Hitman: Definitive Edition {2016} (PS4): Cold Blooded.

I've always had a mild affinity to the stealth genre as a whole. As I've stated more than once on this very blog, I feel like the Assassin's Creed series started off on the right foot to scratch that itch, but ultimately got bogged down by it's own story and cinematics that I never really got to feel like an Assassin stalking my prey. 

Now, I was familiar with this series from seeing my old boss at Gamestop play it more than once. It looked cool, but tricky as hell. I was never very good at these games so I never really dove all that deep into them. It wasn't until SquareEnix picked up the property and gave it a new glossy sheen, put in a hand holding mechanic, and pretty good story and suddenly I found myself to be a fan. After watching Funhaus play the new installment a bit, the stealth itch was begging for a scratch.

HITMAN: DEFINITIVE EDITION (PS4)

The prologue to Hitman serves as prequel to the introduction to the series as a whole. Shortly after Agent 47 escapes his initial handlers in the start of Hitman: Codename 47 he is brought into the International Contract Association (ICA) to undergo initiation to work for them as a hired assassin. It is here Agent 47 first meets and befriends his long time handler, Diana Burnwood.

47 makes child's play of the tests laid before him, and with a sketchy untraceable background it makes the head of the ICA Erik Soders very uncomfortable. So to force 47's failure, his final mission was meant to be a recreation of an impossibly done bit of historical espionage. 47 again completes his task and begrudgingly brought officially into the ICA with Burnwood as his official handler.  We see a montage of 47's greatest hits (ba dum tss) throughout the Hitman franchise before we catch up with him in 2019 for the first level of this installment. 

So despite the Hitman franchise having a continued narrative, this is probably one of the few games that I honestly couldn't care less about a the story when I pick up to play it. It's not to say that the story is bad, or poorly told. But if you come to play Hitman then you really aren't here for the narrative. You are here to find your target and figure out how you can kill them without being noticed or without leaving a shred of evidence behind you.

I will say that compared to the game before this one, Hitman: Absolution the story feels less important for progress. The characters in Absolution were definitely a major focal point, where in Hitman we get some framing cutscene between quests but the story tends to be brief before dumping you right into the next mission. Perhaps because of the new episodic release schedule for this version of the game the story is told it shorter polished chunks.

Now, I distinctly remember the older Hitman titles having some pretty wonky and frustrating controls. I had distinctly remembered having difficulty specifically in Hitman: Blood Money and Hitman: Contracts. Not so much that the controls were difficult, they just never felt very tight. It wasn't till Squenix came in and polished up the series in Hitman: Absolution where I really started to find my groove with the game.

While proficient in hand to hand, you will be heard doing it.
Best avoid getting into dust ups if you can help it.

This particular installment feels like the controls of the older Hitman titles with only a few splashes of some of the new mechanics. This is going to be one of those games where every button as a purpose, so you are going to need to get real familiar with the controller. They brought back 47's "heightened senses" mechanic, which is essentially the same kind of sonar hearing they used in the The Last of Us where you can see silhouettes of everyone around to find your target, or intractable pieces of the environment. It's handy to give you an idea of where you should be headed without spoiling the nuance of the surroundings. Just seeing the target 100 yards away doesn't tell you what surrounds them.

What they did take away though, was "point shooting" system from the Absolution. Essentially this was a bullet time sequence (think John Marston's dead eye aim in Red Dead Redemption), which if used at the right moment and with quick enough reflex you could use to quickly dispatch an entire room when things got hairy, or if there were enough spaces completely remove the bodies prior to being noticed. It certainly made Absolution easier and I'd be lying if I said I didn't use it for all its worth to finish that one. But I'm not unhappy to see it gone.

Thats.... Not exactly subtle, 47.....

But at its core, Hitman returns to its the roots of its gameplay. From the campaign you select your location and you are treated to a small cinematic of Diana explaining your target(s) from who they are, what they do, and why the contract is out on them. She explains some of the situation you will drop into and what you can try, and then "leaves you to prepare."

And from that point, you are on your own (kind of). As you move around the map to case the area, you will stumble across hints and opportunities that Diana can expound upon to give you a path to try. Many of these help you build level mastery and are used to completely level specific challenges. But really, it's 100% optional. The real fun of Hitman is your first blind run: Just trying to get to your target without being caught, killing them, and bailing without dying.

That's some pretty pro level blending in.

You start missions with a pretty limited inventory, but you can always pick up items around the locations to provide more options. Some missions have multiple objectives but the majority of them just require taking down your mark. Once you get a feel for a stage it's worth your while to go back to the level and try to complete the specific challenges and opportunities you are presented with. Doing so completes the aforementioned level mastery, and what this does is this allows you to start the missions in different areas with different disguises, and allows you to bring or stash additional weaponry and tools to being with.

Most of the controls are pretty 3rd person shooter standard so there isn't a lot to go on for that front, but like I mentioned before it feels very much like the old ones specifically in regards to the face buttons. These are usually used for the item interaction and the big thing to remember is that they are not just presses, but holds. So say you take down a bystander, if you stand over their body you will be prompted with a few commands, X to change disguise, O to drag body, Triangle to pick up or interact. You need to remember to accommodate for those extra few seconds. It could make or break you getting caught.

Sometimes you don't even need to be near the target

Levels are pretty much completely open from the word go. Depending on what you bring with you (based on your level mastery) you might have means to get around locked doors from the start or have the necessary keys to get past locks, or even invited in as a guest. Regardless, it's always a great idea to just spend some time wandering around the level. Get used to what path the target follows, find out who he talks to, learn what situational things might be happening to get you close or provide distraction. Perhaps you might find an errant soldier that looks exactly like the guard that get into the building the mark frequents.

But you need to be careful about how you play dress up, sometimes specific people know who is on their staff, so if you wander into their eye-shot and you don't blend in immediately or get out of sight they will become suspicious and follow you, or alert the guards. If you don't move quickly and quietly, situations can escalate in a hurry. You can always run and gun your way through levels, but it really does you a disservice for what makes this game satisfying. It's funny to create a pile of bodies in a doorway, but not long after you will just restart your save and try again.

Upon completion of the level you are rated by how well you did and given a total mission score. This is essentially just for bragging rights and do nothing towards beating the game or unlocking more mastery items, but it does give you a quantifiable number for how you are doing as an assassin. If you run and gun your way through the level, sure you will probably be able to move on but you'll get slapped with a "dunce cap, zero star, thanks for trying ribbon for idiots" at the end of the level.

Looks like it's.... Lights out for you... (YEAAAAHHHHH)

But to get an idea of how satisfying being an assassin could be, allow me to go through a scenario I played through that just made the game for me: I'm in Sapienza, and I've currently snuck into the compound of Silva Caruso. He's been working on a viral weapon with Francesca De Santis. I need to kill both of them. After sneaking onto the compound as a gardener, I'm eavesdropping on Caruso during his golf lesson. I learn that his golf instructor has been having an affair with De Santis, but the instructor denies it.

After the lesson I follow the instructor and catch him making a call to De Santis about a date. So I size the opportunity knock him out, steal his clothes, and stash his body. With his phone, I call Francesca back to meet up for our date. I set some mood music and lighting, add some rat poison to the champagne set that was waiting for us, and take a seat in the lounge chair in the shadows. Franscesca comes in, worried about these trists and explains that she's actually been spying on Caruso, and that I risk my life by continuing this with her. She's clearly nervous but wanted to be straight with me about the risks.

I started a empathize a little as she took a nervous drink of her champagne, it didn't take long for her body to start reacting to it. She quickly rushed to the restroom as I slowly rose from my chair to sauntered after her. I opened the door to see her vomiting over the shitter and felt a little bad because this was a horrible way to go, but I have a job to do. I slipped behind her and forcefully held her face in the bowl until kicking and bubbles stopped, dropped her body in the clothes bin, hopped out the window, and was off to find Caruso for his turn.

"Farewell, my love...."

None of this pontificating of Assassins and Templars, No wiping a feather on their neck bullshit, no 20 minute monologue of a death rattle about how I don't understand shit. Just cold, emotionless execution. It probably says all sorts of fucked up things about me as a person that having things go that smoothly felt so incredibly satisfying to do. But this, THIS is how Hitman is intended to be played. When you can go in and get the job done with nobody being the wiser, it makes all the effort and time spent tracking your mark worth it.

I purchased the definitive edition of the game prior to season 1 going free to PS+ members, and I'm glad that I did because it allotted me two extra campaigns to play. They all use the same maps but the targets are different. There are also a large number of increasingly difficult challenges that you can use to improve your mastery and also just generally get more play out of a level. Which in turn gives you more memorization that you can use to play the main campaigns to get better masteries. I honestly don't think you can get the Silent Assassin rank without a couple higher rank mastery tools.

On top of these missions, there is a whole online contract mechanic that I never even delved into which is basically user made custom levels, so if you for some reason you completely dive into this one 100%, you can still find use created kills to continue to stretch your dollar out on this one.

I guess stealth doesn't always mean quiet....

If I have complaints, they are pretty minimal. First and foremost is the same problem I generally with every installment of this series, and that is that Agent 47 is basically a non-character. Like Master Chief, Agent 47 is basically a blank slate that has no tonal range, no emotional expression, no physical personality to his movements. In some cases he's even worse because he doesn't even string one liners during gameplay. Now, you can argue that this contextually fits in the story since he was essentially a test tube grown clone, so his human interaction was nil.

Two, the story itself to this game kinda sucks. Like I said at the top we get a brief greatest hits prologue explaining how we got to now, but as we play through this game we end up following the actions of a character I don't actually think is ever named. He seems to know who Agent 47 is and seems to be a hand behind a behind-the-curtain war between the ICA and a shadow group called Providence. The ending, without spoiling, basically is a teaser for the upcoming Hitman 2 which is kind of frustrating.

It's most egregious problem is that this load times in this game are just unforgivably long. Especially for a title that will cause you to reload the level or reload your saves regularly, any load time that takes longer than like 15 seconds is pushing itself to be too much of a noticeable wait if you have to constantly do it. It's not as bad as Bloodborne's original 30-60 second load times, but at this point Dev's really should find ways to have the game constantly loading or able to quickload to get you right back into the action.

"Ahem, Don't mind me..."

I'll be the first to admit that the game can be a little samey after a while. Especially when doing challenge missions because it is very easy to get into a rhythm of using the same tools to secure kills in different missions. I can't think of how many times I've used rat poison in a drink to take down a target in this one.

And while the controls are polished to be as responsive as this game needs to them to be, there still feels like a degrees of innate awkwardness to them when trying to change outfits, drag, or pick something up. It doesn't feel as broken as many of the old Hitman games seemed to be, but in the early going there is going to be a curve to pick up the nuance of them before they start to feel natural.

Ultimately though, I like Hitman and I like it a lot. I've said hundreds of times that this is how the Assassin's Creed series should have played. I play it off and on quite a bit still and it scratches the stealth itch for me in all the right ways. Or I can just melt down and try to see how many people I can kill before getting taken out.

Hitman is one of those games I like to play when I want to zone out and focus simultaneously. It's generally low stress to play and I can spend well over an hour just wandering around a locale, taking in the surroundings before plotting my attack. There is just something immensely satisfying about playing this game to me. The adage of "If you liked, then you will like" applies here. If you liked the other Hitman installments then Hitman 2016 is going to satisfy in all the right ways. If you are looking for a fast paced run and gunner, then this is not the game for you.

I had to walk the catwalk in Paris for a mission.

That alone made this game worth it.

A Hat In Time (Steam): A surprise hat thrown in the ring.

Sometimes there are games that you hear about and just from the couple of sources you trust you know that you are going to want to try it. That was kind of where is was at with this one. I heard the game mentioned a couple of times and I heard some pretty positive reviews about it without reading too much into it.

So naturally when the steam summer comes around I have games like this one locked, loaded, and ready for purchase. It dropped a bit so I jumped on this one. It sat in the backlog for a bit, but while looking for something new to play on my Thursday stream and this seemed like a good change of pace. So with that, we donned our best cap and dove into.....

A HAT IN TIME:(STEAM)

So contrary to what I had assumed, this is not about time traveling girl in a dashing top hat. That's only part of it. Hat Girl, as she is known, is an alien simply flying home in her spaceship. But as she passes over a specific world, a member of their local mafia bangs on her front screen demanding a toll. Hat Girl refuses and the Mafia smashes her window, causing her vault to fly open and suck out these glowing hour glass "time pieces" as well as herself out into space to the planet below.

There, Hat girl meets a local trouble maker in a red hood and a dashing mustache, hilariously called Mustache Girl. Initially, after Hat Girl helps her get free from the Mafia, Mustache Girl agrees to help find the missing time pieces if Hat Girl helps her run the Mafia out of town. Things go well until Mustache girl learns the time pieces can be used to actually alter time, and has the idea to use these to be time traveling heroes and ride the world, and other worlds of their bad guys.

Unfortunately, Hat Girl needs to them to power her ship and get home so she declines. Mustache girl claims this is a selfish use of them, and after stealing from Hat girl and dissolving their friendship, it then becomes a race to see who can collect the time pieces first.

Spoiled a little of the story there to give context, but that is more or less the framework of the story and its as good a motivation as I needed.  As I eluded to in the intro to this one, I basically went into the game pretty much not knowing a thing about. But now that I have played through the game from start to finish, there is only one way I can describe it:  A Hat in Time is a love letter to the 3D Super Mario platfomer. So expect a good number of comparisons to it.

At the onset of the game, Hat Girl has pretty limited bag of tricks. She can run around, and jump, and has a umbrella that she can swing at enemies. When she is airborne and someone comes into range, you can hit the attack button to do kind of a homing flying dive at a baddie. Its a generally invulnerable move but its not fluid or fast. So you will more than likely bash things with your umbrella until you are prompted to use the aerial attack, usually by bosses or specific enemy types.

You have 3 primary objectives every time you drop into a new level. You need to A: collect pons which are gems that will let you unlock new buttons for you hats which give you new passive abilities. B: collect balls of yarn which allow you to unlock new hats, which give you new active abilities like dash, bombs, etc. and C: collect that level's time piece, which allow you to progress to the next chapter of the game. 40 time pieces in total.

As I sort of mentioned before, it draws a great deal from the formula that made Super Mario 64 work so well. Each chapter of the game is broken up into 4 to 8 acts which drop you into that world to go after a new time piece. And like much like its inspiration, each change of act might produce some subtle changes to the level on top of your ultimate goal.  For example, in the first world of Mafia town, the entire place is somewhat of a tropical beach island city.

Man, the Mafia are friggen jerks.

But in one of the acts, Mustache Girl turns on all these giant faucets that basically make them spout out lava instead of water, so now any of the water you could previously swim in now causes damage and require more precise platforming. The goal to unlock the time piece is to navigate around the new terrain to reach said faucets and turn them off. Worlds are generally open so you can explore around and see what changes and learn where you can go now or what ability you might need to come back later.

After completing a certain number of acts (you don't need every time piece) you can move to the finale of the act which usually results with a fun, interesting boss fight and the closing of the story for that set of worlds. All of them individual to each other so while it does lead to a big final story arc, each chapter feels contained and different so they feel different, fresh, and unique.

You can always replay levels to go back to reload on pons or try to get more yarn to get new hats for more abilities. It is entirely possible to beat the game without having all of them because I was able to do so and do so without much difficulty. As you play, you can also find time shifts. Again, much like in the 3D Mario games and would say Mario Sunshine in particular, time shifts are these kinda surreal floating in space pocket levels that usually involves some trickier platforming to complete in basically a wide infinite undersea/spacescape. Most chapters have 2 or 3 of these.

So I'm not gonna lie, There is a lot to love about this game. First off this game bills itself as "A Cute as HECK platformer" and I'm hard pressed to disagree. Everything about the art style gives me a nostalgic Saturday morning cartoon feeling about it. Cartoony style caricature with big eyes and character proportions. A lot of absurdist scenery. Each world has its own differing theme with characters to go with it be it a train car of birds, a forest of ghosts, or a mountain of shamanic goat people. In the recent DLC update, they also added a "retro" mode to make the graphics looks like they are on the N64, and somehow that feels like it fits just as well.

Hat girl, who never actually has a full speaking line I think, has a lot of little character building animations that will happen when she idles or during the course of the story or level. She is a bit of a fun loving prankster and when approaching enemies she stick her tongue out and make a "bleeeeeeeaahh" sound at them. She'll make faces at people and tease. But she is also a sweetheart and if she befriends someone she'll blow kisses that have little hearts. This game is adorable.

In more than one level, she'll have to sneak around silently. During these levels of the game you will notice that if you aren't using your dash, you will see that she is walking around holding up her hand in a finger gun pose like she's playing that she's a spy. It's a lot of these little animations that end up giving Hat Girl so much character to her personality without having to deliver a single line of dialog.

There are some pretty great supporting characters too. My hands down favorite is the antagonist from the 3rd or 4th act, a ghost called the Snatcher. He basically traps you at the start of the level and yanks your soul out, and then forces you into a contract to be his fixer. Everything about this character makes me laugh. His voice, the 4th wall breaking cynicism of his boss fight, he even has brief Undertale reference if you are looking for it.

One character I was expecting more from is the shopkeeper you use to buy new button abilities for your hats. He is a ghostly, spectral character with a floating mask and broken speech. Just from his overall design I expected there to be more story, or content relating to him. He ended up just being a shopkeeper like he said he was, which actually kind of impressed me because that is an awful lot of attention to detail for a character that essentially has no bearing on the story.

Every part of the game with the Snatcher is my favorite part. I love this character.

They throw in a lot of little game mechanics in this one to change the feel of it too. I mentioned the stealth levels that borrow mechanics you might see in a Metal Gear game. In one level you are just racing forward as the stage falls apart around you, using your gear to navigate the jumps properly to keep moving forward, like you might see in Uncharted, Tomb Raider, or even Crash Bandicoot really. At one stage a character wanted me to doctor up my picture for a movie, and so I am basically doing an MS Paint job over my picture as part of an actual story mission. It's hilarious.

Hat In Time also does some camera tricks like Nier: Automata did change the feel of a segment. The game for the most part is generally 3D in all its segments, but one boss encounter with the Mafia Boss, the game sticks a 2D plane for the entirety of the encounter. It limits the range of movement which requires you to have more precise jumping and timing of your aerial attacks to complete. Some of these changes also completely change the tone and feel of the game from level to level.

The game has some very funny writing. It's incredibly cheeky and plays with a lot of the tropes you expect in video games. A lot of segments are very sarcastically written. And while I have called this game a love letter to 3D Mario titles, there is a lot of love to go around as there are references upon references in this game, such as the C.A.W. agents from the Murder Mystery level, which are clearly drawing inspiration from the G-Men from Psychonauts.  There is even a text adventure on the ship that you can play that has some rather hilarious outcomes if you continue to play it. It even turns a trope I generally hate on its head and made it feel hilarious and new, while also providing me a much more difficult moral choice than I was expecting.

Right down to how they deliever their lines, the agents of C.A.W
are a direct parody of the agents in Psychonauts.

This soundtrack completely nails it. This is an OST that sort of does a lot with a little, and ends up giving us a ton. Each stage has their own unique theme, so naturally they all have a complimenting song that go along with them. But as you complete each of the acts in each stage, The song remixes to adjust to the changes of level, thus giving it the song a different feel while still being the same theme for said level.

But then, the game blindsided me with the exceptional rock-as-fuck boss fight themes. I first noticed it with the fight with the Snatcher and its highly covered theme "Your contract has expired". So it caused to me to go back and listen to some of the other encounter themes and almost every one of them is fantastic. I am really loving Contract and "The Battle of Award 42". Pascal Michael Stiefel absolutely knocked it out of the park with this OST. Some of you might be hearing some of these songs in my upcoming Extra Life highlight reel.

The game has a decent length to it as well and what I like about it is that it does not require 100% competition to get through.  It tells you right at the onset that there are 40 time pieces to gather, but you don't actually need all 40 to play through all the main chapters of the game. You DO need most of the hats to navigate through all the levels, but you don't need all of them. This allows for some additional replay value after you have completed the main story. If you wish to do the DLC chapter, it does require a bit more completion than required to finish the game, but I consider that post game content and don't hold it against it.

In addition to all of this, for the first day of its release they gave away the first DLC chapter away for free. While I can never be rid of the bane that is DLC, I appreciate gestures like this. The devs also released an update that provides modding support for fans to customize the game, and a multi player split screen mode that looks to provide some fun cooperative play/teammate trolling as you can hit the other player. I personally haven't had the chance to try the multiplayer, but for collector missions or finding time riffs, this seems like it could be useful.

Awwwww.. These girls...

There are some minor complaints at best. There is a looseness to the controls that 90 percent of the time feels generally feels pretty great when you are playing, but it becomes a massive annoyance when trying to time a jump right at the edge of a ledge. More than once I would be trying to time my jump and go over the edge because I wasn't hitting it as soon as I felt I needed to.

There is an air dash kinda move that you use to extend the length of your jump, which I hate. Not that mechanic doesn't work, but it also functions as your slide move when going down a hill. Again, also fine. The problem comes in is because this animation doesn't cancel itself, or with any of the main actions such as jumping again or swinging your umbrella. So in the occasional tight situation I would be trying to navigate tight platforms, land my extended jump, then die because I was scrambling to swing my umbrella or jump out of the way. It's annoying and seems like an easily fixable issue, and may be with upcoming patches.

As with most 3D games of this nature, there is some camera fuckery that can be a mild aggravation.  When having to do some wall jumping, climbing, or worse yet when you have to land on narrow platforms, you also need to sort of guide your camera while you jump to make sure you stick the landing. It's not exactly fluid and not comfortable to do, so chances are you will be making more than one attempt to hit a jump. This is incredibly frustrating when trying to jump on a clothesline because of the narrow target to hit. The level "The Big Parade" was probably the most frustrating example of this.

This is more of a personal complaint, but I would have liked health to be a little more forgiving. I wouldn't say this game is exceptionally hard, but hearts aren't as common as pons are. Unlike 3D Mario games where you get 8 health and coins restore it, Hat In Time only gives you 4 and only specific heart pickups restore your health. This makes the latter stages, and specifically the DLC update on a WAY higher difficulty curve than the rest of the game, which can lead to some frustration.

But ultimately, these are minor complaints on an all around solidly built game. The fact that this was done by an incredibly small team and basically shared in bits in pieces instead of working together at one office makes it even more impressive to me. A Hat in Time hits all the right points for me for a new property: fun characters, good soundtrack, great replayability, adorable art direction, the right amount of skill to be challenging without being frustrating, and so on.

Sometimes when there is a buzz around a title and you take a cursory glance at it you know that it's going to be right for you, and that is exactly where I put A Hat in Time. This game is appropriate for everyone and has a little something to offer everyone's gaming tastes a bit. I very much enjoyed this game and give it a wholehearted recommendation to anyone who is looking at it.  I just wish that I started it sooner.

Sorry Mustache Girl. But every British sounding
woman just sounds like Tracer to me now.

Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4): An Amalgamation of Holy Shit.

I've talked about the E3 hype machine before, a few times on this very blog. Specifically in relation to Watch Dogs.  Basically sometimes even when you generate all the right kinds of hype, it doesn't necessarily mean you are going to live up to the bar that you have set. There are a handful of games that have been set for release that have a very mighty leap to make.

This one specifically was one of those games. It was a completely brand new property put out by the people who put out the functional but middling Killzone franchise, Guerrilla Games. In the 7 or 8 minutes I watched what appeared to be a cave girl running through open world and scaling around nature, where she then roped down an hunted a massive robot dinosaur. In the battle sequence it showed the various tricks she could do.

And I swear to god my jaw fucking hit the floor. I was locked in on this game at the point, and after a few years of development it finally came out. The bar was set incredibly high on this one, but did it deliver?

HORIZON: ZERO DAWN(PS4)

In Horizon: Zero Dawn we are set in a distant future of Earth by well over 1000 years. In this future setting there human society has collapsed under their own technological advancement to the point of near extinction, but humanity did manage to survive but are reduced to more primitive state of society. They broken among three camps of the Nora, The Carja, and the Oseram. For the most part to coexist with the large dinosaur like robots known only as "Machines", but as time continues to pass the machines are becoming more and more aggressive towards humans. Our story focuses on the life of a child of the Nora, Aloy.

Aloy was child of a mysterious birth, placed under the care of a Nora outcast named Rost. Because of her upbringing, she is also reviled as an outcast. This pains her, and after one such shaming she flees from Rost and tumbles into one of the forbidden technological ruins from the now ancient time. She comes across a small device called a Focus, which gives her an informational HUD that explains much of the things around her, but more importantly allows her to see the paths and critical information about the Machines.

But all this information still doesn't answer what she truly wants to know: What else is out in the world, who is her mother, where did she come from, and why was she outcast? Rost informs her if she can come out on top of the Nora coming of age, The Proving, she will no longer be an outcast and will be granted a boon. A boon which she can use to get answers from the Nora elders. And thus begins Aloy's training to master the hunt, tracking, and her quest for answers.

I love how this story starts and develops. There are a lot of different elements to the narrative it tells so I don't want to go into too many different specifics for spoiler reasons because it branches out quite a bit, but I think that this is a fantastic way to weave and almost fantasy setting out of modern sci-fi. It's not quite Star Ocean where a futuristic person is dropped in a primitive time, but reversed where the humans have become primitive in a futuristic post apocalypse.

But what I like about it is that its not the grim dank destroyed brown-grey post apocalypse used in every other game. So much time has passed that nature has re-encroached on the lands again. They are lush, green, full of wildlife. Despite technology pushing humans to the brink, nature and life still found a way and on top of that coexists with the machines. It's honestly one of the first times I've seen a game take place in this kinda setting that I can remember, (unless you want to count the post credits of Final Fantasy 7).

This might be one of my more meaty reviews because when I describe this game to people I really have to talk about it as the amalgamation of game elements that it represents. If I am approaching this with brutal honestly, a lot of what makes Horizon great isn't what it brings new to the table, but what tried and true thing its used and how its been polished to a mirror shine. And there are a lot of them that get used.

First and foremost at its base control scheme it is pretty traditional 3rd person action adventure at its core. If you have played any modern open world game of this nature the controls are going to feel pretty natural to you because the standards for this style of game have been pretty set in stone. Running, Jumping, climbing, aiming all feels simple and natural at this point. There is no real hard cover mechanics but there are specific foliage that can be used for stealth purposes that can be slipped in an out of easily.

Many of these style games (such as Tomb Raider or Last of Us) have a focus mechanic that helps you track, aim, or find things. So it might be a little on the nose that Aloy's device is called a focus. With a quick click of the analog button you get a small HUD display that can be used to track machine movements, pick up trails, and show weak-points of machines to target.

Unless you are going for a stealth kill, Melee should be kept to 1 on 1 fights.

Because Aloy's primary weapons tend to be variants of bows combat also feels like it strongly compares to Tomb Raider as well. You aim and fire with triggers as you would normally expect, You do have two varied melee attacks with a spear of light and heavy attacks but where the combat excels is switching your gear on the fly. Enemies have varied strengths and weakness so you can't just stick to your cheap bow and hope to fight everything because it won't happen.

For example, one of my favorite weapons is the Ropecaster which was featured in the E3 demo. It basically fires a roped bolt that lodges into the machine and then fired into the ground. It produces a rooting effect and with enough of them can trip up or ground a machine. For fliers like glinthawks or aggressive targets these are exceptionally useful to limit their range or knock them down for critical strikes.

Then you have fast moving targets that are difficult to hit the weak spots of, this is where tripcasters come in. You basically fire two bolts to make a trip wire that will freeze, zap, or burn whoever triggers it and can be as short or as wide as necessary. So for stealthy moving Stalkers for example, you can lay traps so when they try to ambush you they can get some damage for their troubles. The key to combat in this game is to have an idea what weapons you will find most effective and be prepared for anything.

I seriously used to rope-caster whenever possible. Even if they didn't fall it would
hold things to pepper them with flame arrows or ice grenades.

As mentioned a second ago there are element type weapons as well, as you continue to unlock more and more weapons, you will also be able to create more and more different types of ammo to use for them, so while you can wait to just pay of the best gear if when you can like I did, it is a good idea to try to get everything to give you more options. Even more so is when you buy a new weapon, it gives you a relatively easy tutorial mission for how to use it, which are a great use for experience dumps.

You will want that XP, there is a reasonably sized skill tree that can be maxed out at level 50. The new Tomb Raider games comes to mind again because there isn't a lot of branching customization, the goal here is to try to unlock everything, so don't be afraid to spend those points. You will have lots of little opportunities for experience via various quests and combat. Also use all the tiers of a weapon, each one gives a mini tutorial for a free XP dump.

Conversation blocking feels very Mass Effect as you can see. But the scripted
action sequences definitely will give you that Uncharted feeling.

Exploration and dungeons are a big part of the game's experience, but the combat is dressing that makes it worth it. The fun thing about fighting the Machines is that pretty much any one of them can fuck you up at any given point. Even if they look harmless, they will probably have some buck-wild attack you weren't expecting that'll stomp you into paste. But a safe thing to remember is that the bigger they are, yes the more dangerous they can be. Some don't have easily exposed weak points, some will only ever move in packs so its hard to take them down as a group. You have to get clever about what you use to fight.

Which also leads into the surprising amount of stealth that is in the game as well. As you travel along you will constantly find these patches of red grass suspiciously colored similarly to Aloy's luxurious mane. While crouched in that as long as you don't open hostility enemies typically won't see you. You are practically invisible to machines doing this, but there are a number of bandit camps you can raid where these become essential. With the right tipped arrows, you can completely snipe down an entire bandit camp without having to step foot inside of it, which honestly will make you feel like a total bad ass.

Or you can be less subtle and crashing into camps bow blazing.
Which isn't something a bow does.... shut up.

Questing I feel draws its biggest comparisons to open world blending of Mass Effect/Dragon Age mixed with the open world nature of a Skyrim or Far Cry. As you wander along the countryside you will come across other travelers or villages rip with NPCs to squawk their troubles at you to go out and collect/kill/find for them. Much of the world is open right from the onset and what is locked off isn't locked for very long. Inside of a few major story missions you essentially get the entire world opened from the onset.

So thankfully, they have some ways for you to pick up the speed of your travel. The standard movement speed isn't slow, but it isn't very long before you get mounts in the game, which certainly reduce travel times, and actually have somewhat of an autopilot to keep you on track. And it also has a fast travel system that I appreciated having, but it isn't limitless. There is an item that will allow for limitless fast travel but until you can find and afford it, using fast travel requires to purchase or use supplies so its a good idea to not overdo it, or you might find yourself needing to scavenge for supplies more often than you might want to.

Horzion features a "photo mode" which people are making some incredible screenshots with.

Speaking of that, you will probably want to spend a decent amount of time on foot to begin with. Crafting plays a pretty big factor in the equipment you have and healing you can do, so you are going to want to pick up almost everything you can get your hands on. This is especially important in the start of the game because your carry amount is limited and you are going to want to expand that immediately. On top of healing items you have, you also basically have a healing pouch of weeds you can draw from for a slow ticking recovery instead of instant, you will want to keep that full so you aren't dumping your potions when you don't need to.

Conversations in the game apply the conversational wheel that you see in Bioware games. Most of the time this is used to raise questions and flesh out conversations. Sometimes you will be prompted with various response between caring, logical, and aggressive.  And while it feels like it sort of gives you a sense of moral choice system for responding certain ways, it didn't feel like many of them had much bearing on the game as a whole. Yes there are handful of story altering choices, but I don't think anything would have changed significantly if I picked all aggressive choices as opposed to caring ones.

Erend can be a doofus, but he's one of the most genuine characters in the game I felt.
I really could relate to the guy in some of the more serious moments.

There is some very interesting character design to this game as well. Much like I feel the game is an amalgamation of mechanics, so to are the worlds people. The clans are very diverse within themselves of varied races (which is somewhat explained in the story), but their actual clan ethics and lifestyles are what separate them. The Nora give me a very Native American vibe as they hunt with bows and wear skins, barter, and have very nature based faith.  The Carja though, remind me of more of more advanced Egyptian society. They have stone walls, bustling marketplaces, their clothing aesthetics involve headdresses and fancy makeup, and they praise the sun. The Oseram give me slightly more roman vibe with their thicker armor and mauls, but they are industrious metal working people pushing to re-advance human tech.

So no game is without problems, and there are a handful of little annoyances I should address. I should stress that I think this game is gorgeous. Graphically its landscapes and characters are stunning, but the opening segment as young Aloy has a very "Guerrilla Games" look about her that just doesn't look right. Like her head is 3 times bigger than it should be for her body, She grows into it and becomes super cute, but as a child its off-putting. And while it only happened like once or twice, there were conversation points where the mouths did not match up with the words being spoken. It usually was over by the time I registered it was even off.

If you find enough Cauldrons, almost everything can be tamed to your side. Even the big bads.

I've gotten into arguments about the dialog. It can certainly come off as forced and hokey, but I don't actually hold that against it because it feels like with humanity regressing to more primitive lifestyles, exaggerated exclamations of faith felt kind of natural the world it created so again, I don't hold this much against it.

The inventory system can lick my fucking ass. Let me put out that it's going to be very important to try to hunt and gather as often as you can because you get very limited space for your various knickknacks. But from the word go you can use the gathered supplies to expand your pouches for inventory space. You will want to do this as much as you are able, most bags have 4 levels of upgrade you can do. The problem is, you will find yourself killing like 400 fucking foxes and only getting a single fox bone when you need two. It can be an infuriating waste of time.

Despite the visual dome, the Focus actually has long range. Use it often.

The game gives you a cool slide mechanic so you can hit underside weak points on the machines. I have NEVER once gotten this to work that didn't result in me taking a massive chunk of damage. It's cool, but fucking worthless.

You are going to die in this game a lot. Just get that in your head early because its just going happen. The problem is if you made the mistake of wandering into a Cauldron you better have the gear to finish it. Most of the time this won't be a problem and you do want to investigate them. They are optional but a lot of the meat of the back story is in there. But you can't leave once you are in so if you cam in under prepared to fight a Thunderjaw then you are going to get rekt.

No matter how prepared for a Thunderjaw you think you are,
You aren't.

The game topography is stupid too. I love how lush these environments are and the game does give you a number of different areas to traverse but I do find it to be a bit nonsensical. How can can I be in rolling plains, lush forests, blizzard covered mountains, scorching deserts, and dilapidated societies all within the same short robo-horseback ride distance apart from each other. When you think about that it kinda can pull your suspension of disbelief a bit.

Also this is a personal gripe but getting all the hunters lodge gold medals was a total pain in the ass for two of them. Most of them are not to bad once you have the mechanics of the game down, but the stealth missions are next to impossible to do within the time limits you are a given. That said its worth it to try because you unlock some of the best weaponry in the game if you can do it.

Nil is a murderous creep. While I didn't feel he was "bad" guy, I couldn't trust him.

Probably the biggest knock against the game is something honestly I don't even really consider a knock. Outside of the setting and primary fodder in the game, Horizon doesn't really invent the wheel here. Much of what this game uses has been used in the game that came before it. If I really think about it I struggle to find something this game did that I could trace to another game. You could argue that by trying to do too many things, it doesn't excel at any one of them.

But I disagree and why I don't think this is a knock, is because Guerrilla did their due diligence and polished all of the mechanics to a mirror shine. Everything worked exactly as I felt it should and I slipped into total immersion almost immediately. And if there is any one determining factor for a good game, immersion is one of the keys. To be able to forget that you are playing a game and are just playing it, that is the trait all games should have.

To give probably my biggest nod for why I enjoyed this game, is that none of the questing was tedious to me. This is a game that has a shit ton of fetch and side quests and I practically did all of them. By the time I moseyed out of the initial Nora lands, I was something like 27 levels ahead of what the next story quest was supposed to be. Despite it being a great story I honestly was having enough fun wandering the lands, fighting robo-dino's and stalking bandits. I never tired of doing it.

I really knuckled down with this game and played it a great deal. I totally bought in on the hype machine on this one and for once it absolutely delivered on what it needed to be. I fucking loved Horizon: Zero Dawn. This is a game that absolutely deserves to be part of the Game of the Year discussion. Its biggest roadblock for that is it went up against Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which despite massively outselling its Nintendo competitor {market share factors here}, its limelight was short lived because "Zelda."

But make no mistake: PlayStation and Guerrilla hit a fucking grand slam with this one. Horizon: Zero Dawn was a fucking fantastic game and is one of my, if not most peoples front runner for game of the year. And it damn well should be. Bravo.

Seriously. Fuck herds of Tramplers.

Gravity Rush Remastered (PS4): A Charming Case of Vertigo.

This is one of those games I took a flyer on. I didn't own a vita until way late into its cycle, so really all I knew about this game is what the Title was called, that gravity was involved, and that the main character appeared in an iteration of hot shots golf. Cute blonde character who also dresses like a Maid. Worked for me.

But then I started hearing rumblings about it getting a PS4 HD release (because apparently they don't make "new" video games anymore), and I started seeing articles about what a darling this game was that didn't get the love or respect it deserved. I also hear similar reviews from some friends who have played it, so I decided why not give it a shot.

GRAVITY RUSH: REMASTERED:(PS4)

The story of Gravity Rush is confusing. We start off with the Amnesiac trope as we take the role of a girl named Kat who plummets to a floating city called Hecsville and wakes up knowing nothing about herself. In her ambling confusion she comes across what appears to be a spectral cat she dubs "Dusty". This cat somehow gives her the ability to shift the direction of gravity for her giving her a makeshift ability to fly.

In the opening moments of the game, a gravity storm threatens to further pull apart the city, with a small child clinging for dear life. Kat uses her new found ability to try to rescue the child before he is pulled away into the abyss. Kat manages to succeed in saving the child, but was unable to save their home. Instead of being grateful, the father and rescued son vilify her for not saving their home, showing an intense disdain for "shifters". 

Kat gets mixed reactions from the people in the city, and decides that before she starts anything she needs to find a place to stay and clean. After situating herself, she sets out into the city to try to find out clues of who she is, and hopefully fend off the gravity monsters (called Nevi) that stand in her way and rescue and assist the citizens who cannot defend themselves.

Gravity Rush I guess can be consider to be sandbox game at its core. You start off on a section of the world map with pretty much the freedom to explore it at a whim. On the map you find number of locations where you can do quests or missions, and as you play through the game the map continues expand giving you new locations and more missions to do. I wouldn't say its as expansive as the Grand Theft Auto universe but its a pretty sizable environment for what was a handheld game. 

Gravity Rush is one of those bizarre enigma's of a story. From the base onset I find the amnesiac trope to be kind of a weak starting point because its just been so overused and played out. Very early Kat decides that she wants to be helpful to the people of the city, who for the most part do nothing but shun and berate her, or take her for granted. Its sporadic because it feels like it is constantly throwing various story elements at you as you play it, but many of them feel like they deviate away from the main story of finding out who she is rather than complimenting it.

Apparently, she doesn't remember that this is a major plot point either.

That being said? There is something incredibly charming about Kat as a protagonist that I found myself really liking. She's got an adorable little voice that matches the cutesy facial expressions she makes in cutscenes. It sounds vaguely french but I am fairly certain it is just gibberish with french accents. But she's earnest, playful, helpful, even sarcastic at times. She is also flawed as she is easily distracted and manipulated, so I wouldn't consider her to be a "Mary Sue" either. Actually with all honesty, if she didn't have Dusty the only thing separating her from the day to day citizen would be her clothing (which people love to point out to her).

Much of the main story seems to be delivered by means of comic book stills for the major point of exposition and questing, and actual animated cutscenes for the major pivotal moments of the game or scenes meant to increase tension such as the appearance of an adversary or a giant monster of some kind. Honestly I think it kind of adds to Kat's charm when it was told this way. It also produces some hilarious out of context screenshots. Also, for one of the more useless features you can rotate the controller to tilt the pictures a few degrees in any direction. 

It works as a means to frame the story, without cut scenes getting too long winded.

As mentioned once you have the freedom to explore, the game turns into a sandbox and you are free to do missions and challenges at whim. But it would be a good idea take some time to just fly around the city and explore. One: because the flight controls can be a little wonky since you aren't actually flying, but falling in different direction. And Two: You need gems to upgrade your abilities and unlock additional challenges.  Thankfully there are hundreds of them scattered all about the city for you to collect, some worth more than others. 

The real place to make gems though is in the challenges. Many of them are basically variants of time trials or races. Some of them require you to fly from point to point, some of them only use the gravity slide mechanic, some of them are moving items to a specific zone within a certain time period, and some of them are more combat centric. When you complete them you will be rewarded depending on how well you did. There is a bronze, silver, and gold tier reward so it is in your best interest to try to hit that gold in each one.

Once you master the Grav-Kick. you master death.

There is an abundance of abilities for you to learn. Sadly though, there is is really only a few things that you need are of any actual use, which seems like a shame considering all the nifty tricks you should be able to do with gravity based abilities. There are really two things that are immediately useful to you: Gravity Gauge Usage, and Gravity Kick. Both of these should be obvious. Usage lets you stretch out how long the gauge lasts while you suspend in gravity, and the kick basically fires you like the dart at your aim point while you are suspended.

The Kick especially because as long as you are partially decent at aiming up your shot, you can basically use your gravity kick like a yo-yo and be constantly bouncing back and forth at targets without ever needing to hit the ground. I have played through what seems to be nearly the entirety of the game with this ability. It's one of the strongest attacks you have, its the easiest to use, it functions as a dash. It's just the most broken ability in the game and you get it at the onset. 

There are a handful of abilities you might want to level later, but they are all window dressing.

Some of the abilities seem like really good ideas but then end up just being really stupid. One of them is basically a telekinesis that allows you to lift, carry, and throw things. Sounds great, but you basically trigger it which causes a singularity to makes you hover and float in the air, so you lose the level footing you had, so you have to try to re-aim a drifting camera which is already difficult, and the shot is never as precise as the reticle makes it seem. The challenges that force you to use this ability are the hardest ones. 

Really, after you max out Usage and Gravity Kick, the only other things I found worth getting was more health and anything that affected my movement or flying speed. Since most of the challenges will require you to slide or fall as fast as you can, it makes sense to bolster the speed. You can upgrade some of the carrying challenges so you can pick up multiple things at once, but 100% honesty? I played through the majority of the game without ever needing to upgrade my health. Usage and Grav Kick first, everything else is secondary.

Maybe it's just a personal preference but for some reason, I find that falling is more fun that flying. I noticed it's something I enjoy in almost any sandbox game I play. If I have the ability to get the highest point of elevation in the game, the first thing I do is get up there so I can take the plunge. To cite an even older example, there is a PS2 game you've probably never heard of called Kya: Dark Lineage that used a number free falling mechanics where you had to control the velocity and direction of your descent. They were some of my favorite parts of that game.

Which is probably why I got so wrapped up in playing Gravity Rush because that honestly is the game's major mechanic. I'll try to keep it as spoiler free as I can, but there is a segment of the game later one where you are being pursued by a rival trying to stop you to reach your goal. In it, you have this massive free fall segment which makes you feel like you are falling down to the core of the planet. You have to shift and dodge attacks, pick up collectibles along the way, and make landings on platforms to recover your ability to shift. It wouldn't say it was difficult, but it was certainly a memorable and satisfying mission to do.

Raven makes several appearances during the course of the story, because each
good heros needs an antagonist, even if Raven doesn't really have a reason to be one.

If you are like me and you purchased the HD remaster on PS4, you are also treated to the extra DLC missions included in the full game, which is a gesture that I appreciated. They could have left it off and sold it separately, so I appreciate when a game makes a definitive edition.

Being a vita port there is only so much I can say about the graphics. They were glossed up a bit and cleaned to look much nicer on the PS4 and I'm sure the frame rate is improved as well. Although the I will say the overall design of the game is kind of flat and boring. Because the game reminds me of steampunk, I find the color pallet to be boring. It's washed with greys, browns, bronzes, and off yellows. The only color that really stands out is Kat's hair. All the environments are interchangeable brown buildings so even though I travel to new area's of the map, it feels like I've already been there.

Your choice of locale is: Generic steampunk town, other generic steampunk town,
ANOTHER generic steampunk town. or under generic steampunk town.

So what didn't I like about the game? Well, the control of this game is loose at best, and that's if I am being generous. Basically you hit one of the shoulder buttons to go into stasis as I call it. You hit that button and you start to hover in place, but since there is no center of gravity you begin to spin or flip. So the camera doesn't stay put which makes it a headache if you are setting up your fall. You then hit it again and the direction you are facing becomes the next downpull of gravity, causing you to plummet that direction. It's essentially how you fly, and this is what the races are usually based around.

But because you are falling and not flying, you have very little control of your aim sans using the grav kick. And since that is the direction of the gravity, anything you hit then becomes the floor. This can make for frustrating situations where you will be trying to thread a tight needle and find yourself suddenly tight-roping a street lamp or fence. If you are doing a time trial this will completely fuck your run, and there is no quick restart outside of finishing the race and doing it again.

The game can be disorienting. especially in combat. So remember that when you
land on a surface, the direction Kat's hair moves is where down actually is.

Combat can also be frustrating. They give you a base kick to use on the ground which isn't a horrible alternative, but some of the enemies are huge and all of them only have one exposed weakness. So it doesn't make any sense to level your base attack doesn't work on half the enemies, and as we established the telekinesis isn't worth using either. So that leaves you with the grav kick, but even that can be frustrating as if you miss your target it basically sends you rocketing past the combat, scrambling to remember to stop your flight. You can find yourself disoriented, far away from solid ground, and without any more gravity usage to keep you afloat.

I feel they could have done more with the monster design. The Nevi aren't inherently bad looking, but they fall under a kind of generic trope. Shadow monsters with minimal features outside of a glowing weakness is kind of played out and over done. But thankfully this prevents them from using pallet swaps for the most part. You can tell by their weakness if its a standard baddie or elite level monster, but outside of those two it forces the game to at least design all the Nevi differently so you have a varied difference of flying and land monsters.

All enemies have exposed weaknesses, but some of them don't get exposed immediately,
Some you have to wait to expose, others appear as you take out other weak points. Stay offensive. 

The music is... ehh... It's not great.  I suppose the best compliment I can give it is that its not grating and annoying. It's just uninspired, generic. I couldn't hum a single bar or melody for you of any of the songs in the game because its so plain you don't even notice it. The only song that you will be able to recognize is the little melody you hear when you get the results of doing a challenge. Because you will probably be retrying them a few times so you can get the gold level prize, you will probably be hearing it every minute or so.

One of the biggest issues is the story never seems like it goes anywhere. As I play through the game I seem to keep getting introduced to new plot threads and while little side quest plots get wrapped up, I never feel like I am getting closer to getting any explanation to the main story. What is happening? Why are there gravity monsters? Why does Kat seem inexplicably ok with not knowing who she is? Why is every single citizen in this fucking city an absolute twatknot? Seriously, no amount of good deed you do seems to end with anything other than the person you helped being shitty in response.

As you can see, they gave the graphics a real nice gloss over for the PS4 port.

For all the mysteries and plot threads they lay down, a very surprising few of them ever seem to get solved. There is no explanation of who two of the major antagonists are, we never get any indication of who Kat really is outside of one throw away slide in the final credits and even that isn't explained. There is no explanation for why the timeline suddenly jumps ahead just before the last chapter of the game. Maybe these will all be answered in the upcoming sequel, but considering this came out in like 2012, that's a long time to wait for some story closure.

The biggest problem that I have with the game is that it was very easy to put down. When I close a stream I keep saying that I am going to go back to it, but then I never end up doing so. Because of the constantly spawning plot threads, I never seem to be getting any closer to the finish and while I am enjoying the game its inadvertently causing fatigue. And with each game release it gets pushed a little further down the pile. As it turned out, I put it down for several weeks with only about an hour or so left of game play. Live and learn.

The actual context for this image is a lot less funny than its screenshot

Ultimately though, despite all the flaws I was able to find in Gravity Rush, I wouldn't go as far as to say it was a bad game. Far from it really, no game is perfect and what I didn't like wasn't game breaking. I felt it laid down a foundation for what could possibly be a very good series of games. It has a good original concept, it was fun to play, and has a charming protagonist. This game feels like it just needs a little more direction and a bit more polish to really make it shine. Now I know that they recently announced that there is going to be a Gravity Rush 2 coming out for vita and PS4, so that gives me hope that they can use this as a starting point.

I probably wouldn't have paid 60$ for Gravity Rush, but at it's currently price of 30$ (and often on sale for less than that) it was absolutely worth the jump. It took a little bit of extra prodding to get me to finish it but I did enjoy my experience with it. I think with a little more direction, focus, and commitment to a coherent story this game can really be something special. Here's hoping they learn from this game and improve on it for the sequel. 

I'll play any game that has a maid costume in it, won't I?...
Ugh.. I'm such a creep.