So sometime around midnight last evening, after some 102 hours of gameplay, I completed the main storyline of Assassin's Creed: Origins.

It was a very good game and I'd rank it right up there with the best of the role-playing games (RPGs).  It didn't have the outstanding story-telling of Witcher 3, but then again it doesn't have Andrzej Sapkowski novels to support it, but it was much more involved than a straight-up action game or shooter.  The graphics were outstanding and even breathtaking at times, the quests varied enough to not seem repetitive, the characters were interesting, and it even had educational value (I now know much more about Ptolemaic-Dynasty Egypt than I did before).  The game was produced by Ubisoft, the creators of Far Cry 4, and while the mechanics of the game were very similar to Far Cry, Ubisoft managed to smooth out the bugs and idiosyncrasies that made game-playing in Far Cry so unnecessarily frustrating.

It was my first Assassin's Creed game, so I was genuinely surprised by the whole Animus device (no spoilers - about the Animus I will say no more).  I'm told Origins is the best A.C. game, at least in a while, so I won't go back and play earlier versions, but I am intrigued about the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, which reportedly will continue the story from where Origins left off.

There's still plenty of gameplay available for me in the game - there are still a lot of side quests yet to be completed and the game allows you to switch and play as different characters to keep things interesting.  But I know from past experience with other games that playing the side quests without the main storyline to give things structure and flow will seem pointless after a few days and that soon I'll be searching for a new game to play.

Video games, with their complex, non-linear storylines, their action and excitement, first-person point-of-view, and compelling fantasy content, have taken over the role that cable t.v. used to have for me and that Netflix now has for many people, namely the predominant time-waster in life.  The 102 hours I played is roughly equivalent to two-and-a-half weeks of a full-time job, but I did this all in my spare time between last night and Memorial Day weekend. 

Final thought: I can't rank all the games that I've played the past couple years or so linearly, such as  No. 1 on down to No. x, but I can group them into the following categories:

God Tier:   The Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed: Origins

Patrician Tier:  Fallout 4, Skyrim

Okay Tier:  Fallout: New Vegas, Borderlands 2 

Pleb Tier: Far Cry 4, Minecraft 

Meh Tier:  Wolfenstein II, Everyone's Gone To The Rapture