It's been a while since the Gaming Desk posted anything here. Last told, the Retired Old Man had just wrapped up playing Mass Effect 1 back on January 15, and was looking forward to playing ME 2 and ME 3. By mid-February, the entire Mass Effect trilogy was completed, and the ROM had found the sci-fi games quite rewarding, especially for the intelligent and well-written storyline.
Valentine's Day found the ROM celebrating by launching the game Horizon: Zero Dawn. It was just about on that same date that the game's sequel, Horizon: Forbidden West, dropped to much critical acclaim. Frankly, the ROM thought Zero Dawn was a masterpiece, and would put it in the top pantheon of games played, right alongside The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. Zero Dawn didn't hurt itself at all with the storyline (especially the voice acting of the great Ashley Burch), but what really drew him in were the incredibly beautiful graphics and the gameplay mechanics. Rarely has he enjoyed killing enemies as much as he enjoyed taking down the big mechanical beasts in Zero Dawn. The Gaming Desk could go on, but we've come to understand that no one really cares what a 68-year-old ROM thinks about a video game, and with the release of Forbidden West, the praises of the Horizon franchise have been pretty well documented lately.
We'll add this note in praise of Zero Dawn, though - unlike a lot of other games, where the initial weapon you receive is no more effective than a pea-shooter, you're given a fairly efficient bow and arrow right at the beginning of the game and are taught how to take down at least some of those mechanical beasts with a single shot. It's encouraging to be good at something right at the start of a game and be able to one-shot your enemies, and while the challenges rise throughout the game, your skill sets do as well. Some of the latter bosses are quite challenging, but the game gives you confidence from the outset that you can figure out a strategy to beat even the gnarliest beast under the most challenging of conditions. It's a refreshing change from so many other games that seem to want to beat you down and break your spirit at the start, only to slowly allow you to rebuild and develop from there.
It took the ROM 183 hours over about 30 days to finally beat Zero Dawn, putting it between Far Cry 4 (177 hours) and Assassin's Creed: Origins (190 hours) in terms of hours played. The ROM didn't record the exact day he wrapped the game up and moved on to the next, but his Steam statistics indicate he finally reached Level 60, the highest level (we think) on March 14, and got his first "achievement awards" on his next game, Days Gone, on March 18, so you do the math.
The ROM didn't like Days Gone at first. That's not unusual - he often finds a new game to be awkward and unsatisfying during his first several hours of playing. The controls are different from the last game played and therefore seem "wrong," the look and general aesthetics are different, and it's simply not the same game experience. This perception is especially acute after completing a game as fulfilling and satisfying as Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Days Gone is the story of an outlaw biker surviving a zombie apocalypse in rural Oregon. If you think Sons of Anarchy meets The Walking Dead, you're not too far off the mark. While the ROM enjoyed at least the first couple seasons of both shows, Days Gone didn't look or feel like Zero Dawn, and the ROM had concluded that after a streak of highly enjoyable games (Far Cry 6, the Mass Effect trilogy, and Horizon: Zero Dawn) he had finally downloaded a dud. He didn't have nearly enough ammunition to fight the first of the zombie enemies (Only three bullets? Really?), his motorcycle ran out of fuel and had to be walked over a kilometer back to base camp, and he kept dying at every hostile encounter. It was the direct, polar opposite of the initial Zero Dawn experience.
But he soon realized that Days Gone is as much of a stealth game as a shooter game, and that foraging for ammo, fuel, and parts is a major component of gameplay. He was soon drawn in by the beautifully rendered Oregon scenery, and as it developed, the storyline wasn't too bad, either. The game's not perfect - it's not in the pantheon with The Witcher and Zero Dawn, but it's at least on par with any of the Fallout games (which, despite its post-apocalyptic setting, it doesn't at all resemble). The ROM soon found himself anxious to start playing again, to go back to that Pacific Northwest countryside and become that biker character again. He's probably about halfway through right now, and as of today, he's finding the game most enjoyable.
Days Gone is played from the POV of a male character and most but not all of the significant NPCs are also male. It's a fairly macho game to be sure, but the female characters are well portrayed and are free from sexist stereotypes. Unlike, say, Red Dead Redemption, where it seems like all the women are either prostitutes, alcoholics, or both, the female characters in Days Gone have fully developed characters with well-formulated back stories, and don't exist merely as eye candy for adolescent male players or for the gratification of the main male character. It's a decidedly non-sexist game, even if you don't have the option to pick your character's gender.
So the Far Cry 6, Mass Effect trilogy, and Horizon: Zero Dawn streak of enjoyable games continues after all. Here's a list of games the ROM has already purchased but not yet started.
- A Plague Tale
- Fallout 3
- Tomb Raider (2013)
- Rise of the Tomb Raider
- Cities Skylines
Anyone have any recommendations on which game to play next after Days Gone?
No comments:
Post a Comment