Things I wish I knew before I started playing Red Dead Redemption 2

Hey gamers, here are some tips and tricks so you can finally join FaZe.

truly next gen

1. Early on, during the tutorial phase of the game, you'll come across a legendary bear. After defeating the bear, you'll gain a legendary bear skin. Legendary skins are for crafting clothing and so long as you've killed the legendary animal you're good, so you don't actually need to keep them around.
2. Legendary animal parts can be used to craft talismans and trinkets that unlock permanent bonuses, but they're all honestly really mediocre upgrades.
3. If you have a bounty and surrender to the police, the game deducts the value of your bounty from your wallet. If you have a bounty worth far more than you're willing to pay, spend all your money or donate all your money to the camp funds and then surrender. This will clear your bounty.
4. You can gain access to the fast travel function from your camp by upgrading your lodgings.
5. Your main horse will show up at your destination if you fast travel via coach or train.
6. Always carry a bottle or two of horse reviver. They can be bought at a stable or general store.
7. Wear a mask out of sight before committing crimes—for both free roam and during missions.
8. The deadeye ability becomes upgraded through story progression.
9. If you already have a handgun and still see it available in the gun catalogue, it's because you can buy two of each handgun for dual wielding purposes. The two guns can be separately customized and are denoted by a diamond and spade symbol after their name.
10. You can sell looted valuables at the fence. There's one in Rhodes, south of Valentine.
11. During chapter 3 you'll rob a bank in Valentine. After this mission, money won't be a problem for the rest of the game.
12. High honor gives store discounts and access to new outfits. Low honor increases the loot from dead lawmen and increases the drop rate of deadeye replenishing items. Other than that, it doesn't do anything.
13. Always carry a warm outfit on your horse.
14. The White Arabian, the best horse in the game, can be found on the west bank of Lake Isabella to the north. You can tame this horse right from the start of the game after you clear the tutorial.
15. If you focus on an animal, you'll find dots next to the animal's name. The number of dots tells you the quality of the animal's pelt where three is perfect condition. Study the animal to know what type of weapon to use. Kill the animal with a single shot using the correct weapon to get a clean kill and preserve the animal's pelt quality.
16. You don't need a clean kill on legendary animals to obtain their drops.
17. Camp upgrades provided by Pearson are all cosmetic.
18. Satchel upgrades provided by Pearson double your carrying capacity of a certain set of items, but it's rarely needed.
19. Fishing can be boring, but it's ridiculously profitable for the minimal effort it takes.
20. If you call out to a passing wagon or coach, you can ask for a ride into the nearest town.
21. Sneak up on someone while unarmed to perform a non-lethal takedown.

Darkest Dungeon

Darkest Dungeon essentially adds one more layer to the familiar RPG dungeon crawling experience: stress. Thematically dark and inspired by Lovecraftian horror, the game will have players juggling not only the traditional health and mana, but also the mental well-being of party members. In a setting full of eldritch horrors, the fear of descending into the dark depths and never coming back is real in the minds of our digital fodder adventurers. Darkest Dungeon is aesthetically solid and builds around this stress mechanic, but it's a mechanic that fails to carry the game through to a satisfactory experience.

none of your heroes have eyes

The premise of the game is simple: there's a dungeon, it's pretty dark, it's full of crazy stuff, you gotta go clear it out. The story is mostly revealed through journal scraps that you'll find while exploring dungeons and, to be honest, isn't all that compelling. To that end, the meat of the gameplay centers around building a party of four from a handful of different classes and then running them through a gauntlet of trial and error to figure out what works. The game also takes pride in its difficulty as perma-death is the norm and the game comes out frankly and tells the player that Darkest Dungeon isn't so much about winning as it is about damage control and minimizing loss.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, if you enter Darkest Dungeon seeking perfection, you're in for a rude awakening. Whereas other RPGs might see the accumulation of resources and wealth that never gets used, every little bit counts when you're trying to pass an encounter in Darkest Dungeon and oftentimes this comes down to a form of damage control. The element of uncertainty gives even mundane actions a sense of tension, more so manifesting in disbelief. Sometimes there will be a crucial 97% success that simply fails and hey, that's just how the dice rolls sometimes. It's up to the player to really cover all the bases and consider everything that can go wrong and it's simply better to just assume that everything will go wrong.

And believe me, things will go wrong. It's important not to get too attached to any single character because you never really know when an unexpected enemy ability will wipe out your party. What results is a filtering effect: you'll start out with a giant roster and bit by bit that list will shrink as characters die, go insane, become incapacitated by disease, etc. You can pay to remove negative effects or lock in positive ones, but the price of treatment will increase dramatically as the party member becomes more and more powerful. With this, the game places players into a balancing act: do I cough up the gold to treat a lightly injured hero and risk him straight-up dying in the next delve or do I invest that money in another promising hero?

The game features your standard fare turn based combat but there is one aspect I really want to emphasize: the lighting mechanic. Give-and-take is the theme of Darkest Dungeon—it's rare to come across a scenario where you only stand to benefit. In line with this, there is a lighting mechanic during dungeon delves. Torches are consumed from the supplies inventory to light the way for your party, staving off stress and helping gain the initiative on the dark dwelling monsters. As torches run low and the light diminishes, stress buildup can lead to mental breaks in party members and monsters will be more powerful. However, all of the negative effects come with a savvy increase in loot. In some instances, it's advantageous to let the light flicker, keeping your party members at just the edge of madness. The light mechanic is an aspect of difficulty control within the confines of an already set difficulty that gives players a chance to seek greater rewards without having to completely change the difficulty setting. It's a good way to give players a temporary challenge that they don't need to totally commit to if they feel they can't pass.

Your hard earned loot then funnels back into building up your party to confront the namesake final dungeon. Darkest Dungeon boasts fifteen hero classes, each with seven combat skills, upgradeable equipment, and unique stat modifying trinkets. Each hero also come with specialized camping skills that allow for buffs and bonuses during moments of respite in the dungeons.

I think Darkest Dungeon has a strong presentation and it had me hooked for a good number of hours, but that was before I began to really see the bones underneath the mechanics. For every one hero that makes it to the maximum level, you may need to go through three or four, maybe even six fodder heroes to reach that stage. All that time, you'll be investing and losing, only to try again with the next poor sap who comes along. With this, the game becomes repetitive, grindy, and loses a lot of its agency. It's fun to theorycraft strategies and lineups but it won't take long for you to realize that the variety that 15 classes offers is mostly superficial.

Again, the underlying philosophy with Darkest Dungeon isn't for the players to optimize for success, but to have them prepare to stem the losses. The RNG elements of the game sometimes makes encounters feel more cheap than challenging as a single miss can quickly cascade into a catastrophic defeat. Tactics rely on maximizing probabilities, but there are scenarios where you can make all the best possible moves and still lose. It's frustrating and those moments reveal the shallow mechanics underneath the game.

Although there wasn't much to keep me coming back to Darkest Dungeon, the game itself was wonderfully presented with a great deal of initial theorycrafting and unexpected outcomes. The game plays like a smaller, more punishing version of XCOM with less tactical decisions available overall. Nevertheless, Darkest Dungeon is a fairly solid game, one worth looking into if you're curious about the game's artistic presentation and its employment of mental health management in an RPG.

Persona 5

Before we get into more detail, I want to say that it has been a long time since I've played an RPG that was as charming, stylish, and fun as Persona 5. Developed by P-Studio, a subsidiary team within publishers Atlus, Persona 5 was released in September 2016 in Japan and April 2017 internationally. I've never played the previous titles or know anything about them, but Persona 5 got my attention with all the positive reviews and its distinct art direction. I knew it was a fusion of a daily life simulator and dungeon crawling featuring turn-based combat with JRPG elements. What I didn't know is that I would become totally absorbed by the world of Persona.

you'll never see it coming!

You'll play as a nameless, nearly mute main character as he tries to live an honest high schooler's life after being placed on probation for a falsely reported crime. At his new high school, rumors about the transfer student with a criminal record abound. A few spins on the wheel of fate plus some awakenings of the soul and, what do you know, our protagonist finds himself with the power to wield Personas, familiars conjured from the psyche, and the ability to dive into the Metaverse. In short, the Metaverse is the cognitive world, one that is formed by people's distorted perceptions of reality. By traveling through the minds of people and stealing the source of their distorted thoughts and desires, the protagonist and his recruited band of misfit friends seek to reform society through their newfound powers. There's a bit of a Psychonauts flavor to it all.

click to enlarge pictures

Persona 5 is a quintessential Japanese game not in the sense that it uses anime stylization or carries forward some JRPG tropes, but because it reflects on Japanese culture and society. Simply put, it is a game from Japan about Japan. That isn't to say the issues the game identifies are limited to Japan. Katsura Hashino, the director for the Persona series since Persona 3, views each Persona game as a way to "'address a problem... in society at that time, especially in Japan.'" Freedom and inner identity are some of the keywords I would place next to Persona 5. The game's themes juxtaposes the real world and the Metaverse, in which the real world is a place where societal and cultural norms rule and the Metaverse is a place for rebellion and inner expression to physically manifest in the form of the various Personas and enemies encountered within the cognitive world. What results is a supernatural fantasy story that is anchored in the real world—not just the real world in-game, but in our world as well.

welcome to the shadow realm, jimbo

The first societal issue Persona 5 brings up is also how the game is framed: Japan's criminal justice system. The game begins in media res with the protagonist, codenamed Joker while operating in the Metaverse, fleeing from a heist after being separated from his group of accomplices, the Phantom Thieves. You see, as the Phantom Thieves go around changing people's hearts through the Metaverse, the results are felt in the real world and have lead the Japanese government and public to think of the Phantom Thieves as threats. Think, "Who watches the Watchmen?" and you're about there. Anyways, Joker is captured as he makes his exit and is placed into police custody in the real world. The game then begins as a series of flashbacks that has the protagonist recollecting the events leading up to the formation of the Phantom Thieves and his eventual arrest.

combat is a badass, super animated version of pokemon

When the player is prompted to name their character, it is done through signing a confession in the interrogation room after being psychologically and physically tortured. The scene may look like something out of a police drama, but it is very much a reflection of how criminal cases are sometimes handled in Japan.

Japan has an unbelievable conviction rate, greater than 99%. Compare that to Britain's Crown Court in 2009 with 80%, America's 93% in 2012, and the Chinese Communist Party court's modest 98% [EDIT: That Chinese conviction rate figure was from 2013. China is now harmoniously up to par!] How is >99% conviction rate possible? After all, prosecutors are human and thus prone to error sometimes, right? J. Mark Ramseyer of Harvard Law School and Eric B. Rasumesen of IU Kelly School of Business authored a well-cited paper in 2000 examining this very question in depth. Confessions are a big part of handling a criminal case. Plea-bargaining isn't allowed in Japan, but confessions are pretty analogous to that. Japanese defendants are far less likely to contest prosecution and rather just confess. However, when you see how the protagonist is beaten and threatened behind closed doors with no record of the events inside the room, its hard not to wonder about the coercive tactics prosecutors may use to extract a confession regardless of the detainees innocence. It makes you wonder just how many innocent people have been arrested and made to confess, all for the sake of prosecuting in order to save face rather than for a sense of justice.

Then there's the game's depiction of issues Japanese women face in the professional workforce and as victims to a culture of harassment. Doctor Tae Takemi and prosecutor Sae Niijima are characters that depict the minority of women in their respective fields and how women struggle against conservative Japanese gender roles. As the story progresses, the player learns that Takemi was made a scapegoat to a failed medical trial by her superiors and Niijima is later similarly dismissed by her bosses, having her authority in the Phantom Thieves case removed and being sardonically told to use the down time to find a husband.

Women face tremendous social barriers in Japan. Of course, women have all the legal rights as men as per the Japanese constitution, but women in Japan will find a much harder time finding good economic opportunities in the workforce. According to Seeker Daily, Japanese women hold less than 10% of leadership positions in businesses. Only 66% of women are employed and and almost 60% of those working women aren't even in full-time positions. Women aren't afforded the same level of opportunities as men are because of the conservative, traditionalist values that have confined women in the domestic sphere.

comes with a killer soundtrack

The last thing I want to mention regards what the game has the player doing in between fighting monsters from within the minds of twisted people: going to high school. I think Japanese high schools have really become a cultural set piece of their own. You've got the uniforms, the school culture festivals, the variety of clubs, the senpais and kouhais, all wrapped and exported to the rest of the world in the form of anime, manga, and light novels. There's a focus on high school in the daily life simulator portion of the game because, as Hashino states, "'For good and bad reasons... the school-life experience deeply affects many Japanese people.'"

School is stressful anywhere, but Japan has really captured the attention of the mass media when it comes to just how tragically the stress can build up in students. The situation in Japan is so bad, 500 students under the age of twenty turn to suicide every year. In fact, the World Health Organization reported in 2014 that Japan's suicide rates are 60% higher than the global average. There is such a pressure not only to perform well academically, but to conform to social norms that students feel there is no escape, no out to their situation. Physical bullying, vicious rumors, and the terror of confronting such daunting aspects of school life absolutely cripples people, making them believe they somehow do not have any value or anything to offer society.

Going through the daily life portions of the game, both in and out of school, you'll meet some pretty ordinary people that each have remarkable stories. Much like real life, you can never guess what kinds of backstories characters have gone through just by looking at them. You begin with a small and unlikely grouping of friends which quickly branches out to people like Takemi and Niijima mentioned earlier. It's such a simple message, yet so solidly conveyed: everyone has their own story, everyone is unique. The hardships the characters go through are all different, but the way the characters end up as social outcasts is cast as a binding quality. Persona 5 features some of the most well-rounded characters that make it way too easy to cheer them on. Through their stories, the characters each uniquely show how individuality doesn't mean exile, that conformity to expectations is not the only measure of a person. In a twist of irony, the game shows how everyone is, in one way or another, a social outcast and that society is nothing more than a bunch of social outcasts that have come together.

Persona 5 gives us a taste of what it feels like to have the power to change the hearts and minds of people for good (plus the ability to romance any, ANY, girl with a few silent nods, soft grunts, and generic hand gestures).

It seems like an overly idealistic, opportunistic message, but maybe that's the kind of story we need most about these tumultuous and troubling times. Persona 5 may be set in modern Japan, but its themes championing determination against great odds are timeless. Symbolism and imagery within the Metaverse show how people think of the real world as a kind of prison, a seemingly safe place where all of your needs can be met so long as you never act up to attract trouble from the authorities despite adverse conditions. It's easy to think that so long as we do what we're told and don't try to change anything, life will get better. The Phantom Thieves, however, are the embodiment of a will to seek change in the world the best they can. The Personas each member of the Phantom Thieves wield are born from an inner sense of rebellion. Persona 5 reminds us that we are, every one of us, a part of the world ourselves. By realizing that we're not as helpless as we think, by realizing that we have the power to enact change in our own ways, we can begin to do great things.

some star wars kinect flashbacks

Persona 5 is riveting, heartwarming, surprising, funny, and all-around just charged with a great sense of life. The gameplay elements and narrative mesh seamlessly into a fluid experience. Starting with a high school scandal, the stakes will keep climbing to exciting, ludicrous levels as the player makes progress, all the while polishing the game's core focus without losing sight of the central themes at play. Persona 5 was an absolutely delightful experience, one that emulates the voice of a generation.

Further reading/viewing:

• The Whole Story on Japan's 99% Conviction Rate, and the Corruption that Follows (Sept. 2013)
• Japan's program to boost senior women in work is a dud (Sept. 2015)
• The mystery behind Japan's high suicide rates among kids (Oct. 2015)

Nier: Automata

Where do you even begin with a game like Nier: Automata? Do you mention its relatively obscure pedigree, the Drakengard series? Yeah, you must be fun at parties. Well, you'll be happy to hear that you don't actually need to have played the previous games to really understand what's going on in Automata. If you were to start with categorizing the game, Automata is an RPG hack-and-slash, bullet hell hybrid with some novelty in its narrative delivery. In less technical language, the game is about androids made out of congealed sex-appeal that wear maid outfits and use katanas and lasers and shit to blow up everything around them.

You know, the characters aren't a bad place to start in seeing just what kind of game Automata is. To that end, let's go to Yoko Taro, the director himself, for some insight into the characters. Mr. Taro, why is a battle robot in high heels and a French maid outfit? "I just love women. There's no particular reason for it." That's it, really. There's no discussion about that and, really, I applaud Yoko Taro for that kind of answer. It's a simple and honest response that pretty much asks us, "Why not?" I feel like that's the defining core of Automata, the moment you experience something and say, "Yeah, sure, why not," for better or for worse.

I'll be honest with you: the game gets away with a lot of things. Nier: Automata is certainly Yoko Taro's masterpiece, but it's a stretch to be singing praise from the comfort of every 2B body pillow out there (you know who you are). The game is beyond technically competent (except for the tragic PC port) and the overall experience is fresh, but one has to be honest with a game like Automata. The gameplay is flashy and repetitive, the art-style is blandly minimalistic, and the philosophical stuff suffers from an underdeveloped cast of characters that have been tasked to carry out the story's message. It isn't the gameplay, artistic delivery, nor the half-baked philosophical musings that makes up the spirit of the game. As a whole, Nier: Automata is really an exercise of the medium, a simple yet elusive one that celebrates the ability of video games to deliver an experience you couldn't find in any other form. So let's get into it.

the robots wear hats later on

The premise of the game follows a war between machines that have been built by an alien invasion and human built androids. Supposedly, humans lost the war and have fled to the Moon while androids continue their master's proxy war. The androids' base of operations is a space station in orbit and every once in awhile the androids will receive suspiciously pre-recorded sounding propaganda messages from the last remnants of humans who are totally alive and well on the Moon. Keep it up, we're totally alive and, gosh, we don't have Earth yet but we sure will soon! Keep at it boys and girls. Anyways, you'll get to play as various characters while you muck around in the whole "machine consciousness" thing. Think Terminator 2, thumbs-up-in-lava. Good? Good.

in the apocalypse, everything is coated in dust from exploded concrete

Let's have some fun this time around, starting the the game's Premium Girl, 2B:

There's one android called 2B,

2B or not to be, you see?

She's got big thighs,

She's cold towards allies,

You know, that's about it, really.

You have 9S whose name is a combination of his age and size of clothes he wears:

Adolescent boy

2B, a cherry blossom

Shitty minigame

Then there's A2 who's basically 2B but with longer hair and further down the scale of traumatic experiences lived through. Oh, she cuts her hair eventually so consider her your 2B replacement:

[Chorus - Snoop Dogg]

When the pimp's in the crib ma

Drop it like it's hot

Drop it like it's hot

Drop it like it's hot

robot with a hat, i can get behind that

If at any point during the game you think to yourself or out loud to your lonesome self if you're one of those people, "Wow, the machines are trying to be like humans and the androids, too, are weirdly human-like despite their constant denial of emotions and interpersonal relations. The machines and androids are adversaries on the eternal battlefield yet they have so much in common with one another. What does it really mean to be human and how does consciousness fit into our ideas of what constitutes life?," give yourself a big certificate with WordArt that reads I DO MY BEST and shower yourself with gold star stickers next to your nameplate at work because you just grasped the handle of the game's complex and thought-provoking philosophical quandaries. If you got the exact wording of the thought, I ask you to please leave my room and fix the window on the way out.

The philosophical undertone in Automata doesn't rise up beyond just that. The game is spectacle driven for the most part and whatever difficult philosophies it muddles around in are just the various highway roadsigns that get less and less entertaining as the friend next to you read them out to you over and over again. The only way it could get worse is if the highway sign falls and smashes through your windshield so you can get a better look at the sign you've seen six times before.

its a claritin d commercial

Then again, subtlety is far from Automata's strong point, except when you're talking about the environments. The game world is beautiful in the sense that a desolate landscape is beautiful in a melancholy kind of way. It's like your screen has a permanent grey filter on it and it gives everything in the world a washed out after effect. In retrospect, even the carnival level worked within a single color grade and was too afraid to work with any kind of contrasting hues. The grey filter seemed to just be replaced by a purple-red one in what was supposedly the most colorful zone in the game. Every zone seems to suffer from this innate blandness once the honeymoon period is over. The first time you look across an expansive, encroaching desert, there is a sense of reverence or majesty for the forces of nature. As you begin to repeatedly plod through the game's artistically bland landscapes, however, you're going to begin to wish that natural forces were a little more creative with how they destroyed and reclaimed the world. You're going to really wish for anything to stare at. To that end, I suppose it gives you more time to ogle at 2B's revealing acrobatics—well played, Yoko Taro.

can you tell why people like this game yet

Earlier I noted that Nier: Automata features repetitive gameplay and I realized how lazy a complaint that sounded. You can't fault a hack-and-slash game for making you, you know, hack and slash stuff over and over again—it's like blaming a shooter game for making you pick up a shooty thing to shoot at things. In essence, complaints about repetitive gameplay stem from unrewarding gameplay, the sense that you're doing something for no gain. In Automata, it won't be long until you're swimming in money and health restoration items and upgrades to the point where combat really isn't a threat. Weapon upgrades all serve to simply increase damage and you don't even need to get to the maximum level to do well. Enemy variety is sorely lacking outside of boss fights and they're hardly worth the time that I ended up just running past every enemy encounter between where I was and where I needed to go to advance the story. Sidequests are generally pointless in the rewards they give and are mostly there to placate the OCD collectors that scour the game for every little hidden thing. Be prepared for fetch quests and backtracking in these sidequests, the ultimate killers of pacing and sense of fun. Harder difficulties are scaled from the School of Frustration as Challenge and the only diploma you get in the end is a piece of tissue paper that has the words "Bragging Rights" written on it. There isn't a sense that you as a player are doing better or becoming stronger as you progress through the story.

is my screen just dirty

Nier: Automata touts itself as an open-world experience but it takes little to no advantage of the fact. Invisible walls, linear stage progression, and boxed in mission zones litter the game. Was the open-world aspect to avoid loading screens? Well, you're going to be using the fast travel system anyway. Does it promote a sense of exploration? Exploration isn't really rewarded as much as you'd think and many of the zones are recycled anyways. It's not like you can interact with the world in any meaningful way, either. You can ride animals and fish, but those features don't add anything. I mean, they don't detract anything either but then it only leads you to question why its even in the game. The world may be large, but eventually you begin to see all the limitations that have been set in place. The open-world aspect of the game only serves to make navigation between story moments as tedious as possible. You'll be scrolling through the same zones that are devoid of anything interesting just to progress the story.

pull up, porkins!

In terms of the combat, the game seamlessly moves between classic bullet hell segments and third-person hack-and-slash, which also incorporates elements of bullet hell. You'll be mashing your dodge button into oblivion as the camera moves around to give you a 2D side-scroller or top-down shooter perspective for no real effect other than to make sure you're still awake. The hack-and-slash is your standard fare light/heavy attack combos, dodge, counter, special move, etc. The fluid animation and controls really come across here and carries the game on its back. The bullet hell segments are actually less developed than I would've liked and manifest more in 9S's annoying-as-fuck hacking minigame that easily overstays its welcome. The combat gameplay experience, as a whole, is smooth and will make you say "Oh, that's cool" every now and then, but is ultimately low on content and relies on visuals more than anything to keep you engaged.

just pile on the symbolism

Okay, so if the story and characters were underdeveloped and mediocre at best and the gameplay was mostly unrewarding, what are we left with?

Well, Nier: Automata certainly had its fair share of spectacular and unexpected moments interspersed within its slogging gameplay. The game made bold, convention defying narrative moves, even if they did feel disjointed and awkward at times. Automata is all about spectacle without relying on purpose and celebrates the ability of game developers to manifest their insane ideas and give them life. In the face of why, Automata pushes back and asks why not. I can't put my finger on it, but despite all the flaws there is a warm feeling of passion and care that emanates from the game. It's like a curious kid who wants to try everything out in all new ways, makes a mess, but comes out of it proud knowing he tried something different and new. If anything, Yoko Taro's Nier: Automata is certainly an unforgettable experience.

its okay

Thanks for reading.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Here's a game where I took one look at the cover art and thought, "How are you going to justify Mecha-Godzillas in a post-apocalyptic setting." In retrospect, the answer seem simple. If humanity ever did invent Mecha-Godzillas for whatever reason, it wouldn't take much smarts to determine the cause of why humanity is locked in a battle against rogue Mecha-Godzillas. There is a powerful narrative drive in Horizon Zero Dawn that sees players taking on the role of Aloy, an outcast of her tribe due to the mysterious events surrounding her birth. Why exactly is Aloy an outcast? What happened to the old world? Where did the Mecha-Godzillas come from? What role does Aloy play in all of this? Starting in a small village, the search for answers begins with small steps into a wider world teeming with beauties and dangers alike.

skyline one sunset is a planned sequel

Horizon is traditional fare as far as open-world games go. Players will have access to the definitive open-world gameplay procedure: a big sandbox world, main quests, side quests, a variety of points-of-interests, distractions/diversions, towers to reveal the map with, collectibles, OCD inducing material gathering, crafting supplies, fast-travel, mounts, etc. Combat against machine and human enemies consist of melee and ranged options. The melee combat is solely comprised of a light attack and a heavy attack without anything else to go with it. Ranged combat sees a variety of weapons, however. Aloy can use short bows, longbows, slings that shoot bombs, tripwires, a "ropecaster" that can immobilize foes, and a "rattler" that can shoot multiple bolts in quick succession. These tools are complimented by traps and a rudimentary stealth system that aids Aloy in hunting down her prey.

In the cage fight between Aloy and Mecha-Godzilla, any sensible person would bet on Mecha-Godzilla. Bows and spears don't exactly match up to tons of metal and plasma beams, that is unless you know where to hit Mecha-Godzilla. Aloy has the ability to pin-point weaknesses in enemies that will tell her where to hit and what to hit it with. This divides the combat into two effective phases: stalking/preparing and springing the trap. The machines, especially on harder difficulties, can easily flatten Aloy in several hits. It's a great deal of fun and tension as you study the machine's movements, mark its weaknesses, and prepare your traps, all to gain the maximum advantage as you inevitably come out of stealth and begin running and dodging like a headless chicken. My favorite tactic for taking down machines that could instantly mulch me was to lay a system of tripwires attached to explosive traps, spook the beast, and lure it through all of them.

While hunting the larger machines is the hallmark of Horizon's gameplay, the game falters in its smaller enemies. From the starting portion of the game, Aloy has access to an ability that lures enemies closer. Combining this ability with stealth take-downs trivializes many of the fights in which the enemy group is composed entirely of humans or smaller machines. Here's what I would do against a pack of small machines: find tall grass to hide in, lure-call one of them over, perform a stealth takedown, repeat. The enemies don't actually see Aloy as she's performing the takedown so long as you're in the tall grass so the procedure always works. Enemies will be alerted by corpses, but it does not blow your cover instantly. Rather, the alerted enemy will simply wander around the corpse for awhile, allowing you to lure-call the enemy to the same fate as his friend. Aloy can sit in one spot and take down an entire group of enemies with this method. Horizon's real gameplay prowess becomes apparent during tense moments in which larger enemies are surrounded by a group of smaller enemies that act as lookouts, but engaging against groups composed entirely of small enemies shows off the tedium of a crude and over-simplified stealth mechanic.

pinnacle of stealth technology 

In addition to head-on and stealth combat, Aloy also gains the ability to perform overrides on machine enemies, briefly flipping their allegiance to Aloy's side. Aloy won't be able to override every machine and only learns to do so against specific machines after exploring map points called Cauldrons. Sometimes fights can be decided with a single override against a larger machine. However, overrides have a long cool-down period so you're unlikely to get more than one enemy to your side in one encounter. Moreover, overrides also forfeit the experience rewards you would otherwise gain from defeating the machine once you upgrade the control state to be indefinite. It's a fun little mechanic that can lead to amazing machine vs. machine spectacles, but it's usually faster and more rewarding from a gameplay standpoint to just take on the machines yourself.

Horizon's primary forte is in its world development that parallels Aloy's development, both as a character and in terms of player progression. Aloy is unsure of her role in the world at large as strange and devastating events seem to focus around her. Her self-doubt diminishes and she journeys across the world, gradually revealing the secrets of the old world and the machines in a manner that reflects the player's own growth in the ability to take down larger and more powerful foes in increasingly complex scenarios. The narrative is not unlike a rolling boulder that gradually picks up momentum. By the time you've experienced your first piece of the puzzle, it becomes a powerful motivator to seek more of the story to unveil the mystery of Project Zero Dawn and reach the satisfactory conclusion to why Mecha-Godzillas are running around the world.

Guerrilla Games, the developers of Horizon, may not be particularly innovative as far as open-world gameplay goes, but they certainly make up for it by focusing and polishing what it has to be enjoyable and rewarding. This polished gameplay is upheld by an engaging narrative and a beautifully presented world. The machines of the world are characters deserving of respect in the challenges and majesty they present to Aloy and the player. Horizon Zero Dawn successfully distinguishes itself from other open-world games with its unique world brought to life by a powerful presentation of its mechanics and engaging sci-fi plot.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is to the Nintendo Switch what Halo: Combat Evolved was to the XBox 15 years ago: a critically acclaimed, console defining debut of a title. Much like how Halo has left its mark in the first-person shooter canon, Breath of the Wild rightfully belongs in the pantheon of great open-world adventure games. The people at Nintendo set out to reshape the tried-and-true Zelda formula into something that would properly usher the Legend of Zelda franchise into the Switch generation and they have succeeded. The open-world style allows players to experience the world of Zelda like never before. 

If I had to summarize Breath of the Wild's gameplay design philosophy, I'd put it something like this: varied mechanics, simple interactions. Hyrule is full of interactive elements that makes the game world dynamic and seemingly organic. These interactions range from visual spectacles (ex. grass and tree branches swaying in the wind) to useful gameplay mechanics (ex. flammable game objects can be burned to create an updraft for gliding). Monsters and critters will interact with one another in small ways, simulating an ecosystem full of mysteries to discern and behaviors to study. Link also has access to tools never before seen in previous Zelda games. With various abilities to manipulate game objects and influence monsters and animals, the player has a great selection of mechanics to experiment with. This gives the player many options to choose from in approaching the game's challenges. The simplicity of the mechanics make them easy to utilize. As a result, interactions between objects and the player are intuitive and consistent.

With the number of near-perfect to perfect scores the game has received from review sites, Breath of the Wild seems infallible. The game has certainly earned its critical and commercial success, but I want to point out that many of these reviews don't capture the game in a representative manner. Call it hype, nostalgia, whatever—it's important that we take the time in examining the game not solely as a remodeling of a legendary franchise, but by how well it stands on its own. To that end, here are a couple of my own thoughts about the game.

The first third of the game is the golden time for Breath of the Wild. The game really emphasizes using all of the tools available to you when Link is weak and most vulnerable. Weak early weapons and a plethora of world objects subtly pushes the player to experiment with the different interactions. This becomes phased out as Link becomes stronger and finds better weapons. Damage from dropping a metal box on a monster, for example, just doesn't compare to the direct damage of hitting a monster. While the interactions still have a place in puzzles, they become less and less relevant in combat when the simplest solution becomes bashing monsters with stuff. The effort to impact ratio is too large for the world interactions to really hold up in the later portions of the game.

everything the light touches can be yours... if you have enough stamina elixirs

Weapon durability did not give me any problems whatsoever. I've read reviews that have gone both ways regarding the issue, but it was never a deal breaker of any sort. I also think reports of needing to carefully manage weapon usage are exaggerated. On the contrary, I always had weapons on Link and was constantly finding better ones. There isn't really a need to save weapons for anything so you might as well just use them, with the only exception being keeping one or two ancient weapons around in the event you come across a stray guardian. Finding the Master Sword is relatively easy and comes with natural progression and paying attention to hints from NPCs. The unbreakable weapon renders the problem of weapon durability moot for the most part. 

Cooking was needlessly elaborate. The crafting system involved is simple: throw in up to five ingredients and see what you get. The number of unique recipes that produced specific foods kind of surprised me. Cooking is divided into two categories: food and elixirs, both of which pretty much perform the same functions. Foods come from foodstuffs and elixirs are derived from monster parts; the two ingredients categories should never mix else Link cooks up something useless. You can experiment with different ingredients but ultimately boils down to this: You need a fire resistance elixir; find anything in your inventory that lists fire resistance as a property; throw five of those things into the pot. The simplest method of throwing five of the same thing usually provides the best results. The different food recipes for cakes and soups are elaborate, but ultimately just pointless flavor.

five mushrooms for dinner again

Enemy variety was sorely lacking. The developers might have stuck to the Zelda formula a little too much here. For an open-world as large as the one we get in Breath of the Wild, I was expecting more region unique enemies. The enemies are for the most part recolored, power-upped versions of weaker templates. Variability comes in the form of size and elemental attribute, but that doesn't really count in my opinion. The same attack patterns persist through similar enemy types, so the only additional challenge afforded is the increase in health and damage that the enemies have. I would've liked to see enemies that required the use of Sheikah Slate abilities to defeat, for example, or enemies that had access to their own versions of Sheikah Slate abilities that they could use on Link.

you're really the bad guy- they were just enjoying themselves

On-demand healing was a questionable mechanics design choice. It allows the player to open their inventory at any point, freeze the game world, to eat food and heal. Whether you just pick up things that come across your way or exhibit symptoms of kleptomania, you will end up with enough food and healing items to cook with. With a cornucopia in Link's pockets and on-demand healing, the only thing that will really give you a Game Over screen is being defeated in one hit from a monster far above your weight class. Players and reviewers have pointed out that Breath of the Wild is a more difficult game, but I cannot agree with their statement when on-demand healing is present without any counterbalance. There is no penalty to scarfing down foods whenever you want and the world is packed with meats, fruits, mushrooms, and vegetables. I would've liked to see a system that limited the amount of food/elixirs Link could consume in a set period of time, or at least during a state of combat. The availability of food combined with Being able to tank everything removes the agency of a difficult fight.

speaking of on-demand healing

A lackluster ending kind of hangs in the air for me. The purpose of Link's journey is to gain strength and gather allies for the upcoming fight against Calamity Ganon, so I really shouldn't be complaining when I say the final battle is really nothing special. Breaching Hyrule Castle, however, was a great deal of fun. Previously, the shrines and the four Divine Beast dungeons made extensive use of Sheikah Slate abilities which factored into my surprise that there are very few moments in Hyrule Castle that made use of the Sheikah Slate in any great capacity. For the most part, Hyrule Castle is a straight A to B with hidden side rooms. The most direct path to Calamity Ganon can miss many of the secrets and unique items along the way, so it's still worth exploring the various rooms of the castle. Aside from finding hidden rooms, though, the Sheikah Slate is largely forgotten.

breath of the wild II will feature a sheikah fit-bit and sheikah vr goggles

--

Despite a few missteps here and there, Breath of the Wild successfully captures the spirit of the Legend of Zelda franchise in its open-world presentation. For me, the story and characters weren't as memorable as some of the past Zelda games, but the world itself may as well be its own character. With its painterly landscapes. mysterious ruins, and hidden treasures, the world itself provides an interesting sandbox for the player to create their own journey.

As far as open-world games go, Breath of the Wild isn't really that unique. I didn't feel an air of open-world innovation, but that's probably because it's still a Zelda game at heart and the open-world formula has hit a stagnant point as far as game mechanics go. On that, you still have narrative design and world presentation. Again, narrative design isn't quite there with Breath of the Wild, but world presentation carries Breath of the Wild into the new generation of gaming consoles.

they're not that bad

A more cynical part of me thinks Breath of the Wild  is still just banking on 80s gaming nostalgia for its praise. Besides, the game's mechanics begin to taper off after about a third of the way through while some of them simply become obsolete once you figure things out. However, I had to ask myself, "Did I have fun with the game" and the answer to that is a resounding yes. The reviews exaggerate the success of the game's design decisions, but that doesn't get in the way of a fun gaming experience. Breath of the Wild speaks to both older and newer generations of gamers in its journey to recreate the world of Zelda like never before.

Verdun

Gas! GAS! Quick boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

—An excerpt from Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

time to say auf wiedersehen

There was a time when the first person shooter genre was saturated with big-name games featuring a WWII setting. Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, and Red Orchestra, just to name a few, became some of the most recognizable franchises within the genre. However, there aren't many WWI games that really come to mind. Just as an illustration, browsing Steam games using the "World War I" tag results in 28 entires versus using "World War II," which results in 177. If we then use the tag "Shooter" alongside both tags, we see WWII coming in at 44 entries and WWI with a whopping 6. Is there a reason why shooters don't feature WWI games as often? Is it because the subject matter of WWII is more recent and more captivating? Blackmill Games and M2H, the developers and publishers of Verdun, distributed Brodie helmets to players and boldly set forth back in April 2015, presenting audiences with the first WWI first person shooter in recent memory.

WWI is distinguished by the technological advances of the 20th century and the grueling trench warfare that has seared itself into the imaginations of many today who look back. Both aspects are prominent in Verdun as the developers have really done their homework. Weapon models, uniforms, speech, music, and even battlefield topography are highlighted in historical accuracy. Gun handling favors the realistic approach with full on physics for ballistics and takes into account each guns parameters and performance statistics, providing an authentic feel to all the rifles, pistols, machine guns, and other weapons found within the game. All of this combines with atmospheric variety in powerful recreations of the famous fronts of the Great War. The whistling and pounding of shells overhead; the distant sounds of rifles and machine guns; the rain patters and pools that dot the scorched landscape; the whistles signifying a charge across the top; the agony of the shot man besides you in the mud—make no mistake, historical and atmospheric presentation is superb.

tweet tweet tweet tweeeee— and then they took away my whistle

Verdun features a "tactical squad-based" first person shooter experience. Each squad consists of four players, each taking up a preset class offered within the different squad types. Class accoutrements depends on alliance (Allied or Central) and nationality or corps the squad is from. The general structure of each squad is roughly equal with key areas tweaked to differentiate squads based on their role on the battlefield. For example, the French Chasseur Alpins have access to reconnaissance planes and are well equipped to scout forward positions; the US Marines are equipped to tackle the trenches with shotguns and incendiary artillery; the German Pionieres can quickly clear sectors with the dreaded flamethrower. Squad types are distinguished by the types of weapons they carry as well as officer abilities on the battlefield. The officer gives aura based bonuses to the squad, provides forward spawns, and can call in support (artillery, gas, smoke screen, recon plane, etc.) depending on what type of squad they lead. Strategic use of officer abilities is paramount in mounting a successful attack or defense.

Verdun offers 4 different game modes: Attrition, Squad Defense, Rifle Deathmatch, and Frontlines. Attrition is your standard team deathmatch whereas Rifle Deathmatch offers its free-for-all counterpart. Squad Defense pits a single squad versus a horde of AI opponents in an effort to hold off as long as possible. Frontlines is the premier game mode and pits two teams against each other in grueling trench warfare. Slow and methodical would aptly describe Verdun with an emphasis on the slow aspect. Each team consists of 4 squads for a total of 16 players per team, 32 players per server, but action on the front varies depending on the battlefield. The Champagne front is mired with intense trench crawling and close quarters combat whereas the Aisne sectors will have the Allies trying to push through open fields into well defended locations.

never do this

Although the team sizes are relatively large and on smaller maps something is always happening, the game can enter a lull at times, especially with lower player counts. The game will detect imbalanced teams and ask players to switch sides once in awhile, but gives little to no incentive for players to actually switch over. It is not uncommon to see a 14 versus 6 match on a server of 20 people. Long fronts see small skirmishes break out along the trenches and team cohesion generally crumbles because of the imbalances. Voice and chat communication is available, but outside of those traditional means there are limited methods to coordinate and plan. Officers can generally direct the squad towards an area with attack orders but the lack of any other kind of pings or indicators makes communication difficult and clunky within squads and between squads as well.

Much like the definitive characteristics of the actual Great War, players are seemingly able to fully reenact sitting in a trench waiting for something to happen, climbing over the top, and being shot by an unseen enemy. There isn't any tutorial to orient players to the nuances of trench warfare or any kind of practice ground to hone skills. Instead, direction for new players is limited to tips that appear during the loading screens. What I would've liked to see was a co-op vs. AI mode that combines features from the Frontlines and Squad Defense modes in which human players take on a team of AI enemies in a Frontline manner. This would ensure balance while allowing newer players a more open area to experiment and experience the game before facing off against human players.

also features the metro 2033 dlc

From a technical perspective, Verdun is poorly optimized and even mid-tier machines will struggle to maintain a consistent 60 fps even at the lowest settings. Although the game shines and truly shows off the Unity engine's capabilities, I place emphasis on this because spotting the enemy is step one in Verdun. Sacrificing resolution for an increase in performance is met with difficulties in discerning enemies at a distance, making the game far more unenjoyable. Additionally, some textures and props pop into the world awkwardly while some are simply consistently broken. Verdun uses simplistic hit boxes will register shots to the head but no other body parts are considered. For example, shooting someone in the arm does not deter them from swinging around instantly and firing back at you in response.

Verdun is an interesting experiment in WWI shooters. Remarkable attention to historical details and relatively solid mechanics are put at odds with a shaky sense of gameplay. Verdun fills a niche category in first person shooters with its setting but succumbs to repetitive gameplay. A low player base means only a handful of well-populated servers exist while most servers suffer from team balance issues. Although the game feels more like a proof of concept rather than a complete game, Verdun displays solid potential as a precedent for other WWI shooters, demonstrating that it can indeed be done. Verdun is certainly impressive for an indie title but care should be afforded when considering a full-priced purchase: the game certainly has its moments but you're more likely to end up a statistic rather than the wartime hero everyone loves.

an early iteration of the pain train; targe technology didn't come around until ww2

--

We could see them in the trenches ahead of us. I dared to peek over the top. Forlorn shapes danced in the tree line ahead. A scorched and scarred earth.

"Wait for the gas to drop! Prepare your masks! On my order, advance—"

A sharp whistle overhead and we all ducked, hanging on to any amount of dirt and mud underneath us. Up and down the line he paced, pistol at his side, peering through his binoculars, undeterred.

A dull whistle this time and then shouts from a distance. A ghastly green-yellow haze shrouded the bombed out hills in front of us. And then the whistle.

A flurry of arms, legs, bayonets, and heavy breaths. Into the green sea, bounding, slowing, swimming, and then slowly crawling. A shape! A man! A man! A man! 

A fumbling of hands and feet, quick work with the blade, shot through his core and he floundered no more. Crawling, crawling, crawling... a witness to drowning.

And then a searing pain, the sound of a machine gun, and I was dragged to the depths.

Door Kickers

Command and guide your SWAT operatives in Door Kickers, a 2D top-down tactical strategy game. Developed by Romanian indie studio KillHouse Games, Door Kickers was released in September 2013 for Windows, OSX, and Linux.

time to say goodbye

For its simplistic ascetic and mechanical handling, I was taken back by how fun Door Kickers turned out to be. A variety of SWAT scenarios and equipment options coupled with powerful controls for handling each mission creates tense and fast gameplay. Blending real-time action with pause controls for additional planning makes for a unique experience in the world of close-quarter combat.

if you go nappy on time enough times to get enough gold stars i'll give you an m4 assault rifle

Players will take on the role of a SWAT commander, ordering officers in the field and managing equipment decisions. Troopers are equipped with class-based accoutrements and it's up to players what factors are prioritized. Heavy weapons, armor, and breaching equipment means being geared for any kind of contingency while sacrificing valuable mobility. Ensuring your troopers are agile enough to maneuver rooms and find firing angles is critical, especially in missions involving timed hostage rescues or bomb disposal. Having an efficient team composition is also critical. Each trooper has individual masteries that make one officer better in some aspects over others.

The scenarios themselves offer a variety of situations from simple hostile neutralization to complex VIP rescues and arrests. Troopers can be told to move, rotate, deploy equipment, and interact with limited environmental objects such as doors (especially doors) and objective points. With simple controls, Door Kickers offers strategy in the form of planning how to breach a room, how to approach covering angles, and how to do so quickly and precisely. Scenarios vary in location from tense close quarters to dangerous open areas. Some missions also feature a sniper that can pick off selected enemies in key locations. 

command hasn't told us to do anything; keep staring at that wall!

Although missions can be performed in real time, it is often prudent (and more satisfying!) to plan ahead. Players are allowed to pause the game at any time to immediately give new orders as the working environment changes. The planning element in Door Kickers resembles programming aspects with the troopers movements running along set paths as analogs for decision trees and flowcharts. Finishing a mission with only one plan is a challenge available to players, along with finishing a mission without pausing and finishing a mission with only one trooper. Each challenge type will test the player's improvisation and planning, adding a great deal of replay value from previously completed missions as a simple rule change can completely change the experience.

The individual, stand-alone missions are complemented with a series of different campaigns, each ranging in difficulty. Whereas officers start out without any injuries in the stand-alone missions, campaigns feature an "iron man" challenge where officers under your command retain all injuries across missions. Should an officer fall in the line of duty, that officer will not be available for deployment in future missions within the campaign without reseting the campaign progress. Campaigns offer extra challenging enemies that pack a variety of combat equipment of their own, so it is recommended that players familiarize themselves with tactics and techniques in the stand alone missions before venturing further.

you can always go for the one-man terminator strategy

To top it all off, Door Kickers offers full level creation and sharing, a valuable and powerful asset. By being able to allow players to create their own levels and download them off of the Steam workshop, the game virtually has an infinite number of scenarios. Modding support is also available and has empowered players to create and share their own classes, weapons, and even total conversions. With simple creation tools, it is easy and accessible to begin forging one's own levels to share.

Although the game suffers from user interface issues that makes giving orders to stacked units difficult, Door Kickers' simplicity is its genius. With only a few well-placed commands, it is possible to witness and experience your troopers pull off impressive and mesmerizing tactical dances. KillHouse Games shows just how much depth outclasses complexity.

LISA

Women are dead, perverts abound, and drugs are turning people into monsters in LISA: The Painful RPG, a side scrolling RPG developed and published by indie studio Dingaling Productions. Initially released back in December 2015 for the Windows platform, the game has also seen a OS X and Linux debut. Prepare to wander through a gritty post-apocalyptic world filled with curious odds-and-ends.

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BE CAREFUL NEAR CLIFFS OR YOU WILL HATE YOURSELF"

I hadn't heard of LISA until about a month ago when I saw it pop up during the autumn Steam sales. What drew me in at the time was the seemingly straightforward pixel graphics and plain backgrounds in the preview screenshots (which indicated to me a low-budget work) combined with the overwhelming amount of praise found in the Steam reviews section. Normally, the Steam reviews on a game rarely affect my decision in making a purchase, but after reading some of the reviews and how emotionally charged they were in praising the game for its narrative and style, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take a closer look. So does LISA hit hard "right in the feels," as one reviewer would have it?

Drenched in black comedy, LISA introduces players to Brad Armstrong, a broken man in a broken world. As a child, Brad had to deal with schoolyard bullies and an abusive father. Now a grown man, Brad carries his life experiences with great burden and difficulty, resorting to a drug called Joy in order to numb his mind and body. The world Brad lives in experienced an event simply called "The Flash" in which all women died, rendering repopulation impossible and effectively dooming the human race (similar in style to Children of Men, in which infertility is the cause of the apocalyptic backdrop). Brad lives his life in a dirt hovel with some childhood friends until he discovers an abandoned baby girl in the middle of nowhere. Seeing the child as a second chance to redeem himself from the shadow of his father, Brad takes it upon himself to raise the girl, christened Buddy, and to protect her. Several years pass and Buddy grows up and one day the secret is out; raiders come and take Buddy away and Brad places responsibility upon himself to rescue the girl.

"my dads [sic] in this game"

Inspired by Earthbound, LISA presents a return of older RPG conventions in its game mechanics. However, by emulating something of an NES experience, the game suffers a great deal when it comes to technical use. Equipping and managing party members quickly becomes a chore and the general lack of a streamlined user interface had me wondering why I couldn't just use my mouse instead of having to go through multiple motions in order to bring up one screen. Such a design decision may create a more authentic RPG experience for some gamers, but there is a reason why outdated conventions are outdated. The lack of a quick save feature outside of fights creates irritating moments where a player may be forced to load from a checkpoint multiple times, making the trek back to a fight, all while praying to the RNG for good rolls in order to defeat a boss. Combined with the infamous cliffs that result in instant death placed in strategic locations, there will be a great deal of revisiting the same areas over and over again, ultimately cumulating into a frustrating gaming experience.

The game suffer's from a general lack of feedback, an important aspect to indicate to players what works and what doesn't. There are two culprits in this case: navigation and combat. Navigation doesn't suffer as badly as the combat; the backgrounds are plain and the paucity of landmarks boils getting from point A to point B to memory as passages and doorways look similar. The ultimate villain is the combat system where so much information is hidden from players. Certain status effects such as burning, poison, bleed, stun, and tripped are self-explanatory, but others are more vague in their function. Crying, weary, stink, and weird are some of the more enigmatic status effects that may take some time to understand; even then it may just be better to consult a guide. Moreover, something as simple as enemy health isn't displayed, leaving players to wonder how far into a fight they must plan for. Some enemies harbor resistances to various effects in varying degrees and there doesn't seem to be any logic conveyed to players as to what kind of tactics are working, often resulting in the aforementioned prayers to RNG. You may never find out an enemy has 40% resistance to stunning attacks and simply think you're getting bad rolls when attempting to stun the enemy. This lack of information leads to a deficit in the player's tool belt when trying to solve a problem and reduces some areas of the game to brute force trial and error.

"Cons: fucking snakes"

There is a large emphasis on "ruthless choices that that permanently effect [sic] towns, characters, life" as stated by the game's Steam page. I cannot express how untrue this is. The choices to be made are ruthless, I'll give it that, but they aren't emotionally motivated or impactful as most of the decision making prompts are there to simply fuck with the player in a gameplay sense, not a narrative one. For example, one fork forces Brad to choose between the lives of his party members or all of his hard earned items. But here's the major problem: for all the weird, quirky, and cooky characters there are, none of them are characterized beyond one or two traits that make them eclectic. Ultimately, any value you attach to your party members is going to be motivated by how much utility they present in a fight. Your party members are essentially walking bags of numbers and you'll feel sad and angry that your bag with the biggest numbers died in order for the game to up the emotional ante. Any kind of backstory or exploration of motive from all the unique characters is essentially nonexistent and any kind of investment into the characters is impersonal; I truly wish the party members were more fleshed out in their relationship to Brad. 

Technical gripes aside, LISA offers a bold exploration of depression, domestic abuse, drug addiction, and gender roles to name just a few themes. A Mad Max-esque vision of the darkness in human hearts is complimented by the carefully limited color palette and dirge-like music and in other sections contrasted by the bright colors and strange rave-like music as some celebrate to the end as they lose inhibition and control of themselves. An intriguing exploration of Brad's past, his mental image of his father, and motives for saving Buddy is examined, but the weak pacing of the game places all the interesting story elements in the far back as the first two-thirds of the story is narrative cannon fodder that focuses more on the environment and its inhabitants rather than Brad. I feel that the storytelling could've been more homogenous rather than having a stark break between sections as it would streamline the storytelling process and prevent elements of the plot from being forgotten or becoming stale.

"All I got from this game is that humans are trash, life sucks, and anything good that comes to you is taken away"

Ultimately, LISA is a clear example of an intriguing narrative executed poorly as frustrating mechanics and a lack of technical polish tarnishes the game's victories. Suffering is another theme conveyed in the game, but the game seems to feel that frustration and suffering are the same thing. Brad's suffering mechanically translates to a series of difficulty spikes in-game but the game backs itself into a corner when the game has neither the complexity nor the depth required to create a smooth spectrum of difficulty. Instead, what we have instead is essentially a numbers game that artificially increases the game's difficulty. This effect is exponentially made worse when you simply can't care enough for your companions to really make a meaningful choice when, for example, choosing which companions should live and which should die.

LISA is certainly a dash of the strange. It's eclectic style and oftentimes clunky revivals of old technical tropes found in older RPGs makes for one peculiar game. I have to praise the game's humble beginnings as a Kickstarter project and the subsequent follow through to see the game onto Steam, completed and even expanded upon with an additional DLC storyline which builds upon the original game's plot. Still, I hesitate in recommending the game. I don't think LISA is for everyone; the game isn't broadly appealing but the game does have a strong cult following within the gaming community. If you're looking for something close to home in terms of an RPG but strange and different in unsettling ways, LISA may be the game you're looking for.