RPG Tourist

Horizon Zero Dawn is a game that I deliberately avoided learning much about. It did not look like something I would normally play. It appeared on the PS4 recently (there are multiple accounts) and next thing I knew I was playing it obsessively. I really get the love for this title. You get to play the entire tutorial as an adorable little girl. Main game coming of age Aloy starts out with some moves. She is attractive, the NPC’s are attractive and the environments are attractive which make the robots appear even more unnatural and terrifying. The game play reminds me of Far Cry Primal but Horizon Zero Dawn is post apocalyptic science fiction so everything is possible and plausible. Denizens are articulate and even literate. The resource based economy is a little grindy but the game is generous with XP. Even though it’s obvious what caused societal collapse there is much mystery surrounding Aloy, her society and the weird machines. The game is lore deep. It is mostly a strategy game...

Warning: Spoilers Because I avoided learning very much about Mass Effect 3’s ending controversy, I didn’t really know what to expect. Well for me it’s over now. Yikes. On the surface, 3 isn’t much different than the previous game but there are hints of the catastrophic direction Bioware was about to turn. They deliberately made progressing towards the final mission more difficult for exclusive single play. They addressed this with an extended DLC but I still got frustrated with gathering war assets and cheated. Regarding the Steam version performance issues, enough hate buckets have been tossed that EA has responded. There’s no solution yet but they claim to be investigating. As well they should considering their asking price. I started the game on normal difficulty but got frustrated with a boss, turned the difficulty down and tried using my Steam controller. That got me through the boss fight but made the fps drops all the more noticeable. I think it’s because I put...