nitpick, it falls a little too close to the sci-fi-wackiness-meets-modern-bureaucracy of the SCP stories and, most notably, 2019’s Control.

The main narrative itself is delivered as live and recorded radio transmissions. Themes include the role of science, faith, commitment, obsession and sacrifice. It is interesting enough and supplements the already enjoyable gameplay loop, but occasionally feels a bit less profound than it thinks it is. For instance, the trope of woman wanting a baby but putting career first is very much in effect here. Not exactly groundbreaking. In several key places the narrative beats don’t quite land, and in my view the silent protagonist just doesn’t work. The player has no control over the story, and even the player character has very little involvement, generally just hearing events tangentially linked to your actions play out. All of this creates a feeling of listening to a radio-play than a meaningful interactive story with at least the illusion of agency. None of this is helped by the fact the key parts of the narrative can be playing out while you desperately repair a failed engine or drive out of the jaws of danger.

Visually, Pacific Drive is stylised but fairly flawless and oozing atmosphere. The game could be compared to Outer Wilds in its semi-cartoon portrayals of nature and technology. It has a consistent aesthetic design which complements the narrative style and worldbuilding, and is regularly downright beautiful. The chaos and tension can be suddenly punctuated by moments of peace: the headlights go off and you are left with fireflies glowing over a vast alien pond; a lightning strike illuminates a rain-drenched plain.

The UI fits the style of 1970’s computer technology well, but is confusing at the best of times and downright overwhelming at first. In many places Pacific Drive is about choice – should I build part X or part Y? – but sometimes the fact that those options are available is hidden across multiple menus and systems. This combines with a slightly weak tutorial that is split between voice-over vaguely pointing you in the right direction and text instruction. The result is a downright messy introduction to the systems. There were multiple upgrade paths and systems that I never knew were there or forgot. In other instances, I failed runs into the Zone because I had misunderstood how the map works, or headed into a region in search of a particular resource that was specifically not available there, but I had missed that in the small print. Perhaps a case of style over substance.

My principle criticism overall is that the game was too easy. Firstly, much of the game’s peril lies in the unknown – which is initially everything. The dark corners of The Zone are filled with creeping horrors offering unknown threats. Is this mannequin going to chase me down and eat me? Will this toxic cloud melt off my skin? And indeed, much of the first chunk of the game I spent darting out to snatch up a handful of loot before a frantic dash to the relative safety of the car. However, as you see more of these dangers on your repeated trips you learn how to deal with them, which in many cases render them barely an inconvenience. What once sent me recoiling in horror is ignored and avoided with a flick of the joystick.

The darkness is literally and figuratively illuminated because as your knowledge increases, so do your tools. These also reduce the threat from the hazards of The Zone, leading to a precipitous drop in the feeling of danger and something moving toward confidence. Even the dreaded instability that closes in at the end of each area – at first an urgent threat to be breathlessly outrun – turns out not to move that fast, and doesn’t do that much damage even when it arrives. That is not to say the car makes its return to the base (the so-called Auto Shop) in tip-top shape, and a key part of the loop is making your repairs and improvements back at The Shop. However, it was very rare to feel like the run was at risk of failure.

(If one was being generous, they could argue that making the game easier as you learn more aligns with some of the themes of science and enlightenment, but frankly that’s a bit of a stretch and feels more like imbalance.)

It should be said that I play games very conservatively, prioritising safety and resource management over speed and flair. If anything, this highlighted the fact that I could make progress in the game without taking too many risks. The only essential upgrades were the ones that allowed the car to make longer journeys, necessary in the mid- and late-game. Everything else offered convenience rather than an essential, and the player could make do without. There was nothing forcing an Anxious Andy like me to push it to the limit in hopes of some fabulous reward.

(This of course could lead to a wider discussion about whether it is possible to “play a game wrong”, and maybe I was in this instance, but that’s an article for another time)

A couple of final minor gripes. The game has some fantastic licensed music – playing out of the in-car radio – that is so well-suited and matches the rest of the excellent vibe, but needed double the number of tracks. I think every song was well-chosen, but I never wanted to hear them again by the end of my time. And then, after all of this game that relies on voice-over, sound effects and music – I reached the end of my epic journey and the credits played in silence. This genuinely felt like a bug, and if not was a missed opportunity to provide a denouement with style and atmosphere.

In the end, I really enjoyed Pacific Drive and was excited every time I booted it up. Though comparisons to Outer Wilds were overblown – it never reached the heights of discovering [REDACTED] on the Quantum Moon – its weaknesses were more than compensated by the enthralling gameplay loop and fantastically executed style.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Review

I came to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order as a refugee from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla having been disappointed with its floaty, contactless combat. SWJ:FO did not leave me disappointed.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is an action-adventure game in the vein of Dark Souls. It is characterised by crisp, precise combat and sometimes gruelling enemies. Fallen Order has been on my radar for the year since its release and building a new PC has given me a chance to get around to it. Additionally, it can be obtained through the EA Play program for a quarter of its RRP.

Fallen Order reveals its world in a thrilling and visually stunning opening sequence. We’re introduced to our jedi-in-hiding hero who is swept into a narrative larger than himself. The first thing that jumped out at me in FO was the combat. It’s responsive and specific in a way that I had really been looking for. It takes some time to get a handle on (I played on the second-highest difficulty) but your successes truly feel well-earned. This, of course, is a double-edged lightsaber (?) and means you run into some tough enemies (a la Dark Souls) that can end you in one hit. Or more frustratingly, lock you into an inescapable cycle of blows until you are finally, frustratingly, ended.

As he proceeds our Hero Cal Kestis is adorned with extra force abilities that add to the jedi power fantasy. They serve to enhance platforming, unlock new areas and add depth to combat; certainly on the harder difficulties your new skills are an absolute necessity for crowd control and big bosses.

Proceeding a few hours into the game it became clear that the story in Fallen Order isn’t your usual, cut-and-paste good versus evil tale. The characters have shades of grey and compelling motives. I found myself interested in the turns of the story in a way that I have found in few video games. SWJ:FO features some fan-service which, while expected, generated nostalgia that I didn’t see coming. There’s a lot to look out for for fans of the Clone Wars/Purge era of Star Wars history.

Much like its Metroid forebears, Fallen Order has a scanning mechanic which adds flavour to the world. I really enjoyed the details of the flora and fauna of the planets, specifically the ones that aren’t out to kill you. I didn’t read them all, but they fleshed out the world and made it feel alive and lived in. I was a little disappointed with some of the more narrative scans, which tell stories of events that have taken place in that location. You can usually track a parallel narrative as you move through a level, but in general these were fairly lightweight.

The game is set across a handful of planets and has you return to them repeatedly, your newfound skills now granting access to previously barred zones. On the surface this didn’t appeal but there is something satisfying in returning to a previously explored area with fresh eyes. The map is brimming with things to collect, providing improvements both cosmetic and mechanical. I cared more than usual for the cosmetics in the game, which provide a layer of customisability and variation to Cal and his little robot buddy BD-1. Nevertheless, my main interest in the collectibles were the ones that made Cal a stronger Jedi. Here I found myself a little frustrated: the map does show how many collectibles are left to be found in a zone, but the map itself is messy, hard to read and does not show you precisely where the collectibles are. As much as I like the upgrades I’m hardly going to return to a location for the fourth time just to look in every nook and cranny.

Fallen Order looks awesome. Having just come from the clay figurine faces of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the characters look and move in an impressively realistic way. The landscapes are some of the most epic I’ve ever seen in a game but equally each nameless corridor has been lovingly created with production value you would expect from a Star Wars product. The music is perfect, swelling at the right moments and giving you the little flute trills characteristic of the series. Overall a smashing presentation.

In summary, SWJ:FO is the full package. It controls beautifully, it looks amazing and has a story with appeal both to newcomers and fans of the series.

Top 5 Games of the Year 2018

It’s that time of year again.

Honourable mention: Red Dead Redemption II.

Holy Moly. Say what you want about RDRII, that game is a hell of a thing. In terms of scale, attention to detail and sheer quality it is unparalleled. It is really a sight to behold. The problem with RDRII, in the end, is that it just wasn’t that fun. Unlike this year’s fantastic Spiderman, the moment-to-moment action in Red Dead II was simply tiresome and dull. Yes, the story was great, the voice-acting was spot-on, the shooting was fun. The bits in between – as in, the majority of the game – were not fun. When it came down to it I think I resented Red Dead II for not respecting my time. I felt like I was constantly having a hypothetical argument with the Houser brothers, where I wept for the 50th time “Why can’t I just fast-travel there?!” and Dan Houser spits back through gritted teeth “Because you’re going to fucking ride a horse for ten minutes instead”

5. PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds

It’s back. Flying against the rules of my top 5 list that I made up, I am including the same game two years running. PUBG was my game of the year last year and it has remained such a constant feature in my life that it has to make the list again.

The ongoing criticisms of PUBG are well-documented and as I approach 1000 hours of playtime I am not going to argue with them. The netcode can be bad. The microtransactions are shitty. The performance is spotty. But the core mechanics of the gameplay are so damn good.

There is something about the long periods of peace, frantic moments of violence and satisfying shooting mechanics that keeps me (and my friends) coming back to PUBG. It has to be said that I would not be so keen on the game if I didn’t have a close group of friends still playing it – but that fact it has kept us all so hooked is testament to the game in itself.

Further in the defense of PUBG Corp, they have made a concerted effort to appease fans this year with the Fix PUBG campaign and the release of a huge update in December. The new snow map has proved a big hit with the community (and me) and PUBG‘s concurrent player count once again surpassed one million. Despite fierce market competition from the likes of Fortnite and Black Ops among many others, PUBG is not out of the battle royale just yet.

4. Into The Breach

Released early in the year on PC and more recently on Switch, Into The Breach has proven to be a huge success. From the makers of FTL, Into The Breach is a turn based strategy puzzle game that pits teams of mechs against alien insects.

The most remarkable thing about ITB to me is just how solvable many of the predicaments you find yourself in are. If you stare at the field of battle long enough, you can frequently find a way out of the seemingly hopeless state you have gotten yourself into. You might have to accept some damage here or sacrifice a city to the Vek there, but you can get out of it (most of the time).


ITB really makes decisions feel meaningful and impactful and encourages – or rather, insists upon – sacrifice and compromise in order to move forward. It is satisfying and frustrating in just the right ratio and gives you the feeling of being a strategic battle commander in both ways – when you lose, you know it’s your fault but when you win, it’s you (and not the roll of a dice) that made it happen.

3. Spiderman

The swinging in Spiderman is excellent. This is a really important point because it makes up most of the game. If you like the swinging, you will probably like this game and it feels truly majestic to move around Manhattan this way. Unlike the ponderous RDRII, every moment of Spiderman is good fun.

The combat has come in for criticism for being Arkham-lite, and that may be fair. Nevertheless, I found it to be enjoyable, strategic and generally what one would expect from an arachnid superhero.

I found the story relatively luke-warm but for me the sheer joy in every moment of Spiderman got it easily onto this list.

2. God of War

The hype for God of War was one of the reasons I bought a PS4 earlier this year. The console did not disappoint, and neither did GoW.

The axe mechanic – which can be thrown and recalled by magic at any time – is enough for GoW to score highly, but in addition to that there are breathtaking visuals, an intricately designed world and a relatively in-depth loot system.

Despite the criticism God of War received for lack of female representation, I think the game should be praised for its portrayal of the difficult aspects of masculinity and the nature of the father-son relationship. Sure, it may be a little clumsy at times but the game makes good use of voice-acting, cut-scenes and game mechanics to develop the relationship between Kratos and Atreus to make a truly compelling story.

After completing the game I took great pleasure (and a little frustration) in beating all the Valkyries, which added many hours to the game and is an indisputable marker of the good time I was having.

1. Horizon: Zero Dawn

So H:ZD didn’t actually come out this year, but I played it for the first time in 2018 and was so blown away that it not only made the list – it made the top of the list. Horizon swept in and became one of my favourite games of all time. H:ZD is Dutch studio Guerilla games’ first attempt at the open-world genre and their fresh and unique approach has produced a very fine contribution to the field.

The first thing that stands out is the combat mechanics. The game revolves around fighting various kinds of robot animals – from ostriches to dinosaurs. The player gradually acquires a variety of weapons to take on these cybernetic beasts and the range available keeps the fights fresh, fun and strategic. It is possible to just brute force your way through the encounters, but much more satisfying to scan the creature for weaknesses and use the most appropriate weapon to achieve the most devastating results (which could be a catastrophic explosion, the removal of a limb or freezing). It is by far the most engaging combat mechanic I have ever seen in an open world game.

I must also highlight the story in Horizon, which could easily stand alone as a book or film. Guerilla opted for the conventional open-world technique of drip-feeding narrative through written and audio logs interspersed with cut-scenes. The characters are compelling, mysterious and supplemented by on-the-mark voice-acting, with the fantastic protagonist Aloy chief among them. I was keen to seek out every available audio log to find out more about the world.

The open-world of H:ZD is densely-populated and beautiful. Sun-scorched deserts give way to verdant forests, all in a vibrant and varied colour pallet. Tribal hunting parties roam the dangerous wilderness and well-developed side quests are ever-present. In harmony with the story-telling Guerilla have built something that feels very like a living world.

Of course, nothing is perfect and H:ZD is no different. The inventory management is clumsy at best and off-puttingly overwhelming at worst. However, the flaws in Horizon only serve to underline the potential for a sequel that builds on the strong foundation that the first game started. Here’s hoping for some news on a follow-up in 2019.

The Joy of Travel (in Videogames)

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There is something comforting about being “in transit”. I like being on buses and trains and planes and just being conveyed from one place to another. You can sit back, relax and watch the world go by. “I like the peace/ In the backseat”, as Arcade Fire put it.

I think the main reason is that you’re not really expected to be doing anything else when you’re travelling. I’ve never had to commute long distances, Leeds-to-London-style, so I’ve never been obliged to do work on a train. For me it has generally been for leisure and therefore I can spend the travel-time as I please; a welcome retreat in a world of constant stimulation and distraction.

My first recollection of having a similar feeling in a game was in my excitement for the release of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. I liked the idea of me and my chums hunkering down in our caravan and journeying from one adventure to the next – even though I was aware that that would actually make a pretty boring game and the fun itself revolved around the bits in between the travelling. I liked the concept nevertheless.

This was brought to mind in the time I’ve spent this week with Supergiant’s new game, Pyre, which offers the familiar opportunity to lead a mismatched bunch of companions on a caravan-based foray. Pyre actually offers a bit more time inside the caravan than FF:CC, albeit only while the caravan is stationary (I don’t quite get the same cosy feeling if the vehicleisn’t moving).  Still, the game captures the excitement of a travelling adventure quite admirably.

Some of this feeling is even captured in open-world games such as The Elder Scrolls Series, where one experiences the quiet anticipation of setting a distant waypoint and journeying through the wilderness to reach it.

Ultimately I suppose travel is a fundamental part of being human, harking back to our ancient nomadic routes. This is underlined by other art forms, which frequently employ the “travel tale” as part of their narrative to inspire a feeling of wonder in the audience (The Lord of The Rings, On the Road, Heart of Darkness). I’m happy to see Pyre using this technique in its unique graphic-novel-esque setting and hope to see more games packing me up in a wagon and sending me off to war.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe- Impressions

As a day-one Switch adopter, Breath of the Wild kept me interested for about 70 hours and I loved playing the console handheld, on-the-go. I was disappointed with Zelda’s lack of end-game content, however, and left wishing I had something else to play on my shiny new console. Enter MK8D.

Everything about Mario Kart radiates quality, craft and fun. The game looks stunning, and is incredibly easy to pick up and play. I quickly set to work attempting to get gold on all of the Grand Prix, which up to the Mirror Cup was challenging but not overwhelming. 200cc mode was whole other beast, and many of the cups took several (many) attempts. All of it was thoroughly enjoyable.

In comparison to my previous experiences with Mario Kart games, MK8D feels fairer. It is still frustrating to be blue-shell’d, but knowing there are ways to avoid it mitigates this considerably. Items can be used to repel the blue shell, and letting an opponent cruise into first place only to get nuked from above is extremely satisfying. Similar goes for red shells and other obstacles in the game. Ultimately it feels more like a game of skill.

This has been evident through the online play as well, in which I have seen my ranking slowly improve as I gained skill and finesse. Again, nothing seems unfair and the consistency of the top players within a tournament indicates that the role of luck is minimal. Furthermore on the online play, the netcode seems good once in-game with little to no lag and generally good performance. I have been kicked from pre-game lobbies more than a few times though.

My main criticism of MK8D is that after around 15 hours I have gold in all the cups (unlocking the Gold Mario character) and feel unsure what else there is to do. More gold equipment can be unlocked by getting 3 stars in all the cups, which sounds like much more of an ordeal than it is worth. I still need to investigate Time Trial mode which could reveal some more addictive challenges, but (while fun) I don’t feel compelled to go back to the online mode. Hopefully MK8D has something to hook me back in lest I return to my wanderings in the Switch release schedule wasteland.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – Impression

After seeing a Quick Look on everyone’s favourite videogame entertainment site GiantBomb, I knew PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (henceforth referred to affectionately as PUBG) was a game I would like very much. I struggled to justify the expense on an early access game, but succumbed one lonely evening. And I did not regret it.

The streams of PUBG fail to express the sheer intensity of the experience, especially when playing solo and especially when you’re new to the game. Every sound spawns terrified jamming of keys while trying to go prone. I am a particularly jumpy person and this can be embarrasing when dead team-mates (more on squad play later) are spectating my play and see my view leap up and down again when a gunshot rings out. Despite being in early access it’s clear that PUBG neatly walks the fine line between the thrill of looting, the fear of being shot, and the sadism of ending another player’s round in a bloody haze.

I was fortunate to notice friends also playing on Steam (not surprising since everyone is playing at the moment) and was quickly able to form a regular squad. The game takes on a slightly different tone when playing as a group of up to four, the abject fear of a lonely death replaced with considerations of strategy, positioning, resource management and not humiliating yourself in a more public way. The best way to describe squad play in PUBG is to say it is the best game that I have ever experienced at replicating children playing soldiers. You get to shout “Moving to cover!”, “Reloading!”, “Check my six!” and other such pseudo-militaristic jargon in a non-ironic way that actually means something in the game. It’s cool.

Frustrations are definitely present, however, particularly for those of us who are not very good at shooting. I find myself regularly able to get into the top 15 or 10 living players, only to be deftly outgunned by more skilled opponents. This is not unfair, but it’s vexing that the only practice I get at PUBG’s shooting is in a live fire situation. One cannot help but feel that you’re in the ever-closing circle with 12-hour-a-day streamers, but I’ve got a day job. Some kind of training or deathmatch mode would definitely be appreciated.

Despite this, I have definitely spent a lot of time thinking about PUBG recently and am keen to see its development in the coming months. More on this to follow, probably.