Sunday, April 20, 2014

Dishonored [Game][PC]

Amount Completed: 1 complete and very deadly play through

Dishonored is a first-person stealth (or optionally not stealth) game in which you play as an assassin (or optionally non-lethal assassin). The game plays out as a quest for revenge (or optionally quest for revealing the truth and saving some people) with a couple of twists and turns. While interesting I wish the story were a bit more involved. All the extra details that are written in little notes found throughout the game, while appreciated, did not add much to the potential grandeur of the larger story.

The game plays very well and allows for quite a bit of creative freedom on how to approach complex situations. Various patrolling guards, lights, and otherwise make for some tough spots to work through.

Additionally the game provides some non-standard extra powers to give you the often much-needed edge over the enemy. The extra powers can be selected to suit your desired style of play. I opted for the anyone-that-is-a-threat has to be removed approach so most of my extra powers were suited towards stealth and inflicting death upon the world. It should be noted that non-violent "enemy" characters were always carefully rendered unconscious and placed in a comfortable resting place.

Gut: Play it if you have any temptation to try a stealth game. It's one of the few I have played all the way through. While I felt the conclusion lacked a bit (especially in relation the to Outsider character) the journey was enjoyable. I might just play it again and be completely non-lethal.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim [Game][PC]

Amount Completed: Incomplete

Skyrim is Fallout: Really Old Vegas with dragons. As a first-person explore and battle role playing game Skyrim has arguably too much going on. After so many twists and branching side stories I lost track of what the main plot of the game even was. With the Dawnguard expansion installed I decided, after way too many hours, that I wanted to stop the Vampires from killing off people in towns (some of the merchants were dying... I need them to buy all the garbage I pick up!). After about 37,821 diversions along that storyline I finally just threw in the towel. I never did complete the vampire story line and completely quit the game.

The endless stream of bait and switch quest/story designs started to grate on me as I played more and more. The plot to various storylines moved so slowly due to the constant one off requests to "go this and do that, but to do that you'll need to do these 17 things, each of which will branch off into 37 other things." I really just lost track of what was going on and started to just look at the map and pick random locations to visit if a quest marker was present.

Gut: Skyrim can either be fun or a like having a second job depending how you play. Unfortunately for me I played it as though it were a second job. "Completionists" be wary of this game... I have a lot of respect for the product but I have had a lot more fun with other games requiring the same amount of play time investment.