I so want to be as hyped as everyone else for the next red dead but I'm just not feeling it. Right off the bat here I'm gunna say that I am of Native American heritage and that will color a lot of my opinions here. Now I did play Red dead redemption and did not nearly feel as harsh about it. Something about John Marston did not repel me(although I hated his son). The gameplay was great the setting was gorgeous and I enjoyed the story. My sister and I had a lot of fun in the limited online as well. We generally played as various minorities which was nice for a change, the native characters were all right not great. Mostly played Hispanic characters which is the other half of our heritage.

As one of the more forgotten and marginalized people in this country I have a question for the Caucasian gamers here, would have said white but that felt like more of an attack and that's not what I'm going for. Does it feel good to have these characters that represent you? I'm one of the seemingly few that liked Assassin's creed 3, will get into this in a different blog I really like that game. In the most recent Red dead gameplay video the camp or family as they put it is pretty much just Assassin's creed 3. Family was a huge part of AC3 but never mentioned. Anyway back to the protagonist question, I know that I love it when a character comes around that represents at least a little of my heritage.

I don't want to get off into too much of a tangent here back to Red dead 2. So in the first Gameplay it was revealed you would be Morgan an enforcer for Dutch's gang. So right away I see this dude and he's a John Wayne looking Indian killer that's just my first impression then he goes on to rough fools up for money and be an all around dirtbag. This recent video helped a little with the player choice coming into play. We'll see if the honor system can make Morgan a cool dude.

So the diversity looked a bit sparse in the new gameplay, let's see we have one black woman and what looks like a mixed African American-native American cause if they be mixed we get both minorities. I'm not shitting on this game in anyway I just feel nothing for it outside of gameplay the gameplay looks cool. I'm a damn fool and will end up playing this anyway hehe but just had to say what I felt as a Native. Feel free to chat me up on this I think about it more than perhaps I would like.

So I'm gonna start off here with my Battletech/Mechwarrior past. My introduction to the Battletech universe was through a friend who had a roleplaying book I would look through reading about all the awesome mechs. I was pretty young at the time and never got into pen and paper roleplay. On a side note my dad and I rented Robot Jox back in the day and I love him for it, I miss renting movies based on the cover. I've spent the most time with MechWarrior 3 and MechWarrior online and I loved it, the weapons,mechs,heat management. Anyways I never really got into the lore which I hope to rectify soon(any recommendations would be welcome).

I went with the Capellan Confederation, mostly because I like Chinese history and what not. I didn't really think hard on this one. If I had done more reading and dove into the lore it might be different but hey. I chose my family goes bankrupt because I wanted to go for a more mundane origin making me a little more of a nobody. My next decision was to be an escort for caravans after I struck out on my own, a mall cop yes but that's what I was going for.

Story spoilers ahead!

So before my family went bankrupt they hired a dude called "mastiff" to train me as a MechWarrior. Years later while mallcopping he finds me and says hey yo I got this job for you protecting high lady Arano. Sure why not what could go wrong, anyways things go wrong and I'm on my own in frontier space. 3 years go by and I'm running the mercenary group and we may be in a little debt(a lot). My first mission out I get Dekker killed due to my own inexperience, he got absolutely pasted by turrets because I had him up front in a damn spider. We get betrayed by our employer's but are able to stomp them out with little to no trouble. Poor Dekker we hardly knew ye. I didn't even read his bio.

House Alor, what I decided to name my group. My characters name is Kal Alor the mechs name is Krypton(I have a thing for superman lore). Anyways House Alor takes on a few missions one in particular we have to run down a convoy supplying terrorists. My lance takes way too much time destroying the escort mechs while the convoy runs for it we eventually take out the excort and sprint for the convoy. This is where I decided to use jump jets to cut them off since they were above me on the ridge. It felt so good to take 3 building sized mechs fly them up and literally stomp this convoy into the ground. No casualties and very little damage but memorable anyway.

House Alor spends a few missions taking out pirates and paying the bills, a particular pilot callsign "glitch" is growing on me. Her dialogue is very happy and upbeat despite her backstory which boils down to her doing time in maximum security due to a "glitch". Her lines are fun and she is putting in work, the other 2 pilots callsign "behemoth" and "medusa" seem cool but not having the same reaction to them. They are my tank and scout respectively.

I soon get my first priority mission to raise a 200 year old ship called the Argo. Expected some turret and light mech resistance and a little more resistance from the pirate leader Grim Sybil. Everything goes pretty well with minimum damage we take out the turrets an radar towers. Then it comes to defending the Argo while the engineer get it running, this mission is peppered with some pretty great crackled transmissions from your team and the woman trying to get the Argo up and running. Sometimes you forget the little people on foot up in your ivory mech.

Grim Sybil shows up with another mech that we rock right out of the gate but won't go down. They focus fire Glitch but she is holding on, we miss some easy shots here which is frustrating but that's how it goes. Glitch after running for a bit but I guess not far enough gets knocked down. Grim Sybil jump jets to a nearby hill and proceeds to melt glitch into the dirt overheating her mech. After this we make quick work of Grim Sybil but she has given us our first real loss. I do get a pretty sweet shot of the Argo lifting off along with some sad music coincidentally for glitch.

I really like this game and I believe it's just going to get better from here out.

This was originally posted in the waypoint forums May earlier this year.

I love superman and hopefully I always will. I don't really see his power level as a problem it just forces the writer to be clever about it, also the boy scout aspect of the character turns some people off I believe. I know as a child I was all about the "cool" characters like venom and wolverine and not really caring for the squeaky clean heroes.

Admittedly the reason I started liking superman was his power level. I remember reading the death of superman trade paperback and seeing the double page spread of doomsday and superman trading blows with the windows of the skyscraper blowing out from the concussion. I remember thinking that was so cool, I had a similar thing happen with iron man.

Anyway as I read more and more I gained more appreciation for the character and his strength both physically and morally. Superman has to be stronger morally or he will be like most kryptonians who come to earth and just try to do as they please. One small slip and he becomes injustice superman. Some of my favorite superman panels or moments come when he does something fairly normal.

I remember a couple of years ago he was stopping some crime and this kids bicycle wheel got all bent and messed up superman said hey later on I'll come by and help you fix that. So superman stops by later with some tools and just spends some time with this kid fixing the bike not using any powers just being a cool guy. I love these moments when he does something without the powers like the all star superman suicide talk. We need more of this superman and less of the injustice superman although I do enjoy that take as well.

I'm gunna say something crazy and say that I loved man of steel. That movie showed Clark making some mistakes like destroying that dudes truck sure he deserved it but he really messed that dudes life up. I do have one problem with pa Kent saying that maybe he should have let those kids drown, I just don't feel like he would say that. Other than that I loved Costner's Jonathan Kent, some people said his death was pointless but I saw it as Clark seeing how he could have prevented this and serves as an example of how he could help people. Also the guilt over letting his father die.

I also really liked how they portrayed Krypton it was not a perfect society by any means what with the no natural birth and forced careers. General Zod was fantastic everything he did from his point of view was justified, he was literally born to protect the planet and his people. After the hope of turning earth into new Krypton is lost and he's sitting there with the ash telling Clark that he took everything from him. I felt a little bad for him, yes he's going to kill everyone on the planet but this was his purpose.

So before I saw this movie I heard about superman killing and I of course jumped to the "oh no" what have they done conclusion. After seeing the movie I turned completely around, Zod forced superman's hand to cause him pain and anguish. Superman was forced to take a life and on top of that Zod was the last of his people. It's getting me a little choked up just thinking about it, the cry of pain after what he was forced to do, also Lois seeing all this was perfect as well. Also I just want to address the "he could have found another way" argument. While I do think he could have eventually how many more people would have died, Zod was not going to stop he said so himself.

Anyways if you read all of this thank you, I love Superman and will gladly talk more about it.

So yea I'm a little late to the party. I did start Horizon when it originally came out early in the year and I was super impressed with the look of the game. The writing was good and I especially liked how little kid Aloy interacted with a hologram she found, the way she voices it back and just everything about that scene was impressive.

Then the culture appropriation really kicked in, so I'm native American and hearing characters(white characters) throw around the word brave did not sit well. It's also not just that, everything about these people is taken from other cultures. Also when you get into the meat of the main story these appropriations make no sense. There is one scene from a hologram later that could explain the "braves" term outside of the real word meaning. I bailed on the game, either I got bored or something else stole me away. Anyway I just wanted to get that out of the way, now let's just discuss the story and character. Although feel free to hit me up on the cultural appropriation.

So due to some life choices I have a ton of time on my hands and the games this year are so good and so long. A few days ago I resolved to finally get into and finish Horizon zero dawn. The game starts very strong introducing you to Aloy and her place in this world. Everyone loves a good montage into adulthood, right from the beginning Aloy is presented as a strong character who will not let others bring her down while also being compassionate(although how much of that is her genes, more on this later). That could also just be the way I played the character and her choices you can make.

The one thing I will say about this game is while the side quests are decent I never felt the need to do them. The main story is so damn good that I just needed to know more and more. Also I'm not gunna lie just walking around and navigating the world is a chore. Machines are always in packs and they always want to kill you when I just want to run by to the next mission. The main reason to play this game is the main story of how the world ended all those years ago.

So the main story missions that involve the tribes of horizon are ok but are bogged down by the appropriation, the Nora that Aloy comes from is an amalgam of various different tribal cultures in our universe. The Carja are just Mayan/Aztec culture. The Oseram I am not completely sure but I'm sure it's stolen as well. It feels all very lazy, which hurts to say because I really like this game. There are some decent characters inside of these tribes but Aloy and her connection to the machines is what this game is.

Ok let's get into the guts of the robocalypse. So kind of early on Aloy sees a hologram of Ted Faro consulting Dr. Elisabet Sobeck on a mistake he made. Turns out this is a world ending mistake, so Faro runs a company who makes "peacekeeping" robots that can use biomass as fuel. Something goes wrong in the code and they start consuming the planet. Sobeck tells Faro that there is now way to fix this and that the earth has 16 months left, holy crap. Sobeck says we need to get project zero dawn done before the 16 months is up. Of course that's where it stops and the player has to run to the next installation, which turns out to be U.S. robotics command. How can you stop and do side quests after hearing that.

So wandering around these various installations you find e-mails and voice recordings. Before finding out what zero dawn is you hear how humanity is throwing everything they got at these robots to buy time for zero dawn. This one voice recording recounts how they set the ocean on fire to slow the robots down, about how they fought slag covered robots for about an hour before the swarm showed up. The tired voice on this person and the fact that you know they have that thousand yard stare recounting this hit me pretty hard. They go on to recount dropping buildings on the swarm and giving literally everyone a weapon to slow down the swarm.

The civilians are told that zero dawn will generate the codes to stop the swarm but it's just a lie to get more bodies in there to slow them down. It is immensely sad, you find a hologram later of the general who sent all these billions to their deaths. He laments the fact that he killed more people than all the monsters of history. All this time I am thinking damn I want to be playing that game. So all of this sounds awesome in a tragic way. Strange how the past is always more epic than the story of the moment, I'm looking at you star wars and lord of the rings.

So we come to it, project zero dawn and the whole reason I am writing this. Turns out it's a terraforming project using A.I.. Doctor Sobeck surmised that the only way was to rebuild the earth after it was devastated and to use the population as a shield. So they name the main a.i. Gaia and her subroutines after various other greek gods based on what they do. Apollo is the sum of humanity's knowledge(this one is important and we'll get back to it). Hades is a failsafe in case the terraforming fails and they need to try again, hades will scorch the earth so Gaia can try again. Turns out hades is the reason all these machines are being jack asses and he's the main villain.

There is much more to get into about Gaia and hades and the connection to Aloy's origins. The thing that really got me about this game is what I believe to be one of Gaia's attempts at repopulating. So you go into mother's cradle which is in nora territory and where Aloy's comes from. It's basically an installation to breed and teach humans to repopulate. When you first walk in you see children's drawing's everywhere on the walls. these are not pleasant drawings and right away something is off. There are a few bodies here and there. You find these holograms of children playing with a a.i. trying to tell them to go to bed or something, the kids say nope guess what your not a real person. Right away you can tell this will not go well. The children also call the various a.i. mom or dad, which is heartbreaking in it's own way.

I have to say the sadness creeps in as you watch these knowing these kids aren't going to get what they need from these machines. You get various holograms of machines and when I say machines I mean a.i., not knowing how to deal with teenage humans. When they get out of line they say "let's go outside and blow of some steam". The kids are also clearly not growing up right they still speak and whine like children when they should be further developed. One of the last recording shows a machine talking to a group of 18 year olds I think saying they need to go into the world and fend for themselves because there is no food left. The machine says "you need to take care of each other and be brave" the brave part could be used as an excuse for the "braves" thing. Anyway the children ask if they can come back if they get cold and of course the machine says no. It's goddamn heartbreaking but I do believe these kids are the first to start these other tribes we see like the nora, perhaps these are just nora ancestors.

So you may be asking what about Apollo the a.i. that was supposed to teach this new humanity. In one of the recordings you see the children asking if they can go into a particular door, there are windows off to the side so they can see this room but never enter. The machine says something about it being offline. So these kids grow up seeing all this immense space while essentially growing up in the living quarters. Later on we learn that Ted Faro is still alive and bunkered with the rest of the super smart survivors who built zero dawn. I was pretty pissed that he was still alive by the way, homie should have been put down. Anyway he surmises that this knowledge of humanity is something earned not given and erases Apollo. Now I assume that he was guilty over ending the world and wanted this knowledge to stay dead but that's just my theory. So Ted Faro master mistake artist condemns these children to grow up like this.

I got so sad after playing this maybe it was the acting but damn I thought about this for days. There is so much more to discuss but this was the main thing for me. I did not even get into the overall theme which is obtaining knowledge at any cost or stopping to think on whether or not you should. Ian Malcolm was right. Anyways I just needed to get this off my chest and if you want to talk some horizon hit me up. So much I didn't cover about sylens and hades and Aloy's origin, the tribal religions also I have not got into the dlc yet but I'll probably play it. Thanks for reading if you did.

First and foremost thanks to anyone actually taking the time to read this, Much appreciated. My name is Michael and I am 33 years old with a huge love for videogames. So I work at have worked at Tree Top for the last ten years and for the first 8 or so things seemed alright was making money the hours were ok. Found my girlfriend Brandy there, had plenty of money for games and other nerd like things I am into, had a house built with my family with a master bedroom downstairs for my parents with another master upstairs for my girlfriend and I. This all sounds great I know.

So the last couple of years or so I have just been angry. Mostly at my job that just feels like it is going to garbage more and more. So I work graveyard and it feels like we are largely forgotten, which I am sure is not the case but whatever. We are short at least two people a night sometimes more the people we do get in are unreliable at best. Cleanups are a nightmare since being shorthanded as well as people with little to no experience makes it frustrating as hell. Also getting trained people in position takes forever my girlfriend work 12 hour shifts for about 3 weeks straight which is ridiculous.

I feel like this job is sucking the life outta me, but what could I possibly do with just a high school education. Also I am not old by any means but it feels late for me to get into anything game related. My life is not bad by any means but I can't see myself at this job much longer, I want to spend the rest of my life doing something I want to do.