Skyrim VR: Why the Stormcloaks are Basically the Alt-Right

It’s been a weird few months in the real world.  Like many other gamers, it sometimes helps me leave it all behind by venturing into the fantasy world.  Most recently, I got the inclining to play Skyrim.  But not just any Skyrim… Skyrim VR.  Oh yeah, I wanted to feel the dragon fire…

I finally updated my graphics card, and after what must have been about 4 hours of me screwing with HDMI ports, my Drives, Oculus customer service… and then about 20 minutes of my wife solving all the problems instantly… I was able to immerse myself into Tamriel’s northern most region.

Now, as I’ve mentioned before I have NEVER beaten Skyrim’s story.  I get lost in all the side quests and plunging into caves and the littlest nooks and cranies.  Then a new patch for WoW comes out and I’m pretty much done.  I’d like to think that a VR setup, with a new graphics card, is finally the play through I’ll be the game in.

I’d like to believe my character is the best suited for it to.  While melee combat feels a bit clunky and unreal, archery is AMAZING.  It is, if anything, more realistic and more satisfying.  I decided that I wanted to go for a more Archer/Soldier vibe than a sneaker/assassin vibe, mostly because Skyrim Vr requires you to actually crouch in order to go into sneak mode.  It can get a little hard on the legs to just stay in a squatting position through a whole dungeon.

Naturally, this made me think about which side I would pick in Skyrim’s most noticeable side-quest, the Civil War. Typically, I’m a rebel through and through, Browncoats and Rebel Alliance all the way.  Something about the rules of Fantasy seem to dictate that rebelling is always the good side.  Perhaps it’s because rebellion is just a natural fit for narrative conflict.  I made this decision early on.  Some may remember that on the road from Riverwood to Whiterun, you come across a pack of Imperial Guards escorting a Stormcloak prisoner.  Without much thought, I killed the guards and freed the prisoner and went about my way.  Next stop, Windhelm to start the Dark Brotherhood quest and probably join up with the army.

When I walked through the gates I came to a situation that basically came the real work crashing back to me.  Some might recall that when first walking into the city you come across a scripted event where two Nords men are yelling at a Dark Elf woman, claiming that her “kind” shouldn’t be allowed in Skyrim.  It reminded me that this kind of behavior is present throughout the rest of the Stormcloak storyline (which I have finished).

Basically, the Stormcloaks hate the Imperials.  And for some pretty legit reasons.  For one, the Imperials don’t allow Nords to worship one of their Gods (Talos).  For another, the Imperials are basically just patsies for a group of Elves.  This seems to be a perpetual reminder to the Nords of a huge failure in Nordic history.  Also, interact with any of the Imperials and they just kinda suck.  There is a dude in Whiterun I almost always kill.  His voice line is “Have you been to the cloud district, oh look at you, of course you haven’t”.  He just stinks of “eliteness”, and I hate him.

On the flipside, the Stormcloaks all seem like noble patriots who are fighting the good fight against these elite fatcats who are taking this country in the wrong direction.  Sure, this victory is only for the Nords and the Nordic way of life, but ultimately they aren’t the bad guys… right?  Sound familiar?

Bethesda games have always had an element of moral relativism in them.  Fallout 3 had the moral ranking system, but that was ultimately done away with in Fallout 4 where you could just make decisions at any moment.  This fixed a lot of issues where the moral characterization didn’t quite fit the context.  Like if I steal from someone who seems like a bad guy, why do I lose Karma?  Bethesda games ultimately evolved, starting with Skyrim, to do away with this system.  Stealing just became a law that was enforced regardless of ethics, and the main factions in the game (Brotherhood v. Institute in Fallout 4, Imperials v. Stormcloaks in Skyrim) were just a matter of perspective.  To ease that transition, Bethesda clearly made positive and negative qualities to both.  This ultimately made a more interesting and emersive experience in my mind.  Especially in Fallout 4, where I constantly ask myself if I’m on the right side.

In Skyrim though, I think I came to my set conclusion.  The Stormcloaks are basically the alt-right.  A group of racist xenophobes who justify their actions with their perception that returning the country to be governed by their own ideals, regardless of the changes that have been brought by previous administrations, is the greater good.  They see their enemies as betraying  the ideals of a nation that hasn't existed in quite some time who are elitists or negatively influenced by foreigners.

So naturally, I shot the racist Nord in the face and spent the next 20 minutes of what was supposed to be an enjoyable night running around Windhelm to escape the guards who were coming to arrest me.  The words “I’d rather die than go to prison” never seemed so fitting.

Post Script:  There is actually a huge amount of online discussion and videos around the topic of whether or not Stormcloaks are racist (as well as some pretty hilarious fan-made propaganda).  Please leave your comments below if you have any thoughts.

Late2theGame with The Last of Us

I finished The Last of Us: Remastered last night!  After hearing this game hyped by nearly everyone who owns a PS4, it was an easy choice to pick up along with Horizon: Zero Dawn and Detriot: Become Human along with my new console.  Looking back on my total experience, I can say that I enjoyed the story, but I had a few issues with the overall gameplay.  Obviously, spoilers ahoy!

Storyline:

To be honest, the first part of this story felt a little dry. I think partially because even by 2013, we were painfully familiar with zombie-genre tropes, making most developments feel pretty predictable.  The Walking Dead TV show came out in 2010, building off of older works like The Road and Dawn of the Dead that really showed (1) that the true horror of the zombie-apocalypse is not the zombies but the other humans and (2) if you meet a small child mid-game, that kid is definitely going to turn into a zombie.  Like the moment that kid was introduced, I said out loud to my wife “that kid is going to die” (prompting her to ask “what?!” as she was in the other room entirely not paying attention).
Games like Dying Light managed to create a world where the zombies were still a huge threat but the plot and conflict was still focused around two factions.  This made it feel different.  Not to mention that only a small subset of humans you interact with in dying light are evil. In The Last of Us, almost 95% of the humans you come in contact with want to kill you on sight because… reasons?

The second act of this game (I guess you could say Winter and on), I found extremely good.  To be honest, I think it saved the game for me.  I mean obviously the Walking Dead and The Road also had cannibals, but it’s really not overplayed and it’s an opportunity for Ellie to develop as a character. Up to this point in the game she has expressed a shocking resilience that almost mocks the situations, but only after the winter do we really see it affect her.  To me, the part of the game where I said “oh shit, it is a great game” was the start of the Spring, where it becomes clear that as Joel starts to see Ellie as more of a daughter, Ellie starts to becomes increasingly less attached and able to fill that void for him.  A total flip from the “Fall” and really quite moving and sad.

Then there is the ending.  Every part of the final cutscene in the hospital parking garage is extremely well-done.  It paints Joel as almost frightening.  I found myself on his side until it is mentioned that Ellie would want to die to give humanity the cure.  BUT what’s more amazing than Joel’s clear acknowledgment of this fact in his immediate reaction is how the cutscene is mashed together.  But showing us Joel driving away with Ellie before even revealing how the conversation in the hospital went, it shows that he doesn’t even really care what Ellie wants.  He made up his mind, and there was no changing it.  While the game could have made this more of an internal struggle, or even made it a choice, or left it open-ended, the fact that the game showed you the resolution before even showing the choice made such an amazing statement about who Joel is.

Gameplay:

I found the game slightly repetitive.  Though I will say that partially had to do with my familiarity with zombie-tropes mentioned above.  Additionally, I found the stealth element of the game to be nothing new.  While Joel and Ellie’s lack of combat mastery made failing stealth somewhat less dire than, say, in the Batman: Arkham games, I really didn’t feel a huge incentive to be stealthy.  Rarely was there the opportunity to avoid combat entirely, and even if there was it seemed like the easiest solution was to kill everyone.  In situations where it would seem to be narratively beneficial for Joel and Ellie to avoid combat altogether (think, the very last level where Joel is needs to sneak around like 10 armed men to save Ellie), there were hidden threats that seemingly spawned from nothing-ness to shoot me in the face.

That being said, it was narratively interesting for me as of course in this situation things would go horribly wrong.  There would obviously be limitations on Joel’s ability to hear someone not making any sounds behind a box.  In fact, in some of those situations (where I succeeded), it was extremely rewarding.  Still, this just drove home the idea that while stealth was an element of the game, direct conflict was the only way to victory. 

Another general issue I have with stealth games is that I really feel like I cheat the system sometimes.  I talked about this before when discussion Alien: Isolation, which I feel like did a fantastic job letting me off the hook.  In the Arkham games, I remember hiding behind tables with my pointy ears sticking out, walking almost next to someone to do a silent takedown.  I feel like the game lets me get away with little things and I have to suspend disbelief to really accept it.  In The Last Of Us, I feel like this is compounded.  I would sneak up to choke a guy out and he would literally yell “oh shit!”, but for some reason no one else in the room could hear him.  I would also find myself in situations where I’d fire a gun in a different room than an enemy (but absolutely in ear shot), and those outside the room would hardly notice.  This was especially true in the final encounter you have with the Infected where you are surprise-attacked after sneaking by at least 4 clickers and a big dude, and none of them seem to notice because they are slightly obscured by a bus.

This wouldn’t be much of an issue to me if it didn’t make up so much of the game.  The boss fight Ellie has in the second half of the game would have been an awesome element to add-in more frequently, mixing up combat to offer something slightly different.

Beyond the story reasons mentioned above, I think I also enjoyed the gameplay in the game during the second act because it featured more individual combat.  It was laughable sometimes to see Ellie stand up behind Joel and walk right in front of a dude with a gun, but he didn’t see anything because he didn’t see me.  Similarly, I could often tell if a situation was going to get tense when I was crouching and Ellie was walking upright behind me.  That being said, I would NEVER suggest taking away the bits of the game that had the two of them.  It would be interesting to see a mode of this game where Ellie’s placement mattered more to the stealth element.

Ok, seriously last gameplay complaint.  I don’t actually have a solution to this, but I’m really excited for when cover-based video games create a solution for how to introduce a surprise attack when the environment is literally built for a fight.  I’m thinking of the level at the hydro-electric plant where as soon as you walk in you see 3 boxes in a concave formation around a door with loose bricks all scattered around.  I saw that coming from a mile away.  It would be really cool to see this used to build tension, perhaps introducing it when there was no fight at all.

Conclusion:

Despite my nitpicking at the game play of this game, I did really like it.  I’m excited to play it again, and it will likely go down as one of my favorite games.  I need to keep in mind that this game came out 5 years ago and these elements have likely been addressed with new technology.  I’m really excited to see how some of these minor issues are addressed in Part II, and to return to this amazing story.

Why is Skyrim Not My Favorite Game When 100+ Hours of Playtime Says Otherwise?

A friend of mine recently texted me out of the blue, as he tends to, with the following interesting topic:

“I’ve put in about 80 hours on my current Skyrim character, had 127 on another, and like 40 more on a 3rd.  Yet I don’t consider Skyrim my favorite game, partly due to the occasional bugs.  Shouldn’t the 200+ hours of enjoyment equate to a game being my favorite?”

Needless to say, I found this to be really fun to think about.  I’ve sunk an equivalent amount of time into Skyrim.  Maybe more as I picked it up again when it was remastered and again when it came out for Oculus Rift (which, by the way, is pretty fun so long as you are good with the occasional bugs and only choose archery or magic).

Addiction

But I’ve also sunk time into games like Fallout (3, New Vegas, and 4) and World of Warcraft.  My time played for Warcraft is insane.  Of the ~14 years that game has existed, my time played is measured in months not hours.  But as I’ve mentioned previously, World of Warcraft is really not my favorite game, nor would I consider Skyrim or Fallout to be my favorites either. Now it’s hard to compare the addictiveness of World of Warcraft with Skyrim and Fallout. There are certain elements of WoW that make it addictive. Very addictive!

In the older days, there were horror stories about people dying due to lack of food or sleep after playing WoW for too long.  I think what tends to make WoW more addictive is the leveling and achievement process.  Sure, the Bethesda Power Couple has a leveling mechanic, and gaming consoles and Steam all have built in achievement systems, but the process of achieving and leveling are not gamified in the way they are for WoW.  For one thing, your level in Skyrim isn’t super important?  Sure you won’t get access to some cool skills (unless you are PunchCat, in which case you are born with everything that you need), but to progress through the game you will general level as fast as you need to complete content.  In WoW, you are literally grinding for XP so that you can face greater foes.  It is essential.

For another, earning achievements and levels happens far more often in WoW than Skyrim or Fallout.  This mechanic has been incorporated into everything from Overwatch to whatever game is on your iPhone.  Completing a simple task gives you a reward that lights up the screen: “Congratulations! You did it”.  This activates our pleasure center in our brain the same way any other addictive substance might, we naturally seek out what rewards with a pleasurable sensation, driving us to do it more and more.

Time to Play

Hmm, this got kind of dark. To be fair, I don’t think the only answer is that these games are addictive and that’s why we spend more time on them.  I think a big part of it is that Skyrim is never really over.  According to Howlongtobeat.com, Skyrim takes an impressive 32.5 hours to beat the main story, 107 hours for main+extras, and a massive 225 hours to complete everything.  To be honest, I’ve never beat Skyrim, and I don’t know if I know anyone personally who has.  For comparison, HowLongtoBeat clocked Fallout’s main story at 26 hours and only 150 hours to do everything.  THAT’S 3 DAYS SHORTER than Skyrim.

Put another way, you could play EVERY SINGLE HALO TITLE (the FPSs and Halo Wars), and not just the campaigns but all the extra side stuff, looking for all the skulls, doing EVERYTHING YOU CAN and clock in at 219 hours, which is STILL SHORTER THAN SKYRIM.

Its possible people just don’t have the time to beat Skyrim or Fallout 4, but the point still stands that I think one element that keeps drawing people back is the sense that you’ve never actually completed the game.  That there is something new to find or to do.  Not to mention that you could essentially triple most of these play lengths as each game offers significantly different play styles (melee, ranged, and stealth), and within those unique ways to play as well!  You’ll always come back because there will always be something you haven’t done or tried.

Lastly, Skyrim and Fallout really offer something different than most other games, and that is that you can do almost anything and you have a game that will always just feel different from any other game that you play.  No other open-world game, save perhaps Grand Theft Auto V, boasts that level of interaction with the world around you.

So Why Aren't These Games our Favorite?

Hard to say.  In his work “The Poetics”, Aristotle states that a story needs a beginning, middle and end.  That may be why as much as we love playing Skyrim, it might not be our favorite game.  In my case, despite my love for all these games, a game with a structured story always feels more fulfilling to me and I end up remembering my overall experience more than any unique playthrough of Skyrim.

What do you think?  Is Skyrim your favorite game or do you agree with the points here?  Let me know!

Reflecting on Warcraft, and How Starcraft Made it Better

Game

Warcraft III Reign of Chaos & The Frozen Throne

Platform

PC & Mac OS X

Reign of Chaos: 21 hours
The Frozen Throne: 18 Hours

When I was in middle school I attended “Kids are Scientists Too” or “KAST” Camp.  This was my third and final year, having already taken Astronomy and Chemistry, I was now reduced to the grossest science: ecology.  When I wasn’t attempting to impress the girl I had a crush on whom lead me to participate in this particular session, or falling into a gross pond (for these stories and more skin-crawling adventures at Ecology camp, see my other blog: Ickology), I was debating an essential video game question with one of my fellow campers:

Starcraft or Warcraft.

Think of the Blizzard Entertainment roster as the DC Universe.  StarCraft or Warcraft is the Superman/Batman debate.  Sure Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Green Lantern are all pretty cool…
But they aren’t Batman or Superman.

I’d argue that this debate is actually even more difficult than the Batman vs. Superman debate, because there isn’t an objective answer to this question.  Seriously, Batman destroying superman in a fight was the only thing that movie got right!

Warcraft III: The Narrative Thread Behind the Warcraft Franchise

Both these games and their respective franchises hold a similar place in my heart.  When most people think of the legacy of the Warcraft franchise, their minds often go to World of Warcraft.  But from a lore and story perspective, almost everything successful was born out of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, or its expansion The Frozen Throne.  Some of the most popular story elements from WoW were direct follow up to the events of Warcraft III; the return of the Burning Legion, the fight against the Scourge, the creation and intense bad-assary that is Sylvanas Windrunner taking over Lorderon, and much more.  In fact, some of the driving story elements behind the upcoming Battle for Azeroth WoW expansion are a product of the Orc campaign in The Frozen Throne.  One might even argue that the structure of the campaign was the intellectual precursor to WoW, as rather than having a mission-by-mission approach typical of most RTS games, you actually controlled a singular character and leveled him and collected items through a series of open world style areas.  More elements of the story were released via downloadable content months after the initial release of The Frozen Throne.

The game follows a more structured and easier to follow timeline between 4 races: first the humans, then the undead, followed by orcs and then night elves.  The mixing of Humans and Orcs through the story was great tactic for Blizzard to introduce totally new elements, as the first half of each new race’s campaign focuses very heavily on their interaction with the older races.  Anyways, these races through some way or another all interact and come to unite to drive back the Burning Legion.  In Warcraft III, the Burning Legion’s motivations are pretty much what I want them to be.  They are a band of demons that seek to destroy planets across the galaxy, but their leader has a particular soft spot for destroying Azeroth due to a thwarted attempt about 10,000 years ago.  In World of Warcraft, this story is updated into an almost anti-hero level, where the actual task of the Burning Legion is to destroy the Old Gods… eh, it’s a long story.

Reign of Chaos ultimately ends with Orcs, Humans, and Elves uniting against the Burning Legion in one of the most intense and fun “survive for x minutes” style missions.  The Frozen Throne picks up tying up one particular loose end, and ends with another great mission and two amazing cinematics.  Each final level is appropriately challenging and rewarding, featuring something that the previous games lacked, which was some sort of character development.  This is something I feel like even Starcraft lacks.  Particular characters that come to mind at Garrosh Hellscream, Kael’thas, and Jaina.  That being said, even those that don’t develop exude a mythic nature that leads you to love their immutable nature.

Starcraft: How Blizzard Perfected In-Game Storytelling

But the success of Warcraft III’s story telling ultimately built on, and was later perfected by the Starcraft series.  While there was a story in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, the narrative was delivered to you in sort of “mission report” that you would receive at the very beginning of the mission.  And ultimately, no matter what the mission report said, the ultimate goal was really just to kill everything else on the map.  When Starcraft was released 3 years after Warcraft II, it came with a massive improvement to the RTS genre, it told a story.  The story was told not just through mission-briefings, which were delivered through NPC dialogue including you as a character in the universe.  It also existed within your gameplay.  Characters would reach specific checkpoints and make comments, sometimes even just jokes.  The entire mission could be undermined at the last minute, and you could be double-crossed or the person you are hunting saved in the nick of time.

The missions became less “kill everything” and more elaborate too.  One particular mission that comes to mind was actually the secret level in Starcraft: Brood War (the expansion to Starcraft).  The level featured the character Zeratul learning more about the Xel’Naga’s behind-the-scenes efforts to basically destroy the galaxy.  For a secret level, it’s amazing how many events of Starcraft 2 relied so heavily on a mission most people missed.  What made this level so great is that while there was fighting, the level itself was mostly there for narrative purposes.  Another of my favorite levels in Starcraft, that I was so happy to see basically reproduced in Starcraft II was the “survive for 20 minutes” level.  This is the second level of the Terran campaign in both games, and it pits you against an unreasonably large group of zerg foes.  This level quite literally flips the script on almost the entirety of Warcraft II.

Starcraft II ultimately perfected story telling within the gameplay, introducing elements of choice into the campaign that affected the rest of the game. These choices included upgrades and research approaches to units that would change the campaign playstyle, as well as narrative choices that affected which level came next, and therefore which units you had access to (or which units your opponent didn’t have access to).  These choices ultimately even influenced the narrative for later points in the game. My biggest complaint was that these choices did not flow through the campaign.  For example, there is a decision you can make in Wings of Liberty regarding partnering with a Dominion Ghost.  In the follow-up expansion, heart of the Swarm, it is presumed you made the choice that would not help you for this particular mission.  While the level was enjoyable, it ultimately feels sloppy when Nova tells me I should have messed with her and I remember consciously choosing not to.

Conclusion

So, which game is better?  It really does come down to your style.  I’m always going to choose Warcraft because I grew up with it.  I watched my brother play Warcraft against our neighbor during the earliest days of the internet.  It would literally take an hour to set up the connection.  Although I believe that the story of Starcraft was done more expertly, I think the characters of Warcraft have far more appeal.  Sure, Starcraft has a ruthless dictator, a space cowboy, and a badass woman who wants to kill everyone, but Warcraft has a complicated elf who walks the line between good and evil, a man who’s quest for salvation for his homeland ultimately leads to his destruction, and… a badass woman who wants to kill everyone.

The original Starcraft became a constant repetition of tedious alliance and inevitable betrayal.  Warcraft III’s strength was that it [minor spoiler] actually ended with everyone fighting together for a common cause. The weakness of World of Warcraft was the return to conflict between the Alliance and Horde is ultimately a game mechanic and therefore something so grand as peace can literally never happen until the very end of the game’s run.  The Frozen Throne was a great look at what the Warcraft world would look like beyond the constant power struggle between the two factions, as the playable game actually circles around Illidan, Arthas, Sylvannis, and Kael’thas, four characters who are ultimately some of the most villainous in the series.

Mechanically, I find Warcraft to be more relaxing.  On the ultra-competitive level of pro-sports, you’ll probably still find a similar APM score for both games, but if you’re a casual player who likes to mix it up with folks on line, I think you’ll find Warcraft to be more your style.  In ladder play, you are less likely to come across someone who is just cranking out 10 grunts at a time than in a game like Starcraft where you’ll be swamped at any level in 2 minutes by like 70 zerglings.  Starcraft Is ultimately a game of resource management.  Warcraft is still a game of unit (specifically Hero unit) management.

So yeah, this is my love letter to Warcraft III, which had a lot to do with Starcraft surprisingly.  Again, if you are anxiously awaiting Battle for Azeroth I highly suggest you take a look at the Orc Campaign in The Frozen Throne.  This campaign is playable from the onset and the story exists separate from all the others, meaning there are no spoilers if you chose to play the rest of the game.  Warcraft III just received a big update from Blizzard recently too, so you might even see a remastered version soon if you want to wait until then.

Please comment below with your thoughts on the Warcraft vs. Starcraft debate, other Blizzard games you'd like to see me talk about, or other thought about how to make this blog better!  Thanks!

Alien Isolation: Reflecting on Why I Crouch When I Move from Room to Room at Night

Game:

Alien Isolation

Platforms:

PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC, Mac, Linux, Oculus/Vive VR (but be prepared to poop yourself)

Average Time to Play

18-22 Hours, depending on play style

Spoiler-free Plot

Years after the events of Alien, Amanda Ripley is working as an engineer when she is approached with an interesting offer.  Sevastopol, a soon to be decommissioned space station, has located the flight recorder of the Nostromo, the ill-fated ship from Alien.  Wanting to know what happened to her mother (Ellen Ripley, again, from Alien), Amanda teams up with a group of... other space people to get her hands on the flight recorder. Unfortunately, as soon as they touch down, things start to break bad.  Chaos breaks out throughout the station due to a mysterious "creature" hunting down residents.  The survivors break into panic, making them just as unsafe.  Oh! Let's not forget the creepy robots that are also out to get you!  Use your creeping skills and your trusty motion detector (that will just shit the bed sometimes) to help navigate this horrible place.

The story of Alien Isolation isn't anything to write home about, but it isn't anything to dismiss either.  Without any spoilers, the game treats you to some nice twists and turns, some real feels, and some classic Alien-franchise bits.

Why This Game is Amazing.

I saw the first Alien movie alone in my dorm room some Halloween and it was ok.  I mean it is a classic, but I was not obsessed with the franchise.  I never played any of the other games associated with the series (Aliens V Predator, Colonial Marines).  I fell asleep watching Aliens.  So I just wasn't immediately interested in this game.

If you’ve never experienced the indescribable joy that is watching a youtuber play Alien Isolation, you absolutely should go now.  It is the best.  This is the first one I found, and it's pretty hilarious.

It was this very experience that made me think, “OK, I’d like to give this game a try”.  

This is a worthy first installment of this blog, as it is my favorite game.  When people ask me what my favorite game is, they usually think I’m going to say World of Warcraft, or at least something more conventional.  To be fair, I’ll be the first to admit that I have a weirder taste in video games.  I picked up The Witcher III a few years back and I played about 2 hours and was not into it.  It mostly stems to the fact that when I play a role playing game, I don’t want to be someone the game has invented for me, I want to be my own person.  That’s why I love games like Fallout and Skyrim, or Dungeons and Dragons, and even World of Warcraft since it gives me the space to create my own “head canon” for my character. 

So, if you’ve ever played Alien: Isolation you might be surprised to hear that this game is my favorite.  Amanda is definitely a game-invented character.  The game features no choice, no dialogue options, nothing really personal.  So why?  Well it helps that the game is in first person.  Mix in the intensity of any survival horror and you can cultivate a deeply immersive experience.  This makes it easy to find yourself in the game.  Beyond that, I immediately found Ripley to be more interesting than I found Geralt.  First of all, Ripley is a woman which is pretty rare for a protagonist.  Secondly she's just an ordinary person.  But instead of taking the approach some games or movies take like...

"Meet this ordinary woman who can all of the sudden battle an xenomorph like a boss!"

... the game believably shows you a way that Ripley can overcome this situation.  Either that, or it chalks it up to luck, which is also very well done.

------------Warning:  Minor Spoilers------------

There are a few scripted moments in the game where you encounter the Alien, and it's totally about to kill you, but then something happens.  Part of the extremely damaged ship explodes.  There is another moment that's not even worth the spoiler, you just have to play!

---------End of Spoilers-----

The game uses luck in a believable, non-deus ex machina sort of way.  Any instant when you escape or avoid the Alien feels like something believable for Ripley or allowable due to what's going on in the station.  In Alien: Isolation, you will never feel like you cheated the game. This creates a super rewarding experience.

Best Part: The Environment

A similar care goes towards the environment.  The game could potentially be described as open-world, as towards the end of the game no part of the ship is really off limits to you.  The problem is that you have ABSOLUTELY ZERO desire to go anywhere but where you are supposed to go.  The game does a fantastic job opening up different areas of the ship and controlling the movement of the player in a believable way.  By way of comparison, I was playing The Last of Us last night and I was on the level when I was stuck in the Massachusetts State House.  I was being hunted by about 10 dudes and I was with a 15 year old girl who seemed unable to appreciate that fact.  When I turned towards the back of the room, holding a baseball bat I'll add, I saw a closed window that I could not bash through.  To me, nothing ruins realism like being faced with impossible odds and not being able to bash your way through a window.

Now I understand for designers, that must be an impossible issue to deal with.  Especially in real-world environments.  In Alien: Isolation though, there are very few spaces that you cannot enter for no reason.  You either can't enter it because you haven't found the access code or key card, or you don't have the right wrench, or there is a big scary xenomorph between you.  But from a narrative perspective it all makes sense.  Why would you have any of that stuff?

The real reason the environment wins is for stuff like this:

On top of really keeping this 80s-futurism aspect from the movies, so much of the game's environment is designed to look like the xenomorph.  It's hard to find a good picture of it, but this is the best I could do.  I can't tell you how many times I played this game, cried "OH SHIT" only to realize that I was looking at a pipe.  Its just so good at keeping you on your toes.

TL;DR

I love this game.  It is the perfect length, not overstaying it's welcome or ever feeling repetitive.  The haunting environment, first person perspective, and believable story work together to create a truly immersive (and scary!) experience.  This game offers a great avenue into survival horrors that isn't filled with blood and gore.  Its just a smart game with an even smarter xenomorph hunting you for 18 straight hours.  

If you haven't played this yet, you're late to the game.

Introduction

Hello (likely) friends and family!

In the past, I've tried to keep up a blog, but I believe it fell pray to these classic blunders of internet blog-dum:

(1) Rare posting

(2) Rampant speling errors 😁

(3) Freshman-level philosophy bullshit

I've decided to move forward with an idea that I've had for a long time which will hopefully avoid this blunders.  

I don't know about you, but I am extremely suggestible when it comes to video games.  (Note to self, I almost wrote "suggestive", which could set up an entirely different blog).  Last summer, my wife and I went to Greece for an amazing two week trip.  Seeing all the ruins and learning about how an early civilization blossomed into the European Union's least favorite country left me with a lot of feelings.  Not the least of which was a HUGE desire to play Civilization 5.  I get a similar spontaneous nostalgia driving me back to games in my library I had previously thought I'd worn out.  I remember when I StumbledUpon a Punch Cat article on Reddit (not this one, but this is the basic tone of most) which sent me running (like a Khajiit who kicked a chicken in Riverwood) back to Skyrim for weeks.

I'm typically behind on the times.  I have a horrible habit of betting on the wrong trend when it comes to games and consoles.  Because of that, I frequently find myself playing some our generation's best games about 2 months to 5 years too late.  So, I wanted to share my experience being Late to the Game with all of you.  Maybe it gives you the motivation you need to return to Tamriel, Azeroth, Sanctuary, the year 2329, or Sevastopol Station.  Maybe you've never played Dying Light, and you're not sure that you'd like it but you just need some details to make the purchase.  

I'm not going too far back.  We're not going to be reviewing Pong here or anything!  I'm going to be playing some current generation games that I'm just a little Late to the Game in playing.  I'm going to talk about my experience playing, how I felt about the story and characters, and some other thoughts.  If you're into a more technical review, this might not be for you.  I've got some friends who in my Warcraft guild who frequently remind me that I do not know the first thing about graphics quality.  In so far as the graphics quality does affect the quality of my experience, I probably won't be touching upon it.

I'm not looking to rush my first experiences playing some of these games.  I think that's a benefit of reviewing games that have been out for a while!  So, to keep up and push content, I'm going to have some reflections on games that I've played in the past that I think warrant a second look.  I'll also look into streaming some play on Twitch and other services.

To keep an eye on what's coming next, you can look to the right to see what games I'm playing and what consoles/systems I'm using.  I just started The Last Of Us, which will likely be my first real post, but in the meantime, you can keep an eye out for a reflection on Alien: Isolation.

Also, please feel free to leave comments with what games from the last 20 or so years you'd like to see revisited and reviewed!  On this particular post, can you name the game/series that corresponds to the underlined places above? (Hint 2329: you'd have to be a real internet Journeyman to know this one).

I hope you enjoy what you find here.  If you take away one thing, I hope its "Damn, I need to play that again!"