Mass Effect: Andromeda (PS4): What's New is Old.

July review of a game I played in March. Good pacing, Chris.

As we all know, I generally have a pretty hate/hate relationship with the majority of science fiction. There are a handful of shining examples through various media that will grab and in some cases even hold my attention, but they tend to be pretty few and far between. With games that is just as relevant. If it has star or space in its title I'd say 70% of the time I don't even bother giving it a second glance. I don't care what color Spock's beamsaber is in Battlestar.

Which is what made it so surprising that this series managed to actually engross me to the point of being a fan of it. Because to be totally honest I don't think I actually even really liked the first one, I didn't think it was a great game. I had just bought a XB360 at the time and was told this was a game worth getting. But once I actually got into it I'll be damned if I didn't fall for this universe. I still feel the second one was the best in this series and it sure felt like the book was closed on the third one, but here we are with a new game in this franchise. After the lukewarm ending of the third, I'm ready to see how Bioware writes themselves out of this one.

MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA(PS4)

In between the events of Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, in a joint initiative between the Quarians and 4 races of the Milky Way galaxy have collaborated on an expansion initiative to the Andromeda galaxy. Over 20,000 of the collected races partook in a 600 year journey across space in search of "golden worlds" on massive ships called Arcs. Each race's Arc is lead by a Soldier with an embedded AI unit called a SAM, and they are tasked to find suitable planets for colonization. In this case, the human pathfinder, Alec Ryder.

You control either one of Alec's children, Scott or Sara Ryder (Sara in my case), and unfortunately after being awakened from cryo-sleep to find out that their targeted golden world isn't quite golden.... or even habitable, as it surrounded by this harmful dark energy being called the scourge. The scourge knocks out the ships power, and renders one Ryder sibling comatose. A scout team goes down planet-side to confirm if they planet is habitable or not, and they are met with resistance from a hostile alien race called the Kett.

While investigating the remains of a previous alien race, Ryder and Alec find an alien monolith and activate it. The explosion from it sends them reeling, smashing Ryder's helmet. Alec sacrifices himself to save his child, and makes them the new pathfinder by transferring the SAM AI to them. With the pathfinder lost, all that's left is to return to the centralized space station for the Andromeda Operation called the Nexus and continue the mission. But the Nexus is in shambles, none of the other arcs made it, and it's barely functional. So it's up to Ryder's team to figure out what happened, and get the Andromeda initiative underway.

So as you can tell from the plot synopsis here, we are getting no resolution on the events of the previous Mass Effect Trilogy. It's essentially so far down the timeline that the majority of the characters from original series would have died from conflict or age. They essentially wipe the slate clean sans from a handful of messages from Liara T'soni warning about the impending purge of the Reapers.

Anyways, Andromeda. I'm going to be a little hard pressed to review this one because I'm months behind writing this, they've already patched a bunch, and honestly I can't really think of a lot that has changed in this one in comparisons to the rest of the series.

First off, let's talk character models. Bioware, I'm willing to give you a pass because the majority of the cast are aliens, but some how a significant portion of them seem to look more humans than the actual humans. It was a pretty significant issue with how poor an number of the characters looked that they had to patch in design upgrades to make the humans (specifically women) look less tired and more detailed. Every character with a humanoid form still looks like their eyes are trying to pop from their heads.

The character creator is still a plate of hot garbage. I spent hours try make Velfir Ryder appealing for me to look at only to have it look like she has neon face paint the moment she left the creator, because shit looks differently in different lighting engine. Despite the incredible amount of customization to this game, you really only get one crack to make your characters so you better be confident in them when you finish up. Or, you can do what a significant number of people did and just try to make the shittiest looking characters they can come up with.

Kotaku had people send in their bad character screens, and some of them are horrifying.

Thankfully, when it comes to abilities you don't really get locked into what kind of character you have this time around. Andromeda lets you play around with all the aspects of your characters pretty fast and loose, and it makes incredibly cheap to reboot and make adjustments. So if you are playing the game as silent stealthy sniper and decide mid-way through the game you'd like to be a heavy wielding thicky with biotic powers? A quick trip to you ship and a couple of credits and you can respec however you like. I ended up liking what I was rolling with and didn't end up doing this.

Andromeda has kept the somewhat cover-based 3rd person shooter engine it laid down in Mass Effect 2 pretty much intact. If you've ever played a Mass Effect game before or even any modern 3rd person shooter, the controls should feel natural at this point its been around for well over a decade. The combat really on changes up depending on what traits you've taken and will dictate what kind of attack you will use.

Andromeda gives you lots of freedom with your specs, so play around.

In my case, I was a technician with effective sniping ability, so I would basically rain down headshot fire target after target from hundreds of yards away, and if they were foolish enough to get closer they would be burned with a incinerate fireball, then exploded with an electric overcharge. If they were dumb enough to push closer, they were ripped down with a laser assault rifle. I could clear out entire bases without ever needed to step foot in them till it was totally safe. I've seen some pretty interesting high damage builds, but I never really needed to explore them.

The only real thing different about the combat that I can think of is now there is an addition of a rocket jump and a dodge. The dodge I found useful for whipping around a cover for tense firefights. The jump is really only about as useful as the games platforming segments require them. Sure you can jump and then dodge to dash, and it helps with exploration a little bit but otherwise the game could have not had it and it probably wouldn't have affected things much.

Paw Rifle: unlimited ammo, perfect accuracy, shreds shields.  Yes please.

The cast? Ehh, cast is alright I guess. As is with most Mass Effect games there are characters I really liked like Peebee and Drack (the Asari and Krogan, go figure), and ones that I didn't like Cora. But because of your ability to overhaul your skills team composition never really felt like it was a real determining factor. From my build, it seemed like I wouldn't have needed a character like Ja'al because of the same skill set, but I rarely noticed any impact if he was on my team or not.

It feels like Andromeda tried to mix various elements of the previous games that worked in the hope of a vastly improved experience. It's better for it but I don't know how much. Maps for example are big and explorable again. It feels like they have taken a page out of the build of Dragon Age: Inquisition and set up the maps for individual questing areas. As much as I hate to say it, Skyrim really set a precedent for open world questing that's probably going to continue to be a staple for years to come. Thankfully, In addition to the return of being able to drive around the maps, it also implements a fast travel for landmarks you have already hit to save time. But it's still viable to drive since you are able to mine resources from the car as well.

Dem Duke boys is crazy

Which makes me wonder why the hell we still have to scan every single planet still. Either for meager resources or map completion there very rarely is any functional reason to do it. There are handful of areas where you scan that adds areas of interest to the map. These should be the only things we need to scan for, the rest is just pointless fluff.

It was especially bad before the initial patch where every time you wanted to transition from planet to planet or from galaxy to galaxy you had to watch this extended interspace travel sequence. Prior to the patch, there was no way to skip these sequences that basically slowed down planet exploration to a crawl. I'm sure this had to do something with load times but there are only so many planets you actually set foot on. Thankfully, this got quickly adjusted and once you are in a new galaxy, you are able to skip most of these flight sequences.

The transitions are so long that 15 seconds of gif isn't enough to show a whole one.

Speaking of patches, I found this one to be especially bad when it came to glitching in general. I would have tons of problems of animations bugging out, interactions messing up, falling through floors mid fight, things bugging out that wouldn't allow me to finish off the quests, and one situation where backing my PS4 to a new drive almost ruined my progress. Thankfully the majority of these were able to be fixed by simply restarting the game, but it gave the entire game a very unpolished feeling to me.

There really isn't much to add about the multiplayer. If you played it on Mass Effect 2 or 3, it's basically more of the same. There is a new companion app for you phone that you can use to earn more research points to unlock more weapons or equipment, more characters of the online mode, but I only really dabbled with it a few times and it destroyed me on the easiest setting, so I didn't really bother with it.

I'll give Bioware this, they always manage to leave me totally confused at the start of a Mass Effect game as they drown me in terminology, backstory, and massive opening map locations, but by the time I get rolling in the game I am completely dialed in. The story in this one is pretty straight forward for the most part, and while there aren't a terribly bountiful amount of boss fights (a handful of architect fights really), it does still get pretty exciting by the end of it.

But the one thing they got very right is that they finally did away with the stupid Paragon/Renegade system. Typically when you play this series you pretty much make the decision in your head at the onset if you are going to play this game good or evil, since there is generally no real benefit to play things neutral. You generally needed to be all good or all bad to make certain decisions, and the game suffered for it.

I liked Peebee a lot. Lived in an escape pod in the event the other shoe dropped.
Kept everyone at arm length. Behaviors I could certainly relate to.

Now instead of those options, you have conversational choices of formal, logical, emotional, or casual. I like these options better because while they aren't exactly clear what that logical response could be, it allows me to better play to the character I am talking to. Most of the time I just went with casual because I tend to be a bit of a smart ass, but in more harrowing moments I could shift to emotional and it made sense. Or meeting a new race of aliens, formal made more sense to me. Conversational trees felt better in this one, more natural.

But the biggest thing I applaud them on this front is not the conversation trees, but the decisions. Again in older Mass Effects it was: Do you want to save the box of adorable kittens? or do you want to light the box on fire. I always hated that there was no middle ground or if there was it was not worth picking. Not so in this one. In a large number of critical moments during the game you are presented with two opposing, but equally viable options. No good or evil, paragon or renegade. Just two varied grey possible options. And they fucking killed me to the point where I would sit and agonize over what selection I was going to make. It made it truly feel like my decisions mattered, and would leave me with consequences of those decisions. It really was the best aspect of this game.

So did I like the game? Yeah I guess so. When the narrative got going I was able to see it through to the finish.  There were certainly enough characters I liked to want to see their story through, and even the ones that I didn't care for I cared enough about the story to do their missions as well. But ultimately, when the final credits rolled I was with the distinct feeling of "Whelp, this certainly was a Mass Effect game." It's certainly not a game I felt I needed to keep playing the moment I had finished it.

Mass Effect: Andromeda feels like a cash in to try to draw back a fan base that felt scorned by the ending of Mass Effect 3.  I enjoyed that it took the story back in a new direction and honestly I didn't mind a return visit to this universe. It was met with somewhat lack luster reviews and similar sales. It's certainly not the greatest one in its series, but it's certainly playable.  It pushes no boundaries and breaks no molds. It simply was just a another game of the series.  If you are a fan of the franchise you certainly will find yourself enjoying your time with it. I don't think it's a must have or can't miss, not sure if it's a hard sell for new fans, but I wasn't unhappy with it.

Seriously, how long does it take to set up a goddamn movie night?

Nier Automata (PS4): Learning 2B Human.

I really wanted to like the "first" one of this series. A seemingly under the radar release from SquareEnix from what seems to be a completely new property? Sure, I'll give that a shot. And the initial impression of the game was actually pretty good. I was happily plugging along slashing at enemies until "the event" stopped me. A single soul-cleaving fishing game of pure unfiltered hate for the player that was required to proceed with the game. After 45 minutes of controller snapping frustration, I had not caught one single fish. Left with a broken spirit, that was the last time I picked up that game. It had its niche audience but ultimately faded away.

Then surprisingly at an E3, this title surfaced again. A new faster paced action, new female protagonist, and what looked to be a very cool combat trailer. But then I saw it was done by Platinum Games, makers of Bayonetta, which I love. THAT caught my attention, and they released a demo of the intro chapter of the game and signs were positive from there. So while I never was super ingrained into this series, I rather eagerly dove into this title in the hope that fishing would not thwart me yet again...

NIER: AUTOMATA(PS4)

I've come to learn that Nier: Automata actually has a longer and more convoluted story line spanning way far back into the Drakengard series on ps2. But you can play Automata without having known any of it and still enjoy the game. That's what I did, so forgive me if I get part of the story wrong. Here is the setting as I understand it.

Our story begins in the distant future, well past the year 11945. During what was know of the 14th Machine War, aliens descended upon earth wielding bio-machines and attacking the human populous. Being pushed to the brink of extinction, humanity actually had no choice but to abandon Earth and escape to the moon. There, they developed (very goth Lolita) combat androids known as YoRHa to try to fight and take back their home world from the machines that now overrun it.

As years continue to pass the game starts with us in control of 2B, a YoRHa series-2 combat model flying down to earth with a unit of YoRHa fighters to take down a Colossus class machine. Her unit is decimated but she survives and continues the mission. She is joined up with an scouting class series-9 unit called 9S tasked to provide her support. After a massive battle with the colossal machine, 3 more colossi enter the fray and force the two badly damaged units self destruct in order to wipe out the machines.

Their data luckily is backed up and they reloaded to new bodies on "the Bunker", the lunar base where YoRHa runs their operations. After a brief rebooting segment (which will become the hacking minigame), the two are tasked by the YoRHa commander to return planetside and assist  fighting and scouting for the resistance movement on the surface, in the continuing conflict of the machines. Specifically with the odd behavior of the machines in the nearby desert, and it's from this point where the game world really opens up.

Oh good. Starting the game with a tragic sacrifice. That's a good sign.

So I kind of had to give away the a majority of the introductory level of the game but it was kind of necessary to give the story context because much like Platinum Games likes to do, the game starts you off right in the action. Now the reason I was so into the idea of trying this edition of Nier is because Platinum developed it and as you might remember from my Bayonetta 2 review, I love the combat system that they put forth. So I was expecting more of the same: Fast paced hack and slashy action in post apocalyptic world.

But what I wasn't expecting is how the game switches its play styles on you, sometimes multiple times in a level. The game starts off with 2B descending with yer aerial unit and you begin to be attacked by machines, So it starts of as a vertical bullet hell shoot em up in the vein of an Ikaruga for example. Then as the level progresses you get a camera shift and now it turns into a multi-directional bullet hell shooter like Geometry Wars. I am a big fan of these kinds of games, so that was a welcome little surprise.

The bullet hell can actually be pretty forgiving. So long as you keep dodging, you are fine.

Once you actually touchdown on land, it then shifts to more of what I was expecting. It seems to be your relatively standard spectacle fighter style of action game. If you played either of the Bayonetta titles or Devil May Cry it's going to feel right at home for you. Analogs for move and 360 degree camera, light attack and heavy attack, Jump and dodge buttons. You also have a little support robot to provide covering fire and various heavy shots depending on what weapon you have equipped on it. So you better have spider hands, because all of the buttons have uses and you can fully customize them.

Ironically, Devil May Cry and Bayonetta luminary (and Platinum Games founding father) Hideki Kamiya actually wasn't in charge of or developed for this project. He was given input on the combat mechanics but ultimately wasn't part of it, which is actually a surprise to me because the familiarity to his previous works is abundantly clear. 

Even playing with this familiar combat style, there are camera shifts that can take place in battle which will drastically effect how you play. There are a lot of platforming segments that turns it into a 2d Castlevania style action game, and others where it turns into a top down hack and slasher. Thankfully through all of these shifts the game still functions well on its controls and never gets really too disorienting. It's incredibly clever how it makes use of a few camera shifts to make the game feel like a new experience. This is done exceptionally well in some of the boss fights.

You'll see how during the fight the camera shifts above for a top down segment mid-fight.

Automata is an open world game in a post apocalyptic setting but what I enjoyed about this more than others, is much like the setting in Horizon: Zero Dawn, nature and wildlife have taken the world back. Sure there are remnants of buildings, factories, sewers and an amusement park, but wild moose and boars (and seemingly nothing else) roam the lands in harmony with the number goofy toy looking robots. While certain areas don't open up until storyline contexts occur, the maps that you get are pretty expansive with lots of little side quests to find along the way.

I should make special note of the side quests here. Many of them are not required to actually progress in the game, but it should be made note of that blowing past them your first time through like I did would be doing yourself an injustice from a storyline context. Each of the side quests will usually result in a little bit of banter between 2B and 9S, and this these moments that really flesh out the characters, the world, and their relationship to each other. After completing the game you have the ability to jump around the story to complete the side-quests at your leisure, but this is the one time I would advise to do as many as you can as you play the story. Some of them have multiple parts, so be sure not to miss them.

Probably the best aspect of this is game, the use of the actual video game tropes as part of its story meta. Automata does this to such a degree I haven't seen since I played Undertale. As mentioned before, we are controlling androids. So naturally, the game features a series of menus and HUDs that are very mechanical and pixelated in nature in a very Original Game Boy monochromatic color scheme. But this isn't just a cute design aesthetic for the player, this is actually what the androids see. It is actually their internal workings and meta spills into multiple game aspects.

For example, The game features an upgrade system to where you can add, merge and remove microchips that allows you to customize your abilities: give you more attack power, make you run faster, allows you to heal over time, gain more experience, etc. But in this chipset also contains you HUD chipset and OS. They are listed right there in the chips. So you could feasibly remove your HP gauge chip or GPS chip, and when you get go back to the game sure enough your life bar will be gone, as well as the mini map you had.

And when I say your OS (operating system) that is no bullshit. The flavor text of the OS chip says right out that it is what allows you to function. To remove it literally means death. If you ignore that warning and pull out the OS chip anyways?  The screen fades to black on you, you get a reminder to take greater care when adjusting your CPU, and then get a credit roll and need to start over from your last save.

You get 3 sets to customize your chips, so you have backups to use if you happen to die.

Another such example comes in with saving. Automata very pointedly tells you at the onset that this game does NOT have an autosave and that it must be done manually. At first, I was sort of annoyed by this because honestly at this era of gaming we have all become pretty used to autosave at this point. But from a storyline perspective, it makes total sense. 2B and 9S are androids gallivanting across the world and fighting robots, meeting the many cyborgs and robots along the surface, and collecting valuable data about the human society that has been lost to time.

But that data means nothing unless it gets backed up to the servers. Hell their very own ability to survive catastrophic damage is reliant on their ability to literally back up themselves back to the YoRHa bunker, so as you play through the game you will need to find an defend multiple server locations all along the map. These allow you to save your game given you are in range of them to do so (bluetooth still sucks apparently). Finding this also will eventually unlock the fast travel system, as well as allow your map to become more clear and detailed.

Some of the endings involve you dying. These will usually not require you to reclaim your chips.

It also affects your ability to play sometimes as well. Without venturing into spoiler territory too much there are certain instances in combat and gameplay that allows the game to make some screwy visual tricks that just sell the experience better. At one point I thought it was a cutscene until I realized I was still getting my ass kicked and needed to move. It's just and exceptional way of playing with the 4th wall of the game without overtly smashing through it like Deadpool. Taro Yoko may be an insane person and developer, but he certainly knows how to stick to the narrative he's built.

Nier: Automata features an absolutely exceptional soundtrack from the beautiful mind of Keiichi Okabe. I need to state that right off. It is very classical inspired featuring varied orchestral instruments accompanied by three very incredible vocalists all singing in English, Japanese, and French respectively. In the overworld, or in the resistance base the music is very melodic, chill, and soft as if to auditorily present that this area is safe, or the expanse is wild but calm. Walking the YoRHa bunker is devoid of music as the androids work in the silence of outer space.

But then you get into battles or boss fights, and the operatic intensity rises with increased tempos and more pronounced vocals. There is one such spectacular boss fight called only Beautiful Song, which just mirrors the boss' desire to be beautiful in appearance and tone as if performing for an opera (see above boss fight video). And the song "Weight of the World" that plays during the final credits sequence of the true ending, my god.... That song? It's perfection. It's the reason I really gave the soundtrack to closer listen in context to what I was playing. Compiled with the spectacular final true ending sequence, it's probably my favorite part of the game.

If I had to make one complaint about the music, is as beautiful as it is? It might be too chill, bordering on boring. I know that doesn't make sense considering how I gushed for two paragraphs, but what I mean by that is this: On more than one occasion, while I was playing the game slouched in my bowl chair like the disgusting slob that I am, the music was just so chill that I would nod off while I was playing it. For a medium that is meant to keep you engaged and alert, that's not actually a good thing. It's the primary reason it took me so long to get through it because I would keep falling asleep while I played. Given my history, that's not usually a selling point.

That said, this is a great soundtrack to catch a nap to. I do at work all the time too, 2B.

I do have a bunch of little annoyances with Automata though. The aforementioned chip idea for stats is cool and clever, but it doesn't do the best job of explaining how to best condense your chips to make the best of your limited space. By increasing the potency of your chips, it more often makes them require more space. Makes sense, but it also will sometimes basically scare you off from spending a chip you like for fear of not having to reorganize your whole chip set over again. It took me forever to realize the little diamond next to them is saying the chip is as small as it can be. So you really only want to merge those with other diamonds.

It also can make the game almost insultingly easy. Once I discovered chipsets like auto-heal, offensive heal, and deadly heal the game became a walk in the park. With a combination of those chips on I was restoring health for damaging enemies, killing enemies, and not taking damage. It still left me plenty of room to boost damage and speed, so I basically would be able to shred things with reckless abandon because if took too many hits, either I'd use a healing item automatically, or just back out of the fight a few seconds to heal up and dive right back in.

Which made the occasional cheap death that would come the fuck out of nowhere even more infuriating. I might have only died in the game like 2 or 3 times, and they happened in the exact same spot because I would just be ripping around the area at high speed forgetting about an environment insta-kill. This also clued me in that this game also does the Dark Souls thing where if you die, you lose everything you have equipped. Not everything, all your stored items and money are still available, but your chipset you were using are with your body, and if you don't go get it back, they are gone forever. Not expecting that after a cheap death is infuriating because then you are extra careful not to lose your carefully crafted character.

Your map is next to useless. The minimap might point you in a general direction, but the three dimensional monochromatic pixel map for a guy with partial red/green colorblindness makes finding your way to side quests or objectives kind of difficult to track down. There have been multiple points where I was right on top of the path I was allegedly supposed to take or on where a quest was supposed to be to find out I was several stories up or down where I was supposed to be. I was getting flashbacks to the new Doom and how little the map actually told me where to go.

You really need to go back to the theater after the boss fight there.

That's another thing about the map. It is both simultaneously huge and small at the same time. You are going to spend a lot of time back and forthing across the world from place to place and it's always going to take a few minutes to do, but when I actually think about it there is only like 5 to 7 locations in the whole game. Now to compare, this is essentially what they did in Lightning Returns: FF13 and it does give the game a sense of bigness to explore. But if you play through the game long enough, you are going to notice that you in the same areas an awful lot.

There is a weapons and upgrade system, and you can also find additional gear of the body's of players littered across the map, and I'm going to tell you right now? It all means next to nothing. I played through 3 times and never found any of the items to upgrade my little pod support, so it apparently doesn't mean much. Weapons only have 4 levels of upgrades, but your chipsets will play the bigger factor on dealing damage. There are lots of little items you pick up, and I'll be honest I don't think I used any of them. If you are using auto-heal, almost 90% of the items are useless.

The hacking mini-game work just like the flight units, and is surprisingly strong.

As I said before, the story is very convoluted. And while I very much enjoyed it, essentially playing only this game of its entire narrative spanning almost 5 games (There were 2 releases of the original in japan), I am left with a whole lot of unanswered questions. Why if they are androids are they programmed to experience emotion and personality, yet have directives to not experience or display them? Why if they are machines with databases, was human history so lost that they only loosely understand the concept of shopping? If the YoRHA are Androids, and the robots are Machines, Then what is the Resistance, Cyborgs? There are a bunch of other more spoilery questions I won't get into, as well.

But I suppose the biggest story thing to complain about it is even after playing through the major endings, I still don't really understand what the story point was. There is a lot of existential crisis and realization throughout the story of the game, and I truly did feel for almost all the characters I was presented with. But by the end of it I was left with a very "what exactly did I learn here?" feeling. That doesn't make it bad by any means, but apparently I don't have the super intelligent space brain required to see the deeper meaning here. Luckily, if you stick to focusing on the characters, it's still a very enjoyable experience.

The game also has a mind-numbing 26 endings. One for each letter of the alphabet. Granted a significant majority of them are very jokey endings, many of which you might get entirely by accident by making the wrong decision or walking the wrong direction. But to get the 5 major endings of the game to truly see everything, you are going to have play the game through a couple of times. The game pretty much tells you this after you finish once: "Congrats on beating the game! But you reeeeaaaaaallly should play it a few more times. wink wink."

There is also an trophy for trying to look up 2B's skirt too many times. Honestly this is coming from Platinum who has never had any problems with fanservice in there games so this doesn't surprise me. Especially after the whole controversy about someone taking a screenshot of 2B's surprisingly detailed robot butthole, (I stand by the theory that if she's an android operating at high speed, there needs to be an exhaust system right?). You can self destruct to blow off her clothes as well, but as I mentioned above the game can be easy. It never occurred to me to even try that until my sister told me I could do it. This is a game where the fanservice honestly wasn't necessary in any capacity.

But through all of these niggling little complaints, it is totally totally worth it. It took me a little bit to get the ball rolling on the story but once I was in I was completely in. From a technical standpoint the game is practically flawless. I can't think of any mechanic fault that wasn't intentionally put there for story context. Platinum Games once again just delivered a home run on a property that a lot of people didn't give a chance here in the west, and now it is being met with well deserved critical acclaim.

Again, the rage quitter has little rage about here. I came into Nier: Automata only expecting a few things and I got all of them, but some clever use of cameras, music, and playing around with the very mechanics of the game to make them in-story relevant really put this game over the top for me. It got me to spend hours watching videos of spoken word classical concerts of the series misty eyed as I watched the cutscenes behind the singers.

A lot of the reviews are saying "masterpiece" which I think is a little much. If the game has flaws it can't be a masterpiece (looking at you Breath of the Wild), but there are a whole lot of 8's, 9's, and 9.5s and I am very hard pressed to disagree with any of them. Nier: Automata was fucking fantastic and it completely turned me around on the franchise. Maybe enough to make me go back and re-try the first one. Absolutely worth your time and highly recommended.

Oh yeah, the fishing isn't impossible in this one.
and more importantly, it's optional. 

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.

DOOM (PS4): I'll be Damned.

I can't deny what the first person shooter genre did to the video game industry. The first one I ever played, probably like most people, was Wolfenstein 3D. It was new and interesting, but one of the games that has heralded as one of the most iconic of the entire genre is the Doom series. Like most people, I feel this is one of the games that really defined what made a great FPS. Fast paced, interesting weapons, fun monsters to kill. I specifically have childhood memories of Doom 2 being exceptionally good.

But as well all know, FPS games and I have a very/love hate relationship. There aren't a lot of them that I really love, and many of them seem to be carbon copies of each other. Very few rise to the top. That being said, the recently reviewed Overwatch has kinda softened me on FPS games lately, and I found myself curious about this newest installment. Thankfully due to one of my local libraries, they had a shiny new copy waiting for me to check out. 

DOOM{2016}(PS4)

I honestly went into this not caring what the Doom story was. I just wanted to go in and shoot some demons. Thankfully, the game obliges. The game opens with you seeing a red mark appear on the screen and you waking up chained to a stone sarcophagus with a demon fast approaching. You break one of the chains and quickly smash its skull against the stone. After freeing yourself you quickly find a handgun and dispatch a few more enemies. When you enter the next room to find the famous Doom Marine armor waiting for you.

Upon touching it you have series of flashbacks of hell and demons. When you come back you are armored and checking the PC screen next to you, all of the information about what has gone wrong is blocked off and receive a message from one of the scientists. He goes to explain that he has plans for how you can mutually help each other, but the Marine pretty much trashes the screen immediately, grabs a nearby shotgun and heads out into Mars to raise hell.... again.

Hello again, old friend.

So right out the gate I have to appreciate this. Doom for a lot of people is really just one thing: Man with guns shooting demons from hell on Mars. The people at ID software clearly realized that people did not like the direction that Doom 3 had taken, and realized they just want what they had before, just newer. And that is exactly what they did. They framed the story, gave you a gun, and put you out there to start shooting everything in your path. This was smart of them, because pretty much from the first level I was locked in a ready to go. 

To be fair, there is a story. The long and short of it is a Mars base owned by the Union Aerospace Corporation is here to solve the earth energy crisis. Dr. Samuel Hayden heads this project and has learned not only how to siphon energy but also can travel to hell to steal and research artifacts they've found there. One of his subordinates however, Olivia Pearce, makes a pact with one of the demons from hell and opens a portal allowing their release. Hayden is forced to release the "Doom Slayer" trapped in one of the artifacts, to try to take the fight back to the demons and send them back. As you play through the game it fleshes out the context of this story.

Seriously, Do people who start cults not listen to how crazy they sound?

But who fucking cares, we aren't here for a new doom story. We are here because we want to kill some eff'n demons. Now as someone who was a fan of the original Doom and Doom 2, I only really had a couple of things I really wanted in this game. Are the iconic monsters there? Are the guns I enjoyed using still there, and is the game fast paced. This was pretty much the standard for me on the game being good.

The game starts you off with a pretty big and wide open area of mars terrain to get you going. There are handful of imps around and lots of infected humans. It felt like i had a pretty fast run speed but I didn't really have any sense of context for how fast I was moving due to the size of the map. That did not last long. Almost immediately I found myself in an area of tighter corners and I found myself strafing at a full sprint as imps dashed at me chucked fireballs at me, zig-zagging closer so I can pop a close range shotgun blast. Speed? Check.

The speed of the game feels just right. Fast and frantic without being too much.

As I played through the the game, I was very happy to see some familiar faces appear as a I played. The regular shambling dead were kind of new, and I kind of "hrrrrnnngg'd" at what appeared to be more than one variant of Imp walked by. But maybe not even a level goes by when see one of the newly modeled remnants appear, leaping around and firing from its shoulder mounted rocket launchers. The redesign was amazing that it looked new, modern, and terrifying while still exactly reminding me of what sprite it used to be.

And then I turned around to see a Cocademon I didn't notice before point blank range chomping me for an instant kill. Scared the living fuck out of me. But as I continued to play the game more and more of the original monsters started to appear, all with cool new designs, new tricks, and new behavioral patterns. Not only that though, they made sure to have specific demons appear in specific map layouts which forces your to adjust your attack strategies because the same tricks won't work with different combinations of enemies. Even that first encounter with the Cyberdemon my brain just went "Ooooh yeah.. I remember you. *cracks knuckles* Lets go." Iconic monsters? Check.

At this point you know of this third check point is going to go. I don't remember the specific order I picked the weapons up but you start with a shotgun. OK no big, the game always has a shotgun. Then you pick up an assault rifle. Yeah yeah, FPS I get it. Even when I picked up the rocket launcher I met with a un-enthused "meh"... But then I landed the double barreled shotgun, and all the memories of Doom came flooding back.. That "ooooooohhhh yeahhh, shit's about to serious now" feeling just hits you the moment you see those two shells get loaded into the gun. The pulse rifle shortly followed and of course the infamous BFG 9000. Doom Weapons? Check.

Another point about the weapons that I should note is that there is no reloading in this game. I don't specifically remember that there was reloading in the old Doom games, but apparently there was not. But because I was so conditioned by Overwatch and most of the modern shooters these days, I would constantly find myself hitting the square button to reload only to yank out the chainsaw instead. Fun note about that weapon: If you use that to kill a demon, they drop a shit ton of ammo. I did not realize this right away and it caused for me to have a lot of difficult and stressful moments of the game because I would be fighting very tough enemies with practically no ammo, because I'm an idiot who didn't know how to get more.

But wait! There's more! While I continued to play through the game there are areas where you have skirmishes with waves of enemies, typically while you are fighting your way to get blue yellow and green skulls or key cards (another throwback to classic Doom) while the fight is taking place I noticed that I was sort of head banging in place. I realized that I was REALLY enjoying the music in this game. In points of high tension and battle Doom delivers an unrelenting mechanical hybrid of industrial. Very sharp and hard repetitious riffs, with very punctuated drums.

I know this sound, I've definitely heard this before. And sure enough one google search showed me that behind the soundtrack was Mick Gordon, who you would know from the amazing remixes of the Killer Instinct OST from the updated release of that game. The music in this game absolutely rocks my ass off. I must have played a 4 hour stream of this on one day off and I couldn't help but constantly comment on how bad ass the soundtrack was. There is no official OST for the game available, but if you search the Internet hard enough, there is a 3 disc rip of the all the music from the game, and it is fucking bad ass. Mick Gordon is quickly becoming a member of my god tier of video game musicians with Akira Yamaoka, Richaad EB, Shoji Meguro, and Nobuo Uematsu.

For the most part, I love the level design. For a pretty large majority of the game I was able to navigate my way through level after level without finding myself getting lost too much. The game guides you only with a small HUD that points you in the general direction of where the objective is and most of the time so long as that is pointed the right way you will be able to march your way to the goal without getting too lost. It does a pretty good job of not being too linear in the maps because there are a number of areas where you can spread out and use various covers and launchers for some pretty wild firefights without using cover mechanics.

But the path indicators don't necessarily mean you are going the right way. Sometimes the only indicator your have is blocked by a locked door, which then forces you to explore your surroundings to try to find the appropriate colored key to move on. Normally this is a very good thing because the levels are designed to be complimentary to exploring. but when this happens, I am the type of player who will find himself completely lost with no idea how to backtrack back to where I needed to go. The in-game map is not very helpful when you have multiple levels all layered over the same spot.

There is one really specific section that annoyed the shit out of me because it was a map that had a series of teleporters that warped you all over the map. This was an incredibly frustrating segment and it showed while I live-streamed it. Because in order to proceed I needed to find a yellow key. It took me nearly an hour to constantly be warped from place to place trying to figure out what specific area would help me find they key. But then once I found the key, I couldn't figure out how to get back to the area with the door so I could continue on.

This is one of my primary gripes about FPS games. The moment I find myself lost and wandering to figure out where to go next, is the moment I start to lose interest in the game. What followed were a couple tortuous hours of constantly wandering the same areas to the same droning song with no monsters to fight. It forced me to close the live stream because it wasn't entertaining anymore. The game could have lost me at that segment. Thankfully not long after I called it a stream I stumbled on where I needed to go but it could have lost me there for good.

Fuck. You. Map. You were not helpful at all.

There is also a multiplayer section that for some bizarre reason requires several minutes of loading to get to from the main screen. Something I don't understand, and for a guy who is usually pretty against playing multiplayer giving me a more difficult barrier of entry just makes me less likely to try it, which is pretty much what happened here. I can't comment on how fun the multiplayer is because I didn't try it.

This iteration of Doom features something called the SnapMap editor. I suppose the most comparable comparison I can make would be something like Halo's forge mode. Essentially its a plug and play user generated content map builder for players to create and share. Since I just had the game checked out from the library and this seemed like a lot of work, this too is something that I didn't really try. But from what I have been reading some real wizards have come up with some clever uses for it.

Apparently there are whole bunch of hidden things to find in this game too. I found a couple of the Doom Solider dolls as I played through the game, but talking a friend about it apparently there are ways to unlock classic levels of Doom titles to play in the new system. They must be well hidden because I didn't find a single one of them but a quick google search proves that they do exist. So I guess that really layers some replay value to the game in addition to the series of challenge maps you come across in the game, as well as the multiple levels of difficulty.

One last little nitpick here. The install file for this game is fucking retarded. I get that we've reached an age where we can't just throw in a cartridge fire up a game. But I thought the whole point of the PS4 is that I could toss the disc in, and it would install just enough that I could start the game up while if finished downloading and installing the rest of it in the background. After the game was "ready" to start I was treated to another install screen, just like the bullshit Resistance 3 pulled. By the time the update file finally finished, the game was taking up a whopping 77GB of hard drive space. That's almost a 5th of the drive! Absolutely ridiculous and probably unnecessary. Download enough to let me start the game, then do the rest later. Yeesh.

I have to be totally honest here, I freak'n loved this game. Honestly I'm pretty surprised at how much I loved this game. For someone who is pretty lukewarm to the majority of the FPS genre as a whole, Doom pretty much managed to nail down every single thing I liked about an FPS game while managing to leave out almost everything I don't like about it.

I really cranked through Doom once I really knuckled down with it and I don't remember having this much fun with a FPS campaign for a long while now. And this is how I know it was a good game. Once I was I got through the whole campaign, I deleted the game data and moved on to a new title. Maybe less than hour later I found myself looking away from the game I was playing looking at the box for Doom. I wasn't ready to stop playing, so I put it back in, cranked up the difficulty, and started to play it again. That means something.

So If you still haven't played through this game yet, you are in luck as Doom is frequently reduced to 30$ these days, which motivated me to purchase a copy of it for myself even after beating the campaign. I enjoyed it that much. I look forward to going back and playing it on a harder setting. Surprisingly and highly recommended.

Seriously, the new design of the Cocademon terrifies the crap out of me.