From the Gaming Desk

 

Okay, just because the so-called "real world," you know, the "consensus reality" everyone seems to talk about all the time, is going to hell in a handbasket doesn't mean we can't escape from time to time into the virtual reality of a video game.

While the planet is overheating, while Russia is pushing civilization to the very brink of nuclear annihilation, while the Republican Party in America is conspiring to replace representative democracy with a form of Christian-fascist authoritarianism, while the American populace seems intent of murdering each other with high-capacity assault rifles, and while economic disparity widens, intolerance is on the increase, and polarization is becoming the dominant force in formerly polite society, the Retired Old Man has been amusing himself with a string of fairly entertaining video games. This year alone saw him complete the following games:

• Far Cry 6 - Far from a perfect game, and those who've criticized the game as a clone of the previous Far Cry games have a point.  But that formula developed by the previous games has been successful because quite frankly, the games are fun to play.  You play the games as a hero who learns of his abilities of create mayhem and succeed at asymmetrical combat, single-handedly overtaking heavily fortified enemy encampments.  Far Cry 6 takes place on a Caribbean island similar to Cuba, but who cares about the plot or the politics or the characters?  You get to shoot helicopters out of the sky with a backpack-mounted missile launcher, jump from aircraft and very high places equipped with a wingsuit and a parachute, and battle forces under the command of Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul).  Danny Trejo even shows up for a while playing himself.  Not the deepest intellectual experience, but lots of fun.
• The Mass Effect Trilogy - A series of well-written science-fiction games complete with their own backstories, lore, and mythology.  You play as the commander of a spaceship, a sort of James Kirk from the Star Trek series but whichever gender you choose, and engage in a literally intergalactic battle against multi-dimensional entities intent of annihilating existence itself.  Meanwhile, you have a large cast of characters for your crew, each with their own back story and quest lines, that you have to manage and keep in line.  Part of the charm of the series is following the development of video game technology from the first Mass Effect (2007) game to Mass Effect 2 (2010) to Mass Effect 3 (2012).  But the real satisfaction of the game comes from the way it reveals the histories, customs, and manners of the multiple species of aliens in your crew, all without being pedantic or boring, and not requiring the player to read volumes and volumes of embedded texts like the Elder Scrolls games (although there are embedded texts in the Mass Effect universe if one is curious to know more). A fun series of games with true role-playing attributes (decisions made in early gameplay have implications later in the games) and one the ROM would gladly replay, if not for the next game in the queue.
• Horizon Zero Dawn - While most of Western Civilization (as well as the East for all I know) was busy playing the sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, the ROM was playing the original Horizon Zero Dawn.  A masterpiece of a video game, a fine example of the potential games have to provide an immersive, compelling experience.  The gameplay is fun (a LOT of fun) and the storyline is interesting.  The great voice actor Ashley Burch does a fine job as the voice of the main character, Aloy, and there are several other interesting characters in the game.  The setting and imagined world of the game - a far, far future Earth where a medieval-like civilization thrives amid the ruins of our current technology - is pretty original and unlike almost any other game, movie, or book I've experienced.  Much of the gameplay involves hunting or battling large, robotic animals, and both the fighting and the ultimate victories are quite satisfying.  Early in the game, you're given the weapons and lessons needed to "one-shot" some of those beasts, and the satisfaction of the sight and the sound of a mechanical raptor collapsing can't be understated. I'm looking forward to a replay and also to playing the sequel, Forbidden West. Truly one of the best games I've ever played.
• Days Gone - A change of pace, at least for me.  Bikers vs. zombies in rural Oregon. Sons of Anarchy meets The Walking Dead.  And just like those two television shows, not the deepest intellectual experience but if you turn off just a very small portion of your brain, a lot of fun.  The motorcycle simulator is well done and the scenery of the Oregon countryside is frequently breathtaking.  The "zombies" aren't actually zombies, per se, that is, not reanimated dead, but more like frenzied, mindless, cannibalistic victims of some virus a la 28 Days Later. The storyline is simple enough not to be a distraction but not so simple as to insult the intelligence. The real kick of the game, though, is battling hordes of the zombies - huge swarms of 100, 200, even in one case 500, of the monsters - huge masses of more bodies that you can shoot with your weapons and just as fast as you can run.  The first encounter with a swarm is truly a terrifying moment, and I imagine for most players, certainly this ROM, a fatal one.  You have to come up with clever techniques to either lead the swarm into a tight alley, where you can incinerate the trapped zombies with molotovs and napalm, or to spread out the heard where you can pick them off individually one by one.  But either way, once a swarm starts chasing you, it's a totally immersive, if terrifying, encounter and you're not thinking of anything else until the last one is dead.  And then you get to ride around on your motorcycle some more.  

Didn't intend to write capsule reviews of all those games when I started this post, but you never know how these things go.  Anyway, after six highly enjoyable games (four if you count the Mass Effect trilogy as a single game), I finally hit a relative dud.  Although I've liked the Fallout games I've played so far - Fallout 4, New Vegas, and the rebooted version of Fallout 76 (hated the original release of 76, though) - I was disappointed by Fallout 3, the game I played after Days Gone.  Some reviewers and a large portion of the Reddit community consider Fallout 3 to be "one of" the best of the series (New Vegas is widely regarded as the "very best").  I found 3 to be boring, poorly designed, and under-illuminated (the "atmospherics" praised by many reviewers apparently just means many of the settings are so poorly lit that one can barely see).  The game was released in 2008, an eternity ago in video-game years, and some of the shortcomings may be due to the technology available to the game designers back then, although Mass Effect 1 was actually released a year earlier and doesn't feel nearly as clunky.

But anyway, I slogged my way through the game, completing quests that didn't interest me and fighting enemies I couldn't care less about. What I found most interesting was the backstory and lore of some of factions of later Fallout games, like the early version of the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave (I was never really sure who the Enclave even were until I played 3). I bought the "Game of the Year" edition of the game, including all of the subsequent downloadable content and to be fair, I found the game's DLCs rather enjoyable, at least compared to the base game.  But to be honest, if I had only bought the base game, I probably wouldn't have added the DLCs based on that primary experience.

Fallout 3 is a big game, especially with all of the DLCs.  According to Steam, I started the game on April 19 and despite my reservations, I managed to put some 116½ hours of play into it, putting it right between Far Cry 3 (113½ hours) and Far Cry 5 (120½ hours) in terms of hours played. 

About a week ago (and I'm just now getting to the point I originally wanted to make when I started this post), I fired up another vintage, 2007 game, Bioshock.  Technically, Bioshock's play mechanisms were more like the enjoyable Mass Effect (2007) experience than that of the clunky Fallout 3 (2008).  In fact, I'd go even further and say it was quite good, despite being 15 years old.  It's a short game - I completed it in a mere 18 hours - but I have to say it's one of the most original, unique games I've played.  It's set in an underwater city, Rapture, designed and built by a sort of John Galt inventor and industrialist, who spouts nearly non-stop Ayn Rand-type philosophy.  It's particularly satisfying killing him in-game (I beat him to death with his own golf club) and finally shutting him up (sometimes I wish I had that option for random dudes who for some reason want to argue with me about Objectivism).

But the game is so unique and original that at times I had no idea what was going on.  You have the typical first-person shooter weapons - pistol, machine gun, a flame-thrower, and if all else fails, a good old reliable pipe wrench - but you also acquire some mutant, recombinant-DNA abilities powered by something called "Adam."  Or is it "Eve?" - there's an "Eve" you're supposed to monitor as well as "Adam."  

And then the quests often get quite convoluted.  At one point, while you're trying to get to a safer, higher floor of the city, your pathway gets blocked by debris.  The plot then goes something like the door to the alternative pathway is locked, so you need to find the key.  But the path to the last known location of the key is guarded by a character who demands you fight some other opponent before he lets you pass, but that opponent can only be beaten by acquiring another "Adam" (or "Eve") superpower at some other, distant location.  So off you go, looking for that power, all this while you're getting randomly attacked by random enemies of various strengths and abilities.  By the time you get the power, beat the opponent, are allowed to pass the guardian, find the key, and then unlock the door, you've forgotten (I'd forgotten) why you wanted to go through in the first place.

But on one level, who cares?  It's about playing the game, and the game play was fun.  So much so, that after completing the game in the mere 18 hours, I've already started a second replay - maybe it will all make more sense to me the second time through.

So that's been my secret, behind-the scenes, virtual second life spent away from the wicked real world of ours.  I can be upset about the recent spate of mass killings (I am!), outraged about Putin's decimation of Ukraine (the bastard!), and angry over the latest Republican shenanigans and flaccid Democratic response (are you fucking kidding me?), or I can go virtual and save a Caribbean banana republic from itself, command a spacecraft, hunt post-apocalyptic animatronics, or shoot zombies from my motorcycle.  I can try to negotiate peace in a post-nuclear dystopia or do whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing in Bioshock's Rapture.

The advantage of the virtual alternative is that if I don't like the way it's all going, I can just turn the computer off, or write a snarky review on my blog.