rariow

I'm about 5 hours into Horizon: Zero Dawn and that game's world completely took me by surprise. I knew about the robot dinosaur gimmick and that was about it (I was sort of out of the games loop when the game was coming out and recently picked it up on a random whim without any research). I really didn't expect the worldbuilding to be so cool and detailed. You really get this feeling of ages and ages of history leading up to this point, and while there is a few archetypes thrown in there on a macro level (noble honor-obsessed tribal people and crafty, deceptive imperial types) when you zoom into the detail of the culture it's actually made up of really unique individual bits. There's also surprising depth to the writing that I'm not used to in this type of games, like how the outcast lady who's only allowed to speak in prayer very clearly says specific prayers to thank Aloy after you do the quest, but she's too unused to people to get it and gets sulky for not being thanked, or the guy who's clearly suffering from some sort of mental illness but the super-religious tribespeople chalk it down to the spirits of the unfaithful talking to him. I've only barely explored outside the tutorial area, so it's possible the game loses a lot of that, but so far I'm super impressed.

I've decided to re-play the entire Mass Effect series as a run-up to playing my recently purchased cheap copy of Andromeda. I've got to re-playing Mass Effect 3, and splurged on the Leviathan and Citadel DLC (already had Omega from earlier). I'm reminded why despite all the ending shenanigans that was my favorite game in the series. My opinion of Mass Effect 1 grew even more, so I think that's my new favorite (I suppose I'm a hipster who likes ME2 the least now, despite that game still being one of my absolute favorites of all time), but I'm pretty sure I like ME3 more than ever. It looks gorgeous (game's five years old now and I swear it looks better than some stuff coming out today, and runs super smooth), and I still maintain it contains the best moments in the entire series (The ends of the Tuchanka and Rannoch arcs in particular are both amazing). I love the way it really sets up the feeling of dread as the Reapers are taking over the galaxy and various locations get more and more beat up, it's very good at making it feel like you're living in the end days and fighting a loosing war against an overwhelming apocalyptic force. I think this, plus being overshadowed by the ending controversy, is what makes the game often be seen as weaker than ME2: Its focus is in a pretty different spot from the first two, being much more of a tone piece than a story-driven experience. The cast of characters is also great, as one would expect from BioWare, and the characters that have been with you since Mass Effect 1 are particularly strong (especially Ashley and Liara, back from a somewhat lacking showing in the second game, Liara in LotSB aside).

Leviathan is a fun little romp. It has my respect for answering a question I didn't think needed answering and making me glad it got answered, and the journey to get there has plenty of fun setpieces and intriguing little moments. It's a far step from the underwhelming Omega DLC, and stands up to the very high standard that Mass Effect 2's DLC set. It's a real good piece of lore with a bunch of fun action setpieces attached to it.

The thing I really want to celebrate is Citadel though. Holy shit! The actual story of the DLC is fine. It's a fairly unremarkable and surprisingly shlocky little action romp with a decent amount of good character banter and several attempts at implementing new mechanics, all at varying levels of success. It's a good amount of fun, definitely worth the time it takes to play through. But the stuff after that? Wow! A full new area on the Citadel that looks incredible, with tonnes of environmental details, "pass-by" conversations and absolute boatloads of things to do, including decently-sized (and mostly excellent) dialogue scenes for most of the main characters from ME3 and a good amount of ones from ME1 and ME2, a fully functional horde-mode score-attack arena thing where you get to use and level up damn near the entire party from both the previous games with their skills re-imagined to fit the updated ME3 skill system, a tonne of fun little space-arcade games and, most importantly, a fantastic final party that's funny and nostalgic all in one, designed to serve as a final hurrah for one of the greatest casts of characters in all of videogames. Honestly, Citadel could not have had story content at all and just been the stuff you unlock after it and been worth the asking price. As stands, Citadel is by far my favorite piece of DLC for any video game (unless you count full expansion packs like Oblivion's Shivering Isles as DLC) and far surpasses any other DLC in the Mass Effect series. I say this as someone who for years held up Mass Effect 2 as the shining beacon of DLC quality, the game that really set the bar and never really got surpassed. Lair of the Shadow Broker, Zaeed, Kasumi and the criminally underappreciated Overlord were all absolutely fantastic pieces of content. Citadel blows it all out of the water. It honestly might be the absolute best part of the Mass Effect series, which is one of the absolute best video game series of all time.

This is actually something that bothers me more the goofier the game gets. When it's something relatively serious like Skyrim or Xenoblade I don't have trouble believing that the shopkeeper doesn't know that I'm actually a legendary hero of prophecy. To, say, a merchant in Nopon Village I'm some weirdo with a strange sword, and I don't really have any proof that I'm the world's best hope, any shmuck could wander in and start claiming to have the real deal Monado and be able to see the future to try and get a discount. Even when there's some proof I could provide, like say a dragon shout in Skyrim, people are very good at rationalizing why it shouldn't be THEM that takes the bullet and gives away a full set of Daedric armor for free. I see this situation going very similarly in real life. In stuff like Mario RPGs though... We're the Mario brothers! Come on, you know we'll use this to save the Mushroom Kingdom for the eighteen millionth time, and money obviously has little to no value in this world. The goofiness makes me more willing to believe people would recognize and go out of their way to help the heroes.

I've not played 5 yet, but I have played all of the other ones. I'd say P4, easily. I mean, it's my favorite game of all time, so it's kind of to be expected. 1 is not a good game, both parts of 2 have jank that really bring them down, and I think 3 is essentially just a half-step towards making the great game that is 4 (4 really does just feel like a more polished version of 3 with the added benefit of much better writing, even if I think the setting is portrayed better in 3 FES). I'd argue that re-releases with extra content like FES or Golden aside, each game got better. I unfortunately do not currently own any PlayStation console though, but I am desperately saving up for a PS4 to play 5.